this may alarm some of my readers, so I feel like I ought to explain and qualify my words somewhat.
it is my considered opinion that a *certain conception of God* must be laid to rest. I've loosely termed this conception of God "the #Christian God", but that's tricky...
...since #Christianity is such a fearfully atomized and scattered assortment of different cults, all of them centered in some way on the #Bible and the spiritual event known to Christians as the Incarnation, that the very word "#Christian" no longer has a certain meaning.
(2/x)
it cannot be denied, however, that there is a #Christian mainstream in Western society; its American manifestation is particularly noisy, very well-funded from money trickling down from wealthy capitalists like the Koch Brothers, and fascıstic in its political inclination.
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the goals of this hyperpolitical #Christian movement are clear to any honest soul who has been following American #politics for any length of time. mainstream media, though, barely notices that U.S. "Christofascism" is much of a problem. @mtaibbi has other fish to fry.
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the @GOP is the loyal political instrument of American Christofascism; @TheDemocrats do their part by discreetly giving reactionary #Christianity as wide a berth as possible. their own "big tent" contains authoritarian Christians as well; they don't want to alienate them.
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this is a vital, central feature of mainstream #American#Christianity: its chief exponents aren't churches and priests, but *politicians* and *pundits*.
yes, there's high-profile celebrity preachers in this Christofascist movement, like @PastorMark and @dalepartridge...
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...but the true priesthood of this nightmarishly corrupt and degraded form of American Christianity are @GOP politicians, and the numerous #conservative pundits whose careers are devoted to propping up sagging right-wing ideology, people like @DouthatNYT and @sullydish.
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people like @DouthatNYT and @sullydish are remarkable in that they exist almost for the sole purpose of advertising their commitment to #Christian morals, and yet they bristle in anger when challenged on their own morality. hypocrisy radiates from them in all directions.
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this politicized American #Christianity, in fact, has condensed around a value system that has almost nothing to do with anything that a layperson might think of as a #Christian value. @GOP politicians and right-wing pundits of the @MattBruenig type *hate the virtues*.
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especially since the @GOP's treasonable dealings with Iran placed @RonaldReagan into office as a scripted mouthpiece for evangelical Christian propaganda, this reactionary American Christofascist movement has discarded most of its morality as politically inconvenient.
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they've invented false virtues to replace the old #Christian ones.
"charity" now means creating corporate tax shelters. "generosity", i.e. giving people things without demanding anything back, is *evil* to right-wing #Christians; it breeds "entitlement" and "dependence".
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the modern-day American mainstream #Christian is like @dalepartridge or @MattWalshBlog or @robertjeffress—they're cynical men of business, people who have turned their "faith" into profit-making enterprises. and they are intensely hateful, bıgoted, harmful human beings.
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and yet @dalepartridge and @MattWalshBlog at the same time consider themselves to be *men of God*, specially blessed by Jesus, their sins permanently washed clean. these vestigial, corrupted #Christians really and truly think of themselves as *perfect* and *inerrant*.
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it's been the way of Western society and #journalism in particular to regard the spectacle of American Christofascism as a mere circus sideshow. "the West" is founded upon #Christian values and preserved them in secularized forms, but (like @DouthatNYT) it's hypocritical.
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American #politics, in particular, wants to pretend that mainstream U.S. #Christianity is merely another religion, just one of many. U.S. politicians and pundits both freely use "religion" and "religious freedom" to refer *very specifically* to American Christofascism.
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the intensely *political* nature of American #Christianity, as well as the ingrained _racism_ of American Christendom, has been concealed as much as possible by mainstream #journalism.
nobody *wants* to deal with these folks, because they're so unpleasant and relentless.
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but we *must* examine and dissect American #Christianity, lest it destroy us all—for these Christofascists want the world to be destroyed in an apocalypse.
*eschatology*, i.e. the intellectual preoccupation with the end of all things, is a major U.S. #Christian pastime.
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@dalepartridge, @MattWalshBlog, @PastorMark, &c. have been planning for the End Times for as long as they've been alive and able to speak, most likely. #Christianity has in fact always been like this; the early #Christians thought Jesus was coming back really soon, too.
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that was eighteen hundred years ago and more! you can maybe see why @dalepartridge and @MattWalshBlog and all the rest of these American #Christofascist fanatics are getting very impatient indeed. they're running out of options—their numerous crimes have attracted notice.
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"God"—the God of mainstream American #Christianity, an entity that's quite distinct from the Jewish deity and from Islam's Allah—has promised @MattWalshBlog, @dalepartridge, &c. this ultimate evasion of all responsibility for all their sins and misdeeds. they think this.
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they really do. they've banked their careers, their very *personalities*, on this promise of ultimate reward—this permanent escape from the harsh realities of life on Earth, the same harsh realities that @dalepartridge &c. gleefully beat their enemies over the heads with.
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for to be this sort of American #Christian is to be a hypocrite about *everything*, including things like responsibility and punishment.
@dalepartridge &c. think they've been assured a permanent holiday from these things...
...they have not. their "God" has failed them.
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quite clearly the "God" of American Christofascism, the "God" of @GOP politicians, the "God" of @dalepartridge and @MattWalshBlog, the "God" in whose name Republicans write fascıst legislation, is not who they say He is.
oh right. I was going to say something about "God"—the being whom right-wing Christians seem to worship, the "God" who seems like so much *smaller* a thing than a truly omnipotent Creator—and how He's a demonstrably loyal friend to authoritarians and bloodstained tyrants.
#Christianity was permanently warped by its growth medium—the authoritarian and bureaucratic structures of Roman rule. Rome was a harsh and brutal state; "Western civilization", #Christian civilization, continues to imitate the tyrannical Roman model to this very day.
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not once has "the West" ever lost its fondness for rule by absolute monarchy. right-wing blowhards like @DouthatNYT and @MattWalshBlog reflexively fall at the feet of every military strongman or corporate dictator or @GOP politician in whom they sense Great Man potential.
incidentally we've been watching the 2006 documentary film "Jesus Camp" intermittently today. we've only watched forty minutes so far; it's upsetting material. right-wing #Christianity is an upsetting thing to deal with; just ask the *victims*.
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@dalepartridge, whom I've given special attention this day (the feast day of St. Agnes—but that's just a coincidence; also it's #NationalHuggingDay) might be attempting to console himself with imagining that I'm a mere vengeful *victim* of right-wing Christianity. I'm not.
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I'm an apostate #Catholic whose personal experience of Catholicism was in fact rather mild and not without its positive qualities...though there was also a lot of sadness and disappointment. I wanted to reach out to God. I reached out and felt...a void. mournful emptiness.
we've played this music a few times a day, routinely, for a long while now. Kajiura Yuki's theme music for #FateZero: "Back to Zero". it's one of my favorite pieces.
we've used it for grounding ourselves—it is, after all, right there in the name.
(1/x)
"Fate/Zero" is fiction. our present-day world may have magic in it, for surely magic is as eternal as anything that's woven into the Beatific Vision; magic, I tell myself in hope, can never completely die. but it has no magic like that of the mages of the "Fate/" universe.
(2/x)
it is perhaps well that this is so. one of the lessons of the "Fate/" universe ought to be that humanity perhaps ought *not* to have magic, because magical crimes are truly nightmarish in scope and scale. a little handful of mages almost bring about the end of the world...
"God" falls easily from the lips of the world's worst human beings. @MattWalshBlog thirsts to impregnate children, and perhaps has actually done that—and he's a "man of God". his child rapist friend @joshduggar—a "man of God".
@dalepartridge is a grifter, a confidence trickster, a squalid grasping man of #business consumed by avarice and pride—but, a "man of God". @laurenboebert habitually embezzles public money for her private use—but she's "faithful" to "God".
it's an astonishing phenomenon.
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clearly "God" is something different from what @dalepartridge &c. all pretend He's about, i.e. infinite everything. all power, all knowledge, all love, etc. etc. etc.
in fact this "God" is defined by the *absence of definite qualities*. omnipotence is void, featureless.
and really this is what the failure of #capitalism boils down to: capitalists hate *equilibrium*. a healthy planet full of life is a physical system—one of profound complexity, but still, a system in dynamic equilibrium, maintaining an approximately steady state over time.
"steady state", in economic terms, would mean a #business that continues to provide approximately the same services or products over time to a steady clientele—not a *constant* number of clients but one that varies up and down with time, oscillating about a steady average.
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and this #business would continue over time to charge about the same for its products or services, and the profit rakeoff going towards workforce and #management pay would also remain about the same. this approximately stable state would be a business at equilibrium.
@jordanbpeterson a sure sign @jordanbpeterson is really a dunce, is that he *talks* like a dunce about science. this muddled, profoundly ignorant man—who undoubtedly pretends, like all #Christian fanatics do these days, to be a champion and guardian of science—*makes fun* of science.
~Chara
@jordanbpeterson global warming isn't tough to grasp if you know a few basic things about science. @jordanbpeterson could learn these things, if he weren't dedicated to *remaining* the dunce that he is.
the _carbon cycle_ of the Earth involves the interchange of carbon between physical phases.