A line in the sand.

You can't ignore politics, no matter how much you'd like to.
~Molly Ivins

Yesterday, I saw this.

A fairly transparent attempt by a sitting U.S. Senator to fear-monger about the increasing number of Latino people in Texas.

Like, literally what the fuck?

Senator, it doesn't goddamned well matter what ethnicity your constituents are. It's your job to represent all of them.

But ya know, in the course of doing a bit of research over the past couple of days...it's absolutely mind-blowing to me how dismissive of other people...any other people...most "Conservatives" have become. I'll largely except #NeverTrump conservatives from that, because, to their credit, most of those people are just as appalled by all this racist shit as I am.

But John Cornyn can hardly be identified as a racist bomb-thrower like Steve King.

Or can he? Does it even matter anymore?

Somewhere, CNN managed to dig up this asshole.

"It's up to the parents to do things rightfully and legally."

I'm curious. Where does all that "Rightful" and "Legal" stuff go when Democrats are the ones in power?

No, I'm serious. Don't look away, don't move the goal-posts. Answer. The. Fucking. Question.

These fucking people only care about what's legal or right when they think they get to determine what that is.
And these people want to have a government that hurts people they don't like.

Hell, they think that's what government is for.

I live in Michigan. I'm specifically from Northern Michigan, and I've spent significant time in the Upper Peninsula of the state as well. I'm here to tell you that when Bill Clinton got elected in 1992...

If left to my own devices, I'd spend all my time pointing out that he's weaker than bus-station chili. But the man is so constantly subjected to such hideous and unfair abuse that I wind up standing up for him on the general principle that some fairness should be applied. Besides, no one but a fool or a Republican ever took him for a liberal. ~Molly Ivins, on Bill Clinton

Well...within a year or so, there were armed anti-government groups all over the place in my state. Multiple people that I knew were in them. A guy I know once told me, somehow forgetting who he was talking to, that "The Lord wanted him to join" the Michigan Militia. He seemed to forget that the Bible tells Christians in the book of Romans that they are to obey government authorities, that Christ said to render unto Caesar that which is his, and unto God that which is His also. He seemed to forget what I was doing, and what my plans were, at the time. If he ever got his whack-off fantasy shoot-out with the government there was an excellent chance that I'd be one of the people shooting back at him, and I was a conservative, a Republican...

As regards loyalty to my country and its ideals as defined in our founding documents, and as regards stuff like racism, sexism, and any other form of prejudice I drew a line in the sand right about that same time in my life.

A line that puts me firmly on the opposite side from these motherfuckers not only socially but politically as well...and my views have actually not changed that much except on a few social issues like health care and marriage equality. Just sayin.'

These days, that basically makes me a socialist, and I've moved from where I was in 1993 on only a few issues, gun control, health care and marriage equality.

I've always believed people should take care of each other and that the government should be responsible to all of its people.

I'd like to point out AGAIN, that when that line was drawn I was a REPUBLICAN. A lot of my heroes were Republicans. What we are seeing now is, at least, not what was in power at that time on my (then) side of the fence.

(I also would like to point out that a bit over a year after that conversation took place, Mid-term elections swept Republicans into Congress and Newt Gingrich into being the Speaker of the House and that began to change...)

Instead of fear-mongering about the number of Latino residents, or caging Latino kids at the border in horrific conditions, what Republicans SHOULD be doing is trying to help those people, reaching out to them and maybe try and give them a reason to vote Republican eventually.

Most Latino people are Catholics, and decent numbers of them are in fact conservative. But, they're generally smart enough not to support people that hate them. (Unlike poor white folks, but I digress.)

So, they've spent 50 years basically alienating everybody BUT racist white idiots and the rich fools that those racist white idiots will unfailingly vote for.

Now they're on to dehumanizing the rest of us, and actively tormenting those they think they can get away with doing it to, in every way possible whether it's abusing kids or getting in the way of a vote on a climate change bill.

If you cannot find it within yourself to vote against this crap, no matter who the other party puts up, you're setting yourself up to be the next one in the cage because trust me, these fucking people don't give a good goddamn if you're a Christian or a conservative or white or whatever the fuck.

Eventually it'll get down to you have to be the proper KIND of white far-rightist Christian...and THEN the line will become who is willing to abandon Christ and worship Trump as God and it'll be the Christians in the cages without soap or even decent food and water.

Oregon's climate-change bill is a Cap-and-Trade scheme, and Cap-and-Trade is, fundamentally, a very capitalistic and market-friendly effort to address global warming, that was originally formulated by George H.W. Bush administration lawyers, if I recall correctly.

But then, popular conspiracy theory target Agenda 21 was signed off on by the Bush administration as well.

See, It's never been about conservatism, Christianity, or any of the other things they've ever said it was about. All relatively decent people like George H.W. Bush or John McCain or Ronald Reagan...or James Comey or Robert Mueller for that matter...or even racist assholes like Jeff Sessions who STILL wouldn't go against the Constitution...ever were was a means to an end, Camouflage for murderous racists and sociopathic rich fucks It was always about power, and about making sure that they have it and you don't.

It's about hurting people as an expression of power.

It's about the fact that people like Laura Ingraham don't think the descendants of slaves should get reparations because she doesn't think slavery was wrong in the first place.

It's about turning every mechanic of life into nothing more than a self-reinforcing ego trip for the right kind of white, allegedly "Christian" politically/socially "Conservative" male scumbag.

Even sex is not for enjoyment or procreation, but who gets to have sex and what kind of sex becomes about power, not what God or nature or the universe intended it for.

This will trickle down to every single aspect of life.

I'll never forget finding out that in Saudi Arabia something as simple as drinking a Coke out of the can (and thus displaying that American brand) or smoking Marlboro cigarettes rather than the lesser quality Arab or Turkish brands could get you harassed by the police.

Who would then get back in their American or Canadian built GMC trucks with their American-made guns and answer the next call on their Motorola radio because it was their power to have "Western" stuff...but they'd harass you for doing it.

While I'm at it, over there the Muttawa don't particularly have to obey the laws, either. The situation is so bad that Saudis openly joke about it and the various clerical councils in the country have repeatedly issued Fatwas to try to get the fucking police to obey the fucking laws.

Allah Akbar, motherfucker.

This is the future that conservatives want, for America.

And even "Race" is nothing more than the sorting point that's popular RIGHT NOW.

When that goes out of style or we're down to just the right kind of white people they'll simply find something else in the service of their shitty agenda.

It's not about anything else but power, and who they can fool into giving it to them and how they can keep it.

If you cannot find it within yourself to vote against that shit, whether you "like" the other party's candidate or not, fuck you.

It's not about policy or party, it's about do you wanna live in a country that puts kids in cages or not? We are and always have been a diverse and multicultural society. Do you want that to stay the way it is, or do you want nuts like this Q-Troll to determine what our culture is?

Do you wanna live in a country where one political party thinks it has some kind of a divine right to hold up progress by any means necessary, or not?

It's a yes or no answer. There can be no other way.

We cannot live with people who simply don't think the rest of us have a right to exist.

The future is up to all of us, not just them.

But if you don't vote, you give them an advantage that they don't deserve.

And if you can't be bothered to get off your ass and vote to potentially save your own freedom, or your own skin, well...fuck you.

He that Believeth in Me (Lost Souls, Part Two)

Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: ~John 11:25

I may have said this before, but, Seriously?

So, apparently the Jerry Falwell Jr. "Pool boy" scandal is back in the news.

Apparently, there's various nude and semi-nude pictures of Rebecca Falwell circulating.

Okay, whatever. But...as somebody who's accidentally had shit like that get out...I'm a just say one thing. Nobody, Christian or not, married man or not, is going to go to absurd lengths to hide or scrub the shit if it's just normal "Between husband and wife" type of stuff. I mean, sure, some people might really want to protect their privacy or whatever. I get that.

But ain't nobody...nobody...on this Earth, especially somebody with actual principles, especially a person that actually believes in their religion...that's going to be blackmailed into endorsing a scumbag like Donald Fucking Trump if somebody has the kind of vanilla, normal type of shit nude pictures one might reasonably expect of an Evangelical husband and wife. For fuck's sake, they're married. What is anybody who actually cares about anything Jerry Falwell Jr. says even going to say?

Even some kind of scenario involving Rebecca Falwell and another woman, with photos taken by Jerry...would be unlikely to cause anybody to even bat an eye. Normal-range kinky stuff? Same. 90% of the kinky chicks I've ever dated either were conservatives/Evangelicals or had been at some point and as regards bisexual or bi-curious people of either sex I'd say that figure is still over 50%

Which tells me there's probably something pretty messed up going on there, or maybe something involving Jerry with a dude or otherwise something that would piss off his fellow "Believers." I don't know, I don't care. If there wasn't a multi-million dollar business deal and shitty political shenanigans that have negatively effected the entire country I wouldn't give a fuck about that either.

I don't give a goddamn if Jerry Falwell Jr. likes to suck dicks. It's the 21st goddamned century, most people don't. Most conservatives, most Christians...hell even a decent number of Hard-right motherfuckers. Don't. Care. (If you don't believe me, the French hard-right is full of gay dudes, you can look this up.)

But in the long run it'd be better for everybody if he'd come clean, be open about it, and hell, ask the LGBT Rights peoples for forgiveness and work to make amends. He damn well wouldn't be the first and if he did and was actually serious or on the up-and-up in any way about it I could see him being accepted. He wouldn't even have to change his politics or religion, just his views on LGBT rights.

But that's not what's going on here. This is "Gay stuff and 3-ways for me, but not for thee" like every other debased shitty "Social Conservative" going all the way back to Caesar Augustus (Whose family, the Julii, was the kind of flaming train-wreck that made the Trumps look like pikers.) It's all about libertinism and sexuality as a mark of power...not for enjoyment or love or for its own sake.

And I can't be cool with that, no way, no how.

What's funny/sad here is that all this blackmail and shady shit was probably not even necessary.

Look at this picture. Do any of these idiots look like they needed to be told to vote for Donald Trump? Do any of them look like they'd have been swayed by a hypothetical Falwell endorsement of Ted Cruz?

Do you really think people who are going to dress that foolishly in public give a damn about what Jerry Falwell Jr. says, let alone who he fucks? All they wanna do is act like fools in public.

That lady is dressed like a flag-pimp. Anybody who will dress that ridiculously in public is either in a parade or has absolutely no pride or self-respect whatever.

I wrote yesterday about how conservatism and the Church forgetting their purpose in favor of doing stupid shit has created an enormous tranche of lost souls who, essentially stood for absolutely nothing...so as the saying goes, they fell for anything. This isn't helped by Capitalism or a culture that doesn't encourage people to give a shit about each other, either.

And the stuff I saw on social media this morning isn't causing me to reconsider my thesis, not one damned bit.

It's funny how so many people can't be arsed to care about their neighbors, and other people can't be bothered to even go outside and know that they have neighbors...but they'll dress like Liberace's stunt double to celebrate hatred of immigrants, liberals and the media in a nation that's built on immigration and the liberal founding principles of the Enlightenment and that Constitutionally has a Free Press.

How the fuck ever did we get to the point where fully a third of Americans basically hate all the things that America was founded on, or that actually were what enabled it to be an exceptional nation in the first place?

You'll note that the doctrine of "American exceptionalism" appears to have died a quiet, unnoticed death in "Conservative" circles since 2015...more or less replaced with belief in the Greatness of Trump and some dumb shit that basically implies that America sucked and apparently never had a "real" President before Trump came along...but I digress. Yes, this shit is a cult.

(I find it interesting that American Exceptionalism is basically a liberal...or at least Never-Trump Republican...thing now.)

But what is this Trump shit a cult of?

I think we've reached the level where it's not enough anymore to say that "The Cruelty Is The Point" although that certainly still applies.

The Sadism is the point.

These people will literally throw away everything they've ever claimed that they believed or cared about away...and dress like absolute clowns in public...to celebrate a government, no matter how temporary or based in illegality or immorality, that hurts the people that they don't like.

And an exceptional nation doesn't do that.

A great nation doesn't do that. Hell, even a good nation doesn't do stuff like that.

In point of fact, if any other country in the entire fucking world were acting like the United States has been under Donald Trump...America would be leading the charge to bomb that country, invade them, destroy everything we could reach and leave an occupation force there for at least a generation.

And "Conservatives" would be foaming at the mouth demanding we do it and offering up their sons and daughters for military service to lead the fucking charge.

But no, they want America to be like that...and I think they know if they want things to stay that way and for themselves not to be prosecuted for being that way...I think they know they're going to have to tear America down first.

You know, we've always had some people with some pretty shitty beliefs, and nativism and racism have always been a big percentage of those shitty beliefs.

We've faced down and destroyed people with those kind of beliefs and worse, and that's a big part of why America has the place in the world that it occupies.

Small wonder, then, that These Fucking People want to tear that place in the world down as well.

You know, I think there's going to be enough of us and I think These Fucking People are incompetent enough and I think people are pissed off enough that this whole country will come flying apart before these fucking people win.

And you know what? That's what scares me.

Because you know what? This country was never set up to deal with a large minority of its own citizens believing in nothing at all.

Except maybe racism...

We've hit the point where a third of us care so little for America, for Democracy, Freedom, or any of our values...and who have so little inside and so few principles...that if he loses at any point all Trump has to say is "Follow me" and they will do it, rabidly and without question.

And why? More to the point, why do I think that it will end the way that I think it will, with a fractured nation, and at least two countries where this one used to be?

Yesterday, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez referred to the abusive border detention facilities being run by CBP and ICE as Concentration Camps, and "Conservatives" Republicans and the media fell all over themselves telling her she was out of line, wrong, etc. etc.

Meanwhile experts, historians, rights advocates, most Democrats and pretty much anybody with a soul agrees with her.

And the media, or at least most of it, appears to be hell-bent on trying to avoid hurting the far-right's "Feelings" by referring to these facilities, accurately, as Concentration Camps.

What's going on here is an attempted, preemptive ethnic cleansing.

And the fact that nobody wants to call these things what they are, that the media and too much of our political class wants to just keep letting everybody do what they will do naturally instead of sounding the alarm like it should've been...because nobody wants to hurt anybody else's feelings or take any responsibility...just means the other side is going to keep marching in lock-step in the same direction they have been.

Never mind that the demographics have already started to turn, that in whole states the majority of elementary school kids are People of Color, never mind that white conservative Christians are already a minority and have been one for years. They're going to keep that white supremacy drug high going for as long as they can.

Right now, they're trying to close the barn door and setting it on fire because it's what they can get away with.

It'll come to worse.

If these fucking people can do that to a Guatemalan or Salvadoran kid...they can do that shit to an American kid, or you, or me. I've seen it every day for the last several years. One doesn't have to be Brown or liberal or not a Christian for the howling mob to set itself on them. All one has to do is not worship their false god, or criticize Trump even once, or not vote the "right" way even one time.

Look at how they did George H.W. Bush or John McCain.

You think they'll be any kinder to the living?

It'll come to Americans shooting at each other.

They want to "Re-order" the public sphere to suit themselves...so badly that they've forgotten what their values even were in the first place. They want to win so badly that they don't care what they win or if anything of it can be sustained save their endless hate and rage.

And, day by day, these people are chipping away at our national life, aided by the Russians. I've blocked multiple obvious bots and trolls just this morning.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

When this blows up, one hell of a lot of white conservative Christians are going to die right along with all the rest of us, at the hands of this goddamned mob, that'll be egged on by foreign powers that we've been against for the whole of our living memory.

If we don't find a way to stop this, vote every last one of these sons of bitches out and then still be prepared to have a fight on our hands...and show up in enough numbers that the other side decides that discretion is the better part of valor...this is going to end with one part of America bombing another part, ethnic cleansing, refugee camps, United Nations peace-keepers, wars and rumors of wars, the whole bit.

And how did we get here?

Because we allowed at least 30% of our people to become so isolated from the common good, from education, from humanity, from their neighbors...that to them Detroit or Los Angeles or Nogales, Arizona or New York City of San Francisco might as well be a foreign country. Because we stopped caring.

Because we allowed the Church to become about debased rich people and gossip and money rather than Christ and because Creationism, conspiracy theories, debased preachers and empty religions have made part of our population so feeble-minded that the only way those people would honestly, really, believe in the words "He that believeth in Me..." is if they could be induced to believe that it was Donald Trump who said them.

Through me you go to the grief wracked city;
Through me you go to everlasting pain;
Through me you go a pass among lost souls.
Justice inspired my exalted Creator:
I am a creature of the Holiest Power,
of Wisdom in the Highest and of Primal Love.
Nothing till I was made was made, only eternal beings.
And I endure eternally.

~Sign above the gates of Hell, From the Divine Comedy.

Part 1.

Part 3.

The last day of the rest of my life (Lost Souls, Part One)

Through me is the way to the suffering city;
Through me is the everlasting pain;
Through me is the way that runs among the Lost. Justice urged on my exalted Creator: Divine Power made me,
The Supreme Wisdom and Primal Love.
Nothing was made before me but eternal things
And I endure eternally.
Abandon all hope - Ye Who Enter Here.'

~Sign above the gates of hell, Dante's Inferno.

Seriously?

I saw this last week, and it's been bugging me ever since.

"Before Q-Anon no one had ever told me that I was intelligent, that my voice was important or my story mattered."

Look here, it's my personal judgment that this person needed a better family, better friends, maybe a better church community or a better job...or maybe just the guts to move on from whatever shitty situation they were in. I don't know. To me...it's just pathetic.

I find it a little hard to believe that no one ever offered this person affirmation before. But, at the same time...I was taught that didn't matter. If you don't like you, if you don't have self-respect...the chances are excellent that nobody else is going to like or respect you either.

But in the end, this is neither here nor there. One way or another it comes down to this person just needed better friends.

Look, ya'll, this is America, supposedly one of the greatest and most-free countries ever to exist. Now, I'm not sure if I quite believe that. But, in all honesty, and based on my own experience, if you cannot find something in America that fulfills you in some way, at least for a while, you're probably not actually looking.

And ya know, if you can't find it, maybe you can buy it, or at least some reasonable substitute that'll keep you going for a bit. I mean, just my own personal contact list has roughly equal proportions of alcoholics and pot heads, for example, though the latter seems to be decreasing slowly and the former slightly increasing.

You mean to tell me all this person could come up with was sitting behind a computer scrolling through dumb shit?

It bothers me that we have these broken people, these lost souls, who have so little going for them in their lives that they find satisfaction in an obvious bullshit-tornado of extremely obvious bullshit. You cannot even properly call whoever is behind Q-Anon a liar. The reason for this simply is that a liar has to know what the truth is, and care about it at least a little, if only to obscure it effectively. "Q" or whatever it is doesn't care, doesn't care that anybody with two working brain cells in their head knows that it's utter bullshit, metrically bullshit, bullshit-ception...all at the same time.

What even causes this kind of silly bullshit? I asked.

"Capitalism" was one answer that I got.

"These people are this way because that's the way some wealthy person wanted things."

Okay. I suppose that's accurate.

But to me, it doesn't really tell the whole story. So, I made an effort last night to poke around on Twitter and see if I could find anything.

I got no further than yesterday's Trump Rally in Orlando. Trump-Land, where it's still 2016 and These Fucking People are still going on and on about Hillary Clinton?! Private citizen, basic retiree Hillary Clinton, Hillary? Who if you don't specifically follow her on Twitter...you could be forgiven for not knowing that she's made any major public statements in at least a year? That Hillary Clinton?

I'm just saying, if you want to ruin somebody's life and make it so that people cross the street to avoid talking to them...get somebody's mind stuck on some old news, make them obsess about the past. Most of us know that guy...or girl. You know the one. That guy at work who can't stop talking about the four years he spent in the Navy in the 1970's and the one time he got his dick sucked in Thailand. That girl who can't stop talking about the asshole ex-boyfriend (or toxic ex-girlfriend) or that person, in whatever form, who never moved on from high school.

Some of us might even have been that person for awhile, and it's no fun. A lot of people grow out ot it. Some never do.

No, nobody wants to talk to those people, and deservedly so.

That's what conservatism has become. That's basically what Trumpism is, already, and it's only going to get worse by next year.

It's the political equivalent of the old rich white man driving slowly through the parking lot of the college student apartments, hoping to impress somebody. For obvious reasons nobody should be encouraging this crap.

And yes, it's getting creepy. But the gist of it is you can't count on somebody's leadership to get these people to feel good about themselves, not really.

For fuck's sake. It's. 2019. No well-adjusted human being wants it to be anything else.Let's move on, people.

What about that favored hiding place of the feeble-minded? The Church? (Yes, I know that probably sounds harsh but right now I don't actually give a fuck.)

Here, we have Trump-Supporting, Prosperity Gospel "Pastor" Paula White, presumably praying for God to open a can of whoop-ass on CNN. Look, yo, if you're looking for support for your spirituality or values you ain't gonna find it here. If this crap, and abortion restrictions and political power are the kind of stuff that churches are going on and on about these days...ya know, it's not hard to understand why anybody...or maybe even everybody...is looking elsewhere for validation.

Throw in some learned helplessness and a little outrage here and there and it's not hard to see why we're in this mess.

But ya know, it gets worse. A Facebook friend and I were talking the other day and she brought up that one of the main reasons that she left Christianity...specifically the Southern Baptist Convention in her case...was because of the backstabbing, the gossip about stupid shit like who was wearing what, or who drove whatever car. There's nothing good or moral in that kind of thing, let alone spiritual.

First they gave us Christianity without Christ, now they want a new gold-plated Messiah.

And ya know? The Church wouldn't be that way either, except that that's the way that somebody wanted it, the character they showed, the example they provided. I'm just sayin' if Christians wanted to "Save" all these lost souls...well they are supposed to be the ones with the desire, the theological mandate, the tools and supposedly the Commandment from Jesus Christ to do exactly that.

So why don't they?

Trust me, I know from personal experience that nothing ruins religion more for people than some nut walking around acting like God is their own personal smacking stick. You want to create even more lost people who look to silly bullshit to fill whatever needs they may have, keep that up, Christians, and keep tolerating false teachers among your own ranks.

Of course it's always the same shit. Heaven isn't heaven if everybody gets to go, and if they lose a few of their own along the way...well, it's everybody's fault but theirs. Blame anything but the shitty ideology.

And then of course, there's that good old fashioned American standby, the social movement. Except in this case, it's "Proud Boys" marching in support of Trump (and apparently freedom of speech, but only for Nazis.)

I mean, after all, what could be more American, more wholesome, than a movement founded by a Canadian Hard-right idiot who likes to crawl in bed with a bunch of dudes under a Nazi Swastika flag blanket or sticks dildos and microphones up his ass on camera?

And in case you don't believe me, well, I've written about this crap before, and here you go.

Ya know, though, I think it's safe to say that not very many people seem to find Nazis all that inspiring this time around.

And ya know, there are reasons history presents these people as the bad guys...

Sure, some people on the Right seem to fetishize marching soldiers, or uniformed sameness, and of course there's the whole separate issue of white supremacy...which of course nobody on the conservative side of the fence wants to admit to even having.

I guess, at the end of the day, when you're part of a movement whose beliefs are so shitty that you can't even talk about them in public or admit to yourself that you have them...completely lost souls who think Lizard Aliens Walk Among Us or whatever other dumb shit they make up to feel good about themselves,,,is probably par for the course.

Look, if at the end of the day you need other people to tell you how great or insightful or smart you are so that you can feel good about yourself, you probably aren't any of those things, and if you want to change that you're probably going to have to learn something other than that there's a bunch of conspiracy nuts out there. You might actually have to make some effort to grow as a person or learn a thing or two.

But don't do that so that people will like you...do it for you, so that you'll be a better or smarter person for your own damned good. Do it so that you have your own inner life and aren't dependent on outside forces to feel good about yourself. Meantime, maybe the rest of us could try caring about each other more than about ideas, or shitty politics?

Maybe the Church could learn the obvious fact that the Judge it will face at the End of Days is not Donald Trump?

Maybe it's time to stop believing in dumb shit and accept that without truth, there is no freedom?

Or maybe we all just need to realize that if we don't care about each other, ain't nobody else going to do it for us.

Last day of the rest of my life
I wish I would've known
'Cause I would've kissed my mama goodbye

I didn't tell her that I loved her and how much I care
Or thank my pops for all the talks
And all the wisdom he shared

Unaware, I just did what I always do
Everyday, the same routine
Before I skate off to school

But who knew that this day wasn't like the rest
Instead of taking a test
I took two to the chest

Call me blind, but I didn't see it coming
Everybody was running
But I couldn't hear nothing

Except gun blasts, it happened so fast
I didn't really know this kid
He wasn't part of the class

Maybe this kid was reaching out for love
Or maybe for a moment
He forgot who he was
Or maybe this kid just wanted to be hugged
Whatever it was
I know it's because

We are, We are, the youth of the nation.

~P.O.D. early 2000's Christian band. 

Fun fact: There was a time when even the Christians actually knew this.

Instead of getting people to believe in dumb shit because it's convenient or profitable, if you want things to be better for you, much less everybody else? Start there.

Part 2.

Do Neo-Feudalists dream of Electric Peasants?

So·cial·ism

/ˈsōSHəˌlizəm/

Learn to pronounce

noun

1. a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

   • policy or practice based on the political and economic theory of socialism.

     
     

Let me ask you something: What's the first thing you notice here?

I have a fair amount of experience in small construction jobs and even more in woodworking, with a little bit of metal thrown in here and there down through the years.

Before I even read the text, my eyes immediately went to the fact that the nail gun Vice President Penis is holding doesn't have an air hose attached. Likewise, the stand-up screw gun that Mother is trying to appear to be using isn't plugged in.

Speaking as a working person, just once I'd like to see Republicans do two minutes of actual work for a photo op without insulting my intelligence. This is an even dumber version of Paul Ryan's 2012 stunt in which he spent a few minutes running clean dishes through a commercial-grade dishwasher.

I've done this type of work, I've done that, too. I currently work in a kitchen.

Just for once, could Republicans manage to stage a photo op that doesn't telegraph utter, flaming obvious contempt for working people?

Apparently, sometime yesterday Mitch McConnell gave an interview in which he basically described everything from the Green New Deal to health care to voting rights to proposals for Statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico as...Socialism?

I do not think that word means what you think it means, there, Turtle boy.

Just to get the obvious out of the way, why should the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico not have full representation in Congress? The people in both polities are American citizens. Why should they not have full, proportional representation in Congress? And...in the case of Puerto Rico in particular, also the right to vote in Federal elections?

There is no damned good reason for this situation, and no damned good reason it shouldn't have been fixed years ago. I presume Yertle is against it because he thinks that the Senators from these places would be at least predominately Democratic? Not. Necessarily. As recently as 20 years ago, Puerto Rican people that I knew were predominately Republican. If that's changed, Bitch, that's probably your fault. After all, why should any people, up to and including People of Color support a political party that has turned against them in every way possible, and whose debatable leader has now come out against full political representation for those people?

Action = Consequences, and standing athwart the flow of History yelling "Stop!" is only going to defray those consequences for so long. It's just plain out that simple. Political control and power only protects you and yours so long as everybody follows the rules...and in the era of Trump none other than Republicans have made a big show of not following said rules.

It's only a matter of time before other people follow suit. It's only a matter of time before the system starts to break down from there.

But Republicans don't know or care about any of that. Somebody said "Socialism" so, Beavis-and-Butt-head like, Republicans cackle and assume "everybody knows" what that means.

It has, after all, been an article of "Conservative" faith for at least a century-and-a-quarter that Socialism = Bad, mostly because then rich people would have to pay more in taxes and ooga booga people who don't have to worry about a bunch of shit would maybe be less likely to go to church or otherwise trust supernatural forces when their needs are being met by the State.

Never mind that Socialist absolutely does not equal Statist, Mexico had a mini-revolution on a state level 25 years ago that was fought by Anarcho-Socialists against the government...and today, Kurdish factions with similar views have been utterly indispensable in helping the U.S. and its allies crush Daesh in Syria.

So, Socialism Bad...unless we need boots on the ground in a war where the American public has no wish to send its own troops? Just like, Socialism bad unless we needed the Red Army to pound the shit out of the majority of Hitler's Wehrmacht while the Western allies liberated North Africa and Western Europe?

So, Socialism is only bad when Americans...particularly Brown Americans...want to make sure they get a piece of America...however small? That seems to be what Asshole Pucker-face is saying here.

I would, in fact, argue that a majority of Republican voters don't have a clue what "Socialism" even means, simply because they've never bothered to look up the definition at the top of the article even though it's knowing the word and like two seconds away from literally everybody being able to read it for free.

And I'd argue that, at least since Joe McCarthy, Republicans haven't bothered to care what that word...and increasingly any word at all...even means.

Just over a year ago, I wrote about how at least for a majority of Republicans, politics was devolving into a series of Magic Words And Phrases.

Shameless plug; That article, Fiery The Angels Fell, is one of the ones that I consider among my best work. I'd say I hate it when I'm right, but I re-read the piece this morning and I gotta say things have turned out about how I thought they would.

We've hit the point...largely out of unreasoning "Conservative" fear of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (and maybe a little of Bernie Sanders and where was that in 2016?) where "Socialism" has become nothing more than a Magic Word used by Republicans to scare the base...who, mind you, have profited nothing by Republican tax cuts and anybody who's even been paying the slightest attention knows this.

Except of course that Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders are more accurately considered Social Democrats. You know, the kind of people who Stalin detested enough to name-check that philosophy and explicitly call social democracy a moderate form of fascism. So yeah, Commies they ain't, at least not by the words of the guy old Tailgunner Joe was most afraid of.

But ya know, it's worse than that. People who regard civil rights, education, health care and voting as "Socialism" and some kind of a threat to their power...are at best an annoying anachronism (and mind you, I was taught these things were important by conservatives) and at worst, a threat to modern human civilization.

I'm just sayin' it seems to me like the average Republican at this point never quite mentally got past the age of 14 and thinking the Neo-Feudalism and giant robots of the Battletech universe were just great.

Truth is, it's not a bad game system, the level of universe-building is utterly impressive...if a bit dated being that all this was originally put out there in the 1980's...and they never retconned it to account for current events at the time. In actuality it hardly supports one political view in particular, taking instead the notion that centralized authority became necessary as humanity propagated across the stars. A number of the nations and quasi-national military forces are, in fact, described as Socialist...a couple using that dated Cold War definition in particular, in fact...but the world as built has its liberals, its libertarians both conservative and socially-oriented, and hell it's anti-State Iconoclasts as well. Not just that but in the early 1990's the writers pretty much assumed LGBT equality or at least acceptance would be a given...and that what racism there was had largely realigned more according to culture and faction than skin color. One of my favorite characters in the novels was a Black Samurai...another was his factions spymaster, whose name clearly suggested South Asian descent.

The trouble is, the people who nominally grew up to be today's Republican Party never got past the part about riding around in some giant walking tank while being the Baron of some planet or other.

Just like they never read any deeper into Starship Troopers than that one had to serve in the government or the military to be a citizen or any deeper into any Heinlein novel than whatever gun happy bullshit supports the latest tear that the NRA is on.

Yeah, you could try maybe being an embattled Chinese future-Communist struggling to hold things together under the rule of a mad dictator and using Mechs that were built out of what you had, not what you wanted, or a Japanese-culture-based super Ninja or maybe a techno-Samurai who'd best his political rival in a game of Go before the two of them strap up in 60-metric-ton walking tanks and blast the shit out of each other...or a German-Scandinavian merchant-warrior with an even bigger Mech commanded by incompetent generals who had a tendency to lose the war even if you won the battle. But anybody who's played this game will tell you that the system stacked the deck totally in favor of the Anglo factions both past and present, to the point where such was a sore point with more dedicated fans.

The thing is, in a lot of cases the average citizen who doesn't have millions-in-whatever currency in assorted accounts doesn't make out all that well, often at best going into the field with a ballistic vest and a laser rifle against weapons that'd wipe out an entire platoon at once, or working in a factory or field or mine somewhere and hoping that shit doesn't get raided by pirates riding metal monsters.

For extra points, I had a week-long argument last week at work poking holes in a co-worker's adoration of the Warhammer 40K universe (much to his annoyance, and I've played that game as well, and it sucks) and if you think the Battletech universe is shitty you ain't seen nothing yet. (It's a literally fascist universe ruled by a catatonic dead guy in which faster-than-light space travel is accomplished by short-cutting through hell.)

And that's the kind of science fiction that a lot of Republicans read...and read badly, I might add.

But we live in the real world, where the only way to hold shit together is to be as fair as possible to as many people as possible, even if it doesn't make everybody happy and only works sometimes...and where, like it or not, heroic shit is best done on a smaller scale, like in how you conduct yourself. It's not glamorous but that kinda beats the alternative.

And I frankly prefer a future where at least most people work at least somewhat together for the betterment of all to any of the alternatives, both historical and fictional or theoretical.

On Twitter last week, I watched a video...shared by somebody who's political leanings I'm not sure of save that they appear to be on the anti-Trump end of the conservative spectrum...that showed two guys messing around with a fairly basic robot, one getting the thing to do various tasks and the other smacking it with a hockey stick and otherwise being real abusive, to disrupt its efforts. For the record, the poster was appalled and said "They're going to remember this, and they're going to kill us all."

That story has been written a few times too, in the various iterations of Battlestar Galactica, Blade Runner, and the Terminator movies...among others. I have no mouth and I must scream, anyone? Hello? Is this thing on?

Don't any of these motherfuckers read decent science fiction, or at least watch movies?

If we, the living, in the present day don't throw motherfuckers like Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump out of office at the first available opportunity...well, just remember that some people's idea of the future is Conservatives and Robots that they can abuse and you and me or any descendants we might have (much less any resistance by the robots) don't appear to factor in at all.

And that, my friends, is why Mitch McConnell thinks education and health care and peace and everybody getting to vote is socialism. You have to be alive to have Constitutional rights.

...

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those ... moments will be lost in time, like tears...in rain. Time to die. ~Roy Batty, Blade Runner.

The Evil Empire.

We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev...Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! ~Ronald Reagan

I want to ask you a question.

How much longer are you willing to let this crap go on?

Trump said last night, on camera, on TV, that if somebody handed him some kind of dirt on his Democratic opponent, in violation of US law, that he would take it and he would not call the FBI.

He basically implicitly admitted to everything he's been accused of...and probably more.

It's not just the act itself, not just the corruption of the 2016 elections and all the stupid bullshit since that burns my ass. It's that these absolute motherfuckers took information from a country ruled by a former KGB agent. You know, the "Sword and Shield of the Party" of what Ronald Reagan called the Evil Empire...the Soviet Union.

Doesn't that bother you?

How about the fact that during my lifetime we've gone from "Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" in Berlin to "Build the Wall!" on our southern border IN MY LIFETIME?!

And the same political party was in charge for both statements. Think about that for a second.

How exactly did the Republican Party go from standing for freedom and peace to demanding that we wall off the country and shoot down our neighbors in just 32 years?

I strongly suspect that it has something to do with people like this guy, Rick Wiles. He's the guy that runs "TruNews" a conspiracy theory website run as a "Christian ministry" out of Dallas, Texas, which daily features a hell of a lot of anti-semitic and racist content...and apparently now he's also actively excusing fathers lusting after their own daughters and "Grooming" them for the presidency because "he has lust for her." I'm sorry, but I've read the Bible...and I have no fucking idea where in the hell this asshole is getting the idea that that's Okay.

So, you might start trying to solve this problem by asking where the hell religion got bent sideways in this country, just sayin.'

I'm serious, speaking as an experienced gamer here, if somebody came at me with a character concept for my Vampire: The Masquerade game involving something like this, I'd send it back and tell them no, with extra profanity. Stuff like this is sick and wrong and disturbing and I want no part of it.

I'm fucking sorry, but I couldn't even make this shit up and my brain flatly cannot process how this shit came out of the mouth of any person who claims to believe in Jesus Christ, much less have a "Ministry."

Look, I'm fine with disturbing if the people involved are consenting adults or otherwise in the same general age group and willing to take the consequences if they get caught. I'm fine with whatever if the level of power of the participants is pretty equal. But that's not what this is.

When one of the parties involved is basically revered as a god by millions of creeps like Rick Wiles though, much less a rich old white man who is currently the head of a government? I'm sorry, but there's no way you can even in a remote sense bend the idea of consent into any kind of workable shape there...and that's before you get to the fact that Trump is, ya know, married.

I'm just saying didn't these fools put a lot of time and effort, 20 years ago, into trying to nail a Democratic President to the wall for adultery? And ya know, I gotta give Slick Willie credit for one big thing, despite his being from Arkansas, he wasn't lusting after somebody he was related to.

But that's all Okay now because #1 Republican, so there IS no Sin, and well #2 it's Trump so things that would make the mutants in "The Hills Have Eyes" say "Fuck No" are apparently perfectly cool as long as you can somehow manage to hang the label of "Conservative" on yourself one way or another.

Does any of this seem...I don't know, fucked up...to you yet?

How about Rick here, again, openly insinuating that one's DNA determines "Salvation." I mean, when you're saying that hamburgers will alter human DNA somehow something something gazpacho to create "Soulless people" that's basically what you're saying.

One's soul doesn't come from "DNA" according to what I was taught, it's your immortal essence that was created by God, and this flesh which we inhabit is basically a side-effect of that fact.

Let me tell you what a "Soulless person" is. A soulless person is exactly what you have when you have a supposed "Christian" preacher saying that our souls come from DNA that can be altered by something or other in a hamburger. I'm going to call that my "Hamburgers are more powerful than God" theory.

Because to these fucking people, God isn't the eternal creator of the infinite universe who exists no matter what we think about Him or what interpretations we believe because He is, after all, God. No, to motherfuckers like Rick Wiles "god" is just some card you play or words you say to get what you want, some little trinket that you keep in a box until you need it and then you pull it out because you need to impress somebody or manipulate the feeble-minded.

I'm sorry, but I was taught better than that. I was taught I'm going to have to answer to a higher power when I die, and that everything I ever did is gonna be looked into...a situation for which shouting "Jesus!" is not an automatic get out of jail free card, I might add.

What we're dealing with here, is people who literally believe in nothing. Anybody in government who will stand up already has. We need to, as a people, get down on our collective knees and thank whatever Gods we believe in, or whatever else if ya don't...that roughly two out of every three of us is against this shit.

And then we all need to stand up and do something. What that is, I have no idea, but we better get to figuring it out and we better accept that it's going to be messy and require us taking responsibility for what happens. We are going to have to do something as a people instead of getting others to do the heavy lifting.

50 years of bigotry, dumb shit and yellow-eyed spittle-flecked hate brought us to this point.

We're going to have to start trying to do something about that...or even if we beat this Trump problem, the next one will be on us in probably a matter of just a year or two given the short half-life of things these days.

But we'd best get after it anyway.

Because if you think people who believe that them being in power is more important than all of us being free, or that our country should be some kind of subsidiary to brutal, murderous dictators, or who think that fathers lusting after their daughters is Okay or that eating the wrong hamburger will suck your soul right out through your nucleic acids...are going to go quietly when they're voted out or that they give a damn what the rest of us think of them...you have another thing coming.

And that's before you factor in the misogyny, racism, sexism, and yellow-eyed drooling religious hatred.

As I've said before, I've hit the point where I think when the rest of us kick these people out of power...they're just going to take what they can including whatever people and states will side with them and form their own little Banana Republic Idiocracy so they can have a place where they can protect all the stupid fucked up bullshit that they want to believe.

Yes, you have to want to be this dumb.

And all the rest of us can do is hold the majority that's left together as best we can so that it stays that way...and do the best we can to protect ourselves while protecting others.

Yes, the simple fact is, we're soon coming to a point where the rest of us are going to have to act to protect ourselves. We'll have to cross the bridge of figuring out how to deal with what these idiots do in the places where they retain control when we come to it.

But if we don't stand up, that's on us.

Vote the bastards out, and if they don't go willingly we run them out of power by whatever means are necessary. Anything less is no longer sufficient.

It's just that simple.

Because otherwise we're the ones that history is going to view as the next Evil Empire, or as the glassy-eyed passive bovines that let it happen.

I don't want to live with that, do you?

Graven Images.

The very deep did rot, O Christ, 
That ever this should be
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea!
~Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Wow, I have to say I'm impressed.

No, really. American Evangelicals have finally made God in their own image. Surprisingly enough, it's not Donald Trump.

They don't get any points for that, since they basically just imagined God as a dudebro much like their own (diminishing) younger set.

Like, fucking really?

I'm sorry, yeah maybe I'm old. I grew up in the 1970's and 1980's and I remember being taught about a God, hearing Bible stories as a kid and maybe reading a book of the same here and there, that sort of depicted God as this old Middle-Eastern dude in desert robes with a long white beard of the kind that is a badge of rank in lots of more traditional cultures, most especially those spanning the space from Morocco to...roughly...the Chinese border. Maybe it's just I grew up in a different, less self-centered part of the timeline but I can't imagine ever thinking up a God that looked like me...or at least, I can't imagine calling such a thing God.

That's Okay, I guess, given that the quality of Christian theological education...official or otherwise...apparently isn't what I remember it being. I did a few years in Catholic school, I've been in Catholic men's groups when I sporadically attended Catholic churches years later. Fuck, my AA group back in the day met in some meeting facilities attached to the local Catholic church in my hometown. I'm not sure what this shit going on here with this Twitter account is...but it ain't that. It ain't even close.

(It appears to be some sort of Catholic-themed fake sword-fighting group.)

But there's something else I'd like to call attention to, specifically. Do you notice the words "Spiritual Warfare" in the bio? Spiritual Warfare (meaning praying against things, invoking or warding against "spirits" and the like) is not a Catholic concept. It's not even a Protestant one in mainstream terms, having arisen out of syncretism with African traditional faiths at first among African slaves in the Americas, a stream that gave birth to such faiths as Santeria, Voodoo in its various forms, and good-old-fashioned Holy Roller type Pentecostalism.

These people are Catholic about like I'm a goddamned toaster oven.

And I'm sure they're just amazingly fun to be around on an interpersonal basis as well. Oh, wait, did I say that with a straight face?

"Chastity is the real taking control of your body." I would say that almost sounds Islamic, except a majority of the Muslims I've ever met screw around that way just as much as everybody else I've ever met does, and neither those who do nor those who don't really make a big deal out of it in my experience (at least between men and women) not least because when he first heard of the phrase "Shotgun wedding" my friend Ikram did not have to have it explained to him what that meant. Although I'm sure in Pakistan the concept likely involves different weapons. Situational bisexuality is not uncommon in those kind of cultures for that exact reason.

Why do I bring this up?

Apparently a bunch of Catholic priests have been losing their shit on Twitter the last couple days over the issue of...women having bare shoulders in church..?

TAKBIR!

Allahu Akbar!

Oh, wait, I digress.

No, seriously, when the fuck did these people become the Taliban?

No. Don't look away, no hand-waving and if you try to move the goal-posts here I'm a break your fucking legs.

When did these sons of bitches turn into the Taliban?

Louisiana's House of Representatives just killed a bill that would set a minimum age for marriage in the state.

I quite honestly would not think such a bill would need to be considered simply because I would think any non-age-appropriate sexual activity or the same involving more than a year or two of age difference would be better handled under laws concerning murder or at least serious aggravated assault. Just sayin.'

Listen up, yo. Has it crossed no Republican minds here that this shit is just plain WRONG?!

I don't give a damn what some son of a bitch can get a judge to agree to or not. A grown-ass man has no God-Damned business "marrying" a teenage girl (or worse, younger. What, you think that's not going to come up?) So yeah, as far as I'm concerned, this just ain't right. Apparently, the God-people have forgotten that Man isn't the only judge they will ever have to face.

There's a sick element of irony to this garbage, too.

All the way back in 2006 a pregnant 12-year-old was pretty much the undoing of Warren Jeffs, the leader of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints cult. That motherfucker is still locked up...in Texas. The current governor was the Attorney General who basically masterminded the prosecution of FLDS members in that state. Such is the state of the idea of "Religious Freedom" today that those who risked life and limb and put considerable time and effort and their very lives into bringing Warren Jeffs and many of his cronies to justice for their crimes would likely have a much harder time of it, were somebody to be in the same position now...with Republicans like Greg Abbott, who was that AG, to thank for it.

At the rate they're going, before this is over, Republicans are going to have to apologize to every gimcrack sick-fuck of a cult leader all the way back to Joseph Smith, just sayin.'

Where's the line here? Where does the veneration of nothing greater than their own dicks actually stop?

What happened to the kind of basic conservative morality that used to say "If you look at my daughter (or other female relative) that way again, I'm a knock you out." What happened to, ya know, the proverbial Dad waiting up with the shotgun? (Actually, the majority of conservative people I've known who've expressed such sentiments in the last decade or so have tended to be the Moms, but I digress.)

When did conservative men cease to be...well, men...and become this creepy bullshit?

Ya know, as much as I hate Trump and how much of a fool he's busy making of himself and our country over in England right now, this problem didn't start with him. This bullshit started with a million small choices to prioritize single-issue fanaticism over basic morality in all ways...without any care for the consequences.

Apparently, if pregnant 13-year-old girls is the natural result of not teaching proper sex education, not teaching about birth control or the proper use of condoms and making it hard or even impossible to get an abortion, then these idiots are perfectly fine with pregnant 13-year-old girls.

It's not as much of a leap as I thought it was, apparently, to also keeping older boys or adult men away from said teenage girls. Let's be serious here, for a second. Let's play the game these fucking people always played with the rest of us, back when there was some collective idea that this was about decency or life, rather than control over women or trying to arrange some sort of breeding stock for white men. (You notice how in the "Abortion debate" people of Color rarely seem to make an appearance, except for generally being aligned with the Democrats on these issues?) I'm serious: What in the hell kind of perversion will these fucking people be Okay with next?

After all, they've been excusing Catholic Priests diddling boys...basically forever. I'm serious, where's the fucking line, here?

'Cause it sure doesn't exist at basic common sense or decency or self-respect. These fucking people are basically just a cult, by now, no different than Warren Jeffs and his Fundamentalist Mormons were a decade-and-a-half ago. Why is this acceptable now, but it was not then?

What changed? When did these people become the fucking Taliban, with a David Koresh-like cult vibe besides?

Women having bare shoulders in church is literally nothing compared to the perverse shit these people have already done...much less the kind of sick bullshit they're apparently preparing to do if nobody stops them. And no, these fucking people simply cannot be trusted to police their own. If it's shown us nothing else, the Trump era has clearly shown us that.

Whether it's insane religious fanaticism, literal treason committed with the Russians, scamming their own voter base or openly making laws that will enable child molestation, Republicans have shown they cannot be trusted.

The rest of us need to do something about this crap, or it's on us, too.

It's rapidly passing the point where simply voting them out just won't do, because what's to stop them at this point from taking their ball...and maybe a few states...and going home to set up their own little wannabe-Afghanistan right here within the borders of the by-then-former United States?

Call it the "Conservative States of America" and they don't even have to change the acronym.

And with the combination of age and demographic trends leading to basically a Republican Apocalypse, that's going to be exactly their strategy, you watch. Get all the like-"minded" people in one or maybe a few areas. Break off a piece. Protect "Conservatism" at all costs. "Resist" "Socialism" even if it means breaking the United States.

I mean, that's been their strategy all along. What else did you think all those Confederate flags still being around in 2019 were for? I'm not kidding when I say this...they're busy setting up the exact same kind of "legal" system I always thought they would right under our noses, before they even try to leave. In case you haven't noticed, it's not like the President we have now would make a serious effort to stop them if they did. Throw in "President for life" and the motherfucker would probably join them.

So you smack that shit down now, and maybe prevent a lot of people getting blown up or shot later.

We are what we will tolerate, and don't you forget it. We cannot continue to accept this kind of backward religious bullshit because it's already led to horrible things...it's just that before, the shit could be prosecuted.

When the legal system gets that bent out of shape, civilization unravels, and a long night falls. At this point you're either standing against the fall of night and standing against this perverse bullshit or you're not.

Which is it?

Now we've seen what these "Conservatives" are really about...and it looks suspiciously like a Christian version of the "Radical Islam" they claim to hate.

If we stand by and let this sick shit happen, we're just as guilty of it as they are.

It's time to pick a side, and it's time to get off your ass and do something, as much as you are able.

Because no, if they haven't stopped this shit by now there is NO bottom.

Republicans reached the point where I could no longer tolerate the direction in which they were heading in 2008. That's small potatoes compared to this garbage.

So, do you bow down and worship that graven image?

Or do you stand up and do what you know you should...even if you're the only one, like Moses descending from St. Catherine's Mountain in the Sinai with the Ten Commandments?

The choice is yours, and soon it's going to be time where you have to make it.

2 I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

~Exodus 20:2-5