The Menace from Space

 

"The spear, the bow, the gun, and finally the guided missile had given him weapons of infinite range and all but infinite power. Without those weapons, often though he had used them against himself, Man would never have conquered his world. Into them he had put his heart and soul, and for ages they had served him well. But now, as long as they existed, he was living on borrowed time."
― Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey

The Jewish Space Lasers Lady is back.

The Republican from Georgia (which sounds like the title of a 1950s science fiction pulp novel) Marjorie Taylor Greene, submitted an amendment to the Israel Aid funding bill that, if approved, would provide funds to "develop space laser technology for use on the Southern Border." 

Space laser technology.

For use on the Southern Border. 

Space lasers.

Again. I mean, you remember the space lasers, right? 

But what do I know? Greene asks. I just like to read a lot. 

She likes to read nutty antisemitic conspiracy theories about the Rothschild Investment Corporation and and she likes to imagine "The Jews" have some secret space program so advanced it can launch industrial grade orbital solar power stations without anyone actually noticing but some smelly beardo in a dirty bathrobe living in a run down trailer somewhere in West Virginia and posting his "findings" to Truth Social. And not just those launches, but somehow vast orbital acres of highly reflective solar panels necessary to such installations have likewise somehow gone unnoticed by not only military, government, and academic observatories but those amateur telescope wranglers who track everything from SpaceX launches to the International Space Station. 

But, yeah, what would she know, right? 

Greene says America deserves the "same type of defense for our border that Israel has and proudly uses." (emphasis mine).

Has and proudly uses. 

Space lasers. 

Apparently she thinks Israel has space lasers. Which they use to defend their borders (and if that's the case, it's hardly an advertisement given the current state of affairs). This system Which I guess was lofted by the vast Israeli space program is also used to start forest fires in California on the orders of some secret Jewish investment bank because something something gazpacho and sure it sounds crazy when you say it out loud on social media but that doesn't mean it's not actually bugfuck insane, does it?

Folks, we really have to stop electing lunatics to run our government. 

Yes, even you, Georgia. Seriously, just stop it. 

That said, imagine it. 

No, really, imagine weapons grade lasers in orbit.

Space-based laser weapons powerful enough to punch through 200km of increasingly thick atmosphere with enough energy to ... what exactly? fry people and vehicles on the ground? Start forest fires? defend Israeli borders? burn ants? I don't know and the amendment doesn't say, but, imagine that weapon. 

Imagine what you could do with it, not just on the border, but anywhere, anytime, against anyone. 

Now, imagine giving control of that weapon to ... who? Trump? Biden? Booger eating crazypants Ex-General Flynn? The Arizona Supreme Court? Who?

Yes, imagine that. 

But then, you don't have to imagine it. 

We already have this, you know. 

Well, not have have, but we've got fully developed engineering plans for a similar weapons system. One that would have actually worked. 

Project Thor. 

That's right: Rods from God. The finger of death, smiting the sinners from upon high. 

Orbital-based Kinetic Bombardment. 

And if the sound of that doesn't scare the shit out of you, you've never read enough military science fiction. 

Except it wasn't fiction. 

The whole thing was thought up back in the 1980s by a bunch of science fiction writers and NASA engineers led by Dr. Jerry Pournelle (who was both). Thor is a fully fleshed-out design for kinetic energy weapons. Telephone pole sized solid tungsten rods, dropped from low orbit. A satellite might hold a dozen or more of these missiles. You can drop one or all of them at once, then a solid fuel rocket engine deorbits the Thor impactor and simple basic missile electronics guide it precisely to target (you wonder why we ever developed something so expensive as the GPS system? You didn't think it was for the public good did you?). Tons of metal moving at hypersonic velocity, you don't need a warhead or explosives. Depending on a number of variables, the impact energy of these things could be measured in kilotons. They could hit nearly anywhere on earth's surface with the power of a nuclear bomb, a manmade meteor. No radiation, no fallout. You could drop one or a hundred, or thousands, globally, all at once. Scalable, flexible, the system could target a tank column or a missile silo, a single building or an entire city, a battle group at sea or even submerged submarines. 

Simple and elegant in design -- if elegant is a word you associate with mass death from the sky. 

You don't need any new technology. The materials and engineering have existed for decades. We could have built a basic system as far back as the 1970s. 

There could be no defense against it.

It was developed as part of Ronald Reagan's Star Wars program. It was expensive and it would get more expensive the more satellites you put into orbit (it got cheaper if you had a reusable launch system, hey, and now you know some of the impetus behind the Shuttle's development and why Reagan was willing to keep funding it) but not nearly as expensive as maintaining a massive nuclear arsenal and the associated delivery systems (except the Shuttle vastly exceeded its design and operating budgets and never even came close to lowering the cost of launching material into orbit, and it turned out the nuke ICBMs were cheaper after all). 

But it wasn't the expense that ultimately canceled the program, so much as the idea of the sheer power of such a weapon.

You see, Thor, once implemented, could be used to impose an ironclad dictatorship over friend and foe alike.

You could use it against targets in the Middle East and the Soviet Union (remember, it was still the Cold War), but you could also use it against uppity Americans. Or your allies, if they forgot who their friends were. 

Now, there were certainly those who salivated at the idea of such power, but eventually it was cancelled before any serious hardware was constructed. They never got a working platform into space (probably).

But...

If we had built it, can you imagine handing over control of such a thing to Donald Trump in 2016? The power of surgical strike tactical and/or strategic nuclear weapons without the associated downside of radiation, EMP, and long term contamination? Can you imagine handing control of that system over to the guy who wanted to know why we couldn't just nuke a hurricane? The guy who gleefully bragged on worldwide TV about dropping the "Mother of all Bombs" on Afghanistan?

That guy? 

Can you? 

Can you imagine that?

Who would he have used such weapons on? Think about that. Think about that power in any president's hands. 

I know Marjorie Taylor Greene is thinking about such power right now. 

I know she is. I don't have to guess. She told us. She keeps telling us.

That's all she and her ilk think about.

The power of God. And using it on us, those she considers undesirable and where have we heard this sort of thing before?

Yes, of course, Greene's amendment is idiotic. 

We're not going to build space lasers. Not yet. Not now. For the same reasons we didn't build Thor. We won't build Space Lasers for a lot of reasons. 

But this isn't really about that, is it?

It's about how these vile people think. 

It's about how they dream of having the absolute power of gods, being able to send down lightning from the heavens and fry the people they hate. Us.

The state of the art -- and the limitations of the budget -- won't let them do that. Yet.

But that doesn't make us safe from our leaders who dream about killing us. 

If you let them have power, they'll find a way to eliminate those they despise and they won't need science fiction weapons to do it. Whether it's cattle cars, camps, cyanide showers, and gas chambers or something more modern, they'll find a way just as those of their evil ilk always have. 

Because that's all they dream about. 

It's all they dream about. They tell you this in speeches, in their social media posts, in every amendment they write. They can not go a single minute without fantasizing about mass murder. 

Those like Marjorie Taylor Greene, like Trump, like the modern Republican Party, they don't build better futures. Not even for themselves. 

The only things they build are walls. 

The only things they create are new ways to to commit mass murder.

Their gods are hate and fear and profit. 

If you give them power, they'll use it to kill. To burn. To destroy. To tear down civilization and bury history in mass graves next to all those they despise. They told us so. 

It's all they dream about.

It's right there in their words, they don't even try to hide it. 

It's aways fascinating to me, the irony when someone whose entire identity is vested in some charismatic wannabe dictator calls me a communist.

A communist. 

Fuck. 

I'm not a communist. Never have been. And in fact I spent a not insignificant fraction of my adult life in the uniform of my country standing against communism. I despise communism. 

I'm not even a socialist -- not that these drooling halfwits can tell the difference between socialism and communism, or care to find out.

Hell, I barely qualify as a liberal most of the time. 

And you wouldn't have to read very far back in the archives of this blog to figure that out. But the truly ironic part is where most of these people proudly wear their Christianity on their sleeve. A religion whose own founding prophet allegedly told his adherents in no uncertain terms: feed the hungry, clothe the poor, heal the sick, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into heaven, judge not least ye by judged... 

And we could have done that. 

Even if you don't believe in that god, even if you don't adhere to that religion, those are good ideas. Feed the hungry. Clothe the poor. Heal the sick. The Golden Rule. We could have done all of that. We could have fed everyone by now. We could have clothed and sheltered everyone on the planet. We could have healed almost everyone, or at least made sure everyone had effective quality medical care. We could all be wealthy. We could all be entitled to liberty and justice. We could have made this world a paradise for all, instead of embracing an ideology that promises salvation to only a select few and eternal misery to all the rest. 

We could have done that.

Mad?

You damn right, I'm mad. 

Scared?

Yes, that too. 

I'm fucking furious at all the things we could have dared, and did not. 

I'm terrified of what these dirty rotten selfish greedy miserable fanatical sons of bitches will do next, should we let them have power again. 

We better show up. 

We better do our duty. 

We'd better stand fast, shoulder to shoulder, against the fall of night, or one day real soon they'll find a way to burn us all down and civilization along with us. 

You want a better nation? 

Hell, you want a future where our leaders don't dream about murdering us? 

Then you have to be a better citizen. That's where it starts. 

 

"Pffaww, They're a pair! They don't like anything. They don't even like the dachshund. Who doesn't like dachshunds? They're little parcels of dog-shaped goodness. I've known Jalabite Hegemon ships that give up conquest and start little farmsteads just so they can have happy dachshunds. Everyone likes dachshunds, everywhere in the universe. Well, except on Bithomorency. People there got into a war with a refugee column of evolutionarily advanced dachshund super soldiers fleeing the destruction of their home world. The wire-haired marines took out an entire town. Two hundred thousand dead. And it was a tragic misunderstanding. The dachshunds only stopped to ask for some biscuits, automated defense systems fired on them. There's a lesson: never give control of your space weapons to an unsupervised machine. Schoolboy error.”
― Nick Harkaway, Doctor Who: Keeping Up with the Joneses

No Safety

 

"The only evidence I see of the antichrist here is everyone's desire to see him at work."
-- William of Baskerville, The Name of the Rose

God will not save us.

If that's what you were hoping for, you're going to be disappointed.

Your deity will not save the Republic and it's not like he promised to anyway. 

Either he's not up there, or he doesn't much care. 

Or, more likely, he's a Republican and from what I gather he doesn't have much use for democracy in the first place.

Either way, he's not going to save us. 

He's not. 

Plague, genocide, mass murder, fire, flood, locusts, nailing people to crosses, those are his specialties. He's not big on free will or women thinking for themselves and Donald Trump is right up his alley -- well, at least the American Evangelical version anyway. 

What's that? 

Oh, you're insulted already and we're only a couple paragraphs in? 

Good. It's about time you got mad. If I'd known, I would have insulted your god long ago. 

You're going to need that energy in the coming years.

You see, whatever your god is or is not, what I'm saying is that while I'd be happy to be proven wrong, given his track record when it comes to such things I probably wouldn't count on thoughts and prayers saving the Republic anytime soon.

Nope. 

Likewise, some Special Counsel isn't going to save us. 

The Attorney General isn't going to save us -- and can't now even if he wanted to, which he very clearly does not. 

I told you, back when the liberals were all giddy and swooning over Robert Mueller, that it would go nowhere. Oh, there was plenty there, sure. Obviously so. Russia Russia Russia. We all saw it. Hell, Putin bragged openly about how he diddled our elections. A massive Russian intelligence operation was uncovered. Thirty-four people were indicted, including prominent members of Trump's Campaign. A bunch of them went to jail, but not Trump. Mueller was too much of an old school G-man. He thought it would be enough to lay out the evidence and Department of Justice and Congress and Republicans would do the right and honorable thing like it was 1974 and Richard Nixon was giving us the finger on the way out the door with the White House silverware. Mueller couldn't wrap his head around the fact that there were no honorable Republicans left, including and most especially Bill Barr -- who is ironically today warning America about the dangers of electing Donald Trump again and he certainly would know, wouldn't he? 

Speaking of Attorney Generals, I told you Merrick Garland would fail us. I fucking told you. I told you that if Trump wasn't indicted, charged, and convicted in time, he never would be. There was a window, maybe two years, where Garland could have put Trump away and the nation might have accepted it and we could have moved on with minimal violence. He's got to go slow! Garland has to cross the T's and dot the I's! It's a painstaking process, have faith in the system! My audience screamed at me. You're not a lawyer! You don't know! And you were right, I'm not a lawyer. But I do know politics. I'm certainly not an expert on the law, but I know what civil war looks like -- I've been in the middle of more than one. 

Liberals just never understood that this was never about the law. 

It was always about public perception and that's something Donald Trump understands very well indeed. 

Now it's election season and it's too damn late for Merrick Garland. We can't put Trump away because he's the nominee. We can't even keep him off the ballot. Q.E.D.

And here we are exactly as I told you we would be.

The Court is not going to save us. 

I mean, come on, you're not in any way whatsoever surprised by the Trump Supreme Court decision, are you? 

You're not that damn naive. 

No, you knew, or you should have anyway. It's not like you weren't warned. 

SCOTUS, champion of "States Rights," has decided that states do not have the right to keep Trump off their primary ballots despite the very, very clear and unambiguous language of the Constitution specifically requiring them to do exactly that. 

But, again, you're not really surprised, are you? You were warned, over and over and over again. You were warned what would happened if Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell were allowed to pick the majority of Justices. You were warned. You knew. Don't pretend you didn't. But not enough Americans cared, not back when it would have made a difference. Not enough to show up for the elections where their votes could have actually changed the outcomes. Those elections weren't sexy enough, weren't important enough, didn't affect them personally enough. Hell here in my own Florida District 1, serial sex trafficker Matt Gaetz's district, less than half of registered voters even bother to show up for anything less than the general election every four years -- the one election where their vote doesn't actually decide the outcome. 

And here we are.  

This bought-and-paid-for Supreme Court was never going to save the Republic. You knew that. 

Yes, you did. 

This Court was put in place to save Trump not the Republic. 

This Court was put in place to serve Republicans and the Kochs, to turn women into livestock, to unleash Christian Evangelical fanaticism on us. And they will do exactly that. 

Oh yes they will, with a vengeance. 

We could have stopped it, but it wasn't important enough to enough Americans. And by the time it was, it was too late. 

And here we are. 

The Press for goddamn sure isn't going to save us. 

The Press is the only private enterprise given enumerated rights in the Constitution. Did you know that? But the Press has long ago given up their sacred role as the watchdog of liberty in exchange for clicks and likes and profit. 

The kind of journalism that once brought down Richard Nixon is as dead and buried as Trump's first wife. 

Moreover, the Press has no interest in saving the Republic. 

Why would they? 

Blood, war, disaster, Trump, that's what sells, that's what pays million dollar CEO salaries. That's what built William Randolph Hearst a castle on top of a mountain. Trump has been a media cash cow for forty years, they won't give him up until he's dead and probably not even then. 

When the Press tells you Joe Biden is old, what they really mean is that Joe Biden is boring.

They're not wrong. Biden is boring. Good government should be boring. You shouldn't have to think about it all the time. You shouldn't have to spend every minute worrying if the lunatic in charge is going to start a trade war or invade your uterus or just randomly decide to drop nuclear bombs on a hurricane. 

But boring doesn't sell. 

Boring doesn't generate views. 

Boring doesn't make media CEOs into billionaires or build castles on top of California mountains. 

The Press isn't going to save us, even if it means they get put against the wall. Hell, they'll livestream their own execution for clout. Watch and see if they don't. 

A lifetime of sloth, fast food, and clogged arteries is not going to save us. 

Not in time anyway.

The Republican nominee for president is a twice impeached, self-declared serial rapist, a convicted fraud, and a tax cheat currently out on bail, facing ninety-one felonies in four different jurisdictions, who owes over a half a billion dollars in restitution for his crimes, who can't differentiate between a picture of the woman he raped and the mother of his children (who he also raped, that's why she divorced his flabby orange ass, and why he had her buried in an overgrown weed-choked plot on his golf course for a tax break), who is so addlepated he often doesn't know the name of the current president and his supporters have to keep making excuses for his fits of dementia and increasing memory lapses, who brags about how he managed to identify an elephant like he'd discovered nuclear fusion on a test any five year old could pass, and who led an insurrection against his own country live on national television.

His opponent is boring. 

But we're acting like this is some sort of normal race between normal candidates. 

It isn't. And hasn't been for at least twenty years now.

It's not just Trump who is spiraling down into madness, it's the entire Republican Party. But we keep acting like this is normal. Just like the good Germans did a few generations back. 

And here we are. 

We all know what another Trump presidency means. 

Liberals know. 

Conservatives know. 

Our allies know. Putin knows. 

The courts know. The Press knows. 

Your god knows, if he's up there. 

We all know. We don't have to guess. Trump is literally telling the entire world what he'll do:

I'd love to see the following question put to Trump. 

GIVE US A "THEORETICAL" EXAMPLE OF A "PROPER DECISION" THAT REQUIRES PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY FROM THE LAW.

What's that? The Press? No, I don't expect the Press to demand that answer from Trump or even from Republicans. He wouldn't answer anyway. 

But Congress? 

The Court? 

Yeah, the branches of government charged with checks and balances on Executive power? I expect it from them.

That's their goddamn duty. 

Listen, can a president order the FBI to dismember a journalist with a bone saw if he thinks it's the "proper decision" for America? That's what happens in Saudi Arabia where those in charge have immunity from the law. 

Is that what Trump means? 

Can a president order the CIA to throw those who criticize government out of a 10th story window for the public good? That's what happens in Russia where Vladimir Putin is immune from accountability. Is that what Trump means? 

Can a president order the army to execute his brother-in-law with an anti-aircraft gun? That's what happens in North Korea where Kim Jong Un has total presidential immunity. 

Well? 

You think I'm engaged in hyperbole, don't you? 

But am I? 

Donald Trump has promised to be a dictator on Day One. What does he mean by that and who will suffer for it? Don't you think maybe we should find out before he's allowed back in office? 

Don't you think maybe Congress should find out?

Don't you think the Court should find out before they allow him back on the ballot?

If the president has total immunity, can he then order the government to raise taxes on the citizenry and business without regard to their particular representation in congress? What if it's to pay for a war with, say, France? If not, why not? And is there perhaps a historical example of this particular situation in American history?

Say, speaking of our history, let me ask you this: If the president has total immunity, can the president then refuse to sign or enforce laws -- even those "most wholesome and necessary for the public good?" Can he? Can the president order state Governors to likewise refuse to "pass laws of immediate and pressing importance?" How about this: Can the president refuse to pass laws unless the people who want those laws are willing to give up their right to "Representation in the Legislature?" If you're a Republican, think about this in the context of your complaint regarding Joe Biden and the border. 

Can the president order the congress to meet in locations "unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records?" Can the president just dissolve Congress entirely, if the legislature opposes him "with manly firmness?" and then refuse to allow election of new representatives?

Can the president refuse to allow immigration? (I know. I know, you're wondering what sort of weird tangent I've gone off on, aren't you? Can the president refuse to allow immigration and what? Hang on, it'll become clear in a few more lines)

Can he refuse to appoint judges? Or only appoint them if they swear loyalty to him? (and has he done so already?)

Can the president just appoint new government officials and send them out to "harass our people and eat out their substance?"

Can he increase the size of the army and make us pay for it? And can he make the military independent of civilian oversight or give it power over civilian authority or even require us to house soldiers in our homes? And if the military turns its guns on Americans, can the president protect those soldiers from any punishment or accountability -- particularly if they did so on his orders? (Say in Chicago, for example)

Can the president just cut off trade with the rest of the world if he wants? (why does this sound so familiar?)

Can he raise taxes? He can lower them, right? So, why can't he just raise taxes as well? If not, why not? 

Can the president suspend your right to trial by jury? Or transport you overseas without a trial to be tried by a foreign court for "pretended offenses?" (and if you're thinking about rendition right now, you get a cookie)

Can the president invade a neighboring country, abolish its government, establish his own totalitarian puppet state and then point to it as an example of why absolutism would be likewise good for you? If not, why not? What stops him? (and will Mexico pay for it?)

Can the president fundamentally change the nature of our government?

Can the president make laws without Congress?

Can the president declare war on his own citizens? Or if not war, then refuse to defend America from those who would "plunder our seas, ravage our coasts, burn our towns, and destroy the lives of our people?" Can he hire foreign mercenaries to do it instead of the army? Can he conscript you and make you wage war on your fellows? 

What does Trump mean by "total presidential immunity?"

Does he mean any of that? 

No? Of course not. That sounds crazy -- well, except for the parts where it doesn't, right? Are you sure? 

Are you? 

How do you know?

Because that's the Declaration of Independence. 

Those were the grievances our Founders used as justification to tell King George III to shove his immunity up his inbred ass. 

Oh, but then there's the last line, the final straw.

This one: "He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us..."

Yeah. Right there. That.

The Founding Fathers were so outraged by that idea of the guy in charge fomenting domestic insurrection, turning American colonist against American colonist, that it pushed them into open rebellion against a King who likewise thought he should have immunity from the very laws he imposed on his subjects.

Presidents do not have immunity.

The very idea is abhorrent to liberty and justice and the founding of this country.  

Instead our leaders must be held to the highest levels of accountability at all times.

That is literally the entire point of the Constitution itself. 

The Grand Old Party started out with Abraham Lincoln and ended up with Trump. 

Lincoln was assassinated by a cowardly seditionist who believed in the same violent rhetoric and oppression as Donald Trump -- and it's little wonder why the ideological descendants of John Wilkes Booth are front and center at every Trump rally proudly waving their Confederate flags and shouting for violence and murder. 

That's the Republican candidate for president. 

The Courts will not save us. History and tradition will not save us. The Press will not save us. 

Our children are not going to save us -- but they very well might end up pissing on our graves for our lack of courage. 

And your silly god will most certainly not save us. 

There's no miracle coming. 

There is no easy way out of this where you again get to be a lazy spectator to history while someone else does the grunt work of democracy. 

Not this time. 

No, you're going to have to show up. 

You're going to have to show up and do your duty even if you don't want to. 

You're going to have to show up and make a decision, even if you don't like the choices. That's why they call it duty, Citizen. 

It's not about you. It's about the Republic. 

You're going to have to face down the goons and the brawlers and demand your just place on the right side of history, even if it costs you your life.

You're going to have to face down the violent fanatics, not for yourself but for those who cannot fight themselves -- for if civilization cannot defend the helpless from savage brutality, if it cannot give voice to the voiceless, if it cannot grant freedom to those in chains and liberty to all, then what damn good is it? 

If you want a better nation, then you're going to have to be a better citizen. Even if you don't want to be.

It's up to us, same as it always was.

“In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the People.”
-- Eugene Victor Debs