Crab Bucket (Reason For The Season 2025, Nineteen.)

Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him.”

When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born.

So they said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet:

‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
Are not the least among the rulers of Judah;
For out of you shall come a Ruler
Who will shepherd My people Israel.’ ”

Then Herod, when he had secretly called the wise men, determined from them what time the star appeared. 8 And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the young Child, and when you have found Him, bring back word to me, that I may come and worship Him also.”

When they heard the king, they departed; and behold, the star which they had seen in the East went before them, till it came and stood over where the young Child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy. And when they had come into the house, they saw the young Child with Mary His mother, and fell down and worshiped Him. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented gifts to Him: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Then, being divinely warned in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed for their own country another way. ~Matthew 2, New King James Version

...

We've got to take the neighborhood back. We've got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It's right around the corner. It's standing on the corner. It can't speak English. It doesn't want to speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk. "Why you ain't where you is go." I don't know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't land a plane with "why you ain't…". You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they're moving ahead on this? Well, they know they're not, they're just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you're just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out. ~Bill Cosby, the "Pound Cake" speech.

...

I am Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? "No," says the man in Washington, "it belongs to the poor." "No," says the man in the Vatican, "it belongs to God." "No," says the man in Moscow, "it belongs to everyone." I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture. A city where the artist would not fear the censor; where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality; where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well. ~Andrew Ryan, Bioshock

I saw this last night.

I find it interesting that These Fucking People keep trying to push two things on the country, those being AI and Erika Kirk, and nobody's buying either.

The running theory is that certain people want JD to divorce his wife and marry Erika Kirk and then when Trump kicks the bucket, she gets to be First Lady and somehow make JD (who makes Al Gore look personable) palatable to...well, somebody.

The trouble is, JD is married, Catholic and a Marine Corps veteran and all those things were supposed to come with standards. Yeah, I not only saw them all over each other, I freaking wrote about it awhile back.

If a man won't be faithful to his wife...what the hell good is his Word on anything else??

The whole thing disgusts me, but speaking as a man who's very much in love with his partner, it's absolutely rage-inducing on top of that. I can't even look at another woman the way I look at her, and I don't want to.

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."

(As is the fact that she's stuck dealing with idiot relatives right now, and it's going badly.)

And as for the whole issue of Artificial Intelligence? Well it's like I was taught about calculators when I was a kid, computers when I was a teenager and coding when I was in college. 

If you don't know the subject matter for whatever you're doing? 

Well, Garbage In, Garbage Out.

And for that matter, if half the country can't read how the fuck are they supposed to use a goddamn AI?

The problem is threefold.

#1 Modern "Conservatives" fear and hate damn near everybody and damn near everything.

#2 These Fucking People want some kind of "Daddy" God-King to protect them from the rest of the Universe. (And then they pick Trump which is totally nonsensical.)

#3 But the truth is they don't care if they accomplish anything, they don't care if they survive, they don't want to do anything...but they don't want anybody else to do anything either. 

And they actively try to pull down and drain dry anybody who is trying to accomplish anything.

Then they have the balls to say you "Think you're better than them" for trying to do something with your life??

I can't make this shit make sense.

It's the Crab Bucket theory but political, call it Crab Bucket Conservatism.

Like, the whole Republican Program at this point is "Everything is shitty shit, vote for us, we won't fix it."

It's like these jokers bitching about Islam somewhere in the DFW metro in Texas. I guess it'd make more sense (although not much more) if they were actually practicing Christianity. But these kind of Unga Bunga chuds apparently think having a pig is somehow, by itself, going to bother a Muslim person.

(They don't give a shit, they just can't or simply won't eat the thing. It's not just Muslims, it's a Middle Eastern cultural thing. I had a Jordanian Christian friend years ago who didn't eat Pork either. It'd be like expecting an American to eat a cat.)

Their "Grievance," their problem such as it is, is simply that Other People Exist.

And the truth is, more often than not, that includes each other.

That's not just incompatible with America or Democracy, it's incapable with Human Life.

Like crabs frantically and fratricidally trying to escape from a crabber's bucket, they pull each other down so none of them escape. They want to strike at everybody else, but end up destroying each other and their own shit because they cannot exempt themselves from their own laws or political system.

Like, there's literally no way to be Right-Wing enough to please These Fucking People at this point, short of instituting the underwater city from the Bioshock video game franchise.

And that doesn't even end badly, it starts out badly and gets worse.

They want their own space, but they are incapable of having the self-governance and self-regulation to actually make anything work without having a wider society composed of people different from them to pirate their shit off of.

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

And worse, they see it as beneath them to even have to try, they want others to do the work of life for them.

I suppose that's why they so willingly fall for Trump basically talking flimflam "Magic" solutions all the time and think people like Elon Musk are gonna give them AI and Robots to do their thinking and their labor for them.

Do I even want to know, at this point, what the fuck these idiots think they would be doing with their time or themselves in such an environment??

Never mind.

Having been in the military and then spent 25 years working in food service and then a few more working with the public, I should know not to ask questions like that.

We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev...Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
~Ronald Reagan

I mean I get it, at the end of the day it boils down to some variation of "Get so drunk or high that you fall down in the middle of the street" and "Rampant Sexual Deviancy"

It's not just that these fucking people care about no one, give zero fucks about values and have nothing to fight for...it's that they literally think they will never have to do any of that, after just a bit over 35 years of peace and prosperity they cannot imagine that a set of circumstances might come about where you have to give a shit about somebody else just 'cause that's how you stay alive and survive in any way that's worth having done so.

In fact, they cannot even imagine that it was not always so.

That somebody had to do the work and earn or fight for that peace and prosperity.

They cannot imagine that ordinary Germans tore down the Berlin Wall, they cannot imagine that ordinary Americans don't like or would resist Donald Trump. They cannot imagine that ordinary Ukrainians want to fight for their country.

That's what happens when everything's a conspiracy theory and everybody's in a goddamned crab bucket.

It's these fucking people's failure of imagination that destroys them, and could destroy everything else if this shit is not stopped.

And when this is actively questioned they go from being crabs in a bucket to basically being Gangstas trying to beat up the person who wants to get off the street and go get a real job. It ends up being nonsensical, group identity and partisan loyalty completely replaces thinking.

These are the same fucking people that try to turn Christmas into a Partisan stick to beat other people with. Think about that for a second.

They don't even just want to punish people for leaving the group, they want to punish anybody in it who tries to accomplish anything.

Nothing matters but trying to ruin somebody else's damn day.

Even if that's just basic survival and earning a living. And at the end of the day nobody profits from that.

And it seems like a hell of a way to live.

You can't problem-solve, let alone in today's world, with a Bible or a Meme or a goddamned Red Hat.

And a pious belief that everything is terrible and somehow this justifies anything you might do, in the end only makes things worse for everybody including yourself.

None of this works that way.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

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

The test is coming.

Soon.

If we want to succeed, or even survive, we have to stop pulling each other down and work together.

Get out of the damned Crab Bucket.

Слава Україна!

 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.

And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. ~Luke 2:1-14

Eighteen

[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."