Oil and Whine (American Revelation, Explained, Four.)

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. ~Revelation 6:5-6

...

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

...

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride." ~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

I saw this yesterday.

Trump, trying to get MAGAT's to buy Tesla's because Elon's stock and car sales are in trouble.

Hurt not the oil and the whine, I guess?

But it's Okay, supposedly there's one that "Only" costs $35,000

Bitch, the most expensive vehicle I ever bought (a new 2001 Ford Escape that my ex-wife just had to have, and she got that car...and the loan...in the divorce, LOL) was like a good ten grand less than that, and only the second new vehicle I've ever had, the first being a 1995 Chevy S-10 basic model pickup truck. Fuck, If I had $35,000 the absolute last thing I'd ever spend it on would be one of Elon's Fash-mobiles.

This is how out-of-touch and hopped up on "Hey, we have a cult" these fucking people are.

Most people do not have $35,000 to just go buy a Tesla for the sake of partisan political loyalty, and the number of them that does is only gonna go down.

Why? Because the economy is starting to visibly crash. It's been working on it for a couple weeks. The little stock ticker that my new little laptop often has on its taskbar (and I got it a couple weeks ago) is usually in the red with down arrows. This should surprise absolutely no one. Chaos is not good for anyone's finances, but then these fucking people are doing this shit for relative status (and the bidding of Vladimir Putin) not money.

Elon's ball's deep in the Twitterization of America and it's crashing, at about the same rate that Twitter did. Except Trump is gonna try to use the full power of the State to keep Elon afloat because these assholes think crashing America (but not themselves) is some great Project on behalf of their little cabal of billionaire butt-buddies.

Oh, and hey, if you don't have $35K to just go out and use to blow the narcissist, fuck you.

Entire government departments are basically being laid off and illegally disbanded, thousands of people are out of work or about to be, and these idiots are apparently surprised that most people (even a shit-ton of conservatives) are pissed off??

Like, I don't know how any of these fucking people expect the economy to keep going gangbusters when all the sudden tens of thousands of people (a number certain to go up) are applying for Unemployment benefits when there's literally no good reason any of them should have been let go.

Most of America is basically being told to go fuck itself by these dickheads, nobody but cult members and rich people are actually happy with any of this crap, and somebody's surprised that there's people in the streets?

That's only going to get worse.

Like, I personally know people, a couple of my Mom's seasonal neighbors for example, who've had their lives upended by this horseshit...and where they just bought a house, there literally are no jobs other than the National Forest they were working at!

You know, another reason I'm pissed off about all this bullshit is that it's made my Mom have to follow politics. My Mom is a basic Democrat and has been since the early-to-mid-1990's (she was/is a Clintonista) but she hates politics, hates following politics and until the last couple of months has hated it when anybody brings that shit up!

Now she's the one bringing it up!

I think a lot of these fucking people who voted for this shit thought Trump's second term would be like the first one, or that they wouldn't get fucked over and somebody else would. Well, none of this is going to work out that way and a lot of privileged American white people are going to find out how the global Other Half lives.

And they're not liking what they see so far.

Like, I'm serious, hate is a luxury good that kind of goes out the window when people end up struggling for survival or living with off-the-wall day-to-day chaos. It's a little hard to blame Black people (for example) when Donald Trump and Elon Musk are the motherfuckers causing this shit.

And I'm warning you now, when the inevitable clap-back comes, when the other shoe drops, these fucking people are gonna try to kill their way into staying in power forever. Fuck, they're already doing all type of health woo shit in the hope that they can use the next pandemic as a bioweapon like how they tried to use COVID-19.

And if they can't do that, they'll weaponize (or even start) civil conflict, insurgency and war because mass death is their goal and they don't care how they get it, so long as the wealthy are unaffected. That's what the "Do not hurt the oil and the wine" in Revelation 6:6 means. 

The Prosperity Gospel is a lie, these fucking people are evil, not righteous.

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. ~Revelation 6:7-8

It won't work, just like it didn't last time. The anger from Americans is becoming visible, and not only do I not think this will be solved by the political process, I think it's going to fly of the handle sooner and not later. More to the point, seeing us as a test case...the rest of the world is going to stop reacting with horror and smack this billionaire far-right shit down hard.

And that's why these motherfuckers want to go out and fight everybody and try to crash everything and replace the Lord's Word with a Christ-less Prosperity Gospel.

They'd rather be the Beast of Revelations their own damn selves than lose even one iota of their narcissistic relative status. It's not even about money. What God thinks about that (or does to these fucking people) doesn't seem to matter to them, I guess?

As for us, either we believe in freedom or we don't.

Because the time is coming where we're all gonna have to stand up.

Soon.

The assholes aren't going to give you a choice.

And when it doesn't work out how they thought it would, they'll whine about that and try to blame somebody else for it, too.

Слава Україна!

Osman Ali Atto: I see not catching Aidid is becoming routine.

General William Garrison: We're not leaving Somalia until we find him. And we will find him.

Atto: (scoffing) You've been here, what, six weeks? Six weeks, you tried to catch the General. You put up reward posters. $25,000. What's this, gunfight at K.O. Corral?

Garrison: It's O.K. Corral.

Atto: Don't make the mistake of thinking because I grew up without running water I am simple, General. I do know something about history. See all this? It's simply shaping tomorrow. A tomorrow without a lot of Arkansas white-boys' ideas in it.

Garrison: Well, I wouldn't know about that. I'm from Texas.

Atto: Mr. Garrison, I think you should not have come here. This is civil war. This is our war, not yours.

Garrison: Three hundred thousand dead and counting. That's not a war, Mr. Atto. That's genocide. ~From The Film Black Hawk Down.

Three

They're pickin' up the prisoners
And puttin 'em in a pen
And all she wants to do is dance, dance
Rebels been rebels
Since I don't know when
And all she wants to do is dance

Molotov cocktail, the local drink
And all she wants to do is dance, dance
They mix 'em up right
In the kitchen sink
And all she wants to do is dance

Crazy people walkin' round with blood in their eyes
And all she wants to do is dance, dance, dance
Wild-eyed pistol wavers who ain't afraid to die
And all she wants to do is
And all she wants to do is dance
And make romance
She can't feel the heat
Comin' off the street
She wants to party
She wants to get down
All she wants to do is
All she wants to do is dance.

~Don Henley, All She Wants To Do Is Dance

Red Horse (American Revelation, Explained, Three.)

 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.

~Revelation 6:4

...

Evey: Can I ask about what you said on the telly?

V: Yes.

Evey: Did you mean it?

V: Every word.

Evey: You really think that blowing up parliament is going to make this country a better place?

V: There's no certainty, only opportunity.

Evey: I think you can be pretty certain that if anyone does show up, Creedy will black-bag everyone of them.

V: People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.

Evey: And you are going to make that happen by blowing up a building?

V: The building is a symbol, as is the act of destroying it. Symbols are given power by the people. Alone, a symbol is meaningless, but with enough people, blowing up a building can change the world.

Evey: I wish I believed that was possible, but every time I've seen the world change it's always been for the worse.

~From the film V For Vendetta.

...

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. ~George Orwell, 1984.

I saw this last night. In a United Nations general assembly vote, the United States was the only country to vote against creating an "International Day Of Hope."

Good God, Republicans, talk about showing your ass. I mean, I get that about the only thing Republicans seem to collectively love...even more than money or political power...is being miserable sons of bitches, but for fuck's sake both North Korea and Russia voted in favor of this thing.

Like, what's even the damn point??

You know, before this is over I bet Putin ends up regretting backing Elon and Trump. If these guys are fascists, well, they're also soft-handed bitches who project weakness by pretty much every action. 

Seriously, somebody shot ONE CEO a few months back and they can't show a picture of the guy without him being surrounded by a fuck-ton of cops. I hear people have been tagging and torching Tesla cars and Tesla dealers lately...so they seriously need 25 cops in formation in front of the place?? I think one or two sitting out front in a police cruiser would probably have sent the same message more efficiently.

Isn't "Government Efficiency" the big buzz-word lately??

Of course, why be efficient when these fucking people can put their bumptious fascism on full display??

The Red Horse of Revelation these fuckin' people ain't. 

At least not on purpose. (Perhaps by incompetence?)

I mean if you want to get really technical about it, Donald Trump has had a busy couple of months. He's singlehandedly created Canadian Nationalism and European Militarization (neither of which was much of a thing 4 months ago) crashed the Biden economy (a thing I'm already starting to see here) Kowtowed to Russia (a backward 17th century shithole) removed America's global hegemony and superpower status, and thrown all this away hoping it would somehow give Putin a hand up in reconstructing the *Checks Notes* late Soviet Union??

And while I'm at it, if these morons actually do pick a fight with Canada, remember it ain't just Canada. Canada is a part of both the British Commonwealth and NATO. That's like half the world, right there.

And let's not forget these fucking people are gutting the government and the military and reducing American state capacity by the day.

Yeah, that's right. Supporting even one major military operation takes a lot more than just proper military logistics and a good amount of supplies built up with a way to get it on the battlefield where it's needed. The guy pulling that trigger needs to know his family is safe back home, his government isn't a shit-show and that he'll get his paycheck on time. Not to mention, that the Black guy watching his back will still be there when he needs his back watched.

Yeah, that's another thing: People need to be able to trust their government. Other countries need to be able to trust ours. The list goes on.

If this blows up all the way, I fully expect we'll lose, and that Australia ends up with Alaska, Guam, Hawaii and the West Coast, the British burn the White House again and my ass ends up living in the new Canadian province of Lower Ontario. India will end up employing American tech-bros as call center tech support guys for the same, and you "Conservatives" can pretty much expect you'll have to learn a thing or two and you will lose your guns, or at least face much tighter regulations. 

Toting an AK-47 around Walmart like you expect to get jumped by Al Qaeda while buying eggs is probably not going to fly.

And if you're the kind of fragile punk-ass White Man who thinks you need all that, well...I strongly suggest you get your head out of your ass and look around and see how the rest of the world is reacting to our bullshit.

Ya know the big line about Trump from his first term, like it meant something, was "He fights."

The observation about it that I remember was "We lose."

And ya know, I get where this shit comes from.

Yes, I used to be a Republican.

It's the "Conservative" mentality that they could somehow take on the whole rest of the world (including all the Americans that they don't like) and somehow win by sheer Craggy Bumboclatically-glaring Cowboy Masculinity. It's the whole John Wayne thing. And it's stupid.

The thing you have to remember about John Wayne, though, is that John Wayne wasn't even John Wayne, literally. Dude wasn't a tough guy, he just played one on TV while being an adulterous, drunk, racist asshole off-screen. Of course his was more the "Great White Father" brand of racism than ranting about them N-words like George Wallace. As far as I'm aware, the only person John Wayne ever even considered attempting to actually assault was Native American actress Sacheen Littlefeather, but security at the Oscars prevented him from doing so.

But dude was a Republican, even if he did have the occasional bout of common sense regarding his politics, so Republicans think John Wayne was the ultimate tough guy.

This is how Mike Pence could post a picture of himself staring intently across the Korean DMZ while wearing a bomber jacket and post it on Twitter and expect not to just get laughed at (and by the way that was for a domestic Republican audience, as far as I know nobody in North Korea (even now) has Twitter or X or Whatever The Fuck It Is This Week.

But here's the thing, when stage-managed Republican crap meets the real world, Republicans tend to actually lose.

I'm serious, there was a time when most Republicans were not like this.

But the truth is, there were at least some that were always like this.

And, worse, you can add as I've said before that these fucking people have an attention span for serious events that lasts about two weeks at the longest before they spiral out into conspiracy theories and crazy shit. If COVID-19 was most of these people's first crisis (and they failed that test) how do any of them really think they're going to weather all this crazy shit that Republicans are doing now??

Like, does anybody really think that declaring war on the rest of the civilized world is going to come without any personal inconveniences??

I mean, if you think about it, these motherfuckers want to pick fights with the Commonwealth? BAE Systems, a British company, owns one motherfucker of a lot of our Military Industrial Complex. That could get...complicated if Trump tries to invade Canada.

You'd think these fucking people would have thought about stuff like that.

Or do they just not care??

And that's the most likely answer, because the driving force for a lot of these guys is narcissism, whether it's religious narcissism or just plain mental illness.

But I consider several things to be safe bets.

#1 Any war these idiots get us into, we're going to lose.

#2 Their actual goal whether it's part of a wider conflict or the result of that wider conflict not being possible or winnable is to fight other Americans.

#3 They absolutely intend to break up this country, because current wider American culture. Most of America will not reject the idea of Hope. Some of us may hope for some deviant things, even too much of MAGA if you really look at it isn't interested in hopelessness...or at least not more of it...and does not valorize the idea of squatting in the dark and shitting on your own shoes while peering suspiciously out of the firing ports of your bunker through a rifle scope.

#4 Russian culture, on the other hand, is like 11 time zones of paranoia and just fine with #3.

#5 You Do The Math where that puts whatever part of the former USA these ass-clowns get, both internationally and socially.

But of course, there's a catch.

We know they're Oligarch-raiding the USA in preparation for a Soviet-style breakup.

Which, whatever wars there may be because of it, leads to another certainty:

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. ~Revelation 6:5-6

By which I mean that standards of living in the former Soviet Union dropped massively after its fall, especially in terms of health care, social metrics and support for the elderly.

And that, too, is both a goal and part of the plan. It's less social Darwinism than Stalinism with a gilded veneer, or as I've put it before, it's the Killing Fields, but with a mall and shit.

Any war these motherfuckers get us into, we're going to end up fighting with rifles, machine guns and Technical Trucks, while the Republican war profiteers still make bank off the shit.

I'm serious.

There is no bottom with these fucking people.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Слава Україна!

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride." ~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

Two

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

Conquering And To Conquer (American Revelation, Explained, Two.)

 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

...

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

...

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. ~George Orwell, 1984.

I saw this last night. Evidently the military has deleted pictures of the WWII B-29 Silverplate Superfortress Enola Gay, the aircraft that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima at the end of WWII, because the aircraft had "Gay" in the name.

Bitch, the aircraft was named after Colonel Paul Tibbets' mother. Dude was the mission commander and it was tradition for him to name it. At that time...and certainly even more so when his mother was born, the naming conventions in this country were different than they are now.  I'm here to tell you, in 1945 "Enola Gay Tibbetts" did not even raise eyebrows as a name.

To know something like that is to understand why context and history are important. It's the same with theology when it comes to religion, and for the same reason. Emotion and experience have their place, but sometimes you have to know why this or that is so. 

More to the point I was taught all this and taught to respect it because I was a conservative.

More to the point, I'm a United States Air Force Bomb and Missile Wing veteran, 410th Bomb Wing, KI Sawyer AFB, MI and 91st Security Police Group, Minot AFB, ND. This stuff is part of my history and although I had known the basics before, you are taught this stuff in Basic Military Training so that you will goddamned well know who you are and what the fuck you're doing.

Not to mention why you're doing it. These are serious matters, and they should be taken seriously. If you cannot do the small things, like remembering and honoring those who have gone before, who's to say you can do the big stuff when it really matters?? 

Capt. Ramsey: You do qualify your remarks. If someone asked me if we should bomb Japan, a simple "Yes. By all means sir, drop that fucker, twice!"

[Men laughing]

Capt. Ramsey: I don't mean to suggest that you're indecisive, Mr. Hunter. Not at all. Just, uh... complicated. 'course, that's the way the Navy wants you. Me, they wanted simple.

Hunter: Well, you certainly fooled them, sir.

Ramsey: [chuckles] Be careful there, Mr. Hunter. It's all I've got to rely on, being a simple-minded son of a bitch. Rickover gave me my command, a checklist, a target and a button to push. All I gotta know is how to push it, they tell me when. They seem to want you to know why.

Hunter: I would hope they'd want us all to know why, sir.

Ramsey: At the Naval War College it was metallurgy and nuclear reactors, not 19th-century philosophy. "War is a continuation of politics by other means." Von Clausewitz

Hunter: I think, sir, that what he was actually trying to say was a little more -

Ramsey: Complicated?

[Men laughing]

Hunter: Yes the purpose of war is to serve a political end but the true nature of war is to serve itself.

~From the film Crimson Tide.

These fucking people...so-called "Conservatives" do not want us, as Americans, to know our own history. Think about that for a second.

Crimson Tide is the kind of movie that'll make you dumber about certain things, but I always thought that particular point is spot-on.

But there's more to it than that, the interplay between Denzel Washington's character, Captain Ramsey, and Commander Hunter, played by Denzel Washington was very indicative of how things were in certain places at the time.

The literal point of conservatism is supposed to be things as they are (not as some fanatic would wish them to be) belief in revealed truth and the wisdom of the ancestors. 

Likewise the point of liberalism is not to be Republican-lite, but to go the places that the conservatives won't, to forge the changes and the future and take care of the people that they don't give a shit about.

So of course, these fucking people want you to forget all that.

But ya know, I can kind of see why.

Wisdom of the ancestors is inconvenient, for one.

At the State of the Union address, Rep. Al Green yelled at Trump and ten Democrats joined all Republicans to vote to censure him for it.

You know, when Rep. Joe Wilson yelled at Barack Obama, no one cared...not even Obama. He was roundly mocked for it, but nobody thought it anything more than the stupid outburst that it was.

When Al Green was born, the idea that he could grow up to be a Black Congressman from Texas not only didn't exist, but there's a good chance somebody might've gotten murdered if they'd suggested it.

And he's lived to see a lot of the progress that got him where he was relegated yet again to existing more on paper than in practice, and far too many Democrats cheerfully align with racist Republicans to turn on their own for no damned good reason other than (apparently) gaining the approval of monsters and thinking they'll keep their place in the Magical City.

Well guess what?? Those Republicans aren't going to be the ones voting for you, We The People will be, and if it was up to those shitty Republicans...you wouldn't even be there in the first place. They'd rather have more Republicans.

Not that I think this shit will be resolved electorally, or wait until 2026.

So instead of throwing your own people under the bus with a smile on your face, why don't you try standing up for your own damn selves much less the rest of us out here in the real world who legitimately believe we are going to have to physically defend ourselves from these motherfuckers in the near future.

Now, let me teach you, as the Baptists taught me:

The premise of Revelation 6:2 is that Power is freely given to the Beast of Revelations, who then goes out to conquer the world with bluff, bluster and threats (the Bow, lacking arrows, being a specific bit of symbolism here) and that people who should resist do not.

In the same way and for the same reason that a lot of "conservatives" use "Things as they are" to justify bigotry and oppression and resist needed changes, a hell of a lot of End Times nuts have used these particular verses to literally demonize anybody seeking peace or the peaceful resolution of conflicts, especially anyone Left-of-Center,  as if War is somehow the "Christian" thing to do.

Yeah, a lot of these alleged Christians jumped the shark a long damn time ago, and it's like these fucking people never heard of the Ten Commandments.

So, when you see that Gavin Newsom sat down with MAGA-nut Charlie Kirk and agreed with that motherfucker about a bunch of stuff, remember all that.

These people ain't your friends.

And resisting the Antichrist is not a thing that they will do. Most of them cannot be bothered to resist Trump.

And I maintain my belief that Trump, now joined by Elon Musk, is a test run for the Beast of Revelations. That's a test that the Christians in particular failed miserably.

It's not that they fought and lost, they didn't even try. Hell, they switched sides the moment some lying false prophet tickled their ears!

A lot of these fucking people literally see Donald Trump as their Man On The White Horse...but it's not the Beast Of Revelations when they do it!

(Yes, yes it is.)

The thing to remember is that Truth is the only thing that gives people a floor to stand on to push back against Power. 

Do not forget this.

Now, sure, an infuriated public will likely move these assholes back in that direction, just like in 2017, but #1 I really doubt that we're going to have the luxury of that kind of timeframe and #2 it's very, very likely that Donald Trump and Elon Musk could cause a complete collapse of Federal power within a very short timeframe and that's before the fact that experts are forecasting an economic collapse this month.

To work within the system, you have to HAVE a system in the first place.

At the end of the day, you either believe in freedom or you don't.

You're either willing to fight against this shit or you're not.

Those are the only things that matter, without them, what's even the damned point??

And remember, shit gets worse.

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.

~Revelation 6:4

Слава Україна!

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride." ~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

One

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

Contractions (American Revelation, Explained, One.)

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

...

And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.

And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?

And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.

For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.

And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in diverse places.

All these are the beginning of sorrows.

Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake.

And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.

And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.

And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.

But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come. ~Matthew 24:2-14

I saw this yesterday.

Some Claremont Institute idiot wants Trump to subject federal workers to "Reeducation."

Sorry, bro, but this is America and we don't do that shit here.

Also, Republicans or Khmer Rouge? You be the judge.

I mean seriously what's the difference between this motherfucker and Pol Pot, except for a few jots and tittles of ideology? I mean, these fucking people made it quite clear during the COVID-19 pandemic that their dream world is basically the Killing Fields of Khmer Rouge Cambodia, but with a mall or some shit.

I mean, why not?? These fucking people have already given up America's standing in the world and thrown in with KGB Agent Vladimir Putin, who had to seriously be a Communist's Communist just to get in the door so he could be considered for that kind of a job in the Soviet Union. And yes, Vlad wants to bring back the Soviet Union. He ain't your friend.

And half of America is fine with that, thinks they'll somehow get something for it, in fact. These fucking idiots seriously do not understand Russia is our (and their) enemy and wants to fuck all of us over.

I mean, I get that a lot of these idiots hate America and want it to fall...to replace it with what, I'm not so sure. If they want to be the Beast of Revelation, they're sure going about it in a very haphazard way...since they've given up much of the worldly power they'd actually need to be that, on a global scale.

But there's a reason I write about this in terms of American Revelation. Most of these narcissistic little jerkoffs don't seem to think the rest of the world really exists. They think, they do whatever fucked up bullshit here and somehow the rest of the world just magically falls in line.

They don't even seem to understand that other countries are, well, other countries perfectly well capable of making their own decisions. Somewhere in there, narcissism became a very American affliction.

And no, they really don't know what they're doing, except that they want to hurt other Americans for no good goddamn reason other than we refused to keep blowing some goddamned narcissist.

There is no magical algorithm in the sky that determines who gets what based on some kind of partisan political loyalty to Republicans. America is a secular country, and the conflation of Christianity with Republicanism has always been stupid and wrong and a cover for much worse things.

A lot of fucking people thought that somehow wrecking America meant wrecking it for other people and not them in the last couple of months they've found out differently. The American electorate basically decided they wanted to believe in Santa Claus and somehow thought Trump would have them on some kind of a "good" list and all those other people on a "bad" list...and they would get to have whatever they thought they had...and maybe get to take other people's stuff, too. Well, none of this works that way.

And we're all very likely to end up choking on the sins of the super-wealthy in the meantime, because a lot of Americans are basically morons who chose to believe that shit and had no trouble with the idea of trading  their freedom, lives, and livelihoods for bullshit and magic beans.

Like, if you'd have told me ten, or even five years ago that Elon Musk has basically an "IVF harem" of women he's impregnated by in-vitro fertilization with trait-selected spunk and then he just ignores both mother and child after that...I'd probably have punched you in the face. I'm sorry, but if somebody were to mail me or some woman that I care about, their sperm, I still have just enough of that Church background and 1980's-1990's conservative in me that it'd be hard for me not to show up at that dude's door with blessed weapons, exorcism materials and holy texts. Like, who does this shit?!?!?!

But also, Like, I'm a man. If you're not actually getting laid what's even the damned point??

The longer this shit goes on, the more demonic it seems, and I'm not a born-again anything anymore.

It's not just that this shit is all dystopian and weird but it's legit not even interesting. It's pretty much the Great Whore of Babylon, reduced to a fucking spreadsheet.

All these things are the beginning of sorrows.

The End Times narrative as I was taught it likens the beginning of the Apocalypse to the birth pains, the Contractions, of a woman in labor.

The difference is that there's two worlds struggling to be born here, one is a world of dystopian hyper-Capitalism run amok and led by idiots, and the other is a world of equality, freedom and justice where hey, guess what? Rich people still get to be rich people, but maybe have to do with just a little less and don't get to hog everything. These two worlds are incompatible.

And, likely, America will try to continue to have it both ways, which means the country splits up and then these fucking nimrods just try to invade the rest of the former USA too.

They simply aren't going to let anybody else have any peace if it's up to them.

Like I said when your starting belief is that you're alone in a lost and dying world, but you also have some kind of overwhelming itch to get money and political power so you can force other people to believe as you do because THE WORLD IS ENDING...and then you couple that with a bottomless well of forgiveness for those who believe the "correct" things?? Well, that sounds like an invitation to do lots of antisocial and nihilistic behaviors and hurt people and I don't care if you don't like me saying so.

And that's your "End Times Narrative" right there.

I'm just sayin' either you believe in freedom or you don't.

Either you're willing to fight for your own life or you're not.

There is no middle ground.

One of these Brave New Worlds is going to be born whether you make a choice or not.

So choose, but choose wisely.

Because some of us want to live in The Empire from Star Wars, and some of us don't.

One of these things is not like the other one.

Слава Україна!

Behold, I have told you before.

Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not.

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.

For wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together.

Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:

And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and puts forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh:

So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.

Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.

~Matthew 24:25-34

Prequel

Hess: So what shall we toast to, boys? I can blather on about “To health” or “To success,” but I’d like to do somethin’ a little less rote. Where you from, Brown Eyes?

Migs Mayfield: How ’bout a toast to Operation Cinder?

Hess: Now there’s a man who knows his history.

Mayfield: No, I don’t just know it. I lived it. I was in Burnin Konn.

Hess: Burnin Konn?

Mayfield: Mmm.

Hess: That was a hard day. I had to make many unpleasant decisions.

Mayfield: Yes, you did. Entire city gone in moments, along with everybody in it. We lost our whole division that day. Man, that was like 5-10,000 people.

Hess: Yep. All heroes of the Empire.

Mayfield: Yeah. And all dead.

Hess: Well, it’s a small sacrifice for the greater good, son.

Mayfield: Depends on who you ask, don’t you think?

Hess: [irritated] What you gettin’ at, trooper?

Mayfield: All those people, the ones who died, was it good for them? Hmm? Their families? The guys I served with? Civilians, those poor mud scuffers, died defending their homes, fighting for freedom. Was it good for them?

Hess: But we’ve outlasted them, son. They’re eating themselves alive. The New Republic is in complete disarray, and we grow stronger. You see, with the rhydonium you’ve delivered, we can create havoc that’s gonna make Burnin Konn pale by comparison. And then they’re gonna turn to us once again. You see, boys, everybody thinks they want freedom, but what they really want is order. And when they realize that, they’re gonna welcome us back with open arms. Ah. To the Empire.

[Mayfield chuckles, then fires a blaster at Hess' chest, killing him instantly. He and Mando then shoot their way out of the mess hall] ~From The Mandalorian, Season 2, Ep. 7 "The Believer"