It should be much more at the forefront of our minds, the extent to which the most politically activated and politically empowered segment of the authoritarian American cult calling itself "Christian" see the apocalypse as something to hasten, not prevent.
Now ... I'm aware that there's a Christianity that doesn't ascribe to Rapture Theology and Prosperity Theology—I include myself—but I'm not inclined to make a differentiation betwixt and between, or to "not all Christians" this, for a few reasons:
1) This cult has infiltrated "regular" Christianity 2) regular Christianity accepts the graft, treating the madness as difference of opinion to accept rather than a defining break, because ... 3) This cult represents the more politically activated and influential group
What do they believe?
They believe they and they alone are chosen by God for eternal life.
That everybody else is chosen for eternal punishment.
That nothing they can do can change that.
That the world will be destroyed and God will evacuate them to a gated community afterlife.
Imagine what believing everyone but you and a few select people (who mostly look as you do) does to how you think other people should be treated. Or warnings of mass extinction.
You want the mass-extinction. You want the planet to burn. That's part of the plan.
Mass extinction? The planet destroyed?
That's how you get your gated community. That's how you get a better house.
It's a genocide theology. It's an apocalypse cult. It sold a billion copies of a book series called Left Behind.
It's running our government.
It is logically impossible to believe that you are in God's small select group of chosen beloved and that everyone else is rightfully doomed to eternal torture without on some level not caring what happens to those other people.
It's a genocide theology.
It is logically impossible to believe the end of the world means you're about to be catapulted out of a world of pain into a world of eternal joy without wanting the end of the world to happen.
It's an apocalypse cult.
The theology boils down to "the people who intrinsically matter will be evacuated out while those who intrinsically don't matter are destroyed."
How would one expect a political entity who believed this to react to global challenges? Exactly how the Republican Party is acting.
Horde wealth
Stockpile weapons
Favor the people who look like you (they aren't elect *because* they're white, how dare you suggest it, it's just that God's favored *happen* to be people who look like you, crazy coincidence that)
Demonize the rest
Get the women under control
My point is there may have never existed a greater threat to human life than the Christian-backed Republican Party.
They're an apocalypse cult with nukes and a genocide theology.
We have to demand Democrats deliver an uncompromising fight.
1) Voter and election protection/gerrymandering reform 2) Green energy/climate plan NOW 3) Then we start working on centering our other priorities on human thriving over corporate profit
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There's a moment in Steven Soderbergh's film Traffic where the newly freed drug boss says to the drug lawyer who had been working behind his back "do you know the difference between a reason and an excuse? Because I don't."
At this point the lawyer knows he is in deep shit. 🧵
(By the way this thread is part of a longer essay, but if I lead off the thread with a link to an outside source, it usually gets crushed by this site's dork owner and his algorithm shenanigans, so here you go.)
Anyway the lawyer knows he's in deep shit because "do you know the difference between a reason and an excuse" means "I'm not buying your bullshit," and if newly-freed-drug-lords-behind-whose-back-you've-been-working aren't buying your bullshit, then it is murder goon o'clock.
One thing I’ve noticed is, the meanest tables are often popular ones. Sometimes they are the most popular. My observation here would be that bullies know that cultivating friendly relationships is useful and necessary for effective bullying.
Any abuser knows they need accomplices. If dad is getting drunk and beating mom up he’s going to need everyone to keep nice and quiet about it, and if anybody squawks then it’s got to be quickly framed as something bad being done to him rather than the other way around.
If it looks as if the truth of the story is about to get around he’s going to need people to stand up for him in that moment and say things like this: “Nooooo! Not him. I know him. He would never. He has never been anything but nice to me.”
When people decide to leave the place they are and move to a different place, there’s an observable order to it. The order is very important.
So, in movement, there is the moment of arrival at the destination.
But before that moment, there is the actual journey. We began here. We moved until we got there. We put one foot in front of the other. We set sail and kept going until we arrived. The aircraft cut its way across the sky. This is the journey.
There's so much scandal all the time, it can be hard to remember where we are, much less how we got here. But they say it's important remember the lessons of the past, or else we're fated to do...something, I forget what, I forget, I forget.
It's really hard to know where to begin when it comes to where we are. There's only so much sheer volume of blatant corruption and noxious hate that a person can stay aware of even if they're trying. Eventually something pushes out.
It came out this week that NC Republican gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson has in past years spent his time posting pro-slavery and pro-Nazi comments on porn sites, and other things of that nature, many of which are so bad CNN, who broke the story, declined to print them.
Conservatives keep telling us they're oppressed, and when they define what form the oppression takes, they explain that other kinds of people ... exist.
You know what? Let's do it. Let's actually do it. I think we ought to oppress conservatives.
Other people *should* exist. 🧵
Let's oppress conservatives with a kind and open and generous world that they will hate and fear specifically because it will care for everyone, even them, while it refuses any longer to accommodate the revenge fantasies that they call "self-defense."
At the bottom of it all, it strikes me that conservatives are driven by fear. They're big fraidy-cats, scared specifically of the ongoing danger of good and necessary things, of openness and diversity and peace and plenty.
Last Tuesday Donald Trump shat his pants on national TV. Ever since, he's been scooting his butt around on the national carpet to dislodge the detritus of loserdom. It's standard wounded narcissist self-care behavior, and it would be nice if all of this could be *only* funny. 🧵
Unfortunately, it can't be only funny; Trump and his gang are engaged in some shockingly evil rhetoric even for them—promising that, for the crime of existing while undesirable to conservatives, as many people as possible will be hurt, as soon and as badly as possible.
Incidentally, this thread is part of an essay that you can read right here on my weekly newsletter, The Reframe.