Being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered.
And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread.
And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.
And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.
And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.
If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.
And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence: For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee:
And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.
And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season.
And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee: and there went out a fame of him through all the region round about.
And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all.
And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read.
And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written,
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him.
And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.
And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. And they said, Is not this Joseph's son?
And he said unto them, Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself: whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country.
And he said, Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country.
~Luke 4:1-24
I saw this last night when I got up.Apparently Zelensky had a meeting with JD Vance and Trump in the Oval Office and got into a shouting match with them because he wouldn't blow the narcissist enough or sign over his country's resources to them. Apparently, he called JD Vance a bitch and got thrown out.
Good for you, bro. Fuck those two motherfuckers.
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. ~Revelation 6:1-2
You know, the day will come when everyone will say they always were against all this bullshit, in the same way that one hell of a lot of French people for years always said they supported the Resistance and nobody admitted to being one of those Nazi collaborators photographed at the end of the war wearing a new coat of tar and feathers and trying to pick hot pitch out of their ears at the height of the Epuration Sauvage. I mean, sure, there were a lot of people in various arms of Free France, the Maquis, the Resistance, ex-Vichyites who threw in with the Allies so they could keep having a job, and so on...but I've generally heard that at no point before the middle of June in 1944 when the tide definitively started to turn and the Germans started visibly losing the war all across the French countryside were those people in the majority.
Courage is contagious, but so is apathy, conspiracy-theorist horse-fuckery, cowardice, desire for perverse entertainment, stupidity, willful ignorance, and so on.
And, too late, I'm seeing a hell of a lot of anger and/or buyer's remorse from Americans who went along when they thought it wasn't gonna be their ass.
Only now that it's derailed America's place in the world and started to cost them money and their good jobs and whatever social status they thought they had are a lot of Americans getting pissed off.
And that's just my theory, a hell of a lot of American Idiots simply thought Trump was gonna be more "Entertaining" and they would still get to keep the benefits of Joe Biden's economy. Democrats simply failed to tickle the ears of those who hungered for a False Prophet enough.
Or, as a friend of mine puts it, politics became entertainment for ugly people.
It wasn't anything the Democrats did policy-wise, there's a lot of blame going around there. I don't think that's it and I don't think it even matters. Kamala Harris could've gone to Israel and freaking negotiated peace between Hamas and Israel and I don't think it would've mattered worth a damn.
Too many "Leftists" will always hate the Democrats no matter what because Something Something Gazpacho. Too many "Conservatives" just think Republicans are "Their team" and all any of this fucking shit is to them is some kind of extended sporting event that never goes out of season.
People are just stupid.
I mean that literally, I knew a fair number of people at my old job who either couldn't or wouldn't tell me why they like Trump. One guy just said "I like the shit he says" as if it was all some kind of big joke.
Only now from what I hear it's getting to be not funny anymore.
We as a people had it too good for too long and we got bored.
Here we are now, Entertain us, I feel Stupid and contagious.
Kurt Cobain called America right all those years ago.
We're awash in bigots of every kind, conspiracy nuts, fascists, literal Commie sellouts (except they're Republicans, think about that, Reagan fucking Wept.) Russian stooges and wealthy assholes (and lots of not-so-wealthy assholes) who apparently think Trump is their Lord and Savior because he freed them from having to act with any level of decency or moral restraint. And I'm sorry but too many years of too many Democrats hemming and hawing about doing anything about this shit has removed any fear of consequences from these motherfuckers.And the only way this changes is people Fucked Around, and now they're gonna have to Find Out.
And again, I cannot help but think this ends with two or three countries (at least) where this one used to be. That might mean a legit liberalism develops in one or more of those places, but it also means the asshole reactionaries are going to keep somewhere and that place is probably gonna basically be the Central African Republic, but for White People. And here's the thing: I'm not sure the fucking people who live in that place or go to it will care.
Let me tell you why: A bit of background first, Just a bit under 25 years ago my girlfriend broke up with me, for reasons then unknown. (A year or so later I found out; She was gay, had figured this out and was afraid to tell me at the time.)
Okay, so I kind of went a little nuts screwing around for a couple months or so, no big deal.
Well, then I got with my now ex-wife.
Where my then newly ex-girlfriend had started out poor (and was a Native American tribal descendant) and was religious (Evangelical with a theological side, and she smoked weed) she was a go getter and had a sense of hustle and she'd always worked (Yes, this was a trap) my then new-girlfriend was basically on-purpose perpetually unemployed, poor white trash and Pentecostal with a side of Personality Disorder. Naturally, we hooked up on the first date. Hell, hooking up was the first date.
We dated for a few months, moved in together, got married, were married for about a year (and separated for about half of that) and then we got divorced. I did all the work on that, she just got in the way, on purpose. We maintained an off-and-on relationship for a couple more years before I moved downstate to get away.
See, I was a conservative, a Christian, a veteran and a basic lower middle-class white person. I didn't know how even at that point, America wasn't working out for a lot of Americans. The levels of abuse and addiction, bigotry, conspiracy bullshit, crime, drugs, End Times nuttery, poverty, rampant occultism (No joke, these people seemed to believe more in astrology than in Jesus Christ) and woo woo and ravening untreated mental illness in a lot of places in rural America will shock you. A lot of the people I knew then, back in the early aughts, thought the world was ending and given the conditions some of them live(d) in, I'm not sure I have much of a right to argue.
And again, this was 25 years ago. A lot of this bullshit has only gotten worse.
My ex-wife could have given a flying fuck about anything that George W. Bush did or said, her go-to was whatever the pastor of whatever fucked up holy-roller church she was attending said. Convincing her to freaking vote was an ordeal. She didn't give a damn about politics until 2008 and that was because of Sarah Palin. Ideas like Christian Nationalism and shit did not even penetrate...until some dumbass wrapped it up in their particular brand of Bunga Bunga horseshit.
We've since lost touch, but through mutual contacts I hear my ex is not a Trumper and she actually has a job now. For what it's worth, I guess? I don't really wanna know, but people tell me this stuff.
Thing is, I've driven through the area where she's from and where we lived for part of that time and it's pretty much the MAGA part of Northern Michigan, aside from the fact that Black people are a visible minority there now (mostly because of Jamaican seasonal workers 25 years ago, many of whom had kids with local women) and some of the signs at the gas station we stopped at were in Spanish, not much has changed...and most of it is still dirt-ass poor. The thing is, a lot of those people still live that way and at least some of them seem to want to.
Misery seems to make a lot of Republicans feel validated.
Traditional conservatism did not interest these fucking people.
And the God a lot of these motherfuckers believed was about to destroy the world back then sounds a hell of a lot like Donald Trump does today. Yeah, think about that one.
And I'll point out again that Ukraine is a Christian, traditionally-conservative (very much in the way I understood those words 25 years ago) country. It doesn't matter because that's not the world MAGA wants to live in. Those people chose democracy and fought for it instead of just giving up and blaming somebody else. Years ago I railed against learned helplessness and moral relativism. I was outvoted.
But then Trump convinces them that the reason they're in the mess they're in isn't because of people like Trump picking their pockets, it's because the rest of the world has been holding out on them somehow or the government gave their money to Black people or some shit. Hate has become the new Opiate of the Masses. Throw in a bunch of conspiracy theories to rationalize that, too, because these fucking people lack the guts to just say they Hate.
And yet they want to shun people forced into that exact position, simply because those people believe in freedom and a more optimistic world-view and don't want to stay that way??
I can't make it make sense. The traditional conservatism I was raised in would be over there fighting alongside the Ukrainians instead of...this crap.
Reagan Wept.
Look, I don't know how to make these fucking people give a shit, but we'd best think of something and besides that, we'd best be prepared to fight against this bullshit our own damn selves.
We need to make America work out better for a lot more Americans, and less well for Elon Musk, so that the opiates of conspiratorial thinking, hate and religiosity or the tyranny of some backwoods church or drugged up-ass family or YouTube truck-screamer doesn't hold as much appeal.
You either believe in freedom or you don't.
So get after it. The fight is here.
As for me, this series is gonna go into more detail about all the Apocalyptic bullshit and End Times stuff and I'll do what I can to explain it and tie it in with all aspects of the current mess we're in. Know your enemy.
Maybe together we can figure something out.
Слава Україна!
“‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen." ~Ezekiel 16:49-50
Sold I to the merchant ships
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pit
But my hand was made strong
By the hand of the Almighty
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly
Won't you help to sing
These songs of freedom?
'Cause all I ever have
Redemption songs
Redemption songs
None but ourselves can free our minds
Have no fear for atomic energy
'Cause none of them can stop the time
How long shall they kill our prophets
While we stand aside and look? Ooh
Some say it's just a part of it
We've got to fulfill the Book.
