Rejecting America (Bottomless III.)

And so tomorrow, as we take the campaign South and West; as we learn that the struggles of the textile workers in Spartanburg are not so different than the plight of the dishwasher in Las Vegas; that the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of L.A.; we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people, we are one nation. And, together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story, with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea. Yes, we can. ~Barack Obama

There's something I'm becoming concerned about, and it seems to be getting worse rather quickly. Some people have said, given the choice between democracy and losing power, conservatives will reject democracy.

I think it's actually worse than that, and I think this process began over a dozen years ago.

Consider what Elie, here, posted about Fox News (Black guy looting) EVERYTHING IS BAD (Black guy looting) BUY BITCOIN! (Black guy looting) and you know, if this is the kind of shit they're doing these days no wonder we're up to our ears in racist dickbags and people who want to overthrow the government.

And of course Fox News and Rupert Murdoch are balls-deep in this ridiculous shit. Even smarter people on that side, like Elon Musk...seem to find it funny to enable this garbage.

Racism is, of course, the drug being ginned up that these motherfuckers think they will give to the masses to cover for our loss of freedoms and rights...and of course there's a lot of fucking idiots out there who seem to be just fine with all that.

But it gets even worse than that. And it will get worse still.

There are one hell of a lot of these people for whom Fox News doesn't go far enough.

More so even than merely rejecting democracy, these people intend to reject America. Don't get me wrong, it's still for basically the same fucking reason. It all started when a Black man ran for President, expressing a vision of America that was both inclusive and patriotic...and then he won.

These people, be they either authoritarians, racists or whatever else, will never forgive America for, as they see it "Making a Black man the boss of them." Yes, it's childish. So is calling a foreign dictator "Vlad The Great." I can remember when saying shit like that would get you beat up, by conservatives.

As my friend put it "I can remember buying the original Zelda for my NES. Both things are ancient history." 

Yep.

Now, this old former conservative looks at this shit and thinks "Jesus Christ passed out in a shopping cart" and no one on the red side of the line does anything, except cheer this crap on.

I mean for fuck's sake they ran out Tea Party Joe Walsh and Justin Amash, stars of the Tea Party wave of 2009-2010. Mitt Romney, 2012 Republican Presidential candidate...is basically persona non grata in Republican Land despite representing Utah in the Senate. There's not even anything of the old brand left. These people are, for the most part, just dumb racist fascists and they're pretty in your face about it, too. It's not even just that there's nothing else left. It's that there's nothing else these people want to have but autocracy and fascism. 

And if they can't have Trump...they'll kiss Vladimir Putin's ass and live vicariously through whatever image Russia presents to the world...which often bears little resemblance to what's actually going on there.

For years now, the far-right has sought to portray Russia as a religious nation and the Russians as some kind of holy, pious people. Religious observance percentages in Russia are actually pretty low, abortion and drug use rates are pretty high...and Russia is a dysfunctional mess that's openly dominated by criminals and is back to spending too much money on its military. Despite this, they've been unable to conquer Ukraine despite trying since 2014. 

Also, I'm not sure how it is now, but maybe a decade ago I remember reading somewhere, taking note of the fact and doing a little research that showed online porn seemed to be positively dominated by two groups of people, the British and the Russians...all supposedly conservative people who very loudly pretend to have become more so.

You do the math. If these people are so right...or so righteous...why all the drugs and freaky sexual bullshit?

Of course, I also read just the other day that traces of Cocaine have been found all over Parliament in the UK. I guess these people are pretty in your face with their hypocrisy too.

And conservatives in general tend to be bigger porn consumers anyway. As for drugs, at the higher levels, they sure love their Bolivian Marching Powder, too. I'm also reminded of that guy screaming in the face of a Michigan state trooper during the COVID-19 lockdown protests while wearing a pot-leaf T-shirt.

I can remember when doing anything that gave a cop the hint that you smoked weed was regarded as being really fucking dumb.

And when you point this type of shit out, their answer to everything is basically to loudly scream "COMMUNISM!" Even though Communism hasn't been a thing since 1989 and as if they're not happily, willingly crawling in bed with a KGB agent every time they get a fucking chance to. I don't know how evil, hypocritical or stupid you have to be to not see how twisted and wrong that is, but they must be redlining all three by now. Point it out? They just jam the pedal into the floor and firewall the engines. 

These people, I think, have hit the wall of reality, backed the now heavily-damaged truck up, and decided to hit it again until they either crash through or can go no further.

I have to wonder how many people on their own side will be a casualty of that. I saw this tonight, too.

Apparently Kyle Rittenhouse regrets going to Kenosha, and he visibly recoiled when some right-wing interviewer congratulated him. Assuming this is true...well, there's going to be your next culture war casualty and the next person these fuckers throw out the airlock right there.

I keep trying to warn people no one is safe from these fascist motherfuckers.

Except maybe for Donald Trump.

I saw that Devin Nunes is resigning from Congress to go work for Trump's social media startup. I have to wonder how long it'll be before he gets stabbed in the back and kicked to the curb. 

These days that seems to be happening to everybody but Trump and the Boebert/Cawthorn/MTG Axis Of Stupid, and since I also saw tonight that Dan Crenshaw isn't rolling over and taking it called out these people for their "Performance Art" bullshit and called them "Grifters in our midst"...his words...and, yeah. I see it as less the Night Of The Long Knives and more the Night Of The Large Rubber Dildoes but it will happen. It has to, The Purge, Republican edition, is coming.

These people, as Jim Wright of Stonekettle Station put it, are leaving fascism in the rear view mirror. Trouble is, they're coming up on what's basically Fascism, As Written By The People Who Brought Us Jackass and Survivor. Or, if you prefer a shorter label, Idiocratic Fascism: It's got what plants crave.

Even my previous label of "Atavistic non-state fascism" suggests an actual philosophy and is thus probably inaccurate.

As I wrote yesterday there's people who are cynically trying to use this shit but who intend to pull a bait-and-switch, substituting religious theocracy at the last minute when it's too late to do anything about it. Thing is, in researching that post and for some other stuff I'm doing, I was looking up the Sovereign Military Order Of Malta last night...and the sad truth is that (likely against the will of the cynical manipulators) the two tendencies may merge, in which case you end up with a religious leader who dresses like Liberace's stunt double, praises selfishness and says dumb shit. 

You look at some of these people, and you can see the scandals and the Tijuana Donkey Show politics that might well result from them having power. And since there's already been at least one set of reality shows that focused on a large family of religious fanatics and got all tangled up in gross nasty sexual molestation allegations, I don't think it's right to crack any jokes about that.

These fucking people might be dumb, evil, and fundamentally unserious, but what they want to try to do is serious as hell. They want to dismantle America and sell it for parts, to burn everything down so they can rule the ashes. They might be incompetent morons, but they came within minutes of being able to divide the country and end up with Americans shooting at each other.

And they're still trying for exactly that.

And all you get out of it is the perverse entertainment value of the hypocrisy Olympics.

We don't have to go out like that.

So don't.

And the fact that they're being so hypocritical, in your face and stupid about everything should make it easy to say "No."

So why aren't you?

Previous Post

Part II

The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all. You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits — not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty. ~Ronald Reagan

Bait And Switch (Kirchenkampf II.)

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

I saw this earlier.

Some Q-Anon false prophet is going around trying to claim that Trump is the "President of the world."

Now, considering that no such office exists and I'm pretty sure that if America wouldn't vote for Trump again, the rest of the world won't either, I'm going to ask again, why do people tolerate this shit?

The Bible says the only men that will ever be given power over the whole world are the Beast and the False Prophet of Revelations, or in End Times Prophecy movement terms, the Antichrist and the author of the false one-world religion. They will, according to that interpretation, hold such power for only three and a half years.

Again, I find myself arguing that the basic Biblical standard for Prophecy should be upheld. If somebody says some shit, claiming to be a Prophet, and it turns out to be nothing but so much bovine exhaust and it's against the Word, they should be stoned. Yep, execute a few of these fucking people by stoning or in some other horrific old-school way and see if the market for false prophecies and made-up horse-shit doesn't dry up overnight. 

I'm tired of this shit, and frankly I'm even more tired of organized Christianity putting up with it. But of course they will keep tolerating it and all the unbiblical stupid shit that results, because there's not enough money and power to be had in just compassion for one's neighbors and the Truth.

The simple fact is, there's a lot of people out there who simply don't want the Truth, as described in the Bible or otherwise. They'd rather eat poisoned dirt than take a now-empirically proven to work vaccine. I'm serious, I don't understand this. We have people that basically believe in magic, for all intents and purposes. I'm a gamer, I've had a number of friends that were professed witches, etc. etc. Magic in the sort of way these people think of it...magic cure-alls and shortcuts around reality...doesn't work. I've seen a fair amount of shit that I can't explain. But I've never seen somebody eat or subject themselves to contact with poisoned earth or toxic heavy metals and be cured of a virus. You might get a few more medical conditions from it though...or just plain die.

Seriously where do people come up with this shit?

Or is this just more of that dying to "Own the Libs" crap that I keep hearing about?

I was once a conservative and a devout Christian. I never once thought of killing myself for any ideology or political philosophy or because it might hurt somebody else's feelings.

Or of doing so by subjecting myself to toxic waste. I mean, what are you, fucking nuts? 

The thing that gets me is, I have to wonder how much of this getting people to destroy themselves is base stupidity and how much of it is being done on purpose? At first glance, no matter other political machinations that Republicans are engaged in it seems stupid to basically kill off your own followers with dumb shit. 

Long-term and increasingly otherwise such acts deprive one's own side of mass, of numbers, of voting power in real terms...and should conflict result, you have fewer bodies to use as meat shields to protect your damn self. But then I've always rejected Social Darwinism on moral grounds. That's not the case for a lot of ultra-conservatives and wealthy people. For that matter I've known lots of overly-bearded, overweight white dude-bros who spend and awful lot of time rambling about how "The gene pool needs to be chlorinated."

Well, intentionally or not, a lot of These Fucking People have taken it upon themselves to do that. Maybe we need to just bring back the Darwin Awards and start mocking these people's stupidity, and maybe then they'll get the point.

The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all. You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits — not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty. ~Ronald Reagan

But you know, certain things...like all these fascists, outright Nazis and radical Catholics coming out of the woodwork, and likely further damage to Roe v. Wade, among other things...makes me wonder if it isn't all deliberate. Same with the ongoing effort to divide the country and spark off a civil war.

A lot of the people at the heart of this shit not only despise Democracy, but they genuinely seem to passionately hate their own supporters, their own voters, the Plebians who are the ones who one way or another gave them their power in the first place. So, why not use the virus to kill them off and then use an increased birthrate (that will be most acute among white conservatives of lesser means anyway) to get more?

And if you look at the whole picture here, it really does seem to me like American white conservative Protestants are being asked to take on a lot of risks that they don't need to as concerns both COVID-19 and the bellicose, divisive politics of the moment. 

While at the same time, it seems like no matter how bellicose the radical Catholic nut...either they're vaccinated...think Clarence Thomas...or the church they go to is at least making an effort to be more safe, and the people at the top of that power structure...even if they get sick they're more likely to have the resources to be able to survive. Think people like Newt Gingrich. Think organizations like the Federalist Society.

And these people, the wealthy and like I said certain religious fanatics...seem perfectly fine with using more secular people like Donald Trump (non-religious) or Tucker Carlson (Episcopalian) or all the damn Anti-vax nuts on the internet and shit...to get people to off themselves by not taking the vaccine and/or doing stupid shit like rolling around in toxic dirt or taking improper medications.

For example: Despite his fame and wealth, Prosperity Gospel preacher Marcus Lamb wasn't. Lamb, the owner of Daystar ministries, recently died of COVID-19. Now I've always been naturally suspicious of ministries with names like that and of anybody who believes in or preaches the Prosperity Gospel. I'm not going to mourn the loss of that dude one bit, for a variety of reasons.

Among other things, it's people like him who've turned American protestant Christianity into a very unfunny joke. Don't think certain people...either secular demagogues like Trump, the radical Catholics of the Federalist society or various cults like what's become of Falun Gong...won't seek to take advantage of that, too.

I'm just saying, when you consider stuff like the current makeup of the Supreme Court and the decades upon decades of plotting that went into making it that way, I have to wonder if there isn't an actual conspiracy here. In this case, specifically, an effort by certain kinds of conservatives to alter conservatism as a whole to be more their way, and less other ways.

And more to the point, do you think any of these people's "Natural Law" beliefs and assorted other bullshit will ever be applied to elites or the wealthy? No, it won't. It's just the common people who will have to deny themselves and go without because the Church says food is only for nourishment and sex is only for procreation and so on.

I'm a person, not an animal. While I appreciate the environment and nature, don't try to make me have to conduct myself like I'm some kind of livestock for your stupid religion. This is America, we don't have to put up with this shit. That is the entire fucking point.

We in the United States, above all, must remember that lesson [of the Holocaust], for we were founded as a nation of openness to people of all beliefs. And so we must remain. Our very unity has been strengthened by our pluralism. We establish no religion in this country, we command no worship, we mandate no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are, and must remain, separate. All are free to believe or not believe, all are free to practice a faith or not, and those who believe are free, and should be free, to speak of and act on their belief. ~Ronald Reagan.

But I'm here to tell you, Anti-Vax nuts, Conspiracy Theorists, Trump Supporters, and various people destroying yourselves over any or all of this stupid bullshit...be careful what you wish for, for you may get it.

But it sure won't be what you thought you wanted.

Remember like I said a couple weeks ago, while out of one side of their mouth the Nazis professed "Gott Mitt Uns" (God With Us) out the other side when they gained control of the churches, the first things the Nazis did were kick anybody out that they didn't like, start dictating doctrine, and force pagan Volkisch customs on the Churches.

If you fuckers persist in dividing America and succeed in breaking off a piece of this country, or whatever, I strongly suspect you're going to find yourselves forced to bow down to something you don't recognize or want to be a part of. 

If you're still alive to be granted the privilege...

America was founded upon the idea of the rejection of kings and hereditary rulers. Somehow, we've fallen far enough that there's people who want an American Caesar.

Somehow, they think they're not going to be one of the ones who gets crucified or thrown into the arena. Somehow they think the priest that's dressed like Liberace's stunt double isn't going to molest their kid.

Remember, that's the type of shit that Rome was known for. There's a reason our founders gravitated more towards Greece than Rome in their thought process when they wrote the Constitution.

And like the parents of the kid that shot up that school, when it goes bad they'll run and leave others to face the consequences of their actions. Like Dinesh D'Souza and all those other people trying to claim that the Patriot Front marchers in D.C. the other day were a "False Flag" when it doesn't work out the way they thought...they'll deny, wash their hands of it all and try and stick you with the bill...and the consequences of their actions.

And ask yourself, while you're at it, why so many of the people egging this shit on ain't even Americans, much less American conservatives?

America, like conservatism (before it went crazy) depends on a responsible electorate in order to function.

This? This ain't it.

Like I said, don't be these fucking people.

Part I

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.  We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream.  The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it, and then hand it to them with the well fought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same.  And if you and I don't do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free. ~Ronald Reagan

And remember that without truth, there is no such thing as freedom.

That's all.

Freak-Corps (Part II.)

Every one of the thousands at the airport, about to leave for Jeddah, was dressed this way. You could be a king or a peasant and no one would know. Some powerful personages, who were discreetly pointed out to me, had on the same thing I had on. Once thus dressed, we all had begun calling out "Labbayka! (Allahumma) Labbayka!" (Here I come, O Lord!) Packed in the plane were white, black, brown, red, and yellow people, blue eyes and blond hair, and my kinky red hair -- all together, brothers! All honoring the same God, all in turn giving equal honor to each other.

That is when I first began to reappraise the "white man." It was when I first began to perceive that "white man," as commonly used, means complexion only secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions. 

In America, "white man" meant specific attitudes and actions toward the black man, and toward all other non-white men. But in the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been. That morning was the start of a radical alteration in my whole outlook about "white" men. 

~Malcolm X, letter written following the Hajj.

Every once in awhile, I get a response when I link to one of my blog posts on Twitter.

Some obvious Trump Supporter idiot took issue with the fact that I referred to marching Nazis as idiots in my last post. Well, that we're clearly not dealing with the cream of the crop here should be fairly obvious. She also thinks it's Okay because the "Reclaim America" Patriot Front Nazis are being "civil" and not "Looting and killing like Antifa."

Wut?

Couple problems here. First of all, to the best of my knowledge Anti-Fascists have done neither. 

But of course, like most modern "Conservatives" i.e. fascists this person thinks the very existence of resistance to their bullshit justifies...well, damned near anything including collective punishment of everybody else and harsh violence. I blocked, reported and moved on. Nothing about the account, least of all it's low follower count or the bunch of questionable-looking posts on the feed suggested it was legit or that this person was real or posting in good faith. Usually when somebody's argument stems from "Property" that's a tell and I just block them, reporting if I see any reason to do so.

In other words, nobody asked you, bitch, butt the fuck out.

These fucking Freak-Corps motherfuckers basically believe...like the World War I German Army that invaded Belgium and France, that any resistance to them other than by armed, uniformed soldiers was somehow state-sponsored terrorism against them. And like the Kaiser's Army and the home-front population of the German Empire, these people cook up all manner of wild stories to justify their fear and hate. 

Effectively, these people think they're the center of the universe and they can't imagine that anybody would really, legitimately be against them...even people who had every right to object to and resist the invasion and occupation of their own countries. 

This was a stream of thought that fed directly into Freikorps hooliganism and street violence during the Weimar Republic and led directly to Nazism and World War II.

But of course, modern American "Conservatives" melt down and throw tantrums like bratty kids the second anybody doesn't just bend over and take it up the ass from them. I don't know how or when these people became so narcissistic, but I think it's fucking stupid.

And it's not even just that. These fucking people seem positively offended by even the existence of other people, and that capitalism, government or media might have reason to acknowledge those people.

An Idaho Republican campaign official appears to have recently been fired over a very strange meltdown on Instagram that they had over a year-old Hershey's commercial that featured a Black family. Remember that, this is from last Christmas season, and it's not like Black people being in commercials or on TV is some kind of new thing to begin with.

Earlier this year, she had complained about Juneteenth being added to the calendar on her phone and said "I guess we're on our way to being a Black nation" or some shit like that.

It's a Federal holiday now, why wouldn't it be added to calendars?

I'm not sure how these people get from Hershey's commercials and Juneteenth being a holiday to "On our way to being a black nation" or just what the fuck would be wrong with being one.

But then I'm not a racist and I got (and would probably still get, today) my ass beat for talking like that. This shit isn't cool, it isn't funny, it's wrong, and it should not be tolerated one damned bit.

Black people have been part of America since before America was even America. I don't understand why y'all have a problem with this. Your ancestors, spiritual and otherwise, brought those people over here basically as ambulatory farm equipment for the purpose of profiting from their free labor. 

Not even modern, but fucking 19th century human society decided that shit was illegal and wrong.

And you know what "Conservatives" really mean when they get all obsessed over the possible destruction of "property" because Black people have taken to the streets over some injustice yet again? What they're saying is they mad because the Black people aren't their property. That's all that shit is.

Maybe if you people had thought you were going to object to their presence later, you ought not to have done that? It's not like the abolition of Slavery wasn't a major cause at the time, hell the British Empire banned slavery in 1833. We had to fight a war to do it, and again, you lost. Deal with it.

Now, and mind you I say this as a former Republican...it increasingly looks to me like the entire basis of modern American "Conservatism" is racism, and considering that the Republican Party was founded with the abolition of slavery as one of its principal goals, I find that pretty damn offensive. 

The history of the Civil War and the early Republican Party and the Reconstruction-era South has always been a big deal to me. I've walked through that white schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin where the Republican party was founded in the 1850's. 

If Abraham Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt saw this shit, they'd whup somebody's ass.

It was Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign that started this shit. And Goldwater...who as a US Air Force General had integrated the Arizona Air National Guard in the late 1940's...went along with this shit. 

They Richard Fucking Nixon made it worse with the Southern Strategy. Maybe if Republicans would have had a goddamn soul instead of being willing to do literally anything to get elected you, and the whole damn country and the rest of us, wouldn't be in this fucking fix right now! 

Hell, even if some of y'all would have just shown some leadership and told people no instead of bitching out to the ravening mob, we wouldn't have this fucking problem.

And then, worse, these fucking idiots continue with their mindless veneration of the 1950's even though if you really think about it...if these people knew a goddamn thing about the era they'd hate it. That was the time of Joe McCarthy being shot down live in front of the whole damn country on TV by an Army lawyer. Have you no sense of decency, sir?

It was the time of the civil rights movement and Union factory jobs dominating the American labor market and of Democrats and a hell of a lot of liberal Republicans building 40 years of prosperity and wealth for the middle class. But all these fucking people see is the Red Scare and Tailgunner Joe that it's the time that came before the hated 1960's and they think "Hey, I'm cool with that."

They never think that Jimmy Stewart...a Republican and an Air Force Reserve officer who was also noted for a sense of compassion and decency often reflected in his movie roles...would see that poster and lose his goddamned mind. And Donna Reed...a Republican who showed amity to the Democratic Party and later became an anti-Vietnam War peace activist...likely would have as well.

The people who think Old Man Potter was the hero of "It's A Wonderful Life" are trying to appropriate the Bailey Building And Loan for their purposes. Seriously, fuck these fucking people.

Like, have any of you fuckers actually seen that movie?

Just like those Nazi fucks marching past the fucking Lincoln Memorial yesterday...if you did you clearly missed the goddamned point.

Literally the only things these fucking people know about the 1950's are misogyny, racism, segregation and overwhelming fear of Communism.

But Communism hasn't been a thing since 1989. Republicans...certainly better Republicans than we have now...were a big part of why.

Other than that, y'alls record is shit. 

Actually, current Republicans don't even want to acknowledge that Communism was defeated...because they find "Communist" a convenient label to throw at other people without even knowing what it means. So, basically, they take a win...a win that, if they believed what they say they do...should still be defining them, and they turn it into a loss.

Which of course, is exactly what people like Vladimir Putin want.

Historically it doesn't get much better.

Segregation went down in 1964. (Despite the fact that some people are still honoring it, apparently.)

The Nazis lost in 1945.

The KKK became a national embarrassment in 1925.

The Confederates lost in 1865.

Monarchy as a concept was on its way out, outside of the Islamic world even at that time...

Need I go on?

Maybe you fuckers should stop backing losing causes and wake up and smell the 21st century, eh?

Get with the program you fucking freaks!

Part I

Freak-Corps (Part I.)

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

I just saw this.

Bunch of masked idiots in blue hoodies and khakis marching past the Lincoln Memorial chanting "Reclaim America" and carrying plastic Bucklers like they think they're some kind of Strip-mall Freikorps. And they can't even march in formation...

Crowd wasn't having it, apparently.

Good. You want to make this silly bullshit go away? Tell these people to go fuck themselves and make it stick. I'm not sure what the hell these Dollar Store fascists think they look like...but they sure don't look like Americans.

That would be if they looked like this, I suppose.

The thought is the same, but these fools fail in the execution. The Reclaim America idiots don't look scary, just ridiculous...and while the 1920's Klan also based itself off of the popular culture of the time (D.W. Griffith's 1915 film Birth Of A Nation in their case) the idiotic "traditions" of these Nationalists and "Proud" Boys just strike me as ridiculous. They're cosplayers who think they're going to recreate Greco-Roman culture, just without the sodomy...when all a bunch of them really want to go out and do is exactly that.

But far from Leonidas at Thermopylae...well, as we've found out in the last year or so, a whole bunch of these people cannot even handle going to jail, often for unusually short prison sentences for people who tried to overthrow a government.

And while I'm at it, I'd like to take a minute to remind you that the Second Ku Klux Klan collapsed in the mid-1920's over the exposure of its membership and the arrest, trial and convictions of some of its leaders in crimes...including the rape and murder of a white woman, a schoolteacher named Madge Oberholtzer.

These people don't give a fuck about America...just like their ancestors, spiritual and otherwise, did not.

And just like their forebears they are nothing but criminal gangs, albeit ones that are even more ridiculous looking.

I'm not sure if the "Reclaim America" marchers are deliberately  trying to look like Radical Islamists or Russian Nationalists, but they managed it. I think with the shields they're trying to make themselves look like Greek Hoplites, but the truth is, you can see in the picture and the video I snipped it from that the things are just chintzy plastic. Not so much "Come back with your shield or on it" as with the shattered plastic shards ground into your skin or stuffed in your pockets because you tried to fight and somebody whupped your ass.

But some of these people just plain want to be the fucking Taliban. They think they're "standing up" against abortion, but the fact is that "Conservatives" and Evangelical Christians have a hell of a lot more abortions and out-of-wedlock births than liberals and moderates do. Of course they have just as much sex as the rest of us, they're just a hell of a lot less responsible about it.

And, having seen this particular stupid post that I snipped here, I don't ever want to hear anybody else call Progressives sanctimonious ever again.

I'll note I say that as somebody who's not really a fan of a lot of the Bernie Bros and shit. 

But goddamn, I'll take dealing with those people and their policy arguments and tedious pedantry all day over these anti-abortion crusader religious fanatics who think it's "Entitled" if you want to have sex. There's something really fucked up about that, if you ask me. 

If you don't want to have sex, don't have any. Don't tell me or any other person what to do. This is America, we don't have to accept or believe in your religion and even if we did, there's lots of interpretations of Christianity and lots of other religions with a more positive view of sex. The idea that sex is for childbearing only...I mean, fuck, in real terms even radical Islam doesn't actually go that far.

We're people, not ferrets or some other animal, and that's all there is to it.

These people aren't a few righteous Christians or a few hundred valiant Spartans standing up for faith or life or western civilization. They're a bunch of criminals, fanatics and morons who think they have a right to tell you who you can have sex with while they go out and do whatever they want, no matter who gets hurt or killed in the process.

And it's starting. The radicals and the Trumpers have started on their purity purge of the Republican Party. In the last week we saw Marjorie Taylor Greene go after Nancy Mace, and we know she's had the knives out for Kevin McCarthy for a very long time already. 

And trust me, it's only going to get worse. It doesn't matter how Evangelical Christian or how Republican you are, because it's not about doctrine or policy anymore. It's about submission to the ravening mob...and their stupid ideas about a more combative or "Masculine" conservatism. 

Basically, they're fucking low-rent Nazis. 

Now, these fucking people are going after Dan Crenshaw, and I'm sorry but I'm a bit hard-pressed to think of anybody who's more of a simpering Republican sellout than that fucking guy is. So be warned, Republicans, you're not safe. The Freak-Corps is coming, and it looks like you're just a little bit more in their way than the rest of us are.

Today, Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie posted this picture, which got him dragged all day on Twitter but I suppose if you have no self-respect like a typical Republican all you'll see is that you were the trending topic for the whole damn day.

Frankly, I'm a gun guy and I think it looks ridiculous. You spent the money go go out and buy yourself a semi-automatic M-60 and you're posing sitting on the couch with it in full suburban brunch getup with that Pig? Seriously??

That's worth negative masculinity points in terms of guy-code 

I think. I grew up in the 1980's with shirtless muscular Sly Stallone as Rambo carrying a -60 as one of the iconic images of my childhood. (And I'll bring that up today in spite of recently learning that Sly is apparently a Q-nut.) I carried and frequently shot one as a Security Police troop when I was in the Air Force...and don't get me wrong, they're fun as hell to shoot...but I can't even imagine shooting one semi-auto. If you want that? I've got a deer rifle that fires the same caliber of shell (.30 Caliber/7.62mm) and it's a hell of a lot lighter to carry around.

If you actually want to get off the couch, particularly while carrying a long gun, that matters.

And that picture is a perfect example of what we're dealing with here, self-important fascists and freaks and religious fanatics who think they scare somebody...but they just look ridiculous.

Most of them haven't the foggiest what "Scary" even looks like. Like that couple in St. Louis last year who all they did was show everybody that they didn't know the first thing about how to carry, much less use, their weapons properly.

If you can't stand up against that? Get out of the way, and the rest of us will do it for you. This shit is ridiculous. I keep saying, if you want a better country you have to be a better citizen.

But this? 

This ain't it. If you let these people take your freedom it's because you didn't fight back at all.

Don't go out like that. This is America, we don't have to put up with this shit.

So don't.

#Top20

 

Rapture.

I am Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? "No," says the man in Washington, "it belongs to the poor." "No," says the man in the Vatican, "it belongs to God." "No," says the man in Moscow, "it belongs to everyone." I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture. A city where the artist would not fear the censor; where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality; where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well. ~Andrew Ryan, Bioshock

James and Jennifer Crumbley, the parents of Oxford school shooter Ethan Crumbley, were charged yesterday with four counts of involuntary Manslaughter.

They ran from the cops, were located and arrested overnight, and were arraigned this morning.

What the hell kind of shitty people are these? "Our kid is in jail, we'll just run from the cops and leave him twisting in the wind." Seriously, Jesus Christ, what the fuck is wrong with these fucking people?

The morning of the shooting, the parents had been called to the school for a discussion because the kid had got caught searching ammunition on his goddamned cell phone.

After that, his Mom texted him. "I'm not mad, LOL, you have to learn to not get caught."

Family of the goddamned year, right here, seriously.

And somehow, Jennifer Crumbley's slobbering sycophantic letter to Trump seems to me to not even begin to put in perspective just what's wrong with these fucking people.

Couple days ago, I saw this. Now, keep in mind that it's the 21st century in the United States of America, which is supposed to be the lead country of the Free World and by definition an advanced First World democratic nation with an advanced society and *Checks Notes* people believe in "Magic dirt" and think it will cure or protect them from COVID-19. First of all, I say this as a gamer, and as a person with a Christian theological education. Magic in the sense that these superstitious people believe in it isn't real. There are no magic talismans that will protect one from disease or from evils real or imagined. That's just life, you have to do that shit yourself and do it based on what's real and excessive belief in what's not real will only get you killed.

Like I have said for years, we have people that don't want any of this civilization stuff. They'd be happier dancing around a roaring bonfire, shouting "Unga Bunga" and roasting their neighbors on Rebar spits while they wait for the local witch doctor to come out of his cave.

And if you think that having people around with that sort of mentality benefits you, you're a damned fool.

Among other things, most of these people don't have the first clue how to survive without "Civilization" being the default setting, and all their right-wing libertarianism and survivalist crap boils down to is Live Action Role Playing for entertainment and selfish bullshit because they want the benefits of civilization, but don't want to pay for them.

What they want is a world unconstrained by petty morality, but only for themselves.

They want you to have to have morals so you're easier to control or take advantage of.

And they're willing to kill not just different people or other people, but civilization itself, to try and get that.

These people want to live in the Bioshock franchise.

I suppose the one thing civilization, and the rest of us, have going for it is that as my British Twitter-bro puts it these people will die for lack of a manual can opener.

The problem is that like I said, when they run themselves out of food, when they realize that in most places there isn't enough wildlife to support themselves by hunting and that in a lot of places the rivers aren't safe enough for them to support themselves by fishing, they'll just turn to cannibalism and start eating their neighbors.

But to start with, a lot of these people would rather kill and steal than live, or would rather hate than eat.

These are people, that individually and as a group don't believe that other people...including others of their own tribe...are really people. All of them, deep down, believe that they're the protagonist of reality, of which there can be only one.

And then we have the nerve to wonder why a kid like Ethan Crumbley can go so wrong?

Whoever thought teaching people this crap was the formula for a successful civilization ought to have their ass removed.

They really do want to live in the underwater city with no constraints on their behavior and no rules and they really don't care that this ultimate expression of Randian objectivism leads people to all become ravening murderous psychopaths who kill each other for fun and profit.

The truth is, they don't even want you to know that civilization is a thing, or that it includes people who are any different than you are.

And the truth is, it's even worse than that:

Look at this list here.

Look at what's on it.

The thing that reached out and grabbed me is that "V For Vendetta" by Alan Moore. The comic itself and the Guy Fawkes mask (and the movie) having become icons of both the far-left and the far-right and of social libertarianism (and libertarianism in general) long ago. 

The core of these people's love for V is their love of the idea of standing up against a tyrannical government. Yes, a lot of these people are idiots who think any government is tyranny, I get that.

But the fact that they'd blacklist something that so many of these people view as an expression of their entire goddamn philosophy shows that, to the people who imagine themselves at the top of the hierarchy it was all bullshit to begin with.

They don't want people to have the power...or even the desire...for redress of grievances. In fact, they don't even want people's grievances directed at the proper things. Unending Trumpist cultural grievance benefits them. People realizing they're underpaid, overworked and in comparison to much of the rest of the world do not have proper social benefits...that doesn't benefit these motherfuckers.

These people have far more in common with the Chancellor, Mr. Creedy and the Norsefire Party than they do with the dude in the Guy Fawkes mask and don't you forget it.

And if you don't believe me, believe them.

Here's Madison Cawthorn referring to women as "Earthen vessels." 

I want you to take a step back and look at just how dysfunctional of a statement all that is...not least because, in a "nation born of freedom" these fucking people would have to recognize that not everybody believes the same way. 

If these idiots believed in freedom they would have to have the understanding that not every woman, not every person, wants to be an "Earthen vessel" or any sort of vessel for somebody else's beliefs or desires, but rather that people have their own autonomy and beliefs and sovereignty over their own bodies because we are ALL endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, according to our system of government, and that we may not be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.

That's not what these people want. Not for anybody but themselves, anyway.

The truth is people like Madison Cawthorn don't see it that way and they want a system where they live forever, have power forever, and all they have to do to get more is say dumb shit and claim to believe in Jesus...which they don't, really. Trust me...not only would they be happier making sacrifices to some emperor in an imperial cult...they're actively making efforts to found such a thing.

And they'll tell you so themselves, proudly.

Don't believe these fucking people when they start talking about God or Jesus...because they are obviously and openly trying to replace both of them with *Checks Notes Again* Donald Trump, who is an old man who will die sooner or later and anybody who believed in him is (according to the Word) going to go to hell right along with him and that's all there is to it.

There is no ambiguity here. Donald Trump is not the Creator, he is a Man. 

According to Christianity or any of the other Abrahamic traditions, Man Cannot Save Man. That's the entire basic principle of most religions in one way or another, not just of Christianity, Islam or Judaism. You have to believe in a higher power over and above Earthly powers and principalities in most theistic understandings of the Afterlife.

And Donald Trump ain't that guy. He'll fucking tell you he ain't. That guy doesn't believe in anything and he doesn't care about anything that doesn't give him glory, money, or a Viagra-assisted erection.

Of course, neither do they, nor do they care about anything else, really.

The reason these people love Donald Trump beyond all rational sense is most of them are the same fucking way.

The fact that he's not just their nominal leader, but their symbol...in many ways their god...should tell you just how lost these people have become.

But the truth is, the right wing is moving past Trump already, just like they abandoned Ayn Rand and every other person that embodied their beliefs previously. 

They're looking for something worse, but I think eventually they're going to realize that the only place they need to look is the mirror.

And at that point they're going to try and overthrow our civilization, government, society, etc. themselves. 

Sure, most of them will die for lack of any skills to match their inflated visions of their own toughness, or for lack of a damn can opener or any other capability to survive in a world where electricity and refrigeration and public health standards aren't things everybody has. That's a feature, not a bug in this. Just like the fact that these people are the ones doing the most dying from COVID-19. No one has more contempt for these people than their own masters do.

Why do I say that? The people who set all this up? The people watching the chaos from bolt-holes and fortresses guarded by private armies or from yachts safely offshore? Or from space?

They'll be just fine.

Until they start killing each other.

And it'll come to that, too.

Welcome to Rapture. Welcome to Bioshock, the real game.

That's the future "Conservatives" want. A world of nihilistic objectivism and murder where they can chop someone up while singing "Jesus loves me."

And then they'll call themselves Pro-Life.

Who gets to be free in that kind of future?

Nobody.

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

Pro-Life = Bullshit. (The Abortion Post.)

It was The Gospel From Outer Space, by Kilgore Trout. It was about a visitor from outer space... [who] made a serious study of Christianity, to learn, if he could, why Christians found it so easy to be cruel. He concluded that at least part of the trouble was slipshod storytelling in the New Testament. He supposed that the intent of the Gospels was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low. But the Gospels actually taught this:
Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn't well connected. So it goes.
The flaw in the Christ stories, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didn't look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being in the Universe. Readers understood that, so, when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought...:
Oh, boy — they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch that time! ~From Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut.

I used to have more ferrets than I do now.

One of them was this guy, Joey, a Blaze ferret. He was two years old when I got him, an owner-surrender from a lady in Saginaw. It was the weekend before the 2016 election. He had fleas. So he got a Dawn dish soap bath when I got him home, and flea medication from the vet the next week. He was both blind and deaf, and had been an only ferret, the other pet in the house was a dog. Thus, in weasel terms, he was profoundly unsocialized and forgetful in the ways of his own species. 

Surprisingly, once he learned where everything was he got around OK. He found his way around by nose and touch and whiskers, it took him a long time...nearly two years, to become fully socialized to the other ferrets, a long time with a lot of fights and many times I had to pick him up and separate him until he calmed down and he bit me plenty of times. He gradually figured out the rules of dominance play, learned to climb and fight (without a killing rage) and play and war dance and beg for treats and he got old, and his fur faded down to nearly completely white. By the time he passed away this last spring if you didn't know he was both blind and deaf, you'd never have suspected either.

No matter what you do, you can't make a ferret not be a ferret. They cannot be anything else. It's simply impossible.

But of course this post isn't really about ferrets.

I keep seeing stuff like this.

"Eagle eggs are protected by the Federal government, why not a human baby?"

First of all, horse shit. Lots of laws exist to protect humans of all ages from various things, including many laws that specifically protect children or even the unborn, including more serious charges if a pregnant woman is assaulted or killed.

Like I said, you cannot make an animal not be an animal, or force it to act as if it were a different kind of animal no matter what you do.

Humans, however, aren't like that. Humans are a lot easier to brainwash, to bribe, to coerce, or to manipulate.

Second, male Eagles don't plot to chain female Eagles to home and family and kitchen (or nest, if you will) by using their own biology not for its intended purposes, but to create slavery. A female Eagle has to fly and hunt and do everything the same as a male. 

They have to do that for the species to survive.

In our modern, fast-paced high-cost-of-living world, isn't it the same way for human beings, really? It's not the 1950's where one income can support an entire family anymore. It hasn't been that way for a very long time, certainly for most of my life.

Third, male Eagles do not glorify being an irresponsible promiscuous jackass while also expecting female Eagles to be or at least conduct themselves as if they were virtuous virgins purely for the sake of male arousal and ego.

And whatever spirituality Eagles or ferrets or other critters have, they do not make up convoluted religious rationalizations purely for the sake of keeping economic or political or social power in the hands of one group of their kind. 

All Cinnamon ferrets may be assholes by temperament but they do not actively persecute Albino or Blaze or Sable ferrets. Bald Eagles to not condemn Golden Eagles or Redtail Hawks or Owls to some lesser status based on how they look. Let alone to do harm to members of their own species simply for being a different gender or orientation or sex. 

Only humans do that shit.

Call if abuse of free will (in religious terms) or simple stupidity. The effect for those subjugated by those who'd use religion...and I have never in my life seen an argument against abortion, against choice, against basic sovereignty over one's own body...that did not fundamentally come down to not only Christianity, but a certain specific, often political interpretation of Christianity as well, is the same either way.

And this is a fairly widespread interpretation in a lot of America, and in many developing countries, most of which are also mostly Christian. It seeks to use basic biology and childbirth for no other reason than to oppress women in the name of God or some church or other, and that's all there is to it. In other religions, so far as I know only the Salafist version of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia and the Tribal Islam practiced by the Taliban of Afghanistan and Pakistan is as restrictive of basic human rights as a lot of these "Pro-life" "Christians" desire to be. Hell, Islam in normal terms has no issue with abortion because it has an entirely different interpretation of when a person gets their soul. This is why reproductive rights are a major thing in Iran, for example. 

Even in Christianity, hell...restrictive abortion laws in conservative Poland brought out women by the hundreds of thousands in the streets and the government was forced to back off some. 

In secular terms, the closest one gets is China or North Korea but on the opposite end of the spectrum, forcing abortions on women. 

I'd make the argument that these American "Pro-life" motherfuckers are, or have at least become, as controlling and fanatical as any Chinese or North Korean communist, and for the same reason.

It's really about power.

And don't tell me the "Christian Nationalists" or the "Pro-life" people, much less the racists, wouldn't force abortions on liberal, secular women, non-Christian (or non-approved Christian) religious women, or women of color, if they could...and find ghoulish doctors who'd do it, too. You can't tell me that.

Because I know for a fact that Christian nationalism and White nationalism absolutely are a part of anti-choice movements. That's one of the reasons Republicans like the unborn so much. A kid not yet born is an idea, not a person yet, not to them anyway. Not really.

As with the previous one-child policy in the People's Republic of China, this garbage is really all about control. 

And it's absolutely about trying to create more conservative white Christians of a specific kind, or people who can be brainwashed into believing the same shit. Don't take my word for it. Among their own, when they think they don't have to resort to manipulative platitudes, they'll tell you this stuff themselves.

Hell, they dream of using this garbage to raise up armies of religious fanatics to conquer the world. How they square that with Christian doctrine, much less End Times prophecy, I have no fucking idea.

If these people really believed in the sacredness of life, they wouldn't be pro-death penalty.

And for the record I've known a hell of a lot of pro-life Catholics, many of them even very conservative, who were also against the death penalty. Those people aren't as common as they used to be, though.

But a lot of the American ones just aren't that consistent nowadays.

If they really believed in protecting kids, supporting families, they'd make sure people had clean water and education and good jobs and health care and protection from pandemics and safe homes and schools, They wouldn't support the proliferation of firearms and they would make sure children were protected from such things and educated about them and in their safety and use if they wanted to know, once they got old enough or responsible enough. If these people really believed in the sacredness of life they wouldn't want a new war in some other country every few years and they sure as hell wouldn't be trying to cause a civil war or a right-wing insurgency in this one.

If these people believed in life half as much as they seem to believe in the sanctity of the penis, they wouldn't be tripping all over themselves in a slobbering, sycophantic embrace of fascism.

If they believed killing people was wrong, Ahmaud Arbery would still be alive and Kyle Rittenhouse would be facing life in prison without the possibility of parole. 

If these people believed in life, they wouldn't tolerate racism. They would not allow violent police.

If these people believed in life...for everybody...Donald Trump would be on trial or already in prison for gross incompetence and the mass negligent homicide of 777,000 Americans.

And these people would not venerate dictators and murderers. They would expect and demand and practice citizenship, for all, rather than clamoring to be Subjects to a dictator or a king in all but name and seeing who they could get away with excluding from the political process.

If they believed in life, like the Bible says to, "Thou Shalt Not Kill" would not be a controversial statement.

But they don't.

And it's absolutely amazing how cheap it is to get some of these people to buy into this garbage.

Most of the time, these days, when an American person says they are pro-life, they're only pro- a certain kind of life, mostly for themselves.

And they want to use things like biology and the fact that other people exist as a stick with which to beat those other people, usually for no better reason than so that they can feel good about themselves and their shitty lives.

It's real easy to make a human act not like a human, to forget the humanity of others, or simply get them to not care in the first place.

Don't be those fucking people.

If you're pro-life, you have to be pro-life after the kid is born, and for everybody, in all cases, at all times, otherwise it's just bullshit.

If life is sacred, fucking act like it is!

That's all.

Deplorable (Bottomless II)

It's time we discussed something rather important. The issue at hand is, well, my presidency. The question has been raised, I know, as to just how I came to be elected to this most illustrious office. Or, whether or not I had been elected at all! To that I must answer: Of course! Of course I was elected, sweet America! Isn't the right to vote the very foundation of a democracy? Unfortunately, in the interest of national security, I'm not at liberty to discuss the details of the election. You understand. But rest assured, I AM your President because the appropriate people of this great nation decided I should be! I AM your duly elected representative. Of course, when the time comes, when my term is up, America will be free to elect a new President. And that person will have our full faith and confidence, and carry our collective values forward, into the future. Democracy, dear America. Democracy, now... and forever. 

~"President" John Henry Eden, Enclave Radio, from the Fallout franchise.

Seriously?

Marjorie Taylor Greene said today that people like her are not the fringe, but the base of the Republican Party. So far as I can tell, lately, for once she's not wrong.

As I've said before, I used to be a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican. Over the course of the Aughts I pretty much got ran out of all three positions against my own will simply because I kept encountering...and in different contexts getting bum rushed out the door by...increasingly violent fanatics who'd swarm me simply for standing up for what I saw as the normal, human, humane thing to do. You know, simple shit like "Killing people is wrong" or "Hey, maybe we shouldn't start this war in Iraq based on obviously-made-up bullshit intelligence" and "No, you can't burn gay people at the stake." This shit reached it's first apotheosis during the 2008 Presidential campaign with the Republican Party's full-out embrace of conspiracy theories and racism. When Sarah Palin was nominated for V.P. that was it for me. Yeah, I made a few lame jokes about how she must've sucked John McCain's wrinkly old balls to get the position, but the next week, I ended up going to the Secretary of State and changing my Party affiliation from Republican to Independent.

And I stood by this decision through the 2010 midterms, which brought the Tea Party wave rolling up on our shores, and familiarized us all with people like Tea Party Joe Walsh.

2012, 2014, 2016 and so on. I walked away from the Republicans and never looked back.

I've followed Joe on Twitter since I got on there in 2016. At first it was simply because he said dumb shit and was entertaining to make jokes about. But over that time I watched him...the archetypal Tea Party conservative...become disgusted, at first with the lies and the Russia scandal, then with the bad behavior and racism and then get run out of the Republican Party just like I had. He went from Trump Supporter to outsider to Trump critic to Democratic voter in less time than it took me. I spent twice as long exiting conservatism.

And so far as I know, aside from losing some or maybe even most of his racism, his policy preferences haven't changed all that much. But the fact that he's not a Nazi makes him damned near a liberal at this point. That's how fucked up and polarized this shit is.

Your day will come, Marge. Your day will come. There will come a point where you won't...maybe can't...cross a line drawn in the sand by your Party, just like me and just like Joe. Why? 

Because there is no bottom, these people are moral Black Holes and I have an increasing feeling of dread that we're nowhere near the Event Horizon.

And as I've said before, if Republican division and hate isn't stopped this is going to end with Americans shooting at each other. That looks to me like exactly what "Conservatives" want to have happen. In the replies to this snipped post somebody remarked that 'by the time we get to that point, women will have no rights and be stripped of office." I disagree with this, but only partially.

There will always be room for women in Republican politics. Sure, you might have to be dressed in some skimpy costume and chained to the dais used by the bloated slug-like forms of creatures like Donald Trump or Newt Gingrich, dancing for their entertainment above a pit filled with monsters, in the middle of their criminal court in a dusty desert palace...

But you'll be there. Their debased desires, their dicks and egos demand it.

Whatever economic and political and social compacts you think you've made, Republican women, they don't mean shit to the Republican men. Not the current ones, at least. To follow one gratuitous Star Wars reference with another...they're altering the deal, and telling you to pray they don't alter it any further.

What?

Seriously you didn't think all the anti-abortion crap for the last 50 years was about protecting actual kids, did you?

Yesterday in my state some 15 year old kid shot up his school with a pistol his dad bought on Black Friday, and he killed three of his fellow students. At least one more has died of wounds since then.

They're throwing the book at the kid and charging him as an adult, including First Degree Murder and terrorism charges. And the prosecutor is debating charging the parents also.

Good, but that won't help the dead much, will it? That won't give the kid a future and a life like having parents who gave a shit and kept their weapons locked down would have, eh?

Apparently, in 2016 the kid's mom sent an adoring, yet profanity-filled letter to then-President-elect Trump. I'm going to take a wild guess here and say she probably enabled and instilled the worst possible attitudes in her son. 

And that's modern conservatism. "Deplorable" doesn't even begin to fucking cover it. Not at this point.

Hillary Clinton was too fucking kind.

Not only that; They ran with that label, made a big joke out of it, even, and have since done their absolute damnedest to become even worse and worse people. It's as if being the absolute slime of humanity was something they aspired to all along. Hillary Clinton called out the Nazi shit and I'm here to tell you at that point the Nazi shit had been brewing up for more than a dozen years and the "Christians" were balls-deep in making it that way.

And if you think that won't result in violence, consider this;

The atavistic non-state fascists have been outsourcing population control to murderers for years, and they don't give a shit if the people who get murdered are kids, we've known that since Sandy Hook in 2012. 

Now, I'm a gun guy, I'm a former conservative, and I've been following and writing about this type of shit for years. And I'm here to tell you these people's appetite for extremism, for violence, for outright fascism in both form and policy is only getting worse and will get worse yet.

Long term, their contempt for government, for facts and reality and their disdain for public health and science is probably one of the few consistent advantages that the rest of us have, and can expect to be able to exploit and maintain. If these people break off a piece of America like they want to, the first thing they're going to do is attempt to reinstate the 19th century, with elements of the Burning Times, the Dark Ages, the Crusades and the Yugoslav Wars, in roughly that order...

And if it comes to that, the rest of us have exactly as long as it takes the Marjorie Taylor Greene types to pussy-whip the Donald Trump and Kevin McCarthy types and eliminate or subjugate the Nancy Maces to get our own shit together...and then can only expect they will be overcome by something worse. They're already trying to find worse than Trump, for fuck's sake!

We will have exactly as long as it will take the fascists to beat and kill their side into a sufficient state of ideological purity or at least terror-based conformity to get our own shit together and organize a government for our parts of the country and to prepare to defend ourselves.

And lest you think these are decent fucking people at all, well here's some Conservative Catholic gloating about the likely further-gutting of Roe V. Wade like it's some kind of a good thing for women. He's likely also scheming to try to use whatever social programs he's thinking about to try to force as many people as possible to be his kind of Catholic.

This kind of shit is usually pretty harmful to actual people, if history is any guide. That's what happens when you have dudes with an ideological hard-on going around trying to make other people's life decisions for them. Remember, one of these fucking people used a pregnant nine-year-old as a damn example, like that ain't the most fucked up thing you could imagine. Pro-life my goddamned ass! What the hell kind of life is that?!

And again, if these people get their shitty banana republic...don't think they won't use it to cause problems on a global scale. Don't think the radical Catholics won't find a way to elbow the remaining right-wing Protestants out of their way, much less the secular Trump Supporters...and don't think they won't pick fights with the Holy See, start various and assorted conflicts, or (and I've been saying this for awhile too) just plain form their own new religion with Trump as its godhead and start trying to conquer the world in its name.

The gold CPAC statue wasn't a joke, and even if it was, I guarantee you that enough people thought it wasn't. 

But Trump doesn't really represent the Republican Party now, if anything he's their elder-god martyr. It's Boebert's and MTG's party now, with elements of Brett Kavanaugh and Matt Gaetz and Steve Bannon. If you think people like Mitch McConnel AKA "Yertle McTurtle and Other Lies" and Kevin "Et Tu, Marge?" McCarthy are ever going to regain control of their party again, you have another thing coming.

And that's because they abandoned morals in pursuit of power. Republicans set every previous belief they ever had on fire, for Donald Fucking Trump. And now it's the guys who schemed for decades to bring this all about that are going to be the ones to pay the price, to be subjugated first by what they unleashed, because there is no damn bottom.

They've replaced Abraham Lincoln with Donald Trump and then replaced Donald Trump with MTG and don't think it won't get even worse from there.

Prepare yourself accordingly, because they won't take any responsibility at all.

And remember, if you want a better country that means you have to be a better citizen, and a better person.

There is no bottom, until the rest of us say there is, and enforce that shit.

Part I

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan