Changes.

"I've had some long nights in stir, alone in the dark with nothing but your thoughts, time can draw out like a blade. That was the longest night of my life." ~Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding (Morgan Freeman's character) The Shawshank Redemption.

I do travel, occasionally. Last weekend I hired an animal sitter to tend to my dogs and the ferrets and I went up north...first to my Mom's and then to the Upper Peninsula (of Michigan) to attend my Grandma's 90th Birthday party in the Marquette area.

Early Saturday morning (with Memorial Weekend well underway, judging from the previous day's traffic) my Mom and I headed out pretty early. driving up through Cheboygan and then along the lake towards Mackinaw City...and after driving across the Mackinaw Bridge (which had reduced traffic due to joggers being present) we made a quick stop for breakfast and to use the bathroom at MacDonald's in Saint Ignace. When we got our food...we were waited on by this cute little Black girl.

That's a change...and an obvious one,,,here.

Mom got behind the wheel of her Jeep, and we set off down US-2, headed west under a vast, clear blue sky. There is a reason locals often call the Upper Peninsula "God's Country" and days like that one are it.

You notice things...signs for small businesses in houses, tourist traps, changes since the last time you went this way...for me, it's been about five years.

Early on, we passed a small convoy of Army National Guard trucks, shockingly out of place painted in desert tan. Almost certainly, they were from the 107th Engineer Battalion (the Upper Peninsula's resident National Guard unit,) All headed the other way...presumably to Camp Grayling for training. You'd think they'd have the holiday off. I have to say that, thanks to the open side windows on the armored cabs of their Oshkosh M1083 trucks, I observed that this troop included at least a couple of Black and Brown faces...and it, too, is worth noting that though they have Armories in the cities like Marquette and Sault Ste. Marie, many of their companies, detachments and troops are based in outlying communities like Gladstone (near Escanaba) Ishpeming, or Kingsford.

So, diversity in this case is noticeable.

Along US-2 is still kind of a tourist area, so everything is decently well kept. Some of the houses might be a little rough, old cars here and there...and, it being Memorial Weekend...lots of garage sale junk...but things are decently maintained.

Further down the road, I noticed that not only some of the houses...but road signs with blinkers and the common pumping stations and transfer sites for things like natural gas that are pretty ubiquitous in the area had Solar panels to power them. This held all the way through our turn north up through Engadine and driving up to M-28 for the main leg of the trip across the Upper Peninsula...what they call the "Seney stretch." This is the Upper Peninsula that people think of when somebody says the word "Yooper."

Much of the way along M-28 a railroad track follows along the highway, crossing in several places. On sidings here and there sit old railway cars, boxcars and tanker cars mostly...and many have not moved in 30 or 40 years. The route goes through several towns...skirting around Newberry, Seney, Shingleton...and there's more than one collection of abandoned houses or other buildings in each town or in between. Especially given the changes I'd mentioned earlier the disparity can be jarring.

Yet for whatever reason, Federal grants, who knows? Each town had a nice, new, well-maintained park with new-looking playground equipment.

Odd...but not that out of place in the land of rusty old pickup trucks and nice new deer rifles.

In some places...it really does seem almost apocalyptic...abandoned houses, broken-down cars in the yards of shitty shacks, falling-down barns, rusting rail-cars on equally rusted tracks. Hell, add a few abandoned cars on the highway and it would not be hard to imagine a different past in which instead of the last ones flying out to Minot, North Dakota on my birthday in 1994, the BUFF's (Boeing B-52H Stratofortress strategic bombers) of the 410th Bomb Wing were all bombed up in response to some crisis, that orders were hastily given and that the sky shook every 12.5 seconds with Minimum Interval Takeoffs, and filled with the ear-splitting sound of screaming TF-33 jet engines and vast trails of black smoke in the face of incoming Soviet (or Russian) missile strikes that would turn the northern night brighter than the light of a thousand suns in an apocalypse of energy and fire, nor to imagine that the area that I knew so well in my younger years...K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base, the surrounding communities of Gwinn and Skandia, and probably Marquette itself...would not be so hospitable to human life as it was to be for us later that day. If one imagines the few bike-riders or people out walking that we saw as the living ghosts of shell-shocked survivors...it's not hard to imagine that the Nukes...or perhaps in our more popular modern context, the Zombies...have come and gone and the apocalypse is decades in the past.

But in the real world...we face many less immediate, but in some ways more insidious crises. Climate Change, for one...and election meddling by the Russians that might even cause as much or more damage than the aforementioned nuclear weapons. I heard dumb ass Trump is thinking of pulling the United States out of the Paris Climate Change accord?

Dude...the oil and gas companies are already using solar panels.

Try as you might, you can't hold back...nor easily undo...progress. If you try...you're likely going to get squished under the forward motion of the world. It's slow, perhaps, but inexorable if it's gotten to here by now.

Funny thing, too, not a political sign in sight. People have moved on.

We stopped for gas in Munising at the other end of the Stretch before doubling back a bit to take a slightly different route. A Latino family got gas at the same time we did. We got back on the road, a large programmable sign I'd seen earlier advised truck traffic to K.I. Sawyer to take this route also. An hour or so later...and having shooed several mosquitoes out of the Jeep...we turned onto US 41 north, only to find extensive road construction and a decent amount of truck traffic close to the former Air Force Base. So, after a couple of decades of inactivity...the area seemed busy again...or at least busy enough for the Saturday morning of a holiday weekend...perhaps more so than I remembered it.

We went on to have a nice day with my family. When we got there, my cousin was regaling guests with the tale of her Lyft driver...one of the top five in Chicago, she said. An immigrant from Cameroon who works as a scientist at the Argonne National Laboratory who drives Lyft as a second job to pay off his student loans...and she took the opportunity to speak to him in French. Like I said...we NEED people like that Lyft driver in America...that kind of drive, freaking energy and intelligence...if this country is going to meet all the challenges it must in order to survive. But some people don't like that guy, just because he's Black?

Madness, I say.

Even as I write this people I know are arguing with StormTrumpers and dealing with Russian bots on Twitter. Putin has basically admitted that the Russians diddled our Presidential election, and even as Republicans plan budgets that will kill their own constituents I just saw that even FOX News is not saying that Trump is innocent anymore. So the stakes...and increasingly the amount of public mockery and outrage directed towards Republicans and Trump...grow exponentially by the day if not by the hour. Yet people thought this bullshit would be a good idea? Why? Because they thought they wanted to be able to say racist shit in public again?

Son, that shit hasn't been cool...that I know of...for 40 years. The President is not a King, he cannot undo 50 years of social change nor 70+ years of progress by decree. Let alone he can't do it just because you don't want Black People to get any...and THAT has been the way it is for over 150 years according to our Constitution.

We got back on the road after dinner and pictures, Mom was tired so we switched drivers in Munising and this time I drove...and one thing I noticed above some of the trees was prodigious funnel-clouds of bugs. We talked about the day and various issues and among other things...our first remembered encounters with people of different races.

By the time we got close to St. Ignace, Mom was knocked out in the passenger seat. I fished around in the console for the bridge-fare money so I didn't have to wake her up. When I got across the bridge I stopped at the rest area outside of Mackinaw City to take a piss...and there was a Toyota minivan with several people of apparently Indian or South Asian extraction...young men and women, one girl wearing a Hijab with otherwise-Western clothing, including shorts. The van had Missouri plates.

"As Salaam Alaykum" I said. Peace be upon you. "Wa Alaykum Salaam" one of the young men replied, smiling...And upon you, peace. He was young, early to mid-20's, bearded, very dark skin and shiny black hair, very neatly brushed, dark American-hipster type clothes. Each of us...myself and these two young foreign men, the second in shorts, a Chicago Bulls T-shirt and Sandals...set off separately for the bathroom. They got there before me, we each concluded our business and when I went to wash my hands, the first guy was combing his hair in front of the mirror with exacting precision.

"Where you from?" I asked, curious. "St. Louis" he replied, again smiling. The second guy was done, and obviously needed the sink. I stepped back, grabbed my cane and headed for the door. I said my say "You gentlemen have a safe trip...and a blessed day." Both replied "And you as well, sir."

As I drove home under a darkening sky, I noticed an awful lot of anti-oil-pipeline signs in front of permanent residences and vacation homes alike...in an area not necessarily known for being full of environmentalists or liberals.

That was a bit of a surprise, and honestly I was shocked that I'd not noticed the signs in the morning.

Politeness and common decency should never feel revolutionary...but in Trump's America, they do. That one desires to protect one's environment should never be a surprise. It is, but yet there it is. If normal things are so revolutionary in this time of abnormality, sign me up for the revolution. I was taught to use a rifle, once upon a time.

But I was also taught that Soul Force was far stronger than force of arms.

We are faced with a choice, as we face the future:

We can do this their way...and live through the darkness and its fires...

The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood. Thus all you that never passed under a great change of heart, by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls; all you that were never born again, and made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin, to a state of new, and before altogether unexperienced light and life, are in the hands of an angry God. However you may have reformed your life in many things, and may have had religious affections, and may keep up a form of religion in your families and closets, and in the house of God, it is nothing but his mere pleasure that keeps you from being this moment swallowed up in everlasting destruction. However unconvinced you may now be of the truth of what you hear, by and by you will be fully convinced of it. Those that are gone from being in the like circumstances with you, see that it was so with them; for destruction came suddenly upon most of them; when they expected nothing of it, and while they were saying, Peace and safety: now they see, that those things on which they depended for peace and safety, were nothing but thin air and empty shadows.

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you were suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God’s hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell.

~Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God, Jonathan Edwards, 1741

(...And remember, kids, if you're a Republican, and/or sufficiently anti-Liberal, none of this need apply and you can do whatever you want. Damnation, hell, and rules are for other people.)

Or...

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

                Free at last! Free at last!

                Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

~Martin Luther King Jr. "I have a Dream." August 28th, 1963.

Change is coming. Make your choice.

As for me 'To go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other."

Bonus points if you know who I'm paraphrasing.

Education, experience, knowledge, and an informed and consenting citizenry were considered essential things when I was coming up...and I knew who Johnathan Edwards and Martin Luther King Jr. were, what they had done, and at least some quotes from each of them...by the time I'd made it through the 5th Grade.

Think about that the next time you're dealing with some Trump Supporter that can't get basic pronouns right.

We have to be the change we wish to see in the world.

As Roland Martin put it at the end of his show today. "We'll fight until hell freezes over, and then we'll fight on the ice."

It's OK, Moses, I'll clean it up...

Exodus 32King James Version (KJV)

32 And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.

2 And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me.

3 And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron.

4 And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

5 And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said, To morrow is a feast to the Lord.

6 And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.

7 And the Lord said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves:

8 They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

9 And the Lord said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiff-necked people:

10 Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation.

11 And Moses besought the Lord his God, and said, Lord, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand?

12 Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people.

13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou swarest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever.

14 And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.

15 And Moses turned, and went down from the mount, and the two tables of the testimony were in his hand: the tables were written on both their sides; on the one side and on the other were they written.

16 And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables.

17 And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said unto Moses, There is a noise of war in the camp.

18 And he said, It is not the voice of them that shout for mastery, neither is it the voice of them that cry for being overcome: but the noise of them that sing do I hear.

19 And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount.

As I've always said, I have a Church background. I think about stuff. I've always sort of wondered...what must have gone through Moses's mind when he came down from the Mountain of St. Catherine and caught his people worshiping a golden statue of a cow?

Last night at work I saw this. Evidently, Paula White is hawking "Prayer flags" that supposedly have been "Blessed" by Donald Trump.

There's two small problems with that. #1 Donald Trump is not religious so far as I can tell, and #2 Prayer Flags and the use of them are a Chinese Traditional religion, Hindu and also Tibetan Buddhist/Traditional religious practice, not a Christian one. (The picture above is of Chinese traditional prayer flags in the Quilan Mountains in China.)

I know, I know...details...details...but who cares. Profit!

As my friend Aaron says, I've probably already put more thought into it than they have.

Then I saw this...

In the interest of not dirtying up my blog I'll link to the article rather than post the picture, the short version is that awhile back a retired New York (City) Police Department officer was photographed in the back of a boat, completely naked and humping away at a recently caught dead shark.

Right there with ya, Moses, right there with ya. Hold on, take a deep breath, I'll get the broom and dust pan...

Oh, forget it. This crap is ridiculous.

Now, I don't care if Buddhists in China and Hindus in India have prayer flags. That's their customs and they're observing their religious or traditional beliefs and that's absolutely nobody's business but theirs. I'm certainly not going to worry about it.

But please, go ahead, show me in the Bible where the words "Prayer" and "Flag" ever appear in the same verse, much less the same sentence. It's the weekend, I've got ALL day, I'll wait.

While we're at it, I don't really care what other people do with their bodies...but almost everybody I've ever met would agree that bestiality and necrophilia are disgusting and wrong.

For that matter, why did I push a stack of glass racks out into the break room at work so I could stack the cups on the cup rack, only to be immediately bombarded with (from all 3 TV's being as they were on the same channel) ads for "Adam & Eve.com" a website that sells sex toys...AND I WAS AT WORK! Had I brought my laptop to work, got on the internet with it and gone to that website to buy something I'd be in violation of the Casino's internet policy AND their sexual harassment policy! I could get FIRED! (...And yet, this crap is just fine on TV?) For the record if ya'll wanna buy sex toys go ahead. I don't care. When I've had a girlfriend or when I was married (and after that but still kind of involved with my ex-wife) I bought some. It's OK. BUT I DON'T WANNA SEE THAT STUFF WHEN I'M AT WORK! It's inappropriate in a professional setting.

Yet it's on TV. (The cashier, who is a Christian, and I the old former conservative who's getting too old for this crap, briefly commiserated about "Why do we have to put up with this?)

Why is this tolerated?

...And what does any of this have to do with the Bible verses posted above?

Money. That's why.

Gullible people buy unbiblical, unnecessary and just plain WRONG faux-religious articles because they've been sold a gold-plated load of just-plain-bullshit about politics and religion and the intersections thereof, and people who probably don't know the Quilan Mountains exist or are located in China don't know or care what the actual religious or theological significance of a prayer flag is, or that it doesn't relate to Christianity in the first place...but that it does relate to the kind of Shamanic and Traditional practices that the Church often historically (wrongly, in my view, but whatever) tried to stomp out whenever it could.

American pop-Christianity is loaded with this kind of fakery, and I spent much of this day discussing these matters (and to a great extent, this post) with a Facebook-friend who lives in Uganda, whose main concern right now is raising money to buy a water pump to irrigate a small patch of farmland that his United Methodist church (Lugala United Methodist Church, somewhere near Kampala) owns so the congregants can grow fruits and vegetables more efficiently to feed their kids.

Priorities, huh? For the total cost of six of those useless prayer flags, a church in Uganda would be able to irrigate its gardens better, have more food, maybe even sell some extra produce and raise money for whatever hard-working African people (for whom $100 is a LOT more money than it is to me) might need.

I wonder how many Americans really would take a chance on trading all this fake, stupid pop-culture and pop-religious fake garbage for the genuine effort to actually follow what we say we believe and help out a bunch of African kids who just need more vegetables and stuff? I quite wonder how many people would set aside the cheap grace, fake righteousness and sheer tribalism of Americanized Christianity and do what the Lord actually commands of us? How many would follow His Word and set aside even a little to help the disadvantaged? If half the people in just my small city gave a dollar that most of us wouldn't miss...those people could get themselves all type of stuff to make life better for everybody.

What are the odds? Even though the average person would probably find that they derived more emotional satisfaction from doing such a thing, how many would actually have the guts to do it, to stand on the faith they say they believe?

Well, my Twitter feed today has been aflame with all sorts of stuff about President Trump giving the Commencement speech at Liberty University in Virginia...and the stuff he and the other speakers have said.

The odds are not great. Trust me...and the answer is, only the people for whom that's their natural inclination anyway...and that's the problem.

When you make even being a decent person, much less following your own claimed beliefs optional, a lot of people just won't DO it.

They'll probably put more work into convincing you they do it than actually doing it would even take.

The kind of fake-religious garbage that caused Jesus to become angry and make a whip of cords to drive the money-changers from the Temple is not just thriving...complete with all the same kind of silly bullshit that Jesus Himself railed against back in the day...it's the only kind of Christianity indeed, I think the only religion that is actually growing in the United States of America right now.

Even the kind of Fundamentalist Christianity on which Liberty University is based is withering and dying here, or being overtaken by the kind of Prosperity Gospel false teaching embraced by Paula White and nominally claimed by Donald Trump. Mainstream Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, etc. etc. all are hanging in there, and some are even doing alright...but no belief system holds the spotlight right now like good old fashioned money-soaked American Calvinistic Protestantism...ESPECIALLY in its current debased Prosperity Gospel Pentecostal form (Actual believers in Reformed Theology are quite rare, and I say this as somebody who frequented online Christian forums for years) where the main (if not only) "Sins" appear to be being gay, having an abortion, not voting for the Republican Party and (apparently) not worshiping Donald Trump. That leaves an awful lot open. We are on track to soon have a Christ-less Christianity, that celebrates Godless capitalism and doesn't even know the children of Lugala UMC exist, or read the Book that says we should help them.

Actually...we're closer to attempting to realize Ayn Rand's vision of John Galt replacing the Sign of the Cross with the Sign of the Dollar than we are to reaching for Ronald Reagan's vision of America as a Shining City On A Hill.

...And that too, was a vision inspired by the Bible, even though Reagan wasn't all that religious.

Rand's vision, by contrast, was (as Chuck Colson called it) an "Idolatry of self and selfishness, that places Man at the center of a Godless world, where self-satisfaction becomes the moral purpose of his life."

I know from life experience and being aware of how the world works, which of the two visions helps me more. I know which inspired me...and which I view as an obstacle that threatens my future. I'm hardly an orthodox believer in anything...Christian influences I can't shake aside...and I reject Ayn Rand and her Godless, selfish Atheism...

...Even as so much of American Christianity rushes to embrace it.

When you start out being taught the Truth...especially, I think, if you're given the choice to follow or not to follow...at least some of it will stay with you.

Sometimes it does that whether you want it to or not. All these years later I really can't explain it all.

It's hard to know the Truth, that's what tells me those rushing to support the way things are, don't. Their way is easy. All they want...is more. Meanwhile, I'm fine with what I have. I know people for whom life would be a lot better if they had just the equivalent of one of my paychecks.

We're in some deep shit, people, but keep at it. Work, for the night is coming.

We can do better, but it starts with each of us putting in whatever efforts we can, all of us.

Maybe, if you meet one, ask a Ugandan about what's really important in life.

Chances are good you'll hear a lot about farming and Jesus. You'd have to go all the way back to my Grandpa's generation to get that here.

Enter through the narrow gate for wide is the gate and broad the way leading to destruction, and many are those entering through it. ~Matthew 7:13 (NIV)

And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder...

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.

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.

~Revelation 6:1-2 (KJV)

As the name of this blog implies, I have ferrets.

Last week, the local pet store got this little Cinnamon Sprite kit (A Sprite being a spayed female ferret.) I had got there just as the delivery guy was dropping off the weekly critter shipment Wednesday morning. As usual, that shipment included a couple of baby ferrets. My friend Tyler got the ferrets (This one and a little red-eyed Champagne/Sandy Gib kit...a Gib being a neutered male ferret) out of the shipping box. She immediately latched on to his fingers, jaw-locked and hissing in that sort of way only an enraged weasel can. I helped disengage her, we put the other kit in the ferret cage and I took little miss bitey back to the cat towers to work with her a bit. I grabbed a squeaky toy on the way.

When I got back to the cat towers I put her down on the shelf in front of the cat tower, let her bite and grab my finger, then pulled her off and scruffed her saying "No bite." Next, I offered her the toy, squeaking it a couple of times for emphasis. (The toy, since you can't see the whole thing, is a little green dragon.) She immediately grabbed it and started to back up into the lower section of a cat tower. I held fast, so a tug-of-war ensued between me and this ferret. I let her have it a couple times, offered her my hand (she bit) scruffed her again and then offered the toy. This went on for about 20 minutes. A couple of times she bit hard and drew blood, but she was slowly getting the idea. Finally, I just held her down and started petting her, and she seemed to calm down and recognize that I was something other than a threat or a giant chew toy. By the time I left the store, we'd made friends. It might not seem like much, but it was a small victory. Last Friday I brought her and her cage-mate an old dog toy (same brand as the dragon, but it was a Triceratops dinosaur.) It lasted the weekend before the two teething baby ferrets destroyed it. (This toy had previously survived the jaws of 32 other ferrets, but I digress.) The little Sprite has since gone on to a new and happy home and the little Gib is my pet store buddy.

What does this have to do with anything? Nothing, really, but also everything.

Ferrets are fearless little critters, for one.

In my experience, a good act, or a positive accomplishment or the completion of a project makes people feel good (self included here) whether it's getting out of work after a busy shift, helping somebody, paying my bills, or even something as simple as bite-training a baby ferret so they'll go to a good home. In my experience also, knowledge...real knowledge...translates into power. Knowing the history of the Antebellum era, and of the Civil War...indeed having been raised on it...gave me the capability to say that the President was wrong to say the dumb shit he said about Andrew Jackson and the Civil War...and to know I was right because I've been studying this history since I was learning to read in the first place. Knowledge reinforcing values prevents one from being lured into the catatonia of groupthink, or from being moved by popularity and going along with the crowd. In the world today, believe it or not, that matters. As I have said many times, I started out as a Christian and as a conservative. It is precisely for those reasons that I didn't go with the crowd and support Donald Trump.

With all that in mind, it never ceases to amaze me that people would choose the societal heroin of racism or sexism as the means to feel good about themselves, or chase after stupid and often blatantly false conspiracy theories above actually seeking knowledge (and remember folks, I started out as a conservative. Facts are nonpartisan, and stubborn things. They are true whether one believes in them or not. A solid baseline of facts and reality was once a part of conservatism.) It blows my mind that young men...and even some my age...will go on living in their Mom's basement, angrily spewing all sorts of nonsensical invective, racism and whatever else at the world because they're angry that they can't find a girlfriend, or their job sucks, or they don't have a job...and to a great extent these are the people who supported Trump, either because they wanted to make the rest of us miserable or (and worse, in my opinion) because they thought it would be funny.

Well, roughly two-thirds of the rest of us Americans aren't laughing, Pepe.

Like I've said, if you want to defeat terrorism...don't be afraid. Don't allow yourself to be terrorized. If you aren't happy with your life, you can go out and change it. You. YOU, YOUR actions are always the key here. If you don't want to be afraid all the time, instead of wishing for a government that will kill all of your bogeymen and/or "protect" you from the things you're afraid of...why not just try not being afraid in the first place? Be fearless like a ferret. If you want your country to not get laughed at or taken advantage of, well, don't do stupid shit and allow yourself to be taken advantage of.

We are all responsible for our own actions.

A large number of Americans have proved the veracity of the old adage that if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything.

It's just not the particular people I thought it would be 20 years ago.

I saw earlier today that FBI director James Comey testified before Congress today, and the lack of interest from some Republican Senators was pretty ridiculous. I mean, come on, people. This is our country we're talking about. Now I know that American conservatives are suddenly in these last couple of years butt-buddies with the Russians. Hell, once upon a time we were that way with Saudi Arabia too...but goddamn it, if we'd been taking orders from or our politicians had got elected with the aid of the House of Saud there'd have been hell to pay at the ballot box the next cycle, if not blood in the streets. This is where we're at right now, Comrades. It's coming down to "Do something, preferably the right thing, or face the consequences.

Because that's just what happens.

Change is coming, and they can blithely ignore it all they want, but whether by ballot or revolution, it's coming. We the People are no longer asleep at the switch. The middle has moved on, while the majority of Trump Supporters are either angry poor whites or rich old white men, the majority of us took our campaign signs down last November. So, sooner or later these idiots are going to walk into a buzz saw. Smart Republican strategists know it, and they are already worried about 2018. They know people are pissed. As Trump daily proves himself more and more unfit, and demand for impeachment grows...well, the current behavior of Congressional Republicans and the assholes who constitute the majority of Trump Supporters these days...that's exactly the type of shit that sparks revolutions.

When you have Congressman Mo Brooks (R-Redneckistan) saying shit like "Good people don't have pre-existing conditions" well that's when a hell of a lot of the people who agree with him on a lot of beliefs...but have preexisting medical conditions for which they need health care...well, he just probably lost those people. It amazes me that people say shit like this in a world where firing squads, Guillotines and revolutions of all kinds exist.

It amazes me that here we have all these people, who were presumably taught some kind of values at some point...who could use the positions and power they have to effect good policies and positive change and in so doing become great...settle for at best mediocrity and at worst self-destructive short-term thinking where all they care about is "What can I get out of this Right Now?"

It amazes me that for all their big talk, these people's vision is so small. Like with the budget stuff last week...after all this crazy talk over nothing...the current budget looks an awful lot like that of last year or the year before...and as usual there's no direction from the White House, only the threat of a government shutdown that Trump isn't the one who has power to effect. This guy can bluster and "look into" and "Review" all the stuff he wants. The constitution and the law are what they are, and everybody else in the system but him knows it's dangerous to set the precedent of doing a lot of tinkering with it for the benefit of one man. After all, the next Democrat in office could then turn around and do the same...and eventually we end up with a bipolar and ineffective government that tries to reinvent the wheel every four years. At this point, as several people that I know have said, these people's incompetence is the main thing protecting us from their malice.

Hell, yesterday I watched a video of Trump giving a speech with the US Air Force Falcons football team standing behind him...and all the cadets, from the most Republican of our Armed Services, were either failing at game faces or trying not to laugh (and failing) and one cadet looked like he hid behind another to facepalm a couple of times. The speech was intended to honor the team...but Trump made it all about himself.

This is what we're dealing with here. I often think getting through all this will be easier than I thought. But at the same time, overall the situation is more of a train wreck than I ever thought it could possibly be. I guess I was expecting a smarter wannabe-autocrat.

Things are holding, the situation seems still in hand, but barely. We're all just going to have to keep doing the best we can and we'll all get through this together.

In the meantime, we need to be as decent to each other as we can be. Ignore the pop-culture bullshit and stupidity...because those things are a big part of what got us here. Count up the small victories, and keep the tide rolling, because that's how you make a tidal wave, eventually.

Change is coming, very likely it's going to look like the Apocalypse for somebody...and it looks increasingly likely that it's going to be the people who have it coming.

The only thing that worries me is that they'll probably take a lot of the rest of us down with them. That's why we have to be prepared. The afterlife is only a heartbeat away, and what we do in life echoes in eternity.

Be ready, just in case. Be strong. Master your fear and reach for the stars.

There's a man goin' 'round takin' names
And he decides who to free and who to blame
Everybody won't be treated all the same
There'll be a golden ladder reachin' down
When the man comes around

The hairs on your arm will stand up
At the terror in each sip and in each sup
Will you partake of that last offered cup
Or disappear into the potter's ground?
When the man comes around

Hear the trumpets hear the pipers
One hundred million angels singin'
Multitudes are marchin' to the big kettledrum
Voices callin', voices cryin'
Some are born and some are dyin'
It's alpha and omega's kingdom come
And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree
The virgins are all trimming their wicks
The whirlwind is in the thorn tree
It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

~Johnny Cash, the Man comes around.

First World Problems

Last week, on Twitter, Convicted Felon Dinesh D'Souza made a stupid comment about the new Nike Sport Hijab. It was something to the effect of "I hope Nike isn't saying to Jihadis and suicide bombers 'Just Do It." He was rightly put through the wringer for it. I have to say I think that's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. If he can't tell the difference between a Hijabi and a Jihadi, Dinesh is dumber than I thought. Note I thought he was pretty fuckin' dumb.

Look here, we live in a global society whether we like it or not. Our markets are likewise global whether we like it or not, and it's actually been that way as long as this country has existed. If Nike has decided that the Middle East is a big enough market that it should be specifically marketed to by them, then that's their decision. Sorry, but I started out as a Free Market conservative. I understand you don't get to have a free market when you like it, and a not free market when some corporation does something you don't like. It's their company, they're going to do what's profitable for them. Personally, I think These Fucking People are just pissed off because we live in a global society and the Middle East has become a big enough market for American companies to specifically market consumer products there in a visible manner. Of course, I'm sure the Sport Hijab will get marketed lots of other places too, like here or in Europe or Australia. Personally, I think it's a great idea.

I don't even get why this is a problem, we've been buying Arab oil and selling at least some of those people weapons pretty consistently for longer than I've been alive. How is a Hijab or a pair of expensive basketball shoes any damned different? Capitalism. If there's money to be made eventually somebody's going to give it a shot. If there's a market for it, hell, maybe in a year or two, Nike will make sport Turbans for Sikh men? Perhaps Buck or Gerber or K-Bar will start making Kirpans (Sikh daggers or swords) with some particular American ingenuity? For that matter, with Baptized Sikhs now able to observe the tenets of the Khalsa (the "Five K's") without a waiver while serving in the US military (and for that matter, with female Muslims also able to wear Hijabs now) I wouldn't be surprised if digital camouflage Hijabs (or at least the black form-fitting ones) and Turbans according to the different services digital patterns are already being manufactured.

This is no big deal, this is normal. This is how American tradition works.

Of course, it's also tradition that people bitch about it. That's just how this country is.

In some countries, like Iran or Saudi Arabia, a Muslimah might not be able to go jogging or train for an athletic event or play association football or whatever without her Hijab. Wouldn't one that fits and is designed for that type of activity be appropriate? Nike being an American brand...it might just be a big thing to be able to have.

And that, too, is just how those countries are.

Doesn't make it right.

In the era of Trump, those people have been sounding pretty damned "First World Problems" to me.

You know, like when you get the wrong food item at the Drive Thru at MacDonald's or when your battery is dead on your phone or when your WiFi is out?

Never mind that even though something as simple as a Mobile Phone weather app can literally be a lifesaver for a subsistence farmer in Niger, not very many people have Mobile Phones. Often, there's no electricity so maybe charge it in the car if you have a vehicle (Most people don't) and certainly outside of the cities and more populated areas, fuck 4G LTE, you're pretty often lucky to have any "G's" or service on any level at all. Yet to a subsistence farmer, largely dependent on the weather...a cell phone weather app or access to the internet (through the national ISP, SONITEL if they can afford access and live where it's available) and a website that shows longer-range weather forecasts can affect planting and watering schedules and can literally make the difference between survival and maybe even having a little money...or poverty and starvation.

Actually, given the country's low literacy rates, Radio is the big medium for news and weather. The BBC's Arabic and Hausa services, which also cater to Nigeria...are pretty heavily used in Niger. How many Americans even bother with the radio anymore? I know I sure don't.

Think about that, for a second. Something we take for granted or might not even notice or use here, can be a literal lifesaver in other parts of the world. Something ubiquitous here, like cell phones with internet access, is rare as fuck over there.

One of the feeds I follow on both Facebook and Twitter for news is Al-Jazeera English. Last week I read a couple of articles about the East African country of Benin that really got me thinking about these kinds of things and fed into me writing this post.

The first one was about parents (and other people) selling kids into forced labor. So, basically, it was about slavery. These kids are being sold sometimes for as little as $30. A kid might get told they're going to go away and get some great job, and end up performing agricultural work, working as a shoe-repairman/kid or working in a grocery store in Nigeria. If a parent or guardian is poor, they may feel like they don't have a choice, or they might simply give a kid to the village shoe repairman so the kid can learn a trade and they have one less mouth to feed. Did I mention that a lot of these countries do not have (and cannot afford to have) much or even anything at all in the way of social safety nets or social welfare programs? The article I read went into some depth about various non-governmental organizations and individuals that work with the Beninese government and law enforcement (or on their own) to bust these kids out of slavery.

The second article that I read was about Voodoo in Benin and how children, if they are believed to be possessed by an evil spirit, are often exiled to Voodoo convents where they are given a new name and all they get to learn is Voodoo songs and dances to try to "cure" themselves. (Note that "Possessed by an evil spirit" may be the local interpretation of some kid's medical problem that no one around has the capability or the knowledge to deal with.) Also, note that a vast majority of these kids would rather be going to school and doing normal kid stuff. The article talked about NGO's trying to shorten the time these kids were exiled, and getting them into school instead of doing crazy woo woo religious hokum. Funny thing, at the end of the article, the President of all the Voodoo priests in the area where these NGO's were working spoke with some of their people and, saying that "Where others can't, I can, I am the god of the thunder, of the lightning, and of snakes" he admitted he'd been ignorant, he apologized and agreed to reduce the time that the kids were exiled to three months (where before, some of them might be locked away for up to ten years) and to help get them into schools where they would get caught up on learning.

If an old Voodoo Priest in a country most Americans have never heard of and can't find on a map, can admit to error and make amends for previous mistakes, why can't so many Americans do it?

The next time somebody bitches about illegal immigrants or refugees...and remember, there's more than just Mexican illegal immigrants and there's a lot more people besides Muslims who become refugees...

Some of them, too, might be fleeing from religious persecution or slavery...

And people here want to complain about people who come here to do the jobs that they literally Will. Not. Do?

First World Problems. Seems kind of fucked up, I think.

If we don't get over these entitled attitudes, and this country comes flying apart or people like Paul Ryan get their way and get rid of the social safety net...we're absolutely going to find out what it's like to live in a country that's like Benin. We already have enough problems with crazy religious woo woo shit here already.

We live in a global society, with global problems, which will require global solutions. Like the man said...injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

We'd better start acting like it.

As long as we are ruled by others we shall lay our mistakes at their door, and our sense of responsibility will remain dulled. Freedom brings responsibilities, and our experience can be enriched only by the acceptance of these responsibilities. ~Kwame Nkrumah, 1st President of Ghana.

Chlorination Nation.

To recap (and I'm sure this is not all of what JonTron said), JonTron said, in what he thought was perfectly fine for a debate:

- Foreigners dilute the gene pool
- Black crime in America is the same as in Africa (like, he fuckin' brought this up TWICE)
- Racial issues can be summed up via mixing different colors of paint
- Statistical data means nothing because Clinton lost the election
- Destiny wants to kill black people
- Black Lives Matter is a violent organization
- the richest black man commits more crimes than the poorest white man
- Tribalism is a valid theory
- Immigrants are destroying every single country they are let into
- America is gonna become Mexico
- Racism is over
- Muslims are organizing to make it seem like Christians are protesting abortion clinics

And Destiny didn't even fucking ask the most obvious fuckin' question: "If you're so concerned about immigrants, why do you keep bringing up blacks?"

"Foreigners dilute the gene pool."

That's some straight up Nazi shit right there. Sorry, but I thought that Eugenics was pretty much discredited by the fact that most of the only people who actually tried to put it into practice ended up dead.

Also "I'm going to show that 'racism is over' by saying a bunch of racist shit?" What kind of fucking logic is that?

This shit was brought to my attention by my co-worker C.J. last night at work. (The original thread being here.) My basic response is "Fuck this shit, the gene pool needs Chlorine at this point, BAD!"

Each of you owes me 100 Nazi scalps...and I want my scalps.

But I digress...

 I'm going to be crude and probably pretty damned offensive here, and if you don't like it, too bad.

Seriously, I'm just sayin' here but some young punk ass gamer geek (I'm assuming that's what this little Jon Jafari/JonTron asshole is) who's sexual choices at this point most likely consist of Right Hand or Left Hand has one hell of a lot of nerve complaining about anyone, much less foreigners, diluting anyone's gene pool. If there's one thing that seems to be a common thread with these angry alt-right Nazi racist basement trolls who seem to spend all their lives on the computer, it's that they #1 haven't been laid yet. #2 they resent this fact, and #3 it's everyone's fault BUT theirs.

Just sayin' if running out of whack-it lube or shitty bandwidth denying access to your porntube subscription or Hentai videos is a tragic event, you might want to get out of the house.

Turn the computer or the console off, go outside, and talk to some real live human beings.

Like I told my friend Aaron awhile back, every last one of these motherfuckers ought to get smacked right in the mouth. At this point I'll add, preferably by a woman of color.

This guy sounds like he should be a member of Milo Yiannopoulos little retinue of sheltered-white-boys-who-need-an-ass-whuppin.' AKA "Alpha Males" who come off like their job is to be boy toys for the Gay Nazi or at least Faggot eye-candy so Milo can feel good about himself. The article I read about that made me think of how, back in the early 1990's Michael Jackson always seemed to travel with a retinue of young boys...which somehow seems less weird now.

Most of these people who go around claiming the "Alpha Male" label strike me as the type who are one Felony conviction away from knowing what another man's penis tastes like. Most of these motherfuckers are sheltered, weak-minded dudes who think their penis is some kind of magic key that unlocks money, power, and the secrets of the universe and entitles them to have sex with attractive women. No, It Does Not Work That Way.

Listen, people, I was taught if you wanted something you went out and earned it. You whether black, white, male, female, Christian, Jewish, Muslim or some rama-rama-ding-ding shit you had to have been to India to hear about and whether you came from a poor family or a rich one, aren't entitled to one goddamned fucking thing. Or you shouldn't be, anyway.

Doesn't matter if your parents are rich, once you leave the house, go make your own money. Yes, occasional family support is fine but once you get past a certain point, maybe a couple years out of college or so...you should be in a position where you don't need it too often.

Yes, everybody needs help now and again (and our society makes people jump through sometimes-ridiculous hoops to get it, and often in so doing helps the wrong people, while not helping those who are actually trying to accomplish something. That's not an argument against the social safety net...I'm saying we need a better one than we have and we need to apply intelligence to it and do the best we can to weed out the malingerers) some people have money and some people don't. Some people are good at this or that, some people are not. That's just life. Nobody wins at everything all the time and anybody who tells you that you can or gives you a trophy just for showing up is a fucking liar and needs to be punched in the face.

That's a lot of the problem. People have grown up not being taught that Action = Consequence, they are not being told, "NO!" They have been taught that their "feelings" are paramount, that their "individual liberty" is more important than anything, up to and including the freedom and rights of our whole society. People need to be told "No" sometimes, period. For some reason, most of the people who get this shit the worst are men.

Some people are socially successful and some people aren't, some people gamely try and don't quite make it, but still end up on your good side or are tolerated because at least they're trying.

I'm just gonna throw this out here right now, that the absolute last fucking thing any Man worthy of the name is entitled to is to get another person, whether male or female, to share their body and their soul with you. It's not about money, it's not about power, an awful lot of the time all it takes is not being a dick, having some mutual interests with a girl, a little courtesy and some common fucking decency.

Unless you've got a thing for mercenary gold-diggers who'll stab you in the back or women with a raging mental illness, guys, absolutely nobody is going to give a shit about how much money you make, or your I.Q. or the length of your penis. It just Doesn't. Work. That. Way.

Then of course there's the entitlement, and the racism. Jafari...not a very WASP-y sounding surname, that, just sayin.' Is this kid trying to out White-Man the White Man? That doesn't usually seem to work.

Instead, no, a lot of males have this idea that "Oh, she thinks I'm a dick." Hmmm, "Well, I guess I'll be an even BIGGER dick and then maybe she'll find that interesting?" I suppose it's not a big leap from that to thinking that Black folks will give up their rights and all they've fought for, for 150 years, in exchange for a job?

Of course, this also seems to be the governing philosophy of the Trump administration. "If we're big enough dicks to everyone else, and show our power by sheer ham-fisted obnoxious stupidity and unnecessarily hurting enough people, everybody else will get out of the way or submit and we can just do what we want!"

I'm here to tell you, that's also the lizard-brain mentality of the average 13-year-old boy. Acting like that, though, would tend to get me a hard backhand across the face from my Grandma. Old ladies especially usually aren't having it when it comes to that kind of crap.

I'm here to tell you, neither the ladies, nor those that certain people judge as less-than, nor the rest of the world is going to keep putting up with this bullshit forever, and those who practice it are going to be made to pay. If we Americans don't get this shit under control, and fast, our country is going to be made to pay. This glorification of crazy assholery for the sake of crazy assholery and the biggest dick bag wins is going to be the death of us.

You know how we fix this problem? We bring back the ass whuppin.' Full stop. Start beating the shit out of these motherfuckers. Hell, we may have to just straight up shoot a few of 'em. (I say start with the guy who said "foreigners dilute the gene pool" but that's just me.) We make this shit...entitlement, poor treatment of women, racism, and general shitty behavior both socially and otherwise unacceptable by inflicting as harsh as possible of consequences on people who act like that.

Richard Spencer (for example) seems to be keeping a much lower profile after getting punched in the face a few times. Do your civic duty, punch a Nazi. If you don't believe in violence...stand up, refuse to put up with this bullshit just the same. (Oh, and by the way, Fuck You Geert Wilders.)

Actually, the hell with that...

Forget punching Nazis...

Kick a Nazi in the balls, HARD. That'll chlorinate the gene pool real fucking quick.

Maybe if there's some risk to the dick, these guys will stop thinking with theirs.

Do your civic duty, kick a Nazi in the balls. Chlorinate the Gene Pool.

Fuck you, Steve King.

Blood that has soaked into the sands of a beach is all of one color. America stands unique in the world: the only country not founded on a race but on a way, an ideal. Not in spite of but because of our polyglot background, we have had all the strength of the world. That is the American way. ~Ronald Reagan

So, yesterday, Iowa Representative Steve King tweeted this:

For any who don't know, Geert Wilders is an Atheistic dick bag of a Dutch politician who's made a career out of hating on Muslims for no fucking reason that I can figure out. I don't know what the fuck any Muslim person ever did to him, but he's basically such an asshole that nobody wants to work with him so even if he wins the upcoming election in the Netherlands, he loses. He is the only actual member of his own party and so far as I understand it, none of the other parties want to work with him. So he can't become Prime Minister. Christ, how much of an asshole do you have to be for the famously tolerant Dutch to tell you to go fuck yourself?

As regards King; Before we move on, I'd just like to say "Fuck you, fuck you, and oh yeah, fuck you." As I've mentioned before I'm of Scandinavian descent. If culture and demographics are my destiny, well fuck it all then. I'm going to get a crew together, some kind of a boat and some weapons, and sail down the Missouri River to go a-Viking in King's district, because fuck him, that's why. But, ya know, this is America and he's lucky I ain't gotta be like that. I'm so sick of this right-wing shit by now though, that I might just get around to pillaging somebody's village yet.

The goddamned Fascist moron with the corn-cob up his ass Also said:

"We need to get our birth rates up or Europe will be entirely transformed within a half century or a little more. And Geert Wilders knows that and that’s part of his campaign and part of his agenda." 

Okay, so more of the usual "OhMyGod, Brown People are coming and they're going to fuck your daughter!" Racist bullshit.

Sorry if you don't like it, you sheet-wearing cow-fucker, but if I had a daughter and she got with a black person, or a person of any other non-white ethnicity, well that'd be her goddamned business so long as they have morals and treat her good. I say "Person" because if I had a kid (or have one that I don't know about...a real possibility given my own unfortunate sexual history...but in my defense I was trying to piss off my nut-bag ex-wife) I don't care if they're gay. If their partner happens to be religious...great! If their partner is Muslim? I'd probably actually be encouraged because I have quite a bit of experience with Muslims and know pretty well what I can or can't expect in terms of behavior. See, a little knowledge about things other than bestiality, cousin-fucking, horse cock porn and right-wing bullshit actually comes in real handy for reducing the amount of stress in one's life.

...And then, in response, This happened:

As I've said before regarding Trump, when assholes like David Duke are supporting your dumb ass, it's probably time to rethink your life. Duke has falsely claimed to be a Vietnam Veteran (he's not a veteran at all) he was part of a plot to overthrow the government of the Caribbean island nation of Dominica (supposedly to establish an anti-Communist government, but in reality there were extensive financial motivations) by American and Canadian white supremacists. The plot was foiled by the FBI and pretty much everybody but Duke went to prison either in Canada, Dominica or the US. Then eventually, he became a (basically hated, and ironically replaced by now-sitting US Senator David Vitter) one-term member of the Louisiana house of representatives and he eventually was kicked out of the Klan for stealing money from them. David Duke is such an all-around loser with enough of a rep for doing dumb shit that I'm surprised he hasn't pissed off the wrong person and been chopped up and fed to alligators by now. A compliment from this dude should end one's political career. I hope (and given his record, I wouldn't be surprised) that some day a cache of gay porn featuring black men is found in the possession of this Nazi shithead. I'll laugh like a motherfucker.

When pressed about the issue, King said:

"I'd like to see an America that's just so homogeneous that we look a lot the same, from that perspective,”

No, dude, just No. That's not how this works, not even close. Maybe you want to live in some kind of weird Stepford-America where everybody acts the same and goes to the same kind of church and looks the same and shit but I don't. I'd find such a country to be pretty damned deadly boring, you know, kind of like Iowa. I've driven through that state quite a few times and I can't say I've ever done anything more than stop for gas and take a piss now and again there, it's pretty much several hours of nothing between Illinois and Nebraska...and Nebraska is of course even more of nothing but miles and miles and miles, of miles and miles and miles of nothing! But since I legitimately don't consider the smell of cow manure to be attractive nor do I regard a picture of cow udders to be pornographic, I think I'll pass on your idea of what America should look like, Representative Ass Wipe.

Funny thing, but it's a good goddamned thing that for him that I've had some positive experience of Iowans and don't actually regard Gauleiter King to be all that representative of the people of his state. That might've changed since I was in Mrs. Nitz's 4th Grade class at Peace Lutheran School in Tustin, California...but if that is so, you can count on me to be even more pissed off. That teacher and her class is exactly why books like Pilgrim's Progress, James and the Giant Peach, Where the Wild Things Are and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory became relevant to me in the first place. She was a mean old lady originally from Estherville, Iowa, a devout Lutheran and a retired secular teacher, who was fiercely committed to education. What she'd say about Steve King, I don't know. My guess is that it'd probably involve the wooden paddle she kept behind her desk. One of the few times she ever used it was when one kid called another one a racial slur.

This is America, a country of stolen land with assimilated, borrowed and stolen culture, partly built by literally stolen African people who were in part freed by German and Irish immigrants impressed into the Union Army fresh off the boat. After that war (which Duke's side lost) we that replaced THAT source of agrarian labor with immigrant industrial labor from even more other countries to fuel our industrial revolution. Our car and consumer cultures were largely established by Henry Ford, an arch-conservative (and anti-Semite) who brought Arabs-both Christian and Muslim-over here to work in his factories, with the goal of establishing them as a constituency to oppose the Jews. That's why my own home state has the largest percentage of Arab Americans in the United States. We won a war with and have defended the post-World War II liberal democratic order mostly with technology created by emigrated or yes, stolen Austrian and German scientists. and I sit here typing this today on technology that is what it is because of a Lebanese immigrant and an American college dropout who started out with basically nothing who between the two of them, founded rival companies and got our modern computerized technological age going. Can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies? 

In the immortal words of Barack Obama (himself the son of a Kenyan immigrant who along with Obama's Kansas-born mother, was a college student here, I believe) Yes we can.

This is America, and restoring and rebuilding and reinventing our civilization with "somebody else's babies" is exactly how the fuck we do it. It's the only way we ever have. Americans aren't like the Arabs or the Dutch, or the Japanese or the Russians or the Swiss. We aren't a people based on the land we live on and one unified culture. We don't have a common religion like the Greeks or Laotians or the Saudis or even my own Lutheran Scandinavian ancestors did. We're Americans, all we have and all we are...is what we want to be. Somebody else's babies? Well if they're here, they're ours, because their parents wanted to be Americans. Guess what? That's Okay. Unless you're Native American, your ancestors were once in the same boat.

If you don't like that, fuck you.

I'll say this much with certainty, if people from the rest of the world stop wanting to be Americans? People like Donald Trump and Steve King will be exactly why that happens.

And it'll be a damn shame, too. 

This is what we came from:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
MOTHER OF EXILES. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

~The New Colossus, Emma Lazarus

That's the America I want to live in, and I'll fight to keep it that way and don't you forget it.

#Top20

The Heart Attack Burger and the Orange Man.

Are you going to eat that?
 ~Brooks Hatlen, to Andy Dufresne, the Shawshank Redemption

I was at work last night (I work in a kitchen at a casino) and I happened to be the trash guy last night. That's about as fun as it sounds. After I get done working I want to brush the crud out of my green fur, go home, crawl in my garbage can and go to sleep. Yes, it really is a job tailor made for Oscar the Grouch. It's also one of those jobs where one isn't assigned to a particular area. I was on this particular job for a number of years in my workplace because I'm one of the people who gets shit done instead of fucking off all night.

Along the way, I've observed a lot from the small-but-diverse slice of humanity that I work with.

Last night as I'm making one of my rounds I observed that the cooks for one of the restaurants were making up these burger patties that had big chunks of butter in the middle. I asked a couple of questions, got my answers and found out in the resulting back-and-forth that one of my co-workers wanted to eat one of these monstrosities. Me and the other guy from my department who was right there both thought the same things; Who'd want to eat such a thing, and how quickly would one have a heart attack after eating it? If I ate a burger like that, I'm quite sure that I'd find out I could rap (or at least beat-box rather well) with my behind. I say this as somebody who's worked consistently in various jobs in the food service business ranging from dishwasher to line cook and all the way up to manager in a cafeteria...the burger...and the idea of me eating it...are ridiculous.

Who would find such a plated monument to culinary excess appetizing? For the record the guy who wants to eat one is the young, socially awkward Libertarian on our shift. He has a good heart and an idealistic nature as people his age who take up such philosophies often do. So, I won't hold it against him...but I had to give him some shit about wanting to eat what sounds to me like Death on a plate, or as I had tentatively christened it "The Heart Attack." As I'm leaving the kitchen to go out to dump my trash the little old Japanese-American bakery lady (who'd heard the conversation) had to add that "Yes, you're right, that IS heart attack burger." So, I got to thinking about it. Why does this exist?

It exists because people's souls are empty, so they compensate by filling their bodies.

It exists because delayed gratification, let alone self denial, have become foreign concepts to many Americans. It exists because we have no problem with establishments like the one I work in throwing away enough food to feed a respectably-sized African village on a daily basis (although I'm pretty sure that Africans have more sense than to eat some of the kinds of food we serve.) Anyone familiar with the term MRE (Meals Rejected by the Enemy/Everyone/Ethiopia) and the culinary quality thereof can imagine what I mean when I say that I refer to the food we get in the break room as "Meals Rejected by the Customers."

It exists because we're Americans, Excess is what we DO, Excess is what we've become. Excess and the glorification of it for its own sake is why anybody at all in this country would vote for a man who feels the need to have a gold-plated toilet be something that he owns.

It wasn't always that way. Grandparents on both sides of my family were all children of the Depression, they taught me to not waste food. They taught me values and work ethics that I have always relied on. My religious views (including respect for other people's religions) and work ethics trend old-school small-c conservative. My social views? I'd have been a New Dealer if I'd been alive back then because that's what my grandparents (conservative Democrats and liberal/Rockefeller Republicans respectively) either were or understood the need for. Only in recent years have I come to fully appreciate all this, even as my body starts to break down and my health gets worse because of my own accidents and chemical and culinary misadventures and drinking and ridiculous behavior and sexual stupidity (and I was taught better than that) which could be ascribed to youthful dumb shit. Note the "Could" honestly the worst of it hit in my later mid-twenties after my own life had gone to shit not once, but twice and I'd gotten divorced AND the Divorce (from my Pentecostal religious nut ex-wife) had damned near made an Atheist of me.

Nothing wrong with Atheists, but I probably wouldn't be a good one.

I'm a stubborn son of a bitch, I tend to learn things the hard way. I've also tended to need something greater than myself to look to when things go sideways. and another human being just won't cut it. My own spiritual beliefs are thus a pretty agnostic form of Christianity.

So, yeah, while I'm not necessarily a Big-"c" conservative nor a Big-"l" liberal and I'm not sure if it's because of or in spite of my lack of conventional religion, I look with equal parts genuine alarm and unapologetic disdain at what American "Conservatism" has turned into.

Oh sure, we've always had nuts. We've always had greedy power-mad shitheads and old motherfuckers whose main, if not only, concern was staying in office, and/or staying in power. But, we're at the point now where it's either Far-right or Left, with no real middle of the road. We've reached the point where Republican Representatives and Senators are literally running away from their own constituents and where even moderate and sane Conservatives like David Brooks and Evan McMullin sound like liberals compared to Congress and Trump. A hell of a lot of Republican voters are having second thoughts (and worried about their health care, among other things) with many more about to be left behind...and what's the main thing Congressional Republicans seem to care about? Staying in power...

Meanwhile, even their own voters are getting pissed off...

The rest of us are going to have to start finding ways to work with those people, to allay their constant, often unfounded fears (or as I keep telling people, turn off the damn TV) before we end up in the position of having a competent, focused, intelligent autocrat taking over who isn't obsessed with how he looks to the media and his personal popularity. Like I've said before, Trump is in the position of being very unpopular and looking like a weak autocrat...and few things have a shorter lifespan than an unpopular and weak autocrat.

But, once the Trump mess is over with (and I don't have any idea how, at the rate he's going, he's expecting to serve a full term) we'll likely have to deal with the Pence mess and/or the Ryan mess. In both cases, those guys are a lot more conventional/predictable and thus easier to oppose, and I don't see either as inspiring the same kind of fanaticism that Trump does, but still each caters to different, solidly entrenched aspects of the Republican Party (Fundamentalist Christianity and Ayn Randism respectively) and each one would likely have their own strong base...which would likely be stronger, or at least smarter, than Trump Supporters, and probably not the flash-in-the-pan that Trumpism is likely to be. I can't help but notice that Milo Yiannopolous appears to have dropped off the face of the earth...and minus Bannon, many of the alt-right Nazis have done the same.

It's not just reaching out to the other side that's going to be needed. We've got to come up with somebody that's worth following and likely somebody new or at least not that high up on the seniority list...kind of like how things worked out with Obama, in point of fact. It's not like the other side hasn't made it easier. One by one, the right-wingers have conceded belief in a decent environment, civil society, common decency, facts, reality, patriotism, policy, truth and even standard conservative traits like religiosity and support for the military to the other side, as if they are irrelevant.

Maybe they are, if you're one of those people who thinks giving the rest of the world a giant middle finger out of hate and rage is some kind of wonderful thing. I've seen videos of these Trump rallies where people act as if being able to express hate or say racial slurs is the greatest thing ever...and so far as I know such things haven't been socially acceptable for at least as long as I've been alive. Yeah, the crowds are getting smaller, have been for a while. But, the fact that this garbage ever appealed to anybody in this day and age should give people pause and cause us all to re-think some things.

For fuck's sake, as another friend of mine pointed out at around six this morning "Fox News is engaging in rampant self-abuse (i.e. Masturbation) because the President used the words "Radical Islamic Terrorism" in a sentence. He then added that this is apparently code for brown people. I pointed out that there are plenty of white Muslims out there...

He remarked that I'd have to turn off my brain if I wanted to think like these people do...

And that's it, right there, isn't it?

I've said more than once that when this is over we might have to send a lot of these people back to school, and bring back the ass whuppin' too. 'Cause if I acted like that, that's what I'd expect to get even today.

We might have to go 'old-school' in some other ways too.

There's a lot of people who have qualities that might appeal to displaced conservatives feeling buyer's remorse: conservatives like former CIA agent Evan McMullin might be able to be recruited, people like Senator Tammy Duckworth (Army Veteran) or Rev. William Barber (African American Pastor) or even unaffiliated but well-known people like Jesse Ventura or Mark Cuban. If I were the Democratic leadership, I'd be making an effort to reach out to and recruit moderate and sane conservatives, and to promote Democrats with the type of qualities that right-wingers say they want to have in terms of leadership. The Democrats themselves are in a position where (Bullshit-ass, Man's Approval-seeking Evangelicals and Melania Trump's leading the Lord's Prayer aside) at the rate this is going, give it a few more weeks or months of this crap and they'll be able to claim religion (as well as religious tolerance) as a defining value...while a lot of people are already wondering just what the values of the Republican Party even are anymore, aside from money and staying in office.

Damn it, we can do better.

The Republicans are basically in the same position the Democrats were in 20 years ago, but without the ability to coast on popularity.

We have some real problems in our society these days, up to and including that a lot of people have fallen through the cracks and even more are being marginalized and of course the leadership either doesn't care or is actively encouraging this crap. The golden toilets, heart attack burgers and in many ways even Trump's traveling clown show are nothing more than a distraction from that. The real problem we have right now is Congress, that can be a pretty damned local issue. If we don't find a way to impeach Trump, we may have a revolution in this country. Once that happens, this country is probably going to fly apart like the old Soviet Union did.

If you want to stop that, put down the cheeseburger, turn off the TV, and go outside into the unseasonable climate change weather and get to work.

I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impel. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days. ~Franklin Delano Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, 1933.