Worshiping The Dragon (American Reformation I, Four.)

The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood. Thus all you that never passed under a great change of heart, by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls; all you that were never born again, and made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin, to a state of new, and before altogether unexperienced light and life, are in the hands of an angry God. However you may have reformed your life in many things, and may have had religious affections, and may keep up a form of religion in your families and closets, and in the house of God, it is nothing but his mere pleasure that keeps you from being this moment swallowed up in everlasting destruction. However unconvinced you may now be of the truth of what you hear, by and by you will be fully convinced of it. Those that are gone from being in the like circumstances with you, see that it was so with them; for destruction came suddenly upon most of them; when they expected nothing of it, and while they were saying, Peace and safety: now they see, that those things on which they depended for peace and safety, were nothing but thin air and empty shadows.

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you were suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God’s hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell.

 ~Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God, Jonathan Edwards, 1741

...

There's a man goin' 'round, takin' names
And he decides who to free and who to blame
Everybody won't be treated all the same
There will be a golden ladder reachin' down
… When the man comes around
The hairs on your arm will stand up
At the terror in each sip and in each sup
Will you partake of that last offered cup?
Or disappear into the potter's ground
… When the man comes around?
Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers
One hundred million angels singin'
Multitudes are marchin' to the big kettledrum
Voices callin' and voices cryin'
Some are born and some are dyin'
… Alpha and Omega's kingdom come
And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree
The virgins are all trimmin' their wicks
The whirlwind is in the thorn tree
… It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

~Johnny Cash, When The Man Comes Around

...

"I didn't want to do it,'' he hears himself saying. "I didn't want to leave them behind.''

The void laughs at him. There are miles of empty air beneath his dangling feet. "You had no choice.''

"Yes I did! I didn't have to come here.'' He pauses. "I didn't have to do anything,'' he says quietly, and inhales another lungful of death. "It was all automatic. Maybe it was inevitable.''

"-- Evitable,'' echoes the distant horizon. Something dark and angular skims across the stars, like an echo of extinct pterosaurs. Turbofans whirring within its belly, the F-117A hunts on: patrolling to keep at bay the ancient evil, unaware that the battle is already lost. "Your family could still be alive, you know.''

He looks up. "They could?'' Andrea? Jason? "Alive?''

The void laughs again, unfriendly: "There is life eternal within the eater of souls. Nobody is ever forgotten or allowed to rest in peace. They populate the simulation spaces of its mind, exploring all the possible alternative endings to their life. There is a fate worse than death, you know.'' 

~From A Colder War, a novella by Charles Stross.

I'm warning you.

And I'm not going to repeat myself a lot with this one.

I keep seeing shit about ICE agents and other Trump Regime people arresting or assaulting Pastors.

These fucking Trump people are about five seconds away from becoming about the most Antichrist, anti-Christian and in general anti-religion regime in the history of Humanity, I think. Less out of any particular philosophy of Atheism than being violently reactionary against anything that might constrain their behavior or make anyone not fear them. If there's any "philosophical" element to it, it's basically that These Fucking People think they are God.

But then I see shit like this, too.

Some kind of "Beef Tallow lotion" that's not even subtly insinuated (in CHUD terms it's a fucking air raid siren) to claim to make a dude's dick bigger or some such bullshit.

Yeah, like that matters if you smell like old fryer grease. These dudes ain't lonely enough by half.

But it's more than just that.

I know from personal experience how dependent on emotional and sexual manipulation even the supposedly "Christian" element of all this modern "Conservative" bullshit is. The entire damned point is to get people to turn their brains off, permanently.

After awhile of dealing with this shit, your schwantz ends up being your god.

(Or worse, somebody else's does, which is kind of the problem with the whole Trump thing. Not least 'cause according to Stormy Daniels his ain't that big.)

But it's worse than that, really. At least that idea had the gravitas of Roman fertility cults behind it, I guess??

Obey, Pay, and Pray...it's pretty much the entire point of Prosperity Gospel or Spiritualist Pentecostalism. It's rent-seeking oligarchic capitalism as a religion, with all the distraction build right in.

People are easier to manipulate when they're just a bundle of brain chemicals and urges that's walking around. There's no study or theology, you basically just end up worshiping your own Endorphins after awhile.

Next move is gonna be to try and file the serial numbers off of even that and simply change it to "Trump."

AI Jesus is just a test run to see if they can get away with that crap.

The fact that this is even thought of is why we need an American Reformation.

The people doing this bullshit are not your friends.

And I shouldn't even have to say this but if you think any of these monsters actually believe in Jesus Christ you have another thing coming.

Yeah I get it, historically America  doesn't have that great of a human rights record and overall the history of Christianity is far worse that way.

These fucking Trump people want to match or exceed any of the worst excesses of the past in either case, not because they think they can or think they'll get away with it but because on a very deep level they don't, nor do they believe in anything. And, as much because of that as anything else, these freaks crave destruction.

Not only their own but yours too. They just wanna watch you go first, preferably while enjoying themselves before they get destroyed by the Evil Elder Gods, too.

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn." ... "In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."  ~HP Lovecraft

They know they're shit, being shit is the point, the entire Republican program since at least 1994 (and debatably 1968) has been "Were shit, everything is shit, you suck, everything is terrible, vote for us!"

These fucking people are Hell-bent on living like this!

And they've consistently gotten a large enough plurality of the American electorate to go for this that they're in power as often as not.

In Biblical terms, as Revelation puts it, these people are Worshiping The Dragon...and they're doing it because they think it hurts you, not them.

I don't think that says anything good about our society.

But however bad it is, they wanna make it worse. In fact they think that's their divine right. I think that might be why Republicans like Putin and Russia, because everything sucks there and Russians seem to like it that way so long as they can get drunk and have relative status over somebody.

But this is America, we're supposed to be better than that.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

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

Слава Україна!

Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.

And five of them were wise, and five were foolish. They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them: But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.
While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.

And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.

Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps.

And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out. But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.

And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut. Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us.

But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.

Watch ye therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh. ~Matthew 25:1-13

Three

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