Q-Servatism.

When the earliest settlers poured into a wild continent there was no one to ask them where they came from. The only question was: Were they sturdy enough to make the journey, were they strong enough to clear the land, were they enduring enough to make a home for freedom, and were they brave enough to die for liberty if it became necessary to do so? And so it has been through all the great and testing moments of American history. Our history this year we see in Vietnam. Men there are dying; men named Fernandez and Zajac and Zelinko and Mariano and McCormick. Neither the enemy who killed them nor the people whose independence they have fought to save ever asked them where they or their parents came from. They were all Americans. It was for free men and for America that they gave their all, they gave their lives and selves. By eliminating that same question as a test for immigration the Congress proves ourselves worthy of those men and worthy of our own traditions as a nation. ~Lyndon B. Johnson.

So, Kamala Harris has been the Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee for all of two days now.

And the Birtherism crap has already started.

Not just started, but made it all the way up to an article in a formerly-respectable publication like Newsweek. Both the author and his so-called editor tried, in their writing, hell in the article itself to say that it wasn't racism. Then, the author proceeded to use so many dog-whistles that my old Schnauzer started howling, and so many weasel-words in trying to ferret around a claim that Kamala Harris somehow wasn't a valid American that my ferrets complained about it and they can't read.

Weirdly, the same guy had no issues with Ted Cruz running for President and had legal opinions to show for it. Ted Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, in Canada.

Kamala Harris was born in Oakland, California.

So to this goddamn moron, citizenship depends on your partisanship?

Or are these fucking idiots saying they don't think California is part of the United States?

Fuck that.

I'm going to tell you the same fucking thing I've been telling people since I first saw this garbage pop up in 2007. If you leave the definition of "Who is an American" up to the drooling internet-idiot mob, then no one will be.

Except maybe Donald Trump, if he's lucky.

I'll add that bit now, 13 years later.

Make citizenship a partisan issue, and I guarantee you, it won't be long at all and there won't be an America, but rather something along the lines of 50+ small countries, quite a few of whom...mostly the blue and purple states...would likely band together in short order. Probably around 20 of the states, though, would basically be Right-wing Transnistria.

And you can safely throw in a bloody ethnic conflict in Texas as a thing that will predictably happen.

And that, of course, is precisely what the fucking right-wing nuts want.

There is no excuse for this shit, and there never was.

But before that, they have to break even the idea of basic government services, because they hate and fear the ideas of absentee or mail in voting...and of course voting in general.

Perhaps we should all just smoke up a bunch of dope and select the President by Magic 8-ball?

Maybe see who can pull the sword out of the rock?

Oh, don't worry, it gets worse.

There's a running theory that after this year's election there will literally be a Q-Anon caucus in Congress.

But, ya know, before they destroy even the basic idea of government service, the mail, social security and all type of other stuff we all depend on for things like medication and paying our bills, they have to destroy even the least bit of respect for truth. Doesn't matter that Grandma died because her time-sensitive medication that she ordered for just-in-time delivery two months ago is sitting on the floor in a postal service distribution center in Miami, we gotta disrupt mail-in voting so Trump gets reelected, don't ya know?

Motherfuckers.

Seriously does it even fucking matter to these people that they're killing one hell of a lot of their own voters, and seriously disrupting basic services for a lot of the rest of the ones who are still alive?

162,000 Americans have died, many of them older people.

The disabled, senior citizens, and veterans...including people that I know personally...are not getting their medications, and all type of other stuff they need that comes in the mail. If I didn't have insurance through my work and the ability to get all my shit filled locally, I'd be one of them.

I just had to help my Mom and her partner...over the phone...figure out how to get some things they'd normally get by regular mail sent to their E-mail instead. My Mom had to dig her laptop out from under a pile of fabrics in her sewing room and make sure it still worked, and called me this morning to ask me what kind of printer she should get because some of this shit still needs to be printed out as executable documents. (I told her just get a cheap one.) I should point out here that my Mom is retired and on a fixed income, even $35 for a cheap printer at Walmart is a bite she doesn't need.

And she's luckier than a lot of people especially in her own age group or older, who don't have any tech skills at all or anybody they can call for help with that, who are stuck arguing with the bank or the D.M.V. or their health insurance or the V.A. over the phone after long waits because they don't know the first thing about E-mail.

And don't tell me it doesn't happen, I remember what it was like dealing with my Grandparents regarding technology. My Grandpa kinda caught on and got to where he could do basic stuff on his own, but we're talking about a guy who was a reserve Naval Aviator for 25 years. It took some work, but he could do computers.

My Grandma never caught on to technology, past the TV and the VCR, and Cable.

My aunt ordered all my grandparents' medication online, set up all my Grandpa's V.A. stuff, and had to get her name on their checking account and power of attorney and specific authorizations to do a lot of this stuff. I should point out that my Grandpa passed away nine years ago, my Grandma seven years ago, and it's only gotten worse tech-wise and having to get your shit in the mail-wise since.

In many cases there is no alternative, or the infrastructure for anything else simply no longer exists.

Everybody's dependence on technology has only gotten worse as I found out filing for Unemployment in April, and lots of people who can't or won't catch on are and were getting left behind, or are dependent on tech-savvy relatives to do basic stuff for them.

And add to that, that lots of government forms aren't exactly clear, and sometimes if you screw something up online or off, the paperwork to fix it has to go through the mail.

Or they'll add the feature that lets you upload an image of the required documents or info after you've sent them out.

Now take away the reliability of the Post Office...which is the only form of mass communications that's been with a lot of old people for their whole lives, and you do the math about what's going to happen, how those people are going to feel, and for that matter what will become of stuff like their bank statements and ya know, basic health care.

All in the service of getting a worthless asshole who's failed almost his whole life reelected President.

What in the hell kind of society does that type of shit to itself?

What in the hell kind of society tries to decline to recognize its own citizens, simply because of their choice of political party or the color of their skin?

In 1957, as the leader of the majority in the United States Senate, speaking in support of legislation to guarantee the right of all men to vote, I said, "This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies. ~Lyndon B. Johnson.

What Republicans are telling us, what they are now shouting from the housetops, is that they don't want a functioning society, they don't want a unified America that is a global superpower because that's too hard, or something.

Hell, they don't want elderly voters, unless those voters are massively wealthy and will give them money, or something.

Where in the fuck do you think that leaves you, or me? Republicans in general, and Donald Trump in particular, show nothing but hatred to the vast majority of Americans...including their own idiot voters. At best, they seem to long for the good old days of Segregation and the governor being able to claim openly and in public that the only way he'd ever lose office was if he got caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy.

And that's the best case scenario...which by itself is terrible for most people. The worst...which is what we're headed for if we don't all step up and stop this bullshit...is a slow-rolling collapse of our civilization and probably a civil war or three, because these fucking people don't believe in government, or the future, or anything except conspiracy theories, their own profits and a shitty ideology.

Hell, I've heard a Trump supporter say to my face that they think there's going to be a civil war, and they did not say that like it was a bad thing.

Now keep in mind I'm in one of the places that might survive kinda okay if things fall apart, so long as we can keep our current local and state governments. But lots of people that I know are dependent on Federal government programs to keep them alive or having enough money to live on or having basic health care.

What the fuck do you think the end of Social Security, either by the collapse of the Federal government or the President refusing to fund it, is going to do to people's standards of living?

'Cause I'm here to tell you that shit will kill millions of Americans, including dozens of people that I know personally. Lack of belief in science and modern medicine will kill more.

I'll manage, but I know a lot of people that won't, up to and including people that were able-bodied and working just over a month ago, who are in the position of having to apply for Social Security that is now not being properly funded.

Basically, if we don't rip control of the Federal Government away from these goddamned assholes, everybody dies. And that was the trajectory of things before the Republican Party, openly led by the Trump campaign, started to embrace Q-Anon and the conspiracy theory rabbit hole.

READ the snipped Tweet above. Adam Kinzinger isn't just some random person, he's the GOP Congressman for the district containing the southern exurbs of Chicago, the Champaign-Urbana area and Rockford, Illinois. He's also an Illinois Air National Guard KC-135R Stratotanker pilot. And apparently he's not insane.

He pops up with facts, the Trump campaign replies with more conspiracy theories.

What the fuck do you think happens to your freedom when you can be denounced by any random Alex Jones-addled dipshit on the internet, and there's a non-zero chance somebody in the government will #Hashtag Believe it because "Where we go one, we go all" or some shit, and it scratches some itch on their enlarged Amygdala or floods their addled brain chemistry with dopamine if they do so...

...And your Constitutional and human rights be damned.

Because these people's dystopian Warhammer 40K bullshit adventure time is more important to them than real life, and if Immanentizing the "Conservative" Eschaton means everybody but a few chosen ones have to die...well, these fucking people have been the bearers of Ayn Rand's "Fuck You I've Got Mine" ideology since the 1950's.

Then throw in a bunch of woo woo bullshit that they got off the internet that they accept as a greater Truth than stuff they've supposedly believed their whole lives, or even that of God himself.

What happens when they make a God of all this eschatological conspiracy-theorist fapping, or their idea of the all-powerful transcendent State?

...And you don't...or can't...or won't...worship that "God?"

What if you doctrinally or morally or theologically cannot accept the Gnosticism of the modern Right?

Because that's exactly what the fuck this will come to.

Where the fuck do you think that leaves you?

Because I guarantee you, these sons of bitches are chomping at the bit to kill some heretics and burn down our goddamned civilization so that they can live in illiterate savagery and dance around a fire shouting "Unga Bunga" and so long as the dirty heathen cannibals stay away from the guarded compounds of the rich, the Republican donor class will be Okay with that, until the money isn't worth anything anymore and their hired guards run out of food and eat them.

Vote these fucking bastards out, all of them, while words still have some fucking meaning and the goddamned lights are still on.

And then, be prepared to have to fight them off.

They want this crap. We'd best be prepared to educate them as to why that's a bad idea.

Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. There is no reason which can excuse the denial of that right. There is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have to ensure that right. ~Lyndon B. Johnson.

Invictus, Part Three

Out of the night that covers me
Black as the pit from pole to pole
I thank whatever Gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell grip of circumstance, 
I have not winced nor cried aloud
Under the bludgeoning of chance
My head is bloody but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the Shade
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how straight the gate
How charged with punishment the scroll.
I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.
~Invictus.

Yesterday, Joe Biden selected Kamala Harris as his vice-presidential nominee. I have to say that I 100% support this decision. Among other things, I think it's long past time that a child of immigrants, or a woman of color for that matter, should be a Vice-Presidential candidate. As far as I'm concerned, white men...particularly conservative white men...have spent most of the last several years showing they're too often unfit to run a lemonade stand and I say that as a white man who is a former conservative.

And you know, thus far she's been endorsed by everybody from Bernie Sanders to the Lincoln Project, and that's a good thing.

Thus far, it's all fear and loathing in MAGAland and you know what?

Fuck 'em.

Although, judging from what I've seen in the last 24 hours or so, with the Right's attempt to gin up attacks on Harris, given the quality of such I'm increasingly wondering if Wile E. Coyote managed to find a job working for Donald Trump after all.

I'm totally sick of this passionate Rube Goldberg stupidity. I spent much of my life as a Christian, much of my life as a conservative. This "Gospel of whatever helps one sleep through the night" bullshit looks to me like an express train to hell, first class. I get that Republicans don't give a damn about the truth...and many of them may well never have...but I couldn't do it. I wouldn't do it, I'd find it difficult to get ready for work without being able to face my reflection in the bathroom mirror.

Fuck that shit.

Since 2016, and especially since 2018, the Democratic Party looks more and more like an America that is changing, that has changed.

Note that this happened in spite of Trump, who basically ran on an angry hatred of everybody with a darker complexion than a sheet of notebook paper.

And the Republican response to this has been to double down infinitely, to become even more angry, more hateful, and more racist...to the point of one of these fucking people murdering a man live on camera and Republicans being surprised when such a horror as that lit half the country on fire.

And then they make it worse by dragging out old vices like anti-Semitism.

How anybody thinks this is going to work out well, I'll never understand.

Politics is a game of addition, not subtraction, and sooner or later if you want to stay in power you need a bigger coalition and more people. Republicans kept doubling down on the crazy, the racism and the stupid and now their electoral strategy basically has two main points; #1 Try to keep as many people as possible from voting, even their own, and #2 In the meantime, fervently hope that the virus kills everybody else.

Yet they've basically brainwashed their own voters into not wearing masks and trying to pretend that Coronavirus isn't a thing. None of this makes any sense unless trying to split the country so they can break off a piece for their own Banana Republic...followed by death, disease and war...is actually the plan. Certainly, these people's ravening hatred of places like California and New York suggests they don't want to live in a unified country.

Don't take my word for it, listen to what Republicans themselves have to say about other Americans having a voice, about other people having power.

Listen to their endless contempt for the rest of us.

It never occurs to Martha McSally that if D.C. and Puerto Rico became states, Republicans would rightfully have just as much of a shot at Democrats at winning Senate seats there. It never occurs to her to make a play for those seats, nor to attempt to expand the party's base of voters. Certainly, D.C. has no shortage of Republicans and I've known plenty of Puerto Ricans and other Latinos who were conservative Christians or Republicans...less so now, though.

Seems like there might be a reason for that.

This is what we're up against, people whose basic platform is that only landed gentry should be able to vote, or perhaps, people who desire "literacy tests" and poll taxes and Segregation, despite the fact that we already had this argument and on a legal level, the ancestors of these assholes mostly lost.

If we want to fight this bullshit and right the ship of state, I think Joe's choice of Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor, as his running mate is probably a good choice.

But you still have to do the work, you still have to show up, You still have to vote.

Remember that.

My fellow South Africans — the people of South Africa:
This is indeed a joyous night. Although not yet final, we have received the provisional results of the election, and are delighted by the overwhelming support for the African National Congress.
To all those in the African National Congress and the democratic movement who worked so hard these last few days and through these many decades, I thank you and honor you. To the people of South Africa and the world who are watching: this a joyous night for the human spirit. This is your victory too. You helped end apartheid, you stood with us through the transition.
I watched, along with all of you, as the tens of thousands of our people stood patiently in long queues for many hours. Some sleeping on the open ground overnight waiting to cast this momentous vote.
This is one of the most important moments in the life of our country. I stand here before you filled with deep pride and joy: — pride in the ordinary, humble people of this country. You have shown such a calm, patient determination to reclaim this country as your own, - and joy that we can loudly proclaim from the rooftops — free at last!
~Nelson Mandela

American Whiplash (Part Two of a Duology.)

And so tomorrow, as we take the campaign South and West, as we learn that the struggles of the textile workers in Spartanburg are not so different than the plight of the dishwasher in Las Vegas; that the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of L.A.; we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people, we are one nation. And, together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story, with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea: Yes, we can. ~Barack Obama

Somebody actually wrote this, this morning, saying that Democratic attacks on Sarah Palin in 2008 were because she was a woman. I've just got one thing to say about that; Seriously?

*Glares in former Republican.*

First off, no, that's not it. I was there. People...including many conservatives...were against her because she was an idiot. I know, I had these discussions with those people. I personally was against her because she's the same kind of Pentecostal religious nut as my ex-wife was.

Second, hold the fuck on here.

Okay, on the one hand we've got this Republican Author that works for the Beast trying to make it sound like Republicans are all woke and shit.

And here's this other fool saying he wants to pour holy water in his ears after listening to the new song WAP ("Wet Ass Pussy") by Cardi B and Meghan Thee Stallion.

I'm old enough to remember watching the music video for "I wanna sex you up" by Color Me Badd on MTV. Fuck, I'm old enough to remember when MTV actually showed mostly music videos, dude, shut the fuck up.

So let me get this straight, as a movement, Conservatism wants to defend Sarah Palin's political aspirations regardless of her lack of competence for them, but also wants to disparage Cardi B's artistic expression, regardless of the fact that this is her literal job, which she is very good at doing.

I mean, personally, "Rump Shaker" by Wreckxx-n-Effect or "Baby Got Back" by Sir-Mix-A-Lot is more my thing...and trust me, I can remember basically the same self-emasculating ninnies trying to work up a moral panic about those songs, too. Then, as now, nobody actually cared.

Of course, the same fucking people who are against cheesy, gaudy but ultimately harmless music videos are, no doubt, all for savaging a National Monument just because the President thinks he should be able to have his face on Mount Rushmore.

And he's done what, exactly, to deserve any such thing?

The gold-plated dumb shit of a music video by an African-American artist is worthy of disparagement, but the gold-plated dumb shit of the fake-ass wannabe billionaire aspiring-dictator who lives in the White House are worthy of...being indulged by the Governor of the state in which said National Monument is located?

Something isn't adding up here.

And you could get whiplash from these fucking people constantly contradicting themselves.

If I was trying to follow their "logic" that is.

But you can't do that. Not anymore. You can't follow Republican reasoning as if there's any internal logic behind it because there isn't. It's all about getting through the next self-inflicted crisis, How they feel RIGHT NOW (And here's a hint, they constantly feel "Attacked" because they figured out then they can passive-aggressively try and claim some kind of victim status and whine their way out of consequences) the needs of the moment, the next operation's body count, the next poll, the next quarter's profit statements, and so on. Ya know, this Operation Constant Grievance bullshit gets really fucking old...and trust me, the people conservatism has drawn into itself literally are the kind of people who think they have an ax to grind against basically the entire fucking world because the world outside their little bubbles refuses to treat them as if they are, each and every one, the protagonist of reality.

These fucking people have gone from believing in America and Christ and conservatism to believing in their guns, and Trump and how White they are, and that's about it. Don't take my word for it, listen to them yourself. They'd rather burn down the world than face change, and see that a Latino person gets a share.

Most Black folks and Latinos are Christian, and a lot of them trend pretty conservative on a fair number of actual issues, but none of this was ever about that. All "conservatism" ever was, was a cover for these fucking people's fear, hate, and racism.

Then they wonder why everything is collapsing, but the internal logic that held their philosophy up for the last seventy years or so began collapsing a decade ago because it wasn't actually designed around fear, hate and racism (Republicans sought to exploit these people too, and never really expected that they'd take over the party at some point, but then the nuts took over) and Republicans themselves were the ones taking axes and sledgehammers to the frames, gleefully and with malice aforethought. I mean, sure, they kept some of the same people in front of the cameras to try and make sure that wasn't what it looked like they were doing, but now, a lot of those people are working for the other team, most of the rest have quit, and a few have died off.

So now, they've switched gears and are actively trying to run on the destruction, to use their taking a battering ram to our society as a fucking talking point, to see if they can start a civil war just to try and cover for their own incompetence...because any other way, they lose...but when it comes to killing people they might still have a shot at winning.

The people who taught me the value of consistency and internal logic no longer have any. Or perhaps it would be more accurately stated that most of those people who taught me that stuff have died off, and the rest are Democrats now, just like I am. The people who were rabidly against moral relativism 20 years ago have embraced it as the heart of their strategy, indeed their way of life, at this point.

I'm not cool with that. I was a conservative back when the standards were, if not better, at least different...and I can't shake what I was taught. This ain't it. Not by a long shot it ain't.

And then they invested all their hopes of fixing everything in...hold on, let me get this straight...people like Scott Walker and Donald Trump?

The party of "Morning in America" and "Tear Down This Wall!" became the party of "Build The Wall" and "No We Can't" because a Black man said "Yes We Can" and because maintaining moral leadership, soft power and superpower status that wasn't based on their jingoism and racism was too hard, apparently.

I'm failing to see how any of this is a winning long-term strategy, or even a survivable short-term one to tell you the truth.

And again, the worst part is that they don't care. Not even about their own lives. The shitty agenda, and White Supremacy, are the end-all, be-all, all else is noise. Fully a third of us, at this point, believe this.

When we as a society elect people who don't believe in the future, who don't believe in having consistent ideals, or at least not the kinds they can openly or publicly speak about, and when the only holy grail is the next week's election poll numbers or the next quarter's profit statements and they're willing to sacrifice literally everything including the America's international standing, the economy, the lives of 160,000 of our people, and even our own national sovereignty over getting a goddamn fool like Donald Trump reelected, and how they feel at the moment, yeah, you know, maybe it's time that we start rethinking our national life and wondering just what the fuck it is that we're even doing here.

Part One.

Reading Amos In Satan's House. (Part One of a Duology.)

Hear ye this word which I take up against you,even a lamentation, O house of Israel.
The virgin of Israel is fallen; she shall no more rise: she is forsaken upon her land; there is none to raise her up.
For thus saith the Lord God; The city that went out by a thousand shall leave an hundred, and that which went forth by an hundred shall leave ten, to the house of Israel.
For thus saith the Lord unto the house of Israel, Seek ye me, and ye shall live:
But seek not Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and pass not to Beersheba: for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to naught. Seek the Lord, and ye shall live; lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and devour it, and there be none to quench it in Bethel. ~Amos 5:1-6

"Christianity Will Have Power." Thus said Donald Trump at on January 23rd, 2016 at Dordt University, a small Evangelical Christian college in Iowa.

Let me teach you the Truth, as the Baptists taught me;

If you need the President for your religion to have power, it doesn't have power and indeed it should not. If you need the power of the President or the State for your religion to survive, much less thrive, you probably need a better religion.

If you need the power of the State behind your belief systems to feel good about yourself, you probably need better beliefs, and some therapy.

And no, you can't really say you're "Strong" in those beliefs if you demand that every rock and tree and creature, that the world itself, shout your beliefs back at you.

Jesus Christ, when questioned by Pontius Pilate, said "My Kingdom is not of this world" and so it was not, and is not, and never shall be.

According to what I was taught, when you start mixing Christianity and the World, the World does not become more Christian, Christianity becomes more worldly, Christianity becomes more sinful. The ancestors of these Dutch Evangelicals in Iowa were Dutch Calvinists who fled the Kingdom of the Netherlands because the government at the time was putting the power of the State behind a different denomination, and demanding the people worship that way.

This against the backdrop of the fading of the Enlightenment, in a Europe in which the dust from the Reformation...the formation of Protestantism itself...had hardly settled. These people's ancestors fled a continent rife with theocratic states, or those that aspired to be. I would point out the hypocrisy of these people, but it'd be a waste of time. These people don't know they're being hypocrites. If they knew, they wouldn't care, any more than an old gray dog knows or cares that he's licking his balls in the middle of the front yard on a Sunday morning.

I find it funny, all things considered, that the actual Netherlands is and for a long time has been diverse and relatively secular and tolerant...in fact, it's that very tolerance that birthed the claque of hyper-religious ninnies that were these people's ancestors...and is a nation that throughout its history has lived and died by global engagement and trade, being a small country, it kind of has to.

Funny enough, Dutch tolerance sheltered the Pilgrims long before that, which spawned a number of Dutch copycat sects (although it's really more complicated than that, there's the short version) who became the ancestors of people who settled in places like Iowa and western Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and turned the politics of those places, more often than not, into a mess of reactionary stupidity.

Generally speaking, as both the American and European historical experience demonstrates, the reason that Christianity doesn't have power is precisely because once it gets power it immediately shows that it doesn't deserve it. Christianity, given power, immediately hands power to fools who cheat on their wives, who disrespect and lie to their followers, and who tow a pious-sounding line in public but are known as womanizing drunkards surrounded by scandal in private.

And the people in the pews, the people in the tiny farming towns, the people who claim to be the good and pure and true religious folk of the land...are by and large Okay with that, every single time...yet somehow it always manages to bring dishonor and lay low the entire nation later on. It's almost like the good and pure and true religious folk of the land are themselves, in reality, none of the above. Once they are given power or the social impetus to conduct themselves as they wish, the first thing to go out the window is always the desire or need to conduct themselves as their Savior commands.

It's almost like none of them believe in any of that stuff, anyway.

Usually, Evangelical piety lasts exactly as long as it takes for them to get around somebody who will let those "standards" slip, who will not call it out for whatever reason when they start looking for technicalities, and who will simply enjoy it right along with them when they crumple that list of rules up and throw it in the trash can.

And that fully includes Christians with different beliefs or standards, who then become both rationalizations if somebody calls it out and pawns for later use.

I'm here to tell you that from my own experience what such people really believe in is going to the bar on Friday and Saturday night, partying it up and singing drunkenly, to the point where in the morning they get sick...and then on Sunday morning at church their face is buried in their hands as they abase themselves before the Altar, begging God for "Forgiveness" for what they really wanted to do anyway and the fact that they care more about having a good time than they do about following His Commandments, or even those of their own local Baptist church, which strongly discourages the consumption of Alcohol.

And I'm here to tell you, a substantial part of these people's obsession with guns is their desire to be able to simply shoot anybody who points this out, which makes them not unlike the Taliban fighters in Afghanistan who American media paints as pious Muslims waging holy war...but who are often hated by observant Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan precisely because their actual habits lean towards buggering little boys and doing mass quantities of drugs, then shooting anybody who claims too loudly that their shouts of "Allah Akbar!" may be insincere.

In fact, these people's harsh Christian religiosity...just like the Islam of the Taliban...seems to exist for Three Reasons;

#1 It makes them feel good about themselves to have and live by a harsh tribal code. The more exclusive the tribe, the better it feels to be part of the "In Group."

#2 They can use that harsh tribal code as a club with which to beat their enemies, real and imagined. The more people they can use the rules to maneuver into the "Out Groups" the better.

#3 It feels really good when, either secretly or openly, they break that harsh tribal code. and they long to have the power to do so openly, because it feels good. Because then you can have all the sinfulness of the people you despise and you still get to claim how righteous you are!

And the fourth (Always Unwritten) rule which underlies all the others is that if it feels good, do it! (But don't get caught until you have the power to just laugh off the rules.)

Not to be crude, or anything, but I have to wonder just how many of the girls in the small Iowa towns around Dordt University are exactly the sort of Evangelical virgins whose claims of virginity enthusiastically ignore all the blowjobs they've given or the boys who've sodomized them, because that's not really sex, is it?

(I may know a thing or two about these kind of girls, going back decades, maybe.)

I can't even tell you how many Evangelicals I've known, down through the years, whose Evangelicalism only became known at the start of an argument about politics or religion or social issues, and which went immediately back under the bushel at the conclusion of said argument.

It's almost like nothing really matters to these people, past their desire to have something to beat others over the head with.

It's almost like their latent desire for fascism, more recently become an open and poignant longing, especially when people like the Iowa Evangelicals profiled in the article say they don't like or respect Trump, for someone who is like them who does observe their religion to be given the reigns of power.

And yet, watch exactly how these people talk about Mike Pence, that tells you everything you need to know and I'm not going to spoil it, you have to read the article.

It's almost like what they really want, all they really want, is somebody who will legitimize their desire to hurt other people, and make them feel righteous for doing it.

But I spent much of my life as a Christian. I know what the Bible says about such people, I know that when they stand before their God and are judged, they will answer "Why? Lord, did not we do all these things in Your name?"

And He will answer that they did no such things in His name.

Whose name they really did those things in, I'll leave as an exercise for the reader.

I'm not going to tell you what happens next. If you lack the intellectual curiosity to read it yourself or the knowledge to know what the answer is, that's on you.

But it doesn't end well for the fake Christians.

It turns out that in the end, God is not really Donald Trump.

And it's an indictment of us all, against our society, that people think their culture, their fear, their harsh conservatism, their homophobia, their racism, their self-soiling fears of the Other,  their terrible social beliefs, or their Whiteness is Christianity.

Because I know what I was taught, and that ain't it.

It's a failure of generations that it's come to this.

We have to live with that. But it's on us to fix it.

Or at least show up in enough numbers to vote these people out of power so we can start fixing it.

Vote.

Unless you want these people running the world.

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

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

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

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

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

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

~Amos 5:7-12
Part Two.

Cold Dead Hands (Immanentizing The Eschaton, Part Seven.)

Nom Anor: There are thousands of warriors out here, you are only one man.
Ganner Rhysode: I am only one Jedi.
Nom Anor: You're insane!
Ganner Rhysode: No, I am Ganner. [Spinning his light-saber in a dizzying flourish] This threshold is mine! I claim it for my own, bring on your thousands, one at a time or all in a rush, I don't give a damn. None shall pass! 
~From the New Jedi Order series Star Wars novel; Traitor, by Matthew Stover.

On Thursday, New York State Attorney General Letitia James filed suit to dissolve the National Rifle Association, which is incorporated in the state, citing fraud, among other crimes.

That night, I happened to be working in the break room at work.

At my work, quite often one of the break room TV's is tuned to Fox News, often another to CNN or MSNBC and the others usually to sports channels.

It seemed like they had Laura Ingraham on loop most of the night, spouting yellow-eyed hair-on-fire paranoia about Liberals coming to take away your guns and your Jesus and "fundamentally change American culture."

Listen to what I have to say next, and listen good.

When you're the organization that's too corrupt for Oliver fucking North you don't get to paint a state effort to dissolve your declining, politics-obsessed hard-right "charity" as some kind of nefarious conspiracy.

Not when it's perfectly well legal consequences for literally decades of bad behavior and increasing corruption that you did as part of your own actions.

Not when you long ago abandoned your stated primary mission of firearms education and safety and protecting the legitimate Constitutional right to keep and bear arms for endless shrill promotion of an ever-rightward political Long March that soon enough simply became an excuse to buy multi-million dollar mansions for the bigwigs and pay millions of dollars to just a few people out of the dues paid by thousands upon thousands of rural, white, working class people...many of whom, wondering just where their money is going, have quit the NRA in disgust.

Oliver North, of all fucking people. The guy who sold AIM-154 Phoenix missiles, F-14A Tomcat parts and other assorted weapons and equipment to Iran, to the people who were shouting "Death To America" damned near while they were shouting it, in order to finance illegal wars in Central and South America. That guy.

When you're too corrupt for somebody like Oliver North...who once literally was the spider at the center of a web of nefarious conspiracy....you don't get to claim that an effort to remove you from your opportunities to steal is some kind of evil machinations anymore.

Conservatives these days, from Trump on down, are constantly claiming that they're so badly done-to.

The people with a history of being balls deep in almost every bloody-minded mistake America has ever made and damned near every committed-with-deadly-purpose Sin this country has ever committed, mostly for no better reason than their own personal power and profit. The motherfuckers who have turned brutality, corruption, election tampering, fraud, racism, religious fuckery and stone-cold lying into high art forms, all while keeping all the bad shit just enough out of view that they can still, with a straight face, claim to be some sort of righteous and somebody, somewhere might just be dumb enough to believe them.

But no, it's literally everybody else in the entire world, with the debatable exception of the heirs to the goddamned Soviet Union who are trying to raise up a new Red empire or the Kingdom that birthed and nursed and raised and funded Osama Bin Laden and most of the goddamned 9/11 terrorists...and pre-COVID-19 at least also Chinese and North Korean Communists...who are the fucking bad guys. Well, them and goddamned long-dead slave-owning Confederates, there is that.

Go ahead, just ask them. Republicans will gladly tell you. They can't wait to tell you how much they hate the average liberal or non-Republican or moderate Republican American and that we are their enemy, but Kim Jong Murder-with-antiaircraft guns, Mohammad Bin Bone-Saw, KGB Lt. Col. Vladimir Putin and Victor Orban the Soros-ally turned Soros-hater and COVIDictator are their friends and mentors.

Actually, you don't even have to ask them.

They'll tell you, and gladly, like it's some big secret, like it's some great thing, like the crazy stupid bug-eyed kid that took a shit in the pool and somebody else had to clean it up.

They tell you with every bug-eyed stupid freak out over having to wear a mask in the middle of a pandemic.

They tell you with every racist or sexist rant on Facebook or Twitter or at the kitchen table.

They tell you with every smarmy, sneering Fox News broadcast by TV-dinner heirs and people who got their start outing gay folks to the college newspaper that some old guy sits their watching like a bug-eyed ADHD kid watches cartoons.

They tell you how much they hate you, how much they hate other people, or change, or progress or foreigners or stable governance. All it took was a Black man running for President on the terms of hope and change for Republicans to decide nobody deserved hope or change anymore. All it took was Barack Obama saying "Yes We Can" for Republicans to become the Party of No We Can't. 

Ever notice how all it took was for somebody to say "Black Lives Matter" for Republicans to decide that, indeed, no lives mattered anymore?

In five years I've watched Republicans devolve from high-minded defenders of liberty and personal freedoms, some of whom may even have believed it or meant it, even if it was an interpretation of such that I may have disagreed with, who at least could sound like they believed in truth even if you didn't agree with theirs...to cowardly simpering fools eager to lick the jackboots of whatever foreign dictator or domestic uniformed thug comes wandering by....and you can't believe a word they say, not that they really believe much at all, but here's the kicker; outwardly, at least, they don't even seem to notice that anything's different.

Except that they know it's all coming crashing down, even if they don't know or won't acknowledge why that is so, and they're loading their guns and sharpening their knives to go out in a blaze of glory, practicing their gimcrack speeches in front of their mirrors like they think John Galt was real and they want to be That Guy, and writing their final manifestos all the same.

We're going to have to vote these fuckers out, all of them.

And then we're going to have to fight them off. You cannot reason with unreasonable people. You cannot live with people who don't think you have the right to exist.

You want change, you want progress?

Better wages, constitutional rights that aren't dependent on the mood of the cops? decent health care, human rights, racial equality, to simply be left alone if you're an LGBT person? To just live your life without one of these fools bothering you about how to do it?

You want an effective COVID-19 response, or for life to regain some measure of normalcy?

Listen, yo, if we want the future, we are going to have to pry it from These Fucking People's cold dead hands.

We didn't make it that way, they did. This is that Immanentizing of the "Conservative" Eschaton that I keep talking about.

This fight is what they wanted, what they are still demanding to have, what they hoped to turn the George Floyd protests into with riot police and unconstitutional arrests. No, I still haven't seen an effective procedure for social distancing when you'be been shot, so there is that.

Somebody might want to get on with doing that. Just sayin.'

Part Six.

333--The half-ass Apocalypse (Immanentizing the Eschaton, Part Six)

There's a man goin' 'round takin' names
And he decides who to free and who to blame
Everybody won't be treated all the same
There'll be a golden ladder reachin' down
When the man comes around

The hairs on your arm will stand up
At the terror in each sip and in each sup
Will you partake of that last offered cup
Or disappear into the potter's ground?
When the man comes around 

~Johnny Cash, The Man Comes Around.

I just saw this a little while ago.

Jerry Falwell Jr. with his pants unzipped, belly hanging out, Speedo showing, a glass of booze in his hand and his arm around a rather immodestly dressed woman who is obviously not his wife.

Just sayin' if I posted a picture like this, my friends would be mocking me over it for years...they've already done so for less.

People keep telling me we're in the End Times.

Well, I'm sorry, but if this is the End Times it's the dumbest, most half-ass ridiculous version possible and I say that as somebody who has actually seen that one dumb ass low-budget Christian "Apocalypse" movie from the late 1990's. And I'm fucking tired of it. Really fucking tired of it.

It's almost like Christianity, but if Jim Bakker was the Messiah instead of Jesus Christ, failed theme park, gaudy obnoxious wife that he cheats on, rumored homosexual relationships and all. It's like somebody took the plot of the Left Behind series, edited out literally all the supernatural stuff and here we are, stuck in a world run by idiots.

These fucking people never fail to come off as bumptious fools weaned on an ideology of self and selfishness, get caught with their dick in the pool boy or some 14-year-old girl, and then try and come at the rest of us as if they're the sober, serious Republicans of old.

Of course, they'll still trot out Bill Bennett or Newt Gingrich on Fox News every now and again, when the volume of the fire dance and the shouts of "Unga Bunga" from their mob of primitive-minded idiots grow too loud and they need some hoary old Tribal Elder to get the mob pointed in a safe direction. But ya know I'm old enough that I remember when Bill Bennett was exposed for having a gambling problem and I remember Newt getting run out of politics for cheating on his wife (while impeaching Bill Clinton for the exact same thing) and I'm not really sure that these motherfuckers ever were that sober or that serious or even that decent or intelligent, but let's be charitable and say that the quality control fell off a cliff in 1992 or so.

Republicans took control of Congress after the 1994 midterm elections.

"Left Behind" was published in 1995.

The rot goes at least that far back, I know, I was there.

It was harder to spot at the time, but, looking back you can definitely see the beginnings of it, like, ya know, elevating an obvious slime ball like Newt Gingrich to the position of Speaker of the House. Not to mention the proliferation of guys like James Dobson and Ralph Reed and, in the wake of Newt, obvious scumbags like Dennis Hastert and Tom DeLay rising to positions of power.

Launder that bullshit through 8 years of the Bush Administration, then wash it furiously in another eight years of fervid racism against Obama, concurrent with six years of Tea Party fanaticism and in 2016, there we were. Add four years of Donald Trump and...well, you do the math.

It's funny how, in the end, for These Fucking People immanentizing the conservative eschaton somehow manages to fail at being either convincingly Christian or convincingly conservative, but it somehow manages to be tacky as fuck and involve the old white man being caught in a vaguely compromising position with a younger woman...and somehow managing to still feel smugly morally superior about it.

 

And of course what Failpocalypse would be complete without Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman making an appearance.

Zip up your fly, Jack, and make sure this press conference isn't outside where there's a garbage truck.

I mean fucking seriously, here we have a woman in public office who doesn't think women should hold public office? Meet Merritt Corrigan, yo. She's a worker for USAID who doesn't like refugees and for that matter an alleged Christian who doesn't seem to know the first damn thing about Christianity, or possess the ability to identify other Christians, for that matter (last I checked, Cory Booker is very enthusiastically Christian, but evidently he's not her kind of Christian despite having background in both African Methodist Episcopal and Baptist traditions.) Evidently she doesn't like Tim Kaine either, referring to both Booker and Kaine as "anti-Christian Leftists" which is kinda weird given that Tim Kaine is a pretty active Catholic who's attended the same church for 30 years. Actually, judging from what I know of these men, and for that matter what I've heard them say regarding their own religious beliefs I think it's a reasonably fair assumption to argue that either Cory Booker or Tim Kaine is probably more conservative in any sense of what that word actually means and in terms of 'Things as they are' in American society-as-it-is than Merritt Corrigan is. 

Merritt Corrigan's beliefs, so far as I can tell, seem to be entirely composed of hate for...well, everything. She's an American who refers to the United States of America as a "Homo-empire" which sounds vaguely like assorted Russian anti-American and anti-EU propaganda that I've seen in recent years. Apparently all a country has to do to be a "Homo-empire" is...treat LGBT people like human beings? Also, she thinks Tucker Carlson should be the next President.

I'd like to say this is a surprise, or comes off to me as an aberration, but I can't. To me 20 years ago it might have, but my ex-wife is a mentally ill Pentecostal who has turned into an Anti-vaccine conspiracy kook. I saw...and was horrified by...most of this bullshit long before the average person did. Not just the religious craziness...and I was stuck fighting against that long before the average person knew or would even understand what I was talking about. But, most of the ingredients of Trumpism were present among lower-class white conservatives long before this. It made for quite a lonely struggle for a long time to try and deal with that, but at the same time I'd almost prefer that to the level of awareness of this shit that lots of people have today if it meant these assholes didn't have power. These are people who think their rules should apply to everybody else, but not them. Why anybody wanted to give these fucking people power, I don't understand.

And when you don't show up to resist these motherfuckers, or vote against them, that's what happens. They get power.

These are people who literally think they have some kind of a right to fuck shit up for everybody, and that others don't even have the right to get mad about it. In fact, if you're lucky, they'll understand that you are mad. We're dealing with people who basically think they have a right to demand a greater share of resources before they even do anything...and then they get angry when the world doesn't comply with their demands just because they say so and they treat it as some kind of vast conspiracy against them that they are not powerful and rich just because. And of course they all think believing just exactly the right things in exactly the right ways is their ticket to literally Immanentizing the Eschaton and creating heaven on Earth...for themselves. That it might be hell for other people is actually a selling point for the whole idea. These Fucking People don't care. As I've said before, they don't care if they win, so long as everybody else loses too. These are people who think if they screw things up bad enough, Jesus will appear and save them and then they'll get everything anyway and get to watch the rest of us go to hell..

And that, fundamentally is why they're Okay with being on the losing end of capitalism and why they're just fine with Donald Trump's magical 8-ball theory of government and why they're Okay with their version of Christianity being run by libertine assholes like Jerry Falwell Jr.

Nothing matters, not even the Cause, except insofar as they can get something they want out of it, and maybe deny the same to somebody else.

And that, fundamentally, is the conservative Eschaton. That is the world they want.

In that kind of religion, everybody goes to hell.

Part Five.

Intermission.

Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers

One hundred million angels singin'
Multitudes are marchin' to the big kettledrum
Voices callin', voices cryin'
Some are born and some are dyin'
It's alpha and omega's kingdom come
And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree
The virgins are all trimming their wicks
The whirlwind is in the thorn tree
It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks

~Johnny Cash, The Man Comes Around.

Whom shall I send? (Immanentizing The Eschaton, Intermission.)

I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me. ~Isaiah 6:8

Today was the funeral of Congressman and Civil Rights legend John Lewis in Atlanta, Georgia.

Barack Obama spoke at his funeral, as did George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Donald Trump wasn't there.

The Bible verse I quoted was from Bush's speech.

John Lewis, activist, Baptist minister, civil rights leader, freedom rider, preacher and teacher of nonviolence, and Representative for Georgia's 6th Congressional District, was born in 1940 to poor Sharecroppers in Alabama, and by his teenage years he was a Civil Rights activist, a freedom rider working to desegregate busing in the South, an organizer of Civil Rights marches who was beaten during the "Bloody Sunday" attack on the Selma To Montgomery marchers and one of the "Big Six" organizers of the March on Washington. He was elected to Congress in 1986 and served long enough to become Dean of Georgia's Congressional Delegation. He was also one of the few Congressmen who voted against the invasion of Iraq in 2003. John Lewis never wavered in his commitment to freedom, to nonviolence and to peace.

In these days of the Trump administration actively trying to start a civil war while gravely mishandling the COVID-19 Pandemic response I cannot help but feel John Lewis will be missed, and should be.

On the very day that Donald Trump Tweets some stupid shit about trying to delay the election, only to be told "No" by pretty much everybody including members of his own party, we need more people like John Lewis.

Herman Cain passed away today as well, and of course Republicans can wax eloquent about him, saying that he exemplifies the American story, but so does John Lewis...to rise from utter poverty and powerlessness in a State and time where he was by custom and by law a second-class citizen, to the halls of power and the leadership of one of America's two great political parties is to me the archetypal example of American greatness...and I say that as a person who was of the other party for a majority of my adult life, and who definitely skewed conservative before that.

The truth is, there are some things that fame is no good for, that money cannot buy, and that worldly power cannot achieve on its own.

John Lewis understood that.

And we are a poorer nation and people for the fact that much of America does not.

As Republicans like Bill Barr and Tom Cotton seek to Immanentize the Eschaton of their shitty beliefs, to make a god of Self and Selfishness, the life and truth of John Lewis points us to a better way. Either we are all free, or none of us are. The chain that is "Us" is only as strong as its weakest link. We are all in this together.

Together we rise, or none of us do.

The life and work of John Lewis shows the conservative Eschaton to be nothing but a lie. Of course Trump wasn't going to go to his funeral. Of course Bill Barr was going to lie to Congress while John Lewis lay in state in the same building.

That's what these people are. Their contempt for everybody else is shown in the mirror that is people like John Lewis.

Nearly two weeks ago, John Lewis passed into the afterlife and strode through the gates of the heavenly city, on the day after Federal agents began attacking and abducting protesters in Portland at the behest of the Attorney General.

I cannot help but think he chose this time to check out so that we might take a look at his life and be reminded in this time of lies and fake presidents and quack doctors that there is such a thing as the Truth, and grow stronger from that recognition.

Goodbye, brother, rest in power.

Our nation is founded on the principle that we do not have kings. We have presidents. And the Constitution is our compass. When you see something that is not right, not just, not fair, you have a moral obligation to say something. To do something. Our children and their children will ask us, ‘What did you do? What did you say?' For some, he concluded, this vote may be hard. But we have a mission and a mandate to be on the right side of history. ~John Lewis

Part Five.

Weapons Of Mass Distraction (Immanentizing The Eschaton, Part Five.)

It is an ancient Mariner,

And he stoppeth one of three.

'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,

Now wherefore stops thou me?

The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide,

And I am next of kin;

The guests are met, the feast is set:

May'st hear the merry din.'

He holds him with his skinny hand,

'There was a ship,' quoth he.

'Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!'

Eftsoons his hand dropped he.

He holds him with his glittering eye—

The Wedding-Guest stood still,

And listens like a three years' child:

The Mariner hath his will.

~The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

So, Demon Alien sex, now? Seriously?

That's what you've got? That's your big plan. Blame all this on some woo woo bullshit, and then what? Make up something else when people keep dying.

If this lady is so religious...and a doctor, to boot...why don't y'all tell me what Book of the Bible describes Alien DNA and Demon sex and lizard people as some element of Christian truth?

Or what peer-reviewed, published medical journal or text describes any of this. Go ahead, I'll wait.

When I've cracked jokes about these people's descendants being the savages dancing around a fire in the ruins of civilization, shouting "Unga Bunga" while they wait for the witch doctor to come out of his hut and bless their overcooked cannibalistic repast of grilled member-of-the-other-tribe, this is exactly what the fuck I'm talking about.

In all seriousness, let me ask you a question; In matters of religion, according to any Holy Book, do you have to get it right or can you just fuck around and miss the mark and maybe, just maybe hit the same side of the barn and still get that nice spot in the afterlife?

Let me tell you what I was taught about how one goes to heaven in Christianity. You have to believe in God, you have to believe in Jesus Christ, and you have to be sorry for your sins and at least try to live a moral life at the same time as you understand that neither Right Action nor Right Belief is enough on its own. Christianity is not, technically, a works-based or practice-based faith, but yet faith without works is dead...and you have to know this stuff. Without Truth, somebody could try and claim that the Bible is an auto-repair manual and what could you do about it?

You have to believe in Truth, and that there is such a thing, in order to do this properly.

Likewise, biology and medicine and science are based on the scientific method. If you want a specific result, you have to go about things in a specific way, you have to follow what is known, what is scientifically proven, what is True, or people die. There is a whole body of ethics and law about this.

Much the same as there is in religion, interestingly enough.

If you accept some stupid bullshit that's dressed up as religion, according to the Bible, your eternal soul can be destroyed. Fear not he who can destroy the body, but fear He who can destroy both body and soul in hell.

If you accept some bullshit quack medicine, you can die, in a number of cases painfully while all some stupid bullshitter has to offer your family is excuses.

It seems like somebody that's both a Christian pastor and a doctor would know all this stuff.

Unless of course it's all a lie and she just doesn't care and only wants to get famous.

The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone:

He cannot choose but hear;

And thus spake on that ancient man,

The bright-eyed Mariner.

'The ship was cheered, the harbor cleared,

Merrily did we drop

Below the Kirk, below the hill,

Below the lighthouse top.

~Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

These fucking people know they're in trouble. Social change, time and tide and their own refusal to roll with all of the above all but guarantees that. The fact that they picked an incompetent like Trump, who chose a comic-book henchman like Bill Barr to try and cover his ass, all but guarantees that there's going to be consequences. The current situation cannot continue for long without things blowing up.

And that's the idea, isn't it?

They know that, and they do want to make things blow up.

I've been saying for awhile, that they probably figure they can't win an election...but they figure they might win a civil war.

Trouble is, the economics and the numbers and the simple calculus of what's where don't stack up in their favor. The side that wants to maintain the global economy will always be able to find more resources to make finished products and weapons and be able to import food. The side that's going to end up with all the rural areas that depend on the cities is going to have to learn how to do a lot of the stuff they seem to hate the very idea of real quick. It's hard to fight a war when you have a bunch of guns but no way to manufacture ammunition on a massive scale and fewer people to trade with to get it. Not that they give a shit.

And don't ask how hard it is to "clear out" cities of hundreds of thousands on up to millions of people with agencies whose total number of troops on the rolls is in the low tens of thousands, not least when the citizenry is pretty close to as well armed as you are. That's eventually going to end badly.

Sure, you can bolster those numbers with a bunch of contractors and rent-a-cops for a short period of time...but it's virtually guaranteed they're not going to be in it for the long haul. Yeah, you can strip-mine your own followers for those young and strong and able to fight, but when your followers skew older and less healthy and less well educated and more prone to certain problems you're eventually just plain going to have to lower standards...and when you've already made yourself the champion of only one group, doing things that way is going to deplete your numbers faster than it wears down those of the more-diverse and more numerous other side.

Especially when you've already found out that the military isn't in your corner and you're already reduced to using contractors and security guards.

Even more so when, due to your own machinations and tribal partisanship, the deadly virus has reached its hand far enough up your ass that it's infecting your own senior leadership.

I'm not really sure what the plan is here, and the preponderance of the evidence points to the fact that there really isn't one, and they're just hoping they get lucky or whatever.

Another thing that I'm slowly becoming more and more sure of is that this isn't really about winning, to these fucking people, or at least it isn't anymore.


You could make the argument that it's about money and power, on a certain level it seems to be that, for Trump. But, he's not really doing a lot of smart things or planning very well if that's the goal. Of course, all that is consistent with his known history.


Certainly enough people have made that argument and done so convincingly. I just think among other things, whatever plans they had have not survived contact with reality, and Trump himself seems to be living in his own little world. So, like strategic forces whose command center has been hit, they're falling back on outdated plans and preset strategies because it's what they have, or what they were trained to do. You punch in the codes, you turn the key to launch your weapons, and you take your chances.

And it's not working.

And they don't care.

In point of fact, they seem to no longer know what the words mean. Like futuristic death cultists who can't innovate or repair their crumbling technology because they've forgotten the basis of it all and don't know how to make the things that make the things anymore, they just keep marching blindly forward while the priests babble grimly about some mythical Time of Ending while they serve the long-brain-dead Emperor.

And in point of fact, despite the fact that these End Times are pretty much the basis of their whole belief system, these death cultists have in place an economic system whose main purpose appears to be to distract people from the fact that everything is broken and nothing works anymore and that when the lights go out, they may never come back on again. Alone in the darkness, Man does terrible things and chaos beckons.

This isn't Warhammer 40k, this is American capitalism and the Republican Party in the year 2020.

The Sun came up upon the left,

Out of the sea came he!

And he shone bright, and on the right

Went down into the sea.

Higher and higher every day,

Till over the mast at noon—'

The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast,

For he heard the loud bassoon.

The bride hath paced into the hall,

Red as a rose is she;

Nodding their heads before her goes

The merry minstrelsy.

The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast,

Yet he cannot choose but hear;

And thus spake on that ancient man,

The bright-eyed Mariner. ~Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

It's not about winning, it's about trying to make a God of their shitty beliefs, and then martyring themselves before that very God.

To what end, I cannot say and do not pretend to know anymore.

It's about Immanentizing the Eschaton. They don't want to live in this world, but they don't want you to either. They believe they have the perfect ideological construct, and apparently they somehow believe that this will somehow live on after them, of its own devices. Remember, this is conservatism we're talking about. They believe that humans are just shadows on the cave wall in the flickering firelight, but it's the ideas that are the real Things.

That's kinda hard on the locals and the wildlife, though.

And it's even worse when you find out that you had shitty ideas all along.

Where the Communist red Hammer and Sickle flag of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics comes in, I have no bloody idea, and from what I can tell, neither does anybody else.

Unless...unless...it was all a lie to begin with and all the bullshit crazy histrionics and dumb ass crazy shit and all this much speaking were never anything but Weapons of Mass Distraction so that politicians and rich people could get more power and steal more money and maybe their simpering cowardly followers could work up the guts to go out and kill some people.

Then it makes perfect goddamn sense.

Part Four.