Pravda (Christmas 2025, Two.)

[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."

...

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

I keep seeing shit like this.

Whether it's the Charlie Kirk thing, trying to convince people that we're in the middle of facing down some massive global Jihad when we're clearly not, trying to get people to believe that "Leftists" are out to get them, whatever...nobody's really buying that shit except the most dedicated Cult Republicans.

I mean, Charlie Kirk was a big deal for like 3 days and then almost nobody cared but the media and the most dedicated Extremely Online right-wing fanatics.

For fuck's sake even a majority of MAGA seems to be flaming out over escalating prices, the Epstein files and Trump's erratic stupidity and that Susie Wiles interview.

I live smack in the middle of rural Northern Michigan two hours from the nearest freeway and the last time I saw a MAGA hat or a Trump sign or sticker in the wild was when I took my partner and the kid downstate in the middle of September *Checks Notes* 3 months ago.

By the way, in rural Southwest Michigan, Republican campaign signs are pretty much a permanent feature. Note: My partner is sick of it down there.

She hates it.

For all their supposedly "Conservative" talk, my partner's extended family are welfare people with a total Crab Bucket mentality and she hates that shit. She's likely coming back up north, may have to in fact, in which case we'll have to hustle to get a bigger place.

Our issues are all too typical. Nobody has time to watch Bari Weiss demanding narcissistic worship on TV.

Whatever the attraction was to this Trump shit, it's finally starting to wear down, maybe Trump going ALL in with the Billionaires (which he was always gonna do) broke the spell.

Maybe it was the ICE shit? 

I don't think throwing random people in prison camps has been the Power move these nuts thought it was gonna be.

For fuck's sake, maybe it was recycling Southern Segregationist propaganda from 1960 in 2025 and calling Martin Luther King Jr. a "Communist" like that was some kind of an own.

Communism hasn't been a thing since 1989.

I watched it fall, Live on CNN.

Personally, I think it was when These Fucking People started TELLING other people who they had to care about, mourn for and pray for.

Most of us who are not totally vapid crowd-followers have our own struggles, our own stuff to worry about, and our own thoughts and we like it that way.

Like I don't give a damn how much political power you think you have or who you think you are.

"No" is a complete sentence.

I've made it over half a century now without these idiots trying to tell me what to think, I served my country, I work for a living. My own counsel will I keep, thank you very much. Fuck Off.

There's a small percentage of the population, somewhere between 10% and 20% that's addicted to this horseshit. I've seen those people in action, at my old job, staring zombie-eyed at FOX News like ADHD kids mainlining cartoons.

You take a drug, right? The chemicals, they rush through your body, rush through your brain. And the sensations, you want the sensations again and again and again, but let me tell you, you can also get addicted to grief, to guilt, to hate. Because when you feel dead inside, even bad sensations make you feel like you're alive! ~Augustus Hill, from the HBO series Oz, S1.E5 "The Straight Life."

But there weren't as many of those kind of people (mostly mediocre-as-fuck middle-aged White Men) as Republicans thought, I think.

And they mistook voter apathy for a mandate.

While putting every election-losing "Conservative" reject possible in the government and front-and-center.

Then they overplayed every hand they possibly could.

The thing that blows my mind is nobody's buying any of this shit anymore, and like 1980's Soviet Commissars these Republicans just keep blathering on like they think somebody's listening or that if they repeat their bullshit long enough that will make it true.

They somehow thought everybody had joined their Cult.

And the shit just gets more and more unbelievable the more they keep talking.

America doesn't work like that.

The more you abuse the public, the more the public is gonna get pissed off at you.

Yet for fuck's sake it's Christmas and Republicans are telling people to buy less stuff??

I don't know how this doesn't compute with These Fucking People that this does not work that way.

Oh, right.

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.

There is that.

Start with half the goddamned country (especially the "Conservative" White People now) is basically illiterate.

Again, it's Christmas. How do you even know what that means if you can't read the Lord's Word??

At some point, especially if all this bullshit blows up all the way be it civil war or Soviet style collapse or simply a big enough "normal" crisis, we're going to have to have massive levels of remedial education and retraining because we as a society, or at least those who want to keep having a society, are gonna have to start using people, human resources, more efficiently.

Trying to cull the population of people you don't like tends not to actually work, consider how these assholes tried to weaponize COVID-19 in 2020 and ended up killing mostly their own people.

The ideal future that current Republicans actually seem to want is the Killing Fields of Khmer Rouge Cambodia, but with a mall.

And Republicans, like Pravda or some other Soviet news agency at the time, keep pumping out bullshit about how great things are going in Democratic Kampuchea and how great of a ruler Pol Pot Saloth Sar Donald Trump is (and then they're surprised that nobody believes this bullshit???)

I get they think it's a Power thing.

I get there's certain cult members who'll literally at least pretend to believe just about anything.

But sooner or later you need to actually tell a plausible lie.

Sooner or later you're going to need people to do something.

Among other things.

Sooner or later, you're going to need your people to be brave, or smart, or to do the right thing.

Profiting off the terribleness of people is an old game, but what happens when that's not what you need anymore??

What happens when Sin becomes unprofitable??

It's like a buddy of mine used to say "You can't turn a Ho into a Housewife."

And you really can't do that if you've endlessly trained them to be cowards, to do wrongs, to live in fear, and to practice learned helplessness.

You cannot just flip a switch to "Righteousness" and expect it to work.

People just don't work like that.

Nobody's gonna believe you, and trust is the basis for most collaborative human interactions.

They tried to turn Charlie Kirk into Bro Jesus and some Ella Cook chick that nobody ever heard of into a holy martyr.

Like, damn, what's next??

Sooner or later, either you believe in civilization and freedom or you don't.

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

Слава Україна!

The wind whispers of fear and hate. The war has killed love. And those that confess to the Angkar are punished, and no one dare ask where they go. Here, only the silent survive. ~Dith Pran, The Killing Fields

One

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