Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
~Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus.
...
We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev...Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! ~Ronald Reagan
...
We have too many men of science, too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon On The Mount. The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. ~General Omar Bradley
...
For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.
And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.
For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.
Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double.
How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she said in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.
Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judges her.
And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,
Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come. ~Revelation 18:1-10
Bitch, I'm a veteran.
#1 I don't WANT to be your hero. There's a very, very small number of people I care about trying to be heroic for, 'cause if there's anything I've learned in the last year it's that a hell of a lot of people (and certainly most "White" people of a certain imagined level of privilege) are just perverse ungrateful shitheads with no values, for absolutely no good reason. But there's still a decent number, at least a plurality, of good people out there and they're the ones I'm willing to fight and die for.
You ain't on that list.
I can't save the world. I figured that out.
But I've managed to help a few people, and got a girlfriend for better and worse.
And you'd have to want to be Saved.
#2 The reflecting pool and every other damn thing was fine before Trump broke it in some half-ass personal vanity project or Republican ideological/moneymaking scam. But I repeat myself.
#3 The difference between me and you is, I'm brave enough to stand up and say this sucks and it is not right.
You know, it's worth noting that there were great swamps not far from Ancient Babylon, the modern marshes of southern Iraq are what is left of that.
In Oz, the guards lock the cages and walk away, and the predators rise, take control and make the rules. But in Em City, the guards are with us 24 hours a day. There's no privacy. Everybody sees what everybody's doing. Eyes everywhere. McManus' eyes. See, in Em City, retribution gives way to redemption. Timmy boy believes he can save every one of us, from each other, from ourselves, from the system that dumped us in here. Only thing he don't get is, you gotta wanna be saved. ~Augustus Hill, From the HBO series Oz, S1.E1 "The Routine."
And that's where all this mythologizing garbage comes in.
They have to do it to try and say that Trump is "god" because if they don't do that, they have to admit that he's simply a two-bit greedy thug who sees America and everything about it as his personal piggy-bank to loot or smash as he damn well sees fit in order to try and prove some bullshit idea of "Authority" that only exists in his own bloated, orange-painted head. But nobody, not even his own family loves or respects him.
The American system constrains Law and use of Force, so all this dude has is an unnatural ability to inspire cultic devotion, thankfully only in a certain type of person.
The problem is, he has a cult, and when all this crap finally falls all the way down...that'll still be 20% of the country just like it was for Bush 43 at the end of October in 2008 when he crashed the US economy so bad it took the rest of the world's economics with it.
'Cause the real problem is most of them are vain little narcissists too.
I guess "Me, Me, Me" is even how they could square that. I couldn't do it, and the whole idea drove me into Old Testament-grade FURY.
And like my buddy says Trump makes these fucking people feel like high school football players and prom queens again. I don't know, I played football one fall semester and found it boring.
I can't even talk the way these people talk, as a result of all this shit.
And I've seen what the redneck CHUDs do, it disgusts me.
What disgusts me even more is the people who should know better that keep going along because they think they will profit from this mess.
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.
And that's exactly why as bad shit continues to come out and things keep going sideways (and they will) it will eventually come down to everyone at least says they were against all of this bullshit all along.
Don't tread on me with that bullshit.
They knew what they were doing.
These fucking people will eventually betray Trump and throw him overboard, if he doesn't do it to them first.
31 years ago when I took this picture at the KI Sawyer AFB farewell airshow, having gotten lucky enough to have most of the daytime hours off that day, I don't know if the world was necessarily any better but it was at least less fucking stupid.
And yes, it's things like that, which remind me that people like Mercedes Schlapp or Troy Nehls don't give a shit about people like me or anything that our service accomplished.
Which, when I see some idiot Republican literally talking smack about the Statue of Liberty, I wonder just what the fuck I was even doing.
And as we run up to Independence Day and America's 250th anniversary, with an apparent Fyre-festival like collapse waiting in the wings just behind it, all I can do is fight to make sure that when that happens, decent people step up and build something that works instead of allowing the next generation of this garbage to perpetuate itself the second We The People go back to sleep.
What comes after that is on us.
Enough Is Enough.
You either believe in freedom or you don't.
Слава Україна!
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. ~George Orwell, 1984.
Charlie White-knife: Do you know what "fiduciary responsibility" means?
Cooper Howard: "Fiduciary responsibility?" No. I have no fucking idea. I play a cowboy for a living.
Charlie White-knife: Okay. So, the US Government has outsourced the survival of the human race to Vault-Tec. Vault-Tec is a private corporation that has a fiduciary responsibility to make money for its investors. And how does it make money? By selling Vaults.
Cooper Howard: That's called "capitalism," Charlie.
Charlie White-knife: But they can't sell Vaults if these peace negotiations go through. So, Vault-Tec has a fiduciary responsibility to make sure that it don't work out.
Cooper Howard: [scoffs] Yeah? How are they gonna do that?
Charlie White-knife: I don't know. But...do you remember that movie we did with Johnny Morton? You were the Sheriff, and I was some generic Indian?
Cooper Howard: Hey come on, don't say that. Tall-hand Mudlake could talk to horses. You played him with grace and dignity. It was a great role for you!
Charlie White-knife: Morton played a rancher who owned half of Missouri. And what happens when the cattle ranchers have more power than the Sheriff?
Cooper Howard: The whole town burns down.
Charlie White-knife: The whole town burns down. Right. Vault-Tec is a trillion-dollar company that owns half of everything, and after ten years of war the US Government is broker than a joke. The cattle ranchers are in charge, Coop. Unless the People do something about it.
Cooper Howard: I guess everything's a conspiracy, right? Come on man, you sound like you're in a cult.
Charlie White-knife: And you're sitting here defending a system that's ready to set the world on fire, Cooper. Maybe you're the one in the cult.
~Fallout (TV Series) Episode 1.06 "The Trap."
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