The Golden Image (Don't Tread On Me, Ten.)

Nebuchadnezzar spake and said unto them, Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, do not ye serve my gods, nor worship the golden image which I have set up?
Now if ye be ready that at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of musick, ye fall down and worship the image which I have made; well: but if ye worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace; and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter.
If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.
But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.
~Daniel 3:14-18

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If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

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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.

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I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those...moments will be lost in time, like tears...in rain. Time to die. ~Roy Batty, Blade Runner.

I'm from Michigan.

I'm a former Republican.

Hell, I volunteered for George W. Bush's campaign in Cheboygan County, MI in 2000. I've written extensively about all this.

Mike Rogers isn't even calling it the REPUBLICAN Party anymore, he's calling it the MAGA Party.

Fuck You, No.

At every step of the way here, Republicans have refused to stand up for themselves, and ended up fighting (in some cases literally, as happened here in Michigan several years ago) over whatever scraps of bullshit and Power that Donald Trump is willing to leave them.

Now? Three or four years later? I can't even talk the way these people talk anymore. My partner can't, either. 20 years ago we were both pretty much mid-grade Republicans.

And instead of standing up for themselves they all seem to adopt a culture of armed loser-dom.

Among other things, I'm a gun guy (Hell, I'm a veteran) but I've never even considered that I might need a weapon to go to the store, or in a Church.

And if we're being honest I wouldn't want to live in the kind of world where I thought that shit was really necessary.

Fuck this bullshit, wouldn't it have been easier to just say "No" in the first place??

Trump and his enablers betray everybody, yet after eleven years of this goddamned bullshit there's still millions of credulous dopes and Remora-like businessmen and racists clinging to this horseshit who all think they're gonna be the ONE PERSON that Trump somehow does right by.

As I'm somewhat familiar with Trump's actual history I'm rather sure that *I* sure as hell wouldn't want to feel constantly under siege and like that loser asshole is somehow something something Gazpacho the only one who's going to save me.

Yet as time goes on, These Fucking People only seem to get more and more addicted to blowing the narcissist. It's to the point where they're like the bad guys in the second half of the Left Behind books now.

And Trump has so much of that goddamn makeup on, he looks for all the world like he has shit on his face.

Lots of Republicans claim that's the "Best" President we've ever had.

Speaking as a conservative Democrat and former Republican here it'd be nice of Movement Conservatism would go back to having some level of self-respect.

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.

Because this shit is disgusting, and yet it gets worse.

Like, Are you fucking kidding me??

I mean, I suppose a hell of a lot of these idiots are just simple-assed racist knuckleheads who think Trump is a "god" come to save them from Barack Obama. 

As if *Checks Notes* Term Limits weren't already going to do that before any of this even happened??

I don't really buy that, I think there's more to it. A lot of these fucking people are simply dishonest monsters who see something of themselves in Trump, and I think the racist shit just gets tacked on too.

Some of these motherfuckers still trying to claim Obama is Muslim, like the whole damn country didn't see him in line buying BBQ Pork back in like 2011 or so, or as if any pothead in the country didn't recognize the signs that appeared more than once as Obama's hair got grayer and the stress of the job started to show on the man towards the end.

As if any of these know-nothing CHUDs knows dick about Islam.

Let alone the dark currents of Middle Eastern religiosity that appear to be driving some of this other shit *Cough* Baal *Cough* Epstein Files *Cough.*

And some people think they're going to "Pray" all that shit away?? Okay, I'll bite, I'd agree that America needs an Elijah but it ain't gonna be you. And Elijah wasn't an enabler, he had the Prophets of Baal executed...not shielded from accountability.

As if Republicans aren't loudly and publicly in bed with the Saudis *Checks Notes* the one country in the world that does more than anything on both a De Facto and De Jure basis to promote Salafism which is the actual Islamic-legal and Theological basis for Radical Islam.

And yet somehow, the worse-ness continues to pile up.

There is a non-zero percentage of these "Men" who don't really care about any of that, so long as it enables them to hide and rationalize what's really going on in there...

Which is that at the end of the day, they simply long to be Catamites to Power. 

I have a church background and I've never gone on and on about Beefcake Jesus in my life.

And the thing is, more and more, it seems like this is coming down to an increasingly weird Power/sexual fantasy and that's true whether these freaks are talking about Jesus or Trump.

Literally everything else, including at some points the racism, is starting to feel expendable, but not that.

Why do I think that is?? Because...and take it from a guy who knows all the political and religious doctrines...but to know that shit, you gotta read it. A lot of these fucking people can't read, and don't want to learn, and it's all feelings and vibes and what gives them wood and what doesn't but they can't admit to any of that and NONE OF THESE FUCKING PEOPLE HAVE EVER DEALT WITH THAT SHIT!!!

In fact their entire business/political/religious model is "We Don't Want To Talk About Any Of That."

With a huge side-order of hoping that if they ignore it, it'll go away.

Well whether or not you want to talk about it, it's there, and this shit is starting to get really damn creepy.

And I've got a partner and a kid to think about, I can't afford to let this bullshit slide.

More to the point, I have been loudly on record for years that I don't want to live in a country where half the population worships Devil and Idols of Gold. Even as an Agnostic secular liberal I had a huge damn problem with these fucking people bowing before Dis Pater and Mammon and thinking it was Okay because they made the Golden Image look like Donald Trump and tried to wrap it up in White Supremacy.

They don't even care about that, what they want is Gold Supremacy and Orange Supremacy.

So long as they think they're "Identified" with it.

And you watch and see if that doesn't start coming out in the wash here real quick.

Don't Tread On Me with this garbage.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

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Republicans are selling their soul to win elections. Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. The government won't work without it. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them. ~Barry Goldwater

Nine

And so tomorrow, as we take the campaign South and West, as we learn that the struggles of the textile workers in Spartanburg are not so different than the plight of the dishwasher in Las Vegas; that the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of L.A.; we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people, we are one nation. And, together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story, with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea: Yes, we can. ~Barack Obama