American Sodom (Great Men, 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.

...

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

...

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

I saw this last night.

Jake Lang showed up to Ole Miss in an APE MASK looking to cause trouble.

As if the electoral ass-beating These Fucking People have taken in the last week isn't enough, well let's just say if I'd ever done anything like that, not that such would ever have occurred to me, I'd have been eating nothing but knuckle sandwiches for awhile, and I'd have deserved it.

As far as I'm concerned, at the rate this shit is going it's probably literally gonna have to come down to whuppin' these people's asses one by one until they either fucking get it or just shut the fuck up. I no longer care which.

I mean, among other things, my best friend in the Air Force was Black. That dude saved my life once. I first as an adult got Saved and baptized by a Black pastor in a pretty mixed church, and among other things, a lot of the people who helped keep my spiritual life going when I'd rather have focused on anything but that were, again, not White People.

I wouldn't be here without those folks, it was a close run thing with them in my life.

Apparently on election night, Cindy Hyde-Smith was talking real big.

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.

Gonna guess she's probably not doing that now.

Cope, Republicans.

Dude had bipartisan support to be a federal judge. 

She could have just not screwed with his nomination and left it at that.

Had she done this obvious thing, she'd probably have beat whoever the MS Democrats put up. But, she didn't. So, I love the FAFO and the Karma on this one, fuck all that.

Bitch can spend the rest of her days playing Pickleball with her pals at whatever dumbass HOA events she hangs out at for all I care.

And so tomorrow, as we take the campaign South and West, as we learn that the struggles of the textile workers in Spartanburg are not so different than the plight of the dishwasher in Las Vegas; that the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of L.A.; we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people, we are one nation. And, together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story, with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea: Yes, we can. ~Barack Obama

It's 2026, maybe it's just me but I'd have thought that the GOP should have stopped letting these Old-Ass Segregationist fossils be in the party, much less run for office. 

Of course then Obama got elected and the Old-Ass Segregationist Fossils chased everybody else out.

And I mean, they chased us out like the goddamn T-Rex in Jurassic Park chasing a couple of kids fleeing from a wrecked Ford Explorer.

At the end of the day, it was just easier for a lot of people like me to switch teams than to keep trying to Save a Republican Party that, for all intents and purposes, simply didn't wanna be Saved.

I hate to sound that way, but you gotta want to be Saved.

America has never been united by blood or birth or soil. We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests and teach us what it means to be citizens. Every child must be taught these principles. Every citizen must uphold them. And every immigrant, by embracing these ideals, makes our country more, not less, American. Today, we affirm a new commitment to live out our nation's promise through civility, courage, compassion, and character. America, at its best, matches a commitment to principle with a concern for civility. A civil society demands from each of us good will and respect, fair dealing and forgiveness. Some seem to believe that our politics can afford to be petty because, in a time of peace, the stakes of our debates appear small. ~George W. Bush

And These Fucking People believe in their Narcissism and Racism more than they believe in God.

There is simply no such thing as basic respect for other people, for institutions, for the Law, even for the honored Dead when it comes to these assholes.

There is no good faith to be had.

These are not even the Republicans of my era, of 20-25 years ago who could still have some basic Humanity, even when it was inconvenient or went against them to have it.

Bigotry, disrespect, dishonor, is simply what they fucking do. You can't negotiate with this bullshit. You can't even trust these people not to lie to your face for absolutely no good reason whatever. 

There is basically no purpose to communication with these jerkoffs. 

Rampant Disrespect undermines the fucking foundations of civilization and society on a basic level. Lying...especially to the degree that they do it...perverts the entire purpose of speech. And when you factor in that so many of these people pretty much instantly rearranged their entire moral order around one man? 

Seriously, what's even the damn point??

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)

What is the difference between us and the goddamn Barbarians??

Well, aside from the fact that no damn Barbarian tried to say I should eat a worse kind of meat so economists, Republicans and rich people could make more money. Fuck all that.

In the debate between "Pick another protein" or "Pick another Senator?"

Imma pick another Senator every damn time. 

You do not have the Right to make other people's lives worse just 'cause you think it's funny or profitable, Republicans. No, Fuck You.

It's not just that I don't want my partner or the kid to have to live with this shit. I don't wanna live like that!

I'm so tired of this crap.

And again, this kind of shit is what Republicans think makes "Great Men."

Narcissism and Sociopathy, basically.

Republicans crave the idea of America as a bigger version of the Biblical Sodom.

No.

Remember when your High School History teacher said "The course of human events changes because of the deeds of great men"?. Well the bitch was lying. Fuck Julius Caesar, fuck Abe Lincoln, fuck Mahatma Gandhi. The world keeps moving because of you and me: the anonymous. Revolutions get started because people don't have enough bread. Wars start over a game of checkers. ~Augustus Hill, from the HBO Series "Oz" S1, E8 "A Game Of Checkers."

Fuck that.

No.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

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

Scott Colom seems very much like he's That Guy who understands the mission. It's unfortunate that Republicans have forgotten it, if they ever knew it to begin with.

I remember.

Слава Україна!

When the men got up to leave, they looked down toward Sodom, and Abraham walked along with them to see them on their way. Then the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.”

Then the Lord said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.”

The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord. Then Abraham approached him and said: “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”

The Lord said, “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”

Then Abraham spoke up again: “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, 28 what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five people?”

“If I find forty-five there,” he said, “I will not destroy it.”

Once again he spoke to him, “What if only forty are found there?”

He said, “For the sake of forty, I will not do it.”

Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?”

He answered, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.”

Abraham said, “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?”

He said, “For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it.”

Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?”

He answered, “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.”

When the Lord had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home.

~Genesis 18:16-33

Five

[Kuiil and Mando have successfully repaired the Razor Crest with the parts recovered from the Jawas]

The Mandalorian: I can't thank you enough. Please allow me to give you a portion of the reward.

Kuiil: I cannot accept. You are my guest, and I am therefore in your service.

The Mandalorian: I could use a crew member of your ability. And I can pay handsomely.

Kuiil: I am honored. But I have worked a lifetime to finally be free of servitude.

The Mandalorian: I understand. Then... all I can offer is my thanks.

Kuiil: And I offer mine. Thank you for bringing peace to my valley. [leaves the ship and mounts his Blurrg; to Mando] And good luck with the Child. May it survive and bring you a handsome reward. I have spoken.

~From the Star Wars series; The Mandalorian, S1.E2 "The Child."