Guilty! (Gravity, Eight.)

Ka mate, ka mate! ka ora! ka ora!
Ka mate! ka mate! ka ora! ka ora!
Tēnei te tangata pūhuruhuru
Nāna nei i tiki mai whakawhiti te rā
Ā, upane! ka upane!
Ā, upane, ka upane, whiti te ra!

~Ka Mate, Maori Haka (main body)

...
'Tis Death, 'Tis Death, 'Tis Life, 'Tis Life
'Tis Death, 'Tis Death, 'Tis Life, 'Tis Life
This is the hairy man
Who caused the sun to shine again for me
Up the ladder, up the ladder!
Rise! The Sun shines.
~Ka Mate (English translation.)

(War Dance)

Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles; Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up: Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning-hooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong. Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together round about: thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O Lord. Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about. Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. ~Joel 3:9-14

.....

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

~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

So, while I was sleeping yesterday, Donald Trump was convicted on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in his NYC Hush Money trial.

Good. For what it's worth, anyway. I saw it when I got up, but I had to work last night.

Like I said to my local paper-delivery guy, there's a good chance Trump is done politically, but a non-zero chance Republicans declare him a martyr and their god, and the devotion of the Cult deepens. That just means we have other problems coming, like a right-wing insurgency that will be fought in Trump's name.

(It'll be a soup sandwich and they'll lose but it'll still kill people.)

Basically every MAGA nut, Republican or Republican-adjacent person is trying to defend this asshole while blaming imaginary Communists, and for what?? It's not like Trump appreciates it. Communism hasn't been a thing since 1989, and they threw in with Putin anyway. Do they think we can't see this bullshit??

(Note: I find it suspicious that RFK Jr. is playing for second Vs. Trump just like Nikki Haley and all the other Republicans did. You'd think now is his moment if he's seriously running.)

Also, how fucking ideological and/or stupid do you have to be to think Donald Trump is a "Freedom Fighter" of any kind?? Of course, Stephen Miller is trying to be the legal arm of the White Supremacist Liberation Front, but there's nobody actually oppressing Angry Old White Guys.

And what I'm not sure Nosferatu even realizes is, angry old white guys are a dime a dozen, and the next one might not give a shit about him, I mean, why should they?? For fuck's sake, what happens when all these obviously Anti-Semitic Republicans realize he's Jewish??

And that's the thing I don't get. 

What's even the point??

There's too many contradictory factions here.

All these motherfuckers have in common is Donald Trump, a hatred of liberal democracy and petty racial and sexual bigotries...but the far-right usually falls apart due to petty infighting whenever their Icon-Of-The-Moment gets taken down a peg or two, and Trump just did.

The problem with that, is that Republicans have spent decades undermining US national cohesion and all these Republicans basically hate each other, too.

This could very well result in a couple of fucking Red States seceding from America (and liberals just taking the attitude of "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out") then promptly going to war with each other over some stupid shit, like who is the most special snowflake Trump-worshipers.

And if you don't think Trump or his family members would egg that shit on in the name of fueling his delusions or their own narcissism, you have another thing coming.

And it can always get worse.

We're dealing with a fucking cult here.

These fucking people are simply not rational.

And honestly, I feel like there's no good ending to this. One, The system waited too long. Two, because the way to stop it was to never let it get started in the first goddamn place and too many fucking people dropped the ball in 2015-2016.

The Republicans could and should have told Trump to go fuck himself. Democrats should've taken this threat more seriously and the goddamned voters could have easily stopped this shit ourselves...except too many of us had our heads up our asses.

Now the goddamned Republican power structure and the media have gone balls out to try and save Trump (and his ego) so they can make money off him and it wasn't enough.

My concern here is that MAGA motherfuckers will just start shooting at people if they don't think they can get whatever they think they want politically, and of course the only way to stop that is to shoot back. (And Republicans will be no help with this shit, even though it will end up targeting them, too.)

Like I said, it's not so much Gravity, it's that sudden stop at the bottom.

I feel like a Conviction is a start, but we have to keep the pressure on. We have to stand up, and keep standing up. Everybody wants to go back to normal, but Normal wasn't even yesterday.

Remember that.

We have to believe in and want our Freedom more than they believe in and want their Hate.

And we're going to have to fight for it.

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

And now's the time.

Freedom ain't free, yo.

Слава Україна!

Seven

[Cassian and Kino Loy have successfully broken out of their cell block and took over the prison complex's command center]

Cassian Andor: Kino. Tell them what to do. It has to be you. Come on, Kino. You do this every day. Tell them what to do.

Kino Loy: [presses PA system] My name is Kino Loy. I'm the day shift manager on Level Five. I'm speaking to you from the command center on Level Eight. We are, at this moment, in control of the facility.

Andor: Is that the best you got?

Loy: How long we hang on, how far we get, how many of us make it out, all of that is now up to us. We have deactivated every floor in the facility. All floors are cold. Wherever you are right now, get up, stop the work. Get out of your cells, take charge and start climbing. They don't have enough guards and they know it. If we wait until they figure that out, it'll be too late. We will never have a better chance than this and [looks at Cassian, knowing he said it] "I would rather die trying to take them down than giving them what they want." We know they fried a hundred men on Level Two. We know that they are making up our sentences as we go along. We know that no one outside here knows what's happening. And now we know, that when they say we are being released, we are being transferred to some other prison to go and die, and that ends today! There is one way out. Right now, the building is ours. You need to run, climb, kill! You need to help each other. You see someone who's confused, someone who is lost, you get them moving and you keep them moving until we put this place behind us. There are 5,000 of us. If we can fight half as hard as we've been working, we will be home in no time. One way out! [repeats it multiple times as he leaves the command center]

Andor: Come on! Let's get out of here!

~From the series "Andor" S1 E10 "One Way Out."