The dumbest *Possible* Eschaton (American Revelation V: Part Nine.)

All you kiddies remember to lay off the needle drugs, the only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon. ~Abbie Hoffman

Yesterday, a Miami police officer was photographed wearing a Trump mask in a polling place.

Do you even America, bro?

Not to mention, who'd you blow to keep your job all this time if that's the level of attention you pay to the regs?

Fucking seriously, electioneering within a certain radius of a polling place, and voter intimidation, have been illegal forever.

Every polling place I've ever been in has signs to that effect posted, also per Federal law.

To their credit, the Miami P.D. jumped on this situation as soon as they heard about it, which was pretty quickly considering the asshole got caught by the local Democratic Party chairman and was almost instantly Twitter-famous. Generally speaking, when it comes to any profession that carries arms, two rules consistently apply in such a way that no Judge Advocate, no Union or any other damn thing will get you out of the consequences of breaking. #1 Don't throw shit uphill, and #2 Don't do anything that attracts mass negative attention to yourself and your team and especially don't make your superiors look bad. Also, dude violated two very specific Department regulations, no political attire while in uniform and no foul language while on duty. Have fun at your next job working loss control at Walmart, asshole.

Seriously, if I'd done what this motherfucker did as an Airman, I'd have been lucky to walk away with an administrative separation or a Bad Conduct Discharge, either of which would have come via Article 15 nonjudicial punishment after Article 32 proceedings declined to send the case on to courts martial. 

What this guy did was commit two Federal felonies and get caught on camera doing it. A member of the military doing that and being that stupid about it would almost certainly be arrested, charged, tried, found guilty, likely incarcerated and at the conclusion of their time as a guest of the US Disciplinary Barracks-Leavenworth or Naval Consolidated Brig, Miramar they'd be dishonorably discharged. 

These laws and regulations exist for a reason.

Things like the franchise, nonpartisan institutions and the rule of law are what separates us from barbarians and petty tyrants and don't you forget it.

That so many Republicans from the voters on up have forgotten this is unforgivable. 

That so many Americans would rather be petty corporate goons or Russian-backed satraps or the white equivalent of drug-addled illiterate Pashtun goat-fuckers than people living in a democratic first-world society who exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship tells me maybe we should send a lot more people over there for awhile, and let them see how they like it.

The actual damned problem with that logic is, there's one hell of a lot of people who should theoretically know better who think they'd go to a place like Afghanistan and be the petty warlord reclining on his throne, puffing away on an enormous Hookah while Kalashnikov-armed thugs bring him the day's haul from the peasants in the poppy fields, smoke some hashish or maybe some  opium, get stoned and sit around watching pirated copies of American movies..

Nobody, and I mean nobody thinks they're going to go to a place like that and be the Catamite lashed to the back of the truck until the headman of the local Lashkar wants his dick sucked. Or, ya know, go there and just plain end up dead. And that's the problem, isn't it?

Way back in 2015 I started to note fairly early that there were far too many privileged white people, especially on both far ends of the spectrum who were willfully ignorant of the ways things could go wrong, who always assume they'll be Okay, and who didn't and still don't give a shit about other people.

And worse, there's those, many of them far less privileged, who simply want the chaos and destruction because they think they'll profit by it somehow, or at least be entertained in some way.

Which brings me to yet another issue.

Trump keeps bringing up this idea of Joe Biden "Taking away God."

First of all, that tells me that Donald Trump doesn't believe in an infinite God who created an infinite universe and who is all-knowing and all-powerful. If God can be "taken away" by Man, then He is not God. 

I'm increasingly convinced that for Trump and a lot of his followers, religion is nothing more than some kind of magic show woo woo bullshit entertainment and none of these people really believe in anything at all.

Let me say that again, it's all bullshit, for a majority of these people all it ever was, was bullshit. It seems like anybody and everybody who cares in the least these days has voted, is voting or is planning on voting for the Democrats.

Including me, I'm a former Republican.

Voted for the Contract With America and the Gingrich Revolution, I did.

Hell, I volunteered on a GOTV effort for George W. Bush's campaign in 2000.

Goddamn, do I feel stupid.

That it's come down to this is a bitter goddamn pill for someone who spent more than half his political life so far as a Republican. The high-minded principles of Ronald Reagan or either Bush, the sweeping vision that at least went with the paranoia and shitty behavior of Richard Nixon, and the relative moderation of somebody like Gerald Ford all have no place in today's Republican party. Yet Kim Jong Un, the Taliban, and Vladimir Putin just might. The party of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, of "With Malice Toward None, With Charity For All" and "Mr. Gorbachev, Open This Gate! Mr. Gorbachev, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!" has become the party of dictators and kings, and sounded suspiciously Soviet while doing that. The party that united America in the face of terror on 9/11 has become the party of the fucking Taliban.

I feel like half my life was a lie, in the service of another lie, for an ideology of lies. If these fools don't think I'm angry enough about it to go out and fight somebody over that they're goddamned wrong.

And, as I write this, Twitter is aflame with trending topics related to Rudy Giuliani getting caught in a compromising position in front of a young actress that was playing the role of a reporter interviewing him in the new Borat movie.

Rudy, who once boasted about how glad he was that Sacha Baron Cohen never "got" him.

Trouble with that kind of track record is you only have to screw up once and it's over. That just happened.

And this guy was "America's Mayor" on 9/11 and had a real shot at being elected President in 2008, but he fell apart in the primary and that was that.

He's going to go down in history as Donald Trump's free lawyer and Impeachment causer.

Well, Donnie, you get what you pay for.

If you'd ever been a real businessman you'd know that.

I'm tired of these goddamned fools and their play-pretend paste up "righteousness" and shitty judgmentalism toward everybody else. I'm tired of the same silly bullshit day in and day out like America has turned into a never-ending episode of "Jackass."

If this is their idea of "Immanentizing The Eschaton" count me the fuck out.

Vote these motherfuckers out. All of them.

You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists. ~Abbie Hoffman

Part Eight.

Take away from me the noise of thy songs, I will not hear the melody of thy viols (American Revelation V: Part Eight.)

I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies. Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream. ~Amos 5:21-24

There's something that needs to be said, here; Words have meanings. Laws have to be respected. Precedents must be observed, and, like it or not things have to be changed according to process when they don't work.

The Trumpist disrespect for basically everything is starting to really bother me. But, perhaps more to the point, it also bothers me that these idiots think no one else has any sense of agency. These fools clearly think other people are not going to act, react, or try to change anything. These are clearly the people who've managed to get through life without getting their clock cleaned for talking stupid, or something.

They likewise assume that God is somehow like them, on their side, or otherwise agrees with them, or that there is no "real" point of view other than their own.

It's really stupid, actually. More than that, it seems to me to be the height of hubris to go about this way and that as if the Universe automatically agrees with you...especially when it clearly does not.

"I hate, I despise your feast days, I will not smell in your solemn assemblies." 

That verse, in and of itself, seems pretty straightforward about the fact that God is not going to approve of everything that Believers do.

But it's funny how the believers in the shitty Republican agenda either persuade themselves that God doesn't get a vote...or they think He agrees with them, always.

It's funny how none of these motherfuckers anymore ever asks "Am I doing the right thing?"

And with the rise of Q-Anon and shit, it's quite honestly past time for people to start asking serious questions of themselves and others, and while they're at it, stop proof-texting and actually start reading things like the Bible and the Constitution and serious eschatology and theology because this chucklefuck idea of "just believe it" because it tickles their ears or satisfies their confirmation bias is going to put a lot of people on an express elevator to hell.

Whether "Q" is Russian active measures or some dumb bullshit made up by some idiot in New Jersey, the truth is that this shit has taken pretty much all the conspiracy theories, mashed them together, and started stirring the resulting toxic sludge into a stew that looks very much like the beginnings of a religion; More to the point, Q-Anon-ism is both the kind of Christ-less Christianity of which the Beast of Revelations could have previously only dreamed and the sort of cult with a potential for random violence based on total bullshit that could make Daesh and the Taliban seem positively reasonable by comparison.

These fucking people claim to be against human trafficking and pedophilia, but it seems like anytime these motherfuckers are confronted with either, or with an actual concrete way to do something in any real, concrete way about the real-life problem, they refuse.

That's because Q-Anon isn't about protecting children, it's about trying to rat-fuck Democrats and non-Trumpist Republicans. That's all it is.

But it fits well with the Godless Theonomism of the Trump Republican Party, which substitutes a deeply agnostic greed, a shitty agenda, and the worship of a man for God, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

In fact, if we want to get the sense of what Q...or Trumpism...might look like as a religion, we need to look no further than the constant, inane self-reverential ramblings of Donald Trump himself, or the callous twisted irreligion of Bill Barr's "Catholicism" or for that matter the willfully ignorant Stepford Wife cruelty of Amy Coney Barrett.

In that faith, we are all damned, understand that right now. In that faith, the only reward some people may get is that the more-damned will get to have their boots on the throats of the less-damned at some mythical point in the future, dangled just beyond the mind's eye like the premise of a badly-written Christian end times novel, invisible, yet always there. 

It's that unspoken reasoning These Fucking People are using when they tell you they don't know why they support Trump. They know, but they're absolutely terrified of the idea that immanentizing their shitty right-wing eschaton might actually involve personal risk or physical pain or that somebody else's bootheel on their face might cause them to rethink their bad life choices.

It's the kind of thought process that casts listening to experts and science as a bad thing when the only thing that'll get us out of this is expertise and science.

And it's enough to make you understand why God threw Adam and Eve out of the Garden and why it seems like He spent most of the Old Testament feuding with and punishing the Israelites in a frustrating cycle of abuse, apostasy and repentance where those on the outside looking in are never sure which is more in the wrong, but all know they don't want these two crazy fuckers to be their neighbors because there's bound to be a 3:00 A.M. shouting match in the front yard about just how much money did your dumb ass spend on that golden calf statue, anyway?

Yeah. All these thousands of years later things have not improved. The only thing that's really eternal is These Fucking People.

Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs, for I will not hear the melody of thy viols.

I think I kind of understand now, what God was getting at with that remark. I don't want to listen to these fucking people either, Lord.

Fuck these motherfuckers. You can't reason with this shit. Vote these people out and be prepared to kick their asses if they try anything funny after that. Maybe a good old fashioned Biblical-level beat down is about the only thing these idiots will understand.

I don't know if there's another answer, but I do know this path we're on as a country right now cannot continue.

Part Seven.

For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins (American Revelation V: Part Seven)

Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is his name: That strengtheneth the spoiled against the strong, so that the spoiled shall come against the fortress.
They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly.
Forasmuch therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them. For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right. ~Amos 5:8-12

As things spiral out of control, with Republicans and Trump having at long last lost complete control of the narrative and things looking pretty grim, there's an old line of argument that I've been seeing pop up again. It goes like this:

"Reagan conservatism has not failed, it has only been failed." Or another old standby; "True Conservatism has never been tried."

Even in their own minds, Republicans have already begun to prep for heavy casualties and triage the damage. It seems to go without saying that Trump is in trouble and not one damned thing he's doing is working. Among other things, as I pointed out on Twitter last night anybody who's ever worked in Information Technology for any length of time can spot all the flaws in the current Hunter Biden conspiracy theory...and it seems like most people are doing just that. 

So, on the other hand, Republicans are falling back on simple accusatory judgmentalism, as if their accusations should be taken at face value simply because they're the ones making them.

Amid all the noise, noise, noise it seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle that Susan Collins got caught funding two specifically Q-Anon candidates for the State House in the Aroostook County area of northern Maine. Judging from the look of the one I've seen a picture of, Kevin Bushey; dude being a silver-haired old man and all, and from the (admittedly pretty general) bio that I've seen...which mentions that the guy is an Air Force veteran. I'm going to guess he was at some point back in the day stationed at Loring Air Force Base, a place I went to once, that seemed to brood in the kind of quiet isolation that induces stark-raving madness in so many horror movies. 

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY! ALL work AND NO PLAY makes JACK a DULL BOY! But I digress...

Enter into the picture this guy's church, which he is naturally very active in and which appears to have gone full Q-Anon...to the point of having actual Prayer "Kill lists" of organizations, which I have seen, and likely of people as well...which I have not seen any evidence of but which follows logically.

And to keep the Mainer references rolling, the place's theology is pretty much The Shining hooked up with Under The Dome as narrated by the crazy preacher from The Stand.

It's not that Stephen King couldn't have thought this one up, I suspect he may have, but figured the manuscript would be rejected out of hand by the publisher as too unbelievable.

Yet here we are, and here's their Kill-Bill-esque list which is a pretty bipartisan laundry list of just about everybody these fucking nuts hate.

The church and some groups associated with it advocate for the use of military force to accomplish their goals, not use of force by somebody else, but by these fucking people themselves.

And this is Christianity, in the age of Trump?

I've long worried about a possible merger between "Spiritual Warfare" type Pentecostalism and Q-Anon, and given that the Prosperity Gospel and Trumpism already effectively merged five years ago, I'm going to warn you that we're probably looking at the rise of a particularly murderous cult here; If it has not arisen already, that is.

The Assassins; For Jesus. Allah Akbar, motherfucker.

"Christian Taliban" will not end up being far wrong.

And before you think I'm joking consider the following;

These kinds of people, and these sorts of churches have a terribly bad habit of claiming some kind of God-given authority for shit that they already want to do anyway...and it doesn't matter whether said thing is against the Lord's Word or the Ten Commandments or whatever at all.

It has been my personal experience that these fucking people will do whatever they want and ex post facto invoke God and Jesus and some kind of special spiritual dispensation to do whatever they damned well please as a general rule.

I've seen that cover everything from adultery (and every other kind of sexual immorality imaginable) to blasphemy, to lying and outright theft, can murder be too far behind?

And the Republican Party and Susan Collins gave this dude money, doubtless they see it as a transactional arrangement in keeping with the times.

I'm a just say it right now, this was not some kind of oversight. This was done with malice aforethought by some nominally-rational asshole somewhere. 

The ISI always thinks it can control the Takfiris, right up until they're clashing with the Army in the northwestern tribal areas. Other Army regiments will always say that the Taliban would never dare enter their area of operations, right up until the Americans show the base CO dozens of classified counter-battery radar tracks indicating that yes, indeed, that mortar fire originated from within five clicks of your Gray Castle, Colonel. Here's a couple of drone feeds indicating that yes, they're right here within sight of your men. See that timestamp in the lower right corner? And all of your British-accented finery isn't hiding the fact that at the minimum you're Okay with that fact.

Cue the deep concern and furrowed brows and "They'll look into it."

And then throw all their musty WASP-y gravitas into politically defending that shit.

That will continue well past the point where people have died, and when it gets too bad to deny, they'll just lie about it. When Maine Army National Guard soldiers are dying in firefights with these Takfiris For Christ, people like Susan Collins will retroactively deny any connection or responsibility and profusely shed crocodile tears on the behalf of "Fallen Heroes."

And when they lose, these fucking people will deny that fact for as long as they can, in the hope that they can lie and steal some more before reality catches up.

And they think that the rest of us don't know that.

And they either think the God they want to jam down the rest of our throats doesn't really exist, is dumb as fuck, or is somehow Okay with all of this bullshit.

And you can cite chapter and verse saying otherwise all you want, but it won't register.

You cannot reason with people who will ever and always only act in bad faith, you cannot shame the shameless, you can only defeat them.

I suggest we adjust our expectations accordingly. People are going to die, and Republicans will laugh about it.

Part Six.

Fallen (American Revelation V: Part Six.)

Freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul. When our founders declared a new order of the ages, when soldiers died in wave upon wave for a union based on liberty, when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner 'Freedom Now', they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled. ~George W. Bush

I saw yesterday, that people in one majority-white suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, had a fifteen-minute wait to vote. While another nearby majority-black area had a line that took about five hours. Somebody that I follow on Twitter said that they waited eight and a half hours to vote.

Thanks, Republicans. Thanks to you motherfuckers, the rest of the world can now successfully argue that the Democratic Republic of the Congo...or the United Nations, for that matter...is a better-organized entity with more workable elections than the United States of America.

It's time that we, as a country, face up to something. A large minority of our people...certainly at least a third of us...simply do not believe in Democracy or rights or indeed anything that does not 100% favor them right now, on a minute-to-minute basis. 

And if you listen to them talk, these fucking people are saying they want total power, forever, such that a person should have to ask their permission to even walk down the street.

And their only consistent ethic is "FUCK YOU!"

Or perhaps the bizarre-to-the-point-of-nonsensical political counting coup of "Owning the Libs" whatever that even means.

And then they're the ones who habitually wrap themselves in the rhetoric of freedom and rights. But the only rights they seem to care about are the rights to say "Fuck you" or to kill and steal.

Just because they want to do it with laws and politics instead of guns and knives does not make it be something other than what it is.

More to the point, in a civilized society; How does that work, exactly?

How in the hell does anybody...even on their side...call such a state of affairs "Freedom?"

How in the hell do we, as a people, ever expect to remain free when one third of us does not believe in freedom on a conceptual level, except maybe for themselves, contingent on their emotional state at the time?

That kind of mentality is hugely problematic even without there being a kind of Oppositional Defiant Disorder vs. Reality in these people's minds?

How does freedom of the Press, not to mention governance on any level, work when the President is infected with a deadly virus and refuses to have any care for himself or others?

How exactly, do we expect anything of our government or society when the President's own family seems to view his position as primarily a money-making opportunity for themselves?

If this is how rich people conduct themselves, as a fucking rule, I quite frankly think we need to start setting up a lot of Guillotines and put into effect laws concerning their use, and maybe, just maybe, rethink who we look up to as a society. Why? Because it's pretty goddamned clear that these fucking people...and the donors who give them money...could give a shit about any of us.

In fact, if anything, they seem to want us to die in vast numbers.

All for the greater glory of Wall Street, and yet I'm not sure how any of these fucking fools think they can have a country, or an economy, without the people that are needed to run both. It's a classic case of the wealthy forgetting how or why they get, or have, their money in the first place. Couple that with a vast, seething contempt for everybody who isn't them, and there you have it.

We need to get these fucking people out of power if we want to keep having a country, let alone remain free within it. 

The thing that bothers me, now that all this is being exposed and laid bare before our eyes...is that there are still people rabidly following this shit, to the point where they're willing to go to rallies and risk getting COVID-19 just for some temporary feeling of power...or whatever they think they're getting out of this bullshit.

And these people's rank dishonesty and vast seething hatred now seems to extend to democracy itself.

Seems like, in a democratic nation, you're in the wrong business if you're in politics and that's what you really think.

After all, how the fuck else did you get that job?

Sure, Democracy might be flawed and messy and occasionally produce stupid results...but how else would we choose our leaders? What other method have we ever had? This is America, and the whole point of America is that this country was founded in opposition to the emperors, kings, petty satraps and warlords that were the norm of human governance in the 18th century.

What else even is there, Entreating the Gods? Gladiatorial combat? Kill your way to the top? Magic 8-Ball? Vision Quests? I'm gonna be honest here, none of that shit really works or ever did, and it seems like, flawed as it is, we already have a workable system. Maybe if you can't honestly, lawfully get elected under that system you need to change your ways, expand your voter base, or otherwise, you need to do something. Our system is not going to sacrifice itself just so you can have power, especially when your ideology literally becomes more shitty by the day.

I used to be a Republican, I'm a basic white guy, and I'm going to be honest...there's nothing for me in modern Republicanism. I don't get anything out of it, except worse living conditions. So why should I support this crap? Tell me why, show your work! Of course, these fucking people can't do that because the best answer they can come up with for why they should have power is "But they've always had it before" or "Because somebody we don't like might get it." I can't support that on any level.

Republicans are losing and people are waiting eight hours to vote against them because they're shit, because their ideals are shit, because even the religion they offer is nothing more that sycophancy toward a shitty, selfish God that is little more, even to them, than the Big Republican In The Sky. The Republican Party, as a whole, has become nothing more than an anthropomorphic, living representation of Ayn Rand's absolutely terrible novel "Atlas Shrugged" which can, in fact, be called a novel only by degrading that term.

And they're mad because people are reacting to that like real people would, not like the people in the novel that Rand wrote as cheering when their employers abandoned society. Modern Republicans not only think they have some kind of a right to take bodily autonomy away from women, or rights away from other groups of people...they think that those other people should cheer for them and vote for them while they do it, on the off chance that somebody else might end up having it worse.

It's not just that they're filled with hate of all kinds and all manner of shitty selfishness and they think they should be worshipped like gods for it, it's that they're so out of touch I have to wonder if epic level amounts of drug use are involved.

For example: What's their idea to try and bring back, for example, suburban white women? They try to cast Mike Pence as a sex symbol. You know, the dude who calls his wife "Mother" and is probably the most unsexiest motherfucker ever to fuck a mother, if there was any sex involved, which I sort of question because after all, a fly did land on his head and stay there for like three minutes.

That sort of suggests that Mike Pence would only be considered sexy if you're a Necrophiliac.

When you're so out of touch that Mayor Pete, the boring midwestern white guy who, in a normal world would probably be a Republican by dint of his moderate personality, his prior service as a US Navy intelligence officer and his religion, can be considered a "Rhetorical Assassin" against you, fundamentally for simply pointing out the obvious, it's time to pack it up and go home. Or, on a more base level...as 25-years-ago me might have opined...you got beat by a gay dude...it might just be time to pack it up and go home.

Now, personally, I like Mayor Pete, and I'd have been all in to vote for him if he'd been the nominee.

But he's exactly the type who should have been able to be a loud-and-proud gay Republican if he'd wanted to be, and had Republicans followed the trajectory of the Bushes and lots of their philosophical leaders instead of that of Conspiracy theories, FOX News, Fundamentalist religion and their baser, hateful racist elements, that might have been possible.

But it isn't, and I'm glad he's on our side.

Same with the Lincoln Project people, literally current and former Republicans who've dedicated themselves to getting Donald Trump...and in many cases their own party...out of power. Some of them want to De-Trumpify conservatism, or rebuild it along earlier lines, others have effectively switched sides. I'm glad they're on our side for now because fundamentally it's going to take all of us to get these assholes out of power.

And if you think this fight is going to be over with a Democratic election victory, or even Biden's inauguration, you have another thing coming. Just as it took generations to jack the Republican Party so far to the Right that it became anti-American, undoing the damage will likewise be the work of generations, and we will face other crises at the same time.

Climate change, and a probably right-wing insurgency, for example. Republicans have fallen a long way.

And that's why they have to be both driven from power and kept from having it ever again. If that seems like a lot of work, too bad.

But the work has to be done, and done right, and pursued vigilantly until it is complete.

Why? Because if it isn't, these fucking people will take away your vote, kill you and take your stuff, or let you die of disease while the world burns, simply because they think it's funny. This is what we're up against, period.

That spell it out for ya?

America has never been united by blood or birth or soil. We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests and teach us what it means to be citizens. ~George W. Bush

Part Five.

Also, Fuck You Lindsey Graham.

And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.
And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.
For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.
And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.
For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.
Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double.
~Revelation 18:1-6

 

 

South Carolina Soviet Socialist Republic (American Revelation V: Fuck You Lindsey Graham Edition.)

 In the future individualism ought to be the efficient utilization of the whole individual for the absolute benefit of a collectivity. ~Che Guevara

In 2015, when Trump started talking about building a wall, I said "So, Republicans are basically Communists now?"

This, this right here, is exactly why I said that.

Yesterday, Lindsey Graham said "An African American person or an immigrant can go anywhere in South Carolina, so long as they're conservative, not liberal."

Do you even America, bro?

No, I'm fucking serious you asshole closet-case. Listen to me, and make sure your brain don't fall out your dumb head.

This is not the South Carolina Soviet Socialist Republic.

This is America, according to what I was taught America is, by Christians, by conservatives, America is not the kind of country where one's success or failure in life is determined by whether or not one joins The Party. This right here is some pretty damned Communist-sounding shit, as far as this former conservative Republican is concerned.

This is America, where one can and cannot go should never be determined by one's political affiliation or the color of one's skin, but simply by whether or not a person has the capability to get where they want to go. Anything else smacks of the closed cities and fences and guard towers and walls of the Communist Bloc of my youth.

If Black people can be told where they can go, or what they can do, the rest of us will absolutely not be far behind. 

Power only craves more power, and the monster that Lady G insists on feeding has no bottom and has an insatiable appetite for more...

Like I've said you could pour this entire country and everyone and everything in it down that space where Donald Trump's soul is supposed to have been, and you'd never fill it. My ex-wife has a personality disorder, this whole Trump thing ain't my first rodeo.

And more to the point, this stupid bullshit shows that Lindsey Graham doesn't know jack shit about Black people, most of whom are, in a lot of ways...especially as regards religion...pretty damn conservative...just not in the kind of way that involves telling other people where they can and can't go or what they can and cannot do.

But this isn't about arguing capability vs. purpose, or Christian doctrine, or even navigating one's place in the world.

This is about power, and the fact that a small, angry, shitty man is for once in his life having to fight for that which he thinks he deserves...and the truth is, he doesn't, and he knows it.

The polling is dead even, or maybe with Jaime Harrison a little ahead, depending on the day. Also, Harrison is kicking Lindsey Graham's ass up between his shoulder blades fundraising-wise.

And that just makes him more angry. Lindsey Graham doubtless thinks he should be getting all that money.

See, These Fucking People (a term I picked up from Jim Wright of Stonekettle Station) i.e. people like Lindsey Graham, they don't really believe in anything, except power and their own capabilities.

And they love to exercise that power. They worship that power and crave more like a Black prosperity gospel preacher craves and worships money...and at least the Prosperity Gospel preacher has to pay lip service to a power higher than himself and be seen doing so with convincing enough passion that a whole lot of people will believe he's praying to Jesus and not for the fattening of his own wallet.

And Lady G, she really can't do that, can she? I mean, the old gay bear, he ain't what he used to be...or something. Hell, the last time I ever saw Lindsey Graham say something with any degree of passion it was that "If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed, and we'll deserve it."

Prophetically spoken, but the timing was off by about four years judging from how things are going.

And look where Lindsey Graham is now (cue Sad Trombone noise.)

I mean this in all sincerity and I say it as a former conservative: Fuck this Commie-Wannabe Motherfucker, with a train, sideways, while it's running.

Integrity Above All
Service Before Self
Excellence In All That We Do.
~United States Air Force Core Values.

You know how you know what kind of an absolute shit person Lindsey Graham is?

He's a retired South Carolina Air National Guard officer, a Judge Advocate General to be specific. I know the values he was supposed to have lived by, oh yes, I do.

And this? This ain't it.

For all the values he was supposed to espouse, uphold, and literally put his life on the line for, for all the oaths he swore, for all the time as a JAG and as a Congressman and as a Senator that he had in, for all his time in supposed-public service...

Well, you see all that ain't shit. It's worse than nothing, somebody else should have had his spot. See, at the end of the day Lindsey Graham's word ain't shit.

I don't know about you, but where I come from that is supposed to be the measure of a man.

And here's Lindsey Graham freely and openly stating that, at least behavior-wise, he'd gladly turn the United States of America into a new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics if it would keep him in power and serve the interests of those who make up his power base.

I don't know about you, but that's not the America I want to live in. We don't have a thousand years of history or all that many unifying factors. All he have is what we want to be.

And I don't want to be this.

Do you?

Vote.

Vote the bastards out.

All of them.

Because as of right now we still can.

It really is that simple.

And after this, it gets a lot harder. If you don't think Republicans will try to split America to see if they can break off a piece, well, you ain't been paying attention.

Part Five.

Do you even Conservative, Bro? (American Revelation V: Part Five.)

Barbara: With a cute little rear end like that, you'll be the belle of the ball. Your dance card'll be filled every day. You'll be so popular, making all kinds of new, close friends. Big, ugly, hairy friends! Not that you'll ever see what they look like, 'cause you'll be facing the other way.
- Ken Kessler: You're very good at this. You should write children's books. ~From the film Ruthless People 

Democracy isn't the objective?"

Okay, smart guy. Tell me then, what is the objective? Why have I been voting since I registered to vote (as a Republican, no less. Man, do I ever feel stupid now) in 1991 when I turned 18 years old, why did I raise my right hand and swear an oath to the Constitution, what is even the point of, well, most of my life?

For those in the back, and apparently some of the Republican Senators out there, let me explain something in very fucking simple terms.

Without people having a say in their government, in how things are run, in their lives and in what goes on in their own country, it's not liberty, peace, or prosperity, not really.

Well, it might be unimaginable prosperity for a very few at the top, but that's about it. Your profits are not my objective. And if you think you can hold a society together that way, you're wrong.

Without Democracy, we are at best pampered pets, subjects, not citizens, having as much say over our own lives as a dog does over the actions of his master. At worst, we are slaves, well-fed or otherwise, and whether we "flourish" or not is subject to the whims and vanities of people like this asshole, and not by our own capabilities.

Without Democracy, our purpose in life is not even ours to find, nor do we rise or fall by our own initiative, but all this is instead dictated by the State per its own needs or by the political doctrines and various dogmas of the moment.

That sounds an awful lot like fascism, or maybe Soviet Communism without any of the parts that sort of helped people, sometimes. Your ideas, Senator, sound pretty damned Soviet to this former Republican. And I will not live under such a system. Do you even conservative, bro?

In point of fact, I'd rather DIE than live under the Senator's ideas of me "flourishing" without having a say in HOW. I'd rather die, with a rifle in my hand if need be, defending the Constitution and country WE ALREADY HAVE as I was once trained to do. What happened to the basis of conservatism being "Things as they are" not "things as we wish them to be" or reverence for revealed truth or the wisdom of our ancestors who built the small-L, small-D, liberal democratic system that we have? Flawed as it is, it's better than the alternative.

I don't want what I do for a living, where I live, how much money I make or who I love or where I work or how or even IF I worship God determined by a right-wing apparatchik in Utah anymore than I'd have wanted all that determined by a Communist apparatchik in Moscow.

This kind of bullshit is exactly what I was taught to fight, BECAUSE I'm an American, BY conservatives and liberals alike, BY Christians, because there was a time when people knew their histories and remembered things like that there was a time when people died for the right to read the Word in their own languages, on their own time, and draw their own conclusions from its pages.

You and your belief that you will be the King in his castle or the Lord in his manor while the rest of us are the serfs toiling in the fields directly interferes with that, with the very basics of what I was taught conservatism, revealed truth, or the wisdom of my ancestors all even were.

Freedom may be messy, but at the end of the day, without it life really isn't worth living because life isn't even ours to live. If you don't like how others live, LEAD. BY. EXAMPLE. Show them the Truth. It's on them to follow it, or not. 

If you can't do that, maybe you need to pick a different set of beliefs.

This has been a conservative argument.

Not that a large majority of these fucking people could be described as conservative, by any accurate definition of that word.

I got home from work this morning and besides getting deluged with posts about Mike Pence having a fly land on his head and stay there for awhile, I almost immediately saw Mike Lee's idiocy.

Then I saw this. Six right-wing terrorists apparently plotted to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, my state's governor, overthrow the government and start a civil war. Then they got busted by the FBI and the Michigan State Police.

Right there is what These Fucking People think of America, Democracy, and the will of the people all in a nutshell, in a nice, neatly wrapped little gift box, handed to you on a silver platter.

I hope that you can infer the depth and breadth of my hatred for these people and their fucking bullshit by the fact that I'm quoting from "Ruthless People."

If you haven't believed me when I tell you that first we're going to have to vote them out, then we're going to have to fight them off, I'd suggest that you start. These fucking people are not trying to win the fucking argument, at least not by any conventional...or even unconventional...means that a sane person would recognize. No, as I've said before, these idiots are trying to immanentize some sort of right-wing Eschaton. 

And they're so fucked up on this silly bullshit that the goddamned Vice President doesn't even notice when a goddamn fly lands on his dumb head.

These fucking people don't want to live in America, they want to live in a place that's basically Gonzo Afghanistan with bigger guns, more drugs, and nukes, where their followers are basically a bunch of illiterate savages who will do what they're told and be dumb enough not to realize that their own corpse-like, flyblown, mealy-mouthed overlords really fucking hate them.

And you and me? What do we get in their world? Well, if we don't get shot, we get to die of some perfectly well avoidable or preventable illness, and then the local warlord gets to take our stuff.

I don't know about you, but I don't see anything conservative about that, and I'm saying that as a former Republican.

If you're not outraged by this goddamned fucking bullshit, you're not paying attention.

Vote the bastards out, all of them.

Part Four.

Feet Of Clay (American Revelation V: Part Four)

 Thou, O king, saw and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible.

This image's head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass,
His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.
Thou saw till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. ~Daniel 2:31-34

Yesterday, Trump told House and Senate Republicans "His representatives" to stop negotiations for the stimulus package until after the election.

My initial comment on this was "Holy shit, we get to watch a political mass suicide in real time."

But, no, really; It's worse than that.

But these Republicans are not the disciplined Samurai kneeling, drawing out their Katanas and stabbing themselves in the guts, no, we should be so lucky.

When Trump shouted "Takbir!" before the assembled mob, in typical call-and-response fashion they replied as one "Ayn Rand Akbar!" as they lift their Kalashnikovs and swords to the sky and strap on their suicide bomber vests, and they have resolved not only to sacrifice their Party and political careers and reputations in the service of Trumpism...but to see who they can take down with them as well.

Doesn't matter if that's "Millions of Unemployed Americans" or "People with Pre-existing conditions" or the goddamned White House Staff, the Secret Service, or the guy who carries the Nuclear Football around. Hell, it doesn't seem to  matter to Republican elected or even appointed officials if they or their loved ones catch COVID-19, or if thousands or even millions more Americans die of it as well.

It didn't have to be like this, but the causes of this mess as it stands right now are many and varied.

Lots of people, including myself, have pointed the finger at Newt Gingrich and other Republicans in the 1990's creating an adversarial relationship between the two parties that was full of partisan rancor. That's true enough.

And let's not forget the Militia movement and the explosion of far-right crazy that went with it at the same time.

But there's more to it than that, some far more...mundane...factors at work.

For one thing, starting in the later 1990's I remember there being a fair number of "Conservatives" who were more or less obsessed with the idea of "Population Control" which was basically code for killing off people who weren't like them...generally including other conservatives.

This tracked closely with modern incarnations of "Going Galt" like in Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged." Meaning that some elite group, which always seemed to include primarily the person proposing it and whoever they liked, or all the "smart people" or something something Gazpacho should just all go hide out on a tropical island or something and ride out the imagined decline of civilization in some form of splendid isolation.

It's basically a lazy person's view of Eugenics. These people's idea of civilization is the some condos, a golf course, the mall and Walmart...surrounded by the Killing Fields.

Fundamentally, if you want to know why so many Republicans half-assed the response to, or outright tried to ignore COVID-19, that's why. They never thought it would hit them. They never thought it would strike down their new god.

They didn't understand when I said that the virus doesn't care who you are. It's incapable of that. It doesn't know politics, it's a strand of DNA that makes you sick if it gets in your body, and all it exists to do is propagate itself relentlessly.

And long before The Apprentice and the rise of Trump as some kind of media star there were TV shows like Friends and Seinfeld that were mostly nothing but vapid nonsense, or garbage like Jackass and Survivor that glorified stupid shit and antisocial behavior.

And that's on top of 50 years of embracing declining educational standards, intellectual incuriosity, and low-rent racist bullshit.

When I was a kid, I remember one year there was a TV miniseries about Mussolini that was rather unsparing in its appraisal of the man and not shy about dealing with his ultimate fate, either.

Now? Here's one of these dumb white nationalist shits commenting on Trump's "Mussolini moment" like it was some great show of strength.

I deal with chronic pain every day. It was obvious to me that Trump was in pain and miserable and struggling to breathe and I don't wish that on anybody because I've been in that kind of position. But what these fucking people do is see what they want to see.

And what they want to see, is people dying, mostly for no damned good reason.

Yet to get what they wanted, they elected a man who has shown himself to be nothing more than a demented useless fart factory that spends more money on his hair in a year than the entire Gay Men's Chorus of San Francisco does, and who spends most of the time when he should be working on Twitter and watching TV, who is afraid of such dangerous things as being mocked for shit that he said in public, eating real food, and walking down ramps.

They went All In on this guy.

And now that, thanks to his own actions, Trump has COVID-19, has infected half the Republican Party and is being exposed as the human garbage fire that he is, they mad.

But the truth is, this is America, power doesn't flow from the top down, it flows from the bottom up. You can Immanentize that Eschaton all you want, but first you have to actually convince people that it is heaven. Politics is downstream of culture, and eventually the Right got exactly the "leadership" it deserved.

This is America, it is and should be unforgivable that Republicans have forgotten this.

And we're all paying the price right now.

Vote. Them. Out.

All of them.

Remember when your fifth grade social studies teacher told you that history is shaped by the deeds of great men? Well the bitch was lying. Fuck Julius Caesar, Fuck Abe Lincoln, Fuck Mahatma Gandhi. The world keeps moving because of you and me, the anonymous, revolutions get started 'cause there ain't enough bread, wars happen over a game of Checkers. ~Augustus Hill, From the HBO series "Oz."

Part Three.

Witch Doctor (American Revelation V: Part Three.)

For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. ~Romans 1:25

So, okay, wait a minute here, Bill, Trump has an "Animal spirit" helping him now?

Do me a favor, bro, remind me, what religion are you, again?

'Cause if you've changed religions from Fundamentalist Christianity to some kind of traditional Animism or Paganism, I mean, that's cool, but you picked a strange place to let us know that.

Oh, what's that? You're just saying dumb shit to fool the rubes on TV.

Many of whom, mind you, wouldn't know the difference between the Holy Spirit and some vaguely New Age concept of Spirit Animals if you distilled years worth of Christian Apologetics into a 15-minute Youtube video and made them watch it, but then if you point out that Pagans are generally liberal (or at least not their kind of "Conservative") then they'll fly into a spittle-flecked rage over it and start repetitively praising Jesus.

Because that's all God or religion is to people like Bill Bennett, a club with which to beat other people over the head, and a claim of oppression when somebody tells them they can't do that.

I mean, after all, Bill Bennett, respected 1980's Republican politician and Ronald Reagan's education secretary, Bill Bennett, infamous 1990's moral scold and disgraced gambling addict. Bill Bennett, that guy...he'd be the one to ask about this stuff, right? 

Shorter Bill Bennett: I've got a full house, what you got, sucker?

Okay, never mind.

Perhaps we could at least discuss the exclusivist claims of Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christianity regarding Salvation and the Afterlife?

Bill: What? ... Ding ding ding ding *Cash-Out Ticket ejects from Slot Machine* Hey! Can I get a Slot Ambassador over here please!?!?

Well okay, maybe Bill isn't the right guy to ask, after all.

Well, I guess I'll just have to go with what I was taught, which was that people who are Christians and conservatives don't believe in animal spirits or spirit animals or silly woo woo bullshit...unless of course you're Pentecostal in which case all that stuff is just fine, so long as you can put a sufficiently Christian-seeming gloss on it first.

I mean, don't get me wrong, Traditional religion is perfectly fine when practiced by people who actually believe in that stuff, according to their culture's interpretation of it, or whatever others they've syncretized with in order to patch together a workable belief system...modern Native American spirituality being a good example of this.

It's where those musty old Republican white guys who can't even handle a proper plate of Carnitas tacos, and who desperately fear Taco Trucks Every Corner start appropriating spiritualism to try to cover for an Atheistic dictator-wannabe like Donald Trump that I kind of sour on the concept.

 It's where formerly-respectable conservative politicians and oh-so-Christian moral scolds who made a career of telling everybody else they're doing it wrong suddenly up and turn themselves into nothing more than Tribal Witch Doctors for the ever-restless Natives of MAGAland that I start thinking; "Hey, maybe we should apply these fucking people's own standards to them and hey, ya know what? If that results in some old wannabe Witch Doctor getting broken on the rack and burned at the stake under his own fucking standards, well, ya know, ya gotta break a few eggs to make your French Toast in the morning.

I mean, seriously, this dude wrote like 30 books that he basically just turned into so much expensive toilet paper.

What a way to even live your life, I mean, come on dude.

Unless...40 years after this asshole's rise to prominence we're just now finding out in a big way that it was all bullshit and always bullshit meant to gain the support of the feeble-minded for his shitty agenda, and maybe the gambling problems and the shitty talk-radio comments were who he really was all along.

Unless the only Gospel this dude ever believed in was the Gospel Of What Helps Him Sleep Through The Night.

I read some of this dude's books back in the day, boy do I feel really fuckin' stupid now!

Fuck these motherfuckers.

Bill isn't all that. Hell, he isn't any of that. At this point he's just another tribal witch-doctor waiting to come out of his cave while the red-capped heathen cannibals dance around the fire shouting "Unga Bunga!" and begging to hear the Word of the Orange God.

And he isn't even trying to hide it.

Maybe I shouldn't have asked "What's next?"

Part Two.

COVID Cultists and Trump Takfiris, what's next? (American Revelation V: Part Two.)

 

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, like a roaring lion, walks about, seeking whom he may devour: ~1 Peter 5:8

Today, I had to go help a friend of mine run a few errands, and of course I had to do a few of my own. One of the places he had to go was the UPS Store, to mail a package.

It's right next to our local county-level Republican Party office.

Which is normally an empty storefront with a Trump/Pence sign on the door. In fact, for the longest time that's what I thought it was, an empty storefront that somebody from the local real estate company (which usually breaks Republican) stuck a Trump sign on the door of. It's fairly common around here to see exactly that...officially or otherwise, and some of those signs have been there since 2016.

This being the campaign season of an election year, that storefront next to the little UPS storefront is festooned with Republican campaign signs for local and State-level Republican candidates.

But now, there's no Trump sign.

Hmm, I wonder why. My guess would be something along the lines of;  "Because Trump has COVID-19 and is historically unpopular, and everything from his campaign to our government is a chaotic shit-show being run into the ground by the morons with which Trump has populated the executive branch, aided and abetted by the Republican senate majority."

Of course, you could make the argument that the Trump sign is implied. For that matter, I've seen as many of them get taken down this year as I've seen get put back up, and there's far fewer of them now than there were in 2016.

But on a certain level, it seems like there's a fairly large percentage of Republicans that are trying to avoid association with Trump.

But then I got home, and I saw the Tweet that I snipped for this article. "I would die for him, I will die for that man, happily die for him..."

(Hold on, does anything about this kind of talk strike you as, ya know, American? It sure doesn't seem anything like the American normal to this former Republican.)

There will be Trump Takfiris. I shit you not. They're already here. Allah Akbar, motherfuckers.

And there's a lot of them. Even as bad as things are, I'm going to say those people are probably at least around 20% of the country, I'm thinking of Bush 43's numbers, post-2008 Crash, when it seemed like absolutely nobody liked him, even most Republicans.

I remember those conversations, and I had a lot of them.

But now?

These various demonstrations of support for Trump that have popped up since he got sick have a different feel to them.

Like all they need is some people shouting "Allah Akbar" and a few dudes with AK-47's and ski masks firing their weapons into the air, full auto, and some bug-eyed crazy bearded dude waving a sword around and shouting random shit at random people to the delight of the howling mob that's busy shouting "Death to America!" and there you go. That's the energy I'm getting from these people.

And one way or another, no matter how things go, once these fucking people have tasted that particular opiate, the effective replacement of their religion with their politics...it's only going to get worse.

The implied-Trump sign people, or those taking them down, might feel the sting of somebody pointing out that they traded Jesus Christ for Donald Trump. Some of them might even repent.

These other ones never will. In point of fact, when you point it out, they double down.

And in fact they will go after the implied Trump Signers, not to mention the apolitical, liberals (real or imagined) and the rest of us for not accepting their god.

Note that this is a deliberate choice of words here.

I hear Trump is being discharged from Walter Reed right about now. Supposedly he feels great, objectively, of course he does, he's jacked up on a massive amount of drugs, including steroids. One of my bros was on a steroid for a lung infection of some sort about ten years ago and I remember him saying on Facebook that, fuck lifting, he felt like he could eat barbells, until the effects ran down and he had to stop and get his breath from getting up to go take the next dosage.

This isn't over, and like I said on Twitter earlier, half the Republican Party is infected and it seems like somebody has got it in their head to infect the other half as well.

And some of these Republicans are acting like Democrats should be getting it just because they did, instead of, ya know, following the guidelines and protecting ourselves.

Fuck all that. You buy the ticket, you take the ride. Those of us to who have the sense God gave the common domestic ferret (or more) have been wearing masks like we were fucking supposed to all this time. Other people don't have to get sick just because you think it would be "fair."

I know these people are real fucking dumb, and selfish as all hell, but come on, this should not even be a talking point. More to the point, it's dumb shit like this that tells me we're going to be stuck with this problem for longer, because these people would rather believe in woo woo bullshit than scientific fact.

And if Trump dies or something else bad happens, or any significant number of Republicans are undone by their own bullheaded stupidity and refusal to mask up, I worry that these goddamned fools are going to start shooting at people...because they'd rather do almost anything than what the doctors, experts and scientists are telling them that they should do.

Because education and knowledge is "liberal" or something something Gazpacho.

Because consulting the oracle, magic words and phrases, offerings to the gods, praying over the sick, and shouting "Unga Bunga" while entreating the local witch doctor to come out of his cave and do the dance and shake his magic rattles over a cooling corpse always worked so well before, right?

Not to mention, it seems like there's a lot of these people who'd rather die for Trump than live for protecting their family and friends.

And what happens if Trump dies from this shit? Are these people going to Kamikaze themselves by going out to get the virus so that they can infect more people? MAGA seems intent on pulling a Heaven's Gate so that they can beam up to the mothership and join Trump to live on the comet, or something. I understand that Republicanism has been slowly morphing into a death cult for the last decade or so. What I don't understand is, that sort of thing is usually about venerating death as a concept or trying to inflict it on other people. It's not usually about trying to cause your own death in addition to those of other people.

And, so far as I know, nobody has come up with an effective procedure for social distancing when you've been shot.

So the rest of us better get a handle on this situation, and fast. 

Part One.

Damned And Deceived (American Revelation V: Part One.)

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. ~Matthew 22:37-40

 This kid that I work with, he had a bad night last night.

He's from a family of "Conservatives," religious nuts, and Trump Supporters, but of course I repeat myself.

And he's none of the above and struggling with having to deal with all this bullshit.

I tell him that I have a church background, that I used to be a conservative...and of my own journey from conservative Christian to Agnostic outsider. 

I tell him, that his family's claimed beliefs, as he tells them to me, seem as alien to the Christianity that I was raised with as men in Keffiyehs and Ski masks and desert robes...or old Soviet uniforms...firing their guns in the air, waving black flags and shouting "Allah Akbar" from the backs of Toyota Hilux technical trucks in some dusty valley in Afghanistan would.

There seems to be no love in his people's religion...unless it's love of Donald Trump. These fucking people talk about Trump more than they talk about Christ...and with the same wild-eyed devotion towards the former than they used to have towards the latter.

Their single-minded dedication to Donald Trump seems an awful lot like Daesh or the Taliban's dedication to Jihad.

And the truth is, the more these fucking people talk, on their own, the more sure of this analogy I become.

I kind of think my friend understands, but I'm not sure.

I'm not going to lie, the whole Kyle Rittenhouse thing seems darkly fascinating to me. 

Mostly, because I remember being 17 years old, being a gun owner, a person of strong opinions who was even then thinking about enlisting in the United States Air Force, a young conservative...and for that matter having my own car and the ability to go places...when the damned thing was running, at least. But, honestly, most of the time at that age I could have gave a fuck about politics and my main priority was getting through until the next time I could get my dick sucked, or whatever. 

The thought of wanting to kill somebody never so much as entered my brainpan. In those days, people tended to beat each other up, a killing of any sort was, quite often, a big deal. In point of fact, shootings were, rightly or wrongly, more associated with inner-city drug crime than right-wing nuts...who themselves were not taken seriously by most mainstream conservatives, like me.

And the militia movement and all that crap was still a few years in the future.

The thought of going to another state with intent to try to "defend" stuff that didn't belong to me from people that mostly weren't trying to steal it anyway would have probably made me bust out laughing, had someone suggested it.

And the sick thing is, not one damn person who should have done right by this kid did it before he shot those people, and they've done worse since. There's his Mom who's basking in newfound Republican-fame...which seems to be like internet fame only dumber. There's his lawyer, who seems to be trying to monetize the fact that Kyle Rittenhouse is his client, and bringing political partisanship into it. All of this seems both really dumb and a gross violation of both his client and his professional ethics. 

For one thing, if I committed a crime, I sure as hell would not want my case politicized. Not in this sort of climate, no way, no how.

Seriously, if this kid had real parents, had his Mom just done what my Mom would have done and said "I ain't gonna drive your ass nowhere, and you ain't leaving the house with that." Or had the cops done their actual job and arrested him before he killed somebody, or even just took his weapon and sent him home, he could be home playing video games, sneaking internet porn and hoping he could clear out his search history before his Mom found it (and probably facing a misdemeanor-level charge of Brandishing, at most) instead of sitting in a cell. 

How come nobody on the Right has even so much as brought up the question "Where were the parents on this one?"

What about the simple fact that three people got shot, and two of them died, for no good reason. And when all these people have got their fame or their money off this kid and he spends the rest of his life, or any part of it that's worth living anyway, in prison...I'll bet you not one of these assholes comes to visit him or even gives a shit in any way. Whatever life...whatever dignity...he is able to eke out will be under some pretty bad conditions while dealing with horrible shit.

Go ahead and tell me how these fucking people have so much regard for "Life" because I fucking love that story. To hear these fucking people tell it, life begins at conception and ends at birth.

The damned manipulate the deceived in the service of the greedy and sociopathic, and this is modern "Conservatism?"

Where is the belief in revealed truth and the wisdom of our ancestors, or the preference for 'things as they are' upon which traditional conservatism rests?

Where is the love in these people's religion, or the redemptive, saving power of Jesus Christ? And what is God, besides being a rationalization?

These fucking people have traded Christ for Trump, and most of them can't or won't even tell you why.

By comparison, when I started out as a Baptist, even when I was a kid I was damn well encouraged to know what I believed and to tell it to anybody I could get to listen and that included the 'why' part.

Trump's just a man. In any kind of Christian theological understanding, Man cannot save Man, only God can do that. I mean, sure, you can argue that Jews and Muslims are covered under the Law, or something something Gazpacho. Others? Outside the framework of the God of Abraham, so who can say...but the understanding that I was given was that the way, the truth, and the [Eternal] life was, and was found in, Jesus Christ.

And according to what I read in Revelation, that goes out the window if you start worshiping idols, or a man. As I said, Man cannot save Man. 

Especially when Man is an adulterer, a blasphemer, a mocker of God, who casually commits every one of the Seven Deadly Sins and breaks each of the Ten Commandments, and commands his followers to do the same.

It's almost like somebody's getting a cut from the take whenever one of these fucking people or their followers goes to hell.

And like any good marketing scam, they're going to do what they can to keep the numbers up and the money rolling in, and they'll do anything to ensure the next quarter's profitability.

And if you wonder why we're in American Revelation; That's Why.

Welcome to the End Times.