The Golden Elephant (October Unsurprising, Five.)

I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom;

Preach the Word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine.

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;

And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. ~2nd Timothy 4:1-4

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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.

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Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.  We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream.  The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it, and then hand it to them with the well fought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same.  And if you and I don't do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free. ~Ronald Reagan

I saw this bullshit last night.

Former Trump administration official William Wolfe, saying that people should "Want" to live under Christian Nationalism because otherwise it's the "Golden Calf" of Black Lives Matter, preferred pronouns, "Transgenderism" and (excuse me?) Hamas.

No, dude, just No.

Do I really have to remind y'all?

REALLY?!?!

These fucking people literally had a gold idol of Donald Trump made and bowed down and worshiped it at CPAC in 2021. I had pictures and video and I wrote about it at the time. I even wrote about it not once, but twice.

Black Lives Matter isn't a "Golden Calf" it's literally what it says at face value, three words: Black. Lives. Matter. People got tired of being murdered. A man got choked out for nine minutes on camera. I'm serious, if I'd done that to an enemy combatant in a war zone as an Airman, I'd likely have been brought up on charges and gone to Courts Martial, and I'd have deserved whatever I got. War is bad enough when there are rules and everybody fighting in it follows them. Why should policing be any fucking different??

Also, preferred pronouns? Really?? Well, let me guess, bro, if I just started exclusively calling you "Late for dinner" every single time I spoke to you, I'm gonna guess that you'd get offended by that pretty quick. Tell me, how is referring to somebody by the gender (or lack thereof) that they identify with any damned different?? 

And why shouldn't people have the right to live according to whatever gender (or lack thereof) they feel they have, in a Constitutionally secular modern nation where the vast majority of people have come to accept LGBT rights just the same as most of us respect the rights of People of Color or of women without too much fuss. For the record, the Classical world was pretty bisexual and (accounting for the lack of technology) there were Transgender people then too...and nobody really cared. 

(Again, it also needs to be said that Rome in particular was still pretty patriarchal...but also gay as fuck.)

So why should anybody have to listen to this crap?!?!

Go ahead, show your work, I'll wait.

And likewise, why the fuck would somebody like Kamala Harris have to put up with these dudes saying she has a "Jezebel Spirit?" By the way that's Weirdo Pentecostal Speak for "Any Woman who does anything some freakish whack-a-nut doesn't like."

While I'm at it, Kamala Harris is a Christian and as far as I'm concerned, ought to get a basic level of respect from these fucking people for that.

Yes, yes I know; The right-wing bullshit is far more important to these morons than any religion that a person may or may not actually profess. In fact, for most of them, the politics is the only game in town because they sacralized that crap and forgot about Jesus a long damn time ago.

In fact what these "Christian Nationalist" assholes basically wanna be is a Christian version of Hamas: A group of violent religious fanatics basically trying to immanentize some kind of Earthly political Eschaton for no better reason than worldly Power for themselves. At the end of the day it doesn't even matter what god they claim...God isn't the point.

And that's probably why a bunch of them think Trump is Christ.

Have fun in hell, idiots.

Because I, without even breaking a sweat or thinking about it too much, can tell you exactly why Trump has the Spirit of (and fits the actual Biblical definition of) Antichrist.

Sorry, but there's no better way to put it, if you believe in this stuff or if you ever did.

But the thing is, this is America and nobody has to...or should have to...care about any of that crap if they don't want to!!

A lot of these nuts traded the Cross of Christ for the Republican Elephant a long time ago. It's only gotten worse since. This is America, you can do that, but sooner or later you're going to have to stop calling yourself a Christian...and it's plain to see most Republicans are just using that title to get Man's approval for their shitty agendas, anyway.

Golden calf, you say??

How is the Golden Elephant any fucking different??

If other people can see that, do you not think God can see it as well??

These fucking people are losing, Trump was their Last Stand...to the point where they basically have proclaimed him their God...and now he's pretty much a spicy seasoning and some butter away from being a vegetable side. Like, seriously?? 

You did this to yourselves, Republicans.

You know, speaking of dementia and shit, love him or hate him at least Ronald Reagan believed in something I could identify as Freedom, he stood for it and stuck with it even when it didn't entirely benefit him. And while I'm at it, right up to the end of his Presidency he could at least hold it together in public without looking like a demented old fool.

Tell me something; What is it, that these current so-called "Republicans" believe in other than their own political Power?? They sure don't believe in the Lord's Word except as a club to beat other people with. What do these assholes believe in?? Is there even one damn thing??

Go ahead, think on it, I'll wait.

As for the rest of you, you either believe in freedom or you don't.

You're either willing to fight for it...and vote for it...or you're not.

Yes, it really is that simple.

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

Four

It is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for the country in return. ~Oliver Wendall Holmes, Jr.