American Revelation (Part Two)

And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see.

And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword. ~Revelation 6:3-4

I ran into a friend of mine at work yesterday morning when I took the kitchen laundry over to the hotel, a lady I hadn't seen in awhile, and for that reason I'd wondered a bit if everything was OK. Her name is Virginia, she and her husband Henry have been very good friends of mine for years. They're immigrants. Henry is from Zimbabwe, Virginia (despite her strong African accent) is from the UK, though her father was a Black dude from South Africa. After the requisite couple minutes of small talk, I said "So, I've been wanting to talk to you, or Henry, about Zimbabwe, I saw that Robert Mugabe is gone. I watched the events of the Coup very closely...and I thought of Henry."

At that point, this old, chatty African lady exploded into joy. "Yes, Gone! It was beautiful. The best thing of all, no one died, there was no violence. Henry was very happy." I wholeheartedly agreed that it was a beautiful thing that all this happened without violence. I told her that I was just a little kid, not quite eight years old, when Mugabe became the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe. Virginia replied that she had just graduated from high school the year before. We talked a bit about the situation, she said that international aid has increased, and some of the expropriated land has been returned to white Zimbabweans, which she believed will motivate foreign investors and bring in needed capital, which will decrease the need for aid and help get the country on its feet. Virginia isn't an economist or even management where I work, she's a housekeeper. We covered all this stuff in a conversation that lasted five, maybe six minutes, while me and another dude were unloading a couple hundred pounds of laundry. Then Virginia gave me a hug, we agreed we had to make arrangements to hang out and talk more about this stuff, and she went to punch in for her workday.

The other dude, John, who barely follows American politics or economic stuff, was dumbfounded. He said "You know a lot about politics, don't you? I couldn't even imagine following that stuff in another country." I laughed "You should, it certainly could affect you."

See, there's more ties between Zimbabwe...or more properly, Rhodesia, it's white-dominated predecessor...and the American far-right than one might think. The exact kind of nuts that are now Trump Supporters are the same people who went over and fought for the Rhodesian Army or engaged in sanctions-busting, or otherwise supported the white minority government in the 1970's at the height of the Rhodesian Bush War. I'm talking about people like this damned nut. I'm talking about people like Robin Moore, who wrote the book on which the John Wayne movie "The Green Berets" was based, I'm talking about the fact that the US government violated its own sanctions to buy ore from Rhodesia and I'm talking about Soldier Of Fortune magazine.

These are the people who thought Nixon didn't go far enough...who thought that the Vietnam War should have...or could have, or would have...ended with mushroom clouds over Hanoi. As if the Chinese or the Soviets...both of whom would have lost people in such an attack...would not have responded with a retaliatory strike of their own somewhere.

Hell, their only answer to Communism was massive, naked force as well. Their answer couldn't have been better ideas...because they didn't have any. For all their love of it, they don't understand war. War is not about destroying things...war is about making the enemy break before you do...otherwise there would be no battle cries or war dances. War isn't about just destroying or killing...it's about doing so effectively. Otherwise, well, you get Vietnam, or the Soviet or American misadventures in Afghanistan. In such cases, all the enemy has to do is hang on until the invader poisons local public opinion against themselves enough...

But that's not really what it's about. Get used to that idea, that it's never really about what these people say it's about.

Anti-Communism was often, among far-right types at least, a racist dog-whistle. The UDI (Unilateral Declaration of Independence) government of Ian Smith, especially after they declared Rhodesia a Republic, cast themselves as the defenders of Christianity and Western Civilization, fighting against the hordes of Godless Communism. Sound familiar? Now, none of that is true, of course. Whether one sees it on Alt-right Nazi websites today or heard it from far-right politicians or the KKK back in the day, it's still bullshit. The Zimbabwean Nationalist rebels got a lot of help, training and weapons from the East Bloc, but that was who would help them. Funny thing but towards the end the Rhodesian government had no issues with buying Soviet-made T-55 Tanks from Poland, either, just like the Alt-right has no issues with accepting help from Russia now...even though Vladimir Putin was a KGB agent and steeped in "Godless Communism" himself.

The way this war worked, was that the Rhodesian Security Forces held the upper hand against Nationalist Guerrillas, while maintaining a reign of terror over the majority Black population, and the fighting was primarily rural. It went on this way from UDI in 1964 until the 1974 Carnation Revolution (a successful revolt by liberal-leaning NATO-trained military officers against Portugal's borderline fascist government following the death of dictator Antonio De Oliviera Salazar) led to the end of the war in Portugal's overseas colonies, including Mozambique. This deprived the Rhodesians of one of their two main sources of military supply and support (the other being South Africa) that was willing to break the arms embargo and it forced the government to start looking for a political solution to the war. Negotiations were somewhat successful, an internal settlement was reached, and a Black-majority government was installed, but the two main armed Nationalist groups were excluded...so they kept fighting and kept the pressure on. It worked, and after the Lancaster House agreement with the UK in 1979 the country reverted briefly to British rule and under the authority of (yes, Conservative) Margaret Thatcher's government...even though she personally sympathized with Rhodesian Whites...  which held to the stated policy of No Independence Before Majority African Rule) a more permanent solution was achieved. In 1980, Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, and Robert Mugabe became its Prime Minister.

Despite his socialistic rhetoric and acceptance of Chinese and Soviet aid, Mugabe adhered to a largely-conservative program...but one that fully included the Black majority in all respects. Faced with competition, a lot of the whites left in gradually increasing numbers, and Mugabe's seizure of land owned by white farmers in 2000 caused still more to leave. None of that helped anything, and Mugabe himself spiraling off into autocracy and greed made matters much worse. In fact only agricultural assistance and equipment provided by China helped Zimbabwe to begin to redevelop the skills to use the land properly. In the meantime, Zimbabwe is still a net-importer of food (where food was once a major export) but as my friend said, things have improved a little bit in the meantime, and there is hope for more.

What does any of this have to do with anything? Well, during the conflict it was quite common to see Rhodesian housewives out and about carrying sub-machine guns and such (so, along the lines of "This is the future conservatives want" yet again...) and as I've said before those people's rhetoric and that of white American conservatives are pretty damned similar. The fact of a changing international situation is also broadly similar, although current environmental problems add a variable that didn't exist (at least not on this level) forty years ago.

But on some level...the conservatives? They're largely the same or perhaps it's more appropriate to say that they've begun to revert to the kind of bullshit they were known for in the 1950's. Of course, that too started with the National Rifle Association back in the 1990's. Ironically, much of the worst of it happened under Charlton Heston's leadership. Now how a guy goes from marching with Martin Luther King Jr. for civil rights and protesting segregation...to dog-whistle racism and waving a gun around, I'll never know...Neoconservative or not.

Fuck, *I* used to be a Neoconservative and I couldn't support that type of shit. I let my own NRA membership lapse in 2000 because I thought they'd become too political and that was never what I signed up for.

I'm glad now, that I left when I did because (even though the craziness actually died down during the Bush years) it's gotten much worse lately.

One gets the vibe that these people just can't wait to shoot it out with their fellow Americans. What makes people want to do stuff like that? I'd submit that in retrospect, it seems fairly obvious that the farther-right one gets, the more racism becomes part of the program. Whether people intended for that to be the case, or it just happened, doesn't matter. We're there now. We have people who'd rather have kids killing kids, or mass shootings with almost 600 total casualties, than take a chance that they might actually be fully equal to Black folks...rather than merely legally equal. After all, as conservatives themselves are so fond of telling people, just because one makes a law about something doesn't mean that people will obey. I guess they'd know. They don't have to arm themselves and organize and shoot it out with the rest of us, all they have to do is provide easy access to weapons, including providing them to crazy people, and watch as crazy and malicious and stupid people kill other people for all sorts of dumb reasons.

It's population control through murder and suicide, that's what it is.

How else would Dylan Roof, a goddamned racist nut with legal issues and a drug problem, and who owned a jacket with a Rhodesian flag on it, get the handgun he used to kill nine African Americans in a church? According to none other than then-FBI Director James Comey, the only reason Roof was able to purchase his Glock .45-caliber handgun was lapses in the NICS background-check system, which is operated by the FBI. You know who resists any attempt to make that system work better? The NRA. That's who.

From the beginning, capitalism and guns have been intertwined with racism...but even these fools know that if they just went out and started killing black people, or gay people, or Muslims or poor people or whatever they'd get taken out real quick, and whoever of them survived they'd be put on trial for ethnic cleansing, genocide, mass murder...you name it. But no...aim it at an average of 30,000 random people per year, then recast it as mere corporate profit, and package it up with a good corporate lobbying game and an action-movie star or two (and the NRA board is loaded with them) and it's not only perfectly legal, but likely to be resoundingly popular, at least among those who think they could or should have had a shot at being action movie stars.

They know that at least some of those 30,000 people are going to be the people they don't like. They know at least some of those people are going to be people they consider a drain on the system. They don't care about the collateral damage, as long as it isn't them.

It's the same thing with homophobia. I always said that homophobia got to be such a thing because it wasn't cool for people to be racist anymore...and there's the added bonus that people of color end up being LGBT at about the same rate as everybody else...so they got to hand onto a little of their hatred for everybody else, too.

Guns and hate go way back, too.

The fact that something like 80% of Americans including a lot of conservatives want better gun control? That just gets lost in the mix, because the American system is tilted towards handing a megaphone to the crazy, the rabid, and the salacious.

The fact that all African-Americans or most of the rest of us want is a fair shake? They don't care about that, either.

In fact, at this point I'd wager that any resolution to any situation that doesn't result in a firefight is a disappointment to the fucking NRA. When all you have is a hammer, sooner or later everything starts to look like a nail.

It doesn't hurt that guns fir well with their mentality of authoritarianism and life as a zero-sum game, either.

"Do what I say, because I've got a gun" ...only works for as long as the ammunition holds out.

I'm a gun owner, I grew up around guns, and I say this is ridiculous.

The only reason that the Right to Bear Arms is being pushed to the point of absolutism...is because it's the one most easily capable of being used as a club to beat on all of the other rights of their neighbors, citizens and otherwise, immigrant or native-born.

Then, of course, there's the American political class (Left or Right, it often seems) and corporations and their love of war, as my inclusion of the picture of Henry Kissenger was meant to suggest, but regarding that issue...which of course could be many more posts of its own...I think I'll just say that these days, I'm really feeling like a lot of why we get ourselves involved in places like Afghanistan or Iraq or Vietnam...is because if the people who really drive this problem actually chose to invade Chicago...which Trump was actually dumb enough to bring up...or Los Angeles, Americans might notice, and stand up and do something about them. Republicans want to bomb North Korea because they know if they bombed California, they'd have a civil war on their hands, that they'd more than likely lose.

And after all, as far as Republicans are concerned, what good is spending all that money on weapons (or anything else?) if it doesn't keep them in power?

Remember, that's what all this crazy bullshit is all about, power.

But remember, too, that there's another way...and that when I spoke about these issues with an immigrant...that was the first place her mind went, without having to exhaust other alternatives.

...And that, right there, is a threat to those who wish to hoard money and power, who'd happily retroactively throw out Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan for their liberal heresies (such as working with the existing systems in the context of their time and place even when it didn't favor them, or doing what a majority of the people wanted) and who want to throw out any aspect of our system...up to and including naturally conservative-leaning parts of it like the Federal Bureau of Investigation...because adherence to (and rule of) law is also a threat to that power.

Change is coming, and these people started it, or will make it worse, depending on one's point of view. Conservatism in America is at least as dead as Ronald Reagan is.

We...the rest of us...had best come up with something new fast, before people's worst impulses start filling the void.

American Revelation (Part One)

American Revelation (Part Three)

American Revelation (Part One)

Revelation 6 King James Version (KJV)

6 And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.

2 And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.

You know, I'm a former member of the End Times Prophecy Movement...and also a former conservative Baptist (but from back when that meant something other than "Fundamentalist nut) and I used to be a Republican. Over the last couple of years, I've watched with interest that has slowly ramped up to increasing horror over the almost-worship of a Man (and throwing away every value they've ever claimed in his service) by my former party and many of the very same people who have (or claim to have) the same background and life experience as I do, and who claim political or religious views that spring from the same wellspring of thought as what I used to believe.

In the Book of Revelation, none of the Beasts described as originating from the Seven Seals signifying the initial judgement of God are ever described as being good or worthy of following. But then, I see pictures like the one I posted above...and I can almost imagine the adoring fawning by Trump Supporters over a person such as the one seated on the White Horse. 

For those who don't know, the End Times nuts usually take the First Seal judgement as signifying the "Anti-Christ" of "pop-Christian" thought. Yet here we have an image of Donald Trump standing on an outdated M-1 Abrams tank...looks to be an original M-1 (driving out of the surf with no snorkel kit and a paint job that in the real world says "bust my chops") while holding an M-82 .50 Caliber anti-materiel rifle as an improbably-armed Bald Eagle and a Vietnam-era UH-1 Iroquois helicopter provide air support against unseen foes and (apparently) an Iowa-class Battleship waits offshore. Firstly, I quite suspect whoever made this has about as much exposure to the physics of modern firearms, the United States military, or riding on top of any kind of large vehicle in adverse terrain as John of Patmos had. Secondly, if they've read Revelation 6, they obviously didn't comprehend its meaning one damned bit.

Why? Because they basically just drew Trump as an over the top modern version of the Man On The White Horse.

For anybody who has familiarity with the Book of Revelation, this should be setting off alarm bells.

Let me help you out here. Words have meaning. Starting with the horse...white is often a color associated with peace. The crown signifies that the man is a ruler, obviously. However, no nation or region is named. Note that he is given a bow...but arrows are not mentioned. He is sent out conquering and to conquer...but there is no army and no strategy described. What this has been taken to mean is that a ruler (of one nation or more often some trans-national organization like the United Nations) will claim peace and seize power by threats of force or other nefarious means.

When you actually break it down, this could easily describe somebody like Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin. But back in the 1990's any Fundamentalist nut would have told you it signified some European secular liberal or United Nations secretary general Boutros Boutros Ghali. 

Here's the funny part...Secretary General Ghali was an Egyptian Coptic Christian (and his wife was a Catholic) and Boutros is Arabic for Peter. So his name means "Peter, son of Peter" and in his own country he was the son of a former Egyptian Prime Minister, a lawyer who served as the foreign affairs minister and thus to much of the world, he was a very respected diplomat and university professor, and the founding Secretary General of the La Francophonie, the international organization of French-speaking countries...a fitting end to the career of a guy who did all his post-graduate studies in France. He believed deeply in peace, yet his tenure was marked by conflict, particularly the breakup of Yugoslavia and the Bosnian War.

Fuck, it's almost like American Fundamentalist nuts are classless, tasteless idiots or something. I think anybody who's paid attention for the last couple of years probably can see where I'm going with that. This is a perfect example of white American right-wing anti-intellectualism and racism and these people's minds stopping with the idea that a person with a "non-white" name (even though his name's English version is pretty damned common) who happens to be an Arab and is from another country is somehow something something gazpacho up to no good by default. Also, at the time, plenty of liberals-especially late night comedians-mocked the dude's name and a second term was vetoes by the Clinton administration (much to the outrage of the rest of the world.) So it wasn't just the conservatives who were against him. But that aside, minus a few of the variables being different, it's the same bullshit these people kept trying to slime Barack Obama with and he was born here and was, I think, somebody that a majority of Americans could relate to. But of course, to the average white American racist, somebody not being white invalidates everything else about them. Judging from how these idiots treated Obama...and looking back...you could safely say that to them, apparently any non-white, not obviously-far-right political leader is potentially the Anti-Christ. This is White Supremacy, right here. Never mind that Ghali was, and Obama still is, a Christian.

Ghali's funeral (with military honors provided by the Egyptian Army) was officiated by the Coptic Pope and the dude is buried at a church.

Some Anti-Christ, that guy.

Yet the same people that spewed this kind of dumb shit will hold up the obviously-irreligious old racist white man as a paragon of "Christian" values?

Now, of course, to most thinking people this literally makes no damned sense, and well it shouldn't.

Now, I think this sums up what was going on back in the day:

Situational Ethics

noun

PHILOSOPHY

plural noun: situational ethics

1. the doctrine of flexibility in the application of moral laws according to circumstances.
2. 
   

It's actually, come to think of it, a term that should be familiar to any observer of Republican politics that hasn't spent the last few months curled up on the couch with a Fifth of Old Ocelot bourbon.

When the Republican Party has decided that conservatism is whatever Trump does and whatever Trump does is moral and they resolve to defend it...that's Moral Relativism and Situational Ethics.

For the record, Situational Ethics was a concept a lot of us on the Right back in the day got pretty worked up about, claiming that fixed values and a strong moral compass were a better idea...for reasons that seem all the more obvious now...except it's the Democrats and the liberals who seem to be the ones who have them. Damn it, I feel pretty stupid, looking back. It turns out that damned near everything we accused the Clinton Administration and the Democrats at the time of has been exceeded by Trump & Co. to the point of ridiculous.

Granted, I'm now a registered Democrat and I voted for Hillary Clinton, but still...

I re-registered and voted the way I did for the last decade, because of my fixed values, because I've always believed that racism is wrong, I've always believed in truth, I've never liked Trump and I...a descendant of immigrants...have always supported immigration. 

This Situational Ethics crap has other dimensions, too.

For example, When a person demands Truth in a religious context...but is fine with having political leaders who like to lie to them and tell them what their carnal flesh wants to hear (even if on some level they know it's wrong) that's...wait for it...moral relativism and situational ethics.

When a White person demands that People of Color follow every aspect of the law...especially when their legalism lacks any concept of context, justice or morality...but then they break the law and support politicians who do so as well? That's situational ethics.

I was taught that, hey, that kind of bullshit is wrong. If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. "Being White" doesn't count as something to stand for, and I'm GOD Damned sick of these motherfuckers lighting everything they've ever claimed to value on fire for Donald Trump, racism and tax cuts.

We're past the point of "Cut that shit out." I honestly feel like the next step is consequences.

...

The Ferret Post (Prequel to this series.)
Part Two

This web of life. (American Revelation, Prequel)

Canada, the most affluent of countries, operates on a depletion economy which leaves destruction in its wake. Your people are driven by a terrible sense of deficiency. When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money. ~Alanis Obomsawin, Native American activist and filmmaker.

I'd like to take a bit of a break from my normal range of topics. Let's talk about ferrets for a bit. Meet Malik Daoud. His name is Arabic for King David, and he has that name because he was so small when I got him, and because I detest prejudice in all its forms and, at the time, an Arabic name seemed appropriate to make a statement about that. Ironically, Malik Daoud was also the nickname that the Iraqis applied to US Army General David Petraeus...so there was that element of irony as well.

The above photo was taken in December of 2015. I'd walked into the local pet store on a Wednesday morning, as I usually do (and have done for years) and they had two two new kits (baby ferrets) a Marked White Sprite (Spayed female) kit and this tiny little Cinnamon Gib (Neutered male) kit. Just a few minutes before this picture was taken, he was crawling around on the bottom of the ferret cage, pitifully crying for his Mommy, who I'm sure he was still missing after only a couple days of being in transit. I looked at his teeth...shockingly (although it is unfortunately fairly common to see this nowadays) the look of his short little baby-teeth suggested he was at most six weeks old. I decided to take a picture of him. The little dude fit in the palm of my hand, and used the opportunity of being left there to curl up and go to sleep. I carried him around that way for 20 minutes, before transferring him to the inside of my T-shirt. I wasn't looking to get another ferret that day, but I had the cash, and I couldn't leave him there. He didn't even need to go in the pet carrier. He slept curled up in my shirt all the way home. I would later have to give him his own food dish, with moistened kibble, which he attacked as if he had never seen food before.

There's a reason for that.

Malik is, as most pet store ferrets in the United States are, a Marshall ferret. Marshall farms is widely hated among knowledgeable ferret owners for a variety of reasons that could easily be a blog post of their own. But let's start with this: They produce (or have produced on their behalf) all sorts of ferret-related items, most of which are junk (although their hammocks and stuff are pretty decent) not least of all the food.

Don't believe what it says on the front of the bag. Trust me.

Marshall ferret food ranks solidly in the orange section on the More Dooks ferret food chart (you can Google this yourself or here's a link) meaning a ferret can live on it, but probably won't thrive. They sell basically everything to do with ferrets, and a good deal that has nothing more to do with ferrets than a picture of one on the container, and the food they put their name on is crap. Keep that in mind.

Also, keep in mind that none of this is the pet store's fault. The people who work there have mostly been good people, the animals they have are well cared for, the ferrets have a Ferret Nation cage, usually a good hammock or other thing to sleep on, the litter gets changed daily and the employees make sure they get out of the cage and are handled. That's the lap of luxury for a pet store ferret

I have 33 ferrets. Of those ferrets, 16 are owner-surrenders, rescues, re-homed or were sold to me by owners who no longer had time or the capability to care for them, but had the sense to know it. Of those ferrets, all but one are Marshall ferrets...as denoted by two green dots tattooed in their right ear. The other one was an owner-surrender via the same pet store who literally jumped into my arms and started dooking when I opened the cage.

Four of those Marshall ferrets have been less than eight weeks old and clearly not thriving at the time of sale. Ideally, baby ferrets should be with their mothers until at least eight weeks of age, though twelve weeks is better. Sometimes, as with several the pet store has had lately, the wee ones catch on quick, become socialized and do well. Sometimes, they don't.

Some people see a baby ferret as an adorable, furry little soul. Others see a baby ferret as $150 with fur on it.

I also have had two other ferrets that have died, Aella (3-year-old Dark-Eyed White Sprite and official Queen of All Ferrets, after a long struggle with ulcers and other stomach issues, topped off by the flu, and many vet bills) and Wulfgar (a very large Champagne Gib who died unexpectedly at 10 months of an undiagnosed heart condition according to his Necropsy. He was big, he was lazy, he only ever went to the vet for a checkup and we all missed checking for that.)

I feed my ferrets either Evo cat food (87% meat) Evo dog food (83% meat, but it's cheaper and they have bigger bags) or Orijen cat food (95% meat, but expensive) and I've tried them on Orijen dog food (85% meat, expensive, but cheaper than the cat food.) So, in all cases they eat very well. The "cheap" food (Evo dog food) is close to $70 for a 25-pound bag. That will last me about two weeks, and I keep a spare around.

A five pound bag of Marshall ferret kibble and a six pound bag of Evo dog food are the same price. You aren't saving anything by buying the bad food. There's no quality/quantity trade-off here. Marshall Farms just wants to stiff you on food that'll eventually kill your ferret, so that then you will go buy another one. This kind of "Company Store" bullshit in most other respects has been illegal since the Great Depression and the New Deal that resulted from it.

To me, and to most of my readers as well, especially those of us who live with this stuff...this is and should be nonsensical. It's a perversion of the purpose of life, really.

Also, a word about ferret foods in general...with the exception of Evo Ferret (discontinued) or Evanger's (wet food) most ferret foods are garbage. Ferrets are obligate carnivores and require meat or a meat based food...on the ingredients list, five of the first six ingredients should be meat, at minimum. Let me show you something:

Marshall ferret food is bad, but a ferret can live on it. Even if it'd be like a human living on mashed potatoes and gravy all their life. Do you see the problem here? "Fruit & Veggie Crunch Treat?" This stuff is poison and will kill a ferret. That is not a joke.

If you look at cat foods or dog foods, let alone ferret foods available at Wal-Mart (that's where this picture and the one of the Marshall kibble bag above were taken) most of them are horrible for your animals. This is a problem endemic to the pet food industry, which the FDA and USDA seem to consider an inconvenience to actually regulate.

...And that's when Republicans aren't in power. As we've seen lately, when Republicans are in power, they gut regulations, rape the earth, sell off federal lands, and promote the coal and oil industries...because that's who gives them money.

All people at my level get out of this, ever, is that Republicans promote racism and either passively or actively (under Trump) tolerate (or encourage) people being shitty racists.

Now, I have no idea who the owners of Marshall farms are or what their politics are...but as a ferret owner whose main contribution to this long-running struggle has been to save a few babies who never should have been there for me to buy in the first place, the only way to fix this problem is to elect Democrats or the rare Conservation-minded Republican and stay on them until they pass Federal laws that require decent conditions for commercially-raised animals, pet foods that the pets can actually eat, etc. nationwide.

...And some people don't understand why Republicans and their rich benefactors hate government so much on a conceptual level. The State, customarily backed by force of law, rule of law, and ultimately armed force...is the only power that can coerce decent behavior or obedience to laws and morals from rich people. The purpose of government is to protect the weak from the ruthless. Otherwise, what damned good is it?

Now, if you think Republicans or rich people have any better intentions for a human like me, who hangs on to the bottom rung of the Middle Class primarily due to the fact that I have a decent car and don't have any kids, than they do for ferrets...you have another thing coming. They want me to be poor, so that I have to devote even more of my income to basic survival, have less time to be aware and engaged with what's happening, and ultimately to price the few things (like ferrets) that make my life better out of my reach...because the only thing that makes a miserable bastard happy is making other people miserable. We've already had the experience of taking a dog-breeder approach to humanity. It was called Slavery and we fought a war to end it.

Hell, as my friend Aaron put it the other day, a big part of why Republicans and the wealthy have been able to hack away at the New Deal is because once racists couldn't deny the benefits of it to Black people, they basically decided they didn't want it anymore.

Now, if they really wanted to, for only a small increase in price, Marshall farms could keep kits with their Moms until they were 12 weeks old, they could make better food and not sell so much junk stuff that nobody needs, and they'd probably have a better reputation and, long-term, a more profitable business.

Just like the Republican Party, if it wanted to, or cared about its survival long term...could promote a more diverse, inclusive, tolerant form of conservatism, based around economics but also promoting religion in order to foster values and find a way to work for the greater good of everybody. Instead, no, they go for base greed, the path or least resistance, the short-term solution, the social heroin of fascism and racism, and whatever else will degrade this country, it's social fabric, and what have you especially if it will make money for their rich donors and keep their hateful, resentful followers pointed at whoever they don't like right now.

Take for example, the subject of immigration...which is, at this point, a necessity for this country if we want to continue to be able to pay Baby Boomers social security checks, much less continue to grow and innovate and be the powerful nation that we are. I've seen massive amounts of anti-immigration stuff posted by right-wingers on Twitter lately, and I think it's ridiculous. My Great Grandma Thompson was born in Norway in 1900. We're the world's melting pot, and diversity is...and always has been...our strength. People come from all over the world, and sign on to the idea of being an American. I don't think Trump and his supporters have a basic idea of immigration. I'm not sure they had the slightest idea what citizenship is. No, There is no American Volk, we don't share a common culture or language or religion or a thousand years of history. All we have is what we want to be.

Unfortunately some Americans want to be Nazis.

Some Americans think they'll profit from pain, and that justice will not come in this life or the next.

...And by profit, I mean they think they'll get money. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they cause far worse problems that cost far more than anyone earns or ever will. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are prime examples of this.

On a (usually) smaller scale, so are corporate abuses.

A ferret cannot help but be a ferret. They are literally incapable of being anything else.

But, it seems like if you wave a big enough wad of money under a human's nose, you can damned well get a human to not act like a human being.

Hell, you don't even have to go that far, sometimes, you can just tell them it's OK to hate somebody for no reason and some people will follow you straight to hell.

That's a hell of a way to run a railroad, it doesn't work long-term, and it's gone on far longer than it should have already. At this point, we can either hang together...or hang separately. If the rest of us hang together, we just might win.

Some days, you wonder how anybody can survive this insanity we've found ourselves in. I sometimes wonder if this country might come flying apart, and split into two or three smaller countries. But then, when you really look at it, there's more of us then there are of the assholes, and Trump doesn't have enough public support for his whole dictator schtick to take hold.

This little guy doesn't seem too worried. Of course he doesn't have any social media accounts or watch TV or deal with idiots all day.

This is Malik Daoud, today, fat, happy and healthy and part of a large, crazy family. I wonder sometimes if he even remembers where he came here from or how he got here. If he does, he doesn't seem too bothered by it.

But that's not the point, the point is we need to make it so that everybody has a shot at a decent life here...and it doesn't matter where they came from or how they got here. Everybody deserves to have a decent life...whether they walk on two legs or four. A human should not have to be born as the right color or the right station in life to live decently, a ferret should not have to hope that they luck into getting purchased by the right human. All that needs to happen to make things better for everybody is that those who already have too much learn to do with just a little bit less. You'd think people who have more money than they could ever spend wouldn't notice the difference.

"Make America Great Again" isn't a philosophy, it's a way to sell hats to morons. You want a philosophical data point to start with? I say, we need better justice.

Until we have better justice, economically, socially, and in terms of rule of law and even how we treat those who break it...the greatness of this country will not be fully realized.

We all come from the same Creator. Animals seem to understand this. We humans had better get with the program. If we don't, what are we even doing here?

Man does not weave this web of life. He is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. ~Chief Seattle.

Next up: American Revelation, Part 1

What communion hath light with darkness?

I've had the misfortune, in the last several days, of reading the comments attached to stuff on the Fox News Twitter feed several times, and (usually because I saw something so ridiculous that I had to speak up) also of posting there myself. Last night, in response to my response to a ridiculously racist comment, some jackass literally tried to tell me that ALL black people are either in gangs or on welfare. (I went to the guy's feed, to see if he was a bot or a troll and his entire feed was nonsensical far-right articles, including one that I Googled to find the same exact text and verbiage on dozens of far-right and racist websites across the world, I strongly suspect this was a bot, not a person) I blocked and reported him.  The problem, such as it is...is that whether he's a real person or an electronic creation of the Russian GRU, there is literally so much racist (and for that matter, anti-LGBT, sexist, etc. etc.) crap in the comments on the Fox News Twitter feed that it's hard to tell at this point.

The title of the article that caught my attention was literally a claim that teenagers in Sweden had taken to carrying rifles because of soaring crime rates, which the reader is supposed to believe are due to immigration. This is absolute horse shit, given that Sweden has (especially in comparison to the United States) a very low crime rate. Also, Sweden (like most European or other "First World" countries) has strict firearms laws which mandate licensing, including having to have a purpose for having a weapon (Self-defense not being a valid reason) safe storage and even prohibiting the carrying of firearms by civilians unless engaging in specific, legal acts such as attending a shooting range or hunting. Not only that, but police in Sweden are (by European standards, anyway) fairly heavily armed, they maintain good relations with their communities, and they'd be certain to both outgun and quickly arrest mobs of armed vigilante teenagers.

For extra points...the article itself was actually about someone supposedly throwing a petrol bomb at a police station in Malmo. There's nothing to indicate that actually happened, either. The closest thing I could find was an article about an alleged hand-grenade attack in the same city...but the people (not named in the article) who allegedly did it and were pictured being arrested looked pretty damn white to me.

Now, between this bullshit, the assorted right-wingers losing their shit over "Dreamers" and various other racist crap that I've seen in the past couple of weeks, combined with the fact that we're seeing large numbers of "Conservatives" and Republicans basically setting everything they've ever claimed to believe on fire in defense of Trump...I'm forced to make one simple conclusion:

For a majority of these people, all their "Conservatism" ever was, was cover for the racist bullshit.

Hell, given Trump's stated refusal to enforce and implement bipartisan Russia sanctions passed by Congress, the Nunes memo, and the fact that certain members of the far-right punditry are outright calling for a police state...I've become rather convinced that conservatism in the United States of America is basically dead. Certainly conservatism as I was taught it, and likely Christianity as well. have both been dead for awhile. I'm leaning toward placing the time of death somewhere between 2008 and 2012.

I'll go a bit further and say that I believe that racism ate both of them alive from the inside out. 50 years of the Southern Strategy probably didn't help...but the truth is, what it really took to create this situation was Donald Fucking Trump.

Yes, there are still some real, intelligent, relatively sane and obviously non-racist conservatives and Republicans (and for that matter, Christians) left...but none of them hold power right now and more than a few of those who I follow on social media (among them Bill Kristol and Max Boot) are noticing that they're now on the same side as the liberals and middle-of-the-road people and reevaluating their priorities accordingly.

That said, there's a substantial percentage of this country's population that seems perfectly willing to burn down this country and our civilization, to abandon every principle and teaching of Christianity, and to sell everything out to the Russians and even to give up their own rights, or the very concept of Truth itself, for the chance that they might get to call people of color racial slurs. I never realized that beliefs that I was taught were socially unacceptable and wrong (or words that I was never allowed to use) were just that damn important to people.

I have no tolerance for racism, but I like civilization, flush toilets, the internet and the ability to have pets that don't end up on the dinner table just fine, thank you.

These idiots don't seem to care that you can still get fired from your job for that shit. (Hell, one of my objections to not only "sexual potency and stamina" infomercials but Fox News on TV at work is that if I was on break and somebody saw something saying the same stuff on my Laptop, I could get fired.) They don't seem to care that acting or dressing like a Nazi in public can get you beat up, or at least might just stay with you forever and prevent you from getting a job anywhere that somebody has the sense to Google-search your name. Hell, they don't seem to care about anything but the cheap emotional thrill of being a racist asshole.

...And that, to a great extent, is the real problem. These people have spent all these years quietly pursuing the cheap, vacuous emotional thrill of racism and constant self-indulgent rage (for which they didn't have to do anything but be white) like that young dude who spends all his time looking at Anime porn and whacking off instead of going out and finding a job, finding a date, doing something constructive and otherwise contributing to and participating in society. These Fucking People assumed they would always be "on top" and so they did nothing. White conservatives did nothing to show their ways were better (or even any good at all) provided no leadership, expected to sit back and collect checks for nothing, and in general whenever anybody questioned them, they just got mad. In fact, starting around 20 years ago with ever-deepening hypocrisy, they started alienating any of their own who had a brain in their head and the will to think about what was going on.

Like me, a decade ago.

...And now that their parents are gone, or fading out, and generally passed from the scene as regards setting the tone, these idiots are wondering why the lights are going out and the world is moving on without them, and why instead of being "Great Again" under their so-called leadership, the United States of America has become the laughingstock of the world and the rest of the world is moving on without us.

In a lot of meaningful ways, especially as regards things like Climate Change policy and renewable energy, the rest of the world is simply ignoring us.

This virtually assures that we'll be back on-board as a junior partner in a few years when this crap is over. We will get told what to do by the British, and the Chinese, and the French...like some second-rate middle power...and we'll end up damned well liking it because we need to get back "in" to the international order of things and 25% of us traded away our position of international leadership for the chance to hate Brown people for a few more years...and half of our population just fucking let them by not voting.

You know, there's another way. There's been another way this whole damn time. All we need, is the will to face that truth. The choice is yours to choose between the light or the darkness with its fires. It is late, choose now.

• Americans of every race and color have died in battle to protect our freedom. Americans of every race and color have worked to build a nation of widening opportunities. Now our generation of Americans has been called on to continue the unending search for justice within our own borders. We believe that all men are created equal. Yet many are denied equal treatment. We believe that all men have certain unalienable rights. Yet many Americans do not enjoy those rights. We believe that all men are entitled to the blessings of liberty. Yet millions are being deprived of those blessings--not because of their own failures, but because of the color of their skin. The reasons are deeply imbedded in history and tradition and the nature of man. We can understand--without rancor or hatred--how this all happened. But it cannot continue. Our Constitution, the foundation of our Republic, forbids it. The principles of our freedom forbid it. Morality forbids it. And the law I will sign tonight forbids it. ~Lyndon B. Johnson, prior to signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

As for the sign? This is the future conservatives seem to want. Let's have the sense not to give it to them.

Cruel Truths.

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

I saw this on Twitter on Friday, some idiot on FOX News claiming that because a majority of kids in Arizona elementary schools are Latino, somehow the "Border had moved north." Funny thing, but the idiot who said that is Canadian, and last I checked Arizona was still part of the United States.

But there's two variables at work here. #1 According to FOX News, you have to be White to be an American, and #2 America isn't America if White Conservatives aren't a majority. Everything is a zero sum game, heaven isn't heaven if everybody gets to go...and of course, these motherfuckers think they should be the one who determines who gets to go.

Yo, there's a reason that according to the Bible, Man doesn't get a say in who attains Salvation or goes to Heaven or whatever. It's the same reason that previous generations spelled out this stuff on a Constitutional level...because if people like Tucker Carlson got to determine who went to heaven, or who became an American, well it's them and Donald Trump and whatever popular and rich people they agree with and everybody else...including most of those of us who meet the actual requirements and have lived here all our lives (whether we were born here or not) can go hang.

That's why, when they're operating functionally, both government and religion understand that there is a need to protect the average people from the ruthless people. If either government or religion won't protect the weak from the bastards...then why bother with them?

I went through the comments on this FOX News post, and I saw an awful lot of conspiracy theorizing and groundless fear...mostly of the kind that people gin up when they want to try to justify actions that they know are horrible or wrong.

There's an awful lot of talk here and there about this "Wall" that Trump thinks he wants. But let's get one thing straight right now. That wall isn't going to do one damned thing about changing demographics and all those millions of minority people and white liberals etc. etc. and other folks these people hate, who are already here, legally so, and who aren't going anywhere and who don't like them much. They see that the end is on the horizon, it's getting here much faster than anyone thought, and that scares the hell out of them...because they know they've been doing all type of sick and wrong shit for years and they're afraid the rest of us might start doing it to them. There isn't and never has been any thought in these people's heads of not being an asshole in the first place.

Let me tell you what's on these people's minds, really.

Collapsing the government, death camps, murder, segregation, and if they can't get any of that past the rest of us politically (and I have a sneaking suspicion that they know they can't) then there's always their go-to of civil war and they'll try to take it by force. Why the fuck do you really think these idiots so favor the defense contractors over the actual troops? Why do you think Mitch McConnell blocked the Democrats resolution to make sure that the troops got paid? As far as these assholes are concerned if the military (or any other of this country's institutions) isn't white conservative Republican by a comfortable enough margin...they can go hang along with everybody else as far as Mitch McConnell and the Republicans are concerned. If the number of white conservatives isn't high enough and they can't stack the deck hard enough (or they lose with a fully stacked deck like they did in Alabama) they'll just try to burn everything down and hope that by the time the rest of us have cleaned up whatever they've crapped all over, they can come up with some kind of new strategy.

Come on, why do you really think these assholes have switched from "Support the Troops" to "Support the Police." As soon as a majority of the troops voted Democrat in 2008, the troops, "support" for whom was always bullshit anyway...were no longer a political constituency. Now trust me, as soon as police officers start turning up with PTSD, too much bad press, an excessive number of unemployment claims, wanting to keep their Unions or otherwise needing anything...and gradually shift back to voting Democrat like a majority of them did years ago (I remember an awful lot of conservative anxiety about the Police way back in the early- to mid-1990's) then the Republicans will be on the hunt for somebody else to "Support" in order to buff up their agenda. Who that will be, anti-government insurgents or Nazis or whoever the fuck, I don't know, but I don't really want to speculate at this point.

What it comes down to, in the end, is that despite these people's protestations of religiosity and this and that...their true god is Discrimination, and their desire to abuse and hurt other people. They would rather kill and steal than live, and rather hate than eat. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that most of these cowardly shits are too afraid to do all that...so they want a government that'll do it for them. Never mind that our system doesn't really work that way, and mostly stopped enabling that kind of crap over 50 years ago...and as a year of Trump has shown it's damned hard, if not impossible, to reverse that kind of inertia on the scale they'd need. So what they're left with is Trump equivocating and half-ass enabling Russian active measures and American Nazi wannabes in the hope that somebody will come up with something before the clock runs out.

As usual, These Fucking People are trying to bullshit their way through...only this time they seem to be failing, miserably, publicly, and looking damned incompetent while they're at it.

...And there's some people who seem prepared to excuse or ignore it, oh sure, vote them out this time but let them have a crack at it again in 2024 when maybe they've learned to look more reasonable.

Hell, I said last week that if Jeff Flake switched parties, he'd probably gain more than he'd lose and have a reasonable shot at getting elected President as a Democrat, because some people just don't want to learn anything.

Conservatives (insofar as that term has any real meaning anymore) and Republicans have lost the culture, they've lost their treasured "Culture Wars" and they know it. They'll try and impose their bullshit in small ways, but that too will fail and ultimately be reversed by the next administration, and they know it. They've lost the demographics, and they can build all the fences and mine fields and guard towers and machine gun nests they want...but in large parts of the country the next generation (not to mention the current ones) is already more diverse, more black, more brown and those kids are already American citizens and they know it.

...And this fake-populist crap has Republicans looking a lot more like East German Communists than anything I was taught a Republican should be.

But the root of populism is that weak-willed people want a government that will fight their demons for them, no matter how illusory and unreal those demons are.

So there's people like this asshole, trying to claim that God will have former Presidents executed for criticizing Trump. This is the same kind of crap my ex-wife would pull...trying to weaponize God as her own personal enforcer...but I didn't believe that kind of crap then and I don't believe it now, either.

Let me tell you how this is going to end up. Before this is over, I think Trump's hard-core supporters are going to end up worshiping him as a god. Whether they or he declares him to be so, I'm not quite sure. I see an old, cognitively and mentally declining man who ended up in the most high-pressure job in the world and who is not handling it well, and I think he might snap. I see MAGA-hat types and religious nuts slowly realizing that this isn't going to work out, and I see both the Republican party and the Republican voter base slowly, inexorably shrinking.

But there's that small group that keeps doubling down...and doubling down again when called on it.

Those are the people I imagine forming an Imperial Cult around Trump.

There were hundreds of thousands of people (probably millions altogether) in the streets because of the Women's Marches over the weekend.

With the government shut down...people get hella mad at the slightest hint of the Democrats caving to unreasonable and/or racist Republican demands...and as well they should.

We, the People, are getting tired of this shit-show.

We need to dig in and start holding these assholes accountable and hold their feet to the fire and stop this ridiculous shit.

And when this is over we need to treat the MAGA hats and the Republicans the way that the Dutch and the French and all those other European countries that were conquered by the Nazis treated their collaborators. Humiliation, No forgiveness, no mercy, pain. Then expect, Euro-style, that the Far-right is still going to start trying to weasel its way back into government in a generation or three, and guard ourselves accordingly.

Expect a lot of weird, cult-like stuff from them along the way. I'm talking about like the French extremists who stole Marshal Petain's coffin in 1973 with intent of re-burying it at Verdun...level of cult-like weird shit.

As the saying goes, if you're not angry, you're not paying attention. People are going to have to be angry, stay angry and stay engaged, and most of all, vote these sons of bitches out and be prepared to stay active and make sure they don't get back into power.

The cruel truth is, we might as well get used to the idea, because now that these assholes have had a taste of power, undiluted from the norms that were ironclad even as of the last Republican presidency (and remember, George W. Bush made me stop being a Republican) they will never stop trying to get it back.

We might as well settle in for the long haul and then hang on like an irate, jaw-locked weasel, because if we don't, they will. I'm going to be honest, with the rampant unhinged racism that I've seen over the weekend in some places, I wouldn't put it past right-wingers to start killing brown kids.

As a friend of mine put it the other day, what with all the broken promises, dashed expectations and let-downs of the Trump administration, racism is all they have left.

I was taught that racism is wrong.

But the cruel truth is that, fundamentally, racism is America's original sin. There's obviously some people don't want to let that shit go.

Well, fuck them. There's more of the rest of us.

It's time we started acting like it.

If we don't, we're dead.

City on a hill.

So, last night while I was on break at work, I saw this. It's funny, that the first thing that popped into my head was some Bible verses, being that I'm not exactly religious, but that's what happened. I can't say with any certainty what Tucker Carlson believes about anything except that he seems to think being smarmy and obnoxious is generally a good thing. But in any case, I (being a former Christian, former conservative and fairly well-versed in how Republicans being those things for a lot of years related to U.S. foreign policy...it's an understatement to say I was shocked.

This is what I was taught, this right here:

 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which spitefully use you, and persecute you;

That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?

And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

~Matthew 5:43-48

You got that?

As a former conservative Christian, I'm beginning to wonder what happened to basic familiarity with the Word (not to mention a baseline sense of morality) that people would even say shit like "It's not our job to stand up for other people." Oh hell yes, it is.

My second response was to post "Tell that to all the American soldiers who died liberating Europe from the Nazis, or who died in the jungles of Vietnam standing up for those who could not or would not stand up for themselves, you son of a bitch" directly as a reply to the post on Tucker Carlson's Twitter feed.

I grew up hearing the stories of my grandfathers and other veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam. I grew up not only aware of and attentive to (because it was on the news every day) the reality of the Cold War and all the international engagements of the postwar liberal democratic order of things that we ourselves had set up...but I had come of age, was politically active and aware and paid attention (because I had to, as they directly affected my job and life at the time) and was there for all the bumps and bruises of the 1990's and particularly the Clinton years when all the dust settled from all the stuff I grew up watching on TV as a kid. 

In other words, you're damned right that America exists to protect the citizens of other nations. Why else did we found, lead, and in the long-term remain a member of NATO or the United Nations? No, we haven't always done a good job, but in general, we step up more often than we don't. We don't always do things the right way, and we are often too quick to use force...but you can't even do that effectively anymore without international engagement.

More to the point, international engagement generally depends on the principle that everybody at least thinks that that Man Behind the Curtain knows what in the hell he's doing.

Trump blows the cover off of that idea on a daily basis. Take for example his reference to countries populated primarily by Black and Brown people as "Shithole" countries. Now, that there's some level of racism at work here ought to be obvious, and the various Republican denials of this are ridiculous, and the fact that the Senate is apparently holding hearings about this (while necessary) is equally ridiculous because it never should have been said in the first place. Needless to say, this is not going over well in Africa, or in Haiti, or in Latin America...but it went over big with Trump's base of ignorant, racist imbeciles...which is presumably why he said it. 

Let us not forget that current Republican policies are absolutely aimed at turning the United States of America into a Third World shit hole, because theoretically that will reduce the tax burden on the rich...though I'd argue that it'd also greatly reduce their power, their personal safety, and very much also the amount of protection they have. It's hard for a third world nation to maintain even a tiny percentage of the advanced military capabilities that the United States Armed Forces has...let alone the education and social support needed to produce people who can become the soldiers that use those capabilities properly, much less effectively.

Leaving aside the fact that the President seems to be openly striving to only be popular with idiots and racists, where the rubber meets the road is that I've personally gotten an earful about this from people that I know who live in other countries.

Not exactly how I want to spend my day, but I'm not going to ignore people or their entirely legitimate feelings and opinions about an issue just because it's inconvenient. Reality by its very nature is inconvenient and if that wasn't the case, then alcohol and drugs wouldn't be so popular, would they?

We all live in a global society, whether we want to or not. The world does not ask if you like it before you are born into it and no amount of ignoring that, or pretending it doesn't exist or small-pondism will ever make that fact go away. You can resent the hell out of all the "Made in China" crap that Wal-Mart sells, but the reason they can sell it and you can afford it is because it's cheaper due to lower labor costs over there. 

The thing is, there will come a day when those Chinese workers stand up and demand better working conditions, higher wages, and that their government live up to the philosophy it claims to follow.

At that point, it'll be better for everybody if we've kept the ball rolling on progress and worked to remedy the inequality and other social problems that plague our own society...because the Chinese, or the Russians or any other actors on the international stage can point to our behavior either to condemn us or to justify their own actions, right or wrong. America electing a boorish, lying, tacky rich racist pig of a President probably is not going to help with that.

We don't stand up for others, or treat other nations or people with respect because it's convenient or popular or profitable at the time. We do it because it's the right thing to do and because (for most of my life anyway) we've followed a policy of enlightened self-interest.

The rest of the world is never going to let us live this crap down, and well they should not.

What happened to us, and to American conservatives in particular, that we have forgotten who we were, in favor of such insular and bitter visions? 

Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.

Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. 

~Matthew 5:14-16

Do you know who else used Matthew chapter five and the vision of America as a "City on a hill" as a guiding light? Ronald Wilson Reagan, that's who.

Tucker Carlson ain't fit to hold Reagan's hat while he takes a leak.

The hell with these fucking people, and the hell with their small-minded selfishness.

The Bottomless Pit

Then the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star from heaven which had fallen to the earth and the key of the bottomless pit was given to him. He opened the bottomless pit, and smoke went up out of the pit, like the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke of the pit. ~Revelation 9:1-2

It's Martin Luther King day, and this was the first thing I saw when I got up this morning and logged into my social media accounts. Before we go any further, I want anybody and everybody who reads this to let that sink in. Think about it long and hard. I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. Think about how fucked up that is, do it now, take as long as you need.

Here we have a productive member of society, a man with a family, a home and a job, who has probably paid his fair share in US taxes being deported for reasons that, fundamentally, are not his fault.

Then there's this fucking guy, right here. "LA Werewolf" who I guess is some kind of internet Nazi or Youtube something-or-other who has to quit the far-right internet sausage fest because his parents are forcing him to get a job. I think it's kind of hilarious that he refers to this as "resigning" to "civilian life." As if the closest this guy ever got to either the military or a professional job wasn't renting "American Sniper" from a shady video store late at night one time when he got bored with beating off while watching Anime and they were out of pornos.

I suspect working at the local Jack-In-The-Box is probably going to be an educational experience for this dude, especially when he realizes that both the staff and the customer bases of such places are largely people of color, and an awful lot of the asshole managers are the white ones.

I would, in fact, like to point out yet again that in my own life experience as a former conservative, having a job, paying your bills and being a productive member of society (regardless of color, creed or station in life) was fundamentally what the entire damned deal was based upon. Living in your parents basement, not paying your bills, and spending your time surfing the internet instead of being productive? That doesn't qualify, and if I'd have told any of the older people who educated me on this stuff that one could get paid for such a thing, the very least I could or would expect is to get laughed at.

I can imagine my Grandma pointing out "Well if he can get paid for it he can have his own place, can't he?" You know, logic.

But then, it occurs to me that the absolute last thing modern conservatism is about is being a productive citizen. The rich assholes at the top basically want to colonize the rest of us and sit back and collect the checks, and this has spread downward to the masses of idiots that follow the political party they control. There's another word for that: Parasite.

Then of course, there's this ridiculous shit. You remember what I wrote about Steve King last year, right? The notoriously racist Iowa Republican Tweeted this earlier today, and has put up several similar posts since: 

Don't ask what I think about that. You don't want to know and I'd rather that this essay didn't devolve into an unending stream of profanity. This son of a bitch, who has openly said that more Americans should read the racist French novel "Camp of the Saints" is posting MLK pictures and civil-rights quotes? What's next? Pol Pot and Josef Stalin take turns reading from the Bible? I mean, come on, fucking seriously? You know what? I'm actually not sure what this does more, generally offend me or simply insult my intelligence. I know these people like their whitewashed, inoffensive mythology about the Civil Rights movement, but damn. The simple fact is that 50 years ago, Steve King would have sided with the Southern racists and there's no doubt in my mind about that subject. Why? Because that's how the motherfucker acts today, in this day and age, publicly. After all, this is the guy who publicly said that Mexican immigrants had "Calves the size of Cantaloupes" from smuggling drugs across the deserts of the US Southwest.

Yeah, fuck that guy, I don't give a damn what he has to say about anything.

If I said something like that, I would expect nothing more and nothing less than an ass whuppin.' 

Go ahead and try to tell me that not only all this Trump bullshit, but most of the current Republican party and the far-right more generally isn't all about the damned racism. Go ahead, I'll wait.

There's only one way to fix this, and that is that white America needs to get its head out of its ass. This racist, path-of-least-resistance, no-one-takes-responsibility bullshit is going to do nothing more than enable the worst elements of our society...and yes I'm talking to you, Republicans who are choosing to retire rather than stand up. We have a real problem, and that is that a small, but still statistically significant portion of American idiots get their dicks hard at the thought of ranks of goose-stepping soldiers...and if you think those people won't eventually come for the other conservative white folks, you have another thing coming.

It's like, the only future some people can imagine is destruction.

Funny, but it's often people of color who are the first to articulate a different vision of the future that works better for everybody.

Old pirates, yes, they rob I
Sold I to the merchant ships
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pit
But my hand was made strong
By the hand of the Almighty
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly
Won't you help to sing
These songs of freedom?
'Cause all I ever have
Redemption songs
Redemption songs

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds
Have no fear for atomic energy
'Cause none of them can stop the time
How long shall they kill our prophets
While we stand aside and look? Ooh
Some say it's just a part of it
We've got to fulfill the Book.

~Bob Marley, Redemption Song.