Destroying The Village (Left Behind Is A Lie V, Four.)

Karis Nemik: I'm struggling to understand why my faith doesn't calm me. I believe in something. Why am I so unsettled? I mean you have nothing, you sleep like a stone. I write when I can't sleep. Wrote about you last night. Not you specifically, not "Clem." Although I'm assuming that's not your real name, anyway. "The Role of Mercenaries in the Galactic Struggle for Freedom." My conclusion is simple. Weapons are tools. Those that use them are, by extension, functional assets that we must use to our best advantage. The Empire has no moral boundaries, why should we not take hold of every chance we can? Let them see how an insurgency adapts.

Cassian Andor: [sighs] Well, you're half right. The Empire doesn't play by the rules.
Karis Nemik: And how am I wrong?
Cassian Andor: They don't care enough to learn. They don't have to. You mean nothing to them.
Karis Nemik: Perhaps they'll think differently tomorrow.
Cassian Andor: Be careful what you wish for.
Karis Nemik: So you think it's hopeless, do you? Freedom? Independence? Justice? We should just submit and be thankful? Just take what we're given?
Cassian Andor: [Inhales deeply, leans toward Nemik and glares] Do I look thankful to you?

~From the Star Wars series Andor, S1, E6 "The Eye."

...

In Natal, apartheid is a deadly cancer in our midst, setting house against house, and eating away at the precious ties that bound us together. This strife among ourselves wastes our energy and destroys our unity. My message to those of you involved in this battle of brother against brother is this: take your guns, your knives, and your pangas, and throw them into the sea! Close down the death factories. End this war now! ~Nelson Mandela, speech at a peace rally, February 25th, 1990.

...

The wind whispers of fear and hate. The war has killed love. And those that confess to the Angkar are punished, and no one dare ask where they go. Here, only the silent survive. ~Dith Pran, The Killing Fields

So, apparently Trump's followers are spanking the monkey to the idea of...I don't know, violent revolution against the rest of America, or something?

(And Trump is feeding this crap with what appears to be fake Napoleon quotes.)

As I've been saying since the height of the COVID-19 Pandemic, I get that These Fucking People's ideal world is basically the Killing Fields of Khmer Rouge Cambodia, but like, with an Applebee's and a mall or something.

I'm just...increasingly skeptical of the idea that any of these dumbass motherfuckers are smart enough to get there unless the rest of us just lay down and die for them.

(And no, Congressional Democratic leaders, you don't get to make that call for the rest of us, fuck off.)

For the record, I'm going to remind you that it's been awhile since the United States Navy...you know, the actual sea service of our legit armed forces...could conn a ship without having one smack into some unfortunate merchant vessel a couple times a year (A set of circumstances that was once Career Death for everyone in a position of responsibility that was involved.) 

So, that's clearly not what it used to be. 

Also, since I'm a US Air Force veteran, I'll also point out that we're trained #1 That we cannot be used domestically against our own people, and #2 That we're supposed to avoid civilian casualties, and #3 that we are supposed to be apolitical by actual law and tradition. Trump (or at least somebody around him) knows this, which is why he seems to be making grunting noises in the general direction of militia movements lately, concerning some half-baked idea that these motherfuckers have of some kind of "Great Purge" against the "Left."

*Note: "Left" appears to mean anything up to and including most traditional Republicans and anything short of Monarchist "Conservatives" now.*

Well, I'm here to tell you that the militia movements make the current failing-to-meet-professional-standards, undertrained US Armed Forces in all its messy soup-sandwiched glory look like infallible gods of war by comparison. I've known these fucking people, and they suck at anything more than stealing chemicals out of their workplace or your garage with which to cook Meth.

I mean, most of those guys look like they haven't run ten meters since they almost got busted shoplifting 2-for-$1 packs of King Edward little cigars from the goddamn corner store back in the 1990's.

But then "Right" nowadays seems to include the fact that Elon Musk got a "Conservative Influencer" *Cough* I spelled "OnlyFans Ho" wrong *Cough* pregnant (Apparently by IVF, rather than doing it the old fashioned way) and bought her off with some cash and a Cybertruck or some BS. Now they're not talking, or something.

I guess Eugenics and Technology create a poor basis for relationships and could be said to undermine the traditional family unit, or some shit??

Like seriously there was a time when shit like...whatever Ashley and Elon are up to...would have itself been the basis for weeks of Congressional hearings and wrinkly old Republicans (plus a smugly grinning Newt Gingrich) waxing eloquent about the decline of the American family and demanding that somebody do something!!

And there's also the fact that CPAC and a bunch of other Republican conventions are wretched hives of scum and villainy not only in the sense of the freaks that go to them, it's that they are apparently also buzzing with activity when it comes to shit like gay prostitution.

I'm confused, I used to be a Republican, and none of this is supposed to work that way, either.

(And didn't These Fucking People decide they didn't like IVF and wanted to go back to rabidly hating all LGBT people just a few months ago?)

Kamala Harris calling these motherfuckers "Weird" didn't go far enough.

Not. Even. Close. If you ask me.

This crap isn't just weird, it's sick.

And now apparently JD Vance is trying to tell our European allies that they don't respect Democracy because they're not letting the Russians take them over by bribery and bullshit-ass political manipulations, and accusing the British of arresting people for "Thought Crimes" because some nut got arrested for harassing women inside the exclusion zone around an abortion clinic (A thing Trump just pardoned a bunch of religious nuts for here.)

These fucking people missed the entire goddamned point of George Orwell, among other things.

European governments are currently convening emergency meetings and, presumably, planning to do whatever they figure they need to do without us, because we got stupid.

This crap will end with a united European Union (as one country) and a divided America. By the way, it's worth pointing out that this sort of thing entirely fits with the End Times Prophecy narrative that I learned in the latter half of the 1990's.

I guess I just never thought it would come about by...Idiocracy...let alone by an Idiocracy being enthusiastically adopted by conservative Americans in particular.

Seriously if you'd told me this shit would happen back when I was a serious twenty-something Baptist, I'd probably have punched you in the face while screaming about Donald Trump being a Democrat.

Because believe it or not, there was a time when Republicans were not like this.

America is falling apart and getting Oligarch-raided at home, and we've effectively taken ourselves off the board and surrendered to the fucking Russians abroad...and no, the psyche of the average American Idiot will not handle the United States ceasing to be a World Power very well at all...but that's not "Where we're headed" it's where we already are and that wound is entirely self-inflicted.

Some bullshit idea of being mean to their neighbors and relative status will not replace a hell of a lot of the intangible (and entirely taken for granted) things a lot of These Fucking People are about to lose.

Much less what we've already lost, a lack of childhood diseases like Measles, for example.

Antivaxxers and Eugenicists do not give a shit about public health.

Conspiracy nuts do not (successfully) build starships, regressive fanatics and religious nuts do not invent the future.

Nations and peoples who let this shit get a foothold do not keep Superpower status or the wealth that goes with it.

And I'm here to tell you, that in and of itself will be enough to break America, were we not already like, half a crisis away from complete disintegration based on Republican divisiveness and Trumpian incompetence alone.

Not to mention the greed of Billionaires.

Well, that and Republicans have been attacking the social cohesion of America right down to the family unit for a good long time now.

Like, where the fuck do these assholes think they're going to get their money or even have it be worth anything without *Checks Notes* Civilization??

These Fucking People aren't "Saving America" not even for themselves. 

They're trying to burn America down because all these fuckin' idiots want to be the guy who gets his face on the One Credit note for some kind of far-right New World Order that names Vladimir Putin "Tsar Vladimir I, the World-Conqueror."

And America, as she is currently constituted and as a whole country, stands in the way of that.

As does Ukraine, and so will the rest of Europe if they do what I think they will. If all those people want to remain free...they're going to have to stand up and fight.

As for those of us over here who still believe in the stuff we say we do??

We're gonna have to fight to get to a point where we can contribute to resisting these fucking Antichrists. All that "Left Behind" shit was a lie. The Evangelical Christians were the goddamned Enemy (in the sense that they themselves use that word) the entire time.

So yeah, if you really believe in Christ, that ain't the way.

You either believe in Freedom or you don't.

Yes, it really is that simple.

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

Three

Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple.  “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written: “‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.”

Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’

~Matthew 4:5-7

Bonus Content

Faith without deeds is worthless.
~Warhammer 40K Dawn Of War, Imperium Thought For The Day.

It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.
~Attributed to an unnamed US Major by war correspondent Peter Arnett following the US bombing of Ben Tre, South Vietnam, in 1968.