#a shithole nation with a shitty government

[bailesu]

July 4, 1776, 1863, and 2018

Warning:  I hate Trump with a burning atomic fury and what follows is a mixture of my family’s history, America’s history and me damning Trump to burn in Hell for eternity.  If you don’t want to read that, skip the read more and go on.  I totally understand.

This is the America’s day, for good and for ill, for America has been both a great country and a terrible one.  We sent men to the moon and set high ideals of equality and freedom... then failed to live up to them again and again.  I love my country, but sometimes it drives me crazy.  Its past is full of glory and horror, good deeds and terrible deeds, and above all greatness, but greatness can be wonderful or horrible.

On this day in 1776, the Continental Congress issued a document which declared American Independence.  But not just Independence.  It laid out the idea that all men are created equal by God, with inalienable rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.  This high ideal thus became one of the foundation stones of America.

It was written by a man who owned dozens of slaves and had children by one of them, who he continued to own.  Thomas Jefferson managed to embody both our highest ideals and our greatest depravities.  

One in four Americans were slaves in 1776.  Women could not vote and neither could White Men who lacked Property.  Child abuse was the normal way you raised your kids.  Threatening to murder your political rivals was basically normal.  One of our great leaders of the Revolution, Sam Adams, was basically a man who organized riots and lynching.  (Lynching of people who served Britain, rather than Blacks, but lynching is murder, whoever the victim.)

By any modern standard, America in 1776 was a terrible place, a land carved out by killing Native Americans directly to take their land and indirectly by disease.  (Mind you, every nation, including the ones we killed off, has a history of killing neighbors and taking their land; the nations without that history died.)  

But it was also the seedbed of modernity; it became a democracy, if not a very good one, and its ideals still ring across the ages and have provided leverage to every group trying to get fair treatment instead of stomping.  We helped inspire the French Revolution and the rise of Nationalism.  In 1945, when Vietnam declared Independence from France, the first lines of their declaration read:

All men are created equal; they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free.

America has always struggled with the tension between this high ideal and the deeds our country has done which are not high or noble.  We often fail, but on this day, we have to look again to this ideal and work to make it real.  

My own ancestors were all tangled up in this mess.  Three Quaker Brothers fled to America to escape persecution and the loss of their family’s lands due to the British Civil Wars, settling in Pennsylvania.  One of the brothers, Thomas, eventually went South to North Carolina.  He is my ancestor, and his family soon came to own slaves.  They were never top-tier slaveowners but they prospered.

If you are a White Southerner, your ancestors either owned slaves, supported the slave system without owning slaves, or both, unless they came South very recently.  We all have to deal with that legacy.  Many in the South don’t want to, but if this country is ever to heal the wounds inflicted by over 250 years of slavery, then we have to.

During the Revolution, Thomas’s son, also named Thomas, fought in the Revolution.  By killing Cherokees; they allied with the British to save their lands and they found out the hard way that Britain couldn’t help them.  On this day, 1776, he was sitting in a military camp, but soon they would return and drive the Cherokee out of part of North Carolina and all of South Carolina.  (Ironically, many years later, a member of the Richardson family would marry a Cherokee woman and their later descendant would marry one of Thomas’ descendants.)  He may eventually have fought the British, but we have no record of it.

Thomas’ grandson, William Alexander Christopher Biles, was born on the plantation.  His family made him go pick cotton with the slaves a lot but we don’t know why exactly; it would serve him well later when his family lost everything but we have to assume that he probably hated it at the time.  William’s father was too old to fight (In his 70s!) but William was not.  He fought in a North Carolina regiment and was shot and stabbed repeatedly, including having his skull cut open and a gut wound.  This happened during Pickett’s Charge, so he was left behind in Union hands; a doctor, his name lost, operated and saved his life after initial triage had said he wasn’t worth trying to save.  Whoever he was, he was a miracle worker, because somehow he saved WAC’s life, though he had a plate in his head for the rest of his life.  In fact, he *escaped* from the hospital and returned to duty until the final surrender at Appomatox!  We don’t know his motives for fighting, but it was probably a mixture of wanting to save slavery and loyalty to his state.  It would be nice if I could say he was anti-slavery, but he wasn’t even the Jeffersonian kind of anti-slavery, where you still own slaves, but you do limit slavery’s growth somewhat.  By 1860, your choices were basically either to say ‘SLAVERY IS AWESOME’ or flee to the North, that far South.  (In the border states, you could say ‘I hate black people, so I want to end slavery so I can get rid of them’.  This is not a huge moral step forward.)

His family’s estates unravelled; the Biles clan did not know how to get by without slaves.  He went west to Missouri and worked with his brother a while, then became a farmer; he was not good at either, but his cotton-picking skills enabled him to get by; I can only imagine he found it rather humiliating.  And as a slaveowner, he deserved humiliating.

To be White in America carries the shame of having ancestors who did terrible stuff.  Some of it was so accepted you can’t blame them too much but others *could* have done better and didn’t.  The essential problem of being descended of the winners is that they probably did terrible things to win.  (And the problem of being descended of those who lost is that your ancestors got thrown down the stairs and lost it all.)

I don’t feel guilt for my ancestors, but I do feel responsibility.  I cannot control what they did, but I do benefit from it and part of my response to that has to be to try and make a better America, to help overcome our worst impulses.  And I do that by teaching, so that those coming up will understand our past, why we did terrible things, and how we can do better.  (And how we did awesome things too, because the hardest part of history is that the same people can do wonders and horrors at once.)

Which brings us to the now.  I was describing 1920s and 30s fascism to my students and one said, “So, basically, Trump.”

And it’s certainly way too close.  I am lucky; as a White Man, I am automatically spared much of the worst of Trump and his idiot followers.  This country has always been tilted in my favor.  

Trump embodies pretty much all of America’s past sins, but also is basically the biggest drooling idiot who has ever sat in the White House, making even Harding look like a supergenius.  He knows how to work his audience, but he’s utterly incompetent at governing, to the extent you can call it governing.  He embodies sexism, racism, egomania, and cruelty.  He is a man who instinctively degrades and bullies everyone around him, who has cheated on all of his wives and abused his mistresses, a rapist, a thug, and a cheat.  He is a horrible human being in almost every possible way.  Many people who claim to be Christian flock to him because they have flushed Christ down the toilet long ago, but unfortunately, flushing Christ down the toilet has a long history in American religion.  

If there is a hell, Trump is going to roast in it and if there is not, we’ll have to make one just for him.  I want to see him fall like Lucifer from Heaven, if Lucifer fell into a mixture of broken glass, shards of metal, and lava.  But it’s important to remember, Trump is not some alien aberration; he incarnates real American flaws, mixed with his personal flaws of being a pig-ignorant, aggressively anti-thinking man-baby molester of women with vast wealth he has always abused to shield himself from consequences.  Racism, sexism, greed, and so on all have a long history in this country.  And his supporters voted for him with their eyes wide open.  We cannot expect any better from them.

America has a huge cancer and that cancer often has been driving the national bus, so to speak.  And getting rid of it is going to be a long fight.  But bringing change to this country is always a long, hard fight.

So on this Fourth of July, fuck Trump to hell, along with all his shitty supporters.  We have nearly two more years of this shithole before we can toss him on his ass.  (Impeachment takes 2/3rds in the Senate, so it’s not happening even if we take both houses, I fear).  May we sweep the Republican party, which has devolved from the people who ended slavery to a resting place for all of America’s sins, into the garbage pile in November and again in two years.  Growing up in America means I’ve watched the Republican party gradually mutate into a degenerate, feral hate society run by a mixture of greed, racism, and fake Christianity.  

Fuck the Republican party and all the morons who vote for it, whichever one of the Seven Deadly Sins drives them to spew hatred, abuse immigrants, rob the poor to make the rich richer, and to destroy all our alliances and trade relations.  They chose a feral animal as President, a molester and a bully, and I hope he destroys them all.

May they all eat shit and die.

[lookingforstupid]

An artist from region A (a democracy) has a couple of emoji stickers for sale on an international chatting app. The chatting app is banned in region B (a totalitarian state), whose government the artist despises because of historical territorial disputes.

The stickers are cute. Without proper channels to purchase them, some people from region B screenshot the stickers, without the artist's permission, to be used among friends in personal conversations on region-B-owned chatting apps.

The artist found out and expressed strong dissatisfaction. On an international social media site, the artist publicly listed the internet handles of a few region B persons who have reposted the stickers without permission and stated that the stickers should not be used outside of the aforementioned international chatting app.

At the same time, the artist also stated on a less popular local social media native to region A that they hate region B so nobody from region B is ever allowed to use their stickers. Replies to this latter statement were filled with discriminatory remarks against the people of region B by people from region A.

The former statement is more visible as the platform on which the statement was posted on is international. It's safe to assume that hardly anybody from region B is aware of the latter statement.

Oblivious to the fact that they are disliked because of their nationality, fans of the artist from region B kept asking if the artist could offer the stickers on their region-B-owned chatting apps; they would gladly pay. The artist ignored their requests - not a single reply, not even a direct no.

Alongside these requests in the same comment thread, fans of the artist from region A again posted multiple discriminatory - borderline hate speech - remarks.

Condemnation of piracy is of course rightful. On that front, people from region B are definitely in the wrong. It’s the artist’s deliberate concealment of xenophobia that irks me. 

Dear artist from region A, be like American racism! Be bold and upfront and free! Just pull out your dick and tell yours fans from region B that you think they are all brainwashed neo-nazis because they were born in region B so they don’t deserve art or beauty or anything fun! 

When people in places like North Korea pass pirated movies and songs around on USB sticks, you romanticize the action and praise their courage, and when people from region B do the same thing, you think it’s because they are natural thieves.

I’ve seen it too often. Justice, freedom, democracy - all these noble pursuits are always tainted with some form of xenophobia and populism nowadays. When you see someone oppressed, you don't actually feel sympathy for them. When you see someone brainwashed, you do not wish to educate them. You are just projecting your superiority. You want to look down upon somebody, sanction somebody, punish somebody, so that your own little corner of the world might feel a bit better.

But you are no better. When you can't see past nationality you are just as shitty. And the world will not become any better because of you. Every country can be a shithole; it all depends of your birthplace, the color of your skin, your socio-ecomonic class, and your damn fucking luck.

I'll go so far as to say, there is no true equality as long as the concept of labels still exists. We should just all join the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement and fuck off the surface of the Earth. Leave all your fucking stickers to the stardust.

[reverseoppression]

What angers me the most about Trump’s shithole comments regarding Africa and Haiti is the complete lack of awareness about why Haiti and some countries in Africa are not prospering in the same way as Western countries.

Like okay you want to call those countries shitholes? You know what’s more shitty? Colonizing and draining African nations of their resources, leaving their economies and environments desolate and obsolete for the people who live there. Fucking with the Haitian government for the betterment of Western economies while leaving Haitians in the dust. You can not criticize these other countries for their current state without acknowledging the West’s role in all of it. Western nations abused Haiti and nations in Africa for their own capitalist gain for CENTURIES, and they’re the true shitholes.

[captkirkland]

@shithole-state YES. YOU UNDERSTAND ME. YOU UNDERSTAND ME!

i feel like he absolutely has those similarities with francis and the germanic nations way more than he’d ever like to admit. esp francis, the others aren’t so bad, but the very thought of him being even less like his brothers than he believed is enough to make the man deny it flat out if it’s not brought up right—ALSO HONESTLY YEAH. i think these days the brothers are fucking hilarious, the banter? insane. it’s absolutely a drama every time they’re all together

ALSO, YOURE RIGHT. i believe he tans, but he’s naturally so damn white that he burns easy too, and he starts getting sun spots. those are the closest things he can get to freckles, but he thinks they look so damn ruddy on his own face and body that these days he avoids the whole thing all together. he hasn’t been tanned since his older pirating and sailing days— but about his addictions your fucking mind dude. i have had the exact same thoughts (i just read the post) and death... has never really stopped arthur from doing anything he’s ever done to himself. or that others have done to him (need i get into the whole persecution of witches both female and male, ough) I have a head canon that countries CAN die and they DO, they do all the time for various reasons but it’s never permanent. if anything it’s like getting painfully knocked out for a moment, and at first I can imagine that’d be incredibly traumatic on any nation, but some of them.. unfortunately get used to it. it’s part of being the type of being they are.

AND DONT EVEN LOOK AT ME ABOUT ALL THE SHIT ARTHUR WAS GOING THROUGH BETWEEN THE 50s-80s PLEASE! Dude was in so much pain from quite literally every direction, and so much of it was his own fault, his own hypocrisy coming back to slap him in the face right after an entire world war (shit happened after the first one too, with ireland’s independence and the creation of northern ireland, which you know sucked because he wanted his brother to stay. that’s his oldest brother! but his people were being harmed fucking horrifically, and it was just better to let him go.) not even mentioning that arthur absolutely lost his leg during wwi. same leg he lost for a bit when he was a pirate. and the SAME leg he lost during wwi. (i write him needing a cane often, he keeps his wand in it and has fashioned it into a bond/kingsman-style weapon, but also his pride pushes him to act like it’s pointless, making him walk effortlessly with it, ect) but i also believe he started physically showing signs of the physical and psychological traumas of the actual land during wwii, being burned on his side and over his eye. not to mention the fact that he’s got an actual heart issue because of the american revolution specifically that i. cough. cough. have drawn.

yes that’s london. in my head their hearts are their capitals and theres a lot i can talk on there about why it’s crystalline (why can their hearts fall out and it’s just.. not gory at all.. ivan’s heart anyone?) but, moving on.

On top of ALL OF THIS, he had to deal with his own emotional dissonance during the rock movement. the loss of his empire, the pain of snapping back, the further realization that the government that’d been keeping him in that spot of power was hurting so many. it was enough to shatter his gentlemanly facade for quite a few years, and i full heartedly believe he went full punk rocker just to cope with everything. just scream it out, type deal. pull down the shitty system that upheld his own empire. disagree with himself over and over and over. yet.. still, there’s times where he longs for the past in a way. longs for when he felt stronger, was on top of the world. who wouldn’t? he’s constantly at war with himself, and that’s something you’d never see when you look at him. he makes it a point to seem calm and put together, so if you brought up the fact that he got like that? he might deny it on a bad day, LMAO. he’ll flat out lie like that with a straight face if he doesn’t want to think about it, dude can get just as blank as he can get upset. but.. it’s magic that makes him happy. it’s the sea that makes him happy. it’s family that makes him happy. you know if there was a dnd campaign where he could be a fucking pirate wizard and the group in particular comes together by the end, he’d be on that shit like white on rice, goodbye. bonus points if he gets to dress up. you’re so right about him going to ren fairs and stuff, i feel like he enjoys the hell out of that and LARPING? BRO? say less.

there’s probably something to say there about the desperate attempt to be anyone but himself but still be closely enough aligned enough with himself that he can be normal and not think about his own past. like.. there’s a lot to unpack there. there’s a lot to unpack with all of him honestly, but i like to think that he keeps it all under so much wraps that most people are none the wiser. even people who know better might tend to forget unless it’s brought up, especially considering how much countries forget, but that’s another conversation.

i am so sorry this is so long but gOD yeah you can use the tartan i made! just know the meaning behind it is family and togetherness, with it containing the flag colors of all the brothers! (even seamus/ireland because he is still their brother) i used a darker green so it wasn’t as gaudy on accident, but I feel like all of em like green for different reasons. i’ll try and write something up for alistair/scotland soon! just need to get my thoughts together bc i don’t rp him like i do arthur lmaooo

Alright, so some Arthur Kirkland headcanons from me per @shithole-state’s request:

Arthur is genuinely such a complicated guy that it’s hard to really.. quantify him easily in words, I think. At times, he can seem like the complete antithesis of himself, and it’s not like he does that specifically on purpose, but there are certainly things he does do to throw people off about him.

Firstly, to me he’s.. a very small man. Like 5’4”-5’6”. Not that this is bad, but it makes his life even more complicated because people tended not to take him seriously when he was younger. It was a quick and harsh realization that he needed to harden himself against a sharp world that’d run him through if he didn’t.

Having grown up the way he did, the youngest of four brothers, who (in the canon I usually write from full of my own hcs,) had to deal with quite a lot of bullshit from them and his father during his upbringing. He looks more like Britannia than Celt of course, but that is for some very specific reasons. (Cough. The saxons being such a big part of early English history. Cough. Those were Germanic, not Celtic.) Often times I feel like he was the subject of bullying, considering those very early on English traumas, and I don’t really feel like he ever came across a genuine way to express himself. Emotionally, he’s stunted as hell, and he doesn’t preform in very healthy ways in regards to himself.. which.. y’know, eventually did come out in the way he treated others. He was a magic user, a witch, which obviously did not work very well with the sharp rise of Christianity, Catholicism, and Protestantism— and really that only made things so much worse.

I have a very specific view of how the personified nations behaved compared to how the governments of certain times did, because I absolutely believe that sometimes the countries, as their own people, did not agree with their bosses all the time! How could they? Their own people are getting hurt, the people of their friends, family. They are severely impacted by the wants of the people they represent, the land they call themselves— so of course they’d dissent. That comes out a lot in my specific canon with my friends a lot because we like to merge the 2Ps, Nyos, and even 2P Nyos into the canon verse to get a wider view of history. But, saying that, I fully believe that pirate Arthur specifically had a moment in time where he was.. literally a pirate. Against the East India Company, thieving, fighting, what have you. It was short lived, but he’d been a privateer and a sailor much longer, the literal pirate bit was towards the end when he started disagreeing hard with his own actions and the actions of his nation as a whole. I mean, how could a dude colonized to fuck and back very PERSONALLY entirely agree with that? But there was a part of his head that wanted land, wanted people in his “family.” It wasn’t right or okay, but at the start.. the idea of an empire didn’t seem so bad to him. It’d just be people in a family. Even if it’s a little hard, families are hard. Plus, it gave him such a rush and surge of power. What could be so bad about it? Which.. is the thought process that lead to a lot of self loathing during those lapses of (coined term with my friends) “country brain,” where he could make out what what going with those affected humans and what was actually happening. He started drinking then more than ever before, and it’s really never gone away.

He takes the harder roads of English history I think, out of some wish to keep Oliver from having to deal with that, believing he’s a touch more steeled than the other. Though, granted, it’s a thought in folly. A lot of his thoughts of himself are skewed, which really plays into how he behaves. He doesn’t care for people knowing his real feelings, hardening himself against prying eyes with an anger and a pissy face he’s had ever since his childhood. He hates the thought of being belittled and ruled, yet for a bit that’s what he did to people. He’s a hypocrite, and the worst part is that he knows it. He hates so much about himself, and yet even that twists himself because he has to carry himself highly. Nobody can hurt him if he does it first, and nobody can hurt him if he makes himself untouchable. So, he comes off narcisstic at times, probably because he is one after so many years. There’s so much going on in his head that’s unchecked, and he’s too prideful and staid in his ways to get it looked into on his own. Sometimes it all becomes too much though, and that’s when he has almost visceral breakdowns and has lapses in sanity (Britannia Angel, anyone?) before it all snaps back and he’s embarrassed about even carrying himself that way. These days he needs to have a more gentle nature outwardly, because that’s what’s been deemed as appropriate. He needs to be a gentleman in front of everyone, but especially both those he hurt, those who are afraid, or those who would judge him harshly if he didn’t. However, the facade is absolutely shatterable. There’s so many cracks in it sometimes that it confuses people sometimes about what kind of person he is. Dude had a huge one during the rock movement, which is incidentally where he gained back quite a bit of actual confidence in his own personal abilities, which is why I think his guitar is so damn important to him. But he also was partaking in quite a bit back then, the man has a real problem with addiction, but these days he’s cut back on mostly everything but smoking and drinking. unfortunately you can’t take the bottle out of his hand, or the music out of his head no matter what it sounds like! (sea SHANTIES) but all in all I find the man absolutely fascinating just because he is so diverse as a person on his own. This doesn’t even touch on the fact that he feels responsible for most of the world and is willing to absolutely lay down his life for the people he cares about either. There is just so much I could say about him, like he was a knight once! he loves high fantasy, he plays dnd! the list goes on, he’s such a complex person because the life he’s lead has been so— but at the end of the day he’s at home watching the bake off and doing needlework and I absolutely can’t stand him LOL

[icymirss]

There is a lot of ruin in a nation, but for almost 40 years now, US elites have treated the US as something to loot, and assumed that the good times would keep rolling. They were uninterested in actually governing. They were happy to move much of the US's core manufacturing overseas, to the most likely nation to replace America as a hegemon, because the Chinese were smart enough to make American elites rich. And so, today, large parts of the US are shitholes, which the residents hate so much they are consuming record amounts of drugs and committing suicide, because who the fuck wants to live in a nation with no hope, shitty bosses, and no hope. Oh, of course, there are people doing well. There were people doing well in 400AD as the Roman Empire collapsed. There are always some people doing well. But the number of people doing well keeps getting less and less, and the decline keeps getting worse and worse. But the top is doing fine, so they see no reason to do anything.

[wishingfornever]

2/16/2018 – No Contact:  Mass Tragedy

There was a school shooting yesterday.  I think?  May have been the day before.  It was mentioned yesterday but I was so sleepy I couldn’t recall.

Gun control in the US… or at least the debate begins.  I was actually raised in a household with a lot of guns.  Go figure, it’s one of the reasons why Esther was SO concerned that I’d kill Dennis and why Dennis feared for his life.  OoooOOOooo.

I’m reminded that Dennis is the biggest fucking coward.  Obviously I didn’t kill him and I wouldn’t have killed him.

Whatever. Not the point.  The point is, in the US there is always a delay when talking about gun control.  Like, so much.  “Can’t talk about gun control; you’re using these victims to push an agenda.”  So, the best you can do to even bring it up is to wait… then they’ll forget about it and it’s no longer an issue.  Out of sight is out of mind, so to speak.

I’m pro gun.  I believe the populous should always have access to firearms as a whole.  As a whole.  A whole.  The individual, however, should not.

What does that mean?

It means if the individual is unfit to own a gun then they shouldn’t own a gun. Simple.  The same way that you need a driver’s license to own a car.  The difference between a car and a gun is that your car isn’t protected by the Bill of Rights.  In order to operate a car, however, you can’t be drunk and a lot of medications say you shouldn’t be behind the wheel of a car when on them.

Irresponsibility is certainly an issue.  However, that’s not the ONLY problem.

I’d like to think medications are a big part of it.  Not necessarily the medications themselves, but the reason people need them.  I’m under the impression that if the US were to embrace a healthcare system that would allow for people to afford therapists, then there would be far less shootings.  Why do I think this?

Because the US isn’t the only nation that allows guns to their population.

Iceland and Switzerland are two GREAT examples.  Switzerland has allowed their citizens and foreigners with permanent residence to own automatic weapons.  No mass shootings.  Why?

The right wingers will say because EVERYONE is armed… but that’s not true.  The left wingers will say that it’s because the government tracks EVERYTHING and you can’t fire a bullet without them knowing… but that’s also not true.

The fact of the matter is, Switzerland is actually… kind of… happy?  The US is an impoverished, third world shithole despite being the wealthiest and most first world nation in the world.  The citizenry of Switzerland aren’t impoverished and live in first world conditions despite being technically a third world nation that is renowned for it’s banks.  Not everyone is a banker, obviously.

Switzerland has a higher Human Development Index than the US.  The HDI in the US is dropping.  And when income inequality is taken into account, the US drops even more.  Switzerland has nationalized healthcare, so their people are taken care of.  The US?  That shit keeps get taken away because “muh taxes.”  Your taxes are going to the poor whether you’d like it or not, Mr American Taxpayer.  If someone is on foodstamps despite having a job, then their company isn’t paying them enough.  If you want to pay less for taxes then you should push for a higher minimum wage.

Simple enough.  Tax money goes to foodstamps, which less money can go to foodstamps if the people on foodstamps can afford their own food.  Or that taxmoney can go to medicare, like every other first world nation, so you can save a bit more later on.  In the US, prices for medical treatments are SUPER high without good reason.

The US population is relatively disgruntled.  Switzerland, which has a lot of guns themselves including FULLY automatic rifles, doesn’t have the mass shootings the US does.  It’s because the Swiss aren’t as unhappy as the US. They can get all the treatment they need to prevent wanting to murder everyone.  There is less stress and inconvenience in Switzerland.  There is just more of everything that makes a Swiss citizen human and less of everything that makes a Swiss citizen… well… American.

The US isn’t the best country in the world because it’s a country that constantly contradicts itself and ignores it’s own problems while misattributing them wholly.

At Dollar General, I see people come in from their jobs while still in uniform.  Not even like “Dollar General” jobs where you have to purchase and assemble your own uniform.  Like, legitimate customized colors with the companies name on it.  Jobs that pay MORE than just minimum wage, yet they’re still on foodstamps.  Why?  What is the purpose of having a job if it isn’t enough to keep you alive?

Of course, the shooter was 19, I think?  Apparently, he bragged about killing animals which is a clear sign of being a serial killer later in life.  He’s not the sort of person to have guns because he’s, and hear me out on this, NOT THE SORT OF PERSON WHO SHOULD OWN GUNS. Want to know what is more expensive than guns?  Therapy.

He apparently posted on Facebook really dumb things.  Like, looking back it’s obvious.  He was reported to the FBI and they couldn’t find out anything beyond his name.  Youtube should have sent them his Email address and FBI could have used that email address to look him up on Facebook, just to see if he’s posted anything similar there because Facebook has made privacy a very unpopular thing.

Don’t need to even do NSA and track him through his email and watch him closely or whatever it is they do.  Spoiler alert, they do nothing of important value.  If this guy was posting dumb shit and the NSA didn’t get involved, then they’re literally worthless.  Save some money and disband the NSA.  Not like spying on your own citizens (and our own allies) actually works, it seems.

Ugh… this is my day off.  Don’t want to get too angry… btw, time is 11am.  Been up since at least 9am.  Went to bed at about 9pm.  So, about 12 hours?  I think that’s not bad.  Catching up and I’m ready to face the day.  I’m going to relax today.  Worry about everything tomorrow.  No working on my book, no calling dad, no productivity.  This is a break day.  I want to have breakfast soon. Almost 12 and no food.  Not cooking eggs.  Going to be cereal.

But then again, a breakfast sandwich sounds pretty kick ass right about now…  Or even a regular sandwich…

So, Pizza Hut just sent me an email.  Stuffed crust large two topping pizza… for 10 dollars.  My god.  Such a brilliant deal.

Thing is, I order online so it seems that there is always access to a large two topping pizza for 7.99 and you can have it stuffed crust for 2 dollars more.  Which makes it 9.99.  If I order it like that, I literally save myself a penny…

Now, that may seem pretty dumb.  And it is.  However, they basically just sent me an email to tell me that they have a SPECIAL deal for something that I already know about and have done on occasion.  They also want a penny more for this information.

Current Time;  11:50.  I am drunk.  I was drinking as part of a stream for NGParadox.  I like him, charming fellow.  British, but he’s worth it if you can get past that shitty accent.  I went out for pizza… free pizza.  Adela didn’t have any.  She said she vomited 7 times. Jesus, I hope she’s okay, I just remembered.

I hope she gets better.  She doesn’t want pizza.  I ate most of it.  

I am drubk.  Current time is 1am tomorrow.  Relly drunk.  So drunk that I’m revealing something.  Yesterday, I was so tired I bought a candle.  Or the day before yesterday?  When I went back to work I bought a candle.  I bought a candle when I felt on the verge of blacking out from Dollar General and wrote “Esther returns to me” on it.  I am so drunk right now.  I lit it that night with a lighter nad it’s still burning.

It’s an intention candle.  I’m not sure why but I’m placing faith in the universe.  I’ve actually prayed if you can believe it.  I prayed that Esther would come back into my life.  If tht’s not pathetic, I don’t know what is.

Can you believe that? After all this time, I still care for her?  And she said I wouldn’t because I’m a narcessist.  Fuck her.  I love her regardless of what a total bitch she’s been.  It won’t help though.  There is no power in the universe, but it’s welcome to prove me wrong through delivery of Esther.  Are you there, infinite power of the universe? Did you hear my prayers?

I don’t think it did.  It gives me hope, though… thinking something divine is looking out for me. I microwaved the remaining too slives of pizza.  Finished the stream I as watching, bound to sleep soon.  Why do I care so much about her? Why can’t I just move on?  This is creepy for her… why am I such a piece of shit?

Whatever. Remind me tomorrow to share some stories about what happene when I bought alcohol.  Night

[theliterateape]

American Shithole #34 — Perhaps This Time We Shouldn’t Forgive?

By Eric Wilson

I’ve been thinking a great deal about faith lately. I don’t have many religious friends, and I lost a few more this week.

It was several decades before I truly understood the thought-dampening power of faith, and the seductive draw of the false promise all religions provide — that they spare humanity the existential fear associated with death and the unknown.

I’ve been frustrated with organized religion since a very young age, but I’ve always tried to maintain an uneasy truce with my secular friends; mostly by not shitting all over their laughably stupid ideas in mixed company.

The truce has ended.

Religion sells the lie that if you just have faith, it will put your fear in a neat little box for you. An enticing offer I imagine, for a young, frightened mind.

Unfortunately, only curiosity ends up in the box.

Informing religious people of this over the course of my life has resulted in zero hugs from the throngs of churchgoers I have encountered. Mostly, I don’t get invited back to Easter dinner. The facts remain:

There is no box for fear. You either face it, or it infects everything you are until you do.

I’ll give him this; Trump has done more for exposing the truth about the faithful in America than any other president in history.

Never before have we seen the naked hypocrisy of the Evangelicals on display as it is now. Why is there no low, no rock-bottom that Donald Trump can sink to, profane and depraved enough to separate Fundamentalist Christians from their unwavering support for a man who is demonstrably so morally and ethically bankrupt?

Fear.

I understand you don’t want to experience the embarrassment of being horribly wrong, but it’s more than that for you, isn’t it? This is more than partisanship or tribalism for the Trump base. They are all in, because they’re convinced they have everything/nothing to lose.

As (thankfully) more and more traditional conservatives, moderate republicans, and independents are coming to understand, unless you are extremely wealthy, you have not benefited in any way from the Trump presidency. Even the billionaire class — the only beneficiaries of that enormous tax-break bestowed by Republicans — did not gain in some life-changing manner. They didn’t get a coat they needed to survive winter. They didn’t receive food for their hungry children. They didn’t get much-needed access to healthcare, or an opportunity to advance their education.  

They got their eleventeeth fucking yacht.

That’s all this has ever been about — for centuries. The emotionless bean-counting from high atop Mt. Greed, at the expense of all else.

With millions of Trump supporters (that would apparently rather die than value fellow Americans as equals, refusing to champion affordable healthcare, adequate housing, education, etc.) still finding the anti-hero of their dreams in the insufferable primordial vanity of our chest-puffing cheeto-in-chief, will there ever be an end to what fuels Nationalism and Evangelical dogma in America?

What a wretched thing, the Trumpian mind. What a miserable beast. For fear of even a moment of self-reflection, they would rather instead let a narcissistic sociopath run roughshod over the constitution, leaving nothing but a wake of destruction in his path.

So, it is my opinion that if you voted republican in 2018, it demonstrates that you don’t believe Donald Trump has done anything requiring a check or balance from one of the other two branches of government — which means to me, you are at the very least, a fascist enabler and a dangerous simpleton.

There is a part of me that wants your vote to count in a way you never imagined. I want your vote for fascism to matter. I want a fiscal rebuke of the millions of miserable idiots handing this one-man societal wrecking-ball a blank fucking check.

Here’s my argument:

Someone else you know and actually like that is undoubtedly suffering from one or more of the countless atrocities committed by this administration, either does what their Trumpian counterparts do, or buys or sells some version of it. Let’s make our evaporating value in this corrupt economic system count for as much as we can. If pro-Trump conservatives are so sure our democracy is safe in the hands of this known charlatan and admitted serial liar, they shouldn’t mind losing support for their businesses because of it.

Let’s see how fucking committed they are to Making America Great Again, when everyone other than their fellow screaming Trumpian lunatics refuses to buy what they sell, or support whatever it is they do for a living.

I would say that many republican voters would have a change of heart before the 2020 election, if their livelihoods were in doubt.

Then I realized, like many progressives, that I just don’t want to make people suffer — but what if that is the only way they will ever change? Every time in America that the Republicans are in office, the bottom 90% gets fleeced, and everything goes to shit. Every fucking time since Reagan, and exponentially worse each time. Then Democrats come in, we do our best to clean it up, and we always forgive the morons that can’t stop voting against their own fiscal interests.

Perhaps this time we shouldn’t forgive?

I was so mad at a now ex-friend for still voting republican, that I lashed out online and cut all ties with him and his family. A not uncommon event across America, I imagine. It pains me that their fear is something that they are, in the end, incapable of overcoming.

I am so angry, and I feel that anger changing me; I hope the change is temporary, but I suspect (as I wisely instructed myself from the future) that it is not. This anger regarding American fascism and the greed of the billionaire class has weighed heavily on me these past two years. I am changed, likely for the worse. We all are.

As I was working through these things this week, my thoughts drifted to another childhood friend, whom I have not seen since high school, but have rekindled some level of social media contact with over the last decade. I know he’s probably not the progressive I am; he is a Marine, a veteran, and an LA cop. If I find he voted republican this year, do I cut ties there as well?

I believe service to country at that level affords the right to be terribly wrong politically, without penalty — but does it though?

How can I hold one friend accountable for their shitty actions, and not another?

I have tried to be forgiving. I can forgive a Trump vote in 2016 (it took me a few years, but I worked out the reasoning along the way) — but to have witnessed what we have all bore witness to, with our own eyes and ears, the horror of this presidency and this administration, the spiteful cruelty on a near daily basis for two, fucking, years?

And then this past Tuesday to still cast your vote for republicans in Congress?

We all decide what we can forgive, and what we cannot. Former first lady Michelle Obama confessed she will never be able to forgive Donald Trump for putting her family in danger with his reckless, despicable rhetoric.

For me, the line was the 2018 midterm elections. In a sane country, we never would have let it get this far. The midterms should have ended the political careers of every single republican running for office.

It wasn’t Russia. It wasn’t Facebook. It was the immovable block of terrified stupidity, the Trump base, that has allowed this horrifying charade to continue.

Your failure to protect America cannot be forgiven. At least, not by me.