Through A Glass Darkly...

1 Corinthians 13:12King James Version (KJV)

12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

 My friend Aaron as a theory "This wasn't an election, it was a 'Going out of business' sale for the Baby Boomers." So, basically, fear of death is what's driving this whole Trump thing. 

I've been considering this since he said it last week.

An awful lot of the human drive regarding religion is the struggle with death, acceptance (Buddhism and Hinduism, along with many other Eastern traditions) avoidance (Rapture-believing Christians) control/martyrdom (Early Christians and today's Fundamentalist Muslims) and transcendence (Christianity, Judaism, most Muslims) being the most common responses. There are other answers to this dilemma, but that's what came to mind right now.

Much has been said about conservative and Evangelical Christian support for Trump, but the simple fact is that most of the people I know who fall into those demographics is that they might claim the label, but they fall short of fulfilling the meanings of those words. Most of the Christians I know who support Trump seem to be the kind who regard Christianity as little more than their tribal identity, or worse as a framework on which to hang all the stuff they want to do anyway. Add to that, that modern American Evangelical/Fundamentalist Christianity is basically the gospel of "Fuck you, I've got mine" and there you go.

Not all people who follow those forms of Christianity are that way, but a lot of the ones I've met are, and that's the truth.

For seven years, I was a staff member on a forum for ex-Pentecostals and ex-Fundamentalists, and an awful lot of people at one time or another spoke of fear of death, or of a dying relative's fear of death. Well, my answer to that is, if you think God is some kind of cosmic bully who's just waiting for a chance to send people to hell...and so, you fear death...then that's YOUR problem.

I was not taught that way.

Of course, an awful lot of the same people will tell you in the next breath that they think we're living in/near the End Times and Jesus is going to come back and the Rapture will occur and they'll all get teleported up to Heaven (without the inconvenience of, ya know, death) and get to watch the rest of us suffer for the next seven years.

Does any of this sound fucked up to you yet? 'Cause it sure did to me the first time I heard it. 

The doctrine of the Rapture was invented by a British nut job theologian named John Nelson Darby, and popularized in the United States by an Alcoholic former Confederate soldier (and, for the record, deserter) named Cyrus Ingersoll Schofield. If this sounds like some kind of 19th Century equivalent to Duck Dynasty, well it pretty much is, just without the ducks, and with some financial and political scandals and crazy religious bullshit thrown in.

America has always had a thing for cranks, and that fucking guy was no exception.

In any case, in the latter half of the 20th Century his doctrine of the Rapture became the great hope of those who were seeking to avoid death. In 1996, after some bad things happened in my life, I became a member of the End Times Prophecy movement. I have to say though, that I never really bought into all the Rapture stuff. Probably, this is because I was raised as a mainstream Christian and that doctrine is not a part of mainstream Christianity. In any case, my affiliation with that movement died off in early 2000 when the Apocalypse failed to materialize. I wasn't going to move the goalposts or look for the next big thing, I was just done with it all.

But, a lot of people weren't. Interest did more or less die off for a while, but then 9/11 happened and inflamed these people's imaginations again and they've not looked back since. I remember all sorts of religious craziness in the days immediately following the attacks. Oh yeah, and I heard ALL about it from my ex-wife, who was convinced that this was some kind of major event on the prophetic timeline.

Funny thing, but now I hear the Daesh are saying the same thing about Donald Trump's attempted Muslim ban...which they think of as a blessed event. While the rest of the world reacts with anger and confusion and rage and legal wranglings and court orders, they sit back and chuckle at the human suffering because it'll prove their "point" and net them a few more recruits for their imagined holy war against the West. (How they view it that way when they are mostly killing other Muslims, I'm not sure I understand. But, like with the Trump Supporters...I cannot fit my head far enough up my own ass to see their point of view.)

If we don't get a handle on it, if we don't overcome our fears, they will kill us.

Fear of the other, fear of Black people, of Brown people, of gay people, people of other religions, you name it. People say all type of dumb shit about the people they're afraid of...and of course very little of it is true. But then, if somebody has never been further than a hundred miles from home and watches FOX News all the time, how would they know? right?

We as a nation used to have an antidote for that kind of backwardness and a cure for that kind of fear, a guy would get drafted and probably sent to some other part of the world for a couple of years. Hell, long after THAT went away, when I was growing up in my small Northern Michigan hometown, most people my age couldn't wait to leave there and go out into the world and DO something.

I'm not sure what the hell changed, except that fear became more socially acceptable and 24-hour news cycles had to talk about something, so they went with shitty negative stuff. Fuck, I can remember when PBS and a couple of other local channels went off the air at Midnight and when the only thing on after Johnny Carson and David Letterman was bad reruns on the regular TV channels.

Truth be told, I kind of miss those days, I work third shift and I get really tired of some of the shit we get treated to on the break room TV's by CNN, FOX News and the damned infomercials, but hey, that's just me, and I can't hear Tucker Carlson speak without wanting to punch him right in the mouth so he's got something other than that smug sneer on his face for a while. I get a bad vibe from that guy...even Bill O'Reilly or Glenn Beck did not set me off like he does.

Get the fear merchants and the haters off the air, and I bet a lot of this shit calms down...

But even if they never do, let me explain what the real problem here is.

It's not Black Lives Matter or the Liberals or the Mexicans or the Muslims or Obama or whatever the Bogeyman of the week is, if you're a conservative.

Hell, for ya'll liberals the problem really isn't Trump, or the Republicans, or Hillary or Both Parties Are The Same, Man. 

It all comes down to fear, ultimately, fear of change, and fear of death.

Well, the idea of gradual change got rejected by a well-placed minority of those who bothered to vote, so now we're in for massive, uncontrolled change and whether we will even survive it as a whole country, none can say.

That said, overcome your fear. There's a reason I chose the verse that I did as a header.

Look, people, we're all going to die. Whether death comes by economic chaos, social collapse and war or simply by old age after a nice long, comfortable life, we're all going to die.

Death is the great equalizer.

You could, theoretically, destroy every threat or thing you see as a threat...

But when you are alone, and there's nobody else around, and it's just you and that bathroom mirror...

For most of us, at least people my age, that's when a little honest self-reflection is usually a requirement. When nobody else is around is when shit gets to you.

The simple fact is, eliminate all outside threats, and then you'll fear the mirror.

I don't see a lot of things around myself as threats, but then I wasn't taught to be afraid of everything either.

I still gotta look at my aging face and whitening beard every damned night before I go to work.

I'm going to die, eventually, and I'm just fine with that. No outside force, no God, no medical procedure, and no politician, will ever be able to prevent it. Nor would I want them to.

Death is that door we all have to walk through in order to reach Eternity, and we're all just travelers here.  To love this life too much is to risk spiritual death. When you're dead, nobody in the afterlife is going to care how much money you have. What determines where you go after you're dead is what you DO in this life.

I want to see how it ends, and if I have to die to reach that point so be it, when that time comes we're supposed to be ready, that's all.

What we do in life, echoes in eternity. ~Maximus Decimus Meridius, Gladiator.

Inglorious Basterd.

So, on Friday, during the protests of the Trump inauguration, this happened:

Whoever you are, as the grandson of World War II Veterans, I'd like to say thank you, from the bottom of my heart. Nazi punching damned well ought to be our new national sport.

Yours is a damned masterpiece, you Inglorious Basterd, (And damn it, people, if any of you haven't seen that movie you need to. That's your homework for the week.)

Below is my article about Richard Spencer from last November. The original was viewed over two thousand times. Please, Know that I would not change a single word:
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And the Lord saith unto Richard; "The fuck is even wrong with you, man?"

I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou were cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: ~Revelation 3:15-17

So this afternoon (Yesterday now, as this was written on breaks at work and edited when I got home) Mo, my roommate, was watching News One Now on TV One as he often does. The host of the show,..which is a news show geared toward the Black community...Rowland Martin, had Alt-Right Nazi Richard Spencer on the show to interview him. For the record, Richard Spencer looks like the mutant love-child of Trey Gowdy and Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase's character from the Vacation movies) with a shitty Civvie high-and-tight haircut.

Also, he looks like a dude I wouldn't buy a used car from, but I digress.

I have to admit this was the first time I'd ever actually heard the man speak aside from the speeches he gave in Washington D.C. last weekend. I have to confess I was pretty shocked that anybody ever thought this nebbish of a man, who seemed to stumble through answering any questions regarding his beliefs when put on the spot, man-to-man, actually amounted to anything.

After a few minutes of watching this dude stumble through trying to deny that he was a White Supremacist and shit, and repeatedly claiming that Slavery was a "Disaster," (If so, then what exactly was all this racist shit ever about?) I was ready to walk away, me and Mo were laughing at this asshole.

Then Rowland Martin asked him a question, straight up "Are you a Christian?"

I stopped like I'd hit an invisible wall, hard. Rowland Martin is a Christian and vocally so, I've been watching his show since I've lived here, and I moved here in May of 2015.

Spencer's answer? "I'm a cultural Christian." (?!?!?!?!?!)

My thought process: Fucking SERIOUSLY? (!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

See, here's the thing: I was raised in the Church. To call someone a cultural Christian is basically to say that they are a person who goes to church because it's what people in their culture do, and they don't REALLY believe in Jesus.

This is, all too often, a way of de-legitimizing the Christianity of others (particularly when said of Catholics by Protestants.) In other words, it's NOT a label anybody who knows what they're talking about or who knows church culture or knows anything about American Christianity would actually claim. It's basically a very backbiting, backhanded insult to call somebody a "Cultural Christian."

I repeat: No one who knows what that label means will claim it.

Rowland's next question was even more direct: "Are you Saved?"

Spencer's answer? "I have been." (????)

I imagine Jesus, the Jewish carpenter and itinerant Rabbi from Galilee, somewhere on the Other Side watching this like: "What the FUCK is even WRONG with this guy?"

According to what I was taught, you're either saved or you're not. No middle of the road, no half-measures, you either accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior who died for your sins or you don't. Thus, you're either cold or you're hot...because if you're Lukewarm, He is going to spit you out. Yet, automatically, Spencer equivocates.

...And that makes him weak.

All this followed by more mumbling, stumbling, and various excuses. This guy literally sounds like he's making excuses for his bullshit beliefs. Hey, we're the polite Nazis...at least to your face.

Lifelong student of WWII history that I am, I can't imagine members of the Waffen-SS, captured by the Soviets and put on some radio program by the party to be interviewed and confess their sins against the State at gunpoint, sitting there making excuses.

If you're going to be a flaming ridiculous shithead, at least have the guts to fucking own it.

But he can't, can he, because then he's just another Nazi and most of us know what the proper thing to do with Nazis is, don't we? For pretty much all of my life until this last week or so, the only good Nazis were dead ones.

But, here you have this dissembling coward, this Fascistic Mr, Rogers, dancing around any direct question of what he is...because he is afraid, because he is a Deceiver, because he is a manipulator. That's all he's got...manipulation.

Damned few people, especially anybody with any decency or intelligence, want to be a fucking Nazi.

But that's what he is...and he's afraid to own it or say so to your face. Oh sure, he'll pose doing the Sig Heil two-step, drink in hand, with his buddies (who seem to include bisexual Asian porn star Tila Tequila, apparently) and he'll shout "Heil the people, Heil Victory!" in front of a crowd of like-minded young punk-ass motherfuckers, most of whom are a felony conviction or two away from providing non-consensual sexual services to actual Aryan Brotherhood gang members in Federal prisons, by the look of them.

Richard Spencer is afraid to own what he is, in front of people like you and me, and he has to pretend there is such a thing as a reasonable Nazi, because on some level he knows he's morally wrong, unsaved, and afraid to die. He knows that death or reform of one's nature is the only acceptable end for Nazis. He's afraid of death because like anybody else in Western Civilization...he knows at least the basics of what the Holy Books say:

This is what the Word says on these matters:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. ~Galatians 3:28

The teachings of our Muslim brothers and sisters say thus...

O people, We have created you male and female and made you nations and tribes that you may know one another. Verily, the most noble of you to Allah is the most righteous of you. Verily, Allah is knowing and aware.

Surat Al-Hujurat 49:13

We have certainly honored the children of Adam and carried them on the land and sea and provided for them of the good things and preferred them over much of what We have created, with definite preference.

Surat Al-Isra 17:70

...And on some level this dude knows God is watching. See, Richard Spencer thinks he's right and God...or at least his version of it...is with him. Why else would he try to call white people the "Children of the Sun" and say we are a race of conquerors? It's not just you and me he's trying to fool...this motherfucker is trying to lie to God.

That's some balls, there, I'll give him that much. Motherfucker.

But strong delusions do that to people. I was taught we were children of the Son...of God, that is. And of the Father, and of the Holy Spirit.

Not that flaming ball of plasma in the center of our Solar System...but the Creator. Not the Created.

Now, here's the thing: For those who believe in and practice Righteousness and truth...whether they be Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Pagan, Sikh or whatever...there's your opening. There's your shot at dealing with this thing. The Truth of the divine conversation, as you understand it, is the weapon your hands and your heart may wield most effectively...and if used properly it can destroy any delusion or illusion. People like Mohandas K. Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela knew this...and used it well. 

Now pick it up and fight. Wield the light of Truth, and the sword of the spirit, to paraphrase what the Bible says, put on whatever armor your God gives you...or none at all but your own resolute conviction...and stop putting up with this bullshit.

You might not get anywhere with these Nazi assholes, but you can help prevent them from spreading their bullshit beliefs. YOU can show that you...we...humanity in general is better than that...and this guy's beliefs are nothing but a hologram of his own creation.

People like Richard Spencer thrive in the darkness, like cockroaches. Always remember, darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Let your light shine, be active, blog, get involved, protest, volunteer...and when...not if but when...the time comes...FIGHT! Do it, and do it until you die. We have to keep at it and we have to keep at it until justice rains down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream!

Amos 5:24(King James Version)

But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.

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I'm pretty sure even Jesus would bitch slap this motherfucker.

Addendum: I just saw this:

“I’m afraid this is going to become the meme to end all memes,” he said. “That I’m going to hate watching this.” ~Richard Spencer

Glad to be of service, sir, and I'll cheerfully wish you many more ass whuppins in the future. Maybe if you'd gotten a few ass whuppins as a kid you wouldn't be a goddamned Nazi.

If we ever meet, expect you'll get another one. I've been saying "Bring back the ass whuppin' for a decade now; And people like you are why.

Fuck you,
Signed, the Mustelid Liberation Front, Commanding Officer.

America: Nation of the Self.

As I begin to write this, the final minutes of Barack Obama's presidency are ticking away. By the time I'm done we'll be looking at a new era, for what it's worth.

As I sit here, surrounded by prancing and wrestling ferrets, I find myself worried about our future. There have already been a few violent incidents according to what I've seen on my Facebook and Twitter feeds. As I have said, been saying since before the election had even been decided...and for more than a decade, I worry that the partisan divide in this country has become too deep and this whole mess might just come flying apart like one of Wile E. Coyote's Rube Goldberg inventions when he fails to catch the Road Runner. 

Perhaps more to the point, idiot Republicans won't care as long as they end up in control of a good-sized chunk of land, with enough weapons to protect themselves.

Last night I bitched out one of my co-workers and gave him a profanity-laced quick lesson in basic economics and morality when he (who has been anti-Trump until, evidently, yesterday) was all the sudden like "Come on, give Trump a chance!" 

Evidently he got his 401 (K) statement in the mail and his stocks are up. I had to explain to him that the stock market hasn't been a real indicator of economic...well, anything...since the 1980's when all the deregulation started. I had to explain to him that my dislike of Trump has been a thing since 1989 and  has one hell of a lot more to do with adultery, bankruptcy, divorce and racism than it does today's politics. In terms of politics it's not even Trump, it's the Republican Party's stated desire to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, gut Social Security and privatize Medicare, and with issues of LGBT rights, preservation of our National Parks, and racism. They are wrong, morally wrong, and they know it or they wouldn't be running away from their constituents. I explained to him that my Mom, who is retiring in April...needs all of that stuff. I also had to point out to him that he's a grown ass man in his late 50's and if I have to explain to him why he should care about other people, this conversation is probably going to end the same way it did when my Mom taught me that...when I was about one-tenth of his age. (Hint: The end of that conversation involved a Yard Stick.) Worse, supposedly this guy is a Navy veteran, and he doesn't seem to understand the concept that respect is earned and one's Word has to be good? Some corporation waves a little money under his nose, and suddenly, no principles? There's some words for people like that...

Selfishness, pure and simple, as another co-worker pointed out after the first one scuttled away.

How did we get here?

Well, it goes all the way back to the beginning of this country. 

Now, most apolitical, liberal, and indeed many conservative Americans think of the beginnings of the United States of America as the Boston Massacre, Lexington and Concord, the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War.

That's the De Jure beginning of us, yes. For a lot of us, often the best of us, that's our starting point.

However, for a large subset of American conservatives and apolitical types, and a much smaller slice of the liberal population (usually the part that's more Utopian in thinking) that's not the case. We have a different De Facto beginning:

The real story of us, for those people, for greedy bastards, religious nuts, and Utopian social reformers alike...begins with the Pilgrims, and is remembered yearly in the holiday of Thanksgiving.

(On the liberal...for the time, anyway...end of it, these are also the wonderful people that brought us Prohibition. You do the math.)

To make a long story short, Puritan Calvinists from England came over here and established a colony at Plymouth, and then proceeded to nearly be wiped out by disease and a hard winter. So, in March of 1622 the colonists signed a peace treaty with Massassoit, principal chief of the Wampanoag people. This is the exact event we celebrate in November. The Pilgrims are presented as being models of Calvinistic Christian piety, hard work, perseverance and thrift. They leave the bloody bits out when you're a kid. Most of the time they don't teach about diseases, people freezing to death, rumors of cannibalism and the fact that the only thing that prevented a war at that time was that *Both* Native and Pilgrim societies had been devastated by disease (mostly transmitted via travelers from what is now Nova Scotia thanks to contact with the French) and hard conditions (with the added pressures of recent wars and Mik'Maq raiders from what is today the Canadian maritime provinces on the Wampanoag side before Europeans arrived in the area.) What they don't tell you is that almost 40 years later, shortly after Massassoit died (of old age) relations between the two peoples got really bad, really fast until under Metacomet (King Philip) the Wampanoag rose up against the colonists and fought a bloody war, in which they were defeated having suffered about twice the losses that the colonists did. (Be aware that by this time there were many more Europeans than Native folks) and in the aftermath, by means of cultural assimilation, enslavement, and more war, the Natives were almost exterminated.

Today, about 2,000 Wampanoag people are enrolled as members of two Federally-recognized bands or tribes. Not much left of what, to hear the average Elementary school teacher tell it, was a noble and proud traditional culture, eh?

How is this Okay?

One word: Calvinism.

Calvinism, in a nutshell, is "Fuck You, I've got mine" Christianized.

The basic theology of Calvinism follows:

Total Depravity of Man: Humans are basically Evil, and can do nothing about it, because God, that's why. Unless...

Unconditional Election: ...You're actually Not Evil, again, because God. That's why. Technically, through...

Limited Atonement: ...Jesus dying a bloody and horrible death so your wretched, sinful ass could go to Heaven, because of His...

Irresistible Grace: Yep, and even if you're cursed to grow up among these people with enough empathy to worry about what might happen to all those inconvenient other people, there's not a damned thing you can do about it. This is also the basis for that uniquely American idea of "Once Saved, Always Saved." Which again, basically says you can do whatever you want, because Jesus and the..

Perseverance of the Saints: Because God is Sovereign and cannot be frustrated by Human actions and (according to this mentality anyway) only follows His own rules (as set forth in the Bible) or expects Humans to follow them when it's convenient.

Gee, when I put it like that...well, it certainly explains modern American Christianity and who the Evangelicals voted for, doesn't it? Calvinism (now mostly known today as Reformed Theology here in the United States) often brings with it a veneration of Capitalism and the Wealthy, because money and secular power are an easy metric to measure people by (and in these days, these fucking people often don't read their own Bibles.)

Now, I've known a few decent and logical Calvinists, but most of the ones I've met have been religious nuts and/or single issue fanatics, infamously, in South Africa the racist philosophy of Apartheid was inspired by Calvinism. It was in fact originally implemented by Daniel Francois Malan, who before becoming Prime Minister of South Africa, had been a Calvinist (Dutch Reformed) Minister. In my own life, I still remember a guy who posted several long rants on ChristianBBS back in 2003 fervidly advocating the burning of homosexuals over the course of several days and becoming the only Fundamentalist Christian I ever heard of being banned from that place. The bar on that forum was set so famously low (and the Admins could be counted on to be in the tank for the promotion of things like homophobia) that he was basically banned only because hundreds of people including long-time members and site contributors complained.

The worst part is, my bastardized, from-memory synopsis probably required more thought than the average Disco Ball Megachurch Evangelical ever puts into their religion. (That said, before the infamous incident previously mentioned I'd had some fierce debates over theology with the Burn the Gays dude, and we about broke even according to opinion on the forum. It's often the theological ones that are the craziest. For fun some time look up a guy named Rousas John Rushdoony.) No, seriously, you can ask these people and half of them can't even tell you who John Calvin was, what he did, or what Calvinist theology is all about. But, these ideas have been baked into the American psyche and anymore you don't even have to be a Christian to follow them. You just have to be greedy or have money. No, seriously, why the hell do you think Ayn Rand is so popular?

She advocated for the destruction of Christianity and replacing it with Greed-driven Atheistic Objectivism in the 1950's on National TV in an interview with Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes and was not run out of the country on a rail. Why? Because she told Right-Wing Nuts what they wanted to hear, that's why.

I see the same shit with a lot of these alt-right Nazis today, most of whom also appear to be irreligious.

As Chuck Colson put it, Rand envisioned Man at the center of a godless world, with self-satisfaction as the sole moral purpose of his life.

Sounds an awful lot like Trump, doesn't it? That said I'd be surprised if Trump or very many of his Supporters know who Ayn Rand was. But that's OK, they've got theirs, and Ayn Rand can go wander lost in the Underworld for all they care because just like she replaced the Pilgrim Fathers, well we're sorry Ayn but there's a new Right Wing Jesus in town...

So here we are.

Amos 5King James Version (KJV)

5 Hear ye this word which I take up against you, even a lamentation, O house of Israel.

2 The virgin of Israel is fallen; she shall no more rise: she is forsaken upon her land; there is none to raise her up.

3 For thus saith the Lord God; The city that went out by a thousand shall leave an hundred, and that which went forth by an hundred shall leave ten, to the house of Israel.

4 For thus saith the Lord unto the house of Israel, Seek ye me, and ye shall live:

5 But seek not Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and pass not to Beersheba: for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to nought.

6 Seek the Lord, and ye shall live; lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and devour it, and there be none to quench it in Bethel.

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

8 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:

9 That strengtheneth the spoiled against the strong, so that the spoiled shall come against the fortress.

10 They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly.

11 Forasmuch therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them.

12 For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right.

13 Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time.

14 Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so the Lord, the God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken.

15 Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate: it may be that the Lord God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph.

16 Therefore the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord, saith thus; Wailing shall be in all streets; and they shall say in all the highways, Alas! alas! and they shall call the husbandman to mourning, and such as are skilful of lamentation to wailing.

17 And in all vineyards shall be wailing: for I will pass through thee, saith the Lord.

18 Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord! to what end is it for you? the day of the Lord is darkness, and not light.

19 As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him.

20 Shall not the day of the Lord be darkness, and not light? even very dark, and no brightness in it?

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

22 Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts.

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

24 But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.

25 Have ye offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?

26 But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves.

27 Therefore will I cause you to go into captivity beyond Damascus, saith the Lord, whose name is The God of hosts.

Replace "Israel" with "America" and there you have it. Ronald Reagan's shining city on a hill is no more. It's been razed to make room for a giant gold statue of Trump.

(The picture above is of a golden statue of Saparmurat Niyazov in Turkmenistan.)

As goes the least of us, so too will go the rest of us. Remember that, when you get that 401(K) statement in the mail. Without health coverage and Social Security that money isn't going to get you very far when you're old. We can't...and we won't...all be rich, no matter what they tell you.

Resist.

It's not gay if you're a Republican.

So, yesterday I found out via Twitter that Milo Yiannopoulos got a $250,000 book deal. I guess it's some kind of a biography or something, to be published by Simon & Schuster.

I commented on this.

I expressed disgust, as I was (until this election, anyway) primarily familiar with that disgusting little troll from the fact that he'd been one of the major driving forces of the Gamergate affair. So, naturally, I didn't much like him going in. After the whole alt-right Nazi thing blew up, and I found out about his role in it, I was even more disgusted. For one thing, Misogyny from a gay dude strikes me as very odd. For another, I hate the fact not only that Milo seems to do the things he does for no better reason than he thinks it's funny.

There's a cure for that type of shit where I come from, and it's called an ass whuppin.'

If I'd ever have acted like that little twerp as a kid or young person, I would have got ass whuppins' for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I'd have gotten the "Can't sit down for a week" treatment so much I wouldn't have known what a chair *Was.* 

As a teenager, I literally got punched in the face by people in my school, and more than a few times punched people myself, for far less than I've seen these internet trolls say to people, safely behind their computer screen and miles away from their targets. That's otherwise known as being a coward. I don't act any different online than off, Anything I've got to say on here I'll say to your face, possibly with even more profanity.

I specifically pointed out that when I was a teenager, somebody who was a gay Nazi would have got beat up for two reasons in my town. As I've said before, the only good Nazi is a dead Nazi, and I'll take a bullet (hopefully atop a pile of dead Nazis myself) before I ever retract *That* statement. The term "alt-right" which represents a loose political group of which Milo is an enthusiastic member, is a "Politically-correct" re-branding of Nazis and White Supremacists, coined by White Nationalist idiot Richard Spencer. Yes, this is America in the 21st Century and we have Politically Correct Nazis.  What's next? Calling Black people Dermally Challenged?

I repeatedly got told to go eat a dick, people denied that Milo was alt-right, they denied he was a Nazi, hell I'm surprised that nobody denied he was gay. Hell, at least one person specifically said "I was offended that a conservative had such an edgy, dynamic stage presence." 

Folks, Milo is a conservative about like I'm an Insinkerator commercial-grade kitchen garbage disposal. He's not. One of these things is not like the other. 

Milo has an edgy and dynamic anything about like Rush Limbaugh provides reasonable and sane political commentary. He doesn't. 

He exists to offend people for the sake of offending people because he thinks it's funny, and he most likely gets away with it primarily because he's an English upper-class twit and for some reason these alt-right Nazis have themselves a thing for European style politics, meaning everyone fancies themselves as being "in" on the joke. Except the joke isn't funny unless you're an asshole.

If you'd have told either of my Grandfathers, not to mention *Any* of the stodgy old conservative Republican retirees (most of whom were active in local politics in the 1980's and 1990's) or my Republican, Vietnam-Veteran Uncle Bill, or any of the other guys who taught me about what being a Republican was...about Milo Yiannopoulos I can guarantee you that they'd have burst out laughing. I can guarantee you that the word they'd have used to describe him sure as hell would not have been "Conservative" with either a large or small "c." The word you're looking for here is "Faggot" probably with a boatload of other negative adjectives to go with it. I was taught that acting like that was Not OK, but an awful lot of the old guys I grew up around would've taken up my share, and gladly, and truth be told I'd have laughed at their jokes.

Why? Because that is what people like Milo the fag deserve, and would get in a rational, sane world. He'd get laughed at, have it possibly violently explained to him that his bullshit wasn't funny, and be told in no uncertain terms to get a real job and take that "Dangerous Faggot" shit somewhere else.

Before very long (And, I think, because the poster of the thread had an Arabic or possibly South Asian name, not that this means anything concerning religion) all these idiots kept trying to change the subject from Milo to Islam, and eventually (since, for a good part of this time I was at work) I just left the discussion and started blocking idiots.

More than one of these fucking people had the term "Shitlord" in their "Name" on Twitter and while I don't have the slightest idea what the fuck that means I know it's something that some of these modern Nazis like to call themselves.

Folks, I'm 43 years old, and if I hung that kind of terminology on myself in a public capacity online or off and my Mom found out about it I'm pretty damned sure my shit would get wore right the fuck out and the next Lord I'd be talking to would probably be the Lord Jesus Christ, but in the afterlife, rather than in prayer.

As I have also said before, some things are not done in the better places. This is not negotiable at all.

It's not just that, though. Understand this: Most, if not all, of the people who taught me would be appalled at the idea of so-called "Conservatives" adamantly and with much invective defending a homosexual twit who harasses women online for kicks while simultaneously demeaning Islam.

While I, most people in general, and even most of my family and friends (including even some of those stodgy old Republicans) and my late uncle before he died, evolved to some degree ranging from grudging tolerance to full acceptance on the gay thing...for most of my life, I'd say up until the drive for Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal got really strong...being a gay person was viewed at least somewhat negatively. I'm not saying that's right, I'm saying that's how it was.

You know how that changed? Work, a lot of it. Effort and good conduct and reaching out to people like me, not with insults but with understanding. And, because I was taught to treat gay people like everybody else and to mind my own business as regards the sex lives of others and to not have a problem with those who are different...I am today an enthusiastic ally of those people in most cases.

But I reserve the right to laugh at those who act ridiculous, and I've little tolerance for those who want to do whatever they want, but who undermine the freedom and respect and rights gained by their own people. I reserve raw, angry, naked hatred for those who will exploit and use others, without extending them the courtesy of the same rights they cheerfully claim. Milo especially, likes to be sodomized by black men and (last I knew) has a Muslim boyfriend. Now, I don't care, whatever floats his boat. But give the people you share your body and your life with the same respect as you'd expect to get yourself...or leave them be.

Otherwise, how's Milo any different than a straight, wife-beating misogynist?

Islam, on the other hand, was and is an ancient and respected world religion with influence over history and life and our modern world on a scale so vast that most people can't comprehend it, and it's easily as diverse and has as many degrees of practice and levels of devotion as Christianity itself. With my own eyes, I've seen Turkish girls, International students, who were distinguishable from the American girls they chatted with over coffee only by their names, accents and occasional ESL issues. I've seen Saudi women wearing Abaya and Hijab or Niqab in 100-degree heat as the midday sun blazed overhead who spoke with no men at all, save family as they went about whatever business they were attending to...and that is just one example. 

Perhaps more to the point, even though I have been around the world a bit and seen these things elsewhere...the two examples I just named have been observed in the small city in Michigan where I live. I picked them for that reason, and they involved a college classmate, my friend Dilek, and my across-the-street neighbors from my old apartments. Mohammed's wife (whose name I knew, but which escapes me at the moment) scarcely said two words to me, nor I to her, beyond the customary exchange of "As-Salaam Alaykum" (Peace be upon you) and "Wa Alaykum Salaam" (And upon you, Peace) and that was fine. Mohammed was in my World of Warcraft guild for quite awhile when I had it. We made friends when I helped him dig his minivan out after a snow storm, so that he could take his wife to her class at the university. I'd hazard a guess that most of the Muslims I've met probably value learning more than all these idiots I ran into on Twitter over the last couple of days. While we're at it, one day when I saw him my neighbor asked me (knowing that I come from a Christian background, though I was less in tune with that then, than I am now having accepted my Christian-influenced Agnosticism and called it even) if I'd pray for his wife, because she, this Saudi woman, was taking her road test to get her driver's license.

I did so, enthusiastically. You want to know how to subtly undermine fourteen centuries of stoic religious tradition? There you have it, right there.

People are people. There's a small population of Muslims around here, Medical staff from the hospital or faculty, staff and students from the University, mostly immigrants, and a few white American converts (actually, the technical term is "revert" because like Baptists, many Muslims believe everybody is born with some knowledge of religion. So, in their context, you don't come to it, you come back.) That said it's not the least bit unusual to see bearded-and-skullcapped young men in groups at Wal-Mart. I quietly and respectfully watched over one guy, one afternoon as he knelt to pray in the cold with his jacket off...I wanted to make sure no one would bother him...and was moved to take a moment for spiritual reflection my own self. After he was done, I walked over and talked with him for a few minutes...and we had more we agreed on than we didn't, as it turned out. It is likewise not unusual to see a group of Muslim girls wearing brightly-colored Hijab at the bus stop, or the grocery store, and I can guarantee you that if you speak to them in Arabic or say "As Salaam Alaykum" to them, the smiles you will see will be as bright as the colors of their headscarves.

In and of themselves, neither conservatives nor gay people nor Muslims will usually hurt anybody. The problem, as it so often is, is when one combines anger and toxic ideologies with those things.

This is how you get people like the Pulse nightclub shooter, who was a gay Muslim seeking to lash out at a world that he felt hated him. This is how you get people like Milo the Fag, who doesn't have the guts to shoot anybody, but would probably laugh about it if his trolling behavior online caused a person to commit suicide. I don't know the man, but that's the vibe his public behavior gives me.

An old principle of conservatism that I was taught is that we are defined, and shored up or torn down by the company we keep and the things we stand to defend.  I don't care if it's not MY religion or my form of righteousness, I will always stand up for righteousness. I don't care if it's not my truth, I will stand up for it.

In these days of Republicans defending Communists and right-wing nuts defending homosexual internet trolls, it might be good to remember that. When people base their beliefs on lies, they believe a lie and the Bible has some bad things to say about what happens to such people. At the bare minimum, all these idiots defending that immoral shit-bag while denigrating Islam just scored a propaganda victory if some Takfiri motherfucker happens to find their bullshit. There's a ready example of the confusion and immorality of Western culture right there.

And you know what? I'm not sure I'd entirely disagree, I mostly disagree with the means to attack the problem. These idiots could get somebody killed. I'd prefer that they not be idiots in the first place. It's worth noting that I last posted a couple days ago...and some of these people are still arguing with me while I just ignore them and laugh. A lot of it sounds like rationalizations. They are wasting a lot more effort on me than I am on them.

I prefer truth, even when I don't necessarily go by everything I was taught anymore, at least I have a baseline with which to compare, contrast, and criticize stupidity. The truth is often inconvenient. The parts we don't follow still should be acknowledged.

It's gay whether you're a Republican or not. Nothing wrong with that, but it still is.

Oh, and the picture at the top? You figure it out...

Rogue One.

So I went to see Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, today.

Actually, this is the second time I've been to see it. I went to see it on its opening weekend, too. I've been going to do a blog post about it since then, and just hadn't got to it. So, I decided to go again, just for the hell of it, but also to give it a more critical look the second time around.

One of the things that struck me, about Rogue One during the run-up to its release and on its opening weekend was the sheer amount of hate that alt-right Nazis and Trump Supporters were putting out there because supposedly there was some kind of "Anti-Trump" message worked into the movie at the last minute. Now, the way movies are made these days means it doesn't work that way. Shooting this thing finished up months ago, by Election Night, distribution was likely being finalized and there was no way to add anything to it short of bonus features for the DVD release. The entire story was, basically, just made up by some idiot troll on the internet. I've also heard that these fucking people object to the diversity of the newer movies. Hello? Star Wars has been pretty diverse from the beginning and it got *More* that way with every film. Star Wars has *Always* had a strong female lead character, whether it was Princess Leia or her mother, Padme Amidala. So, Rey (from Episode VII: The Force Awakens) or Jyn from this one are par for the course. Not to mention Lando Calrissian, Mace Windu, and Ahmed Best, the guy that voiced Jar Jar Binks, who for bonus points has an Arabic given name.

If you don't like diversity, that's YOUR problem. The world is diverse, deal with it. The rest of the universe, once we put ourselves out there, will likely not be any different.

For the record, last I'd head Rogue One was doing extremely well and had made a pretty damned impressive amount of money. So either the alt-right Nazis don't have nearly the amount of pull they think they do, or their (and probably Trump's, also) levels of support aren't as high as they'd like to think. That said, this isn't so much a critique of the movie as a critique of our national audience vs. the themes of the film. So I'll try not to spoil anything for those who haven't seen it, but speaking as a Star Wars fan who's been there since the beginning (I was four, but I digress) I will say that I for one was pretty impressed. This is the first Star Wars film since the original trilogy that I've seen twice in theaters.

See...what we see here is what Obi-Wan Kenobi was talking about when he spoke of the Dark Times. This is the Empire at its full glory, and at the height of its power. You've got Stormtroopers arresting people in the streets, and while there seems to be resistance, in a lot of places it's pretty limited and nothing an extra squad of troopers can't be called in to handle. I can see why those who like the idea of dominance and hierarchy would be drawn to the image of such a time. I really can, and that just says to me that they need to be opposed all the more.

This is a situation where, even as a Star Destroyer is parked hovering over a city, there's still gritty, nasty street fighting between Stormtroopers and an extremist anti-Imperial insurgency. Not only was such well done, but I thought it had a very Iraq War-like feel to it. I have to wonder if the various scenes of the fighting in Jedha City were put together by a crew that had a couple of Veterans on it. In any case, it reinforces the idea that, even when all seems hopeless, it is a human tendency to resist. (Yes, even though there's plenty of resisters in these movies who aren't human.)

Hope, is definitely the central theme of the film. "Hope is what rebellions are built on." That line kept cropping up. Yeah, that right there and the fact that anyone would have a negative reaction to it (especially in the sense of this being a science fiction franchise that's been a thing for 40 years) tells you everything you need to know about anybody who does have a problem with it. Hope has been a theme of Star Wars since the original novelization of A New Hope was released in 1976. Deal with it. If you have a problem with hope, or with other people having hope, that says more about you than it does about them. In the last couple of days, Donald Trump simply Tweeted a two-word message "Happy Hanukkah" to Jewish people as a group, and the alt-right Nazis predictably went bananas. Of course, this says a lot more about them than it does anything else. It's a simple two words, and they can't handle it. What does it say about a person, when they can't handle a mere two words being given in acknowledgement of another?

Not good things, I think.

In doing some research loosely connected to this post, I looked up the resistance to the Nazi occupation in tiny Luxembourg during World War II. Now, because it was a small country with a small armed forces, weapons were hard to come by and much of the resistance was passive. But oh man, there sure as hell was a lot of it. A census, intended to legitimize the annexation of the country by Germany, which included three questions (of which the intended-correct answer to all three was "German") was scuttled when an overwhelming majority of the population answered "Luxembourgish" to all of them. People refused to speak to Germans or sit by them on the bus, and this annoyed the Germans so damned much that they made laws against it.

That's what we're up against. I'm sure these fucking people we're stuck with will try to make laws against them being made fun of on Twitter or against going to another business when theirs is resolved to provide shitty (or no) service to people that they don't like.

Now, like Nazi Germany, but greatly unlike our own present evils, The Empire has always been presented as a pretty generic, often deliberately faceless, impersonal evil of helmeted Stormtroopers and masked Sith Lords. If you see yourself in that when it's on the big screen that means you're the one who has the problem, not the people who made this movie. I'll admit that I liked how the lower-powered shots fired by the Death Star produced effects similar to nuclear weapons, and in that way yet again Star Wars is prescient in taking on something that's been made an issue in recent days (even though it shouldn't be.)

Honestly, my favorite part of the movie was at the very end, Darth Vader vs. Rebels on the flagship of the small Rebel fleet sent to attack Scarif in support of Cassian and Jyn's mission. These Rebel troops have the disk with the plans (the very one that ends up carried by R2-D2 in A New Hope) and the door is broken, so the Rebels stand and fight and Darth Vader chops his way through them, blocking and deflecting blaster bolts, Force choking one, ripping away the weapons of several with Move Object and, though the last one passes it to another Rebel crewman through a gap in the door, Vader just chops his way through it and continues on. Ultimately, several of the troops make it onto Leia's Corellian Corvette which drops out of the flagship's hangar bay and sprints away, only (as we know) to be eventually caught by Vader's flagship anyway.

The point is, even in the face of overwhelming odds, people keep fighting. In the end, this is one of those gritty, almost-everyone-dies war films. The thing to remember is, all those characters (just like people who serve in the military in real life) knew the risks, and went anyway, because that's who they were.

So that's our choice, Hope, or Power (and hoping you get some tiny piece of it.)

Choose, and choose well. Why? Because just like in Post-WWII Europe, when this is over Collaborator or Resister, Imperial or Rebel...those are the labels that will really matter, that might determine in whatever form(s) our country continues after this...whether or not you get the job, whether or not your neighbors simply tell their children that you were "Wrong" and don't talk to you or your kids. A lot of issues were created in Europe by this whole situation, and in some ways they are still being resolved...especially, believe it or not, in places like the Ukraine.

I choose hope, and the hell with the consequences. If that makes me a Rebel, so be it. I picked that side decades ago in the Star Wars universe. If anybody ever thought I'd choose differently in real life, you either don't know me or you never really did.

I choose Hope because I wonder how anybody who doesn't can even get out of bed in the morning.

...And hope is what rebellions are built on.

US Media invents a new sport: Apocalypse Golf.

So, as I understand it, yesterday the last part of Aleppo fell to the Syrian Army.

Yesterday, and last night at work, I followed a lot of what was happening via Twitter.

The posted image is from last week.


Today, I saw both on Facebook and Twitter, that Golf Digest wants to name Trump the "Best ever Golfer-President." For the hell of it, here's a link from Golf Digest (apparently from 2008) http://www.golfdigest.com/story/presidentsranking that (based on my half-remembered knowledge of a game I mostly played so I could drink more beer) that suggests the actual best Golfer among Presidents was George H.W. Bush.

But then, 20 seconds or so of research would be a facts-based approach, if to a completely pointless story.

This is typical, not only of the American news media at this point...but increasingly typical of the people of the United States of America as a whole.

If you ever wonder why so many Americans think it's all about them, and that education is evil, or act like the "real world" ends at the county line and the center of the Universe is located in  Ass Fuck, Texas, Booty Poke, Iowa, Bourbon Chug, Duckfuckistan Louisiana, Cousin Screw, West Virginia, Dry Hump, Kansas, Meth Teeth, Michigan or ... MY HOMETOWN GODDAMN IT, MINE!!! MINE!!!!!!!!!! Screw you rotten people in North Dakota!!!!! *And* whatever they have is something that everybody else in the world wants (and they are afraid that people who look different from them or who say God's name in a different language are going to come and take their stuff, as if their stuff is what they have that makes life worth living) not to mention how THEY and/or some rich person they think they identify with should get everything and Nobody else should get anything at all...or why so many white people think they want to burn down the United States of America so the Blacks or the Mexicans or the Muslims who Obummer is bringing over by the millions whose ancestors have lived here since they came over to work for arch-conservative automaker Henry Ford in 1912 can't have any, This kind of crap would be the reason why.

Not to mention, the fact that due to the cultural diseases False Gospels of Base Tribalism, Pilgrim Calvinism, The modern Prosperity Gospel/19th Century veneration of the rich and the White Jesus, your basic American Idiot has now handed the US Presidency over to some Orange-hued fool who thinks that restarting a nuclear arms race (and giving Japan, Saudi Arabia and South Korea nukes) is somehow a good idea.

As I have said several times, I'm pretty sure Donald Trump thinks he can just snap his fingers and in a few months Boeing will start cranking out new AGM-69 SRAM (Short Range Attack Missiles) and they'll be carried on FB-111A Aardvark tactical bombers based at Plattsburgh Air Force Base in upstate New York and he'll get to play the role of Ronald Reagan in some explosion-filled Michael Bay movie about how time-traveling Trumpist FBI Agents helped the Mujahideen defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan while persuading them to become Capitalism-friendly Gulf State-like Muslims instead of the Taliban later and preventing Afghanistan from crumbling into a cesspool of chaos, poverty and war by sharing good old-fashioned American values like hard work, pickup trucks and sodomy between rural conservative white men who are actually married and don't tell their wives...

No, that last one is *Not* over the top, this is a real thing.

Add that up with the Opiate epidemic ravaging a lot of conservative, rural areas and you've got another wonderful thing from the 1980's: AIDS. Except that wasn't wonderful for anybody except Jerry Falwell, and it devastated a lot of lives particularly among gay men. A (gay) neighbor of my Grandparents and my Mom died of AIDS. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. Oh yes, with proper health care one's virus count may be rendered negligible and they may live a normal life...

But remember, the Republicans have pledged to repeal the Affordable Care Act, while gutting Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

Medicaid and Social Security were the only reasons our neighbor had bills paid and food to eat and health care for pretty much the entire time I knew him. Think about that, for a second, will you?

The missiles and the bombers have been scrapped, Plattsburgh AFB closed in 1995. Nobody misses the days of 3 A.M. alert scrambles with the SAC crews dashing out to their BUFF's in the cold at Castle, Griffiss,  K.I. Sawyer, Mather, Loring and Wurtsmith except for people who never lived them, who never had to deal with the stress of the high-intensity mission and the threat that any time the klaxons sounded it could mean the missiles were on their way down, that you, your buddy in the Air Operations Center, or your family over in the base housing might all have fourteen minutes to live. Imagine dealing with that, for an average of ten days out of every month for your entire career...

The remnants of that time, the bases repurposed to support tankers or other missions, the BUFF's at Barksdale and Minot, the missiles under the prairies in Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming, the Spirits at Whiteman and the Ohio-class Submarines silently keeping watch beneath the waves are all still needed...but now all but the ICBM crews support conventional missions as much as (or more than) they prepare for the Apocalypse. That is a damned good thing, if you ask me.

Let us not make the sacrifices of previous generations and of men like my grandfathers be in vain. I can tell you for a fact what a lot of those old guys, or the ones I knew anyway, would say about the Republicans sucking up to the Russians if they were here to say something about it.

Actually, it most likely involves fists and one hell of a lot of profanity.

The ironic thing is, it's the spiritual (and in some cases, literal) descendants of the Anti-Communists and the Arch-Conservatives and the Professional Cold Warriors that are the ones who seem to be just fine with selling the United States of America out to a KGB man.

I'm pretty sure somewhere in hell, Joseph McCarthy is drinking himself into a stupor over this...

Let us not continue to kill ourselves with irresponsibility...and that's what all this is and don't you forget it. Many Americans value their comfort, distractions, profits and the illusion of safety more than they value the ability of humanity to live on this planet and continue to survive. Deal with the fact that, simply put, we as a species have nowhere else to go.

Assuming one believes in all that, the End Times will happen on God's calendar, not ours.

Jesus is not going to come back and save us if we blow up the world, and there is no profit in Apocalypse.

We are forfeit of our moral right to exist as a nation at this point. By next month, we and our distractions and illusions could very well be an existential threat to the rest of humanity.

...And if you think the rest of humanity isn't watching in horror and trying to find a way to prevent this disaster, I'm quite sure you have another thing coming.

Fundamentally, we need to stop looking inward, realize that the rest of the world exists (or that most of it stands with us if you're somebody who is against Trump) stop all this navel-gazing, stand up and fight and survive, and remember just what the hell it is we're supposed to be doing here.

If we don't do that, if we continue to fall prey to the media-generated spectacle and continue to forget who we are and what we're supposed to be doing  and continue to fail to live up to our values because doing that would be too hard, we're going to deserve everything that we get.

We can stand up and resist, or we can hit the links and then watch FOX News and have some beers at the club while the world burns.

It's your choice. Reality, or Unreality.

Both parties are not the same, man.

Remember that to abandon facts is to abandon freedom. Without truth no one has a basis to criticize power.

The least we can do is go down standing up.