Fair warning

Luther M. Siler1 Comment

ezgif.com-video-to-gif.gifThe next person to accuse me, either directly or via implication, of being “distracted” by something outrageous the shitgibbon has done because I am complaining about that thing and not some other outrageous thing the shitgibbon did that you want me to be complaining about is getting punched in the neck.

Understand that I am willing to travel to punch you in the neck, because I’m sick as fuck of the idea that this gang of poltroons is smart enough to be layering their evil.  They’re throwing as much shit at the walls to see what sticks, and I can pay attention to more than one thing at a time.  So can most adults.

So.  Drop this nonsense from your vocabulary or get punched in the neck.  We clear?  Good.  That’s all; go about your business.

facepalm emoji

Luther M. Siler9 Comments

Because shit is too serious right now:  you may or may not be aware that my wife’s mother passed away a couple of weeks ago after a long illness.  I alluded to it here a couple of times but I don’t think I ever actually came out and said it.  Do not bother expressing your well-wishes in the comments as I am about to spend this post making fun of my deceased mother-in-law and your sentiments will feel inappropriate.

My wife spent part of her day today helping her dad clean the house out, and in the process of throwing out a bunch of newspapers and magazines somehow came across this.  I am seriously considering getting in touch with the President’s office over at Purdue on the off chance that the letter this is responding to is still in an archive somewhere, because oh my God how batshit crazy must the letter this is responding to be:

omgwtf.jpg

Kudos to President Beering, seriously; this is shade of the highest order and I am very impressed.

(NOTE: This was published, obviously, with my wife’s full knowledge and permission.)

On refugees and Christianity, again

Luther M. Siler9 Comments
24OPINION-diptych-articleLarge.jpg
On the right, Rouwaida Hanoun, a Syrian five-year-old who is, as far as I know, still alive.  On the left, Anne Frank, who is not.

There are– it is horrifying to think, but it is true– people who believe that the orange fascist currently occupying the White House is a Christian.  Many of these people are the same people who believed Barack Obama to not be a Christian, so it’s immediately and apparently clear that when they say “Christianity,” what they mean is “White supremacy,” and they have little to no idea of what Jesus actually preached, what he might have believed, or– rather importantly– what he looked like.

I noticed this morning that the post I wrote about refugees last year is spiking in page views again, which is not surprising.  The monster in the White House has chosen to ban desperately frightened and endangered people– the “least among us” who Jesus spoke of– from our country, has deliberately decided to let children die rather than incur even the slightest risk to people who look like him.  He has, of course, excluded his business partners from these calculations; if  you are wealthy enough for him to have business dealings with, you are a Person, of course; Rouwaida Hanoun is not.  When I wrote the post last year we had a President who, while he made bad decisions in any number of ways, I believed fundamentally cared about people.

Unfortunately, that is no longer remotely true, and the man who was trying to keep Syrian refugees out of my state at the time is now Vice President.  Most of the time, I have trouble believing our current President is actually human.  It takes every bit of moral strength I have to recognize that the demented narcissist in the White House deserves as much compassion and dignity as anyone else by simple virtue of having been born a person.  Somebody or something fucked this man up; I don’t believe he was born this awful.

But that’s beside the point.  When I wrote that post last year, I was trying to be nice and trying to be the voice of reason.  You may recognize the tone; I use it around here from time to time when I’m writing something I want to be taken more seriously than usual.  At this point, I’m going to take a different tack: if you don’t think these people should be allowed into the country, if you think refugees (and people with green cards!  People who have been here, and are now separated from their families simply by virtue of having been somewhere else when the ban went into effect!) should be banned from the United States simply because of their religion, you’re a fucking monster.  You’re not a Christian.  Christ himself would rebuke you– he already has, in fact, in clear terms in the Bible you claim to believe is divinely inspired and true in its every word.

You are a bad person if you agree with this ban.  You are a racist and a monster and a coward and every bit as much of a piece of shit as the people trying to keep the Jews out of the country in the 1940s were. You are the exact same people saying the exact same things for the exact same reasons, only with “Jew” crossed out and “Muslim” written in.  And while I don’t want this to be true and I try to be a better person, I really wish there was a Hell so I could see the look on your face when you end up there. Because Jesus has been clear on your responsibilities in this matter.  If you’re not a Christian, you don’t have to follow Jesus.  I certainly don’t.  But he was perfectly clear on this, and you are the bad guys.  

As I was writing this, word came through Twitter that the ACLU has won a stay against this executive order, which is good, as it was wildly illegal from the start.  I set up recurring monthly donations to the ACLU and Planned Parenthood today.  You should too.

In which I am sleepy and content

Luther M. Siler

It was, all told, a pretty good day, with several hours of video games in the morning, some quality time with my wife, a visit to my parents, a couple of minor projects completed, and I finished a book.

Oh, and then I got home and saw this, somehow for the first time, ever, and it has improved the quality of my entire life by at least 2-3%.

(This next one is a bonus video; I don’t actually have time to watch it right now but I suspect it will go well when I do.)

On taking action, sorta

Luther M. Siler2 Comments

qlemjK.jpgHere’s where my head’s at right now.  I’ve called my Senator twice in the last couple of days, one to thank him for announcing that he was voting against Betsy DeVos and again this morning to encourage him to vote against Jeff Sessions when that abortion of a confirmation vote comes up.  I literally just say “call my Senator” to my phone and bam, I’m talking to a staffer a couple of moments later.

And then it hit me: the #1 rule of Republicans is They Always Get Worse.  The #2 rule of Republicans is They Only Get Worse.  So am I doing anything that actually has a point here, other than encouraging Joe Donnelly to go against his usual first instincts and vote like a Democrat?  Is there any point to calling my other Senator, or even finding out his name, which I’m just now realizing to no small amount of self-loathing that I don’t even know?

I can’t name my Governor right now either.  I’d recognize either of their names, mind you, but I can’t produce them.  That’s how deep the hole I’ve been in since November is.

That’s not the point, though.  Let’s say Sessions and DeVos both get voted down somehow.  It’s at least conceivable, right?

Their replacements, the way things have been going, will be David Duke and Michelle Rhee.  Neither will be an improvement.  That’s not how Republicans do things.  Whoever they replace Sessions and DeVos with (and Rhee is very likely going to be the actual choice) will be worse than they would.  And we won’t manage to fight off two in a row.  It won’t happen.

I’ve been saying “I need to shake myself out of this” for nearly three months now.   Probably about time for that to actually happen.