When I was sixteen I won a great victory. I felt in that moment that I should live to be a hundred, now I know I shall not see thirty. None of us know our end really, or what hand will guide us there. A King may move a man, a father may claim a son. That man can also move himself. And only then does that man truly begin his own game. Remember that how so ever you are played, or by whom, your soul is in your keeping alone. Even though those who presume to play you be kings or men of power. When you stand before God, you cannot say "but I was told by others to do thusly" or that "virtue was not convenient at the time." This will not suffice. Remember that. ~The Leper King, from the film Kingdom Of Heaven.
...
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it, and then hand it to them with the well fought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same. And if you and I don't do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free. ~Ronald Reagan
I saw this last night.Some capitalist jackoff spouting off about wanting to go back to the Dark Ages and trying to say that "God" will keep you safe if you're "subservient and loyal to Trump."
For fuck's sake that's not a religion.
Trump has nothing to do with God. Trump is not Of God. You should not need me to tell you that.
The man mocked the Lord live on CNN and said he didn't need God's forgiveness all the way back in June of 2015 and for the life of me, I have no idea how the fuck it didn't end in a massive scandal right then and there.
I saw it.
I was a Christian for most of my life. That I can recall specifically from my earliest memories to the last time I walked out the door of one; I was "In Church" to one degree or another from 1977 to early 2008.
More than that, I'm an Air Force Veteran. I worked in food service for 25 years. I've done physical labor, I've worked with technology. I have a lot of life experience where things have to be done the right way, the first time, every time.
You can't just wing it and pull some kind of bullshit "God card."
God. Does. Not. Work. Like. That.
Hell, the Dark Ages didn't work that way.
The nobility...the only rich people there were in a lot of places, did in fact collect taxes from their Serfs (mostly out of whatever crops said Serfs grew) but then they had to sell the shit, and then pay taxes on their land to the Crown and/or the local Bishop, and there were a trillion and one unpleasant things involved in all this and probably even more ways to die. There were no tax courts or loopholes or lawyers. You paid your taxes to the Crown or you got killed by whatever means the King saw fit. And there's a reason the King could do that. There was no law, no physical safety, beyond the walls of a given Lord's castle, and whatever sentries were sent out to guard the serfs during their workday. If a local noble's guard force couldn't handle a problem, then whatever army the King had could be called in to fix it, if you were in good standing.
When those who could travel did so they went under armed guard for a goddamn reason.
(By contrast, all we really need is a functional air traffic control network and aviation safety, for the roads to be maintained and for the crews of ships to be reasonably competent. Only in a few places are those crews or ships required to even defend themselves or be escorted by warships. Likewise all the other regulations these idiots hate so much are comparatively a hell of a lot less onerous than historical penalties for not doing them. All those regulations and shit are written in blood. Yet all that is apparently too much to ask for these fucking people, also.)
Your day could get pretty bad, pretty fast out there.
And that's if you didn't live in a place that got regularly raided by various barbarians, brigands, illiterate religious terrorists, Islamic invaders, pirates, or the goddamned Vikings.
Needless to say, outside of the few big cities of the day there wasn't much in the way of profit, nor the physical security that guaranteed it (and remember, this was a time where the power of the French king largely ended at the borders of Paris itself) but I suppose there was relative status aplenty, if you lived long enough to enjoy it.
But that was a hella big "If." Life expectancies in the Roman Empire (and in China or the Islamic world during the Dark Ages) were similar to those of the 20th Century. You were damned lucky to make it to 40 in Europe a thousand years ago.
The systems of finance and trade routes that existed at the time largely came from the East or from the Islamic world, then at the height of its own Golden Age. Those systems would be adapted by Europeans during the Crusades, and much of that recovery of ideas (and of course, loot) from the Crusades would feed into the later Renaissance, and then the Reformation, which sowed the seeds of our modern world.
And that's all shit that these Capitalists and Jesus freaks think they want to undo. Note that the rest of the world is not playing along with this: It's just America that's cruising all ahead flank towards Failed Statehood.
And the thing is, what these rich idiots think is that they'll live in bunkers and abuse their assorted hangers-on while trying to figure out how to Upload themselves into some kind of bullshit Virtual Universe.
Okay.
So what happens when the power goes out. Your virtual Cryptocurrency world needs electricity, don't it??
Seems like if somebody pulls the plug, strips the solar panels off your Whatever, or some wire-chewing critter shorts out your shit or some techno-bandits kidnap or recruit your IT guy, etc. You're probably gonna be fucked.
What if whatever's left of your consciousness loses itself screaming trapped eternally in some dead metal box??
What happens if the people you're shitting all over figure out there's more of them than there is of you? What if the food runs out and they eat you to make up for the shortfall?
What if you didn't get to upload yourself??
What if all that is just a bag of hooey and you can't?? What if the human mind or Soul simply doesn't work that way??
(This is the most likely result, in my opinion.)
Ain't that pretty much Lights Out on you??
Somehow, I don't think these fucking people have thought any of this through. I think they're overcome with debased, self-destructive urges and being egged on by people who want the End Times so bad they're willing to be the Beast of Revelations their own damn selves.
That only ends one way, and I'll note again the rest of the world (except possibly for Russia) seems not to be buying in at this point.
It seems like it's the people who have some actual cultural memories of living like barbarians or serfs that are saying "No." Not just no but "Hell no, fuck you."
But the rest of us, those of us stuck in here with these morons??
We're gonna have to figure something the fuck out, and fast.
You either believe in freedom or you don't.
You either believe in civilization or the darkness and its fires.
Yes, it really is that simple.
Слава Україна!
Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth,
Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is his name: ~Amos 5:7-8
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
No comments:
Post a Comment