Mirror Universe Christianity., Part One

It is our conviction and we believe that both men and women are created by the Almighty. Both have equal rights. Women can pursue an education, women can pursue a career, and women can play a role in society – just like men. ~Ahmad Shah Massoud.

Last Tuesday I saw this, but then before I could react to it, Google Chrome crapped out on me.

What are these people, the fucking Taliban?

A woman died...and these idiots are more concerned that she kept her skirt from flying up...than they are that a person died.

Modern "Conservatism" in a nutshell, ya'll. Just sayin.'

I used to be a conservative, a Christian, and a Republican...and I can't hack this kind of lack of empathy. I just can't do it, If I said something like that on TV...after awhile I'd probably blow my own brains out from the shame of it alone.

But this crap is more or less Christianity, filtered through the dark Mirror Universe from Star Trek.

I started out as a Baptist, and many of the religious laws Baptists are supposed to live by...no dancing, no drinking alcohol, a theological hostility to LGBT rights, etc...would be accepted by and familiar to any Muslim, including members of the Taliban.

So naturally, here are a shitload of members of the Falwell family dancing and drinking at a club in Miami...and this sort of situation would get any Liberty University student expelled. That's leaving aside Jerry Junior's "Pool Boy" scandal from awhile back.

I recently read an article that just went on and on about the dirty dealings, financial shenanigans, and political bullshit of the Falwell Dictatorship at Liberty University. Far from being sorry, even if only sorry that he got caught, Junior got his pets in the IT department to downgrade the photos in question in searches originating from the University's ISP. Because of course, in their world who gets to dance and drink and have sex isn't "Whoever wants to" like it is in secular America...or even most churches anymore. In their world who gets to do what is not the result of who has the capability to do X or Y, let alone the desire. Who gets to do this, that or the other thing comes down to "Who has the power to do so."

And remember this: The answer is always, ALWAYS going to be "Not you."

I mean, personally I feel like why bother setting up all these arbitrary, stupid rules for others to follow when you're not going to follow them yourself...but then I don't like hypocrisy.

I never liked or much cared for Jerry Falwell Senior, but I'm pretty sure he didn't advocate for the idea that conservative or Evangelical leaders could live Bohemian lifestyles like 19th century European aristocracy...while being a part of a political movement that demands that women who are falling to their deaths keep their skirts down while avoiding burning to death in a towering inferno.

But ya know, of course that's not even the half of it with these people.

They don't just want to party it up while you get to live like it's Taliban-era Afghanistan. If you're poor, they want to party it up and dance and drink and have forbidden gay sex with their pool boys and while you either starve to death or die from lack of health care.

They will also 100% reserve the right to be offended if they see you dying in the street from a preventable illness or starvation, while they're leaving the club...and I wouldn't be surprised if some idiot has suggested putting the homeless or the poor in concentration camps, just so that rich conservatives can avoid having to see the results of their shitty beliefs.

Never mind that the truth is that social programs like Medicaid and SNAP cost very little, or that SNAP in particular generates two dollars in our economy for every one that's put into it.

The rich see that as money that they should be getting. Fuck you, I've got mine.

Oh, and of course as of late last night there's war-talk again, because rebels in Yemen hit a couple of oil processing facilities in Saudi Arabia with cruise missiles and drones.

It's not just that these people basically want to destroy America and kill those Americans that they don't like while they starve out a majority of their own voter base and destroy our environment and standing in the world while they do it..for no better reason than they think they'll make money, or our constitutional system of laws doesn't give them everything they want, or enough power, or whatever.

It's that they're perfectly willing to be the bitches of Saudi Arabia...the country from which 15 of the 9/11 hijackers came...while they do it. Let the Saudis fight their own damn wars, I say.

The people currently running the majority of our government don't see America as their country and governing it well as their job. They see it...and us...as a resource pool they can use for their own ends and financial purposes.

Assholes like Falwell Jr. and Trump see shitheads like MBS as more their fellows than other Americans like you or me.

Now I don't usually do this, but I'm going to share an element of personal horror that very much goes with the current situation.

I know people of a huge variety of political inclinations and otherwise walks of life.

I am here to tell you, that I know people...including someone that a younger me once loved very deeply...who are poor as dirt, or who don't work, or who've never been able to get it all together because they were never taught basic life skills like balancing a checkbook or how to maintain something like a decent credit score...who think all this crazy shit means their ship will come in and they'll all get rich, if they just believe in it all hard enough.

Yes, even people who don't work...who haven't worked in a dozen years or more who have no logical way to have anything.

This morning I was treated to the deeply weird spectacle of a former lover that I've occasionally conversed with of late, who has no car, no job and no money...not to mention no contacts there, and who is not in good health...reserving a moving truck because she thought God told her that she was somehow going to get enough money to buy a house in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan within a month.

A place where there are not that many jobs, outside of a couple of small cities, a place where you have to have a car, where you have to be tough enough to withstand the elements and your own health problems at least long enough for an ambulance to cover a pretty long distance.

I pointed all this out, but she held on with all the smug piousness one can expect of a person whose mind has been poisoned by false doctrines like the Prosperity Gospel.

So I emotionally and mentally washed my hands of the whole mess, let her figure it out.

Yes, you certainly could make the argument that those people are mentally ill or stupid or have been deliberately misinformed and uneducated...in some cases by some of the very criminal sociopaths now running our country, I have made all of these arguments at one point or another.

But unless we all stand up and stop these motherfuckers...it's a lot of those people, in addition to many far more innocent children, disabled people, elderly people, etc. who will go in the first wave if these motherfuckers ever get their wish.

Jesus said to help the poor and give them food and show compassion. Evangelicalism basically stands for starving the poor.

Our country is being run into the ground by people who would rather preach at a person who is dying of starvation than give them food.

We have to stand up and do something, and we have to stand up for everybody, whether we necessarily like them or not, or whether they will even appreciate it or not.

Because if we don't...what does that say about us?

Because it's the right thing to do.

Because someone has to, if not protect these people from themselves, protect them from the predators who've brainwashed them.

Because if we don't, who are we?

Vote the bastards out. All of them, get rid of the Republicans, vote them out and then run them out on a rail...and then start taxing the churches.

Because if these absolute motherfuckers care more about the fact that somebody preserved their body modesty while falling to their death, than that the person died, they have no damned business holding any kind of special place in our society...or any place at all, really.

Fuck these motherfuckers.

Part 2.

Straight Out Of Revelation.

And they worshiped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshiped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?

~Revelation 13:4

Yesterday, I saw this.

Lou Dobbs...who has apparently turned into some kind of dead-eyed rotting automaton...saying that Trump makes the weekend possible.

I'll be 46 in November. There have been weekends all my life. I feel like it's well past ridiculous that I should even have to point this out. We owe weekends to labor activists and unions and workers who fought for that kind of stuff, not Trump.

That shouldn't even have to be said.

And it sure as hell should not be necessary. This is the kind of dictator ego-fluffing by a media figure that I thought only happened in North Korea, maybe the Soviet Union, Uganda under Amin...or perhaps Revelation.

I took Tuesday off, just because I couldn't take it and I knew I was going to spend the afternoon looking at cars. So, I spent the morning playing with ferrets instead of writing and I was glad I did. I ended up test-driving a Lincoln Town Car in a thunderstorm. So I'm pretty sure that officially makes me an old white man at this point. Anyway, my Mom found something up notrth on Thursday and so my week was primarily consumed with getting everything I needed to get a car in order. And I was too tired yesterday to write anything.

But ya know, the longer this crazy bullshit goes on...I don't know about America but I think an essential part of the Republican Party's character died on 9/11. Reason died, and was replaced by fear.

I was always taught that reason was an essential part of conservatism, without reason and some degree of empathy there's not much to keep these people from sliding backwards into the 12th century and petty hatreds, religious warfare, superstition and the worship of kings.

Conservatives are by nature followers...and thus decent behavior has to be modeled from the top down or we get this kind of mess we're in now. Some people have to be consistently told right from wrong. I kind of feel like nobody, especially on the conservative side of the fence, should need to be told that it's wrong to invite the Taliban to Camp David, especially at the start of the week of 9/11. Some things should just go without saying.

But that's the trouble isn't it? Some things just go without saying but then because nobody says them, you get a generation of selfish morons who can't or won't pick up on social cues and all the sudden you gotta start saying that kind of stuff again...or more to the point arguing that shit with people who never picked up on the most basic of home training...or mathematics, or ability to scale the small things up to the big picture. Republicans won two special elections in Deep Red congressional districts last week. North Carolina's 9th Congressional District in particular was Republican +12 in 2016, to win last year Republicans had to cheat. They got caught, people went to jail and the result was invalidated. The Republican squeaked by...by a point and a half in a +12 Red district and an absurd amount of money was spent to make it so.

You get enough "victories" like that and the defeats start piling up faster and pretty soon there isn't a Republican Party anymore.

It gets worse. Somebody apparently gave Trump the idea that he should be the arbiter of who is religious enough or who is not.

Frankly...I can't think of a better argument for atheism that I've ever heard.

But you know, what's really going on here is that Trump somehow thinks he is the State...and thus he wants to enforce worship of the State...just like his buddy Kim Jong Un has in North Korea.

Honestly, if somebody really wanted to destroy both America and its various religious subcultures, I can't think of a better way to do that than making this irreligious self-worshiping Orangutan the arbiter of faith in America.

On Tuesday, North Carolina Republicans took advantage of Democrats and moderates attendance of a 9/11 memorial service to override the governor's veto of the budget while they were away. Thus proving, of course, that Republicans don't give a fuck about Democracy.

They don't give a fuck about democracy, their own history, or anything that has gone before, and they demand that everybody else worships their current Leader, as if he were some kind of a god...while utterly ignoring the commandments of the God they've claimed to follow for all this time and in fact refusing to even acknowledge that there's anything different.

And where have we heard that one before? (Revelation)

Christians and former Christians, I'm looking at you here.

We need to vote these motherfuckers out.

The Last Day

Experience suggests that if men cannot struggle on behalf of a just cause because that just cause was victorious in an earlier generation, then they will struggle against the just cause. They will struggle for the sake of struggle. They will struggle, in other words, out of a certain boredom: for they cannot imagine living in a world without struggle. And if the greater part of the world in which they live is characterized by peaceful and prosperous liberal democracy, then they will struggle against that peace and prosperity, and against democracy.~Francis Fukuyama
America's last normal day, 18 years later.

Granted, for some of us it wasn't all that normal. I'd been going through a fairly nasty divorce for a good seven months by that time. But for such times, I remember that day as being fairly calm.

But, as I may have mentioned, the next morning dawned infamously bright and blue and clear and it was during a Yahoo Messenger argument with my ex-wife early the next morning that I learned that a plane had hit the World Trade Center...and I turned on my TV, set to CNN out of habit...just in time to see the second plane crash into the other tower.

But when I went to bed, fairly late on the night of September 10th, 2001 I had no idea that the world would change not quite eight hours later. I figured I'd have class that next morning and had done my homework accordingly, most of it during the slow part of my shift in the Cafeteria across the sidewalk from the Dorm, where I was a cook and very often did the boss's job for him in closing at 10 P.M. That would see me promoted to shift lead less than a month later...though I never actually had a shift. The boss just didn't like having to balance the till in the morning.

I'd smoked a couple of cigarettes with my friend Ali, a Saudi international student, flirted with the chubby nerd girl behind the residence hall desk as I walked in, and turned left and headed right down the hall to my room, checked my E-mail and Yahoo Messenger...and then went to bed.

Though I was well on my way out of Christianity thanks to my divorce, I was still a conservative, a Republican. I hadn't just voted for Bush the year before, I'd been an enthusiastic supporter and volunteered for his campaign, door-knocking for the Cheboygan County (MI) Republican Party. 

I actively paid attention to what was going on in the world, heavily skewed in both a Christian and conservative perspective. I followed and had donated to Voice Of The Martyrs.

And one of the countries I followed the news from was Afghanistan. It was a side-effect of life experience, and of my spiritual nature...because even then I understood the beliefs of groups like the Taliban to be nothing more and nothing less than a perversion of Islam.

And despite...perhaps even because of...my conservative Christianity I'd never had any problem with Islam or Muslims.

But perhaps because of that very fact, to me, the Taliban were nothing more than tribal barbarians, abusers of boys and women, religious fanatics who...though many of them cannot read...professed to know all Truth. Men who, valuing piety and dedication to harsh philosophies of violence for their own sake and ignoring the spirit of the message in the Koran for a perversion of its laws...still very often used drugs such as Hashish, Heroin and Opium despite the fact that such are Haraam (Forbidden) in Islamic practice.

Then, as now, I believed that the only way to deal with such people was by the muzzle of the rifle, by air-dropped precision-guided munitions and 30mm GAU-8 Cannon rounds.

Fuck those motherfuckers, I thought.

All things considered, it was a normal day.

It has, in fact, been a long-ass 18 years. I'm not going to bore you with the specifics, but it's been a long damn 18 years.

If you'd told me, on September 10th, 2001 that the President of the United States...and in particular, a Republican President of the United States would ever even consider inviting the Taliban...the fucking Taliban...people who in all probability could not find the United States on a map but are fanatical in their hatred of it just the same. Barbarians, people who by their own shitty behaviors reinforce the bullshit stereotypes that people like I used to be have of the world. The ultimate in These Fucking People...invited them to Camp David for some supposed peace negotiation? Camp David, the place where peace between Egypt and Israel was negotiated, the personal getaway of the President of the United States?

The Taliban would not have been judged fit to hold Anwar Sadat's hat while he took a leak.

If you would have told me that a Republican U.S. President would even secretly consider inviting the Taliban to Camp David...and then brag about it live on social media...I'd have punched you in the mouth.

And Trump just fired John Bolton from his position as National Security Advisor. That Guy, the War Mustache himself.

Think on that.

And think on the fact that we have people, Americans, right here at home who'd fit right in with the goddamned Taliban, if only the Taliban worshiped Donald Trump.

Ever get the feeling that Trump could shout Allah Akbar while shooting somebody on Fifth Avenue with an old AK-47 and not lose any of his cultists voters?

Fuck it, I need to find me a time machine.

Lo! Those who believe (in that which is revealed unto thee, Muhammad), and those who are Jews, and Christians, and Sabaeans - whoever believeth in Allah and the Last Day and doeth right - surely their reward is with their Lord, and there shall no fear come upon them neither shall they grieve. ~The Koran, Sura 2:62

I'm damned sick of this foolishness.

Who's the more foolish, the fool, or the fool who follows him? ~Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars: Episode IV, A New Hope.

Last night, I logged on to check my Twitter while I was getting ready for work and was greeted with a massive collective "What the fuck?" Apparently, Trump had taken a Sharpie and childishly altered a weather map so that it wouldn't look like he'd been talking out his ass about the hurricane hitting Alabama earlier.

How old is this guy, again?

'Cause that's a particularly idiotic kid-level move right there. I'm just sayin' if I would've tried that in elementary school I'd have got my hide tanned.

This guy is the President.

And he can't even get somebody to cook up a plausible lie, or be bothered to do so himself.

He's either that stupid, or he has no respect for anybody, his own voter base least of all.

Yes, Republicans, I mean you.

If Trump cared about or respected America and Americans...he wouldn't be trying to pull this kind of Third Grade (as in the educational level) bullshit.

And if Trump really thinks he can control the weather with a Sharpie he needs to go for a whole other mess of reasons.

And people keep enabling this dumb motherfucker.

Note the wording: "Appears to show..."

There's no "Appears" about it, that is exactly what it shows. There was no "it appears to be altered, sir" here. The map was fucking altered, obviously and childishly so.

And if Trump didn't do it, he sure as hell ordered somebody else to, most likely because he probably can't draw half a circle without a computer-aided drafting program that's been bastardized into an iPhone App. I'm fucking serious, why are people putting up with this kind of childish, disrespectful, illiterate bullshit?

Those of you who voted for Trump, what do you think you're going to get out of this?

Other than a big fat Zero, and your life being worse, I mean.

Meanwhile, the orgy of senseless murders done by people who should never have had access to firearms, or indeed to any other kind of deadly weapon, continues. A 57-year old woman was shot dead after a car accident, in front of her son and numerous other bystanders.

I have to ask, did the shooter somehow think he was going to get away with it? Or did he just, in the heat of the moment, not care?

You may ask what does this have to do with the President doing dumb shit, and the media equivocating and playing the "both sides are valid" card to cover for it?

One hell of a lot, by my figuring.

Because there's some in the media who will do that for everything done by a person or group that has more power than another.

Because there really are those assholes out there who really do think they should have the right to gun down anybody who displeases them at any time, for any reason.

And because society doesn't stand up with one voice and ask "What the fuck is wrong with you?" or otherwise make it known that shit like that is wrong and dish out consequences for it before it gets out of hand, people like that sit in the corner, or behind a computer screen and nurse their petty, bullshit grudges until...in some cases at least...it results in lethal violence.

And somehow, you can find somebody willing to make the both-sides argument for damned near anything these days.

I mean, if a person's right to be alive and some rage-filled asshole's right to have a gun are both equally valid...to be honest I'm actually surprised we don't have more murders.

If nothing is wrong...or if a person has been programmed with an improper definition of right and wrong...then what?

If whatever is right or wrong is only that way because a person with power says it's that way...as opposed to a definition of right and wrong formed by compassion, empathy, morality or religion...then who is to say that murdering somebody in the street for no reason is wrong and should be illegal?

Certainly, modern conservatives are always trying to frame things as if they're trying to make it Okay for them to shoot people in the street.

And stuff like that is what happens when corruption, evil, hate and sin are normalized and then people become afraid to challenge that...because money or ratings or whatever. If you take a gun and rob somebody, America automatically considers that a crime. If you wear a suit and rob thousands or millions of people with the stroke of a pen, that's just business, capitalism, or politics or whatever.

And that is Not Okay.

There is no "But it's Okay for politicians and rich people" after "Thou Shalt Not Steal."

Most of you, I think you know it, too.

And if you don't...or if you're sitting there making excuses in your mind for this garbage...then fuck you, get out.

Conceptually, truth is the basis for everything we have.

We lose that...we lose everything.

Far Country (Part Two.)

 For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost. ~Luke 19:10

Several years ago, an Episcopal church in North Carolina put up a statue of a homeless Jesus.

Some people understood and appreciated its meaning. Some people called the cops on Jesus, thinking the statue was an actual homeless person sleeping on a bench in front of the church.

Yep. You got that right, America is so Christian we'll call the cops on Jesus Christ...and then, I'm sure, fail to see the lesson in that.

As I've said before, I'm a former conservative mainstream Christian. This Episcopal church is a liberal church in a mostly-liberal neighborhood. I'd have still almost certainly have understood the message of this particular statue, even 20 years ago.

As a Baptist, I understood well the Protestant work ethic that, fundamentally, often leads to well-off churches that are not unlike this Episcopal house of worship. But for the same reason, I understood and was taught to have compassion for the poor and the downtrodden. Yes...pull yourself up by your own bootstraps if you can, but also be aware that not everybody has boots. We'll get back to that.

Jesus did not come in power and glory to subdue the nations of the Earth. He came as a humble itinerant Rabbi in a land occupied by an Empire so great, so enduring...that many elements of its system persist even today, the world over, in lands that the Roman Empire never heard of, and where the original inhabitants never heard of it.

Were He to show up today, I'd expect the Savior to be not unlike this statue of Him.

As a younger man, as a *Conservative* younger man, at that, part of my life history is that I spent fourteen months or so as a Walmart associate in 2000 and 2001. I worked in Electronics officially, as in that was the department to which I was assigned. I worked at the Cheboygan, MI Walmart store, then transferred over to the Petoskey, MI Wal-Mart. For part of that time in each location it was a second job.

But on a lot of days, I'd get bumped up to the front end to work the registers, or if it was slow I'd help other departments, and I often covered breaks for Jewelry or Sporting Goods.

I'd mentioned, when asked, that I was a Christian and if possible I'd like Sunday mornings off...but that I was more than willing to work afternoons. And so, I often did, because in the small Northern Michigan city where I lived and worked, despite the fact that at the time we got paid an extra dollar an hour on Sundays...lots of the older workers wanted to have Sundays off which created a bit of a staffing issue.

That said, somewhere along the way my supervisors figured out that I was an actual, serious, practicing Christian...and for that matter, having worked with them in previous food service jobs, that I got on fairly well with the Jamaicans. That is, seasonal workers from Mackinaw City who were frequent customers during the busy tourist season, which I'd hired in at the beginning of. Anyway, people figured out that the religious customers liked me, and that I was fairly adept at dealing with the seasonal workers and smoothing over issues and for that matter, I had absolutely no trouble understanding their accents.

This sort of thing fairly quickly got me a couple of raises.

I worked in Electronics, most of the Electronics people and photo-lab people were total nerds...as was I for that matter.

In that first store, Two of my co-workers were women that were outspoken liberal Atheists, close friends and roommates...one, Amber, was a former Jehovah's Witness...and as a Baptist I totally understood about the damage cults could do. I'd been taught that type of stuff and that the Jehovah's Witnesses were a cult. Nothing that lady ever said about her family or their ways did one damn thing to change that opinion.

The other one, Andrea, was in one of my classes at North Central Michigan College in Petoskey, where I was a student at the time. Fun fact: We once ended up on opposing sides debating for or against religion and no, we were not each on our own "team." Anyway, the verbal sparring and philosophical discussions we'd have during slow times became well known. Enough so in fact, that it drew in one of the managers eventually.

So quite often, while being generally mindful of company policies regarding such things, I ended up fairly often talking Bible stuff with one of my bosses. When I transferred, this came up, so the same patterns more or less continued in the new job. For some reason, the second store had more obvious religious customers...lots of Baptists from a nearby church, ladies that wore long dresses and little doily-caps that were some kind of Pentecostal, and the occasional Muslim student from the college.

After I helped a customer with serious ESL issues one day, thanks to my own language skills, my immediate supervisor at the new store (who was also the Pastor of a house-church) was immensely impressed when he found out I knew and could recite the Lord's Prayer...in Arabic.

Also, in that particular location I got very sick of the "Toy Story" movies because for whatever reason they were what was on the TV's in the electronics department. Just sayin.'

Long story short, it was a diverse environment, Sam Walton's policies were still in effect while I worked there and while the environment was decidedly conservative and slightly favored the religious including actively catering to Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christians...it was pretty tolerant, too. Lots of associates adorned their vests with buttons and pins, and the store even issued one that was a Pride flag. They asked a lot of you, but also treated you good and rewarded initiative and skills. When I finally quit, due to stress from getting divorced, mostly, I was making just over $9 an hour. Not bad for almost 20 years ago. The Protestant Work Ethic very much went with the job, but so did the idea that good performance should be rewarded.

Toward the end of my time, things with the company began the slow slide to how they are now as the old man's kids took over running the company.

But...the point is, Walmart was and presumably still is a conservative company, that donates to Republicans, etc. Hell, Walmart has done its bit to shape the current mess we're in, too. They donated to Trump in 2016, for one.

But guess what?

None of that is good enough for the NRA. None of that will matter to Gun Nuts and Trump Supporters. None of that will matter to the fanatics.

Because every day in modern "Conservatism" is Year Zero.

Hell, the fucking Khmer Rouge had nothing on these people for cult mentality and willingness to forget or ignore everything that went before...save that which enables them to hurt people. It doesn't matter one bit that 19 years ago I could talk Bible stuff at work. It matters that Walmart has the sense to react to public opinion and oh, the fact that there have been a couple of mass shootings in Walmart stores.

If you haven't noticed, Capitalism and the Free Market seem to only be "Good" when they do what The Tribe wants. Thus, Walmart joins much of the corporate world and two-thirds of Americans, not to mention mist of the rest of the Earth...in being banished to the Outer Darkness of the Trumpist cosmology.

And I don't see anything conservative about that.

"So then because thou art lukewarm..." is basically where these people are at. If you criticize even once, or do even one thing that goes against these fucking people's assorted dogmas, they will spew you out.

As somebody said last night on Twitter, there is no "Just the tip" with Trumpism.

There's no "I don't do anal" nor "I only do anal because something-something virginity" No. Either you bend over and take it balls-deep from the orange schmuck in the cheap baggy suit, Peasant, or it's the Comfy Chair  Spanish Inquisition  National Razor  Gulag Outer Darkness for you, too.

Time was, a hell of a lot more conservatives would have objected to this on grounds of principle and personal boundaries alone...but time was that Trump was not considered a conservative, also.

Apparently if you accept the Orange Gospel of the Chosen One you have to submit yourself to the Dictatorship Of The Proletariat, the Hive-Mind, the Uber-Consciousness, the Howling Mob...and cease to be a rational, thinking person with your own needs that you have the guts to articulate openly and speak your mind about. This even seems to apply to corporations now.

"Oh, hey, the customers are saying they don't like these dudes walking around with rifles slung" is no excuse. You're supposed to light yourself and your profit margin on fire for the greater vainglory of Donald Trump. Hmm, can we ask the farmers in Iowa how well that's working out for them?

I don't get it, these fucking people think that everybody else is supposed to just let them do what they want and run wild all over everything and then suffer the consequences in silence?

Fuck all that. I got shit to do and I'm not going to wait around for them to shit all over me before I stand up for myself.

These people will throw anyone and anything under the bus for their "Chosen One."

This is exactly the kind of fake-"Conservative" theonomy, the exact sort of Christ-less Christianity, that I've been warning people about.

And it seems like I've written about this before.

It's time we start dealing with this problem. Be proactive, not reactive, as the corporate cliche goes.

These are the people who'd call the cops on Jesus, who are busy trying to throw their own former corporate icons to the howling idiot mob of Trump-worshiping lost souls.

Where do you think you stand, citizen?

Realistically, where do you stand?

Probably not in the place you wanna be.

Nobody is trying to repeal the Second Amendment. (Presumed Part 1.)

The Constitution provides that an amendment may be proposed either by the Congress with a two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate or by constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the State legislatures. ~From US national archives website, via Google.

*Nobody* is trying to repeal the 2nd Amendment.

Repeat this until you understand it.

Per Article V of the United States Constitution and established practice and legal and legislative precedent (See Also: "Prohibition" and "Repeal of Prohibition.) IT TAKES AN AMENDMENT TO REPEAL AN AMENDMENT!

Again, repeat this until you understand it.

Nobody is trying to repeal the Second Amendment:

Nobody is trying to reinterpret it in any form that would disarm a majority of law-abiding presumably mentally stable adults.

Nothing of the sort is taking place.

But, let's suppose somebody were to propose such a thing (and the Bill didn't die in committee.)

Imagine America, 2025, with current level of dipshit unabated.

Say hypothetical liberal Representative Wun Hung Lo (D-CA) a younger Asian-American aspiring socialist originally from Eugene, Oregon...but now residing in and representing the Bay Area in Congress...and a hero to both Liberals and Never Trump Republicans for having traveled to Hong Kong in 2019 and gotten arrested while protesting...then got elected campaigning on being to the Left of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2020 (and somehow survived several elections since) comes up with such an idea.

We'll call it the Cold Dead Hands Amendment. Note that it does not ban guns, only instituting gun regulation favored by 84% of Americans or more at a Constitutional level...but critics call it an "End run around the absolutist positions set by SCOTUS" and charge that it sets the tone for harsher restrictions in the future.

Say he or she (and can we really rule out a trans-person, just in case?) finds a Republican willing to co-sponsor this monstrosity.

Theoretical Republican Ira Lee Goatscrew (D: ND) an old, white, but unusually peaceful ultra-conservative Fundamentalist Christian Big-C Conservative beloved of the state's small Plymouth Brethren community who, to his lasting embarrassment (but to the pride of his voters) got a Ronald Reagan Tattoo during his misspent youth as an Aircraft Armament Systems Technician in the Strategic Air Command...but who after studying the issue in college realized just how close we came to nuclear Armageddon during Able Archer '83 (an exercise in which he and his unit, the 319th Bombardment Wing at Grand Forks AFB, ND, participated) and chose to renounce all violence, yet somehow he still gets elected to Congress in 2020 and won reelection several times since by an overwhelming landslide.

He's put the Peace Garden State on the political map and is widely favored to win if he runs for the Senate. He ran the first time on the idea that he would make Trump stop taking the Lord's name in vain...and has stayed in office by placing himself as a direct contrast to Ilhan Omar and Keith Ellison in Minnesota and his district voters love him for it.

Somehow, these two get this beast out of Committee, there was in fact much quoting of Jesus Christ involved.

Somehow, they persuade the new Speaker of the House, none other than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AKA 'The Second Coming of Nancy Pelosi" herself...now lampooned by what remains of Conservatism as "WHAT DO YOU MEAN I HAVE TO BE A RESPONSIBLE ADULT?!) to go along, and the thing passes the House by a vast majority.

Despite vicious opposition by the few remaining Senate Republicans (especially the new Senate Minority Leader, Roy Moore, R-AL) and even a few Democrats including the junior Senator from Kentucky, Amy McGrath (D-Fuck You Mitch) it squeaks through the Senate with 79 of what's now 104 votes.

Several states threaten to rebel if the Amendment is even brought up for ratification in their legislatures. ANTIFA (!) bros and militia nuts hold dueling protests in Oregon with each group carrying signs that say "Fuck that guy, but we're both against this shit!"

Because we live in the dumbest of all possible worlds: Over the tearful objections of Vice President Williamson...for once in her life newly re-elected President Gabbard does the sensible thing and vetoes this mess. She knows full well that Congress doesn't have the votes to override her and half the states wouldn't ratify this mess anyway and a few even threatened secession over it.

Her publicly-stated and largely-accepted rationale being that while the current system could use a lot of fixing, better the devil we know than the devil we don't.

And even if it's only Alabama, South Carolina and Wyoming, SECDEF PETE publicly said "No" to the suggestion of active duty military units being deployed Stateside again and threatened to resign if ordered to federalize the National Guard in such a case.

Buttigieg specifically stated that "The current priority of the United States Armed Forces is countering the European Union's new Antimatter weapons" leaving unspoken that the unexpected and ironic election of Northern Irish firebrand Ian Paisley, Jr. as EU President leaves a maniac with his finger on the big blue button...a man who has called American democracy, the Catholic church, lately the Neo-Soviet Empire and Israel's new lesbian Prime Minister "the AntiChrist."

Plus, After the embarrassing performance by both sides that some call the Second Civil War...but that the Right is unusually politically-correct about calling "The Emergency" and just barely holding the line in the Baltic States, Poland and Western Ukraine against Putin's much-reduced but still newly re-designated Red Army and nearly a decade of daily domestic terrorist attacks, nobody really wants more war and that's what it would come to.

In all cases, at all times, no matter what kind of stupidity is the result, because screw rationality, this is America damn it.

Even with 84% of the population having supported numerous gun regulations since the mass murders of the late 2010's, Even after the death of the NRA. Even after the grim specatcle of Seb Gorka negligently shooting himself in the groin while blowing Gavin McInnes live on Trump TV last year...

See what I did there?

And Why?

Because yeah, the numbers aren't that far off from what they are right now, but that ain't the point.

The point is nobody wants this thing, and short of mass conversion to Marianne Williamson's Rama Rama Ding Ding peaceful philosophy...which despite being loopy as hell isn't a bad idea...nobody ever is going to want it, either.

Because it's in the Bill Of Rights, damn it. Because it takes a goddamned Amendment to the US Constitution to repeal a goddamned Amendment to the US Constitution, because even if you got some kind of a gun ban or second amendment repeal past Congress, there's the President, and if you got it by the President there's still the courts and then even after that, still three-fourths of the States...and some of those fuckers are crazy.

Because no matter how much things change or how liberal the country gets or how "attacked" the conservatives feel, there's always going to be enough fanatics on both sides of the aisle, enough gun nuts and overall rights-absolutists that it's almost certainly going to be better to go with the devil we know than the devil we don't.

And here's the funny part:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. ~Second Amendment, United States Constitution.

Doesn't the entire concept here, as written in the Second Amendment, sort of imply that regulation is not just needed, but required?

Nobody is trying to repeal the Second Amendment, and if they were, it would never work. Our legal and legislative system is designed to be inefficient as fuck for a reason. Repeat this until you understand it.

If you haven't learned that after almost three years of this crap-fest you haven't been paying attention.

It takes an Amendment to repeal an Amendment. There's a reason for that. This applies to the Second Amendment as much as any other.

Anybody who tells you different is not your friend.

It's always open season on the First Amendment somewhere, though, and that's cool, at least according to "Conservatives."

Apparently some people think it's the media's or society's job to do nothing but lavishly and publicly polish their side's collective knob.

I suppose that's kind of like those Evangelicals who think Jesus gets all soggy and hard to light if the universe doesn't shout their beliefs word-for-word back in their faces.

And if they can't finagle a way to force their Epuration Stupide on the media either Constitutionally or legally...well there's always the Benghazi bullshit route and either a few of the donors or enough of the chuds might just be able to be bamboozled into funding some kind of extra-legal "Investigation."

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
~First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Anybody who tells you anything different from this, anybody who champions any restriction of it or tries to get around it with some kind of extra-legal black-bag bullshit...violent or otherwise, is not your friend either.

Anybody who does not want you to know what is true...politically, religiously, scientifically...you name it IS NOT YOUR FRIEND. They do not support you. They do not support whatever your belief system is. Chances are, they are only out to manipulate you for their own personal gain.

Anybody who takes an absolutist approach to the Second Amendment, while taking any sort of minimalist approach to the First Amendment, is not your friend.

And ya know, it bugs the shit out of me how many people get a big damn hard-on talking about the Second Amendment, but they positively hate the First.

They quite likely think that either you're stupid, or you're too fearful of or hateful towards your own neighbors to worry about the lies they want to be able to tell without being challenged.

And the fact that people are dumb or politically partisan or willfully ignorant enough to keep falling for this type of shit is exactly why we're in this mess.

As a former conservative, I am here to tell you that whether it's right or wrong, I was taught that the only reason worth a damn for why we even have the Second Amendment is to protect the First Amendment and the rights provided therein from both overreach by the State and from foreign threat.

Because even back when the Founding Fathers came up with all this stuff they knew that motherfuckers gonna be motherfuckers, and some people cannot be trusted to do either the right thing or the legal thing without the threat of consequences for not doing it.

And that, too, is something that some people need to take note of. We the People are always both the first line and the last line of defense.

Vote accordingly, and vote for people in government who will do so as well, because the alternatives are a big damn mess.

Florida Man Gets Religion.

There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win, because it works. ~Stephen Hawking

Is this an example of that "Florida Man" meme that I keep hearing about?

"Christians Rebuke Hurricane Dorian in the name of Jesus."

Hold on,. I have a church background...and nowhere in years of Elementary and middle school theological education, nor Sunday School nor adult-level church attendance nor in some cases participating in church decision-making as a tithe-paying member of a Baptist church...did I ever get the idea that I could control the weather.

Nor did I ever get the idea that I could "Rebuke" anything whatever "In the name of Jesus." But then, this isn't Dungeons & Dragons, I don't have levels in Cleric, and I've never actually claimed Jesus was my patron deity.

And I sure as hell wasn't taught that it was Okay to make up some big show of whooping and hollering and singing and whatever on the beach to try and make a hurricane go away.

But then I also didn't attend some hokey Pentecostal church in Jacksonville, Florida, as these people apparently do.

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. ~Matthew 6:5 (KJV)

But I digress.

In any case, the hurricane gods seem unimpressed.

This photo was taken either from an NOAA WP-3 Orion...or possibly from an older model C-130 Hercules. (The aircraft use the same engines.) At first I thought it might be from a WC-130J Hurricane Hunter, but then I realized the props were the wrong shape and the engine nacelle wasn't big enough.

Tell me something, does all the physics, much less the physical toughness and skill of the aircrew have any damn thing to do with God?

I mean, don't get me wrong, it might in some small way. Perhaps there are people in the aircraft's crew that are religious, perhaps that drove them to seek a life of public service, perhaps to serve in the Air Force or the Navy and then move on to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or the Air National Guard. But along the way, the skills they picked up to do an incredible bit of flying to even take this incredible photo are entirely man-made and were made possible by human intelligence and natural physical capabilities. Any divine assistance...fundamentally cannot be proven.

That's right, I didn't say it doesn't exist. I said it remains unproven. In other words if you have to believe in it, it cannot be empirically measured and thus cannot be quantified.

That's always the rub, isn't it?

And quite likely, if the hurricane doesn't hit where they live, these yahoos whooping it up on the beach will take credit for that fact.

I mean, nobody can actually prove otherwise, as foolish as such a claim may seem on the face of it.

Never mind how many people get killed or lose their homes someplace else. But that's always how it is with these kind of "Christians."

That's their attitude. "I'm saved, you go to hell." And people have the nerve to wonder why so many terrible people are drawn to Christianity in America these days.

Too often, Evangelical/Fundamentalist/Pentecostal heaven isn't Heaven if everybody gets to go. Somebody has to burn, so they can sit up there in heaven with Republican Jesus and gloat. Far too often, that kind of garbage is either covertly or even overtly the basis of these people's religion.

And that's not just wrong, it's pretty damn sad.

We live in a world where manned spacecraft and satellites and space stations can give the Mark One human eyeball literally a God's-eye view of a storm so vast and powerful that it creates and uses as much energy in a day as all of humanity's power grids combined. Or, as I once had it explained to me, the average hurricane hits with the force of four Hiroshima atomic bombs per second.

And some little group of nuts thinks their prayers are going to turn that aside?

Of course, I also wonder if that church is one of the ones who believes LGBT people cause hurricanes? I hope not, but in this particularly silly season of our national life, it cannot be ruled out.

Yes, the world is big and scary, and you know what?

It's even bigger and scarier if you're stupid.

Religion...even literally primitive or traditional faiths that involve entreating air spirits or thunder-beings...is not about magic words and phrases and jumping around and raising your hands in a big fuss on the beach where everybody can see you and the local news website takes note and somebody writes a report about it.

I have watched two Native American people 'smudge' first each other and then a drum used in traditional ceremony as preparation for moving it, burning sage or some other fragrant herb in an Abalone shell and fanning the smoke about with hawk feathers to purify themselves and the drum and the area around...so that, in their beliefs, any malignant spirits in the area might not travel with us, and I'd been helping my buddy move all weekend. He was in the process of a divorce. I may no longer be religious and was not even then...but I could understand the concept of bad spirits arising from such a situation as well as anything.

And, while they were doing their thing, I can honestly say I felt the same sense of peace and spirituality, the "Holy Spirit" if you will...just like I used to in church.

I have felt the same thing in Buddhist temples, in churches of every description, and also in Islamic Masjids, and when I beat the drum while dervishes danced.

There is something to all this stuff...or people wouldn't do it.

But, It's not about making a big deal of yourself or proving the "power" of your idea of the divine over somebody else's.

Hell if that's what you want...to worship power...wouldn't it just be easier to worship the hurricane?

It's about a power higher than you...that can't be proven or seen and that's the point. It's about helping your neighbors, loving your enemies, and standing up for justice and the poor and the downtrodden. And if you can't do that...why even bother?

It's not about magic words and phrases, and the kind of ignorance that thinks it is can be fatal to both religion and civilization itself.

Pure religion un-defiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself un-spotted from the world. ~James 1:27

The Lie of the "End Times" "Prophecy" "Movement."

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. ~Matthew 7:15

Fucking Seriously?

Rick Wiles, Anti-Semite, Fundamentalist nut, former advertising executive, false prophet, Islamophobe and wearer of bad suits predicts that he'll soon have to "go underground" to escape the murder of Christians in America.

Really?

I have to ask, is anybody "going underground" over the murder of Jews in America?

Has anybody "gone underground" over the murders of Black men by police?

Has anybody "gone underground" over the mass murders of concert-goers? Latinos? School children?

Did anybody "go underground" when nine people in a historic Black church were murdered by a white supremacist?

'Cause ya know, it's funny, Black churches that actually wanted to worship Christ have had to "go underground" in the past.

What about LGBT people, including those who are Christian?

How about the mass abuse of the overwhelmingly Christian Latino migrants at our southern border?

What about the children of non-Citizen members of the United States Armed Forces who are deployed overseas? What about children adopted overseas by members of the military, even if the parents are citizens?

Of course, the problem here is, as far as Rick is concerned none of that is real, As far as Rick is concerned "Christian" means "White Calvinist Big-C "Conservative" Evangelical Who Voted For Donald Trump, Who He Thinks Is Basically Jesus."

At this point if those people and other generic Trump Supporters get beat up, their heads shaved and tarred and feathered in some sort of American Epuration Sauvage, followed by an Epuration Legale which means a lot of Republicans get tossed in the clink for awhile, my basic answer is "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes."

Speaking as a former conservative here, Rick...and likely somebody who ticks more of the boxes than you do...I'm damned tired of killing. I quite suspect that most actual (rather than default, like me) liberals would likewise be against killing Christians. Wouldn't mind seeing some butts kicked in the street, but that ain't murder. People might be against their bad behavior and hateful conduct...but that doesn't mean anybody wants to murder Christians in general...let alone you in particular.

Hell, I had to look you up on Wikipedia to even know who you were...and I've heard your name before.

What you're doing here is projecting.

And, Rick, like it or not, so far murder and stealing and terrorism seems to be your side's game, not everybody else's.

But of course, to cowardly, shitty little fanatics like Rick Wiles...who, for the most part can't or won't tell you that their real faith is in White Supremacy and Far-Right politics because even they know it's shit and they don't have the guts to own it...even the existence of different ideas is considered an existential threat because they know their bullshit won't stand up in the light of day, to a critical eye or even challenge on its own terms by a person who's looking at the whole Bible and not just the cherry-picked parts that fit some kind of Gospel Of The White Jesus type of agenda.

Military dependent kids? Hell, these fools even want to go after corporations and various social media platforms that more often than not have proved to be very friendly to These Fucking People down through the years...because no amount of friendly is friendly enough.

These Fucking People want everybody from Facebook and Twitter on down to you and me to shout their own beliefs back at them and then set ourselves on fire for their own amusement. As with their (Orange) Lord and Savior, their "Chosen One" as he's named himself, no amount of self-abasement is too much. To these kind of petty fanatics, even the whole world remaking itself around their pet issues would never be enough. They would just find new ones.

Because it's not about Christ, it's not about Conservatism, and it sure as hell ain't about the "End Times." Hell I think even Whiteness might be expendable in the long term. It's about motherfuckers gonna fuck mothers and then they want to be glorified for being shitty little motherfuckers and any pointy-headed crop of fools that'll do that will work, in the long run.

It's just that, before Trump anyway, there's historically not been a lot of money in the cult business unless you can fool people into thinking that your cult is "Christian" and maybe have a bunch of pretty white girls as your front people. See also "Fox News."

Oh, hey, speaking of Fox News and projection; Some Fox News idiot said "Millennials are obsessed with self-love" and "Don't want to have anything to do with God or having kids."

Got that, kids? Become Christian and have a bunch of white babies and vote conservative so these cowardly rich shits can keep the money in the family while the planet burns and your children starve and a measure of wheat for a Denarius, but do not hurt the oil and the wine, and all that.

Seriously, fuck these motherfuckers.

They're the ones who don't give a shit about God...in addition to ruining the whole God thing for one hell of a lot of the rest of us. Like I said before, nobody hates God more than these fucking people do, at least when it comes to actually doing anything that He says.

Oh, they'll talk all holy and shit. But these people? They're so holy that if Jesus showed up again they'd be shouting "Crucify Him!" in the streets. These are the people who, when given the choice between the murderer and the Son of God, will choose the murderer every fucking time.

The truth is, just like Trump, these people believe that Man is everything and the Universe was made for us and blah blah blah, all those same fake-ass "Western" conceits that have been with us since the days of Aristotle and Plato.

And that stuff was crap then and it's crap now, especially if you believe in the Bible or ever have.

It's not all about us, the universe exists for itself, and was not made for us, and we are but travelers here. If there is such a thing as God and He did create the world...why would He not punish us in the next one for abusing His creation?

That's the thing, none of this actually belongs to us.

But you can't tell that to these motherfuckers.

While the jungles burn and the oceans rise and the ice melts and people begin to be displaced by the effects of Climate Change...which are visible to any person paying even the remotest attention, these fucking people shout "Look at me, look at me! Look at me and how holy I am!" And then in a fit of inspiration, they shout "Look! He is Coming Soon!" And while everybody's looking away in this direction or that, they're stealing the money out of the offering plate.

If we're in the End Times, they're of our own making, born of fear of our own neighbors, hate and racism and shitty ideas and a suicidal desire to keep giving more to those who already have too much.

And these End Times Prophecy shits are balls deep in all that, waiting to blow their own loads in an orgy of self-gratification and self-worship, secure in the supposedly-hidden knowledge that it's all crap and that if a God they don't really believe in is planning something, they'll be dead before it gets here.

And there's nothing Christ-like about that, is there?

Guarantee you they'll make me out the bad guy for pointing it out, though.

I used to be a member of the End Times prophecy movement. I didn't get that deep into it, but I damn sure found out every bit of it had been a lie when I woke up to a normal day on January 1st, 2000.

And if we all find a way to get through this, we'll still all be the bad guys and they'll just move on to another dumb thing that supposedly points out that we're all going to go to hell while they get to gloat about it.

And if God supports that kind of garbage mentality, then he is not God and we need not worry.

And reduced air quality from half the Amazon burning will kill people in real life, just as surely as any imagined fire from Heaven.

If there's an End Times, that's it, right there.

But if we learn to control ourselves and not be too greedy...as any mainstream religion including Christianity says we should...we have it in our power to stop this mess.

Think on that.

The (Orange) wine of the wrath of God.

And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.

And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand,

The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb:

And the smoke of their torment ascends up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receives the mark of his name. ~Revelation 14:8-11

Have we reached peak stupid, yet?

I know I keep asking this. Yesterday, Trump attempted to order American companies to find alternatives to doing business in China, and then attempted to order...by Tweet...a number of shipping companies to search their packages for drugs. No, not Federal agents, not police, not "cooperate with X federal agency" he wanted the companies themselves to do it.

One: Trump has no authority, Constitutional or otherwise, to do this. This is America, God doesn't have the kind of authority Trump is trying to claim for himself.
Two: Private corporations generally don't have their own Narc units. That's what the feds, or the local cops, are for. How the fuck did you even get this job?

Oh, right; Idiots.

Listen, ya'll, it's not just that Trump appears to have no idea of how his government or the world actually works...he appears to be mostly incapable of learning, as well as in the grip of some form of cognitive and mental decline. In short, this motherfucker should never have been elected in the first place, and needs to be gotten out of power one way or another, soon. And, the Party that nominated and has enabled him needs to be banished to the Outer Darkness, the kind of electoral wilderness that you don't come back from.

The Amazon is on fire. China and Hong Kong appear to still be on a collision course. Russia is still a threat. North Korea is becoming a worse threat. There is a probably-global recession starting. We're in a trade war that we have no way to win, and this absolute jackass is blathering away on social media like he thinks he's some kind of reality show kingpin, still?

Fuck this guy.

Listen, ya'll. I'm sick of furrowed brows and "I'm very concerned" and strongly-worded letters and social media rage and this goddamned moron in general.

And I am damned sick of the fact that the only people more invisible than Congressional Democrats in condemning this latest round of idiocy...are Congressional Republicans.

It's your credibility and reputation that are getting trashed here, Republicans. As far as I'm concerned nobody with an "R" after their name should ever live this crap down.

This is not a time for people to sit back and hope they can wait it out. If you do that there's not only no "wait" there's no "out" either. This is not a time to sit back and hope you'll profit from this mess. You won't, it's just that damned simple.

We don't have time to fuck around. This is the kind of time when everybody from national leaders down to the most common of the common people need to screw their courage to the sticking place, stand up and tell Donald Goddamned Motherfucking Trump what he can go do with himself! Trump and every last Republican office-holder at every level in this country should be run out of Washington D.C. and every state capital or other large city in the USA on a fucking  rail.

Any questions!?

Lately I keep hearing how conservatives seem to view everything as some kind of zero sum game, or think that life is something that must be earned.

There's no thought of the idea, like I was taught, that if you were born you already done "earned" your life.

There seems to be no thought among these people that there even *Is* a higher power or something greater than themselves.

There's no thought that hey...God is the one who creates life. And this from the people who self-appointed themselves as "The God people" in American politics, sometime back.

I started out as a Christian and a conservative and I was taught that life...ALL life, not just human life...had intrinsic value. 

Of course, like me, almost none of the people who taught me that (the ones still living anyway) are Christians anymore, and none of them are still conservatives. Should be noted the one person who is still a Believer (my Grandma, who is 96) has always been a Democrat. 

The thing that bothers me about this lack of belief in the intrinsic value of life is...Okay then, who determines who or what has value? Banks? Rich people? The "Tribe?" None of the things these people put forward as values these days fits with anything I was ever taught about this stuff. It seems like the things these fuckers actually value are things they know they can't speak publicly about, hate, racism, sexism etc. 

Like, what is even the meaning of life...or death...or anything else without some kind of fixed values that one can actually relate to other humans with and speak about? 

Without life having intrinsic value what's even the damn point of getting out of bed in the morning?

Just sayin' if you think that Trump and the Republicans care about you, you're wrong, they don't.

But they sure as hell want to spit in your face, and still be worshiped just the same. More to the point, they want you to not have a choice.

At this point, I think these fucking people all know they're going to hell. All they've ever cared about is profit and power in this life.

Yet so many these people claim to be Evangelical or Fundamentalist Christians. They've all at least heard what that religion says is on the Other Side. They know.

They just want to take the rest of us with them.

Don't let them have the satisfaction.

Fuck these motherfuckers.