The Sins Of Your Sister Sodom (American Revelation VI, Part One.)

Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not.
For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.
Behold, I have told you before.
Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not.
For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. ~Matthew 24:23-27

Last night at work, I saw this.

I very much got a "Behold, he is in the desert!" vibe from it. "Behold, he is in the secret chambers!" and naturally, I didn't believe it. But then, I never did.

In fact, I got a vibe of a profound sense of satisfaction on the part of the people who posted the snipped Tweets. Trump might not be the President anymore, but that just means they don't have to share. As if any of the rest of us would want the motherfucker.

Trump still gets the adulation, although perhaps a little less of it. He still gets to golf, and he apparently has conservative influencers and Republican elected officials or those aspiring to run for office coming to see him all the time. He still gets to be the powerbroker, without any of the responsibility.

Pardon me for thinking he's not ever going to run for President again. He doesn't have to.

Why be President when you can be the Big Man, God-Emperor, Potentate Of All Republicans and any future Republican President while you're still alive is going to have to de facto answer to you, lest they face the wrath of the mob?

And any Republicans who stand up to this horse shit, and increasingly stand up to the purveyors of it within Congress, will find themselves on the wrong side of the personality cult.

And this is life in America now. We have our own national Anti-President, or perhaps more appropriately, Antichrist.

These fucking people were thirsting so badly for someone to bow down to that they selected... *Checks Notes* Donald Trump?

Sounds about right.

Except it's not, really.

Like the label of "Conservatism" itself, it's misleading. Such a label is completely outdated, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were conservatives, but there's nothing there if you look in that particular spot.

Just like [modern] conservatism isn't about conserving anything anymore and hasn't been so for over a generation now, Trumpism itself is nothing but a hologram. It's basically Newt Gingrich wearing a bad wig and an orange face mask.

Trumpism is a hologram, it's the same old shitty bullshit that Newt Gingrich made seem like a new thing in 1994, or that Barry Goldwater first put into a cohesive national platform in 1964 only to back away from later, or that numerous far-right Republicans and segregationist Democrats said for basically forever before that.

"Fuck you, I've got mine, but I want yours too." and we'll call that "Freedom" and "Liberty." The freedom to do what I want, my liberty to have power over you, what you want doesn't actually matter. That's modern conservatism and Republicanism in a nutshell. Everything else is just noise, or made-up bullshit to distract the masses from that truth.

When somebody tells you who they are, believe them the first time.

What Sarah Huckabee Sanders calls freedom and rule of law sounds to me like classism, homophobia, misogyny, racism and transphobia. Republican politics is no longer about limited government and lower taxes, it's become about creating a fascist nanny-state to forcibly advance the interests of only one specific type of person.

If people like Josh Hawley and Sarah Huckabee Sanders had their way, the government would indeed make all of your decisions for you, but those decisions would look suspiciously like those of rural white Christian Fundamentalist nuts from Arkansas or Missouri. Doesn't matter one damn bit to them if that's not you, what you're like, who you are as a person is irrelevant to these fucking people because they have their own mythos they desire to uphold to paper over the holes in their own egos and satisfy their own endless hate and racism. They don't need a life, they have a narrative!

They want to have a transcendent State to worship, meaning a government that they control to try to force their dominance over our culture, and for no better reason than they do not really believe in God, except as a rationalization.

And it's not working, in no small part because all they can do is react. They could face reality, and the world as it is and be proactive, or think ahead but that would require that they adapt and change and have a little foresight and maybe accept some more people and more kinds of people. But to do that, in and of itself, is apostasy to them.

Now here's the kicker, if bearded men in desert robes who shouted "Allah Akbar" were doing the same exact thing, these same Republicans would be demanding war and claiming they wanted to defend oppressed peoples, and hoping you ignore the Lockheed Martin stock options and that the fighter jets don't actually work.

And the day will come when they will try to break off a piece of this country, to declare war against modern multicultural, pluralistic life and social change. I think they've recognized...I think they recognized a long time ago that they would not ever control the government or our culture enough to do that and they were hoping that the virus would even their odds a bit. I've written about this before, too.

But that's not working either, yet within their own ranks nearly half of them are doubling down on it, to their ultimate peril. I'll be damned if I understand the logic of it. Personally, I think it's a death cult and a lot of these fucking people simply have a death wish...and they hope to take as many of them down with us as they can.

Because that's what power is, to them.

Those who do not believe in eternal life always think that the taking of earthly life is the greatest expression of power.

And that's what the Mark Of The Beast truly represents, the acceptance of the false worldly system over He whose kingdom is not of this world.

Welcome to Revelation.

“‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen." ~Ezekiel 16:49-50

Prequel.

American Revelation I

American Revelation II

American Revelation III

American Revelation IV (War Dance)

American Revelation V

"Attacked?" (America Is Not So Exceptional, Tucker Carlson Edition II.)

I have read a fiery Gospel writ in burnished rows of steel.
As ye deal with my contemners so with you my grace shall deal
Let the Hero born of woman crush the serpent with his heel.
Since God is marching on. ~From The Battle Hymn Of The Republic.

So, disparaging women in the military in the name of trying to get one over on Joe Biden and the 'liberals' or whatever didn't work out so well for Tucker Carlson. As soon as I checked my Twitter on break at work last night I saw that active duty military leaders up and down the chain of command had responded, many directly and in a rather 'official' tone addressing specific comments that Tucker made, a fair number of them doing so very calmly and in a rather "HR-speak" manner, a few more in the sort of tone one would use in dressing down some civilian visitor who done fucked up. 

I'm not going to lie, since Tucker bought the ticket I was rather hoping that some senior enlisted leader was going to let him take the full extent of the ride and drop enough F-bombs on his ass in full command voice to make his ego look like Dresden after the Eighth Air Force got done with it, but alas, it was not to be.

Of course, as usual, those people who didn't handle it that way were right. Today, Tucker Carlson feels "Attacked."

Well, fucker, it's like this;

If the United States Department of Defense attacks you, you'll goddamned well know it.

Or maybe you won't and there will just be a big smoking crater where you used to be.

I'm sick of these fucking people and their petty, shit-talking egos and their feeling "Attacked" when anybody says anything in response to them.

Tucker Carlson is who he is, because there was a plate-full of knuckle sandwiches he ordered that somebody forgot to serve his dumb ass at some point when he was a teenager. He's exactly the kind of guy that needed to be told "Hey ass fuck, sit down and shut up before you hurt yourself" when he was 19 or 20 so he didn't continue to act like this as a grown ass man.

So now that Tucker is 51 and a Fox News honkey, he gets the response he should have gotten from some random dude on the street from military leadership and it's delivered in HR-speak, officialese and the sort of tone one uses on the tech rep who got caught sending dick pics to some female LT.

Can't fire him, and the company sure won't 'cause he talks Bible with his supervisor or some shit, so you find a way to make sure the dickhead understands and won't do it again, at least not here. 

And Tucker can't handle it, when said response was made to order to be handled, to be understood.

Message received, I'm pretty sure, but the response was (so far as I can tell) the typical conservative non-apology mixed with passive-aggressive defiance.

They should've been dropping F-bombs like BUFF's dropping real ones over Hanoi. Then maybe the motherfucker would've got it.

Or quit his job to go become a monk and contemplate the sound of one hand clapping, maybe.

Either way the world would have been a better place. 

And the reason for it is this.

"Biden should be finished, Tucker is on any minute/"

Fucking FOX News will go right on and disrespect the President of the United States in order to boost the ego of some shitty little overgrown Frat-boy like Tucker Carlson.

Because to them, to their viewers, some shitty little rich-boy news anchor who has a job because at some point mommy basically bought his ass a job but he tells them what they want to hear...yeah, that fucker is more important to them than the President who's actively trying to save all of our collective asses and rebuild functional government while doing the best he can to fix up the mess that the last one left. That should tell you everything you need to know about modern American "Conservatism."

Just as these people don't really want a working government, they don't want a working political philosophy either. They just want to hold up a bunch of myths and service their own egos and pocketbooks while convincing a bunch of fools that they're righteous.

We as a society need to stop putting up with this silly bullshit.

The reason things like Fox News, or ever-increasingly Newsmax and OAN because Fox News isn't conspiratorial or evil or shitty enough, are profitable is because there's about a quarter of the population that gets off on this garbage, and I don't know how to put it any other way.

And they want to make this country in their own image, or break off a piece of it and do so wherever that is. The cruelty and evil are the fucking point. 

And we had best start dealing with this crap accordingly and treating it like the threat to the common good and to our nation's survival that it is. These people daily attack democracy and freedom, they just hope if they say enough dumb shit, you won't notice.

But you have eyes to see, ears to hear, minds to think, memories to keep. Use them accordingly.

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

And if that feels like an "Attack" to you? 

Maybe you're part of the fucking problem.

Part I.

Chickenhawk (America Is Not So Exceptional, Tucker Carlson Edition I)

We have too many men of science, too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon On The Mount. The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. ~General Omar Bradley

Last night, I saw this. Tucker Carlson, who has served exactly zero days in uniform as a member of the United States Armed Forces, accused Joe Biden of trying to "Feminize" the military.

He used the example and image of a pregnant female Airman in a flight suit.

Listen here, you misogynistic chickenhawk dickbag, I served with plenty of women back in the early to mid-1990's and their presence, even in my career field (I was a US Air Force Security Policeman) was something nobody, even the most strident conservatives then extant, even bothered to comment on. The entry of women into many non-direct-combat career fields in the United States Armed Forces was signed off on by Republican president Richard Nixon in 1973. The first women to become Air Force Security Policewomen would enter basic military training  and tech school later that year. That was also, coincidentally, the same year I was born, I'm 47.

Since my own time, women have served in combat as everything from fighter pilots to light infantry. One of the 'stars' of my own day, former USAF Captain Martha McSally, went on to become a US Senator. Granted one who couldn't get elected in her own right and was appointed only to fill John McCain's spot, but there you have it.

Tucker seemed like he was OK with that. Martha didn't "Feminize" the Republican Party?

So why, oh why, is so-called exemplar of "Conservative" Manhood...that is, impotent Chickenhawk fascist insurrectionist Tucker Carlson, frozen fish stick heir and avoider of military service and personal responsibility for basically anything...only commenting on this now?

Perhaps because the last Republican President was a dishonest, fat, lying impotent old fart factory of a traitor who aspired to become a real dictator, and wore heels and more makeup than a South Beach drag queen revue? (Apologies to drag queens for the comparison.)

Perhaps because modern Republicanism is itself more associated with Milo Yiannopoulos and Peter Theil and with CPAC being a mecca for gay prostitution than with John Wayne and Ronald Reagan and 1960's Orange County style conservatism?

Because if you're a modern conservative, being a current internet troll is considered more useful in real terms than being a veteran.

And do you ever notice, these fucking people only say this kind of dumb shit when a Democrat is in office?

Because being a veteran itself is only useful to others to assuage their insecurities and those of their parents and grandparents, many of whom knew what needed to be done in Vietnam, in Bosnia, or in Afghanistan but chose with malice aforethought to pawn that responsibility off onto others.

Possibly because modern Republicans don't see the military and its people as defenders of the country or instruments of national policy, but simply as yet another partisan flag to grab in their perpetual effort to "Own the Libs" itself a bizarre, ritualistic ethos of eternally counting coup on "enemies" that mostly exist only in these fucking people's heads...yet somehow said enemies encompass everybody from Tea Party Joe Walsh on leftward ad infinitum, current North Korean and former Soviet Communists excepted, especially one former KGB Colonel, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. Sword and shield of the Party, y'all.

Tucker Carlson isn't upset because women are serving in the military, he's upset because the military reflects the makeup of this country and its culture, and the diversity thereof strapped up in blue, in green, and haze gray, reflecting the reality of our nation...as if it could do anything else...rather than existing solely to performatively reassure the bottomless sexual insecurities of "Conservative" white men.

Tucker and men like him are upset because the military is sworn to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, because it isn't the Sword and Shield of a Republican Party whose conduct and tone are increasingly Soviet.

Men who, in too many cases, own enough weapons to outfit a squad of soldiers, but can't shoot worth a good goddamn...because it isn't about that. It's not about being able to fight, or having real skills, or holding our government to account, it's not about hunting or even self-defense, for the most part a lot of these fucking people own so many guns because American capitalism has told them that's intimidating and makes them look tough and scares their neighbors and oh by the way give us money.

For too many, gun ownership and the implied fascism of modern conservatism alike aren't even about Donald Trump, or their "vision" of America, it's about papering over all the holes in their egos and perpetuating their own mythos about themselves, which mostly still exist because far too few of these fucking idiots have ever had to try and live up to them. 1/6 and our debased "Look Mom, I'm on TV" attempt at overthrowing the country while looking like a bunch of circus sideshow freaks should have caused this stupid bullshit to die of embarrassment.

Hell, one of the fucking people who died in that shit was a female USAF Security Forces veteran, Ashlii Babbitt, a bisexual conspiracy theorist from California who by her very existence proved that Tucker Carlson is full of shit...and she was on his fucking side!

The mythos of conservatism is so far behind the reality of it that it'll never catch up, and perversely that's probably a good thing. It means somebody on that side, at least, will be remembered as something other than an immoral traitor to America.

Meanwhile, the late-night TV commercials I see every night on the break room TV's are full of ads for everything from tactical electric shavers to tactical sunglasses, with everything from endless ads for impotence medication to open ads for pornography.

Not because we are a nation of Men and Warriors, but because we're anything but that, and frat-boy chucklefucks like Tucker Carlson and manipulators like Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch are balls-deep in making that so. Capitalism overruled social conservatism a long time ago, and no one cared.

The problem is, to a great extent, nobody cared enough to notice, either.

The avatars of my parents' generation of conservatism, men like Jerry Falwell, Sr. and Ronald Reagan, would weep to see what their movement has become.

American conservatism has gone from ending the Cold War in our favor to desperately trying to restart it, not out of some reborn ideological fervor but simply to try and keep itself relevant and see if it can somehow reinvent the glories of Reagan and Bush 41 even as it now openly reviles both men.

Conservatism has come a long way, a long way down, that is.

And the bar didn't start all that high.

If we want to have a better country, hell, if we want to remain one country, or the country we are...we had best stop tolerating this silly bullshit.

If you want a better nation, be better citizens.

Part Five.

The Scorpion And The Frog (America Is Not So Exceptional, Part Five.)

 Simon Adebisi: See, we are all of us bad men, even you. I know you have come to destroy me.

Kareem Said: Simon, I don't want to destroy you. I want to help you change.

Simon Adebisi: That is what would destroy me. ~From the HBO Series "Oz" Season 4, Episode 8, "You Bet Your Life."

Last night, I saw this.

Out of the blue, Trump sent out a memo, apparently trying to nuke the Republican National Committee's small-dollar donor base.

It'll probably work. Evidently, Trump is mad and suing the RNC over their continued use of his image and his name for fundraising. Not like he isn't still effectively the leader of the party or anything. Trump knows this, knows he's a public figure and this lawsuit won't likely go much of anywhere, so he did this.

He wants his supporters to give him the money instead of the Republican Party. Safe bet, if he gets it, the Republicans will never see a dime, not without immolating themselves even more on the flaming funeral pyre that is Trump's political movement. Trouble is, there will be some...probably quite a few...who will do exactly that. It's not a political party anymore, it's a cult.

From Wikipedia:

A scorpion wants to cross a river but cannot swim, so it asks a frog to carry it across. The frog hesitates, afraid that the scorpion might sting, but the scorpion argues that if it did that, they would both drown. The frog considers this argument sensible and agrees to transport the scorpion. The frog lets the scorpion climb on its back and then begins to swim. Midway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog anyway, dooming them both. The dying frog asks the scorpion why it stung despite knowing the consequence, to which the scorpion replies: "I couldn't help it. It's in my nature."

The thing I find interesting is that Republicans took this bet, and they somehow thought they'd come out ahead. Now, they're not only surprised that all this didn't give them their fabled Permanent Republican Majority or otherwise work out...they're convinced that the fact that it didn't was some big conspiracy and/or it's our fault, not theirs.

No, you fuckers broke it, you bought it. Have fun with that.

This crap is becoming like arguing with immature 13-year-old boys.

No. Sometimes, Republicans, when everybody hates you the problem is you.

And because these fucking people can't face reality or take responsibility here we are.

This morning, Marsha Blackburn was banging on about starting shit with China again. As if her donors didn't have the motherfuckers on speed dial for anytime they need cheap crap made by slave labor for less money in a day than the average American worker makes during their morning coffee break.

I'm sick of this goddamned horse shit. The Chinese haven't actually been Communists since the 1970's. Since then Conservatives, Republicans, and the rich fucks that enable them don't want to pay workers a proper wage, so they outsourced much of our manufacturing base to China, the Chinese government taxed all the money their elites made on all these business deals and put a shit ton of that money into building up their military, which we'll likely have to fight eventually. I'm serious, I don't like this fact anymore than anybody else who understands what that might entail but anybody else in the region that the Chinese might actually threaten is our allies and that's supposed to mean something.

When that time comes, the only advantages we really have are our power projection and strategic capabilities are better and we have about a 20 year technological lead, which the Chinese are working hard to close even as we're stuck trying to get out of the rabbit hole of the F-35 Lightning II, the Littoral Combat Ships and the Zumwalt-Class Destroyer being built far more to be contractor money-pits than effective weapons of war. We had to go back to building Arleigh Burke Class destroyers because they can't even manufacture shells for the guns on the Zumwalt-class (the ones they had gotten to prototype stage were roughly a million dollars a shot, literally) and we'll be back to ordering the same blocks of upgraded F-16V Fighting Falcons that we're selling to Bahrain and Slovakia before this is over...and that's actually Okay because the Viper is a good aircraft that's still a handy match for anything else in the world and everybody knows it.

Marsha Blackburn theoretically knows all this too...or she should, but the truth is she just doesn't care. The Chinese could invade and conquer Russia and be breathing down our throats directly on the borders of our NATO allies and she still wouldn't give a crap because for her it's not about any of that. For her it's cosplay and racism, gin up the base, make an indirect threat towards liberals, and wrap herself in the glory of Reagan and Bush 41...whose actual beliefs and politics she surely rejects...all at once, trying to claim the mantle of Cold War victory even though her party is very much in the thrall of both Chinese and Russian oligarchs...who, granted, she'd happily betray if a better deal came along.

Like I said, Reagan would weep.

Actually, he'd probably spit on these motherfuckers.

Note I'm not saying Reagan was some kind of a great guy, although he did do some things that were undeniably great. But nobody has worked harder to undo his accomplishments, to try and bring back the Cold War and reinstate the threat of nuclear war than his own party in recent years.

And one of the reasons for that is people like Marsha Blackburn absolutely do understand that as shitty as the F-35 Lightning II is, it's one hell of a lot better than anything the Russians have available...even the vast majority of their modernized and upgraded variants of the SU-27 Flanker, for example, are sold for export. But you rarely get the conflict you want to have.

That's begun to change a little, but not enough to matter if we decided to dust off and update the old REFORGER playbook and move our line of defense forward to deal with current threats. And all this is possible, even likely to be the case in the near future and it's a thing we've been preparing for and doing on a lesser scale since the conflict between Russia and Ukraine started. But there will come a point where air-defense detachments and tripwire forces and naval deployments aren't enough.

But there's also the little matter of the Republicans owe the Russians...and all this for a guy who just wrecked Republican fundraising prospects for his own benefit. Yes, that's something we're going to have to deal with, too.

And the reasons this has become permissible?

Hate, racism, and willful ignorance.

The average rural white American conservative Evangelical doesn't know jack shit about countries like Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania and cares even less. They have no idea that a former Soviet Navy base in Estonia has become a town that includes a small Estonian Army base and a bunch of things that'd surely be familiar to them, like a MacDonald's and a couple of Pentecostal churches. They'd be surprised by things like the fact that my Latvian friend from college liked explicitly Christian bands like DC Talk and P.O.D. or that we have people in Lithuania supporting the Baltic Air Policing mission. They don't know...or care...that Vladimir Putin persecutes Evangelical Christians in Russia, or that Christians in Belarus are persecuted by the government.

And lots of Americans don't know stuff like this because they don't have to, because it's too much work, and because it's uncomfortable, or because giving a shit might cost money. They want to be an island unto themselves, and not have to care about people in other countries, even when there's a better than average chance that those people are just like them and they'd likely have a good time if they met and sat down to have a beer. Even when we live in a world that is so interconnected that something that happens in a place like Estonia could very well affect something in my hometown in some small way.

Because too many of us lack the imagination to even consider the possibilities. Saving a nickel on a gallon of gas is more important. Smoking their next cigarette matters more. Hating their neighbors is easier.

But those people that really want to stick the knife in your back? People like Donald Trump and Marsha Blackburn?

They can imagine quite a bit. It just doesn't work out in your favor.

Part Four.

Natfluenza (America Is Not So Exceptional, Part Four.)

 Here's all you have to know about men and women: women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid. ~George Carlin.

I saw this Friday night when I was getting ready for work.

Chuck Grassley yapping on Twitter about eating popcorn while watching Democrats hammer out the particulars of the American Rescue Act, which ultimately passed and is on its way back to the House for a few adjustments and expected to be on President Biden's desk fairly soon. It's not "Partisan" if one side simply refuses to do anything. Then it becomes other people doing your work for you, Chuck.

Dude, if you don't want to do your job what the fuck are you even doing there? I mean, seriously, at this point if you're not helping try to deal with all the problems created by COVID-19 you're part of the damn problem. What the fuck is wrong with you? I mean, come on dude. Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way. 

But if you were ever the person you say you are, you'd know this.

Work seems to fascinate Republicans, they like to watch other people do it.

Over the last few months I've seen a lot of people trying to make sense of the preceding five years. I don't think it's chemicals in the water, defective genetics, hate, racism, religion, rotten philosophies, selfishness, etc. etc.

Or rather, it isn't JUST that.

A more proper answer would be "All Of The Above." But at the same time that answer would also be incomplete.

Among Republicans and the Republican-adjacent these days, there's something else I've observed. I noticed it when I had dinner with an ex-partner of mine a few weeks ago. I feel like there's a few things that overrule even all of the "traditional" Republican vices, while still allowing for their existence...if you want. Those things are:

#1 A fundamental un-seriousness. This particular ex-partner of mine has been scheming for *Years* to try and get me to get back with her, yet when we met for dinner she acted like it was some kind of miraculous, unbelievable coincidence that we were going out to dinner...even though she'd very clearly planned this, that and the other thing.

And everything is funny, because nothing really matters. Call it giving up, laziness, learned helplessness or whatever, but since the rest of the world has not enabled them to enforce their ways by the means they wanted (mostly just straight up savagery) and the world hasn't ended yet, a lot of these people have adopted an "Eat, Drink and Be Merry, For Tomorrow We Die" point of view.

Needless to say, I didn't go for it.

#2 A kind of Bourgeoisie indifference literally to the existence of other people, as Chuck Grassley demonstrated in the first pull-quote. Republicans literally don't give a shit about the rest of us, they believe they can do whatever they want, because to them, the rest of us don't really exist. Why make anything better? Why work for anything when they're doing Okay no matter what happens?

This is exactly why these fucking people turn government into nothing more than Jackass Theatre when they're given a chance. This is why people like Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Green, and Tommy Tuberville have ended up in government. 

#3 The same kind of national Affluenza that infects all Empires eventually. It's best summed up by Daffy Duck in the Looney Tunes cartoon "Ali Baba Bunny" as he's walking away from an angry Genie: "Consequences, Schmonsequences, as long as I'm rich."

Maybe that doesn't make sense to you if you haven't seen a little of how the global Other Half lives, but even a poor person in the United States of America often has as much or more in terms of creature comforts and possibly even material wealth as more well-off people in some other countries do. I know a guy named Joseph from Uganda who I wrote about once before. Trust me when I say that for some people in the world, even a few dollars spent could be a life-changing event for them. 

The United Nations defines the global poverty line at $ 1.90 per person, per day, and is talking about raising it a little to account for financial inflation.

Think about that for a second. Relatively few Americans will ever have to face that kind of poverty.

In places like Afghanistan, on the other hand, it's pretty common. 

Yet more than one of my friends talked to me about walking through fields of Opium poppies and having been specifically ordered not to destroy the crops, or interfere with their cultivation.

And in more than one case, they were given these orders during the height of the US Opioid epidemic.

Again, think about that for a second.

And to tie all three of these things together, American-style capitalism demands an underclass. You think the Sackler family or whoever it is these days gives a shit about some poor farmer in Afghanistan who's working for $2 a day to grow the crops that their companies turn into pain medication eventually? I'm here to tell you, that person doesn't even exist to them.

They don't care, and its inevitable that this lack of care, this lack of giving a shit, and thinking they could do as they damned well please would eventually be turned on the regular Americans these motherfuckers have nothing but contempt for.

I guess yesterday and today, Tom Cotton has been name-dropping criminals and terrorists, saying that those people will get stimulus checks under the American Rescue Act, as if that somehow invalidates the whole thing.

Dude shut the fuck up, not only does Dzhokar Tsarnaev need the money, you know damn well who's going to get most of that money.

Stuff is expensive in prison, from phone cards to snacks to toothbrushes, anything the State doesn't have to give you is sold through prison canteens and contractors and it tends to be way overpriced, and there is an entire ghoulish industry lined up to constantly try and exploit and price-gouge inmates and their families, and to find new ways to do it, even though most of the people who are in there, and their families, don't have much money.

It's surprisingly very expensive and time-consuming to be poor in America when you aren't in prison.

Not that a rich poser like Tom Cotton, who joined the Army to pad his political career would even know that...or care.

But I'll bet Dzokhar Tsarnaev's wife does.

.What the profit-from-prison industry does is at least as bad as anything that was done by the inmates to get them in there, but I'm sure Tom Cotton considers that to be godly, righteous capitalism.

And that's exactly the problem.

Poverty and wealth have both become generational in America, a system that has always prided itself on rejecting how the rest of the world does things has become exactly like the rest of the world, with malice aforethought towards its own citizens...and the very people doing this shit are either in denial or wrapping themselves up in the sentiments of previous generations to try and hide this bullshit from their followers who are increasingly just as cynical, jaded and uncaring as they are, and from whom hiding this stuff is increasingly unnecessary because they, too, revel in it and in the pain that it causes.

I found the snipped picture on the Facebook feed of some random asshole who was being a dick in a discussion about Dr. Seuss that included several of the ferret group people on my list. Some old white guy with a Confederate flag ballcap and a long gray beard whose timeline was nothing but a Never Never Land of pro-Trump and racist bullshit.

As a lifelong student of Civil War history, I am here to tell you that none of that shit is true except for the stars representing the states. There was in fact some debate about potential religious aspects, which was why the George Cross (which was also seen as the symbol of England) was not adopted, and the "X" design was chosen for secular reasons like its utility in terms of battlefield recognition.

It wasn't some icon of holy, religious purpose.

The Confederacy was about owning people.

It's this kind of navel-gazing, rabbit-hole religious bullshit (in indirect defense of racism as well) that's exactly what I'm talking about. People who have real shit to worry about don't have time for this kind of stupidity. All this assigning of meaning to the flag of a nation 156 years dead is what people do when they're either comfortable enough to not have to worry about much or when they've effectively given up on reality and nothing else really matters anyway.

At this point, there really isn't much the rest of us can do but exorcise the bad spirits, keep the majority in government where we have it and fight to get it where we don't, and let these assholes stew in their own hate while guarding against the possibility that they'll resort to violence. The truth is, there isn't much else we can do. These people have simply decided they don't want to participate in a democratic, free society unless they can rule it and get everything they want, which would in short order mean it was neither democratic nor free, in any case.

They believe leadership and persuasion are beneath them, that having morals is for suckers and that everybody is against them anyway...and then they behave in a manner that will bring about exactly that. They used to say it was because they were "right." But I've noticed lately that they seem to have even stopped caring about that.

If we're ever going to move forward as a society, we have to stop putting up with this crap from our fellow citizens and it's as simple as that. You get what you tolerate.

If you want a better nation, you have to be a better citizen.

And frankly, I think it's past time we move on from these fucking people and their barbaric view of the world. It's the 21st century. We'd best start acting like it.

Part Three.

Conservatism, History and Insanity (America Is Not So Exceptional, Part Three.)

Is it not true that our brotherhood transcends distances, different languages, and the absence of close cultural links, and unites us in the struggle? Ought not a Japanese worker be closer to an Argentine laborer, a Bolivian miner, a man working for United Fruit Company or a Cuban cane cutter, than to a Japanese samurai? ~Che Guevara, as quoted in the Mexican publication Humanismo, September 1959.

Help me here.

In what idealized alternate universe were the 1950's "A culture that championed meritocracy and colorblindness and the superiority of individual achievement?" In any country? Go ahead, I'll wait.

In 1959 much of the world still labored under colonialism, a bloody revolution against French rule in Algeria was just starting its bloodiest phase, the British and Commonwealth forces were fighting an insurgency in Malaya, US involvement in Vietnam was low-key, but present, and the Civil Rights movement was in full swing in the United States. There was a reason for that. The United States, hell the world in 1959 was not colorblind, nor a meritocracy, nor a place that championed individual achievements. In point of fact, the defining issues and threats of the times, colonialism, communism, racial oppression and the looming threat of nuclear war were primarily driven by the policies of nation-states.

Although, for the record, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged had been published two years before and was then a roaring success, Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers would be published in November of that year, and despite its universe of gun-happy borderline fascism it did present a more socially libertarian vision, the beginnings of modern conservatism (and yes, even a few ideas that would not be out of place today) were present, but only in science fiction.

As an example of just how egalitarian the world of 1959 was, the British Commonwealth would only appoint its first non-white colonial governor (Chinese Trinidadian lawyer Solomon Hochoy, of Trinidad and Tobago) in 1962.

People of different races couldn't get married in many parts of the United States.

Feminism and LGBT activism didn't exist, women's liberation would follow the beginning of the breaching of the color lines over the next decade. The push for LGBT rights would only begin after the Stonewall uprising in New York City in 1968.

In 1959, anyone other than white men having power in the United States, especially outside of a very few urban majority-black districts was either a novelty or a token, and that was rare enough. The first Black Congresswoman would not be sworn in until a decade hence, Shirley Chisolm in 1969.

There was one Asian Senator, Hiram Fong of Hawaii, and one woman...Margaret Chase Smith of Maine. The first Black popularly-elected Senator, Edward Brooke of Massachusetts, would not be elected until 1966.

Again, the idea of a Black person being president wasn't even thought of outside of science fiction. Again, in Robert A. Heinlein's writings.

In point of fact, one of the few professions in which non-white men (and yes, this almost entirely would apply only to men until the early 1970's when most non-combat career fields were opened up to women) could actually get a fair deal was in the military, that is, if you weren't stationed in the South and subject to Jim Crow the second you went off post. There was a burgeoning class of Black officers and career non-commissioned officers, true enough, but a man of Color in any level of major command authority was still rare enough to be kind of famous. The first African American to command a US Navy ship, Samuel Gravely, would command a Destroyer starting in 1961, having previously served as an officer at sea and ashore including as the communications department head on the USS Iowa.

True enough, there were plenty of people like him forging a path toward the future, but it was by no means a certain thing.

This is the future white conservatives want. They want to have everything and make the rest of us fight to get their scraps.

Conservatism has been lionizing the 1950's since I was a kid. That never made much sense to me and mine. Nobody I knew growing up, who'd lived through the 1950's really wanted to go back.

Myself, I always thought it was better to look forward.

But I suppose the 1950's was a good era to be a rich smarmy white asshole like Tucker Carlson.

For the rest of us, not so much.

That anybody else besides people like Tucker would sign on to this bullshit is an indictment of our country and out culture. These fucking people aren't conservative, they're insane.

And this obsession with Dr. Seuss is both an attempt at distraction from, and perversely the result of, that one particular fact.

Keep your eye on the ball. Move forward.

John Constantine: You're handing Earth over to the son of the Devil? Help me, here;

Gabriel: [Gabriel sits on top of John Constantine, explaining her rebellion] You're handed this precious gift, right? Each one of you granted redemption from the Creator – murderers, rapists, molesters – all of you just have to repent, and God takes you into His bosom. In all the worlds and all the universe, no other creature can make such a boast, save man. It's not fair.

[Gabriel leans closer to Constantine's face]

Gabriel: If sweet, sweet God loves you so, then I will make you worthy of His love. But it's only in the face of horror that you truly find your nobler selves – and you can be so noble. So … I will bring you pain. I will bring you horror.

[Gabriel lifts up Constantine from his collar]

Gabriel: So that you may rise above it. So that those of you who will survive this reign of hell on earth will be worthy of God's love.

John Constantine: Gabriel... you're insane.

Gabriel: [smiles] The road to salvation begins tonight. Right now.

~From the film Constantine.

Part Two.

Canceling Republicans (America Is Not So Exceptional, Part Two.)

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared. ~Gautama Buddha

There's something I'm getting really sick of hearing about.

"Cancel culture."

This isn't really a thing, just a term Republicans have made up to account for the fact that people are having to face consequences for their actions. In a free society, nobody has to do business with you, nobody has to buy your stuff, nobody has to engage your services, and in recent years when somebody does or says something stupid, people have begun to exercise the power of the purse, to shun somebody, and to vote with their feet when somebody does something they don't like.

Conservatives do this too, ask Colin Kaepernick, or the Dixie Chicks, or for that matter Adam Kinzinger, Justin Amash and Liz Cheney.

Either way, freedom of choice is one of the most basic of human rights.

But in the last couple of decades as our culture has shifted away from conservatism, it's the Right that's feeling the heat more, and they can't stand it.

So naturally, Republican logic says "If your choice isn't us you shouldn't get a choice." Marco Rubio, as a prime example, has started to disallow comments from people who aren't on his list on some of his Twitter posts. You know, mostly the Bible verse ones.

Because people kept pointing out (rightly) that Marco Rubio is not living by the Word himself.

Fuck these motherfuckers.

We've got half a million dead Americans from COVID-19, our economy in tatters, people need help, and there's the rising threat of a right-wing insurgency...and what does this Republican idiot think is worthy of people's time? Dr. Seuss, Mr. Potato Head, and what products Amazon chooses to sell...or not. So his problem is with...Capitalism? Intellectual Property? Corporate and personal responsibility? I'm not seeing why he thinks this is important except for maybe constant, fanatical, unreasoning fear of and resistance to change. 

I don't give a damn about Mr. Potato Head. I didn't know or care that Mr. Potato Head had a gender to start with. The parts between the nominally Mr. and Mrs. Potato are interchangeable. You do the math.

I've heard of one of those particular six Dr. Seuss books that Seuss Books itself has chosen to discontinue. Just one...Theodor Geisel wrote over 60 of them. Why are the ones that have racist stuff the only ones that are important?

And isn't it the purview of Amazon...or any retail corporation...just what they choose to sell?

And why are books, toys, or any other products only suddenly important when somebody says the words "Misogyny" or "Racism?"

Can anybody tell me with a straight face that if "Cancel Culture" was a thing Republicans controlled, that they would not use it utterly ruthlessly against all enemies, real and imagined?

I mean, come on now.

The truth is, Republicans are scared of the Boogeyman.

I heard 3 different transphobic rants last night, unprompted, for no fucking reason. These people fear the cultural and social change that they think is coming, even though it's actually been continuous these whole last five years and longer. They fear that we have a government that'll be responsive to people's needs, including theirs, because perhaps most of all they fear not having their biases confirmed, They fear having their mostly-imagined "Authority" eroded. They fear not having Trump or somebody like him, to Tweet and yell and scream on their behalf. They fear the bill for all their bad behavior is going to come due. They fear that somehow, someday, they're going to be treated the same way they have treated others.

Oh, and believe me, they know what ways those were.

Good. Let them make themselves miserable, I don't give a fuck. I'm fresh out of sympathy.

I'm not in the business of comforting morons, most of whom want to be afraid.

I don't have the time for it.

We as a country need to stop listening to these assholes. Don't be these fucking people.

Vote these fuckers out.

If you want a better country, you have to be a better citizen...

Part One.

 

Unfathomable? (America Is Not So Exceptional, Part One.)

Little kid in a small town
I did my best just to fit in
Broke my heart on the playground, 
When they said I was different
Oh now, now I'm all grown up, and nothing has changed. Yeah, it's still the same
It's a hard life on easy street
Just white painted picket fences far as you can see If you think we live in the land of the free
You should try to be black like me. ~Mickey Guyton, Black Like Me.

When the George Floyd murder and the subsequent protests happened last May, I said that "MLK said that a riot is the language of the unheard. Well, here we have a whole bunch of people desperate to go right on unhearing." I'm kind of tired of being right.

"It still remains deeply unfathomable that this extraordinary country ever elected that buffoon (Trump) as President."

No, actually it's extremely fathomable if you've been paying the least bit of attention for at least the last 30 years or so, and the roots of this mess go back another 30 years and more besides.

Conservatism was once, for the most part, dominated by sober, serious men. Even after Goldwater first started appealing to racism in 1964 (On the advice of his campaign honchos, that is. Barry Goldwater was also an Air Force officer who had led the effort that integrated the Arizona Air National Guard. I'll say it again, it really is the ideology that's just plain terrible.) Republicans were for the most part led by sober, serious men who, from Nixon going forward, occasionally dabbled in racism to get the assholes on board and voting for them. Reagan appealed to this directly during his campaign, but then for the most part didn't govern that way. Bush 41 had Lee Atwater running his disgraceful Willie Horton ad campaign, Bush 43 sunk John McCain's campaign in South Carolina with allegations that John McCain had an illegitimate mixed-race daughter (and this disgraceful, evil bullshit was actually targeted at his real-life adopted daughter, who came from Bangladesh, and South Carolina conservatives were proud of this dirty politics!) but neither of them governed like that. In 2008 when McCain himself did get the nomination, even he had to stand up against the conspiracy theories, hate and racism that came out of the woodwork directed at Barack Obama, 

Which was the specific thing that ran me out of the Republican Party.

And some say that standing up to that damned nut at that town hall meeting cost McCain the election.

How did this unfathomable thing happen, indeed?

I saw this, this morning.

The University of Texas fight song "The Eyes of Texas" dates back to a late 19th and early 20th century university president, William Prather, who had graduated from what is now Washington and Lee University when Robert E. Lee was in charge of it. Lee liked to tell his students "The eyes of the South are upon you." Interesting statement for a guy who tolerated pervasive hooliganism and rape against the local Black community by the then exclusively white and male student body.

Later, William Prather, when he became president of the University of Texas late in life, copied Lee's saying and told his students "The eyes of Texas are upon you." A UT band member and yearbook editor wrote the song at the request of another band member who was also the director of UT's minstrel show (which raised funds for the sports program) to make fun of the university president, who enjoyed the song and liked it so much he directed that it be played at his funeral. Do we see a pattern here yet?

There's a reason they called it the Southern Strategy.

Evidently, there's been some talk about changing the fight song of late, except that the alumni revolted over the issue and plenty of the donors, claiming the usual bullshit about "Heritage" responded with various racist screeds and threats to stop donating to the university.

Racists always appeal to "Heritage." It's that way every fucking time. Facists always appeal to some imagined past greatness as a rationale for present evil deeds.

But Sarah Longwell says it's "Unfathomable " how a buffoonish Republican politician could get elected off of racism.

Ronald Reagan's choice of the Neshoba County Fair as a launch venue for his presidential campaign would like a word, ma'am.

At this point, you have to want to not hear this shit. We're still having the same arguments with the same fucking people, basically.

And until we, as a people, stand up and stop tolerating this bullshit we're not going to hear anything else from these motherfuckers, because it automatically gets a third of America behind them.

And they increasingly don't give a damn about anybody else.

And they'd rather burn down the country, destroy academic freedom, eliminate human rights, kill the franchise, lose their own rights and start a war against their own neighbors than give up on the racism. 

When Republicans started using racism to get votes, they hoped the racists would vote for them, then crawl back under their rocks. Now, 57 years later, racism has basically completely consumed American conservatism in general and the Republican Party in particular.

And they'll drag down everything into the mud with them, including the Cross of Christ, Himself, to support their fundamentally racist cause. They don't care about anything else, like at all.

And they're saying this shit out loud and in public while bowing to literal golden idols of Donald Trump as our media turns it into a circus, because it makes conservatives look crazy (albeit accurately so at this point) and its good for ratings and thus profits. We've all been subjected to a week or so of this disgusting bullshit because of CPAC, and I'm here to tell you Tea Party Joe Walsh...who, of all people, really does seem to understand what's going on here and taken a stand against it...said that he's heard from thousands of Republicans who love the fuck out of this horrifying bullshit.

But it's unfathomable that any of this should happen, Unfathomable, she says!

No, that's not it. It really becomes pretty goddamned fathomable when you start listening to what these fucking people themselves are saying.

But to do that, you have to open your ears and engage your brain a little bit. You cannot continue to be unhearing. The article I linked to says that 60% of White Evangelical "Conservatives" think their idea of America is evaporating so fast they're going to have to use force to try to "save" it.

And if we, as a people, don't start listening and then stand up and do something about it, the day will come when American Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines are fighting and dying not in Fallujah or Kandahar or Raqqa but in Fairfax and Kingsville and Raleigh-Durham. There will come a time when it's not an electoral issue or a political crisis but an existential, literal fight to the death for everybody in America who won't get on the hate train and bow down before whatever golden idol the fake-Christians and so-called "Conservatives" and the wannabe-Nazis put up and then demand at gunpoint that we all bow down to, if they deem us worthy.

You have to understand, there's lots of people these motherfuckers would just kill.

But it's worse than that, they want the war, so that they can tell the rest of us to submit or die.

Fuck that, and fuck them.

I have to stand with William T. Sherman on this one, if that time comes, we'd best give them all the war they want, and then some.

But if you want to avoid all that bloodshed and death and destruction, you have to start listening now. The unfathomable had best become the understandable real quick.

And you have to love your freedom, your rights, your fellow humans...more than they love their hate. You have to love it all enough to fight for it.

But first you have to understand that it is a fight, and there's reasons it's happening, and that this is not some magical, special process or one time event but a thing that happened because of cause and effect, history and the denial of it, reason and unreason, and you have to know and understand the difference.

And it's not magic, there's nothing unfathomable about it. We're not exceptional or extraordinary, we're the country that built itself from the rest of the world's adventurers, castoffs, fanatics and forgotten people, and in so doing we brought the rest of the world's problems with us, and we made some of them worse.

Ignoring all that stuff isn't going to make it go away. It's only unfathomable if you refuse to think about it.

You have to do something, and the first step is to admit you have a problem.

We're not so exceptional, but we could be.

The Golden Asshole (CPAC 2021: All We Want Is Your Money And Your Soul.)

Albert: No good?

Armand: Actually, it's perfect. I just never realized John Wayne walked like that.

~From The Birdcage

As I start to write this, Trump is half an hour late for his speech at CPAC. (And I just saw that he's going to be at least an hour and a half late.)

Seriously?

Yet these fucking people will literally bow down and worship Donald Trump, when he can't even be bothered to show up on time for his own fucking speech.

Republicans, y'all have issues.

I mean, for fuck's sake dude has literally nothing going on these days, you'd think he'd already be there just for all the props and photo ops and stuff like that.

You'd think he'd be there just for something to do.

But of course Trump is a lazy shit who can't help but show his contempt for basically everybody in how he conducts himself. He's a weapons-grade gold-plated asshole who doesn't even care about his own supporters and if that's not clear at this point, I don't know what in the hell will make it so.

But here's this guy, literally bowing to a golden idol of Trump all the same. Why people want to debase themselves for this motherfucker is something I'll never understand.

How to get to hell in one easy step, I guess. What they think they're going to get out of going there, I don't know.

And you can literally tell these people they're going to hell and they don't care.

In fact, if you're the wrong kind of person, they'll go to hell just because they think they'll get one over on you by doing it.

And you can literally be somebody who's job it is to have been there and done that, who has no reason to not tell them what is true, and they won't listen anyway.

In fact that might even make them double down. How dare you *Checks Notes* be a Reporter or somebody else who's job it is to find shit out, and tell me.
Why?

Because conspiracy theories are not about the truth, they're about agendas and obscuring the truth and protecting the egos of the dumb fucks who believe in this shit.

I'll never understand it.

That has got to be a hell of a way to live. Ignoring the evidence of your own eyes and ears seems like it would be pretty damned difficult after awhile.

These are people who'd literally rather live under a Nazi type military dictatorship, or bow down before our nation's enemies than be free, for the most part because they think they'll get to spite some mostly-imagined "Other" by doing so, or because they don't want to be free if some person that they don't like is also free.

Or as I first said all the way back in 2015, they'd be perfectly fine with being slaves, so long as they get to be a better class of slave than some of the other slaves. 

And the would-be slave masters are perfectly happy using a bunch of circus-stunt, professional-wrestling like bullshit to manipulate the mob. That's pretty much what CPAC has turned into.

That, and a hell of a lot of M4M sexual ads on Craigslist.

Which is fine, if these fucking people would just be honest about it. It's 2021, nobody cares, and hating gay people doesn't make you righteous, it just makes you a hater.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't understand why these people seem to base their lives entirely upon the imagined opinions of others, and then think they're somehow coming out ahead by performatively doing or feeling the exact opposite.

I don't understand this shit and I used to be a conservative Republican.

It's like if Black people, gay people and/or Democrats get to live in civilization too, without having to wear some sort of hair shirt for doing so, these fucking idiots would rather go out into the deep, dark wilderness and dance barefoot around a fire shouting "Unga Bunga" while they wait for their Witch Doctor to come out of his cave.

I'm sorry, but I don't fucking get it. I don't value hatred of or opposition to other people more than my own life. I sure as hell don't see anything conservative about that.

And I sure as hell don't see anything conservative about believing in a bunch of absolute horse shit just because that's what feels good at the time.

The world is an uncomfortable place, and it's messy and it challenges you and it's very often complicated and difficult to understand, but embracing those challenges, and the diversity and difficulty of life? That's how you be free.

All too often, as we've observed with this week's CPAC convention, these fucking people are just overgrown children, desperately acting out to get attention, and they like Trump because they see him as "Daddy" or some sort of father figure.

Well, maybe it's just me again and yeah I've lived my own life full of enough dysfunction and shit, but if you want somebody like Donald Trump to be your father, I can't help you. And I've no wish to try.

But perhaps even more than that, I think you have no right to force your stupid psychological issues on the whole rest of the world, and we certainly have no obligation to put up with you trying to. In other words, grow the fuck up.

Because if you don't, the world is full of people who are clamoring to take your place and move forward while the world just passes you by.

Does that sound cruel?

It's what I was taught, by a different generation's conservatives, back when that word meant something else, apparently. 

The Russians...and others, including domestic elements like the far-right and the ultra-wealthy aren't trying to manipulate our politics because they like you and share your goals, they're doing it because they want to take what you've got, no matter how little it is. They want to take your spot or eliminate you as competition or grind you underfoot and when you enable or support people like Donald Trump, people who have nothing but contempt for you and can't even be bothered to show up on time for their own damn speech, you let them.

You're saying "Rob me" and "Take my shit."

Does that sound crass, does that sound cruel? It's the truth.

It's not "Cancel culture" or "The Left" that will unman America, it's the willingness of American conservatives, and particularly American conservative white men, to bend over and take it up the ass from anybody who talks stupid and makes them feel validated for their petty stupid childish grievances, when all too often they have no one but themselves to blame for their own inadequacy and their own problems, bringing in Unga Bunga tribal bullshit and blaming other people for your problems doesn't do one thing to change the face you gotta look at in the mirror when you get up in the morning.

In the end, you have power over your life, but you have to fight to keep it. If you're a free person, in your mind, only you have that power, whatever happens, you have the capability to change your circumstances.

Too many people be trying to fight in the wrong direction. Too many people have accepted a kind of learned helplessness, where the only things they're allowed to do is try to blame others and keep them down.

And we wonder why people can't face themselves and commit suicide or overdose on drugs or whatever? Look at the crap we've allowed one of the two main political movements in this country to become!

Too many of us don't even understand what it is to be an American, or a Believer, or a Man, or a Woman, and I'm not talking about the gay people or the Left here.

And this confusion has turned conservatism into a Tijuana donkey show. I'm fucking sick of it.

I used to be a Republican, I contributed to this crap. You bet your ass I'm angry. I want the time back that I put into trying to make things better and thinking this was the way. Fuck these motherfuckers.

Too damned many people are just willing to believe whatever they're told, without even checking to see if it might be a lie, so long as it validates their biases or their feelings.

But if somebody lies to you, they don't have your best interests in mind and they're sure as hell not really trying to make you feel good about yourself.

They're trying to rob us all blind, so they can go spend the money on hookers and blow and enjoying themselves at our expense. Conservatism didn't start out like Donald Trump, but he has consumed it.

And the best the rest of us can hope for is a vaguely humiliating escape as we realize our pockets got picked.

Senator Kevin Keeley: [in drag] No one will dance with me. I think it's this dress. I told them white would make me look fat.

Barbara Keeley: [in female drag] What about me? I'm just as pretty as the rest of these guys! ~From The Birdcage.

 

It's All Bullshit (Conspiracy Theories Are False Religion, Part Two.)

Whose song is that remembered?

At random, serpenting
Through fatty coils, emerging
Some other thought it's thinking
This light
Stands above the
Houses
On the ground
This illumination
Visited upon the whole land

Unmarked helicopters
Hovering
The lord is coming soon.

~Soul Coughing, Unmarked Helicopters.

"Real Americans?" 

There's something that I'm getting real damn tired of.

As if I, or the Latino guy I work with, or the Muslim lady who rang up my stuff at the grocery store after work this morning are somehow not American, even though all of us were born here.

I'm at least as "Real American" as these assholes, maybe more, because I at least try and make sure my word is worth something when I give it. That's what swearing an oath means, Captain, but you should have known that. More to the point, you don't get to choose who's an American and who isn't. The Constitution and 56 years of modern immigration laws spell all that out.

Speaking as a real American here, yeah, I'll admit I've had probably more than my share of conversations about the Bible. That's what happens when you actually believe in things of that nature as being more than a scary-faced Tiki at the edge of the village, when your faith demands that you care for others instead of telling them to stay out.

But I've also had day-long conversations about some pretty esoteric shit. I'm a gamer and I have been for most of my life. It goes with the territory.

But that's not what you're on about, is it, Pete?

Standing for the national anthem? That literally wasn't a thing I, or anybody that I know, talked about before Colin Kaepernick started doing his thing. By dint of life experience, I stand, but I don't begrudge others different choices, and for the same reason. The Constitution I swore to defend gives everybody freedom of speech, not just the people I like or the ones that say shit that I agree with. But again, if you were the person you say you are you'd know that.

I'm sick of these people. Pete Hegseth's "Man of the people" routine is faker than Madison Cawthorn's claims that he got accepted to the US Naval Academy. These fucking people are even more out of touch than the "Ivy League Elites" they pretend so studiously to hate.

Cancun Ted Cruz graduated from Harvard, not Baylor. For that matter, Captain, your education is no slouch, or did you forget that was part of the job? 

I've sat and eaten with people in diners who could and did casually quote the Bible, Ronald Reagan, Saint Augustine and Thomas Sowell with equal fluency, all over bacon and eggs.

I've never had a conversation about the Tenth Amendment in my life. I only remember what it says because of high school and college government classes.

Pete's even bringing it up isn't a reference to some mythical people who believe in the Constitution and talk about it over burgers and fries, it's a reference to an entire sub-genre of cockamamie conspiracy theorists who think the Tenth Amendment makes the States supreme over the Federal government, or something...despite the direct implication in the text itself of the opposite and the stated supremacy of Federal government and laws over those of the States.

I'm tired of people like Pete Hegseth and their "Man of the people" routine because I know that what little use they have for people like me or most people who eat in diners...but especially people like me who have the education and experience to know utter bullshit when we hear it...is as cannon fodder for their shitty political and religious agendas. Pete wrote a book titled "Crusader" in the 21st century, and he said all this shit while standing on a stage that is specifically shaped like a Nazi symbol. I don't give a goddamn what his dumb ass thinks about anything.

These fucking people would crucify Christ again, and they'd do it while singing "Onward Christian Soldiers."

And let me tell you something else, while I'm at it.

I'm goddamned sick of these people bitching about Communism.

The Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Communism very rapidly ceased to be a force in world affairs after that. If you were seven years old when that happened, you have no damned business talking about it in anything other than a historical context.

These people know they lost, and they know that as their movement runs smack into the wall of reality over and over again they're going to lose still more. That's why they're talking like this, likening their bullshit culture war to the Cold War. 

They think if they can just activate and mobilize and get their people fanatical enough, they'll win. I have to say anybody who thinks that has a pretty shitty understanding of how the Cold War actually went down. Others have directly compared the modern Republican Party directly with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the 1970's and I think that's a pretty accurate comparison. 

If the Republican Party wasn't right in the middle of openly self-replacing with something even worse, I wouldn't have a problem with that at all. Note I do say this as a former Republican.

Here comes the super copter
Here comes the noise it makes
The demon was an idea
The demon is awake
Scratch mark traced across the
Surface of your mind
This hour, now upon us
The hour, now arrived

Unmarked helicopters
Hovering
The lord is coming soon
Unmarked helicopters
Hovering
They said it was a weather balloon.

~Soul Coughing, Unmarked Helicopters.

And I'm tired of the fetish for apocalypse and violence, too.

Especially when most of these people wouldn't last ten minutes in the apocalypse world they'd like to create for all the rest of us. If you can't be bothered to do something as simple as wear a mask to protect yourself against a virus when civilization is still standing, you sure as hell aren't going to have what it takes to survive without civilization.

I think, more than anything, I'm just tired of the hypocrisy, I'm tired of the racism, and I'm tired of the fact that any of these fucking people think any of this is an original idea or that anybody in the world doesn't know what they're really about.

The problem is that about a third of Americans know exactly what's going on here, and they sign up anyway.

What are we going to do about that?

Part One.