An open letter to House Republicans.

When the forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law; peace is considered already broken. ~Che Guevara

Dear Representative Jordan;

First of all, put on a coat, you look like a schmuck.

Second, I am an American person, a member of the body that you, without a hint of irony, refer to as "The People." I am a Democratic voter, a former Republican in fact. I voted for Hillary Clinton primarily because I do not like Mr. Trump, and I never have. He has always been a boor, a con artist, a liar and a racist, traits that I considered antithetical to my own Christian and conservative upbringing. I disliked him when I first became aware of him as a child. As a teenager, I was disgusted by his personal intervention in the Central Park Five case. I was a young conservative at the time, and the antics of people like Mr. Trump would be a part of why I registered to vote as a Republican when I was 18 years old.

And my hatred of evil conduct, lying, and racism is no small part of why I decided to vote Democrat in 2008 and would re-register as an Independent that year, and as a Democrat in 2016. My former party abandoned me, I did not abandon it.

It is for those reasons that I object strongly to your use of the term "The will of the People."

Sir, I have to ask, are you a Communist? Or do you have some manner of alignment with Vladimir Putin's Neo-Soviet regime? Or do you endorse the conduct of that regime and its revival of Stalin's personality cult and whitewashing of the conduct of the Soviet state?

I was raised to a great extent by my grandparents who told me about things like McCarthyism and the Army-McCarthy hearings. Have you no sense of decency, sir?

I grew up watching movies like Rambo and Rocky and Red Dawn and the mentality of "Better Dead Than Red" was still a part of my cultural background, most especially because I was a conservative kid in a conservative family and the grandson of Cold War military veterans.

So I'll ask again, are you a Communist?

Why? Because that was how Communists talked. They always cited some amorphous, unspecified body referred to as "The People" to provide ideological cover for their regimes. Even today, the world is littered with "The People's" this or "Popular" that, in both current Communist states like China, Cuba, and Vietnam and formerly East Bloc aligned states like Angola or Laos or Sudan. But do you seriously think that the People's Armed Police or the People's Liberation Army in Communist China exist to serve and protect their nation's Constitution, the law and the people, as our own armed forces and police do? Or do they exist solely to protect the State, including from its own citizens?

I submit that the term "The Will Of The People" is nothing but empty words, a shibboleth, a thought-stopper intended for naught but a lame attempt to silence dissent, or in the case of our current national legal matters, legitimate Constitutional processes that it is your duty to participate in, in good faith with the interest of your country considered paramount...rather than the interests of the Putin's Russia or the Republican Party or your donors or of Donald Trump on a personal level.

When people swear an oath to the Constitution, it is their duty to represent or to serve ALL Americans, not just the ones who voted for them. Members of the other party or of no party at all, and the immigrant or the native-born at all, those who vote for you or the other guy or those who have never bothered to exercise their right to vote at all are The People, regardless of race or religion, just as much as your own voters are.

Our founders defined America in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as "WE The People" not in terms of the "Will" of one specific faction or group.

There has, in the last few months, come to be something very Soviet about the conduct of the Republican Party, and speaking as a middle-aged American who grew up in the shadow of the later Cold War and who cheered when Reagan said "Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" and did so again when that wall came down a bare few years later, that is not a complement.

And until that changes, I consider you, your colleagues and the President all to be unfit to hold public office of any sort whatever.

Imagine a droning voice whining about "fake news" forever.

I mean, if I had my way... you'd wear that goddamn uniform for the rest of your pecker-sucking life. But I'm aware that ain't practical, I mean at some point you're gonna have to take it off. So. I'm gonna give you a little something you can't take off.~Lt. Aldo Raine, to German Col. Hans Landa, before carving a Swastika into his forehead. from Inglorious Basterds.

I've been noticing something, lately.

I'm starting to see a different kind of Trump Supporter, compared to what I saw around here in 2015-2016.

I parked behind this car on Friday night last week at work, presumably that of a second-shift person. On the back of it, there were three window stickers. A skeletal middle finger, a topless Anime-titties sticker (and how is that cool, even these days, especially if you say you're a conservative?) and a Punisher skull with a trump wig superimposed on it.

The vehicle in question was an orange Chevy HHR. I suppose the guy has to overcompensate somehow.

As I've said before, 20 years ago I was a conservative. Not just a conservative, but a rural Northern Michigan pickup-truck-driving conservative who ticked more of the proper boxes than most did.

And we laughed at cars like that, minivans and station wagons and the then-new idea PT Cruisers.

I haven't seen a pickup truck with a Trump sticker on it that wasn't driven by a very old person, and none of those stickers have been new ones, either.

Yesterday, when I pulled out of my parking space I noticed one of those Flex box-SUV's with a "Trump 2020: Make Liberals Cry Again" sticker on it."

In all of the 2016 election cycle I think I saw one Trump sticker on a car in the work parking lot. I've seen all of three Trump hats or shirts or anything on customers at work since, although we did have a pro-Trump Graffiti incident in one of the bathrooms last summer.

I've seen more Sikhs in Turbans than rednecks in #MAGA hats at work in the last three years.

The place you saw that type of shit the most was, naturally, Wal-Mart.

That's where you saw the typical, or perhaps I should say stereotypical, Trump Supporter in all of their full glory, along with whatever splashy dumb-ass Trump swag they had on.

I'm not seeing those this time, at least not so far.

What I am seeing is a few old nebbish-looking white dudes wearing "Trump 2020" red baseball hats, logic dictates there must be some young Trumpers still left, but I haven't seen very many in the real world.

I happen to know a lot of generic Republicans who voted for Trump. Almost all of them seem to regret it and a majority of them think he won't get reelected. Some of these people are pretty out there, outspoken about whatever opinions they have, tattoos of Bible verses or things suggestive of military service or at least support of it, obvious things about them for the most part, that provide clues to an alert observer where they stand and on what. And for the record, not all of them were white, either.

I'm not seeing a lot of those people still being pro-Trump, or if they are, they've gone quiet...and if they're still Trump Supporters a large majority of them have been real quiet about it since the spring of 2017 or so. Some of those people have in fact liked anti-Trump posts of mine on Facebook or Twitter.

In short, what we're seeing, is that like the changes in the attitudes and makeup of the Congressional Republicans, the nature of the Loud And Proud Trump Supporter has changed.

And then I see stuff like this, and that Trump issued a vague executive order declaring Judaism a nationality rather than a religion, in some vague fashion, supposedly to combat the boycotts of Israel that are common on some college campuses.

Bullshit.

This is about trying to define some American people as...not being Americans, and to do so even in the most tenuous and vague legal terms seems like a bad idea to me. Such things echo Apartheid South Africa, Nazi Germany, and yes, the Soviet Union.

Not exactly countries we should be emulating in any way. This is the kind of bullshit that got six million people incinerated, and millions more sent to Gulags, and made people slaves in their own country.

But then, it made sense. Trump and the Republicans have still got the cranks, the freaks, the greasy Congress-critters, the internet morons, the Prosperity Gospel preachers, and the talk-radio screamers.

But on the street level, they're down to the Good Germans, or at least the American equivalent thereof. The people who've thrown in with this crap because of ideology, or money, or racism, but aren't loud about it You know, the people who knew damn well what was going on at Buchenwald, and didn't care.

It doesn't matter that there are fewer of those people. That we have those people at all represents an existential threat to the American experiment.

Those aren't the people who, if Trump is Impeached and removed or voted out, will pick up a gun and try to shoot down their fellow Americans, despite all their big talk. They're the people who, if some state governments decide to back Trump when the shit hits the fan...and it will, partisanship in general and Republican bad actors in particular all but guarantee it...will enthusiastically support such things. They won't pick up a rifle and march off to fight, no, they'll get others to do it for them.

And when you factor in that there's a sizable minority of young people who don't vote or take much of an interest in politics but are vaguely sympathetic to libertarian ideas, you start to see where they could find those others.

These people don't have to win over the government, or the military...or at least not much of it. Hell, a rifle company or two, some cops and slapping uniforms on some lawyers and medical staff could be the basis of an army if they've got enough of the same type or at least caliber of weapon for a degree of standardization and effective logistics.

It's not that it doesn't take much...the really alarming thing is just how little it actually takes, if you think about it.

And we've had two mass shootings aboard Navy bases, plus an attempt at a third. Only one of the three was perpetrated by foreign nationals.

I can't help but wonder how much of that is due to the amped up nature of things right now.

And when you have this kind of talk from Trump, on top of that, it makes for a pretty explosive mix.

Explosive as in people get killed and shit blows up.

They don't have to get the whole country, just a part of it, and with between a quarter and a third of Americans consistently behind this crap, the cultists and the Good Germans who don't question, it's not hard to see how they could populate whatever piece they break off. And really even the most tangential or temporary success in this regard is a horrific thing for everybody.

Even a short conflict where these fucking people get their ass kicked, does nothing but help this shit in the long term. While the common Collaborators suffered in the closing months of WWII and after, lots of Vichy French generals and lower ranking officers and one hell of a lot of the troops switched sides to the Free French and damn few of those were even questioned. Hell, a former Vichy General, Alphonse Juin, served on both sides during the war, switched sides during the North Africa campaign and went on to fight in Italy, and after the war he fought in Vietnam, ending his career as the last Marshal of France. Of such people and their descendants is the current French far-right made.

Let me put it another way; Do you think John Bolton wouldn't switch sides or join another faction just to save his ass?

And if that happens here, it's just going to go on and on.

But when you have people talking about an "American Nation" and alluding to the fact that it consists only of their supporters, and taking legal steps (however small) in the direction of making that so, and threatening the Apocalypse if they lose. It's not just that these people talk as if there will never be another Democratic President...they talk as if there will never be another President, period. As if they think Trump will both live, and stay in power forever...like the Emperor of the Imperium of Man in Warhammer 40K.

Imagine Trump's Chloroform voice, whining about "Fake News" forever.

It doesn't work that way, one way or another. And when it doesn't...

You do the math.

It's not that American democracy won't survive. It'll survive just fine in the Blue and Purple areas of the map, and probably a decent percentage of the red ones as well. It's that this autocratic bullshit *Is* going to win somewhere, and the fall that will bring that about is going to happen unless we find a way to change the trajectory of this and get enough people to come together and say No.

Because if we don't, it's just going to go on and on, not least because most of us don't want to live under this bullshit. I for one have had enough of these people and their puerile soul-crushing banality.

We need to stop this shit, and fast, or it's just going to go on and on, but with a switch from social media flame wars to actual flames and actual wars.

And the only people who will profit are the weapons manufacturers and the makers and sellers of coffins.

This crap needs to stop.

Destroying the town in order to save it, Again.

It is better to die for the Emperor than to live for yourself. ~Warhammer 40K Dawn Of War, Imperium Thought For The Day.

Steve Bannon and US ultra-conservatives try to school the Pope about Catholicism. Seriously.

If ever there was a headline indicative of the level of stupidity we've reached, there it fucking is.

These Fucking People are evidently Very Concerned about the Pope expressing support for migrants and the poor while arguing against nationalism and unfettered Capitalism.

Perhaps my headline should read; "Christian does what is Biblically required of him, film at 11."

And this is something that these people have a problem with? These "Ultra-conservative" supposed Christians? These people who consider themselves, no joke intended, to be more Catholic than the Pope?

Conservatism is loosely based on the idea of "Things as they are."

And Jesus told them to support migrants and the poor.

The message of Christianity, as I was taught it, was not "Support the rich and act like you're religious."

Truth is Subjective.
~Warhammer 40K Dawn Of War, Imperium Thought For The Day.

The Pope is, whether anybody likes it or not, considered the absolute monarch of the Holy See and of Vatican City, as well as the spiritual and temporal head of the Catholic Church. The Pope has, in point of fact, been quite clear what his views are and what he thinks is appropriate.

And, right or wrong, dude has lived up to his ideals regarding freedom of conscience, including for the most part leaving the conservatives alone except for sacking a few people who really had it coming. You'd think they'd be decent enough to return the favor, given that the Pope actually does still have the Holy Inquisition *Cough* I mean Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at his disposal.

If I was That Guy, I'd probably be putting some people on trial with an eye towards burning them at the stake. The Pope has, in fact, declined to do so thus far. Given the shit these people do, firing a few of them seems a rather light punishment.

There is no such thing as innocence, only degrees of guilt.
~Warhammer 40K Dawn Of War, Imperium Thought For The Day.

Were these people what they actually say they are, the proper response would be "Thank you Sir, may I have another?"

But of course that's not what's going on here. These people are conservative like I'm a goddamned toaster oven.

Catholicism, Christianity, even Conservatism itself, along with every other value these people have ever claimed, have all been shown to be nothing more than a means to an end, all to be discarded the second they are no longer convenient.

An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.
~Warhammer 40K Dawn Of War, Imperium Thought For The Day.

What these fucking people have in mind for Christians, what they would have preached from the Pulpit, probably doesn't work out very well for the Christians.

This Nationalist, Trumpist, ultra-right bullshit thus far seems to do little more than funnel more money to the already-very-wealthy and leave an endless stream of bodies and broken people and wrecked lives in its wake. The cruelty is the point...when there even is one.

And then it expects those who lose everything to suffer in silence for the good of their shitty agenda.

I used to be a Christian, and this bullshit is not what I was taught.

I do not want to live in that kind of world. Honestly, if you have a brain in your head, I'm pretty sure you don't either.

It's not just that these people are wrong, but rather that they are wrong in the context of even their own historically claimed values, which seem to have been nothing more than utter bullshit the whole time. What people like that would have planned for you or me, they seem none too interested in openly stating, at least not while the rest of us have greater numbers than them and the capacity to defend ourselves. From that alone, you should be able to deduce that these people are not your friends and their idea of freedom is "They get everything and you get nothing but a big bag of dicks, if you're lucky." Fuck that shit.

Foolish are those who fear nothing, yet claim to know everything.
~Warhammer 40K Dawn Of War, Imperium Thought For The Day.

The thing to keep in mind here is that these people, who wish to sublimate absolutely everything to their shitty politics, even their religion...as if on some level the Salvation of Souls secretly stems from one Richard Milhous Nixon rather than Jesus Christ...they don't give a fuck about you.

In fact, they likely view you as either cannon fodder, an enemy, or a potential slave.

And they're being remarkably, explicitly open about this in recent days as the walls close in on them, as if they hope that by their sheer shitty evilness they might justify themselves to the masses and cause the public to rise up in some kind of global reverse-French-Revolution and tear down centuries of Enlightenment liberalism (Which mind you, includes such documents as the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence.)

Perhaps to reinstall kings and priests? Rule by men, rather than rule of laws? I don't know, these fools are never terribly specific on what exactly they do consider a valid form of governance.

Yes, this really is the type of shit that Alt-Right Nazis say when they think nobody else is listening. And they really, really do think it's all about them.

I rather expect their vagueness is on purpose, because they don't want to be hanged from gas station canopies and spat upon by passing Partisans.

And given just how post-modern these opponents of modernity are, I'm going to go out on a limb and say they're probably more Saddam Hussein (Austin Powers-like tastes and all) or Moammar Gadaffi than Antonio Salazar or Francisco Franco, and far more Pol Pot than Gerald Ford.

Thus, their undermining of coherent religious doctrine is by design. They don't have any set beliefs, they don't want you to have any either.

Hatred is the emperor's greatest gift to humanity.
~Warhammer 40K Dawn Of War, Imperium Thought For The Day.

Even their current belief in Trump is likely transitory.

The whole point of religion is not to justify what sinful unregenerate Man already wants to do, but rather to put a brake on his behavior and instill in him the idea that this world is not all there is, and in in the case of the Abrahamic faiths in particular, to instill in Man the idea that each of us, all men and women, will be judged someday by a God that is, in turn, merciful and righteously angry.

The whole idea is that no, it's really not all about you, the universe doesn't care what you want. More to the point...no this is not all made for you, and when you die you're going to be judged by somebody else who's by definition smarter than you, who likely does not share your opinions and who, if the Bible is to be believed, did not and does not suffer fools, hypocrites or liars gladly.

If you think that the whole point of religion is simply to use it to sanctify that which you already want to do...get a publicist or a political operative, not a priest.

Or shut your goddamned mouth before you embarrass yourself any more than you already have.

Faith without deeds is worthless.
~Warhammer 40K Dawn Of War, Imperium Thought For The Day.

It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.
~Attributed to an unnamed US major by war correspondent Peter Arnett following the US bombing of Ben Tre, South Vietnam, in 1968.

Trumperwocky.

Twas Brillig and the slithy toves
Did gire and gimble in the wabe
All mimsy were the borogroves
And mome raths outgrabe.
~Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky.

'There are no set facts here."

There is no statement that I've ever heard in my life, that I would consider to be more anti-conservatism than this one, so of course in this day and age this statement was not uttered by Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, but rather by Republican Rep. Doug Collins (R-Georgia) in defense of Donald Trump. As I have said before, if this is what conservatism has made of itself, I'm damned glad I got out over a decade ago.

Conservatives have become the crazed Anarchist from the Mortuary in Planescape: Torment, pretending to be a zombie to spy on the Dustmen, and they don't even know why.

As somebody who was both a conservative 20 and a Dungeons & Dragons nerd (not to mention avid PC gamer) 20 years ago, I find this appalling.

I mean, seriously, without set facts, without a shared baseline of reality, how is anything possible, much less democracy, freedom...or indeed accomplishing anything at all?

To use a common statement from my days as a conservative Christian, without a belief in set facts, somebody could say the Bible is an auto-parts manual...or by turn, that an auto-parts manual is the Bible.

It's not just that without Truth, on a certain level, Democracy is not possible, it's that without a belief in Truth...at the end of the day, nothing is possible, except perhaps destruction.

Tell me something; I was taught that conservatism was based on facts and reality, or at least a certain interpretation thereof...as is liberalism, and up to a certain point the same can be said of any valid belief system at all. People are different, understandings of the facts will be different.

But you have to accept that there are facts. That there is truth. Otherwise, what's even the point?

Among other things, without facts and truth, religion itself is likely nothing more than tribal ritual, an exercise in feeling good about yourself, and it has no purpose.

Without facts, what are you even believing in?

Christianity, Judaism and Islam all share the same God. Buddhism, Sikhism, Traditional spirituality...all at least acknowledge some higher power than the Self, and have that in common with most other religions. There are, on a certain level, beliefs taken as facts that are common to almost all religions.

There is a reason for that.

If there are no facts, what exactly is the point of belief in Christ, or in an afterlife? If there are no facts, is not a religion based on worshiping Sporks just as valid? Celebrity worship? Heaven's Gate? How about belief that you are God?

Now you go and try and make your own Earth, in six days or even six billion years, without help.

You see what I'm saying here? Note that I'm saying it right out of 1990's Apologetics drawing on both books that I read and stuff I heard at the street level from a bunch of African American believers I was close to at the time thanks to my Mom's then-ongoing Social Work internship in Saginaw, Michigan..

Any idiot can say any old thing they want, but that does not make it true. There is always and forever a set of objective facts, that people ignore at their peril because reality is a wall that we all, always, run into sooner or later.

These people are in the wrong even from their own hard-right perspective. Funny how Conservatives have morphed into exactly the kind of moral relativists they accused liberals of being 20 years ago.

For the record, I just tried to Evangelize you, using the exact same stuff I would have 20 years ago, but this time for reality.

There's one key difference, though.

These people, Evangelicals and Republicans all, would cheer the AntiChrist if he offered them tax cuts.

And so it is with the Republican Party.

When the Secretary of State starts whining about "When will people love him" you know something is wrong with the dude. I mean, come on, what the hell kind of grown-ass man says shit like that, much less in public?

When that self-same Secretary of State immediately gets punked by Linda Ronstadt of all people (Full disclosure; I did not know that Linda Ronstadt was still alive) I'd suggest this is a big hint that something is wrong. And remember that this dude was first in his class at West Point. Education and social class does not mean shit if you started out as an idiot and made the choice to remain so, by being a closed-minded fanatic.

I've heard that Mike Pompeo keeps an open Bible on his desk. Maybe he should have tried reading it instead.

 Apparently, Trump is going full racist in public now, aside from his comments about Warren, he's plain out saying shit to rooms full of Jews equating them with money, and then telling them that they have to vote for him based on that money.

Listen up, yo. Speaking as a former conservative myself, my first response to somebody telling me that I have to support them is generally something along the lines of "Bitch, I ain't gotta do nothing of the sort, get the fuck out of my face before I bust you up." But then I'm old enough to remember when conservatism wasn't composed almost entirely of authoritarian boot-lickers.

And the worst part is, these fucking people are going along with this shit.

I mean, seriously, as even a former conservative...hell, as a Man...I do not get this.

When somebody insults you to your face the correct response is not "Thank you sir, may I have another."

Don't any of these people have any pride in themselves, or at least basic self-respect? Don't they have any pride at all, even in the negative sense?

Peddle ethnic hatred, of my own group or any other, right to my face and you're going to get smacked right in the mouth. You'll get it again if you insult me.

If you, in the next breath, talk about ignoring the Constitution that is the basis for our entire country, you've just made an enemy.

Look, I don't care who or what you are. These people are not your friend.

Strike that. I'm guessing the answer would be "No."

I caught this response on one of the Ronstadt threads. I'm literally not sure who or what this person thinks she's talking about, but despite the fact that you have to be at least my age to even know who Linda Ronstadt is, I've seen far more support for her online...and off, given that my roommate mentioned this to me later on, granted mostly in the context of "Hey wait a minute, Linda Ronstadt is still alive? I guess she made Mike Pompeo her bitch at some dinner thing." I mean, if you do not know at this point that conservatives are a minority in America, you haven't been paying attention. This was understood back in the 1990's, so far as I know. Granted my definition of conservative honestly did not include a majority of the people who are currently Trump supporters.

It should be noted that the area I lived in in the 1990's, Michigan's 1st Congressional District, was a Blue district at the time, now it's red, and it has at least its fair share of Trump Supporters. Thus, logically at least some of the people living in it voted for both Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.

See, it's like this.

This woman is a conservative like I'm a goddamned toaster oven.

Let's look at this, shall we?

Her Twitter handle is "I heart Mindy" so she's definitely got the overly high opinion of herself down real good...if not probably unrequited self-love, just sayin.'

Anybody who starts off with "I LOVE ME!" probably has issues, and probably doesn't, really.

She starts off with profanity. implied or otherwise. Ya'll tried that in my church back in the 1990's you could expect to be leaving fairly quickly because you'd be asked to leave, and likely escorted out. If you refused, the police would have been called. There was a time when this was not cool.

Ostentatious fake patriotism? Check. Middle-finger mentality? Check.

Some people think they're being cute when they say "Fuck you" to other people. I was taught there's nothing particularly conservative about it. Disrespect, Nihilism, and self-importance are not conservative values...or at least they weren't before Trump.

Fake machismo? (From a woman, no less?) Check. Rifle? Check. Sexualization? Check. Denial of any particular association with the values of traditional conservatism (!) while still trying to claim it to get the approval of the feeble-minded? Check.

Titillation to appeal to the erectionally-challenged? You do the math.

Check.the weapon.

Right in the middle of the banner pic like an upraised middle finger from Stalin himself.

It's an AKS-74U, the carbine version of the AK-74 rifle. I recognized it immediately.

That's a Soviet weapon. One still in use by the Russian military, I should add.

That's a major tell, consciously or not, I think.

This woman is not your friend.

Just like how today's Republican Party, in the face of Impeachment and polls showing that 60% plus of the population does not support them...is suddenly sounding very Soviet.

They're hurtling balls-out towards that wall called reality...and trying to deny that it exists. These people are the apparatchiks making Five Year Plans in the fall of 1991.

Right before the fall of the Soviet Union itself.

It's not so much the fall that kills you, it's that sudden stop at the bottom.

Physically or metaphorically it's largely the same.

Physics and the laws thereof will kill you whether you believe in it or not.

"There are no set facts here."

Remember that line.

And both Trump and institutional conservatism, not to mention a large percentage of the Republican base wanted the guy who said it to be a United States Senator.

Remember that the next time some Evangelical Republican starts talking to you about "Truth."

If we don't stop this shit, the fall is coming.

...

Stalin is a Genghis Khan, an unscrupulous intriguer, who sacrifices everything else to the preservation of power … He changes his theories according to whom he needs to get rid of next. ~Nikolai Bukharin

What shall it profit a man...

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow. 

~Winston Churchill

Seriously? This shit again?

I'll tell you one thing, speaking as a child of the late Cold War here, I am GOD damned tired of seeing "Conservatives" take the side of Russia in this ongoing political shit-show.

Russia, you know, the central focus of the Communist Soviet Union, that had nuclear weapons pointed at us for 40 years and was...and indeed still is...one of the main bogeymen of conservative fever-swamps.and probably will be until the last Baby Boomer is naught but shadows and dust. Russia, ruled by former KGB agent Vladimir Putin, and as the saying goes in Russia...there are no former KGB men. Russia, where there is an ongoing political project aimed at rehabilitating the political image of brutal Communist dictator Josef Stalin, who killed so many of his own people that even Moscow can presently only guess at the numbers.

And Tucker Carlson thinks we should take the side of Russia over Ukraine?

Fuck that.

Let me put it another way.

I don't ever want to hear another damn word about Jane Fonda ever again.

In July of 1972, Jane Fonda went to North Vietnam, as a lot of activists, civil rights leaders, pastors and teachers had done, for humanitarian and political purposes and, often, to see the damage from US bombing campaigns.

Somewhere along the way she posed with North Vietnamese soldiers, sitting on an anti-aircraft gun.

This led to an endless spew of hatred, primarily from Conservatives, but also from some US military veterans and even active duty troops, for at least 40 years. I still occasionally hear about it. Hell, there's people who weren't even born when this happened who I've heard this crap from down through the years.

Listen, yo, I have every damned reason to be one of those people myself. I certainly remember hearing the occasional disparaging of Jane Fonda from military people even in the mid-1990's and yet somehow I never picked it up. I honestly can't imagine why people would still get that worked up about some stupid thing some famous person did the year before I was even born, that had no real, lasting effect on...well, anything except to light their own fairly useless reputation on fire.

And most of the time, when that happens, people just move on.

I mean, for fuck's sake I mostly remember Jane Fonda from exercise videos in the 1980's and never saw why I should give a fuck.

To be quite honest, except that I see his smarmy, sneering face on the TV screen a lot of nights at work before I change the channel on break room TV's I wouldn't give a damn about Tucker Carlson, either. I've thought he was a useless twit for years, and thought so before he was on Fox News.

But in this case, it doesn't matter what I think and it's not some irrelevant political grudge from almost 50 years ago.

Lots of people watch Tucker Carlson's snidely sneering every night. I see a small but fairly persistent number of people at work, almost all of them older folks, watching Fox News with the glazed-over, zombie-eyed look of severely ADHD kids. I'm serious.

It's like a real Zombie Apocalypse, except that it somehow only ate these people's brains.

And not all of them are dedicated Republicans either, there's been more than one older registered Democrat in that group as well. 

So yeah, it's a problem for me when somebody with that kind of a following is teaching their viewers how to betray America and support Russia.

I mean, maybe it's just me, but I'm so old that I can remember when expressing this level of support for Russia on TV would result in a bunch of conservatives beating you up and then using your face to clean a toilet after a bunch of them took a shit in it. I remember prejudice against Chinese and Vietnamese neighbors on the part of older folks when I lived in California...because of Communism. I can remember hearing stories from my grandparents about people losing their jobs, indeed entire careers, for exactly this kind of talk. Hell, for statements that didn't even rise to this level.

And Fox News people have done plenty of hating on Jane Fonda...over something that happened before I was even born...and mind you I'm 46 years old.

But they're perfectly Okay with Tucker Carlson saying he supports Russia, multiple times?

What does Tucker, or Barr or McConnell or Trump have to do, pose next to an S-400 SAM system for you to get it?

I never thought I'd live to see the day when Conservatives forgot what Communism was...to the point where a lot of these stupid motherfuckers that claim the label these days unconsciously seek to emulate it, complete with desiring central control of the economy, leaders who want big parades with missiles and tanks, personality cults, and total disregard for truth in favor of whatever the party line is today...even if it contradicts what they said yesterday.

Conservatives desired to "Win" to so totally defeat Liberals, that they lost. It's not just that they've lost control of the culture, or the narrative, or this or that thing, or the other. They lost themselves.

Unless it was all a lie in the first place...which is a real possibility.

Unless their hatred for their own fellow Americans was so great...that they literally willingly became what they said they hated for so many years. Or maybe they're just plain stupid and don't know the difference.

Either way, 30 years after its own fall, the Iron Curtain has claimed the Republican Party at long last.

What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, yet lose his own soul?

If you wonder why I'm not a conservative anymore, that's why. I can't sign on to the idea of hating my fellow Americans and my own country just because people don't agree with me.

Conservatives, the "America, Fuck Yeah!" people until about 2015 or so, are now openly preaching hatred of America since over two thirds of us didn't join their cult.

If we don't vote the bastards out and drive them from the public sphere down to the subatomic level, what do you think these fucking people are going to do with that hatred?

Vote the bastards out, and then be prepared for when they want to make a fight of it.

Without apology to 1950's conservatism, better Dead than Red, I say.

Ferrets are better people than Republicans.

We're not going to have the America that we want until we elect leaders who are going to tell the truth - not most days, but every day. I believe in recovery, and I believe that as a role model I have the responsibility to let young people know that you can make a mistake and come back from it. ~Ann Richards

This is Alaska. The camera caught him in mid-yawn. Even the most chill, old rescue ferret that just wants to sleep all day looks like a fierce predator when yawning. It's my favorite ferret picture.

I got him almost a month ago, he's my disabled rescue ferret. Due to poor diet (he was fed Meow Mix) in his previous home and probably an untreated back injury or other soft-tissue injury his hind legs don't work very well. Most of the time he gets around just fine by crawling or dragging himself. He actually can manage pretty well most of the time. Better diet also means the fur on his shoulders is growing back. Alaska will explore and play, and he's starting to become social with the other weasels. Life is slowly improving.

He is slowly regaining use of his hind legs, he'll quite often scoot around on his backside now, like he's trying to walk sitting down. He got a new cage today, a nice new Ferret Nation single. When I put him in it, he was so excited that he madly scuttled around the cage for several minutes. I've moved several of the senior ferrets in with him,

It's really, really hard to get a ferret to not act like a ferret.

Sometimes, the smallest of things can be a great victory.

I've seen this several times in the last few days.

There's a bill proposed in Ohio that intends to try to make doctors reimplant the embryo from an Ectopic pregnancy inside the mother's uterus.

It doesn't work that way. The human body simply doesn't function like that. An Ectopic pregnancy means a woman will certainly lose the Fallopian Tube in which it occurred, no, the Embryo will not survive. The whole thing is a tragedy, and one that so far as I know, we don't really know much about the cause of it, only that it happens on occasion. In a general sense, this is wrong, for a lot of reasons.

Chief among them, is that there simply is no way to do it, nor any valid reason to. I'm not talking "not with current medical knowledge or technology, I'm talking never. It's simply not something that's possible.

Such a "procedure" would amount to nothing more than a particularly gory slasher-film murder.

If done, this would be medical experimentation on a living and unwilling person. It's against medical ethics...and any doctor who tried such a thing would lose their license for malpractice and probably also negligent homicide, and probably go to prison.

Also, abortion is not illegal and "abortion murder" is not a category of homicide nor of any other type of crime. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean you should get to make it illegal.

I happen to know a couple of women who have survived dealing with Ectopic pregnancies, and one of those was an Evangelical Republican ex-girlfriend of mine, who was passionately anti-abortion.

But, ya know, she wanted to stay alive because she had to care for her disabled sister and elderly parents so she went to the hospital and got the proper medical care.

Biology doesn't care about your politics and must be treated objectively or people die. It's as simple as that.

Perhaps more to the point, just sayin' if you cut up a ferret because of some insane stupid ideology or for no reason whatever, you're going to go to prison for animal cruelty.

But apparently, if you're a Republican it's perfectly well Okay to want doctors to cut up women for your insane stupid ideology or for no goddamned reason whatsoever.

You can't make a ferret be anything but a ferret, and even two ferrets who really don't like each other will almost always follow the same 'rules' they all seem to go by in dominance play or fighting.

Apparently, all it takes is enough money or politics or religion and it's damned easy to make a human being not act like a human being.

And all it takes to completely disregard the humanity of others or basic biology and medical science is to give such people power.

Think on that, will ya?

Right now, the Republican Party is destroying itself, and trying to take America down with it. This happened because Republicans and their voters started to care more about ideology and "winning" than about truth.

Sometimes, the unintended consequences of a great victory end up making defeat look far more preferable.

America, it's time to rethink your life.

People. Are. Stupid. (And Evil.)

Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curse thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. ~Genesis 12:1-3

Yet again, are you fucking kidding me?

What the fuck is it with these people? I'm serious, how in the hell have Trump Supporters managed not to learn anything since, what, the 1930's?

I was raised Christian and conservative, and one thing I had drilled into me was that Antisemitism, racism, and shit like that were not cool. More to the point, I was absolutely raised with the idea that Jewish people (and Muslims, for that matter) were our natural allies. After all, we all believed in the same God. Sure, Jews were often more liberal, and Muslims often even more conservative, but that was Okay. We had more in common than we didn't and for much of the time when I was growing up, too many outside threats to spend a lot of time sniping at each other.

But it's more than that.

Read the verses from Genesis 12 posted above. Was not Abraham, at least in mythological terms the patriarch of the Jewish people? Didn't God make a deal with him in particular? And was not Abraham faithful to His terms?

I was raised Christian, and I was raised with the idea that as first among the Abrahamic religions, the Jews were God's chosen people. I was taught that this wasn't something one should try to mess with, after all, had not all the Empires that tried to dominate or destroy the Jews eventually fallen? From Rome to Nazi Germany, was not history littered with the bones of those who had incurred the wrath of God by seeking to destroy or worse, replace God's people?

Certainly, the history of Israel since 1948 seemed to bear out that theory. And when I was a kid and a young man, the wars in Lebanon raged for over two and a half decades of my life. They've had some close calls, but Israel hasn't yet been defeated in a war.

At least as I understand things, that tells me there just might be something to all this mythological and religious belief. I don't care if you agree with me, that happens to be what I think.

The Arabic term the Palestinians use for themselves literally is "Philistine." So if you go by the Bible, the country we call Israel has basically been the location of the longest-running known ethnic-religious conflict in history. Factor in all the other stuff that the Jewish people have been through on top of that...and it's not hard to imagine these people needing...and having some level of divine backing just to survive.

And there's people...Christians, Evangelicals, people who claim every word in the Bible is divine truth...who want to fuck with that? Now I realize that for a certain species of conservative and/or fascist and/or religious fanatic, this kind of shit is basically normal.

But you'd think they'd at least have read their own sourcebook.

It doesn't make any sense to me that these people, of all people, would want to preach hatred of or attack Jews, but they do and they have.

And now they want to do it for Donald Trump?!

Some people are just plain fucking stupid.

I wonder if their next step will be practicing black magic like the Nazis did?

Abomination Of Desolation

When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) Then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains: Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house: Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes. And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days! But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day: For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened. ~Matthew 24:15-22

Not this AntiChrist bullshit again.

Rick Perry, calling Trump the "Chosen One." I saw this yesterday, and anything I tried to write about it turned into a text wall of profanity. Like seriously, what the fuck is wrong with these people?

The first time I saw this kind of silly bullshit my hackles went up. Casual blasphemy and the embrace of AntiChrist is now apparently a conservative value.

Last night at work, I saw this. Apparently Traitor Carlson is now openly rooting for Russia, ruled by Communist KGB Agent Vladimir Putin, to invade a mostly free and democratic Europe. Who needs ITAR-TASS when you have Fox News?

I mean, seriously, why don't these fucking people just go to California and dig up Ronald Reagan's corpse, desecrate it, and scatter his bones all over the Simi Valley while they're at it?

What's next? Waving AK-47's around and shouting Allah Akbar?

What belief or personal value or political shibboleth will these fucking people utterly reverse themselves on next?

Fucking seriously?

Who knew that all the Commies had to do to defeat Red-blooded Marlboro-Man Craggy John Wayne Style American Conservatism was pretend to switch sides and be right-wing themselves? For fuck's sake, Vladimir Putin has reintroduced Josef Stalin's personality cult. Do I have to spell it out for you? Hello, is this thing even on?

Actually, it was probably some sort of mistake to even ask that question, because apparently as the walls close in and they get voted out by irate constituents or indicted or are subject to impeachment inquiry, the sole core value of "Conservatism" becomes nothing more than "Fuck You."

I sure cannot think of any other even remotely workable reason for pardoning a man convicted of raping a six-year old girl.

There is literally no goddamned good reason for this.

I suppose it's strangely fitting that I just gave up, yet again, on conversing with an Evangelical ex-partner of mine who seems to not even hear me when I say that she needs to get a job and get out of the crappy situation she's in...and she counters by going deeper into unreality.

And for what? It's not going to get her anything that she actually needs in life. It's just not, much less the things she says she wants.

I suppose it's the same with all this Trump bullshit. People would rather light themselves and everything they've ever claimed to care about on fire for some imaginary greatness than do the little bit of adapting, or the little bit of work, that it would take to achieve actual, tangible, great things.

People would rather hang onto the 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% chance that they might somehow manage to get rich because something something gazpacho that conservatism says it offers than get the education and do the necessary things that it would take to have a legit, no-shit chance of making good money or getting rich...or even just have everyone pay a little more in taxes so nobody has to go hungry...that political moderation, liberalism or social democracy offers, because the latter requires that they might have to give something, put some effort forth, or at least ya know, change a little.

They'd rather be Russians than Democrats because, I don't know, at least Russia has always consistently been some kind of a shitty basket case that never quite managed to live up to its full potential no matter what form of government it had.

They'd rather bow down and worship emperors as gods because, I don't know, that worked out so well for the western Roman Empire, or something.

I honestly think these fucking people have no fucking idea what they want, except that as the walls close in, they seem to be trying to claim the right to use the rest of us as guinea pigs to work out their mental issues on. Fuck all that.

And that's funny, because I remember being taught some pretty solid fixed values as a young conservative.

Except that, well, now that the line has moved so far and I haven't, I'm more or less a liberal, bordering on socialist, simply by default and a factual understanding of the world.

While conservatism-as-it-is-now ultimately calls for the reinstatement of Emperor-worship...in a nation that was never intended to have such a thing as emperors. How the fuck does that work exactly?

When did fear and hate and ignorance and superstition become conservative values?

I'm not sure I know what the answer is, but if you're a conservative at this point, read the Bible verses that I used as a header, read them real careful, and consider that it might be time to rethink your life and get out.

I did it over a decade ago now, the journey since has not been easy, but nobody ever said life was easy. And those who promise you an easy, safe life if you'll just follow them are liars.

It's just that simple. Truth is often hard, sometimes inconvenient, but if you want to be free you have to respect it and understand what it is.

Because the alternative is destruction.

It depends on what the definition of "Is" is. (Republican style, presumed part one.)

Matt Lauer: You have said, I understand, to some close friends, that this is the last great battle, and that one side or the other is going down here.

Hillary Clinton: Well, I don't know if I've been that dramatic. That would sound like a good line from a movie. But I do believe that this is a battle. I mean, look at the very people who are involved in this—they have popped up in other settings. This is—the great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president.

~Today Show interview, 1998.

If there ever was a "Vast right-wing conspiracy" if this Trump bullshit is the result, it was junk. It might have accomplished the goal of denying Hillary Clinton the presidency...but it seems to stand a good chance of destroying everything else.

The House public impeachment inquiry hearings are over, and a vote to Impeach looks extremely likely, but yet somehow the partisan divides have become even deeper, and the Cult Of Trump (formerly known as Conservatism or the Republican Party) has doubled down on their belief in their Orange God.

But America was not designed with political cults in mind, not even close. And that's a problem.

I used to be a Republican, this pisses me off. We've heard this song and dance before. I'm pretty sure Irony died when Republicans started to try to redefine the word "Is" just like Bill Clinton did 20 years ago.

As I wrote yesterday on Facebook, before this is over, Republicans will try to redefine "Is" and Bill Clinton will win, at long last. I didn't expect the turnaround to be this fast, however.

With the hearings over, and the dismantling of all of their bullshit excuses, Trump Republicans have officially reached the "Dog Ate My Homework" find any excuse no matter how pathetic level of trying to defend their corrupt fascist bullshit.

Or maybe, just maybe, these people have been morons who never should have been given power all along.

And maybe, just maybe, their supporters have been shit all along, too. At least some of us had the sense to get out before it got this bad, though.

I love that the new rationalization is "Liberals are messy...as if that is an excuse for dictator wannabes and fascism. Funny common variable among those who say it, though. Apparently, none of them are people who have to clean up after concert-goers at a Country concert...because there are damn few people as stank-ass nasty as overwhelmingly conservative, often Trump-supporting country music people in my experience, and that's often across the board in terms of appearance, attitude, and cleanliness. Imagine an overweight white girl stuffed into a cowboy hat, a tube top, booty shorts and cowboy boots. Belly hanging out, muffin top, and the whole nine yards. Now, I like bigger women, personally. I also know that there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. I also like people who take care of themselves and dress like they have a modicum of self-awareness and self-respect.

#Hashtag Things you learn working in a concert venue.

All people are messy, people who have been taught right clean up after themselves regardless of their politics. But these are mostly not those people.

And that's exactly the problem, that Republicans have lost all self-awareness and self-respect, and it probably doesn't help that most of us who had those things got ran out.

The upshot is that these goddamned people know they're losing, they know they've lost any moral right to be in any kind of position of power, but they're going to try to do or say anything they can to stay there anyway.

And if this deepening partisanship on the part of Republicans is not stopped, this is going to end with Americans shooting at each other. It will most likely end with Republicans breaking off a piece, which will almost certainly end up being some kind of bullshit Russian satellite-state banana republic in any case.

The key thing to remember here is that there's more of the rest of us than there are of them. This can be stopped.

But we all have to stand up.

Part of the problem is, they actually know this. I believe they've seen the writing on the wall...and I don't think they care. Or if they do, they've already resolved to break off a piece. Why? because as contradictory and disorganized and scattershot as 'resistance' to them has been...the fact that it exists at all has driven these fucking people insane.

Because deep down they know they're going to end up being irrelevant, and that scares them more than anything.

Funny enough now that the shoe is on the other foot, Republican defenses of Trump have been contradictory, disorganized and scattershot. They've seen the writing on the wall. They know, long term, that they're going to lose. Whether they get put up against the wall for treason or simply voted out, they know it's coming.

And they fear that end. But all things end.

If they really believed in their God they'd know that and be prepared for it.

They know now, if they didn't before, that they backed the worst horse possible.

Now it's "The Dog Ate My Homework!" Next their defense will be to pull a gun and demand that everybody else do what they say.

But that won't work either, not on a grand scale, not least because other people have just as many guns as they do...and are often more skilled at actually using them.

But that's beside the point.

If it's not stopped, there is going to be conflict, which these people will lose. But, culturally and geographically they do have certain levels of concentration. They will win in some places. I'm serious. If we cannot talk these fucking people out of their March Ever Rightward and around to basic humanity, these people and their supporters are going to end up walling themselves off from the rest of us and shooting at anything that comes too close. As tempting as that image is to liberals and others who would just be glad to get rid of all the right-wing nut jobs, or whatever, the key thing to remember is that a hell of a lot of people who don't deserve to be would end up trapped in there with them.

And in their own heads these fucking people have built, and hate passionately, a version of "The Left" that is basically composed of a lot of their own atavistic fears.

Here's the thing; Lunatic dreams create nightmare reality for the sane.

I was taught that there was a baseline of truth, always.

I was taught this, by conservatives. We all lose out because they have abandoned this teaching.

But none of us will lose more than they will.

I can see what's coming, and I can see that it's not going to work out the way "Conservatives" think it will. And the tragedy of it all is that they will have thrown it all away for an unworthy slob like Donald Trump.

It's not that you people should have chosen better gods. You had a better god and rejected him for Trump.

They tried to bullshit God, and when that didn't get them what they wanted, they simply went out and got another one.

They don't care how shitty he is, he tells them what they want to hear.

For that alone, Republicanism deserves to be relegated to the ash-heap of history.

Core Values.

O Beautiful for spacious skies
For amber waves of grain
For purple mountain's majesty
Above the fruited plain!
America, America, God shed His grace on thee.
And crowned thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea. ~America the Beautiful, Katherine Lee Bates, first stanza.

A United States Army officer and his family have been moved to quarters on a military base for their own protection.

Not from the Enemy, not from terrorists, not from any hostile foreign force.

They're being protected from Trump Supporters.

The officer in question is, of course, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who I've written about previously. I've been saying for longer than I care to have been saying it, that this mess or something like it would end with the far-right, or the religious nuts or white supremacists or whatever taking up arms against the United States government and the military.

Do you believe me now?

A decorated United States Army officer, a Lieutenant Colonel with a long and distinguished record, a hard-core expert on the country to which he was assigned, is under threat from...let me get this straight...supposedly-conservative Republican Americans for...doing his job and taking his oath to the Constitution seriously...?

Imagine if you will, eating, sleeping, watching TV and trying to go about your business and live your life and have your family do the same...under the constant watchful eye of Security Forces. Imagine, quite possibly, having to have weapons close at hand not because you live in or are serving in a combat zone...but because a bunch of your own countrymen are threatening your life because you did what you are supposed to do, what your oath demands of you, what has been baked into the cake of your professional training since the Academy, or Basic Military Training, or Officers Candidate School. For the people who are worth a damn, those oaths aren't just words, they're a reflex, a constant brake on one's actions, a constant set of higher values.

Integrity Above All.
Service Before Self.
Excellence In All That We Do.
~United States Air Force core values .

One one level, my first response regarding these fucking people is basically "Better pack a lunch, assholes." The United States military oath specifies "All enemies foreign and domestic" for a fucking reason.

But on another level, it shouldn't have to come to that, Ever.

This is America, since the end of the Indian Wars in the 1890's at least, we tend to resolve domestic conflict with ballots rather than bullets, or through peaceful protest rather than violent action. Politics, as distasteful as it often seems...is most often far more preferable than the alternative.

In my own day, it was the breakup of Yugoslavia, then Somalia, Rwanda, interminable conflict in Bosnia, the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan and later conflicts in Kosovo and Macedonia and various African civil wars...not to mention Northern Watch and Southern Watch, making sure Saddam didn't get too out of control. If the 1990's...the era of militia nuts and Newt Gingrich, when all this toxic partisan bullshit got started...should have taught us anything it's that civil wars suck.

And I'd like to remind you that even peacetime military service is hard and dangerous and dirty and lonely even if your greatest adversaries are defense cuts or the weather, but it does have the benefit that there's nobody shooting at you.

And that's before the new century, 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, and watching my bros...both figurative and family member alike...have to deal with even worse. I have a friend who was permanently disabled when his vehicle hit an improvised explosive device in Iraq, and another who came back from Afghanistan with PTSD that was severe enough he eventually committed suicide. I have a cousin who's battled alcohol and drug addictions since he got out of the Marine Corps. Far beyond that, there's many more walking wounded whose scars both mental and physical are not immediately visible, who are still with us, beset with a crumbling veteran's health care system all too often maliciously neglected by Republicans whenever they're in power, and under-funded by them even when they aren't.

Republicans.

The same people now threatening the life of a US Army soldier, for doing his goddamned job.

The same people whose President, who they revere as a personal champion and damned near worship as a god, pardons actual war criminals who were turned in by their own teammates, or whose own enlisted platoon members testified against them at Courts Martial.

I'm here to tell you, Republicans don't "Support the Troops" even when the Troops are hard-core Republicans...unless there's something in it for them. And I hope I'm wrong, but along those lines I see something sinister in the whole idea of Trump pardoning convicted war criminals...like he thinks he's going to want a core group of loyalists with military training who owe him something...or something like that.

And there's an awful lot of these fucking people who have yet to come around to simple concepts like basic humanity, there's a lot more of those people who are Trump Supporters than who are not.

And these people have been threatening violence against those with whom they disagree for a while.

Now take what we know, what we all see on a fairly well daily basis, all the stories we've heard and all the pain that we know exists stemming from conflicts in places like Afghanistan...

...And transpose that to Alabama.

Instead of Iraq, imagine if you will an insurgency in Idaho. I guarantee you, there's people who live there who have imagined exactly that.

Do you think people in California or Michigan will be kindly disposed towards refugees, if those refugees are from Mississippi or Oklahoma, rather than Syria or Vietnam?

I've read about the Depression, and heard stories from my grandparents. I've heard about and studied the successive Great Migrations of African Americans. I'm here to tell you they won't be.

The destructive nature of what these people are doing is only going to keep piling up and get worse, until it is made to stop.

Do you think people like Tucker Carlson are going to be smirking any less when the MLRS rockets are striking some ridge line in Appalachia than he would be if they were hitting Taliban positions on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border?

Do you think the CNN or Fox News talking heads will opine more or less gravely about the "beauty" of American power when those Tomahawks launching from the Vertical Launch Systems on the USS Ramage are targeted to strike insurgent positions in East Texas than they did when it was some random airbase in Syria? Will the furor about Russia selling S-400 missiles to Turkey be greater or lesser than that of Russia selling them to Alabama?

No, and long story short, the corporations and the media and all type of other people will find ways to profit from the misery that's going to result from the conflicts we have coming if we as a people don't stand up and put a stop to this bullshit.

That's what the "Blue Wave" a year ago was about, and that's what Impeachment is all about today. In a war, one of the first casualties is usually the truth. That's what these Constitutional and political processes are about, is upholding the truth and the law so maybe we can stop this shit and leave the assholes railing at their demons in the darkness instead of taking them out on the rest of us.

I have a feeling that some degree of conflict is inevitable, but it's going to be worse if people don't stand up.

Remember that when some rando tries to tell you that both sides are the same, or nothing matters. That is a very Russian talking point.

And who would profit more from our downfall? Even if they only partially succeed?

It's time to put a stop to this crap, people, before it does get worse.

If we don't care enough about the values we proclaim to stand up and fight for them, to hold ourselves and others to them, why even bother?

Fundamentally, we have a choice, either we all get a say in how things go...however small that say is.

Or we accept small and shitty and ever more aggrieved autocrats and nobody gets anything but them.

Your call.