Bullets I (One Of Us... Seven.)

And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.

And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.

And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see.

And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.

And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.

And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.

And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast saying, Come and see.

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:

And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?

And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow-servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.

And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;

And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casts her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.

And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;

And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:

For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?

~Revelation 6, KJV.

...

Then spoke Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that follows me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. ~John 8:12

I keep seeing shit like this; People basically having voted for all type of bad things to happen to other people...but either being angry that it's happening to themselves or simply angry that somebody pointed out the obvious. 

They voted for Trump to abuse and harm others, yet also gave him the power to hurt them...so of course he did.

And make no mistake about it, deep down, people like this angry middle-aged White lady think that is right and good, they regret only not being close enough to Power to remain unaffected.

These Fucking People crave Empire and Tyranny and yes, the Lash, as much because they think it'll hurt Other people as because they are pretty much taught in their churches that God is an angry, violent narcissist who demands constant control and praise.

A few of them think they'll get to use the lash or wear the jackboot.

And then they align themselves politically with rich sociopaths because they all believe in the Prosperity Gospel. And it doesn't matter whether it's in the original Calvinist/Reformed format or this Unga Bunga Pentecostal shit that's been more popular for about 30 years, it's still all bullshit and this kind of crap is exactly what it leads to.

I find it interesting that people who claim to follow the guy who said "I am the Light Of The World, they that follow me shall not walk in Darkness but shall have the Light of Life." deliberately choose to walk in Darkness like it's the most awesome flex they could possibly make.

That makes no fucking sense to me,  

I was going to write about that.

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.

But then I saw this last night.

Some dipshit Republican legislator in Louisiana making excuses for the sexual abuse and resulting pregnancy of a nine-year-old girl and saying she shouldn't have an abortion.

Might be a bit of a guess on my part that the girl in question is White, but I suspect if she wasn't we wouldn't be having this argument or hearing these excuses because These Fucking People would have quietly invoked whatever exceptions exist and the discussion would never have crossed my social media feed.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. ~George Orwell, 1984.

I'm old enough to remember when kids having kids was considered a Sin and a tragedy by pretty much everybody regardless of politics, I remember one motherfucker of a lot of conservative and religious moralizing on the subject. 

Honestly, I had (still have) some pretty strong opinions about this stuff myself.

But then I think back and most of that was just at the start of America's diversity becoming more visible to These Fucking White People.

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

That was before these assholes felt threatened by the simple existence of Other People.

And if being ruled over by some small unaccountable criminal elite assuages even a little of their disingenuous and misplaced fear, they'll take it. They don't care if they lose their freedom.

Well that and the fact that Newt Gingrich started turning the Republican Party into a cult in 1994 between that and Trump's obvious fucking up everything, Republicans are starting to worry and see the writing on the wall even in Texas.

That was before a guy whose parents came from India, even though he himself was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and by our Constitution and the Law is as American as Baseball or a redneck seeing their girl cousin naked and was considered a valid candidate first for President, then for governor of Ohio

(And he can defend Bernie Moreno's abusive son-in-law all he wants, but a hell of a lot of Ohio MAGA's and Republicans are not very enthusiastic about voting for Vivek Ramaswamy.)

To summarize, These Fucking People mostly cared about stuff like teenage pregnancy before other people were visible and accepted a certain kind of quietly extremely racist White asshole felt threatened. Does that spell it out for you??

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

Now?? Any White Kid, born in shitty circumstances and likely to either grow up poor or be adopted out to sociopathic rich white people (in a Red State in either case) is pretty much nothing more to a lot of these fucking assholes than a living Bullet in a potential Ethnic Conflict.

They understand this is a numbers game, they're trying to eliminate anything else but doing what they want as a choice, and the ultimate endgame with these fucking people is coercion, their only real values are Murder, Slavery and an increasingly creepy cultish devotion to Power. Whether they get that in an Antebellum South type scenario, from Communist peons or in some dystopian bunker situation doesn't matter to them.

I was a peacekeeper in Bosnia for 3 months, I've seen the kind of world these assholes think they wanna live in and keep voting for to happen to "Other" people.

The wind whispers of fear and hate. The war has killed love. And those that confess to the Angkar are punished, and no one dare ask where they go. Here, only the silent survive. ~Dith Pran, The Killing Fields.

They forget the enemy gets a vote. The people they hate get to fight back. Lots of Serbs lost their ass, their homes, their lives etc. in the Yugoslav wars too.

But these motherfuckers think assholes like Slobodan Milosevic were the good guys in that war.

And yes, that kind of shit is exactly why atavism and hate are marketed to These Fucking People like sports team logos. I've written about this.

Blood that has soaked into the sands of a beach is all of one color. America stands unique in the world: the only country not founded on a race but on a way, an ideal. Not in spite of but because of our polyglot background, we have had all the strength of the world. That is the American way. ~Ronald Reagan

It's a big part of why these assholes idolize Israel's current genocidal government. Well, until they figure out that Israel is Jewish, anyway, and then they become skeptical.

It's why Democrats even running about the most White-Bread, literally Christian candidate possible like James Talarico still somehow isn't good enough for a lot of these fucking people, but somehow an adulterous, pedophile-releasing, utterly immoral slug like Ken Paxton is just fine.

Think about that shit for a second, will ya?

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)

(Well, that and the latent greedy immoral patriarchy of the current Republican Party.)

Democrats are seen as being the party that betrayed Dixiecrats and Segregation and gave rights to "Those" people, never mind that Dixiecrats were only a portion of the Democratic Party at the time. And any group of people that either votes predominately for them or is imagined or seen as doing so is likewise considered Traitors to their Power.

Hence why these motherfuckers are trying to normalize and increase toleration of (for example) violence against women in general (and yes, White women in particular, even White women rich enough to be able to afford to take up Golf.)

Yes, even in a golf ad. In fact, that's probably what they figured was one of the "safe" places they could do this shit. It turned out even golfers were pissed off, and the ad has been taken down...but it's still making the rounds, just outside of their control now.

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.

Other countries see what's going on here, and they want nothing to do with it.

Whether it's creepy Christian Nationalist horseshit, Trump's incompetence and violent narcissism or simply threats to their own freedom and sovereignty, pretty much the whole rest of the world is saying "NO" Fuck That.

Even the conservatives (Like Ontario PM Doug Ford) are telling Trump he can kiss their ass.

Russia is in no position to help, and China is aligned with Iran in our current mess. They were before, too, but at this point they've picked a side. 

The US functionally losing our support infrastructure in the Middle East only helps the Chinese. And by the way the Chinese have already made other inroads into the Middle East.

Nobody fucking wants this Trump shit and constantly threatening the rest of the world but between maybe 25% and 30% of Americans. They thought they could make the rest of us hate like they do and somehow use that as a springboard to even greater hegemonic power. They were wrong.

Republicans sure as hell can't make the rest of the world hate like they do, unless it's hating them.

America's hegemony was based on alliances, money, and soft power. It was dependent on assisting other countries with their defense against common threats, when the world has changed multiple times since those arrangements were made, that doesn't readily transfer over to a kind of neo-neocolonialism where "Hey white people, it's your turn now!"

I'm not gonna change for these motherfuckers and I'm sure not gonna be colonized.

And since any effort to attack Canada is highly likely to end up with divisions of British, Canadian, EU and yes, Indian troops running Trump out of Washington DC under considerably more embarrassing circumstances than the British chasing out James Madison (and given the state of US Forces and of our domestic politics, even Trump likely knows that) if it doesn't result in him being led out in an orange jumpsuit and shackles.

So my guess is they try and break the United States Of America, hoping they get an ethnic conflict and a couple of Banana Republics out of it and/or hope like hell that the international community sits on its hands trying to figure out what to do for a couple of years like they did with the Yugoslav Wars.

When These Fucking People say "American" they mean "Trump." It's a cult.

And if they have to break everything right down to normal family or sexual relations to preserve his cult-god status they'll do it, these motherfuckers are even throwing out people who wear anti-pedophile T-shirts now.

No, These Fucking People are not far from worshiping devils and idols of gold.

You have been warned.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Now, I've read the Bible. What if all the stuff in there is exactly what it says, and it means that? What if God is exactly who he says He is and the practitioners of this weird Babylon-Trump shit are the ones automatically going to Hell, not the Atheists or the gays, not Barack Obama or Dolly Parton??

What if the problem is greedy old racist white men not the Autistic people or the Muslims??

What if the problem here is *Checks Notes* concentrated wealth in the hands of bad men, resulting from heresies like the Prosperity Gospel?

What if it's this presumed right of a Certain Kind Of White Man to ejaculate anywhere they damn well please that's wrong??

It's not just guys who can afford to play Golf that are the damn problem, we regular people are needing to clean up our own house, too.

And we're gonna have to.

Because right now from where I'm sitting this bullshit looks like Antichrist.

And that the Christians (or Mormons in the case of the guy who sexually harassed my partner last summer) are balls-deep in all this bullshit does not speak well of ya'll.

Remember that.

Because what you've done with your Witness is going to matter.

Even if all that God stuff is not real, do you really wanna be the guy that when you die most of the world says "Have fun in hell, asshole?"

Cuz I just said that.

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You don’t understand what it was like. The town was on its last legs. It started after we got news of the Death Star blowing up. The second one, that is. [flashes back to one particular night at the Mos Pelgo Cantina] The Empire was pullin’ outta Tattooine. There was blaster fire over Mos Eisley. The occupation was over. We didn’t even have time to celebrate. That very night, the Mining Collective moved in. Power hates a vacuum and Mos Pelgo became a slave camp overnight. I lit out. Took what I could from the invaders. Grabbed a camtono. I had no idea it was full of silicax crystals. I guess every once in a while, both suns shine on a womp rat’s tail. I wandered for days. No food, no water. [image of Vanth being rescued by the Jawas] And then... I was saved. [Inside Sandcrawler] The Jawas wanted the crystals. They offered their finest in exchange. [remembers pointing to what is actually Boba Fett's armor] And my treasure bought me more than a full water-skin. It bought my freedom. 

~Cobb Vanth, from The Mandalorian S2.E1 "The Marshal."

Last Post

[As the four newly-revealed Cylons aboard Galactica struggle to deal with the information, the call to action stations sounds]

Lieutenant Felix Gaeta: [over the loudspeaker] ...Inbound Cylon fleet! I repeat: action stations, action stations. Set Condition One throughout the ship. This is not a drill.

Tory Foster: Oh gods... what're we going to do?

Saul Tigh: The ship is under attack. We do our jobs. Report to your stations!

Chief Galen Tyrol: Report to stations?

Saul Tigh: My name is Saul Tigh. I am an officer in the Colonial Fleet. Whatever else I am, whatever else it means, that's the man I want to be. And if I die today, that's the man I'll be. ~From Battlestar Galactica (2003) S3.E20 "Crossroads, Part 2."

Six

If God had a name, what would it be?

And would you call it to His face

If you were faced with Him in all His glory?

What would you ask if you had just one question?

And yeah, yeah, God is great

Yeah, yeah, God is good

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

What if God was one of us

Just a slob like one of us

Just a stranger on the bus

Tryna make His way home?

~Joan Osborne "What If God Was One Of Us?"