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)

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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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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