Decivilization? No. (Shouty Man, Five.)

Look! The moonlight shows us for what we really are! We are not among the living, and so we cannot die. But neither are we dead! For too long, I've been parched of a thirst with nothin' to quench it. Too long I've been starvin' to death and haven't died. I feel nothin'. Not the wind on my face nor the spray of the sea, nor the warmth of a woman's flesh. [steps out into the moonlight, revealing his skeletal form] You best start believin' in ghost stories, Miss Turner. You're in one!

~Hector Barbossa, Pirates Of The Caribbean; Curse Of The Black Pearl.

...

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.

...

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.

I saw this last night.

Some Antivaxxer nut going off about how inside vaccines there's "RNA-modifying biotechnology that connects your body to 5G" Whatever that means.

Lady, I've had a whole bunch of vaccines, as a kid, later when I was in the military and more recently because of COVID-19, and the only reason anybody might usually detect any Wi-Fi signal near me is because I usually have my hotspot up on my phone. (I have a pretty distinctive hotspot name and people have commented on this.) 5G is just...well, better Wi-Fi than we've got where I live, it's not any more magical or Satanic than 4G internet was. Also, CERN (A Franco-Swiss research complex) being located on the site of some ancient Roman temple seems...unlikely. Switzerland was a frontier region of the Roman empire, not a place with big cities or temple complexes. The one major Roman ruin that I know of in Switzerland was once a Legionary camp.

Also, way back when I was a member of the End Times Prophecy movement the "Beast" supercomputer (Brussels Economic Activity Surveillance Terminal, if I remember right, never mind that the acronym wouldn't be the same in Dutch or French) was supposedly in Belgium, near Brussels (because that's where the EU capital is!)  Come on, people, what's wrong with you?

These conspiracy theories are, essentially, Mad Libs.

But the concern-Troll whiners at The Atlantic (while carrying water for the business elites) are worried about "De-Civilization?"

Guys, the people trying to disassemble Civilization and sell it for parts are the fucking CEO's.

And they get a big assist from the conspiracy theory weirdos and religious fanatics (not that there's much difference between the two anymore, at least as far as American Christianity goes) who keep the masses distracted with stupid religious-sounding bullshit that makes no sense to anybody capable of opening a Bible, a history book or Wikipedia and actually reading it.

On the one hand, sooner or later this crap usually ends up indistinguishable from mental illness.

On the other hand, American Conservatism itself has always had a seamy underbelly of bigotry, conspiracy bullshit, and literal murder.

But of course, that serves the existing power structure more often than it doesn't, and gives the power structure a hell of a lot of deniability in the process, so the Atlantic peeps don't care.

If vaccines, which have (to one degree or another) been a thing for as long as America has...were really going to turn everybody into Satanist Liberals (which is basically the between-the-lines quiet part of most End Times and other conspiracy lies) it'd have taken effect decades ago and we wouldn't even be having this dumbass conversation.

Like somebody pointed out in the snipped conversation above, an Anti-abortion activist fatally shot a doctor in his church. These motherfuckers don't give a shit about God or Jesus either, let alone the Ten Commandments.

Divine commandments and Human laws are things that Republicans usually try to finagle their way around, not actually obey. All they really want is Power, Wealth and the Capability to basically do whatever the fuck they want, rules are for other people. And no, like the undead Pirates of the Disney franchise...they can never be satisfied, whether they were cursed by the heathen gods or are simply greedy rapacious fuckheads is a matter of opinion.

Until the pitchforks and torches come out or there's a threat of actual revolution, and then Republicans are all about the Law and usually like "Hey now, take it easy, we were just kidding!" And then things change and once the eyes are off them, they go back to trying to finagle their way around that, too, like a ferret eternally trying to get out of its cage. Except ferrets are more civilized than Republicans and they're usually better people.

These fucking people are worried about "De-Civilization" and the first things that the Right usually throws out the window are "Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness" (in other words, don't lie) and Thou Shalt Not Kill. The next things they want to do are get rid of health care for the non-wealthy and end Social Security, thus violating the Lord's repeated commands to care for the elderly and the sick! Then they wanna throw out all the immigrants and strangers! 

Have these fucking assholes ever even read Leviticus??

I'll save you the time, No. No, they haven't.

These conspiracy nuts and Republicans and the CEO's they enable and the idiot "Conservative" voters who are responsible for this mess are the kind of people who sit in the breakroom at work, looking all serious going over the same chapters and verses every damn night while they talk Conspiracy Bullshit with some dumbass goon and make lewd comments at female coworkers, but they go to a Pentecostal church on Sunday, so they think it's all good because there's a Shouty Man in the pulpit telling them that Other People are gonna go to hell.

To them, Heaven isn't Heaven if they're not the only ones who get to go. America isn't America if anybody else gets a slice...no matter how small. That's in case you're wondering why these fucking people don't seem to want America anymore.

The true religion of These Fucking People isn't Christianity, it's the Prosperity Gospel with a side of Eugenics. If it could be sufficiently well explained to these idiots that Jesus Christ was neither rich nor White, they'd reject Him and be all too happy to follow the Beast, so long as it looked sufficiently like Donald Trump or Elon Musk.

And I guarantee you, they're all about the idea of putting computer chips in people's heads and claiming "It's not the Mark Of The Beast when we do it!"

Yes, yes it is, because what that whole bit is symbolic of is rejection of spirituality in favor of the false world system. Donald Trump isn't the Beast of Revelations, but he'd like to be...and the Evangelicals would still worship him!

We had a choice to not go down this road, but too many fucking people would rather be Entertained than Free.

Now if you want to be free or worship a God that isn't (their) money, you're probably going to have to fight for it. And the first thing you can do to start winning that fight is set your feet on the floor of Truth and push back hard against Power. You have to yell back, too.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

You wanna be free? Reject conspiracy theories and find out what is true, it's really that simple. Then you act on it. That's not "De-Civilization" that's the basis of Civilization.

Reject the false gospel of the Shouty Man.

It's the only way we're gonna be Saved.

Слава Україна!

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning.

I turn this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.

I touch the name Andrew Johnson; I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.
~Facing It, by Yusef Komunyakaa, US Army Veteran

Four

The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all. You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits — not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty. ~Ronald Reagan