Antichrist Superstar (Scenes From The Culture War X.)

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:

And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. ~Revelation 13:16-17

I saw this earlier tonight.

Conservatives, presumed Christians, cheering, shrieking like they're at a rock concert, and finally chanting his name as Kyle Rittenhouse gives a speech.

I mean...the fuck?

Dude killed two people. Why is that something to cheer about?

I'll admit that I've not been a Christian for some years now, but whatever happened to "Thou Shalt Not Kill?"

Not just that, somebody made a fucking song to serve as his "Entrance music" in this apparently Professional Wrestling-themed "Conservative" event. Like Reed Galen said, somebody is pouring millions of dollars into...basically...a gala event celebrating fascism. And this is happening right here in the United States. If anybody wonders why I think it's inevitable that Americans will eventually start shooting at each other...even though I also think we as a people should still do the best we can to prevent it...it is that "Conservative" America is turning itself into something that the United States armed forces would bomb the shit out of if it was happening in some other country.

I'm going to say it again, as somebody who was a conservative when the Yugoslav Wars were raging and who made it over there after the first round ended, and saw what the fucking Serbs did...these fucking people, they think the Bosnian Serbs were the fucking good guys. Me? I was horrified by the whole damn mess, because that's the proper human reaction, politics be damned. I feel the same way every time the police shoot down some black dude for no reason. I especially felt disgusted by the George Floyd killing. But where I was repulsed...these fucking people saw an opportunity to create an ethnic conflict and pit American against American.

These people see Kyle Rittenhouse as the first of a new Freikorps Amerika.  or perhaps an American version of the Serbian "White Eagles." I wonder how many war crimes they will commit? While I believe that a lot of these people will end up killing themselves with grandstanding, negligence and plain stupidity if all this shit turns into a conflict and the sundering of America...somebody wants this, and insurgency and war are Darwinian enterprises. They don't care how many people have to die for them to get to the ones who know what they're doing. Somebody will eventually learn something, and this crap had best be treated as a threat...national security and otherwise...before that happens.

Somebody wants America divided, fighting a civil war and plagued by rampant disease...and if you think COVID-19 is bad now...imagine social distancing when you've been shot.

I saw this earlier tonight too.

Some Swedish startup has come up with a microchip that (they say) would contain all of a person's vaccination information and stuff. Now, as a former member of the End Times Prophecy movement who has unwillingly been made aware of current conspiracy theories...well, guess what? Every anti-vaxxer or other goddamned nut out there is going to see this as the culmination of everything they ever said they believed. It doesn't matter if none of this shit ever goes anywhere. In fact, every couple years or so something like this seems to crop up and of course it never amounts to anything for a variety of reasons...but what it did back in the day...and now with this vaccination angle added will continue to do is make every fucking End Times Nut that's out there...and every Antivaxxer now as well...feel justified. 

It should be noted, though, that the two streams of thought appear to have #1 effectively merged, and #2 Jesus has apparently been entirely kicked out of what's supposed to be His own narrative and replaced with varying combinations of Antivaxxer woo and Q-Anon bullshit...and not a little Trump cult stuff as well.

And I'm here to tell you, if these fucking people ever take over a country or succeed in breaking off part of this one, guess what?

They're going to become all about the Chinese-style surveillance society, and I'll bet you money the "Mark Of The Beast" very quickly isn't the Mark Of The Beast anymore...especially when they see that something like this could mean vast convenience and technological privilege for the wealthy and whatever upper classes there are, and maybe the upper middle gets a slice too...but for everybody else (and really, for them too) it could also mean a total lack of bodily autonomy or privacy with the State literally under your skin.

Think about that for a second, and consider that I was skeptical of State power as a conservative and remain so having been pushed pretty much all the way Left by two issues alone: I've always hated Donald Trump and I've always been against fascism. 

'Cause if these fucking people, these cheering fascists, this roaring mob? If they're the State...all bets on everything are off, and even if all they get is a part of this country...if they gain full power over a nation, they will become a world-spanning threat that literally everyone is going to have to deal with.

Because these absolutely are people who will cheer for a murderer. If you don't think they'd ram the government, the State, all the way up your ass if they controlled it...you have another thing coming. And if you don't think they'd use that power to do things like shoot a little girl in the face just for walking down the street, or to commit war crimes against their own neighbors, you're flat out wrong. These people are moral bottomless pits and narcissists for whom the lives of other people have no meaning.

Which really was the whole point of all this "Culture War" bullshit to begin with. Divide the country and create an "Us vs. Them" where there wasn't before, so that any old stupid thing could spark the Apocalypse.

So that the powerful and the wealthy can use that shit to jam their power underneath your skin. 'Cause trust me, all that talk about the Mark Of The Beast and Revelations will be abandoned same as everything else when it becomes inconvenient to these people's Bad Faith religion. Trust me, if a chip under your skin means somebody owns you and not them, these relative status-obsessed fucking gomers will be all about that shit.

But don't think they won't dredge all that talk back up every Sunday morning when it means you're damned and they're not...hell, that's already the basis of their religion. 

Trust me, these motherfuckers will see things like chipping people as them getting to choose who goes to heaven and who doesn't. Nobody with a brain in their head wants that shit. You think these fuckers are obnoxious now? It'll get worse.

Because they know...they know...in the context of their own people, the people raised and schooled on this stuff who swallow all the contradictory bullshit...it will mean total, demonstrative, utter control. These people don't care about God or Jesus now...if they ever really did at all.

They see somebody else being a slave a s a symbol of their freedom.

They see somebody else's needless death as a symbol of their life.

That's why they love guns, that's why they're cheering for a killer. Sinful unregenerate Man sees no greater power than taking life away from another. It has always been that way.

We had best start doing something about this shit now, because if you don't think these fucking people would emulate all the worst parts of Revelation in the name of forcing their shitty worldview on the rest of humanity...you haven't been paying attention.

Part IX

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

 

Boiling (Scenes From The Culture War IX.)

Blood that has soaked into the sands of a beach is all of one color. America stands unique in the world: the only country not founded on a race but on a way, an ideal. Not in spite of but because of our polyglot background, we have had all the strength of the world. That is the American way. ~Ronald Reagan

I've been saying for years, in response to these Fox News motherfuckers always speaking against their fellow Americans, stirring the pot, stoking grievance and hate, that all this shit wasn't going to keep simmering forever. It's eventually going to boil over and become violence.

And here's Jesse Watters literally talking shit about ambushing Dr. Fauci, literally talking about murdering an American hero with a list of accomplishments stretching all the way back to the AIDS crisis of the 1980's, he advocated for LGBT people when nobody else did. Fauci also worked on George W. Bush's PEPFAR program which saved 20 million lives around the world, especially in Africa. Dude has faithfully served both Democratic and Republican administrations for his entire career in public health. And for all that, has to have an armed security detail because of nuts like Jesse Watters. How fucked up is that? Seriously, dude, people have a right to be left well enough alone...and I think Fauci earned that a long time ago. It's really that simple. 

Ask a person from Africa, and they will tell you that George W. Bush and Anthony Fauci represent the best of America...just because of that AIDS program alone. I've spoken to people from places like South Africa and Zimbabwe about this. You have no idea how much of an impact PEPFAR made on a lot of people's lives. I've written about such conversations before.

But those were people in other countries...and lots of them were Black...so to a lot of Americans all that might as well not exist. These fucking people are mad, basically, because somebody with real knowledge told them what to do. Dr. Fauci somehow managed to offend white far-right idiots, so these people rant publicly about murdering him.

But it's not just him.

These people rant about, and presumably whack off to the idea of, murdering their fellow Americans all the time. 20...or even 10...years ago this was in comments sections and the dark corners of the internet and while they were hanging out with their buddies. Now? It's live and in person, publicly, at so-called "Conservative" political rallies.

And this crap is being mixed in with huge dose of open racism.

I mean, seriously, I don't think I've heard anybody use the words "Yellow People" to describe Asian people since I was a little kid in the 1970's and I'm fairly sure it was an old white person who said it...and it came off as racist even then.

These people couldn't force fascism on the rest of us and turn back the clock to the 1930's for everybody...so they're doing it to themselves in the hope...I think, anyway...that they will be able to use force to accomplish what they want and remake the world in their perverse image. It's not going to work...and I think they know that...but right now these fucking people want to go out and fight the whole rest of the world anyway.

And lots of people will still die for no damned good reason.

I've been writing since COVID-19 began about a feeling of dread that I had, that this situation was going to result in large scale violence eventually. When Trump lost the election and left office and a whole bunch of the 1/6 people got prosecuted, that feeling receded. I wrote, on election day last year, that I felt like the shroud of bad spirits had lifted...and I wrote that my ferrets that I had at that time seemed to feel it as well.

But those bad spirits didn't really go away.

They went into these people who had (to use the Christian idiom) accepted Trump into their hearts. 

I've felt that way for quite awhile too...but it's one thing to think it, and completely another to see it in action and see these people talking about murdering their fellow Americans...citizens and otherwise...like it's nothing to them.

This kind of shit is not natural. There's something wrong with these people.

If this shit is not stopped, it's going to result in violence.

And I guarantee you these fucking people won't care if the people they kill are Democrats or Republicans. They don't care about that, they just want to kill somebody, because they think it will give meaning to their lives or make them "tough."

PTSD ain't no fun, by the way. I'm just going to put that out there for anybody who thinks Jesse or Marge has some kind of a point. 

The downfall of civilization and having to shit in a hole in the woods ain't no fun either...and it only ever gets worse from there. No electricity, no food, war and the disruption to commerce and food distribution and trade ain't nothing to joke about. I'm serious. In a civil war...or really any kind of apocalyptic situation short of nuclear war involving the destruction of large cities, fallout, radiation and stuff like that...more people will die from bad water than die from combat. 

And trust me, because I had it happen once...in Mexico, getting sick from bad water and shitting your innards out for a week ain't no good either.

None of this stuff has to come to pass.

But unless this extremist bullshit is stopped...and I hate to tell you this, but stopping it in their own ranks is something conservatives are going to have to be responsible for themselves. Somebody's going to have to grow a conscience here...otherwise, even though it still has to be done, the government or the military or the police or regular people doing it will further just further these people's sense of grievance and their hate and while it may push us less toward oblivion it will still do so. 

Unending cult-radicalization is the perfect trap. They can't get out, but like crabs in a bucket they want to pull the rest of us in with them.

Somebody's going to have to stand up here. And it's better if it's somebody on their side...but I worry that nothing any one person does will be enough.

Like I said months ago, these people will even leave Trump behind. It's already starting. Some of these people are already too far down the rabbit hole. The pot people like Tucker Carlson have been letting simmer forever for fun and profit is going to boil over.

And if somebody doesn't think of something, or there isn't some kind of mass outbreak of common sense or conscience, that figurative pot boiling over will take the real-world form of armed conflict, right-wing insurgency, of violence.

And the only thing most of us can do about it, if we want a better country, is to try and be a better citizen, and yes, a better person.

So get after it.

Because they won't.

Part VIII

Some seem to forget that I’ve worked with those on movies and television. I warn you. Television may be exciting, but always take what you watch or read with a grain of salt. The more extreme these people act, the more money they make. They don’t care about us. You should always do your own research using verified primary sources. Editorials or articles published can be exciting, but they are seldom the truth. This country will eventually be destroyed for the sake of a paycheck. ~Ronald Reagan

#Next5 #Top20
 

Donkey Show (Scenes From The Culture War VIII.)

The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all. You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits — not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty. ~Ronald Reagan

I saw this today.

Texas is building its own border wall. Of course, it's only a couple hundred feet long. I suppose people will just walk around the fucking thing. 

I'm not sure how or where these fucking people think they have the authority to do this kind of shit. I also think, in the face of an opportunity for displaying racism and stupid culture war grandstanding, Greg Abbott doesn't actually give a shit, and doesn't care if it costs the state a bunch of money or if they have to rip it down later. Like, literally, it's all bullshit. 

I used to be a Republican. I'm here to tell you if there's one thing I, speaking as a former Republican here have gotten sick of it's the modern Right's constant Tijuana donkey show politics. The orange man up on the stage constantly raping the braying jackass for attention and money got old with me as soon as it got started. And the whole time, all these old WASP-y shits have stood there telling everybody how great this shit is, even as Trump blew jizz and donkey shit all over everything you people ever claimed to believe before. 

You Republicans aren't "Owning The Libs" you're making damned fools of yourself. You let Donald Trump basically become your God and you fools are giving him everything you can like it's some kind of sacrificial offering. I know a whole bunch of you fuckers have read the Bible and know how it says that's going to turn out. 

And ya know, the worst damn part of it is, he doesn't care. Trump is a narcissist. He has a personality disorder. You could stuff the whole damned world in that empty space where Donald Trump's soul is supposed to be and he'd still demand seconds. Yet no matter what outlandish bullshit he comes up with, all you fuckers scramble to placate him when he does.

And I get it, "Conservatives" hate cultural and demographic and social change. Well, not only because of decisions our ancestors made but because of our and our country's continuing actions that shit ain't going to stop any time soon. And more to the point, the rest of the world doesn't (and shouldn't) have to hold itself in stasis or tiptoe around your comfort zones. You fuckers ain't the center of the universe.

And other people coming here, or Black people having anything, or the Democrats being in power ain't going to take your "Whiteness" away. Does it ever occur to you that maybe that's an idea that never should've existed in the first damn place? What good is it, really?

Colonialism, the Indian Wars, Slavery...I'm fairly sure the vast majority of humanity understands these were bad things. Of course, wealthy white conservatives (or those who base their identity on being the hangers-on to such) would be the exception. 

Let me ask you something, and note I ask this as a former conservative and a white man myself. What's so great about this shit? 

The only reason "Whiteness" is a thing is wealthy planters rigged the game to set the Black people and the less-wealthy whites against each other so they could "divide and rule" and stay in power. What are you getting out of it? Do you get off on others' pain? Do you like watching other people struggle? 'Cause I'll tell you what. The way America works, you give the State the power to put a boot on a Black person's throat, sooner or later it'll get around to you. 

Seriously, what's so great (or so bad) about Whiteness that you think anybody...least of all the Democrats, who still have a majority of white people as their elected officials...would want to "Replace" that shit? Not to mention, what the hell do you think anybody...and I'll remind you we're dealing with Democrats here...is going to actually do with the other half of the country. Or where might they come up with 165 million people at the drop of a had to "replace" anybody?

Increasingly it seems to me that these fucking people hate America. They hate it either because it's not shitty enough or, in fact, because of its tradition of expanding liberty rather than just allowing a tiny slice of the elite to have it. Yeah, there you go. I said it. These people hate America, they hate its Constitution, they hate the Amendments to that Constitution most of all. They hate equality and freedom and tradition...and that's what shows you the last thing these motherfuckers are is actually conservative. 

These fucking people, the Greg Abbott and David Duke types, they want a caste system, only worse than the one that India used to have. They want to be like the Pashtun tribalists in Afghanistan and Pakistan and have people kowtow to their shitty religion and social views...you know, the Taliban.

But this is America. We don't have to put up with that shit. 

These fuckers live in constant fear that somebody else is going to treat them the way their ancestors treated everybody else. That's actually kind of weird, given that they do not otherwise give a shit about history...unless, like anything else, they can use it as a stick to beat somebody else with. What the fuck did you think the Lost Cause even was?

They don't want to live in America if America includes Black people or everybody gets a slice. Unless America is like the Antebellum South and only rich white people even get fully counted.

And ya know, belief in racial purity and superiority didn't seem to work out all that well for the Confederates. It sure didn't work out very good for the Nazis, either. Seems like when push comes to shove...you need more people, not less. You need more people to have money, not fewer.

Yes, yes,  I know, that's why these people don't like Capitalism anymore either.

And ain't nobody going to replace your ass. If you don't get vaccinated and start taking this virus shit seriously you fuckers are going to be dead and no one will care. You won't have to worry about being treated the way that your ancestors treated everybody else because you'll have done exactly that to yourselves...except that you'll have eliminated yourselves without a replacement....by trying to ignore COVID-19 and hope it goes away.

It won't.

And y'all are making it worse. The longer this goes on, the more it will mutate and the more variants there will be. This could have been over by now.

It should have been over with by now.

The virus isn't some grand conspiracy against conservatives, it's a natural event, made worse by manmade factors, and there's three ways to deal with it. Get vaccinated, social distance, or wear a mask. This isn't hard. I'm vaccinated, I still mask up when I have to. Right now I'm not going much of anywhere.

And the Eugenics types like Tucker Carlson will only too late realize that most of their followers are dead or dying and they'll jet off to Russia or some tax shelter like the Cayman Islands or follow Elon Musk to Mars and live off the money they made because of all these dumb shits.  As for the money, that's assuming civilization hasn't fallen apart and the money is still worth something.

Because they figure nothing will touch them, they can buy their way out of it, or they have an escape plan.

And yes, Tucker is vaccinated, he's bullshitting you. So is Marge, most likely. I think she's lying.

They're all bullshitting you, and they don't care.

So maybe you should start.

Stop being entranced by the disgusting spectacle of the Republican donkey show and give a shit about your own life.

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

Part VII

 

Barbarians (Scenes From The Culture War VII)

I do not like Green Eggs and Ham. I do not like them, Sam I am. ~Dr. Seuss, Green Eggs And Ham.

"The adults are working?"

Says the guy with easily the most impressive record, pre-Trump at least, for childish horse shit.

And, bro, I hate to tell you this but with Blowbert, Cawthorn and MTG in the House you're old news even in the category of "Most Tedious Asshole."

From the 2013 government shutdown (and the fact that his idiot Tea Party friends in the House literally  sang hymns while embarrassing the entire country) to reading "Green Eggs And Ham" all night as a Filibuster speech to failure to act like a grown ass man OR any self-respecting Latino should have when Trump insulted his father and his wife...to slinking off to Cancun while his whole state was freezing in the cold, much of it without electricity, well, I'd hardly call Ted Cruz an adult. Ted Cruz is what happens when a self-important socially-stunted asshole is allowed to spend way too much time jacking off in college and moves on to a career of huffing their own farts but other assholes also tell him way too often how great he is because he went to Harvard and somehow managed not to learn much of anything.

And, ya know, the "Absolute dick-bag who thinks way too highly of himself" effect really shines through in the finished product, Ted. 

And then I saw this while I was writing yesterday's post.

I mean, really?

I'm a United States Air Force security forces veteran. My own AFSC has been open to women since 1973. 

I had an LT who was a United States Air Force Academy graduate, and the service academies have been open to women since 1976/

Women began transitioning into certain direct combat roles...fighter pilots and such...while I was still in fucking Boot Camp in April of 1993.

And I served during the implementation of Don't Ask Don't Tell, so don't get me started on the whole gay thing. We knew (roughly) who was gay and who wasn't. It's not that hard to figure out. The vast majority of people didn't care. Not that anybody spoke much about it, not out of malice...we just didn't care...most of us, anyway.

I was a conservative at that time, thus, my ancestors and elders and superiors had made these decisions and it was part of my job to support that. Personally, I was fine with all that stuff. It was really none of my business to worry about it.

And I'm here to tell you, if there was some hyper-conservative ultra dude who wouldn't shut up about the gay thing in your squadron...chances were very good that you might come in to work one day and maybe they wouldn't be there. Might be some rumors, maybe something happened. Their replacement would PCS in and nobody would think much about it after that. But then a few years later after you got out you'd bump into them somewhere and find out they'd been asshole buddies with some other hyper-conservative ultra dude and got caught at it.

And that's OK, now, but at that time you didn't want to out yourself.

I'm not saying it's right, but that's how it was.

I don't know what the hell Jesse Kelly's problem is, he's known for saying a lot of violently stupid shit. And I've heard that he served, but I have my doubts for that exact reason. Frankly I wouldn't be surprised if he did, but washed out either in boot camp or AIT, "A" School or whatever tech school he was in for his service branch. Maybe it was something embarrassing but (mostly) harmless. Maybe he failed a drug test. I don't know. I could be wrong. That's usually best-case, though. Worst case is: Sometimes dudes like this, they make it and go on to do crimes somewhere or else they're in a firefight somewhere in the Sandbox and crying in the bottom of a hole while a bunch of their buddies get killed.

Sometimes they serve their time, get out, and only then do some horrible thing. I've seen that happen too. 

Stuff like this is why, you walk into any recruiting office in the country talking about "Type A men who want to sit on a throne made of Chinese skulls" the very next thing you're going to do is walk right back out the door again.

Anyway he seems like he's seriously overcompensating for something, and I'm not sure I want to know what it is.

Actually, to be honest I think almost the entire "Conservative" Movement is that way right now. Mass psychosis, midlife-crisis, fuck, I don't know. I'm just glad I got out of the Republican Party in 2008 and didn't get any of this crap on me.

And what is it with these Fox News fools all interviewing each other lately? Are they trying to remind us, on purpose, how much of a circle jerk self-licking ice cream cone all this conservative shit has turned into?

"Fantasies of being a barbarian king" seem to be a go-to move for a certain kind of insecure (mostly, but not all) white conservative dude. It's just a variant of the same old shit that they think when civilization comes crashing down they'll be the lord in the castle or the warlord with all the drugs and guns and armed homies. They never think they'll be the catamite strapped to the back of the technical truck or the serf in the fields or chained to the throne and dancing for the crime lord.

But ya know, Jesse, I'd just like to point out one flaw in your plan that you might not have thought much about. When the world ends, you might not be able to be very picky about where you stick your cock.

Also...what the...?

Jesus Christ passed out in a shopping cart. What the fuck?

"Woke imperialism?"

(Adds that to list: "Oxymorons for your consideration.")

I don't know what the fuck happened to the Wall Street Journal but it seems like there was a time when they wouldn't have bothered with this silly bullshit.

Of course, I get it. Conservatives think the world is supposed to be shit, especially for anybody who isn't a rich white conservative of the proper religious and social background...or the criminals and various lackeys that they can benefit from. And they think this not only because they believe the world is a cruel place, and is supposed to be so, but because they actively work to make it like that so they can profit off of the fucking cruelty in the first place, or off of the criminals and lackeys who provide them with drugs or who implement their cruelty.

Also, such a worldview and the assorted wrongs of the world (that they're working to make worse) make the cocaine addiction so much easier to justify.

We're supposed to be better people than that.

This is America. We don't have a common culture, common language, or a thousand years of history. No blood, no soil. All we have is what we want to be.

And some of us want to be barbarians.

Think about that for a second.

We have all this knowledge, all this technology, over three quarters of a goddamn century of being the world's dominant superpower and we have people who would rather be dancing around a fire shouting "Unga Bunga" because they think that would bring more meaning to their lives.

There's something fucking wrong with these people.

Part VI

Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things. It is the continuous revolution of the marketplace. It is the understanding that allows to recognize shortcomings and seek solutions. ~Ronald Reagan

 

Confederate Gods (Scenes From The Culture War VI.)

Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me. ~Exodus 20:13

I saw this last night. But the power was out and my internet was shit, so I decided not to write anything and just went to bed early.

The My Pillow Guy is still all in on Trump's Big Lie and he says he's spent $25 MILLION trying to prove it. He says he'll keep going until he's out of money.

How he'll pay for the cocaine after that I don't know.

What the fuck is it with these people? What the fuck kind of person would spend half of their $50 Million net worth on some sad-sack piece of shit like Donald Fucking Trump?

Well, I guess now we know the answer to that, don't we?

Thing that gets me is, Mike Lindell is rather loudly and obnoxiously an Evangelical Christian, of the "I gave up Crack so I get high on Jesus now" sort that anybody who's ever attended a Pentecostal church in a rural area is likely familiar with.

Dude could have literally used that $25 Million to make the world a better place. Hell, I happen to know some places and ways where an amount of money like that would stretch pretty damn far and help one hell of a lot of people. Hell, dude could manufacture some of his product in a place like Uganda and pay those workers like $10-$20 a day and not only do a little good in a seriously poor country, but be regarded as a fucking hero for it. All that while increasing his profit margin *And* helping people who overwhelmingly share his alleged belief in Jesus Christ.

But no, he wasted it on Donald Trump and trying to prove some bullshit that's just plain not true.

And he very likely got scammed in the process. Twenty five million bucks, just pissed away. Dude's company lost $80 Million in the last year because retailers don't want to be associated with him.  By comparison, a wisely-spent $100 can help a whole community in a country like Uganda, especially if you spend it on school fees or school supplies.. I'm serious. Think about that for a second. Just think about it.

 But don't worry, that's OK. According to people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, the only thing kids in school need is guns. Not better paid teachers, not better computer labs, hell, not even better-funded sports programs. They need some random morons to show up with guns.

How the fuck is that going to help anything?

'Cause let me tell you what that will do. It'll make a hell of a lot more people like Mike Lindell who don't know anything about anything, but can sling a lot of bullshit. And it'll sure create a lot more morons to buy those people's products. Also, people who will think a gun is the answer to every problem. Do you want to live in that kind of society? 

I sure don't, and I have guns and have been trained in their use.

And I want you to consider something else.

Remember that kid that shot up the school a couple weeks ago? The one with the Trump-supporting Parents Of The Fucking Year who attempted to flee the country when they were indicted and left their kid twisting in the wind. The ones who got a real lawyer for themselves and left sonny boy with a public defender. You know, the "LOL, I'm not mad, just don't get caught next time" people?

Imagine those amoral cocksuckers, and their kid, armed, broke, desperate, hungry and completely lacking in scruples of any kind because all social programs that don't (disproportionately) benefit elderly Republican voters or the wealthy were labeled "Communism" and scrapped or sharply reduced.

Imagine all these old, fat, handgun-in-battery-and-jammed-down-their-sweaty-butt-crack motherfuckers with their shitty pickup trucks and faded Trump stickers when their social security checks get cut way the fuck down. 

Imagine they find out about the cuts while waiting in line at the grocery store or Walmart, and the line is being held up because some poor old lady with an Oxygen Tank On A Leash is counting out her change to buy a pack of cigarettes. Throw in some chubby white girl with a hugely full cart, an EBT card and some kids for additional color. Maybe the obvious LGBT people in line? How many of these judgmental conservative pricks are going to keep their cool, especially when they're constantly being told that the answer to every problem is a gun and founding their own shitty little fiefdom?

And imagine if you will, that some idiot jackleg preacher is harassing shoppers that day. Or it's hot.

What's your guess, about how many people do you think would end up getting shot?

What's left of Conservatism in America already runs on anger and manufactured outrage and paranoia. And these fucking idiots want to brand every single thing that helps people "Communism" and preach that fundamentalist religion, guns, and some tin-pot fake strongman are the answer to all of people's problems, while dumping gasoline on every simmering racial or social issue?

And then you have to consider that some people are just nihilists who want to watch the world burn.

How long do you really think any kind of civil order would hold up with people like MTG in charge, and with a blank check to do what they want?!

While I'm at it, do you really think any of these Republican Ratfuckers who'd even think of something like running a scam presidential campaign (Kanye West) would even give a shit if their citizens were murdering each other in the streets? Unless of course they could lie about it and turn that to their political advantage.

If you want a better country, you have to be better citizens and elect better officials who will hire decent people as staffers and shit.

This? This ain't that.

Having people in politics who demand to be worshiped as gods...and fools who will give them that worship...is a bad idea.

Part V.

From Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the Black Sea, the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than thirty years to establish their legitimacy. But none — not one regime — has yet been able to risk free elections. Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root....If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly....Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated. ~Ronald Reagan

End Of History (Scenes From The Culture War V.)

From Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the Black Sea, the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than thirty years to establish their legitimacy. But none — not one regime — has yet been able to risk free elections. Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root....If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly....Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated. ~Ronald Reagan

Goddamn it.

I'm getting tired of repeating myself.

Communism hasn't been a thing since 1989.

It's 2021.

Even the Chinese, Cubans and Vietnamese aren't Communists anymore. More to the point, Communism hasn't really been much of a thing in the United States since the 1930's...and that's not because of anything conservatives or Republicans did. It's because the Soviet Communist Party allied with Nazi Germany in the late 1930's and abandoned, for a time, ideas like improving race relations and supporting workers. So most of the membership of Communist Party USA simply up and left, by their own choice. Why? Because this is America, even if you are a Communist.

More to the point, the reason Communism fell (aside from the fact that it didn't work, of course) was that American Republicans increased defense spending and pursued a more aggressive foreign policy in the 1980's. This forced the Soviets to try to keep up, and their economy couldn't handle the strain. Throw in the war in Afghanistan, domestic problems and unrest and there you have it. Gorbachev pursued a liberalization of Soviet policies, and Reagan and Bush 41 alike pushed for reductions in the number of nuclear weapons and for peace while making a solid public case for liberal democracy.

And the Soviet people...and eventually the governments of the Union's constituent republics...listened.

The first MacDonald's opened in Moscow in 1991. Clown shoes went where boots on the ground never would have gone. We won. Hell, by 1989 we fucking knew we were winning...and the fucking Communists knew they were on the ropes. I remember, I was there. Hell, I came home one evening and turned on the TV and watched ordinary Germans taking sledgehammers to the Berlin Wall while eating a pepperoni pizza.

In a day, *I* went from my future being "Probable death in a nuclear war" to it looking as if I might live to see a much more positive sort of end to history.

But Marjorie Taylor Greene and her ilk want to throw away that history...that amazing, glorious history and the hope for the future that it brought, that I fucking lived through. The triumph of Capitalism over Communism, Peace over War, and liberal democracy over statist authoritarianism.

Because for her, and for most modern Republicans, it never was about any of that, ever. Greene is my age and lived through all the same shit I did. She just doesn't care.

Throw in a side of ethnic cleansing and cruelty-as-spectacle, and a lot of these people would be all in, for no other reason.

Because to modern Republicans, statist authoritarianism, something very like Soviet Communism, and wars are just fine as hell...so long as they get to be the ones in charge. They don't give a damn if they have to split the country and found some sort of Banana Confederacy and subject us all to right-wing insurgency and a Second Civil War...and probable forever-war vs. their allied authoritarian countries also...to fucking have it, either.

Not that I think any of These Fucking People could or would run any of this shit competently. Or even run it at all.

Their Banana Confederacy would probably be a modern day version of Cuba in the Cold War, subsidized by the Russians but probably, in all honesty...run by them as well. While the Banana Confederacy's legislature spent it's time banning CRT and homosexuality and declaring ever-more restrictive versions of Christianity the State Religion...fighting a Culture War cage match against their own imaginations. The new Inner American Border would likely see its walls manned by token Banana Confederate border guards but they'd be commanded by Russians, with Russian troops with AK-74's and T-80 tanks and shit a few Klicks behind the line. And while the Banana Confederate President did drugs and said dumb shit, his clique of unofficially official Russian advisors would likely make all the real decisions.

That there'd be other Americans with M-16's and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and M1A1 Abrams tanks and drones patrolling the skies and satellites reading the Banana Confederacy's fucking newspapers while the US Coast Guard and US Navy made life damned interesting (and short) for their maritime trade...and mind you, we'd likely be stuck fighting the Russians and God only knows who else at the same time...a conflict in which lots of people on both sides would certainly die...isn't something these idiots think about...or would care about if they did.

Because they think death and destruction and the end of their own country will somehow bring meaning to their lives.

That's how little they care for anyone else.

Hell, turning their domestic partisan fantasies into some sort of global conflict with Russia and some of the other members of Authoritarianism, Inc. vs. the EU, the Islamic world, what's left of the United States and probably China and India (for the sole reason that these people don't think a non-white country should be a superpower) is exactly what the fuck these people want.

Their vision of the world is far more based on The Turner Diaries than even Atlas Shrugged anymore.

Except that it's somehow even more stupid than that.

These people see themselves as the Organization from the Turner Diaries (or Kurt Schlicter's fan-fiction thereof) but the truth is they're a lot more "Harris and Proctor from the Police Academy movies" complete with using excessive force not only on the wrong person, but on some unsuspecting civilian who's just trying to do their job.

And they're surprised when they get busted for it. 

In fact they see themselves as "Righteous Christians" and anything they do as thus justified. They see "Consequences for their own actions" as some kind of Woke New World Order Persecution, which justifies absolutely anything they do, in their own minds. And they absolutely refuse to understand that the First Amendment to the US Constitution already defines the USA as an "Atheist State" and always has.

Even their religion is based on hate and selfishness.

If that combination of paranoia, self-righteousness and stupidity is not a recipe for horror I don't know what is.

I mean, fuck, these people are angry, conspiratorial, violent and stupid. If there's a worse combination of traits out there for an adult human being, I sure haven't found it.

These people think (or say they think) they're going to go out and fight imaginary Communists, when the truth is that they're going to go out and fight their fellow Americans who are different from them in some way, and when they do it's likely to fizzle out into a right-wing insurgency but still, thousands will die, millions will be displaced, and a hell of a lot of bad people in the world will try and take advantage.

Don't think they won't, either.

They've done it already, in public, during four years of Trump.

And Trump said "Thank you, Comrade, may I have another?"

And the mob roared its approval.

And some people want to be taken advantage of, so long as they get their ears scratched by the proper Deceiver, because just like the Bible says, these people have itching ears.

They want to be taken advantage of.

Or people wouldn't put shit like this out there.

And Marjorie Taylor Greene and her fellow Redcaps are fine with letting themselves and their followers be somebody's bitch.

In fact, if it feeds into their collective death wish and persecution fantasies or might upset some hypothetical liberal somewhere, they think "So much the better for us!"

Just like those incompetent French Generals who damned near handed their own country over to the Germans in August and early September of 1914 before the fighting spirit of the enlisted soldiers and a few officers who could pull their heads out of their asses saved everybody's bacon in the battle of the Marne, where Paris taxis drove rifle sections straight from the train stations to the front.

But they don't want courage or guts or national spirit to save the day. These fucking people want [their version of] Jesus to show up, murder everybody else who's not like them, and then they get to go to heaven but nobody else does...while the world we live in gets destroyed basically for nothing.

"Conservatives" want to lose, on purpose, because they think then their "God" will save them...and more importantly not save any of us.

Heaven isn't heaven if everybody gets to go. America isn't America if people they don't like get to live here and everybody gets a slice.

And don't misunderstand this one bit. It's the idea of death and destruction and disease, and of America being turned into some kind of dystopian Third World hellhole...while they get to watch from their guarded gated communities...that is what these fucking people really worship.

It's really all about Eugenics and Social Darwinism.

That's the only "gods" these fucking people care about.

And these people are learning right now, the hard way, that the current American system...hell, the American system as it's been since America was America...isn't going to give them that.

And they see everything from COVID-19 to Donald Trump to the possibility of a civil war as some kind of magic trick to turn things in the direction that they think they want.

Even though a hell of a lot of them wouldn't make it in their own imagined world. They too desire an end of history. Why? Because "Fuck You, That's Why."

And that's all there is to it. There's no deeper meaning, no other reason. The cruelty is the point.

But ya know, the rest of us don't have to roll over for this bullshit.

So don't.

Part IV

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

#Top20

Heavy (Scenes From The Culture Wars IV.)

Obie Trice
Real name no gimmicks

Two trailer park girls go 'round the outside
'Round the outside, 'round the outside
Two trailer park girls go 'round the outside
'Round the outside, 'round the outside

Guess who's back, back again
Shady's back, tell a friend
Guess who's back, guess who's back?
Guess who's back, guess who's back?
Guess who's back, guess who's back?
Guess who's back? 

~Eminem, Without Me.

I started seeing this a little bit ago.

"Some conversations can get heavy. Don't forget the human behind the screen."

And every single post I saw this on was, to one extent or another, about a Republican.

The Party of "Fuck Your Feelings" needs a good cry and a hug, and Post-Jack Dorsey Twitter is apparently willing to indulge said Republicans.

In response to that I'd just like to say "Fuck you motherfuckers sideways with a SpaceX rocket after the fucking thing has been launched, until half the country can see you got flames shooting out of your asshole."

I mean, Jesus Christ. What the hell is wrong with people these days?

For the hundredth time, Communism hasn't been a thing since 1989.

I'm sick of hearing about it. This shit is ridiculous.

Republicans spent six years, from the moment that Trump declared his candidacy right up until the minute he was out of office engaged in every possible asshole transgressive behavior they even thought they could get away with. Like some kind of national equivalent of the jerk who thinks it's cute to smoke while he's pumping gas, especially anytime anything with the potential to cause conflict happened...

While being like "Own the Libs! Own the Libs! Ha Ha Ha"

...And now that Trump, their profoundly unfunny insult-comedian President...has been out of office for nearly a year, these jokers need a hug and a good cry and an afternoon watching Marianne Williamson videos on YouTube every single time someone mildly objects to their evil, autocratic bullshit!?!?

I mean, I kept seeing this on video clips of Marsha Blackburn and Rick Scott blaming inflation on Democratic government spending...as if Republicans don't spend like drunken sailors on a bunch of shit that nobody else needs but it enriches their donors and rich friends. My God, don't you fuckers ever get tired of your own hypocrisy?!?!

And of course there's Marjorie Taylor Greene calling Democrats "Communists" and getting publicly owned by Jamie Raskin for doing so. Goddamn, but I'm tired of these fucking hypocrites and I say that as a former Republican.

They face the most basic level of resistance for trying to govern like basic internet trolls, and they act like they're facing the Apocalypse.

I've created a monster, 'cause nobody wants to see Marshall no more
They want Shady, I'm chopped liver
Well if you want Shady , this is what I'll give ya
A little bit of weed mixed with some hard liquor
Some vodka that'll jump start my heart quicker
Then a shock when I get shocked at the hospital
By the doctor when I'm not cooperating
When I'm rocking the table while he's operating (hey)
You waited this long to stop debating
'Cause I'm back, I'm on the rag and ovulating
I know-that you got a job, Ms. Cheney
But your husband's heart problem's complicating
So the FCC won't let me be or let me be me so let me see
They tried to shut me down on MTV
But it feels so empty without me
So come on and dip, bum on your lips
Fuck that, cum on your lips and some on your tits
And get ready 'cause this shit's about to get heavy
I just settled all my lawsuits, "Fuck you, Debbie!" 

 ~Eminem, Without Me.

Like I said, Jesus Christ. What the hell is wrong with people these days?

On January 6th of this year, Republicans literally tried to overthrow Democracy and when Democrats (and a couple of Republicans, both sides grudgingly, after months of procrastination) try and do something about that shit the "Fuck your feelings" people get all soggy and hard to light and start trying to distract the public by getting all angry and shouty about government spending and socialism.

As if their fascism-boner hasn't turned into a grotesque untreated purple priapism since they got just a little taste under Trump...and a year later they have to arrange that shit carefully before sitting down and there's green stuff coming out of their collective pee hole. 

These fucking people are doing everything but screaming "The plow makes the furrow, but the sword defends it!" like fascist Blackshirts goose-stepping in review and stiff-arm saluting il Duce.

And you point that shit out and suddenly these fucking people are all crocodile tears and emotional support hamsters and hanging motivational posters on the walls trying to turn your ass into the bad guy. 

And corporations are letting them shovel that bullshit!

Now this looks like a job for me
So everybody just follow me
'Cause we need a little controversy
'Cause it feels so empty without me
I said, this looks like a job for me
So everybody just follow me
'Cause we need a little controversy
'Cause it feels so empty without me.

~Eminem, Without Me.

Again, Jesus Christ, what the fuck is wrong with people?

I mean, I really do hate to say this, but if I have to trust Liz Cheney or Tucker Carlson, it's you and me, Liz, all day.

It's funny how Republicans are suddenly again all about privacy and fear of big government when they did something really bad and even some of the people who are investigating them are taking that shit seriously. You know, maybe we should all be taking these people and their seditious bullshit seriously and treating them like the threat they've become?

As with their whining about the NSA during the Obama years it's all bad faith "Poor me" shit, and then suddenly Trump gets elected and they're back to the Bush-years refrain of "Well, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" as if we don't see every goddamn fucking day that they'll fucking make something to fear out of thin air if they have nothing to fear and then they'll try and point the full power and rage of Big Government right at you.

But when it's them "Oh, well, that's different." And when they're actually getting investigated and arrested and charged and even some of them are going to jail it's "Please! Don't let The Man come and get my ass!" Even though the second they're out of mixed company they're talking shit about starting a second Civil War and breaking off a piece of the United States to form the People's Republic Of Trump or some shit.

If you even point it out, they act like they're being thrown to the lions.

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

The sooner we as a nation, as individual people, stop putting up with these people's horse shit and start calling out their fascism and punching them in the face on a regular damn basis the better off we're all going to be...including the conservatives in point of fact.

Corporations and media handing these people a tissue and soothing their bad-faith fake tears while amplifying their bullshit talking points because they miss the drama and easy money of the Trump years ain't the fucking answer. 

I'll remind you there's no small number of these fucking people who'd love to knock off the corporate masters and nationalize social media and every other industry they can get their hands on simply to eliminate sources of criticism and further amplify their own power. How the CEO's and managers and owners think that'll benefit them, I have no idea. These damned Republicans are all but saying out loud they want to whack your ass and take your money because you weren't "Conservative" or evil or fascist enough...almost regardless of your actual political position or how many times you've supported them in the past.

If you don't see that for the threat that it is, you're stupid. 

These people don't want to be the conservative Republicans of ages past, hell, even old Joe McCarthy probably wouldn't have gone far enough for them. They want to be the black-robed inquisitors of the Burning Times or the Commissars of the Imperium Of Man, walking tall among cowering masses toiling in hive-slums who fear being accused of "Communism" by their power and thence the stake or the firing squad. 

It ain't the party of Reagan no more. When these people say "Freedom" they mean it only for themselves.

And when somebody punches them in the face, they don't deserve your sympathy, they deserve to get some questions about why that happened and what they did to deserve it.

Stop giving criminals and insurrectionists the benefit of the doubt or credit for the legacies of ages past that they shit all over every day now.

Sometimes when you see things get heavy, somebody deserved it. If you don't think they'll abuse the shit out of your attempts to be fair, you're wrong. If you don't think at least some of these visible attempts at "fairness" toward Republicans aren't themselves offered in bad faith by people who think they'll benefit, you have another thing coming.

Republicans, it's like my Grandma used to say: Sometimes, when people don't like you, the problem is you.

Cut out the bullshit and maybe we can get along...but first you have to cut out the bullshit.

Part II