Idiot Babylon (American Reformation I, One.)

And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.

And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.

And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.

For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double.

How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she said in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.

Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judges her.

And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,

Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come. ~Revelation 18:1-10

...

[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."

...

Captain Ramsey: You do qualify your remarks. If someone asked me if we should bomb Japan, a simple "Yes. By all means sir, drop that fucker, twice!"

[Men laughing]

Capt. Ramsey: I don't mean to suggest that you're indecisive, Mr. Hunter. Not at all. Just, uh... complicated. 'course, that's the way the Navy wants you. Me, they wanted simple.

Hunter: Well, you certainly fooled them, sir.

Ramsey: [chuckles] Be careful there, Mr. Hunter. It's all I've got to rely on, being a simple-minded son of a bitch. Rickover gave me my command, a checklist, a target and a button to push. All I gotta know is how to push it, they tell me when. They seem to want you to know why.

Hunter: I would hope they'd want us all to know why, sir.

Ramsey: At the Naval War College it was metallurgy and nuclear reactors, not 19th-century philosophy. "War is a continuation of politics by other means." Von Clausewitz

Hunter: I think, sir, that what he was actually trying to say was a little more -

Ramsey: Complicated?

[Men laughing]

Hunter: Yes the purpose of war is to serve a political end but the true nature of war is to serve itself.

~From the film Crimson Tide.

I saw this a few days ago.

Separate pictures of Donald Trump and Nicholas Maduro living it up while their peoples suffer.

Trump and company in their small town gaming convention fake-SCIF at Mar-A-Lard-Ass.

And Matt Walsh, a motherfucking nobody entirely known for saying dumb shit, is acting like God (who only exists when it's convenient) appointed him King of Canada.

Fuck these people.

Or perhaps, better yet, don't fuck any of them, ever.

We need to bring back societal standards, social ostracism and THE ASS WHUPPIN.

Cuz ya know, I've known more than a few Canadians and they're usually people that, if you want to summarily declare yourself the boss of them for no reason like some idiot kid on the playground it's best to do it via computer, from several hundred miles away, where they can't find you.

Seriously, we captured one guy in a military operation that looks a bit suspicious and staged at this point like the whole thing was bullshit, and these motherfuckers are acting like they conquered the world?

And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.

And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer. ~Revelation 6:1-2

What happens when the next person doesn't go along??

Why does  not just Trump but all of the MAGA influencer and media class expect the world is just gonna keep jobbing for Trump like it's WWE so he can strut around on some wrestling ring that exists only in his fading mind and the imagination of his most fervid idiot followers??

What happens when Trump actually isn't the magical Guy On The White Horse from Revelations and the rest of the world says "No?"

I'm gonna amend what I said earlier: It's not just that this is going to end badly or that we're gonna lose. We're gonna get tripped up by something really stupid.

Or by the fact that if something takes longer than an hour, these people lose interest.

Or by the problem that any adverse set of circumstances, inconvenience, threat, virus, war etc. that lasts longer than two weeks instantly becomes a Conspiracy Theory and some mass plot against "Conservatism."

Or maybe we'll be undone by the simple fact that a lot of Americans are simple-assed idiots and on FOX News you've got grown-ass (Old!) men (with gray hair, even!) who think you can get "educated" by watching cartoons, old sitcoms and Westerns.

And they ain't talking about anything like Schoolhouse Rock, either.

America is Babylon.

But only if Babylon is an Idiocracy.

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'm so tired of purposeful stupidity and willful goddamned ignorance.

And sooner or later, we're going to pay for the fact that America has made being a dumbass and a selfish ignorant jackass popular and profitable.

As if we haven't already paid for it, like during the COVID-19 pandemic, for example.

I'm again reminded of how in the summer of 2000 my then-girlfriend (and eventual ex-wife) was so utterly entranced by watching Survivor, which I instantly thought was creepy and ungodly and once we had our own place the first (and one of the few) rules that I made was nobody was watching that shit in my house.

We were Christians, she'd already agreed to listen to me and respect my authority as the Man since we'd gotten engaged fairly quickly. Since I also, on the other hand, believed in equality I tried not to exercise such authority frivolously or without clear, explainable reason.

But in that case I put my foot down, and my stated reason literally was (Still IS!) the spiritual bad vibe that "Reality TV" was giving me.

She listened. but pouted about it (and I'm pretty sure, had her sister record it and watched that crap over at her sister's place) but then when Jackass came on, my ex was equally intrigued by that garbage and had got on watching it before I was even aware of it (damn work schedule!) since MTV was always on in our house (and if it wasn't it was on CMT, VH1 or occasionally FOX News) and she made plain that if she was going to (pretend) to abide by my rule of not watching Survivor, I best let her have this one.

So I did.

Anyway, Since that point in my life I've hated constant distraction and noise and shit.

And by the way, I still hate reality TV and I'm not that big on TV in general (I haven't owned a TV since 2015) and I still rarely randomly listen to music. Honestly other than occasional specific shows I've hardly watched TV since 2000-2001 at all, although I still had Cable because of shows like Oz or Deadwood or Rome, the History channel (when that still was anything) and occasional WWE pay-per-view or (later) The Walking Dead.

Honestly at this point my entire attitude could be summed up as Thank Jesus for WIFI and streaming services.

But if you wanna know how we got stuck on this AI Jesus crap, start with stuff like Survivor and the fact that we made dumb shit funny and the Truth optional.

Not giving a fuck about Other People was marketed and turned into a big adventure.

What they couldn't sell with Ayn Rand's shitty books, they marketed with Survivor, Jackass, Fear Factor and The Apprentice.

Throw in consumption being treated as culture, debased boredom and too easy of a life for too many of us, and there you have it, a Biblical-level plague of Narcissism that we'll be fighting until we get kicked in the teeth as a country enough times for it to sink in that this is a bad idea.

Thing is, as we should remember from our own history, surviving adversity takes care and solidarity. Getting ahead generationally can take sacrifice presently. Often it's the immigrants, LGBT folk and minorities and yes, women that still know this. Why do you think comfortable white men hate them??

It's the same thing, why one of my Air Force bros said so much of America doesn't like Islam, that religion scripturally mandates charity and sobriety, thus removing two control points for rich elites.

If everybody's drunk (or high) and selfish and constantly sozzled on Confirmation Bias and been convinced that they can Believe whatever they want and still go to Heaven, Truth has no meaning, you could say Atlas Shrugged IS the Bible and who can prove you wrong??

And when God tires of this and we get What's Coming, which will be bad enough that nobody who's ever paid attention can deny that's exactly what it is...the Wrath Of The Lamb...guess what? Within 48 hours you'll see a whole online Industry of Apocalyptic Situation Denialists pop up.

I guarantee you, when that happens and somebody speaks Prophetically, speaks the Truth, tells people what's really going on? These Fucking People will be the most violently anti-Christian (in particular) anti-Religion (in general) and either Atheistic or Idolatrous wankers imaginable.

If there actually is an American Reformation, these freaks will want to burn people.

Again, Truth...any Truth will do, ultimately...is the only floor most of us have to stand on to push back against Power.

And you either believe in Freedom or you don't.

Слава Україна!

Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?

And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?

And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. ~2nd Corinthians 14:16

Prequel

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.