Q-Berty, Again (American Revelation XXI, Ten.)

[In the Preox-Morlana planet of Morlana One, Deputy Inspector Syril Karn is confused his superior won't open an investigation into the murder of two Pre-Mor officers]

Chief Inspector Hyne: Tough case. Bad timing.

Syril Karn: I'm sure that in several days, with the proper resources, I can bring this case to a-

Hyne: Stop! And I don't just mean the talking. I mean stop. [closes his office door] This case appears to bear all the hallmarks of what I like to describe as regrettable misadventure.

Karn: Sir?

Hyne: Two dedicated Pre-Mor employees caught in the sad orbit of a rare calamity.

Karn: I don't understand.

Hyne: I want you to conjure a suitable accident, and let's make sure it's on the far side of the plaza. Let's get it outside the Leisure Zone.

Karn: But they were murdered!

Hyne: No, they weren't. They were killed in a fight. They were in a brothel, which we're not supposed to have. The expensive one, which they shouldn't be able to afford. Drinking Revnog, which we're not supposed to allow. Both of them supposedly on the job, which is a dismissible offense. They clearly harassed a human with dark features and chose the wrong person to annoy. I suspect they died rushing to aid someone in distress. Nothing too heroic. We don't need a parade. They died being helpful. Something sad but inspiring in a mundane sort of way. [regards Karn] You look stricken, Deputy Inspector. Are you absorbing my meaning here?

Karn: Trying to, sir.

Hyne: When I said bad timing, I wasn't referring to the fact you spent all night worrying this. I mean that I am on my way this very morning to an Imperial Regional Command review, where I'll be asked to make a report about our crime rates, and the goal of that speech, should you ever be asked to deliver it, is brevity. Minimizing the time the Empire spends thinking about Preox-Morlana benefits our superiors and, by extension, everyone here at the Pre-Mor Security Inspection team, which at the moment includes you. [dons his coat, picks up his briefcase and moves to leave] Don't put your feet on my desk in my absence, and let's have an accident report waiting when I get back.

~From the Star Wars series Andor, S1.E1 "Kassa."

...

We have too many men of science, too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon On The Mount. The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. ~General Omar Bradley

...

Eli Sunday: Daniel, I'm asking if you'd like to have business with the Church of the Third Revelation in developing this lease on young Bandy's thousand acre tract. I'm offering you to drill on one of the great undeveloped fields of Little Boston!  

Daniel Plainview: I'd be happy to work with you.

Eli Sunday: You would? Yes, yes, of course. That’s wonderful.

Daniel Plainview: But there is one condition for this work.

Eli Sunday: All right.

Daniel Plainview: I'd like you to tell me that you are a false prophet. I'd like you to tell me that you are, and have been, a false prophet, and that God is a superstition.

~From the film There Will Be Blood.

I wasn't going to write anything today, among other things it's fucking Labor Day weekend and I'm working five nights in a row.

But then last night, I saw this bullshit.

Somebody's trying to bring back the Q-Anon bullshit except now they're calling it "Q+" or something. No, Google has not caught up with whatever that means and I don't want to know bad enough to go looking for it.

Whatever it is? Apparently the "World" is supposed to just "Understand" when Trump burns it down??

Something tells me it's not going to work out like that, just sayin.'

All this conspiracy theory and racist crap is, and that the entire Trump thing as it's become is...it's a distraction, a circus act dog-and-pony show while Republicans disrespect the American people, crap all over America itself, and loot the country of everything they can before Trump dies and they have to face the goddamn consequences of this Godless bullshit.

And because Trump's health appears to be failing, this shit is ramping up into overdrive and they're literally trying to set it up so that when he goes, the whole damn country comes flying apart, because they can't win if they have to face all of us.

All that all of this crap is, all that any of this crap is...is a shield to hide Republican corruption or failing that, escape consequences.

And what with the Epstein list being out there, they know that shield is wearing thin.

And I'm here to tell you, we wouldn't be here with this shit if the Church hadn't tolerated all type of child abuse and conspiracy theory crap and Spiritualist idiocy basically forever. I (unfortunately) do happen to be aware of the books from which Jack Posobiec got his uh, "Theology." 

When I read part of one of them, I was a devout conservative (if pretty mainstream) Baptist and...to put it in the vernacular of the specific time in which I was doing this, also because the subject of the books kept coming up in the Men's Group I was helping to run at the time...it had about as much bearing on actual Christianity or sound Doctrine thereof as the ever-present bullshit TV commercials for "Miss Cleo" (a fortune-teller with a fake Jamaican accent that was kind of all over the place in the late 1990's) did.

This stuff, written back in the 1980's by a guy named Frank Peretti in a series of books loosely called "This Present Darkness" postulates a world in which every damn little thing could be or was influenced by prayer, and everybody had hordes of angels or devils around them and if you prayed hard enough could determine (for example) something as simple as if your car would start or not.

Me, as a 24 year old Baptist pretty much did a good impression of my "Glares Bumboclaatically" meme that I still use on occasion, when I saw that.

No, none of this works like that. In the real world, even as a much more religious person then, than what I am now, I knew (from experience) that short of (usually human) misconduct, real interactions with the spiritual realm (at least as far as Christianity is concerned) are...and should be...fairly rare. We do not all have little angels or little devils sitting on our shoulders. Humans have moral agency, this shit should be self-explanatory to anybody with the least bit of grounding in the Abrahamic faiths or modern science or Western culture and that list goes on.

What people like that term as "Prayer" or "Religion" is basically Sorcery in Biblical terms, trying to use spiritual powers to manipulate the Universe, and it's a Sin for a reason.

They don't believe in or want Jesus, these fucking people want to have Magic powers that they can lord over other folks and it really is that simple.

I get that a lot of White American Dipshits thirst after living in some kind of magical world, because they're bored with the banalities of modern life and this, that and the other thing. I've also known people...mostly Arabs, Black Africans and Native Americans who come from traditional cultures and also accept beliefs like Christianity, Islam or for that matter secular Americanism and they ALL #1 Have to make all that stuff fit together and #2 Live in a world infinitely more complex and (to them, anyway) sometimes dangerous than the mostly bland self-constructed big-box world of White American Evangelical Idiot Consumerism and its bullshit-ass Prosperity Gospel religion.

And I've seen enough to know that there's something to Traditional stuff and it's not something to fuck around with, where on the other hand if some dopey Pentecostal author or preacher or secular right-wing conspiracy nut predicts a bunch of things that do not come to pass, within a couple weeks everybody forgets about it and it's a normal day (at least for everybody but them. Maybe.)

The problem is that the hate all this crap has generated and continues to manufacture is going to eat this country up, soon.

And no, the world will not understand nor will the rest of us Americans who aren't like this and who will have to clean up the goddamn mess one way or the other.

Freedom and liberty require some kind of belief in Truth and engagement with the real world, as well as acting with a degree of rationality and self-interest.

Trumpian Q-Berty? Well, apparently you can believe whatever bullshit you want, or something as long as Trump is your "god." Apparently what with a bunch of people thinking that Trump was gonna die over the weekend, now some of the Q-Nuts are trying to say Trump will just "Ascend to Heaven" or some shit like that. No, bro, you're in a cult. You're being manipulated. Worse, you seem to want to be.

Slavery sucks, whether it's enforced with chains and whips or simple cultic groupthink. 

I don't give a damn.

MAGA and Q-Anon and all that shit is spiritual bondage, and apparently These Fucking People will say literally anything to stay in it.

I wasn't taught that way. My God has never asked me to burn the world for its narcissism. My religious education was mainly about making sure I picked up a "Christian" idea or two and that such things stuck.

That's why Fundamentalism and various other forms of NO, IT HAS TO BE THIS WAY!!! Don't. Work. The second there's nobody standing there with a big stick or a notice of Excommunication to enforce whatever "THIS WAY!!" is, most people just wander off and do what they want.

Because the odds are, nobody really wanted to act that way in the first place, they was just crowd-followers and dumb people who got caught up in something.

Part of Freedom on a society level is keeping Fascists, Grifters and Scammers under control and away from hurting too many people like that, just sayin.' Societal standards matter.

And when it comes to the balance between collective and individual rights, all far too many of These Fucking People care about is using "Individual Rights" as a stick to beat the rights of the vast majority of the populace into a pulp.

And that's true whether it's LGBT rights, the rights of People Of Color, Women's rights or even the basic human rights of the average White Christian American Idiot. 

These people don't give a fuck, and the only "Right" they want is the "Right" to kill and steal, because they'd rather do that than live.

And since "Jesus Is Coming" has stopped working for most people...because way too many people simply don't have enough actual faith to believe in a God they can't see...now they're using Trump to point to and say "He Is Coming" then pick your pocket and bash your head in when you ain't looking. When they say "Behold, he is in the desert!" Go not forth.

Like I keep saying, you either believe in freedom or you don't.

Make your choice.

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For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. ~Matthew 24:27

Nine

[after Burke is revealed as the one who set the face-huggers loose on Ripley and Newt]

Hudson: [aiming his rifle at Burke] I say we grease this rat fuck-son-of-a-bitch right now!

Hicks: It just doesn't make any goddamn sense.

Ripley: He figured he could get the alien past the quarantine if one of us was... impregnated - whatever you call it - and frozen for the way home. Nobody would know about the embryos we're carrying. Me and Newt.

Hicks: Wait a minute. We would all know.

Ripley: Yes, the only way he could do it is if he sabotaged certain freezers on the way home. Namely, yours. Then he could jettison the bodies and make up any story he would like to.

Hudson: Fuck! He's dead! [aims his rifle at Burke again] You're dogmeat, pal!

Burke: This is so nuts. I mean listen... listen to what you're saying. It's all paranoid delusion. It's really sad. It's pathetic.

Ripley: You know, Burke, I don't know which species is worse. You don't see them fucking each other over a goddamn percentage.

~From the film Aliens.

No (American Revelation XXI, Nine.)

And he spoke this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:

Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.

The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.

I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.

And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.

I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalts himself shall be abased; and he that humbles himself shall be exalted.

~Luke 18:9-14

...

Eli Sunday: Daniel, I'm asking if you'd like to have business with the Church of the Third Revelation in developing this lease on young Bandy's thousand acre tract. I'm offering you to drill on one of the great undeveloped fields of Little Boston!  

Daniel Plainview: I'd be happy to work with you.

Eli Sunday: You would? Yes, yes, of course. That’s wonderful.

Daniel Plainview: But there is one condition for this work.

Eli Sunday: All right.

Daniel Plainview: I'd like you to tell me that you are a false prophet. I'd like you to tell me that you are, and have been, a false prophet, and that God is a superstition.

~From the film There Will Be Blood.

I saw this a couple days ago.

And No, hardest of hard passes.

Sorry, but I have not the slightest interest in any government that tells me when or how often to pray or to whom.

Note; I say that as somebody very likely with more of a church background and grounding in actual Christian theology (rather than pop-Evangelical horseshit) than the person who typed this bullshit. I was "In Church" from like 1978 to 2007 and became a member of the End Times Prophecy Movement in 1995 while I was serving in the Air Force. More to the point I was, like, actually involved in various churches for a good chunk of my younger adult life, to the point of active (as in tithing) church membership and considering ministry.

But, in terms of people's souls, I didn't want that much responsibility because...well, to put it bluntly I'm not one of These Fucking People and I took the whole idea seriously.

That's not what's going on when some chud types "Pray Without Ceasing" into a government Twitter account. I don't give a damn.

And I don't care much for trite slogans, Biblical-sounding or otherwise. No, fuck you.

The separation of Church and State does not only protect the State.

It protects the Church, too, including from sectarian violence 'cause the State can't pick a side.

If I had to guess, though?? Our current government's non-involvement will itself be more malicious than anything.

And I'm here to tell you, praying didn't help nobody in that Catholic school in Minnesota that got shot up the other day by some weirdo that was espousing both far-right and some far-left BS while also lionizing previous mass shooters including Anders Breivik and Brenton Tarrant. Call 'em the Horseshoe Theory shooter, I guess?

There seems to be a sort of demonic nihilism behind a lot of these mass shootings.

And the "Christians" or at least the "Conservative" ones, ain't doing shit about that.

Too busy letting Trump go full Saddam Hussein these days, I guess??

All religion seems to be good for these days is giving privileged White people an excuse to not do anything about actual goddamned societal problems, like mass shootings.

I'm sick of this crap and in real terms I'm a lot more of a gun guy than a lot of these Gun Culture, Meal Team Six morons are, and it's not a game or a macho thing for me. I was taught the right way by my Dad and my grandfathers (both WWII veterans) long before I ever thought of enlisting (which was not a thing my family wanted me to do, by the way.)

And given what I've seen from most of my government in the past year or so, it's hard not to think that my grandfathers and my uncles had a fucking point about not wanting me to serve.

Personally, I'm really wondering what the fuck I spent my life dedicated to and why the hell I bothered at this point.

At the end of the day, you either believe in freedom or you don't.

And this ain't it, people.

Learn the word "NO" America.

And have the fucking balls to use it.

Or be prepared to ask yourself, what the fuck are we even doing here??

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Hess: So what shall we toast to, boys? I can blather on about “To health” or “To success,” but I’d like to do somethin’ a little less rote. Where you from, Brown Eyes?

Migs Mayfield: How ’bout a toast to Operation Cinder?

Hess: Now there’s a man who knows his history.

Mayfield: No, I don’t just know it. I lived it. I was in Burnin Konn.

Hess: Burnin Konn?

Mayfield: Mmm.

Hess: That was a hard day. I had to make many unpleasant decisions.

Mayfield: Yes, you did. Entire city gone in moments, along with everybody in it. We lost our whole division that day. Man, that was like 5-10,000 people.

Hess: Yep. All heroes of the Empire.

Mayfield: Yeah. And all dead.

Hess: Well, it’s a small sacrifice for the greater good, son.

Mayfield: Depends on who you ask, don’t you think?

Hess: [irritated] What you gettin’ at, trooper?

Mayfield: All those people, the ones who died, was it good for them? Hmm? Their families? The guys I served with? Civilians, those poor mud scuffers, died defending their homes, fighting for freedom. Was it good for them?

Hess: But we’ve outlasted them, son. They’re eating themselves alive. The New Republic is in complete disarray, and we grow stronger. You see, with the rhydonium you’ve delivered, we can create havoc that’s gonna make Burnin Konn pale by comparison. And then they’re gonna turn to us once again. You see, boys, everybody thinks they want freedom, but what they really want is order. And when they realize that, they’re gonna welcome us back with open arms. Ah. To the Empire.

[Mayfield chuckles, then fires a blaster at Hess' chest, killing him instantly. He and Mando then shoot their way out of the mess hall] ~From The Mandalorian, Season 2, Ep. 7 "The Believer"

Eight

We have too many men of science, too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon On The Mount. The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. ~General Omar Bradley

Aliens (American Revelation XXI, Eight.)

 Hess: So what shall we toast to, boys? I can blather on about “To health” or “To success,” but I’d like to do somethin’ a little less rote. Where you from, Brown Eyes?

Migs Mayfield: How ’bout a toast to Operation Cinder?

Hess: Now there’s a man who knows his history.

Mayfield: No, I don’t just know it. I lived it. I was in Burnin Konn.

Hess: Burnin Konn?

Mayfield: Mmm.

Hess: That was a hard day. I had to make many unpleasant decisions.

Mayfield: Yes, you did. Entire city gone in moments, along with everybody in it. We lost our whole division that day. Man, that was like 5-10,000 people.

Hess: Yep. All heroes of the Empire.

Mayfield: Yeah. And all dead.

Hess: Well, it’s a small sacrifice for the greater good, son.

Mayfield: Depends on who you ask, don’t you think?

Hess: [irritated] What you gettin’ at, trooper?

Mayfield: All those people, the ones who died, was it good for them? Hmm? Their families? The guys I served with? Civilians, those poor mud scuffers, died defending their homes, fighting for freedom. Was it good for them?

Hess: But we’ve outlasted them, son. They’re eating themselves alive. The New Republic is in complete disarray, and we grow stronger. You see, with the rhydonium you’ve delivered, we can create havoc that’s gonna make Burnin Konn pale by comparison. And then they’re gonna turn to us once again. You see, boys, everybody thinks they want freedom, but what they really want is order. And when they realize that, they’re gonna welcome us back with open arms. Ah. To the Empire.

[Mayfield chuckles, then fires a blaster at Hess' chest, killing him instantly. He and Mando then shoot their way out of the mess hall] ~From The Mandalorian, Season 2, Ep. 7 "The Believer"

...

And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.

And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine. ~Revelation 6:5-6

...

Nameless One: “Shadow of this life?”

Dhall, Dustman scribe: “Yes, a shadow. You see, Restless One, this life is not real. Your life, my life, they are shadows, flickerings of what life once was. This life is where we end up after we die, and here we remain. Trapped, caged, until we can achieve the True Death.”

Nameless One: “True Death?”

Dhall, Dustman scribe: “True death is non-existence. A state devoid of reason, of passion, of sensation.” [Dhall coughs] “A state of purity.”

Nameless One: Sounds like oblivion, why would anyone would want that? 

~from Planescape Torment

I saw this crap this morning while I was writing my previous post.

It's an understatement to say "I'm so tired of these fucking people."

Sorry to point this out, but there's a certain percentage of Americans that crave literal oblivion if they can't be the only people who get to exist.

That's the secret sauce here, that's the "Grievance" that animates all this MAGA horseshit.

Their actual fucking problem is simply that other people exist.

Again, I used to be a conservative and I was not taught this way.

I mean, I did in fact spend a lot of my time, growing up, in pretty homogenous environments and surrounded by a lot of older people...although I'd say relatively few of them were as shitty as the one in Stonekettle's OP.

But then the environment a hell of a lot of those people had to live in, in their own formative years, simply didn't allow for the level of self-destructive selfishness that's so prevalent today.

I mean, acting like I see people act on a routine basis even around here (less than an hour from where I spent much of my time growing up) would have gotten people beat up 35-40 years ago and that is not a joke.

But then, the Great Depression and WWII were the formative experiences of my grandparents' generation and I was, in part, raised by said grandparents because my Mom worked all the time.

If I have to explain to you the level of caustic comments my Grandpa would have had for somebody who wanted a robot more than an actual woman? You simply haven't been paying attention, as much as I've written about him.

But the fact is there's a hell of a lot of dudes out there who'd rather have (in effect) a blow up doll, or C-3P0 with tits, than a woman with an actual opinion and resources of her own that she brings to the table.

And I'm fucking sick of this garbage.

You know, even if all this "Conservative" bullshit was true? It isn't but let's say for a second maybe...no individual, no nation or people, is ever judged by how they treat the mighty, the privileged, or the rich.

How do I know that??

Because I've read the Lord's Word, that's why.

But, These Fucking People are trying to make a New Religious Movement out of their idiocy, privilege and wealth.

It won't work, but they'll try.

And when it doesn't, they will destroy themselves.

I don't have to say this, these assholes say it damn near every day.

Way back in 2004 at Barnes & Noble in Midland, MI I bought an "Encyclopedia of World Religions" such as they were at the time.

I couldn't help but note (and I was still at least technically a conservative Christian at the time) that the further away from ancient roots one got, the more hokey and strange and freaking obviously made-up the shit seemed to get.

Like, I could certainly see the merits of most ancient world religions, even then (and note also I'd deployed to the Middle East and gone to Egypt with my college friend) that Christianity, Islam and Judaism were all cut from the same cloth. Mormonism or the Moonies? Not so much. Buddhism, Hinduism etc. I could understand, less so than the Abrahamic faiths but I could still understand them. Falun Gong or Satya Sai Baba? Not really.

Don't even get me started on shit like Raelianism (UFO worship) or outright celebrity worship.

And again, when I read this I was a Republican. Specifically, a leftover Reaganite Libertarian-inflected Republican. 

To me Trumpism is basically the Raelian version of political "Conservatism." (And I actually couldn't help but notice that there's a Swastika right smack in the middle of the Raelian symbol.)

And I'm not joking when I say a lot of Trumpers that I know or have heard of buy into all that Discovery Channel, Ancient Aliens crap.

So yeah, when I say that Trumpers will ultimately rather worship AI, demons, robots, or Trump himself as an idol than follow the Lord Jesus Christ at all, much less His actual teachings? It's not a joke.

Some of us would rather worship aliens or "Identify" with a Deceiver's bright lights and bullshit than accept reality.

Truth, like it or not, is the only thing that gives most people a floor to stand on to push back against Power.

You either believe in freedom, and in Truth, or you don't.

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

Pick a side.

There seems to be a reason that privileged people don't give a shit about the Truth.

Just sayin.'

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You may talk o' gin and beer,
When you're quartered safe out 'ere
An' your sent to penny-fights and Aldershot it.
But when it comes to slaughter,
You will do your work on water
And you'll lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it.
Now in India's sunny clime, where I used to spend my time
A servin' of 'er majesty the Queen
Of all them Black-faced crew, The finest man I knew
Was our regimental Bhisti, Gunga Din.
He was "Din! Din! Din!"
You limpin' lump of brick-dust Gunga Din!
Hai slippy hitherao, Water! Get it, Pannee Lao
'You squidgy-nosed old Idol, Gunga Din.' 

~Rudyard Kipling, Gunga Din.

Seven

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  

Valley Of Decision (American Revelation XXI, Seven.)

 Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles; Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up: Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning-hooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong. Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together round about: thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O Lord. Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about. Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. ~Joel 3:9-14

...

And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.

And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.

And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.

For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double.

How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she said in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.

Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judges her.

And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,

Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come. ~Revelation 18:1-10

...

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

I've been seeing this kind of shit lately.

If you think these fucking people are trying to crash the economy, push religion on people, and torment women because they have anybody else's interests at heart...even yours, my fellow White Men...you're fucking nuts.

Like, among other things, I'm pretty sure Travis Kelce sees Taylor Swift as an equal partner and about worships the ground she walks on. I'm not seeing where he's some kind of patriarchal asshole like Charlie Kirk is.

I mean, I see the way things are trending, and I sure as hell don't want to live like that...and I don't have near the money those two have. I just don't like adding layers of misery when things are already going to be hard enough. And note I have survival skills, so does my Mom and so does my partner.

A lot of people ain't got that shit. That's what scares me.

Like what good is being even some kind of all-powerful patriarch who rules over his wife and kids if you don't have any money to feed your family with?? Or if you don't know anything about hunting or survival past how to play Trophy Hunter video games or anything about food safety or how to butcher said "Trophy" so you can eat it??

"Power" is only worth so much if you can't eat, and only for so long.

Or if you have to obey and give money (that you don't really have to give, by the way) to some damned Jackleg preacher??

I mean, what's even the damned point??

These fucking people's entire credo is "Anything But America."

Anything but "Love Thy Neighbor."

Anything but even "All MEN are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights."

America is being intentionally run into the ground by these fucking idiots, after social divisions and pressures have already been amped up to the point where they're very likely to break the country on their own.

Yeah, I'm fortunate enough to live in a state that'll land on the "good" side of this mess, such as that is.

But I'm well aware that a lot of people aren't.

It's like I said, when this goes the way it's gonna go, some places in the former USA will be sucky but still kind of normal. Other places in it will be banana republics, fucked up theocracies of various kinds, or literal war zones.

And some places will be literally strip-mined down to the Earth's mantle, to the last millimeter before it's nothing but glowing lava pits, in search of ever more narcissistic fuel for some billionaire jagoff.

And the fucking thing of it is, I don't even know what the hell religion they're supposedly trying to push on people anymore.

Narcissism? Simple-ass cruelty?

I mean, either one tracks, but I've read the Lord's Word and if you think "Love Thy Neighbor" is too hard...or try to define "Neighbor" into a vanishingly small group of people just like yourself??

You're going to hell and had best not plan on packing your Carhartt's for the Afterlife, just sayin.'

And none of These Fucking People even care.

Nobody acts more like "Christianity" is all crap than the Christians do.

And These Fucking People want to impose their bullshit on the rest of us?? For what?? 

Whether I really ever wanted to or not I've spent my Life reading the Lord's Word, either out of literal belief or for writing purposes and as often as not despite being an Agnostic I write basically Christian apologetics as polemics against this shit!

Ain't nowhere in there, my dude, where it says you're Saved by your political Power or wealth. 

In point of fact, far more often than not, those things are a fast-track to Hell.

Because look how the people who end up with that kind of shit freaking act.

I'm not sure if I wanna say that the entitlement, laziness, selfishness and vapidity of the American electorate is bringing about the End Times.

But it's sure starting to look that way, isn't it??

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

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

The world, the country, that we're in is dying of our dysfunctions.

And I'm sorry to remind you of this, but the new world promised in Revelations comes at a cost.

We're all going to have to pay it.

It's a lesser cost and a lighter burden if we share that shit and work together.

We can make that choice, it's our Valley Of Decision.

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John Constantine: You're handing Earth over to the son of the Devil? Help me, here;

Gabriel: [Gabriel sits on top of John Constantine, explaining her rebellion] You're handed this precious gift, right? Each one of you granted redemption from the Creator – murderers, rapists, molesters – all of you just have to repent, and God takes you into His bosom. In all the worlds and all the universe, no other creature can make such a boast, save man. It's not fair.

[Gabriel leans closer to Constantine's face]

Gabriel: If sweet, sweet God loves you so, then I will make you worthy of His love. But it's only in the face of horror that you truly find your nobler selves – and you can be so noble. So … I will bring you pain. I will bring you horror.

[Gabriel lifts up Constantine from his collar]

Gabriel: So that you may rise above it. So that those of you who will survive this reign of hell on earth will be worthy of God's love.

John Constantine: Gabriel... you're insane.

Gabriel: [smiles] The road to salvation begins tonight. Right now.

~From the film Constantine.

Last Post

We have too many men of science, too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon On The Mount. The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. ~General Omar Bradley

Forsaken People (American Revelation XXI, James Dobson Edition.)

I am the way into the city of woe.

I am the way to a forsaken people.
I am the way into eternal sorrow.
Sacred justice moved my architect.
I was raised here by divine omnipotence, primordial love and ultimate intellect
Only those elements time cannot wear are beyond me,
and beyond time I stand.
Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.'
~Sign above the gates of hell (variant translation) Canto III, Dante's Inferno, the Divine Comedy.

...

We have too many men of science, too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon On The Mount. The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. ~General Omar Bradley

...

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

James Dobson died yesterday.

Good.

Never thought I'd pity Charon, or the Grim Reaper.

Or feel sympathy for the Devil who now has to put up with Dobson's stank ass.

Sorry to sound that way, but I personally know way too many people who were hurt by that particular False Teacher's bullshit, even though I can't say I ever followed any of it nor paid much attention to him.

I always thought his whole bit was just creepy as fuck, especially the obsession with spanking kids.

Like, sorry, but you can't beat a person into believing what you want them to believe, humans just don't work like that.

Note; I say this as somebody with a church background who was far more adjacent than I wanted to be, to various Fundamentalist Christians and others (Nazarenes, for example) who bought into this crap. Never practiced any of his shit myself, but I'm not unfamiliar with it.

And I know way too many people who got the fuck beat out of them by their parents or a spouse with these kind of "Christian Teachings" as an excuse.

That's all it is or ever was, an excuse for the shit these fucking people wanted to do anyway.

And perhaps more to the point, without people like James Dobson you wouldn't have Christian Nationalism as, effectively, the Imperial Cult of the Republican Party at this point.

You sure as hell wouldn't have fucking people like Donald Trump in Power without him and his brutal teachings and view of the world convincing a lot of Christians that God is an Asshole and that secular leaders who are assholes are thus somehow following God, either.

Worse, the reach of this crap extends far more than most people realize. All the way back in 2005 I was taking a psychology class at Central Michigan University and my instructor spoke almost reverently about "Dr. Dobson" in class, when somebody brought up something to do with Christianity and a then and now current "Culture War" issue (LGBT Rights, and we'd just watched a video about Transgender people in Samoa, if I recall correctly.)

Yeah, stop and think about that for a second.

I did not actually know until today that Dobson's mentor was an American Nazi ass-kisser Eugenicist, Paul Popenoe.

(Who only redefined himself as a "Marriage Counselor" and shit like that after the revelation of the Holocaust.)

I'm gonna take a minute here and remind you that there's nobody in my little family that Eugenicists and Nazis wouldn't try to kill for various reasons.

Yes, believe it or not this kind of crap, people like Tucker Carlson saying that America was on the "wrong" side during WWII and all that, does affect real people.

Sorry, but growing up I still knew way too many shattered old men who'd left parts of their bodies or their souls in places like Bastogne or Guadalcanal who were and forever would be against German or Japanese people and I'm here to tell you the sweet old German immigrant lady that lived down the street (who'd met her husband when he was a GI stationed in Germany in the early 1950's) had a hell of a time with some of those old guys.

There was a time when saying "One can make the argument that we should have sided with Hitler" would have gotten one run out of public life and beat up by a bunch of old WWII veterans.

But, apparently, People Are Stupid.

No one seems to want to take the Ancestors and the historians at their word that Slavery was bad, or that Nazis were (and are) evil.

How many people are gonna have to die so people can re-learn "for themselves" the shit that pretty much every current Expert is already fucking telling them??

And what's worse, the entire damned point of all this crap is that a hell of a lot of fucking morons somehow think they're going to get something out of being willfully ignorant.

Something other than Dead like James Dobson, that is.

Somebody needs to stick a screwdriver through his brain just in case, so that fucker doesn't turn and reanimate like some sort of Zombie, 'cause I bet Heaven won't take him and Hell don't want his ass either.

And neither should anybody else have, ever.

But some of us seem to want to be the Forsaken People in the City Of Woe in Dante's Inferno, apparently they think it legitimizes their shitty beliefs when things suck for everybody.

I'm so tired of the debased boredom and willful ignorance of a lot of American White people.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

You either believe in your own right to live your fucking life, or you don't.

We need to stop fucking around with this bullshit and putting up with Nazis and religious fanatics.

It really is that simple.

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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  

Six

The wind whispers of fear and hate. The war has killed love. And those that confess to the Angkar are punished, and no one dare ask where they go. Here, only the silent survive. ~Dith Pran, The Killing Fields