"Moral Failure" (Evil Empire, One.)

Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:

For every one that asks, receives; and he that seeks, finds; and to him that knocks it shall be opened.

Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?

Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?

Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.

Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leads to destruction, and many there be which go in there-at:

Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leads to life, and few there be that find it.

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

Even so every good tree brings forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree brings forth evil fruit.

A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

Every tree that brings not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

Not every one that says unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?

And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. ~Matthew 7:6-23

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The Holy Quran says it, "Pilgrimage to the House [of God built by the prophet Abraham] is a duty men owe to God; those who are able, make the journey." (3:97)

Allah said: "And proclaim the pilgrimage among men; they will come to you on foot and upon each lean camel, they will come from every deep ravine" (22:27).

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 intermittently 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.

I saw this last night.

A Megachurch Pastor...and of course, Trump Supporter...has been credibly accused of raping a 12-year-old girl back in the 1980's. He's since admitted to "Moral Failure."

No, motherfucker, you raped a child, and now she's a middle-aged woman who's had to live with a life of pain because of it.

Damn it, people, don't let these sons of bitches sanitize their Sins. 

I'm tired of this garbage.

I'm tired of horrible shit sanitized as "Moral Failure" and victims being constantly asked to forgive instead of being expected to demand justice as is their right.

I started out as a mainstream Christian, albeit in a moderately conservative family, and went to Christian schools. In the circles I grew up in, bigotry, hate, racism, sexual abuse and stuff like that was clearly considered wrong, usually resulted in scandal and was not tolerated.

But then, it's like I've said before, any one damned day of the Trump campaign, Presidency,  post-Presidency and campaign again would've been the end of any other President in American history and probably their political party, too.

I'm tired of Trump, I'm tired of his supporters, I'm tired of the constant scandal (and the media's desire to profiteer off this shit, America itself and the public good be damned.) And, I'm tired of the constant excess, scandal and sexual perversion that just seems to illogically follow with all this bullshit.

But it's more than that.

I live in Northern Michigan.

While I came from shall we say a better environment, as I've said before...a lot of people up here don't.

And it's in a lot of those little enclaves of poverty where you see the most Trump signs, but these are overwhelmingly the people who can least afford Republican policies, especially Trump's version of them. And I don't want to hear about "White grievance" or this, that, and the other thing. For fuck's sake, in a lot of those kind of areas up here it's extremely rare for those people to see a Black person, or a liberal, or anybody not exactly like themselves. Nobody else has ever done anything to the vast majority of these fucking people. Most of the pain inflicted on them tends to come from within their own groups, often from the upper crust members of such communities.

I have a fairly mainstream Christian church background, I'm very familiar with Evangelical, Fundamentalist and Pentecostal BS, but I wasn't raised in it. Sure, I was a moderate politically conservative Republican and a veteran, but I'd never set foot in a Megachurch or anything of the sort in my life nor wanted to.

(Okay, I did go to a Promise Keepers event once, but that was at the Pontiac Silverdome.)

Well, then I met my ex-wife, and I'm here to tell you that I heard, both from her and her assorted bar and Karaoke friends (most of whom were also her church friends) one motherfucker of a lot of fucked up stories. Working-poor Evangelical life in their neighborhood sucked. My ex-wife herself was abused, as were most of the people in her circle in one way or another. And I'm here to tell you I saw the wreckage of that at least every damn weekend.

My wife and her friends would almost always go out to the bar on Friday and Saturday nights, and sing and get drunk, somebody would always drink 'til they got sick. And (aside from my wife, because I put my foot down and said no, we're going to a Baptist church, and you're going to tone it down a bit) these ladies would be bawling their eyes out, making a big deal of themselves at the Altar Call every damn Sunday. Like, I'm pretty sure God got tired of the histrionics.

But I'm pretty sure there was always some creepy-ass old white guy like Robert Morris looking on.

You ask me? A lot of this modern right-wing bullshit is lifetimes of abuse, betrayal and pain papered over with religion, glued together by bigotry and hate, and the one damn thing that keeps so many of these fucking people from looking outside of this mess is a stark raving mad fear of Change.

And as a consolation prize, instead of having a decent life, you get the attitude that "Well, it's all shit and then we die and go to hell, (Because trust me, in their cult-like churches only the Pastor is for sure going to Heaven) but at least it's our shit."

And it only gets worse when misogyny and racism get added into the mix.

And they get mad, go defensive and blame you when you call this out. Me, being the outsider to living like that, I got this shit all the time.  Like modern Russians or 1950's Segregationist Southerners, it's their Sin that binds them together, as much as anything else. So that shit can't be criticized, nor can the wrongs it produces be fixed because nobody can openly name the root causes to start fixing it.

For example: I've never in my life had my military service insulted by a liberal, a lot of these fucking people thought it made me too "Worldly." (And in a lot of small towns up here, the military is the only sure ticket out for the vast majority of young folks.) Cuz I'd see something, and I'd say something or at least point out "Hey, that's messed up!" And of course, when I could I'd try to help people...you know, actually follow the Lord's Word. 

So of course, I didn't have the "Right" beliefs, and did I mention I was a freaking conservative Republican Christian at the damned time?? These are, fundamentally nowadays, the same people who support Trump to "Own The Libs" and, well, because if somebody, anybody, broke the cycle of misery and made these fucking people care about their own lives and self-interest, that wouldn't serve their hierarchy-based worldview and they'd have to vote different and have different theology, and rich people might have to have less money. Or something.

Fun fact, my ex-wife is not a Trump Supporter and now she's getting to go through all the same shit I did for not being one of the tribe, because way the hell too late, she decided that living like that sucked and she's trying to get out.

And I'm here to tell you, there are one hell of a lot of people like Robert Morris out there preying on these people and their self-reinforcing cycles of misery, poverty and religiosity. So far as I know, much of my ex-wife's family has wised up, gotten help with their issues and they got out before she did. 

But, ya know, I see this kind of thing every day where I work...people with shopping carts full of beer and junk food who thump the Bible and wish you a "Blessed day" while they're at it. As the current economy grinds on, if you can find a hand up, you'll do great...but a lot of people get left behind.

This is on purpose, with malice aforethought, and I'm not actually blaming a lot of those people for their various fucked up combinations of addiction and religiosity...and yeah, we just saw how a lot of this manifested with Hunter Biden's recent conviction. But, It's not their "Moral Failure" nor entirely their fault that they know nothing better than blame in such cases. I'm an addict myself, and trust me, that shit doesn't help.

But I blame people like Donald Trump and Robert Morris, and House Republicans, and people like them from the past. For them...the system is working exactly as designed. And they've got people basically addicted to Sin and suffering and the only absolution they offer is the "Cheap Grace" of religiosity. 

So, those people basically let the assholes do whatever they want. He who controls the spice controls the Universe, more or less. It's the same with (conditional) Evangelical "Salvation."

That's what all this talk of "Christian Nationalism" and "Evangelical Theocracy" and "Project 2025" even means. 

This is the entire fucking point of these fucking people's Antichristianity.

Do you think in a society dominated by religious fanatics that even 40 years later and well past the statute of limitations, that an abuse victim would even dare come forward, or would do so without being accused of some shit and either Disappeared or simply publicly denounced as a Witch and killed??

I've known people who'll claim Robert Morris is being "Persecuted" because he "Does The Lord's Work." They don't care that he raped a little girl, he tells them what they want to hear.

And there wasn't just one, you can count on that. Only one spoke up.

Remember that, because it's going to be important later.

We, as a constitutionally secular State with a free people, are very likely going to have to fight a war to get rid of these assholes or loosen their grips on certain things. You don't want to know how much harder that's going to be if they take over the country, or break off a part of it for their own use. It's going to come down to a fight and I tell you that with the cold certainty of a man who's carried a rifle in the field. More to the point, it's what the MAGA assholes themselves want.

These fucking people don't glorify the Antebellum South and the fucking Confederacy 'cause they think everybody was religious, they glorify it because motherfuckers could own Black people.

I can tell you exactly what happens if you say that in a certain kind of Baptist church, though. People be mad when you point out that the whole damn narrative is a lie.

And so, too few people on that side of the equation will have the guts to say "Hey, this is wrong" when they start killing their own for imagined sins and shooting at the rest of us...not least because to say that will be to risk one's own life.

That's why we can't let these fucking people have jack shit. 

More to the point, the rest of us need to aggressively claw back control of the Supreme Court and everything else these fuckers already have, and clean off everything else they've rubbed their dicks all over.

Why??

If you think the modern effects of Soviet-era propaganda and mind-control on Russian Boomers and Gen-X'ers are shitty?? I'd suggest you take a good hard look at your local Evangelical church or, for that matter, MAGA as a political movement.

And they will get worse. Trump is already egging them on to be and do worse.

What the hell kind of an idiot would you have to be to want to hand people like that a nation?? These motherfuckers want to turn America into El Salvador or South Vietnam for no better reasons than ego and Power. Anything but America, pretty much. Fuck all that.

You either believe in freedom or you don't, and freedom isn't free, sometimes you have to fight for it.

We can't let these fucking people have their Empire Of Sin. That shit would make the Evil Empire from Star Wars look like Iceland, by comparison.

Слава Україна!

Hess: So what shall we toast to, boys? I can blather on about “To health” or “To success,” but I’d like to do somethin’ a little less rote. Where you from, Brown Eyes?

Migs Mayfield: How ’bout a toast to Operation Cinder?

Hess: Now there’s a man who knows his history.

Mayfield: No, I don’t just know it. I lived it. I was in Burnin Konn.

Hess: Burnin Konn?

Mayfield: Mmm.

Hess: That was a hard day. I had to make many unpleasant decisions.

Mayfield: Yes, you did. Entire city gone in moments, along with everybody in it. We lost our whole division that day. Man, that was like 5-10,000 people.

Hess: Yep. All heroes of the Empire.

Mayfield: Yeah. And all dead.

Hess: Well, it’s a small sacrifice for the greater good, son.

Mayfield: Depends on who you ask, don’t you think?

Hess: [irritated] What you gettin’ at, trooper?

Mayfield: All those people, the ones who died, was it good for them? Hmm? Their families? The guys I served with? Civilians, those poor mud scuffers, died defending their homes, fighting for freedom. Was it good for them?

Hess: But we’ve outlasted them, son. They’re eating themselves alive. The New Republic is in complete disarray, and we grow stronger. You see, with the rhydonium you’ve delivered, we can create havoc that’s gonna make Burnin Konn pale by comparison. And then they’re gonna turn to us once again. You see, boys, everybody thinks they want freedom, but what they really want is order. And when they realize that, they’re gonna welcome us back with open arms. Ah. To the Empire.

[Mayfield chuckles, then fires a blaster at Hess' chest, killing him instantly. He and Mando then shoot their way out of the mess hall] ~From The Mandalorian, Season 2, Ep. 7 "The Believer"

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