Aliens (Left Behind Is A Lie VI, Eight.)

 [Han arrives at Docking Bay 94 and sees a familiar face, and his ship surrounded.]

Jabba the Hutt: [in Huttese] Solo! Come out of there, Solo! Solo!

Han Solo: Right here, Jabba. [Jabba and his henchmen turn around to see Han and Chewbacca] I've been waiting for you.

Jabba: Have you now.

Han: You didn't think I was gonna run, did you?

Jabba: Han, my boy, you disappoint me. Why haven't you paid me? And why did you fry poor Greedo?

Han: Look, Jabba, next time you wanna talk to me, come see me yourself. Don't send one of these twerps.

Jabba: Han, I can't make exceptions. What if everyone who smuggled for me dropped their cargo at the first sign of an Imperial starship? It's not good for business.

Han: Look, Jabba, even I get boarded sometimes. [accidentally steps on Jabba's tail, causing Jabba to yelp in pain] Did you think I had a choice? But I got a nice easy charter now; I'll pay you back, plus a little extra. I just need a little more time.

Jabba: Han, my boy, you're the best smuggler I ever hired. So, for an extra 20%...

Han: Fifteen, Jabba, and don't push it.

Jabba: Okay, 15%. But if you fail me again, I'll put a price on your head so big, you won't be able to go near a civilized system.

Han: Jabba, you're a wonderful human being.

Jabba: [orders his minions] Come on! [Jabba's gang leaves with bounty hunter Boba Fett following behind.]

~From Star Wars: Episode IV, A New Hope

...

I believe in no God, no invisible man in the sky. But there is something more powerful than each of us, a combination of our efforts, a Great Chain of industry that unites us. But it is only when we struggle in our own interest that the chain pulls society in the right direction. The chain is too powerful and too mysterious for any government to guide. Any man who tells you different either has his hand in your pocket, or a pistol to your neck. ~Andrew Ryan, Bioshock

I saw this last night, in a tranche of Threads posts about the fact that Republican LA-mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt is not only losing to Karen Bass, but he's very likely going to be overtaken by a third candidate and thus not make it into the general election at all.

I'm gonna be honest though, what I noticed, what stuck with me, etc. was his partner's Jabba's Palace space-alien lips. Like, come on, who wore it better? This bitch, or Sy Snootles??

Also I threw in the Bioshock reference for a damn reason. There's no corner of the Star Wars universe thus far that reflects the sheer incompetent malevolence of this shit.

I mean, I get it, American political-class and/or rich people are profoundly out-of-touch, weird, and hate the rest of us, because most of us refuse to be their toys or feed their narcissism (or we simply can't afford to or don't have the time.) And a lot of Americans, understandably, hate them right back.

The Andor series sort of hit this with characters like Cyril Karn and his mom, but even science fiction has to have limits to be believable, reality doesn't have that. Trouble is, there's about 20% of us that are fighting over which one of them gets to be the Imperial Stormtrooper that's holding the shock wand.

But at the same time, the reason I know all that "Left Behind" crap is a lie is that the Evangelical churches that preached it the most are busy as fuck trying to cover for all this bullshit!

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 that's before the Epstein files and lurid talk about Baal-worship, cannibalism, sex crimes and gods know what else at this point...

But ya know, I used to know some old-school Republicans, the kind of guys who had bumper stickers like "Charlton Heston is my President" on the back of their pickup trucks (and it was a regular pickup truck not some ridiculously jacked-up monster, because these guys didn't need to overcompensate. I'm just gonna say that the extrapolating the comments those guys would make about any woman they saw whose lips looked like that (or even repeating comments I actually heard about things far less egregious in nature) would probably get me kicked off this platform. Yes, these guys said shit like that complete with slurs and other type of language people get canceled for today...right to people's faces.

It's the dark underbelly of Societal Standards, I guess. It's worth noting that all of these guys that I knew hated Trump. And they were not the kind of conservatives who'd just follow along either. Just sayin' I don't have to wonder what them guys would say or think about somebody like Gwneth Paltrow because when it came to the kind of movies she was in, just like my Grandpa their attitude was "I'm not even gonna watch that crap, what's wrong with you?!"

She says she's "Not a Republican" but she doesn't "Feel Anything" right now.

Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen. ~Ezekiel 16:49-50 (NIV)

I'm here to tell you she didn't feel anything before, either. She's not a complete dumpster-fire, she was a big Obama booster back in them days, and did the same for Mayor Pete, she urged proper precautions during COVID-19, also. But the truth is Gwen is the kind of "Liberal" that, for all the noises she's made about feminine empowerment and shit over the years, could give a rat's ass about any woman who can't afford to steam-clean their lady-parts with her "Goop" crap...or who lacks the inclination to.

Let alone anybody like my partner who wants to work for a living and doesn't care about all that crap except to point out the health risks of weird shit (which she'll do) and/or anybody whose feminism is more than a brand or situational.

In other words the only differences between her and Republicans at this point are less bad intentions and less active bigotry.

At worst, Gwen's the type that's like "Ew, Ew, poor people." And don't tell me she isn't, bitch is cousins to a bunch of people in Hollywood and politics. This ain't somebody that's ever had to work a real job. Hence the shitty social views despite the at least socially-liberal ideas.

Look, I don't know how her partner does it, but *I* couldn't be with somebody like that, and I say that as somebody in a politically-mixed relationship. Not because I'm so righteous, but because for better and worse I have a fucking soul. I can't imagine having anything in common with someone so vapid. Among other things both me and my partner have hit rock bottom and been poor people. We both got out of that pit by the help of others and varying degrees of government assistance. We agree on most things, end-results-wise, but have (and will fight about) some different ideas on how to get to that end result.

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."

The difference between Gwen and us is we both actually give a shit, we have to. We have to look at what's going on and feel something, we live here. We have to work for a living.

And, like it or not, right or wrong, we actually believe that there's a higher power we're gonna have to answer to when we die, and that each person is a wondrous creation of God, and that to alter or degrade that creation excessively for any reason...let alone just to show something like Conspicuous Consumption"...is wrong.

And that is, basically, the bright side of having standards. Me and most of the people I care about who were taught similarly were never gonna fall for this crap!

Unfortunately, too many people can't say that or weren't taught like we were.

Yeah, okay, if you don't know anything you can believe whatever you want, in theory.

But at the end of the day you as a person living on this Earth in a Universe that, one way or another is not about you, it was not made for us, and we are responsible for getting certain things right or not.

That's our rent for being here.

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."

And I was taught there are consequences for getting it wrong. We have free will, but that also means we have to accept the consequences of our own actions. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Yeah, that includes having lips that make you look like a Star Wars alien.

This moral framework that I was taught can't really exist outside of a free society, it cannot be imposed on somebody else, not if you believe we each have a soul and that is in our keeping alone. Such things must be Taught. You cannot make a person Believe or want to be Saved.

And whatever choice one makes must be made freely.

Yeah, some people get it wrong and that's the nature of the world. Okay, everybody fucks up, but you can't make a Civilization out of fucking up, especially if you're doing it on purpose. There have to be limits.

There is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft....When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. ~Baba, from The Kite Runner.

I'll note that the "Freedoms" current "Conservatives" promote are mainly the kind of "Individual Liberties" that only really can be used to beat on the collective rights of the majority. There's a reason for that. These people ain't your friends. The only "Right" these idiots care about is an alleged right to steal and waste everybody's time. I'm an old-school conservative...nominally a liberal not by choice but because my standards didn't move. I'm a capitalist, but there have to be limits. "Don't make your face look like that" would at least be a start.

It'd almost make more sense if These Fucking People were Aliens.

Man is not the center of the Universe.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Слава Україна!

I don't preach a social Gospel I preach the Gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person. When people were hungry, Jesus didn't say, "Now is that political or social?" He said, "I feed you." Because the good news to a hungry person is bread. ~Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Seven

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:
And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats:
And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
For I hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
For I hungered, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. 

~Matthew 25:31-45