Alas, Babylon (Reason For The Season 2024, Three.)

And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.

And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.

And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.

For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double.

How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she said in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.

Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judges her.

And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,

Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come. ~Revelation 18:1-10

...

We are turning into a nation of whimpering slaves to Fear — fear of war, fear of poverty, fear of random terrorism, fear of getting down-sized or fired because of the plunging economy, fear of getting evicted for bad debts, or suddenly getting locked up in a military detention camp on vague charges of being a Terrorist sympathizer. ~Hunter S. Thompson.

I saw this last night.

Seriously, under what the fuck set of circumstances does one guy, who's already cuffed and in a prison jumpsuit and clearly not going anywhere...require an escort of 50 cops, some in full battle rattle and carrying automatic weapons??

What the hell idiot thought this horseshit made America, them, or New York City look strong??

As I just pointed out to somebody I saw war criminals taken into the stockade with far less fanfare, by two troops with rifles slung and sidearms holstered, maybe throw in a British or German cop who wasn't even carrying a weapon at all, or at least wasn't at that moment.

Instead, we look like a stiff breeze could blow us over.

This bullshit makes no sense, unless...Unless my one far-left buddy from college was right and all this Homeland Security bullshit has turned the coppers into nothing more than a fascist militia for the super-rich. Dude was only off by 23 years, timeline-wise.

I mean, what's even the damned point??

Right now every tin-pot from Ayatollah Cockamamie to Vladimir Putin to some old guy from the Serbian mafia is looking at this shit, laughing, and thinking about taking a shot at us, because we won't fold, we'll just break.

We're this weak...because one guy shot a health insurance CEO?? Dude's not some mighty demon, he's not a Werewolf who might break its chains and attack the assembled men under arms, he's just a guy.

I'm honestly surprised NYPD didn't add three or four chaplains invoking wards against the Devil, judging from everything else...and the level of Idiocracy that this seems to suggest.

More to the point, unless something's changed in the last hour or so we're still staring down a government shutdown starting at Midnight because Elon Fucking Musk told Congressional Republicans not to vote for their own damned continuing resolution. Fuck Trump, Elon Musk might as well be President.

And if you think Trump's first term was a fucking Idiocratic shit show we ain't seen nothing yet. This guy will run America into the ground just like he did Twitter, cackling the whole while.

Americans had better learn to govern themselves, and learn shit like basic elder care, combat trauma and how to grow gardens and shit like that again because unless states or blocs thereof step up to hold things together...the whole goddamned system will break down, America will come flying apart, and Red States in particular are gonna devolve into bloody-minded, dueling Christian theocracies rather fast without a Federal government to keep their worst impulses in check. And, all of our vast arsenals of weapons and gleaming towers of civilization will play no role in this...that conflict will be fought with AR-15's and technical trucks because the people doing the fighting won't know how to use much more than that.

Not least. because if we don't have a functioning government with something approaching a budget to pay the troops, eventually most of them will just go home...I mean, fuck, they'll have to just to protect and support their families, and (by then, theoretical) consequences be damned. Don't believe me?

 Check what the actual levels of military service vs. draft avoidance were in Russia throughout the 1990's. I mean, hell, check what they are now.

But if America just evaporates like Vaporware Nation, he doesn't need all that, does he?? Vlad doesn't need to resurrect the vaunted Red Army. He doesn't need to invade Ukraine, or attack Europe. We were always the actual goal. Revenge for 1989...let alone the Fall of the Soviet Union...was always the damned point. 

(Don't worry, our Defense contractors and shit will be OK, just like the ones in Russia were when Boris Yeltsin's defense budgets were a punch line. They'll just be selling Abrams and F-35's and Arleigh Burke DDG's to countries like Israel and Malaysia and Taiwan and Ukraine along with whatever American successor states get it together soon enough, what with no meaningful regulation or State to stop them. The people who make the weapons always come out Okay.)

And no doubt Elon thinks he can just bribe Vladimir Putin, and dude will go away.

Bro, once you pay Danegeld the first time, it's rather hard to get rid of the Dane.

And right now Vlad knows he can just send in the Russian Mafia and the NYPD will drop their guns and run away screaming...because they're clearly that afraid of one guy who's already in cuffs.

But here's the thing. Look at what's up with countries like the Baltic States, Poland and Romania right now, let alone Moldova or Syria....or Ukraine.

Guns and spectacle don't make you free, courage does.

In the world that's coming, you wanna keep your freedom?

Then you're gonna have to be brave.

Too much of America is already failing that test.

Fuck, it's Christmas and we won't even have a functioning government, just like the Soviet Union at this time of the year in 1991. Think about that for a second.

I said 771 days, not so long ago. It's not even taking 10% of that, and it's by choice, by personal weakness of our own leadership that we're falling. For fuck's sake at least Mikhail Gorbachev put in the work to try to save things. I don't see Donald Trump, Elon Musk or even Joe Biden doing anything.

Reagan Wept.

Слава Україна!

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

Two

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.