Zombie (American Judgment Day, Eight.)

And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads.

And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps:

And they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders: and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth.

These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goes. These were redeemed from among men, being the first-fruits unto God and to the Lamb.

And in their mouth was found no guile: for they are without fault before the throne of God.

And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people,

Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.

And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.

And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand,

The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb:

And the smoke of their torment ascends for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receives the mark of his name.

Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.

And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, said the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them.

And I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like unto the Son of man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle.

And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to him that sat on the cloud, Thrust in thy sickle, and reap: for the time is come for thee to reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe. ~Revelation 14:1-15

...

Another head hangs lowly
Child is slowly taken
And the violence caused such silence
Who are we mistaken?

But you see, it's not me, it's not my family
In your head, in your head they are fighting
With their tanks, and their bombs, and their bombs, and their guns
In your head, in your head they are crying

In your head, in your head
Zombie, zombie, zombie-ie-ie
What's in your head? In your head?
Zombie, zombie, zombie-ie-ie-ie, oh

~Zombie, The Cranberries

Apparently, now we're back to "Christian Nationalists" trying to take over remote areas.

As if that shit hasn't collapsed in embarrassing scandal and shame every single damned time somebody tries it??

They want to kick out anybody who isn't some kind of "Heritage American" whatever that even means. These fucking people are the Dusty Deevers, Ryan Walters crowd, the ones in Tennessee keep having those kind of guys from Oklahoma over, anyway...in case you wonder where the fools in Oklahoma are trying to go with this shit. Because apparently already having a Baptist church on about every city block simply isn't good enough for these motherfuckers.

So, one has to ask, what the hell is?

Basically, These Fucking People's answer to that question is to just keep exiling or killing people until they have what they think is a "Perfect" society which means immanentizing some kind of far-right Eschaton.

Pro tip from somebody who's read the Bible cover-to-cover multiple times; The Lord's Word says Man is not able to be perfected.

Man's true Nature, Humanity's problem, in effect, is that Sin is intrinsic to our being. We all struggle with the Darkness and the Light inside of ourselves.

And lots of fucking people honestly don't know which is which, because on the one hand they're stupid and on the other hand American Christianity has a long history of glorifying savagery for its own sake.

Basically, they want to turn people into Zombies for their particular fucked up interpretation, and then claim absolute power for themselves.

Don't ask what they'd do to get there, you don't want to know.

I mean, you want my honest take? Ryan Walters basically strikes me as not even one Zombie Apocalypse away from being Negan in The Walking Dead. He doesn't give a shit about Christianity, he wants to impose whatever line of bullshit he thinks will make him the "boss" with the least amount of effort...and he doesn't care if it's legal or right or even if he wrecks his own line of shit in the process. Like most small men, he just wants to feel like a Big Man for a few minutes, how much that costs never enters his brainpan.

It's not Trump that scares me.

It's These Fucking People.

Left to their own devices, Trump and his clown-car of cabinet picks and congressional Republicans will spend most of their time fighting among themselves with palace intrigues that run amok, pass some tax cuts, and spend most of the rest of the time tripping over their own dicks, while they manage to provide no leadership in any crises that happen.

They will happen, they're already happening.

Trouble is, it's these idiots that are the crisis, and Trump has spent a decade promising these fucking people the Moon for free, and recently got Elon to throw in Mars just because he thinks it sounds good.

They have no idea how to get there and no plans to actually try.

Going somewhere like Mars would cost a fuck-ton of money, for one thing, and there's not much there unless you're interested in doing science for its own sake. 

These fucking people don't care about that.

We are collectively just not the people we were in 1969 when we went to the Moon. Look at our politics for fuck's sake!

And a big damn part of why is that Republicans have spent forever...explicitly so for the last 30 years...telling White idiots that they can get rich while sitting on the couch getting fat, eating cake, so long as they let Republicans steal old people's Social Security and poor people's welfare...which by the way, do not even add up to very much money, Republicans just hate social safety nets.

And if you don't think their next move is going to be stealing from the big kahuna in the Federal budget (the Military) next, you have another thing coming.

They just want to talk real big for the sake of talking real big and impressing the idiot mob, then use all these idiots and all of their contradictory bullshit to rip apart America, break up the country, loot Federal coffers, sell what they can for parts and leave the rest to rot and then disappear to places like Dubai and Russia where somebody will protect them and their stolen wealth from the rest of us.

Like, seriously, just for one example there's the "Sex is only for procreation" Christian Chuds and then there's the Incels who basically think that Trump is going to give them each a free female sex slave.

One of these things is not like the other one.

As far as I know, rape has always been illegal and considered wrong. The things these fucking people want to do...either way...cut at the most basic level of what it takes to even have a civilization, like family units and shit like that.

And it mostly, I think, comes down to the fact that people have had it way too easy for way too long and they've gotten stupid.

Not just stupid, but cruel and evil, to the point that given the chance to enact any of their bullshit, Men On The Internet would pretty much be as bad as (Or even worse than) the Taliban.

And for no better reason than they think it's funny.

They're going to start fucking over health care next, because a lot of these fucking idiots worship Eugenics and no matter how much woo woo you dress it up with, that's what it's really about.

Again, these people's objective is to destroy America, make no mistake about it.

Just look at what they're actually saying.

We have a population of 330 MILLION people. Just to use Dr. Ooze here as an example: "Two or three percent" of a given population might not seem like much...but just losing ONE MILLION people during COVID-19 (Actually not even that, more like the first 100,000 or so during the height of the Pandemic) utterly overwhelmed American mortuary systems and had us burying people in mass graves and storing corpses in freezer trucks.

For some reason literally nobody wants to think about that, and by the way hundreds of thousands of medical professionals quit because of it. I personally know several who retired as soon as they could, or who do other things now, either because they had to get out for their own health reasons or because it was too traumatic. 

We've got a guy like that where I work, he's a retired psychologist. Doing counseling and shit during the Pandemic overwhelmed him and caused his own mental breakdown.

Now, consider what a fascism-induced breakdown of government, not to mention a Civil War that these fucking people's voters want, is gonna do to all type of other professional people in the government and the military?

Yeah, I get it, a lot of motherfuckers have been basically brainwashed into hating anybody who knows anything or who has done anything of consequence...but come on, those people are still people no matter what, aren't they??

You'd think.

But that would require thinking that a lot of people who are just used to getting their narcissism jerked off by entertainment and politics (but I repeat myself here) don't want to do.

That would require people who've been primed by a generation of Ayn Rand being preached in politics and religion to let go of their selfishness...which they have basically been taught is the highest virtue.

That would mean people would have to cut out their racist and sexist bullshit and other petty bigotries.

And way, way the hell too many of us don't want to do that.

Think about it, how in the fuck did a country as advanced as this one have the bottom drop out of its education systems so hard that 21% of people are illiterate and half the population can barely read a book to their kids??

My fear is that it's going to take a war or two, people having no choice but to witness suffering and death...and stupidity actually becoming dangerous to themselves...before we, as a people in a now-sundered nation fucking get it. They're gonna have to get saved by Black soldiers and treated by female doctors and have to work with Latino construction and agricultural workers and have to do survival-level labor and learn how to survive this shit from Jewish, Muslim and LGBT people, among other things.

If you're lucky enough to be a survivor, because you cannot maintain a society off of mass delusion and mass stupidity.

Because yes, that's what it's gonna come to.

Remember the whole big argument about "Does a woman feel safer with a Bear in the woods, or with a Man?"

A majority of women chose the Bear.

So here's my question for the world:

Which would you feel safer around?

A bunch of American Idiots or a horde of Zombies??

You pick.

Слава Україна!

Sure, we were unprepared, our tools, our training, everything I just talked about, all one class-A, gold-standard clusterfuck, but the weapon that really failed wasn’t something that rolled off an assembly line. It’s as old as…I don’t know, I guess as old as war. It’s fear, dude, just fear and you don’t have to be Sun freaking Tzu to know that real fighting isn’t about killing or even hurting the other guy, it’s about scaring him enough to call it a day... “Shock and Awe”? Perfect name, “Shock and Awe”! But what if the enemy can’t be shocked and awed? Not just won’t, but biologically can’t! That’s what happened that day outside New York City, that’s the failure that almost lost us the whole damn war. The fact that we couldn’t shock and awe Zack boomeranged right back in our faces and actually allowed Zack to shock and awe us! They’re not afraid! No matter what we do, no matter how many we kill, they will never, ever be afraid! ~Todd Waino, World War Z (Novel by Max Brooks)

Seven

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

Bonus Post

The Holy Quran says it, "Pilgrimage to the House [of God built by the prophet Abraham] is a duty men owe to God; those who are able, make the journey." (3:97) Allah said: "And proclaim the pilgrimage among men; they will come to you on foot and upon each lean camel, they will come from every deep ravine" (22:27).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 intermittently 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.

Remember, Man doesn't get to choose who gets Saved.

Kamikaze (American Judgment Day, Seven.)

Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, RACA, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.

Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there remember that thy brother hath ought against thee;

Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.

Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.

Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:

But I say unto you, That whosoever look on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement:

But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causes her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced commits adultery.

Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths: But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne:

Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King.

Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou cannot make one hair white or black.

But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.

Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:

But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.

And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.

Give to him that ask thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?

And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. ~Matthew 5:17-48

I'm a tell you something right now, and make no mistake about it; 

I'm getting really tired of incompetent, mediocre, narcissistic White People who think they're entitled to an audience and to Power. For one thing, you are not. I'm even more tired of these idiots and their rock-solid certainties that they are entitled to...whatever, something something Gazpacho. I mean, seriously, this bullshit makes no sense to me.

And it's not "Bigotry" to tell you "No" or to call out your bullshit. Bullshit is still bullshit no matter how much you try and Jesus it up, understand that right now. It's not "Bigotry" to walk away; You do not have a civil or Constitutional right to some kind of audience for your ignorant woo woo bullshit or your priggish horsefuckery.

People have a right not to care, a right not to participate, a literal Constitutional right to not have to follow your beliefs or your religion. People have a right to not have to put up with yo bullshit.

It's not "Bigotry" for people to just want to be people and not be made into players in whatever little game you think you've got going on...and make no mistake about this either; to people like RFK Jr. this crank bullshit is a game, they do this shit because they're stupid and they think it's funny.

The whole point of America is we're citizens, not subjects, not play-toys for fucking kings and inbred idiotic nobility...which, sorry, but that's basically what the Kennedys are at this point. And in modern America they're about as relevant as some 19th Century Earl of Ass-Crack, too. 

But most of them have the sense to at least stick with their traditional political "side" and not make too much of a spectacle of themselves.

More to the point; This is the United States of America in the 21st goddamn century, a secular Republic. More to the point, a secular Republic with almost entirely Protestant roots, which should rule out wannabe-Crusader (Catholic) bullshit on general principle if you really want to play the religious angle. However, this is America and you don't have to engage that crap. Somebody saying "Deus Vult!" OR having it tattooed on themselves should be about as relevant as Sir-Mix-A-Lot getting in a time machine, going back to the 12th Century and walking up to somebody and busting out with "I like big butts and I cannot lie!" 

You can say it. You have that right.

But the rest of us also have the right to look at you like you've lost your goddamned mind, and walk away laughing.

And we have the right to believe, to know, that not one damn bit of this has anything to do with God, Jesus, or Christianity.

While I'm at it...I thought these fuckers hated the "Left" and discounted everything they said?

Why then since BlueSky has gained a couple million users in the last few days are there all these right-wing and "Centrist" idiots following any given even nominal "Left" person over there and petulantly demanding "PAY ATTENTION TO ME!!" and then being surprised when that person does the logical thing and simply...blocks them??

I mean, why??

(It's all about getting attention, deny them that, all they can even do is get impotently mad about it. Same goes for all these Christians claiming "Persecution." It's a lie, don't give it free air.)

Why would it surprise you that people don't want to hear what you have to say, when you have a well-established track record of being a fucking jackass?? Why would it surprise you that they don't want to talk to you??

Why do you think yourself entitled to an audience from people that you don't like, anyway??

Why do modern "Conservatives" have such a visceral need for internet drama and an audience??

Why the fuck do you think you have some kind of a right to ruin somebody else's day for your own entertainment??

Why do you think you're entitled to fight with people??

If you do not have the right to barge into somebody's house uninvited (which is a good way to get physically thrown out or the cops called on you, if not get shot in America) and just spew crap, why do you think you have a personal right to someone's online space, much less physical or public life??

Why do you people think you have a right to shit in the pool and have everybody else just watch you do it??

Sorry, but that kind of shit is why I had to quit Twitter, it was starting to impact my mental health (again) and since I got the same (or more) levels of engagement with two accounts on smaller platforms (BlueSky and Threads) even though I had a much smaller follower count...why would I stay??

My mental health, my personal time, hell, my breaks when I'm at work are not a Public Good, they're mine. Buddha Ferret is not a public utility. Fuck You.

Why wouldn't the same go for anybody else??

For fuck's sake we have enough problems right now.

And the thing that gets me is, all these cosplay grifters and hack Republicans and priggish keyboard warriors out there picking fights have no fucking idea what they're getting themselves into, all the cute little Leftists who couldn't be bothered to get off they ass and vote for Kamala have no idea what the fuck they've gotten the rest of us into, either. 

When the shit really starts to hit the fan, they are not going to be any better off or any safer than anybody else.

Oh yeah, sure, when the deep dark well of American Crazy gets well and truly uncorked, some of these Republicans will be right up in there with the Nazis marching in the streets, but most of these motherfuckers are far more likely to be on that table than seated at it.

And the trouble with all this Trump bullshit is that one hell of a lot of the worst damn people in the world thought he was promising them the Moon, too.

Thing is, all these Republicans playing all these stupid fuck fuck games...Trump included...just weaken us when real threats like the Russians or home-grown Swastika ass flying Nazis come knocking at the door. I mean, sure, we'll catch up pretty quick even in a worst-case scenario but why fuck around with damaging the military or national intelligence assets at all...unless weakening us to give those motherfuckers a better shot at us is somehow the goal??

(And again, I don't give a damn who you think you are; My literal, lived experience is that those kind of assholes hate Republicans, too.)

The thing that's starting to bother me about this mess, is the same as bothered me during the height of the COVID-19 Pandemic...is very much that it seems like a lot of Americans care more about feeling "Special" or making money than they do about having a country or even staying alive.

It's a little hard to feel like the Belle of the Ball or spend money when you're, ya know, dead. I'm just sayin.' Whether it's from disease or the direct kinetic or indirect economic or social effects of a civil war, dead is dead. 

I said Two Weeks and we're already having minor incidents start stacking up, how much worse is it gonna be in a couple years especially if Republicans have crashed the Federal government by then??

What happens when all the crazies don't get everything they thought they were promised??

(And trust me, from what I've heard a lot of the genuine accelerationists and real bad guys are keeping a surprisingly low profile right now, almost like they're waiting for all the idiots to do their work for them.)

What, exactly, happens when all the little Gaza Leftist Special Snowflake motherfuckers don't get whatever they thought they were gonna get by kicking over the apple-cart, either??

It's not just that I think, say, we're in the Load-screen phase of a Civil War or some such bullshit, right now, although I do think that (and, honestly, have thought so for a long time.)

It's that I think it's mostly Republican unreasonableness that created this BS.

It's that I think...if you think you're on some kind of a mission from GOD to bother Transgender people or say racist shit and you're following people around to random platforms to bug them, where you're unwelcome and you're surprised you get blocked, you need to be sent home, and made to walk while wearing a sign that says "I am a dipshit."

 It's that I think this shit is gonna be the absolute dumbest Civil War that there ever has been, and it'll be all the more dangerous for the levels of conspiracy theories and other idiocy involved.

I mean, it hasn't even started yet and we're already up to people getting viruses and otherwise metaphorically blowing themselves up to "Own The Libs." 

How long before that starts running hot? 

And that's before I get to all the idiot Leftists that didn't vote or voted Third Party because of Gaza...knowing that Trump was on the phone with Bibi and would make that shit worse if he could. Now, he will.

If you want to Kamikaze yourself for ideology and stupidity, go ahead.

I can't stop you, and lately I'm disinclined to try. 

Stupid should hurt.

But don't call me "Anti-Christian" for saying that it's wrong and you're nuts and that none of this bullshit has anything to do with the Lord's Word.

Not least because that is the Truth.

You motherfuckers are the crowd that chose Barabbas, and the situation has not improved one bit since then.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

If you believe in feeling "special" or getting attention or having "privilege" more than you believe in being free, you're part of the problem and you deserve every bit of what's coming.

But ya know, maybe the rest of us didn't.

A lot of innocent people will die from this crap.

(And you can't say you didn't know, the assholes said what they were gonna do.)

And maybe, just maybe, I don't wanna see people die or get hurt or suffer through unnecessary conflict so some other moron can feel "Special." 

It's one thing if you wanna Kamikaze yourself. It's your life.

Leave other people the fuck out of it.

Слава Україна!

Sure, we were unprepared, our tools, our training, everything I just talked about, all one class-A, gold-standard clusterfuck, but the weapon that really failed wasn’t something that rolled off an assembly line. It’s as old as…I don’t know, I guess as old as war. It’s fear, dude, just fear and you don’t have to be Sun freaking Tzu to know that real fighting isn’t about killing or even hurting the other guy, it’s about scaring him enough to call it a day... “Shock and Awe”? Perfect name, “Shock and Awe”! But what if the enemy can’t be shocked and awed? Not just won’t, but biologically can’t! That’s what happened that day outside New York City, that’s the failure that almost lost us the whole damn war. The fact that we couldn’t shock and awe Zack boomeranged right back in our faces and actually allowed Zack to shock and awe us! They’re not afraid! No matter what we do, no matter how many we kill, they will never, ever be afraid! ~Todd Waino, World War Z (Novel by Max Brooks)

Six

Man does not weave this web of life. He is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. ~Chief Seattle.

This Web Of Life (American Judgment Day, Six)

Look at the shoes you're filling
Look at the blood we're spilling
Look at the world we're killing
The way we've always done before
Look in the doubt we've wallowed
Look at the leaders we've followed
Look at the lies we've swallowed
And I don't want to hear no more

My hands are tied
For all I've seen has changed my mind
But still the wars go on as the years go by
With no love of God or human rights
'Cause all these dreams are swept aside
By bloody hands of the hypnotized
Who carry the cross of homicide
And history bears the scars of our civil wars.

~Guns N' Roses, Civil War, from the album Use Your Illusion II.

...

Canada, the most affluent of countries, operates on a depletion economy which leaves destruction in its wake. Your people are driven by a terrible sense of deficiency. When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money. ~Alanis Obomsawin, Native American activist and filmmaker.

...

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

This was Alaska

He was a rescue ferret who I cared for in 2019 and 2020.

He had become disabled and his person was no longer willing or able to care for him. He had a soft-tissue injury and his hind legs didn't work very well, I first wrote about him in November of 2019.

I gave him the best life that I could, he got big and fat, because he ate a lot and literally couldn't burn it all off fast enough even when zipping around in his little ferret-cart. He made friends and was happy, but he never regained full mobility. He passed away from what turned out to be Cardiomyopathy in the late summer of 2020. 

Why do I bring this up? Because that's what the American ideal, the American experiment basically is right now...a rescue ferret.

As the mad whirl of media attention and spin of all things Trump begins...with the media positively gleeful about having all the chaos to cover...America isn't just in the wilderness. No, America is like an old gray rescue ferret huddled up in a cage at some old guy's ferret rescue  with a bunch of others like itself, sleeping in a pile in the corner, waiting for the food and water bowls to get filled and to be let out for playtime, hoping that somebody...anybody...other than the kind old man that comes and takes care of it might take the time to give a damn.

And worse, American Christianity, Democracy, and a whole bunch of the other ideals that we claim to hold so dear are right the fuck there with it, like so many old ferrets sleeping in the same pile...worried that they don't become the sole purview of the kind of people who collect things like old gray rescue ferrets and discarded ideals.

And there's precedent, I count an actual Communist among my ferret-connected friends, too. Not a bad guy, but I wouldn't let him run the economy either.

It's like as far as the goddamn Clicks-and-Likes-based media is concerned, there never was a Democratic Party or a Kamala Harris or even an American Experiment, in the eternal Now of this fucking endless political silly season we seem to be stuck in, this Groundhog Day of Idiocracy, there never even was a Jesus Christ. 

They say "God wills it" they mean Trump.

Yes, these people are that fucked in the head and addicted to blowing the damn narcissist.

It's all Trump, all the time, and I'm goddamned tired of it already. But you know what I'm even more tired of??

The usual head-ass Democratic takes. Like, motherfucker, 20 million of your own damn people didn't fucking show up. You wanna know why I'm comparing America and its ideals to a bunch of forgotten rescue ferrets?

That's fucking why, that right there. Like, do you fuckers believe anything at all?? Kamala Harris called Republicans weird and said "We're not going back" and these idiots stopped her?? It was a line of attack that worked, for fuck's sake!

The people, for the most part, with the most to lose here...couldn't be bothered to get off the couch.

You wanna know why American Christianity for the most part gets defined by a bunch of fucking Chuds who...when some person actually reads the Bible to them (cuz they don't read it on their own) call the Lord's Word, including the Sermon On The Mount, a bunch of "Woke" and "Liberal" propaganda??

Because far too many allegedly decent goddamn people didn't correct their behavior for too long.

So now they think God must be like the fucking Empire from Star Wars or some bullshit.

Now, I get it, some of these people are or at least appear to be dangerous or they're behaviorally and otherwise obnoxious and all a lot of people want to do is get away. Trust me, I've been there. I was married to that shit, yo.

You would think, then, that voting against this crap (Secret ballot and all!) would therefore be the path of least resistance to at least keep this shit away from yourself, your kids, your LGBT neighbors, POC, etc.

But too many of us couldn't be bothered, and now we're probably literally going to have to fight...to survive, let alone reestablish America in some recognizable form...and they won't give us a choice.

It's basically fight or they're just going to kill us anyway. You cannot appeal to the conscience of somebody who ain't got one. 

You'd be amazed (if you'd paid the least bit of attention) at just how much time these fucking people spend talking about all this stuff. These motherfuckers spend more time thinking about gay stuff than actual gay people do. It's creepy and it's sick and it's very, very goddamned weird.

Modern Evangelical "Christianity" doesn't give a shit about Jesus Christ.

And these fucking people think Trump is going to give them everything that they want.

Trump has basically become these fucking people's God. Hell, they've fucking said so.

Yes, I'm a former Christian and No, I'll never understand it. Why a bunch of fucking Baptists and Pentecostals think that a debased old racist former Democrat atheist who only glommed onto the idea of "God" when he thought it might be him will somehow make America more conservative or more "Christian" I'll never know.

I can't fit my head far enough up my own ass to see that point of view.

And when they don't get it, when Trump simply cannot be their imagined Right-wing Santa Claus, giving them treats and the rest of us nothing but shit, when the rest of the world refuses to put up with Trump and the Republican Party's collective bullshit and these fucking assholes get nothing but higher prices and the scorn of the rest of America and the whole damned world for their trouble, the religious nuts (who spent the most time sucking off the damned narcissist in the first place) aren't going to blame him...they're going to blame their fellow Americans.

And if we haven't all started shooting at each other by then, well, guess what? 

If you want to live you're going to have to shoot back when they start shooting at you.

Lest you forget "Deus Vult" (God Wills It, in Latin) was the Crusaders slogan and excuse for mass murder. Don't think people like Pete Hegseth wouldn't act like that again, if they thought they could get away with it. Among other things, motherfucker's cheated on all of his wives and got a fellow Fox News employee pregnant...all while basically having "Jesus Loves Me" tattooed on his junk. Do you think that fool has any scruples whatever??

This crap is getting old, here and around the world.

The rest of the world doesn't have to put up with our shit, my dudes, just like I don't have to put up with yours.

We need to start telling these fucking people "No" America.

And we need to mean it.

You cannot reason with people who do not think you have the right to exist.

Instead of discarding our ideals or locking them in a cage when they're inconvenient or not "entertaining" anymore, we need to fight for those ideals.

Otherwise, why have them??

Look, even if these fucking people succeed in starting a war and breaking America and trashing the country and we go down like the Soviet Union did and start over with a bunch of smaller Republics...well, guess what? 

Somebody has got to be our Ukrainians. Sooner or later somebody has got to stand up.

It's a law of nature.

So get off your ass and get after it, It might as well be us, right?? 

Otherwise, what's even the goddamn point??

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

You either believe in the future, and the promises our country already made to us, or you don't.

771 days between the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Fall of the Soviet Union. Our timeframe will be similar...if we let it.

But we can choose not to.

We can say "No."

We can fight.

We can give our founding ideals a proper place and care for them appropriately, and live by them, you can take that rescue ferret home and give it a good life.

We can stitch this web of life back together.

Yes We Can.

Слава Україна!

Never have I witnessed such sincere hospitality and the overwhelming spirit of true brotherhood as is practiced by people of all colors and races here in this ancient Holy Land, the House of Abraham, Muhammad, and all the other Prophets of the Holy Scriptures. For the past week, I have been utterly speechless and spellbound by the graciousness I see displayed all around me by people of all colors...

You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to rearrange much of my thought-patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions. This was not too difficult for me. Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.

During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug) -- while praying to the same God -- with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the actions and in the deeds of the "white" Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan, and Ghana. We were truly all the same (brothers) -- because their belief in one God had removed the "white" from their minds, the 'white' from their behavior, and the 'white' from their attitude. I could see from this, that perhaps if white Americans could accept the Oneness of God, then perhaps, too, they could accept in reality the Oneness of Man -- and cease to measure, and hinder, and harm others in terms of their "differences" in color.

With racism plaguing America like an incurable cancer, the so-called "Christian" white American heart should be more receptive to a proven solution to such a destructive problem. Perhaps it could be in time to save America from imminent disaster -- the same destruction brought upon Germany by racism that eventually destroyed the Germans themselves.

They asked me what about the Hajj had impressed me the most. . . . I said, "The brotherhood! The people of all races, color, from all over the world coming together as one! It has proved to me the power of the One God. . . . All ate as one, and slept as one. Everything about the pilgrimage atmosphere accented the Oneness of Man under One God. 

~Malcolm X, Letter following the Hajj.

Five

You were just babies then!" she said.
"What?" I said.
"You were just babies in the war— like the ones upstairs!"
I nodded that this was true. We had been foolish virgins in the war, right at the end of childhood.
"But you're not going to write it that way, are you." This wasn't a question. It was an accusation.
"I — I don't know," I said.
"Well I know," she said. "You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be portrayed in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs." So then I understood. It was war that made her so angry. She didn't want her babies or anybody else's babies killed in wars. And she thought wars were partly encouraged by books and movies.
So I held up my right hand and I made her a promise: "Mary," I said, "I don't think this book of mine is ever going to be finished. I must have written five thousand pages by now, and thrown them all away. If I ever do finish it, though, I give you my word of honor: there won't be a part for Frank Sinatra or John Wayne.
"I tell you what," I said, "I'll call it The Children's Crusade." She was my friend after that.

~From the novel Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut 

Original Post

This is Loki, my current rescue ferret. He deserves a better world to live in than this shit.

Man does not weave this web of life. He is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. ~Chief Seattle.

771 Days (American Judgment Day, Five.)

Yuri Orlov: [At Andrei's presidential compound showing the Liberian president a silver revolver pistol] The Glock is interesting. It is made of a polymer composite. Many of my clients feel that they can go through airport security without seeing a lot of bells and whistles. Personally, I do not recommend that. [Andrei chuckles glancing over at a guard flirting with a female staffer] On the other hand, if you are looking for traditional wheel gun, there is no substitute for six inches of muzzle energy of 357 mag I mean, of course, it will never jam. [Andrei shoots the guard flirting with the female staffer] WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!

Andrei Baptiste Sr.: [Aims gun at Yuri] WHAT DID YOU SAY?!

Yuri Orlov: Now, you gonna have to buy it! IT IS A USED GUN! How can I sell a used gun? [Takes pistol from Andrei with his son and bodyguards all aiming rifles at an entirely still business-focused Yuri]

Andrei Baptiste Sr.: A "used gun"? A "used gun"?! [Chuckles] That's a good one. You know? There is no discipline with the youth today. I tried to set an example, but it is difficult huh? Personally, I blame MTV. [Smiles and Yuri nods in acknowledgment] A "used gun"? [Chuckles heartily, gets up and extends hand for handshake] I think you and I, we can do business. ~From the film Lord Of War.

...

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.

Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard.

That's the kind of people Trump is nominating to fill his Cabinet.

Look, I'm just gonna say it. 

There were 771 days between the Fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9th, 1989 and the Fall of the Soviet Union on Christmas Day of 1991. 

Yeah, I just fucking went there. Remember that, 771 Days.

We're next of a lot of fucking people don't get their head out of their ass. That's Putin's goal and the goal of a whole bunch of these idiot billionaires like Elon and Pete, because America is about the only country that could restrain their behavior by itself. The EU could do it...locally, but not globally, and all those countries are...been...under the threat of a Russian invasion.

And we will certainly half-ass helping them out, just like we've half-assed the whole Ukraine thing most of the time.

If it comes to that, which it likely will.

Because far more often than not, America, doing the minimum necessary is simply what we do.

Don't argue with me, I have a job, I'm aware.

I believe that These Fucking People's goal is to break up the United States of America, and it may come to that, simply because These Fucking People are so goddamned incompetent and toxic, and hell...so is their entire goddamned movement. I'm tired of this shit, aren't you??

And it may well come to that, I know from my own experience of dealing with somebody that has a Personality Disorder that sometimes there's no saving the situation and all you can do is get yourself away.

But a lot of people...especially a lot of liberals...would go for it simply because it'd be the path of least resistance.

We're in this mess because too goddamned many Democratic voters sat this one out because they didn't get a blowjob and a free beer for showing up, and too many more had some priggish "statement" they wanted to make. We all knew the stakes, we were warned again and again by people who knew what the fuck they were talking about.

And too many people didn't care.

Liberals tend to get lazy when they feel safe, and they expect somebody else to do the work.

And not enough people did.

Or worse...and yes, I do think this badly of a lot of motherfuckers...I think it comes down to Joe Biden wasn't "entertaining" (whatever that means) and cosplay "fighting" against Trump made a lot of idiots (*Cough* Resistance Twitter *Cough*) feel important and special and more importantly made them a lot of money. 

Hell...there's whole industries of Anti-Trump and Pro-Trump shit out there.

I mean I literally just saw a pro-Trump ad right before a Lincoln Project video on fucking YouTube.

And all those people lose money if and when he goes away, and he's old and not in good shape so that'll happen.

Just like I said I fully expect there to be some violent outburst within Two Weeks of the day after the election (and there's arguably been that on a small scale) I will say that I think we have about two years to pull this thing out of the damn fire and save our own asses. 

Whether we can do that as a unified country or not, I cannot say, whether it comes down to peaceful resistance or armed conflict, I simply don't know.

I do know MAGA wants some kind of a civil war, oh yes, they do.

They've said so, ad nauseum.

But, given the election results despite the known gravity of the situation, I think it's just as likely that America simply...dies of disinterest? I don't know. The ideal of America right now certainly seems about as forlorn and lonely as an old gray rescue ferret sleeping in a cage at some old guy's ferret rescue, huddled up with all the other cast-off Dooks and waiting for the food bowl to get filled and playtime to start, knowing it might as well just go back to bed because outside of the few people keeping it going, nobody outside of that little space gives a fuck.

I saw something last night, someone...I think it was Ken White/Popehat via Bluesky or maybe even on Threads...brought up the example of the Global War On Terror...and did it ever really end? And then they brought up the Cold War and compared how America just counted its blessings when the Wall fell and it was over, and moved on...and compared that to how Rome just built and rebuilt itself over time.

And eventually, Rome became two empires, then it became many empires, and cultures and several languages...affecting everything from the Islamic Golden Age to the Age of Exploration to the character of Europe and Latin America and the US and Canada today...hell, there's even video games! Likewise France and Spain and the UK inflected a good bit of the world with their own cultural imprints. Will we?

Well the truth is, the cultures and systems that built the Roman Empire outlived it by a goddamn fair bit, fuck, you could argue we still live within them.

If we're lucky, that'll be us, too. All empires fall. But for fuck's sake let's at least try and go out on a good note and at a time of our own choosing, shall we??

Because when it comes right down to it, all these "Christian Nationalists" (who are, in reality, neither) really want to do is kill people. I'm sick of these goddamned barbarians.

But the sad fact for a hell of a lot of people is even with our current situation being as fucked up as it is, Russia is a hell of a lot closer to being in The Handmaid's Tale than we are.

And if we do fall like the Soviet Union did, when the dust settles, somebody's gonna have to be like the Ukrainians, somebody always steps up, it always comes down to a fight eventually. So, even then it ain't over.

There's no excuse for this shit.

Maybe we ought to stop with this whole "American Experiment" bit, admit the Experiment came out with mixed results, if it didn't fail outright and just start with the goddamn American Project.

It's a fixer-upper.

We've got, by my reckoning, maybe two years to get the fucking job done...with the tools we've got, after work, on a budget, and we've got to persuade people to get off they ass and help out.

So get to work, because if we don't, things only get worse.

You can't win if you don't fight.

Слава Україна!

Sure, we were unprepared, our tools, our training, everything I just talked about, all one class-A, gold-standard clusterfuck, but the weapon that really failed wasn’t something that rolled off an assembly line. It’s as old as…I don’t know, I guess as old as war. It’s fear, dude, just fear and you don’t have to be Sun freaking Tzu to know that real fighting isn’t about killing or even hurting the other guy, it’s about scaring him enough to call it a day... “Shock and Awe”? Perfect name, “Shock and Awe”! But what if the enemy can’t be shocked and awed? Not just won’t, but biologically can’t! That’s what happened that day outside New York City, that’s the failure that almost lost us the whole damn war. The fact that we couldn’t shock and awe Zack boomeranged right back in our faces and actually allowed Zack to shock and awe us! They’re not afraid! No matter what we do, no matter how many we kill, they will never, ever be afraid! ~Todd Waino, World War Z (Novel by Max Brooks)

Four

Never have I witnessed such sincere hospitality and the overwhelming spirit of true brotherhood as is practiced by people of all colors and races here in this ancient Holy Land, the House of Abraham, Muhammad, and all the other Prophets of the Holy Scriptures. For the past week, I have been utterly speechless and spellbound by the graciousness I see displayed all around me by people of all colors...

You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to rearrange much of my thought-patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions. This was not too difficult for me. Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.

During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug) -- while praying to the same God -- with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the actions and in the deeds of the "white" Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan, and Ghana. We were truly all the same (brothers) -- because their belief in one God had removed the "white" from their minds, the 'white' from their behavior, and the 'white' from their attitude. I could see from this, that perhaps if white Americans could accept the Oneness of God, then perhaps, too, they could accept in reality the Oneness of Man -- and cease to measure, and hinder, and harm others in terms of their "differences" in color.

With racism plaguing America like an incurable cancer, the so-called "Christian" white American heart should be more receptive to a proven solution to such a destructive problem. Perhaps it could be in time to save America from imminent disaster -- the same destruction brought upon Germany by racism that eventually destroyed the Germans themselves.

They asked me what about the Hajj had impressed me the most. . . . I said, "The brotherhood! The people of all races, color, from all over the world coming together as one! It has proved to me the power of the One God. . . . All ate as one, and slept as one. Everything about the pilgrimage atmosphere accented the Oneness of Man under One God. 

~Malcolm X, Letter following the Hajj.

Abomination (American Judgment Day, Four.)

The fight is here, I need ammunition, not a ride. - Volodymyr Zelensky.

...

Thou Shalt Not Kill. - Exodus 20:13

I'm gonna say this again, and I'm gonna keep saying it until somebody listens.

Arm yourself. 

Prepare as best you can for everything to go to shit.

It will.

At best,  imagine that America just handed national leadership over to the kind of bigoted HOA Karen who judges the black lady next door for drinking a glass of wine on a Saturday night even though she snorts cocaine after work.

Somewhere in the middle, consider just how many of these fucking people are just contradictory,  selfish, willfully insane utter morons who think they're gonna be somehow magically exempted from all the bad shit that happens.

They won't. 

I'm reminded of the flashback scene from the latest Walking Dead series of the people dancing and using drugs in a club even as the zombie apocalypse is already starting all around them. The character having the flashback walks out just before the Dead get in.

Cuz that's what this is.

The Walking Dead, but with idiots instead of zombies.

At worst, these fucking people are utterly insane murderous fascists and they've said so, publicly, forever.

And they all hate normal people, doing normal people stuff.

And...this one for both sides of the line...there's a lot of people for whom politics is entertainment, utterly performative, neither it nor anything they say is any more real to them than last week's D&D game. 

These fucking people are lost.

They don't give a shit that jobs like agriculture, construction, food service and retail are in a lot of places totally dependent on immigrants and their labor.

They neither seem to know nor care that shit like fast food and retail that are totally dependent on supply chains...that they intend to remove the entire labor force from whole chunks of, or they were OK with the people talking horrible shit about it...are much larger sectors of our economy than they were ever intended to be.

You think they give a fuck about your mom's Social Security??

And when it all goes to hell...soon...they're going to be mad as hell that they can't get a burger or buy the latest PlayStation.

Because all they really care about is entertaining themselves.

When it starts, when shit begins to break down...they'll see it as a big adventure.

Until internet connectivity crashes. Until the power goes out.

When they have to survive and it's not fun anymore is when things are really gonna go sideways. 

These are the people who couldn't just stay the fuck home during COVID-19.

And what do you think they're gonna do when shit naturally starts breaking??

There's already been mass threats of rape and murder, idiots have already acted on those threats.

Cornell University just shut down a fraternity because a woman was drugged and raped. 

What do you figure chuds like David Leavitt...a notional Leftist who hates Trump, but who also apparently jokes about cutting up women...are gonna do when there are large scale declared sex strikes??

Individually and on smaller scales that's already starting.

When liberals and leftists, people who see what's happening and whatever anti-Trump conservatives there are start organizing and planning and preparing to defend themselves on a larger scale what do you figure the idiots will do?

Again it's already starting.

The idiots will see people who are taking action as video game mobs that drop a lot of loot.

Too many privileged people are thinking the system will hold.

It won't, at least not everywhere.

And where it does??

Where things hold up and proceed as kind-of "normal" it's probably going to go one of two ways:

The People, the state or local government, whatever have successfully resisted fascism but your day is periodically going to be interrupted by air raid warnings and work will be interrupted by occasionally having to shelter in place or go down to the bomb shelter because the fascists will attack, troops will be visible but polite, think Ukraine.

The People in that bomb shelter will be pretty diverse as Rainbow Nation rides out the storm.

They did not, and everything seems vaguely "normal" but the media won't shut up about every fucking insipid little detail of Trump building himself a golden palace as the visible population weirdly begins to skew white and male, people with cybernetic implants...and weird associated medical conditions nobody ever thought of because of them...start appearing. The cops are all Roid freaks.

No one talks about the war, everybody quietly defers to a plethora of Russian and Chinese "advisors." The occasional weird wealthy person is treated like a god.

Seriously, I saw a freaking magazine at Walmart hawking the idea on the Monday morning before election day. 

Think bad science fiction.

And the party line from Evangelical and Medieval Catholic churches alike will be; "It's not the Mark Of The Beast when WE do it." America saw the Abomination standing in the holy place and said "I gotta get me some of that."

Winter is coming.

This isn't the last gasp of a false world-system, it's only the second or third.

Start preparing,  this is going to suck.

Слава Україна

Three

When ye therefore see the Abomination of Desolation, spoken of by the prophet Daniel standing in the holy place (who so reads let him understand:) Let them who are in Judea flee into the mountains. -Matthew 24:15-16