Cultservatism.

2 Timothy 4:3 King James Version 

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

So the FBI and other law enforcement agencies caught the #MAGA-Bomber this week.

Wednesday morning, as I usually do, I ran some errands and then went to the pet store to see what they got in their critter delivery and I spent an hour or so playing with baby ferrets, only to come home and have this be the very first thing I saw. It would be far from the last like it, and as a result much of this week has been marked by irritability and lack of sleep.

It's to the point where I damned near flew off the handle at a co-worker for talking stupid as a result of said irritability, and a fucked up night didn't help. The angry and over-stressed overall climate of things in America right now is about the only part of conservative economics or fiscal or social policy that actually does trickle down. The personal nihilism that results is poisoning our civilization.

I think it says a lot about the state of this country that the conservatives are acting the way they've been acting and trying to blame problems that they cause on nearly everybody except for themselves, and the journalists started this thing off by simply adapting to the problem and keeping on keeping on. It's like every last one of these ridiculous Republican motherfuckers have decided that if Trump is gonna Trump, they're going to to try to be Trump too. The only problem with that, is that nobody else really gets to be Trump except for Trump...and even Trump is not what the Trump-worshipers are making him out to be. I'm not kidding, an odd turn of events led me to read a thread on Charlie Kirk's Twitter feed.

I found out this week that Charlie Kirk, despite presenting himself as some big political dude with some kind of high-dollar national operation...lives at home with his parents. I commented to that effect. Back in the day, if you were a 24-year-old dude who still lived with yo mama, you were considered a joke, at least among the conservatives that I knew or associated with or was aware of.

Kirk, and the people who post on his shit, speak about Trump as if the Orange One is Jesus. I'm not kidding, you can look this shit up for yourself.

It's not just them, though, it's the run-of-the-mill Trump Supporters saying that they don't care what he says, they'll support it. Trumpism has crossed the Rubicon from being a political movement to a cult, as far as I'm concerned. I feel confident that if Trump told these goddamned morons to bow down and worship him, they'd not only do it, but they'd attack anybody who was there that didn't go along. It will absolutely be the people who are closest to this dude, who follow him the most assiduously, who will be the first victims of his most debased whims. It'll come to that, trust me.

Do you really think if Trump told these fools to pick one of their own as a human sacrifice to prove loyalty, that these motherfuckers wouldn't be fighting among themselves to be the first to literally die for Trump? I'm not sure it'll get that far...but you can see it from here.

I'm serious.

I'm warning you now. This dude looks like he should be holding up a sign that says "I believe in Jesus" but no. He's holding up a sign that says he believes in Trump.

Where this ends is in people strapping bombs to themselves. #MAGA has not, as someone said, become the new INRI. It is instead becoming the "Allah Akbar" of what basically amounts to a perverse kind of anti-Islam (and anti-Christianity for that matter as well.)

And Trumpism is a jealous god, much like what Tom Clancy once said of Marxism-Leninism in the second chapter of the Hunt For Red October. Were Tom still with us, I doubt he'd recognize what has become of conservatism.

Hell, I doubt it would have him, considering that it has exiled most NeoConservatives and any traditional conservatives that are left to the Outer Darkness, and sealed this particular dread ritual with a posthumous excommunication of John McCain.

Trumpism has its own code of personal conduct.

Note that modesty, moral probity, sexual restraint or even keeping one's goddamned hands to themselves is simply not part of the program.

I'm a guy, so I can't say for sure, but I would imagine that a lot of women these days are basically being made to feel like they're on the menu, rather than being treated as human beings.

Trumpism has its own shrines, some of which are even mobile, being that they're vehicles.

This was the van owned by Caesar Sayoc, the guy who mailed all those pipe bombs to people, though evidently these pictures were taken before he became so infamously known.

So does that mean that Trumpism has its own priests, as well?

And if so, does that mean that its priests are terrorists?

Certainly, there will be people who will name this nut as a martyr.

Bet on it.

Bet on the fact that they don't care if you're a Republican.

I follow Rick Wilson, who is a lifelong Republican, on Twitter. Some of the crap that these fucking people fill his inbox with is just plain ridiculous. I gather that alt-right Nazis have harassed his family members and threatened him and them with murder. They've done the same to David French, and to a variety of other anti-Trump conservatives. Where that leaves a person like me, who left conservatism and Republicanism in 2008 over Birtherism and Sarah Palin, I'll leave to your imagination. What These Fucking People think of somebody like me, old and disabled and the kind of gun owner that doesn't buy into their fake-macho bullshit and the kind of guy who'd rather keep his job than punch some moron in the face, I'm a go ahead and let you fill in the blanks.

I strongly suggest that it ends up with me dying in a firefight, not for ideological reasons but because I have a good number small furry animals that starving goons and their wannabe-warlords will likely want to eat after they've wrecked the country and the financial and food-distribution systems that depend on having a functioning government and all the various compacts that result from civilization.

Oh, and the company that makes the foods that I feed my dog and ferrets is Canadian (this was a choice I made on purpose) but has their American factory located in Kentucky. If this crap screws up distribution systems more than it already has (and it has driven prices up in so doing) this greatly affects my animals, too.

The truth is that, unchecked, this story ends with these fucking idiots roasting each other over blazing bonfires of burning #MAGA hats because there's nothing to eat and anything else to burn to cook it has been used up.

The time to take a stand against the fall of night is now, and we have an election coming up. You do the math. If we can't work up the interest, or the self-preservation, to stop this Trump-cult nonsense and the destructive fanaticism that it entails, this cartoon evil shit, it's going to end us and we're going to deserve it. You can either stand up, or let the vast, yawning Abyss that's where Donald Trump's soul is supposed to be swallow America, if not the world.

Please, look at this snipped headline, read it, and consider what it means. Caesar Sayoc's family lawyer says that Caesar found a "Father" in Trump. Trump's own kids didn't even find a father in Trump.  These people's idealized version of Trump has no basis in reality. But that's OK with them, they get to shout "CNN Sucks" and "Lock Her Up" and get glory from other feeble-minded people for doing it.

I'm not sure what's so great about that, but it seems to cause some people to love Donald Trump more than they love their own families. In point of fact, the bomber had been kicked out by his parents and was actually living in his van.

If that doesn't tell you how, even according to its own [claimed] basis and the talk it's talked, how far gone American conservatism is...I don't know what will.

These people have gleefully set on fire every single thing they've ever said they believed, except for racism, for Donald Trump.

We can do something about this now, vote the bastards out, get rid of the enablers, and start restraining this garbage...or we can all expect that the Tree Of Life Congregation Synagogue and the shooting of the two African Americans in a Kentucky Kroger grocery store will become even more of a daily fact of life. Evidently, the Kentucky gunman tried to get into a church before he went and shot those two people.

Right-wing terrorism is now a daily fact of life in America, while our government sucks up to Saudi Arabia....you know, the country that Osama Bin Laden and most of the 9/11 hijackers were from.

And these Republicans are the people who spent 15 years telling anybody who would listen that Islam was the threat?

If what has become of American conservatism has a problem with Fundamentalist Islam, it's a matter of professional jealousy, rather than oil or theology or whatever.

Well, that and the fact that Islam on a scriptural level as the very basis of its theology does not permit personality cults, or the equating of a man with God.

Sooner or later they're going to hit that sticking point as well. Care to place any bets on who the Chinese and the Russians and so many of our traditional rivals will side with? They all have large Muslim populations to placate and economic and military interests that run counter to our own.

If you notice, from Gaddafi to Saddam to Erdogan (who thinks he's a reincarnation of Ataturk...Islam does not allow belief in reincarnation, either) Middle Eastern or North African dictators are mostly secular.

Because Islam does not allow the worship of men.

Christianity, or at least the American kind, has...or perhaps had would be a better term...no such issue.

The past tense is there for a reason.

When was the last time you seriously heard a conservative talk about Jesus?

Vote them out, and do it now, before the planet is stuck with this crap for a thousand years because they took down the Cross and put up a Trump hotel at the end of the Via Dolorosa.

Hell is empty, all the devils are here.

James 2:19 King James Version (KJV)

19 Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.

You know what I'm getting tired of?

I'm getting tired of these assorted conservatives, fascists, Nazis, Republicans, and various and assorted other sacks of shit telling me how religious they are.

I mean, come on. Seriously. We have an administration that's actively trying to persecute LGBT people Because Jesus and...wait? What? What horse-fuckery is this?

A bunch of naked Nazis under a blanket that's made to look like a Swastika flag. Like, that doesn't even look a little gay, it's more like a lot gay...and don't these motherfuckers supposedly hate gay people?

Sorry, but I can remember when a picture like this getting out would mean those dudes stood a good chance of getting beat up, or even killed. I'm not saying that's right, I'm just saying that's how it was...and yet that's the kind of world these fuckers want to go back to? Hello? Is this thing even on?

You'll note that the man with the tiny gun appears to be Gavin McInnes, who as I've noted elsewhere stuck a microphone up his own ass because something something argle bargle Hillary Clinton.

This is the guy who founded the "Proud Boys" an organization that has evidently gotten very close to the Republican Party in recent days.

I've heard...I have not seen it but I have heard and Googled the evidence of it...that Gavin McInnes apparently made a live video of spreading his ass cheeks and sticking a dildo up his own ass.

I wonder what Mike Pence has to say about that...

I'm sorry, but if this is what modern Republicanism has come to count me out. Do whatever you want behind closed doors, but nobody needs to see that. I'm a middle aged man with a church background and a former conservative Republican and by the standards I was taught if you're getting caught in bed with a bunch of naked dudes and you're sticking stuff up your own ass on video, those are things ya'll should not even be claiming to be.

Granted, I'm so old I can remember when conservatives hated Nazis, too, but I digress.

Apparently, these fucking fools are even making up "Degrees" now, so that they can give each other glory for assaulting other people, breaking the law, and getting arrested.

Seriously, how in the hell does any of this strike anybody as conservative?

Again, I'm so old that I remember when a guy I used to know who kept getting in trouble for things like assault and drug possession and was asked to leave the church I was going to at the time...and it was a conservative Evangelical church though both apolitical and on the decent end of the spectrum. Conservatism as I remember it attached strict requirements to the use of force. Of course, that was also before the NRA went full Turner Diaries, but I digress, again.

I'd really like to know how Republicans like Carlos Curbelo (who publicized this event to his fellows on the Right) justify using a street gang apparently composed of violent [apparently closeted] homosexuals to terrorize members of the opposition party with traditional conservative beliefs like the dignity of every person, individual freedom, opposition to tyranny and rule of law...let alone modern conservative beliefs that gay people are somehow...bad.

Yes, indeed, I'd really like to know the answer to that.

Indeed, it often seems to me that what it really boils down to is that gay people, along with Black folks, other People of Color, non-Christians, and now apparently also women are "Bad" because they don't vote Republican as much, or maybe even at all.

Republican logic seems to be: You can vote for whoever you want to as long as it's us, fuck you I've got mine, FUCK YOU, YOU'RE NOT A REPUBLICAN!

(...Note that "Republican" appears to be becoming a smaller and less inclusive group by the day...)

There's no way to reason with that, you punch it in the face until it stops talking and cries like a little girl...except, oh wait, you don't need to even punch these cowardly shits in the face for them to start crying. All you have to do is not kiss their ass. Again, how in the hell does anybody find this crap inspiring, or even worth voting for?

So, let me get this straight, "Proud Boys" can basically be raging perverts according to what I was taught were conservative standards, and Fundamentalist Christians like Pat Robertson can say things like we shouldn't let the fact that Saudi Arabia murders its own people (in a manner proscribed by Islam no less) get in the way of selling them a bunch of weapons, but a bus full of Black senior citizens on their way to do a normal thing like voting is wrong and those people have to find another ride to the polls?

As I understand it, they got their chance to go and vote, but it took a lot of extra work and a lot more time...but that's what happens if you want to actually exercise your rights in America these days.

Are you tired of this garbage yet? Let me tell you, I sure am.

Nazis and racists and stupid morons get to have a Bacchanalia of doing whatever they want, and the rest of us get, at minimum, embarrassment, frustration, stress and inconvenience...for basically years on end at this point?

 Unless of course you're transgender, in which case the Trump administration wants to try to legally define you out of existence while instituting "Genetic testing."

Have you non-voters, protest voters and Third Party voters realized what's even going on here? This is literal, outright Nazi shit that these motherfuckers are talking about here!

If you don't think Black folks, or gay people, or Jews, or Latinos, or Muslims or whatever...up to and including you yourself...could be the next one to end up with a target on your back, you're wrong.

It never stops with these fucking people, ever. There is not even any such thing as conservative enough, or white enough. These are people who think that he who builds the highest mound of skulls can see the farthest.

 These are people who have discarded every single thing they ever claimed to believe, who are engaging in mind-boggling levels of perversion, and theft...and they want you to believe Latinos coming here to try to get asylum...and supposed "Middle Eastern" people (and again, what's wrong with being from the Middle East?) are more of a threat than their deceptions, destruction, lies, perversions and thefts.

I was taught that America was big, had a responsibility to the rest of the world as a shining city on a hill, and was better than this. I'm tired of being told by bigoted small people that America is small and only has room for people like them.

These are people who treat the Romans Chapter One and the Seven Deadly Sins as a fucking to-do list, who daily spit on the Constitution, the Ten Commandments and the Word of God and who have nothing but contempt for you, if you voted for them...or for me because I didn't. That's their defining principle "Fuck you, I've got mine." That's their only defining principle and so far as I can tell the only one they've ever had.

But it's not just that they've got theirs, they want yours, too. It doesn't matter if you don't have anything. These ravenous wolves don't care, they'll take the shirt off your back if that's all you got.

And the Bible has plenty to say about how and where people like that end up.

It's not about the money, it's about the fact that these people would rather kill and steal than live, and would rather hate than eat.

It's about the fact that many of the people who speak the loudest about loving America, and God and the Flag believe in none of the above except insofar as how can they use these things as a club with which to beat others.

I'm a middle-aged former conservative Christian white dude with a Protestant church background who's been there and done that and actually did a lot of the things these people claim to idolize, and I still have experienced this in my own life. All I had to do for them to hate me was get divorced, and then call bullshit on their Prosperity Gospel. Why the fuck do you think I'm not a Christian or a conservative anymore?

These people will try and make an Atheist of you, and then tell you you're going to hell for not believing.

If that's what they had in store for me, what do you think they have in mind for people who aren't or never were or who for one reason or another couldn't be part of their shitty little club? These people don't even like each other, and often in my experience try incessantly to take advantage even of one another.

Think about that the next time one of these motherfuckers tells you they believe in God.

Think, if they would treat one of their own, as I was at the time, in such a way that I joked they thought Jesus was a club they thought they could beat me with, well what the fuck do you think they have in mind for brown women and children?

Vote the bastards out, while we still can. As far as I'm concerned, vote them out and kick their followers asses in the streets so they know not to do it again.

If we don't end this by the ballot, the chance increases that it will end by the bullet and that's not going to be good for anybody. If they won't learn the word "No" we have to teach them that word, or this will never be over until we are all dead...because that's basically what these idiots believe in whether they dress it up with talk of Jesus and the Rapture or not.

Vote them out, because in America we have a Constitution and it says God doesn't get a vote. We are free to practice our beliefs, but not to force them on others. If these people weren't afraid of your vote they wouldn't be trying to take it away.

It needs to be said and I'm a keep saying it, show the fuck up and vote. Get rid of these assholes while we still can.

Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.
~William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act I, Scene II.

Idolatry.

The sexual act, successfully performed, was rebellion. Desire was thought-crime. ~1984, George Orwell.

Hold on, back the truck up, Piers. Just a damn minute.

Let me get this straight.

Dude here is carrying his kid...and somehow that's "Emasculation?" Listen here, bitch, one of these things is not like the other one.

He's the guy that plays James Bond...and you're...not.

In fact, what you're mostly known for being is a fat slob of a Trump Supporter who says a lot of dumb shit. What I most remember you for is the fact that during a debate on gun control, Jesse Ventura wiped the floor with your stupid ass live on CNN.

Personally, what I'd like to know is how, in a matter of just a few years, did this motherfucker go from vaguely liberal-ish drooling anti-gun moron who worked for CNN to...Trump Supporting moron.

Well, I suppose you could say that the constant here is "Moron." The fact that he threw in a slur against Native American kids just kind of seals the deal.

For reasons that should be glaringly obvious, Twitter was not kind. I thought it was particularly funny that a majority of the negative responses came not from women, but from men who spoke about things like carrying their kids in baby-slings (or whatever) to various events and stuff. I just happened to think that the responses from women were much more hilariously brutal.

As well they should be. I'm kind of getting the vibe that a lot of women are done with these misogynistic Trump-Supporting idiots and their bullshit. Even a lot of guys I know are sick of this shit. Hell, I showed the Piers Morgan tweet to a co-worker, because I wanted a second opinion, and he laughed at it. Dude is a Democrat, but kind of on the toxic masculinity Bernie-bro end of the spectrum. He still takes care of his kid, though.

It wasn't just people actually in the conversation that were dogging Piers out, though. It was people like Brianna Wu, one of the many women who is running for Congress right now. She also has a history with these fucking people, being one of those who was hounded by the gamer-gate mob...a mob that was in many ways led by a homosexual, Milo Yiannopoulos.

We know what these fucking people would like to do to women. We can now surmise what they have in mind for men, also.

One has to wonder just what these people's idea of acceptable conduct for a man even is.

Look, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that Mike Cernovich isn't exactly a good example of anything, but his idea of exposing himself to women and demanding that they get him off or he's going to masturbate...doesn't exactly sound like a very good dating policy. It sounds like a surefire way to end up on a sex-offender registry.

I'm not sure if people like Cernovich, or Gavin McInnes (who once stuck a microphone up his own ass because Hillary Clinton something something gazpacho) realize quite where their idea of grunting, fighting-in-the-streets hyper-masculinity is likely to get people...but you don't have to have watched all six seasons of Oz to guess that it quite likely ends in Sing Sing, with these Proud Boy idiots taking it up the butt from far less privileged dudes who are actual no-shit gang members rather than cowards who attack peaceful, unarmed protesters.

Is it just me, here, or are we drowning in Stupid Male Insecurity?

Whether it's Incels, losers like Gavin McInnes and Piers Morgan, or whatever, it seems like we're stuck with a lot of people who can't "successfully perform the sexual act...not to their own satisfaction, anyway, so I'm gonna guess that their partners are none too happy either. I know Piers Morgan has been divorced at least once, so I'm guessing that might have something to do with it.

...And then of course there's shitbirds like Trump, who one way or another have to pay for it, and whose entire existence is a shadow-play of trying to hide their own fears and male inadequacies, whether real or imagined.

I suppose, that Trump has managed to make Stormy Daniels look like she has some dignity, so there's that. Yet another unintended consequence in a presidency that's full of them.

Margaret Atwood, the Handmaid's Tale author, said once that "Men worry that women will laugh at them. Women worry that men will kill them."

Listen, guys, I don't know how to tell you this without being an asshole, so I'm a just say it: If you keep acting like this, you damned well deserve to get laughed at. You damned well deserve to have your various avatars of political stupidity voted out of office and you damned well deserve to have them be replaced by the ladies, who will not give a fuck about the various dick-anxieties that are what's really driving a lot of this stupid shit. If ya'll don't want the first question on a gun license form to be "Do you feel secure about the size of your penis" My suggestion is that it's probably time to cut out the stupid shit before ya'll ruin things for guys like me, who managed not to catch this particular societal herpes of authoritarian male stupidity, or at least managed to grow out of it.

I fully well realize that a lot of Western culture is driven by entirely dick-obsessed Greek mythology and philosophy, yet at the same time we have this obsession with thinking of prisoners looking at shadows in a cave, and viewing ourselves as the shadows...Plato of course being the basis for much of Roman Stoic philosophy as well...thus leading to a disdain for the physical world, particularly on the part of the religious, and to a love of ideas over people....but all too often, especially with outright cults like this Trump bullshit...it all comes back to that ancient obsession with the dick.

Listen up, my fellow white straight men, it's the 21st goddamned century, not the Bronze Age.

Most of the time nobody cares about your dick.

We'd best straighten out our bullshit and our petty insecurities and obsessions and cut out this drama-queen bullshit. We'd best cut out this strutting wannabe-authoritarianism and acting like it's some big bad thing that the rest of the world is talking back to us BEFORE the rest of the world smacks us in our collective mouths and tells us to sit down and shut the fuck up.

You want respect? Respect is earned, by every action, every day. Do you really think this kind of crap is respectable conduct? Hello? Is this thing on?

There are people in this country, right here, right now, who do not have food to eat or a roof over their heads and you want to act like it's the worst thing in the world that our society determined long before any of us were born that a woman should have the capability to say "No" to you?

FUCK YOU!

You weren't promised respect, or power, or that women will have sex with you, or anything like that. Hell, if you actually read the Bible you'd know we're not promised that we'll get up tomorrow morning.

I was taught "You want something, you go out and you earn it."

But all I see right now is a bunch of entitled crybabies who think the world owes them everything, and I ain't talking about the liberals, I'm talking about what has become of too many conservative white men.

I used to be one of ya'll, but I was taught better than this.

The idol of the 21st century isn't the Golden Calf of Exodus, or even the Golden Bull of Wall Street, it's not Mecca or the Vatican or the Wailing Wall or some giant Buddha statue. No, the idol of the 21st century is nothing more than a giant gold-plated dick, with a bunch of idiots who want to show it to the world like it's some kind of a new thing and not something that we, each of us men, all have and should be in control of rather than being controlled by.

If this crap is what has become of conservatism I'll say it again, that I want no part of it. If you want to be a man, and have the conduct of a man, you shouldn't either.

The whole damned point of Plato, and of Christianity and of every decent philosophy or religion ever dreamed up by men (and women) sitting around a fire looking at shadows is that sinful Man is meant to rise above and have power over his urges, not to be controlled by them.

Transhumanism, from the people who don't like trans people (or humans in general.)

Brother Cavil: In all of your travels, have you ever seen a star go Supernova?
Ellen: No
~No Exit, Battlestar Galactica, Season 4.5

Sometimes, you can only put up with so much stupid shit in one day before you have to say something about it. I've been going to write something for a week, and between crazy work scheduling and general exhaustion, I just haven't had the energy.

I'm old, and I'm human.

But today started off badly, relatively quickly, at work. I ended up working in the hotel, which sucks and I don't do it that often. My friend CJ enlightened me to the fact that there's evidently some kind of alternate-universe Anime thing called the Omegaverse where men can get pregnant.

What? Seriously? Call me old fashioned, but I thought the impregnating was the man's job?

Call me crazy, but isn't this something conservatives have been making a big deal about since basically forever?

Aren't these also the people who get performatively offended by the concept of actual transgender people, rather than internet-fantasy trans people?

Just sayin' that's kinda messed up.

Maybe it's just me, but I think whoever made this up needs to go out and interact with some real people and possibly try and find a girlfriend.

What is it with these Anime nerds, alt-Right Nazis and assorted other people who spend most of their lives sitting behind a computer, anyway? I was a computer nerd, I was a gamer, I've attempted to be a writer...and I even started out as a conservative and I didn't catch the right-wing racist/misogynist nihilistic nonsensical bullshit bug, somehow...

I don't get this shit.

They can't understand basic things like that biology didn't just arbitrarily happen that way, but that human biology as we know it evolved painstakingly over millions of years and has stayed the way it is for the written span of our history because it works?

Of course, these appear to be the same fucking idiots that can't understand that First Nations kids need to go to school too, but I digress.

You want to know why I'm not only no longer a conservative, but so against this soup sandwich we're stuck dealing with? These assholes can't be bothered to pay attention to basic human biology in biology class, but they think Native American kids going to school is somehow genocide against them. They can't be bothered to treat women as human beings who have and should have the agency to say "Yes" or "No" to their dating interests or romantic or sexual advances of their own free will BUT they sure want to have that sex that they can't be bothered to learn about or understand past the basic ideas that it "feels good" or gets women pregnant and that this happens because of biology, not because of God or male entitlement or something something gazpacho.

Things work the way they do for a fucking reason. Society changes, for a fucking reason. Cause equals effect, and no it's not always what you want. That's why conservatism, as it once was, demanded that people act judiciously and make efforts to avoid unintended consequences.

In other words, you used to have to know stuff, to be a conservative. You used to have to plan ahead further than the length or your dick or so you wouldn't run out of whack-off lube. Also, I'm honestly grateful that I managed to exit conservatism before Anime body pillows, angry entitled male virginity and knowing what a Waifu was were line-level requirements, just sayin.'

You used to have to at least sound like you could function in the real world, treat people with respect, and could be trusted to not sexually assault any woman who wasn't wearing a Burqa and escorted by armed male relatives, but I digress, again.

Brother Cavil: No? Well I have. I saw a star explode and send out the building blocks of the universe, other stars, other planets and eventually other life. A supernova! Creation itself! I was there. I wanted to see it and be a part of the moment. And do you know how I perceived one of the most glorious events in the universe? With these ridiculous gelatinous orbs in my skull! With eyes designed to perceive only a tiny fraction of the EM spectrum! With ears designed only to hear vibrations in the air!

Ellen: The five of us designed you to be as human as possible...

~No Exit, Battlestar Galactica, Season 4.5

What is it, to be human? Countless books have been written, philosophies and political movements and religions and what have you all founded to try to answer that question or to apply existing answers to day-to-day human existence. Wars have been fought over this stuff, wars have been fought over things as simple as the status of one group of humans relative to another.

The above photo is a case in point:

Like, seriously, what the fuck? Do these fucking morons expect some percentage of Black kids from this well-off community to end up being high school drop-out 'hood rats or old gray-haired homeless men pushing shopping carts or tough young gangstas on the corner selling weed just to appease stupid white sensibilities? 

If I was a young African American dude, I'd be all like fuck that shit, I got a life to live.

Fuck you, white people, and fuck your entitlement, and I say that as a fucking white person. The kid in the picture is wearing a sweater-vest, a nice white shirt and a goddamned tie to school. I never went to school...or even college...looking like that in my life. In point of fact, I've only ever worn a tie as part of a uniform or when I otherwise had to.

Dude looks like Carlton from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air and ya'll gonna investigate his school? That kid looks like the only G's he's ever seen in his life are the G's of scholarship money racking up as he gets the grades that demand such and takes an active part in planning his own future.

Ya know, just like the motivated white kids might.

Just sayin' the side that understands concepts of basic humanity usually eventually wins out. Greed and racism and general shittiness sooner or later become uneconomical simply because those nations that survive best are the ones that use their populations...as they are, not as somebody might wish them to be...efficiently. Colonialism and empire only came about, in modern terms, because they could be done relatively cheaply and because the benefits for the common man in the home country outweighed the costs and the risks. We barely ever had it, in international terms. Most of American colonialism and imperialism has been the kind we inflict on each other.

There was an older model, that worked better, and that the United States has haphazardly tried to emulate. Rome: Rome didn't just conquer or economically dominate. The Romans assimilated the gods of conquered peoples and provided them the benefits of civilization, thus making said people want to be Romans. In turn, for much of our history people have come here from all over the world, wanting to be Americans, to sign on to the idea and the ideal of being an American and go through all the stuff one might have to, and work here, to be a citizen. It's kind of like a Carthaginian or a Numidian or a Syrian or a Sub-Saharan African would serve as an auxiliary soldier, an archer or a cavalryman, for 26 years to get their Roman citizenship and pass it on to their descendants.

Being considered and treated as a human being is an inalienable human right, and being an American, just like being a Roman was...is a matter of ideal, of acceptance of some cultural norms (While preserving some of one's own, it's a balance) and of pride in and service (in whatever capacity) to one's nation.

Here's the thing though, as I've written before, I think a decent number of these people actually do know what America is all about, they just want no part of it.

For fuck's sake, Donald Trump said today that he thought Devin Nunes (who's never served in the military) should get the Congressional Medal of Honor.

That's somebody who doesn't know what heroism is, military or otherwise. That's a political party that simply doesn't understand the concept. They picked the motherfucker, knowing his history of being anti-military and anti-most-of-the-rest-of-their-claimed-values. They asked for this well-deserved public mocking.

The character of an organization, be it civilian or military or whatever, flows from the top down. Therefore, if you as a Republican reading this feel offended by that or think it's too broad of a brush, too damned bad, fuck you.

It's not just that they don't want to be American or mock the majority of our values. I'm not even sure they want to be human, but it's not just that. They don't want YOU to be human either. It's the ultimate in crab-bucket mentality. I guess. "If I can't be human and be happy, neither can you." Here's the thing, with people that don't want to be human. Our history generally recognizes people like that as monsters of the worst kind.

Brother Cavil: I don't want to be human! I want to see gamma rays! I want to hear X-rays! And I want to - I want to smell dark matter! Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can't even express these things properly because I have to - I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid limiting spoken language! But I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws! And feel the wind of a supernova flowing over me! I'm a machine! And I can know much more! I can experience so much more. But I'm trapped in this absurd body! And why? Because my five creators thought that God wanted it that way! ~No Exit, Battlestar Galactica, Season 4.5

As regards Richard Spencer's religious "beliefs" I've written extensively and quite invectively about that subject elsewhere.

You might want to choose which side you're on, carefully, conservative white people.

All too often these days, you're picking the wrong one.

Triangle Trade

I had a conversation with a co-worker the other night, while I was at work.

He's a black dude, about my age, maybe a little older. We mostly talk about basketball since that was something we both played, or cars, since he works on them as a hobby. The other day I asked him what he thought of our current political mess, and how it seems like Republicans have lost the plot on damned near everything they've ever claimed to stand for and set on fire every value they've ever had for an unholy trinity of racism, tax cuts, and Donald Trump.

I've been saying this for awhile, obviously.

His response? "Slavery. That's what they want, that's the only value they care about. They want to go back to the slavery days."

Now, my dude is a custodian, not a political scientist. He doesn't write position papers, he mops the floor for a living. But he is, of course, African American. So he is of course conscious of and more sensitive to certain things.

I suppose, if my ancestors had come over here with three or four people stuffed into a space that's smaller than one of my ferret cages, I'd be on alert at the slightest hint of racist bullshit too.

It seems like a bad idea for Republicans and these various fascists to arouse similar feelings among women in a general sense, or to antagonize other groups of people of color, but that appears to be what they're doing. After all, it wasn't so long ago that Republicans themselves were opining that they weren't creating angry old white guys fast enough.

Often, in the last 25 years or so, Republicans have relied on a trifecta of homophobia, racism, and misogyny to accomplish their political goals.

It's like the old Triangle Trade, from the slavery days, as my co-worker put it. The Triangle Trade, for those who don't know, was taking people from Africa to be slaves in the Americas, then cotton, sugar and tobacco from the Americas to Europe...and finished goods, guns, and rum to Africa to buy more slaves.

You can plug all manner of things into this, in threes, using Republicans own words...and it still works.

Of course, at the level of my core sample, it's starting to break down. Homophobia is getting to be less of a thing, hell (not that it's much of an improvement) there are gay alt-right Nazis now. Most younger people are less racist, leaving said Nazis marching in ever-smaller groups and often fighting among themselves, and people who are old enough to remember the days of Jim Crow are mostly old, retired and dying off. Misogyny of course, seems to be getting worse...but I wonder if it's just that it's maybe more exposed, now.

As people keep pointing out...and as Trump aide Jason Miller's spiking of a stripper's smoothie with an abortion pill shows...it's not actually abortion that these fucking people don't like, it's women having control over their own bodies that's the real problem as far as most right-wingers are concerned.

I followed the Brett Kavanaugh hearing yesterday, and on social media last night...and honestly, to me it looks like this might be the battle that costs them the war. A Supreme Court justice nominee, ranting like a drunk on the Senate floor?

Multiple rape or attempted rape allegations, as well as at least one of these having happened in a state that has no statute of limitations on that crime? The dude's own friends coming out and saying he was an aggressive drunk? 

To me, it kind of looks like even if Republicans win this one, they lose. It seems like a bad idea to do something that shines a light on how right-wingers get made, from prep-school to college level. It seems like an even worse idea to put somebody up who seems to think it's an entitlement, his due somehow, to sexually assault women, or to be a Supreme Court Justice.

It's a little bit over a month to election day, and honestly all this seems a high cost to pay for one more Republican ideologue on the Supreme Court, when Roberts is still present as a swing vote...and this will likely both leave a cloud hanging over the Court that will diminish it, as well as drive up Democratic voter turnout and with just over a month until the midterms elections, there's no time to forget.

In point of fact, there will likely be a dozen ridiculous outrages between now and then.

The whole thing seems like a bad idea, honestly, another poorly-thought-out Trump scam that's going to implode somehow, with unexpected consequences.

It seems like the new Republican trifecta literally has become Male Entitlement, Rape, and Resentment.

Women, or at least the ones who aren't programmed Republican Stepford-Bots, also seem none too amused by this garbage, and appear to be driving both increased voter registration and changes to the Democratic Party platform. 

Meanwhile, as Jim Wright put it, Republicans seem intent on fiddling while the world literally burns.

Remember that no social problem exists in America that some rich white jerk-off somewhere doesn't profit from. Perhaps the modern Triangle Trade could better be described as:

Economic, moral or social problem ---> Manipulate or prevent backlash to it ----> PROFIT!

Listen, these fucking people have basically turned into the kind of villains one sees in bad science fiction, cartoons, and maybe the kind of movies that used to be on CineMax after 1 A.M. that have horrible plot lines and worse script-writers but lots of action and some actress who lets her boobs hang out a lot.

If you aren't pissed off enough to vote against that shit, you're part of the problem.

If you need to be "inspired" to vote against drunks raging in the Senate because their Supreme Court nomination got questioned at the last minute, then fuck you.

If we, as a people, don't stand up and fucking well do something about these sick elitist rapist fucks...and mind you the means to do this are provided to us every two years by our own Constitution...then we goddamned well deserve what we get.

Increasingly, I have a feeling this will end in blood and fire. Certainly they will go for their guns if they are defeated politically, regardless of whether or not conservatives (not that they're conservative in any meaningful way anymore, but that's the word) did it to themselves by their own incompetence, regardless of whether they have the judges or not. As Trump himself often demonstrates, even total subservience often isn't good enough. 

It's human nature to resist, and not only that but one gets the vibe that even Republicans know their version of America sucks. But of course, they don't seem to know what else to do. As far as I'm concerned, the failure of imagination alone...not to mention the hell that they imagine as their ideal world...is unforgivable.

If they get voted out...as looks likely, but you still have to show up to make it so...that may only be the beginning of what decent people have to do to stand up for what's right.

But we still have to do it.

Vote. Be prepared to do whatever else has to be done. All the guns, rum and shiny glass beads in the world that you get for selling your fellow man out to the rich guys isn't gonna do you one damn bit of good if the land you live on gets burnt up by climate change, and what happens when they come after you?

You don't have to find out. You could vote against them on November 6th and make sure they start the next round worse off. Democrats won a hell of a lot of special elections in 2017. You can make a difference if you just show up.

It's easier on everybody if we deal with these fucking people by the ballot instead of the bullet this time.

So just fucking do it. 

Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds.

~Bob Marley, Redemption Song.

Rape-publicans

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. ~Maya Angelou.

I've been following the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation saga over the last week or so, and I'm not going to lie, I've been doing so with an increasing sense of revulsion.

Listen up. This isn't about law, this isn't about policy, hell it's only peripherally about abortion or civil rights...given that even a Kavanaugh confirmation will basically punt the Republican swing-vote on the court back to Roberts. After Anthony Kennedy's performance in recent years, and especially in the course of his retirement, I've grown more and more inclined to view him as just another shitty Republican.

No, this isn't about the law, or a more conservative approach to the law or somehow getting revenge for Watergate by nominating some asshole who thinks Nixon shouldn't have been run out of office. (That's basically most Republicans at this point, anyway.)

No. This is, as with so much about this bullshit ass garbage administration, about using-whatever-to stick up a giant middle finger at the world. Yeah, Republicans will say it's about abortion, and conservatism and law and policy, but what this is really about is throwing up a giant fuck you at the rest of us, even in the face of an angry reality.

They know they're massively unpopular, they know they're going down, if not in this cycle certainly in the next and they know that the last person who's actually going to help them with this mess is Donald Fucking Trump. They know the election is right around the fucking corner, and they've not only decided to broadcast their assholery, they're joyously shouting it in the streets.

The Trump era, if not Trump himself, finally liberates them from the laws of decent behavior political correctness having to act like a fucking human being.

What this is about, at heart, is shitty power games. This isn't about law books, this is about thinking with the dick.

I'm serious. These assholes already know they're unpopular as fuck, facing a motivated, hostile electorate that for once (if not actually Democrat-leaning) is certainly hostile to Republicans and Trump. Like any rapist, facing the possibility that their victim will go to the cops, they don't care. All that's on their mind is right now and the power they can exert in the moment.

I'm using that analogy for a fucking reason.

The basic Republican response to the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, with some honorable exceptions like David French or Rick Wilson, has so far been "What? You've never raped anybody?"

As if rape is some kind of thing that people routinely do to each other, or somehow not a thing at all.

As if women are not actually people, or something.

I'm sorry, but I started out as a conservative and I missed where in the manual it said that rape is acceptable so long as you're a Republican.

This basically takes the whole "could be found in bed with a dead girl or a live boy" thing to the next level on an updraft of pure Republican shitty behavior. Dead girl or live boy no longer matters, because the core Trump Supporters (and some, if not all, opportunistic Republicans) will at this point simply assume that the dead girl or live boy or both were Democratic operatives liberals nuts put there personally by Satan to something something Gazpacho mess with Donald Trump ooga booga.

Yes, our political discourse at least on the Republican side of things really is that fucking stupid. They know...they know...it will be the death of them in the end. They just don't care right now because it feels good and they're making money and they got their tax cut so fuck you, everybody else.

I'd like to say that I have more to add here, but the truth is that I don't.

This kind of stupid cannot be reasoned with.

This kind of stupid can only be outvoted and then told to go fuck itself in the ear once it's voted out.

It's not going to get any better, and they keep telling is that they're craven, and greedy, and stupid, and that they don't give a fuck about anybody who makes less than seven figures.

We can't appeal to their better nature, they simply don't have one.

We can only vote them out, and then keep voting to make sure they never get power back in the first place.

We can't say "What about the future?" Because, since these assholes know they don't have much of one, they think none of the rest of us do either.

The same applies to the soul. These rape-publicans simply don't have one left.

We have to vote them out, period.

So get on it.

Show up.

Make it happen.

If we want a better country we all have to be better citizens.

Crab Bucket

Crab mentality or crabs in a bucket (also barrel, basket or pot), is a way of thinking best described by the phrase "if I can't have it, neither can you." The metaphor refers to a pattern of behavior noted in crabs when they are trapped in a bucket. While any one crab could easily escape, its effort will be undermined by others, ensuring the group's collective demise


So, I think over the last couple of days I've actually managed to discover that Republicans in general (mostly excepting #NeverTrump Republicans) and Trump Supporters in particular are actually dumber and more selfish than I thought.


Case in point, I guess Willie Nelson is supposedly losing fans over his decision to play at a Beto O'Rourke rally.


Full disclosure, I've been a Willie Nelson fan since cross-country trips in my grandparents motor home (or later, pickup truck and fifth-wheel camper) as a kid. My Grandpa Thompson especially would play the shit out of Willie's "On the road again." It had a way of livening things up while driving south through Indiana on the way to Florida, or across Nebraska on the way from California to Michigan. Just sayin.'


That set of grandparents was basically conservative union Democrats, in particular back in the 1980's when we went on a lot of those trips they would've been considered Reagan Democrats. When I registered to vote in 1991 as an 18-year-old young adult I decided after thinking about it, to register as a Republican, although I'd generally vote a split ticket for a lot of years.


We all knew Willie was a Democrat, as in the not-conservative kind and we didn't care.


See, according to what I was taught things like music are supposed to transcend temporal things like politics.


It's also worth noting that my Grandpa's branch of the family got help from Farm Aid back in the 1980's that kept my great-grandparents family farm in the family for a couple more years, Even though my Grandpa had left Minnesota farm life behind decades before when he went to college in 1941...and ultimately joined the Navy in 1943...to his generation, the last in which such an upbringing could be considered a default American start in life, such things were still important.


And Willie did his damnedest to raise money for Farm Aid.


I saw a post on Twitter in which a Trump Supporter called Willie Nelson "A bitter, angry old man like John McCain."


Now, weed or no weed, Willie always struck me as more mellow than bitter, and given that he was one of the guys who originated and popularized the term "Outlaw country" I rather doubt, as John Scalzi points out above, that Willie Nelson, being an 85 year old man with that kind of reputation, and being somebody who's gone to jail over his use of Marijuana and belief that it should be legalized, gives one trifling SHIT what some conservative moron on Twitter thinks about him.


These people are fans of Donald Trump, not Willie Nelson. Hell I doubt these fucking people ever bothered to care or pay attention to the things Willie stands for, and has stood for forever, openly, loudly, and without care or worry for the consequences.

Yesterday, Rick Scott publicly stood by the various estimates that place the death toll from last year's hurricanes on Puerto Rico at almost 3,000 people. Republican voters...sounding for once almost like Unicorn-hunting far-Left Bernie nuts...said they wouldn't vote for him as a result, and called him "Just another liberal."


Rick Scott is a Republican, and as shady and shitty as the rest of the lot and he's never made any bones about it.


But no, he disagreed with Cheeto Jesus ONE time and all the sudden he's "Just another liberal?"


Help me here.


It seems like conservatism now has been redefined around two things: Support of Donald Trump at all times and in all cases, and more generally a sort of transactional support for Republicans.


Not a word about free markets, global engagement, human dignity, individual liberty, muscular foreign policy or even (and oddly enough) the traditional American exceptionalism. How exactly are these fucking people blood-and-soil American nationalists without believing in American exceptionalism?


Well, I guess you could argue that they make pretty damned good Russian nationalists, but I digress.


As I've said, I know from personal experience you can be a conservative without being a Republican. Hell there used to be liberal Republicans too. Even today, a lot of the younger Democratic-voting people that I know consider me a conservative, though I've voted with them around 90% of the time for a decade now.


At this point, I'm having trouble even figuring out what conservatism stands for, unless it's misogyny and racism specifically, or maybe corporate greed. Even the latter has...almost...fallen by the wayside and even Trump Supporters don't seem to care about Trump's shitty tax cut.


But they sure care about hating on people of color, and talking real stupid about women, don't they?


This is what happens when you divorce politics and religion from compassion, humanity and morality.


Give these people (most of whom identify as Christian) the option...or even a simple lack of leadership that says not to do it...and the first thing they will do with the Cross of Christ is take it and set it on fire.


If you don't think these damn morons have it on their minds to burn people, you have another thing coming. Fair warning: They'll probably start with their fellow conservatives.


Just remember, Republicans: In the Crab-bucket moral universe of Donald Trump, no one gets out alive. Remember that these are the people who think everybody else must secretly be as shitty as they are...because they lack the imagination to understand that anybody else might think differently.


All the little crabs couldn't get along or work together, so they all pulled each other down and ended up as crab cakes. If you don't believe me, go look for yourself. Go on Twitter and check out all the Republican butt-hurt, even (especially) from people like David French (and especially over the adverse reactions to Brett Kavanaugh by everybody who isn't a Republican) who normally knows better.


Go check it out, and vote, vote these fuckers out. We need to stop rewarding partisan assholery and stupidity.


Just empty the damn crab bucket, make these fuckers at least catch new crabs.

Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace, How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now am found
T'was blind but now I see

T'was Grace that taught my heart to fear
And Grace, my fears relieved
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed

Through many dangers, toils and snares
We have already come.
T'was grace that brought us safe thus far
And grace will lead us home,~Traditional Christian Hymn, by John Newton

I watched John McCain's D.C. memorial service yesterday morning.

To be quite honest, I found the entire thing to be very emotionally draining. I was moved to tears more than one time, and I didn't vote for the guy. I was deeply impressed by Meghan McCain, powering through her pain for what had to have been an agonizing moment on the world stage, to deliver a stinging rebuke of Trump and Trumpism, which she did, to thunderous applause.

We gather to mourn the passing of American greatness, the real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice, those that live lives of comfort and privilege while he suffered and served. He was a great fire who burned bright. In the past few days, my family and I have heard from so many of those Americans who stood in the warmth and light of his fire and found it illuminated what's best about them. We are grateful to them because they're grateful to him. A few have resented that fire for the light it cast upon them for the truth it revealed about their character, but my father never cared what they thought and even that small number still have the opportunity as long as they draw breath to live up to the example of John McCain.

The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again, because America was always great.

It was more than that, though. George W. Bush spoke eloquently, and reminded me all too much of what conservatism once was, and how much it has lost. Hell, even Henry Kissenger came off more as an amusing old man than as some kind of foreign policy titan, kind of like a Vietnam-era version of the old guy from "Up."

I find myself missing these old Republicans. All of them, even the ones I hated, or voted against.

Barack Obama of course, was Barack Obama and god damn but I miss that guy.

We need these people, all of them, even if we don't always or even really like them...because we need examples of class and decency and grace and people with the capability to say things that can uplift us all, because despite...or perhaps even because of...our very often anti-authoritarian, non-hierarchical nature as a people, it's better if the best of us, or at least people who can speak properly, who do not harbor endless insecure fears and who understand the world rise to the top. I don't give a damn if what I'm about to say sounds elitist or snobbish, but there are a lot of people out there...grown ass adults...who in their minds are like little children. They will follow the examples that they see. Fundamentally, these people often don't have much of an internal moral code or sense of right and wrong...they will do what they are permitted to do.

I started out as a conservative, and I quite honestly think that to a degree our society has become too permissive. Now I'm not talking about feminism, LGBT rights, or sexual liberation, or people of color or any of the traditional things conservatives bitch about.

I'm talking about the fact that any old stupid idea people get in their heads is at least given the benefit of the doubt, even if it's a very old idea like racism, that's never benefited anybody but rich people. It's that "Free exchange of ideas" that often makes social media such an abusive shit-hole for so many people. It's the kind of bullshit that leads somebody like Jack Dorsey to refuse to kick Alex Jones off his platform, or to drag his feet in eliminating outright Nazis from the discourse.

It's the fact that personal freedom, at least in a limited sense, has been being used as a club by the Right to beat on the collective freedoms of our society. The right wing basically says [as long as you meet certain implicit conditions i.e. you're a conservative white man] you can do whatever you want. It's kind of like how "State's Rights" is really code for "Hate" and "Laws against brown people." These idiots fundamentally can't concieve of the idea that government can or should be a force for good in the lives of people who make less than seven figures. Therefore, when they talk about their "rights" what they're really talking about is the unwritten conservative-American "right" to be an asshole.

Do you see yet, why these fucking people love Trump so much?

This was a reply to one of my comments on a post by Joe Walsh, as in former Tea Party Congressman Joe Walsh, who was very much the face of the movement for a time and who I really couldn't stand for like, years, but in the era of Trump he's...reasonable and sane, and I can respect him even if he still says something that's nuts now and again. I still often disagree with him, but I can see where he's coming from. Again, this guy was the face of These Fucking People for a few years, and now he damned well makes sense and has firm moral boundaries that have been exceeded by Trump. And this is the kind of stuff people post on his timeline because of it. If there is one thing that I think describes Trumpism over and above everything else, it's the profound lack of gratitude to anyone who's gone before...especially anyone with morals or some line that they were unable to cross somewhere along the way. People like me, for example.

Perhaps that's why I've reached the point where I can tolerate Joe. I remember when I was where he is now, I was that guy roughly about 2007 or so, and well into 2008 before the lines firmed up and I realized that I wasn't...that I couldn't be...on the side I'd spent all of my political life before that moment on. Fundamentally, people like Joe Walsh...or Bill Kristol, or Rick Wilson or even yes, John McCain...are and were fighting to try to save conservatism.

The problem with that, is you gotta want to be saved, and I no longer think these people do.

For one thing, if you've read the Bible, Jesus did not have a funeral, simple or otherwise.

An awful lot of what Christianity has turned into in the last 20 years has been simply a nihilistic veneration of the idea of the end of the world.

I think they want that apocalyptic destruction of American conservatism...of their own side, if not of America or the Earth itself. Why? Because they convinced themselves years ago that it was going to happen.

They've forgotten why. Old men like Chuck Woolery, like Donald Trump, like that old guy at work who talks about how great life was in 1973...they know they're old and they know they're going to die and they can't understand the world as it is...having made no real effort to understand it as it was either. So if they're going to die, why not everybody else, too? I mean, obviously not everybody else is 60+ years old...but when people look at life only through their own eyes and never try to understand anybody else or expand their own perception that's what we have to deal with.

John McCain never mattered to these fucking people. Hell, once he's out of power or has been overcome by dementia or died of old age, Donald Trump won't matter to most of them either, because all the majority of these fucking people care about is right now, and what makes them feel good about themselves, right now.

They don't like Trump for Trump, they like Trump because he's given them permission to act on their shitty impulses. They think...hope, perhaps...that because we have a president who was the public face of self-promoting rich assholes for 40 years...that maybe they'll get rich. If they don't, well then they'll be mad about that too.

They like Trump because people who know how things work worry about this guy causing the end of America, if not the end of the Earth itself.

This is why we need people with some form of higher values, with some sense of class, to be the public face of our country. Sure, the drunk racist uncle types will bitch about that, but they bitch about everything else too...and since roughly 70% of Americans don't like their overstuffed gilded orange god, well they don't like 70% of their fellow Americans.

That's always who these fucking people have really had a problem with, Americans who weren't like themselves...and the things they really, deep down have shown that they believed in are often the very opposite of what many of their own leaders stood for.

We need higher values because the alternative is apparently robocalls with jungle noises making fun of Black candidates.

I think, as much as John McCain himself often failed to live up to the ideals enunciated by those who eulogized him, in this message he left us, in these last words of this American hero, in the class, dignity, grace and merciless subtle condemnation of those currently in power that he obviously had a hand in assiduously planning...I think we have the key for how to deal with this crap.

At the end of the day, I think it mostly comes down to two words. Two words...that people like Donald Trump will never understand.

Be. Real.

Be real, and vote for something better, because this ain't working.