Empire (American Judgment Day, Twelve.)

Kareem Said: You're packed.

Arnold "Poet" Jackson: No, I decided I didn't want to take anything out this place.

Kareem Said: So no last meal? No goodbyes to anybody. Just see ya, have a nice life.

Arnold "Poet" Jackson: It's kinda fucked up, leaving. Everybody else is staying. It's like waking up from a dream.

Kareem Said: Hope is a waking dream.

Arnold "Poet" Jackson: Who that, Mohammad?

Kareem Said: Aristotle.

Arnold "Poet" Jackson: Well, that fuck ain't never served no time in Oz.

...

There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy. Remember this. Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they've already enlisted in the cause. Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. And then remember this. The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire's authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege. Remember this. Try. ~Karis Nemik, from the Star Wars series Andor, Season 1, Episode 12 "Rix Road"

...

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 saw this last night.

Evidently, Syrian rebel forces have retaken the city of Aleppo, held by Assad loyalists and the Russians since 2016. Hell, I remember watching clips of the evacuation on YouTube.

Good.

I've been seeing...hell, it's on my Widgets on this new laptop right now...that the Russian Ruble is in the shitter, Georgians are revolting against Putin's puppet party over their decision to "Pause" Georgian EU talks until 2028.

Trump or no Trump, all does not appear to be going well for Authoritarianism, Inc.

We'd best remember that, and keep going at these motherfuckers.

The thing to remember is, this is a fight.

More to the point, it's a fight against a bunch of brittle, egotistical, flabby narcissists who don't really want to do the work.

You can't give up.

I mean, they don't wanna work that hard, but they'll try and hang in longer than you if it means they get to be mean to people...yes, that's really all this crap is about.

Fighting, war, shit like that...isn't about destruction. It's about breaking the enemy's will to fight, it's about getting the other guy to give up. If the cost of fascism (or whatever) is too high, most of these Republican shitheads won't actually want to pay it. They'll try to get somebody else to, but in the end it doesn't work that way.

Things like that are why we're not still fighting in Afghanistan, for one.

Oh, they'll be mad about that, too. But fundamentally as long as these shitty little drama queens have somebody to fight with, they're (by their own definition, at least) happy. Not that I'd profess to imagine how somebody could be happy with perpetual drama and grievance, let alone find it entertaining or a worthy purpose for one's life.

These people don't want a real conflict, they want a narcissistic hand-job.

I can't imagine all those Syrians celebrating their liberation in Aleppo give much of a shit about "Culture Wars" or various arguments on social media right now.

Trouble is, I think there's a fair number of Americans who'd have to fall about that far before they'd fucking get it.

They'll have to see for themselves that conflict and war are horrible things, and that the idea of such things being glorious doesn't really exist all that much outside of movies.

We're not the people we have been in the past, there's a reason I keep bumping up a bunch of my posts from here that I wrote during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic on BlueSky. 

That's because far too many of us found literally every possible excuse to do everything but what should have been done.

Thing is, enough of us came through that I think the situation was salvageable then, and I think it is now, too...although I'm not sure things will survive in exactly their current form. That's simply because the nuts inhabit an almost entirely different fun-house mirror reality from the rest of us.

And those fucking people. the cultists and fake-outrage and grievance addicts, are well and truly going to have to fuck around and find out and literally hit rock-bottom before they see where they fucked up.

Hey, I'm an addict myself, and I never said this was gonna be fun.

But sooner or later we are all gonna have to face this shit, pick a side, and do our part. The bad guys certainly will. They always show up.

The question is, why didn't you??

And now, to use that popular turn of phrase from these last few years, we're all gonna have to go through some things.

But there is hope, and we can't give up.

It's kinda that simple, like I've been saying.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

And just because some idiots think Trump is "entertaining" and they'd rather be entertained than free...doesn't mean you have to buy into that bullshit. The Red Caesar is more King Lear than Julius, and America was never intended to be an Empire.

Remember that, because it'll be on that test you keep trying to procrastinate and put off, and it'll show in the end product.

Just because some of us want to live in the Empire from Star Wars don't mean you have to.

The only way these assholes win is if you let them.

Слава Україна!

Cassian Andor: What? To steal from the Empire, what do you need? A uniform, some dirty hands, and an Imperial toolkit. They’re so proud of themselves, they don’t even care. They’re so fat and satisfied, they can’t imagine it…

Luthen Rael: Can’t imagine what?

Andor: That someone like me would ever get inside their house, walk their floors, spit in their food, take their gear.

Eleven

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