The Case For Baal (Bropocalypse Now, Ten.)

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."

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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.

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So Ahab sent for all the children of Israel, and gathered the prophets together on Mount Carmel. 

And Elijah came to all the people, and said, “How long will you falter between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.” But the people answered him not a word. 

Then Elijah said to the people, “I alone am left a prophet of the Lord; but Baal’s prophets are four hundred and fifty men. 

Therefore let them give us two bulls; and let them choose one bull for themselves, cut it in pieces, and lay it on the wood, but put no fire under it; and I will prepare the other bull, and lay it on the wood, but put no fire under it. 

Then you call on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of the Lord; and the God who answers by fire, He is God.”

So all the people answered and said, “It is well spoken.”

Now Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, “Choose one bull for yourselves and prepare it first, for you are many; and call on the name of your god, but put no fire under it.”

So they took the bull which was given them, and they prepared it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even till noon, saying, “O Baal, hear us!” But there was no voice; no one answered. Then they leaped about the altar which they had made.

And so it was, at noon, that Elijah mocked them and said, “Cry aloud, for he is a god; either he is meditating, or he is busy, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is sleeping and must be awakened.” So they cried aloud, and cut themselves, as was their custom, with knives and lances, until the blood gushed out on them. And when midday was past, they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice. But there was no voice; no one answered, no one paid attention.

Then Elijah said to all the people, “Come near to me.” So all the people came near to him. And he repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down. And Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord had come, saying, “Israel shall be your name.” Then with the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord; and he made a trench around the altar large enough to hold two cords of seed. And he put the wood in order, cut the bull in pieces, and laid it on the wood, and said, “Fill four water-pots with water, and pour it on the burnt sacrifice and on the wood.” Then he said, “Do it a second time,” and they did it a second time; and he said, “Do it a third time,” and they did it a third time. So the water ran all around the altar; and he also filled the trench with water.

And it came to pass, at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah the prophet came near and said, “Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that You are God in Israel and I am Your servant, and that I have done all these things at Your word. Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that You are the Lord God, and that You have turned their hearts back to You again.”

Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood and the stones and the dust, and it licked up the water that was in the trench. Now when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces; and they said, “The Lord, He is God! The Lord, He is God!”

And Elijah said to them, “Seize the prophets of Baal! Do not let one of them escape!” So they seized them; and Elijah brought them down to the Brook Kishon and executed them there. 

~2 Kings 18:20-40

I saw this earlier.

This lady claims you can fight "Leftist Extremism" by going to church, getting married, having babies, home schooling and reading the Bible.

Shit literally sounds like "The Case For Christ" by Lee Stroebel and I read that book when it came out. I owned it, until I gave my copy to a casino coworker who actually wanted that shit. It was vapid theological nonsense that only fit together in the context of Evangelical church culture: This was NOT designed to reach an outside audience and I thought so at the time.

Nor is Tania Shaw's idea of "How To Fight The Left."

Uh, none of that stuff is specifically "Conservative." I know plenty of Independents, liberals, middle of the road people, moderate conservatives and completely unaffiliated folks who do some or all of that. Most people do some of this to some degree. These are basic human things.

I mean, I get it.

These current Republican Nazis and Heritage Foundation Nazis pretty much think anybody who is to the Left of the Third Reich, who doesn't share their cultic devotion to Donald Trump and who isn't White was either grown in a lab or spawned directly by the Devil as part of some vast "Leftist" plot against "Conservatism." Like they literally don't understand the rest of the world was here first.

Funny enough, their ideas for how to fight this "Vast Leftist Plot" have basically nothing to do with conservative-anything and are exactly what you'd expect from simple-assed weird far-right morons.

They apparently think liberals, mid-conservatives (who are basically Leftist but somehow worse in their minds) and the politically unaffiliated grow their kids in labs and sit around reading from the Communist manifesto or some such bullshit. Needless to say the fact that me, my partner and the kiddo exist sort of fucks up their narrative.

Among other things, the absolute last thing These Fucking People want is relationships based on love, mutual feelings, or people treating each other like people...no matter how Christianized or uptight.

Well, that and how These Fucking People actually act in real life isn't very convenient either. 

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.)

Like, I'm a say it again, the weird MAGA relatives told my kid she couldn't go to church and made her chop wood for daring to ask. Like I said at the time, having basic slave labor was more important to these fucking CHUDS. That word is too kind.

And these weird freaks are apparently weirdly obsessed with breeding, even when the people involved (Cousins, for example) literally shouldn't breed. (Wait. How else do you get Florida Man?)

I don't know if my partner's relatives are the same way. But from what the Kiddo said when I was last down there, my partner's cousin that owned that firetrap rat's nest hoarder-house let his teenage daughter get away with shit that would've got me horsewhipped at that age, so long as she pretended to not talk to boys (they were all under girl names on her phone) and she acted all churchy at school. Yes, what was really going on was an entirely open secret that the little shit would brag about to my kid who wasn't allowed to do anything fun if they had a say in it (unless it was participate in the shenanigans which she didn't want to) let alone say anything about all that.

The first and second rules of fight club are Don't Talk About Fight Club!

Let me translate:

In other words, "Conservative" double-standards and hypocrisy ARE being Taught. It's being taught in that house, actively, with intention and malice aforethought.

And both my partner and the kid have been bullied because they got the fuck out. It's not their fault that my partner finding a good job in her field meant moving three hours away...and of course the kid wanted to go with her Mom. Well, some people thought they were gonna get cult-inductees and slave labor out of that, I guess?

This is how MAGA and so much of this "Country" bullshit (which has always been bullshit, take it from an actual country person here, one who despises rednecks and was taught thusly) grows and attempts to maintain itself.

There has been some foul language and harsh words exchanged about that recently and These Fucking People have been informed that some of us don't give a damn. Or as another mutual friend from back in our casino days who's in on this put it "I can afford to get us all hella good lawyers."

But here's the thing, behind closed doors and what we don't know is apparently way worse than all that.

Like I've said and I'mma KEEP saying I think the rot from the Epstein shit goes way, way further down than a lot of people are prepared to deal with.

And the corrupted Evangelical church is balls deep in this garbage. Like, the churches will try to protect the abuser and silence the victims first.

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

Because what we're really dealing with here is the Cult of Baal.

Why are these people so obsessed with Breeding? Well, among other things Baal started out as the Canaanite fertility god.

This is literal Old Testament-grade Evil.

Sorry, but Law and secular liberalism ain't gonna be able to deal with this shit on their own.

If we wanna burn it out, America needs an Elijah, probably more than one.

Thankfully these idiots are making the Case For Baal about the same way as they made their case for Christ.

And no, it's not designed to reach Outsiders in this version, either.

For what it's worth, with this kind of crap and the spiritual forces behind it, ancient Israel and Ancient Rome had the same battle plan; Wipe out everything from the ground up and salt the Earth after.

And they both did that shit multiple times and we're still dealing with this fucking bullshit. Hell, they're basically treating their depravity the same way their grandparents treated being Calvinist tight-asses and their parents treated being Pentecostal narcissists, as an utterly joyless religious duty.

This is the inevitable result of "Anything but Love Thy Neighbor."

Where they want Christianity at all, they want it neutered like a feral tomcat in a TNR program. They want it empty and incapable of preaching or even reaching outside of itself, shorn of faith, meaning or transcendence and useful only for political power.

They're going to make the Case For Baal, because right now there's some demon-worshiping narcissist somewhere who can't wait to tell on himself, who can't wait for the world to know what he did.

And when they do it you can say "No."

You can fight back.

You can tell these people to go fuck themselves.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Слава Україна!

No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Nine

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"