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T-man posted:So Trump is calling himself the chosen one now, how hosed are we all scale of 10 to 10 oh 11 but that's got nothing to do with the guy in Trump's skull huckin darts at notecards
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Aug 22, 2019 04:39
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I'm working on a thread about it Willie. I've got about 7000 words written on the Socialist Desicion. Probably will put an OP around the end of the month and then will put up my take away of a chapter from the book every few days. I'm going to be real pissy and away from my family for three days that'll be a good time to put it up, if I have internet. I think I'll have internet in Seward. I might have been able to put off getting to this book indefinately, Prester's a good portion of why I can't. It's rough and unproof read and I'm writing casually. I'm only addressing one work. But it's a really important one.
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Aug 22, 2019 05:01
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Willie Tomg posted:substantially less hosed than .... Yeah those things got better going from Obama to Trump and it's great how much power the centrist narrative has lost. I'd hesitate to call things excellent. The cult of Trump has still hosed us in terms of a total death of consequences in the public eye, and a sense of immunity from scandal among public officials and private racists. What he's done to negate the judicial branch and regulatory enforcement hasn't helped. Conmen like Elon Musk are absolutely thriving in this worsening culture when he wouldn't have lasted nearly this long a decade ago. Conmen thrived then too, but only ones who had to have the ability to be somewhat subtle about it. The climate was your main counterexample to things being improving, but don't forget about the economy either. That poo poo's not getting better no matter how far left Trump accidentally shifts the overton window. The wealth in our society has been sucked dry in an upward direction for so long that it is functionally all gone and it isn't coming back short of completely overthrowing the government.
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Aug 22, 2019 05:23
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T-man posted:So Trump is calling himself the chosen one now, how hosed are we all scale of 10 to 10 In all probability this situation has come about as a result of the evangelicals in the Council on National Policy gaining significant sway over Trump behind closed doors. And because the Council on National Policy is largely made up of semi competent fascists.....yeah we are pretty hosed.
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Aug 22, 2019 05:28
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Willie Tomg posted:
Willie I am profoundly disinterested in engaging with you, cuz you have made it explicitly clear that you think that anyone speaking to me with anything other than contempt is abusing me somehow. You havf made it explicitly clear that your agenda here is to make sure that I do things and that I write exactly the way you think I should, and that you will be as offensive/demeaning as you can get away with if I do not comply. At this point I don't really care what you have to say. Please just move on and post somewhere else. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Aug 22, 2019 05:35
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Dumb Lowtax posted:Yeah those things got better going from Obama to Trump and it's great how much power the centrist narrative has lost. I'd hesitate to call things excellent. The cult of Trump has still hosed us in terms of a total death of consequences in the public eye, and a sense of immunity from scandal among public officials and private racists. What he's done to negate the judicial branch and regulatory enforcement hasn't helped. Conmen like Elon Musk are absolutely thriving in this worsening culture when he wouldn't have lasted nearly this long a decade ago. Conmen thrived then too, but only ones who had to have the ability to be somewhat subtle about it. The climate was your main counterexample to things being improving, but don't forget about the economy either. That poo poo's not getting better no matter how far left Trump accidentally shifts the overton window. The wealth in our society has been sucked dry in an upward direction for so long that it is functionally all gone and it isn't coming back short of completely overthrowing the government. you have a rosy motherfucking view of gates and jobs and actually considering what he was up to a decade+ ago, also elon musk still, and the economy has basically tread water while we move numbers on a balance sheet which iirc you post in Doomsday Economics thread so im preaching to the choir but the point is: quote:The wealth in our society has been sucked dry in an upward direction for so long that it is functionally all gone and it isn't coming back short of completely overthrowing the government. quote:What he's done to negate the judicial branch and regulatory enforcement hasn't helped Hrm.. yeah. Yeah. its.... it's a real corker! It's a real mystery what on earth is to be done, here. I suspect it'll be a trice of the ol' bump-n-grind. lmao remember when the courts just unilaterally decided we'd have an evangelical president in 2000? and america went along with it because the other guy wore "earth tones" to casual events and preferred to have a beer with the recovering alcoholic? god, it all seems so quaint now.
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Aug 22, 2019 05:37
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BrandorKP posted:I'm working on a thread about it Willie. I've got about 7000 words written on the Socialist Desicion. Probably will put an OP around the end of the month and then will put up my take away of a chapter from the book every few days. I'm going to be real pissy and away from my family for three days that'll be a good time to put it up, if I have internet. I think I'll have internet in Seward. I might have been able to put off getting to this book indefinately, Prester's a good portion of why I can't. It's rough and unproof read and I'm writing casually. I'm only addressing one work. But it's a really important one. orthogonal to this (maybe atop it though, depending on your eventual construction), i am fascinated by the spaces where liberalism is just a secular euphemism for theology. that was a key inflection point growing up, where i had to reconcile my generally left leanings with my then-edgelord atheism--which could've just as easily turned into microwaved-Hitchens alt-rightism!--and come to terms with some kind of personal peace with materialist dialectics. Prester Jane posted:Willie I am profoundly disinterested in engaging with you as long as you engage your ideas toward analyzing this thread--because its psychology and not anthropology, so i'm told, thus far more broadly applicable--disengage with me to your heart's content.
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Aug 22, 2019 05:58
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Oh word, we just have to do a revolution against the state? Nobody ever mentioned it. Thank you for your wise advice, O internet-brained Willie Tomg.
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Aug 22, 2019 07:17
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I didn't know that the great magician - turned - cult-exposer James Randi wrote a book about Nostradamus's hustle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mask_of_Nostradamus  I'll bet it's quite good. If you don't know James Randi, he is best known for this documentary, and a lot of great more recent YouTube talks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MFAvH8m8aI
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Aug 24, 2019 20:30
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Dumb Lowtax posted:Economics is taught as a narrative The Koch Brothers have been taking over college economics departments for years now and dictating what is taught in exchange for funding: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/10/spreading-the-free-market-gospel/413239/
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Aug 26, 2019 22:55
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Best Korea posted:The Koch Brothers have been taking over college economics departments for years now and dictating what is taught in exchange for funding: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/10/spreading-the-free-market-gospel/413239/ Lol my econ 101 class in college had a lecture on Mao set to O Fortuna
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Aug 26, 2019 23:02
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Economics has been a mix of cheerleading and soothsaying for the ultra-wealthy for decades.
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Aug 29, 2019 08:37
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Economics has been a mix of cheerleading and soothsaying for the ultra-wealthy for decades. 
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Aug 29, 2019 14:53
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Economics has been a mix of cheerleading and soothsaying for the ultra-wealthy for decades. There's a reason Economics and Business School are taught at opposite ends of the campus.
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Aug 29, 2019 15:26
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I do wonder if there's any applicability to the whole Shakesville saga. https://theoutline.com/post/7887/shakesville-golden-age-blogging?zd=1&zi=jn4bn3nr It does seem like that major announcements and calls for loyalty basically function as compaction cycles for online communities as they turn into cults that end up fostering and encouraging behaviour that ultimately ends up what could be scientifically referred to as shithouse-rat insane, with the original ideology and mission statement ultimately being little more than flavour text to their particular brand of mob mentality.
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Aug 31, 2019 03:36
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I do wonder if there's any applicability to the whole Shakesville saga. I was idly considering quotedumping this article ITT. I may yet do it, since so many posters here are aggressively resistant to clicking through and reading things.
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Aug 31, 2019 05:21
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Willie Tomg posted:I was idly considering quotedumping this article ITT. I may yet do it, since so many posters here are aggressively resistant to clicking through and reading things. drat straight
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Aug 31, 2019 05:33
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What if--and bear with me here--but what if a psychological theory as distinct from an anthropological study, as espoused here, encompassed people we agreed with in addition to people with whom we had reasons for personal animus, even if it comes at the expense of feeling a whole lot better at being better IRL than people whom we aren't really a whole lot better than because when it comes down to brass tacks neither group has done The Work. What if outside of this thread there were two other Goon Cults I could point to who followed this exact same motherfucking Shakesville pattern?
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Aug 31, 2019 05:35
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Dumb Lowtax posted:drat straight quote:In early 2007 McEwan was hired, along with Amanda Marcotte, who was running the liberal blog Pandagon, to blog for the John Edwards presidential campaign. Both were soon forced to quit after Catholic activist Bill Donahue called them bigots and lobbied for their removal The incident made national news and McEwan achieved what I assume was dizzying notoriety, not least because it attracted a wider variety of troll to her blog and inbox. According to former Shakesville contributor Litbrit, when McEwan tried to move the blog to a new domain, it was subjected to DDOS attacks. She was doxxed and reported that she received rape threats. It is perhaps unsurprising that an air of paranoia became increasingly palpable at Shakesville. (McEwan did not respond to an email requesting comment for this piece.) to be clear: as a child of the 9-11 blog scene who then grew up and became a man to certain metrics of such, i will never, ever, in a million years, accuse PJ of having the volumetric output of melissa mcewan who did a work-job for money. i will accuse PJ eight days out of the week of embodying the weakness of the DemBlog body politic before it became profitable to do so, even though that weakness intersects with my desire for a Sanders nominee. In fact, that she embodies such IS the weakness!! but she will never hit the NumbersTM for a true astroturf campaign. so while the authentic frontier gibberish ITT passes for truth on this dead gay forum, i will contend regardless that conservatism answers material needs better-met by Marxism, where liberalism fails, and electoral results bear that out generally. Willie Tomg has issued a correction as of 06:53 on Aug 31, 2019 |
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Aug 31, 2019 06:48
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What the hell is your problem?
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Aug 31, 2019 06:52
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Ghost Leviathan posted:What the hell is your problem? that you do not learn things from history.
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Aug 31, 2019 06:59
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also society. there's a school which combines history and society: sociology, idk if you've heard if it, you probably have, what/s with being so angry all the time? sorry that was just a grasp at that Uglycat peer group. please don't hit me but also The Sacred Canopy has either some points of aggressive agreement or else aggressive disagreement depending on your perspective. hey: what's your perspective? answer that in the space below; which is a space that was not solicited by your lovely school lmfao but no im serious I would like an answer: quote:and the hosed up thing is: i'm not even kidding.
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Aug 31, 2019 07:11
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Okay, now I'm starting to get a bit worried about you.
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Aug 31, 2019 07:39
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Okay, now I'm starting to get a bit worried about you. No need: this video has your incredibly GBS performance of pretending to think about anything coveredhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHD3ra9TzlQ
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Aug 31, 2019 10:25
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Ghost Leviathan posted:What the hell is your problem? He wants a pretense to find someone socially acceptable to bully/harass- and I've become it for whatever reason. Literally his entire schtick is arguing that posters who engage with my work on any sort of an intellectual level are both me crea ting a cult+well-intentioned Goons playing into my delusions/harming me. He's had weird meltdowns that got him probated simply because someone agreed with something I wrote. His problem is with me not the content of my work; more specifically his problem is with someone so much lower on the social achievement ladder than himself garnering so much attention by doing work he regards as illegitimate/unsanctioned. So he has appointed himself gatekeeper of this thread and will disrupt any conversation that does not take every available opportunity to poo poo on me. (Any response he writes itt will walk a country mile to find a way to poo poo on me.) Just ignore him and move on imo. Prester Jane has issued a correction as of 11:58 on Aug 31, 2019 |
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Aug 31, 2019 11:13
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Willie Tomg posted:there's a school which combines history and society: sociology, idk if you've heard if it Maybe it's the insomnia talking, but this comment really rubbed me the wrong way. Sociology is a living science with fields that are concerned about the past, present, and future in micro and macro scales. It's not all Marx or Foucault. Anyways, I'm going back to lurking.
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Aug 31, 2019 11:31
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Willie Tomg posted:What if--and bear with me here--but what if a psychological theory as distinct from an anthropological study, as espoused here, encompassed people we agreed with in addition to people with whom we had reasons for personal animus, even if it comes at the expense of feeling a whole lot better at being better IRL than people whom we aren't really a whole lot better than because when it comes down to brass tacks neither group has done The Work.  lol
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Aug 31, 2019 13:08
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his whole conduct in the entire thread, sheng-ji, not just that post in particular cool to know i can't report people in this thread because you also have a bizarre d&d-rear end hardon for being lovely to PJ 
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Aug 31, 2019 13:18
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sheng-ji yang, such a cowardly shithead of a mod that he strolls into a thread about understanding authoritarian cults that's being derailed by insane weirdos pushing a succ dem level disingenuous narrative about how actually that thread is a cult, and probates the OP instead gently caress off back to d&d if this is the kind of "moderation" you think is appropriate in cspam
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Aug 31, 2019 13:25
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Jazerus posted:his whole conduct in the entire thread, sheng-ji, not just that post in particular a thread of lib psychobabble to write off all conservatives as cultists should be in d&d. if it wants to be cspam it can and should be bullied
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Aug 31, 2019 13:27
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Sheng-Ji Yang posted:a thread of lib psychobabble to write off all conservatives as cultists should be in d&d. if it wants to be cspam it can and should be bullied not all conservatives are cultists under prester's take on things. you're literally parroting the line that fishmech et al. used as a troll because they couldn't be bothered to understand what prester was posting. like if i had to summarize this thread, it's about radicalization and the dynamics of groups, especially online groups, which are radicalizing. and the internal belief structure that people who radicalize based on non-factual reasoning build up in order to defend that reasoning and shield it from contradiction. the terminology is obviously non-standard but it's not psychobabble lol the radicalization process in fact demands that most conservatives not be cultists. they are the ones who slough off during compaction as they are transformed by the radicalizing core of the group, into the enemy. the vast majority of any broad ideology's believers are non-compacted. Jazerus has issued a correction as of 13:44 on Aug 31, 2019 |
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Aug 31, 2019 13:37
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people are radicalized based on their material conditions. more people have radicalized in various ways because material conditions have worsened - inequality, poverty, capitalist alienation, economic stagnation. trying to explain away radicalization through this dumb psychobabble poo poo is liberal refusal to accept reality - that american liberalism has failed to benefit most people, and so they have radicalized in seek of new solutions.
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Aug 31, 2019 14:04
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Sheng-Ji Yang posted:people are radicalized based on their material conditions. more people have radicalized in various ways because material conditions have worsened - inequality, poverty, capitalist alienation, economic stagnation. trying to explain away radicalization through this dumb psychobabble poo poo is liberal refusal to accept reality - that american liberalism has failed to benefit most people, and so they have radicalized in seek of new solutions. it's not explaining it away. it's diving into the mechanics of how radicalization functions within the mind of the person radicalizing. yes obviously material conditions set the stage for more and more people to be open to radicalization. but then what? how does it actually happen within the groups that are radicalizing together, what's the social dynamic of it, how does the radical then defend their beliefs if those beliefs won't objectively improve their material conditions? that's what this thread is about. it's not 'liberal' in any sense - the libs would have you believe it's a mental health crisis to be medicated away without examining what's actually happening. prester's work is not incompatible with marxism in the way you seem to believe. most marxist radicals are not narrativists, because marxism is objective reality. there is no need to defend marxism against examination through deflection and multiple layers of belief - it welcomes examination, because it knows that it will survive it. also material conditions are somewhat insufficient to explain all of the radicalization we see currently. the cult of Mother is a good example - almost by definition, someone who is still With Her is not subject to material deprivation. their constantly-building incandescent rage toward bernie is a narrative that they are unconsciously deploying to avoid self-examination, one which drives them all to make increasingly hysterical proclamations about racist sexist bernie who stole Her Turn. they are radicalizing even in the absence of feeling like liberalism has failed them, as a purely social phenomenon. certainly some of it is because they think they'd be less privileged in a socialist america, which is true, but preservation of their narrative of "hillary good, bernie ruined her ascendance" is equally important you sound like bf skinner refusing to admit that "thoughts" exist Jazerus has issued a correction as of 14:38 on Aug 31, 2019 |
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Aug 31, 2019 14:27
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Jazerus posted:it's not explaining it away. it's diving into the mechanics of how radicalization functions within the mind of the person radicalizing. yes obviously material conditions set the stage for more and more people to be open to radicalization. but then what? how does it actually happen within the groups that are radicalizing together, what's the social dynamic of it, how does the radical then defend their beliefs if those beliefs won't objectively improve their material conditions? that's what this thread is about. it's not 'liberal' in any sense - the libs would have you believe it's a mental health crisis to be medicated away without examining what's actually happening. prester's work is not incompatible with marxism in the way you seem to believe. clinton liberalism is incredibly easy to explain materially - theyre almost universally members of the coastal professional class who are would most benefit from her policies. the preservation of her legacy is important because it counters the strength of the left and strengthens the political heirs of clintonian ideology - buttigieg, harris, etc. they are simply trying to defend their class. Sheng-Ji Yang has issued a correction as of 14:41 on Aug 31, 2019 |
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Aug 31, 2019 14:38
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Sheng-Ji Yang posted:clinton liberalism is incredibly easy to explain materially - theyre almost universally members of the coastal professional class who are would most benefit from her policies. the preservation of her legacy is important because it counters the strength of the left and strengthens the political heirs of clintonian ideology - buttigieg, harris, etc. they are simply trying to defend their class. absolutely, but there's room for there to be more to their thinking than purely rational class warfare. people aren't perfectly rational economic golems, they have a need to feel like they're doing the right thing. the narrative allows them to defend their class interests without confronting the fact that, by their own metrics of "progressive decency", they're poo poo people for doing so. this allows them to radicalize more comfortably, especially since they are all surrounded by the same twitter discourse bubble. they can be worse and worse without having to feel bad. narrativist theory is not operating on the same level of analysis as marxism. they are complementary, not in conflict. marxist materialism says, 'they will defend their class'. narrativism is an explanation of how they can defend their class while still earnestly believing that they are actually defending the downtrodden masses. sort of an examination of the precise mechanics of false consciousness Jazerus has issued a correction as of 15:11 on Aug 31, 2019 |
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Aug 31, 2019 14:48
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Sheng-Ji Yang posted:people are radicalized based on their material conditions. more people have radicalized in various ways because material conditions have worsened - inequality, poverty, capitalist alienation, economic stagnation. trying to explain away radicalization through this dumb psychobabble poo poo is liberal refusal to accept reality - that american liberalism has failed to benefit most people, and so they have radicalized in seek of new solutions. So I'm going to go on a bit of a tangent here. It's been something I've been thinking about for a while and I've been struggling to put into words that I'm truly satisfied with. But here it is anyway. I would say that most people are more susceptible to radicalization due to their material conditions. However, many people are radicalized due to their social conditions and perceived social status degrading. Most of this happens on the right wing. In this case, I think that the evangelicals are the most radical and likely to be further radicalized towards political action and violence. They exist pretty high on the social hierarchy in the United States and have been pandered to directly since the 1980's and Christian supremacy (and the white supremacy that lies underneath it) have been waning for over a decade, and waning quickly. Affiliation with cultural Christianity is falling and even the evangelical base of around 25% of the population has been dropping as well. And that's as of 2014, which is five years ago. https://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/ It's now primarily old people who are overwhelmingly religious. The older you are, the more religious you are. The younger you are, the less likely you are to be religious. https://www.prri.org/research/american-religious-landscape-christian-religiously-unaffiliated/ The chart titled "A Generational Shift In Religious Identity" is pretty interesting here. Also you can mouse over it for more information. The new data is from 2017, and you're seeing a crash in religious affiliation, especially among young people. 26% of age 65+ are evangelical protestant, who are probably the most politically active and arch conservative, outside of a few left wing holdouts. Maybe 5% of the population there. But most of them are right wingers. And that falls from 21% for 50-64, 14% for 30-49 and 8% for 18-29. Meanwhile, no religion/unaffiliated/agnostic/atheist goes from 12% for 65+ to 18% for 50-64 to 26% for 30-49 and 38% for 18-29. And that's probably continuing to accelerate because it's now two years later. We're most likely looking at half of all 18 year olds being non-Christian, meaning some other religious identity or unaffiliated, potentially right now. And if not now, then soon. I'm guessing, and it's not a huge leap, that evangelical protestants are looking at the demographics numbers like one might look down the barrel of a loaded gun. They're loving terrified. Not of dying exactly, but dying out and losing cultural supremacy. And with the waning of their cultural supremacy goes white supremacy, or at least how they've cloaked it for as long as the notion of whiteness has existed. They can't push white supremacy openly unless they have religion to get well meaning Christians to largely passively go along with their social dominance programs. If you tell some zoomer kid that Jesus loves him, he might look up from his Twitch stream long enough to shrug. Maybe. Christians absolutely need young people to continue their traditions, just like any tradition. No young people and your tradition becomes like the old Greek gods, a series of myths. And those young people are just abandoning the church. A lot of those places are rural and in a rural town, a pastor or preacher can wield an enormous amount of power to enforce social orthodoxy primarily through fear of being labeled an outsider. What you're seeing though is the gutting of rural America. Young people leave for the cities because there's no future in rural America unless that future includes heroin or meth. And there's this enormous transfer of primarily young people to cities and around them to the point that 50% of all people in the US live in or near a city. And this shatters the social control of the church which required proximity and control over a small amount of people to enforce social orthodoxy. Their ability to project authority is short reaching. Likely no further than twenty or thirty miles. Maybe the county. Maybe. And maybe more if they're one of the cults that enforce worship through holding your family as social hostages like say, Jehovas Witnesses. So I suppose you could consider the loss of the church's young people material conditions. Less kids, less tithing, less control. But what these primarily old, primarily crazy, primarily politically active people desire is to preserve their cultural supremacy through any means possible and right now that looks a lot like stacking the courts and waiting for a new Great Awakening. Also supporting Donald Trump who give lip service towards them and enforce their social programs despite not knowing a loving thing about Christianity. Anything to staunch the bleeding. The thing is, those young people aren't going to come back because the places that they're fleeing are normally dying. The social control of a church plummets when there are other competing churches near it and honestly, who has time for church and tithing when you're struggling from the ugly side of capitalism? The demographics of the Catholic church for example is growing older and older if you're white, but trends younger if you're Hispanic. No longer is the Northeastern part of the US the bastion of Catholicism. It's becoming more Southern as that's where Hispanic people are settling in large numbers. The same goes now for evangelical protestants. But in their case, because their religion is primarily a vessel for white supremacy, or at least it's married to the concept, they're totally unwilling to accept that America is becoming less white and less religious, because their cultural power and supremacy depends on whiteness and Christianity. If not for their white supremacy, they could make overtures towards say, evangelical Hispanic, African American, Asian, etc communities. Or hey, just mainline Christians. But because of their racism, they're unwilling to reach for allies in their political struggles. Their racism and social status is more important to them than surviving. And so they will not change. Or at least they won't change until they feel like it's change or be defeated. And it's a good chance that they'll just be defeated. If people that they view as inferiors: Women, minorities, LGBTQ+, non-Christian religions, atheists, etc, gain in social power, they feel diminished because their social prestige wanes as that gap is closed. Further, they're experiencing a demographics crisis, so their ability to gain, wield and retain political power wanes in return. So I have to disagree with you. For religious people, which is most people, who are only going to get crazier as their political power wanes, what motivates them isn't material conditions, or not just material conditions. It is that their social prestige is not just declining, but on the chopping block. And if evangelical Christianity declines too much, those churches in those rural areas will simply cease to exist. So goes their excuse for social control, for white supremacy. The mask falls off and they increasingly reach for hate and violence which will be totally naked of any vestments of Christianity. And that's pretty loving scary for normal people. I worry intensely about this, because a dying mule always kicks the hardest. Cultures that are on their last legs will go on a kind of death ride to try and reestablish themselves and it is almost always incredibly violent. I doubt so called centrists will do what's necessary to put that violence down. They'll shriek about what happened to discussion and decorum while chuds are reaching for their AR's. Also, the left in the US is still weak, though it is growing in numbers and organization for the first time in 50 years or more. It does not have the institutional, monetary and people power that Christianity and white supremacy do though, and I think that those two forces are the only forces that really have a chance at present of directly opposing the horrors of capitalism in a real way. It's like watching two people you hate beat the poo poo out of one another, but at some point when one is totally beaten down you know, you just know, that the other is going to turn on you. And I think it's going to be the smiling devil that is capitalism, because capitalism is the force that is eroding the old pillars of the US: Christianity and white supremacy. Not for good reasons in particular, but because it's a force that atomizes everyone and corrodes all social bonds to make people marketable. So on the left, yeah, people go left and radicalize left because of material conditions. However, people stay or go right wing because of either their social prestige waning, their material conditions worsening or both. And I'd say that people on the left push for more social prestige, because if African American people had the same prestige that whites do, they wouldn't get murdered for wearing a hoodie or basketball shorts. I'm pretty sure in a few more years that your average church isn't going to be old. It's going to be abandoned and maybe re-purposed. You see this happening right now in a lot of cities. My old church that I mostly stuck around to play youth basketball at is about 60+ years old on average now and they don't really have kids. When those oldsters are gone, the church dies. The kids that remain aren't large enough in numbers to replace them. And when the church goes down, the social group breaks apart. And it's possible that entire sections of cities or even small, rural areas may hit a critical mass where there just aren't enough religious people to sustain a church. And in a rural area, there goes the entire social fabric. Gone. And often it's that leadership and sense of community, often lovely and often authoritarian and often racist, that keeps the community on life support instead of dying. Unless there are serious, fundamental changes in the future, real investment in rural America and increasingly, suburban America, Christianity will almost completely be the domain of the old. It will white-knuckle onto its power as it navel gazes, going into a near total bunker mentality, the kids it holds onto will be even more bizarre and abused to the point that your average young Christian will be socially like the modern Pug dog. Socially inbred and unable to exist in the world without extreme amounts of help. Or you'll have people show up to church because it's basically a party and their attachment to Christianity will not be anything spiritual, but their attachment to spectacle. I also don't believe that the loss of Christianity as an identity is a good thing. Not because Christianity is inherently a good thing, we've seen what happens when people who love hate or money get a hold of it, but because there's not a lot to offer in terms of identity to your average young person. And this makes them susceptible to malformed, bolt-on identities like fascism or shallow, consumer identity from capitalism. And without a strong identity, not only is it bad for you in a kind of existential way, but it makes you incredibly susceptible to demagogue strongmen like Trump. Anyone who can use their charisma and personality. Those people of weak identity will be swayed far more easily. We need a new identity to replace the old, failing one, and fascism is the go-to for many people and violence is the mechanism for enforcing it. Ice Phisherman has issued a correction as of 15:34 on Aug 31, 2019 |
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Aug 31, 2019 15:27
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Jazerus posted:his whole conduct in the entire thread, sheng-ji, not just that post in particular shengji is our version of that now permabanned e/n mod whose modding style was basically cyberbullying and ignoring actual abuse in favor of trying to score cool points
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Aug 31, 2019 15:45
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Jazerus posted:sheng-ji yang, such a cowardly shithead of a mod that he strolls into a thread about understanding authoritarian cults that's being derailed by insane weirdos pushing a succ dem level disingenuous narrative about how actually that thread is a cult, and probates the OP instead
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Aug 31, 2019 15:45
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Sheng-Ji Yang posted:a thread of lib psychobabble to write off all conservatives as cultists should be in d&d. if it wants to be cspam it can and should be bullied actually suck my entire rear end in a top hat (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)
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Aug 31, 2019 15:46
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Sheng-Ji Yang posted:people are radicalized based on their material conditions. I'm going to stop you right there because it's pretty clear that radicalization begins with the identification of an external threat - a threat which can easily be a complete fiction and needs not have anything to do with present material conditions. Just consider the drumming up of "culture war" and "war on Christmas" rhetoric through the 90's - a time of reasonable prosperity. No this was not the final step on a radicalization path, and perhaps material conditions increase ones vulnerability to such narratives, but there are some pretty materially comfortable people in the world that are radical white supremacists. RWM aside, the interesting thing about this thread is it's discussion of community self-radicalization around an identity without a cynical external force organizing such for specific political gain such as a state or a party or a church. That alone makes the topic novel and worthy of discussion.
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Aug 31, 2019 15:47
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