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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.
Ya know, there's something I keep noticing about all these bigots, neo-confederates, racists and Trump Supporters, etc.
They keep getting handed treats by Trump and very often by the Republicans and the Supreme Court as well, but they're still the same angry pinch-faced assholes they were before that.
Maybe that's just who they are, very likely they sense they won't get to keep the stuff they're being handed for very long at all once the majority of people see what they intend to do with it. Certainly, once they get what they think they want they do not intend to leave other people the fuck alone, they want everybody to be a miserable bastard like them, to hate like they hate, and so on.
And in my experience, most people react rather badly to all that. I couldn't live that way, I'd end up dead. Among other things, I have a conscience I have to live with, and since I'm an addict, prone to depression and shit to start with, I tend to not want to stew in negative shit for very long, if at all.
Perhaps more to the point, I just don't hate Black people...or much of anybody who hasn't done anything to me personally to deserve that shit. I mean, there's certain groups of people I don't like very much, the Russians for example...but again that's mostly based on the fact that they won't stop trying to hurt other people for no reason and have fucked over my country in particular. I'm not especially fond of MAGA and/or Republicans at this point for much the same reason.
I don't like bullies and people who refuse to mind their own business in general, and I don't like people who claim their politics, their religion, their station in life or their wealth or some such bullshit in particular gives them a "right" to hurt others.
It doesn't.
And I'm tired of this shit.
These people don't love God or conservative politics, they love their narcissism and petty hatreds and think those things should give them the keys to the Universe in some way.
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.
No, fuck all that.
Thing that gets me is, these assholes
know people will
celebrate when their power is taken away, when they can't hurt people anymore, when they are brought to justice and when they ultimately face God's wrath whether that's in their own time or they're helped along by firing squads and mobs.
You'd think...in the face of that, maybe they'd think about it and ya know, stop being assholes??
It's happened, none other than George Wallace, the infamous longtime governor of Alabama, repented of his racism and made amends, even appointing record numbers of Black folks to the State government.
But then these people look at guys like Trump, or Viktor Orban, stewing in their miserable bastardy like they fucking want to be in it despite having been handed everything...and they decide that's who they want to be. I couldn't do it, my partner couldn't do it.
For some of us, misery is a killer.
I saw this yesterday, Hungary's new health minster just randomly started dancing at some rally where I'd presume everybody was supposed to be being all serious and shit. Good for him, good for his country!
Either in November, next January or whenever the revolution America's assholes are trying to force on the country happens, that's gonna be us too.
These motherfuckers don't care about that, they just want to kill and steal, to jerk off to ideas of hierarchy and relative status, whether those ideas actually benefit them or not.
Again, they don't get it, they don't...can't...understand a simple idea like "Love Outlasts Death."
[Caprica-Cavil and Galactica-Cavil are in an airlock, about to be executed]
- Caprica-Cavil: Is there a Resurrection Ship within range?
- Galactica-Cavil: Yes, brother. But first we're gonna die in a vacuum.
- Caprica-Cavil: There's a 170 foot long launch tube in front of us. We might die of our injuries before we get to the vacuum.
- Galactica-Cavil: I don't like you.
- Caprica-Cavil: I understand that.
- Galactica-Cavil: Do you really believe it was a mistake to attack the humans?
- Caprica-Cavil: Rather intensely, yes.
- Galactica-Cavil: You know that when we download amongst the others your strange ideas will be shouted down.
- Caprica-Cavil: Ideas always seem strange until you try them on, brother. We had a temper-tantrum in the form of a cataclysm because we wanted them to treasure us, the Ones, more than humanity. More than their own history and blood.
- Galactica-Cavil: We didn't want to be loved. We wanted to be treated fairly.
- Caprica-Cavil: We wanted to be held to a bosom. To be petted and perfumed and told we were the princes of the universe.
- Galactica-Cavil: Yes, well if the humans were gone-
- Caprica-Cavil: Our parents would mourn them. They'd love them more anyway.
- Galactica-Cavil: I'm going to see to it that you get boxed. And then I'm going to prepare to wipe out humanity once and for all.
- Caprica-Cavil: The anticipation is very unpleasant.
- Galactica-Cavil: Yes.
- [Caprica-Cavil offers his hand, Galactica-Cavil looks at it and accepts it. Galactica-Cavil closes his eyes while Caprica-Cavil keeps looking. They are then airlocked.]
- ~From Battlestar Galactica: The Plan
And it's not just that they don't understand things like "Giving a shit about other people" or "Reverence for the Ancestors," they don't
want to.
And no, despite these idiots' protestations of their alleged "Christianity" I think you'll find they don't believe in
that either.
To These Fucking People, America very much is the Nation Of The Self.
Or perhaps more crudely, Asshole Nation?
They beat their meat to ideas about Southern "Gentlemen" who owned plantations or Wild West cowboys that have more to to with 1950s Western movies and assholes like John Wayne and Louis B. Mayer than with the actual realities of those places and times. The idea of repenting for that shit is utterly foreign to them (as is the idea of repenting for anything else.)
And they can't understand why everybody else doesn't think that way.
(The only reason these motherfuckers ever promoted "Individual Rights" was to use them as a club to beat on everybody's rights. The truth is they want easily-revocable privileges, not God-given Rights.)
Well, among other things, if we all thought like they did, we wouldn't have much of a civilization, would we?
You either believe in freedom or you don't.
Слава Україна!
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it, and then hand it to them with the well fought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same. And if you and I don't do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free. ~Ronald Reagan
Put on my blue suede shoes
And I boarded the plane
Touched down in the land of the Delta Blues
In the middle of the pouring rain
W.C. Handy, won't you look down over me?
Yeah, I got a first class ticket
But I'm as blue as a boy can be.
Then I'm walking in Memphis
Was walking with my feet ten feet off of Beale
Walking in Memphis
But do I really feel the way I feel?
Saw the ghost of Elvis
On Union Avenue
Followed him up to the gates of Graceland
Then I watched him walk right through
Now security they did not see him
They just hovered 'round his tomb
But there's a pretty little thing
Waiting for the King
Down in the Jungle Room
When I was walking in Memphis
I was walking with my feet ten feet off of Beale
Walking in Memphis
But do I really feel the way I feel?
They've got catfish on the table
They've got gospel in the air
And Reverend Green be glad to see you
When you haven't got a prayer
But, boy, you've got a prayer in Memphis.
Now Muriel plays piano
Every Friday at the Hollywood
And they brought me down to see her
And they asked me if I would
Do a little number
And I sang with all my might
She said
"Tell me are you a Christian child?"
And I said "Ma'am, I am tonight"
~Marc Cohn, Walking In Memphis.
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