Souls Under The Altar (American Revelation, Explained, Six.)

And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:

And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?

And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow-servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.

And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;

And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casts her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.

And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;

And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:

For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand? ~Revelation 6:9-17

...

The 54th Massachusetts Brigade lost over half its number in the assault on Ft. Wagner. The supporting white brigades also suffered heavily before withdrawing.

The fort was never taken.

As word of their bravery spread, Congress at last authorized the raising of black troops throughout the Union. Over 180,000 volunteered.

President Lincoln credited these men of color with helping turn the tide of the war.

~End-credits placard, from the film Glory.

I saw this last night.

Trump's Department of Defense is actively erasing and trying to hide the history of non-White people in the US Army. That's up to and including units with such storied histories as the 442nd Regimental Combat Team AKA "Go For Broke" a unit composed mostly of Japanese Americans recruited right out of the internment camps. Men who served in that unit included Senator Daniel Inouye and a who's who of others in postwar Asian-American political life. 21 Congressional Medals of Honor were won by men serving in that unit, many posthumously. They saw some of the worst fighting imaginable in Italy and central Europe so those guys fucking well earned all that. Don't take my word for it, Look It Up Yourself the 442nd is still an active unit in the US Army Reserves with elements in American Samoa, Guam, Hawaii and Saipan. This isn't "DEI" to those people serving in that unit today, it's their actual history.

And it gets worse, these fucking people are also trying to erase deceased veterans in military cemeteries. I'm sorry, but that's some bad mojo there, you don't disrespect the dead...especially in a military context. This affects people that I served with, my best friend in the Air Force was an African American convert to Islam. He died of COVID-19 in 2020, mostly because he also had heart trouble, otherwise he probably would have made it.

But also, many of those that I served with...white and otherwise...were Christian, as was I at the time. I started out pretty lapsed, by the time I had my accident, I was a fire-and-brimstone member of the End Times Prophecy Movement. I'm not kidding. I used the bit about the Saints under the altar from Revelations chapter six for a damned reason, here.

We as a nation are bringing some bad shit on ourselves.

And I mean just with this and that's altogether separate from all the other bad shit.

And mark my words carefully on this; If this crap isn't reversed, or stopped, we deserve whatever the unquiet dead do to us.

You honor those who've gone before, period. The color of their skin or the creeds they held in their hearts or their gender or sex should have not one goddamned thing to do with it!

A Black or Female Airman, Coastguardsman, Marine, Sailor or Soldier stops a bullet just as good as a White Man does, and if you don't like that?? Fuck You.

I've written about this stuff many times.

ALL of those who have served their country deserved to be recognized. There's nothing political about this, it's just a fact. I'm tired of these fucking people attacking literally everything about America that's supposed to be nonpartisan.

If Republicans want to make everything political, they need to be reminded that when the other shoe drops, when they end up OUT of power...that WILL be used against them, too.

And I'm a tap the sign and ask one more fuckin' time. Why is it, that Hegseth and Trump are disrespecting and gutting the military while picking all type of unnecessary fights with our allies?? Do they WANT us to lose a goddamned war??

Because this shit right here is how you lose the goddamn war.

I'm a remind you that, historically, neither Canada nor South Africa is the kind of country you wanna fuck with. Canada has its own impressive military history but South Africa in particular contains Warrior Cultures, plural. As in the Afrikaners and the Zulus, among others.

And it's a non-zero chance, while I'm at it, that our next war will be against ourselves.

In fact, I think that's specifically what these assholes are counting on, that there won't be an America to backlash against them, and they think they'll be able to count on China or Russia or somebody else to protect them and whatever part of America they get. 

Oh sure, they might lose a war or two...but they're trying to set things up like it was back in the feudal days where if a King lost his kingdom the other rulers would work something out like they did for Guy of Lusignan after the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

The other European rulers ransomed him from Saladin after a few years and made him King of Cyprus.

Kind of puts Trump's Gaza bullshit in a new light, doesn't it??

And yeah, that kind of Crusades-coded horseshit is exactly the world a lot of these "Conservatives" think they want to live in.

It gets worse.

Republicans...not specifically Elon and Trump...Republicans in general are trying to create an ethnic and political monoculture. As I wrote in November, that was one of the specific causes of the Balkan Wars and one of the reasons I got to spend some time in Bosnia. 

I wrote about that too.

And they're trying to pick all these fights while wrecking America and reducing our place and stature in the world?? 

What the fucking fuck??

Like I also said, I think they're trying to beat the record of 771 Days established in the time between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the Soviet Union.

None of this makes any sense unless destruction itself is the goal.

And honestly? I'm really glad that Canada and Europe and Mexico and presumably most of the rest of the world is uniting against this crap and not indulging these motherfuckers. All we're succeeding at doing is removing ourselves from play for no good reason, at best...and destroying ourselves at worst.

And we'll suffer for that idiocy as well.

As for those of us, Americans, who aren't onboard with this shit, who unlike Chuck Schumer are not content to connive at our own destruction??

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

You're either willing to fight or you're not.

And for the record nowadays from what I'm seeing it's liberals, moderates and Never Trump Republicans that are cheering the possibility of a government shutdown and freaking arming themselves and "Conservatives" who are the ones whining and threatening to call the cops on everybody for every damned thing. For too many of those fucking people it was never about Freedom.

It was about Fascism, and now that they think they've got the government they thought they wanted, they'll give all that up! I mean, why not?? Republicans have already in the last decade given away everything they said they believed or thought they were...for Donald Trump.

And yes, their next move will be persecuting religion, including any Christians that won't bow down to the golden idols of Donald Trump that have already been made.

I can't make it make sense.

But I know these fucking people are playing at dice with powers and principalities...to use a Biblical term here...that they cannot even begin to understand.

Or maybe they just don't want to.

These motherfuckers want to kill a lot of people, for no better reasons that bigotry, politics and shitty grievance because they think the whole rest of the world done them wrong just by existing.

I don't know what the fuck is wrong with these people and I say that as a former Republican.

But do I know is the Lord's Word says that when the Saints cry out for vengeance, that call will be answered.

I'm not a Born-Again anything, anymore...but I've read Revelation.

God's vengeance against this country for its many sins will be terrible.

(And no, I'm not talking about the gay people, or any people's sexual preferences or whatever, I'm talking about greed and hate and idolatry and murder, specifically by the White "Conservatives." Literal golden idols to that shit, now, among many other things.)

Donald Trump thinks he's on some kind of narcissistic revenge tour.

These people have forgotten, Vengeance is mine, Says the Lord.

To me belongeth vengeance and recompense; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste. ~Deuteronomy 32:35

And it is coming.

Because these fucking people keep smacking the buffalo right on the nose, on purpose.

Do Not Pet The Fluffy Cows, Yo.

You ain't the Supreme power in the Universe, Republicans.

Remember that.

Because it's absolutely going to be on the test.

Soon.

Слава Україна!

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

Five

Never have I witnessed such sincere hospitality and the overwhelming spirit of true brotherhood as is practiced by people of all colors and races here in this ancient Holy Land, the House of Abraham, Muhammad, and all the other Prophets of the Holy Scriptures. For the past week, I have been utterly speechless and spellbound by the graciousness I see displayed all around me by people of all colors...

You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to rearrange much of my thought-patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions. This was not too difficult for me. Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.

During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug) -- while praying to the same God -- with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the actions and in the deeds of the "white" Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan, and Ghana. We were truly all the same (brothers) -- because their belief in one God had removed the "white" from their minds, the 'white' from their behavior, and the 'white' from their attitude. I could see from this, that perhaps if white Americans could accept the Oneness of God, then perhaps, too, they could accept in reality the Oneness of Man -- and cease to measure, and hinder, and harm others in terms of their "differences" in color.

With racism plaguing America like an incurable cancer, the so-called "Christian" white American heart should be more receptive to a proven solution to such a destructive problem. Perhaps it could be in time to save America from imminent disaster -- the same destruction brought upon Germany by racism that eventually destroyed the Germans themselves.

They asked me what about the Hajj had impressed me the most. . . . I said, "The brotherhood! The people of all races, color, from all over the world coming together as one! It has proved to me the power of the One God. . . . All ate as one, and slept as one. Everything about the pilgrimage atmosphere accented the Oneness of Man under One God. 

~Malcolm X, Letter following the Hajj.