Lord Of The Flies.

Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is his name:That strengthens the spoiled against the strong, so that the spoiled shall come against the fortress. They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly.

For as much therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them.

For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right.

~Amos 5:8-12

Seriously, ya'll. what is it with "Christian" schools in Kentucky?

A couple days ago, a bunch of teenagers from a "Christian Academy" in Lexington, KY, posed with a cardboard cutout of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, pretending to choke and grope the cutout.

I would just like to point out that if I'd done something like that at that age and my Grandma would have found out about it, I'd have been sent out into the woods with instructions to pick a switch for her to beat my ass with. It's not that we were all that "woke" in modern terms. That set of grandparents was old school conservative Democrats, I was a young moderate Republican. It's simply that this kind of behavior is wrong, and where I come from, abuse of women...or joking about it or the simulation of it...was not tolerated.

As I've said in the last couple days, there were times I got in hella big trouble for a lot less than this.

Back in January I wrote about the Covington Catholic school kids incident at the pro-life march in Washington D.C.

And then this stupid shit just happened.

Seriously, how is this kind of behavior "Christian?"

What kind of Lord Of The Flies bullshit program are these schools running?

For any who've never read it, the novel Lord Of The Flies by British author William Golding is about a group of British schoolboys, marooned on an uncharted jungle island during a war...generally assumed to be World War II. The boys start out organizing and electing leaders, but soon a majority of the boys turn idle and devolve into base tribalism and superstitious fear of a mythical "Beast" that unscrupulous leaders manipulate to maintain control of the "Tribe." They end up hunting down and attempting to kill those who sought to maintain civilization, until at the last moment the boys are rescued because a passing warship has detected the smoke of fires the boys set on the island. The story ends with the boys weeping over their lost innocence.

I suspect, intentional or not, that there's an allegory in there somewhere.

I strongly suspect that when American and British conservatives either realize, or start facing consequences for, the things that they've done...that there's going to be a lot of weeping. When these fucking people realize they've pissed away whatever credibility they had for generations...or maybe forever...I wonder if they will stop and think about it as the boys did when an armed Royal Navy officer stood before them and asked why they were behaving in such a warlike fashion...

And then even the officer turned to stare awkwardly at his own warship.

Nah, I rather doubt most modern conservatives are capable of that much introspection or self-awareness....let alone remorse.

Oh, wait, here's House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy ripping into Joaquin Castro for Tweeting already publicly available Republican Donor information.

And like a teenage boy being questioned by Mom when she finds online porn purchases on the credit card statement, suspicious stains on bed sheets and too many tissues in the garbage can, McCarthy accuses and projects.

What he's really saying is how dare you point out publicly available information to, ya know, the public!

It's like that old Calvin & Hobbes strip where Calvin didn't study and when he gets called on by the teacher he just stands up there by the blackboard shouting random answers.

Except that Republicans aren't just not doing the work, here, they are also having bottomless contempt for the American people, you know...the people who elected them and whom it's actually their job to try and govern.

All too often they...and their followers...don't want to do the work. The funny thing is, they don't want anybody else to do it either.

There is a subset of Americans of all social classes, that really does not want to do the hard work and heavy lifting of life. They're the people who go to work and then walk around and play on their phones as much as possible, The guy you offer something to and then it sits there for a week and when you remind him, oh, he forgot. They're the members of Congress that, once elected, really don't seem to do much of anything but try to keep their place in the magical city. They're the reporters who care more about keeping their TV show or stirring up the mob than they do about the truth, which is supposed to be their job.

They're the people who, instead of standing up for what they know they should, make false equivalencies and say dumb shit...when what we actually need is the truth, or at least a firm moral stand.

And if you wonder why we have Christian school kids acting like ungodly little shits and glorifying the abuse of women and various other evil deeds, look no further than Kevin McCarthy and Moscow Mitch McConnell.

There was a lesson that I learned much earlier in life that the character of an organization, of a unit..of whatever...flows from the top down. Therefore, it's important to make sure that you have competent leadership that's of decent character.

If you have shitty citizens you get shitty leaders, which creates more shitty citizens.

The funny, sad, part here is that all of these people claim to follow a God and a holy book that describe their expectations of what good character is, in some rather stark terms, with harsh consequences for those who refuse to obey.

I guess they hope that publicly-available information isn't Tweeted or otherwise pointed out to the public either.

If you want a better country, YOU have to be a better citizen...and yes, a better person.

Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord! to what end is it for you? the day of the Lord is darkness, and not light.

As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him.

Shall not the day of the Lord be darkness, and not light? even very dark, and no brightness in it? I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies.

Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols.

But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.

~Amos 5:18-24

I'm sick of God.

Thou Shalt Not Kill.
~Exodus 20:13

I have a confession to make.

I'm sick of God.

I'm sick of "Thoughts and Prayers."

I'm sick of death and mass murder for no reason, or because of some punk ass being radicalized by racist twerps on the internet.

I'm sick of profit being more important than human life.

And I'm sick of the people who say they believe most ardently in the entity that gave us the Ten Commandments being the most tolerant of their flagrant violation.

I'm sick of Republicans can't be arsed to get off their asses and do their jobs, or because half the citizenry can't be arsed to vote these motherfuckers out even though when you add easy access to weapons to the proliferation of toxic ideologies it very obviously equals mass murder.

So why aren't you?

There were two mass shootings this weekend, one in El Paso, TX on Saturday morning and another in Dayton, OH in the small hours of this morning.

Prayer in schools would not have stopped this crap.

It's funny how conservatives and religious nuts can wax so eloquently about "God" and this and that and the other thing, but in the real world their vision of "God" is strangely absent, and often in reality it's nothing more than the thinnest of covers for nothing more than shitty ideology.

When it's God vs. Murderers, in this life anyway it seems like the murderers usually win. But then, just like back in the day, you give the mob a choice between Christ and the murderer and they'll choose the murderer.

The El Paso shooter wanted to stop the "Mexican invasion of Texas" and prevent his "beloved" state (which he obviously didn't love enough to not murder the people who lived there, or who visited and shopped) from becoming a "Democrat stronghold." Note that as I've said before the vast majority of Latinos are Christians, and could very easily be won over to the conservative side, but for one small variable the Republicans themselves utterly refuse to abandon.

Racism.

When even somebody like Tea Party Joe Walsh can admit that White Nationalism is our greatest terror threat...and in so doing agree with somebody like Roland Martin...I think it's time to admit that we have a problem when it comes to racism and white nationalism.

We had three mass shootings this week. The El Paso shooting and another in Gilroy, California, specifically appeared to (or explicitly did) target Latino people.

The motive for the Dayton shooting remains unknown, but six of the nine fatalities were African-Americans and one of the white people that was killed was the shooter's own sister. It IS known that the Dayton shooter was a violent bully with a history of threatening people, who was mostly ignored by the Police and those in power.

This seems to be an awful lot like how those in power tend to ignore high-school bullying, or college sexual harassment, or Nazis marching in the streets...until it becomes inconvenient for them.

Just as too many of those in power now ignore growing threats to our country, because dealing with them would upset the status quo in some way.

Listen, we already have a fucking problem. We have 30,000 gun-related deaths per year here in the United States of America.

I am here to tell you that, in this day and age, if we were suffering that many casualties per year in a war...something about our strategy and tactics would change or the war would end in a negotiated settlement of some kind, real fast.

So why doesn't it now? I keep hearing that the NRA is going down the tubes, every so often they shut down some part of their organization or the services it offers, and they (like much of conservatism, oddly enough) now seem increasingly dependent on dark money infusions of Russian cash.

Seems to me like some people are so determined to hang on to the status quo, to keep their places in the magical city...that they no longer give a fuck in the least about the society that holds it up.

I mean, seriously, the service rendered and the taxes paid by Black and Latino citizens are, in real terms, just as good as those paid by white citizens. A visitor from Mexico day-tripping in El Paso to buy groceries pays sales tax just as much as a white resident does, do they not?

It seems to me like we've reached the point where some people would prefer to break America into multiple parts just because they don't like how their citizens look.

And how much fucking sense does that make, really?

It sometimes seems as if the reason that the Alt-Right Nazis or the NRA or this or that shitty conservative organization is going down the tubes is because the Republican Party itself started broadcasting the same bullshit and cut out the need for any sort of middleman altogether, leaving the other guys with no purpose.

And that's a worse problem, because it's leading to the Republican Party, one of the two primary components of our own political system, condoning and enabling terrorist attacks against Americans.

And that includes white people...it already has.

I've said before, that when these people start shooting they're not going to stop and ask what your politics are, they really don't care what color you are, because what they really believe in is the  gun.

Politics, race, religion and all that...not to mention specific issues like abortion or anti-government ideology...do however furnish a convenient list of targets.

However, as of 10:40 A.M. yesterday we now have specifically racist terrorists.

Like Rick said if it was Muslim terrorists doing this we'd already be flooding the battlespace with Law Enforcement, Cyber-warfare and JDAM's.

And if America is to remain America, it's going to have to come down to the same thing against white supremacist terrorism...because trust me, among other things, there will be no such thing as White Enough when it comes to these motherfuckers.

It's 2019, people, and we'd best accept that. There are too many people who won't...who can't...go back to what things were like in, say, 1949...and our economic and social systems could not bear the cost of such in any case.

But since we've apparently reached the point where the Turner Diaries have far more influence over Conservatism than the Bible, or Atlas Shrugged...it won't be just people of color, or various non-Christians, or women, that these people go after. It will be everybody who doesn't join their cult. They're already basically broadcasting that.

They don't give a shit if their ideology destroys the country, or even the world. They want to squat in the ruins with their guns and shit on their own shoes, because it vindicates some stupid ideological point or something.

White Supremacy is Evil. White Supremacy is Terrorism.

And we'd best start treating it accordingly.

Fuck your "Thoughts and Prayers."

Now is a time for action, before we all die.

From Tail-gunner Joe to Moscow Mitch

Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"
~Joseph N. Welch, US Army general consul, to Joseph McCarthy.

So, Mitch McConnell doesn't like being called "Moscow Mitch."

He calls it "McCarthyism" that Democrats and even some Republicans are calling him out for blocking various election-security bills, and saying that he's Un-American.

Never mind that the Russian corporation RusAl is building a huge aluminum plant in Kentucky. If one wants to get really technical, given who RusAl is owned by, oligarch Oleg Deripaska, and his relationship to the Russian government and Vladimir Putin, the fucking thing damn well ought to be named the "Hero Of Socialist Labor Mitch McConnell Aluminum Factory."

And the son of a bitch...whose party is currently bent over with the Russians balls deep in them, kept aloft on a sea of Commie dark money and information warfare...has the nerve to get mad?

There's a reason, as I've said before, that I keep using that word. Vladimir Putin was a KGB agent. There are no ex-KGB agents, the KGB was the "Sword and Shield of the Party." Putin has even gone so far as to revive Josef Stalin's personality cult and reintroduce "Young Pioneers" style youth programs as well as making extensive use of old-school KGB tactics, but updating them to the Information Age.

Say what you will about old Joseph "Tail Gunner Joe" McCarthy. That motherfucker at least understood that Communists and Russians were the fucking enemy.

Granted, the actual reason for Joe McCarthy's anti-Communist witch hunts was basically demagoguery in the service of building his own power base. He accused an awful lot of people, actually mostly his fellow Republicans...of being Communists.

Like Donald Trump, he was hugely popular with a certain type of authoritarian assholes.

Joe started out as a local judge, served as an officer in Marine Corps aviation in WWII (where his actual nickname was a lot less flattering than the one he would later try to give himself) and ran for Senate after the war. His first few years in the Senate were unremarkable, he was considered a moderate Republican but was also an engaging speaker and thus he ended up giving a lot of speeches around the country on various topics. His national notice and resulting fame came from an incident in Wheeling, West Virginia, where he held up a sheet of paper that he claimed had a list of 205 Communists on it that supposedly worked for the State Department. That was on February 9th, 1950.

McCarthy spent the next four years or so bullying, showboating, and picking huge public fights with the Army, the CIA and the State Department, until it all came crashing down when the televised Army-McCarthy hearings revealed him to be a cruel, reckless, small man who sought to do nothing more than build up his own power by hurting other people. He was ultimately censured, and became a public nonentity while serving out the rest of his second term before he died of Hepatitis stemming from his alcoholism in 1957. Aside from a small number of far-right motherfuckers who've tried to act as his apologists down through the years...his name and legacy remain so soiled that even Mitch McConnell can comfortably use it as an epithet.

Ironically, a Democrat won the special election to replace him and then remained in office until 1989.

But the tendrils of Joe McCarthy's influence seep down to today. For one thing Roy Cohn, his lawyer, later mentored one Donald J. Trump.

So yeah, I think it's rich that any Republican...much less the current batch that spends its time fear-mongering about Communism and Socialism (while breaking America in the service of a Communist!) would have the guts to accuse anybody else of McCarthyism.

Again, for the 100,000,000th time, the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the Soviet Union fell on Christmas Day of 1991. Even the Chinese aren't really Communists anymore.

All that the accusation of Communism or Socialism by Republicans against Democrats is, is a stick to beat them over the head with and a trope to fool the feeble-minded reactionary white idiots out there.

You know, the people who Republicans basically steal from the most while dealing them backlash politics and racism like some backwoods Kentucky heroin dealer offering a free hit to the rail-thin lady that's paid up her debts and sworn to kick the habit that she picked up after her health insurance and Opioid prescriptions ran out when she couldn't go back to work after the accident.

Tell me one thing, people: Has blame or hate or nativism or racism or voting for the party of big business and tax cuts solved any ONE of the problems that you actually have?

Republicans, for all of their power, keep constantly acting like angry losers. There's still a steady trickle of people leaving, and I kind of feel like all of Trump's efforts to consolidate power and protect himself using the executive branch really aren't going to amount to anything...not least because just like everybody else the number of actual people in those agencies who support him is decreasing.

Even as one third of us drinks deeply of the Trump-cult Flavor-aid on the daily, two thirds of us are consistently against him. Every day there's some new stupid scandal, and both a panoply under-the-radar economic warning signs and a plethora of un-addressed international threats...all of which have been ignored and would likely be handled very badly by These Fucking People.

And to top it off, if the Republicans don't put the brakes on the divisive talk I think there's an excellent chance that by November of next year, Americans could be shooting at each other and each side might hold separate elections in its own territory.

And that seems to be a feature of, rather than a bug in, Republican plans.

for all of the Democrats' herd-of-cats affect, I have a feeling they're most likely going to nominate somebody that's relatively moderate...yet scrappy...like Elizabeth Warren or Joe Biden.

AOC, Ilhan, Rashida, etc. represent a substantial part of the Democratic electorate...and each seems to be popular enough in their own districts that they're likely not going anywhere anytime soon.

But they're all junior House Reps, who knows where they're going to go in the long term?

If *I* were a Republican strategist, I'd be striving to make Marianne Williamson the face of the Democratic Party, not the Squad.

Of course...just like even the Chinese aren't really Communists anymore...Republicans aren't really conservatives or religious people or any of the other things they said they were for all those years.

Here's the thing though, having actual positive principles other than your own self and what's best for your ego or your wallet will keep you going through one hell of a lot of adversity.

Most of these motherfuckers can't even stand up to accurate criticism or exposure, for fuck's sake, just like Tail-gunner Joe couldn't.

We'd best remember that, and act accordingly.

Party like it's 1959

 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 embedded 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, Civil Rights Act signing speech.

On Saturday, Trump attacked Representative Elijah Cummings on Twitter.

I'm fucking serious when I tell you this garbage reads to me like something out of 1959, not 2019.

The racist tropes are all pure old-school Southern Segregationist crap, anyway.

Today, for no damned good reason, Trump started shooting off his mouth about Al Sharpton. Why?

I have no fucking idea, to be honest. You tell me how the hell Rev. Al is relevant these days...or indeed, ever has been. Don't get me wrong, I kinda like the guy, he's pretty much that harmless old bullshitter minister that anybody with a church background will have dealt with at some point. He doesn't mean any actual harm...but he's not above using his position for his own gain a little here and there. Speaking as a former Christian, I might kinda like the guy, but I'm gonna watch his hands when he reaches in the cookie jar. Still, he's far less malevolent or even outright corrupt or political than Jerry Falwell Jr. for example. So far as I know, there's no pool boys or shady affairs or "arrangements" in Al's past and if there were, I'd more or less expect he'd be up front about it, in a "Hey, I might as well enjoy part of God's Creation" sort of way.

And speaking of bullshit artists, as Trump himself observes here, Rev. Al has associated with both Don King and himself in the past. Remember that, Trump doesn't have associates or friends, he only has people he hasn't betrayed yet.

His supporters should remember that.

The Evangelicals should remember that.

And the Republicans should remember that.

But, there's something else I would like to point out here. I think there's something going on here that is actually worse, and that I think not enough people have picked up on.

Al Sharpton is, of course, a Baptist minister.

Elijah Cummings is an active member of his church in Baltimore, New Psalmist Church, which is also Baptist.

Hey, Evangelicals, do you seriously think Trump gives a fuck about your religion? Or are you just riding the lightning until it breaks, to see what you can get out of it, until he throws you under the bus too?

I've posted about this before, but here in the snip below we have Robert Jeffress, Trump-supporting Pastor of First Baptist church in Dallas, saying that "Walls are not un-Christian because there will be a wall around heaven.

Listen, asshole, I've read the entirety of the Acid Trip of John of Patmos multiple times and I'm here to tell you that it while yes, it says there is a wall, it also says the gates are always open.

And unlike most white conservative Evangelicals, I'm pretty sure Elijah Cummings or Reverent Al would not only understand what that means, but be able to answer questions with a theological interpretation of their own without looking anything up.

These motherfuckers, on the other hand? Donald Trump, Robert Jeffress, and their supporters?

I am increasingly certain that these people don't believe in the Lord, or at least, that anything Jesus did or said falls a distant third to their politics and stupid racial theories.

Not too long ago, I read a bit on the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC and the Dylan Roof shooting there. That church was burned to the ground at least once by white racists, and for some time after met in secret. The Black Church was persecuted by white racists for decades, if not centuries.

Some other Black churches that were burned down several months ago, whose rebuilding I recently contributed a little money to, included a couple of Baptist churches.

I looked it up, the most commonly reported Christian denomination in South Carolina? You guessed it, Baptists.

It's the same throughout much of the South. So, quite frequently on a historical basis we not only have Christians persecuting other Christians on the basis of race...but White Baptists persecuting Black Baptists in particular.

I spent much of my life as a Christian...and most of that as a Baptist...I'm sorry, but I have trouble squaring that up with sincere religious belief as I have known it to be. I started out as a Baptist, and I'm well aware of Baptist history and of the schism in the mid-19th century over the issue of slavery.

And as far as I'm concerned...coming as I do from the American Baptist side of the equation...there was absolutely a time when Southern Baptists believed more in slavery than they did in Jesus Christ.

Of course, if one follows current Southern Baptist Convention leaders and theologians like Albert Mohler and Russell Moore (which I do) a lot of these guys are pushing hard for racial equality and racial reconciliation within their denomination.

But I am a habitual reader of the comments on social media in general and Twitter in particular. There's a lot of the asses in the pews that are convinced that there are "Schismatics" and "SJW's" and "Socialists" trying to take over the SBC.

Whatever.

I was a Baptist, I have ample experience at dealing with Southern Baptists, hell the last Baptist church that I was a part of was part of a small association of independent Baptist churches and two out of three of the degreed no-shit theologians that we had, had received their ordinations from the SBC. The chances of that denomination being "taken over by socialists" are precisely zero.

One of those guys, Brother Larry, was the Pastor of my own Church, Victory Baptist...had fought Communists in Vietnam as a US Army soldier. Trust me, ain't no socialists taking over the SBC. They've still got people like that guy.

Like me, and for many of the same reasons, Brother Larry was pretty anti-racist too. Unlike me, he was a registered Democrat, though on the conservative end of that spectrum. I'd be willing to bet he was more conservative by any metric I'd recognize than most Trump Supporters are.

I wonder if the Trump Supporters would call him "socialist?"

And I've gone down the rabbit hole and looked at the timelines of the kind of people who say that shit, one hell of a lot of them are Trump Supporters.

These are people who call anybody to the Left of Robert Welch "Socialist" at this point, especially current and former conservatives and people with religious backgrounds who don't agree with their bullshit.

These are people who have a cult-like attachment to a man.

That man has a history of anti-religious tendencies, and said on a national news program that he didn't think he needed God's forgiveness.

I'm warning you right now, that when all this blows up and Trump gets impeached or voted out or thinks he will be and tells his followers to follow him alone, or whatever and there's bound to be at least some fighting...that when these fucking people break off a piece of America for themselves (and I am increasingly sure that's exactly how this will play out) the very first people they will persecute...whether Black, Latino, or White...are all going to be Christians.

It's not about Christianity or conservatism or immigration status or liberalism or national origin or even politics in any traditionally American sense.

It's all about race...and in particular the association of whiteness with hard-right conservatism and male-dominated patriarchy. It's about that some people basically want a caste system in a country that was designed not to have one.

Christianity is only accepted by these racists to the extent that it can be bent to that purpose.

Ultimately, racism and white supremacy co-opt or corrupt all other beliefs or ideologies a person claims.

That's why I say these people don't believe in God, only their bullshit racial theories.

And Trumpism, much like Marxism-Leninism, is a jealous god, and will tolerate no competing loyalties.

I've just worked my way through all the Tom Clancy novels that I read as a younger man, and I'm here to tell you, that these motherfuckers are acting exactly the way Tom Clancy wrote Soviet and Chinese Communist characters...only with considerably less restraint, because authors have to write believable characters to get their shit published.

There's a reason that I say I'll be surprised if we even make it to the election without Americans shooting at one another, and that there is an excellent chance that Blue and Red sides will simply have their own elections in the territories they control. That's where all this divisiveness leads to.

And here we have Trump trying to drive a stake through the heart of the diverse society that liberals, moderates and even many conservatives worked hard over generations to create.

And there was another mass shooting today.

It's already starting, and it will get worse. It's time to stop trying to have it both ways and pick a side.

Freedom, or Trumpism. Americanism, or Racism.

Hell, for Christians it will come down to being forced to choose between Jesus or Trump.

The only thing the racists are ever going to do with the Cross of Christ is set it on fire.

It really is that simple.

A Rock, A River, A Tree

Hosts to species long since departed,   

Marked the mastodon,

The dinosaur, who left dried tokens   

Of their sojourn here

On our planet floor,

Any broad alarm of their hastening doom   

Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

~Maya Angelou.

Repenting For Republicanism.

Consulate Guy: There must be some mistake!
Murtaugh: Say what?
Consulate Guy: Listen to your friend here, I think he knows what he's talking about. You don't want to go to South Africa.
Murtaugh: Why not?
Consulate Guy: B...Because you're Black.
Leo: You are. [to Consulate Guy] He is.
Murtaugh: Of course I'm Black, that's why I want to go to South Africa, to join my oppressed brothers and take up the struggle against the tyranny of the racist, fascist, white minority regime! One man, one vote! FREE SOUTH AFRICA YOU DUMB SON OF A BITCH!
~From Lethal Weapon 2.

It's official.

As of this week, Republicans have basically become the villains of every Republican-authored, big-screen pro-America morality play from the 1980's, in which at least half of the actors were usually Republicans.

This last week or so, much like Joe Scarborough above, my Twitter feed has been full of people saying, in effect "God forgive me for ever being a Republican."

Hell, I've basically said as much myself.

Joe's sentiment came out of the discussions about Robert Mueller's testimony before Congress.

For myself, I've seen this crap building up more and more over the last few years.

Last night I was moved to absolute rage by the fact that some old biddy in a North Carolina restaurant was caught using the N-word in reference to two other patrons and when called on it, she said she'd do it again.

And aren't these the same fucking people who keep trying to act like Racism is something that "The Left" is just making up?

For much of the time when I was coming up, the Republicans were still for the most part, the party of facts and reality and having a moral compass 20 years ago, there was a cottage industry among conservatives bashing Political Correctness and Postmodernism and openly making fun of what we thought of as the other side's "Do whatever you want" mentality and lack of fixed values. Media from the evening news to the much-younger Internet was ablaze with such critiques, shelves in bookstores Christian and secular alike groaned under the weight of volumes about this debate.

Now?

Rush Limbaugh, leading PC-critic from the 1990's, is somehow trying to claim that Barack Obama and Kamala Harris are not African-Americans.

I mean, Dafuq?

Yo, just sayin' Rush, my own old-school conservative upbringing tells me that if my eyes and ears and personal knowledge of the culture I live in click on "This person is African-American" when I see them...yeah I'm probably gonna go with that instead of some crackpot internet conspiracy theory.

It's a lot less mental work, for one thing.

But under Trump, "Conservatives" are engaging in levels of postmodern woo woo bullshit that "The Left" of the 1990's would have never even thought of.

There are no facts or reality, there is only Trump, who has apparently become their god.

Apparently, he is not omnipotent, and his enablers at Turning Point USA were not smart enough to spot an obviously, yet cleverly, altered Presidential Seal that mocked Trump.

God, but I'm getting really tired of stupid people.

Oh, wait, did I say that out loud?

Too bad. Fuck your feelings, snowflake.

I'm serious, what the hell is wrong with these people? Minnesota Republicans put up some kind of kleptomaniac shoplifter who's facing felony shoplifting charges and who has previous convictions for drunk driving and fleeing from the police, and who has stolen some 267 items.

And here's the kicker. This lady, Danielle Stella, is a Special Education teacher.

That's right, somebody somewhere trusts this drunk, this thief, with their kids. Seriously, have Republicans given any thought whatever to what they're teaching young people with all this ridiculous bad behavior?

Somehow, I don't think Representative Omar has that much to worry about, at least not if that mess is the Republicans' ideal of a quality candidate.

She's pretty damned popular in her state and particularly in her own district...which I already knew as I have a number of friends and relatives who live in Minnesota.

If these people don't get their ass kicked up one side and down the other in the next election, it'll be severe political malpractice.

In any case, I too would like to say God forgive me for ever having been a Republican.

I no longer recognize these people, their values, or even their idea of what leadership looks like.

In fact, I was in most cases taught the opposite from how things are now. And I'm fine with that.

The values I was taught as a young conservative Christian Republican are totally absent from the Republican Party as it is today.

In point of fact, most of those values make me a Democrat now, and firmly so, it's not even close.

And you know what? I'm just fine with that, too

Apollo 11, 50 years on...

"That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for Mankind."
~Neil Armstrong.

50 years ago tonight, on July 20th, 1969, Apollo 11 landed on the Moon.

50 years ago, it seemed like the world was on fire. America was tearing itself apart over various political, racial and social issues. The Vietnam War was still raging full force, and the Cold War had no end in sight, with the ever-present threat of nuclear Armageddon always potentially mere minutes in the future.

But, for all too brief of a moment, people all around the world came together to follow the events unfolding on the Sea of Tranquility, in reality a dusty plain on the face of our Sister-world in the deep, cold dark. For a brief span of hours, every person on the Earth could feel like a brave explorer as we all faced the unknown together, as one people.

I'm a hit fast forward now. 

The world is still on fire, America is still tearing itself apart over the same political, racial and social issues, and trade jungles for deserts and even the wars are still raging.

A new cold war is in the offing, and even the threat of the nuclear flash...of the cold dark night suddenly becoming brighter than a thousand suns...seems insidiously invigorated.

Add to that Climate Change, Conspiracy Theories, Cyber-warfare, Nationalism, Racism, Religious Fanaticism, Sexism, Terrorism, War...It's not just that we haven't learned one damned thing...it's that some of us seem literally hell-bent on making things worse, for no reason in particular, or for political gain, or wealth, or hell I don't know, maybe some people really do just want to watch the world burn.

And, none too coincidentally, the United States of America had a Republican President at the time.

Now, compared to Trump, I'm fairly certain that Nixon...who signed legislation creating the Environmental Protection Agency, greatly expanded the roles of women in the military, actively worked for peace with Communist China and who...faced with a vastly, fundamentally different electorate, a different GOP and a different political climate...resigned when the heat got too bad and he was about to be impeached...would basically be considered just another pinko socialist by today's Trump Supporters.

This despite the fact that Republicans used Tricky Dick as a political Revenge Totem for half a century.

As if he, or for that matter Reagan, would ever be accepted in any capacity other than dead object of worship today.

And for all that, what have we really accomplished?

Oh sure, the cars are cleaner, the computers are far more advanced, the environment is better protected, (most) people are more conscious of the humanity and rights of others, but also the weapons are more deadly and numerous, the bigots are still out there, and the political crisis just rolls on forever, even though the only way to stop it from becoming much worse is to bring it to a speedy resolution, nobody has the guts this time around. If anything we have even less care for each other or social consciousness across the board than we did 50 years ago.

But the world is also drowning in willful ignorance.

This may not be a popular opinion, but I think if you want to foster better values than we have right now, find a constructive way to get rid of all these angry, bored idiots that want to do nothing more than upset the apple-cart, put them working toward something productive, and hell, improve technology while we're at it...I think the answer is we should make a serious effort to re-start manned space exploration.

Humans need frontiers, it's part of our nature. We need something to do with ourselves and as this world gets smaller and more interconnected, we keep finding out over and over again that an angry, bored, idle, comfortable, entitled mind is a terrible thing.

And you deal with that, by giving people something to do, and the means to do it.

We need to start reaching for the stars again, so that we can stop reaching for each other's throats.

Seriously, we need to knock this shit off.

“'When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.”

~Leviticus 19:33-34 (New International Version.)

"Send Her Back" Trump Supporters chanted last night, at a rally in Greenville, North Carolina.

Congresswoman Omar responded to cruelty and savagery with grace and poetry. The lines she quoted are from the poem "Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou.

Ilhan Omar was brought here by her family, refugees from Somalia, when she was two years old. There is no back to send her to. This *Is* home, in all respects, and judging from her reaction and for that matter her choice of poetry with which to respond, this lady is as American as it gets. If you look at how Americans face down adversity when there's long odds, this totally fits our cultural pattern. It's not just the choice of words...but the choice of poets as well. Maya Angelou overcame great hardship and adversity in her life, and eventually composed and read the Inaugural Poem at Bill Clinton's first inauguration.

There's one hell of a lot of other people in Congress, Democrats as well as Republicans, who could stand to learn a thing or two from Ilhan Omar and her three friends, I say.

There are too damned many, increasingly many senior Democrats as well as most Republicans...who hate Trump but they think they'll be safer if they wait him out, rather than stand up.

Meanwhile, America continues its free-fall descent into chaos and superstition. Here we have some damn fool imparting religious-sounding significance to Q-Anon conspiracy theory bullshit and somebody's baby picture...and this stupidity *Was* the top trending item on Twitter for part of last night.

I mean, come on, people. What the fuck? On the one hand, we have anti-immigrant Nativism...on the other hand we seem to have an emergent belief in demons, devils, sacrifices and witchcraft that is different from the kind of stuff peddled by bullshit artists and Juju men found throughout sub-Saharan Africa only by its apparent reliance on the internet and social media.

I hope I'm not the only person who finds this confusing, especially since these same people would most likely refer to African Traditional Religion as being demonic. But how is all this personality-cult conspiracy theory woo woo bullshit and belief in all these made up unseen forces any damned different, except that it's overwhelmingly practiced only by white people?

Like, I'm serious, I know a decent number of non-white conspiracy theorists...and for that matter, traditional religious believers as well...Native American traditional practitioners...and they don't act like this. For that matter I work with a guy from Zimbabwe, who I've discussed this kind of stuff with, and he doesn't act like that.

So what's these fucking people's problem?

This garbage is the result of over 50 years of Republicans pushing fear, hate, racism, religion, sexism and willful stupidity on the American public. Of course, two generations-plus in, and there's little difference between the Republican Party and most of the conservative portion of the electorate. 50 years ago this weekend, Republicans helped get us to the Moon. "We came in peace for all Mankind" as the plaque left on the Sea of Tranquility said.

Now, Republicans don't want to be bothered to have peace with their own neighbors, let alone elected officials from other parts of the country...and they have reached the point of not even recognizing the American-ness of other Americans. This will not end well...and I am increasingly certain that that's the point.

Think the wealthy have it easy, or have too much political influence now?

You just wait until BP finds itself dealing with the Republic of Louisiana instead of the U.S. Federal EPA or watch how Boeing and Lockheed Martin react to a Cold War between North Carolina and South Carolina, or until some enterprising son of a bitch decides to go all the way north and buy himself the Alaskan state university system. Stuff like that is basically the end goal here, the wealthy's dream shot. You think they get away with a bunch of shit now? Wait until they have more net worth than whole small countries that exist where US states used to be.

The Republicans seem to be 'getting' that they're not going to be able to get all of us to go along, that likely even a majority of Americans and others who are here are not going to just roll over for them...senior Congressional Democrats aside...but ya know, they're pretty damned well invested with this divisive bullshit, and I'm kind of getting the vibe that they can't stop...or maybe they're just not smart enough to. But they sure seem like they're more intent than ever on trying to break off a piece for themselves. If you keep stoking people's rage eventually somebody's going to act out on it. If you keep flicking matches into dry grass it's gonna start a fire sooner or later. If you keep the pot simmering long enough it's going to come to a boil.

That's physics, and I don't see human nature as being too much different.

And ya know, when they get their wish, there's going to be at least some of them that wish they hadn't. There's going to be chicken-shit Congressional Democrats who wish they'd done something, except maybe Nancy Pelosi who seems like she'd be perfectly happy being the first President of a new Bear Flag Republic. At the rate we're going there's not going to be any need for schemes like CalExit, America is exiting us!

There's going to be one hell of a lot of us who were made various and assorted promises by America, or who were entitled to various earned benefits, who are gonna be pretty pissed off. I used to be a conservative, I never saw any reason to "Shake things up" or otherwise upset the apple-cart and frankly I never understood why so many people who claimed to be conservatives were so keen on that very idea.

Right now, these fucking people seem hell-bent on kicking over the table just to watch the rest of us scramble to try to pick up our cards and keep in mind where we were at in the game. These fucking people have literally become the Anti-Americans...shitting on everything our country and system were ever based on and wiping their asses with the Constitution even as they accuse everybody else of doing the same goddamned thing. These people project so damned much they might as well be a PowerPoint presentation.

I was taught that America was built on immigration, and that America was not only or just a physical, geographical space but an idea...and Americans are not an ethnicity but a kind of "Chosen People" who had all made the choice, whether they were born here or not, to buy into this idea we call a country. You can be born in China...and still end up being an American, or even a West Virginian. That is the entire basis of America.

Ilhan Omar or WeiJia Jiang are as American as Donald Trump or Mitch McConnell...and certainly, at least they aren't taking money or ideological direction from America's enemies.

Screw "Blood and Soil" nationalism. To hell with White Supremacy.

I've fucking had it with this stupid bullshit.

And I'm going to tell you straight up, if you're okay with it, fuck you.

Light and Darkness, Part Three.

America counts millions of Muslims among our citizens, and Muslims make an incredibly valuable contribution to our country. Muslims are doctors, lawyers, law professors, members of the military, entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, moms, and dads, and they need to be treated with respect. In our anger and emotion, our fellow Americans must treat each other with respect.

This is a great country. It's a great country because we share the same values of respect and dignity and human worth, and it is my honor to be meeting with leaders who feel just the same way I do. They're outraged, they're sad. They love America just as much as I do. I want to thank you all for giving me a chance to come by, and may God bless us all.

~George W. Bush, remarks at Islamic Center of Washington D.C. September 17th, 2001.

Let me tell you a story.

There was this guy, once, he was going through a rough time in his life. He was in the process of getting divorced, and because of this many of the people he had previously relied on for support in times of trouble were mostly no longer present in his life. On top of that, there were the constant Yahoo Instant Messenger arguments with the ex-wife, who he was also still fucking on a fairly regular basis even though it never started out that way and he always knew he shouldn't. He was trying to move on with life, working two jobs, repairing his college GPA, building new networks of friends, restarting old friendships and rebuilding strained relationships with family.

And on top of that, he was losing his religion.

Then, as now, it seemed the world was on fire. He'd literally seen it on TV a couple of months before, when the second airliner hit the South tower of the World Trade Center, he was more aware than most of an under-the-radar tide of religious craziness that had followed, which had also impacted how his life was going.

There were some people who made things a little easier. College friends from different countries and cultures...or from the same, but with similar life-experiences...younger women who might offer physical companionship without judgment, Atheistic, Agnostic, and non-Christian religious friends who might answer questions or provide the kind of spiritual support that most of his fellow Believers had brutally slammed the door on...it seemed, for no damned reason.

Wasn't he the same person he'd been a year, or two years before? Not to many of them, he wasn't.

On this particular Friday night, some of his Muslim friends had asked this dude if he might join them for something they had planned. All were going to the house of another guy everybody knew...the hippie liberal Pagan college professor some of these people, including our protagonist, had a class with, who'd responded to a question about a local space for worship by offering his own back yard...the only caveat being that he wished to observe.

So, this dude and several of his friends all packed into a couple of cars and drove out to the old man's house one chilly November evening. They were of multiple nationalities, Arab-American, Egyptian, Turkish, and his friend from a former life who was simply visiting and wished to join in. That man was a convert to Islam, with skin as black as a night in the desert.

By the time they all got out to the old guy's house, he had a fire blazing in the fire pit in his back yard...and it had begun to get dark. He'd arranged some things, having done his own research. Most of the Muslim men, and the one woman present, each donned a long robe, most of them white, save for the Egyptian dude, whose robe was multicolored and that seemed to evoke the Coat of Many Colors that Joseph is said to have worn in Genesis. The young Turkish man also sported a bright red Fez. The African-American gentleman...who had no robe, as he was not a Sufi or anything similar...was appointed to some kind of religious duty by the others, the disabled white non-believer was asked to beat the drum that would be used to keep the time, and our host was seated in a place of honor for the gathering, as the honorary Sheikh...despite his own beliefs being damned near antithetical to theirs...but it was his house.

And so the drum began to beat, in procession the dancers passed the host three times and offered greetings as brothers...for the brotherhood of all Mankind  is an important Islamic belief, and doubly so for Sufi mystics...the man given the religious duty began to chant...

La Ilaha Illah Lah, Wa Muhammad Rasul Allah...La Ilaha Illah Lah, Wa Muhammad Rasul Allah...

There is no deity but God, and Muhammad is His Messenger.

And each Dervish turned on the ball of their left foot and began their whirling dance.

La Ilaha Illah Lah, Wa Muhammad Rasul Allah...La Ilaha Illah Lah, Wa Muhammad Rasul Allah...

The chanting...called Dhikr...is meant to invoke "Remembrance of God."

And deep into the cold Northern Michigan night, a group of people all sought a loving communion with God.

I was the guy on the drum, the accident I was in several years before that pretty much means I can't dance worth a crap, but they wanted me to join them anyway. 

I cannot tell you how long the dance, nor the chanting nor the drumming went on, only that time itself seemed to drop away and that, by the time the last of the dancers fell out and we all packed up our stuff and drove back to campus it was well into the small hours of Saturday morning, and my visitor spent a few hours crashed out on the extra bed in my dorm room. I cannot really describe the effects of participating in all this except to say that I felt more at peace than I had in some time, and it held for just long enough to keep me sane.

Only some of those people were Americans, only some of those who weren't would go on to become Americans...but they all took the time to care about at least one of us, when too many of our own couldn't be bothered.

And it's things like that, that are why other beliefs, other cultures, the simple hospitality between human beings when they decide not to be assholes to each other, should be important to every last one of us. My Medieval History professor didn't have to offer them a place to do their thing, they didn't have to invite me, my visiting friend didn't have to take the time to pitch in...we could have spent the evening playing video games as we'd planned weeks before.

My friend, by then a civilian IT guy and a Michigan Air National Guard Security Forces Lieutenant, graduated and Commissioned the year before after some years working his own education around deployments and duty shifts as an active duty Airman, would soon be deployed to Afghanistan, and later to Iraq, where he was wounded...and he was glad to go and do his duty.

What a different time that was. Among other things, I was a conservative, a Republican, and only in the very slightest sense apologetic or questioning about that as of yet,

But it was a different Republican Party, with leadership that, incompetent as it could often be, still seemed to recognize the concept of "You don't shit where you eat" and "starting ethnic conflicts at home is bad" among other things.

And people on that side of the political fence still had some guts and common sense. Within a year, Trent Lott would be forced to resign from Congress over his praise of Segregationist Strom Thurmond's 1948 Presidential run. God, I miss even that Republican Party...the one where racism was still bad...and those people are why I quit being a Republican.

Now? Every last one of these motherfuckers...and not a few Democrats as well...fears losing their place in the magical city more than they fear losing the civilization that sustains it and them. A majority of these assholes, whether it be Mitch McConnell or Mitt Romney or Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi, would rather be an American equivalent to Islam Karimov or Vytautas Landsbergis, ruling over some decrepit successor state...than stand up and take some fucking risks to protect what we ALL have right the fuck now. We don't have to fight to get it...we just have to fight to keep it. 

Speaking as a former Republican...as somebody who liked Reagan, who came of age during George H.W. Bush's term, and who initially enthusiastically supported George W. Bush...this bullshit pisses me off.

It pisses me off even more as a Democrat who became one mostly because the Republican Party gleefully tossed me out the airlock when I wouldn't mindlessly repeat obvious bullshit about a Democratic Presidential candidate being born in Kenya...or accept a Vice-Presidential nominee who was the same kind of Holy Roller nut-bag as my ex-wife...and in no small part because I would not ignore my own knowledge of how stuff actually works.

As I've said, I voted for Obama and I'm glad I did. Now, more than ever after the last few days.

If Republicans don't like that, don't like me, or don't like the country that they were (more or less) hired to govern, they're more than welcome to get the fuck out, as far as I'm concerned. Hell, guys, maybe the North Koreans or the Russians are hiring. It'd be a win-win.

I don't necessarily agree with The Squad on every issue, I don't have to, they're obviously a damn sight better than Trump. Would I rather that AOC, Ayanna, Ilhan or Rashida spend their first couple of terms fetching Nancy Pelosi's lattes and learning the job? Hell yeah, but the situation we're in doesn't allow for that and if Democratic senior leadership has fallen down on the job that damned much, maybe it's time we try something different? Do I like it? No, but I didn't vote for this mess in the first place. Too many other motherfuckers straight up dropped the ball, though.

And for fuck's sake, Obama didn't finish out his first Senate term before he ran for President, that turned out OK and god damn but I miss that guy right now. 

Putting too much value into outdated metrics and things that don't apply to the average person is a big damned part of what got us Trump. The vast majority of the people I know don't care how Wall Street is doing, they're struggling. Nobody gives a shit about stock options when they have to borrow $20 to get through until the next payday...and they just got paid.

And among other things that's how you end up with socialism, but I digress.

Also, I'm just sayin' when a nationalist, racist lout like Boris Johnson says you done fucked up, Donnie, you done fucked up.

Old Boris doesn't exactly sound all that thrilled about potentially leading a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural country...but at least he seems to understand that if he ends up being PM that's what his fucking job will be.

Just fucking saying.

This shit is ridiculous.

As things stand right now, I see way too many people ready to throw everything away because they don't like how the future looks, because it's brown or female or comes wrapped up in a Hijab or she openly believes in social democracy and taxation schemes that don't put even more money in the pockets of the ultra-rich at our expense.

I'm tired of "Conservatives" who have forgotten what that word means, who think it only means "conserving" their political power, social status or wealth and the hell with our environment, the planet, what's good about America and all the stuff previous generations have fought for.

But I'm damn tired of "Liberals" who refuse to be, ya know, liberal. And I'm even more tired of people who are so jacked up on their pet policy positions or what color of a wrapper is on the future or whether this person is more "woke" than that one, or whatever.

There's fully a third of the population of this country that's basically joined a cult. But if we want to keep that 33% from being the wedge that splits America...we're all going to have to pull together, Republicans are gonna have to stand up just like Democrats, and older white Democrats are gonna have to stand up just like young Black or Brown ones do. From where I sit right now, it looks like too many people don't have the fucking guts.

And let me tell you, that's the way this ends, keep letting people do as they will, for profit or political points, encourage only those who will naturally stand up or see their own privilege or work for a higher good than "what's in it for me" to do so...and that's exactly how you get a bunch of more fucking people that don't. Do you think we'd have ever won a war, or survived any given national emergency or existential threat if only conservatives or liberals had done their duty to the republic in any given case?

Somebody brought up that "Flight 93 election" bit the other day. I had to remind them that, in that analogy the "Flight 93 election people" aren't the passengers. They're the angry men in the cockpit shouting "Takbir" as they nose the aircraft towards the earth and firewall the engines. The trouble is, the plane is America, and the rest of us are the damned passengers, fighting to survive and take our future and our lives back from the fanatics who've taken control of things.

And if you don't think that's going to end badly, you have another thing coming.

The smart thing to do here would have been to not teach people to be unquestioning, rabid fanatics regarding politics and religion, each with barely more going on in the brain-pan than some illiterate Pashtun tribesman in the mountains of Afghanistan who can't read the serial number on his AK-47.

Fanaticism, Racism, Theological Primitivism, Tribalism. These are not the attributes of advanced societies.

But it sure as hell wasn't liberals who gutted education budgets and started preaching about the glories of the Dark Ages.

And you know what? I'm here to tell you that my Twitter feed is full of people who were responsible for exactly that, who recognize that this mess has gone too far and become dangerous. People like Bill Kristol, David Brooks, David French, David Jolly, Justin Amash, Rick Wilson, Tea Party Joe Walsh, and others. Even many people who actually fucking voted for Trump have turned against him and found ways to stand up, on whatever basis they could. There's people I wouldn't agree with about one other damn thing in the world...that I can agree with about Trump and how much of a threat to all of us this bullshit has become.

The question is...why can't you? Why can't you find common ground with your fellow citizens...even those you may not otherwise agree with...and then act?

Like it or not, this is a Democracy. A majority of our elected leadership is only going to get off their ass if We the People make them.

America is all of us. Black, Brown, White, Native...Christian, Jew, Muslim, Pagan, Sikh and yes, Atheist...Bi, Gay, Straight, Trans...Poor, rich, somewhere in the middle...Citizen, non-citizen, legal and undocumented alike. What happens to one of us can happen to all of us, if we permit it as a people.

And when we cease to be one people, to embody the spirit of E. Pluribus Unum given to us by our forefathers...who said that America was as much for the Christian as for the Mohammedan, the Hindu and the Infidel of every denomination...when we let these rich motherfuckers atomize us into all these "Special interest groups" (to use a turn of phrase from my generation) that's when we die.

Maybe not as individuals, or even as cities, states or whole regions...

But that's when America breaks down and becomes two or three...or four or five...countries instead of one.

And if you think things are ugly now...you ain't seen nothing yet. If it comes to that the only people who profit will be the weapons manufacturers.

We can stop this, but only if we get off our ass, stand together, and maybe, most of all, care about one another if nothing else on the basis that we're all Americans.

Because either we are, or we're not. There can be no middle ground, hemming and hawing or hand-waving here. That's what Trump is counting on people trying to do. To say this one is, but that one isn't...because then we will fail.

No. Either it is, or it isn't, across the board. One of these things is not like the other one. Are we, or aren't we? It's a yes or no answer.

It's really that simple.

The light, or the darkness with its fires.

You pick.

Part 1

Part 2