Eater Of Souls (American Revelation XVII, Seventeen.)

When the earliest settlers poured into a wild continent there was no one to ask them where they came from. The only question was: Were they sturdy enough to make the journey, were they strong enough to clear the land, were they enduring enough to make a home for freedom, and were they brave enough to die for liberty if it became necessary to do so? And so it has been through all the great and testing moments of American history. Our history this year we see in Vietnam. Men there are dying; men named Fernandez and Zajac and Zelinko and Mariano and McCormick. Neither the enemy who killed them nor the people whose independence they have fought to save ever asked them where they or their parents came from. They were all Americans. It was for free men and for America that they gave their all, they gave their lives and selves. By eliminating that same question as a test for immigration the Congress proves ourselves worthy of those men and worthy of our own traditions as a nation. ~Lyndon B. Johnson.

...

We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev...Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
~Ronald Reagan

...

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn." ... "In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."  ~HP Lovecraft

I saw this shit yesterday.

JD Vance of all fucking people, was bitching about "The Irish problem" in the 19th century.

I've read his book (which rang true because I have a fair amount of experience with Scots-Irish people from Appalachia, mostly from when I was a kid) and to be sure, I looked his ass up on Wikipedia. Like many people from Appalachia or who claim descent from that part of the country, JD Vance is Scots-Irish, which is exactly what I already suspected. 

Bitch, you wouldn't pass your own ethnic purity tests.

(For bonus points, he's also a goddamned Yale Law School graduate, just in case you wanna take a gander at the snipped post about how JD said "Professors are the enemy" and see just how much of a goddamn Blue Falcon this motherfucker really is...and if I had to guess, that's an insult to motherfuckers.)

And yeah, it'll come to that because as the Republican Party continues to lose to Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, these weird fucks are going to start tearing each other apart over who's MAGA enough, who's "Republican" enough, and likely, who's White Enough.

Because the Republican dream-world is basically five rich old white guys sitting atop a mountain of skulls in a poisoned, ruined shithole of a world, a couple flunkies and/or lawyers, one slave who does all the work, one bad guy they blame everything on (who may or may not actually exist) and one woman they take turns sexually assaulting when they're not plotting to kill each other and steal each other's wealth...and they're all slowly dying from the toxins of the world they've destroyed.

But, they figure, the last one living gets to keep all the money, or something, never mind that it's real hard to spend money when you're dead.

At this point it's less American Revelation than slowly-dawning-on-everybody Self-inflicted Republican Damnation.

And the thing is, at this point there's a blood-trail of stupid ideas leading through this dark forest...from Anti-Communism and McCarthyism to the blind worship of Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon to Reaganite Libertarianism and the Bush Doctrine that've led us to the Trump Cult. Trump basically is what these idiots have wanted since 1964 but didn't get 'cause all the leaders they elected who got above a certain level either had some level of morals or were smart enough to not talk stupid in public. 

And conservatives, broadly speaking, are the modern heirs to the Platonic conceit that ideas are somehow better than people. They don't care that their ideas are shit. 

They think drawing dicks on the walls of Plato's cave is hilarious.

I mean, honestly given show shitty the ideology has turned out there's probably something to be said for the death of Republican pragmatism.  And on that point, I'm deadly serious.

Because even as they've got Trump out there babbling nonsensically as his mind fails and his narcissism convinces what's left of his brain that he's Jesus Christ, JD Vance is out there howling at the moon with all this crazy shit. And there's a certain segment of "Conservatism" that loves him for it, mostly a few billionaires, some internet trolls, what younger people they do have (all twelve of them, pretty much) and the occasional YouTube truck screamer.

Democrats, the general public and even a lot of Republicans are not impressed. Seriously, Republicans for Harris is a thing.

I'm pretty sure anybody up to Mitt Romney in 2012 at the least would have kept something like Project 2025 under lock and key with like maybe two or three people in the Heritage Foundation (let alone the campaign!) knowing all the details and made sure that shit didn't get out until after the election...and at that, only if they won by a big-enough margin to indicate a broad mandate from the People.

These fucking people have been talking about that Project 2025 shit for months, openly, all but cackling evilly and twirling ostentatious mustaches while doing it. They wanna take away everything from your Mom's Medicare and Social Security to the local dog park to NOAA and the National Weather Service (which is what most of our weather apps run off of!) to your neighbor's Veteran's benefits and women's rights in general. I mean, I get it, Republicans think government should not help anybody but the very rich, that it should be nothing but a terror in the lives of the common people, rule by force, basically...so that everybody will hate government as much as they do. 

(Also, historically, this doesn't work out well as a governing philosophy or for the people who did it and it tends to end in bloody revolutions, Guillotines, and heads in baskets.)

There usually comes a point where the number of people you've pissed off exceeds the number of bullets in the magazines of your soldiers' rifles and at that point, you're fucked...especially when the public is also armed. So don't think a theoretical Project 2026 wouldn't include getting rid of the 2nd Amendment, for example. It's not Gun Control when Republicans do it anymore than it's the Mark Of The Beast when Republicans do it (Project 2027) nor is it selling out America and bowing down to the Hammer and Sickle when Republicans do it either (Project 2028) etc. etc. 

Until you get to the point where it's not "One World Government" if it's "Conservative" and Republicans get to be petty Commissars taking orders from Moscow in it and whatever project number they assign that bullshit to appoints every Republican elected official as a Zampolit in The Party for life.

Then, guess what? They'll call it whatever they want and own it and strut around talking about it and if you don't like it they'll ship you off to whatever Martian iron-mining penal colony run by some descendant of Elon Musk they have by then if you say anything about it.

And there'll be gullible sons of bitches who bow down and rationalize at every step of the way until the Leopards Eat Their Faces, Too. 

Trump is just a Donkey Show-ass distraction from all this shit.

They want the Power. It looks like they aren't gonna get it this time, but they'll keep trying until by pure Law of Averages they get back in at some point. They don't care if it takes a hundred years. 

They can always find another angry old rich white asshole.

Unless we stop this bullshit now.

It's getting so if you want to preserve your life as it is (You know, the conservative point of view, literally things as they are) the Republican Party has to be crushed and MAGA beaten and mocked and shamed out of existence, and Trump needs to be thrown in prison and kept there until he dies just to prove the point to potential future traitors.

But the thing is, Trump is just an opportunist, a symptom. It's fundamentally the ostensibly normie Republicans (and 1990's style Religious Nuts at that) who came up with Project 2025.

This shit is downloadable as a PDF from their website and liberal organizations have analyzed the fuck out of it and equally openly strategized against it and warned the public about it. There was a front-page article in my local paper this morning...which is what happens when you plan on getting rid of an agency that's a small but important part of a community. 

(And apparently that word still means something.)

The actual number of NOAA workers here is pretty small, but their facility (which is across the river from where I live) supports everything from the organization's workboats to local tour boats to the occasional visiting Coast Guard ship and many community events every summer.

Even if you're the most strident White Christian Evangelical imaginable, even if you're rich, Project 2025 and its ilk don't help you. The whole thing is a recipe for economic, governmental and social chaos, and ultimately for the disintegration of the United States. 

Why? Because while we might be, as Ronald Reagan said, a country that has a government rather than the other way around, our government absolutely does provide all sorts of things that people depend on, a lot of that shit is what holds our society together. You think most small towns up here...who have big populations of retirees on Social Security...would survive without that stuff?? And Project 2025 exists to fuck all that up...because ideologues don't care...and don't tell me they'd stop there, either.

Hell, I have the PDF and a couple of summaries and plan on writing about Project 2025 myself after I start working my way through it. 

I mean, Jesus Christ! What the fuck is even wrong with these fucking people??

I mean, aside from the fact that they're addicted to being miserable bastards and that they sacralize meanness of soul and miserly capitalism?

The thing I don't get is, why the hell do Republicans think anybody else would sign on to this?? 

Oh, of course they're used to just spouting vaguely racist arglebargle and getting a third of the country on-board automatically that way, and they're used to cheating, but those things aren't enough to win by themselves.

And they know most of America likes either Kamala Harris or Tim Walz better than they like Trump and JD Vance.

Probably that's why Trump is golfing and Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles and now (apparently) Corey Lewandowski and all these other people are skimming off of Trump's campaign donations and for all some people's big talk I'm sure not seeing that many Trump signs this year.

I mean, shit, if you wanna know how "Conservative" politics is going...now Ukraine is invading Russia...and so far the Ukrainians are winning.

But we should probably expect that these fucking people are going to try to do something stupid anyway.

Republicans basically want to sacrifice everything to the Eater Of Souls.

They don't really have...or need...or even want a reason.

Freedom isn't free.

Sooner or later, you have to fight for it.

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

And there's no Project number to compel that, Citizenship is an action-word, you have to be it.

Now's the time, either you believe in freedom or you don't.

Lead, Follow, or get the fuck out of the way.

Слава Україна!

[The Mandalorian brings together the entire Mandalorian covert after Carson Teva makes a surprise visit and asks him to help Greef Karga's situation on Nevarro when the New Republic won't lift a finger]

Mando: Now, many of you don't know Greef Karga. And those that do fought against him when you rescued me from his ambush many cycles ago on the streets of Nevarro. Since then, he's had a change of heart and has risked his life to save mine as well as the Foundling in my charge. [Grogu coos] I stand before you to petition an intervention. To help rescue Nevarro before it's too late. I am in no position to ask any more of you. However... However, the enemy that decimated this very covert were Imperials, not Greef Karga's bounty hunters. Greef Karga is now a High Magistrate and has offered me a tract of land on his independent world. Perhaps it is time for us to live in the light once again on a planet where we are welcome. So our culture may flourish and our children can feel what it is to play in the sunlight.

Armorer: Does anyone else wish to speak?

Mando: It's up to them now.

Paz Vizsla: I do. I was there on Nevarro that night. I fought against Greef Karga and his hunters. I saw my brothers and sisters fall at the hands of the Imperial butchers that hunted us in the sewers. I saw many die to save the life of [gestures to Grogu] this one, tiny Foundling. And now we are asked to sacrifice yet again. The question we should be asking ourselves is, "Why? Why should we lay our lives down yet again?" Because we are Mandalorians! I have had my disagreements with this man, but he risked his life to save my son. And Bo-Katan Kryze did not give up on my child's life even when the rest of us did. These two are asking us to take up arms in the name of a brighter future, and I for one will take up arms to fight by their side. [Mandalorians agree] This is the Way!

Mandalorians: This is the Way.

Armorer: This is the Way.

Sixteen

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