Book Of Vile Dumbness (Death Cult Romance, Part Three.)

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. ~HP Lovecraft, The Call Of Cthulhu

I've been seeing this bullshit all day.

Antivaxxers and "Conservatives" are apparently drinking their own piss to try and cure COVID-19. I'm sorry, but if you're dumb enough to think drinking urine will cure a respiratory virus, I don't think I trust you with a rifle.

My mind just boggles at this shit. Seriously like I've said the last couple days there's one easy, free, overwhelmingly safe and effective, scientifically proven way to cure this virus and they'd rather drink their own piss...because literally anything in their minds is preferable to getting the shot?

Like, excuse me, what the fuck?

I don't get it, I am metrically incapable of getting it, and I'm Okay with that.

What is this, the D&D Book Of Vile Darkness meets Jackass in the restroom of a seedy gay bathhouse in Queens? Never mind, I don't want to know.

There's something, mentally and morally, wrong with these people. And that's on top of the fact that they're just plain fucking stupid.

I mean, what the hell kind of depraved mind even comes up with this bullshit? Who's issuing these talking points? The Devil?

And seriously, I love how these fucking people accuse everything they don't like of being "Communist."

And somehow this includes not only public health measures but basically anything that has anything to do with the public because these morons don't give a good goddamn about anybody but themselves and this is painfully obvious. Not least, I think, because of the childish acting out these fucking people keep doing. 

Like I said they wouldn't know what Communism was if somebody sky-wrote the entire Communist Manifesto in the air over their heads with a couple of vintage MiG-21Bis Fishbed fighter jets. I've rather more than a sneaking suspicion at this point that if somebody sat them down and explained to them what Communism was, how things in the Soviet Union really worked, how authoritarian it all was, and how much it sucked for most people, these idiots would be fine so long as they weren't on the bottom of things and they got to see somebody else get sent to the Gulag.

Because the truth is, these fools don't want politics, they don't even really want power if it were to require self-control, self-determination and self-governance. They want blood-sport and cruelty and to feel like they're better than somebody else. 

Why the fuck else do you think most of these people are cool with stuff like racism, segregation, and slavery? Lots of these fuckers just want to hurt people.

They want to take no responsibility for life or self and drink cheap alcohol until they pass out in the street and they'll sleep where they fall. There were plenty of people like that in the Soviet Union, and Russia still has a fair number of them nowadays. But more to the point, at least some of the Russians have figured it out:

America has those people too, you can see them anytime you go in a Walmart or some such place, or to the Casino where I used to work. Old, overweight, ill-dressed people wearing Trump ballcaps and carrying oxygen tanks in the basket of their Amigo cart while they smoke a cigarette and spend money they can't really afford to out of their social security checks.

A lot of these people simply don't have the mentality of grown-ass adults.

A lot of them simplistically fetishize and "like" certain things, hierarchy, "social order," uniformed sameness. After the Trump years, I'm no longer sure these fucking people care where they get this stuff.
It's like the guy I used to work with who'd never shut up about the fact that he'd been to jail and had a criminal record, but I saw him leaving work one day and he was wearing a "Thin Blue Line" hoodie.

That's the kind of mentality we're dealing with here.

And I think if you changed the pronouns, as it were, peeled the labels off carefully and scratched off the serial numbers...I don't think these fucking idiots would either know or care whether the authoritarian system that scratched that debased little itch in their diseased minds was Communism or Fascism. So long as it was cruel to somebody else for no reason.

Hell, a lot of these people don't care if the system...whatever it may be...is cruel to them too, so long as they get to see somebody else suffer and struggle and have to fight either literally or figuratively for no damn good reason.

One brand of cheap social heroin seems the same as any other to me, I guess.

And they'll do anything to get it, even drink their own piss or otherwise debase themselves.

Because the truth is, they don't want to be free, they want the unending high of whatever societal Fentanyl they think they want, and they're willing to even give up being Americans for it because if they got their way there wouldn't be an America anymore.

These fucking people say they want some kind of a "Great Awakening" but the truth is, they really want a new Dark Age...because democracy and equality and freedom are too hard, or something.

But they only want the Dark Times so long as they get to be the masters of them.

These people have become lovers of Death...why else would they refuse free, simple medications?

In favor of drinking piss, no less? I mean, doesn't that seem gross to you? Come on, people.

But that's how they want to live, apparently.

And they want us to be trapped in their death cult romance with them. But they forgot that this is America and we don't have to put up with that bullshit.

So don't.

I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and the flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me. But I do not think my life will be long. As my uncle went, as poor Johansen went, so I shall go. I know too much, and the cult still lives.

~HP Lovecraft, The Call Of Cthulhu

Part Two

Deities, Demigods and Dicks (Death Cult Romance, Part Two.)

I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C" and "D." Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?

And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of "conservatism." … This unrelenting obsession with a particular goal destroys the perspective of many decent people. They have become easy prey to manipulation and misjudgment. 

~Barry Goldwater

Seriously?

I saw this yesterday, some Republican state senator announcing his campaign for governor and concluding the announcement by blowing a Shofar...a horn of a type once allegedly used by the ancient Israelites, but now mostly associated with whack-off Pentecostal garbage.

I'd just like to point out, and please take note that I say this as a former Christian myself, in addition to being a former conservative. I'm sick of this fucking bullshit. This is America, believe whatever you damn well please, but leave your religion out of politics. 

Far too often, religion gets used to promote political bullshit that is or should be completely antithetical to not just Christianity...but to any religion practiced by even remotely civilized people. It's often cover, nothing but cover, for simple cruelty and meanness of spirit. A hell of a lot of bad people have figured out, over the years, that they can get Man's approval for their shitty agendas simply by claiming to be religious.

And the thing is, they wouldn't do it if it didn't work. So many feeble-minded religious people end up putting absolute faith in various impossibilities that they're primed to believe bullshit already, so long as it mingles properly with their confirmation biases and tickles their ears just so.

And what the Bible actually says about that...and people who follow that kind of stuff...be damned.

And I daresay among world religions, organized Christianity as a whole has historically been particularly willing to prostitute itself in this way. 

It goes right back, pretty close to the beginning, at least. Constantine did not, in first tolerating Christianity, then accepting it, then making it the religion of the Empire....he did not Christianize Rome. He Romanized Christianity, in so doing he allowed it to become not so much the religion of Rome or the basis of what would become Western culture...but eventually to become the totem of assorted political and religious movements that far exceeded Rome in debauchery or savagery.

And for what?

Don't look away, don't wave your hands around, you tell me: What's the goddamned point?

So that allegedly Christian and "Conservative" news anchors in our modern day can hawk pills that make old men's dicks get hard as a cure for diseases completely unrelated to the functioning of one's penis? Is there something special about dying with a hard-on that I don't know about?

These Fucking People's true "Gods" are their own dicks and you can tell 'em I said that.

If I had to guess I'd say that the Phallus-obsessed Romans would greatly approve of this, once it was explained to them...and even they would probably laugh at it. 

I can't imagine the early Christians would be so impressed with this silly bullshit, though.

And that's all it is: Pure bullshit.

These fucking people don't give a damn about God or religion, so much of what "Conservatism" has become these days is over-the-top shock-jock bullshit that's got nothing to do with any particular belief or philosophy. A lot of it basically boils down to "Say whatever's popular and get people to buy some bullshit product."

As if bags and buckets of "Survival food" that (premade or otherwise) has to be cooked will do one much good when they're stuck in their car during a blizzard?

I've been saying for a long time now that capitalism has become nothing more than an excuse to bullshit people into spending money on stuff that nobody needs, that often has no real purpose at best and at worst is actively harmful. 

And far too often, profit becomes an end in and of itself, the accumulation of wealth becomes its own purpose and responsibility to our fellow humans and the world we live in be damned. It's much the same way with modern conservatism, unfortunately.

These fucking people long ago forgot what the damned point was, but now, they don't care. They just know if they have something to sell and if they talk up a bunch of right-wing sounding bullshit they'll get a bunch of feeble-minded fools to give them money.

And these people, these so-called "Patriots" right-wing fanatics and Trump Supporters...well a hell of a lot of them believe so much in what they are doing that they don't have the guts to show their faces or not hide the license plate numbers on their cars. 

Bur of course the members of the Dark Brotherhood, or the priests of the death god, must remain masked lest the masses find out who they are and pound these fucking cowards into a red stain on the fucking pavement.

And yes, that's always how it is. They know they're wrong, they hate you. They just hope you don't know it, so that they can get away with whatever bullshit agenda they're trying to push.

I mean, seriously, when the hell did conservatism become so full-up with all these greedy gutless wonders that have no greater goal than to whip up a roaring mob that's ready to burn down civilization...so they can sell shit to it when they're not trying to hide from it? I mean seriously aren't these people contradicting themselves at this point? 

And what happens if they succeed?

What good is all this money when civilization has collapsed and the money isn't worth anything anymore?

They never think about that part, do they?

This is what happens when we allow people into our politics whose only goal is literally blowing their own horn and trying to get famous or make a buck off of some stupid ideology that basically boils down to some dude worshiping his own Wang.

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

And this? That's not what this is.

Part One.

Death-Cult Romance (A series, Part One.)

History teaches, perhaps, very few clear lessons. But surely one such lesson learned by the world at great cost is that aggression, unopposed, becomes a contagious disease. ~Jimmy Carter

I saw this yesterday, a right-wing-owned newspaper literally is romanticizing dying of COVID-19.

I mean, what the fuck?

If they'd gotten vaccinated, they'd both most likely still be alive. This isn't even a question at this point. 

This is the kind of immoral stupidity that results whenever some conservative idiot decides they're so against this or that thing (no matter what it is) that literally anything else is acceptable. 

These people were so hell-bent against abortion that some of them decided a nine-year-old girl getting pregnant was Okay. They're so against the Democratic Party, and equality and social change and this and that...that they've decided everything from fascism to feudalism ought to be on the table as options for a political system...anything but a basic small-L liberal, small-D democratic system where somebody has the option of not voting for them and where things change. 

And their monomania against COVID-19 vaccination, fundamentally rooted in everything from Eugenics to simple-minded "You're not the boss of me" bullshit is basically the same. 

Except there's a real difference here: Like it or not there's historical options for not having abortion, like adoption and stuff. There's reasonably functional systems of government other than Democracy as we know it, as some of the few monarchies that linger today attest. This is different. Science is the only option. The only effective prevention against this virus...against any viruses that can be prevented...is vaccination.

And a hell of a lot of these people would rather die...would rather kill other people by carelessly infecting them...than face that single fact and do the proper thing and get vaccinated. 

They'd rather see people die in the streets than get vaccinated, and they want to burn the country down because our government went ahead and did the right thing and made vaccination available to everybody. They'd be 100% fine with vaccination if each shot cost a million dollars and only elites had access to it in order of their social importance.

On a basic level it's belief in bullshit hierarchy and simple-minded stubborn selfishness. These people waste so much brainpower on this bullshit, daily, on who is more important than who and how to get more important themselves...that it simply doesn't compute to them that a virus doesn't care how much wealth you have or what color your skin is or who you are. Even though, by definition, that's what a virus is. It's a strand of DNA that attaches itself to your cells and makes you sick, all it's trying to do is propagate itself, it doesn't think on that order of magnitude, it simply can't. It can't be bargained with, it can only be protected against, one way.

The virus is biologically incapable of giving a shit about you.

And it really doesn't help that a lot of the real reason for these people's shitty politics is plain old narcissism. 

And the only thing they love more than themselves is death, preferably when it happens to other people.

They can't imagine a world that isn't all about them...even though the real world doesn't give a shit about them and never has before. The virus...as my friend Aaron says it's these people's first crisis...forces them to have to face that. So not only can't they hack it, but they go a little bit nuts trying to process it.

And this absolutely applies to all sorts of other things in life, too. The world is what it is, and it doesn't give a fuck about you.

Steve Bannon, for example, called Biden's speech on the anniversary of 1/6 a "Declaration of War against MAGA" as if MAGA hadn't declared war on the United States a fucking year ago. He's just mad because...as it must...the State is acting to protect itself against destruction, albeit slowly, the same way that the body acts to resist illness or infection.

And frankly, if that's what he wants, Captain Beer Gut better eat his Wheaties, pack a lunch, and be prepared to get his ass kicked quite a few times, or maybe expect to get shot in the face. 'Cause I don't think any of this is going to work out the way he thinks it will. 

Republicans want to allow COVID-19 to spread, they want to go to war against the rest of us, and the absolute last thing they want is for other people to have a say in what goes on in their own country. 

Ask yourself, why do Republicans want to live in a dirty, diseased shithole ripped apart by civil war?

Consider, for example, a less violent situation. 72% of Niger's exports are Gold and Uranium from the Agadez region, mostly to the EU, the mines are operated by French companies centered on the town of Arlit, with mostly French workers. Who do you suppose sees any of that money?

Not the common people of Niger, who mostly live off of herding and subsistence agriculture, afflicted by poverty and widespread illiteracy. I mean, sure, the country's elites get a cut, but in a country that's had seven Constitutions and three periods of military rule, with said elites changing every so often, how cheaply can they be bought? And we're talking about a country with a Per-Capita GDP of about $1,213 per person, here.

This is the future Republicans want for the United States.

Not only that, if they get their way, for most people there won't even be a vote. Actually, they don't even want you to care enough about political matters or your future or your life to want to have a say, unless you're rich enough to give them a bribe or a donation. 

You're supposed to be happy with chest-beating nationalism, hate, rage, shouting Unga Bunga and waving flags...while Republicans pick your pockets and walk away with your future, your children's future, and your freedom.

And all they'll offer you as compensation is that there's somebody more unfree than you are and encourage you to pick on them and deepen their misery.

Like that's going to end well. Eventually, the people on the bottom get tired of being kicked around and stepped on by their self-proclaimed "betters" that's just how shit like that works. That's why there even is a country called the United States of America.

But you can't tell these fucking people anything, because they've never known anything but privilege, and resenting that [they think] they're not privileged enough.

Stuff like that is why little, poor countries like the Central African Republic end up collapsing into civil war and cycles of endless violence.

Again, this is the future "Conservatives" want for America, too.

Because they figure it's more profitable for the 1% at the top, and the 0.1% at the top of that, and they don't mind the idea of living in walled compounds surrounded by armed guards and not being able to go anywhere without their heavily-armed motorcade and retinue. Actually, a lot of these fucking people probably look at that type of shit as status symbols rather than living in a gilded cage of their own creation.

I don't want to live in that kind of country, life in the one we have is hard enough.

If we want things to stop getting worse, we're going to have to come together and make them stop getting worse. That means we're going to have to stop tolerating this bullshit. Unless we refuse to allow these motherfuckers to keep tearing down civilization, they're going to keep doing exactly that.

So get after it. It's really that simple.

You get what you tolerate.

Unless we do what's necessary to get better, the disease of aggression will progress as surely as the disease of Coronavirus.

If you tolerate these people glorifying the death-cult romance, you're going to get a lot more of it.

A party with a narrow vision, a party that is afraid of the future, a party whose leaders are inclined to shoot from the hip, a party that has never been willing to put its investment in human beings who are below them in economic and social status. ~Jimmy Carter, on Republicans.

Troubles (1/6, One Year Later, Part Three.)

To state the obvious, one year ago today, in this sacred place, democracy was attacked — simply attacked. The will of the people was under assault. The Constitution — our Constitution — faced the gravest of threats.

Outnumbered and in the face of a brutal attack, the Capitol Police, the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, the National Guard, and other brave law enforcement officials saved the rule of law.
Our democracy held. We the people endured. And we the people prevailed.
For the first time in our history, a president had not just lost an election, he tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob breached the Capitol.
But they failed. They failed. And on this day of remembrance, we must make sure that such an attack never, never happens again. ~President Joe Biden

It's been a year since Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an effort to disrupt the counting of electoral votes and a normally-ceremonial ratification of election results.

I don't feel like we're that much better off now than we were then, even though in measurable, physical ways a lot of us are. Certainly, the daily drama and uncertainty of the Trump years has been reduced.

But we have people, not least of all in the media...who miss that bullshit.

It's been a year and going on three months now, and when I go to town tomorrow for my doctor's appointment I'll still pass a dozen or so Trump flags or signs. I mean, what the fuck? Nobody was still putting Bush 41vsigns up in January of 1994/ The very idea would have been considered ridiculous.

If anything, following his election loss, Trump's cult has deepened its faith in the Hamburger Hutt and hardened its collective heart to...well, anything other than their Mango Messiah. There are literally images of a crucified Donald Trump that you can find on the internet. 

And these Trump Supporters openly hate the rest of America for rejecting their god. They are, likewise in the clear, plotting to wage some kind of a civil war or right-wing insurgency against the rest of us. I saw today that somebody at The Bulwark commissioned a poll which determined that something like 2% of Trump Supporters would be fine with taking up arms against their own country to restore Donald Trump to power.

Doesn't sound like a lot, but it still adds up to being at least three and a half million people. In terms of a pool from which to draw insurgent fighters...it's enough. 

Maybe in conventional terms it's not going to get them more than a state or two, and that much probably not for long, but using insurgent tactics, with at least some of the media on their side and even a little political support, it's problematic.

Especially when you consider that the number of active Taliban fighters throughout much of the war in Afghanistan while US and NATO forces were still present hovered at around 30,000. If they're competently led...that is enough.

And maybe they wouldn't be at first, but insurgency and war are the most Darwinian environment you can imagine.

The enemy wouldn't be1/6 rioter types in their various cosplay outfits or raggedy-ass militia nuts or some other variant of These Fucking People for long. Either they'd get smart and learn some skills the hard way or they'd end up dead or in jail. The next wave would likely be a mix of legitimate bad actors and people looking for revenge because somebody they care about got killed or arrested and incarcerated in the first wave, and so on as the situation snowballs and more people in different groups become radicalized.. 

You bet they'd attract foreign help, media attention, and political support of both domestic and foreign varieties.

And those are three things that define a successful insurgent movement.

If you think Ted Cruz, who's trying to walk back what he said yesterday about 1/6 being a violent terrorist attack merely when faced with Tucker Carlson...do you think he's going to stand up for your country, much less your ass, when the enemy is car bombs, drive-by shootings and snipers in some kind of American version of The Troubles?

Of course, given Ted's heritage, he would know that Fidel Castro, along with his brother Raul and Che Guevara conquered Cuba with basically just a few hundred guys...and they started with only a few dozen dudes packed onto a leaky, overloaded boat. If you value your own corruption and position and wealth more than the country that gave it to you...well, stuff like that is how Ted ended up being born in Canada.

You can't roll over in the face of an insurgency.

And quite likely, Ted Cruz and those like him would vote to give Alabama or Idaho to the right-wing insurgents if that meant that said insurgents wouldn't come after them.

I mean, for fuck's sake Karl Rove denounced these motherfuckers, so did Liz Cheney. Not that there's very much left of the old guard Republicans these days. When you've lost those fucking people, it's safe to say you're probably not really in Republican-land anymore. Or at least, you've gone somewhere that I don't recognize as Republicanism.

And we really need to start doing something about this shit, on a serious level, before these people decide that they can pull the same shit and take over the State House in Idaho or something, in the hope that both State government and local forces might be more sympathetic to what they want, and start trying to accomplish their goals more incrementally. 

They're figuring out that they're not going to get the whole country by their current tactics of political manipulation. The day will come when they're going to make their move somewhere, and hope that the next time, somebody might blink, or think "Oh, hey, it's only Idaho" and not handle the problem in a serious way. 

Or worse...and this is the problem with people like Ted Cruz...they might view appeasement as a valid strategy.

Well, when you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to want a glass of milk.

And how did that shit work against Nazis the last time somebody tried it?

We'd best hammer down these sons of bitches now, and that means holding conspirators and ringleaders like Donald Trump. Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Steve Bannon accountable too.

'Cause it's going to get a lot harder later, if we don't.

Either you believe in civilization, democracy and freedom or you don't.

It's really that simple.

That's all.

Part 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

Unfreedom Fighters (1/6, One Year Later, Part Two.)

Another head hangs lowly
Child is slowly taken
And the violence caused such silence
Who are we mistaken?

But you see, it's not me, it's not my family
In your head, in your head they are fighting
With their tanks, and their bombs, and their bombs, and their guns
In your head, in your head they are crying. 

~Zombie, The Cranberries

"Decades of bloody terrorism."

Note: This is a response somebody is advocating against pandemic measures.

So, basically, when you say "Public health" the "Conservative" starts thinking "Bloody terrorism."

Of course, they don't see the issue as public health, not really. They just see other people, educated people, people who are not far-enough-Right "Conservatives" trying to "Boss them around." Like little children, their response is, in effect "You're not the boss of me."

COVID-19 could not be reached for comment.

Seriously, we could have and should have been over this by now, back to normal or mostly so.

But anti-Vaxxers and "Conservatives" want to keep this thing going. It's because they want to live in a world with a daily body-count, or they think it'll kill more of the people they don't like than it does of the people that they do like...or they want to "Cull the weak from the herd" out of some poorly-understood Eugenicist imperative, not realizing (and honestly, probably not caring at this point) that it's mostly their own people who are the ones still dying.

And on top of that, then they want to add insurgent warfare against the rest of us. Never mind that the military is now mostly vaccinated, that the burden of infections will fall heavier on cops caught up in dealing with this shit...or suckered into joining the insurgents...and of course their own people will keep dying and do so at an accelerated rate once the shooting starts.

Why do these fucking people want to live in a dirty, diseased Third World shithole ripped apart by wars?

Well, for one thing, these idiots are about a step and a half from being some kind of pseudo-Christian version of the Taliban and I'm pretty sure these morons think that if things get bad enough, Jesus will intervene and save them, while tuning everybody else into charcoal briquettes. Of course it doesn't work that way. I've read the Bible, all the way through, multiple times. But I'm here to tell you reading comprehension is not these people's strong suit.

 For another, they think that trying to burn down civilization will give meaning to their lives, or make them powerful. Never mind that meaning, money and power all derive from civilization and from one's place in it...and all the more so from the kind of hierarchical standpoint a lot of conservatives have. But a hell of a lot of modern "Conservatives" influenced by Ayn Rand, various apocalyptic fiction and their own unreasonableness, think it would be better to just kick over the table, take their ball, and go home.

If they can't have everything, they think, then nobody should have anything at all. It's all about the selfishness.

Bethany Mandel just goes right for it saying "The Murphy in me is interested in the terrorism."

As if that's not literally the shittiest stereotype of Irish people that I've ever heard of. Jesus fucking Christ, what's wrong with these people?

(And mind you, this person has written for the New York Times.)

And I'm pretty sure Dan McLaughlin and Jonah Goldberg just got themselves voted off the island for having non-affirmative responses, half ass and lukewarm though they may have been.

And I'm going to note again: This is what these people want to do in response to basic public health measures designed to keep people from dying of a deadly virus that is now a known and well-studied factor.  This ain't complicated, at this point either you want people to get sick or you don't.

They want people to get sick and die.

For their egos, selfishness and shitty politics. And this is an objective they're willing to fight for, to go to war with the rest of us over, because the cruelty is the fucking point.

They think once enough people have died they can just go back to the unregulated accumulation of wealth. Like, they think the virus is some evil spirit that can be bought off by throwing some virgins in the volcano. Unga Bunga!

Think about that for a second.

These people like to think of themselves as "Freedom fighters." Maybe they can call themselves the Virus Liberation Front.

They're fighting for your "freedom" not to earn a living, or go to school, or vote...but to die of a perfectly well preventable-at-this-point disease. They want to be the fucking "Death panels" and decide who lives or dies...mostly dies, by the look of things.

The truth is, they're nothing but the warriors of unfreedom, bent on tearing down civilization for their own ego trip and because some people just want to watch the world burn.

And because without civilization, you lose your freedom but they think they might keep theirs.

Don't be these motherfuckers. This isn't hard. Either you believe in civilization or you don't.

And if people keep passing the buck on this, these people will become a terrorist movement and they will break off a piece of America for their own little private Afghanistan.

And their only notable export will be violence aimed at the rest of us.

And it won't stop, unless we stop it, now.

Part One

If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals — if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is. Now, I can't say that I will agree with all the things that the present group who call themselves Libertarians in the sense of a party say, because I think that like in any political movement there are shades, and there are libertarians who are almost over at the point of wanting no government at all or anarchy. I believe there are legitimate government functions. There is a legitimate need in an orderly society for some government to maintain freedom or we will have tyranny by individuals. The strongest man on the block will run the neighborhood. We have government to ensure that we don't each one of us have to carry a club to defend ourselves. But again, I stand on my statement that I think that libertarianism and conservatism are traveling the same path. ~Ronald Reagan

1/6, One Year Later (Part One.)

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred. 

~Alfred Lord Tennyson, Charge of the Light Brigade.

I saw this earlier.

Rick Wilson said today that Melania Trump is only a few months away from doing online porn and having an Onlyfans site.

And all things considered he may not be wrong.

(And people tried to overthrow our country for these grifting assholes?)

I may be an outlier here, but I get the sense that Trump and his family are becoming increasingly irrelevant, and certain people's pathetic sad-sack quests to restore them to power...well, how is any of that shit going, anyway?

If anything, at this point Republicans are trying to find somebody worse. Maybe somebody more competent, but overall, certainly worse than Trump is something they want.

None of this means these people and their followers aren't a threat, though. In fact I think it'll make them worse.

That's not only because they will continue to degrade public discourse and expectations in an endless search for attention and money...but because they might just try something stupid to get themselves back in the news for awhile.

Hell, Trump himself was going to commemorate the 1/6 Insurrection but evidently decided not to because of public backlash while blaming the House Select Committee. 

Yep, you heard that right.

It's coming up on the one-year anniversary of the January 6th insurrection, lots of the people involved have been thrown in jail...to a person every last one of them incriminated Trump while begging for mercy for themselves, others have cooperated, providing memos and Powerpoints and shit because they don't want to go to jail and lately things don't look so hot for Mango Marcos.

And it's not like a lot of the other Republicans are helping much.

For example, Peter Navarro still can't wait to tell us how crazy he is, and just how much he still thinks he could have said just the right thing to VP Pence to get him to throw the election to Trump.

As if Pence and all the other Republicans he'd consulted would have changed their minds on him not having that power because of the words of one more fanatic.

And that's absolutely why I still tell you not to turn your back on these motherfuckers nor sleep on anything they do. It's not just me saying you can't trust these fucking people. They're telling you that themselves. And some of these people are still obsessed with this bullshit.

And I'm here to tell you, under a conventional, old-school (And I don't like using that word here) George W. Bush style Republican these fucking people would be the same way, in fact they'd probably be even more aggressive in threatening open revolt.

Think they didn't like Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton? I'm here to tell you the Party of "No, we didn't think this through" would positively hate a hypothetical President Liz Cheney or President Mitch McConnell. They're not actually interested in Conservatism or Republicanism, let alone competence or self-interest. Even authoritarianism is no good if it makes even a token effort at following the Constitution or the law...because none of these fucking people give a shit about any of that. Why in the hell else do you think they flocked to somebody like Trump in the first place and went full MAGA?

They don't give a shit about any of that stuff, they just want somebody who will abuse their mostly-imagined enemies and tell them how great they are. 

And the cruelty is the fucking point.

I'm serious, bring back shit like Gladiators, like in the Roman empire, give these motherfuckers an outlet for their cruelty and hate and rage besides politics...and I'm willing to bet that you could probably fit the remaining members of the Republican Party in my neighborhood.

It's not just that Republicans or their policies aren't popular...they haven't been for 50 years.

And a lot...I mean, a lot...of the more dedicated Trump Supporters that I've met are former Democrats (mostly of a certain age) or longtime non-voters.

Conversely, a lot of current Democrats and Democratic voters are former Republicans.

Like me.

Adjust your expectations accordingly. 

Thing is, nobody sees Republicans as the strongest tribe anymore, not even Republicans.

That's why Biden's numbers stay pretty consistent...if average...despite so much of the media being completely in the bag for R's because they miss the drama and easy money of the Trump era.

That's why so many of these fucking people try to portray themselves as some kind of edgy rebels against common decency, or even try to claim the label of "Counter-culture" for themselves now.

The thing is, Republicans have spent more than a decade trying to fundamentally change America and they not only mostly failed or even drove things in the other direction, but painfully and publicly tripped over their own dicks a lot of the time.

So now they're dead set on trying to prevent any changes that they can, because conservatives figure that stasis favors them. They know things are broken, and want to keep them that way in case broken becomes exploitable. As if their own base...that wants to burn down the world and wants to burn it down now...would stand for that?

These people know they're shit, but Trump went a long way towards making it acceptable to be a shitty person. It's all bullshit, none of this works, and no they didn't think this through. If anything, all the shit conservatives and Republicans have been doing to try and keep their base amped up and guarantee their own power is exactly what destroyed them.

It's like an old noble or royal family that the members of don't get out much and get desperate to maintain their power without doing any real work. Eventually the cousins and siblings start fucking each other to make sure the blood and the money and the power stay in the family and everybody just goes insane after a couple generations of this. Throw in some fanatical followers, a few glib grifters, a couple of seedy foreign allies and a deep belief in conspiracies and the occult, add a Rasputin-wannabe or two and here they are.

And it's been a year since 1/6 and these idiots are still trying. 

I'd argue if anything, these people trying to have a civil war or some kind of right-wing insurgency is probably even more likely now...but it's not going to work out the way they think it will. A hell of a lot of "Conservatives" are pretty anti-American these days.

It won't work, but people will still die who did not need to. That's the whole damned point I keep trying to make and why we shouldn't be tolerating this shit.

We have not seen the last of the Unfuckable Dork Brigade.

But don't be surprised if it tries to fund its terrorist efforts with Bitcoin or NFT's. And no, they didn't think that through, either.

But they want you to be the one to pay the price for their stupidity, not themselves.

This bullshit will continue until we put a stop to it.

Divine Wind

Seriously?

The Charge Of The Unfuckable Dork Brigade

See, in Em City, retribution gives way to redemption. Timmy boy believes he can save every one of us, from each other, from ourselves, from the system that dumped us in here. Only thing he don't get is, you gotta want to be saved. ~Augustus Hill, from the HBO series "Oz" (Season One.)

Evil Empire.

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

"If we lose freedom here..."

I keep pounding on this for a fucking reason. These people are telling us, live on TV in real time what they want. They want a closed system, closed cities where only certain people can go, everything being politicized, fortified borders, harassment of dissidents and minorities, Gulags, internal passports, various bullshit "Nationalities" listed on people's ID cards or "papers" and used to cheat certain groups of their rights, and to give those rights to others or to entities that should not have such, and above all, to The Party. 

Ronald Reagan called that the "Evil Empire."

Effectively, what these fucking people want is the Soviet Union, but in America, and wrapped in a Christian Cross and a Stars and Stripes that don't mean anything anymore because it's all about the Cult of Personality around whatever tin-pot dictator happens to be in charge at the moment.

Or more accurately, what they want is the Soviet Union, but with White Conservatives and the wealthy as the members of the Communist Party who get everything while The People...that is, everybody else...are supposed to be happy with cabbages, substandard wages, and not getting shot.

You know, I've met people who got away from countries like that, that type of shit isn't any fun to live with, but you can't tell these fucking people anything.

And seriously, all Alexandria Ocasio Cortez did was apparently take a vacation and visit her Mom, who happens to live in Florida.

Oh, and that's another thing...nothing that happened before These Fucking People came on the scene, and nothing anybody else does, even matters except insofar as how it can be seen as a threat or used as a stick to beat somebody else with. I don't know when AOC's Mom moved to Florida, hell it could've been 10 years ago, and it almost certainly wasn't a political decision.

What bothers me most about modern Republicanism is, you can't just live, everything has to be political. Everything has to be some kind of existential crisis.

I already suffer from depression and shit periodically. I wouldn't survive trapped in that kind of worldview, I barely managed last year as it was.

That doesn't matter to Republicans, to these fucking people everything is a political decision and everything must be viewed through the lens of Trump or whatever "Leader" replaces his ass. Either AOC going to Florida is some kind of a conspiracy against "Conservatives" or it's an example of their beneficence that she wasn't burned at the stake simply for showing up.

Bullshit, this is America, people can go where they want. People can live where they want. This isn't hard. I mean seriously what the hell is wrong with you motherfuckers?

And Republicans lately have been pitching Florida as some kind of "Free State." I mean, what the fuck? 

These people are absolutely in love with the idea of Viktor Orban, the Hungarian dictator-lite who Trump just endorsed in an election that's likely just a formality.

Listen,  Republicans, I don't give a shit what you'd consider a "Free state" and your whole definition of "Freedom" is bullshit.

Besides, I've been to Florida.

Florida has whole regions that are utterly dependent on Federal dollars and if the next BRAC round were to claim Eglin Air Force Base, Pensacola Naval Air Station and Whiting Field, consolidating Air Force testing in California and Naval air training in Texas, a hell of a lot of the Florida Panhandle would look a lot more like a third world shithole than it already does. Ditto for the Space Coast on up to Jacksonville, and so on.

And Florida *Hardly* has some kind of stellar reputation as a conservative place. Hell, except for the Panhandle, Florida isn't even thought of as some kind of right-wing hot zone. Republicans run Florida because of wealthy retirees flocking there and voting Republican, that's all. 

With a lot of help from the fact that until relatively recently the Florida state Democratic Party was run mostly by idiots.

Florida is mostly known for Disney, fading space exploration nostalgia, loose morals and stupid shit (Hello, Florida Man?) old people, tourism and warm weather. And who pays those old people's Social Security checks?

You fuckers need the rest of the country like a fat kid needs cake. "Free state" my fucking ass. 

Republicans basically all see themselves as John Wayne, who wasn't really a tough guy. He just played one on TV. Hell, his name wasn't even really John Wayne and he wasn't the guy he pretended to be, not one damn bit. 

Hell, John Wayne voted for FDR and quit the John Birch Society. I don't think even he'd make it in this political climate, not despite but probably because of the fact that he was one of the main faces of conservative Republicanism for three decades.

Again, and don't forget this, these people have no interest in anything that has gone before. Why else would they act as if America never had a President before Trump?

But they still want to get credit for it as if they do.

It's all bullshit, and increasingly it's not even plausible bullshit. Republicanism now is chock-full of shit that would have horrified even most Republicans 20 years ago, and I say that as somebody who was a Republican 20 years ago. Like endorsing dictators in bullshit elections.

I also keep trying to tell people that without truth, there is no freedom.

If there is no commonly-agreed baseline of facts and reality, who comes up with the best line of bullshit or talks the loudest is who makes the decisions...do you want to live like that, really?

Trouble is, for a quarter of the country, maybe a bit more, the answer to that is "Yes" because they believe the world is that way already and they just want their turn at being in charge and aligned with power. Maybe terrible people who believe everybody else is secretly just as terrible as they are ought not to be trusted to help run a society?

We really need to stop putting up with these people's bullshit.

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

 

Last Stand On Earth (The Marjorie Taylor Greene Post.)

I'm convinced that today the majority of Americans want what those first Americans wanted: A better life for themselves and their children; a minimum of government authority. Very simply, they want to be left alone in peace and safety to take care of the family by earning an honest dollar and putting away some savings. This may not sound too exciting, but there is something magnificent about it. On the farm, on the street corner, in the factory and in the kitchen, millions of us ask nothing more, but certainly nothing less than to live our own lives according to our values — at peace with ourselves, our neighbors and the world. ~Ronald Reagan
 

I saw this last night.

The Twitter feed of some presumably-"Conservative"-run coffee company rooting for America to lose the next war because some NCO who was DM'ing dick pics is in the process of being held accountable.

That shit will get you fired from any workplace in the country, especially the military.

Last I checked, sexual harassment has been considered a serious matter in the military since at least 1991. It certainly was in my day. When I served, sexual harassment training was a thing. And guess what? Bigotry, discrimination, sexual harassment and stuff are all bad for military readiness and unit cohesion. I've sat through stuff like that in any job that I ever had long enough to get used to the schedule.

Tell me something, conservatives, when did we go from "Individual liberty, Limited government and Personal Responsibility" as planks of our ideology to "Bigotry, Hate and Unaccountable Power?"

And preferably unaccountable white male power, at that.

And the further "Right" the better...to the point where these people are looking at fascism in the rear-view.

I'm curious. Answer the fucking question.

When did '"Conservatism" take as its only goal "Absolute power over an illiterate, ravening mob and the elimination of everyone and everything else?"

If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals — if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is. Now, I can't say that I will agree with all the things that the present group who call themselves Libertarians in the sense of a party say, because I think that like in any political movement there are shades, and there are libertarians who are almost over at the point of wanting no government at all or anarchy. I believe there are legitimate government functions. There is a legitimate need in an orderly society for some government to maintain freedom or we will have tyranny by individuals. The strongest man on the block will run the neighborhood. We have government to ensure that we don't each one of us have to carry a club to defend ourselves. But again, I stand on my statement that I think that libertarianism and conservatism are traveling the same path. ~Ronald Reagan

I find it interesting these days how "Conservatives" want...indeed have an absolute hankering for...a system where " tyranny by individuals. The strongest man on the block will run the neighborhood." is the entire basis of everything. And these fucking people's automatic assumption is that person will be themselves.

Like I said before it doesn't work that way.

But you can't tell these fucking people anything.

They seem not to understand that there's people in the world...hell people in the country...who don't know who they are and wouldn't be impressed with their bullshit. Lauren Hoebert doesn't seem to understand that her and the gun bunnies aren't going to be the ones running the neighborhood, or that if the shit ever really does hit the fan she will come face to face with men and women far worse than her most inflated visions of her own toughness. 

I'm a veteran, but I also I spent 25 years working in food service. In both contexts I worked with people from other countries. I've been around a bit myself. I worked with a lot of people who've been to jail in various kitchens too. You figure out, after awhile, who'd make it in the End Of The World or the Purge or the Zombie Apocalypse and who wouldn't. 

Spoiler: It's not the kind of people that "Conservatives" exalt. Being big, bombastic, mean and tough just makes your ass a bigger target for the skinny guy behind you who's holding the knife.

Lauren Blowbert, despite all her tough talk, ain't that person. She couldn't even finish high school for fuck's sake, you're going to try and tell me she has the guts or the follow-through to bring to heel tech companies that will send battalions of lawyers and lobbyists at her and her fellow Congress-people?

We live in a world, for good or ill, where many corporations have just as much money and power as governments do...and I feel like Lauren Q-Bert ain't the Alpha Bitch who'll change that, not for somebody like Donald Trump or Marjorie Taylor Greene...and not when Facebook or Twitter can bust out with a platoon of lawyers and public relations people all pointing to longstanding patterns by these people of violations of the platform's rules.

And seriously, what ever happened to the old idea of "My house, my rules" which I was taught was a basic conservative idea? Let alone rule of law?

If you don't have the power to make your own rules in your own company or your own house without cutting a blanket exception for "Conservatives" what exactly do you have?

I'm pretty sure if you walked into McRib-Bert's restaurant, ordered dinner, ate it and then walked out without paying she'd be the first one to object and call the cops...if not go sprinting after you with her gun to take care of it her own damn self. So, why does she think that Twitter should be any goddamn different?

I'm sick of these motherfuckers demanding some sort of blatant hypocrisy loophole for themselves for basically every-damn-thing while demanding absolute power over others for themselves.

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.

I'm fairly sure when Ronald Reagan said that, he wasn't referring to conservative government, and I think he'd be shocked to find out that that's exactly what its turned into.

Modern "Conservatism" looks suspiciously like Communism, just without anything that helps the common person, like, at all.

And I think not just the Gipper but most of the old gray wrinkly-old-balls Republicans who taught the people of my generation what conservatism was would have some issues with a *Checks Notes* gay far-Leftist who lives in Brazil because he doesn't like America...yes, that's explicitly what Glenn Greenwald is and says he is...echoing the same talking points as somebody (Hell, anybody) who claims to be of their ideological lineage. I can tell you for a fact that the old NRA guy who had the "Charlton Heston Is My President" bumper sticker on his truck would have a few things to say about Glenn Greenwald. I would suggest that it would start with a bunch of anti-gay slurs, probably involve the word "Communism" and end with "Well if he likes it so much in Brazil, he can just stay there." 

I'm not saying it's right. Hell no, what I am saying is that's how it was and certain people were not welcome.

And that distinction wasn't based on color. but conduct...and while I never looked at it that way they would have very much lumped in sexuality with other aspects of personal behavior. I don't know if race wasn't as much of a thing back then or it was just under the radar at the time. I mean, shit, these guys loved them some Black Conservatives. My NRA friend thought Colin Powell should've run for President. These old guys, though? They would think Lauren Blowbert was only good for one thing and that thing would not have been being in Congress. 

Again, I'm not saying it's right. I'm saying that's how it was.

I'm also saying that if you were a conservative and you said in 1996 that America should lose a war because the military had sexual harassment regulations or the State allowed...indeed expected, as a rule...corporations to police their own spaces...you'd have got beat up and thrown out of conservatism on your ass.

These fucking people today? They believe that the only purpose of anything should be to amplify their hate, give them unaccountable power and allow them to take what was earned by others.

You don't have to agree with what conservatives were before all this, you don't have to like it, or how those people conducted themselves. But you should at least know...what I was taught was not this kind of garbage.

Modern "Conservatism" is against pretty much everything even guys like Ronald Reagan ever said. Conservatism these days is anti-American and it's becoming explicitly so, it's anti-Capitalism not out of concern for inequality...but because these people feel that things are not shitty or unequal enough.

They want to be able to do whatever they damn well please, Civilization be damned.

And then make sure that you can't.

These people, these so-called "Conservatives" would take what Ronald Reagan called the "Last stand of freedom on the Earth" and burn it down...for nothing more than personal and political profit.

And if some of these people, like the Tories in the UK or the EU's far-right, get what they want "Last stand of freedom on Earth" won't just be something that Ronald Reagan said in 1964, it may be true in 2024.

And again, all current American "Conservatives" seem to want to do is burn America down so that freedom has no home...in spite of literally decades of declaring that America was the exceptional beacon of freedom in the world...they're the ones who want to burn it down. Not the "Communists" Not the "Left" THEM.

And they're telling us this in real time, every day, thinking there will be no consequences.

But they get mad as all hell when one of their own faces even the slightest consequences for lying about a virus for over a year.

These people's only real ideology is Self and Selfishness.

If you can't stand up against that, what the fuck is wrong with you?

Stop granting these people their hypocrisy loophole and start holding them to account, or we're not going to have America for much longer.

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

Idiocracy 2022. (Yes, we're there.)

Welcome to Carl's Jr. Would you like to try our EXTRA BIG ASS TACO? Now with more MOLECULES! ~Carl's Jr. Computer, Idiocracy.

I saw this last night.

Evidently, a couple of Libertarian Crypto-bros are arguing over fake "Bored Ape Yacht Club" NFT's. Good luck with that, these things are completely unregulated. 

Out of curiosity I did a little research. NFT's...or Non-Fungible Tokens...are essentially bits of data on the Blockchain that people pay money for because something something Gazpacho. Mostly, so far as I can tell they're just shitty artwork. Actually, a lot of them aren't even on the Blockchain, they're just hyperlinks.

If you ask me, this is the apotheosis of Internet Stupidity. 

People are paying money for hyperlinks to stupid shit because they can. Essentially, they're buying nothing as if it's some kind of a status symbol. 

Might as well say you're slicing Air into bite-sized chunks and sell it. Hell, after how yesterday went in general, I'm almost afraid to ask what These Fucking People will think of next. 

Is there a level of humanity dumber than Idiocracy? 

(A friend of mine would probably deadpan answer "Libertarianism" to that. And he's not wrong.)

I think we're there.

[The "Fuddruckers" company's name has changed over the years] Buttfuckers.

~From Idiocracy.

Evidently, conservatives have "Canceled" some guy named Jack Murphy who's some sort of "Alpha Male counselor" because he does gay webcam porn?

Hold on, do people pay for that shit, really?

Like anybody should be surprised when a dude apparently spends that much time on his beard? That said anybody who'd give this dude money is a damn fool to start with, but whatever. I don't care if he does gay stuff, it's not my business. But if your ass was also making a living by saying homophobic shit and that's what these idiots were paying you $100 a month for, I reserve the right to laugh at you.

I don't care if you're gay. It's your behavior that's ridiculous.

I mean seriously, nobody cares about this shit except for "Conservatives" And at this point if you're an LGBT conservative, you're an idiot.

Also, wait a minute, aren't these the people who hate Cancel Culture?

Except when they do it, of course. That's always different.

Joe: Man, I could really go for a Starbucks, you know?

Frito: Yeah, well, I really don't think we have time for a hand job, Joe.

~From Idiocracy.

I mean...what?

Four Seasons Total Escort Service?

I get that Florida is constantly trying to portray itself as some kind of :Conservative" paradise and blah blah blah, but...I mean, Jesus.

Whatever happened to any level of basic respectability?

What the fuck happened to Rudy Giuliani? Time was, dude was America's Mayor, with a real, serious shot at being President and the kind of no-shit reputation that could very well have gotten him there. Now he's...this. At the Mar-a-Lame-Ass New Years Eve party with some girl who looks like she's smiling because she knows how big the paycheck is.

Can somebody try unplugging Conservatism and plugging it back in again? Please?

This shit is ridiculous, and I think last year was bad enough.

Joe: For the last time, I'm pretty sure what's killing the crops is this Brawndo stuff.

Secretary of State: But Brawndo's got what plants crave. It's got electrolytes.

Attorney General: "So wait a minute. What you're saying is that you want us to put water on the crops.

Joe: Yes.

Attorney General: Water. Like out the toilet?

Joe: Well, I mean, it doesn't have to be out of the toilet, but, yeah, that's the idea.

Secretary of State: But Brawndo's got what plants crave.

Attorney General: It's got electrolytes.

Joe: Okay, look. The plants aren't growing, so I'm pretty sure that the Brawndo's not working. Now, I'm no botanist, but I do know that if you put water on plants, they grow. ~From Idiocracy.

Apparently, Republicans are still in pursuit of the mythical massive and somehow permanent Republican majority. And Hobo Rasputin here thinks they'd get it if not for that one guy.

Bitch, there's always going to be "That one guy" and in 2020 you fuckers ran into 81 Million of them.

 

I wonder if Steve Bannon believes in Santa Claus, too?

Republicans, especially Anarcho-Capitalist shits like Bannon, just don't seem to get that people don't like them, their ideas aren't popular and haven't been for a long damned time, mostly because it's been over a decade now since Republicans had any ideas that benefitted anybody other than Republicans.

And I just love how the old Republican credo of Individual liberty, Limited government, and Personal responsibility has been replaced by Bullshit, Excess and Trying to find some magic workaround for basically everything. 

It's become a combination of "Fuck You" and "The dog ate my homework" as a political philosophy.

This is what happens when courage, good sense and morality become things that are expected of other people or only even brought up when they can be used as a stick to beat the other side with. Yes, I've been seeing the right-wing meltdown over AOC going to Florida too. 

Grow the fuck up, people.

If we as a people keep putting up with this silly bullshit, we deserve what we're going to get.

If you want a better country you have to be a better citizen, a better person, and that's not what any of this is.

If you want Freedom, that requires Truth.

Part 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