Let The Bodies Hit The Floor (Left Behind Is A Lie IV, Nine.)

Never have I witnessed such sincere hospitality and the overwhelming spirit of true brotherhood as is practiced by people of all colors and races here in this ancient Holy Land, the House of Abraham, Muhammad, and all the other Prophets of the Holy Scriptures. For the past week, I have been utterly speechless and spellbound by the graciousness I see displayed all around me by people of all colors...

You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to rearrange much of my thought-patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions. This was not too difficult for me. Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.

During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug) -- while praying to the same God -- with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the actions and in the deeds of the "white" Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan, and Ghana. We were truly all the same (brothers) -- because their belief in one God had removed the "white" from their minds, the 'white' from their behavior, and the 'white' from their attitude. I could see from this, that perhaps if white Americans could accept the Oneness of God, then perhaps, too, they could accept in reality the Oneness of Man -- and cease to measure, and hinder, and harm others in terms of their "differences" in color.

With racism plaguing America like an incurable cancer, the so-called "Christian" white American heart should be more receptive to a proven solution to such a destructive problem. Perhaps it could be in time to save America from imminent disaster -- the same destruction brought upon Germany by racism that eventually destroyed the Germans themselves.

They asked me what about the Hajj had impressed me the most. . . . I said, "The brotherhood! The people of all races, color, from all over the world coming together as one! It has proved to me the power of the One God. . . . All ate as one, and slept as one. Everything about the pilgrimage atmosphere accented the Oneness of Man under One God. 

~Malcolm X, Letter following the Hajj.

...

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride."

~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

Earlier today when I logged into Threads, I saw this.

In Franklin, TN an open White nationalist is running for Mayor, with the support of assorted violent rednecks and various White Supremacist thugs. Some idiot put a campaign sign for her on the statue of a Black United States Army soldier that commemorates the Battle of Franklin during the US Civil War...a Confederate defeat in which Black regiments were heavily involved.

Fuck these motherfuckers.

Then, not five minutes later I saw this. Some privileged white idiot who has a non-zero chance of being an alleged "Progressive" taking down posters of Israelis who were kidnapped by Hamas.

And here in Michigan, apparently last night the president of a Detroit synagogue was murdered, stabbed to death by a thus-far unknown attacker.

Note that there's people, not necessarily affiliated with or supporting either party in this conflict, who've attacked both Arab Americans and Jews lately...for no better reason, I think, than feeling like they have some kind of excuse because of the war in Israel.

I can't stress it enough that blame, denial, and purity-testing only serve to enable bad actors.

After how things went from 2016 to 2020, and considering the current clusterfuck in the House GOP, does anybody with a brain in their head really think the United States of America would somehow survive a second Trump term intact??

Let alone, that enabling people like Hamas, these rogue Republicans, the Russians, the Tankie far-left or US White Supremacists to do the kind of shit they wanna do...would somehow make the world a better place??

What kind of narcissist thinks that in such a world as all these absolute motherfuckers want to create, such a large and amorphous group as Democrats is going to somehow "Miss" your vote, much less feel any "pain" over it?? They're not going to notice you didn't vote for them, because we'd all be too busy fighting for things like basic survival.

Or haven't you noticed that the Republican plan at this point basically is to break America up, and sell as much of whatever they get to the absolute lowest bidder who they think is on "their" side, for nothing but the Lulz and pocket change, and thinking they "Triggered" somebody.

What if one of those bidders is, ya know, somebody like Hamas or Islamic Jihad?? Or for that matter, the Russians?? Ya know, I'm gonna go out on not-much-of a limb here and suggest that the same people who spent my childhood fearmongering about Soviet Communism or who were, eight or ten years ago, obsessed with imaginary "Terrorist training camps" in the United States would be just fine with that, so long as some alleged liberal or merely mainstream conservative somewhere opposed the idea.

Here's the thing, it's already started.

You know where all those people whose agenda was so shitty they couldn't discuss it openly even as recently as three years ago during the "Let The Bodies Hit The Floor" phase of COVID-19 are starting to finally land...and, very often, doing so without making any effort at hiding their intent??

Christian Nationalism and White Supremacy, that's where.

I could have told you this would happen. Oh, wait, I did.

People like Don Huffines are exactly why I believe Left Behind Is A Lie.

And I'm here to tell you, they know most people won't go along.

Oh yes, they do. Why do you think they hate most of us so much??

So their next step...as exemplified by the current condition of the US House of Representatives and fully in-the-clear efforts in the Senate to undermine the United States Armed Forces...is going to be to balkanize and degrade America to try and help themselves.

If they can't collapse or destroy "Blue" states and the Federal government or completely purge "Red" states of people they don't like...they'll do whatever they can (up to and including trying to fight a civil war, which they'd likely lose) to weaken the whole until they can arrange for some level of Red State secessionism and American collapse.

I use the examples of places like Afghanistan, Algeria and Vietnam for a damn reason. One can, in fact, lose the war but get the other side to give up.

And then once that succeeds, they'll start the process of Culture War "Purification" all over again, and work from that bloody new "Normal." 

You think it'll ever stop?? No, it'll be lather-rinse-repeat, let the bodies hit the floor (and drown any regions bordering theirs under a tide of refugees) until they finally get to whatever fucked up shit they think they want...and don't be surprised if they view any help given to people fleeing their bullshit as a Casus Belli all by itself.

They  only want "No strings" anything for themselves.

And mind you, many of the exiled "impure" will themselves be violent white Christian Nationalists who simply weren't violent white Christian Nationalist enough.

This is what happens when you enable conflict-obsessed fucking people. This is what happens when you let people who love chaos, drama and war (whether literal or otherwise) run your shit.

They can't even work with each other, they're already attempting to coerce conformity and even threatening violence against each other.

What the fuck do you think these "Conservatives" would do to the rest of us, if that's what they do to their own??

For fuck's sake David French was a high-powered Evangelical lawyer, an activist and later veteran who literally worked for a lot of those Christian Nationalist organizations back in the day and enabled and furthered...and so far as I know, really believed in...these fucking people's agenda.

He literally believed in this stuff enough to go fight for it.

Speaking as a veteran myself I'm not saying that's right or wrong I'm simply saying that's what is.

And for all that, Evangelicals and Republicans, then coalescing into the MAGA movement, violently threw him out when Trump came along because he, like many of the rest of us, was like "WTF??" 

To this day, David French and his idea of actually living in accordance with the values he preached are regarded as an ideological punching bag by MAGA. Same is going to happen to any Republican Congress-Critter that didn't vote for Jim Jordan...and so on ad infinitum.

These people don't believe in anything but power, and that only when they have it. Their main "value" such as it is, is wanting to kill people. Worse, they're going to drag the Tankies and the TERF's and anybody else they can right along with them down the moral bottomless pit.

And doing it with all the moralizing coercion one might expect of Radical Islam.

Why?

Because they don't want to live in civilization. Governance is for suckers, to them. 

The kind of violence going on in places like Israel and Ukraine right now, is the world they want to live in...where if you want to be against them, or even live a normal life that doesn't oscillate between craven submission and violent acting-out...you're going to have to fight for it...or at least live in a world where just going to work means you might get blown up.

Meanwhile, Russian soldiers can get hard drugs delivered right to the front, with the full connivance of their commanders. Try that in the United States Air Force, and a whole bunch of people go to prison.

So no, none of this shit is about Christianity or conservatism or morality.

And the sooner we face that, the better off we're going to be.

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.

Eight

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning. 

I turn this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke. 

I touch the name Andrew Johnson; 

I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

~Facing It, by Yusef Komunyakaa, US Army Veteran