Rain Down Fire (Self On The Throne, Five.)

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

...

[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."

...

I met a traveler from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

~Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley

So apparently, in response to the "No Kings" protests, Trump posted a video of himself, as a king, flying a jet fighter and dumping shit on Americans like what he thinks an avenging god raining down fire looks like. 

(LOL, No. As someone familiar with apocalyptic imagery, No.)

So basically, These Fucking People are saying they wanna shit all over their fellow Americans. Trump is just an excuse for that BS. Now, I'd like to point out something else here, something that surprised me.

Yesterday morning I found out that, despite not feeling good all weekend, on Saturday my partner went to the No Kings protest where she lives now...her daughter wanted to take her Pride flag and go and see what it was all about. So they went.

My partner, mind you, is pretty much a mid-conservative along similar but more right-leaning lines to me being a (more or less) conservative Democrat. 

The arguments are fun, and mostly about policy. Interestingly she's to the Left of me on some things. We get along, obviously.

Last night at work, I was taking my lunch and my buddy comes in the back room looking at the paper, wanting to see if he was in it. Turns out he went to the protest here with his Pride flag.

Aside from gun rights and LGBT issues (because he is very, very gay) with a side of not liking Donald Trump or Evangelical Christians very much, my coworker isn't political at all.

But he's hardly a Leftist.

Just a word of warning to all the Leftists who think they're gonna get what they want after all this. Y'all ain't the ones I see doing all the work.

For example I see the Catholic Church with its new American pope specifically making a lot of effort here, while a lot of online Leftists were telling other people not to protest and not showing any support themselves.

A hell of a lot of the people showing up now are Old White People.

And that will probably end up affecting the various outcomes of this whole mess.

I had to work, naturally, and I was exhausted for whatever reason yesterday. So I slept through it. Didn't hear a thing even though the protest was like two blocks from my house.

More people than the one back in June, too.

Apparently there was a competing "Jesus" rally (because apparently somebody figured out direct pro-Trump wasn't good optics) but like a dozen people showed up for that.

It's amazing to me just how triggered "Conservatives" are by this whole thing.

So yeah, how is that whole "Self on the Throne" vs. "God on the Throne" thing working out for Trump??

(Badly, like most things do.)

The other thing I've been seeing a lot of the last few days is this Joshua Haymes chuckle-fuck saying Christians should defend slavery because it's in the Bible.

Yo I'm just sayin' rampant drunkenness, incest and mass murder are in the Bible too, would you defend those things??

I used to be a Christian and I've never felt the need to defend slavery!

It's been my experience that when things aren't going well, the "Conservative" white male Id pops off. So what they're sayin' is they want to shit all over their fellow citizens and they want to own people.

That's pretty much "Conservative" values right there and I didn't need this last weekend to tell me that.

And apparently this guy has been saying shit that's egregious enough for Dinesh D'Souza to dunk on his ass.

I'm...uncomfortable...being on the same side of any argument as Dinesh. I never liked him or thought he was a trustworthy voice even when I was a Republican.

(And apparently Dinesh has been on this guy's podcast, per the Community Note?)

But here we are, I guess?

I have friends everywhere.

Welcome to the Rebellion, bro?

Christ, I feel dirty for saying that, especially about him.

But I want you to stop and think about that for a second.

And then, apparently, JD Vance's motorcade was on the freeway that the Marines were firing artillery shells over during their exercise and a vehicle in his motorcade got hit by shrapnel from a 155mm Howitzer shell exploding prematurely.

Yeah, I'm not sure if that's shades of what (almost) happened to Mike Pence or just that these fucking people really are that stupid.

Either way somebody decided to rain down fire (badly) on JD Vance.

Like how much of an ass-kissing degenerate does a Republican Vice President have to be for dangerous, risky and threatening shit to not happen to them??

Do I even want to know??

That's the thing about MAGA, they don't want [fellow] citizens, or even subjects, they (each one of them, singular) want everybody else to have to be their slaves, including other MAGA's.

Well, basically I think that's what happens when you have a country overstocked with narcissists that has a political movement composed of narcissists with leaders that are narcissists.

And they're going to try to keep going until everybody either has to bow to them or fight against them. Or at least, that's their plan...because they get all their narcissistic fuel either way.

I don't think this is gonna work out the way that they think it will.

But even so it'll probably come down to a fight, at least somewhere.

And when that time comes, either you believe in freedom or you don't.

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

We'd best figure it out before God decides he's gonna rain down fire on this whole country. 

And if He does, you know why.

Слава Україна!
We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world, a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us. No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we'll kill you. Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush? They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us; they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis. And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them. 

~Hunter S. Thompson

Nebuchadnezzar spake and said unto them, Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, do not ye serve my gods, nor worship the golden image which I have set up?
Now if ye be ready that at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of music, ye fall down and worship the image which I have made; well: but if ye worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace; and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter.
If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.
But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.
~Daniel 3:14-18

Four

 When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything. ~Umberto Eco