Telling On Themselves (Reason For The Season, Four.)

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

...

[Supervisor Heert updates Major Partagaz and Director Krennic on his hospital investigation of Kleya Marki]

Director Orson Krennic: [referring to closeup hologram of Kleya] Supervisor Heert, you will put this image out as wide and deep and far as it takes until we find her. You'll search every comms and transit point. There will be no horizon to the scope of your inquiry, nor will there be any limit to your effort. Failure will earn you a place in the ever-lengthening ISB death march, are we clear?

Supervisor Heert: [stammering nervously] The warrant. To be clear, what's the charge? Sedition? Or murder? All of the above?

Major Lio Partagaz: She's diseased. She escaped the hospital with an infectious condition that threatens everyone with whom she may come in contact. She must be found before thousands die!

Krennic: [sarcastically in Heert's ear] There it is. What are you still doing here? [Heert scurries from the room, leaving Partagaz and Krennic alone. Partagaz chuckles to himself]

Partagaz: [scoffs] "Death Star". What a prescient turn of phrase.

Krennic: I can't protect you, Lio.

Partagaz: You were supposed to be ready by now.

Krennic: You sound like Tarkin.

Partagaz: It's a miracle we've kept it quiet this long!

Krennic: We're moments away! Days! A few more tests, we're there.

Partagaz: [rolls his eyes] Save the sermon for Palpatine.

Krennic: Indeed. You have a 'plague' to stop, and I was due at Scarif two hours ago. [moves to leave, but stops at the door and glances back at Partagaz]

Partagaz: Best of luck to us both. [Krennic nods and leaves]

~From the Star Wars series Andor S2.E11 "Who Else Knows?"

...

Don't change the white man's mind—you can't change his mind, and that whole thing about appealing to the moral conscience of America—America's conscience is bankrupt. She lost all conscience a long time ago. Uncle Sam has no conscience. They don't know what morals are. They don't try and eliminate an evil because it's evil, or because it's illegal, or because it's immoral; they eliminate it only when it threatens their existence. So you're wasting your time appealing to the moral conscience of a bankrupt man like Uncle Sam. If he had a conscience, he'd straighten this thing out with no more pressure being put upon him. So it is not necessary to change the white man's mind. ~Malcolm X.

I saw this last night.

Pete Keg-breath, hawking some "Children's book" featuring a turtle shooting a Russian/Soviet RPG-7 at some kind of cargo boats, insinuated, I suppose, to be drug boats from aboard an old UH-1H helicopter.

First, go ahead and try that, see how it works?

Rambo: First Blood Part II ain't real life, exhaust gases and heat go somewhere. 

You want to burn or choke out your pilots and crash your chopper? 

Try that, seriously.

Second, and not for the first time on this blog; What the fuck is it with these people and Cold War-era Soviet battle gear and weapons?

(Aside from the fact that these fucking people can't help telling on themselves, that is??)

I also saw that it looks like the reason Trump pardoned that Honduran drug dealer ex-President was so he could run in that country's election this year in an attempt to save yet another failing crypto "Freedom City" project in Central America.

(By the way, Libertarians and rich people have been trying this kind of crap forever, and it always comes to nothing. Look up "Sea steading" sometime if you want to have a good laugh. That was their big plan in the 1990's, they even got Fundamentalist Christians hawking that shit back then, as they assumed these Bioshock franchise precursors would somehow be "Christian.")

Makes you wonder what kind of world that Keg-breath thinks he's leaving for all those kids, huh??

Do you suppose, in a barbaric former-US Successor State that one of his daughters might have to wear literal medieval-style plate armor to avoid getting groped while walking down the street??

Like we're, ya know, Afghanistan or some shit??

Some lady actually did that years ago, I guess.

The way I see a lot of dudes act nowadays, nobody should be surprised if something like that is the case in 20 years.

And the worst part is the only thing Keg-breath would likely see as wrong with illiterate handsy nasty Pashtun Chuds is that they're Muslim.

Who would Jesus grope??

There's a lot of dudes out there that could use being neutered if you ask me.

Again, I think the rot from all this Epstein files type shit spreads deeper and further out than basically anybody is prepared to deal with at this point.

But somehow that seems to be Okay for politicians and rich white guys, while the world reserves its scorn for bearded illiterate thugs in Afghanistan.

What's it gonna take, a global color revolution for women's bodily autonomy and rights to be respected??

Maybe we should, in fact, have exactly that, then?

You bet some media billionaire-ball-gargling hack would immediately tag such a thing the Pink Revolution or Utero-Maidan or some shit like that.

Okay, let's have it anyway.

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."

And yes, I'm a Man and I've done things worthy of judgment, too.

A lot more shit than that is happening now, and it's not right. You shouldn't need me to tell you that.

I'm tired of this crap.

At the rate we're going it's gonna take decades to unspool and sort out the swirling morass of crazy sexual abuse stories I keep seeing and that's probably just the barest hint of all that's really going on.

Political authoritarianism of all kinds is (and always has been) wrapped up in Patriarchy.

And they wanna make it worse.

More to the point I'm tired of this A Republican Is A Russian Is A Transphobe Is An LGBT Hater is a Misogynist is Anti-Islam Is a Christian Nationalist is an Antisemite because somehow all this Russian-Nesting-Doll hatred bullshit and somehow Communism is "Conservative" now.

It never stops. Nobody says "Okay, I'll just take a little racism." Nobody ever doesn't just turn around and adopt all the other hatreds as they go along. 

Worse, and I'm serious, all this garbage always ends up in the same goddamned place, every fucking time; Some variant of White Christian Nationalism where nobody but rich, White, supposedly-Christian uber-Capitalist MEN has any rights.

Even when it makes no sense for the person to back Christian Nationalism: Think Stephen Miller.

It's all the same shit: Petty Hatred as a control mechanism.

And it's ALL bullshit.

And the heirs of US Cold War Victory seem perfectly fine with bashing the victors and their memory, and then with installing the grandsons of literal Stalinists as some kind of global ruling class. America's fine with being our literal enemy's bitch if we get to hate.

I can't make that bullshit make any sense.

These motherfuckers would put the Berlin Wall right back up to "Own The Libs" except it wasn't the "Libs" who won the Cold War.

Sure, they helped plenty, but it was the Center-Right that was in charge at the time.

Every once in awhile, the far-right suckers some black dude or white woman into co-signing on this shit, usually starting them off by bashing any memory of what conservatism or Republicanism once was or at least of when they kept all the bullshit out of sight.

Because apparently just saying that shit in the cigar-smoke-filled back room with your bros ain't a big enough dopamine hit anymore?

Reagan Wept.

And somehow These Fucking People always miss the point of basically everything.

Worse, because they're stupid, they want to burn the modern world down to the Earth's Mantle for narcissistic fuel because they think they're gonna have some kind of bullshit modern "Crusade."

Do I really need to remind people just how badly that shit worked out back in the day??

Did we learn nothing from Afghanistan and Iraq??

The West isn't "Christian." It's secular, it always has been. Governments historically just use religion to manipulate the people, and at the end of the day the religions end up wrecking themselves because they get wrapped up in a whole bunch of disgusting, wrong shit, and it turns out that way every time you run the experiment.

But all these narcissists and shit somehow think that won't happen to them.

Worse, they don't wanna go back to Iraq and try that bullshit again. That would be too much work.

Baghdad, Florida or Cairo, Illinois or Damascus, Maryland will suffice.

Or Detroit, or Minneapolis or New York City, for that matter.

These Fucking People don't care who dies, they just want to kill.

They're not interested in Civilization, Western or otherwise, and they could give a fuck about Christianity.

They think they're gonna get some mutant combination of the Mad Max movies and Neil Blomkamp's Elysium out of this, but it'll somehow be "White" and they think they can bullshit that into being "Christian." 

They don't care if they get to live on the shiny space station or not.

They also don't care if they go to Hell.

Just so they can take other people with them.

Jesus wasn't White and probably doesn't give a rat's ass if you are or not, especially considering those classifications didn't exist in His time.

He was born in a Pagan polytheistic Empire that rejected almost all the things modern people, much less modern Christians take for granted as morality, where I'm sure lots of men honored the Gods and loved women and lived productive, virtuous lives and where lots of women were opinionated and smart, also, but those ain't the ones that the histories tell us about and if you don't believe me go right ahead and look up homosexuality in the Roman Empire.

Weirdly, there's not much discussion of women at all in Roman sexuality.

(And that is the kind of world These Fucking People seem to aspire to.)

None of this shit that These Fucking People want is based on love or virtue, let alone Jesus.

They want that complex hierarchy of who can do what to whom, and damned little else.

But for all its might, that sort of system was greatly threatened and ultimately undone by a religion started by a homeless itinerant Rabbi that was born in a stable. Yes, centuries of Roman decadence and clerical intrigues replacing Imperial discipline helped that shit along, the point stands.

Remember that, this holiday season.

And I'd suggest we look at that history to see just where we might be going.

In the meantime, you either believe in freedom or you don't.

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

You can either believe in bullshit or you can believe in Truth.

One of these is not like the other one.

Light has no fellowship with darkness, remember this.

Слава Україна!

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

Three

Never have I witnessed such sincere hospitality and the overwhelming spirit of true brotherhood as is practiced by people of all colors and races here in this ancient Holy Land, the House of Abraham, Muhammad, and all the other Prophets of the Holy Scriptures. For the past week, I have been utterly speechless and spellbound by the graciousness I see displayed all around me by people of all colors...

You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to rearrange much of my thought-patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions. This was not too difficult for me. Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.

During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug) -- while praying to the same God -- with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the actions and in the deeds of the "white" Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan, and Ghana. We were truly all the same (brothers) -- because their belief in one God had removed the "white" from their minds, the 'white' from their behavior, and the 'white' from their attitude. I could see from this, that perhaps if white Americans could accept the Oneness of God, then perhaps, too, they could accept in reality the Oneness of Man -- and cease to measure, and hinder, and harm others in terms of their "differences" in color.

With racism plaguing America like an incurable cancer, the so-called "Christian" white American heart should be more receptive to a proven solution to such a destructive problem. Perhaps it could be in time to save America from imminent disaster -- the same destruction brought upon Germany by racism that eventually destroyed the Germans themselves.

They asked me what about the Hajj had impressed me the most. . . . I said, "The brotherhood! The people of all races, color, from all over the world coming together as one! It has proved to me the power of the One God. . . . All ate as one, and slept as one. Everything about the pilgrimage atmosphere accented the Oneness of Man under One God. 

~Malcolm X, Letter following the Hajj.