Snowflake (Gravity, Left Behind Edition.)

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. ~Thomas Jefferson

...

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.

...

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

I saw this yesterday while I was out doing payday stuff.

I have to admit, I'm tired of these damned Republicans being such snowflakes, and treating Trump as if he is the Specialest Snowflake Of All and acting like even the slightest inconvenience towards him is literally the most horrible thing ever.

It's a freaking courtroom, in the New York City, in May. They probably have to keep the air conditioning on lest the temperature in the building become insufferable, if not unsafe.

More to the point, Republicans demonstrably do not give a shit about the other people attending the trial, or working there...much less the countless other people (many of them People of Color, or poor) who've cycled through that very Courtroom in the exact same conditions.

Republicans are continuing to act like a routine search warrant (for more classified documents, no less) being served and executed at Mar-A-Lago was some kind of bullshit-ass assassination attempt on Trump.

It's puerile. It's ridiculous. 

These fucking people are grasping at motherfucking straws at this point to try and say that everything is horrible and the only solution is some kind of violent right-wing revolution.

The revolution will be short. They'll lose. That might not matter. Mostly it comes down to "What do we do about it." 

Anything that doesn't crack down on bigotry and stupidity and enforce standards on civilization is just stalling for time.

By the way, I also saw this morning in the local paper that this area...which by the way is traditionally pretty economically depressed...is in extremely good shape economically and adding jobs. Around here that's pretty much a Unicorn as far as headlines go, not least because a major local employer closed a few months back.

I live in the middle of nowhere, two hours from the nearest freeway or large city. There's not much appetite for Revolution here (and trust me, historically there has been) and nobody, not even the obvious Trump Supporters, seems to be particularly bothered by the increasing diversity of my own workplace It's an understatement to say that where I live was pretty much White Bread-istan even 20 years ago. 

As I've said before, in 1992 if you saw a Black person around here, they were very likely either an Airman stationed at Wurtsmith Air Force Base...or married to somebody who was. Even 20 years ago an "Out" gay person was uncommon, and the type with rainbow-dyed hair that's fairly routine to see now was more of a Unicorn around here than a headline about the local economy adding jobs. 

Meanwhile there's a new person at work who appears to be transgender. (I saw her yesterday, and I wasn't going to be rude and ask.) The world hasn't ended. No one seems to care.

The only people bitching about Joe Biden, the only people living in fear, hell the only people I see who are whining about anything are the people who'd find some reason to do that anyway, no matter what was going on.

And from the look of things, if Trump wants to have a rally in The Bronx, he has to bus Supporters in from outside of the area.

But the media tried yesterday to say that he was drawing big crowds of Black and Latino people at a rally in NYC.

Is this supposed to be like that one infamous picture of the old White couple wearing "Blacks For Trump" shirts from like five years ago??

The media and right-wing elites are trying to magic up some kind of appearance of inevitability and/or invincibility for Trump even as he continues to disintegrate in a Manhattan courtroom. Failing that, they're trying to WILL a "Revolution" for Trump or...something...into being.

I quite wonder how popular of an idea that's going to be when it inevitably costs rich people money. Like the old saying goes, it's not so much Gravity that kills a person, it's that sudden stop at the bottom.

I've no idea what the fuck is wrong with these people, other than that they want Anything But America, as I've said before. 

These fucking people seem to want some kind of Clickbait Future, a fascist Idiocracy that'll direct the "Clicks and Likes" such as to make all the "Right" people money, secure "White" power...whatever that even means. (I'm White and all this bullshit is to me and my life and everybody and everything I care about is a threat) and in general Something Something Gazpacho.

Here we are now, entertain us, I feel stupid and contagious. Basically.

And somehow, certain people think they're going to try to jam Medieval Catholicism down our throats in the middle of this mess. Really?

The White Right, or at least the "Traditionalist" Catholics are effectively demanding the "Right Of Revolution" to undo the American Revolution and the modern world.

How the fuck does that make any sense??

Also, No, get your own damn country. By the way, if you try to carve it out of this one you can expect this United States Air Force veteran to be militantly opposed to that idea.

(And I won't be the only one.)

Trump isn't some kind of a God. Hell, he's not even the leader of this goddamned movement, except as it's fucking figurehead. He's a symptom, but too many people act like he's the whole damned problem.

It's not Trump. It's the some of the corporations, the media, Republican middle-management, and some of the wealthy. And in the end, as with that "United Reich" bullshit from a few days ago it's going to be Trump and his idiot mob that fuck it up, even with all that trying to drag his flabby ass across the finish line.

But sooner or later, either they'll get somebody competent or (far more likely, in my opinion) American unity will simply gradually fracture...if it hasn't already.

Speaking as a former Republican and a veteran here, do I trust Democrats (much less the "Left" to keep us all together in the face of all that shit?? 

Not really. Most of us, perhaps, but not all...on the one hand, simply because not all of us want to be part of America anymore.

The Right has this long-standing fantasy of "Going Galt" for one thing, because Ayn Rand still has more influence over "Conservatism" than Jesus Christ ever dreamed of having.

On the other hand, there's also the whole very American idea that it's not a party unless somebody ain't invited. America ain't America if everybody gets a slice.

And I guarantee you the "Conservatives" will volunteer if it "Gets them their own place" so to speak. America is too big and too diverse to ever be what they want it to be as its currently constituted.

And it doesn't matter to them how shitty the alternative is.

Because being a better citizen is just too hard for some fucking people.

And there's plenty of alleged Liberals that'll let them leave and take a few states with them if it comes to that. I strongly suspect that if there is to be a Civil War it'll be more about who gets to keep what and getting people who don't want to live in some kind of Catholic Trad banana republic (Like, bro, if you don't think Evangelicals would convert to that shit to "Own The Libs" well, LOL) out than anything else. That we're effectively a House Divided has already been established, any violent breakup will be more haggling over the price than anything.

And yeah, call it 75% America, it'll still be 25% less capable of helping to protect the little guy from the bad guys, which is why so many foreign powers are involved in this shit.

But I'm starting to think that's how it'll play out. For one simple, if ugly, reason;

Left Behind is such a fucking part of our national identity that belief in the Rapture and the sacralization of the whole fucking idea of "Fuck You I've Got Mine" illustrated as some people getting whisked up to Heaven while others get left behind on Earth to get cornholed by the Devil spawned here. 

For fuck's sake that's what the End Times Prophecy movement even is.

And sooner or later the Left is going to grab onto that idea, simply because just like all the rest of us they'll get tired of arguing with these fanatics. But because far more of us (and enough people in whatever Power structure) don't want to live in Donald Trump's "Trailer Park Rome" MAGA won't get as much of the country.

If you look at the whole issue of the pro-Palestinian protests vs. those in favor of Israel, the Left already has decided one way or another who gets Left Behind. It just hasn't generalized out to America as a whole yet.

But on another level, anybody that's ever been in an abusive situation can tell you, sometimes you just have to get away for your own mental health and/or physical safety.

Here's the thing; Whether or not Trump ends up with it, or this movement finds itself another damned dancing monkey...you aren't going to want to live in their Snowflake Republic.

And I strongly suspect a lot of them won't either, if they ever get what they think they want. Pick a damn conspiracy theory or whatever, would you want people that really believe that shit running your world?

So it's gonna get ugly, but it'll probably be worse for the bad guys.

Like, seriously, all of these egocentric idiots think they're gonna be the one in charge.

So if I was you, I'd vote against Trump and the rest of these motherfuckers just the same, if nothing else to try and protect your own ass.

But they're already telegraphing their desires for criminality and violence. That's what this "Appeal to heaven" shit is.

The key point, as I've said many times before also, is that first we're going to have to vote them out, and then we're going to have to fight them off. And they'll still probably get something.

They won't fight well, but movements have lost wars and then ended up with nations in negotiated settlements or just because the majority of one side gave up before. I use the example of Algeria. Somebody inevitably counters with "But that was a colonial war."

You think these fucking snowflakes WOULDN'T claim that they'd been "Colonized" by liberals??

We can avoid this crap if we all stand together and tell these people to go fuck themselves, and do it for long enough.

But will we??

Слава Україна!

And where the body of the people, or any single man, is deprived of their right, or is under the exercise of a power without right, and have no appeal on earth, then they have a liberty to appeal to heaven, whenever they judge the cause of sufficient moment. And therefore, though the people cannot be judge, so as to have, by the constitution of that society, any superior power, to determine and give effective sentence in the case; yet they have, by a law antecedent and paramount to all positive laws of men, reserved that ultimate determination to themselves which belongs to all mankind, where there lies no appeal on earth, viz. to judge, whether they have just cause to make their appeal to heaven. ~John Locke

Four

We're so self-important. So self-important. Everybody's going to save something now. "Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails." And the greatest arrogance of all: "save the planet." What? Are these fucking people kidding me? Save the planet, we don't even know how to take care of ourselves yet! We don't care for one another, we're gonna save the fucking planet? I'm getting tired of that shit. I'm tired of fucking Earth Day. I'm tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren't enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for their Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don't give a shit about the planet. Not in the abstract, they don't. You know what they're interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They're worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn't impress me.The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles ... hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages ... And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn't going anywhere. WE are!

We're going away. Pack your shit, folks. We're going away. And we won't leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam ... The planet'll be here and we'll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet'll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance.
The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we're gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, 'cause that's what it does. It's a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it's true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn't share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, "Why are we here?"
"Plastic... asshole." ~George Carlin