Tuesday, April 30, 2024

Tales Of The Uniparty II (American Revelation XVI, Twelve.)

And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.

And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?

And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.

For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.

And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in diverse places.

All these are the beginning of sorrows.

Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake.

And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.

And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.

And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.

But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come. ~Matthew 24:2-14

You know what I'm really getting tired of?

Trump and people like him, claiming they did their crimes and shit "For me" and then, despite their alleged wealth, they keep asking people like me for money.

No, motherfucker. NO.

(Seriously, more people need to learn how to use that word.)

And for the same reason I wouldn't loan the weird guy that comes in my work ten bucks for a pack of cigarettes last week.

I don't have it, not for people who maybe ain't got gas for their car or a jacket on when it's cold, but their car smells like weed (Which ain't cheap.) Definitely, I ain't got it for people like Trump who allegedly should not need money...because they're supposedly rich...but who go around asking for it all the time, anyway.

Wasn't this dude the poster boy for Stupid Yuppie Wealth for like 30 years?

What happened to all those casinos and shit?? Oh, right, they went bankrupt.

Because Trump is an idiotic, lazy, scumbag con artist who wasn't told "No" when he should have been.

Are people just that damned stupid??

More to the point, does this dude falling asleep in court and being charged with contempt actually look like winning to you??

If you or I conducted ourselves like this in a court proceeding, we'd end up in jail.

Like, already. There wouldn't be no more hearings.

And I'm tired of people lying and making excuses for this sack of shit, or for trying to cover themselves in secondhand "glory" from his own stupid decisions.

I'm sick of that motherfucker stinking up our politics, literally.

But even more than that I'm tired of people lying for this dude.

I'm tired of people making excuses for his dumb ass.

I'm tired of people worshiping this fucking loser like he's a god because he said racist shit about Mexicans.

And I'm tired of the fact that pretty much every bad actor in this whole damn country seems to see Trump as a vector to getting what they want.

They know, fundamentally, that he's an easily manipulated moron.

They just don't care

Like, fuck the rest of you, I've got mine.

Americans act like this and then we wonder why half the damn world's on fire?

Maybe start by waking up in the morning and realizing the world don't revolve around you?

Or as my Grandpa used to say "Remember, brothers, there are others."

I can remember when absolute base selfishness got people's asses beat.

When these people bitch about there being a "Uniparty" they're actually telling on themselves. They're not wrong, if you look at it as people who believe in Democracy vs. people who don't.

And I'm quite sick of people who'd exchange democracy and freedom for shareholder profits or social status.

Especially considering that in the kind of world these monsters are trying to create, the vast majority of these fucking people (and certainly anybody I know) would have neither.

But they "Identify" with the "Hierarchy" the idea of "Caste" or something something Gazpacho.

Bro, you don't live in the 19th Century British Raj in India.

This is America.

If you care more about "Castes" or "Class" or "Hierarchy" than you do about freedom...why don't you go somewhere, where people either live like that or did sometime in recent history and see how you like it. Go ahead, see what those kinds of divisions did to those sorts of societies, I'll wait.

I'll note that none of these motherfuckers seem to have any interest in checking out India...or even the United Kingdom, for that matter.

But these fucking people are obsessed with their fucked up social theories anyway, I've personally seen people go down that rabbit hole with the Alt-Right Nazi shit.

For these nuts, it's basically anything other than America at this point.

And even in the very likely event that Trump loses, we're probably going to have to fight a war with these assholes if we want this shit to stop.

It might not be much of a war, but people will still die in it.

And for these fucking people that seems to be the point. They don't even care if it's them.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

You can either be a Citizen or a Subject, not both. One of these things is not like the other one.

And our Founding Fathers based America on the ideal of citizenship rather than subjection to a king for a damn reason. But I guess that's too hard for some motherfuckers...

You want a better country, be a better citizen.

Because the alternative sucks.

Слава Україна!

Eleven

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

Tales Of The Uniparty I (American Revelation XVI, Eleven.)

Behold, I have told you before.

Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not.

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.

For wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together.

Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:

And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and puts forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh:

So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.

Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.

~Matthew 24:25-34

...

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride."

~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

I saw this earlier this morning.

MTG trying to introduce a Motion To Vacate, vs. Speaker Mike Johnson. House Democrats have already signaled that they're going to back him, and Large Marge be mad about it.

Let me explain something to you, bitch: Yeah, you're right. There absolutely is a "Uniparty." 

Everybody really is out to get you; That is, almost everybody on both sides of the line hates your (and every other member of the "Freedom" Caucus's) guts.

It's Democracy vs. MAGA, period.

Not that it's America these fucking people even want. They want pre-Enlightenment if not pre-Reformation Europe, Lords in their Castles and Ignorant Peasants.

They want the King to be King and everybody else to have to suck his dick, and they figure they'll suck better and get more of what they want, and the rest of us will get nothing but shit. You know, exactly the type of "Government" that was prevalent at the time of our Revolution and that America was founded to oppose.

And nobody but you fuckers and the old people with landline phones that pollsters keep calling really likes your Orange Jesus, either.

There's a certain kind of White Man with various "Adequacy" issues that just loves Trump, old people whose brains stopped working in 1975, too, and various racists love the man.

Most people, don't.

It's all bullshit, just like this big stink that corporate media is making about campus protests, trying to basically keep everybody else from talking about anything else because Trump is losing his ass in court, he looks like shit, he's not even campaigning, and the motherfucker can't even stay awake.

It's the greedy corporations, the idiot MAGA's, the media, misogynists who want to abuse women, old racist shitheads and rich motherfuckers that want this dude. 

Oh yeah, there's a small percentage of doctrinaire fascists and people who jerk off to the idea of genuflecting before a king...but it's funny how those motherfuckers never move somewhere like Russia or Saudi Arabia where people have to live like that, isn't it?? Mostly Trump is backed by people who want to do what they want including beating up on immigrants and their fellow citizens for no fucking reason, and they want to steal America from all the rest of us while he's taking naps all damn day and farting.

And they want to kill other Americans.

They want to shatter this country into a million pieces so they can each have their own scummy little fiefdoms where only people "like them" get to have money and take showers and shit like that.

This goes that far, I guarantee you it'll be the "Liberals" who put a civilization back together faster, and get help from the rest of the world to do it, and you fuckers lose anyway.

It's not so much about beliefs or political ideology as it's about these fucking people's endless goddamn narcissism and nihilism.

America has been pretty good to a lot of these fucking people, and they haven't had to do much for it, and they still want more.

You wanna hand America over to people like that??

You're fucking stupid.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

It's really that simple.

So get after it.

No more excuses.

Слава Україна!

Ten

I have certain rules I live by. My first rule: I don't believe anything the government tells me. [...] I look at war a little bit differently. To me, war is a lot of prick-waving! OK? Simple thing. That's all it is. War is a whole lot of men standing out on a field waving their pricks at one another. Men are insecure about the size of their dicks, and so they have to kill one another over the idea. That's what all that asshole jock bullshit is all about. That's what all that adolescent, macho, male posturing and strutting in bars and locker rooms is all about. It's called "dick fear!" Men are terrified that their pricks are inadequate and so they have to compete with one another, to feel better about themselves, and since war is the ultimate competition, basically, men are killing each other in order to improve their self-esteem! You don't have to be a history major or a political scientist to see the bigger-dick foreign policy theory. It sounds like this: "What, they have bigger dicks? Bomb them!" And of course, the bombs and the rockets and the bullets are all shaped like dicks. It's a subconscious need to project the penis into other people's affairs. It's called "fucking with people!" ~George Carlin.




Monday, April 29, 2024

What's Wrong With Right Wing Men? (American Revelation XVI, Ten.)

I have certain rules I live by. My first rule: I don't believe anything the government tells me. [...] I look at war a little bit differently. To me, war is a lot of prick-waving! OK? Simple thing. That's all it is. War is a whole lot of men standing out on a field waving their pricks at one another. Men are insecure about the size of their dicks, and so they have to kill one another over the idea. That's what all that asshole jock bullshit is all about. That's what all that adolescent, macho, male posturing and strutting in bars and locker rooms is all about. It's called "dick fear!" Men are terrified that their pricks are inadequate and so they have to compete with one another, to feel better about themselves, and since war is the ultimate competition, basically, men are killing each other in order to improve their self-esteem! You don't have to be a history major or a political scientist to see the bigger-dick foreign policy theory. It sounds like this: "What, they have bigger dicks? Bomb them!" And of course, the bombs and the rockets and the bullets are all shaped like dicks. It's a subconscious need to project the penis into other people's affairs. It's called "fucking with people!" ~George Carlin.

...

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride."

~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

I saw this when I got home from work.

Kyle Rittenhouse, trying to dress and act like a soldier, He isn't

He's a fucking soup sandwich.

I was a United States Air Force security police Sergeant, and I'm here to tell you people like me laugh at punks like this...or I would, if he hadn't killed people simply for exercising their Constitutional Rights and been made a right-wing icon and at least in terms of not going to prison, got away with it. What's wrong with these motherfuckers??

And for all his cheap internet fame, Kyle can't seem to get a job that doesn't involve being a right-wing political grifter.

There's apparently a lot of that kind of shit going around, and it seems like a hell of a lot of it is just dudes that don't want to have to get real jobs where they have to show up sober and wear pants to work.

Like, no joke, I worked five days including on what were supposed to be two of my days off and I still have payday bullshit I didn't get done last week because somebody quit on us and my work got fucked over. When somebody says "No one wants to work anymore!" they're talking about the White People.

And it seems like it's mostly the men.

Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with "Conservative" White men,?? And note I ask this as a white male Air Force veteran former Republican with a church background. Shit like this was not acceptable back in my day when I was one of those people.

I mean, it used to be if you showed up drunk, or in a hoodie and shorts for some interview or whatever, just spreading your legs all over the place while basically wearing a Speedo they wouldn't even put your ass on TV.

And somebody would make sure that it got out that you tried this kind of crap, and people would laugh at you and your career would be just...gone.

Nowadays the only people acting like everybody would've acted forty, twenty, even ten years ago and mocking this horseshit are the liberals, the "Left" the moderates who actually give a shit, (As opposed to the Basic Centrists who are afraid if they say something they won't get invited to cocktail parties with these clowns anymore) and the occasional surviving Never Trump Republican.

Meanwhile the assholes, assisted by the cocktail-party-repartee crowd, continue to try to crowbar this country apart by simply refusing to participate in Civilization with the rest of us. 

And they're doing it while Trump, their Avatar, makes up stories about how everybody will "Submit" to him...even though such is demonstrably horseshit. In fact, in the case of Trump/MAGA Republicans vs. Russia, the reverse seems to be true because they keep submitting to Putin

Worse, on that side of the fence everybody seems fine with this.

These idiots are going balls-out and abandoning all decency, morality and even self-respect in an effort to save a Power Structure that they know is failing, that they've actually done not one fucking thing to maintain until they saw what was actually happening and panicked...because they long ago decided that It Would Always Be Thus and they were too good to have to explain themselves, talk to people or even say Why it should be so. I mean, if it was me in this position I'd have died of addiction, depression and embarrassment a long damned time ago.

Naturally, they're destroying themselves. 

And nobody who can stop them is asking "Hey, just what the fuck are we even doing here?" And just like with the George Floyd protests four years ago, these college students are going to leave a mark and the rich assholes who are getting the cops to beat on them will just end up losing and slinking further up their own asses with their bitterness and their money.

Because the truth is it's not even about the money, but about ego and the image of a certain kind of power, which in America nobody really has...or ever has had...on the level that they want it.

And because these fucking people refuse to even talk to, let alone listen to anybody outside of their cocktail party, supper club bullshit, we end up in the same shit in another few years, over another issue.

Or maybe not, maybe that's the thing and it's not another issue, but the same one.

Seems like it's always the same kind of fucking people doing it.

Seems like it's always bigotry and Power and wealth, in some form, that are at the core of whatever the fuck it is.

Again, what in the fuck is wrong with "Conservative" White Men??

And I'm here to tell you, one of these times it's going to boil over into straight up warfare, with Americans shooting at each other.

And when that happens, these cackling, simpering clowns and the bellicose drunks, the fat slobs, the shit-talking goons, the wannabe thugs who were great at shooting people when nobody was shooting back...and the weak-ass enablers are all going to suddenly have pressing business arrangements in places like the Cayman Islands or Dubai or some shit. Kyle Rittenhouse will suddenly get himself an endorsement deal for some arms company in Abu Dhabi that nobody ever heard of before, etc. The last thing these shitheads are going to do is fight in the wars that they bumble-fucked the rest of us into. I mean, don't get me wrong, they'll talk like they're the glue that holds the world together and how if we'd all just obeyed them none of this would be happening...but it's a lie.

And when it ends up being a two or even three front war because in addition to all these brushfire conflicts here at home, the Authoritarianism, Inc. goons decide they're going to press for whatever they can get...those same motherfuckers will just gossip about the Generals fighting the wars and democratic leaders trying to keep America together and John Fetterman's hoodie and Zelensky's army sweater or some bullshit at gilded parties in Dubai instead of NYC.

When it's F-35's, Rafales and Typhoons and upgraded F-16's fighting it out with Flankers and Fulcrums in the skies over Europe and American kids are not only dying in the field in Poland and Romania and Ukraine but in the streets of Cheyenne and Dallas and Salt Lake City...these gold-plated clowns will lament the road block with a tank that protects their neighborhood, or the lack of peace and quiet at their villa in Tuscany...not the threat to their freedoms and lives represented by threats like Russia or wannabe American Fascists.

And when Israel has to become something other than Bibi's personal goon squad in order to survive, they'll...openly or otherwise...be mad that their latest gambit to start the End Times clock and summon their Blood God failed.

(Also, I find it funny how "America First" can't wait to be pawns in somebody else's ethnic conflict that's somewhere else, it just seems kind of odd to me, or like it's all crap or something.)

Never mind that bit about how a rich man getting into Heaven is like trying to fit a Camel through the eye of a needle. 

To these fucking people, that's just crazy talk.

Because apparently, being rich is a hell of a drug, or something. And as long as they get to have it, they don't care if the rest of us are dead or enslaved.

But we do care, and we get a vote in this too, motherfuckers.

As for the rest of you, you either believe in freedom or you don't.

We don't have time to worry about whatever the fuck is wrong with "Conservative" White Men. It's time to start punching motherfuckers in the head and shouting that shit down because it's not our job to be these fucking people's playthings or therapists.

You want a better country, be a better citizen.

And as for those who whack it to the idea of being Lords in their castles, surrounded by fields of serfs, it's time to grow the fuck up and realize the people trying to set this shit up are planning on you being in the latter category, not the former.

Their Wealth is their god.

Do you really think they're going to let you have any??

And I'm not a born-again anything anymore, but I distinctly remember being taught how that worked out, either the having it or the wanting it bad enough to wreck civilization.

It's like this, if you want to be these people's bitch, that's your right, I guess.

But this is America, and I don't have to put up with it, or you.

Remember that.

'Cause I sure will.

Слава Україна!

Nine

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





Sunday, April 28, 2024

Beast Of War (American Revelation XVI, Nine.)

Never have I witnessed such sincere hospitality and the overwhelming spirit of true brotherhood as is practiced by people of all colors and races here in this ancient Holy Land, the House of Abraham, Muhammad, and all the other Prophets of the Holy Scriptures. For the past week, I have been utterly speechless and spellbound by the graciousness I see displayed all around me by people of all colors...

You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to rearrange much of my thought-patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions. This was not too difficult for me. Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.

During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug) -- while praying to the same God -- with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the actions and in the deeds of the "white" Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan, and Ghana. We were truly all the same (brothers) -- because their belief in one God had removed the "white" from their minds, the 'white' from their behavior, and the 'white' from their attitude. I could see from this, that perhaps if white Americans could accept the Oneness of God, then perhaps, too, they could accept in reality the Oneness of Man -- and cease to measure, and hinder, and harm others in terms of their "differences" in color.

With racism plaguing America like an incurable cancer, the so-called "Christian" white American heart should be more receptive to a proven solution to such a destructive problem. Perhaps it could be in time to save America from imminent disaster -- the same destruction brought upon Germany by racism that eventually destroyed the Germans themselves.

They asked me what about the Hajj had impressed me the most. . . . I said, "The brotherhood! The people of all races, color, from all over the world coming together as one! It has proved to me the power of the One God. . . . All ate as one, and slept as one. Everything about the pilgrimage atmosphere accented the Oneness of Man under One God. 

~Malcolm X, Letter following the Hajj.
...

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride."

~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

I saw this yesterday.

In her recent autobiography, Kristi Noem bragged about shooting her dog. Nothing wrong with the dog, and it was only 14 months old, she just didn't want it anymore.

People, across the board...even strident MAGA's...have reacted with nothing but well-deserved anger and disgust.

Meanwhile, because of the idiocy of the Columbia University administration and the NYPD, college campuses around the country have been wracked with protests against the continued attacks on Palestinians in Gaza by Israel.

And there's cops pointing sniper rifles at college students because of it. Speaking as a United States Air Force security police veteran here, how exactly do you enforce any laws from 200 meters away?? And that's the thing, these students aren't breaking any laws but rather exercising their Constitutional rights.

Shoot a dog, that's bad. Point weapons at college students, and that's good? It seems like some fucking people have their priorities all fucked up.

And they'll end up mad at Kristi Noem for telling on them.

Because if you think these motherfuckers wouldn't shoot people, you have another thing coming. And she gave away the game too early. Usually, psychopaths start with abusing animals.

And I find it interesting that the Columbia university administration has already said they won't call the NYPD again. Seems like somebody fucked up here, and it wasn't the college students. And they know it. Protesting is one of those things that college students do. If they'd left that shit alone, it would've flamed out in a week and there wouldn't be a national protest movement right now. Yeah, okay, there are a few violent Anti-Semitic assholes. You deal with those ones (which can generally be done without violence) and you don't use that shit as an excuse to brutalize the non-violent, law-abiding majority with excessive force.

I'm here to tell you, as it always does, the Right has overreached on this one...because they've had a hard-on for going after college students for a long time. And it's going to (further) shift US public opinion against Israel, in addition to creating another cycle of radicals (Islamic and otherwise) for the Right and its progeny to "fight" against, because these motherfuckers ideology can apparently survive just fine without a God...but goddamn, it can't even function without an Enemy.

And that's the thing.

These fucking people want to destroy themselves. They want to provoke an Apocalypse. They want to destroy every damn thing they "Support" too. And US support for Israel is no exception and no, I'm not kidding.

See, for "Conservatives" and Republicans, Israel is merely a Spell Component for "Summon Angry Blood-God Jesus." If they can turn the USA and the world against Israel that simply helps the 1970's vintage End Times Prophecy narrative these motherfuckers are still working off of. (Yes, the one I was taught in the 1990's, which is how I can say this.)

And the Go-condition for the Judgments of Revelation is basically a peace treaty between Israel and the global empire that they believe will exist at that time, which Israel is something something Gazpacho not a part of for some reason.

(Don't ask me, I only work here.)

Also, on the one hand, These Fucking People believe if they destroy themselves and America in some kind of Republican Revelation scenario...their small angry god will save them. Them...and not you or me.

Yes, they want to bring the Apocalypse on themselves because they think it'll hurt you.

(It's typical "Conservative" logic.)

On the other hand, this kind of shit is simply what happens when you marinate your brain in End Times conspiracy theories for your whole life. Most of these people didn't get out when Y2K or Harold Camping or the 2012 bullshit proved to be nothing more than so much Bovine Flatulence. Motherfuckers wanna believe.

Because they're Motherfuckers.

But then, for added confusion, Vladimir Putin basically has declared his intent to have a Far-Right "New World Order" (including declaring Russia to be Rome, the resurrection of Rome also being an implicit criteria for 1990's End Times Prophecy bullshit) which, gradually, seems to be accruing many of the characteristics of the very False World System of Revelation (including multiple prototype Marks Of The Beast) that these fucking people were violently against any hint of until recently. But...like some coalition of Iraqi tribes given a better offer by the government and those invaders they only recently castigated as Infidels than they'd gotten from the terrorists...they've switched sides in mid-conflict.

I'm sorry, Jesus.

And if you think I'm wrong, let me point out that it's funny how all this pops up literally immediately after the Republicans couldn't prevent the USA from helping Ukraine.

Seems obvious somebody's in cahoots with somebody, here.

I mean, sure, there's aid for Israel too, and Taiwan, and trust me...the second that Bibi loses power, let alone faces consequences, the Authoritarianism, Inc. goons will turn against Israel, too. If you consider that Putin (via Wagner) supported and trained Hamas, they already have, really.

And if these motherfuckers can use this ongoing conflict as well as Left-Right divisions in America to split the US into two or more countries...thus meaning whoever ends up helping places like Israel, Taiwan and Ukraine won't be able to do it as much...so much the better. It's Putin's stated goal to both avenge and reverse the collapse of the Soviet Union, and he also wants to inflict that kind of collapse on America. And if things keep up as they are, he might even be able to do it in the middle of a war.

Because 75% America will be 25% less able to help other people, it's as simple as that.

Unless we get a fucking grip.

I mean, Putin won't get Armenia, Azerbaijan, the Baltic States, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova or the majority of Ukraine, much less former Imperial Russian possessions like Finland or Poland...back. His re-expanded Warsaw Pact "Sphere of Influence" is probably a no-go, too, at least as regards Eastern Europe. But Putin will certainly be able to gobble up Belarus, and possibly a few of the other, smaller countries that perversely seem less alert. And if he keeps wrenching away at our own divides with crowbars of hate and political extremism and racism...Russia might get chunks of Florida and the Deep South as some kind of American banana republic Satellite State. 

Call it an East Germany for the 21st Century, actively working towards Republican North Korea.

And you watch, if the Republicans can pull off some kind of Right-wing Insurgency or simply get the aspects of the US government that they've corrupted to go along with several states in a bloc seceding, and once shooting and wrangling over exact borders stops and the guard towers and walls of an Inner-American border go up, once the tech bros and the wealthy flock there and they design their bullshit system of religious laws, techno-Gnosticism and this and that...they're going to start putting computer chips in people's heads and otherwise daring their alleged God to smite them, and that'll be before they start actively working on creating conflict not only internally to feed their own desires for repression and profit, but against the rest of us (again) as well.

Because it's anything but America.

Because it's anything but "Love Thy Neighbor."

Anything that doesn't feed these fucking people's lawless narcissism must be Anathema.

Even if it's something as simple as your dog.

And it'll only get worse if they "get their own place" or are otherwise allowed to make their own rules.

And where the fuck does it stop, unless we stop it??

We are, as I have said before, going to have to vote these motherfuckers out.

And then, we're going to have to take up arms and fight them off.

These people are fucking psychos.

And the Beast Of War is the only thing they for sure figure they have.

I was married to a mentally ill religious nut, I already know how that shit works out. The whole Trump Thing has been like that, but it's the whole damn country. And from what I hear, this shit has even gotten too nuts for my ex-wife.

It's really that simple.

We have to make it stop.

Because if we don't...and this one is for all those cute little Blue Sky Leftists who just can't bring themselves to vote for Joe because something something Palestinians...you have no idea how much worse it can get. Trump wants to do exactly what the worst Israeli elements are doing to the Palestinians, here, and to other Americans.

Vote...and fight...like your life depends on it, because guess what??

It does.

And even a win (Likely, in my opinion) means people somewhere in this country are going to have to contend with their workday being interrupted by trips to the bomb shelter, just like the Ukrainians have to deal with...because the last thing that the far-right wants is anybody to be free from their bullshit, and if they can't hold political power over Other People's lives they will try and use armed force.

It will become that simple.

Freedom ain't free, and sometimes you have to fight for it.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

And the reason these motherfuckers hate America is that we all get to decide, not just them.

Choose your next move wisely.

Because this shit can and will get worse.

And they're already working on new forms of division and fascism.

Let that sink in.

Слава Україна!

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

Eight

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



Seriously, when the fuck is enough going to be enough with this shit?!?!?

What is it going to take for We, The People...you know, what America is based on...to stop tolerating this fucking garbage?!?!

Bonus Content

Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at evening, or at midnight, or at the cock-crowing, or in the morning, ~Mark 13:35

Tuesday, April 23, 2024

For By Thy Sorceries Were All Nations Deceived (American Revelation XVI, Eight.)

And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.

And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.

And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.

For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double.

How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she said in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.

Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judges her.

And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,

Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come. ~Revelation 18:1-10
...
"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride." ~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

I know I'm old school.

Outdated, planned obsolescence, even. I get it. I'm Okay with that, even though I know it's not always a good thing. Things must change, from time to time. 

But come on, people.

I'm a former conservative Republican, who was taught a certain way of doing things that is completely nonpartisan and not up for debate, and which I've always at least tried to live up to. I'm a Democrat now because like it or not, that's the side that gives a shit about America, and that represents Democracy and actually listens to the common people like me now and then.

And they've become the side that represents things I can at least recognize as values, even if I don't personally agree with their particular take on that stuff, I can at least shrug and say Okay, I'll be over here minding my own business because I don't think I have some magical right to tell other people what to do. For me, "Power" in and of itself, is not a value.

But it's more than that, for me at least.

Democrats in general, and Joe Biden in particular, seem to at least have a modicum of self-respect, they actually believe in what they say, and believe what they say about themselves

Joe Biden himself has more than once looked at some goofy-ass thing Republicans were doing and said "Come On, Man!"

Everything is not some kind of naked, stupid power calculus where everybody on that side just ignores the blatant, bullshit-ass hypocrisy in the name of bowing and scraping for profit, for the sheer joy of doing so.

(Because that's what Republicans think is "Right." This is what they think the world is supposed to be.)

But again, that's not all there is to it.

The modern Democratic Party of 2024 does NOT both #1 Consist of some of the most ridiculously over the top, pop-cultured, privileged, puffed-up and wealthy people who've ever lived, and #2 Permit those fucking people to constantly go around asking people like me for money.

But of course, there's more to it than just money.

Donald Trump, whether you think deservedly or undeservedly, lives the kind of life a whole hell of a lot of Americans...much less people in the wider world...can't even imagine

I'm talking in terms not so much of power and wealth here but in terms of literally getting to spend his time...and I mean, like, all of it aside from very recently, when he's on trial for crimes...enjoying himself in terms of everything from attention to drugs to material comforts to sex and whatever the fuck else we don't even know about, never will, and wouldn't want to.

And for all that, he's still a miserable bastard! Worse, the motherfucker wants me to feel sorry for him??

I mean, doesn't any of this seem wrong to you??

Let me put it another way; According to how I was taught, if your ass is hanging around with, sharing secrets with, or otherwise seriously being involved with a skeevy looking dude who's literally named Pecker, you need to go home and seriously start rethinking your life choices.

I have a hard time understanding how these fucking people don't get that. 

Stuff like that was never presented to me as a choice, apparently with good reason. In fact, I don't know that my Grandpa or anybody else ever actually told me to avoid skeevy-looking dudes with funny names, I just sort of got that. Republicans (and Trump) apparently did not.

And these super-comfortable people, who literally act like they are not and never will be under threat, act like it's some kind of betrayal that other Republicans, led by Mike Johnson, sided with Democrats in approving aid to Ukraine so that those people over there can keep fighting for their country and for their culture and their literal right to exist as a People.

And these Republicans, even though the Ukrainians are protecting them, too, and making it so they and people like them or people that they represent don't have to go and fight, think they're too good to have to help out.

And that's before you even get to the fact that a whole bunch of these motherfuckers are actually in bed with the goddamned Russians. If you want the truth, I'm not sure that Republicans like Donald Trump or Thomas Massie would defend America if we got attacked...at least, not if we got attacked by the fucking Russians.

Never mind that the Russians don't give a shit about them, either.

I'm tired of this bullshit.

I'm tired of these fucking people and their priggish religiosity.

I'm tired of their Christ-less Christianity.

I don't want to live the kind of joyless, loveless existence they would gladly prescribe for people like me if they were given that kind of power.

Their entire bit, the whole goddamned thing is literally anything but them living in a civilization to which they must contribute.

Anything but America.

Anything but "Love Thy Neighbor."

Anything but Freedom, if anybody else gets to have it.

I'm tired of these fucking people and their bullshit.

Because for these idiots, it's Anything but doing the work of life and taking responsibility for yourself and maintaining and protecting the society that gives them life, too.

It's literally any old damn thing besides "Having to give a shit about other people, simply because they're other people."

(And America gives selfish-ass clowns like this cop authority and access to weapons? WTF??)

I'm sorry, but I was taught that keeping all that shit up was exactly what being a conservative was. Giving a shit, whether it's convenient or it's not.

These motherfuckers would rather be slaves to somebody like Donald Trump than be free.

And then they're miserable, and they want me to feel sorry for them because of it.

No.

Grow the fuck up, Republicans.

Because if you don't, sooner or later the rest of us are going to have to start treating you like the stupid, violent children you act like you are...not only for our own survival, but for yours too.

And then these idiot wannabe Nazis who've never taken a punch in their lives think they're going to threaten people like me?? Okay, we'll see how that works out for you. I'm a veteran, bro. I faced down people like you in Bosnia...and they pissed themselves and surrendered. If you're so "White" and "Western" what kind of a name is "Gaad Saad" anyway?? I'm a just call you "Saad Sack" 'Cause that's what your ass is.

And when I say stuff like that, remember I was raised with the Ass Whuppin.' Learning to be a person, much less an adult, responsible person wasn't always pleasant in my day. Whether it's right or wrong, that's just how it was when I came up. I had to take the hits when I fucked up.

Note: I looked him up. Bro is an Arab, Lebanese-Canadian marketing professor. Please note, in all seriousness that not a bit of that scans as either "Western" in the way he thinks he means it, or as "White." Let alone macho or to be taken seriously in the kind of (Yes, very White and Male) moral universe that I was originally taught, let alone the one he proposes that we all live in. Yes, Middle Eastern people, both Christian and Muslim...not to mention all those Black Africans and Afro-Caribbean people who speak The King's English, French and other European languages are as Western as old Saad Sack is, or even more so.

There's a reason I say that:

Part of the goddamn point was that Western culture originally was designed to go around hoovering up and incorporating and absorbing the strengths of other cultures and people groups. That's what Rome did, for fuck's sake! During the Islamic Golden Age, plenty of philosophers and scholars were as conversant with the writings of Aristotle as they were with those of the Holy Quran. This is how this is/was supposed to work.

(And if Saad Sack thinks I don't like him, wait until he has to deal with actual Nazis. And remember, the Nazis had a fascination not only with lots of non-Western religions but with Occultism. And I've known that since I saw Raiders Of The Lost Ark as a kid.)

The old white WASP-y shit Elks Club Republicans I used to drink and golf with when I was a teenager and young man wouldn't have let this motherfucker in the goddamn door, and they'd have called him worse than Saad Sack! They'd have laughed at him, to his face. These were guys who cheerfully called people from places like Lebanon all type of shit! And remember, in going out into the real world I had to go from keeping up with these guys to first working with a bunch of [Black] Jamaicans and shit working a summer on Mackinaw Island and I had to have nothing but respect for those people and how hard they worked. Then I worked the kind of hard-ass factory job, working with a bunch of redneck white dudes, that sucked so bad I thought the military might be an upgrade. And then, after I enlisted, I was serving with and learning, sometimes the hard way, the worth of people of all colors and races and walks of life. 

One of my best friends in the Air Force (and my roommate in the Airman's Dorms at KI Sawyer AFB) was an African American convert to Islam who was as Black as a night in the desert. Eventually, we were both Senior Airmen, then Sergeants, Squad leaders. Disobedience of authority in that sort of context or that one didn't like the "Look" of wasn't an option, nor was not liking the look of it. (Per regulations) But, trust me, when That Guy (Probably "That Person" more properly today) gives you an order, you'll obey and you'll like it. You ain't got time to care what Color (or what anything else) they is.

But you know what else those people that I served with and before them, my elders and in fact, those people I worked with and even the shitty old Republicans, taught me??

You either believe in freedom or you don't. Freedom ain't free. 

Understanding that is why I did shit like serve in the Air Force in the first place. It's why I write and try to educate people now

Here's the thing, freedom and rights come with responsibilities, too. 

Freedom is neither a given, nor self-perpetuating, a lot of people around the world don't have it. You have to do the work to keep it, and yes, sometimes you have to fight for it. Like I said yesterday, if the Ukrainians can understand that, why can't so many privileged Americans??

Non Nobis Solum Nati Sumus. (How's that for "Western" eh, Saad Sack?) We are not born for ourselves alone.

If you want a better country, you have to be a better citizen.

And this?

This ain't it.

Citizenship is what America is based on, not Privilege. America is based on what you can be, not what you're born as. I've known that since I was five years old, and we'd best get back to it.

Because if we don't, privilege is going to kill us. Dominant ethnic groups and incestuous nobilities and privileged performative foolishness was exactly what turned Europe into the kind of soup sandwich our Founders wanted to get away from.

How's that for an understanding of Western Civilization, motherfucker?


Barbara: With a cute little rear end like that, you'll be the belle of the ball. Your dance card'll be filled every day. You'll be so popular, making all kinds of new, close friends. Big, ugly, hairy friends! Not that you'll ever see what they look like, 'cause you'll be facing the other way.
- Ken Kessler: You're very good at this. You should write children's books. ~From the film Ruthless People

Слава Україна!

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

Seven

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.

Monday, April 22, 2024

No Sympathy For The Devil (American Revelation XVI, Seven.)

No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
...

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

So, Trump's trial officially started this morning, and he's already calling for his supporters to riot because of the trial.

Aren't these fucking people the same ones who ruthlessly connect "Rioting And Looting" to Black people and others that they don't like at every available opportunity?? It's funny how that, too, is just projection. It's an endless, relentless attempt by the complexionally-challenged to pawn off their own wrongs on other people and use that as an excuse to persecute them. 

Fuck that shit, I'm tired of it.

You know what else I'm tired of??

I'm tired of all these vapid ass-kissers and fluffers and shit, who just can't stop blowing the goddamn narcissist.

People keep trying to make it sound like the whole goddamned economy somehow depends on Trump and/or Republicans or something something Gazpacho...

But the truth is, they're the ones who've created an entire goddamn industry around feeding Trump's narcissism and shoveling this shit at the public.

Meanwhile the truth is, after his ass lost the election in 2020 he went and sulked at Mar-A-Lago for like a year and a half, nobody fucking cared, and the world moved on just fine without him.

But it was the ego of all the MAGA's that appeared to be most harmed by this. These fucking people have made Trump their identity, and they can't stand it if he's not front-and-center of every goddamn thing. So of course amoral Ghouls like Rupert Murdoch latch onto that shit for profit.

And thus, Mike Johnson and the pro-Ukraine Republicans now aside, the goddamn "Conservative" movement as a whole is stuck in a doom loop with a fucking narcissist.

Think about that, for a second. Take all the time you need.

I was married to a woman who has a Personality Disorder. It's not just that I can tell you how this ends. It's that, looking at what's publicly known about the current internal workings and financial situation of the GOP as a whole and the near destruction of my state's Republican Party in particular...it's already about 90% of the way there. And there's no money.

But again, having been in a much smaller version of this mess myself, I'm sure the reality of it is worse.

I'm serious, the constant, ridiculous forays into religiosity are a huge tell that this whole mess is going to end badly, and probably soon. When she saw the writing on the wall, my Ex got the Jesus, like, really bad.

And I'm here to tell you people like Lauren Blowbert and their transparently fake religiosity are the rule, not the exception, going forward. Whether he loses his Speakership, resigns or Republicans lose the majority in November (or for that matter, before that, which is a real possibility) and he's simply relegated back to obscurity...this shit is only going to get worse.

And that's how Republicans want it.

Unless We, the People, stop putting up with this bullshit and vote these fuckers out.

And then they'll try a right-wing Insurgency, that too will end badly, they don't care.

It'd be funny if they weren't threatening to start shooting at the other two thirds of America and trying to burn down the whole damn country.

The thing is, sooner or later these fucking people probably are going to break off a chunk of America for their own shitty little Banana Republic. It won't be the kind of place anybody wants to live.

Like, these fuckers think charity is a bad thing.

In fact, that shit will basically be Turkmenistan, but for White Evangelical Christian People, and there probably will be even more corruption and a lot less freedom, in whatever part of the USA they get. And they'll probably only get it if we let them have it.

And when it sucks, that'll somehow be our fault.

These idiots see stuff like what Elon has done to Twitter, what Putin has done to Russia and what Trump has done to the GOP and they whack off to the idea of making the whole damn world like that.

"Everything is bad, vote for us" or some such bullshit, as if everything sucking justifies how shitty they are.

I mean, it's so bad that even Republicans are sick of Republicans.

But here's the thing, America isn't based on some imaginary Pyramid Of Suckage that exists only in the Republican mind, it's based on citizenship. Of course, that's why these motherfuckers hate America. We're not shitty enough, or something.

I thought the point here was to make things better, not worse.

Of course, what Republicans are really thinking is "Better for whom?" And if the answer isn't "Them" they don't want to partake of it, like at all.

I'm not 100% sure what the answer is here, America, but what I can say is if we go with "Be The People That Republicans Don't Like" we'll probably end up better off.

Don't take my word for it, even Rupert Murdoch, of all fucking people, basically is saying just that. Think the NY Post prints any damn thing without his say-so?? Even the paymasters and the string-pullers are sick of these people's bullshit.

I'm serious, and as bad as things are, Republicans want them to be worse.

You want things to be better?? Don't be these motherfuckers.

Слава Україна!

Osman Ali Atto: I see not catching Aidid is becoming routine.
General William Garrison: We're not leaving Somalia until we find him. And we will find him.
Atto(scoffingYou've been here, what, six weeks? Six weeks, you tried to catch the General. You put up reward posters. $25,000. What's this, gunfight at K.O. Corral?
Garrison: It's O.K. Corral.
Atto: Don't make the mistake of thinking because I grew up without running water I am simple, General. I do know something about history. See all this? It's simply shaping tomorrow. A tomorrow without a lot of Arkansas white-boys' ideas in it.
Garrison: Well, I wouldn't know about that. I'm from Texas.
Atto: Mr. Garrison, I think you should not have come here. This is civil war. This is our war, not yours.
Garrison: Three hundred thousand dead and counting. That's not a war, Mr. Atto. That's genocide. ~From The Film Black Hawk Down.

They're pickin' up the prisonersAnd puttin 'em in a penAnd all she wants to do is dance, danceRebels been rebelsSince I don't know whenAnd all she wants to do is dance
Molotov cocktail, the local drinkAnd all she wants to do is dance, danceThey mix 'em up rightIn the kitchen sinkAnd all she wants to do is dance
Crazy people walkin' round with blood in their eyesAnd all she wants to do is dance, dance, danceWild-eyed pistol wavers who ain't afraid to dieAnd all she wants to do isAnd all she wants to do is danceAnd make romanceShe can't feel the heatComin' off the streetShe wants to partyShe wants to get downAll she wants to do isAll she wants to do is dance.
~Don Henley, All She Wants To Do Is Dance