Shadow Of This Life?? (The Four Beasts, Three.)

I say that every prince must desire to be considered merciful and not cruel. He must, however, take care not to misuse this mercifulness. A prince, therefore, must not mind incurring the charge of cruelty for the purpose of keeping his subjects united and confident; for, with a very few examples, he will be more merciful than those who, from excess of tenderness, allow disorders to arise, from whence spring murders and rapine; for these as a rule injure the whole community, while the executions carried out by the prince injure only one individual. And of all princes, it is impossible for a new prince to escape the name of cruel, new states being always full of dangers. Nevertheless, he must be cautious in believing and acting, and must not inspire fear of his own accord, and must proceed in a temperate manner with prudence and humanity, so that too much confidence does not render him incautious, and too much diffidence does not render him intolerant. From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved more than feared, or feared more than loved. The reply is, that one ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved, if one of the two has to be wanting. For it may be said of men in general that they are ungrateful, voluble, dissemblers, anxious to avoid danger, and covetous of gain ; as long as you benefit them, they are entirely yours; they offer you their blood, their goods, their life, and their children, as I have before said, when the necessity is remote; but when it approaches, they revolt. And the prince who has relied solely on their words, without making other preparations, is ruined, for the friendship which is gained by purchase and not through grandeur and nobility of spirit is merited but is not secured, and at times is not to be had. And men have less scruple in offending one who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared; for love is held by a chain of obligation which, men being selfish, is broken whenever it serves their purpose; but fear is maintained by a dread of punishment which never fails. ~Machiavelli, The Prince.

...

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

Seriously??

So, as it turns out, at least one Republican candidate previously endorsed by Trump has turned out to be just a straight-up murderer.

Is anybody else tired of this dangerous, stupid bullshit yet, or is it just me??

When is enough, going to be enough??

At this point, Trump and his enablers have stripped away every value that made the Republican Party everything it ever claimed to be, all the way back to Abraham Lincoln...and for what??

For Republicanism to become a murder-cult??

So that the Trump family can take over the Republican National Committee as part of an open, transparent effort to rob it blind, in some kind of obvious effort to use somebody else's money to pay Donald Trump's judgments and legal fees??

And then these assholes slap a half-ass religious label on this shit?? Wut??

Come on, people, am I seeing this right??

I'm here to tell you from personal experience anybody who leads with religious claptrap like "God doesn't call the qualified, he qualifies the Called" is absolutely either going to soup-sandwich pretty much everything because they have no idea how anything works...or they're going to rob your ass blind and are just using religion as a cover in the hope that they'll get away with it. 

Or worse (As often happens with genuinely mentally-ill religious nuts) both, and with a genuine, but also rampantly destructive messianic mentality on top of that.

And the truth is, in conservative-land, such people very often do exactly that, and get away with it, because they believe more in the idea that Manipulation and Power should have their "Rewards" than they do even in protecting their own shit, let alone in Justice or even Law.

Dishonesty and cruelty are the norm, no one cares enough to bother.

Jesus Christ wishes he had the influence over "Conservatism" and its thought processes that Niccolo Machiavelli had.

(And then America has the balls to wonder why Christianity and "Conservatism" are overrun with criminals and sex abusers?? It's a wonder anybody else shows up, anymore, if we're being honest!)

The leadership of modern American "Conservatism" and what passes for Christianity is uninterested in Serving the Lord, there is instead one of two other things going on here; #1 Either they counted the cost, looked at the alleged risks and decided they wanted to try to be gods anyway. Or, #2 Nobody Believes. They decided that it's all crap. And not only that, Nobody believes there Is No God more than these fucking people do.

Hell of a bet to make if you listened to the same Sermons I did for more than half my life, and ever really believed a word of it.

And the MAGA followers just cheerfully go along with this BS?

The truth is anybody "destined" for "Leadership" didn't believe a word of it all, and anybody who wasn't either was just following along like a good little Soviet prole or thought all the bad shit only was gonna happen to other people.

I think it's Worse, a lot of these fucking people's followers are just lazy, stupid, and willfully ignorant on levels that are without excuse at this point. The idea of Donald Trump (the meme, not the man) may or may not be what they actually wanted...but then again, it might be. More than that, following after this garbage (which does, after all, very often confirm their biases, etc.) is infinitely easier than trying to determine what the words mean, or to figure out their own beliefs or even stand up for themselves.

And if something doesn't square, they'll just make shit up until it does.

If you wonder why a shit-bag like Machiavelli is still debated and read, etc. instead of having been thrown in history's trash bin where he belonged like so many of the people who lived that way were, stop wondering.

People do this shit because other people let them do it, and for no other reason. If politics and religion weren't the "Safe Zones" for grifting and scamming and easy ways to Power, they'd find something else.

Why??

Anything other than America.

Anything other than "Love Thy Neighbor."

Anything other than figuring out that they're no better or different than all the people they've been told to hate, and remember they made that hatred their identity because it was easy.

And if you wonder why these fucking people have decided they hate the Ukrainians (for example) so much, I think it's simply because Ukraine holds up a mirror and reminds them what they should be doing and should have been doing all this time, and shows them what the actual conservative response to all this bullshit should be.

I mean if somebody comes along openly trying to take your freedom and your stuff, shouldn't fighting back a fairly Bipartisan course of action, at the least?? 

And of course all these dishonest shitheads have just enough left of their conscience or their vanity that they don't like what they see in that mirror. (Of course, the same fucking people have thrown a lot of hate at people like David French for the same damn reason.)

But "Conservatives" also decided that fighting back, or even trying to preserve one's own Life or Rights against the various and assorted machinations of Power...is something that liberals do.

Change, or even self-preservation is too hard. Hate is easier.

They decided this four years ago during the height of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

I was there when they decided this four years ago. I wrote about it.

I don't think Trump is going to win. 

They wouldn't be doing all this crazy shit if they thought he was.

But I do think that Trump or the people who follow him are going to try to break off a piece of America for themselves and I've been telling you for almost four years now that what these idiots want is basically the Killing Fields of Khmer Rouge Cambodia, but with a Mall and shit...and that's what the place will be.

And right now, they're seeing what their own base will tolerate, for that exact reason. You notice how they've stopped trying to win over anybody else, or win over anybody at all and simply started kicking out anybody who isn't full MAGA?? That's why, and it'll get worse.

What genuinely scares me is that a lot of these fucking people are marching into hell right along with Trump and his clique and his Republican enablers, and they're glad to do it, just so long as they can give the middle finger to the rest of us, and be seen doing so.

And they're not afraid to flagrantly lie about why, or lie about other people...no matter how stupidly obvious the lie is.

And fundamentally, they think doing this will hurt other people worse than it'll hurt them. That either there won't be any consequences or what there are will have been worth it, for the thrill of hurting other people right now. This is Machiavelli's The Prince as read by idiots.

Republicans clearly believe there's no Hell for them to go to for all the sins that they've committed. If they did, if there were Eternal consequences as a known factor, most of these cowardly shits wouldn't be here. It's cruelty and rage unevenly yoked with cowardice.

They don't care about God or Jesus or going to Heaven. 

But they'd sure like to create Hell for the rest of us.

That's very important, for some reason.

In fact, they'd like to create all the judgments and torments of Revelation...but only for everybody else.

They just forgot that it doesn't work that way and that if any of that stuff IS true, it's by definition somebody other than them that gets to do the choosing.

This is why religion is no good for anything if you don't care about other people. *I* didn't say that, the Word says that.

You have to care about other people.

Anything else is just trying to pick out a nice spot in the Oblivion.

Without giving a shit about other people and the world we live in, you might as well be some Death-cultist trying to scratch their way out of the Shadow of this life in pursuit of some kind of karmic self-destruction.

I'm not a Born-Again anything anymore, it's simply what I read.

If you want a better country, you have to be a better citizen, and this ain't it.

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

Two

And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.

And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.

And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see.

And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.

And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.

And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.

And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:

And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?

And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow-servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.

And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;

And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casts her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.

And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;

And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:

For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand? ~Revelation 6 (King James Version.)