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