Nazi Babylon The Great (Who Mourns For The Scarlet Harlot? One.)

And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.

And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.

And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.

For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double.

How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.

Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.

And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,

Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come. ~Revelation 18:1-10

...

There's a reason for this, there's a reason education sucks, and it's the same reason it will never ever ever be fixed. It's never going to get any better. Don't look for it. Be happy with what you've got... because the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the real owners now... the real owners. The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls. They got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying. Lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. That's right. ~George Carlin

I saw this shit over the weekend, in fact, on my lunch break at work Saturday night.

In addition to all the other fascist bullshit that's been circulating lately, Trump went full Nazi at one of his stupid rallies last weekend.

Since on Saturday the Pope decided (after much tolerance of the guy's bullshit) to shitcan the bishop of some dumb-ass small-city Texas diocese for going way over the line talking shit about him (and then refusing to resign, when asked) Mike Flynn (supposedly a Protestant, apparently a Seven Mountains Pentecostal Dominionist) decided to stick his nose directly into the administrative and personal-political business of the Catholic Church.

(Historically, if there's a way to end up with more knives in your back than Julius Caesar, that's it. Not saying it's right...but the Church has been doing this political intrigue shit for a long time.)

Mind you, Pope Francis is an absolute monarch. If all these "Conservatives" were the people their current beliefs imply them to be, his word should be law, right?? 

Even...perhaps especially...among the Catholic "Traditionalists" who openly claim to want to return to times when we had more absolute monarchs and shit. Hell, Bishop Asshole is goddamn lucky, and rather more than technically so. There was a time when, if you threw shit uphill in the Catholic Church at all...you got executed. In fact, most likely you got murdered by horrible means under the Color of Authority by agents of the State at the direction of the Church. In other words, technically the exact same shit that happened to Jesus. Rome is gonna Rome whether it's an Empire or a religion or a social system. Jesus just sort of hangs there.

Because absolute monarchy, Papal infallibility, Vicar of Christ, something something Gazpacho. I was Catholic for a minute and I can't keep it all straight anymore. 

It's 2,000 years of history for fuck's sake. That's the world these fucking people want to live in despite the fact that 2,000 years of history has mostly been moving away from shit like that.

But now the Pope merely fires a Bishop and (without changing any core church teachings on the matter, though such would be his right) says LGBT people are welcome and transgender folk can be Baptized (And don't forget, in some other places like the massively Catholic Philippines, which has 20 million more Catholics than America does...the local culture is fine with LGB-and transgender folk) and now it's "No, not like that."

There's always an asterisk** with these people. There's always a "But" where one half of the sentence around it is bullshit.

Somebody has to be excluded, something must lose. Well, guess what?? The Mother Church really doesn't like to lose, Mike, and it was going strong when the Azusa Street Revival was just a dumb-ass idea in somebody's pointy head.

But back to all this autocracy bullshit...

They only want all that...if it does what they want.

And that's not how any of this works.

They only want an autocracy of the Autocrat will...obey them?? That doesn't compute!

A bunch of these fucking people think Trump's gonna be that guy...despite his utter failure to be such the first time around...and now the Republicans are working up this whole big idea of Republican Totalitarianism, White North Korea, whatever the fuck you want to call it...

Around a guy whose brain is basically Jell-O at this point??

I can see why Republicans, especially in states like Tennessee...want to gut the shit out of education because you'd have to be stupid and grow up around nothing else but this far-right "Christian" "Nationalist" Republican shit to even believe this Empire of grifting and hate and narcissism and paranoia and unending vanity where it's every person for themselves isn't going to degenerate into a brawl in the ballroom of the Doherty Hotel in Clare, Michigan...but on a national scale...like the Michigan Republican Party has. 

And these people want to do all this while pointing guns everywhere endlessly, at each other and everybody else?? And ALL of these people are out for themselves...trying to fuck each other and the rest of us over and only seem to care how much money they make.

Yeah, that'll end well. 

Among other things, without civilization, money is only strips of colored paper.

It's one thing to say the center cannot hold, it's another thing to say the center has mashed potatoes for brains. I was in the military...the character of an organization, of a unit, of whatever...flows from the top down. 

I observed this in the United States Air Force...and handily a dozen workplaces or so since.

How does that work when Trump can't even remember who he's running against???

It's like everybody getting fucked up on Meth and trying to speed-run the plot of Warhammer 40K without Humanity ever leaving the Earth. It's like Call of Cthulhu just with even less hope.

Sauve Qui Peut, Mon Ami. Their "honor" ties them to Babylon, wicked though it has become. Wicked, as it always was.

And in the coded vernacular of Revelation, Babylon...meant Rome. In those days, it was a synonym for imperialism and oppression, for sacrifices made to debauched and insane Emperors, and for the crucifixion of the Saints...which, in my Baptist interpretation "saints" meant not only the Canonized men and women of the Early Church...but the Believers of the Body of Christ as a whole. Rome was Antichrist...until it wasn't. Better people than me have disputed the sincerity of that particular change and done it better than I have.

Rome was undone as much by widespread poverty and religiosity and increasing militarism even as the military and political (which increasingly meant Priestly, after Constantine "Christianized" Rome) classes were more and more siloed off from everybody else and ultimately bought and paid for. No one cared enough to bother. The intrigues of the Cloister and the Confessional with violence dealt out by third parties replaced the traditionally knife-edged politics of the Senate and the discipline of the Army was replaced by Germanic mercenaries who fought wars for profit.

If Trump thinks he's gonna turn an army of Citizen-soldiers against the citizens, and just undo the American Experiment by decree, let alone if Republicans...or guys like Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon thought that up for him...and that hundreds of Millions of American Citizens are going to stand for it, or just sit there and take it...they have another thing coming.

And that's if he wins, which I see as quite unlikely, given how things have gone for Republicans since 2017. If Trump even makes it that long. Which is why they have to undo the entire concept of civic pride, of representative Democracy, of societal expectations in the public mind first...and undo it in like, a year?? 

After Republicans got shellacked in the kind of Off-off-year elections where, traditionally, most people don't show up?? Who the fuck loses ten for ten in School Board elections and an abortion referendum in Ohio of all places and still thinks their Party has some kind of inevitability in capturing the Presidency?? 

Half the goddamn problems America has...not least the burgeoning rural White Idiocracy and the Hillbilly Elegy type bullshit and the media disingenuously interviewing Storm-Trumpers in small-town diners...comes from the fact that, normally, it's only fanatics and old people who vote "No" on everything what show up for all those tiny ass millage and school board votes!

And yet...the "Inevitable" march of Fascism, the unending White Idiocracy, took a punch in the face last week, hard, went down...and is still doggedly insisting it'll do what it wants while spurting blood out what's left of its nose.

What are you going to do?? Bleed on me??

And Speaker Mike Johnson, the big Schlong himself, that Great White Christian Nationalist Hope who was gonna shrink Government so small Donald Trump could drown it in the communion wine? He voted with Democrats for a Continuing Resolution to keep the government funded so Congress could go home for Thanksgiving.

(There are many paths to treason, my guess is the nuts are going to try and McCarthy HIS ass next.)

And I'm not sure who I'm more annoyed with, at this point, These Fucking People, or Democrats who keep acting like it's some kind of natural, inevitable thing that we're about to lose America to these fucking self-contradictory dipshits who've soup-sandwiched their own damn selves!!

And if these fucking people can't cheat, lie and steal their way to winning next November, they're going to try to fight a civil war. With the same people who couldn't be bothered to take 2 seconds to put a mask on during COVID-19?? Really??

If you're too conspiratorially-minded, ideologically-addled or plain-ass lazy to take 2 seconds to put a mask on (which could easily be done while doing something else) how are you going to do things like clean your weapon, put dry socks on, shine your boots...master the endless rotes of discipline and muscle memory and training that are the core of what being an Airman, a Marine, a Sailor or a Soldier is...let alone follow the core values that make a military force more than just another terrorist organization?? 

Integrity Above All, Service Before Self, Excellence In All That We Do.

If any of that looks like Donald Trump to you, you ain't been paying attention!

We're a year out from the next goddamn election, and we just won most of the last one.

Yeah, the media is already trying to spin how that's "Bad" for Joe Biden. The media is full of shit and has been, for the most part, a bunch of nihilistic drama queens and finger-pointers and wannabe-kingmakers in search of nothing more than their own goddamn profit margin for my whole damn life. Ignore that shit and get to work.

Remember what actually happened to Fascist, to Nazis, and to Ancient Rome, and what the Lord's Word says will happen to Babylon The Great...to this false world-system that's supposed to be part of the End Times. And hey, Vlad, how's that three-day "Special Operation" in Ukraine going??

Sure, nothing is inevitable...but that cuts both ways. That does, indeed, have a "Both Sides" angle.

But that's the only one.

Either you believe in freedom, or you don't.

Either you believe in the future, or you don't.

Freedom isn't free, If you want a better country you have to be a better citizen.

So get after it. One way or another, eventually we're going to have to fight for it, Because most of us cannot afford to lose.

The good guys ain't the ones that'll be mourning the Scarlet Harlot.

Remember that.

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride." ~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

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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

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Pearls Before Swine (Bad Faith, Four.)

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.

...

Osman Ali Atto: I see not catching Aidid is becoming routine.

General William Garrison: We're not leaving Somalia until we find him. And we will find him.

Atto: (scoffing) You've been here, what, six weeks? Six weeks, you tried to catch the General. You put up reward posters. $25,000. What's this, gunfight at K.O. Corral?

Garrison: It's O.K. Corral.

Atto: Don't make the mistake of thinking because I grew up without running water I am simple, General. I do know something about history. See all this? It's simply shaping tomorrow. A tomorrow without a lot of Arkansas white-boys' ideas in it.

Garrison: Well, I wouldn't know about that. I'm from Texas.

Atto: Mr. Garrison, I think you should not have come here. This is civil war. This is our war, not yours.

Garrison: Three hundred thousand dead and counting. That's not a war, Mr. Atto. That's genocide. ~From The Film Black Hawk Down.

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"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride." ~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

So, apparently Uber-"Conservative" Unlimited-government Nanny-Stater Chris Rufo (or, as Popehat called him "Kirkland Goebbels) was big mad this morning that the University of Florida and the University of South Florida won't act like Communist countries, EU Social-democracies or Gulf Arab Oil Sheikdoms and "disband" Pro-Palestinian protest groups on their campuses. (As if there'd be mechanisms for a State-government entity to do so, provided the students hadn't broken any laws.)

Now, mind you, I don't agree with those students either, but I did swear an oath to the Constitution once, so there's that. Like it or not (and sometimes freedom means tolerating shit you don't agree with) this is America and apparently the (Republican, appointed by Republicans) leadership of those two universities still manages to understand that, one way or another. Now, mind you, Rufo didn't give a shit about Anti-Semitism five weeks ago. In fact, he's one of those people to whom "Freedom" means "Using anti-gay slurs and saying the N-word" and shit like that. Remember, with these fucking people, anything is only as good as how big of a stick it makes for beating the people they don't like.

And reactionaries, particularly the kinds of reactionaries who are still obsessing about shit 99% of the rest of us support or don't care to argue about anymore...like LGBT rights...those people don't build starships or give a shit about the goddamned future. 

If they gave a shit about the future they wouldn't be reactionaries.

And I'm sick of this shit.

Give it up. The United States of America is a secular country and outside of religion, there's no valid reason that LGBT people shouldn't have the same rights as any other American person.

And variations of that pretty much go for everybody else here too, whether the issue is religion or shitty Republican politics.

Frankly, if you ask me just the fact that Evangelical Christians all looked at each other in June of 2015 and thought that Donald Trump was "The Guy who could get it for 'em" should discredit most of American Christianity in the eyes of pretty much everybody for all time.

Republicans hate America.

Like, seriously, where do these motherfuckers...who expressly want to turn the United States of America into some mutant combination of 1970's Uganda under Idi Amin and North Korea under Kim Jong Il...but Republican, somehow...get off saying "Make America Great Again?" 

Let alone doing it while bowing down to Russia, a fourth-rate autocratic shithole that...outside of Moscow, St. Petersburg and Vladivostok, hasn't progressed much beyond the late 18th century except for possessing a raging fuck-ton of weapons that America would've considered modern 40 or 50 years ago. Russia cannot even defeat Ukraine...and these motherfuckers want America to be like Russia or bow down to the Hammer and Sickle?? 

I used to be a Republican. 

I remember when talk like that would get you beat up...by Republicans...and certainly would be career-ending (and likely not just so in politics) for anybody outside of places like the campus of UC Berkeley or whatever buildings the Communist Party USA still owned back then.  

Motherfucker, I've done drugs and I can't make that shit make any sense!

These fucking people have become so "Conservative" and/or reactionary and/or high off sniffing the methane from Donald Trump's cheeseburger farts that they want to be the Democratic People's Republic of Korea??

Do I have this right??

Meanwhile, the other two thirds of America keeps moving forward.

For example, the B-21A Raider, the Next NEXT Generation Stealth Bomber, took its first flight today.

We live in a constantly-changing world, nothing's going to stop it from being that way. You can like it or not. That's just how things are.

And all Republicans keep trying to do is stand in the way, usually while also lying about it.

Sooner or later, if these fucking people aren't driven from office en masse either by the voters or by mobs wielding tar and feathers, this is going to cause a crackup. One part of this train simply does not want to be part of it.

No, they really don't have any kind of alternative vision, they have fantasy, ideological hokum and religion that'd make them the Cuba of the 21st Century, living off Russian money and a few niche or subsidized exports...if they get their way and break off a piece of America for themselves...with the vast majority of whoever can't get away stuck living in shocking poverty while the rest of the world keeps moving forward around and without them.

The things that scare me are #1 There's a lot of Republican voters who'd be fine with that.

And #2 Whatever excuse for a government they have...likely figureheads led about by the nose, or far more likely the dick...by Russian "Advisors" would tell them they were all titans of Conservative Ideology and somehow had it better than other people somewhere else...and these fucking MAGA morons would believe that shit!

If you want a better country, you have to be a better citizen...and this ain't it, yo.

If you want to cast pearls before swine for Donald Trump in the name of Republican Bad Faith, go ahead. I can't really stop you.

But you don't get to make that choice for the rest of us, fuck you.

Слава Україна!

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

Three

Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you. ~Matthew 7:6

Bottomless Pit (Bad Faith, Three.)

Hess: So what shall we toast to, boys? I can blather on about “To health” or “To success,” but I’d like to do somethin’ a little less rote. Where you from, Brown Eyes?

Migs Mayfield: How ’bout a toast to Operation Cinder?

Hess: Now there’s a man who knows his history.

Mayfield: No, I don’t just know it. I lived it. I was in Burnin Konn.

Hess: Burnin Konn?

Mayfield: Mmm.

Hess: That was a hard day. I had to make many unpleasant decisions.

Mayfield: Yes, you did. Entire city gone in moments, along with everybody in it. We lost our whole division that day. Man, that was like 5-10,000 people.

Hess: Yep. All heroes of the Empire.

Mayfield: Yeah. And all dead.

Hess: Well, it’s a small sacrifice for the greater good, son.

Mayfield: Depends on who you ask, don’t you think?

Hess: [irritated] What you gettin’ at, trooper?

Mayfield: All those people, the ones who died, was it good for them? Hmm? Their families? The guys I served with? Civilians, those poor mud scuffers, died defending their homes, fighting for freedom. Was it good for them?

Hess: But we’ve outlasted them, son. They’re eating themselves alive. The New Republic is in complete disarray, and we grow stronger. You see, with the rhydonium you’ve delivered, we can create havoc that’s gonna make Burnin Konn pale by comparison. And then they’re gonna turn to us once again. You see, boys, everybody thinks they want freedom, but what they really want is order. And when they realize that, they’re gonna welcome us back with open arms. Ah. To the Empire.

[Mayfield chuckles, then fires a blaster at Hess' chest, killing him instantly. He and Mando then shoot their way out of the mess hall] ~From The Mandalorian, Season 2, Ep. 7 "The Believer"

...

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride." ~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

I saw this earlier today. In the wake of election losses on Tuesday, Republicans are openly rejecting democracy, the will of the People and any outcome they don't like. That's a lot when you figure they got their asses kicked outside of Mississippi, and just barely hung on there.

I'm going to remind you fuckers that I was raised in a conservative family, and I was pretty well aware nobody got to win all the time by the time I was like five years old.

But instead of acting like grown-ass adults, or even moderately well-behaved children, Republicans have been busy these last couple days deciding that other ideas simply shouldn't get to exist.

Now, if I, being a Republican at the time, had said some kind of shit like that in 1993, somebody would probably have punched me right in the mouth, and I'd have deserved it.

What makes these motherfuckers think they have some kind of a right to decide for everybody else??

I'm going to remind you, also, that if you need to have a gun pointed at your head to behave like a decent goddamn person, you're not a decent goddamn person. If you think everybody else is the same way and resolve to act accordingly regardless of the data, you're a bad person with a shitty imagination and you probably shouldn't be in charge of anything.

And more to the point, what's the purpose of doubling down with ever-more extremism on a confirmed losing issue like abortion??

I'll admit, I'd be less hostile (but still hostile) if this had only been about abortion, if it'd stopped there.

Of course, it didn't.

In fact, these fucking people almost immediately went off the deep end with a desire for panopticon surveillance of women, within hours, these idiots were arguing for the outright sexual slavery of women (without much of a lower age limit, Again, think about how creepy that is, for a second.)

A kid getting raped in Ohio was basically a national incident, she had to go to Indiana to get an abortion, talk about creepy.

Since then, people like Bob Good and Greg Abbott have come up with endless, blatantly Unconstitutional ideas to effectively eliminate even the idea of personal freedom. (And no, not just for women) So, if you think that wouldn't take all of another 30 seconds, my dude, for these people's ideas about panopticon techno-slavery of everything that isn't a rich white Republican dude to start being applied directly to you once they get those shackles on the ladies...you're wrong.

Razor wire on the border between New Mexico and Texas was a goddamned warning, and it wasn't about undocumented migrant workers.

Republicans really do make the Taliban look like they believe in freedom, and I honestly think, given the chance, they'd go further and be more savage than mere fascists would. At this point, ideologically they're watching fascism recede in the rearview mirror. Before this is over, we're going to have to come up with new words for these fucking people's bottomless lust for power and control, combined with their equally endless perversions.

What else would you call it when a father and son spy on each other's porn consumption, and presumably neither is actually trying to kick the habit??

It's like these motherfuckers really do want to live in the Empire from Star Wars, and they're all competing to be the guy who gets to go around shouting "On Program!" at the other prisoners.

All without even a single second's reflection on the fact that nobody's free in that kind of a scenario.

Not even...in fact, especially not...themselves.

And given that celebrities like Gal Godot and Taylor Swift are taking on important roles in defending democracy, getting people to vote and making sure that the public is aware of atrocity...and doing so while still managing to conduct themselves as decent people...you'd think both far-right and far-left might stop and think "Hey, are we the bad guys here??"

But no, they'd rather attack people and try to ban compassion, decency, democracy and public awareness while erasing freedom.

Makes you wonder just what the fuck kind of world these fucking people want to live in, doesn't it??

To me, it seems an awful lot like hell.

But that's usually what a fanatic's concept of "Life" turns out to be for other people when fanatics get any kind of power to implement that shit. Fuck these motherfuckers.

And if you can't be bothered to stand up against this shit? If you think it's beneath you or too much work to be a better citizen like so many people in so many places were on Tuesday?? Fuck you!

Why should Republicans, and any other fanatics like Hamas who'll bow down to Vladimir Putin get to be the ones who run the world?? As the history of people like Bibi Netanyahu vs. Vladimir Putin will come to show, in the end, all these motherfuckers are as willing to betray each other as they are any of the rest of us.

Where does it stop??

Nowhere, if we don't step up and stop it.

And sooner or later, things start getting worse on levels that no amount of submission to your local authoritarian can help.

Remember, on top of endless ideological fanaticism, terrorism and war, we've also got things like climate change and viruses to worry about.

And not only will neither Donald Trump, nor Vladimir Putin nor Ron DeSantis or any of these other motherfuckers do anything about any of that, but none of them want to. In fact, the actual stated Republican plan in 2017 was "I'll be dead by then, so it's not my problem."

The "Conservative" plan on a global scale in 2020 was "Let's see who we can use this thing to kill" and they weren't even afraid to say that shit in public.

And then these motherfuckers get mad when they don't win all the elections.

Sooner or later, we're going to have to as a species, start screening narcissists out of politics.

Because if we don't do that...sooner or later all these bullshit ideologies are going to converge and, whether they understand it that way or not, these fucking people's leaders are gonna start auditioning for and trying to create political positions like Antichrist, Beast of Revelations, and False Prophet.

And here's the thing; Any government that says to a woman "You can't have an Abortion, ma'am, you don't have control over your own body" can, by definition, say to anyone:

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.
Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. ~Revelation 13:16:18

It's all Bad Faith and lust for power, and it never stops.

These fucking people are a moral bottomless pit.

And they know it. They just hope you don't.

Freedom isn't free, and sooner or later we're all gonna have to fight for it.

When Republicans keep doubling down on things that are total losing issues when anybody gets a choice, that's exactly what they're telling you.

They have endless contempt for anyone getting a choice at all.

When they call ignoring the will of the voters "An Act Of Courage" that shows they don't understand what courage is.

If that's the case, defeating these fucking people with real acts of courage should not be that hard.

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Two

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

Sheep And The Goats (Covenant Eyes, MAGA Mike and WTF?? One.)

Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:

But I say unto you, That whosoever looks on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement:

But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causes her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced commits adultery.

Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths:

But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne:

Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King.

Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black.

But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. ~Matthew 5:26-37

So like I've been saying I get a creepy weird vibe from Mike Johnson, the new Speaker of the House. There's a reason for that. I have a church background, and I have a fair number of stories about "Conservative" and religious sexual freaks as a result of that.

You're about to hear one such story, welcome to hell.

***

As I've said before...and mentioned numerous times on here as I worked there for a majority of the time that I've had this blog, I worked in a casino for 18 years. Please keep in mind at all times that during the events of this particular anecdote I was in Stewarding at the time, a dishwasher. 

And don't forget to wash your hands.

Late in the fall of 2004 we got this new guy.

Bald, double-ugly, missing a bunch of teeth, kind of tall, dude literally looked and sounded like an Orc from World of Warcraft (which was the hot brand-new video game at the time) except he wasn't green. 

He had a cross tattooed on one bicep, he claimed to be religious, but we never saw that...and he was virulently homophobic and that was the one thing he'd talk Bible about. (This, we would observe.)

Not a bad worker, but genuinely not very bright, either. Not a bad guy...if you don't leave him alone with any farm animals, as it turned out.

Fast forward about six months, and on lunch break we're all sitting in the breakroom (and in those days most of us all sat at one long table in what was then the smoking side.) 

So, we're all sitting there. I'd just finished a cigarette and as I'm getting up to go refill my soda, somebody (I think it was my late best friend, Carl, but to this day I'm not sure...It got lost in the fog of what happened next) made a drive by comment about wanting to screw Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas and...as I'm walking over to the pop machine the last thing I hear is Orc Boy...loudly...saying "I would pick the corn out of her shit..."

(Mind you, we'd just had a sexual harassment training, like the week before)

I come back a few minutes later (having also decided to get something off the buffet, while I was up) to this dude loudly, by which I mean at full volume for what was a rather loud voice to start with, going on and on and on about fucking a goat, and then about fucking a sheep.

Right smack in the middle of the Breakroom. At Work, It's the middle of lunchtime (roughly 04:15 in the morning) meaning the actual professional people who wear suits and work nothing but day shift and often start early by choice are starting to show up.

There's like over a dozen other people at this table and we're all eye-rolling so hard we're making eye contact with each other sideways out of at least one eye with an emphatically shared, yet wordless message of "Oh My God, WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!"

And since the boss had told us all to take an extra five minutes...this crazy rambling fucked up perverted bullshit expanded to take up exactly that long, too.

As we're walking back into the kitchen to get back to work, I look at my friend Josh and tell him "Don't trust [Orc Boy] to watch Spazz" (Spazz was Josh's then young and hyper cat.)

We were collectively gobsmacked about this shit for days afterward, I don't know how the hell nobody complained.

Motherfucker came into work the next day we both worked, carrying a copy of The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren sticking out the side pocket of his backpack.

**** 

So yeah, pardon me if I don't trust the sexual morality of alleged Evangelical or Fundamentalist Christians, and I've got a fair number of stories like this one...which I'll be making a series out of now. If you need an "Accountability partner, an app or a computer program...much less creepy panopticon Jesus-ed up surveillance to control or regulate your pornography use, sexual urges and various and assorted drives, what the fuck is even wrong with you??

Don't you have a brain, a soul, and/or various religious doctrines you ascribe damned near magical power to...for all that stuff???

And the Republican Party elected this guy as their political leader, he's second in line behind Kamala Harris for the Presidency of the United States, should anything happen to Joe Biden.

I should note that Biden is rather famously Catholic and Harris is an American Baptist with a background in Black churches and neither of them needs a surveillance app to control their sexuality.

I'm here to tell you that the alleged sexual morals of Evangelical Christians ain't all that.

Слава Україна!

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride." ~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

Jihad (Bad Faith, Two.)

 [The Mandalorian brings together the entire Mandalorian covert after Carson Teva makes a surprise visit and asks him to help Greef Karga's situation on Nevarro when the New Republic won't lift a finger]

Mando: Now, many of you don't know Greef Karga. And those that do fought against him when you rescued me from his ambush many cycles ago on the streets of Nevarro. Since then, he's had a change of heart and has risked his life to save mine as well as the Foundling in my charge. [Grogu coos] I stand before you to petition an intervention. To help rescue Nevarro before it's too late. I am in no position to ask any more of you. However... However, the enemy that decimated this very covert were Imperials, not Greef Karga's bounty hunters. Greef Karga is now a High Magistrate and has offered me a tract of land on his independent world. Perhaps it is time for us to live in the light once again on a planet where we are welcome. So our culture may flourish and our children can feel what it is to play in the sunlight.

Armorer: Does anyone else wish to speak?

Mando: It's up to them now.

Paz Vizsla: I do. I was there on Nevarro that night. I fought against Greef Karga and his hunters. I saw my brothers and sisters fall at the hands of the Imperial butchers that hunted us in the sewers. I saw many die to save the life of [gestures to Grogu] this one, tiny Foundling. And now we are asked to sacrifice yet again. The question we should be asking ourselves is, "Why? Why should we lay our lives down yet again?" Because we are Mandalorians! I have had my disagreements with this man, but he risked his life to save my son. And Bo-Katan Kryze did not give up on my child's life even when the rest of us did. These two are asking us to take up arms in the name of a brighter future, and I for one will take up arms to fight by their side. [Mandalorians agree] This is the Way!

Mandalorians: This is the Way.

Armorer: This is the Way.

I have a confession to make.

I'm tired of all these "Christian Nationalists" and these MAGA "Christians" who've never once had to deal with so much as a minor inconvenience because of their alleged faith or their political beliefs claiming how "persecuted" and put-upon they are...mostly because society acknowledges that other people exist, or something. 

Fuck these motherfuckers, I'm tired of this bullshit.

The rest of the world has better things to do than sit around and feed your narcissism, and I'm not sorry for pointing it out, fuck you.

Like, do you fuckers even understand what "Taking up arms" even means??

I'm a veteran. Being in a profession of arms isn't all macho shit and shooting people. It's discipline and endless, rote training, sweating in the sun, then after-action reviews of the training so you know what to do better next time. It's having to give a shit and do shit right the first time, or you might not get to come back, It's all that, plus all the same type of shit you'd have to deal with in most other jobs.

But ya know, I'm going to guess these fucking people don't think "taking up arms" involves classroom training on the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and Federal and International Law concerning the conduct of combatants in the battlespace or on things like counterinsurgency, terrorism and war crimes.

Or that I learned this kind of stuff 30 years ago, as a young conservative Republican Air Force recruit and then as an Airman in tech school, long before words like "Woke" in its current usage, were even thought of in those terms.

And it needs to be said, that the actual art of War has changed dramatically over the intervening 30 years or so.

Shit, it's changed in the last five years, the last five months, even.

Like, nowadays, the enemy can waste your ass without putting themselves at risk even a little...it's not just a matter of missiles and various other stand-off munitions anymore. Oh, hell no. 

It's that the launch platform itself is very likely a drone, that could be controlled by an operator sitting in an air-conditioned control station at Battle Creek Air National Guard Base, Naval Air Station Sigonella, RAF Waddington or at some dusty FOB in the middle of the Iraqi desert...and they aren't even anywhere near you, but you're still hiding from their Hellfires. Imagine that, if you can...or even want to.

We've all had front-row seats to how this has changed war...if you've even close to been following the war in Ukraine, that is. Ukrainian Bayraktar TB2 drones were the star of the conflict, initially, earning a place in the annals of war every bit as legendary as that of the F-4 Phantom II during Vietnam. 

But then, the Russians caught up, mostly by using Iranian Shahed precision-guided munitions drones, and now a hell of a lot of the war basically consists of these two armies lobbing drones and long-range fires at each other with armor and infantry trying to duke it out while keeping a low profile from those ever-present eyes-in-the-sky.

With not much more than Javelin missiles at first, the Ukrainians basically ate Ivan's lunch right in front of him and there wasn't shit that old Vlad's Red Army 2.0 could even do about it. Then they got HIMARS, now...the Ukrainians have at least small amounts of damned near all the same shit we have already...or they're about to be fielding it and if they stole Putin's lunch money with a goddamn Javelin missile launcher and a shipment of M4 Carbines, I really wanna see what the Ukrainians can do with a few F-16 Fighting Falcons. But the truth is, more than half the shit we're sending over there is completely outdated...and I'm talking all type of shit that was state-of-the-goddamned-art back when I served. 

Like you wouldn't even think of fighting a major war without JSTARS aircraft letting you know where everything was on the ground for endless klicks around, now those aircraft are being retired because they're completely outdated, replaced by drones, ground radar, satellites and various vehicle-onboard systems that do the same thing, but cheaper and smaller. You don't need a big aircraft with its own crew and this and that, when the gunner in your track can just look at a tablet Bluetooth-ed into the vehicle's onboard system and get the same information without having to call some Air Force aircraft on the radio and wait for the controllers to hunt up your exact coordinates and tactical situation.

War, like everything else these days, is change.

You don't have to like it, it's simply a fact.

And I'm disinclined to think the same fucking people whose entire bit is fear and hatred of change and whose whole idea of how a "society" should function is that it should be centered on them rather than using all of its people, tools and talents as they are available and needed no matter who may possess them. 

There's nothing "special" about being a White, Conservative Christian male as far as something basic like firing a weapon is concerned. A Black dude who's a Muslim can do it just as well as a Pacific Islander who's a Fundamentalist Christian but also happens to be a gay guy can, maybe they can even do it a little better depending on how they respond to proper training, what if it's the white redneck who's gotta bust ass to keep up, and what if it's a tough, scrappy Jewish woman who's leading the training?? 

Blood and Soil and religion and skin color are shitty things to base your life on, and out there in the dark and dangerous corners of the world that shit can get you killed, by people who are doing the same shit...but at least they're doing it in their own countries, very often the same ways they've been doing it since before America was even America.

So why the fuck do we even think we're special? (Or, in the thought processes of both far-right and far-left it seems, meriting particular scorn?)

The thing about exceptionalism, in either a positive or negative sense, is you have to actually be exceptional, otherwise it's just narcissim.

Likewise, White "Conservative" Christians don't have any special insight into Government, any religion or any sense of the human condition outside of their own, or anything the fuck else...and there's a reason the Founders of this country decided to separate all that shit out per the Constitution, while I'm at it.

Because they knew Creationists, fanatics, political arsonists and religious nuts don't look to the future, much less plan on building a future we can all live in, or defending that vision from all enemies, foreign and domestic...and they knew from their own politics that Power and Wealth do not make people leaders by themselves, much less make anybody righteous or even trustworthy.

And that's why We, The People, are specifically enumerated in the Constitution as the source of Power, those who govern America do so only with our consent. That's why we get a place, and religion doesn't. 

America was founded on Democracy, not Christianity.

And don't you dare forget that.

Tell me, for real...what's even the difference between this Christian Nationalist shit, and the Jihads of Radical Islam??

I'll wait.

Слава Україна!

Then Jesus spoke to the multitude, and to his disciples,

Saying The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat:

All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.

For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.

But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments,

And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues,

And greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi.

But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren. And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.

Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ.

But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.

And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.

But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. ~Matthew 23:1-15

One

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride." ~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

"It's Biblical!" (Bad Faith, One.)

Never have I witnessed such sincere hospitality and the overwhelming spirit of true brotherhood as is practiced by people of all colors and races here in this ancient Holy Land, the House of Abraham, Muhammad, and all the other Prophets of the Holy Scriptures. For the past week, I have been utterly speechless and spellbound by the graciousness I see displayed all around me by people of all colors...

You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to rearrange much of my thought-patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions. This was not too difficult for me. Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.

During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug) -- while praying to the same God -- with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the actions and in the deeds of the "white" Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan, and Ghana. We were truly all the same (brothers) -- because their belief in one God had removed the "white" from their minds, the 'white' from their behavior, and the 'white' from their attitude. I could see from this, that perhaps if white Americans could accept the Oneness of God, then perhaps, too, they could accept in reality the Oneness of Man -- and cease to measure, and hinder, and harm others in terms of their "differences" in color.

With racism plaguing America like an incurable cancer, the so-called "Christian" white American heart should be more receptive to a proven solution to such a destructive problem. Perhaps it could be in time to save America from imminent disaster -- the same destruction brought upon Germany by racism that eventually destroyed the Germans themselves.

They asked me what about the Hajj had impressed me the most. . . . I said, "The brotherhood! The people of all races, color, from all over the world coming together as one! It has proved to me the power of the One God. . . . All ate as one, and slept as one. Everything about the pilgrimage atmosphere accented the Oneness of Man under One God. 

~Malcolm X, Letter following the Hajj.

...

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride." ~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

I saw this yesterday.

Obvious Nazi jackoff inquiring (in obvious bad faith) whether or not I would "Trade the entire nation of Ukraine for the resurrection of George Floyd?" What the fuck kind of question even is that??

First off, what part of "Thou Shalt Not Kill" don't people understand??

Second, either you believe in freedom...for all people...or you don't.

Or rather more specifically, if you don't...then what you believe in is not freedom, but privilege.

(In other words, that thing that "Conservatives" are obsessed with having, to the point of being willing to burn the world to get it.)

Bitch, there is no normal view of life that said God made your husband Speaker Of The House. These motherfuckers don't worship anything more than their own narcissism, and don't you forget it.

Perhaps more to the point, does anybody with a brain in their head trust any fucking person who thinks they were put in a given position by God to do anything other than rabidly fuck shit up in the name of their own ego, petty political horseshit, and rabid religious narcissism?? 

I sure don't! I know what happens when these fucking people think God told them...well, damned near anything.

And I'm here to tell you, what makes this shit even possible is a culture on the Right that's devolved to the point of simply assuming somebody is righteous because the motherfucker looks and acts like some dark Mirror Universe Mr. Rogers who reeks of perversion. It doesn't even matter what he says, let alone what he does, he's a middle-aged White guy in a suit who looks like he might do what they think they want...so Republicans be like "Spank me, Daddy!"

Mike Johnson could fuck a goat live on stage at CPAC and these fucking idiots would bellow "Praise The Lord."

More to the point what you get nearly every time somebody somewhere allows this crap to run wild anywhere is an explosion of bigotry, chaos, hate, war, etc. 

This shit never makes the world better or more "Christian" except maybe for the very few, those who want to mouth pious pleasantries so they can feel all "Christian" while raping the Earth and its people for no better reason than personal profit and being at the top of a system which allows them to do so.

I've heard more than once that the reason all these "Conservatives" love Russia is that an ostensible Democracy was destroyed and then replaced by a nominally "Christian" dictatorship. I find it funny, then, that Putin doesn't even bother with the symbols of Christianity in terms of his Imperial project...privileging the symbolism of Communism, instead.

And the Right, you know, the ostensible anti-Communists, just blatantly ignores that.

Fun fact; Soviet Communism was generally Anti-Semitic too. And available evidence seems to suggest that Russia is both openly doing that shit at home and spreading that shit here (as well as in Europe and the Middle East) because if you give somebody someone to hate, they might not think too much about what you're doing to them, among other things.

That is, until you're the one targeted for elimination...then they don't really care if you know they want to kill you...and at that point, they just start lying to everybody else about you and the people who are trying to help you, anyway. Last year it was the Ukrainians, this year it's the Israelis, and rapidly expanding to include Jews in a general sense.

And it's funny how these same people who routinely cloak themselves in fake righteousness never have the slightest issue with lying, either.

I thought the Bible said "Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness Against Thy Neighbor" among other prohibitions against lying.

But of course, killing and then lying about it...sometimes on a monstrous scale as during the Holocaust...is just fine with these fucking people. If they can induce themselves to believe they're killing "Sinners" so much the better.

And war, particularly wars of ethnicity and religion, are bad enough even when one doesn't bring actual fascism and Nazi shit into it.

Because they believe God elevated them to whatever positions they think they have, and they think God told them they could.

Maybe it's just me, but I think we need to get religiosity out of politics.

Because all you get when you mix the two is bad faith.

The next time somebody tells you "It's Biblical!" regarding some personal agenda of theirs...

Just remember that the destruction of nearly every life on Earth was "Biblical" too.

Maybe we, as a goddamned species, should stop privileging the alleged ramblings of ancient Holy Men?

Слава Україна!

Then Jesus spoke to the multitude, and to his disciples,

Saying The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat:

All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.

For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.

But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments,

And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues,

And greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi.

But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren. And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.

Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ.

But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.

And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.

But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. ~Matthew 23:1-15

Last Post

[Luthen Rael meets ISB Supervisor Lonni Jung, who warns him about Supervisor Meero's current work. He is not too pleased to see Jung have doubts about working for him]

Luthen Rael: Tell me why we're really here today, Lonni?

Lonni Jung: I can't do this anymore. I'm a father now. I had no idea how it would feel.

Rael: We took a vow.

Jung: I'm giving you Dedra Meero. I'm giving you Spellhaus. I'm warning you about Ferrix. I'm honoring my vow. I've been working my way through there for six years. Working my way up. Alone.

Rael: So, what was your plan? Gather a big basket of goodies for me as a farewell gift? What were you planning to tell the ISB?

Jung: My health. My wife's family has an import business.

Rael: Even as you say the words, you know it's impossible. We can't let you go, Lonni. We can't spare you. We've been grooming you for too long. And yes, you've been alone, but your career has profited greatly from information that we've provided. Information that cost me dearly. You love your daughter. Kreegyr's men will be dying to make sure she has a father. You're trapped, Lonni. There's no pleasure in saying it but you're going nowhere.

Jung: My sacrifice? It means nothing to you, does it?

Rael: I said I think of you constantly and I do. Your investment in the Rebellion is epic. A double life? Every day a performance? The stress of that? We need heroes, Lonni, and here you are.

Jung: And what do you sacrifice?

Rael: Calm. Kindness. Kinship. Love. I've given up all chance at inner peace. I've made my mind a sunless space. I share my dreams with ghosts. I wake up every day to an equation I wrote 15 years ago from which there's only one conclusion: I'm damned for what I do. My anger, my ego, my unwillingness to yield, my eagerness to fight, they've set me on a path from which there is no escape. I yearned to be a savior against injustice without contemplating the cost, and by the time I looked down there was no longer any ground beneath my feet. What is my sacrifice? I'm condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them. I burn my decency for someone else's future. I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I'll never see. And the ego that started this fight will never have a mirror or an audience or the light of gratitude. So what do I sacrifice? EVERYTHING! You'll stay with me, Lonni. I need all the heroes I can get.