Wednesday, January 1, 2025

The Spider In The Web Of Life (The Wheel Turns, Three.)

Man does not weave this web of life. He is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. ~Chief Seattle.

...

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

There's something that's been bothering me.

On the American Right, there seems to be an escalating level of nihilism. Like, these fucking people have basically decided if they, as extreme far-right White men, can't have everything they think they want, nobody should have anything at all. I've been writing about this garbage since a couple days after the election, and it only seems to be getting worse.

Some nut was just busted by the FBI in Virginia with more pipe bombs and other improvised explosives than the FBI has ever seized in its entire history up to this point.

Said nut's claimed ideology, literally "No Lives Matter" not people, not people's pets, not even their own lives, apparently. Death and Destruction and solipsistic narcissism and fascism for their own sake appears to be the only goal of this alleged group

Of course, it sort of dovetails with that of the conservative movement and the Republican Party since around 2015, but I digress. And it probably takes it a bit further than even most of those people would like.

And those people are spiraling out.

The wheel turns, and these nuts seem to want to make the turning of the age claim as many unnecessary victims as possible, just for the fun of it. Me? I think that's pretty fucked up.

As a veteran with various levels of training in certain things, as a ferret owner (Seriously) and hell...as a person...I think it's necessary to point out that this shit bothers me on a fundamental level. Being what I am, a citizen and a veteran, I figure I have a goddamned duty to civilization, not least because I'd never have made it this far without it! For shit's sake I'm 51 years old and I know people who didn't last this long. We as a species decided starting a couple centuries ago that conflicts and wars needed things like laws and rules to govern the behavior of armies, leaders and governments and since we first started to decide that...there's been enough atrocities and breaking of said rules that #1 We keep having to add more and punish war criminals, #2 We know why this is necessary and #3 Much of the world has gotten sick of this bullshit.

But there's always nuts out there who think that glorious revolution, holy war or whatever the fuck will get them whatever bullshit they think they want.

And it's the stated goal of people like Kash Patel to have the FBI chasing after *Checks Notes* conspiracy theories that exist only in his own bug-eyed, spittle-flecked, fevered head.

And then, there was a car attack in New Orleans in the small hours of this morning and the driver was apparently killed in a firefight with the police. Think about that, for a second.

In case you wonder why I think there's a very good chance that America is going to come flying apart in the next couple of years...well, that and crazy Republicans are continuing to go after other equally crazy  Republicans...basically for not being racist enough. There's a reason that's long been one of my tells to start worrying about a civil war.

But I'm here to tell you, this shit is pretty much gonna be like The Walking Dead, but with morons, not Zombies. Not that there's really all that much of a difference when it comes to fanatics. Except, Maybe, technically, you could argue that the Zombies are more open to new ideas??

We really need to find a way to force a cut-off point into these fucking people's desire to live in the Dark Ages. If they're not going to have a bottom of the barrel, then the rest of us need to construct one and make it stick.

Nihilism, shamelessness and stupidity are pretty much starting to reach an Extinction Level Event amount for some of these fucking people and I say that as a former Republican who had to listen to some of the other Republicans bitch about stupidity and the need for "Population control" 20 years ago. (And by the way, I had it figured out then how big of a red flag that was. I know from my experience in Bosnia that mass death poses Apocalyptic-level threats all its own, and tends to cause more if it goes unchecked. 

I wrote about this pretty extensively during COVID-19 in fact.

And by the way, there were a lot of people trying to pretend it was all 2017 meme-warfare grade bullshit then, too, or that it was all some kind of big joke or bullshit conspiracy theory that wouldn't affect them.

And when MAGA doesn't get what they want, or at least doesn't get much of it but they see that the money people get everything, I'm going to say this will probably get worse.

And the money people, like Elon, will win this round and probably the next several, simply because Trump wants their money more than he needs the cheers of the mob at this point.

I think it's a safe bet, if today is any indication, that things are gonna fly off the handle pretty soon.

There's a shit-ton of idiots out there (mostly people who don't understand the subject matter, or much else) that think Trump promised them "Blood! Blood for the Blood God, Skulls, Skulls for the Skull Throne!" And when they don't get it, or at least don't get it from him, they're gonna be mad.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

You either believe in protecting your own life and the lives of those you care about or you don't.

You either believe in civilization or you don't.

There's no middle ground to be had, here, and when things start to fray and we start to undo the Web of Life, there'll be endless knock-on effects that nobody even thought of precisely because the world we live in is complex and interdependent and it will affect you. And people are going to have to pull together and put up with a lot of shit just to survive. If you thought the COVID-19 pandemic was bad, this will be worse.

But too many people fancy themselves the Spider in the Web Of Life, and they all think other people are the fly.

We'd best start preparing to deal with this, because too many people couldn't be bothered to get off their ass and vote against this bullshit.

God damn it, White People.

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

Two

...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, Kingdom Of Fear (2004)



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