Roaring Lions (Notes On The Oblivion Cult, Three.)

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: ~1 Peter 5:8

...

Every one of the thousands at the airport, about to leave for Jeddah, was dressed this way. You could be a king or a peasant and no one would know. Some powerful personages, who were discreetly pointed out to me, had on the same thing I had on. Once thus dressed, we all had begun calling out "Labbayka! (Allahumma) Labbayka!" (Here I come, O Lord!) Packed in the plane were white, black, brown, red, and yellow people, blue eyes and blond hair, and my kinky red hair -- all together, brothers! All honoring the same God, all in turn giving equal honor to each other.
That is when I first began to reappraise the "white man." It was when I first began to perceive that "white man," as commonly used, means complexion only secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions.
In America, "white man" meant specific attitudes and actions toward the black man, and toward all other non-white men. But in the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been. That morning was the start of a radical alteration in my whole outlook about "white" men. ~Malcolm X, letter written following the Hajj.

I saw this the other day.

Some dumbass state representative from my own state pitching the racist "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory because something something Jack Posobiec.

Eh, I don't know, maybe it's just me. But, personally, I think if anybody needs to be "Replaced" it's these motherfucking morons, and I say that as an Old White Man.

And then, they always want to bring God into it and try to say they "Represent" Him, as if that justifies their bullshit...but that crap only holds up if they think, as a foregone conclusion, that God is some kind of Old White Man In The Sky.

Bullshit.

Motherfucker, if you look at all the texts that fed into the Bible and where and when they originated and who they were even allegedly written by...God is a brown-skinned Middle Eastern dude. Or (at best) if you really want to lean into Christianity being a rebranding of Platonic philosophy to appeal to the masses...Greek...which at the time tended to be pretty Brown also, as I understand it. 

In all seriousness, if you look at ethnicity, geography, history, etc. and the interplay of those things in that time...Whiteness as a concept simply didn't exist yet. 

The only White people present in a lot of the Biblical stories would have been some of the Romans. Christian tradition as I was taught it tends to consider Solomon as mixed-race, though opinions vary as to how (keeping in mind that in terms of the time, his parents simply could have been of different ethnicities) and generally holds that his lover, the Queen of Sheba, was Black.

This kind of conflating of Christianity and God with Whiteness isn't about God.

It's about money and power, and a certain kind of authority, one heavily steeped in Race and Wealth and good old fashioned abuse and domination.

And, on the face of it, it's about making it easier for a certain kind of men to steal under cover of that alleged "Authority."

I mean, do you really think a lot of these racist-ass old people, redneck idiots and/or Trump Supporters who get robbed by these shouty old white men standing in the pulpits would give up their money if they could be induced to believe that God was Black, let alone a poor Middle Eastern Jew??

I'm gonna go out on (not much of) a limb here and say that the day you convince the average modern "Conservative" that God is Black, Middle Eastern or otherwise "Not Like Them" is the day most of them become Atheists...because the truth is, it's not about some external God to most of these fucking people, it's about the deification of the Self, and about their relative status vs. Somebody Else, often somebody that they don't "Like."

(Although these days, I suppose if you tried to convince these same people that God was Orange, like Trump, they'd be all about that shit.)

And it's about providing some kind of cover for all that crap, not to mention any other skeevy bullshit that these fucking guys (and yes, it's mostly guys) want to try and get away with.

Same people constantly banging on, all the time, about "Salvation."

Who's gonna save your kids, your soul, and most definitely your wallet from the shouty old liar standing in the Pulpit??

I mean, get serious, do you have an actual reason to listen to that guy?? 

Have you ever even bothered to read the entirety of the Bible to see if that's what you want to believe in or not...much less familiarized yourself with a couple thousand years of Christian doctrine and history and tradition??

I have, and I used to really believe that stuff because I was educated in it and taught not just to read it, but how to do so, and I knew what it all meant.

The average Pentecostal or Southern Baptist, not so much, apparently...at least not now.

Hell, I was warning people that political conservatism and Whiteness were being taught as Christianity 20 years ago.

Not only is that how one goes to hell in Biblical terms, in factual terms it's just plain wrong and it tends to lead to all sorts of bad consequences...not least of which is that nobody outside of whatever-favored-group has a reason to believe in the religion, do they?? (And "We'll kill you if you don't" ain't belief.)

See, none of this crap even holds up without handing some ascribed group unlimited power and social status for, effectively, no damn reason. All these White Conservative Christians sure didn't earn any of this bullshit that lets them imagine there's some great Conspiracy to "Replace" them.

I mean, why shouldn't we?? All things change, given time. But, I'm rather sure in a hundred years, Estados Unidos De America will still skew...whether Left or Right...at least slightly towards being a nation of assholes. But of course that's not enough for these fucking people, is it??

More to the point, these motherfuckers are suddenly terrified of losing all that power. Nobody knows more than them that they didn't earn it and haven't done anything worth a damn with it, and that "They always had it before" ain't a reason.

And if it's not checked, it's going to lead to Americans shooting at each other. I doubt it'll be that much of a civil war...but people will still die...and if they do get a shitty little banana republic out of it, it'll be in some negotiated settlement backed by Russia.

But it's not about God, hell, at the end of the day it's not even about all this "White" bullshit.

That's just the excuse.

It's about "Conservatives" making sure that there's some captive population somewhere that's required to give money to Donald Trump, or somebody like him, so these lost motherfuckers can be part of a hierarchy and feel like they're "Part of something" again...without having to do the work of establishing community, or putting forth the effort to find that something themselves, or having to actually learn anything.

They just want to have license to be their worst possible selves at all times, for no reason, and be given (not have to earn) the social status to protect themselves from consequences.

Somehow these idiots think Trump is gonna give them all that...and not just give it to himself and tell them to go fuck themselves.

I spent most of my life as a Christian, and I've studied other religions like Buddhism and Islam.

And I don't think God would have any more tolerance for that kind of crap than I would.

So I'm going to ask again...especially without a foundation of Civilization or Knowledge or Truth to stand on...what's even the basis to push back against Power??

I mean, that's the simple basis of modernity, of science, hell, even of philosophy or sound theology, isn't it?? It's either testable or it isn't. It either calls us to something higher, something greater than and outside of ourselves...or it doesn't.

Who's gonna save you from the shouty, angry-faced man on the stage??

More to the point, do you Care??

Or is Oblivion (after you've given these fuckers your money) the goal??

Anything but America as it's currently constituted.

Anything but "Love Thy Neighbor, eh??

Two

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

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There are times, however, and this is one of them, when even being right feels wrong. What do you say, for instance, about a generation that has been taught that rain is poison and sex is death? If making love might be fatal and if a cool spring breeze on any summer afternoon can turn a crystal blue lake into a puddle of black poison right in front of your eyes, there is not much left except TV and relentless masturbation. It's a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat shit and die. Who knows? If there is in fact, a heaven and a hell, all we know for sure is that hell will be a viciously overcrowded version of Phoenix — a clean well lighted place full of sunshine and bromides and fast cars where almost everybody seems vaguely happy, except those who know in their hearts what is missing... And being driven slowly and quietly into the kind of terminal craziness that comes with finally understanding that the one thing you want is not there. Missing. Back-ordered. No tengo. Vaya con dios. Grow up! Small is better. Take what you can get. 

~Hunter S. Thompson, Generation Of Swine.