Killing The Buddha (Notes On The Oblivion Cult, Two.)

Hear ye this word which I take up against you, even a lamentation, O house of Israel.

The virgin of Israel is fallen; she shall no more rise: she is forsaken upon her land; there is none to raise her up.

For thus saith the Lord God; The city that went out by a thousand shall leave an hundred, and that which went forth by an hundred shall leave ten, to the house of Israel.

For thus saith the Lord unto the house of Israel, Seek ye me, and ye shall live:

But seek not Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and pass not to Beersheba: for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to naught.

Seek the Lord, and ye shall live; lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and devour it, and there be none to quench it in Bethel.

Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth,

Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is his name:

That strengthens the spoiled against the strong, so that the spoiled shall come against the fortress.
They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly.

Forasmuch therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them.
For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right. ~Amos 5:1-12

...

If you meet the Buddha, kill him. ~Linji

I saw this a few days ago; Tucker Carlson saying, out loud, that Moscow is better than any city in the United States.

And I've been like "What the fuck??" For days.

Fuck you, Snidely Whiplash, if America offends you, LEAVE! Hell, I'll help your ass pack, if you want. You were born here, you didn't ask to be here. We won't mind if you go, really.

Bet you that Fucker Carlson doesn't want to give up all his evil American money, though. They never do.

I mean, goddamn, what's even wrong with people??

Note: This was a standard conservative point of view ten years ago.

What is the sound of seventy-million conservatives losing their minds??

Funny how all the Russians had to do was pretend to adopt various forms of social conservatism and bomb somebody, and now These Fucking People are all about the Hammer & Sickle, isn't it??

Some idiot Canadian farmer just immigrated to Russia, to escape "Communism." Note: I checked, Communism in Russia is much diminished from Soviet times but the Communist Party of the Russian Federation still has 57 of 450 seats in the State Duma, making them the second-largest party after United Russia. (And I'm not sure that matters so much when everybody's flying the Red Banner.)

Meanwhile, in its entire history, Canada has (briefly) had one Communist MP, ever.

So, actual Communism has not one damn thing to do with any of this shit. These motherfuckers are fine with the Reds, just so they talk up a bunch of "Conservative" bullshit.

One of these things is not like the other one.

But you can't tell These Fucking People anything. And they're sure as hell not interested in speaking to you.

I find it funny how the entire Republican platform is meant to manipulate people's negative emotions and the first thing Republicans want to do is call anybody who isn't a Republican "Irrational" and disregard them automatically.

I haven't seen a Republican be the "Adult in the room" since at least 2012 and pretty damn often either John McCain or Mitt Romney...either of whom was perfectly well capable of rational thought...got shouted down by their own damn voter base, the right-wing mob, who flat-out didn't want to hear it, ever.

And now Republicans think they're too good to have to listen to...anybody??

Fuck these people.

Don't let these pinch-faced assholes decide your future, kids.

Because *Checks Notes* This is exactly what they are and what they stand for:

At this point, it's literally Anything other than America.

At this point, it's literally Anything other than Freedom.

And now we've moved on to literally Anything other than "Love They Neighbor."

And these idiots are so fucked up on their own confirmation-biases that they don't care.

I'd ask "Damn, What's Next??" But I already learned my lesson on that question.

You want to know what's next?? Try Radical Islam.

'Cause that's who Elon Musk is playing his fuck-fuck games with now, and all those MAGA America-first ass-clowns? They're just fine with that.

I can remember when this shit would have got people beat up, in like, 2004.

Yes, the same fucking people who were all about giving the world the Global War On Terror are just fine with giving Radical Islam...actual fucking terrorists...I mean motherfuckers are on the list and everything...a fucking hand-job under the table and a Twitter verification. 

I mean, shit, pretty much anything to "Own The Libs" right??

"Libs" at this point being a relative term meaning something to the effect that you have two functioning brain cells in your head and are anywhere politically or religiously to the Left of the first Apartheid-era South African Prime Minister; D.F. Malan.

And they all think they're gonna be that guy, or that they can get Trump to be him for them.

You tell me, does this old pinch-faced Calvinist asshole look like somebody who would approve of Elon doing Ketamine and assorted other drugs with his buddies and his board members?? Or of naming one's kid Techno-Mechanical or some shit like that? Really??

Does anything about that face suggest one whit of tolerance for playing hide-the-sausage with Hezbollah or Islamic Jihad??

Again, it comes down to one of these things simply not being like the other one. And these clowns all wanna play their fuck-shit games and be thought of as somehow being that guy, anyway?? 

No, bro. It don't work like that.

It simply cannot work like that; It's not conceptually possible.

And when they figure out it isn't...well, that's when the self-destructive urge rises up and they start seeking after Oblivion.

Better the Great Void than...simply being wrong, facing it, and maybe changing your ways just a little??

Of course, to them, change...even a little change...is Oblivion. These Fucking People's egos are all wrapped up in all this contradictory horseshit. And trust me, it is all the contradictions, and the seeking after capability rather than purpose that makes these motherfuckers so easily exploitable by people like KGB Agent Vladimir Putin, or by Hezbollah terrorists.

Now, the essence of conservatism as I was taught it was asking not if you could do something, but if you should do that thing, and whether doing it was right, or moral, it's caring about things like revealed Truth and the wisdom of one's ancestors. You know, all the stuff that dudes like Tucker Carlson despise.

(And they despise it, simply because it would put brakes on their behavior.)

Personally, I'm past the goddamn point of tolerance for this horseshit and I'm tired of society indulging these goddamned morons.

I mean, come on, what the fuck is wrong with you??

If we don't stop this bullshit, it's going to end up with World War III and we're going to have Americans shooting at each other.

You think these fucking people's reaction to COVID-19 was bad? Wait until they find out College Football done got disrupted because one side or the other's bombs hit Bryant-Denny Stadium, or that their Wi-Fi is shitty because some dipshit insurgents blew up a substation somewhere in Western Pennsylvania, or some shit like that, let alone anything more serious.

And yes, Tucker Carlson will sit through Putin's 30-minute harangue on why that's justifiable and why the West needs to die because its people are too entitled or whatever, too.

Because those of us who will do the fighting and the dying, let alone the cleaning up after and the hunting down war criminals...we're not human to those motherfuckers.

And they won't see the people who do step up, who are the better citizens, who do their duty when they have to go and fight...or who simply endure with a shrug and keep plugging away at doing their jobs even though the server keeps going down, or even when the air-raid sirens go off...because it's their job and that's what's got to be done.

But when the time comes that These Fucking People's hubris has gotten the better of them, when the Godless (actual Russian) Commie Horde or the (real) radical Islamic Jihadists (rather than the ones that exist in their heads) actually show up, and do what such people do and when "Do You Know Who I AM??" is not a valid answer?

Guys like Elon and Tucker will be the first to beg that the Rest Of Us deliver them from Evil, and the last to remember that we did so when it's time to cut the check to pay for that part of Society.

These Fucking People couldn't, or wouldn't, fight a Virus. 

Hell, we're still stuck dealing with it because of these assholes. And my friend's Mom is in the hospital now, worse off, because the local hospital wouldn't admit her a month ago because of too many COVID-19 patients. That virus shit ain't over, either. How do you think that's gonna go in These Fucking People's world of disruptions for the sake of disruptions??

I'll ask again: How exactly do you Social Distance when you've been shot??

I have a creeping feeling that, as long as the bullet is 7.62x39mm, Tucker ideologically wouldn't care.

This right-wing shit is an Oblivion-Cult. Why the fuck else would they see Russia as Shangri-La??

(Or see something as classically All American--their way--as a Country Singer dating a Football Player as *Checks Notes* some kind of a plot against conservatism?? Am I seeing this shit right??)

Worse, fundamentally, they seek after Oblivion for themselves, and ultimately for others, because they think their "Gods" both real and imagined (or if you prefer, Imagined and More-imagined) tell them to. 

And the truth is, actual conservatism...or liberalism or any other actual functioning belief system doesn't give them what they really want.

What they really want is "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law" for themselves...and that harsh Calvinistic religiosity for everyone else. And they get to be the Preacher, and ultimately in their minds the Red Savior, too.

But none of this, conceptually, works that way. You cannot be both rebel and hegemon, you have to pick one or the other.

Because in that vast gulf between those two points lies self-destruction, especially if you're trying to navigate that shit by following your penis instead of an ethical or moral compass.

Something must lose. And it don't have to be Us.

They know this shit is not sustainable, but they'd rather die than face that. "Better Dead Than Red" doesn't register when death itself has become the point.

Until we process that, and do something about it, these problems are gonna continue.

When you meet the Buddha on the road, Kill him.

It's not that out-there of a sentiment, hell, Jesus said we were to die to ourselves, pick up the Cross and follow Him, too. (No wonder they seek Another Jesus, eh?) Confirmation Bias, Ego...those things are of the Self. Killing or reducing them might not be fun, but it's necessary.

Because it's not All About You.

And that's exactly what These Fucking People don't want to do, and why.

Well, somebody's gonna have to.

You want a better nation? You have to be a better citizen.

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

One

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