Hologram (American Reformation II, Seven.)

We know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change. We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics. They will only grow louder and more dissonant in the weeks and months to come. We've been asked to pause for a reality check; we've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope. For when we have faced down impossible odds; when we've been told we're not ready, or that we shouldn't try, or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes we can. 

~Barack Obama

...

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it, and then hand it to them with the well fought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same. And if you and I don't do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free. ~Ronald Reagan

...

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)

I saw this yesterday.

Franklin Graham, among others, trying to say if the Democrats win the midterms it's the "End of Christianity in the US."

Good. And I say that as a Christian.

I have a church background, I've been at this in one form or another longer than most people. Whatever religion these idiots follow, it ain't Christianity.

If God needs these motherfuckers He is NOT God. I Have Spoken.

When is enough going to be ENOUGH with this constant horseshit??

There appears to be no Repugnant Thing these motherfuckers will not try to justify if they think there's some kind of political advantage? Polygamy? I remember when talking that type of shit used to get you beat up outside of (maybe) Utah, if not arrested for something, just so Republicans didn't have to put up with you.

They call this the Penal system. But really it's the Penis system. It's about how big, it's about how long, it's about how hard. Life in Oz is all about the size of your dick and anybody who tells you different ain't got one. 

~Augustus Hill, From the HBO series Oz S1.E1 "The Routine."

I'm tired of this shit. According to these assholes, Christianity is the Republican Party, the Republican Party IS Christianity, all their bullshit social beliefs and hypocrisy aren't just Gospel, they're above The Gospel, and if they don't get everything they want, the [Insert Random Political Enemy Of The Week] are gonna come and take your Whiteness away and make you get gay-married or some shit. 

The world is terrible and it is meant to be terrible and you should just take whatever you can get and hope you get to have your boot on somebody else's throat before you die. After which you're either Worm Food or stuck praising Narcissist Republican Jesus for all of Eternity, depending on who's speaking, and these idiots have no problem contradicting each other or themselves. Everything is what it is, until the next billing cycle or political need comes up. Fuck You. Pay Me.

That's basically their whole Belief.

First off, I used to be a Republican and I never bought into this fucking bullshit.

Second, it's hard for me to imagine a worldview more antithetical to Christianity than that one.

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears. ~2 Timothy 4:3

Third, how is it that every last one of these fucking people is being exposed as some kind of raging pervert?? I used to be shocked at my ex-wife's massively sexualized Pentecostal beliefs but in her defense, she does have a Personality Disorder. I don't see how the average dude with "Christian" in their bio has that defense, the sheer mechanics of these things dictate they can't all actually be massively mentally ill. A fair number of them are just bad people with a large side order of entitled bigotry and stupidity. Not that it ends up easy to actually distinguish this crap from ravening mental illness.

But as far as I'm concerned at this point, these people are Without Excuse.

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.

I grew up reading the Lord's Word, and I've still never claimed to be an angel or a Saint. For fuck's sake I was in the military, I'm divorced, and I've been pretty open about how those two things led me to make a lot of bad choices one way or the other. But I cannot imagine the logic of coming at some lady you don't even know with very specific sexual talk on the one hand while claiming to be a "Christian" on the other hand.

Think about this; think about how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of 'em are stupider than that. ~George Carlin

Especially since it's the 21st Century and if you want to be an irreligious sex pest, well, the ladies might object on totally non-religious grounds but certainly not enough other dudes are going to care. Why do they have to drag God into this kind of bullshit??

And I'm even more tired of just basic willful ignorance at this point, the utter dismissal, born of the same smug Republican fake-"Certainty" that they're "Right" of any beliefs, facts, or even very obviously provable world events that are contradictory to what they already WANT to believe or do anyway.

I mean, I guess I was taught you have to believe in something, that there has to be a baseline to reality.

I would have never believed, back when I was one of these people, that some of them would look at the options and select "Donald Trump" as theirs, and then gone on and believed every dumbass conspiracy theory that showed up while trying to argue with you if you showed them actual truth with obviously provable evidence.

Inappropriate religiosity and political convenience are more important, I guess?

Like I can't even imagine these idiots that try to deny obvious world-events that have affected my life and people that I know like COVID-19 or the War in Ukraine, but there's people that do it.

This is the fruit of what I call "Atheism Minus One" Christianity. These people are so Unbelieving in the Biblical sense of that word, except for in that one little thing, that twisted interpretation of mashed-up Republican/Christianity that worships Power and the State in spite of about every word I ever heard about how you shouldn't do that, from *Checks Notes* Republicans, when I was growing up. And, they will try to deny or rationalize away anything that contradicts this massively contradictory ethical construct or that simply "Feels" bad.

I believe in no God, no invisible man in the sky. But there is something more powerful than each of us, a combination of our efforts, a Great Chain of industry that unites us. But it is only when we struggle in our own interest that the chain pulls society in the right direction. The chain is too powerful and too mysterious for any government to guide. Any man who tells you different either has his hand in your pocket, or a pistol to your neck. ~Andrew Ryan, Bioshock

I used to look at the Book of Revelation or things like the Left Behind series books and wonder how, with literal fire falling out the sky and the Wrath Of God basically announcing itself as such, people could deny shit like that?? 

Well now I know, don't I??

He's got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory. Just gold everywhere. ~Barack Obama, RE: Donald Trump.

And the worst part of a lot of this bullshit is it literally comes down to racism and reactionary politics and shit like that.

Like, Obama made a crack about Cheesecake Factory and all the sudden some stupid gaudy restaurant chain is like, sacred to Republicans now??

Fucking Seriously??

Sorry but, like, I bowed out of the constant angry emotionally-driven politics-of-bigotry crap something like 30 years ago, at the least. I couldn't keep up with just the little bit of personality-cultism around Bill Clinton on the part of Democrats (including some of the Democratic voters that I knew) or the Right's countervailing assertion that Slick Willie therefore Must Be The Antichrist, simply for President-ing while Not Being Republican.

My partner used to be like this, too, somewhere along the way it got to be too much even for her. And she used to like to argue about this shit. She wouldn't have been MAGA anyway but I think it's really sad that life has worn her down, too.

There isn't enough life on this ice cube to fill a space cruiser. ~Han Solo, from The Empire Strikes Back.

This is why I say that Trumpism is a Hologram, most of this bullshit started with people like Newt Gingrich and I wouldn't be surprised if when Trump kicks the bucket they cut him open so Newton Leroy Gingrich can crawl inside him like Han and Luke did with a Tauntaun so they could survive the night snowstorm in Empire Strikes Back. This shit has just gotten even more dishonest and stupid over time.

Like I would have never thought that Republicans would declare Vladimir Putin the "good guy" at all, or especially would do it just because of Trump's servile desire to be Putin's bitch. Nor for that matter do I understand These Fucking People's servile devotion to Trump.

Unless it really is because he's racist, and that is actually their Supreme Value.

Then I understand it just fine, but the person I used to be especially when I was a Republican would be utterly disgusted by such a cynical, evil view of the world.

At the end of the day, you either believe in Freedom or you don't.

You either believe in God, or you don't. No one cares if you don't anymore...but if you don't, just don't pretend that you do, especially if the only reason for that is to manipulate people or to justify being manipulated.

This is why we need an American Reformation, because following the American religious system is gonna send you straight to Hell if we don't start doing something different.

We have a chance in five days to stop this shit. We'd best take it.

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

Six

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.

And let’s be honest, does anybody really think this guy in the White House right now is spending all that time thinking about these issues? I mean, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he seems very focused on home renovations. He should be on HGTV. Guy’s building a ballroom that’s bigger than the White House. He’s paved over the Rose Garden. Put a helicopter pad on the South Lawn, and there’s gold everywhere. What’s up with the gold? Everything, more gold. He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory. Just gold everywhere. … So, he’s clearly not focused on lowering prices for you. ~Barack Obama