Fire And Brimstone (MAGA Zombie Land, Three.)

“'When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.”

~Leviticus 19:33-34, NIV.

...

[in the aftermath of the chaos at Palmo Square, Dreena goes on the radio]

Dreena: Palmo One. This is Palmo One. This is the voice of Ghorman. This is Palmo One making an emergency broadcast on all open channels. This is Palmo One! This is Palmo One. We are under siege. We're being slaughtered. The Imperial murder of Ghorman has begun. There are hundreds of bodies this moment. As I say these words, hundreds of murdered Ghormans lay dead in Palmo Plaza. Thousands more on the streets. More every minute. We're being destroyed! This is Ghorman reaching for any open channel that can hear me! If you can... If you can hear me... If you believe in truth, if you have any faith left in truth, please, please mark this message and pass it forward. This is murder! The Empire built this fire. They made this fire and led us to the slaughter. Now they expect us to die without knowing why. The conspiracy we've feared is real! It's here today! Imperial ships are already landing across... Help us! Is there no one who can help us? Is there no one? ~From the Star Wars series Andor, S2 E8 "Who Are You?"

...

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, somebody pitched a "Reality Show" to DHS wherein immigrants are supposed to fight out the Hunger Games against each other for some bullshit alleged fast-track to citizenship.

First off; Bitch, that's not even what Citizenship is, nor what it's for, and anybody with two working brain cells going all the way back to the Roman Empire should be able to tell you that. 

You either believe in civilization as a concept, or you just don't.

Second, anybody who thinks it'll stop there has another thing coming.

Perhaps more to the point, last I checked, GOD takes hospitality and not abusing the immigrant or the stranger pretty damned seriously. You'd think all these American "Christians" would've noticed.

These fucking people are trying to turn America into the kind of freak-Donkey Show that nobody with even an ion of decency in their body will want to be a part of. If they do that? Concepts like national collapse or even Secession won't even begin to cover it. 

The shit will be like that one jungle temple in the Wrath of the Lich King World of Warcraft expansion with panicked jungle trolls stampeding out of it, but the end boss for the instance is a ridiculously bloated, engorged Donald Trump in a gilded chamber he's too big to get out of, who pretty much eats anybody that doesn't get away fast enough. That's even before you get to "These assholes want to turn America into the kind of place people try to get away from."

Like, this kind of bullshit isn't just how you go to Hell, it's how you get fire and brimstone falling out the sky and a special room just for you in Hell when you fucking get there after your ass gets blown up 'cause a flaming stone hit your giant useless pickup truck. 

And no, your AR-15 ain't gonna do shit against the wrath of God.

I mean, fuck, God made an example of Sodom for less than this type of shit, if you actually look at it.

And among other things, I think all the people who turned conservatism and the Lord's Word into nothing but a political grift and a Prosperity Gospel scam fucking caused this shit.

The reason Donald Trump and his cruelty and petty enablers and foreign satraps motherfucking resonate with so many damned people is the American Church is full of these kind of motherfuckers to the point where many people simply do not know Right from Wrong.

So what happens when your kid has to punch another kid in the nose just to get lunch at school? Where does this kind of shit stop? What happens when these assholes, so full of themselves, simply start throwing any American that they can into gladiator pits for entertainment during their cocaine orgies??

When is enough going to be enough??

This week Trump gleefully hopped in bed with the countries and people most responsible for propagating Radical Islam, and I'll note the deadly silence from all the "Conservatives" who treated the words "Radical Islamic Terrorist" as some kind of magic words and phrases a decade ago.

I mean, damn, what's next??

And these assholes will continue to use the most half-baked excuses imaginable, outright lie, or simply hope their base will continue to get some kind of a high off their freakish racism right up until somebody stops this fucking bullshit.

We're gonna have to invent new words to describe the level of evil that's even going on here now, much less if these fucking clowns get to do half the shit they want to.

Either We the People step up and fucking fix this, or the rest of the world is gonna have to kick our ass just for their own goddamned safety.

And at the rate we're going, in 2,000 years in some version of the Bible in that time, it'll be America that will be referred to as Babylon.

And honestly? We deserve it.

You either believe in civilization or you don't.

You either know right from wrong or you don't.

Pick one, but be aware there will be consequences.

Freedom isn't free.

Sometimes you have to fight for it.

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

Two

Falco: Games. One hundred and fifty days of games.

Gracchus: He's cleverer than I thought.

Falco: "Clever"! The whole of Rome would be laughing at him, if they weren't so afraid of his Praetorian.

Gracchus: Fear and wonder, a powerful combination.

Falco: You really think people are going to be seduced by that?

Gracchus: [about Commodus] I think he knows what Rome is. Rome is the mob. Conjure magic for them and they'll be distracted. Take away their freedom and still they'll roar. The beating heart of Rome is not the marble of the Senate, it's the sand of the Colosseum. He'll bring them death…and they will love him for it.

~From the film Gladiator.