Terminator (Oblivion, Two.)

Sarah Connor: [she and Reese have just snuck into a Cadillac] Reese. Why me? Why does it want me?

Kyle Reese: There was a nuclear war. A few years from now...all this...this whole place, everything...it's gone. Just gone. There were survivors. Here, there. Nobody even knew who started it. It was the machines, Sarah.

Sarah: I don't understand.

Kyle: Defense network computers. New... powerful... hooked into everything, trusted to run it all. They say it got smart, a new order of intelligence. Then it saw all people as a threat, not just the ones on the other side. Decided our fate in a microsecond: extermination.

Sarah: Did you see this war?

Kyle: No. I grew up after. In the ruins... starving... hiding from H-K's.

Sarah: H-K's?

Kyle: Hunter-Killers: patrol machines built in automated factories. Most of us were rounded up, put into camps for orderly disposal. [pulls up his right sleeve, exposing a mark] This is burned in by laser scan. Some of us were kept alive... to work... loading bodies. The disposal units ran night and day. We were that close to going out forever. But there was one man who taught us to fight, to storm the wire of the camps, to smash those metal motherfuckers into junk. He turned it around. He brought us back from the brink. His name is Connor. John Connor. Your son, Sarah... your unborn son. [Sarah gapes in amazement.]

~From The Terminator.

...

If there is anything I have learned in my travels across the Planes, it is that many things may change the nature of a man. Whether regret, or love, or revenge or fear - whatever you believe can change the nature of a man, can. I’ve seen belief move cities, make men stave off death, and turn an evil hag's heart half-circle. This entire Fortress has been constructed from belief. Belief damned a woman, whose heart clung to the hope that another loved her when he did not. Once, it made a man seek immortality and achieve it. And it has made a posturing spirit think it is something more than a part of me. ~The Nameless One, from Planescape: Torment.

...

Rotta the Hutt: [sees Grogu] Who is he?

The Mandalorian: [to Grogu] Don't stare.

Rotta the Hutt: It's okay. [to Grogu] What's your name?

The Mandalorian: He doesn't talk. Who do you have to pay?

Rotta the Hutt: Can I feed him?

The Mandalorian: Sure. Who do you have to pay?

[Rotta takes some food and throws it to Grogu]

Rotta the Hutt: Lord Janu.

The Mandalorian: I don't know the name.

Rotta the Hutt: You should. He runs the syndicate on all the moons of Shakari. [throws another piece of food to Grogu] He signed me to his stable, he bankrolled my board and training.

The Mandalorian: He keeps you in a cage.

Rotta the Hutt: He treats me well. And after tomorrow night, I'll be my own man. And with the following you got me as a promoter, not only will my debt me paid, but I'll be rich by the solstice.

[Grogu squeezes through the bars of Rotta's cell, and approaches Rotta as Rotta is about to give him another piece of food]

The Mandalorian: Grogu! Heel!

[Rotta holds Grogu]

Rotta the Hutt: Don't worry. I'm not my father. You know how hard it is to be your own man when your father is Jabba the Hutt? You see them cheering for me out there? For me. It's the first time I'm not living in his shadow. That's why I fight in the pits. They feared him, but they cheer for me.

~From the Star Wars film The Mandalorian and Grogu.

I saw this last night.

Trump posted a bunch of AI slop pictures of him at the head of an army of Terminators. Or maybe he saw The Mandalorian and Grogu and thinks he wants a Droid army like the Hutts have in that movie.

I don't really give a shit which it is.

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, then I saw this video of some old German person that lives in the state of Saxony-Anhalt in Germany. The motherfucker was literally saying if Russian troops marched through the Brandenburg Gate he'd be at a field kitchen ready to feed them. First, I was like "The fuck kind of person is not loyal to their own country?" Well, I looked on the map to see where that state was. It's in what used to be East Germany and my next thought was, well, East German Commies are gonna East German Commie. 

And don't tell me that's not exactly what's going on there. Nostalgia for East Germany...which was never properly De-Nazified by the Soviets nor rehabilitated from Communism by the German government...has a weird nostalgia for the Communist days.

Fucker's loyal to Russia, it doesn't matter if Russia is currently pretending to be left-wing or right-wing, I guess??

I served in the military, on a deep level I cannot imagine not being loyal to one's own country.

But more than that, watching the video and seeing all the stuff around this guy...much of it old, I'm just thinking, well, Miserable Bastards are going to be Miserable Bastards. 

It's not like we don't have whole states full of mostly pinch-faced assholes represented by know-nothing Republicans in our own country.

 And back before Russia invaded Ukraine and proceeded to get the Ass Whuppin Of The Century a fuck-ton of these "Conservative" shitheads were big Putin stans, too. 

Why would Germany be any fucking different??

I mean, it absolutely doesn't make any sense to me because my formative experience of all this shit was the 1980's and it was abundantly clear at that point that, whatever was going on over there, the Russians and a bunch of other people in the East Bloc countries were just about done putting up with it.

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

Now, almost two generations later, some of those same people who were there want the Jackboots back?? Sorry, but I even as a teenager I could see that Communism sucked. 

Now? Capitalism itself seems to be slowly morphing into the same kind of bullshit, mostly because people who were all too glad to throw off the shackles of Communism have gotten comfortable and fat and bored and they don't want anybody else to get any of whatever they think they have.

Which mostly isn't all that much, but ya know, other people coming up or getting a slice might offend the narcissism that seems to be born of the relative affluence of some of these countries.

I'm really, really goddamn sick of this fucking bullshit. I say that as somebody that spent a few years of his life serving in the shadow of the Cold War.

Communism hasn't been a thing since 1989. Democrats are not Communists. Judging solely from actions it looks to me like it's Putin and Trump that are trying to bring that garbage back. I mean, the Russian Army literally is flying the Hammer and Sickle, the Russian government flies it outside of government buildings. Putin is/was KGB. 

You cannot tell me Republicans don't know all this shit.

They just hope that you don't.

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

And I feel like Republicans Red-baiting Democrats while doing Commie shit themselves is pretty damn insulting to all the people who served, or died, in the Cold War.

 Republicans used to be the people who cared about government, history, religion, doing things properly, and all type of shit. Now? I tell some CHUD something I was specifically taught, by Republicans of previous generations, as a Republican of previous generation myself to point out that they're wrong and they look at me like I'm from Mars. 

And/or they wanna argue with me and try to qualify their previous stance even though they know I'm right.

I don't even try to argue with the young ones, let 'em find out the hard way. The ones my age or older should fucking know better, though.

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.

Or at least, that's the theory.

The truth is that, as Russell Moore said in his book RE: The Southern Baptist Convention, is that a lot of these people didn't even believe in what they said about themselves, or taught, or whatever. 

A lot of These Fucking People Seem like they were in some kind of a holding pattern, waiting for Trump or somebody like him to give them permission to be Bad People.

I think, looking back, that a lot of these fucking people...or those eras equivalents of them, anyway, were hoping Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan was gonna be That Guy. Neither was, despite both being, in modern terminology, problematic.

And, well, now a lot of these motherfuckers are wondering why their friends stopped being their friends, or their kids won't talk to them or whatever. Action/Consequence. This isn't that hard.

But if there's anything I've learned in the last eleven years, with particular emphasis on the last year and a half, it's that some people are just Bad People.

And one motherfucker of a lot of them don't want to be anything else.

I say on a regular basis that you either believe in freedom or you don't.

Some people, I'd say between a quarter and a third of us...don't.

And he caused all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:

And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. ~Revelation 13:16-18

There was a line from Full Metal Jacket that always stuck with me, where Private Joker says to one of the other Marines, regarding the Vietnamese, that they'd "Rather be alive than free, I guess."

Well, I'm gonna modify that and say that some people would rather have a spot in a pecking order than be free. Hierarchy matters more than freedom. They don't love Christ because His Word resonates with their soul...they look at the Bible as a bunch of excuses and rules to follow, if they bother with it at all.

And increasingly they don't.

I think it's worse than that they'd rather be alive than free, or even rather be part of a hierarchy than free.

I think they think Trump gives them a "god" that they can see.

Which tells me, really, that a hell of a lot of "religious" people were more Atheists than the most Atheistic rationalistic Atheistic non-Believer that I know.

Or worse, if they did believe in some God or demon or spirit or whatever they thought it was an angry violent narcissist they needed to appease.

Which (now) is why they can't stop (metaphorically) blowing the narcissist now. They literally seem to think if they appease this guy enough they'll go to Heaven or some shit.

Sorry, but in my opinion, going anywhere in the Afterlife with Donald Trump in it sounds like Hell.

I mean for fuck's sake they are even willing to throw the Epstein files victims under the goddamn bus for Trump, not to mention all the people for whom bringing the people in the files to justice was a big thing. And not only that, but they talk about people who really did believe in that (like MTG or Thomas Massie) like they're crazy or something.

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 mind you I burned through a lot of ink mocking both Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie over the years but now I have to respect both of them, simply for doing the human thing.

For not believing that Putin or Trump or some other shitty potentate is "god."

For not choosing Miserable Bastardy for its own sake.

Seems like a low bar, but it's where we're at, and that disgusts former Republicans like me.

But the truth is, if they can't have the Totalitarian Power that they think they want right now, they'd rather not only they but everyone else too, have the Oblivion.

However they philosophize or rationalize it, that's what this shit comes down to.

And if they really did believe all this End Times stuff, they gotta know they're picking the wrong side. I think they just don't care.

Some of these people literally wanna build Skynet, and Terminators.

I guess they didn't watch the movies and see how that worked out.

Again, you either believe in freedom or you don't.

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

It's going to come down to a fight.

Soon.

Слава Україна!

The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all. You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits — not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty. ~Ronald Reagan

One

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