FAFO.

Hess: So what shall we toast to, boys? I can blather on about “To health” or “To success,” but I’d like to do somethin’ a little less rote. Where you from, Brown Eyes?

Migs Mayfield: How ’bout a toast to Operation Cinder?

Hess: Now there’s a man who knows his history.

Mayfield: No, I don’t just know it. I lived it. I was in Burnin Konn.

Hess: Burnin Konn?

Mayfield: Mmm.

Hess: That was a hard day. I had to make many unpleasant decisions.

Mayfield: Yes, you did. Entire city gone in moments, along with everybody in it. We lost our whole division that day. Man, that was like 5-10,000 people.

Hess: Yep. All heroes of the Empire.

Mayfield: Yeah. And all dead.

Hess: Well, it’s a small sacrifice for the greater good, son.

Mayfield: Depends on who you ask, don’t you think?

Hess: [irritated] What you gettin’ at, trooper?

Mayfield: All those people, the ones who died, was it good for them? Hmm? Their families? The guys I served with? Civilians, those poor mud scuffers, died defending their homes, fighting for freedom. Was it good for them?

Hess: But we’ve outlasted them, son. They’re eating themselves alive. The New Republic is in complete disarray, and we grow stronger. You see, with the rhydonium you’ve delivered, we can create havoc that’s gonna make Burnin Konn pale by comparison. And then they’re gonna turn to us once again. You see, boys, everybody thinks they want freedom, but what they really want is order. And when they realize that, they’re gonna welcome us back with open arms. Ah. To the Empire.

[Mayfield chuckles, then fires a blaster at Hess' chest, killing him instantly. He and Mando then shoot their way out of the mess hall] ~From The Mandalorian, Season 2, Ep. 7 "The Believer"

...

[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

I saw this a couple days ago.

Some MAGA, three-time Trump voter, angry and upset at *Checks Notes* the perfectly obvious, stuff that anybody with a brain in their head or any awareness of how Donald Trump conducts himself or ever has, tried to tell this bitch for over a decade. Trump started another pointless forever-war, Trump sold out the country to tech-bro billionaires who wanna put their personal 666 on everything and fuck America into being a post-Apocalyptic hell-scape like something out of the book of Revelation, one data center at a time. Trump fucks up everything he touches, blah blah blah. Yeah, I get it. Welcome to the party, lady. I believe I personally tried to point this shit out to a fuck-ton of people my damn self.

Trump was always gonna have to pick between the Red Hats and the Billionaires and he was always gonna pick the tech bro Billionaires because their "Libertarian" sociopathy was always going to make his utterly amoral ass the most fucking money. And that's all he cares about. What the fuck kind of a dumbass do you have to be to think that Donald Trump gives a fuck about you??

Meanwhile, the Republicans got nothing and are going with their two standard pitches: "Everything is terrible, we made it that way, vote for us" and "Cheat Like Crazy."

Still thinking of my fellow janitor at the casino who, when asked why he liked Trump said "I don't know. I guess I like the shit he says." Said with a stupid, simpering expression on his face.

I think of all these old white guys in my department, who pretty much went full zombie-eyed ADHD kid watching cartoons the second somebody turned one of the breakroom TV's on to FOX News.

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.

Yeah how's that working out now, bros??

Like I said I can't even talk the way these fucking people talk.

And these Republicans, they all think we're that fucking stupid, or that we're against them just to be against something, like they are or have the only truth or valid belief system. Which is of course "Grab what you can while you can with no thought for any other people or the future" followed by "Fuck you, I've got mine" when the bill comes due.

They're either so insane or out of touch that it's effectively a mental illness unto itself or they're lying and they know it (and very likely all of the above.)

And I said it in November of 2024 that the only medicine that was gonna cure whatever addles regular people on this shit was FAFO: Fuck Around and Find Out.

Well here we are. About the only things making the situation any different than what I expected was that something like 70% or 75% of Americans are against this bullshit, along with almost the whole rest of the world...and the situation here at home hasn't spiraled into outright violence yet.

Despite Republicans trying to instigate exactly that.

Well that and for the most part these idiots have neither the manpower nor the money to implement their dystopian fantasies even if they had the public support.

Doesn't help that these guys are so incompetent they make Mussolini look like Machiavelli by comparison.

And their own coalition is falling apart like Woodstock 99 on Saturday night. It's the Fyre Festival of Fascism.

I mean, fuck, just the fact that Trump has gotten 70% of Americans to agree on anything should be one for the history books, even if it is "He sucks."

And the people running this fucking shit-show are so goddamned backwards they're trying to argue in favor of *Checks Notes* more teenage pregnancy.

Now like I said :

This bullshit infuriates me.

As a teenager I was basically required to carry rubbers, in my wallet, in my truck, etc. My Mom didn't want me getting somebody pregnant and her and my high school girlfriend were very much on the same page with this.

I quite literally was taught until you are capable of being financially responsible for a kid either practice safe sex or abstain. Like the slogan they use in Africa to combat AIDS, ABC: Abstain, Be faithful, Condomize. We were Republicans

To me that's *Checks Notes* Basic morals, let alone Christian morality.

I'm glad the kiddo is gay and me and my partner don't have to worry about this shit.

I was taught not to associate with Welfare people. Yes, you know the type, even if you don't admit it. The people who live by working (and cheating) the system, and who never make any effort to get off it. A hell of a lot of those people here in Northern Michigan (or down where I used to live, also where my partner is at now) are "Conservatives," Fundamentalist Christians, MAGA. An absolute raging fuck-ton of those people are on Welfare. I don't know any Black or Latino people on Welfare, but I know my ex-wife basically lived by working the system. I don't understand from either a logical or political standpoint why those people are Republicans. Hell, They don't know why, they just like the shit that Republicans say, or something.

I mean, fuck, given their rhetoric on the subject for basically my entire life I don't know why Republicans tolerate it! Republicans increasingly hate poor people and are actively trying to kill them.

And here they are, trying to push for more teenage pregnancies, presumably among White girls. 

Again, if anybody goes with this bullshit, you get more generational poverty, more Welfare People. I hate to be that guy, but when you hit a certain level of poverty and your life generally being shit, conventional morality much less self-respect, let alone the kind of priggish Christianism Republicans demand as public behavior pretty much goes in the shitter along with everything else.

Worse, it gets replaced all too often with scammy shitty bullshit because, among other things as Eminem once famously rapped "These goddamn food stamps don't buy diapers."

And while I'm at it, especially at the moment EBT cards aren't big business because our government is compassionate; They're big business because they're a huge subsidy for American farmers and ranchers.

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.

And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

~Matthew 25:31-46

And nobody gets left behind, or left out of getting any help at all, faster than decent people who don't want to live like that, or whose first goal once they get into the system is to get out of it. And again, the more independent or "Liberal" a person actually is, the less likely they're going to stay in that kind of mess any longer than they have to.

People like my partner's redneck relatives, not so much. She's long out of that crap now, and struggles but she's doing a lot better. I still help, and I'm glad to do it.

Morals, like about everything else, are a luxury in Republican-land because the conditions that create or incentivize them in real terms got sold to rich people for bullshit lies and magic beans and parted out for profit, but Republicans got their cut first, so fuck you.

And like I said the only way a lot of people are going to get this is to be reduced to bare survival their damn selves and have things be bad enough that they have to face it, and who caused it. And yes, Republicans are the problem here.

FAFO.

We're probably going to get there soon, certainly some parts of the country will. Sucks, because as I've been saying for years the Republican ideal future is basically the Killing Fields, but with a mall. And their only real "Value" if you want to call it that, is Slavery. What's worse, is if they can't have the total power of the Slaver, they'd rather have Oblivion.

A lot of people thought they were gonna be the ones holding the whip. Now they're the ones getting lashed by it, because of course Republicans are gonna eat their own first. Simply put, it's easier.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

And either you're willing to fight for it or you're not.

Слава Україна!

Nameless One: “Shadow of this life?”

Dhall, Dustman scribe: “Yes, a shadow. You see, Restless One, this life is not real. Your life, my life, they are shadows, flickerings of what life once was. This life is where we end up after we die, and here we remain. Trapped, caged, until we can achieve the True Death.”

Nameless One: “True Death?”

Dhall, Dustman scribe: “True death is non-existence. A state devoid of reason, of passion, of sensation.” [Dhall coughs] “A state of purity.”

Nameless One: Sounds like oblivion, why would anyone would want that? 

~from Planescape Torment

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We are a nation that has a government — not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our Government has no power except that granted it by the people. ~Ronald Reagan