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