Lost Cause (Parable Of The Ten Virgins, Two.)

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

Yesterday, Nikki Haley was asked about the causes of the Civil War by a reporter.

The cause of the Civil War...as explained by the Confederates themselves, in their attempted founding documents and various political speeches and shit at the time...was Slavery. The Antebellum South was a society of Slavers, by Slavers and for Slavers...forced labor and human bondage for profit. And the common free White people in the South at the time were fine with this, even though the slavery system depressed their own wages and devalued their own labor. And all they were offered in return for...fundamentally, submitting to feudalism under our own flag was racism.

You don't need anthropologists, archaeologists, complicated analysis and this, that and the other damn thing to determine this, these fucking people said so, in plain language. They wanted people to know why. There only even was this whole Lost Cause bullshit mythos of courage, honor, and nobility because the sons of bitches lost and because the memory of Slavery and wartime defeat wasn't something most basic white Americans...or even most Southerners, for a good long time, wanted to hear or talk about. 

The South, for most of the post-Civil War 19th century, was considered a violent, backward, impoverished shithole. and then, as now (and for that matter, before the Civil War) negative stereotypes about rednecks or Southerners were very much a thing. I mean, fuck, Dixie...the unofficial Confederate national anthem...was written to make fun of the goddamn South! 

Rehabilitating the image of the Confederacy and of its armies was a multigenerational and mainly early-to-mid-20th century project. They had to wait until most of the Civil War veterans had died off, for reasons that should be obvious. 

Like seriously what the fuck do you think Gone With The Wind was really about??

I'm a lifelong student of Civil War history as was my Dad before me. I don't need Joe Biden to tell me that the Civil War was about Slavery or that Slavery was bad. 

Nikki Haley might be a Republican...but she's of Indian Sikh heritage (which is cool as hell in its own right) and at the time of the US Civil War her ancestors were living under the British Raj or its assorted princely bootlickers in India, she really has no dog in this fight and would have been much better served by simply answering "Really?" or "No Comment" except that a lot of these Republicans are hell-bent on trying to appeal to hard-right assholes and racist motherfuckers who'll never vote for them, no matter what...and won't vote for anybody else as long as Donald Trump is still alive. Like seriously, why the fuck even is there a Republican primary?

What do any of these idiots think they're going to accomplish other than embarrassing themselves??

Not that anybody in the post-shame "We Hate American Because It's Too Liberal" Republican Party even gives a shit about that...or ever will, ever again. That's the one thing they have learned from Donald Trump. 

Civilization depends too much on everybody following the rules, and they just don't want to. 

And everybody from Chris "Please Clap" Christie to Donald Trump himself to Nikki Haley to Vivek RamaRamaDingDing has internalized this and decided "Fuck the rules" but is too chickenshit to say that shit out loud, openly, and without equivocations. Except Trump, who will obfuscate it (badly) by talking a lot, following up his Dictatorship comments with a lot of talk about foolishness and stupidity, and then Republicans and the Media will try and say he doesn't mean it. But Trump doesn't joke, lies poorly and was never that clever. 

He means it.

Republicans want to say it, and want to mean it, or at the very least want to be seen as good little Fascists by the Republican voters...but are desperately afraid that any of the above would mean they don't get invited to the Met Gala next year and they've seen now that the "Society" people mercilessly have kicked Trump-Land to the curb. 

(So they pull this kind of craven shit like Nikki did yesterday and wonder why The Base still hates them?)

You cannot reason with this kind of backstabbing, malicious cowardice, you can only defeat it.

And Nikki Haley involved herself in this shit not by culture or heritage (which I might violently disagree with, but from a historical perspective as an American it's at least a thing I can find to be understandable) but simply because she's too much of a coward to say "No" despite a reasonable case in terms of family history for doing so...and trust me, she could have done it and made herself be seen as more conservative.

Because she fears what a mob of racist Southerners will do to her already nonexistent Presidential campaign more than she respects her own self.

And this is what Republicans are now, there is no more "Lost Cause" than the Republican Party. That's with or without...but especially without...Trump.

Even those running against him won't say shit against the racism that is the one thing Trump really does stand for.

When somebody tells you who they are, believe them.

If you think these motherfuckers who won't even stand up for the American experiment at the most minimal level of saying "Slavery Was Bad" (thus defending how it was saved the first time) would say something disparaging about civil war, ethnic cleansing, killing fields, the sundering of the United States into multiple political polities or the establishment of a fascist Neo-Confederacy (itself almost certainly a Russian satellite-state) in part of the former USA...you have another damn thing coming. They'd rather live in darkness than see everybody get a bit of America to show for having lived here and contributed to our civilization.

Open your eyes, before we sleepwalk right into American Revelation and the judgment of God for all the shit we've done...which will include questions about Slavery.

Pro-tip, Nikki, trying to bullshit God ends badly.

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Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.
And five of them were wise, and five were foolish. They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them: But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.
While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.

And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.

Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps.

And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out. But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.

And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut. Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us.

But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.

Watch ye therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh. ~Matthew 25:1-13