Nobody. Asked. You. II (Rationalizing Themselves Into Revelation, No Kings Edition.)

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.

...

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.)

...

Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles; Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up: Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning-hooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong. Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together round about: thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O Lord. Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about. Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. ~Joel 3:9-14

So No Kings (again) was on Saturday.

Yet that same day, I saw that the former Crown Prince of Iran, a wannabe King who's basically had to do exactly jack shit his whole life, spoke at CPAC.

Something tells me that America and *Checks Notes* the REPUBLIC-an Party has pretty much forgotten what the fuck it's supposed to be doing with itself? First off, America was founded in opposition to Monarchy in a world where Emperors, Kings, Princes, Beys, Pashas, Sultans and Tribal Chiefs of every kind were the fucking rule and damned few of them got their power by reason of anything other than who their parents were or they took it. Second, a REPUBLIC is, by definition, a country that doesn't have a King.

So why the fuck would we want to foist one on somebody else, let alone do so again?

Eli Sunday: Daniel, I'm asking if you'd like to have business with the Church of the Third Revelation in developing this lease on young Bandy's thousand acre tract. I'm offering you to drill on one of the great undeveloped fields of Little Boston!  

Daniel Plainview: I'd be happy to work with you.

Eli Sunday: You would? Yes, yes, of course. That’s wonderful.

Daniel Plainview: But there is one condition for this work.

Eli Sunday: All right.

Daniel Plainview: I'd like you to tell me that you are a false prophet. I'd like you to tell me that you are, and have been, a false prophet, and that God is a superstition.

~From the film There Will Be Blood.

I don't exactly see Monarchy as a political philosophy growing in the world, and most especially not in a Christian or Western context..

In point of fact the only people in the "West" clamoring for a "Restoration" of the "Divine Right Of Kings" are in fact Republicans and then only as regards Trump...they appear to even be losing a fair portion of MAGA on this at this point. There's a certain type of Republican or MAGA that somehow thinks Trump should be some kind of world-spanning God-Emperor or King-Priest basically so they can suck up to him and get things.

Which is very much not the point of why things like centralized authority of any kind exists anywhere.

I mean, fuck, this shit is so against the idea of America at this point there was a "No Kings" protest in Holland, Michigan, for fuck's sake. In a Michigan context that's the capital of Calvinist-Tight-Ass Land right there!

Like somebody said, how bad do you have to be to have lost the Dutch Reformed??

Sorry but I started out as a conservative myself and like, literally the entire point of America is "No Kings."

That's just the way it is.

And nobody asked these motherfuckers.

Technically, you don't have to like it, but let's just say I've never seen all that many Americans looking to become citizens of places like Saudi Arabia, Swaziland, or Tonga, and all the "White" monarchies are also democracies where the monarchy has been constrained into near-irrelevance by a Constitution and such countries are generally far more liberal than America.

And there's actually a reason for that. Most of those countries have been around for a lot longer so they know what does or doesn't work. 

Meanwhile, America insists on trying its damnedest to be the world's Shitty Teenager.

More to the point, American culture itself is almost excessively democratic...which is a part of how we got into this mess, given that some people think they have a "right" to debate the existence or human rights of other people.

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

And of course a vast majority of Americans are sick of this shit, including a lot of the people who thought they were gonna be in the club and Trump wasn't gonna fuck them over.

Thing is, OF COURSE Trump is going to fuck over everybody, including the billionaires and shit, because that's what he does.

I traded You, oh Lord, for Mammon, and what did it get me, huh?! ~Splicer, from Bioshock

Trump just hasn't gotten around to shanking Elon Musk in the back yet, but he'll get there.

And when he does, Muskrat is gonna have no recourse...because he deliberately set it up so he wouldn't have any. I mean, sure, you can flatter and manipulate Trump or somebody like him...until you can't, and that's the goddamned problem people like Elon don't understand. Privilege can evaporate in a second. You cannot rely on it. That's what rights are even for.

That's what Truth freaking is. Truth is all that gives most people a floor to stand on to push back against Power, and do not forget this.

Again, fuck privilege, I started out as a conservative and was taught to believe that rights were given to people by God, not the State. You either believe in freedom and rights and that somebody's humanity comes from a higher source than Man's collective Approval or Opinion...or you don't. Because I guarantee you, if it were somehow up to Man to determine who went to Heaven or not, we're pretty much all fucked.

I'm not even kidding when I say I don't understand where all these narcissistic CHUD-bros think they have some kind of right to tell other people even one damn thing.

And I'm honestly very tired of this whole goddamned mess. We as a people need to stop tolerating bad behavior and stupidity.

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."

Used to be you'd see some random dumbass guy trying to tell people what to do for no reason, or talking bad to women or other people who didn't deserve it, and somebody would come along and punch that dude right in the mouth, and then he'd either not talk like that anymore or at least have the sense to not do it around all the people who saw him get his ass whupped. 

That shit still happens, but not nearly as frequently as it should.

There's a reason I keep saying that Men are not lonely enough.

There's a reason I say *I* pick the bear, and I'm a Man.

Nobody asked these motherfuckers.

And the rest of us straight up need to stop tolerating this garbage!

Yes, it really the fuck is that simple.

Слава Україна!

The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all. You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits — not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty. ~Ronald Reagan

Four

Valin Hess: So what shall we toast to, boys? I can blather on about “To health” or “To success,” but I’d like to do somethin’ a little less rote. Where you from, Brown Eyes?

Migs Mayfield: How ’bout a toast to Operation Cinder?

Hess: Now there’s a man who knows his history.

Mayfield: No, I don’t just know it. I lived it. I was in Burnin Konn.

Hess: Burnin Konn?

Mayfield: Mmm.

Hess: That was a hard day. I had to make many unpleasant decisions.

Mayfield: Yes, you did. Entire city gone in moments, along with everybody in it. We lost our whole division that day. Man, that was like 5-10,000 people.

Hess: Yep. All heroes of the Empire.

Mayfield: Yeah. And all dead.

Hess: Well, it’s a small sacrifice for the greater good, son.

Mayfield: Depends on who you ask, don’t you think?

Hess: [irritated] What you gettin’ at, trooper?

Mayfield: All those people, the ones who died, was it good for them? Hmm? Their families? The guys I served with? Civilians, those poor mud scuffers, died defending their homes, fighting for freedom. Was it good for them? 

Hess: But we’ve outlasted them, son. They’re eating themselves alive. The New Republic is in complete disarray, and we grow stronger. You see, with the rhydonium you’ve delivered, we can create havoc that’s gonna make Burnin Konn pale by comparison. And then they’re gonna turn to us once again. You see, boys, everybody thinks they want freedom, but what they really want is order. And when they realize that, they’re gonna welcome us back with open arms. Ah. To the Empire.

[Mayfield chuckles, then fires a blaster at Hess' chest, killing him instantly. He and Mando then shoot their way out of the mess hall] ~From The Mandalorian, Season 2, Ep. 7 "The Believer"