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.

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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