Crab Bucket III (American Reformation I, Ten.)

The clocks stopped at one seventeen. There was a long shear of bright light, then a series of low concussions. By day the dead impaled on spikes along the road. I think it's October but I can't be sure. I haven't kept a calendar for five years. Each day is more gray than the one before. It is cold and growing colder as the world slowly dies. No animals have survived and all the crops are long gone. Soon all the trees in the world will fall. The roads are peopled by refugees towing carts and gangs carrying weapons, looking for fuel and food. Within a year there was fire on the ridges and deranged chanting. There has been cannibalism. Cannibalism is the great fear. Mostly I worry about food. Always food. Food and the cold and our shoes. Sometimes I tell the boy old stories of courage and justice - difficult as they are to remember. All I know is the child is my warrant and if he is not the word of God, then God never spoke. ~The Man, from Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" (Film.)

...

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.

...

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

I got woke up early yesterday morning.

A simple text from my partner, six words: "You better come get us immediately."

She's been having trouble with her idiot relatives, as I've been saying for awhile, and this has been a plan with varying degrees of preparedness for a couple months now.

As we knew it would the Crab Bucket shit became unsustainable.

So I threw some clothes on, brushed my teeth, grabbed a couple things and got in the car, gritting my teeth to lock in and drive across half the state in a fucking blizzard.

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."

My partner is tough and fast on her feet and develops amazing levels of connections very quickly, by the time I'd gotten to the next big town and was getting gas before getting on the freeway, she had a couple offers of a place to stay and said I could turn around and go home if I wanted. I told her "Fuck that, I'm coming anyway" She'd need the help.

Three hours of driving in ridiculous conditions later, me and the coworker whose offer she had accepted packed her out of that shithole in one go, splitting her load of stuff between two cars. It turned out, she did need the help. At least she's staying with decent people now, and they won't be constantly robbing her blind, she'd be able to keep her decent job as a Vet Tech and keep the kiddo in school where she was already established instead of having to come back up here and start over again. 

More, the kiddo needed a familiar face and a familiar car and a guy she actually knew to pick her up from school with Mom. 

She screamed about it anyway and we didn't blame her. 

We let her rant.

Hell, we deserved it for not being more successful at things.

After that, we got our necessary shit done, went out to lunch, went to the store and got treats and I bought my lady flowers, in general we spent the afternoon reconnecting after four months apart.

Some of the stories they told me about that family?? 

"Chud" is too kind of an epithet for These Fucking People.

While we're eating lunch at the local pizza place, kiddo (Who is *Checks Notes* 14) described the relatives as "Trump Dick Riders."

At her age I'd have got grounded if not my ass busted by my grandma for using that kind of language but she wasn't wrong, we let it stand.

30 minutes after the screaming in the school parking lot had stopped, these ladies were gleefully plotting their revenge and now have 3 dudes and an old lady (coworker's Mom) willing to help. 

Basically, as I've said, the relatives are Welfare People who just live off the State and otherwise cheating other people and the system with a side-order of completely half-assed running a small farm that's more junk cars in the yard and a few acres of what looks to be barely-maintained fields than anything else. It's way worse than that, though.

Both partner and kiddo are Autistic, and had to suffer through these fucking functionally-illiterate assholes daily saying all type of mean shit about Autistic people.

These idiots they've been having to put up with believe in all type of horrible shit, like that illegal immigrants should literally have no rights, along with about every conspiracy theory you can imagine, too.

It gets unimaginably worse. 

What follows is just one example.

Kiddo, who is agnostic-atheist, LGBT and *Checks Notes* a KID, among other demographics These Fucking People claim to want to evangelize IF they believe what they SAY they do wanted to go to church with a friend because she's 14 and naturally curious about such things (and that's natural and OK) the relatives fucking vetoed that when her mother was out of earshot and made her split wood instead.

Now besides that, I get that I'm painfully old school but I don't think a 14-year-old girl needs to be splitting wood. I did it at that age, but I'm a guy. Her mother has done it but is a vaguely-feminist ADULT who revels in doing stuff that men "Traditionally" do, and she's always been like that.

We have our disagreements over politics and policy although never the basics of shit like civilization, but more often than they don't, those things knit us together more than they divide us from each other. We've always been like that, too.

That's not the world the asshole relatives wanna live in.

These Fucking People are loudly supposedly "Conservative" and Southern Baptist.

I made sure to clarify that particular point.

Then I blew a fucking gasket and went full fucking Fire And Brimstone in the fucking car for about five miles.

My partner, who was *Definitely* conservative Christian (Catholic upbringing) when all this started 20 years ago and has gone through several Christian phases since, simply sat back, lit a cigarette and smiled this strangely content little smile that she gets when she knows she's won an argument and really wants to rub it in, but acidly or quietly depending on her mood.

I let her have the point and enjoy 20 years of "She Won The Argument."

After all this, she deserved it.

Think about this for a second, though.

I guess having slave labor (as both partner and kid described how they were treated, and I didn't hear the half of it before yesterday) was more important than a CHILD learning about the Lord's Word.

Which is supposedly vastly important to the Evangelical religion.

But now abandoned like everything else, for Trump.

This is why we need an American Reformation, an undoing of the Indulgences of all this fake "Conservative" horseshit.

If my kid wants to go to church, I want a Church that will do right by my kid!

And that, my brothers and sisters, is exactly what MAGA doesn't want, for all the worst goddamned reasons.

In case you don't believe me that MAGA is Antichrist and will turn out to be viciously anti-religion, at least for any religion that doesn't bow before their Idols Of Gold.

I left out the first half on purpose, the Devils won't have them anymore.

The only thing MAGA is trying to "Conserve" is the social meme of Slavery and more generally, of Taking Advantage of Other People. 

Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen. ~Ezekiel 16:49-50 (NIV)

These are the same fucking people who are basically advocating male situational bisexuality like this is fucking 1990's Taliban Afghanistan because women don't wanna put up with their bullshit, and these dudes ain't lonely enough.

If they have to, they'll be the goddamned slaves and hate the rest of us all the more for it, as they hate us for our refusal to bow down and say "Yes Massa" to the nearest Skoal-can looking motherfucker in a MAGA hat now. 

Now throw in that both regular standard-issue MAGA as it was five or ten years ago is either marginalized like the rest of us or has given up altogether or switched sides, leaving pretty much the extremist weirdos and vicious White Trash, and think on this;

What the fuck do you think Trump really represents to these fucking people?

And they're fucking enraged we're not letting them have what they think they want, as if that would ever be enough.

There's a reason we busted ass to pack her out in one go and made sure to pick up the kid right from school. My partner was more than a little worried about violence and it took everything I had not to bring weapons.

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.

Now think about that shit, writ large.

It's a safe bet that pretty much the only thing These Fucking People that are actually still all in with this bullshit (Note I live in Northern Michigan and have seen like ONE MAGA hat in the last six or eight months) will fight to keep is their Orange God and the little bit of power that they think they have.

Yet again I've seen how these fucking people wanna use that power.

And that these people would rather burn the world than give that shit up.

These people hate America, they hate you, and they even hate themselves.

Anything but "Love Thy Neighbor" as Jesus commanded.

These Fucking People's religion is Donald Trump at this point.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

And you're either willing to do the work and fight for it or you're not.

Yes, it really is that simple.

But the Crab Bucket Brigade lost one yesterday, in spite of extremely adverse conditions for the rest of us, and we won.

That's the kind of effort I'm talking about, that right there, but we're all gonna have to do something.

So get after it.

We owe our kids nothing less.

Слава Україна!

Cassian Andor: Kino. Tell them what to do. It has to be you. Come on, Kino. You do this every day. Tell them what to do.

Kino Loy: [presses PA system] My name is Kino Loy. I'm the day shift manager on Level Five. I'm speaking to you from the command center on Level Eight. We are, at this moment, in control of the facility.

Andor: Is that the best you got?

Loy: How long we hang on, how far we get, how many of us make it out, all of that is now up to us. We have deactivated every floor in the facility. All floors are cold. Wherever you are right now, get up, stop the work. Get out of your cells, take charge and start climbing. They don't have enough guards and they know it. If we wait until they figure that out, it'll be too late. We will never have a better chance than this and [looks at Cassian, knowing he said it] "I would rather die trying to take them down than giving them what they want." We know they fried a hundred men on Level Two. We know that they are making up our sentences as we go along. We know that no one outside here knows what's happening. And now we know, that when they say we are being released, we are being transferred to some other prison to go and die, and that ends today! There is one way out. Right now, the building is ours. You need to run, climb, kill! You need to help each other. You see someone who's confused, someone who is lost, you get them moving and you keep them moving until we put this place behind us. There are 5,000 of us. If we can fight half as hard as we've been working, we will be home in no time. One way out!

[repeats it multiple times as he leaves the command center]

Andor: Come on! Let's get out of here!

~From the series "Andor" S1 E10 "One Way Out."

Nine

I don't preach a social Gospel I preach the Gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person. When people were hungry, Jesus didn't say, "Now is that political or social?" He said, "I feed you." Because the good news to a hungry person is bread. ~Archbishop Desmond Tutu.