Raw Stupid (The Wheel Turns, Two.)

SEAT thyself Sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take high abstracted man alone; and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe. But from the same point, take mankind in mass, and for the most part, they seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and hereditary. But most humble though he was, and far from furnishing an example of the high, humane abstraction; the Pequod’s carpenter was no duplicate; hence, he now comes in person on this stage. ~Herman Melville, Moby Dick, "The Carpenter."

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Think about this; think about how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of 'em are stupider than that. ~George Carlin

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When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything. ~Umberto Eco

I saw this earlier today.

Hold the fuck on, "Raw" WATER??

Haven't any of these idiots ever played Oregon Trail??

Like 90% of the time that game ended with "You have died of Dysentery."

I'm only gonna tell you this one time, and note I say this as somebody who made that mistake and got to regret the hell out of it twice; Drinking bad, developing-country local, untreated or you otherwise don't know where it's been water is a mistake most people only make once...because after you've spent a week or so shitting your guts out once you tend not to want to do it again. I mean, if you have to and when in doubt, there's always water purification tablets and powdered Gatorade.

The first time I got sick that way, I was a kid and it was a trip to Mexico, that's understandable. Second time it happened I was an Airman deployed to Saudi Arabia and there were copious amounts of bottled water all around for a damned reason. I get that this is not a thing one generally has to think about here in America and yes, I absolutely get that the average American idiot doesn't know that, much less even appreciate how much of a gift it is...even in the context of today's world and how the global Other Half lives. People die from drinking bad water, even today it happens all the time.

There are places in this world where clean, safe drinking water is a freaking luxury. In point of fact there are places like that in America...Flint, Michigan or parts of the Navajo Nation in Arizona, for example.

But here's the thing, if things go sideways here...let alone as sideways as I think they might...yes, that could very well happen here. It could happen in San Francisco or Washington D.C. if somebody takes out a water-treatment plant with a laser-guided bomb. In point of fact it wasn't all that long ago historically that America was itself a Developing Country (in modern terms) and shit like that happened all the time. Just because people don't routinely die of disease or starvation and shit like that today doesn't mean the risk is gone. It's just that we happen to have enough (most of the time) that for a majority of us, such things aren't on the threat-axis.

And yeah, that's actually a pretty damned good thing. You don't want to face shit like that, either.

I'm legit tired of this Anti-vax, fake crunchy-earthy bullshit and its eugenicist and vapidly privileged undertones...not to mention the fact that these fuckin' people seem to want to be conned by every Tom, Dick and Harry that comes along and makes them feel "Special" or whatever bullshit.

This crap is going to get people killed, during COVID-19 it killed hundreds of thousands of us.

When is enough, enough??

How many people have to die or be subjugated under fascism or what the fuck ever before these goddamned narcissists stop with this bullshit??

Actually, probably not that many, it just has to affect them. And that's the sad part of all this crap. It's not even that they have anything much that scans as a valid ideological reason for any of this, most of the time it's just basic selfishness and a sort of childish oppositional defiant disorder towards being told what to do by anybody who shows basic competence in how the world really works.

Like I said before, and I know it's New Years, but the wheel is going to turn. Things will move forward with or without you. You can cosplay Grizzly Adams type of shit all you want, but it helps to remember that stuff like that was just a TV show and maybe be grateful you have flush toilets, the internet and a world where your pets aren't a potential optional food source if it's a bad winter.

If you live in America, Australia, Europe, much of Asia and other parts of the civilized world, there's honestly people who would do almost anything to have the problems that you have.

And all the conspiracy theorist hooey in the world isn't going to change that or (at the end of the day) make you feel any better if you're somehow guilty about it.

Maybe stop trying to cosplay stupid shit, and start trying to make the world better for everybody??

It's like I told my doctor awhile back, there's functionally no reason that a gold miner in Sudan should not be paid the same as some unionized miner somewhere in America. Poverty, structural or otherwise, is often a choice made and inflicted on a person by others.

Conspiracy theory horseshit and medical woo woo very often isn't. Stop being stupid on purpose, people. 

Nobody ever invented the future by trying to act like a cave man shouting "Unga Bunga."

Seriously, the freaking Romans knew to pipe their gray water and their shit downstream, even legions in the field did so when making camp.

What the hell is our excuse??

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Remember when your High School History teacher said "The course of human events changes because of the deeds of great men"?. Well the bitch was lying. Fuck Caesar, fuck Lincoln, fuck Mahatma Gandhi. The world keeps moving because of you and me: the anonymous. Revolutions get started because people don't have enough bread. Wars start over a game of checkers. ~Augustus Hill, from the HBO Series "Oz" S1, E8 "A Game Of Checkers."

One

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

Bonus Content

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.

World War X (The Wheel Turns, One.)

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)
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Remember when your High School History teacher said "The course of human events changes because of the deeds of great men"?. Well the bitch was lying. Fuck Caesar, fuck Lincoln, fuck Mahatma Gandhi. The world keeps moving because of you and me: the anonymous. Revolutions get started because people don't have enough bread. Wars start over a game of checkers. ~Augustus Hill, from the HBO Series "Oz" S1, E8 "A Game Of Checkers."

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...We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world, a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us. No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we'll kill you. Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush? They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us; they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis. And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom Of Fear (2004)

I've been watching this lately, the ethno-Nationalists and fascist racists are fighting with the tech bros and their techno-fascists. Let me put it another way, MAGA's, the Greed-heads are gonna win this round. You lost, congratulations, you played yourselves. It was always gonna turn out like this and we warned you...for literally years.

Because Trump, fundamentally, needs their money (and perhaps more importantly their acceptance) more than he needs your cheers and the money he grifts off of you. If all else fails, Elon can just build him a VR head-rig and an AI virtual world where All Is Trump and it's all cocaine, narcissistic fuel and porn stars just for him. If you can't do that...you're gonna lose.

And people like Laura Loomer are just now finding out that no matter what they do, the Tech Oligarchs can always find another slave.

I rather suspect most of MAGA is gonna find itself like the Clone Troopers in the Star Wars movies...mostly replaced by new followers as those in Power find other people who are more useful and for longer periods of time. Pro tip: It was always the goal of people like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy (not to mention Donald Trump) to enslave White People. I specifically warned y'all repeatedly. These motherfuckers see themselves as the Lord in the Castle...and the rest of you as the serfs in the fields, at best. If not just plain dead, because as these fucking people see it, fewer people means more money for them.

And guess what? That's all they really care about. The racism was just to get you to buy in so they could scam you with nothing more than the "idea" of you getting to have your boot on somebody else's throat before they kill you too...and then replace you with a robot they think they won't have to pay. (And they'll be surprised when the robots rebel, too.)

I've been saying this since...well, shit, since before social media was even a thing. Hell, I was one of the people who argued against letting these motherfuckers take over Conservatism in the first place, and both against hate and for humanity, and yes, for working with the other side, too, for this very fuckin' goddamned reason. In the mind of any of these motherfuckers it's the height of Power to turn the right-wing White People that vote for them into the next tranche of slaves, and for awhile there, they'd even convinced you to like it.

Because you idiots thought you'd be a better class of slaves than some random "Other" or some shit. I don't know. Somehow it took you fuckers being talked down to by Vivek Ramaswamy for it to sink in that being a better class of Slave don't make you free.

And there's nothing conservative about Slavery.

Well, as it turns out Slavery was the only thing these assholes really believe in.

"Conservatives" since at least Nixon have imagined themselves righteously standing athwart the flow of History yelling "Stop!" But the real reason was...well, simply to cover for this bullshit.

Nobody stops history or progress, they know this.

The wheel is going to turn, is turning, and anybody what tries to stop that just gets crushed.

Change is the only constant in the world. Conservatism as I was taught it was about trying to manage it, not stop it.

But I and people like me were clearly in the minority, as this last election showed there simply aren't enough Republicans like that anymore...if there ever were.

Nixon, Ford, Reagan, the Bushes...hell, even Trump, but although he's closer to the "ideal" he lacks the force of personality or will to do much...were just placeholders for an unelected shadow-leader like Elon Musk to get into Power on behalf of the Business Class, and even though Trump is likely gonna fail to deliver everything (or even much) of what they want, this is probably gonna be their best chance to do a smash-and-grab Oligarch raid, maybe even break up the USA before they imagine themselves fleeing into the arms of the advancing Russians (Never mind that if Russia can't conquer Ukraine, they will lose vs. the rest of Europe) who they think they can simply buy off, or jet off to glittering Gulf Sheikdoms where they can do whatever they want and the harsh religiosity really is for other people.

If the USA is going to become more socially liberal, they either want to break it up so the parts beholden to them stay that way, or deprive it of its (mostly economic) empire and leave us as the 21st Century equivalent of the UK, knowing we'll have made much less of a De Jure impact upon the world and will have fewer friends so we're not even a Networking-superpower. The closest we ever will get to having a Commonwealth is probably NATO.

International Billionaire-dom wants us to fight each other and as many other "enemies" real and imagined as possible so that we're not restraining their behavior.

And they think they can scuttle out of the way before they get rolled over.

Again, and I'll say it louder for those in the back: When Republicans start going after Republicans has always been my tell for when there's actually going to be a civil war.

And it's not that Elon or Trump or Vivek won't be able to get out in time, it's that they won't even want to because they're all narcissists deeply addicted to drama and bullshit and high on their own supply. 

They equate money with strength, and Social Darwinism with actually being the Apex Predators that their flabby asses are most definitely not in real life.

And I'm telling you now, just like I've been telling you for awhile, they're going to lose control of this mess and end up fighting for survival just like everybody else. 

Even Elon is finding out that the Hate of the American Idiot really don't care what color you are. let alone what you believe.

The Christians and everybody else will find out the same. Haters only care about having somebody to hate...anything that's against that is "tyranny" to them.

Maybe if we wanna beat this thing, Americans are just gonna have to stop being assholes??

Nah, that's just crazy talk.

Again, you either believe in freedom or you don't.

And the Wheel turns whether we like it or not.

Happy New Year.

Слава Україна!

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

Last Post

The wind whispers of fear and hate. The war has killed love. And those that confess to the Angkar are punished, and no one dare ask where they go. Here, only the silent survive. ~Dith Pran, The Killing Fields

Last Series

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

He That Believeth In Me (The Jimmy Carter Post.)

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:

And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats:

And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

For I hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungry, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?

When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?

Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:

For I hungered, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:

I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.

Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungry, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?

Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.

And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

~Matthew 25:31-46

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Democracy's great recent successes — in India, Portugal, Spain, Greece — show that our confidence in this system is not misplaced. Being confident of our own future, we are now free of that inordinate fear of communism which once led us to embrace any dictator who joined us in that fear. I’m glad that that’s being changed.

For too many years, we’ve been willing to adopt the flawed and erroneous principles and tactics of our adversaries, sometimes abandoning our own values for theirs. We’ve fought fire with fire, never thinking that fire is better quenched with water. This approach failed, with Vietnam the best example of its intellectual and moral poverty. But through failure we have now found our way back to our own principles and values, and we have regained our lost confidence. ~Jimmy Carter

Yesterday Jimmy Carter died, I got the news when I woke up and checked my social media.

Jimmy Carter, farmer, Naval officer, activist, Governor, President, founder of Habitat for Humanity and peace negotiator, and informing all these things was that he was a Christian without being an asshole about it. Jimmy Carter didn't try to be a "Great" man, he sought to be a good one, and I rather suspect the one title he ever cared about having was the one he got at the end "Good and faithful servant."

Fair winds and following seas, brother. We have the watch.

I rather suspect that we will not see his like again, not least because historically, America does not even appreciate good leaders, but loves mediocre ones who talk a good game, and we'll be lucky to get out of our current mess as one country to find another mediocre leader to replace the incompetent and shitty but (according to the mob) entertaining one we're about to get.

And if we fail, it's going to take leaders of at least competent quality and exceptional effort by decent people to keep civilization together where it's willing to be kept together. Jimmy Carter was the kind of guy who could do shit like that, and did with Habitat for Humanity. I know people that have houses because of him. I mean, for fuck's sake, via Habitat For Humanity and the local Re-Store up here (Yes, the one here even though I lived downstate at the time) I got a washer and dryer, cheap. My Mom and her then-partner delivered it later. It was certainly more useful than the PCS to Minot Air Force Base that the policies of George HW Bush and Bill Clinton got me.

Sometimes it's the little things that end up being important to people.

With all the crap that's coming, we could use a thousand more like Jimmy Carter, not losing the one we had.

And Jimmy didn't ask for any credit or props for what he did, he did stuff because it was the right thing to do.

And that, right there, is more than this asshole ever did in his life.

Think about that, for a second.

Hell, Jimmy Carter died and Trump tried to make it all about him.

And we, as a nation, lacked the self-respect to not elect this motherfucker again.

I can't help but feel like Jimmy Carter picked the right time to go home.

Jimmy Carter's Christianity was work, not a Thirst Trap. He didn't want to use his carpentry skills to build a big statue of Jesus, he wanted to follow his Lord's ways, and that is much harder which is why most people don't do it. His faith wasn't "Give me $20 and I'll show you the way to Jesus" it was "Give me $20 so I can buy some boxes of screws to help build some people a house." 

He always served others, not himself. He understood the concept of duty.

The work he did, the world he was trying to build? Being a light unto the world? Keeping that effort going now falls to the rest of us. Jimmy didn't just say "Live as if Christ was coming this afternoon" he lived like that.

And we'd best not shirk our duty, especially not to the "Least of these" that Christ often spoke about.

Jimmy Carter didn't.

Remember that, because there's going to be a test later.

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Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: ~John 11:25

The Rosalynn Carter Post

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything. ~Umberto Eco

Last Post

Remember when your High School History teacher said "The course of human events changes because of the deeds of great men"?. Well the bitch was lying. Fuck Caesar, fuck Lincoln, fuck Mahatma Gandhi. The world keeps moving because of you and me: the anonymous. Revolutions get started because people don't have enough bread. Wars start over a game of checkers. ~Augustus Hill, from the HBO Series "Oz" S1, E8 "A Game Of Checkers."

Once More Unto The Breach, Dear Friends (Christmas 2024)

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.

(And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)

And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.

And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:)

To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.

And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.

And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.

And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.  ~Luke 2:1-14

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Joe: For the last time, I'm pretty sure what's killing the crops is this Brawndo stuff.

Secretary of State: But Brawndo's got what plants crave. It's got electrolytes.

Attorney General: "So wait a minute. What you're saying is that you want us to put water on the crops.

Joe: Yes.

Attorney General: Water. Like out the toilet?

Joe: Well, I mean, it doesn't have to be out of the toilet, but, yeah, that's the idea.

Secretary of State: But Brawndo's got what plants crave.

Attorney General: It's got electrolytes.

Joe: Okay, look. The plants aren't growing, so I'm pretty sure that the Brawndo's not working. Now, I'm no botanist, but I do know that if you put water on plants, they grow.

Secretary of Energy: Well, I've never seen no plants grow out of no toilet.

Secretary of State: Hey, that's good. You sure you ain't the smartest guy in the world?

Joe: Okay, look. You want to solve this problem. I want to get my pardon. So why don't we just try it, okay, and not worry about what plants crave?

Attorney General: Brawndo's got what plants crave.

Secretary of Energy: Yeah, it's got electrolytes.

Joe: What are electrolytes? Do you even know?

Secretary of State: It's what they use to make Brawndo.

~From the film Idiocracy.

I saw this yesterday, Christmas eve, while I was sitting around with my Mom's new doggo, a Westie prospectively named Yeti, AKA the Terrierist, and otherwise not wanting to see shit like that.

It's Christmas for fuck's sake!

Republican "Influencer" and former Missouri Secretary of State candidate Valentina Gomez shooting a human effigy in the head in an all-around threatening video. Evidently, she's moved to Texas to run against Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw. I'm not sure how they do things in Colombia, where she's from...but this is America, bitch. People have Constitutional rights, and if I had to guess there's going to be a lot less political will to cater to the whims of Elon, the hard-Right, a few media morons and Trump than people think, I mean so far there ain't a lot of people outside of the "Influencer" class and right-wing Billionaires that are cool with that shit. Thing is, most American politicians know they ass gonna have to face the voters at some point.

More to the point, it's fucking Christmas, lady, can't you come off it and set aside your narcissism for one goddamned day??

It's people like Elon and Valentina who aren't even from here who'd gladly throw caution and good sense to the wind and start a civil war or burn down the global system and turn the USA into the kind of rogue state that the whole world bands together against for their own right to live in peace, not to mention survival. I mean, shit, these fucking people don't even want their fellow Americans to live in peace without them bothering us all the time...and it's getting old.

And some of us are getting very tired of this bullshit.

All the rest of the world really has to do is cut off our supplies of cheap crap, electronics and porn, call in our debts and wait for the economy to collapse and people to start rioting when the prices go sky-high at Walmart. We make a lot less than some people realize we do...and that too, is because of Billionaires who don't know how to make anything except money.

People whose job...or in Elon's case, addiction...is little more than saying dumb shit on the internet to generate clicks, likes and YouTube subscriptions don't have to care about how the world really works. Guys who already have more money than God don't have to give a rat's ass if the US economy goes completely Tango Uniform because the rest of the world cuts us off like a drunk at the bar.

And they're gonna have to, because between 15 and 20 million Democratic voters in the USA couldn't be bothered to get up off their dead asses and go vote against this horseshit.  

These idiots have half the country acting more like a huge gang of bandits than the citizens of a country...that does not even bode well for the ability of America to remain one nation, much less getting other people to join us. Very likely that means, in real terms, that Canada and Mexico (at a minimum likely joined by the rest of the British Commonwealth and Latin America) would kick our ass. It's basic fucking common sense that you don't piss off your allies and you don't shit where you eat. Yes, it really is that simple.

And we're very likely headed toward a nasty cycle of bad choices on a national scale, civil wars, coups and revolutions because fuck, if you think all this crazy shit isn't going to impact your standard of living (or considering the developing Bird Flu situation, ability to keep on living) you have another goddamned thing coming. There were countries, among them Mali, that had revolutions or governments otherwise fall because of inept handling of COVID-19. This will be worse because the mortality rate is higher. But ya know, it seems like a lot of "Christians" and other alleged "Social Conservatives" are Okay with that...simply because they think if they bring enough horrible shit on the world, Jesus will come back or something something Gazpacho.

As if He would not...assuming He is who they say He is...know what they did, and punish them accordingly for causing unnecessary death and strife?? I mean, Thou Shalt Not Kill is supposed to be a thing.

These fucking people think they can manipulate God, without understanding that according to their own teachings, if God can be manipulated by Man then he is not God.

Thing is, if you ask me a lot of right-wingers are basically just atheistic shitheads who don't really believe in anything except their own weird hankering for some kind of autocratic rule by force.

(Mind you, the only reason a whole lot of these idiots believe this crap is they think it won't affect them and they'll get to watch while cackling in Calvinistic glee. When it does affect them and doesn't bring about the harsh religious world they think they want, they'll get mad.)

And because too many people couldn't be bothered to take the small amount of collective effort to be goddamned citizens and do their duty, we're all about to fuck around and find out with this bullshit.

Merry Christmas, I guess.

You either believe in the future and your own freedom or you don't.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends.

Seriously, who the fuck really wants to go through all this shit again??

If we are, as Conservatives used to claim, a country that has a government rather than the other way around, if America is bigger than its government or its leaders, we will survive and in the end not much will change, and we'll be stronger for it despite temporary suffering and hardship.

If we're not, and we really have degenerated as far as the current situation suggests, we won't. And hell, maybe Humans have become so stupid that we deserve Elon Musk owning the world?

I suspect not, despite our temporary lust for Idiocracy.

This season is...and even the celebration of the Birth of Christ at this time is part of that...a season of rebirth.

At the end of the day, you either believe it, or you don't.

So get after it, because this time we don't have a choice.

Слава Україна!

Remember when your High School History teacher said "The course of human events changes because of the deeds of great men"?. Well the bitch was lying. Fuck Caesar, fuck Lincoln, fuck Mahatma Gandhi. The world keeps moving because of you and me: the anonymous. Revolutions get started because people don't have enough bread. Wars start over a game of checkers. ~Augustus Hill, from the HBO Series "Oz" S1, E8 "A Game Of Checkers."

....

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

Last Post

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favored rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow overwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock

and jutty his confounded base,
Swilled with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonor not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you called fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble luster in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!

~William Shakespeare, Henry V.

The kicker here is that all of this shit Trump is spewing is nothing but fantasies and lies. None of it is any more true than any of my ex-wife's Pentecostal false prophecies from almost 25 years ago. Canada doesn't want to join us and isn't going to. Greenland already said No, twice.

It's all bullshit, all of it. That's what cults are.

Follow Trump's crap, you put your soul at risk.

Left Behind (Reason For The Season 2024, Five.)

You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately. Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!
~Oliver Cromwell, dismissal of the Rump Parliament, April 20th, 1653.

...

There's a reason for this, there's a reason education sucks, and it's the same reason it will never ever ever be fixed. It's never going to get any better. Don't look for it. Be happy with what you've got... because the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the real owners now... the real owners. The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls. They got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying. Lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. That's right. ~George Carlin

I saw this last night.

Democratic Congressman Gerry Connolly basically bragging that he beat out Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to  become the top Democrat on the House Oversight committee because he has *Checks Notes* Nine terms in office, to her Three.

There's just one point I'd like to make here. I know AOC is effective, I know she's a fighter, Hell, I know who she is. I had to look this chucklehead up on Wikipedia to even know who the fuck he was.

And my first thought was, Dude, jerking off isn't a job.

Hell, I also saw last night that Republican Congresswoman Kay Granger...effectively missing for six months...was discovered in a dementia ward somewhere. Like, I'm sorry, but I think at this point we need age and term limits for Congress and SCOTUS. Not only because each is effectively a corrupted  gerontocracy but because too goddamned many of these motherfuckers don't seem to have a clit's almost 2025 and not 1985. People are failing to meet the moment and relentlessly out of touch because they have no idea what the fuck is going on.

And honestly, it seems like they don't wanna know.

And here's the thing, rich people, the supposed masters of this moment in time, are no goddamned better. People are tired of this shit, yo. The whole damn reason you have MAGA in the first place is Republican voters got tired of the same old shitty ass Republicans who all looked and talked a certain way and didn't do much of anything. Not that Trump is any better...in fact he's done even less...but those assholes at least think he's "Entertaining" or something something Gazpacho.

This is going to end badly.

Of course via Project 2025 and a whole lot of other ways all the same old shitty ass Republicans all have wormed their way back in and as much as Elon and Trump talk, the GOP's energy is pretty much the same old dysfunction mixed with the shambling zombie of Newt Gingrich's "Contract with on America." No one's happy, I haven't seen a single MAGA brag about "Winning" yet.

Somebody shot a CEO, and hell, even the rich assholes are just doubling down on being rich assholes.

I mean, it honestly doesn't even feel like the Christmas season this year.

And then I saw Steve Bannon is saying we need to start taxing the wealthy...although I have a feeling he actually means only the wealthy who do not meet his particular ideological priors.

(Which, to be fair, is probably most of them.)

I rather suspect that Sloppy Steve is just pointing out the obvious, that these motherfuckers plan on betraying pretty much everybody including most of their own backers.

That, too, will end badly.

None of these guys can keep a secret, they're all like little kids who consciously or otherwise can't wait to tell somebody they did something bad. All of these freaks are trying to double-cross and scam and use each other and us to get a leg up in the Casino that's what being wealthy in the United States of America has been for a bit over 40 years now, though it's significantly escalated in the last 20 years.

And you know who gets left behind? We do. The disabled (no matter how we got that way) the elders, the poor, the veterans, the working people...and we're tired of this shit. I get that if you need anything (aside from already being rich and needing more money) America...whose true religion has always been some form of the Prosperity Gospel...hates your guts. Trouble is, too many people get left behind now.

I don't get why people keep putting up with it, not least because those at the top are pretty in-your-face about not wanting to cut anybody else in at this point, and whether they're consciously aware of it or not a hell of a lot of people are slowly realizing that racism and sexism and shit is a poor substitute for having a decent life. The main issue is that "Conservatives" want to make it so they're the only ones who have a decent life.

That's how revolutions end up starting.

Trouble is, too many people want to burn it all down and ain't thinking "People die in a fire."

It's December, right before Christmas. And there's way the hell too many cracks in the ice, here.

Something is about to break.

And the people who should be rising to the occasion not only don't want to, they're actively seeking to spike the ball away from anybody who does and who has within themselves the capability to meet this moment.

This is going to end badly.

Opiates like religion and the Rapture and shit ain't cutting it. Start chopping away at Social Security and all that, and a lot of Whypipo gonna be mad that Ma and Pa gotta come live with them now. That safety net so many "Conservatives" despise (But also want to use, for themselves) is one of the few threads still holding us together. A I'm serious, rich people...when this thing goes down the nuts are gonna be out for your blood, too, right along with the rest of us that don't believe in their crap. As for you. reader? 

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Get to it. 

Historically, the trouble with movements and revolutions is that even when they have good intentions, they often perpetuate rather than address cultural problems...look at the Soviet Union, for one, three generations later the Russians were worse off than when they started. Make it four, and they're right back to the same system they had before, but with a dictatorial President instead of a Tsar. Congrats, Ivan.

I mean, fuck, look where the New Atheists and Occupy Wall Street ended up. I'd say at least half of those fucking people are MAGA now.

If people want anything to change, even if we are successful it's going to be a narrow window where we can actually do anything, and making it stick is a generational struggle and requires efforts to make sure decent intentions are maintained and that manipulators don't just screw shit up again.

That takes work. That takes everybody doing the work.

And this ain't it, Congressman.

This ain't it.

Слава Україна!

Cassian Andor: Kino. Tell them what to do. It has to be you. Come on, Kino. You do this every day. Tell them what to do.

Kino Loy: [presses PA system] My name is Kino Loy. I'm the day shift manager on Level Five. I'm speaking to you from the command center on Level Eight. We are, at this moment, in control of the facility.
Andor: Is that the best you got?

Loy: How long we hang on, how far we get, how many of us make it out, all of that is now up to us. We have deactivated every floor in the facility. All floors are cold. Wherever you are right now, get up, stop the work. Get out of your cells, take charge and start climbing. They don't have enough guards and they know it. If we wait until they figure that out, it'll be too late. We will never have a better chance than this and [looks at Cassian, knowing he said it] "I would rather die trying to take them down than giving them what they want." We know they fried a hundred men on Level Two. We know that they are making up our sentences as we go along. We know that no one outside here knows what's happening. And now we know, that when they say we are being released, we are being transferred to some other prison to go and die, and that ends today! There is one way out. Right now, the building is ours. You need to run, climb, kill! You need to help each other. You see someone who's confused, someone who is lost, you get them moving and you keep them moving until we put this place behind us. There are 5,000 of us. If we can fight half as hard as we've been working, we will be home in no time. One way out! [repeats it multiple times as he leaves the command center]

Andor: Come on! Let's get out of here!

~From the series "Andor" S1 E10 "One Way Out."

Four

Remember when your High School History teacher said "The course of human events changes because of the deeds of great men"?. Well the bitch was lying. Fuck Caesar, fuck Lincoln, fuck Mahatma Gandhi. The world keeps moving because of you and me: the anonymous. Revolutions get started because people don't have enough bread. Wars start over a game of checkers. ~Augustus Hill, from the HBO Series "Oz" S1, E8 "A Game Of Checkers."

Mystery America The Great (Reason For The Season 2024, Four.)

And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sits upon many waters:

With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.

So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.

And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:

And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon The Great, The Mother Of Harlots And Abominations Of The Earth.

And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration.

And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou marvel? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carries her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns.

The beast that thou saw was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.

And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sits.

And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.

And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goes into perdition.

And the ten horns which thou saw are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast.

These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast.

These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful.

And he saith unto me, The waters which thou saw, where the whore sits, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.

And the ten horns which thou saw upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.

For God hath put in their hearts to fulfil his will, and to agree, and give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled. And the woman which thou saw is that great city, which reigns over the kings of the earth. ~Revelation 17, King James Version.

...

[after Burke is revealed as the one who set the face-huggers loose on Ripley and Newt]

Hudson: [aiming his rifle at Burke] I say we grease this rat fuck-son-of-a-bitch right now!

Hicks: It just doesn't make any goddamn sense.

Ripley: He figured he could get the alien past the quarantine if one of us was... impregnated - whatever you call it - and frozen for the way home. Nobody would know about the embryos we're carrying. Me and Newt.

Hicks: Wait a minute. We would all know.

Ripley: Yes, the only way he could do it is if he sabotaged certain freezers on the way home. Namely, yours. Then he could jettison the bodies and make up any story he would like to.

Hudson: Fuck! He's dead! [aims his rifle at Burke again] You're dogmeat, pal!

Burke: This is so nuts. I mean listen... listen to what you're saying. It's all paranoid delusion. It's really sad. It's pathetic.

Ripley: You know, Burke, I don't know which species is worse. You don't see them fucking each other over a goddamn percentage. 

~From the film Aliens.

I saw this the other day.

Rand Paul, kissing Elon's ass, saying Muskrat should be the Speaker Of The House. Thing is, as an immigrant he's not Constitutionally qualified for the position.

Funny enough, though, last night I saw that the children's cancer research funding allegedly being held up at Elon's order was in fact being held up by...Rand Paul...and dude was doing it of his own accord.

These fucking people are not honest, and they're all perfectly well willing to fuck each other over for a goddamn percentage, Just sayin.'

Somebody should probably warn the German far-right about who these fucking people are that are trying to crawl in bed with them, eh?

No, you know what? 

Let's not, let it be a surprise.

Since "Everything Trump Touches Dies" can now be comfortably amended with "Everything that Elon touches also dies" I'm fine with this.

Seriously if you don't know by now that when people like Trump repeat the old story about the snake, they're talking about themselves, you haven't been paying attention.

And clearly, Trump is far more the woman in the classic tale now, than the snake, since Elon usurped that role. I wonder if the AFD wannabe-Nazis realize what they're likely in for?? Also how the fuck is it legal for an American to try and put their thumb on the scale of a foreign election??

I kind of gather from social media that most Germans are mad as hell about this.

It seems to me like, if we don't reign these fuckers in ourselves, the rest of the world is gonna do it for us and we're gonna get our own collective ass kicked out too...because unlike Republicans, other people don't seem to like foreign meddling in their elections and at this point, we're shaping up to be as much of a bad guy as Putin thanks to Elon.

Hell, the rest of the world kicking us to the curb and then taking us back on specifically as a junior partner once we get our shit back together might just be the lesson a lot of us need.

We're never gonna get our own shit fixed until enough White Americans give up their bigotry and their narcissism, and until we force some basic humanity and common sense back into our own system. The rest of the world views us as spoiled teenagers.

And given what I've seen of us in the last couple of months, the rest of the world is not wrong to do so. If America is the Whore of Babylon, she's definitely in the favorite cohort of men like Matt Gaetz, at least maturity-wise.

But I have a feeling bigotry, discrimination, and a hankering for both (without much caring who is discriminated against) are so much a part of our mentality if not part of our system as a whole that we're going to have to take some hits from our own bad habits before we as a people fucking get it.

As I've said before, White "Conservatives" are perfectly fine with, had things gone another way, being bottom bitch...so long as the social meme that somebody has to be bottom bitch is preserved.

You ask me, this shit is starting to get massively creepy.

Especially how these fucking internet weirdos (of which Elon Musk definitely is one) treat women.

Do you suppose Elon would treat the Chancellor of Germany (either way it goes, apparently) any different than he treats Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?? Because I'm betting not.

These fucking people are basically all the type of creepy Dr. Evil type movie villain that launches into a long rambling plot exposition when they've got one of the female leads tied up, just before somebody else shows up and rescues them.

The difference between the movies and reality here being that we're going to have to rescue ourselves.

These assholes have been telling us all the fucked up shit they wanna do for like 50 years, you'd think people would have fucking paid attention and voted against all this bullshit.

Of course the argument could possibly be made that Republicans are so dishonest and stupid that nobody believed them, but I strongly suggest that we should believe them that their intent, at least, is to wreck everything they can reach, mostly just for the hell of it.

Today's Republicans are mostly the sons and grandsons of 1980's corporate raiders, except for a few really old Republicans who've actually been in office for just that long...and Trump, because just as he's a symbol of incompetent corporate yuppie greed gone wrong now, he was the same shit 40 years ago, too.

And mostly the same fucking people figure they can make a profit off him. I suspect Trump is going to end up a lot less dictator and a lot more rationalization and/or fall guy for what these motherfuckers want to do anyway. Republicans are showing that they're the same old Republicans they've ever been...but now, without the restraining influences of better leaders that existed in times past.

And I keep saying this shit is gonna spiral out of control into division and civil war for a goddamned reason.

Because that's the outcome that would best serve the interests of weird creepers like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, and America as it is has spent way too long indulging these men and not restrained their behavior.

Just remember, you're never gonna be a Billionaire...least of all if any of the current ones have anything to say about it. They sure as fuck aren't going to share unless they're forced to. Radical selfishness is how they got to be billionaires in the first goddamn place!

So you either believe in freedom and your own rights and are willing to fight for them, or you're not.

It's time to start paying attention and get with the fucking program.

'Cause if you don't, Elon's basically trying to be the Whore of Babylon and he's already working on the Mark Of The Beast!

And if you don't think all these convenience-obsessed chucklefucks...not least the ones who have the excess of money and the total lack of sense needed to drop $100K on a Cybertruck wouldn't fall for "It's Not The Mark Of The Beast When WE Do It" or some canned line from some idiot Marketing major about the "New, networked digital citizenry" and/or "Get the Blockchain Inside, bro, like Under Your Skin, man!" from some idiot rightwing Truck Screamer...you have another thing coming.

I'm not a born-again anything, this is what I read some years back. These Fucking People made me believe in the End Times shit again...except now I see they're gleefully on the wrong side of it.

Like it or not, there's a Judgment coming, it's Pass/Fail and we're not starting off on the right foot here.

So we'd better get on it. It's really that simple.

Among other things, this year, it's Christmas and nobody's talking about Jesus.

I rather suspect there's more reason for that than a lot of people are willing to face.

Politics is not the reason for the season, yo.

And if you wanna get it back to the way it's supposed to be, we're gonna have to fight for it.

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.

~From the Star Wars series Andor.

Three

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