Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the thirst that is the drink.
Who put the pube in Reince Pubis? Who put the baa in Barr, the fly in Flynn, the rump in Trump? Who put the scales on Scalia? Who put the pomp in Pompeo?
Pompeo, Pompeo, Secretary of State, the pompous, pumped-up Pompeo. Pompeo distinguished himself at West Point, by graduating first in his class. That is, he distinguished himself by leaving. They were so excited about him leaving that they made him go first. He was not the cutest, nicest girl at school. Although, hefty comedian Jeff Garlin famously had a routine where he contrasted his physical form with the words “I’m a pretty little girl.” “I’m a big fat man,” he would say, and then, “I’m a pretty little girl.” And how the audience would howl in amusement.
Pompeo, pompous, pumped-up. From the French, pompier, fireman. The French find firemen funny. I don’t know why. I think there’s a rumor that all firemen are stupid. The Parisian fire department is a branch of the armed forces. Pompeo is a branch of the armed forces unto himself. Who put the pump in Pompeo, inserted it in his puckered purple portal and puffed him up to such pompous proportions? Probably some pompier.
Pompeo. Pompeo indeed. As noted above, he is not undistinguished. He’s an accomplished scholar and former athlete. Like Bob Barr, the Attorney General, Pompeo had an impeccable record, when viewed from afar. Both Barr and Pompeo are tools of Jesus the Conqueror, Jesus the Dictator, Jesus the One Who Graces the Mighty Chosen with the Divine Right of Kings. Y’know, the evil Jesus. The asshole Jesus. The Jesus who wants the US to inflict upon its foreign prisoners waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation, temperature extremes, rape, threats to their families, electrocution, and of course, rectal feeding. Rectal feeding, it also turns out, is exactly the way they pump the pomp into Pompeo. One day Pompeo might pop, from all the pomp pumped into him.
Pompeo opposes abortion even in cases of rape. He opposes gay marriage, and any rights protecting gay and trans persons from discrimination. He, of course, opposes the closing of the prison at Guantanamo, because it’s such an idyllic paradise for rectal feedings. Just imagine him, sitting on the veranda overlooking the Bay, enjoying a rectal feeding as the sun sinks below the horizon.
When it came out that Trump had tried to extort President Zelensky of Ukraine to publicly state he was investigating Joe Biden, Pompeo said he knew nothing about it, he hadn’t yet read the transcript. Turned out he didn’t have to. He was on the god damn call. He heard it firsthand. He lied.
Last year at about this time, Pompeo empaneled a commission to revise the State Department’s human rights focus to concentrate on Freedom of Religion. Their report is due out early this month. While Dump has been busy packing the courts with anti-abortion, anti-queer, anti-poor and anti-woman judges, Pompeo wants US foreign policy to mirror domestic policy and support regimes who like to persecute those same populations and activities, because he says that’s what Jesus wants. It might seem a coincidence that Jesus wants the same things a homophobic, trans- phobic, misogynistic bigot does, but it’s no coincidence. The Jesus Pompeo knows so much about is an invention from his own arrogant skull, and from the minds of the clandestine Christian crusaders who believe their success and power are divinely ordained necessities to eventually bring about a global theocratic dictatorship. A dictatorship for Jesus.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Bob Barr just announced he’s convening his own task force to redefine political enemies so he can start rounding up Black Lives Matter and other antifascist activists. Yes, he also mentioned the Boogaloo Bois, but the antifascist groups are corralled under a much broader umbrella. He wants to return US law enforcement powers to those it had under the Espionage and Sedition Acts of 100 years ago.
All this as the presidential election creeps ever closer, with Dump’s numbers sagging like his neck flab, due to the deaths he’s allowed from covid-19 and now those of US soldiers Russia’s been paying the Taliban kill. Now would seem an auspicious time to gin up the base with a fresh commitment to hating everything they hate. A domestic commitment from Barr and an international commitment from Pompeo, the twin enablers of the pumpkin pussy-grabber determined to get the Trumpist base to recommit their support in a re-commitment ceremony they envision resembling a scene from Triumph of the Will.
Evangelical fascist groups like the Fellowship have unholy influence in business and government. They’re the group who puts on the National Prayer Breakfast every year, where every president since Eisenhower has broken bread with skulking schemers of skullduggery and skullfuckery. They have one major thing in common with the ISIS caliphate movement and Hindutva Indian Nationalist groups like the RSS: an affinity for enforced loyalty resembling that of totalitarian regimes from the Nazis, Franco and Hideki Tojo through Stalin, Mao, Reza Pahlavi, Peron and Pinochet to Marcos, Somoza, the Khmer Rouge, and Bolsonaro. Antagonism toward all but the most fascistic expressions of popular rule runs deep in the veins of these organizations.
This is why I discouraged praise for George Will when he broke with Trump conservatives. It’s not the thuggish gangsterish fascism Will doesn’t approve of, it’s the idea that Trump, who is extremely gauche and garishly nouveau riche in style, should be the charismatic tool to bring about a dictatorship of the elite. George Will just doesn’t like the vehicle his peers in the peerage have chosen to carry their banner. The banner itself is fine with him.
Natural law – the most unnatural thing ever created by human nature. There it is, the First Amendment, freedom of religion the most important human right “on top” of the list, says Pompeo, “so we got it right.” All other rights subordinate to whatever he imagines freedom of religion to mean.
Barr and Pompeo, these two hefty, heavy-handed revisionists of freedom, whose capitalism is even worse than the one we’re sweating under currently, because, where the normal capitalism is destined to fail due to its own contradictions, to collapse under the burden of its disparities of wealth and opportunity, this is Jesus Capitalism, which will be satisfied when its excesses become so overwhelmingly copious that they must spill out into the public. Normal capitalism is at least discrete enough to fly its torture victims to black sites, and even outsource its torture. Normal capitalism at least makes embarrassed noises when the homeless and sick flood the public square, and militarized police come a-clubbing in the thoroughfare.
But Jesus Capitalism is the Divine Justification for public squalor, torture, and mass-murder, and the violation and desecration of the living Earth. Poor people deserve to be poor, sick poor people deserve to be sick and poor. It’s not sadly necessary, or unfortunate but unavoidable, it’s what makes God happy. Jesus is a dick. That’s why Kavanaugh could be a dick at his confirmation hearing. “It’s okay, he’s just being like Jesus.” That’s why Dame Lindsey Graham decided to start emoting and bitching for the benefit of the Dump regime. He knows who butters his biscuits. “Jesus would approve. Even if I am totally gay, as long as I don’t admit it. Because Jesus never did.” Who put the pomp in Pompeo? Jesus put the pomp in Pompeo. Jesus, that mentally disabled fireman, that firer of men.
The entire system, root and branch, is rotten to the core. That’s why we all feel hopeful that these BLM anti-police-violence protests will continue. We can feel their goal bleeding into every aspect of our lives, because every aspect of our lives is infected with the virus and violence of capitalism. Police thuggery is the outward blemish on the diseased body. Police are the cold sore, capitalism is the herpes.
And, apparently, Jesus loves herpes.
This has been the Moment of Truth. Good day!