Allah Akbar? (MAGA Zombie Land, Two.)

Where were you when the world stopped turning
On that September day?
Were you in the yard with your wife and children
Or working on some stage in LA?
Did you stand there in shock at the site of that black smoke
Rising against that blue sky?
Did you shout out in anger, in fear for your neighbor
Or did you just sit down and cry?
Did you weep for the children who lost their dear loved ones
Pray for the ones who don′t know?
Did you rejoice for the people who walked from the rubble
And sob for the ones left below?
Did you burst out in pride, for the red, white and blue
And the heroes who died just doing what they do?
Did you look up to heaven for some kind of answer
And look at yourself and what really matters?

I'm just a singer of simple songs
I′m not a real political man
I watch CNN but I'm not sure I can tell you
The difference in Iraq and Iran
But I know Jesus, and I talk to God
And I remember this from when I was young
Faith, hope and love are some good things He gave us
And the greatest is love. ~Alan Jackson, Where Were You (When The World Stopped Turning.)

...

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

...

[Mon Mothma addresses the Senate chambers again]

Mon Mothma: Fellow Senators, friends, colleagues, allies, adversaries, I stand before you this morning with a heavy heart. I've spent my life in this chamber. I came here as a child, and as I look around me now, I realize I have almost no memories that predate my arrival, and few bonds of affection that cleave so tightly. Through these many years, I believe I have served my constituents honorably and upheld our code of conduct. This chamber is a cauldron of opinions, and we've certainly all had our patience and tempers tested in pursuit of our ideals. Disagree as we might, I am hopeful that those of you who know me will vouch for my credibility in the days to come.

I stand this morning with a difficult message. I believe we are in crisis. The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil! When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest. This Chamber's hold on the truth was finally lost on the Ghorman Plaza! What took place yesterday, what happened yesterday on Ghorman, was unprovoked genocide! Yes, genocide! And that truth has been exiled from this Chamber! And the monster screaming the loudest, the monster we helped create, the monster who will come for us all soon enough, is Emperor Palpatine!

~From the Star Wars series Andor, S2.E9 "Welcome To The Rebellion."

I saw this yesterday.

Just Donald Trump, talking about how "Great" Saudi Arabia is, to the point where he's extolling the "Heritage" and "Traditions" of that country and how progressive, peaceful and shiny it is.

Funny that Trump doesn't mention Wahhabi Fundamentalist Islam, because that is the heritage and traditions of modern Saudi Arabia.

More to the point, I've been to Saudi Arabia...and it's none of the things Trump is saying it is. Granted, I was there 30 years ago, but I imagine most of the places I actually went haven't changed very much. A lot of Saudis are good people, but that number in my experience tends not to include people who have much authority in that society. 

Among other things, there are some pretty legit reasons that a hell of a lot of Saudis don't even like their own government...let alone America. This is the country that produced 15 out of 19 of the 9/11 hijackers, for fuck's sake! There are reasons Osama was able to make it work that way.

First off, Saudi Arabia's government and in particular its Royal Family and religious establishment are not your friends, they're not really Trump's friends, and they're playing their own game. That generally involves crapping all over most of the rest of the Muslim world and in particular the countries that provide cheap labor in the Kingdom.

Seriously, a lot of the "Prosperity" of the region is just Oil. It has damned little to do with the people who live there, and a lot of the people actually extracting the shit and running the companies that do it are American and British (and the aforementioned Third Country nationals, also.)

Second, I'm old enough to remember when gushing over how "Great" some other country was, to the point of it being unseemly, was a career-ender for almost any American politician, especially a Republican.

And yeah, I used to be a Republican so I remember when there'd be the occasional massive (and almost exclusively on the Right) scandal when some bunch of corporate goons or Republicans got caught playing fuck fuck games with the Saudis or were present at some bullshit ceremony crowning Sun Myung Moon as king of the world, or some such bullshit. 

But I'll note they didn't blab that shit all over the media of the time in full view of the assorted Redneck bubbas and Southern Baptists who used to be the driving forces of such internal backlashes, either. Now? I fully expect some fat bearded idiot in a MAGA hat to bitch to me that gas is cheaper in Saudi Arabia before the end of my work week.

And it's a reasonably safe bet to know that motherfucker didn't spend a hot, nasty TDY doing Force Protection for four months at PSAB either.

Also I'm a note for the record here that all the anti-Muslim goons active from about 2002-2016 or so aren't just suspiciously silent on this garbage (with the apparent exception of Laura Loomer) it's pretty much Cricket Cricket Chirp Chirp on their end.

And I'll note that these are the same fucking people who basically spent 20 years parading any weeping vaguely 9/11-associated person who'd let them all over the damn TV, well past the point of it being merely unseemly and to the point where a lot of us got sick of even hearing about 9/11.

I'm serious.

I'll note the "Patriotism" the event created only seemed to last until it became certain that it wasn't going to convert everybody to being a Republican.

As a veteran who lost people in the resulting wars, I learned to hate the damn Republicans for using 9/11 as a rally point for every damn thing. And I'll note that now that they have a fascist Republican Party and a rapidly dividing America, Republicans have stopped doing that and seem to be tacitly endorsing Trump ball-gargling the Saudi monarchy.

Because they think they'll get more land and hog more resources than others in the resulting collapse, division, and probable Civil War. Note: They don't really care about anything else.

And when they get what they think they want, they'll celebrate the fall of America, too, along with every massacre and vile milestone they can, and every battle won or lost (but only as according to their own narrative, because that's the point) they don't care if they're overall losers, so long as they get to keep their own little banana republic and call doing so a great victory.

The people manipulating this shit seem to think that the Bosnian Serbs were the good guys, Trump loves Saudi Arabia, Tucker Carlson gushes over how great Russia is.

Stop and think about what that shit might mean in terms of geopolitics and history, will ya??

Just think about that for a second.

It's gonna be these fucking people's hubris that fucks them over, and I think they know it.

They don't care.

They just wanna see how many people the can kill first, and fully expect they'll get to buy themselves some small kingdom (like Guy of Lusignan did after the Muslims recaptured Jerusalem) when all this bullshit is over, because they're narcissists (and because political classes have been allowed to become incestuous nobilities again) and they can't imagine there will be permanent consequences for anything, let alone actual goddamned evil.

And the MAGA's just want their no-civilization Walking Dead style Zombie Land so they can live and die like Medieval Peasants to "Own The Libs" or some such shit, because they think "freedom" is riding around in the back of a rusty Toyota Hilux technical truck with an AK-47 and being thugs.

Part of why they don't care is it's been too long since anyone made them care.

Well, were gonna have to.

Put the fear of God into These Fucking People again.

Because right now these assholes are acting like they think they're gonna live forever and get away with it.

And there's Democrats who'd let them, so long as they get their turn again.

Too many vapid dumbass Americans think they're gonna get something out of this mess.

They won't, not if Donald Trump has anything to say about it.

But Saudi Arabia will, and I suppose when it all goes sideways Trump thinks they'll protect him if he still gets the Gaza Sultanate he wants.

I'm tired of this bullshit.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

You're either willing to fight for it, or you're not.

Слава Україна!

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

One

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