What Shall It Profit A Man? (Opioids Of The Masses II, Three.)

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive..." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?"

No point mentioning those bats, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas.

...

Follow the Moskva

Down to Gorky Park
Listening to the wind of change
An August summer night
Soldiers passing by

Listening to the wind of change
The world is closing in
Did you ever think
That we could be so close, like brothers

The future's in the air
Can feel it everywhere
Blowing with the wind of change.

~Scorpions, Winds Of Change

I just saw this.

Apparently, a lot of these "Christian Nationalists" don't much like the exposure of their ridiculous bullshit lately from the media...among others. Well, guess what? Too damn bad.

I'm here to tell you that whatever's been exposed in the media, it doesn't even begin to lightly scratch the surface of these fucking people's assorted bullshit and insanity. Mike Johnson likening himself to Moses at some nutty conference?? LOL, I've seen worse and far more glaring narcissism, and I've seen it in far, far humbler circumstances.

My ex-wife thought we were going to have two kids, twins who would be the Two Witnesses of Revelation because something something Gazpacho. Yeah, it was likely some kind of passing 'thing' the product of Pentecostalism and rabid untreated mental illness. She got real mad that I insisted on using condoms after that bit entered the chat. Too bad, even if I would have been crazy enough to get her pregnant there was no way I'd...and I was a Christian myself at the time...have allowed that kind of religious mania to be forced on a goddamned kid. It's just not right.

And these fucking people simply refuse to see stuff like that.

And I'm here to tell you there's a dark underbelly of American Christianity that was full of this kind of garbage 20-25 years ago and I'd imagine it's only gotten worse since. But, now, I'm primarily observing this shit from the outside so I don't imagine I'm getting the full picture. But I can also tell you almost nobody that I knew who was a Christian ten years ago [who isn't also a flaming right-wing political zealot or suffering from raging untreated mental illness, occasionally both] still is one.

Even the assorted nuts that I still have some degree of contact with tend to be more secular and less explicitly "Christian" than they once were...because many have moved on from Christianity to conspiracy theories. Not that that's much of an improvement. It's simply had the effect of kicking Jesus out of His own End Times narrative.

I was surprised, at first, that the war in Israel hasn't sparked a wave of End Times bullshit from these fucking people, but then I realized that there was no way to work in Antivaxxer bullshit, conspiracy theories about the Deep State, or anything to do with Trump...and worse, that a lot of MAGA's actually agreed with the "Far-Left" protesters who were basically demanding Israel's destruction...and that they, Hamas and the Tankies all were in thrall to the same Russian masters anyway.

So yeah, the response I'd expect ain't gonna happen. Not this time.

I'm not going to make any effort to warn Ivan just what he may have gotten himself into by getting into bed with these fucking people. Yeah, I get that the average Russian these days cynically doesn't believe in much at all. But here's the thing...the kind of Evangelical Christians who'd label themselves as a modern day Moses don't cynically believe in nothing. The problem is that they enthusiastically embrace goddamned near everything, so long as it tickles their ears, confirms their confirmation biases and feels agreeable to their social memes. If they can get money, pleasure or recognition from it, so much the better...and they don't really care if the end result even looks much like actual Christianity. In fact, the more cockamamie bullshit they have to spew to make it sound like it is, the better.

(Because cockamamie bullshit and self-glorification and -gratification is their real religion.)

And I'm here to tell you, when these fucking Christian Nationalists and Trumpers and shit break off a piece of America for themselves and it's less an orgy of blood and fire than every liberal and sane conservative in America saying "Bye, whore" (with military operations primarily concerned with getting anybody who wants out, out of their territory, and securing certain bases, cities and resources that cannot be abandoned...not to mention the Inner-American border) and it becomes a Russian satellite state...there's going to be a hell of a lot of young Russian soldiers sent to protect it, to back up the ill-constructed walls and raggedy-assed militias...who find themselves spending the next 20 years or so dealing with ravening insane white girl Pentecostal baby mamas.

Whatever role, if any, that Donald Trump or somebody like him might play in such a situation...I don't think people like Vladimir Putin or most of his oligarchs are going to want to sit through the tedious Evangelical sermonizing from motherfuckers like Mike Johnson.

You know, the shit that they love to enthusiastically claim when among their own, but then deny whenever they face any kind of mixed audience?

I don't think the fucking people on all sides of this damn equation, who want America to burn, have thought ahead far enough to realize sooner or later they're the ones who are going to be stuck with the maniacs they want to use to light all the fires.

You can't reason with this shit, you can only fight it, and attempts to use it tend to eventually blow up in your face. You, me, somebody like Adam Kinzinger, David French or Joe Biden...we might ask "Where does it stop?"

The thing is, with these fucking people...it doesn't. They're like Heroin addicts, but instead of Heroin, what they're fiending for is a particular kind of dopamine hit. And sooner or later...they need a stronger hit to have the same effect.

I mean, if the American neo-feudalists, Catholic "Traditionalists" and Fundamentalist wannabe Pol Pots get their way in some part of this country...they're not going to have anywhere here to invest their ill-gotten gains, and markets in what remains of the US, its allies and most major US trading partners (including China and smaller places like Nigeria and Zambia that are part of China's emerging network) will be closed to them...which means investing the shit in places like Moscow.

Which might well bring in enough money to shore up the Russian economy somewhat, but I'm not sure Uncle Vlad's neo-Soviet system is going to like all the Evangelical Christian fuckery that comes with it.

And it will come, simply because deep down, the crazies childishly cannot wait to tell everybody else how crazy they are...it's just that they're afraid somebody's going to laugh at them or tell them "No" if they can't accrue all the political power and get all the guns first.

And when that shit hits the fan, the Evangelicals are gonna be mad about it, too.

What shall it profit a man? Isn't it funny how these Evangelicals never ask themselves that about their own conduct??

Be careful what you wish for, Comrades, for you may get it.

Two

No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Слава Україна!

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride." ~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

...

Meme

/mēm/

noun

1. an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation.

   • a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc., that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by internet users.

Organic? (Opioids Of The Masses II, Two.)

Why, why, why, why is it that most of the people who are against abortion are people you wouldn't wanna fuck in the first place? Boy, these conservatives are really something, aren't they? They're all in favor of the unborn. They will do anything for the unborn. But once you're born, you're on your own. Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that, they don't want to know about you. They don't want to hear from you. No nothing. No neonatal care, no day care, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you're preborn, you're fine; if you're preschool, you're fucked. Conservatives don't give a shit about you until you reach military age. Then they think you're just fine. Just what they've been looking for. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. Pro-life... pro-life... These people aren't pro-life, they're killing doctors! What kind of pro-life is that? What, they'll do anything they can to save a fetus but if it grows up to be a doctor they just might have to kill it? They're not pro-life. You know what they are? They're anti-woman. Simple as it gets, anti-woman. They don't like them. They don't like women. They believe a woman's primary role is to function as a brood mare for the state. ~George Carlin

...

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride."

~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

So, Time Magazine named Taylor Swift as their "Person of the Year."

And of course, "Conservatives" are getting soggy and hard to light over that, too. Because why not?

Maybe it's just me, but I think we as a society would do pretty damned well to stop giving these fucking people access to political power and collectively tell them to fuck off with their silly bullshit.

I'm not particularly a fan of Taylor Swift, nothing against her, I just stopped keeping up with whatever was "Trendy" a bit over ten years ago, I'll listen to something by her if it comes on the radio or whatever. As I understand it, she's gone from Okay Country Singer to one hell of an artist during her career, and more to the point, she's actually a decent person.

Which means she votes for Democrats, and encourages her fans to do the same.

Which is, of course, what Republicans' real problem with Taylor Swift even is.

A decade ago, in the grip of all that Tea Party madness, far too many Republicans thought decency was for suckers.

Now these fucking people see decency, or anything other than their own bitter jaded cynicism and perversion, as a conspiracy against them, or as some kind of demonic plot, or witchcraft, or what the fuck ever.

Because these fucking people are mental thirteen-year-olds who can't understand that the reason nobody likes them is, well, them.

Seriously who the fuck looks at a priggish douchebag like Stephen Miller and sees anything other than some punk-ass who should've gotten more swirlies in high school, or maybe an ass-whuppin or three from his parents (and as I understand it, Miller's family does not share his shitty politics.) If I'd acted like how I've heard he did in school, well, my Grandma's favorite turn of phrase for repetitive bad behavior (including sustained troublemaking) was "If you keep doing that, I'm gonna beat you all the way to Escanaba."

And repetitive social (let alone political or religious, we just didn't do that kind of shit in my family) douche-baggery in particular tended to bring down the wrath of my Grandpa. Grandpa was a retired Naval Reserve Aviator who'd flown combat missions on active duty in WWII. His personal credo was "Some things are not done in the better places." Pissing off my Grandpa was generally the kind of thing that'd cause him to ruin your day...and usually the next several days after that, for good measure. 

And if he really wanted to, he could do it with turn of phrase alone. That could be even worse than an ass whuppin' because it was usually followed by getting grounded by my Grandma or my Mom and left with all the time in the world to think about it. Shamelessness was not an option, I was told straight up if I wanted to be that way, my Grandma would beat shame right back into me.

I was obviously taught not to suffer fools or foolishness gladly. I was taught things like fascism, people like Nazis or those who would aspire to be Nazis, etc. are not to be debated or entertained, they are to be smashed, and smashed with violence enough that they'll think twice before arising again.

So yeah, the fact that Republican bullshit is being tolerated, at this point, just pisses me off.

I'm tired of it.

I didn't serve in the Air Force so these motherfuckers could steal my country right out from under me 30 years later when I really started to need civilization to be alive.

These fucking people think they have some kind of a bullshit-ass right to ruin shit for everybody else until everybody else just gives up and accepts being ruled over by these motherfuckers, who will then presumably not stop ruining shit...because why should they, if they got us to give up once??

My ancestry is mostly Scandinavian, but I didn't need to read that history to know that once one pays Danegeld, one never gets rid of the Dane.

Remember that these motherfuckers not only basically excommunicated every pre-Trump Republican President...they've basically acted like the United States of America never had a President before Donald Trump slimed his way down that golden escalator. And they act as if that doddering, demented, unhealthy old fool who can't remember who he's running against or who the President of Turkey is, is somehow going to live forever and retain some kind of decision-making capability. Shit, I haven't heard a professing Republican talk about Jesus since about the early spring of 2017 and that's exactly how far down (or up, if you'd rather) the rot goes. It's a fucking cult. Republicanism is a cult that hates America.

More to the point, outside of the numbers of certain corporate executives, Republicans, rich people and the media, it's an extremely damned unpopular cult.

And these motherfuckers have the nerve to say that they think Taylor Swift is "aging" will die alone with her cat??

Bitch, Taylor Swift is dating an NFL player and if that doesn't work out she can always console herself by playing with her cat atop a ginormous pile of money while posting pictures of it on Instagram and basking in the adoration of her extremely large and vocal fanbase.

More to the point, I'll bet you money that when Taylor Swift is 77 years old, she'll still be happy, she'll still have her looks  and she'll have done some constructive things with all that money...unlike Donald Trump. Taylor Swift beats Republicans simply by being herself and existing.

So, naturally, Republicans have to try to make Taylor Swift out to be a Witch or something, lest they have to think about their own shitty life choices.

Like I said, either you believe in freedom or you don't, and she does.

And perhaps more to the point, Taylor Swift is who and what she is because she doesn't base her entire identity on being in possession of political power and unearned wealth at any given moment. I don't know how "Organic" that is or not, but maybe you Republicans should think about that for a second.

Taylor Swift certainly, whatever else she does or doesn't do, seems to understand the value of being a better citizen if she wants a better (or even the same) country to live in.

And in that way, she actually is an object lesson for the rest of us. It's not Witchcraft, it's Citizenship.

Which is of course why these assholes don't understand it, and getting them out is going to be a fight.

Fight the Memeocracy.

Fuck you, Republicans.

If you don't like America, you can leave.

Also, how is worshiping a golden idol of Donald Trump "Organic?"

Bet nobody answers that question.

Слава Україна!

I never trust a narcissist
But they love me
So I play 'em like a violin
And I make it look oh so easy
'Cause for every lie I tell them
They tell me three
This is how the world works
Now all he thinks about is me
I can feel the flames on my skin
Crimson red paint on my lips
If a man talks shit, then I owe him nothing
I don't regret it one bit, 'cause he had it coming
They say I did something bad
Then why's it feel so good?
They say I did something bad
But why's it feel so good?
Most fun I ever had
And I'd do it over and over and over again if I could
It just felt so good, good.

~Taylor Swift, I Did Something Bad

One

Meme

/mēm/

noun

1. 
   an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation.

   • a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc., that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by internet users.

   
   
2. 
   
   

Fight The Memeocracy (Opioids Of The Masses II, One.)

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

...

Follow the Moskva

Down to Gorky Park
Listening to the wind of change
An August summer night
Soldiers passing by

Listening to the wind of change
The world is closing in
Did you ever think
That we could be so close, like brothers

The future's in the air
Can feel it everywhere
Blowing with the wind of change.

~Scorpions, Winds Of Change

I saw this on Threads when I was on break at work last night.

And I'm still like "What the fuck?!?!"

Apparently, in Russia, a bunch of the people who were kids when the Soviet Union was still a thing and went through all that "Young Pioneers" bullshit are establishing...I don't know, the "Old Pioneers" or some shit.

Like what's even the damn point??

I was around in the 1980's. I remember when anybody who could get out of the Soviet Union did...and when anybody who was actually religious (what religion existed in the Soviet Union was heavily infiltrated by the KGB) or held any kind of actual liberal (or what was then considered conservative) political beliefs, or who just plain wanted to be free...wanted to get out.

I've met plenty of former-Soviet immigrants, or their kids, or kids who came over here from those countries to go to college or for work. Hell, when I was in the Air Force, I was deployed to Latvia. Nobody with a brain in their head misses the Soviet Union...or any of the absolute garbage that went with it.

Is this just brain-damaged, mentally-declining Boomers wanted to reenact their childhoods, or what?

I almost can't even imagine it could be anything else.

The Soviet Union wasn't conservative, it wasn't particularly Russian-Nationalist in the way that's popular over there today, and hell the Soviet State was officially Atheist and generally noted (by the rest of the world, anyway) for long bread lines and state-mandated privation and political repression until past the midpoint of the 1980's...and Glasnost and Perestroika didn't really improve things that much because by the end of the decade things fell apart anyway. 

Communism hasn't been a thing since 1989.

The Soviet Union itself finally fell on Christmas of 1991, I graduated from high school the following June.

Within a few years, globally, only backwaters like Cuba and North Korea could still really be considered "Communist" and even Cuba was legit letting things slip, because Soviet aid had ended in 1990-1991 and the Cubans needed money so they could keep on living.

Yet "Conservatives" still fear Communism as the Bogeyman, the Monster Under The Bed, be a good kid or Comrade Stalin is going to eat you...or some shit. Fuck, I don't know. I used to be a Republican and I can't fit my head far enough up my own ass to see these fucking people's point of view.

Mostly, they just seem to think "Communism" is a convenient slur to use against anything they don't like, I think.

While at the same time they're basically up Putin's ass, and he's the guy who's both officially re-Sovietizing Russia and inspiring people to do shit like form the "Old Pioneers" or whatever the fuck they call themselves.

I can't make this shit make sense, except to say that current Republicans no longer believe in freedom, and that as long as Putin's cruel war against Ukraine continues and Russian oligarchs (the ones who remain in good standing with Putin, anyway) get to keep whatever personal property they have, these idiots will tolerate whatever neo-Commie excesses and Soviet-level shenanigans go on over there.

Because to them, totalitarianism is the "Correct" social meme or something something Gazpacho.

I don't get it, but I was a Reaganite conservative and I knew I was out once Sarah Palin was ascendant in the GOP. No one cared about any of that stuff anymore, and it was going to be all about conflict for conflict's sake and winning an argument with things that existed only in these fucking people's swelled heads. 

In fact, it's gotten worse than I ever imagined; human dignity, individual liberty, rights and small government are now basically anathema to these motherfuckers.

Unless you have Billion$ and even then it only matters if you claim the "right" politics or if you feed these fucking people's delusions and egos...then you can claim all that shit that you want. You don't really get to have it, and it's still subject to the whims of the mob and totally contingent on whether or not you can keep saying dumb-enough edge-lord shit online to titillate all these drooling morons...And you, too, will be elbowed out of the way soon because these fucking people simply don't need you anymore. 

In my opinion, Donald Trump should beware, too.

I've noticed that since "MAGA Mike" Johnson to Speaker of the House, all the dumb shit from the last decade or so is dropping off the grid. The YouTube Truck Screamer types are falling out of fashion, even people like Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene have gone from rising stars to on their way out.

And it's the same old Gargamel-looking and Crypt-keeper dusty Church Screamers that are replacing them...effectively, again, if you ask me. In the same way that assholes like Rick Scarborough, having been welcomed into the Republican coalition by Ronald Reagan, displaced us Reaganites in the 1990's and made common cause with adulterous scumbags like Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay. 

Only difference is this time the "Focus On The Family" assholes all have to watch their backs so the "Traditionalist" Catholics don't shank them...and those motherfuckers are held in check only by the fact that their own leadership has said "No," meant it and backed it up by quickly shit-canning those who refused to listen to the Pope.

I'm going to warn you again; Even Donald Trump is disposable.

Don't get me wrong, they want somebody like him, but they want somebody like that who's a bona fide "True Believer" whatever that even means. 

Or at least, somebody who can convincingly play the role...and Trump is not that guy.

And I find it vastly suspicious that these fucking people have no problem with the Russians or with what Russia is turning into again...except that I know from studying this shit, that the mess over there was, in fact, largely created by American "Evangelicals" with a smattering of the same Libertarian economic types and "Social Conservatives" who always turn up to enable fascism.

These fucking people have basically consumed Russia, so of course they're not going to have a problem with it. The started eating the Republican Party 30 years ago and just finally shit out Mike Johnson. Hell even Kevin McCarthy is leaving Congress now. 

They'd love to assimilate America in the same Borg-like fashion, but about 70% of us are saying "No." It's simply not going to happen. We want to be free? We're going to have to fight for it...but if we do, we'll win.

America is a hell of a lot less Christian than it was even 20 years ago, and no small part of that is simply other people have mostly been driven out of the churches by the Political Evangelicals and more recently the MAGA's.

But at the end of the day, even the Evangelicals themselves don't really give a shit about Christianity, either. What they really care about is Power, and it'll be the misfortune of the old Crypt-Keeper looking dudes that they didn't catch on in time. Hell, as far as a lot of these fucking people are concerned if they have to dress up in some Ronald MacDonald-looking "Old Pioneers" costume and sing the praises of Vladimir Putin to get political power, they'll do it.

"Reagan Wept" does not even begin to cover it.

Should add, the only particular social views that American "Evangelicals" and Russian "Old Pioneers" appear to have in common are homophobia and transphobia. How that works with the Three Way "Mom's For Liberty" co-founder, I'll never know, but we need to beware of that shit. You want to see the mess these fuckers would turn the world into? Look at the Republican Party itself, just a bunch of priggish religious fakes, bound together by hypocrisy, and worshiping an Orange Atheist.

Thing is, what they can't do in their own heads is displace the social meme of the "Church" and the Pulpit-Screamer...so what we'll end up with from these fucking people is basically a church dedicated to fetishizing uniformed sameness and screaming at people...and not much else. It's effectively the kind of setup...literally a Church of Hate...that Vladimir Lenin or Joseph Stalin could have only dreamed of to serve as a new "Opiate of the Masses" (I've explicitly warned against this) and both Republicans and Russians are slouching toward that shit on purpose, because they think it's some kind of flex, some kind of "Own" or some way of counting coup against the Rest Of Us.

Fight The Memeocracy, yo.

Fight it like your life depends on it, because it does.

Слава Україна!

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride."

~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press
Last Post

Meme

/mēm/

noun

1. an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation.

   • a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc., that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by internet users.

   
   

Red Guards (Sick, Three.)

Yesterday you came to lift me up

As light as straw and brittle as a bird
Today I weigh less than a shadow on the wall
Just one more whisper of a voice unheard

Tomorrow leave the windows open
As fear grows please hold me in your arms
Won't you help me if you can to shake this anger?
I need your gentle hands to keep me calm

'Cause I never thought I'd lose
I only thought I'd win
I never dreamed I'd feel this fire beneath my skin
I can't believe you love me
I never thought you'd come
I guess I misjudged love between a father and his son. ~Elton John, The Last Song

...

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

Yesterday, I saw this, but I was out at my Mom's so I didn't get a chance to write about it yesterday.

Police in Moscow raided gay bars after the Russian supreme court labeled the "Global LGBT movement" as extremists. 

I started out as a conservative, way back in the Reagan years. Do me a favor, and don't ever try to tell me how Russia is "Conservative" ever again. This isn't *Individual Liberty* or "Limited Government" let alone self-governance in any fashion what the fuck ever.

This is the State, telling people who they can fuck, because LGBT people don't generate enough bodies to feed into the war machine...and on that same note, don't ever even try to tell me that Americans or the US Government are "War Mongers" ever again, because Putin is literally restructuring Russian society in such a way that the rest of it feeds the goddamned 2nd Edition of the Red Army, in apparent anticipation of a permanent state of war despite (or perhaps simply because of) the Russian Army's failure to conquer Ukraine.

This is the kind of future "Conservatives" want. And if you think it'll stop with the gay people, you have another thing coming. I think once they get all or most of the Afro-Russians, Jews and LGBT people to leave, it's gonna get a lot harder to leave Russia.

If Putin somehow turns that around...or, far more likely, simply gets bored with the effort and redirects it towards an occupation of Belarus (Which he likely suspects their government might not resist, but the people will) or other former Soviet states...many of which are, for survival's sake, shifting their allegiances towards the West only because they know what's coming. 

And they're preparing. Oh yes, they are.

If Putin wants to try and recreate the Soviet Union outside of Russia he's gonna need a lot more meat to throw into the grinder. And that's well before he tries to take on Poland, for example, he's gonna need a lot more bodies. Aside from Ukraine, In recent years, Azerbaijan for example has allied itself with Turkey (that was a thing well before the Ukraine situation) and Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan have all made efforts to strengthen ties with the EU and NATO...and in the case of the last two, this includes increasing amounts of purchases of Western weapons, also. 

It seems like aside from American Republicans and Hungarian followers of Viktor Orban, nobody...including a lot of Russians...really wants to be Russian all that bad. 

And that was before Putin's apparent effort to recreate the New Soviet Man got started.

So now Russia is banning abortion and "encouraging" families to have more than 8 children. Mind you, Russia is already (has always been, by comparison to the West) a poverty-ridden 18th Century shithole. Want to take a stab at how that works out with worse economic metrics, less technology and worse medical care?? Russia is a sick society, and Red America wants to emulate that crap? Make it make sense, because I fucking can't do it.

I strongly suspect Putin, somewhere, is being egged on by some of these new New Right weirdos and that, shall we say, there's likely to be a lot of unintended consequences of this bullshit. Also, none of them will be good, for anybody.

It's like these fucking people see that their efforts to create some kind of global alt-Right Nazi empire centered on places like Dubai and Moscow are just straight-up failing, so they want to breed Russians into some kind of mass human-wave assault and when that doesn't work either...because people are people and tend not to want to be cannon fodder for the mad schemes of others...they'll try and use all these surplus Russians as a global cheap-labor underclass to enrich themselves and they won't have to hire Latinos to do their hard labor. Pro Tip, fellas. Russians are "White People" and won't do that shit either.

Then, these fools will try and keep them tamed by promoting a certain kind of Christianity and bullshit social conservatism.

Of course, when the people driving this manure wagon don't understand that the armored knight started to fall by the wayside with the invention of the Longbow, and was finished off by the invention of the Black Powder firearm and the pike and because it was just plain easier to throw mobs of illiterate peasants at each other while staying out of the fighting their own damn selves...like an early version Russian and Ukrainian armies lobbing volleys of drones at each other's vital points today...that shit was all over.

These fucking people don't understand the world their ancestors lived in, let alone our own, and it's often willfully so.

90% of Evangelical Christians don't know the answer to a simple, basic-knowledge question like "Who was Martin Luther" and as regards Traditionalist Catholics those numbers only improve among the very well educated. But yeah, tell me how these fucking people, with their fertility cults and folk religions all nominally under the aegis of "Christian" churches are going to somehow create a Christian theocratic monarchy in even the remains of a nation quite literally founded in rejection of Monarchy and based on a secular Constitution.

One of these things is simply not like the other one. I don't know how these fucking people don't understand this.

Most of these fucking people don't even know what they're asking for, let alone how to get from Point A to Point B, because most of them don't even understand what those two things are.

They just want somebody to wave a magic wand and make all the stuff that annoys them go away, and the last thing they even want to understand is that, as such things are actually defined neither Christianity nor conservatism is the cure-all these idiots think it is. Hell, conservatism should be about trying to maintain the society we already have...because that's what the philosophy even means. "Things as they are" doesn't mean you get to get rid of all the Black people or all the gay people because they're already a part of society and the ancestors you claim to revere so much were the ones who even made that decision. 

But no, because this shit has been dumbed down to the point of ridiculous by fools who are moral bottomless pits, we've got a bunch of dumb motherfuckers who think "Conservatism" means they have some kind of "Right" to destroy civilization and rebuild it in their own demented images.

This is America, and none of this works that way.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

If you want a better country, you have to be a better citizen...and this ain't it.

If you really think that Christianity or conservatism means things like that government gets to abuse and bully gay people at the behest of the mob or that Putin or Trump are somehow gods or that Unga Bunga witchcraft bullshit isn't Unga Bunga witchcraft bullshit because you allegedly slap the name "Jesus" somewhere in there, yes, you really do deserve the hell you're going to go to.

And it's as simple as that. These people are going to destroy themselves with their own wannabe Cultural Revolution, because they don't know how anything works...or want to. They don't know or never learned that once the Red Guards got a taste for blood, they could never be satisfied. You fuckers make Trump your "god" and you'll deserve exactly what you're going to get...and yes, the Revolution will eat you first.

Слава Україна!

Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth,

Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is his name: ~Amos 5:7-8

Two

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride."

~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

Black Magic (Sick, Two.)

 Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth,

Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is his name: ~Amos 5:7-8

...

I coulda swore I seen the motherfucker in my cell, goin' through my personal effects

He fingers, fingering my cigarettes
Came out like nothing was happening whistling he tune!
So I mushed his ass, like, "Move, motherfucker, make room!"
"Hey, ain't that my cigarette hanging off the tip of yo' lip?"
Didn't even give him a chance for he confession
Just leveled his ass with all that aggression!
Lefts, rights, to the dolex
Foots to the chest
Uppercuts to the grill
I'm like "Kill!"
He's like "Chill!"
Take that for me even bein' in this place
Take that for that fuckin' CO baton across my face
Feel that for that lawyer who don't give two fucks about me!
And feel this, feel this! 

For me being enslaved by poverty! 

Motherfucker
Gimme them damn cigarettes
Oh, wait, these is Marlboros
I don't smoke these.

~Arnold "Poet" Jackson, from the HBO Series "Oz" S1, E1 "The Routine."

Last night, I saw that Christian Ziegler, the Florida GOP Chairman, and his wife Bridget...herself a "Moms For Liberty" co-founder, are being investigated for sexual battery because of allegations made by another woman in a situation apparently involving a longtime menage-a-trois relationship.

I've been telling you all for years, all this "Christian" and "Conservative" fear and hate concerning matters of sexuality is nothing but projection. Look, I don't give a damn if a "Moms For Liberty" co-founder is LGBT...I very much do give a damn that she's all about marginalizing and victimizing people who she's just like for nothing but political power of the most base and shitty kind. That absolutely does offend me. Sexuality isn't a valid excuse or reason to hurt people and that goes double when you are yourself the kind of person you like to abuse and hurt.

Oh, and on a side note, George Santos got shit-canned from Congress today. Seriously, was he even gay? Was his name even George Santos? Nobody ever satisfactorily answered my question "Who is George Santos?"

Oh well, I guess I'll never know. Bye, Whore.

And the thing is, Santos' sexuality had nothing to do with it, for me. It's simply the fact that every word out of his mouth is a lie.

You can...or, in a sane conservative party, in a sane world, you should be able to...perfectly damned well be conservative and even religious and still be LGBT. 

Jesus didn't say one damned word about LGBT people...and well He should not have, because modern concepts of sexuality (let alone the priggish Fundamentalist fear and hate of anything to do with sex) didn't quite exist yet at the time. One hell of a lot of people in the Ancient World were at least situationally bisexual...particularly in the Greco-Roman culture of the Roman Empire's Hellenized East. 

Yes, the Platonic horseshit that was the basis of all this modern crap was there, among the upper classes it was quite popular. But, it hadn't been so massively dumbed down or spread to the masses just yet. 

That took a couple hundred more years of Christianity...and then on top of that, Christianity being suddenly backed by the Empire.

Funny how that works, isn't it? Apparently, you cannot both have Empire and actually be like Jesus. One of these things is not like the other one. The fucking people who think Revelation is their revenge fantasy are, ultimately, the ones who will find themselves subject to it in all the worst ways.

I have no sympathy when these fucking people who think their politics, their religion, their station in life or their wealth...or even just some bullshit idea that they have the "Right" beliefs...give them some kind of right to abuse, hurt, kill or lie to others...and then all their bullshit blows up in their faces. 

Usually after they appoint themselves "Apostles" and proceed to ruin Christianity for millions of people for their own profits.

Seriously, fuck these motherfuckers. Almost nobody that I know who was a devout Christian ten years ago who wasn't also some kind of conspiracy theorist or right-wing political zealot is even Christian anymore...and even a fair number of those who are, who haven't gone full-MAGA, are not nearly what they once were. And it's These Fucking People who think dudes like Donald Trump or Mike Johnson are "Prophetic" are the reason why that is so.

Because for Those Fucking People it was never about Christianity. If open worship of demons and devils got them the same emotional charge or the same level of political power as loudly and publicly getting the Jesus, they'd do it. If throwing babies onto a burning altar of Moloch got them the same level of Power that the anti-abortion crap did, they'd do that, instead. If having open orgies with all genders and sexes in the Temple of Bacchus got them the same secret thrill inside as having a 3-way with their husband and another woman while they were publicly pushing virulent and violent anti-gay shit on everybody else did...they'd do that, too.

Because it's not about anything to these fucking people, except personal power and feeling "Special."

And they don't care if that leads to the effective atomization of entire societies into nothing more than large collections of individuals all trying to fuck each other over.

They could give a shit if this crap results in devastating wars, all for one man's ego.

Right-wing America in particular is a Sick society.

And these fucking people, at this point, believe far more in Black Magic and that they have some kind of ability to find the right words to say to unlock infinite magical powers for themselves than they do...or ever did...in Jesus Christ.

And in a way, they're almost right, because this crap gives them an almost magical power over at least 25% of the population...and maybe another five or ten percent will play along if they think they might get something out of it.

Stop trying to appeal to the better nature of, or reach the rationality of people who believe in Magic. They don't have any such thing, that's the whole reason they're trying to unlock some secret code to try and cheat the Universe. That's why all their movements are powered by evil and hypocrisy!

You can't engage with that shit, you have to beat its ass, lauch HIMARS rockets at it, outvote it, straight up overpower it the old fashioned way and then the only way you get rid of it, long-term, is to make these fucking people's kids go to school (and not their own kind, either) with that Other their parents hate. You have to center the culture on getting rid of this crap, and then expect it'll still try and pop up every once in awhile.

These fucking people's ultimate goal isn't fascism, it's feudalism...these motherfuckers want to live in the Dark Ages, per what those were like in Western Europe...and they all think they're going to get to be the debased nobles who get to have 3-ways in a soft bed and shit and live delicious lives of debauched wealth while some priest and a dude with a sword enforce dour religiosity and harsh work schedules on the peasants outside the castle walls, and then make sure those same peasants have shitty enough lives that they're grateful for a pile of straw to sleep on and potatoes to eat.

(You don't think they've glommed on to following after the Russians for some good faith reason, do you?)

And people who want that crap don't care how they have to debase themselves or what kind of golden idols they have to worship to make it so.

America was founded on the rejection of Feudalism. We're citizens, not peasants or serfs. We don't have Nobles (Constitutionally, they're banned.) We elect our leaders, for good or ill.

You have to be a better citizen, and ultimately you have to stop tolerating those who desire to be serfs.

But Americans are not Slaves of the Caesars, remember that.

There's going to be a test, soon.

Слава Україна!

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

One

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride."

~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press