Purpose (The Abyss, Two.)

American capitalism is predatory, and American politics are corrupt: The same thing is true in England and the same in France; but in all these three countries the dominating fact is that whenever the people get ready to change the government, they can change it. The same thing is not true of Germany, and until it was made true in Germany, there could be no free political democracy anywhere else in the world — to say nothing of any free social democracy. My revolutionary friends who will not recognize this fact seem to me like a bunch of musicians sitting down to play a symphony concert in a forest where there is a man-eating tiger loose. For my part, much as I enjoy symphony concerts, I want to put my fiddle away in its case and get a rifle and go out and settle with the tiger. ~Upton Sinclair.

...

Hess: So what shall we toast to, boys? I can blather on about “To health” or “To success,” but I’d like to do somethin’ a little less rote. Where you from, Brown Eyes?

Migs Mayfield: How ’bout a toast to Operation Cinder?

Hess: Now there’s a man who knows his history.

Mayfield: No, I don’t just know it. I lived it. I was in Burnin Konn.

Hess: Burnin Konn?

Mayfield: Mmm.

Hess: That was a hard day. I had to make many unpleasant decisions.

Mayfield: Yes, you did. Entire city gone in moments, along with everybody in it. We lost our whole division that day. Man, that was like 5-10,000 people.

Hess: Yep. All heroes of the Empire.

Mayfield: Yeah. And all dead.

Hess: Well, it’s a small sacrifice for the greater good, son.

Mayfield: Depends on who you ask, don’t you think?

Hess: [irritated] What you gettin’ at, trooper?

Mayfield: All those people, the ones who died, was it good for them? Hmm? Their families? The guys I served with? Civilians, those poor mud scuffers, died defending their homes, fighting for freedom. Was it good for them?

Hess: But we’ve outlasted them, son. They’re eating themselves alive. The New Republic is in complete disarray, and we grow stronger. You see, with the rhydonium you’ve delivered, we can create havoc that’s gonna make Burnin Konn pale by comparison. And then they’re gonna turn to us once again. You see, boys, everybody thinks they want freedom, but what they really want is order. And when they realize that, they’re gonna welcome us back with open arms. Ah. To the Empire.

[Mayfield chuckles, then fires a blaster at Hess' chest, killing him instantly. He and Mando then shoot their way out of the mess hall] ~From The Mandalorian, Season 2, Ep. 7 "The Believer"

...

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

I saw this a couple days ago, some idiot "Conservative Influencer" saying they wanted "Men" to be doing "real" work, physical labor jobs like working in coal mines and on oil rigs and shit like that. It's funny how Republicans can't (or don't want to) imagine anyone doing any work that they don't control the industry, now isn't it??

And this would somehow be better than the existing daily grind of 9 to 5 shifts and Excel spreadsheets, to the point where "Men" long for it, desiring to work for "Purpose??"

Bitch, NO.

First off, MONEY! Money is why I do this, I don't work for "Purpose" or the greater glory of some billionaire narcissist. Fuck You, Pay Me.

Second, every "Man's Man" with a union factory job in my family or our circle (both heavy on auto workers) worked like 9-5 when they got over a certain amount of seniority and had a set shift (afternoons or midnights) if they didn't. 

And that came with contracts and job benefits and laws and rights.

The "Things As They Are" and "Revealed Truth and the wisdom of the ancestors" parts of conservatism? Yeah, that's where those land me because that's the kind of world I grew up in, the work that my uncles did, that my Grandpa did before he decided to serve his country in the Navy, and the kind of work many of the old guys in the neighborhood where I grew up had retired from, and many of those guys had also served in the military, participated in civic life (often via Unions or civic orgs like the Masons and Shriners, etc.) and so on. Nearly all of them either went to church, or had at some point, and they didn't give a rats ass if it was "Masculine."

And there wasn't very many of those people was conservative Republicans, either, just sayin.'

That's the world I grew up in.

I grew up to understand Purpose just fine, thanks.

I joined the Air Force in part because I didn't want to wreck myself doing the kind of work that was available at the time in the part of Northern Michigan where I lived, and still ended up doing physical labor most of the time (After the military it was Food Service, mostly, because that's where I landed first and I liked it...with sides of IT and landscaping and retail) and I still ended up wrecking myself.

Third, I'd love me a 9 to 5 grind with weekends off because my partner is downstate now ('cause that's where she was able to find a job in her field) and that's what she works. I'd go see her every damn weekend and we'd get busy NOT making babies for fucked up right-wing religion, godless Late Stage Capitalism, or some crackpot idea of political warfare. Right now we work functionally opposite schedules and I hate it.

Bonus: I already know Microsoft Excel.

These fucking people could give a damn about the normal things in life like simply wanting to spend time with one's partner or live a life that's other than drudgery or monomaniacal focus on whatever stupid bullshit they claim to believe in at the time.

These fucking people's entire thing is monomaniacal focus on (mostly) political horseshit and accruing wealth, but they want you to do all the work, die for their beliefs, submit to their every whim, and not even have the sense of self-preservation that would say you demand being paid for doing it. And then they demand that you be happy to do this. I mean, yeah, it's narcissism, but it's a particularly childish, petty and petulant form of narcissism, at that.

These fucking people want people to work hard jobs that lead to their lives being nasty, brutish and short while surrounded by constant bloody warfare. They want them to do it for "feelings" not pay, and then have a bunch of kids they can't feed with "purpose" and somehow expect religion is going to be the one thing that prevents the rich from being what gets eaten at the end of the first week or so.

Somebody should have made these idiots look at history and see how unsustainable all that is and how it usually works out for the people who keep pushing it.

And the difference between me and those fucking people, functionally, is that when I was 13 and (briefly) started talking like this, my Grandma got out her wooden spoon and beat the arrogant stupid right back out of me until I stopped talking that way. Yes, my Grandma was the more conservative one in the family, insofar as we even had a few of those people.

As a group we weren't (and aren't) particularly "Left."

But that's where you trend towards if you believe in anything like democracy or (basic) human rights these days.

Because some things...like understanding that you live in a civilization and it's not all about you...are more important than individual political views or one's self-esteem. Among other things, my Grandpa grew up on a farm and because of circumstances my Grandma spent way more time with that side of the family than her own. They knew damn well somebody had to pick the goddamn vegetables and shit. I mean for fuck's sake even in Minnesota in the 1980's they was hiring Mexicans because the Mexicans worked harder and for less money! You think some Minnesota farmer who grew up during the Depression and spent his whole damn life with one eye on a balance sheet as a result is gonna turn that down?!?!? I ain't saying it's right, but it's simply what is.

Even conservatives used to understand shit like this, and you had to be pretty far out on the edges and surrounded by people like yourself to get away with the kind of horseshit that's all too commonplace now.

These fucking people now, though? They could give a shit about what Is, they're in fact trying to live as if the world they're trying to create is already real...and it's not working, but what it is doing is breaking or damaging existing structures, which these fanatics actually have no intent to replace...not even with their own because all they do is leech off of existing social structures as it is.

Among other things, the vast majority of these assholes have neither the inclination nor the imagination to go out and create anything new. They have only the ambition to try to dominate what already is.

But it's actually worse than that.

Without "The World" to fight and rail against, these fucking people's "Christianity" is nothing but a hologram.

Some people have said "The Cruelty Is The Point." 

True, but I also think it's worse than that.

For most of these idiots, the Conflict is the point. They can't get out of bed without their daily dose of drama or imagining themselves as part of some crusading totalistic Holy War and if you don't think that's why lots of old white dudes stare at FOX News like creepy zombie-eyed ADHD children, you're wrong.

Seriously, if all the rest of us disappeared tomorrow, leaving them the world, these fucking people would rewrite Rapture theology overnight to decree that God took away all the "Bad" people...and then declaring endless victory, they'd be bored, because they'd have nothing to do with themselves.

And they'd immediately start dividing up and fighting because nothing can ever be "Christian" or to put it more bluntly, ideological enough. They prefer an endless mad whirling conflict to simply Loving Thy Neighbor.

Conflict-oriented fanatics are going to conflict-oriented fanatic no matter what the fuck you do.

And they believe in the Conflict more than they believe in God Himself, so much so that they don't care if they're the ones who end up in The Abyss.

It's in conflict that they find their purpose, these guys could give a shit about going to spend the weekend with their girlfriends...unless they get some narcissism fix out of that.

It's perverse, but you have to deal with it unless you want to be enslaved by it.

You can't ignore it and hope it'll go away, they'll just act out harder until they find (or simply become) the issue that wrecks everything for everybody. See Also: Creationists and Pentecostals.

You have to beat it out of them.

And you have to beat them hard enough that they don't just spend several generations stewing and plotting revenge, too, but simply adapt to the new reality and find a spot in it and profit flows from there. (Or they're dead and no one's problem anymore.)

You have to stand up for yourself.

You have to say No.

You have to believe enough in your religion that you tell the money changers to get the fuck out of the Temple.

You have to believe you have a right to your own life.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

And you're either willing to fight for it or you're not.

That fight isn't just a test of arms, it's intelligence, logistics, media fluency, it's all type of shit...and you have to win.

Why??

If you're living your life for someone else's "Purpose" then it ceases to be your life.

And that is exactly the future these so-called "Conservatives" want.

But they forgot there's nothing conservative about that.

Your purpose in life is supposed to be yours to find.

That spell it out for you?

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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

One

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

Bonus Content

 [Cassian plays Nemik's audio diary]

Karis Nemik: 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. ~From the Star Wars series Andor, S1.E12 "Rix Road."

Losers (The Abyss, One.)

And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.

And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.

And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.

And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads.

And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he strikes a man.

And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.

And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men.

And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions.

And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle.

And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months.

And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.

One woe is past; and, behold, there come two woes more hereafter.

And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God,

Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates.

And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men.

And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them.

And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone.

By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths.

For their power is in their mouth, and in their tails: for their tails were like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they do hurt.

And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk:

Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts. ~Revelation 9 (King James Version.)

So I keep seeing shit like this.

Motherfuckers like Kegsbreath and Trump literally goat-eager, to the point of each having a purple priapism about the subject, to try and start a Civil War.

Democrats like Hakeem Jeffries at this point basically refusing to even defend themselves.

While the worst people on the goddamn planet get to run riot in our streets under color of law.

And now the government is shut down.

People are going to literally not get paid, including the military.

I want you to stop and think about that shit for a second.

AND these fucking people basically want to gut the government and the military in the name of some crackpot idea of "Purity."

This is how we lose basic government services, lose wars, and basically lose America.

Which, by the way, is These Fucking People's goal.

Yes, a literal societal collapse is what these motherfuckers want.

Not just that...a Soviet-style collapse, even a Yugoslavia-style balkanization and Civil War probably doesn't go far enough.

Even though the Republican monomaniacal pursuit of ethnic and political monoculture is very, very likely to create exactly that.

Actually, it's probably worse.

What these Chuds basically want to do is strip-mine the Earth down to its molten core in search of ever-more narcissistic fuel.

And the thing, perversely, that'll probably save the world is these fucking idiots have no idea how anything works, don't care to learn and have no idea how we even got here.

And they're alienating basically everybody but a small clade of MAGA Republicans who are still shouting "Faster! Faster!" because they can't wait to be a better class of slave and lord that little bit of status over all the other slaves.

This shutdown happened because Republicans still obsessively want to fuck with the Affordable Care Act and take away people's (massively popular, for reasons that should be obvious) health care.

It's kinda hard to have anything else when you're, ya know, dead.

Full disclosure, I used to be a Republican.

Which is exactly why I don't understand These Fucking People's desire to basically go out and try to fight the whole rest of the world all at once, with nothing much more than guns and obsessively stockpiled political power...and not having the logistics in place to maintain either.

I mean, I get that they think antisocial behavior and bullying and sheer deviance will carry them over the line to a world where cocaine and gold coins fall out the sky and only they get to have the shit, but come on, dude. That sort of stuff only keeps going until somebody punches you in the face.

I've seen, kind of under the radar, that their actual polling numbers are already starting to hit September 2008 Republican levels.

But instead of the Bush 43 Admin's "Oh, shit, we better bail somebody out!" These morons keep doubling down in public.

And again, the reason that they're doing that...because all of the same conditions still exist, never having been properly addressed by either Democrats or Republicans (and with malice aforethought, I do believe) is that I think it's their intent to try to cause societal collapse, social fracture, and some kind of a national breakdown into (likely) conservative, liberal and mid spheres of influence.

The United states of America being "United" doesn't serve rich people's purposes as well as they like, anymore, all the better if they can gin up a war between some of the resulting former US successor states...for no better reason than their own profit.

And just remember This Fucking Guy, Trump, is who they picked to be the face-man of this operation.

I don't think this is going to work out how they think.

I don't think it's going to end well, period.

For anybody, including the people who are (or think they are) behind all of this bullshit.

They don't care.

In fact, deep down a lot of These Fucking People seem to want to die. No, it doesn't have to make sense.

Why do I think that?? I was a member of the End Times Prophecy Movement for about five years.

It kinda fucked me up for awhile, even after.

Cook your brain doing that shit for ten, twenty, maybe fifty years and you tell me what the fuck your thought process is gonna be?? Trouble is, nobody really cares.

Because the truth is all the bullshit is actually symptoms of a society that was very sick to start with, and maybe always was even back to the beginning. Puritan Calvinism was just the start of the goddamned problem.

And yes, I think a lot of the religiosity is just bullshit and lies and cover for other crap. But some of it isn't. As deviant as that is, some people really believe this crap.

But, honestly? I think it's even worse than that.

I think we've forgotten our religious beginnings, our secular Constitutionalist founding, the blood and struggle of our wars (Civil and otherwise) out of sheer Goldfish-brained stupidity and debased boredom because we had it too good.

Among other things I think that's why the Epstein Files and a certain level of epidemic pedophilia lower down are such a fucking problem and why Republican men are into so much weird gay shit among themselves.

And the absolute truth is they will do ANYTHING to not have to give up, much less repent of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.

Some people believe in things because they really believe in them. Other people believe in things for what they can get out of it.

Should be obvious which I think most of these Trump enablers are, and they are in the wrong, and not even trying to hide it. Yes, it will break the country if it doesn't stop. Which means somebody's gonna have to step up and stop it.

Nobody in our political class, least of all on the Republican side, is gonna do that.

Because they don't think any of that shit is even wrong, so long as they're the ones who get to do it and keep enjoying themselves. If they have to break up the country and start a civil war to cover up their gay orgies in Miami hotels or their perverse prostitution of the young, not to mention mass theft of everybody else's money, they'll do that.

(Yet now these people want to kick to the curb hundreds of thousands of us with real skills to stop them, and hand those folks an axe to grind and a legitimate grudge? I can't make that shit make sense.)

In fact they don't seem to care about anything else.

Worse, they don't care if they themselves fall into the Bottomless Smoking Pit or go to the deepest layers of the Christian Hell, so long as they think they'll get to take some of the rest of us with them.

But hell doesn't work that way. If you go there it's because of your Sins.

Trouble is Republicans think they have the right to make choices for other people, including that one.

Relative status is one hell of a drug, I guess, even when it comes to who makes the bigger red stain on the floor of the Abyss.

And if you do think any or all of that is wrong??

Well, either you believe in freedom or you don't, and you're either willing to fight for it or you're not.

More, you either believe there are such things as Right And Wrong, or you don't.

It really kinda is that simple.

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

Last Post

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

For The Day Of The Lord Is Near... (Rapture, Five.)

No Western nation is as religion-soaked as ours, where nine out of ten of us love God and are loved by Him in return. That mutual passion centers our society and demands some understanding, if our doom-eager society is to be understood at all. ~Harold Bloom, The American Religion. (Quoted from Under The Banner Of Heaven by Jon Krakauer.)

...

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

...

For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk; the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up. ~Hosea 8:7

So there was a mass shooting at a Mormon church in Grand Blanc, Michigan, yesterday.

I've been to Grand Blanc, one of my cousins got married in the Catholic church in that town because it's where her husband is from and where his family went to church. Back then the place didn't strike me as especially Republican let alone what became MAGA, but then I found out the shooter was from Burton, and I was like...Oh. I've known people from there, too.

And that tracks.

The shooter was a Trump Supporter and the very first thing I saw when I logged into social media after I got up last night was the above picture.

The shooter was a conservative Evangelical Christian Creationist Trump Supporter with the sort of damed near full-face bullshit neck-beard that a dude who'll walk up and tell you that they stopped eating Pork or Shellfish because "That's what the Lord's Word says" might have.

I've not been to the Ark Encounter or the Creation Museum because by the time those things existed I was either on my way out or already out of conservative Christianity. Not that I'd have gone for any reason other than somebody dragging me there and paying my way when I was in it. I've never been a fucking Creationist. The entire idea of Young Earth Creationism strikes me as nothing more than pure Bovine Exhaust and the people who preach that shit don't lend any credence to themselves by their actions or appearances, usually.

But I know plenty of people who've been to one place or the other, either in full seriousness or in some ironic fashion. An Evangelical ex-girlfriend who now lives in Indiana has been twice, my Pentecostal ex-wife went there and sent me pictures and a couple of videos. Several work friends from the casino have been to those places, a couple of them multiple times. If somebody goes to a place like that and actually enjoys it and takes it seriously it's not the least bit of a stretch for me to say I know exactly what kind of other stuff they might believe.

But, like I said, I've never been one of those people myself.

Why?? Among other things I grew up with people who were Dinosaur stans, the Christian schools I went to had science books like any other school (if somewhat hilariously dated ones, now that I think about it) and the Creation of the World simply wasn't and still isn't an article of faith to me.

We're here, what are we going to do about it??

But the answer some people, including a lot of "Conservatives," MAGA's, Republicans and various Fundamentalist type Christians come up with it "They want to fight about it."

Republicans think they want a Civil War to cover up their Manifold Transgressions and their Mighty Sins...and they fail to realize that both their narrative and whatever control they think they have over the masses won't survive more than the first couple of weeks. A lot of people will get a massive detox off of Fox News or right-wing internet horseshit simply from the internet being irregular, the power being out much of the time, and perhaps most importantly the things they will see with their own eyes and who will be doing that shit.

Of course, I realize they don't care about most of the country (including a hell of a lot of Red States) because what they're after is TOTAL control of a few banana republics and small fiefdoms. 

Trust me, you don't want to live in any of those kind of places.

And I'm here to tell you what they will do is try to enforce shit like Evangelical or Pentecostal church purity culture as the cultures of those areas...yes, MAGA itself not to mention Trump will fall by the wayside as soon as they aren't needed any longer.

I'm also here to tell you that, as somebody who experienced a lot of that shit as an outsider because I wasn't that kind of Christian or conservative but got involved with people who were...there is a lot of squicky weird shit involved that'll make a lot of normal people run for the hills faster than the Roadrunner getting away from Wile E. Coyote.

But...

There's a hell of a lot of other motherfuckers out there for whom a lot of that kind of shit, dry-humping, purity rings, Speaking in Tongues, thanking Jesus for your parking space and the weird acting-out that goes with believing a bunch of Fundamentalist or Pentecostal hooey in a world that most of it doesn't even know that shit exists...and These Fucking People somehow think they're in charge...is just normal.

And these ass-clowns either think other people want that or intend to force it on the rest of us.

Republicans, as I said, think they want a Civil War for various reasons. "As a shortcut to avoid having to persuade people" is a big one...

These Fucking People?

A hell of a lot of them want that shit too...but they want it to be a War Of Religion with all the depravity and inhumanity that tends to go with such things.

I'm here to tell you, it's starting. Republicans going after Republicans (and yes, Mormons are mostly Republican) has always been my tell that we were near the point of a Civil War starting. I used to be a Republican, listen when I talk.

A lot of these damn Republicans are so hard-up for some kind of fight with the "Left" that they don't see they have a lot more actual enemies to their Right.

And it's mostly people who think they don't go far enough...even though they probably can't under our existing system, which despite catering to various flavors of this bullshit for a couple hundred years has never done so enough for the assholes to actually be happy with whatever they got.

Let me put it another way, Fanatics gonna Fanatic.

I saw a bunch of stuff online about Mormon theology last night, and to be honest a lot of it just sounds like using different words to describe the same stuff that I learned in Christian schools, "Godhead" rather than "Trinity" and so on.

But there's people who'll kill people over such interpretations.

There's people who'll kill somebody for not being a Young Earth Creationist, apparently.

And there's a lot more people who'll use such beliefs, or claims of them...as an excuse to kill and steal.

And the whole point of America...the whole point of things like the First Amendment and the separation of Church and State...was to prevent that shit!

You were warned, America. I've spent most of my life in Northern Michigan. This used to be Militia country. I've been aware of a lot of the weird shit longer than most people have.

I've been banging away on this topic on one level or another for about 30 years now, and I'm here to tell you back when I was a hard-core 1990's conservative Baptist Republican with more guns and way more copies of the Bible than I have now, those far-right militia motherfuckers wanted to kill me, too.

They made no secret of that fact, and I made no secret of the fact that force would be met with force and I had better training than they did...which is probably why they never came at me.

And now...at least since 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic and the whole Trump thing...the weirdo Evangelical shit and the Meal Team Six Militia bullshit and all these conspiracy theories and other goofy shit are just fusing into one big lump of stupid.

It's going to come down to a fight.

And plenty of cops and soldiers and Republican politicians and average people who thought they were gonna get to be in on all this garbage and profit by it will get gunned down by the real bad actors...the people only now emerging stage right from the shadows...the same as the rest of us.

And now, more than ever, you either believe in freedom or you don't.

And you're either willing to fight for it or you're not.

For the Day Of The Lord draws near in the Valley of Decision, and there ain't no Rapture gonna let your ass escape without paying the cost.

We're all going to have to go through this together.

Does that bullshit point you think you were trying to make by letting all this happen seem so important, in the face of that??

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Yuri Orlov: [At Andrei's presidential compound showing the Liberian president a silver revolver pistol] The Glock is interesting. It is made of a polymer composite. Many of my clients feel that they can go through airport security without seeing a lot of bells and whistles. Personally, I do not recommend that. [Andrei chuckles glancing over at a guard flirting with a female staffer] On the other hand, if you are looking for traditional wheel gun, there is no substitute for six inches of muzzle energy of 357 mag I mean, of course, it will never jam. [Andrei shoots the guard flirting with the female staffer] WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!

Andrei Baptiste Sr.: [Aims gun at Yuri] WHAT DID YOU SAY?!

Yuri Orlov: Now, you gonna have to buy it! IT IS A USED GUN! How can I sell a used gun? [Takes pistol from Andrei with his son and bodyguards all aiming rifles at an entirely still business-focused Yuri]

Andrei Baptiste Sr.: A "used gun"? A "used gun"?! [Chuckles] That's a good one. You know? There is no discipline with the youth today. I tried to set an example, but it is difficult huh? Personally, I blame MTV. [Smiles and Yuri nods in acknowledgment] A "used gun"? [Chuckles heartily, gets up and extends hand for handshake] I think you and I, we can do business. ~From the film Lord Of War.

Four

Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles; Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up: Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning-hooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong. Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together round about: thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O Lord. Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about. Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. ~Joel 3:9-14

Reaping The Whirlwind (Rapture, Four.)

For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk; the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up. ~Hosea 8:7

...

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)

...

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

Again, I keep trying to warn people.

Lots of these fucking right-wing morons are so desperate for either a Cold War-like showdown with the "Left" or some kind of cosplay Christian "Holy War" that they don't see the threats within their own house. Yes, there's people who think all this crazy shit doesn't go near to far enough, there's people who just want to cause chaos and death and don't want to be bothered with all the "Christian" hokum, among other things. Pretty much the only value all of these groups have in common that I've observed is a ravening hatred of women that makes basic Republican misogyny look like Second Wave Feminism.

And when the shit hits the fan...an event I see as not only likely but soon...these fucking people are going to be wearing their bomber-jackets like Mike Pence at the Korean DMZ, glaring bumboclaatically with rifles in hand at some supposed "Leftist" (who may well just be a conservative Democrat or moderate Republican) or a few mid-lib protesters across a No Man's Land of barbed wire and shit...and they're gonna get shot in the back by some fat bearded internet moron who'll then live-stream the event to the tune of "Big Time" by Peter Gabriel and post that shit all over YouTube, blatantly obvious far-right commentary, declarations of racial holy war and all.

And the Republican response will be to try to haul Peter Gabriel and record label execs in for some bullshit congressional hearings or something.

I get the worldview, OK?? But it's not 1985 anymore.

(And while I'm at it, now Republicans are gleefully in bed with the very remnants of the same Soviet Union they once fanatically opposed. Yes, I'm a little tired of this bullshit.)

More to the point, it's specifically conservatism, corporations like META and Republicans that created this fucking mess...and then refused to adapt. In fact, the corps keep doubling down on stupid shit. META wants to make pretty much another Instagram clone just for AI slop bullshit, just for example.

It's Idicocracy, only somehow a lot more stupid.

Like, some idiot Congressional Republicans want to mint a Charlie Kirk coin that's actual goddamn money.

Somehow on the coin they manage to make Charlie Kirk look like what they think some goddamned Roman Emperor's male concubine might look like.

Republicans are basically Nero, at this point, playing some fucking musical instrument or other while Rome burns...because they live in and are acting (in the real world) in accordance with a bunch of crazy shit that only exists in their own pointed heads. I mean, Good Lord, come on!

Trust me, I get it. Ideology can be a hell of a damned drug.

But if you're not gonna put the pipe down at some point it pretty quickly becomes indistinguishable from garden-variety Mental Illness.

Or just plain stupidity, if you wanna get really technical about it.

And not just a lot of These Fucking People...but a lot of people in general...have had it too good for too long and their survival skills (or willingness to survive without FOX News or Hulu or their daily dose of whatever if not all of the above) have atrophied. 

If they had any in the first place, that is.

When the shit hits the fan a hell of a lot of people aren't going to be able to handle it, and even a lot of those with enough survival skills that they can adjust are going to struggle just with the changes in their worldview that are going to be required by acknowledging (functionally) far-rightists shooting at "Conservatives" and honestly that whole movement is going to fall apart as soon as their information infrastructure and worldview bubble do.

Except of course on the far edges where people are so goddamned brain-fried it won't matter, but then those will be the people shooting at the rest of us.

The continuing Controlled Flight Into Terrain by the Trump administration in terms of running both America and their own popularity into the ground will not help...and like any fucking narcissistic abusers given power for awhile, then let back in after a breakup, these fucking people have functionally made it very difficult for this country to continue in anything like its current form without them.

I've been through this in terms of relationships, rebuilding is hard, and there will be people who just don't want to do it.

More to the point (and that's the problem) there's also those for whom chaos itself is addictive and fun and they think it's hilarious, etc.

And that, right there, is the people we're going to have to worry about.

America is going to reap the whirlwind of a lot of the bullshit from the last 25 years because there's at least one generation that thinks the Yahoo News comments section circa 2008 either is real life, or what real life should have been.

You might as well get used to the fact that there's no Rapture, no easy out, no escapist fantasy coming to save you...and prepare for this particular fight.

'Cause I guarantee you the bad guys are preparing, perhaps badly, but they are preparing.

And worse, Republicans will pick the wrong fight, do it in a self-aggrandizing fashion, and wonder why they're getting shot at, same as the rest of us are.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

And you're either willing to fight for it or you're not.

The time to decide is now.

Слава Україна!

The Holy Quran says it, "Pilgrimage to the House [of God built by the prophet Abraham] is a duty men owe to God; those who are able, make the journey." (3:97) Allah said: "And proclaim the pilgrimage among men; they will come to you on foot and upon each lean camel, they will come from every deep ravine" (22:27).Every one of the thousands at the airport, about to leave for Jeddah, was dressed this way. You could be a king or a peasant and no one would know. Some powerful personages, who were discreetly pointed out to me, had on the same thing I had on. Once thus dressed, we all had begun intermittently calling out "Labbayka! (Allahumma) Labbayka!" (Here I come, O Lord!) Packed in the plane were white, black, brown, red, and yellow people, blue eyes and blond hair, and my kinky red hair -- all together, brothers! All honoring the same God, all in turn giving equal honor to each other. . . .That is when I first began to reappraise the "white man." It was when I first began to perceive that "white man," as commonly used, means complexion only secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions. In America, "white man" meant specific attitudes and actions toward the black man, and toward all other non-white men. But in the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been. That morning was the start of a radical alteration in my whole outlook about "white" men. ~Malcolm X.

Three

Yuri Orlov: [At Andrei's presidential compound showing the Liberian president a silver revolver pistol] The Glock is interesting. It is made of a polymer composite. Many of my clients feel that they can go through airport security without seeing a lot of bells and whistles. Personally, I do not recommend that. [Andrei chuckles glancing over at a guard flirting with a female staffer] On the other hand, if you are looking for traditional wheel gun, there is no substitute for six inches of muzzle energy of 357 mag I mean, of course, it will never jam. [Andrei shoots the guard flirting with the female staffer] WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!

Andrei Baptiste Sr.: [Aims gun at Yuri] WHAT DID YOU SAY?!

Yuri Orlov: Now, you gonna have to buy it! IT IS A USED GUN! How can I sell a used gun? [Takes pistol from Andrei with his son and bodyguards all aiming rifles at an entirely still business-focused Yuri]

Andrei Baptiste Sr.: A "used gun"? A "used gun"?! [Chuckles] That's a good one. You know? There is no discipline with the youth today. I tried to set an example, but it is difficult huh? Personally, I blame MTV. [Smiles and Yuri nods in acknowledgment] A "used gun"? [Chuckles heartily, gets up and extends hand for handshake] I think you and I, we can do business. ~From the film Lord Of War.

Sowing The Wind (Rapture, Three.)

For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk; the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up. ~Hosea 8:7

...

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

...

Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. ~John 8:44

I keep trying to warn people.

We are Sowing the Wind.

And in the case of American Christianity and Republican politics in particular we are jerking off when we should be working and wallowing in narcissism and self-referential shit and thinking we're better than other people to the point where it has become self-destructive and will only get more so.

We are destroying ourselves and we are doin so when we should be...or should have been...at our absolute strongest.

By the time this is over, no one will care about America. 

People will ask, like the one Chud character in that Civil War movie "What kind of American?" you are and if you answer wrong you get shot.

By either side.

And for the record no one will care about American style Evangelical Christianity or Donald Trump either and in fact both will be blamed for this whole mess.

That will be in no small part to people like Mark Driscoll having ruined American Evangelical Protestant Christianity's witness.

And no one will care.

Especially when it comes out that they all thought they would get away with it because Jesus would take them away in the Rapture and they'd never have to answer for their own False Prophecies. I've seen this kind of lying and escapism myself, yo.

In point of fact a hell of a lot of them seem to think the Lord is in on it, or could be manipulated or would cut them some BS deal.

Or maybe it was just never about the Lord?

Indeed there's a non-zero chance like I've said that These Fucking People will worship the Devil in dark and dangerous places, and think they come out ahead by doing so.

Honestly, I'm not even sure a lot of American-style "Christians" know the difference between Christ and Mammon in the fucking least anyway.

And American government policy not only sure as fuck doesn't, it often claims the former while actually letting the latter have free reign.

That legit doesn't help.

Too many people think there won't be consequences for that, even though you can literally see it from here that we have sown the wind and we're about to reap the whirlwind.

That said, when this country flies apart because of all this bullshit, being an American reunificationist will be the most unpopular political position imaginable, because far too many of us simply do not want to live together anymore.

So, most likely, in the places they end up controlling these monstrous fools will be left to do as they like...especially because who the fuck else is gonna want somewhere like Oklahoma??

At least until somebody has to invade and destroy them because of all the human rights violations and shit.

And yes, that will happen.

Because yes, these morons will fuck it up even if they aren't actively trying to be destructive or kill their own people...and they will do plenty of both if left to their own devices.

Yeah, somebody could end up fighting a war over Ohio, and as a Michigan resident I think that's about the most ridiculous thing imaginable.

But we already have Republicans going after Republicans.

That's one of my major tells for "We're about to have a Civil War."

And the whole thing here is...These fucking people will fight Jihads against each other over not being Republican enough, or racist enough, or shitty enough, and the list goes on ad infinitum.

Because fanatics are gonna fanatic and These Fucking People simply have to have an enemy or they can't even goddamned function or get out of bed in the morning without somebody to at least imagine themselves fighting against.

I mean, if you think about it we're already there and the Republican Party keeps trying to blame nonexistent "Leftist Terrorists" when it's most often Republican-inflected or -originated Internet Nihilists that are actually the ones shooting people.

And again, I keep trying to warn people they will deliberately start going after Republicans next and be blatantly obvious about why-and who's doing it-soon enough. It ain't the Left, bros, it's a subsect of your own who think you're not going far enough...or perhaps it's more accurately said that under our existing culture and system they know you can't go as far as they want to. So, they want to burn it all down.

They're gonna start with you, though.

And when this blows all the way up and the people actually doing this shit are bowing down to Golden Idols of Dis Pater and Mammon and worse (Do not ask how much worse it can get, a My Little Pony in a jar full of nastiness sitting on an altar could in fact be these fucking people's deity) please don't have the nerve to be surprised.

In fact, if you think Christian Nationalist ammo-sexual white dudes whose primary (actual) values are macho bullshit, patriarchal abuse of women and the worship of hierarchy and Power are gonna fight all that hard against that kind of disgusting shit...especially if the disgusting-shit people are the ones doing atrocities and war crimes the hardest...or in fact do anything other than look at the Demon-worshipers and go full Twink bottom while screaming "Abuse me, daddy!" You have another thing coming.

Because at this point it really is Anything but America, Anything but "Love Thy Neighbor" etc.

You were warned, for years.

It's going to come down to a fight.

And too many fucking people have willfully committed themselves to misunderstanding what that fight is or who it will be against because they only see good or evil through a lens of what they want to believe...if not straight up only through the eyes of their own bullshit-ass deranged narcissism.

And people who fail to wake the fuck up are going to find themselves enslaved to people far more unworthy and worse than even anything we have now and dying for far more stupid preventable reasons than most people currently do.

Yes, that really is the world a lot of these freaks want to live in because all of them think they'll be the lord in his castle and not the serf in the field, or the warlord and not the catamite tied to the tailgate of his Toyota Hilux next to the .50 Caliber ammunition.

You either believe in Freedom or you don't.

And more to the point, "Freedom to do what?" is a question we better start asking ourselves.

Слава Україна!

Osman Ali Atto: I see not catching Aidid is becoming routine.

General William Garrison: We're not leaving Somalia until we find him. And we will find him.

Atto: (scoffing) You've been here, what, six weeks? Six weeks, you tried to catch the General. You put up reward posters. $25,000. What's this, gunfight at K.O. Corral?

Garrison: It's O.K. Corral.

Atto: Don't make the mistake of thinking because I grew up without running water I am simple, General. I do know something about history. See all this? It's simply shaping tomorrow. A tomorrow without a lot of Arkansas white-boys' ideas in it.

Garrison: Well, I wouldn't know about that. I'm from Texas.

Atto: Mr. Garrison, I think you should not have come here. This is civil war. This is our war, not yours.

Garrison: Three hundred thousand dead and counting. That's not a war, Mr. Atto. That's genocide. ~From The Film Black Hawk Down.

Two

Eli Sunday: Daniel, I'm asking if you'd like to have business with the Church of the Third Revelation in developing this lease on young Bandy's thousand acre tract. I'm offering you to drill on one of the great undeveloped fields of Little Boston!  

Daniel Plainview: I'd be happy to work with you.

Eli Sunday: You would? Yes, yes, of course. That’s wonderful.

Daniel Plainview: But there is one condition for this work.

Eli Sunday: All right.

Daniel Plainview: I'd like you to tell me that you are a false prophet. I'd like you to tell me that you are, and have been, a false prophet, and that God is a superstition.

~From the film There Will Be Blood.