Left Behind (Satan's Sermons, Six.)

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

And why behold thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but consider not the beam that is in thine own eye?

Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:

8For every one that asks receives; and he that seeks shall find; and to him that knocks, it shall be opened.

Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?
Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?

Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.

Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leads to destruction, and many there be which go in there at: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leads unto life, and few there be that find it.
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

Even so every good tree brings forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree brings forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

Every tree that brings not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. ~Matthew 7:1-20

...

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride." ~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

I saw this while I was at the store this morning.

Fuck this motherfucker.

Some idiot right-wing Evangelical preacher trying to say that Martin Luther King Jr. was an "Unbeliever."

Yeah, bitch, go ahead and show me where it says "Southern Segregation" (Or birth control, and yes, the practice did exist at the time) in the Bible, I'll fucking wait.

Or better yet, I could save you the trouble. It ain't in there either way.

(For one thing, Judaism has always held that women have bodily autonomy.)

Hell, neither Black people nor White people are mentioned in the Bible. Probably because it'd be another 1600 years before European Elites invented the ideas of racism and Whiteness both as a justification for Slavery and to prevent Black workers and White workers in the colonies from joining forces against them. (Bigotry has always been a thing, but in context, before it was primarily based on cultural or religious intolerance.)

Here's the thing, in the face of both a changing world and a changing "Conservative" movement...the same old fucking people see their power slipping (Because among other things they know Donald Trump isn't going to abide by their weird views on sex and if he won't, MAGA won't either.)

Or, to put it another way; You can propose fascist political projects all day long...but if your followers can just fuck whoever and whenever they want, they're unlikely to get out of bed and follow your commands.

And as somebody on Blue Sky pointed out; Despite being a bunch of profoundly weird motherfuckers themselves, the modern Right is obsessed with both some perverse idea of "Normal" and with in-groups and out-groups. It's getting creepy.

And worse, their definitions of both "In-group" and "Normal" are getting dangerously narrower. They long to eat their own.

More to the point, the standard Republicans either in on it, or so desperately afraid of getting voted off the island in their own "Survivor" politics that they created that they won't defend stuff that's been *Checks Notes* standard practice for literally decades.

And they will get voted off the island.

That's just how it works.

You play fuck-fuck games with face-eating Leopards, with mentally ill religious fanatics and shit, or with plain old bigots, and those obsessed with relative status, sooner or later you're going to end up on the wrong side of "The Cruelty Is The Point."

You have been warned.

And you were warned a long time ago that Truth is the only thing that even gives people a floor to stand on to push back against this kind of crap.

But instead of getting better, it's gotten worse...all the more so with Republicans being out of Power.

When this crap splits America, one side...the rump United States...which will probably be a majority of the country...will be downright boring, functional government, problems slowly starting to be dealt with, but dealt with nonetheless...but it'll be America having to do all the things that America has to do at 75% strength, which will make everything harder for everybody.

The other 25% will be basically White North Korea with a side of Gilead and everyone will expect (and get) the Inquisition...because that's the kind of world These Fucking People want to live in.

And I'm going to be honest, as long as the average moderate or "Liberal" American is not subjected to whatever-the-fuck-crazy-shit, I no longer think a majority of us have the moral fiber to not let these fucking morons break off a chunk of the country and have at each other in some kind of Purity-culture bar-brawl.

And we'll half-ass getting anybody who lives in the part they get but doesn't want to be in it out of it, and too-enthusiastically allow those who do to go and join in...even though by doing so we'll be sending many of them to their own deaths. In the end, the main point of actual conflict will be the hardening of whatever Inner-American border there ends up being.

But somebody always has to be Left Behind, it's the American way. We get soggy and hard to light if we can't be that fucking guy.

It's literally these fucking people's religion.

That's what happens when you let the Devil do the preaching.

A word of warning on that, though;

The world these motherfuckers think they wanna live in is the Killing Fields of Khmer Rouge Cambodia but with a Mall and shit. Somebody's going to have to invade these fucking people just to keep them from all killing each other, and I'll just bet you that China and Russia will volunteer.

And having washed our more-representatively Less White little hands of the whole thing, the rest of us won't be able to say much about that.

We need to stop tolerating fanatics.

You want a better nation, you have to be a better citizen. 

This ain't that.

Слава Україна!

Nameless One: “Shadow of this life?”

Dhall, Dustman scribe: “Yes, a shadow. You see, Restless One, this life is not real. Your life, my life, they are shadows, flickerings of what life once was. This life is where we end up after we die, and here we remain. Trapped, caged, until we can achieve the True Death.”

Nameless One: “True Death?”

Dhall, Dustman scribe: “True death is non-existence. A state devoid of reason, of passion, of sensation.” [Dhall coughs] “A state of purity.”

Nameless One: Sounds like oblivion, why would anyone would want that? 

~from Planescape Torment

Five

Think about this; think about how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of 'em are stupider than that. ~George Carlin

Uncommitted (Satan's Sermons, Five.)

Nameless One: “Shadow of this life?”

Dhall, Dustman scribe: “Yes, a shadow. You see, Restless One, this life is not real. Your life, my life, they are shadows, flickerings of what life once was. This life is where we end up after we die, and here we remain. Trapped, caged, until we can achieve the True Death.”

Nameless One: “True Death?”

Dhall, Dustman scribe: “True death is non-existence. A state devoid of reason, of passion, of sensation.” [Dhall coughs] “A state of purity.”

Nameless One: Sounds like oblivion, why would anyone would want that? 

~from Planescape Torment

...

We've come to a point where every four years this national fever rises up — this hunger for the Savior, the White Knight, the Man on Horseback — and whoever wins becomes so immensely powerful, like Nixon is now, that when you vote for President today you're talking about giving a man dictatorial power for four years. I think it might be better to have the President sort of like the King of England — or the Queen — and have the real business of the presidency conducted by... a City Manager-type, a Prime Minister, somebody who's directly answerable to Congress, rather than a person who moves all his friends into the White House and does whatever he wants for four years. The whole framework of the presidency is getting out of hand. It's come to the point where you almost can't run unless you can cause people to salivate and whip each other with big sticks. You almost have to be a rock star to get the kind of fever you need to survive in American politics. ~Hunter S. Thompson

So, my state's Primary was Tuesday.

Naturally, there were no surprises, Joe Biden cleaned house on the Democratic side, this despite a far-left effort to get people to vote "Uncommitted."

And while Donald Trump won on the Republican side, a large plurality of Republicans still voted for Haley.

Think about that for a second.

I get it, Americans, both Left and Right have been conditioned by political media and their own biases (because that's what an algorithm is, functionally) since 2008 to want a President that inspires an absolute WANK-fest on one side or the other, and scathing hatred on the opposing side, because strong emotions generate Clicks and Likes and overall Internet Engagement and thus an ass-load of money for a lot of fuckin' people.

Not that there's any real comparison between Obama going on Jimmy Kimmel and all the shit Trump did, but the media would like you to think so. Why? Because at least the media got itself conditioned into liking the easy money from certain people (mostly but not exclusively White Republicans) reacting strongly on some kind of emotional level to everything Obama did, just because he was President-ing While Black.

Then they got all type of money and props for being seen as a center of resistance to Trump. Democracy Dies In Darkness, now give us $5.00 (Funny how no one cared about or even mentioned the people who didn't have five bucks.)

Well, guess what??

That's not helping.

None of those fucking people, thus, have anything at all (least of all in an atomized society like our own where far too few of us either "Conservative" or theoretically "Liberal" give a shit about other people) vested in making anything better because that doesn't *Checks Notes* get a bunch of gullible people on the internet hopping mad and thus directly or indirectly giving somebody money.

And Biden is, obviously, not that guy. Joe doesn't want to play these games or be a superstar like Obama and he doesn't consistently do terrible things and say dumb shit in public like Trump either, thus generating a buzz, and the media hates him for it.

And the far-left hates Joe for not being "Perfect" enough or not doing enough for the Palestinians. Never mind that Hamas got themselves and their own people into this mess, or that letting the stated reasons Hamas is even doing this for let alone their vicious methods set a precedent would be terrible for all nations. Palestine has been a Cause Celebre for the Left forever, or something something Gazpacho.

But it's more and less than that, too. It's not just a generational social meme. They never got over the fact that Bernie Sanders wasn't The Dude in 2020. 

Never mind that Republicans spent months winding up to Red-Bait the shit out of Bernie (And I like Bernie but he had a history of not helping when it came to that crap) and when Joe got the nomination instead the "Anti-Communists" just kind of wandered off and went back to doing whatever they've been up to since 1989. 

Never mind that dueling political cults of personality tend to end badly.

But somehow all that effort didn't generalize past The Bern. 

And somehow Uncle Joe being right up there with Che and Karl and Fidel and Uncle Ho as far as the Right is concerned just never took off as any kind of an idea except in the fever swamps where any Democrat or liberal is basically a "Commie."

Nor did this particular meme expand beyond said fever swamps. In fact, the idea didn't even catch on with most Republicans.

(Also, said fever swamps are not exactly expanding.)

And more to the point, despite the existence of a small number of American Tankies (and nobody is less impressed with Joe than the Tankies right now, trust me on this one) over 90% of the straight-up adoration and worship of the Hammer And Sickle these days is coming from MAGA and Republicans from Donald Trump on down.

Again, stop right there and think about that for a second.

So yes, even if all that were true, Republicans...one of these things is not like the other one...and there's no Leftist policy these days that's as categorically calculated to aid Russia and Vladimir Putin on the battlefield as Republican dysfunction in the US House of Representatives is despite the fact that Putin's armies are literally flying the Hammer And Sickle.

And it's not just that Republicans don't care. It's that they cannot wait to taste Russian boot-leather.

Sorry, but I grew up in the 1980's. I don't get this shit and I never will.

Fuck, Anti-Communism was still very much a literal thing when I was growing up. Red-baiting had mostly died off, but that was because domestically at least the conservatives had either figured out you could comfortably fit the number of actual Communist Party USA members in a phone booth or remembered that they themselves had been the ones marching with North Vietnamese flags and photos of Che Guevara in 1968 before they Got The Jesus and switched sides. Indeed, it was "Fashionable" on the Right, to say that one had once been a Leftist (also it was usually BS.)

I don't give a damn how allegedly "Christian" or homophobic the Russians are...their beliefs and culture (and their paranoia) are not yours, they don't give a shit about your and you will not like their beliefs and social memes nor the fact that their paranoia lands you in a Gulag, either, conservatives. That's where they want to go.

And in the face of that, anybody who's "Uncommitted" to voting for and supporting the candidates and the system we have is apparently also uncommitted to Democracy.

I'm not saying current Democrats are the greatest, but if you think the fucking Fascists will give you an equitable policy on Israel vs. Palestine or Universal Health Care or anything else you say you want, you have another thing coming, and that is not a joke.

And accelerationism will not go the way you think it will.

Playing fuck-fuck games with that type of shit is basically letting the Devil write your sermon.

Hell, these fucking people are already winding up for the next big bullshit moral panic which will apparently be primarily weaponized against their own people...or the ones who are insufficiently Fascist anyway. Also, I'd guess we won't hear much about "Mom's For Liberty" once that starts, will we??

What's it going to take to get it through your head that Republicans literally want to enslave your daughters, your wife or yourself if you're a (White) woman or a poor White man, and kill you and your gay friends too (if you're anybody else at all.) 

If we don't stop this shit now, it'll never stop.

Democracy, for most of us, is self-preservation.

Commit to understanding that, at least.

Слава Україна!

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride." ~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

Four

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.  We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream.  The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it, and then hand it to them with the well fought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same.  And if you and I don't do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free. ~Ronald Reagan

...

Think about this; think about how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of 'em are stupider than that. ~George Carlin

The Believers (Satan's Sermons, Four.)

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"

...

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride." ~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

So, I saw this last night; The Alabama Attorney General said he's not going to enforce the Alabama Supreme Court ruling vs. IVF.

And then a bomb went off outside his office?

Hold on here, are we talking about Republicans...or Radical Islamists in some faraway country that most Republicans can't find on a fucking marked map??

Oh, right. This is *Checks Notes* Alabama.

Alright, Republicans, listen up;

Anybody who's defending IVF, has any kind of common-sense or moderate views on Abortion or simply wants the fury to die down a bit?? Guess what?

All any of you have done now is paint targets on your backs as far as the Oblivion Cult and the Purity Fanatics are concerned. And no, they don't care if you fall in line later. This is what happens when you play fuck-fuck games with religious fanatics.

They view you as hopelessly squishy with a side of suspiciously liberal simply for speaking back to them in a tone that wasn't a screamed "Three bags full, Sir!" 

They either wanna Party Like It's 1955 or they want to provoke an Apocalyptic showdown because in their world either they're 100% Right or Everyone Dies. (And these nuts want everything to be a violent existential fight, so they can feel important.)

And you fuckers spent how long playing "Just The Tip" with these fucking people?? Also, what for??

Did you really think these motherfuckers were only going to eat the rest of us??

(Let alone that they would just vote, and then crawl back under their rocks?)

Also for the record (and I've written about this before.) MAGA views America as a "Communist" country. (This crazy shit will continue no matter what happens in November.)

We've got a SCOTUS with Alito and Thomas and that's Not Enough for these nuts. Think about that for a second.

For those of you coming aboard from reality, Communism hasn't been a thing since 1989. I've written multiple times about where I was and what I was doing and what it was like when the Berlin Wall came down.

These Fucking Idiots don't care about any of that. Hell, a lot of them don't know what words mean. Not just those particular words, I mean words in general.

In fact, to them "Communism" is mere lazy shorthand for "Anything I don't like" which is, by the way, everything except maybe Donald Trump. Ring Bell, Drool, Drool.

Yes, it's a shitty educational system but it's also a right-wing side of the political fence that primarily values emotion, religiosity (including in spaces where it doesn't belong) and "True Belief" for no better reason than those things are easy to manipulate.

And it's not new, these motherfuckers were always like this. They basically wanna live in the Empire from Star Wars.

It's just that, for a very long time, they were outnumbered by conventional Republicans and/or people who really believed this stuff (Christianity for example) like me, and now they're not. The nuts started making a serious effort to drive us out like 20+ years ago.

And they're basically run...not so much by Donald Trump...but by a class of "Influencers" that cares more about prolonging the "Fight" (for their own profits) than anything else, including whether they win or whether they lose.

And the reason for that is, if they won, shitheads like Libs Of TikTok or Matt Walsh would have to get real jobs again. And guess what?? They never want to have to answer the question "Would you like fries with that, Sir?" ever again.

Like I keep saying about this shit, you wanna listen to these fucking people? You might as well invite the Devil to preach at your church.

And if you wanna fix it, you're basically going to have to rewire the distribution system for these fucking people's brain chemicals at this point. It's less "Pavlov's Dog" than wondering how Pavlov relates to Vladimir Putin and if he's thus "One of theirs" or not.

You can't reason with willful stupidity, but you can outvote it and then smack it upside the head.

You can say "Communism hasn't been a thing since 1989, What the fuck is wrong with you??"

And you'd best say it now.

If you want a better country, you have to be a better citizen.

And not only is this not that, but these fucking people have a real problem with citizenship in general, simply because they want (but also have never had to live in) a world of privilege and subjection.

We, as a people, need to stop this shit before it gets out of control. 

Republicans going after Republicans was always my personal warning button that we're too close to a Civil War.

And if We The People don't get control of this situation now and stop this shit, once these fucking people get going with Blood Hunts and Inquisitions and War Crimes, once they get a taste of blood...and they'll start with their own because it's easy...they're never going to stop until somebody else kills off enough of them that their Jihad can no longer be sustained.

Just sayin' I'm a veteran. I did Peacekeeping in Bosnia in 1995. 

When you see people digging up mass graves and doing the work of trying to even figure out who was who, it'll be a little hard to tell if the people involved were conservatives or liberals.

And it you're not one of the Monsters now rising, the Monsters would prefer you be under the ground than standing on it. Against the backdrop of that, I have no patience for all these fucking people who think Joe Biden isn't "Entertaining" or "Far Enough Left" for their tastes.

The Fascist platform is basically Healthcare for nobody. If you're not Rich, White and the right kind of Male? They wanna Kill 'Em All and let God the "Free Market" Donald Trump Something Something Gazpacho To Be Named Later sort it out. 

Get it through your head.

I don't want to live in that world.

And trust me, you don't either.

Stop this fucking shit. Now.

Слава Україна!

We've come to a point where every four years this national fever rises up — this hunger for the Savior, the White Knight, the Man on Horseback — and whoever wins becomes so immensely powerful, like Nixon is now, that when you vote for President today you're talking about giving a man dictatorial power for four years. I think it might be better to have the President sort of like the King of England — or the Queen — and have the real business of the presidency conducted by... a City Manager-type, a Prime Minister, somebody who's directly answerable to Congress, rather than a person who moves all his friends into the White House and does whatever he wants for four years. The whole framework of the presidency is getting out of hand. It's come to the point where you almost can't run unless you can cause people to salivate and whip each other with big sticks. You almost have to be a rock star to get the kind of fever you need to survive in American politics. ~Hunter S. Thompson

Four

I suddenly remembered my Charlemagne, let my armies be the rocks and the trees...and the birds in the sky. ~Henry Jones, Sr. after he's caused a German fighter to crash by scaring a flock of birds into flight with his umbrella. From Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

I Hate CPAC Nazis (Satan's Sermons, Three.)

Jake: Hey, what's going on?!

Policeman: Ah, those bums won their court case, so they're marching today.

Jake: What bums?

Policeman: The fucking Nazi party.

Elwood: Illinois Nazis.

Jake: I hate Illinois Nazis!

~From The Blues Brothers.

...

Indiana Jones: Half the German Army's on our tail, and you want me to go to Berlin? Into the lion's den?

Henry Jones, Sr.: Yes! The only thing that matters, is the Grail.

Indiana Jones, Sr.: What about Marcus?

Henry Jones, Sr.: Marcus would agree with me!

Indiana Jones: Two selfless martyrs. Jesus Christ- [Henry Sr. slaps Indy]

Henry Jones, Sr.: That's for blasphemy! The quest for the Grail is not archaeology; it's a race against evil! If it is captured by the Nazis, the armies of darkness will march all over the face of the Earth! Do you understand me?

Indiana Jones: This is an obsession, Dad! I never understood it. Never! Neither did Mom.

Henry Jones, Sr.: Oh yes she did. Only too well. Unfortunately, she kept her illness from me. Until all I could do was mourn her. ~From Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Last night, I saw this. 

Nazis, in the open, at CPAC.

I Hate CPAC Nazis.

Hell, I hate Nazis in general, and speaking as a former Republican, I hate that Republicans have come to this.

Shortly after that, I saw this, too.

Trump speaking at CPAC, begging to be elected President again so that he can demand that more blood be shed in his name.

So far as I know, there's nowhere in the world where property crimes are also Capital offenses, nor so far as I know has every person's right in this country to a trial by a jury of their peers been rescinded. I'm fucking tired of these fucking people wanting to be judge, jury and executioner...especially for basically minor offenses...or worse, to have somebody else do it for them. Also like 99% of the shoplifters we've seen get caught where I work and that we've had to call the cops on are White and the stats I've seen on crimes committed against the company I work for suggests that's true chain-wide.

It's been my experience that non-white people come down harder on their own for stealing (not to mention other crimes) than White people do.

But we know that both Trump and the CPAC crowd are basically jerking off to the idea of Black people and Latinos getting shot by the cops here.

Never mind that during Trump's own term, the cruel murder of a Black man by the cops lit half the fucking country on fire and, in fact, also upset one hell of a lot of the White people (including me.)

And on top of that we've got the media giving Republicans themselves the 2017 Hillbilly Elegy treatment, saying the Party didn't "Understand" Trump voters (When the truth is, Republicans encouraged this crap, perhaps if anything not "understanding" just how much their idiot base would take it as Gospel.)

And then some idiot reporter gives Chaya Raichik AKA "Libs Of TikTok" the kind of interview that basically amounts to a media blowjob...and she fucks it up. I mean, here we have a *Checks Notes* Jewish woman saying "Not all cultures are equal" and spewing White Supremacist conspiracy theories.

She has no idea what's going to happen to her if the people she's supporting actually win, does she??

Like yo, bitchface, you're from one of those cultures traditionally "Not created equal" as far as the Christian Supremacists and White Supremacists are concerned!! This isn't that damn hard.

One of these things is not like the other one, lady.

I know I've said this before, but hate is literally being marketed to people, like some late-night-infomercial "Miracle cure."

And then we wonder how the fuck we end up with CPAC Nazis?!?!

At the end of the day, Republicans don't want anybody to be free or have Constitutional Rights, including themselves. It's not even so much for any actual ideological reason as it's "They're stupid" and they find privilege and relative status a lot easier to understand.

And, to be honest, they're well aware that freedom leads to outcomes they don't like. As if a lack of it (especially in a country filled with guns) would not do the same, but also tend to be worse for their life expectancy.

These fucking people somehow think they're both the Nobility and the Glorious Revolution, and they're hell bent on this idea that no Revolution could ever overthrow them...and that if they just believe in it hard enough, they can have an Eternity of Peace and Blessedness On This Earth with their "God" who just happens to be Donald Trump.

None of this is gonna work out like that, just sayin.'

And yes, they absolutely do think that Conspiracy theories, Donald Trump, and their stupid cultural beliefs have more power than Christ Himself.

These idiots have always believed in a Man-centered theology where God and Jesus need them, and need them to be "in charge" in order to do anything.

Look, either your God is God or He isn't. 

Make up your mind.

Trouble with that is, they already did.

And they know according to their own beliefs, the consequences are literally Eternal.

They just don't care.

Also, yes, these fucking people absolutely do believe that God is just as dumb and easy to manipulate as they are...but deep down it doesn't really matter. They have a better one now!

And they don't have to believe he's dumb, they know.

Shit, if Trump said Hell was Heaven, they'd march lockstep right in there and when some Demon looked at them like "What the fuck" they'd demand to see the manager.

Even Heaven or Hell is relative to these shitheads.

In fact, the goal is to drag as many people as possible down to Hell with them. I'm not sure they've thought it all the way through who it's gonna be, either.

Just sayin' you don't see many Black Christians, or most believers in non-Christian religions, or liberals (secular and otherwise) falling for this crap, do you?

And CPAC Trump Idolaters was so three years ago. They're worse now.

As for you?

Choose Wisely.

Again, you wanna listen to these motherfuckers? You might as well let the Devil preach at your church.

Слава Україна!

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride." ~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

Two

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 

Forever War (Satan's Sermons, Two.)

Judge not, that ye be not judged.
For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
And why behold thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but consider not the beam that is in thine own eye? ~Matthew 7:1-3

...

Two days past eighteen
He was waiting for the bus in his army green
Sat down in a booth in a cafe there
Gave his order to a girl with a bow in her hair
He's a little shy so she give him a smile
So he said would you mind sittin' down for a while
And talking to me, I'm feeling a little low
She said I'm off in an hour and I know where we can go
So they went down and they sat on the pier
He said I bet you got a boyfriend but I don't care
I got no one to send a letter to
Would you mind if I sent one back here to you

I cried
Never gonna hold the hand of another guy
Too young for him they told her
Waitin' for the love of a travelin' soldier
Our love will never end
Waitin' for the soldier to come back again
Never more to be alone when the letter says
A soldier's coming home. ~The Chicks, Travelin' Soldier.

...

Thou Shalt Not Kill. ~Exodus 20:13

So, I work with this kid.

He's a basic weeb nerd type, a tall, skinny basically redneck gay dude who moved up here from Oklahoma City after his partner passed away, from a heart attack or something last year. They worked together as apartment complex maintenance guys...and while I don't know a lot of the details and haven't really pressed on the subject I very much get the vibe that he still misses his late partner and I can't blame him. 

He showed me (off of his Facebook feed on his phone) a local article about this idiot Republican, as he put it "Saying the gay community was trash." Next thing he said was "I'm so glad I got out of that shithole of a state."

Talk about driving home the effect of current events, Jesus.

Literally the only value Republicans believe in is hate.

Like I said, you want to sit there and listen to these fucking people talk about Christianity and how "Christian" they or "their" state are? You might as well let the Devil preach at your church, straight up.

And it's not just the rampant homophobia and misogyny I've already been commenting on these last few days, they're spewing racist bullshit too.

I've been watching clips of balding pasty butterball white guys on Fox News trying to say that Trump has either won over the "Blacks" with his tacky-ass Trump Sneakers or still carrying on with the whole "Republicans are all Biggie and Tupac now because Trump is out on bail."

And all I can say to that is "Fuck these motherfuckers."

Black people aren't criminals, and they're a hell of a lot less criminal in mentality than too many rich white dudes are.

Republicans are just plain goat-eager to kill their neighbors. Hell, they're coming right out and saying so. This will not go the way they think it will.

Nobody's really afraid of your gun, bro, not least because you don't know how to use it.

I don't know about you, but I've lived around (or with) Black people and LGBT people all my life and it didn't hurt me any. Hell, I served with them in the Air Force, too. You learn a thing or two talking to different people.

Nobody is going to be won over by some cheesy-ass pair of fake-gold sneakers.

Especially when the guy who makes them said a bunch of racist shit at a rally in South Carolina yesterday.

And Joe Biden spent eight years as Barack Obama's Vice-President...why in the hell do you think the Black people voted for him in the first damn place??

Nobody but shitty little haters is impressed by hateful talk.

And I don't know about you...but I hate liars.

You want to turn me off to your "cause" whatever it may be...good and hard? Go ahead, lie to me about it.

I've been being warned about ear-tickling false prophets with fire-and-brimstone sermons to one degree or another since I was like five years old. If somebody's lying to you about (for example) Black people...what makes you think he's going to tell you the truth about anything else??

So I don't understand people who have no problem with being lied to if the liar confirms their biases or is otherwise telling them what they want to hear. In the real world that's a good way to get your money took and your booty shook.

I don't know how these fucking people don't see that's Trump's whole game, too, and he's not even being subtle about it in the least because MAGA will at least pretend to support whatever he does.

Including that he wants to steal our whole country.

Especially that, in fact, because they think he'll give them a slice and make them rich. Having met a few rich people (who tend to be cheap, selfish bastards) in my time...all I can say is "LOL."

And if he's successful at stealing America (A prospect I see as unlikely) Republicans will then simply try to kill us all in some kind of for-profit manner for no better reason than they think they'll be able to. 

And if Trump loses...again I see this as what's most likely to happen...they're going to try to do the same thing because well, he lost and it's what they want to do anyway but then, in their minds they'll have that for an excuse. If they fail to throw a full-out Civil War, we're very likely still going to get some kind of a right-wing insurgency out of it, anyway. 

And given These Fucking People's creepy homophobic, misogynistic and religious BS these days I'm starting to think they're going to try and pull some kind of "Church Split" BS on America instead. (They already did that to the Republican Party, especially in my state, and the MI GOP is now cheerfully calling donors "RINO's" and telling them to go fuck themselves.) There will still be violence if it's successful...but it'll mostly be directed at their own people. Expect all the Inquisitions (Plural.) 

Because The Death Cult must be Pure before Immanentizing it's Shitty Right-wing Eschaton, or some such horseshit. The "Conservative" god is a god of Death (yours, but if you don't die theirs will do) and Wealth (theirs, not yours.) I refer to it as the Chthonic Roman deity Dis Pater.

Except ancient Rome was way, way too "Woke" for these motherfuckers. 

Their guiding stars these days are apparently Russia and Vladimir Putin.

Because that shit has been so successful?

Because Anything but America.

Because Anything other than "Love Thy Neighbor."

These fucking people would rather bow down to the Hammer and Sickle as slaves than salute the Stars and Stripes as free citizens, America is to "Liberal" or something something Gazpacho.

All that's true, oh yes.

It's also wrong.

Because, in a different, far more perverse way, my sarcastic question above is the right answer. They do see Russia as the success...and the West as the failure.

Because they don't want freedom or peace or societal advancement.

Like Leon B. Little, Eli Wallach's myopic hitman in the 1980's film "Tough Guys" with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, these fucking people's whole viewpoint is "Surrender's for wimps, I vote we die."

And they see any coexistence or equality with modernity or The Other as a surrender.

All the Greek Statue Avi guys? They're just basically drawing dicks on the walls of Plato's Cave at this point. It's not "Western Civilization" they want to save. It's the racism, stupid. It's the sexism. It's various and sundry petty hatreds.

It's not the victory they want. It's not success, not really, that's the goal. That implies the fighting will end and then they might actually have to do something else.

They want the fight.

And they want it to go on forever.

Alrighty, then.

Let us give them all the fight they want, and let them see how they like it.

Because it's going to come down to a fight, and they're not going to understand anything else.

And trust me, you don't want to live in the world they'd make.

Слава Україна!

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  

One

We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev...Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
~Ronald Reagan

Immanentizing The Eschaton (Satan's Sermons, One.)

Brothers and sisters, please quiet down. Thank you.

We come here time after time and we talk about the same old same old.

Hey, quiet down.
- We talk about Jesus. - That's right.
Jesus said and Jesus wept.
Jesus heard and Jesus walked over.
I don't wanna talk about Jesus.
Cos as the big man teaches us, there's two sides to every story.
Not one but two. A story is not one-sided.
A story has duality. There's two sides to every story.
Which brings to mind the phrase "necessary evil".
I know many of you hear that phrase and say,
"That don't even make no sense to me.
"Can't be no such thing as necessary - how's evil necessary?
"That don't match. That's plaids and stripes, evil and necessary."
You see, because without bad, there is no good.
Without light, there is no dark, you need both these things.
You hear what I'm saying?
If every day is a sunny day, well, then, what's a sunny day?
Well, the bottom line, what I'm trying to tell you tonight,
is that evil...evil... is necessary.
Evil is necessary, thereby, if it's necessary, evil...
- Evil... -must be good.
Evil is good.
That's what I think. Evil must be good, must be good.
- Let me hear y'all say it... - Evil is good.

Evil is good. Take Brother Brown, one of our strongest deacons,
pillar of stability.
Brother Brown was on Bushwick Avenue last night with a two-dollar ho.
When you tell your wife, "I'm going to see Mama,"
then you go get you a two-dollar ho, that's evil.
But Brother Brown had a good time with that two-dollar ho.
You can push a two-dollar ho and she don't have no limits!
Evil and good walk hand in hand.
- Evil is as evil does. 

I know many of y'all may be saying, "How can he say ass is good?"
How y'all think y'all got here?
Ass is good! Evil's good and ass is good.
And if you get you a piece of evil ass...Woo!

~Maximilian The Vampire (As Preacher Paulie) from A Vampire In Brooklyn.

Seriously??

I saw this last night. Chris Rufo, ranting about "Recreational Sex" and how Birth Control pills are bad and lead to "Sexual Immorality."

This kind of talk is pretty much half a step up from "Boys are for pleasure, women are for children" like they say in really fundamentalist Islamic countries, where men often have sex with younger men because the legal or social consequences of that might not be as bad as having sex with a woman other than their wife in the context of Islamic Purdah.

And you wanna bring that kind of mentality to America?? Oh hell no.

Fuck you, bro.

Or perhaps, better yet...no one fuck you, like, ever.

The point of sex...like anything else...is whatever any individual person wants to do with their sexuality within the limits of consent, period. We are not bees in a hive for motherfuckers like Chris Rufo to play with. And don't you forget it.

People are people, there's as many reasons to have sex as there are people who have it. 

I mean this seriously, The Bible doesn't say any of this shit he's trying to push.

And if they really cared that much about "Motherhood" or more women having children, Republicans wouldn't have allowed that judge in Alabama to rule against IVF the other day.

Seriously, like I said yesterday for quite awhile (until I met a lesbian couple who'd had a kid that way, basically) the only people I'd ever met who'd used IVF were a Baptist assistant pastor and his wife.

Doesn't matter that the guy's wife probably was pretty close to Chris Rufo's ideal or that she and her husband were both devout Christian Conservatives. It's that she and her husband lived the way they did because that was their choice, but they had to get a little help to have kids...and there was no All-Powerful, micromanaging Fascist State dictating their choices.

There are many paths to heresy, but it starts with making your own choices.

These motherfuckers absolutely don't want you to live in accordance with God's Word or any given interpretation of it because you want to. 

And for those of us who didn't get our theology off the back of a cereal box, yes, you absolutely have to make the personal choice to follow Christ or not, and if you do, you do it because you want to do it...or it isn't any good. It does not matter. God will not accept it. Fake Christians don't go to Heaven.

What these "Christian Nationalists" want is to force this shit on other people out of equal parts desire for social control and vanity. These are people who'd see Jesus on the Damascus Road and just keep walking. They have better things to do.

If these fucking people really gave a shit about family, morality or values they wouldn't be effectively appointing an adulterous libertine con-man as their god.

How much "Recreational Sex" has Donald Trump had, why don't we talk about that, Chris??

I kind of gather that Stormy Daniels was not there for procreative purposes.

I mean, for fuck's sake probably at least 75% of the time with my ex-wife, we used condoms. We sort-of considered having a kid...thankfully, we didn't. Later, after we split up...she got on the pill not specifically because we were still having sex (although we occasionally were) but because she had a hormone imbalance (which also further aggravated mental issues) that was, at the time, causing crippling migraines...and she needed to keep her job at Walmart.

It was, shall we say, a necessary evil.

(We just sort of considered other things that naturally resulted from this as a bonus.)

And by the way, I left because my ex-wife was an abusive, manipulative bitch. (For the record, I was often not a very good person at the time, either.) I ultimately had to move three hours away after three years of putting up with her crap, to make that shit stop. Getting rid of "No Fault Divorce" would trap plenty of men, too.

You know why a lot of women are single mothers...with all, good and bad...that goes with that?? Because a lot of dudes...especially "Conservative" white dudes like Chris Rufo, are basically shit, and treat their girlfriends or wives horribly, so the women leave. And these fuckers hate that.

All that this garbage is about...is about trying to control women for no better reason than their own egos.

But the real world doesn't have to go by Chris's (and by extension, modern "Conservatives") often-wrong ideas about patriarchy and the dualities of life...so it simply doesn't.

We're human beings, not ferrets who only even want to fuck when we're in season.

And if you ever wonder why these fucking people are so goddamned obsessed with getting unlimited political power...it's because human nature and the world (let alone liberal-democratic politics) by nature tends to resist these clowns trying to Immanentize their shitty right-wing eschaton.

Deep down, they get it. Nobody cares but them, and they hate that. 

Deep down, a lot of the shit they want to do simply isn't possible, it won't work, in the same kinds of ways that Soviet economics wasn't actually possible and didn't work and for the same fucking reason.

And this right-wing wannabe-totalitarian shit ain't any different.

But these fucking people absolutely would carve up women, starve millions of people to death and do all type of other godforsaken shit in it's name anyway, for the same goddamn reason the Communists did exactly that. 

Cruelty's the goddamned point.

They don't care if it doesn't work. They don't care if their own people starve to death or if they end up sending troops into combat without enough ammunition or proper gear or the right weapons. Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.

Because they think they should get to do whatever they want...and we shouldn't.

And the truth is they think cruelty and Will-to-Power are the only ideals worth having. All the Christianity stuff is really just to fool the suckers.

But eventually the truth will out, it always does.

Or those of us who knew it in the first place because it was our life for awhile (and not yours cause you couldn't be bothered) will just tell you to go fuck yourself because guess what?? Some of us served with Black folks and gay folks and women, etc. and had to go to sexual harassment training and shit and things went just fine. None of this is new to anybody but you, Tommy.

Reality doesn't have to go by your ideology, and when push comes to shove, once they figure that out the Apparatchiks and the troops and the zampolits will just lie, fill quotas, and collect checks and eventually the whole system falls down, taking half the world with it, and it takes an army of historians doing a forensic audit for a generation to figure out why.

See Also: Somebody's eventually going to have to crawl through the sewer that's Donald Trump's financial and other records and even figure out what was really going on, 

Why?? Because that's the nature of things, because you can only ignore shit or lie about it for so long.

But ya know, if you don't want people to only figure out what happened here in 2124 when researchers from whatever parts of America remained free finally release their reports 35 years after the People's Republic Of Trump fell, you're going to have to show up now.

It's generally better to ask "Who's gonna save your soul from the false prophet in the pulpit" while you're still alive and can do something about it or repent from following them.

The thing to remember about ideologically-motivated assholes is, they don't give a shit. It's all a game to them, and the rest of us are nothing but toys, pegs to hammer into the correct holes. They have better things to do than care what actually happens.

I had sex with my ex-wife and any other women that I ever wanted to because I loved them, or because we wanted to, and Chris?

We were consenting adults and that was the only reason we needed. You don't like it? Too bad. You won't find any country in the world where anything is different.

You don't get to say shit about that, not even about why. If the only reason was "We wanted to fuck" that's still none of your business. It's not God's either. This is America and don't you forget it.

And those women and any other people on this earth have the right to be free and live a goddamn life without some hyper-religious right-wing ninny bothering them.

I'm starting to think these idiots have figured out they'd lose a real Civil War, so they're trying to engineer the destruction of America the same way a bunch of Fundamentalist nuts would cause a Baptist Church to fall apart. Like most such people, I think they're gonna be real surprised when they suddenly figure out they don't own the building.

I'm weirdly Okay with a Strip-mall Storefront and cheap plastic chairs Neo-Confederacy but the truth is, that shit would probably suck for somebody...not least the people who go and live in it.

We continue to put up with this fucking garbage at our peril.

And I find it funny how lately "MAGA" is turning into "The Same Old Fucking People coming out of the goddamned woodwork, like it's still 1994 or some shit. Just remember how the whole Newt Gingrich thing worked out. Chris Rufo won't be no different, he's blowing goats somewhere.

You wanna listen to these fucking people?? 

You might as well let the Devil preach at your church!

I'd suggest we deal with the threat and not wait for these motherfuckers to soup-sandwich themselves.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Now get after it.

Слава Україна!

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride." ~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

Last Post

You may talk o' gin and beer,
When you're quartered safe out 'ere
An' your sent to penny-fights and Aldershot it.
But when it comes to slaughter,
You will do your work on water
And you'll lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it.
Now in India's sunny clime, where I used to spend my time
A servin' of 'er majesty the Queen
Of all them Black-faced crew, The finest man I knew
Was our regimental Bhisti, Gunga Din.
He was "Din! Din! Din!"
You limpin' lump of brick-dust Gunga Din!
Hai slippy hitherao, Water! Get it, Pannee Lao
'You squidgy-nosed old Idol, Gunga Din.' 

~Rudyard Kipling, Gunga Din.

(Author's Note: As I've said before; Rudyard Kipling was a British artist, journalist-specializing in military matters, and poet of Victorian England, the author of many books including a number of famous children's books. Many consider him, unofficially, to the the poet laureate of white British colonialism. Was he...Woke? Fuck you, Tommy.)