Left Behind (Wine Of The Wrath Of God, One.)

And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads.

And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps:

And they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders: and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth.

These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goes. These were redeemed from among men, being the first-fruits unto God and to the Lamb.

And in their mouth was found no guile: for they are without fault before the throne of God.

And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people,

Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.

And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.

And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand,

The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb:

And the smoke of their torment ascends for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receives the mark of his name.

Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.

And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, said the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them.

And I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like unto the Son of man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle.

And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to him that sat on the cloud, Thrust in thy sickle, and reap: for the time is come for thee to reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe. ~Revelation 14:1-15

I saw this over on Twitter last night.

And the phrase that popped into my head was "Drinking the wine of the wrath of God."

For the record, I used to be a conservative Republican, I'm a former Christian, and I'm a veteran. I'm an old white man, and when I saw this shit I burst out laughing.

Lady (At least I think it's a lady, hell, for the sake of my mental image I hope it's a lady) whatever image you were trying to project here pretty much got busted by the fact that the photo itself included a whole big shelf full of sex toys. Okay, if that's what you're into that's cool. But don't pretend to be something you're not (Like some kind of conservative religious hard-ass. I know those people and trust me, you ain't it.)

(I'm also gonna go out on a limb here and say I don't think any self-respecting LGBT person would wear those pants. Log Cabin Republicans possibly excepted.)

This kind of garbage, though, is exactly the kind of thing I expect from all these MAGA losers who demand some kind of a right to force uber-Christian sexual "Purity" onto some hypothetical other person. Purity for thee, closet full of sex toys for me. This kind of absurd hypocritical stupid bullshit is exactly what I expect from the worshipers of Donald Trump.

Historically, it's also the kind of thing that leads to throwaway comments about "Let Them Eat Cake," Guillotines and very bloody revolutions. Or, for that matter, entire religious Reformations and literally centuries of bloody Wars Of Religion that reshape continents and civilization, but get real hard on the locals and the wildlife.

Do they really think the rest of us don't notice this freakish weirdo bullshit??

And it's getting worse, like, by the day.

I'm sick of this bullshit. There's no bottom, no reasoning with these fucking people, it's just an endless Gish Gallop of amoral idiocy, racism and religiosity...and I'm sorry but these fucking people's cultic devotion to Trump and, apparently, fealty to every form of bigotry, death and destruction, social fentanyl and useless stupidity known to Man is increasingly starting to look exactly like something not only out of Revelation...but exactly how the writers of Christian End Times fiction wrote their bad guys.

It's getting outright creepy.

Like Byron Donalds trying to say that Black people were "better off" under the Jim Crow Laws of the segregated South.

Although he was born in New York City, Byron Donalds lives in southwest Florida and represents the area in the US House of Representatives as a Republican. His wife, who is also herself a conservative activist, is White.

And, I'm here to tell you, Byron Donalds would not have been possible in the Jim Crow South. 

Republicans look at who was in charge at the time in the region and cynically blame Democrats, without ever thinking about the fact that all those racist Democrats became Republicans over a long timeframe of roughly 1964 to 2008.

My lived experience is different, and I'm older than Byron.

In February of 1994 I was a young Security Policeman in the United States Air Force. The local university was having a Black History Month event at which a few Tuskegee Airmen would be speaking. Some of our commanding officers thought it would be a good idea for the local Bomb Wing to represent, so a bunch of us got told to go get our dress blues and drive into town. Hey, beats standing watch where I was supposed to have been on that shift, given how cold it was at the time. And it didn't matter if I agreed with the duty or not. Duty's duty, it's as simple as that. You get told to go, you go.

This was the world I lived in for several years, and yes, I served with gay people, too. One of my guys from my squad came out to me at a mutual Air Force friend's wedding some years later, but obviously we suspected at the time. Nobody said shit.

So I spent a fair amount of time that evening standing at attention and sweating in my dress uniform (and more than half of the men and women standing there with me were Black or Latino or some other ethnicity) while some old black dude talked about having been one of the Red Tails of the 332nd Fighter Group, a no-shit hero whose unit never lost an escorted bomber to enemy air action over Nazi-occupied Europe, only to come home and find out that little if anything had changed. Segregation was still in effect and nobody gave a shit what he'd done. In fact, they hated him for doing it. This guy talked about how he'd drive from Chicago down to Mississippi to visit family and how the Jim Crow bullshit started at Cairo, Illinois. 

That's right, You didn't even have to go all the way to the Segregated South to be in the Segregated South. Yes, the 1950's, the good old days of the Negro Motorist's Green Book, the Klan and Segregation. You know, what the MAGA's are talking about when they say "Make America Great Again." 

These people were honest-to-god heroes who blazed the trail for everybody else and came back to an America that didn't want to let them use the goddamned bathroom same as everybody else.

Think about that for a second.

That's where Byron Donalds thinks Black families were "better off."

(Did Byron get dropped on his ugly-ass head when he was a child??)

That's America's history.

History, Law, Words, they mean things, yo.

And that history, like Gravity, is a thing that's going to affect you whether you believe in it or not.

Also last night, I saw that some scumbag doctor got arrested and charged with four felonies for leaking details of gender-affirming patient care in a Texas hospital to Chris Rufo, of all fucking people. I mean, why? What's even the damn point??

Like, off the top of my head that breaks several laws that I can think of, not to mention there's at least as many violations of professional ethics and regulations, and the simple fact that when the dust settles even if this motherfucker beats the charges nobody's going to hire him simply because of the risk of similar problems happening again, the threat of lawsuits, and so on.

Dude threw away a likely multi-million-dollar career, is going to lose his medical license (probably at the federal level) and is very likely to go to prison and have further bad things happen to him, and for what?? Bigotry, Ideology and cheap Internet Fame?? 

I'm sorry, but hate isn't worth all that to me. 

If all I have to do to make a million dollars is do my job and shut up and mind my own business, I'm a do that regardless of what I think of the people in the next room. 

Not only do I simply not give a damn or have time to worry about it, such is part and parcel of living in a free society. Freedom means letting other people do what they want with theirs, too.

Shit, I work with the public now. You think I agree with every damn thing I have to do at my simple ass job?? Hell no, but it beats working in kitchens. If I tried to pull 10% of this type of shit that this idiot doctor did, I'd lose my damn job. I probably wouldn't get arrested, but I live in a small city where it's common to go out and run into people I know, and cascading adverse consequences from people reacting to stupid shit are not unknown around here. 

I don't have the luxury of being able to pull some kind of stunt claiming politics or religion or something something Gazpacho in the first goddamn place, not without there being real and likely very immediate consequences!

And if I put up some kind of dipshit Go Fund Me thing for my expenses, guess what?? Most people would just laugh.

Nobody cares, get a job.

But despite living in rural northern Michigan I have to live in the real world, in America, as she is. I do not have enough money or ideological BS and I'm not even the right type of person to try and live in Trump-land or the utter dystopia of the modern global fascist movement. Whacky-land holds no appeal for me.

AND I've got people who'd probably shoot me if I tried to, because my people have standards.

By the way...this is precisely why I don't get...and can't stand...the whole Trump thing.

Unless everything these fucking people ever believed in or said before Trump was a lie, they threw away absolutely everything for a guy who looks like a plastic bag of pre-cooked mashed potatoes, who talks utter nonsense, whose only real skill is self-promotion, and whose favorite pastime is sucking up to motherfuckers like Vladimir Putin whose stated goal is to burn down America and Europe and rule the world in the name of the Ghost of Josef Stalin.

Like, even without bringing up America, freedom, religion, values or any of the other stuff that I talk about or ever have, there comes a point where one had to choose between hate and self-preservation.

Like, do you believe you have a right to be alive and have human rights, or don't you??

And if you believe you should have all that, why do you believe other people, be they different from you or the same as you, should not??

Go ahead, explain it to me like I'm five.

You, a mortal person, go ahead and try to explain to me how "All people are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights" is wrong. You're telling me your bigoted ass is right and the Creator if the Infinite Universe wasn't??

Okay.

Show your work.

I'll wait.

But my whole thing is, there's going to come a point with this Gish Gallop of hate and idiocy where if it's not stopped, and God decides to rain down fire on this Earth because of it, He's not going to be in the wrong, and we who permitted it will be held to account right along with those who did it.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

You either believe in God, or you believe in Trump, at this point.

And if we, as a people, continue to indulge this shit? There's absolutely going to be a point where we ourselves drink the wine of the wrath of God.

And reap the consequences.

These motherfuckers ain't even subtle about wanting to be the Bad Guys from the Left Behind novels, much less the Book of Revelation.

Слава Україна!

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

Last Post

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