Mirror, Mirror (Christmas 2022, Two.)

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.
And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. ~Luke 2:1-14

Ukrainian President Zelensky arrived in Washington D.C. today, to meet with President Biden.

And it evidently pissed the MAGA nuts...you know, those supposed American nationalists...off something fierce.

Because they know what they should be doing. They know that Zelensky is our friend and Putin is our enemy. You can't tell me at this point that these fucking people don't know that Russia/The Soviet Union is our main historical enemy and that Vladimir Putin was a Communist and a KGB agent. They know, they just hope that you don't. 

They know what's up, they just figure they can bullshit their way through and want to see what they can get for trying.

They know what they are. They just don't have the guts to come right out and say that they're enemies of America yet...so they attack somebody else that's fighting for his country's freedom.

You can't tell me these people...most of whom over a certain age grew up with the same horror stories of Communist oppression and suppression of Christianity that I did...don't know exactly what Putin 'winning' in Ukraine, conquering Europe and defeating the United States would entail. Local communists and other "Useful Idiots" were usually shot the second they were no longer useful when the Soviets took over a country. They know...or at least...deep down they have to remember all those stories and shit. And they'll never admit to it, but that terrifies them.

Deep down they know that Russian nationalism is violently incompatible with American nationalism.

They just hope the Democrats get shot first, or that they can somehow "Own The Libs" before they die.

Because they're mad as hell that American culture has gotten away from them...as if they've done one damn thing since Bush 41's term ended to try and persuade anybody of anything. Bob Dole didn't bend the knee to the racists and religious nuts, so he lost. Bush 43 and his idea of "Compassionate conservatism" was scorned by these same assholes.  

And of course the whole Trump thing didn't work out, and Elon still can't run for President even if he manages to avoid crashing and burning along with Tesla stock and Twitter as a platform.

So now they're sucking off Kyle Rittenhouse...and they're mad as hell that most other people treat him as a murderer and not some kind of hero.

They're mad as fuck that nobody gives a shit about Josh Hawley's fake religiosity and priggish crusades. These assholes feel entitled, that they should be the heroes damn it! 

All because they've convinced themselves that being assholes equals being part of some avant-garde revolutionary movement and they're sure the reason this isn't being well-received is some vast left-wing conspiracy and not that they're, ya know, assholes and nobody wants to put up with that shit. (Seriously this is Elon's basic M.O. in how he's running Twitter.)

I mean, they literally think they have Twitter, they own the Blue Check now, $8 Bro, $8! You have to listen to them, you just have to!

Meanwhile, I've yet to see one of these dumb shits actually do anything heroic.

It's puerile, it's stupid, but it's also very, very Republican. It's the end result of what's fundamentally a belief in a godless world where Man's self-satisfaction is the sole moral purpose of his life. In other words...Randian Objectivism.

What if...bear with me here...no one has to listen to you??

These people somehow collectively never 'got' that stockpiling political power and social status only went as far as what you did with it. 

They have made of the "Conservative" movement a thing that makes people not even be the sum of their parts. They know it, Newt Gingrich had some real skills and was a no-shit historian at one point. Instead he will forever be known getting run out of Congress for adultery just after impeaching Bill Clinton for the same thing he was doing.

They're so convinced that everything is top-down and that everybody is secretly like them that they can't even plan for...what if it isn't and we're not?

And yet every last one of these sons of bitches will claim to follow a religion started by a poor carpenter and itinerant Rabbi, that claims as its core tenants "Love thy neighbor" and "Think of others!"

The tragedy of all this is that these people, like it or not, are the heirs to guys like Ronald Reagan.

They could easily look at their own history, see the contradictions and the moral collapse, and choose another path.

They just don't want to.

Volodymyr Zelensky's heroic leadership and the undaunted courage of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the Ukrainian people in their fight against Putin's neo-Soviet tyranny hold a mirror up to that.

And Republicans don't really like the reflection that they see in that cold and misted mirror.

Maybe, Republicans, the problem is you.

Today is the Winter Solstice, one of the points in the Wheel Of The Year that marks the changing of the seasons. Autumn gives way to Winter which leads to the rebirth of Spring. Christmas marks the Birth of Jesus, Easter, repurposed by the Christians to commemorate the Death and Resurrection of Christ marks the resurrection of Spring, which soon gives way to bright Summer.

It's all right there in front of you, Republicans, but you have to want to change.

One

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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

No Sympathy For The Devil (Christmas 2022, One.)

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.
And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. ~Luke 2:1-14

Today, the January 6th Committee made criminal referrals to the Department Of Justice for Donald Trump and John Eastman.

Good.

Now get after it.

But be aware, not only is this not the end, it's not even the end of the beginning.

Guys like Donald Trump and John Eastman aren't the problem. They're a symptom, shitty little opportunists who want to make their fortunes off the backs of those who are willing to be lied to.

The fact that there's a hell of a lot of chucklefucks ready and willing to fork over money, political power and their own freedoms in exchange for the lies...that's the real damned problem.

Now what are we going to do about that? Why? Because fundamentally, that is the root of the goddamned problem. There's too many people who don't want to change so bad, that they don't want to live in a changing society or world.

And if somebody says "Civil War is bad, they'll think it's good, just to be "Contrarian" or some shit, just because they think it's funny to act like willfully ignorant morons.

I've observed that lately, Kyle Rittenhouse has been going around styling himself as a "Christ-Follower." (Which means Fundamentalist nut in English.)

Still wondering; Who would Jesus murder?

I'm sorry, but the Christianity...or the alleged pride in being American...that Kyle Rittenhouse espouses is not something I recognize as either. The religion of Kyle Rittenhouse is at best, Republican politics. At worst, it's outright fascism. He went somewhere that he didn't belong with a weapon he wasn't supposed to have and killed people who lived there, who were legitimately exercising their Constitutional rights. 

First Amendment advocate, my ass.

And whoever...or whatever...this "Patrick Devlin" is that's egging Rittenhouse on they ain't an American. Russians tend to learn British English, not the American kind, for whatever reason. Did you catch it?

Of course somebody like Kyle Rittenhouse would be somebody the Russians would want to promote. Who in the hell else would benefit from something like a civil war in the United States? 

And I'm here to tell you, these people will say any old cockamamie dumb shit they think they can get away with in order to justify their war against the rest of us.

And it's a safe bet that, especially if Trump gets indicted and arrested, the media will let the crazy shit slide. 

If you think they looked at the Trump years and thought "That's a lot of damn money" you can bet they're looking at the possibility of a right-wing insurgency right here in the USA and seeing even more. Safe bet though, that it won't be the TV talking heads and shit who get embedded with the Army National Guard Soldiers, the Cops and the local defense militias that'll be doing the majority of the fighting against it.

They look at the possibility of air battles above L.A. and NYC, Coast Guard boats shooting it out with insurgent boghammer boats in the Great Lakes waters off Chicago, and tanks shooting it out in Iowa cornfields, and they don't see a great tragedy...they see the money and the props they'd get from covering this great tragedy.

And if we've learned anything from the last seven years it should be that us regular people are expendable to the Republican politicians and the TV pundits.

And make no mistake about it, there's no way to be "Conservative" enough for these goddamned nuts. They'll go after those who are or were "their own" who have embraced any aspect of gender or racial equality, LGBT rights, modernity or social change first and the hardest. It's stuff like this that makes me worry about the potential political knife-fight over the speakership in the House.

Yes, if they get their war, they will go out of their way to make it a war of atrocity and religion just like the Russians have done in Ukraine.

Because to them, Christianity isn't about "Peace on Earth and goodwill toward men" it's an excuse to exclude people or go on a Crusade or hate The Other for no damn good reason, and to try to impose their beliefs, their politics, their selfish religion and shitty ideas, on people who already had their own.

And these fucking people will keep on trying to do this until somebody steps up and makes them stop.

It'd be nice, for once, to see somebody work as hard on bringing about "Peace on Earth and Goodwill toward men" as they do on making a buck off the fact that it's Christmas or trying to immanentize some kind of shitty right-wing eschaton.

Maybe it's just me, but I'm so damned tired of this bullshit.

We need to stop having sympathy for the damned devil, and just stop putting up with this bullshit. Lock these fuckers up.

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No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

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Blasphemy (Reason For The Season, Fourteen.)

No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

I saw this a couple days ago.

Some old Russian lady ranting about bestiality and "85 genders" as if any of that is actually a thing in the EU. (It's not, the Right has said this type of shit forever and it's never happened, anywhere.)

Makes me wonder how much of the Q-Anon bullshit is just transplanted Russian conspiracy theories.

That said, these people have a lot of fucking nerve. I saw a Twitter thread that same night about Russian prison culture and just how much of said prison culture is based around abusing anybody who's been raped in prison, regardless of the circumstances. And the prisoners use this rapey system to "reinforce social status."

And from what the thread was saying, this prison mentality is endemic throughout Russian culture and influences the thinking of a lot of people, particularly elites.

Not just that...but apparently PMC Wagner. a Russian mercenary group with some (seriously) Nazi influences is actively bringing Russian prison culture onto the battlefield in Ukraine. As if war, by its very nature, isn't fucked up enough already. Of course I'm fairly sure the Russians think there's some kind of tactical value in the potential for atrocity.

As a veteran...and hell, as a former Christian and conservative, I'm beyond appalled by this. 

Not for the first time, I'm left wondering if these people have ever heard of the rules of war.

But it sure puts the Conservative Movement's obsession with crime and punishment (not to mention sex and sexuality) in some interesting and unflattering lights, now doesn't it?

In general, at this point it's safe to assume that "Conservatives" have absolutely no problem with sex as long as there's neither consent nor love involved. And they're actively in favor of it (regardless of the act or participants) if they can be convinced that it somehow signifies any kind of male dominance and power. You know who else thinks like that?? 

The Taliban.

Oh, and Mike, while I'm at it, you know who produces one hell of a lot of the internet porn that's out there, who owns the companies, hell, the predominant nationalities of the people involved?? The Russians, that's who.

Awkward.

I don't ever want to hear again, how the Russians are so Christian and Conservative, because I know what those words mean, I was one of these people in a different era when this stuff all meant something different. 

I know what I was taught, and this stuff ain't it. 

While I'm at it, I'm damned near as tired of anybody making the same kinds of claims about Republicans.

These fucking people don't give a shit about conservatism, or Jesus, or the Rapture...except insofar as they can use those things as a stick to beat other people over the head with.

I saw today that Father Frank Pavone, a Catholic Priest. anti-abortion nut and Republican activist, was fired from the Priesthood by the Vatican for (their term) literally blasphemous behavior.

Good, but I have a feeling he'll just reinvent himself as some kind of secular Republican politician. A different shade of Roger Stone for the 21st Century, but reeking of incense and pederasty and quoting obscure Latinate texts.

And no one on the Right will care, because blasphemy of everything they ever said they stood for before is exactly what they are now. Hell, it's the goddamned price of admission for both Far-Right and Horseshoe-Theory Left! 

It's as if, in a secret vault somewhere in the bowels of RNC headquarters there is an official portrait of Ronald Reagan...smeared with Elephant dung.

Right next to fountain pen once used by The Right Honorable Sir Winston Spencer Churchill that hangs suspended in a jar of urine and a full size, nude photo of Nick Adams with the handle of a whip sticking out of his ass.

(If you don't get the references, too bad, look it up.)

Consider the example of Trump being obsequious to Putin in Helsinki. If that's not blaspheming everything America and the Republican Party ever have claimed to stand for, I don't know what is.

It will become so that Blasphemy...and nothing being done about it...is a symbol of Power.

And more to the point if these mooks could be convinced that the man in the bad wig and the rumpled suit were some archetype of authoritarian white male power...or somehow spiritually "representative" of Donald Trump...they'd be lining up to be buggered in some perverse ritual.

And again, nobody on the Right would care.

They'd rather make common cause with a nation full of conspiracy freaks and enemies of America than live in our modern nation as she now stands.

Reagan Wept.

One thing I think is worth asking, though, "Conservatives." How is any of this stuff working out for you in real life??

If it was me in your shoes, I'd be looking at things like the disastrous November midterms, and Putin's corrupt, decrepit and perverse nation...not to mention a war his army is decisively losing...and I'd be starting to wonder if maybe I'd gone wrong somewhere and should rethink a few things.

Meanwhile, you can be judged by the company you keep.

But it's the Christmas season, if you want to rethink some things, now is probably a good time. 

Jesus Christ was born in humble circumstances and was a carpenter and itinerant Rabbi, yet he changed an entire spiritual paradigm from that of ritualistic purity and sacrifice to faith and substitutionary atonement. He was not an avatar of secular or social power, quite the opposite in fact.

By design, if you believe all that stuff.

Blasphemy in the name of politics is easy. You have to want to follow the Truth...and then you have to do it.

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I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still. ~Ronald Reagan

Thirteen

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

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

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

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

~Amos 5:8-15

Operation Republican Freedom (Reason For The Season, Thirteen.)

We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world, a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us. No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we'll kill you. Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush? They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us; they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis. And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom Of Fear (2004)

I woke up this morning to find that Elon Musk had suspended a whole bunch of journalists from Twitter. At first, with no reason given, then the reasons given were shown to be bullshit.

I'm finding that:

#1 this autocratic, capricious one-man show horseshit is very tiresome. I used to be a conservative, I just don't work that way. If you can't, don't or won't clearly define your beliefs or rules and stick by them, I'm not going to keep playing with you, because after awhile the cheating, goalpost-moving and the hypocrisy gets old.

And people wonder why I'm not a Republican anymore...

#2 Whatever conspiratorial bullshit Musk believes that's causing this shit is already smacking hard into the wall of reality. People are simply jumping to other platforms. Mastodon, for one, is pretty chill and I don't have to worry about this kind of stupid shit over there. A lot of the people I follow on Twitter who are there have already followed me there, and I'm good with that.

Anyway...

Musk and his weird goons and "Conservatives" more generally seem to think they've won a great victory, somehow "taken down" and "taken over" some kind of "Leftist political organizing org disguised as a corporation." (Yes, I've heard/seen people say this.) It's not that, you idiots, a lot of the user base was journalists and politicians. All the Democrats are on there, yes, but so are all the Republicans. That was by design for what was previously the digital public square.

Twitter was a business, run by business people, on the American ethic that businesses should serve everybody.

But that's not the world these fucking people want to live in.

Musk and Republicans seem to want to turn it into all of the above...but only for far-right/fascist types thinking it'll somehow keep its previous organizing power but now only they can use it and somehow it would retain-and they would gain-its popularity.

Whole thing's already falling apart if you ask me. Seems like the Apartheid/Segregationist types fail to understand you can't really make a living, most places, if you're only serving White Conservative customers and their assorted kiss-asses and wannabe hangers-on.

And, meanwhile, people besides them (naturally) are moving on. I mean, among other things, what else can we do?

Because guess what? We really don't have to put up with this shit. 

This is America, it's a free country, we can go to another venue. Modern "Conservatives" just don't seem to understand that. And they're about to start shouting at us that we have to listen to them, because they have Twitter now!

Yeah, it's going to inconvenience everybody to rebuild all the networking we had on Twitter and that's going to take awhile. But I think we can rest assured the "Conservatives" will make a hash of Twitter and everybody will just end up inconvenienced and pissed off at them. 

So yeah, basically, it's just another Friday.

Meanwhile, and I've been warning about this for a long time, in Republican-land they're presently referring to Ronna Romney-McDaniel as a "Leftist" and blaming her for the Republicans' overall failure in the midterm elections.

The Zampolit class of "Professional Conservatives" is saying she spent too much money on "Leftist" luxuries like, ya know, transportation...?

Like what, she's supposed to walk? March wherever she has to go along with her assorted retinue?

As if Benny Johnson fancies himself some kind of rigid, straight-backed traditionalist-Catholic Vichy French General with a massive mustache and a fancy uniform (and a moldering, outdated army complete with Renault FT-17 tanks in 1942) who eschews luxuries and eats sausage off the end of a knife...and how did any of that shit really work out, anyway? 

LOL.

"Work, Family, Fatherland" only seems to last until they get to wherever tonight's Cocaine Orgy happens to be.

Not a word about the $1 BILLION+ that seems to have just disappeared under Rick Scott's leadership, though. 

It's like Operation Iraqi Freedom, but only for Republicans. 

And it's funny how so much of this shit seems to be "They just don't want other people to find out about that."

Don't worry, they'll hire a bunch of scammy "contractors" to root out the imagined problem, watch even more money go up in smoke, and accomplish nothing because they can't/won't admit what the problem even is...that they're all trying to scam each other, and the donors, and the voters.

But, before they come for the rest of us, they will have knives out for each other...and more seriously, for any institution, be it the government, the military, the police, etc. that they think might be able to stop them.

And they're telling on themselves, in that they appear to be switching their adoration and loyalty from Trump to Elon Musk. It's Christmas, and these motherfuckers think Ebenezer Scrooge is the fucking good guy.

These people don't want to live in America as it is...they want to live in the Aliens franchise where almost everything is run by corporations and the Marine Corps sends a squad to deal with a potential major crisis. 

And they see Elon and SpaceX and all that other crap as a means to get there. Oh yes, they do. They want to live in a world that's run the way God-Emperor Elon runs Twitter.

And this...they claim...is freedom.

Mind the Aliens, they bite.

Twelve

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

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No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride (Reason For The Season, Twelve.)

There are times, however, and this is one of them, when even being right feels wrong. What do you say, for instance, about a generation that has been taught that rain is poison and sex is death? If making love might be fatal and if a cool spring breeze on any summer afternoon can turn a crystal blue lake into a puddle of black poison right in front of your eyes, there is not much left except TV and relentless masturbation. It's a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat shit and die. Who knows? If there is in fact, a heaven and a hell, all we know for sure is that hell will be a viciously overcrowded version of Phoenix — a clean well lighted place full of sunshine and bromides and fast cars where almost everybody seems vaguely happy, except those who know in their hearts what is missing... And being driven slowly and quietly into the kind of terminal craziness that comes with finally understanding that the one thing you want is not there. Missing. Back-ordered. No tengo. Vaya con dios. Grow up! Small is better. Take what you can get. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Generation Of Swine.

I had to get groceries, pay bills and run a few errands this morning. This afternoon I went out to lunch with my Mom and her partner, to a Mexican restaurant on the other side of town. Place has a decent view of Lake Huron and we sat there and ate and watched some pretty impressive waves crash against the shoreline. 

A nice compliment to the slurry of rain/snow mix fouling everyone's day here.

Plus, all my bills are paid up for the month.

All things considered, it wasn't too bad of a day.

And then I saw this shit.

Trump's "Major Announcement" that he's been crowing about for days is some kind of stupid Digital Trading Card/NFT crap. Like, WTF is this silly bullshit??

This shit looks like took some stoned college bro 15 minutes on an old Windows 98 PC with some $9.95 Graphic Design program off the discount rack at OfficeMax from the same basic era. 

While he was listening to an old William Hung Christmas CD and smoking a blunt.

I'm like...are you fucking kidding me? I may be, for once in my life, at a loss for words.

I'm just...I'm so old I can remember when Republicans had more self-respect than this stupid bullshit.

It's like a completely non-combat, chickenshit version of Doom, but for morons.

You bought the ticket, Republicans. Now you get to take the ride.

You wanna know, Republicans, why the North Koreans and the Russians and the Saudis think they can just own yo ass??

Because some of you fuckers think that the Ukrainians, who are fighting to the death for their right to have their culture, language and nation keep existing, are the enemy.

Because you motherfuckers, being the utter swine that you are, turned the party of Ronald Reagan, who carried Barry Goldwater's ethic of "Peace Through Strength" out into the world and stood there in Berlin right in front of the Brandenburg Gate and told Mr. Gorbachev to "Tear Down That Wall" and turned it into...this.

Because you goddamned elected somebody pathetic enough to even try this shit. 

Because you treat disabled veterans and working people, like me, and those fighting for their own freedom as enemies or inconveniences and you lionize...Trump.

This is what you traded people like Adam Kinzinger, Justin Amash, Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney and the memory of guys like George HW Bush, John McCain and Ronald Reagan for.

And you thought you were going to come out ahead?? LOL. 

I have no sympathy. Fuck you.

With malice aforethought, you sowed the wind.

Well like I said, fuck you, now you can reap the whirlwind.

You feel "Punked?" Well, shit. I haven't been a Republican since 2008 and this makes me feel dirty.

You fuckers did this to yourselves, have fun.

And the worst part is, there's a lot of you assholes don't think you even did anything wrong.

Eleven

No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

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Screaming (Reason For The Season, Eleven.)

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

Apparently, there was a bit of a situation in San Antonio. Right-wing idiots showed up with guns to "protest" a drag show...and then LGBT rights protesters showed up with more people and more guns.

Good.

But, and I'm being serious here, somebody needs to get a lid on this and put a stop to this idiocy before there's a firefight and the situation gets out of control and people get killed.

Seriously if you think this shit will stop with the Right's current manias about sexuality, you have another thing coming. They get what they want that way, they'll just move on to something else until we're all living in some kind of a Star Wars prison.

Earlier today, Jim Wright of Stonekettle Station made the point that Twitter under Elon Musk has effectively become a simulation of the Dystopian America that modern "Conservatives" want, in which even information that is by Federal Law public and freely available is subject to the capricious whims of Power.

And he also said, quite accurately, that this was the kind of shit that the Constitution was designed to protect us from.

Thing that boggles my mind is how many of these Bible- and Constitution-humping "Conservatives" can't wait to live in a world where they are utterly subject to the whims of a very small number of small, mean, powerful men. Constitution, checks and balances, freedom and rights etc. be damned, apparently.

Hell, they don't even give a shit if the Power they subject themselves to is even American...in the case of people like Elon Musk or Vladimir Putin. Or if it's subject to god-only-knows-what foreign money and powers like Donald Trump is.

The Right is making no secret of wanting civil war and to turn America into some kind of nuclear-tipped Bosnia 2.0 complete with ethnic and political cleansing of whatever areas they can capture. If they can't realistically help Putin conquer Ukraine, I'd imagine they figure to at least get the US government, NATO and supporters of liberal democracy in general to have to fight a two-front war. 

It won't turn out how they think it will.

And in the meantime, we've got Muskrat trying to make the world...or at least Twitter...safe for Oligarchs. 

Even as he's actively trying to stir up trouble for the rest of us, if only to get "Likes" from his fanboys.

I just...don't even see the point.

Dude could have literally done anything with all that money, and at one point had a stated ambition to run for President...of Mars.

Why in the fuck is he doing shit like buying Twitter, firing all the workers, not paying the company's rent, and suspending flight trackers (which use literally Federally-mandated public information, that's what a flight plan is) and trying to suppress Ukrainian accounts while throwing in with the absolute slime of humanity in America and abroad.

We see you bro. We see what you're doing. It's pathetic, and you suck at it.

Like, what's even the damn point? Do you fuckers think Vladimir Putin is going to give you a cookie if he wins? 

No, the rich and famous who threw in with him might be welcomed for the cameras with a handshake before they're led away and murdered, but the average person will just get enslaved or shot without the pretense.

I can't imagine the people freaking out about Critical Race Theory, LGBT stuff and Pronouns...which chip away at their understanding of the world in small ways...will really be all that excited about Russification and forced conversion either to Russian Orthodoxy or just straight up Atheistic Neo-Communism...depending on how well Re-Sovietization is going by then.

And make no mistake about it, if Putin's version of neo-Communism offered these fucking people Power and Patriarchy, they'd fucking take it.

The thing I don't get is, for all intents and purposes whether it's constant confrontations in the streets, Musk-Twitter, subjugation to foreign powers or the very real threat of an armed right-wing insurgency at this point, this is the world something like a third of us want to live in. I don't know why anybody wants to live like that, from Elon all the way down to dudes I know what can barely keep a roof over their head and it's December...in Michigan.

But that desire for debasement, dystopia and subjection...it's there. I'll never understand it, but it is.

Because America is too hard, or something, especially if it tries to actually live up to the things it already promised all of its people.

And there's a certain kind of white person wants to burn it all down, so they can keep feeling special instead of being one of many.

There's some of us, mostly a certain kind of white dude, that are just goat-eager to kill somebody. I'll admit to being a sadistic bastard at times. I hope some of you fuckers get your wish...and wake up screaming in the middle of the night from the PTSD, throw in living from bottle to bottle for extra points.

And that's not even considering all the people left dead, maimed, incarcerated or facing execution for war crimes, etc.

Does that kind of shit really sound good to you?? Because you're mad?

I'm a veteran. I saw the aftermath of that kind of shit in Bosnia. I saw shit over there I still can't unsee. You want to inflict that kind of shit on Gen Z just because they didn't vote Republican?? Back in the day when I served, I had this strange idea that maybe if I did, my kids or somebody else's kids wouldn't have to.

But no, we got people want to speed-run all the bad shit from the last 120 years because they're mad at the world, or something.

Or worse, because they think some angry, dumb, unemployed beard-o who shitposts on 4-Chan all day will like them if they set it up that way?

It's Christmas, and we've got people who'd rather fight in the streets over dumb shit (that hardly mattered to anybody last year) than love their neighbor as Christ commanded.

If that's the world you want, fuck you. 

I'll be one of the people fighting to maintain the civilization and nation we already have.

I can't...and I won't...put it any other way.

Ten

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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

Fuck Off, Bird. (Reason For The Season, Ten.)

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?

And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. 

~Matthew 5:43-48

I kept seeing stuff like this yesterday. 

"People never become atheists for intellectual reasons, but for sinful reasons. People become atheists because they don’t want to be held morally accountable for the sins that they love."

I'm not sure I've seen that much of a damned Strawman since I used to watch the Wizard Of Oz every year or so as a kid.

For all the talk about Christian Nationalism lately, I've legit not seen that kind of argumentation basically anywhere since I used to be an admin on the ex-Pentecostal forum and have to ban idiot trolls like that every damned day.

Until yesterday.

Even pretty much all the remaining Christians I communicate with know better than this kind of stuff

I'm not going to bother to engage and take this garbage apart theologically. That implies that I think this dude posted it in good faith in the first place. Suffice it to say, that this is but one of many different interpretations, and one you don't see too much anymore...certainly not from decent people.

There's no purpose in engaging theologically, in even implying this bad-faith, my-way-or-the-highway shit is a legitimate argument for anything in a diverse, secular culture. The only question anybody should even bother asking is "Why should I follow this?"

And the only answer you'll ever get is more of the same, because they don't actually have an answer that falls outside of the same kind of religiosity-based claptrap. To call it a circular argument implies that they thought enough about it to call it an argument. It implies these people want any outcome other than to say "You're going to hell!"

I heard enough of this crap for the first 34 years of my life.

It needs to be understood, to these kinds of people, religion is nothing more than a weapon to be wielded against people they don't like...and should they successfully bully somebody into accepting it...turning some other person into one of these Stepford-clone Evangelicals is the ultimate form of erasure.

And then "Based on my Retweets" Twitter hit me up with more of the same.

Fuck off, Bird.

These people don't care about Jesus, they want ethnic and political cleansing, fascism and genocide of the people they don't like...which is basically everybody including Christians and conservatives who've accepted any degree of modernity. 

(Which, again, is most of them because we all have to live in the world and most people will get fired for being openly anti-LGBT, fascist or racist. Capitalism needs/wants everybody's money, and that's why these idiots want to destroy it.)

And if religion doesn't work as a justification...and it really doesn't, because even the most stringent form of Fundamentalist Christianity that pays the least attention to the Word imposes limits on their behavior...there's always conspiracy theories.

But then there's people like Muskrat looking to indulge that shit, if only so they can monetize that infinitely-moveable goalpost to try and make up for the losses from all the stupid shit they've done.

But make no mistake, that's not all that's going on here. 

I have no doubt that somewhere, Muskrat has somebody digging through lines of code somewhere in the electronic guts of The Bird (if he's not doing it himself, micromanaging twit that he apparently is.) tying to find the Liberal Source Code or Secret Sauce or Something Something Gazpacho...because these are the same idiots who thought the Blue Check meant people were some sort of Progressive Secret Society, rather than, you know, simply who they say they are.

He thinks the culture of Twitter...the company as well as the content/users...was imposed by somebody or something else. And Muskrat wants to find it so he can monetize or weaponize whatever it is. 

That's just how a lot of these people see the world. It's bullshit, but you can't make these people see that. They have to find that mental space for themselves. He doesn't understand it's the people.

He doesn't understand the world's not changing, it's done changed. While Republicans were playing Hide The Sausage with Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay or blowing up a good chunk of the Middle East or going down endless conspiracy rabbit holes themselves for years, while people like Elongate were out doing other things...the rest of us just kept on living.

And along the way, adapting, learning to work around or with the new gay coworker, the lesbian roommates, the friends coming out as transgender, the different cultures and people from around the world represented in the ferret group on Facebook.

Because, ya know, we just gotta live. Most of us, in a world that doesn't have time for our personal bullshit. And remember, I was a (small-c) conservative.

Doesn't matter.

I don't have the patience or privilege or time or the lack of compassion necessary to try and put my life or anyone else's on hold because of some willfully ignorant uninvolved third party's opinion.

More to the point as somebody steeped in Christianity and the philosophical guts of "Western Culture" I absolutely know that doing so would not be Just.

It certainly does not reflect the conduct of Jesus as described in the Bible.

And people whose thing is ideology or technocracy don't understand that. To come to understand it would mean they...and the ideas they regard as or even above holy writ...would have to change.

And oh my God are these fucking people pissed about that.

They keep trying to force a large spherical world into a very small cubic box and if that's unjust, well, they simply don't care.

It's supposed to be the time of Peace On Earth and Goodwill Towards Men, but of course hate is more important to them than any of that.

Even Christmas is nothing more to these nuts than a stick to beat somebody else with.

I just...couldn't do it. And more to the point, I don't want to. There was a time we were supposed to be better than that.

And now, at this time of year Twitter wants to promote hate and religiosity??

Fuck off, Bird.

Nine

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.  We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream.  The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it, and then hand it to them with the well fought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same.  And if you and I don't do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free. ~Ronald Reagan

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