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