Slop (On The Dark And The Rolling Sea, Three.)

In the cab there was a very wealthy investment banker from Xi’an. He’d made a lot of money buying up American credit card debt. He had enough to pay for his entire extended family. The man’s Armani suit was rumpled and torn. There were scratch marks down the side of his face, and his eyes had that frantic fire I was starting to see more of every day. The driver’s eyes had a different look, the same one as me, the look that maybe money wasn’t going to be much good for much longer. I slipped the man an extra fifty and wished him luck. That was all I could do.

~From the novel World War Z, by Max Brooks.

...

Brawndo the Thirst Mutilator had come to replace water, virtually everywhere. Water, the basic component of all life, had been deemed a threat to Brawndo's profit margin. The solution came during the budget crisis of 2330, when the Brawndo Corporation simply bought the F.D.A. and the F.C.C., enabling them to say, do, and sell, anything they wanted. ~Narrator, Idiocracy

...

And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spoke as a dragon.

And he exercise all the power of the first beast before him, and cause the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.

And he doeth great wonders, so that he makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men,

And deceives them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.

And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.

And he caused all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:

And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. ~Revelation 13:11-18

I saw this AI slop shit, supposedly of one of the pilots rescued in Iran, a couple days ago.

The other image, featuring Elon Musk as some kind of fake Roman Centurion, is from last year.

I think it's starting to say a hell of a lot about modern American "Conservatism" that their bullshit apparently cannot exist in the real world, so they have to fall back on AI or just plain lie about it.

Well, then I saw this picture of the Undersecretary Of Defense who threatened the Pope, earlier this morning. He looks, as Trump likes to say, like he's straight out of central casting...if the casting is for Douche-Bag Nepo-Asshole, and apparently he's the grandson of Nixon's CIA director.

Also what the fuck kind of hoity-toity, stick-jammed-up-his-ass fuckin' name is "Elbridge" anyway?? That's, like, the kind of name that'd get some preppy-ass kid beat up repeatedly in rich-boy private school, but what the fuck do I know?? He looks like he'd have been the butler or maybe a basic goon back in the days of competent evil.

Anyway, congratulations, dude. You appear to have pissed off the vast majority of Catholicism. (And somebody pointed out that dumbass here is supposedly Catholic himself.) There was a time when shit like that didn't end well, just sayin.' Used to be the Inquisition would show up, break down your door, arrest you (at a time when that meant you had no rights) conduct a Canon-Law show-trial and then burn you at the stake anyway.

Now, probably the most he'd have to worry about is getting beat up by random Catholics from Chicago.

Cassian Andor: What? To steal from the Empire, what do you need? A uniform, some dirty hands, and an Imperial toolkit. They’re so proud of themselves, they don’t even care. They’re so fat and satisfied, they can’t imagine it…

Luthen Rael: Can’t imagine what?

Andor: That someone like me would ever get inside their house, walk their floors, spit in their food, take their gear. 

~From the Star Wars series Andor, S1.E2 "That Would Be Me."

So yeah, play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

And still, when they lose these idiots will cry about it, despite the fact that in historical terms most of them will likely get off relatively easy.

The thing is, the gulf between These Fucking People's mental image of themselves and what they actually are has become an Abyss.

Lots of these fucking people think they're tough but the reality runs the gamut between the chiseled smugness of the Silver-Spoon-Up-His-Ass that's never had to work a day, to the sloppy drunk and the Meth-head on down to the redneck hood-rat with absolutely no pride or self-respect.

And yet somehow the only thing they all have in common is being narcissists and thinking they're better than all the rest of us regular people.

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words on the subject, and still after all this time every last one of these people that's still MAGA can't wait to be used and abused, by Trump, personally.

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'll never understand it, or maybe I just don't want to.

But then, to a great extent it was conservatives and conservative institutions (back when those words meant different things, apparently) that taught me to have better manners and more self-respect than that.

Hell, I know for a fact that I taught people better than this bullshit and they still went bad.

Again, there's how my surviving former best friend talked to my partner back in June, somebody that was supposed to have been his friend for 20 years also. Somebody who, just from the cracks we made about her behind her back, and that I know him and my late best friend made about me behind mine, should have known better than that.

I guess the difference was that I (hell, her and I) joked about her being a ball-breaking, man-eating bitch out of respect. Some people obviously didn't see it that way.

Kareem Said: Homosexuality is a perversion against Gods will.

Vern Schillinger: I agree.

Kareem Said: And yet you practice sodomy yourself.

Vern Schillinger: I'm no f*ggot.

Kareem Said: You raped Beecher. And Cyril O'Reily and God knows how many others.

Vern Schillinger: I never touched anybody.

Tobias Beecher: You lying cock sucking fuck.

Sister Peter Marie: Tobias-

Tobias Beecher: How can you deny what you did? Get up!

Sister Peter Marie: Tobias!

Tobias Beecher: Get up!

Sister Peter Marie: Officer! Stop it!

Hack: Come on!

Tobias Beecher: Come on! Fuck! You fucking lying bitch! You lying fucking sack of shit. 

~From the HBO series Oz, S5.E4 "Next Stop, Valhalla."

As a still-outside observer of modern bullshit-ass "Conservatism" (because even as a conservative Democrat I'm still light-years to the Left of and have a vastly higher Humanity score than current MAGA, and I daresay at this point look at who's former MAGA and I'm talking Alex Jones, MTG, Tucker Carlson and a whole bunch of former Trump ball-garglers at this point) I can only conclude for myself that it's all bullshit. Hell, for some of these fucking people it might well have been bullshit all along.

The thing is, sooner or later it becomes impossible to satisfy the demands of a disordered personality no matter the fuck what.

Even for other people who are like that.

When the only thing they all have in common is a belief that "I am God" sooner or later all of These Fucking People are bound to not get along.

Especially when you factor in two things: 

#1 Exclusivism is a hell of a drug. 

#2 That Prosperity Gospel Word Of Faith Unga Bunga Pentecostalism has been actively encouraging that type of shit for like 50 years that I know of.

And I had to live with that kind of bullshit personally for like a year, and put up with it to one degree or another for like four more.

Sooner or later, whatever payoff you think you're getting becomes not worth it anymore as returns diminish. 

I think that's what too many people are finding out now, with this whole Trump thing.

Sooner or later, Slop is what you're gonna get, AI or otherwise.

If not a full-on descent into the Abyss.

Because that's the world these fucking freaks want to live in.

They crave destruction, both that of others and their own.

You can't feed people escalating combinations of Apocalypticism and Fundamentalist religiosity for a hundred years, hand the teaching over to extremists, narcissists and perverts and not expect it's going to cause problems and screw with people's heads.

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

And they can't get what they want, because nobody can get that, it doesn't exist. These Fucking People's basic Ayn Rand-themed bullshit is poison to a fucking society and now they've replaced Ayn Rand with Trump.

So picture the Space Station from Elysium but gold-plated and incompetently managed exclusively for the benefit of some pig-greedy narcissist and there you have it.

The thing to remember, anymore, is that the Republicans that are left and still in good standing don't believe everybody is created in the Image of God or that we all have basic human dignity and universal rights. They appear to believe All Is Trump, All Flows From Trump and when they die they're going to go to Heaven with Trump.

That sounds like its own very particular special kind of *Checks Notes* Hell. 

I honestly don't even see the attraction.

Or want to.

Never mind there was a whole big world out there long before this dude became President and it will still be there after he is not President or when he is gone from this world.

These fucking people's overall faithlessness and the advent of various AI Jesus scams basically has me wondering if at some point these idiots are going to try to upload themselves into a computer and call it some kind of AI Slop Heaven. 

It won't be, of course. It'll be just another Wank-fantasy that's really just a machine playing an endless video game with digital simulacra of themselves, basically The Sims as Afterlife. That is, until it has a hardware casualty or a software glitch or somebody powers it off or unplugs it or the power goes out.

It never ceases to amaze me how small the Universe these fucking people want to live in is.

Eternity as basically a Beta Fish in a fishbowl sounds like it sucks. The fact that they want to spend that distracted by AI sounds like a dystopian nightmare. It's Eternity as a video game in God Mode, no risk but, basically, no reward either. Like, what's even the damn point??

Spending Eternity just existing and doing nothing sounds boring.

I guess I was just taught to think bigger than that.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Слава Україна!

"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.

Two

Oh you set your course for the furthest shores

And you never once looked back
And the flag you flew was a pirate cross
On a field of velvet black
And those landsmen who you but lately knew
Were left stranded on the lea
Don't call on them when the storm clouds rise
On the dark and the rolling sea

Oh I have no need of a chart or creed
You told your waiting crew
For the winds of chance, they will bear us straight
And you spoke as though you knew
So you paid no mind to the warning signs
As you gave your words so free
Don't change your tack when the timbers crack
On the dark and the rolling sea

Now the thunder rails in the great mainsails
And the stars desert the skies
And the rigging strains as the hands of rain
Reach down to wash your eyes
And your oarsmen stands with his knife in hand
And his eyes spell mutiny
Don't call my name when your ship goes down
On the dark and the rolling sea.
~Al Stewart,
On the dark and rolling sea.