The Face In The Mirror (Gravity, Eleven.)

Note: If you can't deal with some hard shit, here's a picture of a ferret snoozing on a Pride blanket, Thank you and have a good day.

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

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

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Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests,

And said unto them, What will Ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver.

And from that time he sought opportunity to betray him.

Now the first day of the feast of unleavened bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying unto him, Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eat the Passover?

And he said, Go into the city to such a man, and say unto him, The Master saith, My time is at hand; I will keep the Passover at thy house with my disciples.

And the disciples did as Jesus had appointed them; and they made ready the Passover.

Now when the even was come, he sat down with the twelve.

And as they did eat, he said, Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me.

~Matthew 26:14-21

I keep seeing this bullshit.

Republicans fucking hate America, and they seem to want everybody else to know it.

"Conservatives" have basically decided that America is too "Liberal" or something. And since they can't (despite four years of Trump having been President) make everyone have to be a Republican or otherwise reverse that trend, now they want to leave.

Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, yo.

Like, lately MAGA won't shut up about how awesome El Salvador is and how much America sucks. Well, as the old Conservative bumper-sticker slogan goes, if you don't like America, you can leave. Hell, if this flag offends you, I'll help your ass pack.

Tell me something, what's so great about El Salvador, anyway?? I mean, this is a country with an economy so far in the shitter that they don't even have their own currency (They use the US Dollar.) So, I have to ask? Is it the fact that there's 40,000-some people in prison in El Salvador (Thanks to an ongoing gang crackdown, and Republicans love the idea of people being in prison) or the fact that Nayib Bukele (Effectively, imagine having a Twitter shit-poster for a President) basically has a "Buy Bitcoin" symbol tattooed on his ass?? It's a small, poor country, also according to Wikipedia it's a pretty easy place to do business, just show up with money, pretty much, because they ain't got any down there.

Throw in that El Salvador has a history of civil wars, conservative fuckery and right-wing death squads basically just murdering anybody they don't like (including an Opus Dei Catholic bishop who's now a Saint, Oscar Romero) and I'd imagine a lot of Republicans think the place is paradise, some kind of right-wing eschaton awaiting being immanentized. I wonder if they realize the population is Latino or that Nayib Bukele is of Palestinian descent? Or that gay people have rights there, too, even though more of the culture is against them (Of course, I find it amazing just what Republicans will excuse or ignore if they think it'll serve the continuance of right-wing power somewhere, or at least their own ability to stay out of jail and survive.)

I rather suspect, that given MAGA's ongoing failure to colonize the rest of America and turn us all into peons, they're scoping out another, easier target and/or this is where they're going to go if the shit keeps hitting the fan for Trump here in America. 

You think Junior is gonna wait around until the FBI comes knocking at his door?? 

LOL, that pussy ass bitch will be gone the second he can't make no money off his Dad no more. And yeah, that's pretty much all this shit is to him, or he wouldn't have gone to El Salvador to party it up.

Junior is basically the MAGA Judas looking to sell out the MAGA Jesus (his Dad) for rather less than 30 pieces of silver, although technically any one of these fuckers could be that because they'd all betray each other for a can of Natty Daddy if it came right down to it.

And when I say these fucking people will tolerate damn near anything they figure serves them, I mean shit like this; The Epoch Times.

It's a shrill MAGA conspiracy-rag owned by the Chinese Falun Gong cult which, when it was more active, I always thought was nothing but harmless new age nonsense, and yes, perhaps done dirty by the Chinese government. No, that shit is evil, and all you have to do to see it is look at the Epoch Times and what they promote. They're basically trying to foist far-right horseshit on America in the hope that we'll beat the shit out of the Communist PRC for them and then something something Gazpacho. But even that doesn't really hold up since Trump gets in bed with China, too.

And they still promote his ass.

But now they got caught doing crimes, including money laundering...so that gig is probably up, too. So, I suspect the whole Far-Right thing was just a scam intended to pander to a dumb, easily manipulated audience. I bet they turn on America now, too.

The Right's whole bit is "Anything but America."

Anything but "Love Thy Neighbor"

Anything but established ways of doing things, or what we know works, including biology, medical science and virology...and they don't care who dies because of it.

In fact, the more death there is, the better. Didn't we learn that about these absolute motherfuckers during the COVID-19 Pandemic??

They'd rather do dumb shit that profits narcissistic assholes like Elon Musk, even if all it does is get people killed...and sooner or later, it will do exactly that on a larger scale if we don't reign this shit in.

And they'd rather try and blame Dr. Fauci than even consider facing their own debased laziness, stupidity, and uncaring attitudes (even about themselves.)

Like, these motherfuckers would rather be entertained (or keep making money) than be alive. I mean, seriously, if you got a way to have fun or spend money when you're dead, I'm listening...

*Sound Of Crickets Chirping*

Well, never mind.

So it's pretty much Anything but "Stop blowing the narcissist."

And they don't care what happens, because fellating the narcissist seems to be an End in and of itself.

What happens when they realize that the narcissist isn't going to kill all their imagined enemies, or make them rich, or do any of the other damn things they think they want...simply because all a narcissist exists to do, or wants or understands, is to glorify themselves.

These fucking people are stupid, and to be honest, I think they'll just go out and find another angry old rich narcissist, and try for the same thing again.

It doesn't really help much that maybe the next time, these assholes won't do it in America, because wherever they do it...people live there, too. People...who don't deserve this bullshit.

And anywhere these fucking people go, there they are.

That's the part people like Junior don't realize.

Their problem, honestly, is...themselves.

Junior won't be any happier or do any less drugs in El Salvador.

And they sure don't seem to understand that a philosophy that lauds being a miserable, narcissistic rich bastard still seems to have misery as a core component no matter what one does.

And to not be that way, they'd have to care about something, other than hedonism or money, which would mean they'd have to change, to not be themselves...and that can't happen, not in their minds.

Like I said about Gravity, it's not the fall that kills you, it's that sudden stop at the bottom. These idiots simply refuse to understand that there's a hard baseline to reality.

It's the same dumb bullshit attitude that's why every year some dumbass gets gored by a Bison in Yellowstone or some other National Park. 

I mean, what's so hard to understand about "Do Not Pet The Fluffy Cows." This is like a thousand pounds of critter, and it doesn't have to like you or necessarily want you to touch it.

Look, if you want to have a better country, you have to be a better citizen.

If you want a better world, you have to be a better person.

You want things to function properly, maybe you have to be a little smarter?

And by the time these nuts figure out that's as true in El Salvador or some theoretical banana republic carved out of the Southeastern USA as it is here, in America as she is now, it'll be too late.

And you can't tell these fucking people anything.

You can "Noun/Verb Degenerate Left! Ha!" all you want.

You can lower the bar until merely drinking from a water glass makes you the greatest thing ever but it doesn't mean anything.

But no matter what you do, that face in the mirror is always gonna be you, bitch.

And at the end of the day, even if nobody else knows it, you are always going to have to live with your own bad choices and no amount of alcohol or drugs will wash that away. I learned this the hard way.

So I guess it's "Go, Bison!" and let Darwin do as Darwin does?

If you literally refuse to change or grow as a person, pretty much.

The problem is less that these fucking people desire to destroy themselves, than that they want to take the rest of us down with them.

And we'd better start doing something about that, because even if you can make money off the crazy-stupid...one cannot spend it when they're dead.

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

Ten

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

~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press