Salvation (American Judgment Day II, Ten.)

You can take a lot of things away from a man. Cigarettes, the gym. You can take his freedom, his legs, but not his feelings. Not his feelings. A man loves a woman. Don't matter what kind of man he is, if he loves her, he wants her. He wants her body. He wants her to want his. So you say to him, "you can never make love again. You will never touch her in that way again. This is the last time. The last time. Forever." If that's not cruel and unusual punishment, I don't know what is. ~Augustus Hill, from the HBO series Oz, S1.E2 "Visits, Conjugal and otherwise."

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I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do to their fellows, because it always coincides with their own desires. ~Susan B. Anthony

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The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all. You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits — not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty." ~Ronald Reagan

I've been catching this kind of actual horseshit for five months now, since I got with my partner.

Apparently, there's a large faction of men out there that thinks it's "Gay" to love your girlfriend, your partner, your wife, etc.

First, in what universe is having sex with a human being of the opposite sex even remotely considerable as homosexuality?? That's heterosexuality no matter what kind of way you try and twist it. One of these things is simply not like the other one. Words either have meaning or they don't.

Secondly, My answer to that, perhaps because I'm a bit old-school and a former conservative Christian Republican myself is "If you don't love someone, or at least like them, why would you even date them let alone have sex with them, or worse, get married??"

If you're doing it for a power trip, you're doing it wrong. Like what's even the point??

And then I saw this shit.

Some religious nut got fired for refusing to work with a woman because of the "Billy Graham Rule" meaning he didn't want to be alone with any women besides his wife, and sued his former employer over it.

It's like this, yo, I have extensive church background, came up in the 1980's too, and although I wasn't one, I was very adjacent to a lot of Evangelicals and Fundamentalists and I never heard of that shit until Mike Pence following it pushed that bullshit "Rule" into national awareness in 2017.

And this is America, not Saudi Arabia or Taliban Afghanistan, you can't make somebody who doesn't follow your interpretation do so. If you don't want to work with all type of people or serve all of the public, either don't work in a public sector job or get your own business where you can choose who you work with and choose the customer base you serve. If you take a job, that your employer calls the shots within the confines of existing law is just kind of how it is, you don't have to like it.

That's the thing, religion, shorn of compassion and empathy and the confines of secular law and society itself just becomes another vector for control, cruelty and monstrous behavior. 

Again, what's even the damn point??

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. ~John 3:16

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Master, which is the great commandment in the law?

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.

And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. ~Matthew 22:36-40

Also, and not for the first time, my partner is a mid-conservative. She and I have often voted differently (although she's never voted for Trump) and she'll just as readily vote for a Democrat as a Republican depending on the issue and where they stand on it. That her freedom sometimes counts against what I'd like doesn't matter. She's a person, we live in a society. That's not my choice. I'd gladly die with a rifle in my hand not only to defend her rights but those of any person in this country or this world. 

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

[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."

More to the damned point, from a specifically conservative point of view our ancestors decided the issue of women voting over 100 years ago. It stays, this has been a conservative point of view.

While I'm at it, go ahead and Google who the first woman to be a US Senator was and what that lady believed, I fuckin' dare you.

But, You don't have to like it.

And that, too, is America.

It's going to come down to a fight to stop These Fucking People.

But we can do it now, or it will be worse later.

So get after it.

Because we've hit the point now where not doing something is doing something.

I strongly suspect whatever's in the goddamned Epstein files is big enough to cause a revolution by itself. We're gonna have this fight no matter what.

And it won't be Conservative vs. Liberal or Republican vs. Democrat or any of the other fights all these assholes wanna have.

They are not conservatives, hell I'd argue they left fascism in the dust a while ago, this is something different, and worse.

It comes right down to a person's place not only in this world, but their place before their God (or lack thereof) as well.

These fucking people think they are God.

Fundamentally they think they have some kind of a right to judge the Salvation of another according to their own bullshit beliefs and interpretations, for no reason other than Earthly Power.

They do not.

That is the point of American Judgment Day, we're past Revelation.

Remember this.

Because Man does not get to Judge himself.

Only God gets to do that, and He's seen what you done.

Loretta Smith: I'm Loretta Smith. You killed my son. You're a handsome fellow.

Donald Groves: Thanks.

Loretta Smith: You broke God's law: Love thy neighbor. I wanna hate you but I can't. I feel pity, tears, but no hate. I didn't realize that until this moment. You are my neighbor and I love you. And I forgive you with all my heart. That's all.

~From the HBO series "Oz" Season 1, Episode 7 "Plan B."

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The dark is generous and it is patient, and it always wins.

But at the heart of its strength lies weakness.

One lone candle is enough to hold it back.

Love is more than a candle; Love can ignite the stars.

~Matthew Stover, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith novelization.

Nine

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