Yes We Can (American Judgment Day II, Seven.)

And so tomorrow, as we take the campaign South and West, as we learn that the struggles of the textile workers in Spartanburg are not so different than the plight of the dishwasher in Las Vegas; that the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of L.A.; we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people, we are one nation. And, together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story, with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea: Yes, we can. ~Barack Obama

...

Song, song of the south
Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth
Gone, gone with the wind
There ain't nobody lookin' back again

Cotton on the roadside, cotton in the ditch
We all picked the cotton, but we never got rich
Daddy was a veteran, a Southern Democrat
They ought to get a rich man to vote like that
Sing it

Song, song of the south
Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth
Gone, gone with the wind
There ain't nobody lookin' back again

Well, somebody told us Wall Street fell
But we were so poor that we couldn't tell
Cotton was short and the weeds were tall
But Mr. Roosevelt's a-gonna save us all

Well, Mama got sick and Daddy got down

The county got the farm and we moved to town
Papa got a job with the TVA
He bought a washin' machine and then a Chevrolet

Sing it
Song, song of the south
Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth
Gone, gone with the wind
There ain't nobody lookin' back again

~Alabama, Song Of The South.

...

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.

So Zohran won in New York City.

Abigail Spanberger won in Virginia

Mickie Sherill won in New Jersey.

Prop 50 passed in California, with even many Red areas voting in favor.

Three Black Democrats were elected in Mississippi, breaking the GOP supermajority in the state legislature.

Overall, it looks like Republicans had a very bad day.

(And they deserved it.)

These Fucking People's idea of America sucks.

I used to be a conservative Republican and I sure as a motherfucker never wanted to live in or even visit some place where everybody was the same. I mean, it's one thing if you go out in the country here and it's almost all White people, or whatever, but in town where I live it's pretty diverse and I'm fine with that.

I like that things aren't the same here as they were 30 years ago, why is this even hard?? Do these people hate today for not being yesterday? Life goes on, change happens, things can't stay the same.

And it would be boring if it was.

Honestly, sameness or stasis in the normal "Standing athwart the flow of History yelling STOP!" form of conservatism that I was raised with is not even what These Fucking People want anymore.

And more to the point, these assholes specifically hate the America we already have, that was painstakingly built by our ancestors, based on lessons often written in blood.

All too many of America's Evangelical churches have become Narcissist Factories, producing assholes at scale, and they seem to want to wallow in every possible societal cancer and social herpes you can imagine, for no better reason than they got told at some point that they were special, that they had a "Personal" relationship with Jesus, and that they were going to Heaven.

And somebody else didn't and wasn't.

Over time, that somebody else didn't get any became the goddamned point.

I'm a white, male, Agnostic former Christian and former Republican with a conservative church background. I'm a veteran of the United States Air Force security forces, I volunteered for the Bush/Cheney campaign in 2000 (RIP Dick) and even at my most conservative I'd have never wanted to live in a country or place where Hindu temples, Mosques or Synagogues couldn't be built.

And I've been to places where religion is mandated by the government;

That doesn't tend to end well.

Remember, Remember...

In 1994 I deployed to Saudi Arabia and stood watch on cold desert nights in full battle rattle with my M16 at a place called Prince Sultan Airbase. I got to work with plenty of Royal Saudi Air Force guys while I was there, but that was naturally most of my experience of that country. Going to a place like Saudi Arabia made me glad that I was from America.

Saudi Arabia sucks.

But I've also been places over there where it wasn't mandated so much by government as by culture and history.

In 2002 over Christmas break I went to Egypt with my college friend and his then-girlfriend, who were simply going home for the break. I went to a service at a Coptic Christian church and while I was there, but also five times a day I heard the call to prayer over a loudspeaker at the mosque in my buddy's neighborhood, On what in America was Christmas Eve we sat there in a coffee house smoking a hookah and listened to some old man with a long white beard excitedly telling stories in Arabic while waving a sword around and accentuating his points with shouts of "Allah Akbar!"

My buddy's family, or at least some branch of it, has lived in the same neighborhood since before European contact with the Americas, let alone before America was America.

US "Conservatives" are pikers by comparison.

I didn't think Egypt was all that different from home, hotter weather, different culture, language and religions but people are people.

This is America and we have freedom of...and just as importantly freedom from...politics or religion if we want.

I'm not and I've never been all that politically correct or "Woke" but I'm here to tell you it would never in my life have occurred to me to tell a person from (or whose ancestors were from) India to "Go back where you came from." 

Not least because depending on the time in my life, my Dad, my Mom or one of my grandparents would have whupped my ass.

It wasn't a question of "If."

And I'd have deserved it.

Other people have a right to exist. They have a right to exist and within the strictures imposed by civilization to do what they want without you bothering them. 

Yes, it really is that simple.

Somehow Republicans have lost that understanding of life.

The words "Mind Your Own Business" simply don't occur to these fucking idiots...where when I was growing up that was kind of enforced, and beyond a certain level it was considered kind of unseemly to pry too much into the lives of others.

There was a time not so long ago in the grand scheme of things when Mike Johnson would have never made it past being a small-town lawyer and creepy religious fanatic.

But then at that point, Trump was also known as a broke ass divorced deadbeat who'd spent the 1980's embarrassing himself and going bankrupt. 

Hey, I'm old.

Well then in 1994 Republicans won the midterms and all the sudden worrying about other people's sex lives (while cheating on your wife your own damn self) became cool, and that's where all this bullshit started. Trumpism is a hologram. 

I blame Newt Gingrich.

I was a serving Airman during the first two government shutdowns.

To say I'm sick of this crap is an understatement.

In the 1990's conservatives were against "Moral Relativism" and "Situational Ethics" and now they are the most assiduous practitioners of such things.

Shit can fall a long way very quickly.

Hell, some of these idiots are trying to say Virginia ain't in the South no more because they just elected a Democrat.

I get that Partisanship is a hell of a drug.

But I think Republicans are about to wake up and find themselves having made some bedfellows that they didn't really want to have.

And it can and will get worse, because people like Nick Fuentes (and apparently now Tucker Carlson and The Heritage Foundation) very clearly do consider other Conservative Republicans their enemies.

What's coming is gonna be a fight for Republicans, too, they just don't know it yet. And it won't be against who they think it will be or who they want it to be, either. There's people and things out there that'll target them just as much (or likely even more than) they'll target liberals.

I suspect that's where most of the bloodshed in any possible new civil war will even come from, once blue, purple and pink areas establish their borders and shit, things will quiet down.

It's in the red areas where Nazis and people who'd worship Demons if it gave them power have to coexist that it won't just flare up, it'll keep flaring up until the universe burns down if nobody steps in and stops it because those people will just start fighting each other over their own bullshit.

Yesterday tells me we have a chance to stop this shit, but we have to keep after it.

And for all that, I'm still wondering what color the Revolution will be.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

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

Yes, We Can.

Слава Україна!

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.  We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream.  The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it, and then hand it to them with the well fought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same.  And if you and I don't do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free. ~Ronald Reagan

Six

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

Bonus Content

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,

The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,

I know of no reason

Why the Gunpowder Treason

Should ever be forgot.