[Don't] Send Me (Scenes From The Fall, Ten.)

[After beating a US Cavalryman nearly to death for hitting Newt, he climbs on his horse and looks at the horrified townspeople] I hate rude behavior in a man. I won't tolerate it. ~Woodrow Call, from the Lonesome Dove miniseries.

...

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another:


“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”

At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”

And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

He said, “Go and tell His people:

“‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding;
be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’
Make the heart of this people calloused;
make their ears dull
and close their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed.”

Then I said, “For how long, Lord?”

And he answered:

“Until the cities lie ruined
and without inhabitant,
until the houses are left deserted
and the fields ruined and ravaged, 

until the Lord has sent everyone far away
and the land is utterly forsaken.
And though a tenth remains in the land,
it will again be laid waste.
But as the terebinth and oak
leave stumps when they are cut down,
so the holy seed will be the stump in the land.”

~Isaiah chapter 6 (New International Version.)

I saw this yesterday.

Keg-Breath, giving a particularly weird speech at Quantico, talking about "The Faith of Jerusalem, the Philosophy of Athens and the Power of Rome" Fun fact; Not one of those places or times has one goddamn thing to do with the "Freedom of Philadelphia in 1776." Rome ceased to be a Republic. America created the modern concept.

This ideological clown has about as much understanding of history or philosophy as he does of Cowboys, which is to say not much at all. Like, didn't this dude ever see Deadwood or Lonesome Dove??

These idiots consistently have the understanding of everything that one might attribute to a snotty 13-year-old boy who thinks he knows All Truth cuz his balls dropped. Yeah, I remember being that age, part of that time we were staying with my grandparents and I got a lot of ass whuppins that year because my Grandma Thompson absolutely wasn't having it. 

Her favorite line was "I'm gonna beat you all the way to Escanaba."

Most people grow out of this crap. Most of us have to.

Al Swearengen: Let me say this once in your hearing. For outright stupidity, the whole fuckin' trial concept goes shoulder to shoulder with that cocksucker Custer's thinkin' when he headed for that ridge.

Cy Tolliver: It's got its disadvantages.

Al Swearengen: We’re illegal. Our whole goal is to get annexed to the United fuckin' States. We start holdin' trials, what's to keep the United States fuckin' Congress from sayin' "Oh, excuse us, we didn't realize you were a fuckin' sovereign community and nation out there. Where's your cocksucker's flag? Where's your fuckin’ navy or the like? Maybe when we make our treaty with the Sioux, we should treat you people like renegade fuckin' Indians. Deny your fuckin' gold and property claims. And hand everything over instead to our ne'er-do-well cousins and brothers-in-law."

Cy Tolliver: That we don't want.

~From Deadwood, S1.E5 "The Trial Of Jack McCall."

At least back in my day, you did. If you didn't, painful Darwinian processes tended to ensue until you did. I was raised with a very simple principle; Stupid should hurt. Now, by that age my Mom had given up on the ass whuppin.' My Grandma, not so much.

I'm tired of these fucking idiots, I'm tired of their fake religiosity, I'm tired of them trying to force their bullshit Christian Nationalism on the rest of us, I'm tired of the way they treat women, and I'm tired of them running this country into the fucking ground.

I'm tired of these idiot narcissists, period.

I have a church background, I used to be a conservative Republican. I'm a veteran, Hell I even considered ministry myself, and you know what?? I didn't go for it because I didn't want to be responsible for somebody else's soul. I sure as hell never thought I had some kind of a right to "Make the rules" for other people.

And I wouldn't want to if I did.

Among other things, you get Saved or not by what you believe or what you do, not what you make other people do or not.

Other people are *Checks Notes* Other people...what are you doing??

Everybody has charge over their own Souls. Literally the entire framework of American Christianity as I was taught that is dependent on Belief being a free choice; It's literally why Baptism as an adult is even a thing.

I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance. but he that comes after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire: ~Matthew 3:11

If you go to most of those countries like Denmark or the UK where everybody is or used to be a registered member of the national Church at Birth or Infant Baptism...hardly anybody goes to church and all of those countries are very secular. And even in America, there sure as hell ain't very many Calvinists in originally-Puritan Massachusetts.

Religious societies ain't all they're supposedly cracked up to be. Even Jesus knew that.

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)

Among other things, I was taught Christians should expect society to be against them, and eventual persecution; 

Which is true even here, IF you actually follow Jesus and not the worldly abomination of Christ-less American Evangelicalism.

Trump's America can't decide if it wants to be Babylon or Sodom, and it's sure as hell failing to be Rome. Among other things, the secret sauce to Rome's success was making people want to become Romanized. The only thing I'm really sure the Republican Closetocracy wants is to bring back the LGBT culture of ancient Rome. Mind you, even in Rome, consent was a thing (At least for free Men.) There were laws about this. The Romans just invented whole classes of people to which consent didn't apply and the Law fell back in the face of Roman custom.

[Referring to the Hat Creek Cattle Company sign]

Woodrow Call: And if that ain't bad enough you got all them Greek words on there, too.

Gus McCrae: I told you Woodrow, a long time ago it ain't Greek, it's Latin.

Woodrow Call: Well what does it say in Latin? [Gus blusters some gibberish] For all you know it invites people to rob us.

Gus McCrae: Well the first man comes along that can read Latin is welcome to rob us, far as I'm concerned. I'd like a chance to shoot at an educated man once in my life.

~From the Lonesome Dove miniseries.

And I'd argue These Fucking People's aspirations for how to treat women are as bad as that, or worse.

I have a partner and a kid to think about. I don't want the world we have to live in to be like that for their sake.

My partner is strong and tough and very independent, and she wouldn't do well in the kind of world these CHUDs think they want. 

You can take a lot of things away from a man. Cigarettes, the gym. You can take his freedom, his legs, but not his feelings. Not his feelings. A man loves a woman. Don't matter what kind of man he is, if he loves her, he wants her. He wants her body. He wants her to want his. So you say to him, "you can never make love again. You will never touch her in that way again. This is the last time. The last time. Forever." If that's not cruel and unusual punishment, I don't know what is. ~Augustus Hill, from the HBO series Oz, S1.E2 "Visits, Conjugal and otherwise."

The Kid is the same way. She's had a rough life, but still manages to be a decent person. She sure as hell doesn't deserve any of this fucking crap.

And neither one of them would permit me to be a raging dickbrain like a whole bunch of these guys trying to defend the Cornell 7.

That's just life. I've always been held to standards; Why aren't these other guys??

Among other things, speaking as a veteran here if I'd have come into work talking like Keg-Breath does, my LT probably would have had me drug tested.

Son, I'm just gonna tell you this one time. You want to keep working here? Stay off the drugs.

~Mr. McDowell, Coming To America

And I'm old enough to remember when a sexual abuse scandal, or a consenting adult sex scandal could END a church, or a political career or even someone's employability in any kind of a real job and land motherfuckers in jail.

It's really that simple to me.

And the thing with guys like Keg-Breath is, if someone really did "Send Them" into the kind of religious war they yank their cranks to the idea of, it's very likely he'd forget what he was doing, drop his rifle and his pants, grab his junk and go charging at the enemy. Then he'd trip himself up, faceplant, get captured and wonder why nobody on his own "side" wanted him repatriated in the next POW swap. Don't send Pete.

The motherfucker jerks off to the idea of taking a modern military in a modern civilization and turning it into a mob of Christian Nationalist killers little different from the Taliban, and he does it for no better reason than constant overcompensation for his own failures, insecurities, lies and self-deceptions.

I mean for fuck's sake we're losing the war.

And These Fucking People don't care as long as they get to showboat with all their idiotic bigotry, bullshit and religiosity.

And as long as these monsters are in power we're gonna lose and we're gonna keep losing until we get rid of them.

Because among other things they started by missing the point of America, along with damn near everything else.

In life you have to do a lot of things you don't fucking want to do. Many times, that's what the fuck life is... one vile fucking task after another. But don't get aggravated... then the enemy has you by the short hairs. ~Al Swearingen, Deadwood.

The whole purpose of America is that you are not what you are born as, but what you have it in yourself to become. I learned this in Christian schools.

They're seeing that consent for their horseshit is being withdrawn in real time and they're deciding to half-ass try and push forward anyway. Back in the Wild West days, that was a good way to get shot.

It's going to come down to a fight.

It's going to end badly and they're gonna lose.

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[Jim West arrives at Loveless' party]

Dr. Arliss Loveless: Mr. West...how nice of you to join us tonight and add COLOR to these monochromatic proceedings.

Jim West: Well, when a fella comes back from the dead, I find that an occasion to STAND UP and be counted.

Loveless: Ms. East informs me that you expected to see Gen. McGrath here. Well, I knew him years ago, but I haven't seen him in a COON'S age.

West: Well, I can see where it would be difficult for a man of your stature to keep in touch with even HALF the people you know.

Loveless: Well, perhaps the lovely Ms. East will keep you from being a SLAVE to your disappointment.

West: Well, you know beautiful women; they encourage you one minute, then CUT THE LEGS out from under you the next.

Loveless: ...Quite.

~From the film Wild Wild West.

Nine

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.