Weapon Of Ass Destruction (Signs Of The Times, Nine.)

No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind as between the internal and the external threats of communism. 

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular. This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it — and rather successfully. Cassius was right. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves." Good night, and good luck. ~Edward R. Murrow

...

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. ~George Orwell, 1984.

I just spent the last couple hours following the debate, and the coverage thereof.

By about the middle of the whole thing, I'm sitting there, mouth hanging open and stunned into silence thinking "Motherfucker..." with the ferrets looking at me like "U OK, Human??"

Full confession: I absolutely expected this debate to be a soup sandwich, for Trump, a damned-near mirror image of Biden vs. Trump back in June. This wasn't that.

This was Desert Storm and Trump was the Iraqi Republican Guard.

This was War Of The Worlds and Kamala was the freaking Martians.

Hillary Clinton wiped the floor with Trump in 2016 and...this wasn't even that.

HRC, love her or hate her, came off like a debate nerd and policy wonk, and so Trump's bad behavior became the main subject of the story...which disgusted most people but supercharged him with his then-forming up MAGA base.

Kamala Harris handled Trump, he tried to get his usual bullshit-ass Gish Gallop going and she made that the subject of the debate...which is the only way to stop that shit.

She called him a liar right to his face.

And the best Trump could do was recycle the bullshit lie circulating the last couple days about immigrants eating cats in Ohio and tout Victor Orban as a character reference.

Are you fucking kidding me??

Now, "Trump had a bad night" is the best spin they can put on it...on FOX News.

Kamala Harris took Donald Trump's political main-character status away from him live on TV, beat him with it, and then jammed it up his ass and walked away laughing.

Trump was the Wicked Witch Of The West and Kamala Harris was Dorothy throwing a big bucket of cold water on his ass!

I mean, seriously, Harris was a Weapon Of Ass Destruction.

I mean, Jesus, this is probably the first damn time I've ever seen Erick Erickson lose his cool at his own damn side.

Like, allegedly Laura Loomer helped Trump with debate prep and shit.

Seeing what Looney Laura looks like these days, I'm genuinely afraid to even ask what the fuck those two were doing when they were supposed to be doing the homework.

Actually, I saw a list of who was on the plane with Trump and it was a slurry of ass-kissers, hangers-on, campaign people, fucking freaks, grifters and a whole bunch of people who shouldn't have been anywhere near preparations for anything that was public or important.

Trump needed people who'd be hard-asses, honest with him, and make him get his shit together and that didn't happen.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if Republicans could just dial the bullshit back to like Bush 43 levels and keep it there they could at least give Democrats a good run for their money and hang on to some political power.

As it was, their political and social rear-guard strategy of packing the Supreme Court isn't going to survive next year if Harris wins...because fuck, now people who couldn't have named three SCOTUS Justices in 2022 are fucking tired of Clarence and Sam and their wannabe Medieval Catholic horseshit.

Like, there's a reason the Knights of Malta don't have a country anymore, guys, because even fucking Napoleon Bonaparte wasn't having that kind of bullshit. He damned well was an Emperor but he knew he got where he was because people had gotten sick of the last dynasty of kings and theocrats and built Guillotines because of it and killed them all. And he didn't want to join Louis Capet in being about a foot shorter from the neck up.

(And if you're wondering how head-fucked "Conservatives" are, they're still mad about the French Revolution...even as they're trying to undo the American Revolution.)

There's a fucking reason Europe is no longer awash in powerful monarchs and Theocrats and when it comes right down to it, that reason is that the People got tired of it and gave those people a choice between surrendering their power or losing their lives.

And not only do American "Conservatives" not have that kind of Power...they were counting on *Checks Notes* Donald Trump to get it for them.

Talk about going all-in on a pair of twos, Jesus.

And it gets worse.

Like about two minutes after the debate was over, Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris.

Yeah, Trump had a bad night.

Except this wasn't a bad night, it was a nuclear wipeout.

But you still gonna have to show up...'cause 30% of America literally doesn't care if Trump is a vegetable sitting on a gilded throne, they'll worship his ass anyway.

So get after it, Be A Better Citizen.

Because even if we do it's still very likely going to come down to a fight to get rid of these assholes, drive them from our politics and get them to stop fucking with the rest of us.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

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

Eight

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.

Crazy (Signs Of The Times, Eight.)

Captain Mandrake: General Ripper, sir, as an officer in Her Majesty's Air Force, it is my clear duty, under the present circumstances, to issue the recall code, upon my own authority, and bring back the wing. If you'll excuse me sir. [Mandrake tries all exits and finds them locked] I'm afraid sir, I must ask you for the key and the recall code. Have you got them handy sir?

General Ripper: I told you to take it easy, Group Captain. There's nothing anybody can do about this thing now. I'm the only person who knows the three letter code group.

Capt. Mandrake: Then I must insist, sir, that you give them to me.

[Ripper lifts a folder off of his desk, revealing a pistol]

Capt. Mandrake: Do I take it, sir, that you are threatening a brother officer with a gun?

Gen. Ripper: Mandrake, I suppose it never occurred to you that while we're chatting here so enjoyably, a decision is being made by the President and the Joint Chiefs in the war room at the Pentagon. And when they realize there is no possibility of recalling the wing, there will be only one course of action open: total commitment. Mandrake, do you recall what Clemenceau once said about war?

Capt. Mandrake: No. I don't think I do sir, no.

Gen. Ripper: He said war was too important to be left to the Generals. When he said that, fifty years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

~From the film Dr. Strangelove

I saw this last night, and it pissed me off.

There's a lot of reasons for that, but chief among them is that both my Mom and her partner are retired Social Workers, neither is a Marxist or anymore "Woke" than would be the professional standards for a job dedicated to dealing with mental health crises and social problems. In fact my Mom's partner is a US Army Aviation veteran (both Active Duty and Army National Guard) who fought in Vietnam and the Gulf War and who, except some interruptions (like for when he went to college) had a career spanning 30 years. Dude is basically a conservative Democrat, a lot more Joe Manchin than a Tim Walz type. Hell, My Mom had a small business for easily the entire first half of my life and, although nobody in my family was ever really hard-core conservative, she only really started shifting to being a Democrat in the second half of the 1990's.

She raised me to be a Republican, I'm a United States Air Force security forces veteran. Hell, *I* was pretty much the last person in my family to actually make the switch from Republican voter to Democratic voter, and I still maintain that I did this under duress in 2008, primarily because conspiracy theories and racism were deal-breakers for me, but also because I didn't like Sarah Palin one bit.

And I've known plenty of conservative or Republican social workers, not least the counselor I had (though the VA) when I had my mental health crisis...but I'd say that very few of them are MAGA and the reasons for that should be self-evident.

A good day on the job for Jordan Peterson is that he says dumb shit and gets money.

A good day on the job for the average social worker might well be preventing somebody from killing themselves.

Social workers are typically underpaid, overstressed and massively overworked, and in a lot of places the budgets they have to work with are set by Republican legislatures...and it's their job, given those constraints, to produce good outcomes for distressed people, the mentally ill, needy families and so on.

And while I'm at it, a fair number of social workers and the agencies for which they work are explicitly Christian, because after all Christ Himself specifically commanded Believers to help the needy, the orphans, the widows, and so on.

I fully well realize that all this shit is probably lost on idiots that are banging on about Communism...which has not been a thing since 1989 despite the very serious efforts made by Vladimir Putin to bring that shit back, efforts in which Republicans are fully complicit, by the way...in 2024.

Trying to equate modern, American Democrats with Communists pretty much is just crazy.

But then, I actually know some stuff about actual political systems, not just the Fox News Fantasy Football version.

So let me translate all this crap into Republican for ya.

There's this other guy I know.

We'll call him Tarzan, it's his actual nickname, don't ask me why. He was basically...and I'm gonna be very politically incorrect here because it's the truth...the town welfare rat in the town right south of where my Mom lives. He had a half-ass business selling CB radio type shit for quite a few years, a wife who didn't work, and a bunch of kids they pretty much let the school system raise.

Tarzan is massively mentally ill, the fuck if I know with what. 

In 1990 me and a bunch of kids from the immediate area I lived in changed schools from the town to the north of where my mom lives at, to the town to the south, and I met this motherfucker. One of his kids was in one of my math classes and there wasn't a week went by during the school year that he didn't show up to scream at somebody at least once. He did give a shit about his kids, for all his shitty abilities in taking actual care of them.

Not necessarily a bad guy, although he was also in and out of jail on a regular basis, more a result of his being bat-fuck crazy than anything else.

And it's through that situational aspect that my Mom got to know this dude, and helped him actually resolve some issues back in the early aughts.

But here's the fuckin' thing.

In 2000, for reasons that remain mostly unknown to me, Tarzan decided to run for Sheriff. He lost, massively, as it turned out, to a registered Democrat (as if that really means much when it's a cop.)

I think he was bored, because the last of his kids graduated from high school, joined the Marines and got the fuck out, and never came back.

Again, though, the fuckin' thing is that his insurgent Independent outsider small-town candidacy was epically popular...as it turns out...with the kind of people who'd later become (wait for it) Trump Supporters.  His main (if not only) campaign merch that I ever saw or even heard about was lighters that said "Tarzan for Sheriff" on them. I heard him give a...er, speech...once. Funny enough, it was at the local corner bar by where my Mom lives.

That fucking crazy bastard talked for four hours. I didn't sit through the whole thing, I stopped in to get an order of bar food for my grandparents when it started, and when me and the girlfriend (later wife and now ex-wife) decided to make a late run to the store before it closed. All the cars were still there. So we stopped in, out of curiosity. His talk was part Fidel Castro, part Muhammar Gaddafi, part Randy Weaver with a side of Boss Hogg, all wrapped up in the kind of Libertarian arglebargle that I was only familiar with because throughout much of the 1990's parts of Northeast Michigan were hives of militia activity. 

For fuck's sake the sons of bitches tried to recruit me once, when I was in full uniform, getting gas on the way back to the Base. It was a high-school friend of mine, I told him to get the fuck out of my face before I fucked him up. It's a good thing he did, too, 'cause I wasn't kidding.

As you can probably infer, I have an extremely low opinion of that type of shit.

And he sounded crazy enough to creep out my crazy ex.

Think about that for a second.

Anyway, fast forward about five years and Tarzan was having one of many mental health episodes. That one, he'd waved a gun around and threatened to kill himself (and basically, everybody else in that town and the surrounding area who wasn't a cop or a medical professional or mental health worker said "Have fun." i.e. this had happened before, and it has also happened since.)

My mom was a relatively-new mental health professional with a Masters Degree in Social Work, and was working at her agency's satellite office in town, right next to where the Secretary Of State was at the time. She got called to the jail to try and help this dude.

I don't really know the specifics and couldn't say if I did, but she helped that dude get a clean enough bill of health when he was evaluated by a psychologist a few days later that they let him go with a bond and a court date.

I've heard and feel like I can say that much.

Sixteen years later when I moved back up here, lo and behold my freaking Doctor's Office is right across from Tarzan's...well, it's not so much a house anymore as a compound. Like in The Hills Have Eyes, but add a couple of fake palm trees.

So far as I know he's never been elected to anything (thank Jesus) but he's a perennial candidate and he does fine now as a local politician MAGA Grifter and his bargain-basement Jim Jones-plex is covered with so much Trump Swag...both purchased and self-made by this dude...that you can probably see it from space. 

It's right on the highway, too.

All of this stuff is verifiable, hell, it's all public knowledge to one degree or another. You can even look that dude up on Ballot-pedia, though there's not much in the entry (I looked out of morbid curiosity one day while I was waiting for a doctor's appointment. He's on there with his nickname listed as his first name.)

The actual fucking point here is that social workers, despite mostly being Democrats and respecting pronouns and shit to one degree or another...because you aren't going to help a person in a crisis by disrespecting them...are fundamentally non-partisan professionals who do a job, a job that's indispensable in many communities, for often not-much respect and shitty pay.

Unlike Jordan Peterson, they're not trying to immanentize some kind of political eschaton while talking like something straight out of the Empire from Star Wars. While I'm at it, my Mom hates politics.

Not everything is politically partisan, nor should it be. 

Especially people's mental health!

My Mom eventually retired in 2017 because, as she put it, the drugs had gotten too bad and all the crazy shit that was going on at the time was making her job too stressful. 

Don't be like Jordan Peterson. He's the one that's the ideologically-captured radical. And people like him want to make everything political, simply so they can keep their mob of followers amped up all the time and giving them money.

Give your local mental health professionals and social workers a little goddamn respect.

I'm asking you to because they won't.

They're only trying to help you, and more than a few go into the field because of their own issues and because they want to help people avoid some of the shit that might've happened to them.

Now, ask yourself, why the fuck do "Conservatives" want people to be crazy and distressed and miserable?? This is, mind you, a party that's gotten too crazy for Dick Cheney.

Who does that benefit?

That's all.

You figure it out.

Слава Україна!

Seven

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. ~George Orwell, 1984.

Unnatural (Signs Of The Times, Seven.)

Chancellor Palpatine: I don't know how much longer I can hold off the vote, my friends. More and more star systems are joining the Separatists.

Mace Windu: If they do break away—

Palpatine: I will not let this Republic that has stood for a thousand years be split in two! My negotiations will not fail.

Mace: If they do, you must realize that there aren't enough Jedi to protect the Republic. We're keepers of the peace, not soldiers.

Palpatine: Master Yoda, do you really think it will come to war?

Yoda: Hmmm. The dark side clouds everything. Impossible to see, the future is.

~From Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones

...

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. ~George Orwell, 1984.

...

The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural. ~Darth Sidious AKA Senator Sheev Palpatine, Star Wars Episode III, Revenge Of The Sith.

I saw this last night.

Dick Cheney has endorsed Kamala Harris and said he'll be voting for her, because he regards Trump as an existential threat to the USA.

Yep, you heard that right, THE BIG DICK IS HERE!

Think about that for a second.

And we didn't even have to bomb nobody, although if these MAGA's get their way and try to start a Civil War, that may well change.

Frankly, I don't doubt that the Never Trump Republicans hope MAGA does something that stupid, because one hell of a lot of those people have military and/or National Security Hawk political experience and would love to go all Global War On Terror against guys like Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, and against MAGA and the alt-Right Nazis and Wagner Group and all the rest of this shit.

At this point, if I was Trump I'd get nervous when John Bolton starts waxing his mustache.

Anyway, Welcome to the Resistance, Darth Sidious.

And yes, I was a Republican at the time and I still remember all those Doonesbury comics in the aughts that invoked exactly that comparison. I didn't necessarily always (or even often, at times) agree with dude back in the day but Garry Trudeau is a goddamned Master and don't you dare forget it.

Like, goddamn, this is awkward. Yes, I think so, and I don't care who knows it.

But it's also exactly how and what America is supposed to be, we absolutely are one big goddamned awkward coalition, we don't have a common language, a shared culture or a thousand years of history.

All we have is what we want to be.

And an American Caesar...Red or otherwise...would mean the end of America.

Somebody steps up and demands "My way or the highway" guess what? Half the damn country will fucking just say "Fuck that" do exactly that, declare independence and tell that guy to go fuck himself.

Democracy, the vote, Diversity, multiculturalism? Fuck, it's all we have.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door! 

~Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus.

The sad part is that both Dick and Liz Cheney get this and are willing to stand up and fight for it, and a majority of Republicans today, be they voters or politicians, do not and are not. They want America to have to be Republican-Land.

But that ain't who we are.

There's a lot of Republican elected officials and government employees that are afraid of Trump, or at least of his MAGA goons and the mob he's ginned up. But, speaking as a veteran here, I can guarantee you if...or as I personally believe when...it comes down to a test of arms, that will change.

And when enough people get tired of it, like it or not the awesome power of the State will be used against These Fucking People. 

Why? Because right or wrong, that's simply what happens.

Any Republican can tell you this, they just always believe they'll be on the button-pushing, god's-eye-view, order-giving side of that equation. But enough of us have had it with their bullshit, and they're obviously going to keep it up and make common cause with America's enemies against our country. 

This is America and that tends to only end one way.

Even on the rare occasions that it doesn't, the other side usually has a lot more bodies to bury.

Anymore we don't even have to have "Boots on the Ground" or get directly involved! Just ask the Russians how their 3-day "Special Military Operation" is going over two-and-a-half years later!

And as for MAGA?

Like, what the fuck do these motherfuckers even stand for, aside from the ultimately transactional and transitory "Value" that is Donald Trump??

I mean, like, if you think about it Donald Trump and all this Authoritarianism, Inc. bullshit is basically the "Meme Stock" of nations.

You get these guys...at least the "American" ones discussing actual policy and all they even have is that so and so can't do this or such-and-such can't do that. Their latest bits are basically hating on Black people for having basically any kind of professional or prestigious job, hating on women for serving in the military and hating on LGBT people for doing basically anything at all.

Like, yo, for a good percentage of the time that I was in the Air Force my Lieutenant, my day-to-day superior officer that I (being a Senior Airman and then a Sergeant, I spent a fair amount of time as a squad leader or behind a desk) had to answer to and deal with every day on a professional basis was a woman. And she'd have eaten Jabronis like Charlie Kirk or Tucker Carlson for lunch, and then gotten sick off of doing it.

There's no place for misogyny in government, the military, or the [civilian] workforce. I don't give a damn. Simply put, aside from the moral components (of which there are many) American-style Capitalism and economics cannot afford to "Other" whole groups of people right out of the country and/or the economy or have people that cannot or are rendered unable to contribute to it.

51% of the US population is female, for fuck's sake! You eliminate half our economy, we lose the damn country. Most of my direct co-workers at my job are women.

And guess what? Conservatives...but people like Dick Cheney and Ronald Reagan, not Donald Trump...were absolutely balls-deep in making it that way.

Women can do anything that men can do. The only thing that stands in the way of people admitting that is bigotry.

And that's just one category, one example.

But MAGA wants to think of America in the same way as a country club or a gated community or an HOA...or maybe more accurately like we're the kind of small country where you basically have to be an "Elite" to be anything other than a farmer, goat-herder or manual laborer.

And they mostly think that because in those kinds of countries wealth is very concentrated in the hands of elites...which MAGA and a lot of modern Republicans see themselves as and think they always will be. They don't realize how interdependent things are or that once you start fucking with the system and whole parts of it stop working, the whole thing comes flying apart.

Or, to put it another way, a lot of them do and they just don't care because they think somehow if the world goes to shit their status will improve. Like, all these goddamned AR-15 CHUD's think they're gonna be the local warlord...not the catamite the local warlord has strapped to the back of the truck for when he gets bored with the women, who men other than him also do not have access to.

Just sayin' if women lose agency, that tends not to work out well for the men either.

And I happen to remember, when we were picking up the pieces and trying to turn Afghanistan back into something resembling a country, Republicans had a pretty good understanding of stuff like that.

For fuck's sake I read The Kite Runner and I remember it being a big fuckin' deal that George W. Bush and his wife Laura had both read it too.

Donald Trump rather infamously doesn't even read.

But ya know, apparently living according to reality requires Republicans like Dick Cheney and not ones like Donald Trump.

So yeah, think about that.

Being a better citizen requires living according to reality, even when it's inconvenient or uncomfortable.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Remember that, because there's going to be a test, citizenship and freedom require some level of allegiance to reality and truth. Without truth, we don't even have a floor to stand on to push back against Power.

Trust me, I paid attention during the Trump years, what's unnatural and weird isn't Dick Cheney voting Democratic or women serving in the military, it's shit like how Donald Trump conducts himself and his goddamned gold-digger wife publicly saying shit like "Fuck Christmas" and the fact that Republicans of all motherfuckers were Okay with all that.

This is America, all we have is what we want to be.

You MAGA's wanna go be some piss-ant ruling-class in a country that's basically Burkina Faso, but for White People? Go get your own damn country, this one and its land are taken.

We The People have fucking had it.

Слава Україна!

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

Six

The dark is generous and it is patient, and it always wins.

But at the heart of its strength lies weakness.

One lone candle is enough to hold it back.

Love is more than a candle; Love can ignite the stars.

~Matthew Stover, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith novelization.

Red State (Signs Of The Times, Six.)

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

...

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. ~George Orwell, 1984.

...

I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government: 'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.' We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

Winston Churchill, Speech in the House of Commons, after taking office as Prime Minister (13 May 1940)

So I see yesterday, that the Department of Justice has indicted a couple more Russians on charges of election interference, and implicated...well, pretty much most of the well-known right-wing influencers in taking money from the goddamned Russians...to the tune of like $400K-$500K a MONTH.

Like, are you fucking kidding me with this shit??

And if you think it stops with motherfuckers like Benny Johnson and Tim Pool you have another thing coming.

And I'd bet you money that most of them would betray us for rather less than a half-million bucks a month.

I wanna see an investigation of Republican members of Congress...especially of anybody who has held up aid to Ukraine, or US Armed Forces and Justice Department confirmations and promotions.

I mean, I get that these fucking people hate America, but if you actually look at how Russia conducts itself on the world stage, you'd think these assholes would have some degree of, I don't know? Self-preservation, or maybe even remember that Russia is still ruled by the dregs of what Ronald Reagan called the Evil Empire?? You know, the Soviet Union, the very same polity that US and NATO armed forces faced off with for 40 years across a no-man's-land of barbed wire and minefields and outright fortifications, until ordinary Germans and Poles and other Eastern Europeans decided they'd had enough and overthrew Communism in their countries in November and December of 1989, which was followed by the ostensible fall of Communism in the Soviet Union in 1991. Apparently, the Cold War might've had a different outcome if the Communists would have re-branded as "Conservatives" and "Nationalists" sooner?? I'd like to think better of previous generations of Republicans, but I'm not sure that I do. 

Do I think Reagan would have sold us out?? No, But his administration was full of duplicitous shit-birds who probably would have, if they'd have thought they'd get away with it. These are, after all, the same fucking people who gave us Oliver North.

Fuck all that.

Of course, I get it. I wrote an article in 2019 on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall about the fact that Republicans were talking about the goddamned Berlin Wall...the very symbol of Communist oppression...like it was a good idea.

Hell, I said "Republicans are basically Communists now" when Trump said "Build The Wall." I don't like being this right, yo.

Of course I also remember that for the first couple years of Trump's presidency, there were endless pictures of Republicans with Russian spy Maria Butina, who apparently slept with half the guys in the GOP and caused the rest to trip over their own erections, or some shit. I mean, come on, I thought...this bitch was like, everywhere and was seen even with dudes like Rick Santorum who were supposed to be all about family values and marriage and shit like that.

But then like, most of the entire goddamned GOP got itself Honey-trapped by one woman? How does that even work??

Of course, then she got arrested by the FBI and was convicted as a spy, locked up for six months and then deported back to Russia, where she was hailed as a national heroine and went into politics.

So yeah, it's pretty easy to believe that Republicans are up to their eyeballs in Russian money (among other things, probably.)

I get the term "Red State" and all that, but I don't think the people who coined that shit or came up with the 2000 election map that spawned the term meant it quite this way.

I guess my main question is, how far down does the rot go??

How far down the list would you have to get before you found a Republican official that genuinely believed in America and that didn't, or wouldn't, take money from the goddamn Russians??

I mean, these fucking people are our enemies, they say so, Russian equivalents to Fox News regularly threaten the West in general and America in particular with nuclear Armageddon on their prime-time news shows!

And Republicans, from Trump on down detest those who are charged with defending America, its Constitution and its people...not to mention veterans like me or my Mom's partner who have previously done so...while cozying up to our enemies?

I used to be a Republican. Back then, we hated Communism and the Hammer and Sickle and the Soviet Union...and most of us never got to liking Russia all that much back in the day, either.

Now other people can hold up signs saying Republicans hate America and they're right.

I can remember when even speaking favorably of somebody like Vladimir Putin would get a person beat up, by Republicans. I can remember when These Fucking People would take one look at Vladimir Putin, KGB Agent, and assume the man could conjure Devils. I can remember when conservatives thought people like Vladimir Putin and his Oligarchs and Siloviki to be the goddamned enemy.

Now they take money from the motherfuckers?

That's right, the "Better Dead Than Red!" people are taking money from the fucking Commies.

All the Commies had to do was get rid of the social welfare stuff!?

(Probably a good thing they didn't realize this in, like, 1985.)

And all this shit came out like two days after these sons of bitches got caught giving ideological blowjobs to fucking Nazis?

Please, make that shit make sense, 'cause I sure can't.

I guess if you're a "Conservative" it's anything but America these days.

Look, America, you either believe in freedom or you don't.

At this point, this election shouldn't even be close. The fact that it's probably going to come down to a fight to get these assholes to stop fucking with the rest of us and trying to destroy our country pisses me the fuck off.

And the worst part is, I'm not even surprised, just disgusted.

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

Five

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

Nietzsche's Erection (Signs Of The Times, Five.)

Many people, no doubt, honestly believe that they are only giving away the interests of Czechoslovakia, whereas I fear we shall find that we have deeply compromised, and perhaps fatally endangered, the safety and even the independence of Great Britain and France... You have to consider the character of the Nazi movement and the rule which it implies. The Prime Minister desires to see cordial relations between this country and Germany. There is no difficulty at all in having cordial relations with the German people. Our hearts go out to them. But they have no power. You must have diplomatic and correct relations, but there can never be friendship between the British democracy and the Nazi Power, that Power which spurns Christian ethics, which cheers its onward course by a barbarous paganism, which vaunts the spirit of aggression and conquest, which derives strength and perverted pleasure from persecution, and uses, as we have seen, with pitiless brutality the threat of murderous force. That Power cannot ever be the trusted friend of the British democracy.

~Winston Churchill, Speech in the House of Commons (5 October 1938)

...

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

...

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. ~George Orwell, 1984.

I saw this last night.

Recently, Tucker Carlson had some dipshit Nazi apologist on his Podcast, some idiot who thinks Adolf Hitler wasn't the bad guy in WWII, but Winston Churchill somehow was.

Winston Churchill, not just a conservative's Conservative, but functionally the model for anybody who aspired to that label for three generations, although Ronald Reagan gave him a good run for his money, that is...until Donald Trump stole the movement.

And Winston Spencer Churchill hated the damned Nazis like a motherfucker, for reasons that were prescient in the 1930's but proven to be entirely spot-on later. He'd go on to lead the British people through a period of their history...especially during the Battle of Britain and the London blitz...that makes what the Ukrainians are facing from Russian invaders seem almost easy by comparison. There was a point there for about a year, from the Fall of France until Hitler betrayed and invaded the Soviet Union...where it was just the UK and the Commonwealth countries and whatever defeated remnants of European militaries and could be armed with whatever gear was at hand were the only ones fighting against Nazi Germany with anything in the way of effectiveness. Oh sure, China was fighting against a Japanese invasion...with American and Soviet support, but until June 1941 or so the bad guys really were winning, overall. 

US support was slow getting off the ground because we had to arm ourselves too. It's impossible to overstate how unprepared we were. Rick Atkinson's book "An Army At Dawn" goes into great depth on exactly this.

During the Depression, even training...the true lifeblood of any armed forces...had been cut to the bone. The Navy was the only global power and global reach we had, but in our defense we were further along in the development of Aircraft Carriers and Naval Aviation than everybody else...that was what saved our ass, at least at first, and then only by luck because none of the carriers were in port when Pearl Harbor got hit.

The British and French armies were allegedly the best in the world, and were spectacularly well prepared...as it turned out, for the last war. The absolute truth was that they were a soup sandwich in most day-to-day aspects, the French Army in particular was led by a corps of old, senile reactionaries and both it and the French government were reeling from the struggles between old Catholic reactionaries, Communists, French-style Republicans, Leftists and outright Nazi-appeasers, and along the way, modernity had only begun to work its way in. On the British side, such was less the case but funding austerity meant that what pre-war updates there'd been came mostly in the adoption of Radar and RAF aircraft like the Hawker Hurricane and Supermarine Spitfire...both of which would reach enough front-line squadrons to matter only after the German invasion of France was underway, but save the day a few months later.

Thankfully, there was a whole generation of younger officers including such men as Bernard Montgomery, Charles De Gaulle Chester Nimitz, Hyman Rickover and Dwight Eisenhower who'd been developing our next steps (or would) and warning people that the Germans were innovating in nearly all aspects of warfare, and were not going to play by the hidebound rules of previous conflicts, and that mobile warfare was becoming the new thing.

The thing about it is, historically, the French enlisted soldier ain't no dummy, and the fighting spirit of such people most often eventually supersedes the stupidity of their leaders...but against the German Blitzkrieg, there simply wasn't enough time for that to happen.

These Young Turks of warfighting would rise to the top during the war, and in the case of De Gaulle and Eisenhower, help lead the world that came after it, and thank God for that.

Churchill listened to them, when his turn came, because even though he was hard-nosed conservative he prized courage and intrepidity. He had a big part in shaping not only the new way of war but in shaping the world that came after it...because he saw the future and wanted to prevent the next war. 

That world that Sir Winston helped create is the world these postmodern reactionaries want to destroy.

Because oh yes, they want that next war, and they want the bad guys (Like Putin) to win this time. We are unbelievably lucky that the Ukrainians held on, and that they've kept fighting, and that in the equation this time Russia is far closer to the hidebound reactionaries who fought WWI than to, honestly, even a fair number of the Soviet generals who did the bloody grunt work of bleeding the Wehrmacht dry on the Eastern Front...and mind you, it was US industry and logistics that kept the Soviet Union in the fight.

The only goddamned reason to declare Winston Churchill the bad guy is if you're taking sides with the Nazis, to this day considered the slime of Humanity by most people, be they Right, Left, or neither.

I'm honestly surprised the sons of bitches didn't hate on FDR, too. 

If anything these modern so-called Republicans and people like Tucker Carlson all hate modern economics, government and statecraft even more than they hate modern global civilization or military power. The basis of their thought process is the small, angry miser counting his coins (but only so long as that's them.) They hate that a bunch of our ancestors came up with an economic system where everybody theoretically gets to make money.

And, while I'm at it, it's Franklin Delano Roosevelt's economic policies, the underlying ideals of the New Deal and FDR's willingness to engage with the world and pick a side were what made America becoming the "Arsenal of Democracy" and preparing itself for war (let alone becoming a Superpower in the world that came after) even possible. You can have all the great ideas and programs and strategic plans that you want, but if there's nobody and nothing to build the shit you need to execute them nor to pay for it, you're still fucked.

The North Atlantic Charter and the United Nations were great ideals, but they still needed the factories of Detroit and the guts and grit of a generation of men willing to fight for the future to make them the realities of our modern world.

And an America where the only thing anybody wants to make is money and where no one believes in any future that doesn't come in 90-day increments, then and now, ain't sufficient to the task at hand.

And the thing that gets me about this bullshit is that after nine years of MAGA, almost a decade of literal pandering to neo-Nazis and White Supremacists where there's been absolutely no bottom, "Conservatives" are surprised.

I mean, I've seen Tucker Carlson's Snidely Whiplash bit for long enough now and seen him Stan for everybody from Joe McCarthy to Richard Nixon to Victor Orban and Vladimir Motherfucking Putin, so I'm not really surprised.

Remember that two years ago, Tucker Carlson was a big proponent of grilling your balls like gas station roller meat, guys. That's this motherfucker's idea of "Manhood."

Honestly, I think he just gets a hard-on off of fascist aesthetics and stupid macho bullshit, but people listen to this douchebag!

But ya know, to a certain extent the problem here isn't Tucker Carlson, it's all these other motherfuckers. I'd still think that more than 17% of these motherfuckers would identify Hitler as the principal bad guy of WWII. I mean, he's literally the dude that started it. And that is in addition to all of his other many sins. At the end of the day, I think a lot of these "Conservatives" really worship Friedrich Nietzsche, not Jesus Christ or anything like that.

This stuff is a moral and philosophical rot that goes far beyond Donald Trump.

This stuff is simple, known, easily researched historical facts, yo.

The only reason for anybody to not believe it is that they do not want to.

And in my opinion, perhaps the saddest thing to come out of this whole damn mess is finding out just how few of those old-school conservatives like Liz Cheney are even left. I used to be a Republican, I'm serious.

Reagan Wept, and Churchill handed him a Kleenex.

I mean, come on, what the fuck is wrong with these fucking people??

The truth comes down to, as always, that you either believe in freedom or you don't.

You're either willing to fight against this bullshit, or you're not.

It's really that simple, the time is coming where it's "Be a Better Citizen" be it in the voting booth or in the battlespace, or suffer the consequences.

And there's absolutely going to be a test, the other side isn't going to give you the option of sitting on the sidelines and saying "Whatever, Man" unless you wanna be their slave when all's said and done.

That's literally the Right's plan, enslaving Humanity for the likes of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, and they're holding up signs that say exactly that. Their entire pitch since 2015 has been that they want to be slaves, so long as they think that they're a better class of slaves than all the other slaves.

If you can't stand up and fight against that, what the fuck is wrong with you??

Now get the fuck after it, or get the fuck out of the way.

Слава Україна!

I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government: 'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.' We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

Winston Churchill, Speech in the House of Commons, after taking office as Prime Minister (13 May 1940)

Four

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

Again, on the Title 

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