Canceling The Resurrection (Easter 2026, Four.)

In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulcher. And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow: And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men. And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified.

He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goes before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you. ~Matthew 28:1-7

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Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared. ~Gautama Buddha

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I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still. ~Ronald Reagan

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The Holy Quran says it, "Pilgrimage to the House [of God built by the prophet Abraham] is a duty men owe to God; those who are able, make the journey." (3:97) Allah said: "And proclaim the pilgrimage among men; they will come to you on foot and upon each lean camel, they will come from every deep ravine" (22:27). Every one of the thousands at the airport, about to leave for Jeddah, was dressed this way. You could be a king or a peasant and no one would know. Some powerful personages, who were discreetly pointed out to me, had on the same thing I had on. Once thus dressed, we all had begun intermittently calling out "Labbayka! (Allahumma) Labbayka!" (Here I come, O Lord!) Packed in the plane were white, black, brown, red, and yellow people, blue eyes and blond hair, and my kinky red hair -- all together, brothers! All honoring the same God, all in turn giving equal honor to each other. . . .That is when I first began to reappraise the "white man." It was when I first began to perceive that "white man," as commonly used, means complexion only secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions. In America, "white man" meant specific attitudes and actions toward the black man, and toward all other non-white men. But in the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been. That morning was the start of a radical alteration in my whole outlook about "white" men. ~Malcolm X.

I saw this bullshit last night.

Lindsey Graham, getting in a vehicle with an open container of alcohol, he's clearly been drinking. Most of us would be looking at a ticket for this, probably have to go to court, etc. And you know it. I had a DUI once and that shit fucked up my life for a while. Open container isn't quite that bad but is not looked kindly upon, either.

It's Easter.

I'm a former Baptist, not Southern Baptist, just regular conservative Baptist and I can remember when this bullshit (especially on Easter weekend) would have been a scandal that dominated headlines (especially in certain Baptist publications) for weeks, if not months. The Southern Baptists? Had something like this shit happened 20 years ago? They'd still be bitching about it.

With the possible exception of alcoholic idiot fake "Southern Baptists" like my partner's cousins.

It's Motherfucking Easter.

And the only Resurrection or spiritually uh, "Transcendent" event that a lot of these idiotic fake Evangelicals care about is the attempted ascent to Godhood of *Checks Notes* Donald Trump.

It's less about the Resurrection than about trying to turn Trump into the White Jesus.

(I'm White and I reject this.)

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.

It's not working. They seem not to care.

And they'd just as soon Cancel the real Resurrection of the actual Jesus if they can't replace Him with Trump.

Drunk senators behaving like some basic old WASP-y shit from the Elks Club flat ignoring the rules of the golf links? The same people who'd have flipped a royal bitch if John McCain had done that shit 20 years ago just don't give a damn anymore.

The same people, or perhaps increasingly often their kids now, are basically just mailing it in. 

They don't give a shit anymore.

Or maybe all that conservative morality and Christian virtue was a lie to begin with.

Potato, Potato, six of one half a dozen of the other. For those of us who aren't in that system anymore or never were to begin with, it doesn't really matter. The end result is the same either way. 

It at least looks like it was basically all bullshit.

And no one seems to care less that their Witness is completely shredded and no one has any reason to follow them than the Christians.

In fact, the same fucking people are now openly plotting to use the Power of the State to try to force their own people and others to follow whole sets of bullshit-ass rules that nobody even would have thought of back when I was at my most conservative and clearly in the "On Fire For God" stage of End Times Prophecy Movement belief as a young Airman 30 years ago!

But "Follow us, or else" ain't a reason.

I don't actually give a rat's ass what the alleged "Power" of our fading State says in that regard. 

Not against the fact that I've read 2nd Kings and I know how that whole bit worked out for the prophets of Baal.

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

The thing to remember is all these idiots actually care about is a bigoted hierarchy with the appearance of a "Conservative" aesthetic, the ability to act like douche-bags with some measure of impunity and some kind of imagined "right" to mistreat women, and ultimately to kill and manipulate and steal.

And they don't actually care if anybody else gets this, or anything like it, or anything at all, really.

All of These Fucking People, on an individual basis, only want this shit for themselves.

That's not how this works.

Not if you want to maintain a Civilization, anyway.

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.)

And without Civilization, most people's lives in fact are nasty, brutish and short.

The rich people think they're going to hide in bunkers and escape all that, but they won't.

The whole damn point of days like Easter is that it's possible to have a new world...for everybody, not just rich people or whoever one thinks is somehow "Deserving"...and without burning everything down and starting over.

That is literally what the Resurrection even is.

Jesus made a New Covenant that was supposed to make all the harsh religiosity and sacrifices unnecessary by becoming the Sacrifice His own damn self!

Jesus took the Sin of the world upon Himself and suffered for it and became the Sacrifice so you wouldn't have to! Technically, you ain't even gotta follow it. Or you can seek grace in your own way, this is why other beliefs continued to exist and continue to spring up. Christ's death on the Cross and subsequent Substitutionary Atonement is not diminished by the fact that some people might choose to believe in something else, or nothing at all or even whether anybody likes it or not.

Imam: Just because you do not believe in God, Mr. Riddick, does not mean God does not believe in you–

Riddick: You think someone could spend half their life in a slam with a horse bit in their mouth and not believe? You think he could start out in some … liquor store trash bin with an umbilical cord wrapped around his neck and not believe in God? You got it all wrong, holy man. I absolutely believe in God, and I absolutely hate the fucker. ~From the film Pitch Black.

But accepting such a view of the world and spirituality requires Faith.

People like Donald Trump and Doug Wilson and Pete Keg-Breath? They don't want that. They want to issue everybody X amount of Sin because for them Sin means control and guilt and worldly Power, it means spiritual captivity, not liberation.

They don't know and seem not to care that they're in spiritual captivity with the same shit their own damn selves. Or, as I put it on Threads earlier...they prefer the sure thing of counting heads in Hell to taking their chances with God's judgment in Heaven.

From everything I've ever observed about it, MAGA and all this far-right Global Authoritarianism, Inc. Bullshit is one of the most faithless movements of people that ever was. Soviet Communism has nothing on these motherfuckers!

But then, if you really look at it the true "Prophet" of this movement, the guy who really started it and propagated it, is KGB Agent Vladimir Putin.

So I don't know what the fuck anybody else would expect.

And Republicans go along with this shit, out of fear of any possible New World whatever.

Reagan Wept.

I'm old enough to remember when tearing down people like Vladimir Putin created whole new worlds of possibility for millions of people the world over.

And Republicans didn't just do it, they were the captains of the fucking team!

Now, fundamentally, they're mad because other people besides them have gotten to have Freedom.

Well, sorry bud, but either you believe in freedom or you don't. Privilege ain't the same.

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

And on this day, of all days, which celebrates the coming of Spring and the triumph over Sin, remember that.

There's a new world out there.

But just like the whole concept of Salvation as I was taught that...you have to want it, and at this stage of the game you have to choose it freely.

Remember that, today.

It's Easter, the day of the Resurrection.

And remember also, that the alternative is to follow a man who apparently can't decide if he's a Christian or a Muslim of if he is "God" incarnate.

Just sayin' no matter how it goes, spending one's Eternity with Donald Trump seems like it's own special kind of Hell.

Remember that, because I have a creeping feeling it's going to matter, soon.

At this point you either believe in Trump or you believe in...well, pretty much anything else.

You want this shit to stop? It's going to come down to a fight.

You don't have to let these assholes cancel the Resurrection.

Remember that.

Слава Україна!

For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. ~Matthew 24:27

Three

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

Captain Raymus Antilles: Your Highness, the transmission we received. [hands Princess Leia the Death Star schematics] What is it they've sent us?

Princess Leia Organa: Hope.

~From Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.