Rug Pull (Easter In Babylon, Three.)

Living in this country, you're bound to know, every time you're exposed to advertising, you realize once again that America's leading industry, America's most profitable business is still: the manufacture, packaging, distribution and marketing of bullshit. High-quality, grade-A, prime-cut, pure, American bullshit. And the sad part is, is that most people seem to have been indoctrinated to believe that bullshit only comes from certain places, certain sources: advertising, politics, salesmen – not true. Bullshit is everywhere. Bullshit is rampant. Parents are full of shit, teachers are full of shit, clergymen are full of shit, and law enforcement people are full...of...shit – this entire country. This entire country is completely full of shit, and always has been. From the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution to the Star-Spangled Banner, it's still nothing more than one big steaming pile of red, white and blue, all-American bullshit. Because, think of how we started. Think of that. This country was founded by a group of slave-owners who told us all men are created equal. Oh yeah, all men, except for Indians and n*ggers and women, right? I always like to use that authentic American language. This was a small group of unelected, white, male, land-holding, slave-owners who also suggested their class be the only one allowed to vote. Now, that is what's known as being stunningly and embarrassingly full of shit. And I think Americans really show their ignorance when they say they want their politicians to be honest. What are these fuckin' cretins talking about? If honesty were suddenly introduced into American life, the whole system would collapse! No one would know what to do! Honesty would FUCK THIS COUNTRY UP!!

~George Carlin

...

For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. ~Matthew 24:27

I still keep seeing all type of bullshit about these $60 Trump Bibles.

Sinclair Lewis famously said that when Fascism arrived in America it would wrap itself in the flag and carry the Cross.

Well, guess what??

I think that was wrong.

I mean, Trump just literally did all that and his financial and political world, not to mention his mental and physical health still seem stuck in a slow implosion and the appearance of his political support seems about as real as the Astroturf on an indoor miniature golf course.

So I'm kind of not buying the hype.

Or maybe shit's just gotten a hell of a lot dumber in 90 years??

It's more like Fascism arrived as a Meme Stock, while braying like a jackass on its own personal private Social Media website that it owns.

And it'll very likely sneak out the back door having done a rug-pull on all the chumps that bought into a "Pump And Dump" scheme that's more blatantly obvious than anything I've seen since the (brief) heyday of Cryptocurrency, pocket the money, and still not pay all the bills it racked up due to stupidity, and after sneaking out the door it creeps away and lives out its days in a golden palace in Dubai, or maybe a gold-plated penthouse at the Burj Khalifa.

But still, the well-heeled suckers keep giving this motherfucker money, even though they (perhaps more so than a lot of the rest of us) know they won't get jack shit for it, except fucked and stolen from.

I mean, Trump notoriously doesn't pay back debts, return favors, or give reach-arounds, so I don't know why anybody thinks anything would be any different this fucking time, but they always do.

And that's if he wins. If he doesn't, ain't none of y'all getting shit, so you might as well just have set that money on fire.

And the thing is, at this point there is no Republican Party that's separate from Trump, from his disgusting-ass family or the fake-ass women who hang around his stank ass, or from his greasy-ass entourage of liars nor from the priggish yet also repulsively hypocritical "Christians" who've appointed Trump to be their Jesus.

And I don't just mean the people buying his bullshit $60 MAGA Bibles, I mean there's literally people out there who've called Trump Christ.

I've written about it.

Like a good friend of mine once said, if you wanna take a bet like that...you better be right 'cause if you're wrong, it's Hell.

But when this shit is causing Republicans to lose special elections in Alabama (and it's not the first time, either) I have to say it looks like the Trump Bubble is about to burst.

What then, Republicans??

You fuckers literally sold your souls to this asshole.

And a very small number of (mind you, mostly Catholic) "Culture Warriors" want to make shit even worse, like we're talking about these jabronis reviving utterly pre-modern legislation like the Comstock Act that hasn't even been a goddamned thing for over 100 years and is probably in real terms unenforceable given America's current culture...I mean you can't throw everybody in jail. 

And given that right-wing White men are the biggest porn users out there, oh yes, there would be unintended consequences to that shit.

Not to mention the Beer And Boobs (credit to Russell Moore of all people for that term) ethos of modern MAGA (Protestant) Christianity itself??

If all these MAGA dudes can't get their boner pills and their porn?

(Which was exactly the kind of shit the Comstock Act did.)

Oh yes, there will be blood.

But again we're talking about people who basically think the Magna Carta and the Reformation alike should be effectively done away with.

We're talking about idiots who fancy themselves the modern Borgias, but who in reality wouldn't even have been let in the door by such people back when they effectively ruled Catholic Europe by controlling the Church. 

Trust me, nobody acts more like the Bible is all crap, there is no God, and it's all a lie than Christian and "Conservative" elites do...and I suppose that's true whether we're talking about the 16th Century or right now. I mean, if you really wanna look at it in historical terms, my associating this series of essays with Babylon doesn't even begin to cover it!

If nothing is True, if nothing matters, if there is no God...then there's nothing that must be obeyed, either. Of course, at that point debauchery usually kills motherfuckers.

And yeah, I get these motherfuckers desire to follow the example of Florentine and Spanish nobility privately does include the fleshpot lifestyle of such people, but if they ever get the ignorant little Christian fundamentalist Banana Republic they claim to want to create, I'm not sure that's what they'd actually get to do, at least not for long.

Sooner or later the bullshit tightrope is gonna snap, or somebody's going to fall off.

Or to put it another way, they better have a lot of guards when the mob finds out what Caesare and Lucrezia been doing all this time behind closed doors...because the fanatics that all these right-wingers keep playing fuck-fuck games with and winding up will never stop. 

Nothing will ever be good enough for those fucking people.

I mean, this whole goddamn thing is just not sustainable.

More to the point our Founders knew this, for them, Europe's wars of religion were still on the periphery of living memory, and refugee populations from such conflicts (like French Huguenots) had colonized entire regions of North America.

Such kinds of wars were bad enough in the days of muskets and pikes and sailing ships armed with cannons. Do you even want to consider how such things might play out in a world of automatic weapons, drones, and stealth bombers armed with nuclear weapons??

I sure don't, and I say that as a United States Air Force Bomb Wing veteran!

And that's the amazing thing about America. Our Founding Fathers had the foresight to say "No" to that shit too! They might not have been able to imagine modern technology, but they left us frameworks that should be able to control its uses for the greater good, if intelligently applied.

America was not intended to be a Mobocracy.

That's exactly why things like a Constitution that can be amended, the Bill Of Rights...which provides for both Freedom Of  Religion and Freedom From Religion...and a whole bunch of other stuff Trump blithely appropriated to stick in his fake-ass "Bible" exist in the first goddamn place.

That's exactly why We, The People...are both the front line and the last line of defense.

Our Founders had faith in us, and we owe them a debt.

And sooner or later, Citizen, it's going to be time to pay up.

Unless you want to be ruled by the far-right in some kind of Moronocracy forever.

We either live up to what we're supposed to be, or we don't. There's no half measures here, no middle of the road.

Either you believe in freedom or you don't.

And these motherfuckers don't just want to Rug Pull your goddamn money, they wanna take everything else, too.

Слава Україна!

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything. ~Umberto Eco

Two

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