"I didn't want to do it,'' he hears himself saying. "I didn't want to leave them behind.''
The void laughs at him. There are miles of empty air beneath his dangling feet. "You had no choice.''
"Yes I did! I didn't have to come here.'' He pauses. "I didn't have to do anything,'' he says quietly, and inhales another lungful of death. "It was all automatic. Maybe it was inevitable.''
"-- Evitable,'' echoes the distant horizon. Something dark and angular skims across the stars, like an echo of extinct pterosaurs. Turbofans whirring within its belly, the F-117A hunts on: patrolling to keep at bay the ancient evil, unaware that the battle is already lost. "Your family could still be alive, you know.''
He looks up. "They could?'' Andrea? Jason? "Alive?''
The void laughs again, unfriendly: "There is life eternal within the eater of souls. Nobody is ever forgotten or allowed to rest in peace. They populate the simulation spaces of its mind, exploring all the possible alternative endings to their life. There is a fate worse than death, you know.''
~From A Colder War, a novella by Charles Stross.
...
"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride."
~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press
The whole mess in the House of Representatives got me thinking.
It's fairly obvious that whatever else they're doing, none of these idiot Republicans are taking their jobs as legislators, let alone their responsibility as citizens, all that seriously.It's all about the Clicks and Likes, and the Tweets, or whatever they're called now. For a particularly fortunate few, it's about Talk-radio hits and Fox News appearances and having the collective (allegedly "liberal") media's nose up they ass all the time.
In our ridiculous 24/7 News cycle and 365-day-a-year political (mostly Republican) campaign cycle, deep down every last one of these motherfuckers is in some kind of campaign mode, perpetually running for higher office...and for what? Most of them know they're never gonna get it.
At least not until Donald Trump either flees in disgrace to a gilded palace in Dubai or shuffles off this Mortal Coil and goes to the great Cheeseburger in the Sky, or something.
And I'm just like...what the fuck would these fucking people's idea of a Clickbait Future look like??
I mean, who the fuck looks at somebody like Jim Jordan and thinks he's a "fighter" much less fit to stand in the same space as people like Tip O'Neal, Nancy Pelosi or even Newt Gingrich?? Love him or hate him, Newt could at least playact at being serious until he got caught with his dick in some woman that he wasn't married to, one too many times...while impeaching Bill Clinton for the same shit!
And I still say if Slick Willie had gone on live TV and said "Yeah, I fucked Monica Lewinsky, and what happens next is between me and my wife. What you gonna do about it??" Newt would have had precisely fuck all of a case and our politics would probably be at least somewhat different, with the seething resentful Republican tribalism still below the surface and its eruption somewhere in our futures. I mean, even at that point Bill Clinton had gone as far as he could go. Does anybody really think in the late 1990's anybody other than the religious right and tabloid journalists really would've given a shit?? Hell, if Hillary had immediately filed for divorce, she could've very well been a hero to all the angry ex's and feminists and those of us who hated Bill for being a slimy shithead all alike.
She likely could have run and won in 2000 or 2004. On the votes of people who empathized because they'd been there alone, George W. Bush would've never had a chance. And the people who later became MAGA's would be blaming Hillary Clinton for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and/or the perpetuation thereof. I imagine the 9/11 conspiracy theories would be even more insane, though.
Like the current political ecosystem (especially, but not exclusively on the Right) conspiracy theories aren't about the truth. They're about the Self.
It's all about "Look at me! Look at me! Look at me and how great (or smart, or whatever) I am!"
This shit is effectively secularized Gnosticism. Trying too hard to make one appear to be on some kind of a "Higher Level" that other people, for...I don't know, something something Gazpacho. It's ultimately a lot of contradictory nonsense.
And far too often, people get killed in the process, or because of all the crazy shit.
And anybody who knows anything just gets ignored by motherfuckers who wanna Believe, anyway. Conspiracy theories have become a False Religion, on a Biblical level.
And the condition of the rest of the country, or the world, be damned. So long, that is, as the conspiracy theorist or the Republican politician or the right-wing pundit or the vengeful Truck-screamer gets some bullshit political favor, or their money, or somehow feels "Special."
Or at least gets a few more clicks and likes on their social media, which seems to be the damn point of so much of this horseshit.
It's a minority of us, but that minority occupies half our political system and vastly too much of our assorted religious ecosystems, by overall volume if not actual numbers.
You can put on the Full Armor of God all you like, if the space you're in has been filled with the Fuel Air Explosive of Conspiracy theories or with Poisonous Vapors of Hate it's not going to do you all that much good.
You're either getting forced out, leaving out of frustration or self-preservation, or you're going to be physically or spiritually destroyed one way or the other...simply because the fanatics can never be satisfied. And my experience suggests a hell of a lot more people are just leaving, these days...if they hadn't already.
I've been there. So have pretty much most of the people I used to run with.
Evidence suggests "Conservative" Christianity in a lot of its forms and Evangelicalism in particular has gone full MAGA if not full Q-Anon...and I've outright seen people who think Trump is basically their god. You know who taught me that Left Behind was a Lie??
The same people who taught me belief in that sort of thing in the first place!
How shitty of a life to do you have to have to think Donald Trump...who couldn't name two Books of the Bible and thinks he doesn't need God's forgiveness and who very clearly doesn't give a fuck about anybody other than himself...is some kind of divine figure, god, or saint??
And how debased has our collective understanding of such things even become, that this is possible??
More to the point, too much of it is because people have very often had it too easy, for too long. We've become bored, debased, jaded. We care more about our Selves than we do about the greater whole or even the Civilization that gives us all life...not to mention all those things like meaning, or that powers all this technology so many of us worship as Iconolaters of Narcissism.
And they do it while fancying themselves Iconoclasts of Liberalism or Modernity, thinking they're smashing idols instead of bowing to them.
We just don't want to face that.
We know where this goes, the end of Civilization, people dancing around fires shouting "Unga Bunga" in a dark, dark night unmarred by the Light Pollution of cities. But all these fucking people just hope they can bail with whatever they've got before it gets to that point. Trouble is, when the lights go out, sooner or later they go out for all of us.
Unless you do the work, unless you fight, if need be, to keep them on.
Because endless narcissistic bullshit and belief in fairy dust and magic beans doesn't keep the lights on.
Creationists and people who believe in demon-haunted worlds don't build starships. No matter how many guns they have, they cower and demand protection from a night they think is filled with monsters.
You either believe in Civilization or you don't.
You either believe in freedom, and the future, or you don't.
End of story. It really is that simple.
Слава Україна!
Osman Ali Atto: I see not catching Aidid is becoming routine.
General William Garrison: We're not leaving Somalia until we find him. And we will find him.
Atto: (scoffing) You've been here, what, six weeks? Six weeks, you tried to catch the General. You put up reward posters. $25,000. What's this, gunfight at K.O. Corral?
Garrison: It's O.K. Corral.
Atto: Don't make the mistake of thinking because I grew up without running water I am simple, General. I do know something about history. See all this? It's simply shaping tomorrow. A tomorrow without a lot of Arkansas white-boys' ideas in it.
Garrison: Well, I wouldn't know about that. I'm from Texas.
Atto: Mr. Garrison, I think you should not have come here. This is civil war. This is our war, not yours.
Garrison: Three hundred thousand dead and counting. That's not a war, Mr. Atto. That's genocide. ~From The Film Black Hawk Down.
They're pickin' up the prisonersAnd puttin 'em in a penAnd all she wants to do is dance, danceRebels been rebelsSince I don't know whenAnd all she wants to do is dance
Molotov cocktail, the local drinkAnd all she wants to do is dance, danceThey mix 'em up rightIn the kitchen sinkAnd all she wants to do is dance
Crazy people walkin' round with blood in their eyesAnd all she wants to do is dance, dance, danceWild-eyed pistol wavers who ain't afraid to dieAnd all she wants to do isAnd all she wants to do is danceAnd make romanceShe can't feel the heatComin' off the streetShe wants to partyShe wants to get downAll she wants to do isAll she wants to do is dance.
~Don Henley, All She Wants To Do Is Dance
...
Oh, and the header photo;
Where do you think all this crap ends up, if we don't stop it now?
That's the thing about the future, we can choose a better one.
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