Slaves Of The Caesars V (Signs Of The Times, Ten.)

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 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, letter written following the Hajj.

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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.

...

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

I keep seeing stuff like this.

Crazy shit, getting worse and worse. 

Like it's being alleged that Laura Loomer (of all fucking people) has gotten very close to Trump, and she's apparently going around telling people she gave Trump a blowjob.

Like, seriously the last thing I ever wanted to think about, ever, for any reason...is Trump sticking his toadstool schwantz in Laura fucking Loomer.

And, perhaps sensing that the End Is Near, are reverting to open goddamned racism...and what I'm starting to call Ethnic Slur Fantasty Football, because that's exactly what this bullshit about accusing Haitians of eating cats is...with an occasional assist from their various alleged far-left hangers-on like *Checks Notes* Marianne Williamson?

Good to know that the open, tolerant religious views she expressed in all those vapid self-help tapes 30 years ago were nothing but hot air...or perhaps she didn't extend that tolerance to afro-syncretic religions, aside from the vague Pentecostalism of that one Detroit-area church she preached at 25 years ago??

I've been there, by the way, I've seen her speak.

Fun fact...it's a Black church. I rather doubt the people there would approve of this bullshit.

And for the record, Afro-syncretic religions like Santeria and Voodoo owe as much of their belief system to Christianity in general (and Catholicism in particular) as they do to the African traditions that the slave-forebears of many current practitioners were trying to preserve.

Also for the record, the origin of faiths like Voodoo as well as the call-and-response style of most Black churches is in syncretic traditions that began to develop during the Middle Passage as even newly-enslaved Africans sought to preserve something of their cultures and to resist their enslavers. This isn't specific to that time and place. Doesn't matter if it's Africans 300 years ago or Ukrainians today...it is human nature to resist.

And naturally, shills for Power and Whiteness who want to jam their bullshit so far down your throat that it's coming out your asshole in one piece are still mad that those people did that.

Hell, they're mad that anyone didn't submit...you know, like they did.

There's a whole group of people, most but not all of them "Conservatives" who missed the whole goddamned point of America. They don't want to resist tyranny...they want to be lackeys of a tyrant.

They believe in slavery so much that they don't give a shit if they have to bite the bullet and be the goddamned slaves, so long as the "meme" of bondage, domination, hierarchy and slavery is maintained somehow.

And they think Trump is going to give them that...oh sure, a dimwitted and/or wealthy few think they'll be the masters and not the slaves. But the truth is they'll all be happy with whatever...even if it means being Trump's slaves...so long as they're a better class of slaves than some of the other slaves.

And they're mad as hell that anybody is resisting this.

They're mad that anybody would even try and go about their own lives and business without having to spend two hours a day blowing the goddamn narcissist.

And they think somehow they're going to get something for it, even if it's just "Owning The Libs" (whatever that means.)

Personally, I couldn't do it.

At this point, the Republican Party itself is basically a totalitarian cult-state like Baathist Iraq.

And Trump is a fatter Saddam Hussein without the mustache or a country to run.

And when they try and start some bullshit Civil War, then start losing (badly) and then try and sell themselves out to the Russians to avoid ending up being shot by American firing squads, they'll be mad as all fuck that people on their own side resist Russification after the "Limited Contingent Of Military Advisors" comes flooding in and does nothing but buy them time. They'll be surprised when the Zampolits, the obligatory Russian political hacks, show up too.

And they'll build walls and drop bombs and grovel before Power and throw away everything that they themselves said they thought was so great about America to try to please people like Putin and Trump and in the end...they'll be the ones who lose most of all.

Trump will go to prison and probably die there, Vladimir Putin will get to just go on being Vladimir Putin unless the Ukrainians get to him.

These fucking people...won't. It's a sign of our debased times that Republicans won't stop blowing the fucking narcissist.

And both then and now, they don't give a shit how debased their so-called rulers are, nor how debased they become in their quest for a world based on an unholy trinity of Power, Force and Submission, so long as they think they'll get it for awhile.

They don't really care what comes after, either. Or they can't or simply don't want to think that far ahead.

These fucking people want life to be nasty, brutish and short, but as long as they exit stage right with an upraised middle finger or have their boot on somebody else's throat before they die, that's OK.

It's not just that these fucking people are fascinated with death...it's that increasingly they seem to expect that they're going to be ground to dust for no good reason and all they really want to see is somebody else getting it first.

Seems like a hell of a way to live, don't it??

I couldn't do it and I was a conservative and a Republican for most of my life.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

And endlessly blowing some goddamned narcissist is not how you get freedom.

Слава Україна!

When I am dead, bury me

In my beloved Ukraine,

My tomb upon a grave mound high

Amid the spreading plain,

So that the fields, the boundless steppes,

The Dnieper's plunging shore

My eyes could see, my ears could hear

The mighty river roar.

When from Ukraine the Dnieper bears

Into the deep blue sea

The blood of foes ... then will I leave

These hills and fertile fields --I'll leave them all and fly away

To the abode of God,

And then I'll pray .... 

But until that day I know nothing of God

Oh bury me, then rise ye up

And break your heavy chains

And water with the tyrants' blood

The freedom you have gained.

And in the great new family,

The family of the free,

With softly spoken, kindly word

Remember also me.

~Taras Shevchenko

Nine

For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. ~Matthew 24:27