Jackass (American Revelation XIX, Eight.)

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

...

You were just babies then!" she said.
"What?" I said.
"You were just babies in the war— like the ones upstairs!"
I nodded that this was true. We had been foolish virgins in the war, right at the end of childhood.
"But you're not going to write it that way, are you." This wasn't a question. It was an accusation.
"I — I don't know," I said.
"Well I know," she said. "You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be portrayed in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs." So then I understood. It was war that made her so angry. She didn't want her babies or anybody else's babies killed in wars. And she thought wars were partly encouraged by books and movies.
So I held up my right hand and I made her a promise: "Mary," I said, "I don't think this book of mine is ever going to be finished. I must have written five thousand pages by now, and thrown them all away. If I ever do finish it, though, I give you my word of honor: there won't be a part for Frank Sinatra or John Wayne.
"I tell you what," I said, "I'll call it The Children's Crusade." She was my friend after that.

~From the novel Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut 

I saw this last night, Pete Hegseth on FOX News saying "Diversity is not our strength."

Bullshit. Yes, it is.

This soup sandwich knows that, or he was supposed to, anyway. 

He just hopes you don't, and he has nothing but contempt for the inbred dipshits that watch Fox News, either. His religiosity is a lie, he's a drunk misogynistic fuckup idiot and somebody else probably did his job for him in the military most of the time. I didn't have officers like that. I know them that did, though.

I served with people of pretty much most (if not all, I mean, fuck I don't know. We didn't have time for that shit) races and everybody has something to bring to the table, or they wouldn't fucking be there in the first place. I served in the Air Force during the implementation of DADT, and when I was a Sergeant, my best-performing, hardest working troop was a gay man. He was also a Tongan-American (although he was born in Utah) and both fiercely Fundamentalist Christian and a Republican. (Also, it wasn't this bad back then!) His culture, his beliefs, saw no issues with all that. He came out to us at a mutual military friend's wedding in the early aughts, but we all knew way before that. We didn't ask. He didn't tell us until he felt comfortable to do so. My bro retired from the Air Force in 2014 as a married man, his husband is also an Air Force veteran. This guy served in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But let me tell you, I'd rather have the queeniest gay dude you can imagine watching my back than a jackass like Pete Hegseth. Never trust somebody that doesn't wash their hands, for one.

It ain't just that, though.

A bunch of the rest of my bros were Black, my LT was a woman. None of that mattered, we all bled red and wore green and...shit, we didn't have the time to be bigoted against each other (and it'd have been against regulations anyway...30 years ago, mind you) because we were there to do our duty, not score bullshit-ass political points with morons.

Conservatives don't even seem to understand that concept anymore. All they seem to want to understand is cultic sycophancy and selfishness.

But I'm a just put it like this. Look at the FOX News headline. "Europe plots to stop Trump from taking Greenland." Greenland is a part of Denmark, Denmark is a part of the EU.

It's not a "Plot" to defend your own country, or your allies. It's what you do.

Why do these fucking unserious morons think that the Danes and Greenlanders would somehow not defend their own country, or call upon allies for help?? I mean, good Lord, can you imagine if somebody put up a headline "US plots to stop China from attacking its territory" or "US plots against Radical Islamic terrorism" the same fucking people would be frothing and simmering with rage until they boiled over.

Just like Americans are, Danes and Greenlanders are free people.

Which, I suppose, is why Republicans apparently hate all three. Yes, that's right. These fucking people hate America.

The rest of the world and more than half of America does not like and will not "Submit" to Trump for reasons that should be perfectly well fucking obvious.

These fucking people don't even give a shit about other Americans, though, much less the rest of the world. It's a cult.

I can't imagine what the fuck is wrong with people, that they'd make Trump their whole identity, but they have and here we are. What they're gonna do when this dude dies of bad health or old age or whatever, I've no idea.

And neither do they, they think the high, the narcissistic hummer, whatever, is gonna go on forever.

When it doesn't, these people will crash hard, but I think America's "brand" will have been trashed well before that.

And that is exactly why I think that America is going to break up, because these fucking assholes can't even grasp that a fair number of the people killed in the DC midair collision were very likely just like them, let alone summon up the basic empathy to say something as simple as "Sorry for your loss."

Among other things, several members of the US figure-skating team were on that plane, and if you think an expensive sport like that is going to be exactly overflowing with liberals...LOL. 

They might not be your kind of "Conservative" and such people or their parents very likely will vote for Democrats at least some of the time...but downstate I happened to know a fuck-ton of people who were big into winter sports. My car insurance guy...also a friend of many years...was the coach of the local high school's ski team and a retired teacher himself, also an Army veteran, and he straight up said to me one time that, like me, he'd voted for both D's and R's depending on who made their case better at the time, or who might or might not be doing what he thought should be done about this or that issue that he cared about. 

Like me, he was not solidly anti-Republican until Trump came along. (And also, this guy had money.) Some of the jokes we told and shit, some of our military stories, got us plenty of side-eye from the office ladies (who were all basic Democrats and always have been for as long as I dealt with that outfit.)

No, the fact that the military has stuff like diversity training (and had it 32 years ago the first time I went through it) and observed Black History Month before this year absolutely does not make it or it's culture or the people who are in it "Woke."

People are people, period. We are all the fucking same, if you think about it in the least. Being a white "Conservative" or a Trump cultist does not make you special. MAGA being unable or unwilling to see that, along with simple-ass shitty Republican unreasonableness more generally, and especially the Trump Admin 2.0 having this tendency to break things and pull stunts without much care for more than how it plays with a bunch of John Birch Society chuckle-fucks in Idaho or Wyoming is very, very close to breaking this country. 

You can't just beat a nation into the shape that you want it and expect not to break stuff, not to have a bunch of people hating you, etc. Any more than you could beat a kid out of being ADHD or into being a straight white Christian.

Not without risking that you or somebody you supposedly care about might not survive, anyway.

Ignoring cause and effect, or reality or science or the feelings of others or that they have their own beliefs does not make that stuff go away. And Everything comes back around.

Someday, assholes, you will be on the other side of somebody wielding power like a steel fist against you. Sometimes, you wanna give a shit about other people because you hope when things are bad for you, somebody else gives a damn. I mean, from a certain cynical point of view that's what Empathy is.

Acting like beasts just because some jagoff filled your ears with poison for years doesn't actually help you.

You show your "power" or something, Okay. Whatever the fuck that even means. You don't change anything, you're just making the ADHD kid or the gay kid or the trans kid have a harder life for no damn reason.

But then you have the nerve to wonder why nobody plans on showing up at your funeral, or why your gravesite has burnt grass or your headstone reeks of urine?

You have to give respect to get respect. Respect is earned by every action, every day. People won't go into battle...or at least will not do so very enthusiastically...for some braying jackass or relative status.

Conservatives, of all people, should remember this. They are, for the most part, the ones who taught it to me.

Make it make sense, yo.

Because I sure can't.

The truth is these jackoffs don't much care about anybody but their own damn selves (and that, only in very limited ways like how much money they make) and by the time they figure out they're getting fucked too (if they haven't after this week) it'll be way too late to do anything about it.

Relative status will not fill your Mom's prescriptions nor pay her Social Security check, nor keep you warm in the cold, cold night. Racism, spite, and stupidity ain't a culture. Brutality and cruelty is not a noble cause or even an original idea. No, Fuck You. These aren't the Droids you're looking for.

And considering these fucking people's mentality that they'd basically be fine being slaves, so long as somebody else was a worse class of slave?? Well, my dudes, being a better class of slave don't make you free.

People are willfully enslaving themselves to this horseshit.

And the thing that gets me is there's fucking people who should damned well know better, who keep helping this bullshit along.

And yes, I'm looking at you, access media and elderly Democrats.

Get a grip, America. Donald Trump and Elon Musk don't give a shit about you.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

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

Seven

Tobias Beecher: [Walking up to Vern Schillinger] Whatcha readin'? Mein Kampf? Well, let me tell you how it ends. The Aryans get their asses kicked!

~From the HBO series "Oz" Season 2, Episode 2, "Ancient Tribes."

Conspiracy Theories Are Lies (American Revelation XIX,, Seven.)

People are fucking nuts. This country is full of nitwits and assholes. You ever notice that? Nitwits, assholes, fuck-ups, scumbags, jerk-offs, and dipshits. And they all vote. In fact, sometimes you get the impression that they're the only ones who vote. ~George Carlin.

...

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

...

Nameless One: “Shadow of this life?”

Dhall, Dustman scribe: “Yes, a shadow. You see, Restless One, this life is not real. Your life, my life, they are shadows, flickerings of what life once was. This life is where we end up after we die, and here we remain. Trapped, caged, until we can achieve the True Death.”

Nameless One: “True Death?”

Dhall, Dustman scribe: “True death is non-existence. A state devoid of reason, of passion, of sensation.” [Dhall coughs] “A state of purity.”

Nameless One: Sounds like oblivion, why would anyone would want that? 

~from Planescape Torment

I saw this early this morning.

Last night there was a midair collision between a Bizjet and a VH-60 Blackhawk helicopter over the Potomac River in Washington DC. All 67 people on both aircraft were killed.

"Conservatives" wasted no time in turning that shit into a conspiracy theory and using it to attack "DEI" because they're racist dipshits who think nothing bad would ever happen if only White Men ever got to do anything. Fuck that shit, I'm tired of it.

Couple things: #1 Conspiracy theories are lies, get it right. I cannot stress this enough, it's all bullshit. I don't care if it makes you "feel" good. It's bullshit!

Come on, do you actually enjoy being lied to in your personal life?? Why would you accept that in your politics??

#2 If you've ever been in an aircraft (especially a helicopter) at night...it's really pretty easy to become disoriented and unless you have night-vision goggles...which mean you can see, but they restrict your peripheral vision (I've used NVG's in the field at night) you can't see shit and you're reliant on instruments and radio communications to know what the fuck is going on and where you are. I've (obviously) only ever been a passenger in such situations, but that's freaky enough, yo, especially at low altitudes when it's cloudy and shit. (It's actually really cool when you can see the moon, stars, lights from...whatever. I don't know what the conditions were when this happened, but I wouldn't even want to try that shit in an urban environment.

But then, I'm not a pilot nor did I ever have the ambition to be one, in the Air Force I saw those people do some pretty amazing shit, and I've flown plenty, during my service, and both before and after that. Something in my brain likes it just fine on the ground, though.

I know just from my Grandpa's stories about his naval aviation service that being a pilot is a dangerous and damn serious business.

The trouble is, a majority of Americans have become a very unserious people.

Anna Paulina Loony *Cough* I mean Luna is trying to propose a bill to add Trump's face to Mount Rushmore.

Now, before racist asshole Gutzon Borglum (Who's also known for the Stone Mountain confederate monument in Georgia, although he was dismissed from that project allegedly due to Klan infighting) carved the visages of four US Presidents on it, Mount Rushmore was a mountain called the Six Grandfathers that was sacred to Native Americans. Now, personally, I have no objection to Mount Rushmore. It is what it is, and like a lot of things it's simply a product of its time. That said, why the hell does anybody think they need to fuck with it?? Leave the shit alone. I kind of gather from people who know more about this than I do that've posted about it online, that the monument is brittle and won't stand much tinkering.

So why not leave it well enough alone??

I know this history, is not one monument to racism and Whiteness enough??

And yeah, when you look at the full facts of the case and who built the thing, yes, that's exactly what it is.

Of course, these fucking people are fanatics and narcissists and pests who can't leave anything well enough alone.

Some splinter-sect Anglican priest got caught doing a Nazi salute, and when people blew up about it, he tried blaming it on "The Left" well, then he got fired. Then it came out that he'd been repeatedly turned down by the denomination and only went to their seminary and got ordained in 2022 because (naturally) he's a fucking Trump fanatic who tried to make everything political and a lot of people weren't cool with that.

It's not about God.

It's not about Truth.

Fuck, it's not even about conservatism as that's been traditionally defined.

From Trump on down, it's a grift, a scam, and endless goddamn chain-email begging for money and trying to steal power to get more money and attention for themselves.

Because these fucking people are all shitty little narcissists.

This crap is not sustainable.

Something is going to give.

And goddamn it, I can't help but think that this bullshit has eroded our morality and national spirit such that we are very, very close to falling apart.

Because this is not the America most of us grew up in, expect, or event want.

MAGA has very loudly tried to make America synonymous with themselves and Donald Trump. I feel like in a way, they've succeeded but now the world doesn't trust us, we can't trust our government, and most people here much less out in the rest of the world are looking at that with horror.

When things fall apart, you either believe in freedom or you don't.

You're either willing to stand up for your own life and maintain some kind of civilization, or you're not.

Conspiracy theories and lies will kill people.

Conspiracy theories are lies, do not forget this.

Слава Україна!

Peace is not the product of terror or fear.
Peace is not the silence of cemeteries.
Peace is not the silent result of violent repression.
Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all.
Peace is dynamism.
Peace is generosity.
It is right and it is duty. ~Saint Oscar Romero.

Six

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

Valley Of Decision (American Revelation XIX, Six.)

Albert: No good?

Armand: Actually, it's perfect. I just never realized John Wayne walked like that.

~From The Birdcage

...

Franklin Roosevelt once said, "Too many who prate about saving democracy are really only interested in saving things as they were. Democracy should concern itself also with things as they should be." So in this campaign we face those who are interested in destroying things as they are. These fellows are not conservatives in the American tradition. They are just interested in tearing down institutions, not in preserving them. They are dedicated to extreme ideas, not to old values. They advocate aggressive interference with other nations, not increased reliance on others to order their own affairs. This is not a conservative philosophy. This is not even a Republican philosophy. This is not a philosophy ever embraced by any major American leader. "Conservative" may be written on their banner and in their books, but "radical" is in their hearts. ~Lyndon B. Johnson

...

For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. ~Matthew 24:27

I saw this earlier, and it's part of something I've been thinking about, so I figured I'd write about it.

Trump, Republicans, and all these far-right assholes and religious nuts are currently being busy little beavers trying to assert all sorts of power that doesn't belong to them, hoping people will just obey, and mad as fuck because most people aren't.

Again, why should we?? What's even in it for us??

The thing you have to remember is that our government, military, and everything else is composed of people...people who are being adversely affected by all this bullshit the same as the rest of us.

I think something's going to break long before 2026, simply because these fucking people are pushing too far, too fast, and way too openly for a bunch of shit nobody but rich Christian far-rightists even want. 

And again, I think it's by design, on purpose. These fucking people are literally trying to break America.

But trust me, these assholes, on their own? They do not exactly wield the big stick. This won't go how they think.

And I think they massively overestimate their own capabilities and support.

I saw this video this morning, of a "Patriot Front" training camp in Florida. The caption was labeled "Combat training" but it's not even proper Physical Fitness Training, let alone military drill. The video is basically just a bunch of hooded dudes marching in place, out of step, eyes wandering all over the place. Your local High School marching band would literally be expected to do better. For fuck's sake, syncing Left/Right was day one in Basic Military Training at Lackland Air Force Base, most of that day in the hot Texas sun. These guys ain't shit. These fucking people are a soup sandwich.

It's always the small things. If you can't stand up straight, how are you supposed to march? If you can't march, how are you supposed to fight? The list goes on.

And let me tell you one more fuckin' thing. I'm about violently projectile-vomiting sick of this "Daddy" Trump crap. If you think Trump is your father-figure, let alone fetishize the idea of this literal sex-pest creeper beating a person with a belt?? What the fuck is wrong with you?

Don't y'all have parents??

If I'd have ever said anything like that while my Dad or either of my Grandfathers was still alive, I wouldn't have said anything else that day, and they'd have beat my ass. Then they'd have followed up with "Well, why don't you go live with them, see how you like it??"

This kind of thing wasn't tolerated when I was coming up.

And for Trump? Really??

People need to stop blowing the narcissist. Screwing around with people who have personality disorders ends badly.

I mean, for fuck's sake look at Trump's own adult children. With the possible exception of Ivanka they're all cheap-ass clout-chasers, drug addicts, glory hounds, nepo-babies, obvious scammers and petty narcissists who ain't ever done shit in their actual lives besides be rich and live to levels of excess that'd land most of us in prison, if not the graveyard.

And why is it always car dealers and real estate that are the biggest fans of this horseshit, anyway??

Seems like those two industries in particular need Civilization in order to function and keep their value.

My Mom's part-time neighbor, a car salesman who owns two houses (the other, coincidentally, is not far from where I used to live in Cheboygan County) had two Trump/Vance signs in his yard last fall. I'm absolutely serious when I say outside of local HOA political signs (One cabin is owned by a family that's had two different board members over the years) I've never seen a political sign on my Mom's road before that and we moved into that house in 1987.

Granted, for most of my life (and because my grandparents used to live next door to my Mom I mean I've been going to that place all my life) the neighborhood in general and my Mom's little street in particular was populated by Greatest Generation and Silent Generation old guys, almost all of whom were WWII and/or Korean War era veterans who rarely if ever talked politics, my Grandpa mentioned it rarely enough and the man owned shit (buttons and stuff from that era) that made fun of Richard Nixon.

Just sayin' that's what I came from. This stuff used to be considered serious, and mostly private, in addition to that.

And now these fuckin' right-wing turd-burglars are doing "Combat training" that looks like something out of the Police Academy movies, and like they're the Chuds that the cadets misdirect to the Blue Oyster and the scene ends with them slow-dancing with a bunch of gay Leathermen.

Dudes, I'm just sayin' if you can't manage basic military drill and keeping your eyes focused and your mind locked in you're going to suck at all the other stuff. It's not combat training, it's a LARP, and a poorly done one at that!

Conservatism has turned itself into a self-destructive joke, and about the only thing serious about these fucking people is their desire to drag the rest of us down to destruction with them...all while bothering us with their religious crap out one side of their mouth and sexually propositioning us out the other side of it.

Make up your minds, which is it?? Hedonism or religion? 'Cause it can't be both, something must lose.

(And they don't really care if it's them, so long as they get to act like morons while feeling "special" for awhile first.)

And worse, while they act like that, they think they have some kind of a "Right" to destroy everything, because they think it's funny or some shit. 

They'll try and say "God Told Me..." but that's a lie.

God has nothing to do with any of this.

Like I said, you either believe in civilization and freedom or you don't.

And it's time to decide.

This is our Valley of Decision.

Слава Україна!

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

Five

Peace is not the product of terror or fear.
Peace is not the silence of cemeteries.
Peace is not the silent result of violent repression.
Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all.
Peace is dynamism.
Peace is generosity.
It is right and it is duty. ~Saint Oscar Romero.

Death Rites (American Revelation XIX, Five.)

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. ~United States Declaration Of Independence.

...

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

...

Peace is not the product of terror or fear.
Peace is not the silence of cemeteries.
Peace is not the silent result of violent repression.
Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all.
Peace is dynamism.
Peace is generosity.
It is right and it is duty. ~Saint Oscar Romero.

I saw this last night.

Tom Homan, Trump's ICE Director, saying that "Know your rights" is the same as "How to escape arrest." No fucking shit, Sherlock. That's exactly why the United States Constitution, the US Code, our whole legal system and (while I'm at it) centuries of Common Law put a whole hell of a lot of effort into protecting the rights of the accused.

There was a time when, if the King or the Bishop or some random courtier or official or whatever didn't like you, or was bored, or without any reason whatever, they could throw whoever they liked in jail or simply have them executed just because it was Wednesday. People got tired of that kind of shit for reasons that should be entirely obvious. But, apparently a lot of Republicans worship the idea of dictatorial power or monarchy (and kissing Power's ass for profit) or some bullshit. 

Reagan Motherfucking Wept.

This is the very kind of stuff that America was founded to be against.

Hell, it's what Jesus preached against too, if you think about it. These motherfucker calling Empathy a sin? What the fuck is wrong with you??

We need to use words like that a hell of a lot more in this country right now; "What the fuck is wrong with you??"

And on that note...

Today is the start of RFK Jr's confirmation hearings, and evidently it's not going well. 

Democrats keep hitting back at his bullshit with *Checks Notes* official transcripts of his own words. I mean it, seriously, this guy is just an egotistical flimflam artist who has the time and wealth to basically be a professional conspiracy theorist. I wouldn't trust this motherfucker to make me a goddamned ham sandwich!

And I wanna make one thing crystal clear about these assholes.

This shit right now, isn't American politics as it traditionally has been.

This is foreign billionaires and rich American kooks trying to immanentize their bullshit Eschaton.

If you're not able-bodied, rich and the right specific kind of White, socially "Conservative" "Man" who presents as vaguely Christian or as whatever kind of religious or spiritualistic Bunga Bunga crap is in vogue at the moment (and don't let anybody fool you, Christianity has little or nothing to do with this current shit!) these assholes basically think you can serve them or you can die. Perhaps more accurately, that you can serve them and then you can die...with a big side of Eugenics and "Fuck You, I Got Mine."

You ever notice #1 How little the "Master Race" ever actually does for itself and #2 How goddamn pathetic these cretins are??

The vast majority of these Antivax creeps are fuckin' vaccinated. They are entirely sponging off the very things they claim to hate.

This is literally an attempt by the rich to get the rest of us (or at least our future generations) to stop protecting ourselves so we can die off in the name of "Population Control" and they can take our stuff while living out various bullshit medieval cosplays.

They think the Black Death part of that is for other people, though.

Except that historically, it absolutely wasn't, and upwards of half the population of Europe died. Civilization broke down, that's what these assholes thought they could do with COVID-19, use it as a bioweapon against all the people that they didn't like, turns out, more of their own people died than just about anybody else.

It's probably in our favor that so many of these motherfuckers think an incompetent, weak man like Trump is their god.

I'm a former Christian, and I find it profoundly creepy.

We let these motherfuckers try and take the kind of power they say they want? It's literally going to take a war to get rid of these assholes.

There's a very good chance it's gonna come down to that no matter what. When people get this arrogant and entitled, it usually comes down to a fight and you knocking their block off in order to make the shit stop.

Again, and I'm going to keep saying this for as long as it takes; You either believe in freedom or you don't.

These people are trying to break America. You want to keep America, or at least make some kind of a soft landing with a breakup where there's robust enough polities that they cannot simply be bought by somebody like Elon Musk, you're going to have to fight for that.

Freedom ain't free.

Civilization takes effort.

You're going to have to stand up.

Get used to the idea and start preparing for it now.

We have the Right to life and to be free from people bothering us with this shit.

What these assholes want is the privilege to conduct their Death Rites atop the ashes of our civilization using the bones of people they thought undeserving of life.

And they think Trump is the guy who's gonna get it for 'em.

Think about that for a second.

If you can't stand up against that, what the fuck is wrong with you??

Слава Україна!

Franklin Roosevelt once said, "Too many who prate about saving democracy are really only interested in saving things as they were. Democracy should concern itself also with things as they should be." So in this campaign we face those who are interested in destroying things as they are. These fellows are not conservatives in the American tradition. They are just interested in tearing down institutions, not in preserving them. They are dedicated to extreme ideas, not to old values. They advocate aggressive interference with other nations, not increased reliance on others to order their own affairs. This is not a conservative philosophy. This is not even a Republican philosophy. This is not a philosophy ever embraced by any major American leader. "Conservative" may be written on their banner and in their books, but "radical" is in their hearts. ~Lyndon B. Johnson

Four

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

Black Horse (American Revelation XIX, Four.)

Franklin Roosevelt once said, "Too many who prate about saving democracy are really only interested in saving things as they were. Democracy should concern itself also with things as they should be." So in this campaign we face those who are interested in destroying things as they are. These fellows are not conservatives in the American tradition. They are just interested in tearing down institutions, not in preserving them. They are dedicated to extreme ideas, not to old values. They advocate aggressive interference with other nations, not increased reliance on others to order their own affairs. This is not a conservative philosophy. This is not even a Republican philosophy. This is not a philosophy ever embraced by any major American leader. "Conservative" may be written on their banner and in their books, but "radical" is in their hearts. ~Lyndon B. Johnson

...

And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.

And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.

And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see.

And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.

And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.

And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.

And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:

And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?

And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow-servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.

And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;

And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casts her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.

And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;

And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:

For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand? ~Revelation 6 (KJV)

So, apparently, Trump has (via his OMB nominee who hasn't even been confirmed yet) put some kind of a hold on...pretty much all government funding for anything that helps anybody, aside from (so far) Social Security.

Just sayin' if this shit fucks up my veteran's benefits, I'm a be mad. I don't have any appointments coming up, but I know people...some of them, with serious shit coming up, who this will fuck over.

Not that I really expect that United States Air Force veteran status to be worth much more than empty platitudes for much longer. There has to be a United States, first. 

Why do I say that?? 

I believe this is a transparent attempt to collapse America and its full faith and credit. Like I said earlier, if this shit keeps up for more than a day or two, states are going to have to start working together to fill gaps and support their people and stand up efforts to provide (literally) the most basic of government services to their people. Like food for poor people, Meals On Wheels, and shit like that. I'm serious.

Hell, I live in public housing and am dependent on the Department of Veterans Affairs for my health care, like I said. My Mom is on Medicare and Social Security. This crap is gonna fuck us over, too!

At this point, pretty much anybody is right to ask "Why do we even have a Federal government??"

Which is of course, the goal.

Granted the Right's goal here is, functionally, to replace the Federal Government with Trump-as-Dictator. Somehow, I'm thinking this is a really, really stupid way to go about doing that. Most people are a few missed meals away from revolution and a missed paycheck or two away from homelessness...so I really think throwing this much of a goddamn monkey-wrench into most people's lives is a bad idea and just kind of wrong-foots the whole thing from the start.

(And do it right smack in the middle of the dead of winter, no less?)

Now I don't give a damn what excuses they came up with. Saying it's "DEI" or some shit is just a bullshit-ass lie. These fucking people want to fuck over the average American (not to mention the average person anywhere else that they can reach.)

But then Trump is posting on Truth Social, babbling like a little kid who got into Dad's weed brownies about having the military "turn on the water" in California, so I'm kind of thinking these fucking people are a little too far gone to fuck with people intelligently and/or too high on their own power trip to just keep fucking with small groups.

(Like, seriously, what did you think these motherfuckers picking on Transgender people was? But of course, that's not enough now, is it??)

Or maybe they just want to speed-run the Book of Revelation or the French Revolution or something, and I'm sure in their dumb heads they think they'd get a different result because of idiotic Narcissism.

They seem to want to burn America down because Black folks and LGBT people and the ladies got a slice, because immigrants do most of the manual labor, and because they can't legally enslave anybody, especially the White working people of whom too many have all but volunteered for that process at this point.

I think they think somebody's gonna beg Trump to save them or some shit.

I think somebody's miscalculated, because most people I can see...including MAGA's...are either pissed off or scared, but I don't see anybody lauding Trump as their savior from the evils of *Checks Notes* having food to eat or health care or support for aged parents.

I mean, come on, like nobody that I know in this country has just had money to throw around since at least 2008 and, really, most people don't have the mentality...let alone the ability...to do things like save for retirement or even basic emergencies like they sometimes did 60 or 70 years ago.

And I'm just sayin' this is the kind of self-created crisis that'll cause this mess to get dealt with well before 2026 or 2028 if we all pull together. 

If America is bigger than its government, as people like Ronald Reagan said, what the fuck use do we even have for these assholes??

How much money would We The People save by firing them all?? Nationalize and redistribute Elon's fucking ill-gotten wealth while we're at it, too. Welcome to the Revolution you thought you wanted, motherfucker.

And if we're not?

At this point maybe it's better if we let this country fall apart Soviet style. If we all just nope out and leave Trump holding the bag...all the money these chuckle-fucks are probably just stealing at this point becomes worthless fairly quickly. 

At least I know that while government benefits via some kind of Great Lakes Republic would be pretty basic, and taxes higher, if the situation remains similar to how it is on the local level I'm probably less likely to see shit just disappear into the ether because somebody's on an ego trip.

And yeah, I think that's exactly what this is. 

Trump wants to "Punish" Americans because we're not all on board with his dumbass agenda, and hell I've seen his approval ratings were in the range of 43% to 47% before he started fucking with people's lives in the last couple of days.

That's only gonna go down.

At the end of the day, these motherfuckers don't care about that.

They just want to kill people and if they die in the process? They don't really give a damn about that, either.

Some kid just got popped in Tennessee for plotting apparently multiple kinds of mass shootings and this seems to be a pretty clear case of ravening mental illness, but somehow he had a gun. And the only person who seems to have been aware of it before the FBI found something was the last fucking mass shooter that they had down there.

There is something very broken about all this shit, and before today when it obviously started to affect a lot of people's lives, too many motherfuckers didn't even notice, much less give a shit.

We need to Make America Give A Shit Again.

We need to make a lot of fucking people give a damn about other people, period.

Otherwise? Trump is just gonna continue doing this Rug Pull on our society that he's doing.

If you can't stand up and say "No" to that? Maybe you'll feel differently after you fall and bust your face?

A lot of people fucked around on election day.

Well now we all gonna find out, ain't we??

You either believe in civilization or you don't.

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

I can't say it any more simply than that.

If you think Republicans have some kind of a "Right" to inflict the Black Horse of Revelation on America for no better reason than they think it's funny, as far as I'm concerned, there should be hell to pay, both for you and for them.

This is wrong, and nobody should have to explain why.

No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

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

Three

Peace is not the product of terror or fear.
Peace is not the silence of cemeteries.
Peace is not the silent result of violent repression.
Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all.
Peace is dynamism.
Peace is generosity.
It is right and it is duty. ~Saint Oscar Romero.

Culture War Crimes (American Revelation XiX, Three.)

There's this brother on death row somewhere, he checked in when he was 16. He sat there another 16 years while the courts and lawyers argued about this and that. While he waited he painted a mural on his wall. For all those years he painted, not letting a soul see what he was up to. Finally, when he was 32 and had spent more life on death row than in his mama's house, all his appeals were exhausted. He was about to die. As he was about to be let out for the final time, he finally unveiled his masterpiece. All there was were six words. "Death is certain, life is not". The next day the hacks painted over it. Peace out. ~Augustus Hill, from the HBO series "Oz" S1, E4 "Capital P."

...

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

I saw this last night.

Republicans are trying to ban "Chemtrails."

Only problem is, there's no such thing. Contrails are water vapor. 

They're the same as any other cloud, except that they're long and thin, created by water vapor in aircraft-engine exhaust and the combination of heat, humidity and low temperatures at higher altitudes.

Weather manipulation isn't really much of a thing. Seriously, people have been trying all this stuff for awhile, and it seems not to work very much. It's almost like Nature is more powerful than we are, or something. Pretty much anybody who doesn't have Trump's childish understanding of things knows this already, but for some reason the nuts want to humor this fucking idiot with all this garbage.

Republican "Governance" (such as it is) is already spiraling out into conspiracy theories, dumb shit and unreality even as these fucks belligerently bray about firing the government, installing their totalitarian horseshit ideology (which will, apparently, be enforced by the Underpants Gnomes, minus a functional Federal government) and going out and trying to fight the whole rest of the damn world like they think they're Knights on Crusade or some bullshit. 

As if they're not already soup-sandwiching the military.

Among other things, everything from funding to procurement to training pipelines simply cannot handle fighting a war against the rest of the world and half of America on top of that. Shit, we struggled to supply Ukraine until we started overhauling our own production.

Canada, the EU, Mexico, let alone China or Russia...these fuckers start shit with somebody else, they're gonna lose, and the reasons why run very deep in the minds of people like Pete Hegseth. Character flows from the top down in military units, among other things.

And yes, I'm very serious about that.

I've written multiple times about going to a Black History month event where a few Tuskegee Airmen were going to be speaking, in dress uniform, this wasn't "DEI" it was called respect. The Redtails of the 332nd Fighter Group never lost an escorted bomber to enemy air action. Things like that matter to bomber pilots and since that's who made the decisions in the 410th Bomb Wing, a whole bunch of us attended the event. Sure, it was "voluntary." My LT said "You're going."

But the point was, so that we would know what we were. Our history is part of what makes us. Many Tuskegee Airmen became USAF leaders later!

And at a time when we were, certifiably, the biggest badasses on the planet, no less.

But MAGA, with their eternal Year Zero mentality, doesn't give a fuck about about any of that. They think all they need to know is Trump, because all they want to know is Trump. Trump doesn't get shit right...he wings it, on everything. You cannot do that if you're flying an aircraft, or protecting one, along with all the people that turn it into an effective fighting machine. 

History is about people. The thing is, one of the lessons I learned as an Airman was that if you don't care enough to get the small things right, or understand what makes things what they are...you won't get the big, important stuff right either.

Seriously, if these motherfuckers tried to invade Greenland, they'd be defeated by the weather. Worse, there's nothing there that it wouldn't take 15-20 years to be able to actually exploit because you have to build things like pipelines and ports and roads first, at the least. That's before you get to the issue that much of the island is covered by an ice sheet.

"For want of a nail, the horse was lost, for want of a horse the rider was lost..." only scales up.

For example: These fucking people have already declared "Antifa" to be a terrorist group. Trouble is, all
"Antifa" was, was an internet thing for most of us. It was never much more than an internet meme outside of Portland and maybe Seattle, and honestly whatever actual groups existed seem to have pretty much disappeared fairly early in 2021. Portland's political street-brawlers come in both Leftist and Rightist colors, but not much that either side does could legally be considered terrorism.

We already have laws for all this shit. Assault is already illegal. It ain't illegal to be a Democrat or otherwise not be a Republican, and that's a First Amendment thing.

If Republicans are trying to make opposition to fascism or Trump illegal, they've thus far made an effort that a half-baked jailhouse lawyer could poke big holes in.

But ya know, these same people are calling Empathy a Sin. 

Excuse me, What?

There's a few problems with all that, not least that this is America, Trump is already back to his previous shitty approval ratings, and its preexisting culture and society will only take so much. People can only take so much before they get mad. 

Everything from governance to public health to warfare requires a certain level of rational decision-making based on actual conditions and facts and what's really happening...or things simply stop working.

And in any case, it's early yet, but organized resistance to this crap at this point seems to mainly be forming up around churches.

Oh, don't worry, they're coming for Christianity too. Fascists have a long tradition of that. Consider for example the Salvadoran Civil War.

In 1980, Archbishop (now Saint) Oscar Romero, of San Salvador, was assassinated by a right-wing death squad while celebrating Mass. He wasn't some liberal, he was a no-shit Opus Dei bishop, a conservative's conservative or he would not have been the local leader of Catholicism in a right-wing country. But you see, outside of the USA where they recruit celebrities and Republican judges and politicians, Opus Dei is a sect of the poor. Naturally, Archbishop Romero stood up for the poor people because that was his literal vocation from God. So the fascists within the Salvadoran government (who themselves were at odds with the military junta at the time) had Romero murdered.

He was killed on the orders of a guy named  Roberto D'Aubuisson (pronounced De-Ob-Wee-Son) who was a literal self-proclaimed Neo-Fascist and an open admirer of Hitler and the Nazis. He was called "Blowtorch Bob" because he liked to use a blowtorch to torture people, and he was trained in part by the US Army and had ties to the Moral Majority and Republicans and shit. 

Hell, the "Moral Majority" and such groups as Young Americans For Freedom gave this dude awards. When dude got shitcanned from the Salvadoran Army over his death-squad activities, he went into politics. ARENA (AKA the Nationalist Republican Alliance) one of El Salvador's main political parties (along with the leftist FMLN, AKA the Faribundo Marti National Liberation Front) before Nayib Bukele's Nuevas Ideas stole [both of] their lunch money and took over the country, was founded by him. And Republican Senator Jesse Helms was one of his patrons. The FMLN and other Leftist forces gained ground anyway. Old Blowtorch Bob died of cancer in 1992, just after the signing of the Chapultepec peace accords ended the Salvadoran Civil War.

A fair number of the people and various groups that supported this bullshit are not only still around, but big backers of Project 2025 and Trump.

Just in case you're wondering what we can expect from These Fucking People when the shit hits the fan here.

And it's going to.

Soon.

I consider this whole thing to go in roughly two week cycles because, per my observations during the COVID-19 Pandemic and the initial stages of the invasion of Ukraine, that's about how long it takes before these fucking idiots get bored. We're halfway through the first one.

Meanwhile Republicans have lit all type of various fires and are pouring gas on them because they think it's funny, or something. Bird Flu is a rising pandemic, there's a big Tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas right now. Incompetent Republicans will only make all that shit worse, and they're literally governing like they think they've permanently outfoxed reality or some shit.

When it snaps back, a lot of shit is going to snap right along with it.

I am, in fact, preparing as best I can for what I think is coming.

Unlike some other people.

Meghan McCain for example.

She's not worried, she thinks Republicans are "Cool" now. (As if the Democratic Party was ever "Cool" or even tried to be.) So she thinks it's some kind of Brave New World out there. Not brave enough, though, that she didn't block me, Stonekettle and about a thousand other people on Threads yesterday when her stupid comment got (justifiably) dragged.

These people aren't going to be able to handle fighting a war, Civil or otherwise, or any other long-term...anything.

The thing is, it only takes a couple days or weeks to wreck shit that took a hundred or a thousand years to build.

But hey, Meghan McCain got to feel like a cultural trendsetter for five minutes so...Worth It!!

(Full Sarcasm Warning.)

We're down to committing Culture War Crimes.

Feel proud of yourselves yet, Republicans??

If Republicans manage to atomize the Federal government, which I think the most likely scenario; America then starts over as 50 little countries, the Federal budget vanishes into the ether and various Billionaires and politicians pockets, and the military mostly just gets left to rot except for whatever formations land in polities that can afford to support them. Everybody else starts over.

That number will, of course, start going down fairly quickly as different states ally and form co-ops and new nations, and there will of course be conflicts. That and Republican unreasonableness and craving for political monoculture is where we get our civil war.

One of the main causes of the downfall of Yugoslavia and the wars that followed was that the Serbian political elite attempted to create an ethnic and political monoculture in 1989-1991 and shut everybody else out.

And Republicans will say or think whatever they have to, to try the same shit here, knowing that it won't work.

But they think they can get a good result from Bad Faith. 

It don't work that way, but that's what they think.

Do you see where I'm coming from now??

And I don't think it'll take anywhere near that long for that shit to go sideways here. Too many people ain't going back.

The question then becomes, what do we fight for?

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

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

Two

Peace is not the product of terror or fear.
Peace is not the silence of cemeteries.
Peace is not the silent result of violent repression.
Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all.
Peace is dynamism.
Peace is generosity.
It is right and it is duty. ~Saint Oscar Romero.