Welcome To The Revolution (American Revelation XX, Four.)

What was fascism in Italy, in Germany? The exaltation of racial prejudices. Instead of fighting racial prejudice, which is what a revolution does, fascism exalts prejudice and turns it into hatred. ~Fidel Castro

...

 [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."

...

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

So, apparently, Tom Homan is going full Fidel Castro, wearing scruffy fake military uniforms and shit, even looks like he's growing a ratty-ass beard.

Welcome to the Revolution, I guess? Will History absolve him, too??

The Trump administration keeps trying to sound like it's going to war, meanwhile like 300 California Army National Guard soldiers are apparently standing around doing nothing, not getting paid and not properly logistically supported. So for all of their apocalyptic war-rhetoric, their response...were L.A. burning down, which it isn't...sucks.

Thing is, outside of a four-block or so radius life in Los Angeles is just going on like normal, although these protests are spreading...which is exactly what happens in most cases like this.

These aren't people who are fighting anything to win...they just want to destroy shit. Including themselves, cuz if you're a smart fascist you don't fuck over the muscle.

Don't get me wrong, the Right wants to fight...they just don't seem to understand what fighting is. I went out to my Mom's the last few days, but in checking my socials I saw a freaking ridiculous amount of bloodlust from people who've apparently never experienced more violence than a loud argument.

These fucking people seem to think the government and the military and the police (not to mention the Church and every other goddamn thing) exist to enforce their political and social views...and to do it by doing shit like dropping "Big, Beautiful" bombs in the middle of a dense urban core (and wouldn't that destroy the federal building??) or using Special Forces to simply kill protestors and anybody else they don't like.

And like, every single one of these goddamn people follows that shit up with some Bible verse, or has "Christian" or "Evangelist" or some shit like that in their bio.

Evangelist for what?? Bhaal, the Lord of Murder??

And they're all basically acting like this shit is some big joke with some kind of politically-partisan tie-in or some shit.

This is Christianity without Christ.

Or, perhaps more accurately, and continuing when this situation doesn't work out how these assholes think it will, another link in the continuing deification of Donald Trump. In the end, they'll say "At least he tried" or some such horseshit.

How this endless parade of fucked-up shit for Dopamine hits doesn't end with these freaks worshiping literal demons like Dis Pater and Mammon in an endless demand for more hate and rage and wealth and power, I have no fucking idea.

I mean, I get it, most of these fucking people don't like this world or most of the people in it, don't want to live here, and think based on some Sola Fide (Faith Alone) idea of "Once Saved, Always Saved" folk-Christianity that they're going to Heaven and are going to get to watch the rest of us burn either down here on Earth or in Hell...

And so that is the entire point of their religion. More to the point, in the here and now, their Bloodlust only grows.

These fucking people, many of whom do not read the Bible for themselves, have no fucking idea that they're not automatically In Like Flynn on Judgment Day just 'cause they said some dumbed-down version of the Sinner's Prayer in Sunday School when they were like six years old.

And it's amazing how many of them are fake cowboys or clearly wannabe-Marines and Special Forces cosplayers themselves.

I'm warning you that when the shit really does hit the fan (and because of these fucking people, it eventually will no matter what happens in California unless FAFO gets to be too much or we start changing the culture that creates them) the cops and the troops will be fighting and struggling to survive just like all the rest of us and These Fucking People, with their own weapons, haphazardly supported by the local rich people, will absolutely be your local "January 6th People's Cowboy Jesus Special Forces Militia."

And expect the title of "Revolutionary..." to get appended to everything, as if there's anything revolutionary about any of this bullshit.

Yes, very likely sporting that or some other such title that looked like it was cooked up by somebody trying to repurpose some old Soviet "Order Of The Red Banner People's Tractor Factory #427" type names, because if there's one thing "elites" have internalized it's "Keep Blowing The Narcissist" and they'll be a one-stop shop for dealing drugs, murder of the undeserving, stealing people's shit, and enforcing right-wing redneck ideas of "Social Order" by shooting random people and wielding Terror against the local populations. 

And it's worth noting that not a few rich assholes are, themselves, these exact kinds of motherfuckers, but with money.

See also the kind of assholes that constitute the Republican donor-class in places like Texas.

They've finally found that superior justification for selfishness, which, as it turns out was just plain old hate and selfishness.

And robbing from the poor to give to Themselves is exactly the kind of world these motherfuckers want to live in, of course they're rooting for the collapse of the United States...because every last one of these shitheads sees themselves as the Grand Warlord of Scottsbluff or a "Christian" equivalent to Mullah Omar or some such shit, not as the catamite that's strapped to the back of the technical truck right next to the box of .50 caliber ammunition.

Never mind what happens to them when the local satrap comes calling.

You don't want to know.

If you burn down civilization and take everything else away, there are three things people (a certain kind of men in particular, but not exclusively so) will always try to do; Get High, Have Sex, and Kill People.

That's what happens when Hate becomes the Opiate of the Masses, I warned you.

Anybody who thinks that most folks will be sheltering at the local Church praying to be protected under the wings of angels doesn't understand the fallen nature of Sinful Man nor in the least how far too many of the people drawn to what's become of modern "Conservatism" operate.

Whether the "ideology" under which these fucking people take cover is Capitalism or Communism, Evangelical Christianity or Radical Islam, somehow it always works out the same way for everybody else.

If this shit breaks down as far or as hard as these so-called "Conservatives" and death-cultist "Christians" want it to, there ain't gonna be no government or society and we'd all best hope the United Nations can work up one motherfucker of a peacekeeping operation, but if you've paid the least bit of any attention to shit like M23's campaign in the Congo or the Sudanese Civil War...don't ask how that shit turns out. The United Nations has a reputation for sucking at this for a reason.

Republicans are trying to turn America into the kind of place most people try to get away from so they can loot the homes of people who have fled as refugees.

The protestors in California have thus far kept their cool and denied these assholes an excuse to Immanentize their bloody murderous Eschaton, but not everybody is going to be able to do that.

And this whole Trump thing has the media playing at a constant dog-and-pony show to try and justify, in effect, America going to war against Americans, mostly because the rich people who own everything want #1 some kind of bullshit revenge for so many people quitting their jobs during COVID-19, and #2 they think, one way or another, whether it's AI and robots or former-Americans reduced to Serfdom, that they are somehow owed a class of Slaves and Wealth Without Work.

And they think Trump has promised them that, along with only having to look at people just like themselves.

Hell, if they have to try to implement the fucking Mark Of The Beast to get it...that's what they think they're gonna do. That's the thing about cults, they can just get Fox News and the rest of the media to say "It's not the Mark Of The Beast when WE do it!" and too much of the Christian End Times Prophecy Movement itself will line up 'round the block to get that computer chip put in their forehead or their right hand. As long as its pitched as spiritual slavery to Capital, they don't care.

This is true whether it's my my Mom's chuckle-fuck MAGA neighbor or some goddamned billionaire.

Worse, when all these white racist motherfuckers find out that it's all a lie, that it's all been a lie intended to reduce them to Slavery, they'll shrug as long as the "Liberals" and whatever Brown People are left have to be a worse class of slave than they are.

And if you think the crazy shit will ever stop of these fucking people will ever get what they "Want" enough to stop demanding more? You're flat out wrong.

Either we stop this now, or it will never stop.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Welcome to the Revolution.

We didn't start it, they did.

So, pick a side.

Слава Україна!

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

Three

[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."

Bonus Content

Every one of the thousands at the airport, about to leave for Jeddah, was dressed this way. You could be a king or a peasant and no one would know. Some powerful personages, who were discreetly pointed out to me, had on the same thing I had on. Once thus dressed, we all had begun calling out "Labbayka! (Allahumma) Labbayka!" (Here I come, O Lord!) Packed in the plane were white, black, brown, red, and yellow people, blue eyes and blond hair, and my kinky red hair -- all together, brothers! All honoring the same God, all in turn giving equal honor to each other.

That is when I first began to reappraise the "white man." It was when I first began to perceive that "white man," as commonly used, means complexion only secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions. 

In America, "white man" meant specific attitudes and actions toward the black man, and toward all other non-white men. But in the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been. That morning was the start of a radical alteration in my whole outlook about "white" men. 

~Malcolm X, letter written following the Hajj.