Goddamn It, White People (Day Of The Lord, Six.)

Elisabet Sobeck: I remember yelling that I didn’t care. And that’s when my mother took my face in her hands and…spoke.

GAIA: Query: What did she say?

Elisabet Sobeck: She said I had to care. She said, “Elisabet, being smart will count for nothing if you don’t make the world a better place. You have to use your smarts to count for something, to serve life, not death.”

~From the video game Horizon Zero Dawn.

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Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. ~George Orwell, 1984. 

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

I remember it was a bright, sunny morning, although not very warm yet, and almost shockingly quiet when I got in the car to go to town. There was hardly any traffic noise from the busy highway about a quarter-mile from my house...a crappy 1970's-vintage mobile home that I owned jointly with my Black roommate...who'd taken the State's shutdown order of a couple days previously as a good reason to go visit his ailing mother who lived about an hour away. He'd left the previous day.

I had done a round of shopping on the day we shut down at work but, naturally, I'd forgotten a few things. Ferrets need treats and stuff like that, I wasn't sure I'd bought enough toilet paper...and goddamn was that ever hard to come by.

I ran my errands and got my stuff, noting that there was hardly anybody out and about and Walmart was locked down like they were expecting the Zombies were coming. 

I'd had to wait to get in the store.

I went to the pet store and got the stuff I'd forgotten there, and drove through Rally's because they were open although the workers were gloved and masking.

It was...stunningly quiet...almost everywhere.

I decided to pull up by work, and see how well I could pirate off the Wi-Fi, I parked in front of the head shop next to the gas station and sat there for an hour, dicking around on Facebook and Twitter and eating my lunch. The freaking wireless signal was amazing with nobody using it, I'm serious.

It was incredibly quiet.

You could hear the wind whipping across empty parking lots.

I'll never forget that sound.

Shit, it really did feel like the Zombie Apocalypse.

And it felt profoundly creepy and sad.

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The date was March 25th of 2020, the location, the Soaring Eagle Casino, Saginaw Chippewa Tribal Nation, Mount Pleasant, Michigan. USA. 

And that was at the height of the COVID-19 Pandemic although our local wave (eventually the worst in the country) hadn't even started, much less crested.

I knew one person who'd already died.

Hell I was all for doing what needed to be done and I thought Whitmer went a bit overboard with the precautions.

But, all things considered, Big Gretch was not wrong.

COVID-19 eventually killed around ONE MILLION Americans, many of them conservative, White and/or elderly. I personally only knew a few people who died.

It was still horrific to me, as would be people's conspiracy theories and idiotic reactions after the first week or so when self-defense did not get instant gratification.

Think about that for a second.

And These Fucking People want to drive out, exile, and/or (let's not kid ourselves here) Kill 100 MILLION American people??

Losing ONE million almost broke us. You take out 100 million, you literally don't have a civilization or a country anymore.

I suppose it's either not an accident or These Fucking People are just that stupid that the poster they put up looks like the artwork for Horizon Zero Dawn and features no humans whatever.

'Cause that's where this shit ends up.

Mass death and mass removal (especially of people who do vital but unseen and "low class" work) have economies of misery and death all their own once it gets big enough.

And that's before you factor in that people will fight back, things will not go as planned, the country would fragment under the pressures of even 1% of this fucking bullshit and there's no way they have the logistical capability or numbers to pull it off.

It's not that they don't care...they're counting on that.

Their calculus is that failure will kill even more people, including those they are forced by custom, etc. to call their own...but don't really want.

Goddamn it, White People.

Yes, Poor "Conservative" White people, that means you too.

This crap doesn't make America more "Christian" or "Civilized" it wrecks America and the civilization you need to have things like religion.

It turns your local majority faith into "People who believe in shouting 'Unga Bunga' while dancing around a fire, and who make offerings to the spirits to try to recharge long-dead iPhones" because they don't know how anything works anymore, and they believed in magic and Unga Bunga shit even before Civilization fell.

Turn your fucking brains back on!

You either believe in freedom, and in your own right to have a life, or you don't.

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

So get after it.

Слава Україна!

[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."

Five

Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth,

Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is his name:

That strengthens the spoiled against the strong, so that the spoiled shall come against the fortress.

They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly.

Forasmuch therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them.

For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right.

Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time.

Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so the Lord, the God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken.

Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate: it may be that the Lord God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph.

Therefore the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord, saith thus; Wailing shall be in all streets; and they shall say in all the highways, Alas! alas! and they shall call the husbandman to mourning, and such as are skillful of lamentation to wailing.

And in all vineyards shall be wailing: for I will pass through thee, saith the Lord.

Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord! to what end is it for you? the day of the Lord is darkness, and not light. As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him.

Shall not the day of the Lord be darkness, and not light? even very dark, and no brightness in it?

I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies.

Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts.

Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols.

But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.

Have ye offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?

But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves. ~Amos 5:7-26