Pink Caesar.

Hess: So what shall we toast to, boys? I can blather on about “To health” or “To success,” but I’d like to do somethin’ a little less rote. Where you from, Brown Eyes?

Migs Mayfield: How ’bout a toast to Operation Cinder?

Hess: Now there’s a man who knows his history.

Mayfield: No, I don’t just know it. I lived it. I was in Burnin Konn.

Hess: Burnin Konn?

Mayfield: Mmm.

Hess: That was a hard day. I had to make many unpleasant decisions.

Mayfield: Yes, you did. Entire city gone in moments, along with everybody in it. We lost our whole division that day. Man, that was like 5-10,000 people.

Hess: Yep. All heroes of the Empire.

Mayfield: Yeah. And all dead.

Hess: Well, it’s a small sacrifice for the greater good, son.

Mayfield: Depends on who you ask, don’t you think?

Hess: [irritated] What you gettin’ at, trooper?

Mayfield: All those people, the ones who died, was it good for them? Hmm? Their families? The guys I served with? Civilians, those poor mud scuffers, died defending their homes, fighting for freedom. Was it good for them?

Hess: But we’ve outlasted them, son. They’re eating themselves alive. The New Republic is in complete disarray, and we grow stronger. You see, with the rhydonium you’ve delivered, we can create havoc that’s gonna make Burnin Konn pale by comparison. And then they’re gonna turn to us once again. You see, boys, everybody thinks they want freedom, but what they really want is order. And when they realize that, they’re gonna welcome us back with open arms. Ah. To the Empire.

[Mayfield chuckles, then fires a blaster at Hess' chest, killing him instantly. He and Mando then shoot their way out of the mess hall] ~From The Mandalorian, Season 2, Ep. 7 "The Believer"

I've been seeing this around, something called the "Red Caesar" plan, by alleged "Conservatives," for US dictatorship. 

But I used to be a conservative, a Republican. The entire literal basis of conservatism is "Things As They Are" and America is not a dictatorship now, nor has it ever been such a thing.

If that's what you want, whatever you are, you ain't a conservative.

And then there's these fucking people's collective man-crush on Putin and the Russians, and their sniveling desire to bow down to the Hammer and Sickle, because they think Russia i.e. Putin's New Soviet Union is somehow something something Gazpacho "Christian" or "Conservative."

Well, I've met Christians from the former Soviet states, and all I'm gonna say about that is that there's a damned reason Ukrainian Evangelical Christians, Jews and Muslims are fighting so damned hard against the Russians. In point of fact, Putin persecutes non-Russian Orthodox Christians, and other religious people who don't bow down to Russian Imperialism...and this is hardly some great secret. You know what people of my grandparents and my parents' generations said about American people who...for whatever reason...liked or sided with or wanted to bow down to the Hammer and Sickle or jack off the Russians for any purpose whatever??

They called them "Pinkos" and shit like that. Right or wrong, there was a time when expressing such sentiments could get one beat up in this country. In point of fact, conservatives and Republicans made a big damn deal about being afraid of people who allegedly supported Communism and we had a whole decade and a half or so where people like that could get kicked out of government or the military. Hell, politicians like "Tailgunner Joe" McCarthy built careers on this bullshit...and a hell of a lot of the people they actually hurt had not a damned thing to do with either Communism or the Soviet Union.

So yeah, as a taste of these fucking people's own medicine, I'm gonna call it the "Pink Caesar" plan.

Not that I really suspect these fucking people are actually competent enough to take over all of America and sell it out to Putin's resurrected Soviet hordes. They'll try, they might even manage to bite a chunk of this country off...but only one where they and people like them are in the majority and even then, I doubt they'll successfully hold large chunks of their "own" territory, because there's too many of us who can't or won't or wouldn't even be allowed to go along with whatever scheme they think they have.

Imagine Florida or Texas with most of its cities and all of its military bases as "Denied territory." There isn't much left...and those are the "Red States" big enough to have some other economic base. Now, imagine Alabama or Mississippi or South Carolina in the same condition...but further, with their large "Black Belt" regions (areas that have large African American populations) also out of control of any possible secessionist local government.

Bro I live in rural America, in a red Congressional district in a Blue state. All the government has to do is stop sending social security checks out to areas that rebelled and after a couple weeks, when the economies of small towns with aging populations crash, prescriptions come due and the old obvious Republicans run out of cigarettes...yes, this experiment in stupidity would come to a quick, bloody end.

And I ain't never seen no Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Greg Gutfeld or Mike Lindell make no provisions to support anybody who would join them in any hypothetical Civil War, nor to make sure any forces they might raise actually had the technology or the training to successfully take on the local cops, much less the military. 

And with Republican political infrastructure crumbling, especially in places like Michigan where I live, and with even the question of how best to serve their Orange Jesus bitterly dividing these fucking people I really don't see a political takeover...or even a won election...as being all that likely.

And, in light of the Russians being unable to conquer Ukraine, I see a Russian intervention on these fucking people's behalf as equal parts unlikely and unsuccessful if it were to be attempted.

I see conspiracy theories and fantasy and an outright belief that some kind of right-wing Deus Ex Machina is going to somehow spring up from the ground and "save" these fucking people...last week there was some stupid conspiracy theory going on about how a test of the Emergency Alert System was going to cause people who'd been vaccinated for COVID-19 to die and resurrect as Zombies. Never fuckin' mind that these fucking people ruined Zombie fiction for me! 

I swear, The Walking Dead and all that shit doesn't feel "real" because in real life when we were faced with an unreasoning, inhuman enemy in the form of a virus these idiots wandered off into La La Land and refused to face the situation...and they're still making up stupid shit about it going on 3 years later!

No Zombie movie, novel, TV show etc. will ever feel accurate to me again, without people...especially the obvious "Conservatives" and "Preppers" running up and trying to embrace and reason with the approaching, shambling Undead horde...and then getting eaten, or at least bit and turned, and with a very few who "get it" after they get bit blazing away ineffectually with whatever guns they brought because even then "Head shots are for Liberals" and "You Can't Tell Me What To Do" and with people actively trying to hide their infected status if they get away...or worse actively trying to poison others and spread the plague.

A whole hell of a lot of people who spent years stockpiling food and guns and shit for the Apocalypse couldn't handle just staying at home for a few weeks, even when paid to do so. It wasn't the End of the World that several million people died...these motherfuckers treated it as the End Of The World that there weren't any live sports on TV!

How the hell do these fucking people think they're going to fight a second US civil war?!?

Or survive in either the complex, multilaterally dangerous world they say they're trying to create...or for that matter, the resurrected Cold War bilateral world that will most likely eventually result from all this antidemocratic bullshit. 

And, let's not forget the "Reds" on are on a smaller scale than they were before, and with vastly different allies than they had the first time around...because a lot of the countries that would otherwise join them would lose too many international connections or too much power and reputation by doing so. Turkey, for all its adventurism in Syria, has still gone all-in on helping Ukraine. Likewise former Soviet states like Armenia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are pulling away from Russia...although in the case of Azerbaijan that seems to be leading towards forming a regional power bloc with Turkey. 

And maybe it's just me but I don't really see a reborn, neo-Soviet-backed "Confederacy" based on bigotry, with dispersed chunks of territory across eight or ten states, hemmed in by the United States Armed Forces and walls of its own making, being all that excited about establishing diplomatic relations with Burkina Faso, Eritrea or Syria until the Russians that protect and ultimately rule them tell them they have to be. Or being too excited about who, as a result, shows up to do the physical labor they still won't do themselves. Imagine these MAGA's who can't speak English correctly, having to learn Arabic, Belarusian, Fula, Russian, Sango or Tigrinya? What happens when MAGA finds out in the Russkiy Mir, they ain't White Enough??

Also historically, when fascist dictators go crazy, they lose. Even in Ancient Rome, when the Emperor lost his marbles he often got assassinated.

And Trump and most of their political leaders are already both crazy and incompetent. How is that gonna work, do ya think?? You think Vlad is just gonna let these people squander whatever advantage he gets from having them??

It's a dark and dangerous path these fucking people want to go down, they seem to want to destroy themselves...but they hope to take some of the rest of us with them. It's less a project of "National Rebirth" than evidence of national debasement, national ennui and various self-destructive urges.

Seems to me like, if you're actually a conservative, sticking with what we have, defending our allies and interests in the world and maybe fixing a few things here at home would be easier than destroying yourselves to make some imaginary bullshit point? 

If Civilization falls, it isn't just going to fall for Black people or Gay dudes or Ukrainians or whoever you don't like. It falls for everybody.

And it's the side that believes in citizenship and in giving people some chance to better themselves that usually wins, long term.

Most of us have to have something to fight for, fighting for the sake of fighting don't put food on the table.

Neither does ideology, without intelligence.

But I suppose in Russia they don't teach why the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union actually fell, do they? Such knowledge is not beneficial to Power over there.

Which is exactly, I suppose, why Republicans love these fucking people.

The rest of us? We can't afford to be like that.

Слава Україна!

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

~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press
Last Post

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.