And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth. ~Revelation 6:7-8
...
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"
...
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
I keep seeing this shit. Known nepo-baby sex-pest Andrew Cuomo is still trying to talk shit about Zohran Mamdani.
Sure, Cuomo shit-canned tens of thousands of rent-controlled apartments, so naturally he'll point out that Zohran has lived in one at some point.
So?
That's not the gotcha dude thinks it is.
The trouble isn't Democrats or Republicans, it's that our political class is mostly fucking out of touch rich people who don't give a damn if the average person makes it or not.
And most of those kind of people conduct themselves the same way towards us workers whether they're allegedly conservatives or supposedly liberals. I could tell you where I've seen this personally, but it'd be a whole separate post I might write sometime.
There's a reason I've said since 2003 that Michael Moore isn't a liberal, he just plays one on TV.
I met the man once, when he was the big deal in protesting the then-just-started Iraq War.
But a slight digression first.
I, as a young Republican voter serving in the Air Force as a Sergeant in 1994 and stationed (for the first part of my career, anyway) in both my state and congressional district of residence actually got a chance to speak with my (conservative Democrat) Congressman, Bart Stupak for a few minutes when he visited KI Sawyer Air Force Base.
Funny enough, but thinking back to it I think he came off as far more genuinely liberal (in the small "L" sense of the word) and open minded than the big "Liberal" media star I would meet nine years later at an Iraq War protest in Petoskey, Michigan. He shook my hand, we chatted for a few seconds, and I felt like he didn't really give a fuck and was there to just check some sort of a box.
Being a veteran and against war...any war...is often a lonely position to take. The Right hates you and the Left doesn't give a shit.
I mean, since January it's plain-out obvious that most of Democratic leadership just doesn't give a fuck about doing anything but keeping their place in the magical city.
Honestly, the vast majority of Republicans are the same way, only worse and more obvious about it.
The main priority of the political class is that they control the lower classes by various means (Democrats use social welfare where you have to swear yourself into poverty. Republicans use police and are increasingly abandoning even the pretense of that, becoming enamored instead of naked force without even the pretense of law) and they don't have to see us, and don't want to have to answer to or be held accountable by anybody that they don't want to.
And they'd all rather be podcast stars paid to say stupid shit on the internet, than real leaders with responsibilities.
Us regular people don't have any of those options.
And if we're being honest, a whole hell of a lot of these fucking people, especially as the gradients of "1%" narrow upwards, would rather all the rest of us die than they give up one jot or tittle of their power or wealth.
And a lot of them, very likely including serial sexual harassers like Cuomo, actually see the political and social power of women as a threat.
It's just that right now, it's only the freakish Christian Dominionist theocratic types that are willing to say so openly.
But if this crap is allowed to continue it'll become the sort of bullshit that Republicans are loud about and Democrats make vague noises about opposing until enough women go off on them like enraged Furies and some chunky nerd-girl vet tech neuters a Congressman.
Not that that's much of an endorsement.
And as I keep saying, there's a non-zero chance that the social pressures of all this alone will spill over into violence split the country...which means there's a good chance that the Left gets some kind of socialistic paradise (but the kind where nobody has any money, kind of like the UK after WWII.) And the Right gets to one-up Margret Atwood's Gilead while giving billionaires and a very-tiny trillionaire class their gilded enclaves in which none of the "rules" apply.
And yes, there's a whole hell of a lot of places that are going land between those two extremes.
A lot of which won't be nice places to live, either.
And what all that really means is that a lot of people are going to die, because a lot of this transition will not exactly be peaceful and too many of the people who should simply won't give a fuck.
And a lot of people who are pushing this shit on the rest of us are, in fact, White men who see the political power and even basic recognition of other groups like LGBT folks, people of Color and women as a threat to their Power.
But here's the thing, there's a lot of flat-out stupid White bros out there and political monocultures tend to amplify the flaws and fuckups of the groups they're composed of. These Fucking People are too stupid to do much more than get a hell of a lot of the rest of us killed.
Which seems to be the goal and the point, honestly.
And I say that as a White Man, myself.
At the end of the day, you either believe in freedom or you don't.
And everybody has to have it, or it isn't freedom.
Remember that, because it's going to be on the test later.
Soon.
Слава Україна!
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 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.
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.
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