And the people shall take them, and bring them to their place: and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the Lord for servants and handmaids: and they shall take them captives, whose captives they were; and they shall rule over their oppressors.
And it shall come to pass in the day that the Lord shall give thee rest from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou was made to serve,
That thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased!
The Lord hath broken the staff of the wicked, and the scepter of the rulers.
He who smote the people in wrath with a continual stroke, he that ruled the nations in anger, is persecuted, and none hinders.
The whole earth is at rest, and is quiet: they break forth into singing.
Yea, the fir trees rejoice at thee, and the cedars of Lebanon, saying, Since thou art laid down, no logger is come up against us.
Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirs up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations.
Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee.
How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.
Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.
That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners?
All the kings of the nations, even all of them, lie in glory, every one in his own house.
But thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch, and as the raiment of those that are slain, thrust through with a sword, that go down to the stones of the pit; as a carcass trodden under feet.
Thou shalt not be joined with them in burial, because thou hast destroyed thy land, and slain thy people: the seed of evildoers shall never be renowned.
Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their fathers; that they do not rise, nor possess the land, nor fill the face of the world with cities.
For I will rise up against them, says the Lord of hosts, and cut off from Babylon the name, and remnant, and son, and nephew, says the Lord. ~Isaiah 14:1-22
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...
When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything. ~Umberto Eco
I keep seeing this shit.
A whole bunch of "Young Republicans" some of whom are *Checks Notes* like, 40, get caught in a group chat calling Black people racial slurs, expressing love for Hitler, making rape jokes and threatening to gas or otherwise execute their [Republican] political opponents.
Meanwhile all the ringleaders of the group look like somebody took Jabba The Hutt out of Star Wars, poured him into a suit and gave him a bad haircut.
Why for is the "Master Race" always like this??
Not some of the time, not most of the time, always.
And not to be outdone, the "Conservative" Evangelical Christians are making it all about them to the point where Lucifer himself (as depicted in the Old Testament, no less) looks humble and kind and self-deprecating by comparison.
When your basis for everything is "Me" I guess that's gonna warp things a little, at least.
But here's the thing, Lucifer fell from Heaven for a fucking reason.
Hubris and the Fall are always intertwined, one of these things very much is like the other one.
I mean, my Gods, what the fuck is wrong with these people??
I mean, they're still on the "Charlie Kirk is Jesus" kick, seriously??
Again, it sucks that he got shot, but dude wasn't (and didn't claim to be) some holy prophet!
Meanwhile the country is falling apart, the government is shut down, and the majority of people are so disgusted with all this shit that I literally don't see the country holding together much longer because none of our national government institutions have one damn bit of credibility left because of Republicans and Trump.
But how do they measure this?
In selling shit, apparently. Never mind I can tell you from personal experience that 99% of the time it's the same fucking people buying the same fucking shit over and over and over. That doesn't mean they actually believe in anything. Commercialized Evangelicalism is the problem.
I mean, if you wanna get really technical about it, I've bought two Bibles in the last year (A hardcopy and one on Kindle) and I'm not a Born-Again anything.
I've also bought Kindle versions of the Quran and the Torah.
I'm not shouting Allah Akbar or keeping Kosher.
None of this stuff is even evidence of people being religious, much less Christian.
So, Why??
Because I couldn't find my copies of any of them and I need that kind of stuff for quotes and research now and again.
Partaking of Capitalism is not the same as saying the Sinner's Prayer.
Listening to Charlie Kirk makes one neither a Christian nor a conservative.
It's evidence that you can talk, you can make words come out your mouth. Go you. You now have shown proficiency in one of the main forms of human communication.
Even if these "statistics" are real or have any meaning, which I suspect they don't, they are still not evidence of inner life or inward work or True Faith in anything whatever.
Jesus Himself spoke against that kind of religiosity as a core part of His earthly ministry, it was like His whole bit!
And if you want to know why the American Church is in spiraling decline and America is in the mess that it's in...you might even start with the fact that a whole hell of a lot of Evangelical and Pentecostal type churches don't know the difference between Congregants and asses in the seats, measure their success in collected donations (to the church or the Pastor, not charity) and spend more money on their church "Praise and Worship" band's music setup every damn Sunday than they do on supporting the communities around them!
If you wanna know why people think shit like that Trump is Jesus, well I think it starts with the fact that people are not the least bit acquainted with the real Jesus nor are they encouraged to be so in the least.
It's a rare church that encourages Biblical literacy rather than literalism.
And in a country where half the population can barely read (if they can read at all) how in the hell do you even reliably share something like the Lord's Word...which is by definition, written??
It's not an accident that we have millions of people who literally don't know the difference between Christian doctrine and Republican (or MAGA) politics.
And when I was bitching about that 20 years ago, I was a conservative!
Even then, I knew One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other One.
Their parents got mad when I pointed out that George W. Bush was not some holy prophet either.
And now the vast majority of Republicans from 20-25 years ago that are still Republicans freaking hate George W. Bush!
Honestly, the cycle is getting shorter, too! Only a few fanatics on the Right are still talking about Charlie Kirk at all! I only brought him up because Tania up above provided a handy reference.
MAGA? The day will come when Trump is damned near forgotten by them also. How long, you ask??
Everybody was gung-ho about protecting themselves or stopping that shit for the first couple weeks and then they (mostly starting with conservatives, but also some alleged liberals) got bored. Live sports going off the air was treated as a bigger catastrophe than tens of thousands of deaths were.
Tell me something, the people who were like that, in their hearts was God on the throne or was their Self on the throne?? Yes, I'm using the old Christian trope I was taught for a damn reason.
If "Love Thy Neighbor" isn't the point, what are you even doing it for??
Christianity doesn't need "Saving" from anyone...but Divine Truth is no good if nobody can understand it or even read it!!!
What matters more? Your own petty lusts or the fact that people are dying and the world is burning down??
If you think a second American Civil War will be any damned different, you have another thing coming.
People will not understand that they can't go to Disney World or party it up on South Padre Island because it's not there anymore or it's in a different country now, and they'll be even more mad that their kid came home in a box and have to be made to understand that he or she died fighting people even more ignorant than their own damn selves.
There's reasons most modern nations don't have (or last long with) leaders that are narcissists and in the modern era most such places are considered Third World shitholes.
The trouble with that is I've been to parts of America that could easily qualify as Third World shitholes if they weren't part of the same national polity as California and Michigan and New York and tracked on that basis.
And I'm sorry but I think the goddamn problem is that, screw the leadership, too many of the People are petty little narcissists!
How is the Constitution supposed to protect us from that?
Look, if some of These Fucking People prefer narcissism or racism or religiosity to civilization and modern society or want to die in a ditch of a preventable disease like some medieval peasant, have at it...but you cannot expect all that many of the rest of us to want to live with you...nor that your own house will be very happy for very long.
You either believe in civilization...and freedom...or you don't.
The trouble with freedom is you have to be smart enough to know if you have it or not, I guess.
Remember that, it's going to be on the test.
Слава Україна!
The void laughs at him. There are miles of empty air beneath his dangling feet. "You had no choice.''
"Yes I did! I didn't have to come here.'' He pauses. "I didn't have to do anything,'' he says quietly, and inhales another lungful of death. "It was all automatic. Maybe it was inevitable.''
"-- Evitable,'' echoes the distant horizon. Something dark and angular skims across the stars, like an echo of extinct pterosaurs. Turbofans whirring within its belly, the F-117A hunts on: patrolling to keep at bay the ancient evil, unaware that the battle is already lost. "Your family could still be alive, you know.''
He looks up. "They could?'' Andrea? Jason? "Alive?''
The void laughs again, unfriendly: "There is life eternal within the eater of souls. Nobody is ever forgotten or allowed to rest in peace. They populate the simulation spaces of its mind, exploring all the possible alternative endings to their life. There is a fate worse than death, you know.''
~From A Colder War, a novella by Charles Stross.
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."
And war broke out in heaven Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. ~Revelation 12:7-9
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