Discussing GMS's experiences at a Christian homeless shelter

 The binging continues and now I'm reacting to this video. I must say, while I've subbed to this guy for a while, I never really watched him. At first he seemed kinda pretentious, primarily because he was recommended to me by a liberal christian who thought this is how nonbelievers should act (while I tend to have a harder edge than he does toward Christianity), but I will say I find these videos relatable. Thankfully for me, the ties I had to religion by the time I left were never that extreme, and by the time I left, I was quite distanced from my Christian school, my old pastor left my church, the new pastor wasnt super popular with my family (too business/money oriented), and my parents were the only christian influences really trying to keep me in the faith, and while there was friction there, we largely resolved our differences. So outside of kinda not trying to kinda downplay my secularism among my christian friends on social media, I never really had too much trouble trying to live a lie. And even among those friends, when confronted among a more boisterous one years later who wanted to directly confront me, I didn't hide it, and I was willing to go at it with him. We largely dont talk, and I did burn some bridges there, but worth it. I aint living a lie. But it is interesting to see stories from those who, due to social relations, jobs, etc., have to put up the charade. Not gonna lie, I dont think I could do it. I mean, I did burn a lot of bridges in my day over political shifts, deconversions, and dont really regret any of it. Sometimes I lament the lost friendships, but ultimately I realize that it's the other peoples' problems, not mine. 

But anyway, there were a few more direct points I wanna add here. Like the whole despite working in a homeless shelter, these guys really have anti poor attitudes thing. And again, this comes down to worldview. Keep in mind, for these guys, being poor is a MORAL failure. And they take it upon themselves to believe that they need to minister to them by teaching them Jesus and the protestant work ethic to make them not poor. Even more so, these guys just use poverty as an excuse to minister to people. That's why many of them dont wanna solve the issues of capitalism. In a way, their ministry efforts rely on manipulating people at their low points. Another video talked about how the destruction of local culture made their third world efforts more successful, their old worldviews were broken so they came in and replaced them. They do the same with the homeless. They prey on the weak, they prey on the vulnerable. They are religious zealots who believe in imposing their worldview on these people. They care more about this than actually solving their basic needs. 

If anything, looking at how this lines up with this capitalist superstructure as GMS puts it in another video, and how this overlaps with my own studies, well, it seems like these guys dont WANNA solve issues. They dont want a world where peoples' basic needs are met, because they would lose their power over people. Not just the job creators, but the christians too. They'd rather there be a world full of desperate people for them to minister to, than a world full of people whose needs are met who have no need for their BS. While I dont think many christians actively realize this, because again, the worldview doesnt make this super obvious to them, it's only after you leave and study this stuff that you realize how messed up it is and realize how tied to racism, colonialism, and imperialism that it is, that you make these connections. But yeah. The christian worldview relies on charity over state action, uses charity to impose their nonsense onto people, and uses the desperation the current system causes as an excuse to minister to people. It actually makes me sick to realize this. But yeah. That's how you get people in a christian homeless shelter being anti bernie sanders, for example, and having "anti poor" attitudes. 

On the infiltration front, admitting they dont believe in creationism was a huge tell. The biblical worldview collapses without an active belief in creationism. Seriously, this whole belief system is a HUGE house of cards. Pull the wrong one out and it collapses. If you believe in an old earth, the whole narrative stops making sense, and the religion implodes. While there are christians who believe in that stuff while not accepting the creation story as literal, I honestly don't find them to be very coherent myself. I'll actually agree with the fundies that it's either all true or none of it is, and because not all of it is true, well, none of it is, and we shouldnt accept any of it. Seriously, it might seem scary leaving at first, but once you're out, you realize how messed up that whole worldview was. it's actually liberating.

Speaking of which, another topic I wanted to talk about on this was purpose. A lot of Christians struggle with purpose post faith. I know I did, and still do. For me, it's more at this point seeing this capitalist superstructure as evil and oppressive post faith. Dont get me wrong, Im not fully opposed to capitalism. My views are well documented. But what justifies it? Freedom. And how do we get freedom? UBI. The coercion to work is an evil of capitalism that never sat well with me post leaving and I never really adjusted to the system after leaving, especially because i know its current logic is supported...quite explicitly...by christianity.

Still, in the name of intellectually honest, I will say this. I can't not believe what I believe. I mean, I cant delude myself. And I dont wanna delude myself. I fully recognize where I stand on the issue, and I realize my views do go against the system as it exists. It is what it is. Like what, am I supposed to aspire to be a de facto wage slave, working a job I hate for the rest of my life? I mean, come on...

Anyway...I will tell an interesting story, and this is one that has contributed to my belief in spirituality. One time when I was depressed, a few years after deconversion, I kind of had a bit of an existential freakout. It was triggered over a situation related to me leaving. I revisited the situation, and much like later on, I found a piece of evidence that forced me to reevaluate the situation. I ended up reaching the same conclusion I started at, which was atheism, but at one point, I did literally pray about not knowing how to live without purpose in this world. 

 A few months later...I was on vacation, and on a park bench was a copy of the book the myth if sisyphus by albert camus. I was aware of absurdism before this from a philosophy class I took. I even read the myth of sisyphus short story version which planted the seeds for my eventually rejection of the work ethic. So, if anything, reading this book just strengthened my resolve against the protestant work ethic and delusional forms of belief of purpose. I accept reality as it is, I accept it's purposeless, but unlike sisyphus, I dont come to terms and grow to love the grind. Rather, I realize that this system is crap and my soul screams for change. So...yeah.

Idk. I just wanted to discuss my angst, and how it has contributed to my existing worldview. As I said, I really aint well adjusted all things considered in terms of accepting the whole idea of loving work, capitalism, and purpose. The system seems evil to me, probably because it is. Dont get me wrong, once again, unlike leftists, i dont believe this requires abolition of it. It just requires a few tweaks, like a UBI and other proposals I support. I support a more voluntary capitalism: one that allows those who actually do believe that nonsense to work all they want, while allowing those of us who dont to not work all we want. 

Anyway on that experience...I kinda wondered at the time, if God was answering my prayer with that book, as it just seemed so convenient that someone dropped a book on a random bench and i just happened to pick it up and it seemed extremely related to what I prayed. But it would take several more years and more weird crap like that for me to finally be like "okay, yeah, something is definitely out there and listening to me", but yeah it did plant a seed that gee, maybe something IS out there. 

I just told that one because it related to the purpose without god question. And I guess I will say what GMS said in the video. This stuff was made up and put in our heads in a way to be a disease to be cured. We're told we want purpose that can only be filled by work...to make us wanna work. They put a mental illness in us to then cure us. It's how these belief systems work. Meanwhile, rejecting the belief system in the long term is healthy and IMO a sign of being more well adjusted in accepting reality, even if our society is structured around these belief systems in harmful ways (hence why I never really adjusted to our society's expectations that we adopt those values). Like, basically, these belief systems are abusive. Straight up. They mess with your head and it can take years to undo that. And sometimes you just cant fully undo it because, well, guess what, we have a society wide problem with this stuff.

This is why, in response to the whole people fearing what people would do if they didnt have to work any more, my response is we need a mass existential crisis. I want everyone to go through that, as it's a necessary part of deprogramming us from these harmful beliefs. Rather than keeps pushing people back into the belief system because people feel mental distress when it starts to fall apart, my solution to the crisis isn't to resolve it by giving people purpose through a job, as that's just reinforcing illusory and deluisional nonsense that keeps us chained to harmful social institutions we should do away with, but to actually let people go through the process of "waking up." 

Again, our society is like the matrix, and as with the matrix, sometimes people cant stand to be unplugged. They desire the mental safety that IS the matrix over the cold hard reality that's uncomfortable. They become like cypher where they think ignorance is bliss and if only i can forget and go back in, i can just live a normal life. But again, if we want true freedom and true liberation...well...that involves accepting reality, even if uncomfortable. Is it better to be a pig satisfied or socrates unsatisfied? That's up to you to decide.

Well, that's my reaction to this. THis went on a lot longer than I thought it would, but it was an interesting discussion. But yeah. Religion F-s you up, and it takes years to process all this stuff. Hell, here I am 14 years later and I'm STILL processing this stuff and realizing just how depraved the worldview and its related superstructure is. Like I'm STILL making realizations for how deep this rabbit hole goes. And its depressing, but well, it's reality. And it's better to confront it than to stick your head under a rock in my opinion. Anyway, that's all i gotta say for now.  

The Kentucky 4th district primary situation is wild

 So, tomorrow is Kentucky's primary day. It's actually Pennsylvania's day tomorrow, but I'll be blunt, there's nothing really interesting going on there. You'd think kentucky would be boring AF but I wanna put a spotlight on Kentucky's 4th congressional district real quick. Now, for the general, its probably going safe R. I mean it's not in my model AT ALL, which means it's safe. BUT....this is Thomas Massie's district. Why is this relevant? Because Thomas Massie is one of the few republicans with a conscience. He's more a libertarian than a traditional republican, and he's probably one of the only republicans left in the GOP who I respect. I dont LIKE the guy, but I respect him, for putting his country above his party, and at least having relatively based social views. He also voted to release the epstein files, which got him on Trump's craplist. Which is why the dude's being primaried. He's faced intense hatred from MAGA over this and a lot of MAGA voters are voting for a candidate more in line with them instead. So they're throwing the guy out and we're probably getting someone worse in response. Yeah....it don't look good for Massie, it looks like his average has him down 5.5% in my estimation based on the above? That puts him at around a 91-92% chance of losing his primary. *sigh* This is why we cant have nice things...

But seriously, I have mixed views on this. On the one hand, I HATE the fact that the one dude with a conscience on the republican side is being punished for expressing it. But that's what trump and maga does. They act like a cult and they support dear leader no matter how insane he is. 

On the other hand, I feel like democrats can and should learn from this. Democrats always have this attitude that no matter how crappy and unrepresentative republicans are of their values, that their voters will crawl over broken glass to vote for them. But no...here's the reality. These guys are INTO THAT CRAP. MAGA IS THEIR VALUES! When someone DOESNT toe the line of MAGA, the voters will PUNISH them for it. And this ins't new behavior. We did this to Arlen Specter back in 2010 as well. Dems might try to gaslight me on it, but I was there. We did it. I was a republican voter at the time. It was my last election cycle as a republican, but yeah. We did that.

And this is the energy I wish to bring to do nothing candidates. We progressives, we gotta throw out worthless centrists who spit in our faces and tell us we cant have nice things. We gotta PUNISH them for it. This is how. We primary them and we show up and vote. If we werent dealing with straight up illiberal fascists, I'd even say dont vote for them in the general, vote green or something. But seriously guys....we gotta...not do that as long as democracy and our rights are under attack. I hate to say it but vote blue no matter who...at least until we're past the current threat. 

But as far as primaries go? Go for broke. Throw them out! Do everything in your power to get rid of these guys. Do to them what the GOP did to arlen specter in 2010, and what they're doing to Thomas Massie right now. 

As for Massie himself....I will say though, he didnt deserve this. He was one of the few principled republicans left in congress, and he'll be sorely missed. 

Discussing the idea that secularism strengthens western values, and the idea that Christianity is made worse without them

 A common theme I've made in the last few posts is the premise that if you take the Christianity out of western values, you strengthen them, but if you take the western values out of Christianity, it sends you back to the dark ages. Here I want to explain how and why this works.

As I see it, secularism strengthens western values because it subjects them to a process of strict scrutiny in which theyre expected to justify themselves under their merits. With a free thinking system that requires evidence and rationality rather than tradition or dogma to justify things, we are able to put these ideas under a microscope and subject them to a process that cuts the bad stuff while keeping the good stuff. After all, the good ideas can be justified through reason. Bad ideas can't or shouldnt. Take my goals of morality, which functionally recreate "natural rights theory." Natural rights theory was justified by god creating this stuff, but here, I just look at what the functional goals of morality are, and I came up with things like, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I even introduced a fourth goal, the reduction of suffering, which is strangely missing from the original version. It kinda makes sense given christians are okay with suffering existing if it coerces people toward their moral conclusions, but I'm not personally okay with that. Meanwhile, I also cut the right to property as when I subject it to scrutiny, I find it causes a lot of problems that stop us from actually fixing capitalism. While I recognize some level of property rights existing is good, I dont see them as a goal of morality, or act like the morality is ironclad on them. It's not, and such ideas only seem to exist to justify negative narratives like colonialism and the wealthy having insane wealth. So by scrutinizing these ideas, I end up recreating stronger justifications for the rights that should exist, I end up creating new ones, and end up doing away with dyfunctional ones. 

Same with democracy itself. Most rights in our constitution can be justified through reason. Most structures have valid purposes where we can say if we didnt do this, this would happen. And of course, even then I dispute stuff. I think the idea that we need say the electoral college because we cant trust the masses is dumb, is it really better to trust some weird system of oligarchs instead? Is it really better to let land vote over people? I've proposed tons of reforms to the constition over the years, keeping the good parts, while improving on what doesnt work. A reasoned perspective does that.

So basically, any idea worth its salt can be justified in secularism and made stronger. Only bad ideas that dont hold up to scrutiny really dont get supported in my system there.

On the other hand, what if we took the western values out of christianity? Well, it would be a total disaster. Because what is christianity if not for western values? its a bronze age religion justified in myth and authoritarianism. It's just "this is how things are, god said so, now believe or we'll burn you at the stake", and trust me, we've burned a lot of people at the state over the years. Without western values to temper christianity, it becomes illiberal. It mixes religion and state. It imposes itself on all under the force of government. It punishes people for thinking differently. It basically becomes a force of evil in the world.

When people ascribe christianity to western values, I feel like its because for some period of time, people justified things in religious authoritarianism. Like a lot of these ideas invoked "god" because these ideas emerged out of a broader christian tradition and that was just how they did things. But such justifications were always shoddy and awkward. And there are a lot of warts in the ideology (like the work ethic, and an ironclad right to property) that dont make sense and are quite harmful as a result of the historical forces that contributed to them. But again, that's why a more reasoned, secular response is needed now. Because by reducing our dependence on that christian framework, once again, we make those systems better. The good stuff is kept because it's good and serves a purpose, and the bad stuff is phased out.

As such, I see no reason why we need to act like we how some intellectual debt to christianity. Western values arent necessarily christian. THe best parts are quite at odds with christianity, and the worst parts are...the most explicitly christian. Again, you take christianity out of western values and you make western values better. You take western values out of christianity and you get barbarism. It's quite clear what's putting in the work making society better and what isn't. 

Does humanism or atheism inevitably lead to my beliefs?

 So...I love to frame my opinions in humanism and atheism. Even if I'm not an atheist any more, my political perspective effectively involves me acting as if I am. And I tend to invoke humanism in my own perspective. But does humanism necessitate believing what I believe?

Eh...I'd say no. One could make a lot of different decisions in building up their worldview.

So let's start with philosophy and theology, pretty basic, yeah. I guess my position is the position most humanists take. Biology, yeah. Although many atheists dont study the actual history of humanity super deeply. And they can go in different directions from there. Especially going into morality.

Like, for me, morality is a response to a darwinistic world. It's a survival strategy. But it's very well possible to go in other directions. Fascists love to invoke darwinism to argue life should be a survival of the fittest struggle, I watched a video where some guy was talking about reading Mein Kampf recently and that's where Hitler went, for example. A lot of racists will use theories about the biological differences between races to argue for racial hierarchies. A lot of fascists, even today, are secular. Look at European politics. Western germany's brand of conservatism is that of Fredrich Merz and the Christian Union party. And that's the better of the conservative parties. The east germans are less religious and their opinions on "god said so" are replaced with just rank racism and a desire to return to authoritarianism a la the USSR. So you can be secular and still have crap opinions. And really really bad ones.

Ayn Rand was an atheist. She went in this direction of extreme selfishness and hyper capitalist perspectives. At the same time, the Marxist Leninists also were also atheists, and argued religion was the opium of the masses and counter revolutionary or whatever. They basically built up their own weird state religion around communism with all of these doctrines they were encouraged to believe based on the threat of raw force if you didn't.

So...no....you dont need to go in the same moral or political direction as me at all. my own manifestations of morality and politics arise from my own historical context, where I reject the christian right's explicit brand of politics, and in response i get...secular liberalism. I admit, it's better this way, but it's not inevitable.

Even among western liberal perspectives,  the exact manifestation could've changed. Had I been more economically successful and came from a different economic class, maybe I would have adopted more meritocratic attitudes instead and been more of a centrist liberal. After all, my political journey was basically....conservative, moderate conservative, libertarian, moderate, and then I just kept going left. My economics was driven specifically by the conditions of the great recession, which coincided with my own shift away from christianity and conservatism. It's very well possible under different circumstances, one could have gone a bit less left.

If I went left, had I not been convinced basic income could work, I might have just become a standard social democrat and more aligned with bernie's politics. My anti work politics feel natural to me as a rejection of the system as it exists, but again, it really did take me fricking dropping out of the labor market and realizing our fixation on work IS THE PROBLEM. Had I been more inclined to believe work was an inevitability, I might've just fit a more bernie sanders style mold. 

The fact is, I dont have a monopoly on truth. my own politics arose as a response to my specific life path. A different life, in a different location, and things would've manifested differently. Atheists have gone in weird fascist or social darwinistic directions, they've become hardline libertarians. They've become communists. Among liberals, they become either centrist libs, or progressive libs, and my own brand of HCC is specific to me. 

Dont get me wrong. At the end of the day my rejection of the christian worldview defined the start of my shift to the left in a real way, but that was basically a result of the political environment of the times, and my own real world lived in environment. You can theoretically go whatever way you want. Hell, some people even love to act like "cultural christianity" is a good thing. I think I've heard even fricking Richard Dawkins of all people refer to themselves as "cultural christians" and acting like western values owes a debt to christianity. Which...to me...I find a bit ridiculous. As I said recently, you take christianity out of western values and you make the western values better. You take the western values out of christianity and you get dangerous regressive extremism.  The right and their version of "western values" are basically just....literally the worst aspects of those values. It's just extremist religion and work ethic. Thats all they really care about. All the pretense of freedom and democracy, they're willing to throw it away to defend the religion and work nonsense. But....yeah. Some atheists still...do that. I find it baffling, because its like "bro, you broke one form of social conditioning, why do you accept another?" But yeah.

I just wanted to write about this since it's been on my mind recently., especially with me going back over fundamentalist religion again listening to GMS vids.  

Pushing back (somewhat) against "party unity" narratives...

 So, David Pakman had Cory Booker on his program today, and I have some things to say about this. It's been a few hours since I watched this, but my opinion remains relatively consistent on it so I can do this from memory somewhat.

 So, the impression i got was this idea that democrats need to be united in a big tent and blah blah blah. The dems ALWAYS say this every election, and it kinda comes off as cringe. The fact is, the democrats ultimately need to offer a populist brand of politics to win back the masses, and they dont do it. Booker has a point about money in politics, but I dont think he really understands the extent to which we need change. I mean, he's always been a bit of a corporatist, and his idea that Elizabeth Warren is somehow the left flank of the democrats shows how out of touch he is (what about the Bernie people? The Yang people?).

And then he talks about how we need to be like FDR again. Yeah, but again...who is most like FDR? it was Bernie. Bernie's 2016/2020 platform was literally straight out of FDR's second bill of rights. And then you got me and Yang with our own directions, and yeah. We need change. I dont think that Booker realizes how much change is actually needed. We need systemic analysis of problems, and then solutions that directly solve those problems. The problem is the democratic party likes to offer a bland flavorless version of politics of "a better world isnt possible, but you better vote for me or else", and then they go all surprised pikachu face when they fail to win over people. I agree, going into 2028 and beyond, and even in 2026, we need actual change. And we need politics and policies that deliver it. Centrist dems arent up for the task. They're literally bought out by corporate money to keep the party stuck in this weird hugbox of uselessness. And that's why they have the charisma of peeling wallpaper. Because no one fricking likes them.  We're all expected to put up with them, but no one actually likes them. They suck. Because they dont offer us anything.

We are at a point where in 2028, I fear this will be the dems' last, best chance to flip the tables, and if they fail to do so, we're just screwed. And yes yes, people should vote democrat to avoid being screwed. Even Im getting a bit of the "blue no matter who" in this era given how terrible the GOP is. Really, the more I reflect on how messed up and evil the GOP really is, they gotta be stopped, period. They are literally at risk of destroying our democracy. I'm legit scared of the GOP in their current state. They're that psycho.

 So yeah, we cant afford to protest vote for the forseeable future, but...that doesnt mean they dont deserve honest criticism or feedback. And my feedback is...exactly what it always was. Get off their butts and move heaven and earth to solve the problems of this country. You do that, you can flip the country to support you and your ideas for the next 40 years or so. You fail to do that, and the future belongs to THEM. That's literally where we're at. 

Addressing the idea that "American Christianity is cruel on purpose"

 Yep, another GMS video. 

This one isnt a surprise. We've discussed most of this with David Noebel's book "understanding the times." Fundamentalist christians don't believe that a goal of morality is to reduce suffering, if anything, suffering is a useful tool to bring people to God, which is he discussed the need to force people into submission. Yeah, they're a bunch of religious authoritarians who want to coerce people to submit to their worldview.

They also dont believe in mental illness. They show that christian dude interacting with homeless people and accusing them of being possessed by demons. No, they're just mentally ill, which is why many of them are homeless in the place. Yeah. This is what happens when you believe people just need Jesus.

On Christian charity. Yeah, charity is often used as an excuse to preach the gospel at homeless people in compromised positions. It's also used to impose the protestant work ethic on them. Keep in mind, due to the above authoritarian nature and beliefs about suffering, they believe it's okay for the poor to suffer in a lot of cases as their habits and sinful nature are responsible for their suffering in the first place. Again, suffering is okay as it can be used as a form of behavioral modification to force people to submit to their worldview. 

This is one of the reasons I see fundamentalist christianity, and conservatism as literally evil. One of the most basic moral litmus tests for me is that the reduction of suffering is generally a good thing. We can argue fringe cases and specifics at times, but all in all, I generally do believe in a form of utilitarian, consequentialist morality. Not saying we cant have some deontology, but that deontology is only valid insofar as it gets positive results. For the record I would say my own approach to morality is closest to "rule utilitarianism", and I tend to favor it over raw utilitarianism because a legal framework of laws and rights is generally the best way to get utilitarian results, even if utilitarianism sometimes fails in individual situations. But again, that's where the debate is for me. If you dont even accept the basic premise that reducing suffering is a bad thing and you're fine with cruelty to impose some authoritarian system on people, well, that's LITERALLY EVIL. Sorry, not sorry. 

As for the exhortation at the end about liberal christians and atheists uniting and how hitchens style new atheists are just as imperialist as christians (I think he made that specific claim in another video, but he's been making various jabs at new atheist types)...eh....this is where I have some issues.

Christianity is a worldview. Liberal christians still adopt problematic aspects of said worldview. They might tone down the harmful stuff, but take economics. A lot of them would still implicitly agree with the idea that people should be coerced to work to get their basic needs met. They still implicitly prop up that system. They still have weird holdovers like fixations on "virtue" and stuff like that. They still have implicitly authoritarian views at times. I admit, christianity is a spectrum, it's not always as simple as A or B, there is nuance there, but yeah.

Here's the thing. I think that GMS is confusing atheists who argue the intellectual and moral superiority of the secular worldview with people who want STATE ATHEISM. We can agree, state atheism, a la, say, the USSR is bad. But I dont think people disagree with the idea that we should have religious pluralism on the whole, and that people should be allowed to practice their own beliefs, even if they suck, are irrational, etc. Sure, we can step in when they do tangible harm to others, and we should have a strict separation of church and state, but again, it's public morality vs private morality. publicly, yes, religious pluralism is the way, combined with a lemon test style application of separation of church and state. i certainly dont want atheists imposing their views on others in the ways fundie christians do. But at the same time, that doesnt mean we should necessarily entertain the weird views that "moderate" or "liberal" religious people often have. If they wanna practice that stuff in their own lives, no complaint from me, but yeah, I do think it's fine to critique that stuff. 

Sure, we might have to ally with moderately religious people to win elections, gain power, that's fine. Coalitions bring together diverse interests and as long as we agree on the religious pluralism and public/private morality aspects I laid out, sure, welcome aboard. But that doesnt mean I dont have distaste for religious views that still have holdover elements from these harmful traditions. I still wish people would straight up abandon organized religion. Maybe not all spirituality, as I said I have anecdotal reasons to accept some private spirituality myself. But I think the humanist worldview is still the way to go. Logic and reason should be the arbiters of truth, not dogmas, authorities, traditions, etc. And if moderate religious people want to put their stuff into law, well, they're gonna get as much resistance from me as a fundie would. Sorry, not sorry. Because moderate christians still have weird holdovers in their worldviews that dont manifest in as harmful of ways as extreme ones do, but they still have those elements there, and they can be activated at times. And I just aint entertaining that crap. Sorry, not sorry. 

Responding to the idea that TP USA (and the evangelical movement at large) is "basically the klan"

 So...I've been binging GMS videos lately. Very, VERY good channel. Very good work done. Very thought provoking as we can see from recent articles I've posted. And here's another I wanna do based on this video. 

So...my own response is more focused on the broader evangelical movement, rather than just TP USA, as TP USA stems from that movement. I'm not gonna lie. The origins of the evangelical Christian movement are racist. There's a metric crapton of history I've learned since leaving about this and the link and origins of modern evangelical conservatism stemming from literal racism is pretty much common knowledge by this point. 

I also dont deny that a lot of evangelicals even today are blatantly racist. Let's face it, they are. 

BUT....I do wanna push back somewhat based on my own experiences. When I went to Christian school in the 2000s, I honestly had no idea about ANY of this. And quite frankly, these ideas were not taught to us this way. Quite frankly, the history I was taught seems a bit whitewashed, if you'll excuse the term, and revisionist, but the goals, as they were explained to me, was more about other social liberalism, and not about race. Their big issues were with engel v vitale, which established a precedent that enforced a stricter separation of church and state in government run institutions like schools, and with precedents like Roe v. Wade.

Maybe, back in the day, abortion wasnt the big issue. I dont deny that, but being born in the 1980s and not really exposed to this stuff until the 2000s (even my own home church was significantly more liberal and would probably fall more on the moderate/liberal side of the aisle, although this was never explicitly stated), this is how it was taught to me. Again, maybe it's revisionist, but yeah.

Everyone in my school would vehemently deny being racist. If anything, racism was a secular position, stemming from darwinism and pseudoscience related to that. We were taught hitler was an atheist and a socialist, that the communists were atheists, and atheism was the source of much evil in the modern world. Rather, humans were made in the image of god, and skin color doesnt matter. We had black students in my school, latino students, asian students, etc. It was pretty well integrated, even if majority white. 

I will admit, there were undercurrents of more latent racism, as was common with these politics. My own family at the time was pretty anti immigration and had...relatively trumpy views. Even they didn't accept like hardcore biological racism, it was more a cultural thing. And that's how it was viewed in school too. Like there would be the talk of black fathers mentioned in the video. There really is the idea that a lot of minorities dont really practice christian morals and their lives would be better if they did. That Johnson welfare policies enabled this stuff by giving people money to live sinful lifestyles in the name of compassion, blah blah blah. They were obviously big on the protestant work ethic, the nuclear family, and while these are very white coded things, they were framed as being God's law to apply to all humans.

They made active attempts to evangelize to tribes in the third world. They seemed to focus on them because they believed that for the end times to happen, they had to make Jesus known to the whole world. Like, yeah, there were evangelistic efforts made to like secular europe too, but they already know jesus and are harder to persuade. They seemed interested in preaching to the third world, even when dangerous. Like ya know rambo 4 and the missionaries? Yeah, that was my school's evangelism in a nutshell. of course people should reach out to people in their own lives as well, like we should preach to everyone, but yeah, I literally had classmates whose families did missionary work overseas. And they seemed more successful than GMS's video on this seems to indicate, of course they probably showed only the successes and none of the failures.

With all of this said, I don't deny the movement's origins in racism, or even that a lot of people still believe it. But it is dog whistle politics, and not everyone hears that dog whistle. Especially us younger generations. I just really want to emphasize this. Like there is a bit of nuance in these communities that I feel like these videos miss. The conservative movement is racist, but it also has non racists in it too, or people who have latent racist views more akin to archie bunker or carlos mencia, rather than like, hard line grand wizard of KKK stuff. Ya know? It's kinda why I underestimated the threat when trump became popular. I was like, come on, sure they have some racist and xenophobic views but they arent like that far gone...right?....right?

....Fudge. 

But seriously, I honestly thought the white supremacist stuff was like a tiny minority of the community. Even when studying the white nationalist movements in college in that class on terrorism I took, I still thought, okay, but this is just a couple percent of the population, right?

It's honestly taken me well into the trump era, to kinda realize the problem is as bad and pervasive as the left acts like it is. I guess charlottesville was the first inkling, and I started noticing it a bit more than more as rhetoric escalated during trump's first term, but I didn't realize these guys were THIS psycho and dangerous until like January 6th. I mean, I knew that they wanted to implement abortion restrictions and deport illegal immigrants, but I thought the institutional core of the GOP wasnt this extreme, and that even if there are some crazy people out there, not all of them, or even most of them are this bad. And I honestly thought, in the 2010s, they were losing power, and that if Trump won in 2016, he would basically just end up destroying the GOP so bad it would be the end of their generational coalition. There's still hope the second term can do that, but yeah, we're basically at the gates of hell right now and in danger of descending into fascism before americans reach a tipping point to reject and abandon this stuff for good. 

So yeah. I just wanted to say that. Especially as my 20th reunion for high school is coming up. I dont plan on going, but I did think about how things would go if I did. And I do wanna acknowledge that I dont honestly think that anyone from my class are bad people. Even if I think that many of them are horribly misguided, I understand that they mean well. And I do wanna make that clear. You can be brainwashed AF and still be somewhat of a good person. It's only when these ideas are imposed on others that I really have a problem with them. People keep that stuff in their own communities of voluntary participants and it's just...whatever. I just dont want that stuff to be the blueprint for governance in this country. And that's why I come out swinging so hard against that stuff.