Day Of The Dead (Memorial Day, 2025.)

 [Cassian plays Nemik's audio diary]

Karis Nemik: There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy. Remember this. Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they've already enlisted in the cause. Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. And then remember this. The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire's authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege. Remember this. Try. ~From the Star Wars series Andor, S1.E12 "Rix Road."

...

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

...

Now, bring me that horizon. ~Jack Sparrow, from Pirates Of The Caribbean; The Curse Of The Black Pearl.

I saw this the other day.

Trump evidently tried to show Cyril Ramaphosa (the Black president of South Africa) "evidence" of "White Genocide" in South Africa with some bullshit he found on the internet, from some rabid racist that's also a Flat-Earth loon-bucket.

First off, I'm pretty sure the President of South Africa (unlike Trump) is like, required to know what's actually going on in his country since he's not just a damn figurehead for Christian Nationalist morons and fascist wannabe-murderers. White people, even after 30+ years still control something like 70% of the land and wealth in South Africa and I'm pretty damn sure that means Cyril Ramaphosa has to deal with a lot of old rich White Men in the course of doing his day-to-day work.

These fucking people have been banging on about this shit since like 2015 with not a shred of evidence. Trump was touting photos of people burying bodies, but those bodies were of Black people killed by M23 in the DRC in the Goma region where the Rwandan-backed M23 rebels are fighting a war against the Congolese government.

What does it say about America, about us, that we elected this doddering old racist who'll cheerfully believe and repeat any lie that strikes his fancy??

But ya know, it was the Flat-Earth idiocy that actually got my attention. 

The question is, if These Fucking People will lie about something obviously provable like the Earth being a sphere...what else will they lie to you about??

Because that's what "Conspiracy Theories" are is lies.

I've seen many pictures of the Earth taken from space. I own several.

I've personally been high up enough in an aircraft (an Evergreen Airways 747 over the Pacific Ocean on the way to Okinawa for temporary duty when I was a young Air Force security policeman) to have seen the Earth's curvature with my own eyes, simply by looking out the window. It becomes directly visible somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 feet up. I think, honestly, that's the first that I really thought about how big this world still is even with all our technology, or put some of my Grandpa's old "No Shit!" Sea Stories into perspective.

But you don't even have to go that high up.

I live like half a mile from Lake Huron, I have for a few years now, and I can actually see the lake and the horizon from my back deck if I look out over the river and past the drawbridge. That is the curvature of the Earth! This time of year, local tour boats go past my house on an hourly basis during business hours. Ain't a one of 'em that's failed to return due to falling off the edge of the horizon yet!

The evidence of the Truth is right there, every day, right in front of your eyes. It's up to you whether or not you want to see it.

For another example: I've read the Bible cover-to-cover many times. I own several copies, in different formats and translations, actually, in a couple different languages besides English, too (Arabic and Spanish.)

Nowhere in any of those translations of the Lord's Word do the words "Donald Trump" appear. I don't even need to look it up to know that.

Unless you happen to believe that Trump is the Antichrist, or at least the (debatably also-prophesied, depending on how far into End Times nut-ball shit you want to go) prelude to the same. (I think Trump is a test run, personally.)

It's a test the "Christian" Nationalists and Evangelicals have failed rather spectacularly badly.

And all Johnny Enlow can do about that is lie.

Remember, Johnny, a golden room in Hell is still in Hell.

Bright lights and gilded crap and hate and lies and Trump's Saddam Hussein-meets-Great Whore Of Babylon bit are pretty much all these fucking people even have.

And it's wearing thin.

At this point the only reason anybody still believes any of this garbage is because they want to. That said, this world, historically...is chock-full of ideas that persisted for a couple generations after everybody knew it was all bullshit, whether because of State Power or simply shitty people.

But Trump is going downhill fast, and the thing with this one is he is the idea. Other people tried to set themselves up as heirs to Trumpism and Trump himself crushed them. The reason his sons are still there is they are weak enough not to be a threat to his ego.

But Trump, the man, is fading out.

You can see it now.

And I'm here to tell you nobody cares about Trump or they'd get him help.

It's the hate and the greed-is-good mentality and the racism that he represents in their minds that's what These Fucking People are trying to preserve.

Trump gave a speech at West Point yesterday, and the cadets apparently laughed at some of the dumb shit he said.

I saw the video, speaking as a veteran here I was a little shocked because 30 years later I can still maintain a complete poker face if I have to.

It's getting so a lot of people aren't afraid of Trump anymore. 

He's not a god or some diabolical genius, he's just a man and not even a very good one.

But it's all these preachers and Republicans and shit, not to mention assholes with competing agendas, that are going to be the goddamn problem. 

That, as much as anything else, is where the civil war is going to come from. These fucking people don't have another figurehead to replace Trump with and so they'll all try to be That Guy. But, There Can Be Only One.

Because most of these fucking people are narcissists and Freedom means nobody needs them and they just can't stand that idea.

But the truth is that a lot of the real problem is America elected Trump again out of sheer vapid debased boredom because neither Joe Biden nor Kamala Harris was "entertaining" enough, whatever that even means.

You either believe in Freedom or you don't.

And time's coming where we're all going to have to fight for it, or there's gonna be a lot more Days Of The Dead like today in our future.

Remember that, this Memorial Weekend. Freedom isn't free.

Civilization, empathy, freedom, humanity, society...all these things require something of us.

Not necessarily much, but certainly that we care about other people enough to do something about it.

Remember that, it's going to be on the test.

Soon.

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

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