The Believers (Scenes From The Fall, Eight.)

I used to want to save the world. To end war and bring peace to mankind; but then I glimpsed the darkness that lives within their light. I learnt that inside every one of them there will always be both. The choice each must make for themselves – something no hero will ever defeat. And now I know that only Love can truly save the world. So now I stay, I fight, and I give – for the world I know can be. This is my mission now. Forever. ~Diana Prince, from the film Wonder Woman.

...

Maximus: You sent for me, Caesar?

Marcus Aurelius: Tell me again, Maximus, why are we here?

Maximus: For the glory of the empire, sire.

Marcus Aurelius: Ah, yes. Ah, yes, I remember. Do you see that map, Maximus? That is the world which I created. For 25 years, I have conquered, spilt blood, expanded the empire. Since I became Caesar, I have known four years without war, four years of peace in twenty. And for what? I brought the sword. Nothing more.

Maximus: Caesar, your life...

Marcus Aurelius: Please. Please, don't call me that. Please, come sit. Let us talk together now, very simply, as men. Maximus, talk.

Maximus: Five thousand of my men are out there in the freezing mud. Three thousand of them are bloodied and cleaved. Two thousand will never leave this place. I will not believe that they fought and died for nothing.

Marcus Aurelius: And what would you believe?

Maximus: They fought for you and for Rome.

Marcus Aurelius: And what is Rome, Maximus?

Maximus: I've seen much of the rest of the world. It is brutal and cruel and dark, Rome is the light.

Marcus Aurelius: Yet you have never been there. You have not seen what it has become. I am dying, Maximus. When a man sees his end... he wants to know there was some purpose to his life. How will the world speak my name in years to come? Will I be known as the philosopher? The warrior? The tyrant...? Or will I be the emperor who gave Rome back her true self? There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish... it was so fragile. And I fear that it will not survive the winter. Maximus, let us whisper now, together, you and I. You have a son. Tell me about your home.

Maximus: My house is in the hills above Trujillo. A very simple place. Pink-stones that warm in the sun. A kitchen garden that smells of herbs in the day, jasmine in the evening. Through the gate is a giant poplar. Figs, apples, pears. The soil, Marcus- black. Black like my wife's hair. Grapes on the south slopes, olives on the north. Wild ponies play near my house. They tease my son. He wants to be one of them.

Marcus Aurelius: Remember the last time you were home?

Maximus: Two years, 264 days, and this morning.

Marcus Aurelius: I envy you, Maximus. It's a good home. Worth fighting for. There is one more duty that I ask of you before you go home.

Maximus: What would you have me do, Caesar?

Marcus Aurelius: I want you to become the protector of Rome after I die. I will empower you to one end alone: To give power back to the people of Rome, and end the corruption that has crippled it. Will you accept this great honor I have offered you?

Maximus: With all my heart, no.

Marcus Aurelius: Maximus, that is why it must be you.

Maximus: But surely a prefect, a senator, somebody who knows the city, who understands her politics?

Marcus Aurelius: But you have not been corrupted by her politics.

Maximus: And Commodus?

Marcus Aurelius: Commodus is not a moral man. You have known that since you were young. Commodus cannot rule. He must not rule. You are the son that I should have had. Commodus will accept my decision. He knows that you command the loyalty of the army.

Maximus: I need some time, sire.

Marcus Aurelius: Yes. By sunset, I hope you will have agreed. Now embrace me as my son, and bring an old man another blanket.

~From the film Gladiator.

I've been seeing a lot of shit like this in the last couple days.

Dudes coming out the woodwork trying to defend the Cornell 7, Frat-boy rapists who drugged a girl with Ketamine and then abused her for seven hours back in 2024.

Like, I don't give a damn what the girl did or didn't do, first off, somebody should be catching drug charges just for drugging her. Enough Ketamine to incapacitate her for that long?? It's probably a felony charge by itself. Second, Nobody deserves to be raped, and I don't give a damn what you think.

I'm tired of this attitude, mostly from White Republican men that basically everything exists for them to abuse or exploit, that they should exploit whatever they can and that self-satisfaction from doing so is the moral purpose of their lives and, on the other hand, that caring about other people is somehow "Satanic."

These Fucking People believe in Ayn Rand way more than they ever believed in Jesus Christ. 

Trump is little more than the current debased figurehead for that belief system, Atheistic Objectivism.

I've honestly hit the point where I believe America is a violently Atheistic and Materialistic nation, and there's nowhere that proves the point more than a lot of American "Churches."

Right-Wing America has built a "god" in its own image, a god of death and wealth. I use the name of the Roman god Dis Pater (later re-appropriated as a Demon in Christian cosmology) for a fucking reason.

And at the end of the day, one has to also remember that Rome was never Christianized, Christianity was Romanized. Like it or not, Empire sidelined Christ and replaced Him with Caesar. Constantine did this for a reason. Keep the Christians sozzled on the deliciousness of Empire and Imperial Power and after awhile they won't even bother to follow Jesus anymore. 

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)

Why should they?? If they can feel all Holy and be narcissists and shit, with the Self on the Throne, and not ever have to deal with the inconvenience (among other things) of actually following Christ, isn't that just, I don't know, easier?? (Well, until you get to the Afterlife, anyway, then it sucks.)

I mean, who needs Jesus when you can convince yourself that you're your own god??

(And yet somehow, historically, even the most Imperialized understandings of Christianity until the American kind have had the sense to be like "Hey wait a second, maybe we should stop here?)

I get it, trust me, I do.

I spent a few years wrapped up in all this bro-culture nonsense myself.

Yet somehow, I still understood that shit like Pedophilia and Rape was wrong. Way too many of these fucking people have lost that understanding if they ever had it in the first place.

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.

America is currently aggressively trying to make up its mind if it wants to be Babylon or Sodom.

It turns out Rome had social welfare of a sort, grain rations and shit, and that's too "Woke."

And as debased as it was, homosexuality in the Roman Empire had many rules. That's not the world These Motherfuckers want to live in.

This is the only reason Evangelicals would prefer an adulterous, criminal shit-bag like Ken Paxton over John Cornyn (Or James Talarico for that matter.)

And Republicans want to be both the ancient Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar and the ultra-modern-high-tech massively technologically controlled Babylon that the End Times Prophecy Movement prophesied about 30 years ago. They have long since lost the understanding that those were the bad guys in the story, or maybe it's just that the Tech Bros kept giving them money.

And deceives them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.

And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.

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 13:14-18

But they're about half a step from trying to say "It's not the Mark Of The Beast when WE do it!"

Trust me, as long as they can make money and use drugs and stick their junk wherever they damn well please, most of these white Republican men won't care if that means they're going to Hell.

American Evangelicalism (which I steadily and increasingly refuse to call Christianity at this point) convinced itself that the Prosperity Gospel and stern religiosity were all that mattered, that the world God gave us to live in was somehow Sinful and fit only for destruction, that being a terrible person, living in a terrible world and acting like a miserable bastard because you think that's a flex was somehow "Holiness." Oh, and you have to keep spending money and working yourself to death to "Prove" that you are somehow worthy. Well unless you own a bunch of shit, good luck with that.

But if you just own a few things, at this point you have to fight not to get snapped up by people who already have way more than that.

I don't preach a social Gospel I preach the Gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person. When people were hungry, Jesus didn't say, "Now is that political or social?" He said, "I feed you." Because the good news to a hungry person is bread. ~Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Unless you're somebody like Donald Trump or one of these elites that's somehow entitled to have Wealth Without Work and then you can do whatever the fuck you want.

This is unsustainable for most of us.

And it's not that These Fucking People don't care...

The clocks stopped at one seventeen. There was a long shear of bright light, then a series of low concussions. By day the dead impaled on spikes along the road. I think it's October but I can't be sure. I haven't kept a calendar for five years. Each day is more gray than the one before. It is cold and growing colder as the world slowly dies. No animals have survived and all the crops are long gone. Soon all the trees in the world will fall. The roads are peopled by refugees towing carts and gangs carrying weapons, looking for fuel and food. Within a year there was fire on the ridges and deranged chanting. There has been cannibalism. Cannibalism is the great fear. Mostly I worry about food. Always food. Food and the cold and our shoes. Sometimes I tell the boy old stories of courage and justice - difficult as they are to remember. All I know is the child is my warrant and if he is not the word of God, then God never spoke. ~The Man, from Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" (Film.)

It's that they're actively trying to collapse the system so they can build their own flesh-pot paradise for themselves out of the wreckage, and their weird worship of politics and religiosity is just an excuse.

Like I don't give a shit what you think, religion isn't the first thing that comes to my mind when anybody mentions Mel Gibson. And that's the key here, isn't it?? Religion is just what these assholes use to try to get feeble-minded people to tolerate their shitty behavior. No, it's not even about the Empire anymore. Well, Okay, late-stage Western Roman Empire maybe, where those fucking people were so obsessed with politics and religion that they couldn't be bothered to fight for themselves and couldn't avoid pissing off the German mercenaries that had become the majority of the Roman armies, either.

But there are some things politics and religion are no good for unless they are tempered with humanity. Without some level of common sense, ideology just becomes another death trap.

We're trying to pick fights where there's no reason to pick fights and trying to manipulate allies where there's no damned reason to do that either, this for little more reason that people like Donald Trump and Marco Rubio are demented drama queens trying to settle old Republican grudges before they die. 

Never mind how many new ones they create...against them.

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"

You start mixing narcissism and religiosity with right-wing bullshit, sooner or later it ends up the same way every time, with people destroying themselves and then ranting about how the Commies are coming while they're hiding under the bed with a pistol in hand. I've seen people go down rabbit holes like that and it always ends badly.

Especially when people choose evil, exploitation and Sin. Especially when we, as a country, let them.

I have a family to think about, a partner and a kid, but I wasn't down with choosing this before.

Sooner or later everybody else gets tired of your bullshit.

The enemy, the Other, the People, always gets a vote sooner or later.

It's going to come down to a fight.

You say you're a "Believer?" Well what are you a Believer *In?*

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Слава Україна!

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning. 

I turn this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke. 

I touch the name Andrew Johnson; 

I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

~Facing It, by Yusef Komunyakaa, US Army Veteran

Seven

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