In current year, 2024, politics is just a wee bit divisive. On the left, or at least what passes for it here in the USA, if you don't embrace LGBTQIA+ identities, respect pronouns without question, and advocate for at-will abortion, you basically want A Handmaid's Tale to become reality. On the right, if you don't want to ban any library book some Karen insists is obscene, you're basically a groomer pedophile, and if you question border walls, it can only be because you want Mexican cartels to bring a tsunami of crime into America while the welfare state bleeds us all dry.
Why are we battling inflation? It can only be corporate greed or those damn Mexicans and maybe those sneaky Chinese.
Should the US intervene in foreign conflicts? Both say yes, enthusiastically. The left ignores its suspicion of corporate interests when it comes to the military/industrial complex, and the right ignores its proclamations of fiscal responsibility and respect for life.
Do we need to regulate more and more aspects of everyone's lives, liberty, property, and voluntary exchanges? They disagree about the details, but agree we're still just three new laws from Utopia. And if you disagree, you should be locked in a cage.
They also agree that dissent from a given policy is equal to support for evil. The sense of moral outrage over injustice or potential violations of others is just as good as evidence and reason, your counterarguments and reason be damned! Being angry means there's a real problem, because if there isn't a real problem, they wouldn't be angry! Go to hell, groomer/fascist/racist/criminal!
This is a cycle that repeats, not a new phenomenon. I think we're seeing a new version of the cycle from the 1980s and early 1990s known as the Satanic Panic. I wasn't very old, but I do remember there were underlying concerns about kidnappings and satanism. The Jacob Wetterling kidnapping and murder was only a county away from where I spent my early childhood, and I definitely remember that being a local concern.
Later on into the 90s, I also became aware of the AIDS epidemic and the fears about how it was transmitted. We look back now and it seems obvious the fears were overblown, but I would learn long afterward that a certain Anthony Fauci who would never again matter in public discourse was deeply involved in that debacle all along with all sorts of rumors, innuendoes, and accusations trailing in his wake. In any case, there was much uproar and hullabaloo every time any flamboyant celebrity was outed, or a TV character came out of the closet. One side said this was evil, another said it was progress. While heated, there didn't seem to be the same vitriol we have now. It's also odd to see how people who were at the cutting edge of progressivism then would be seen as hopelessly outmoded if not downright repressive and closed-minded.
I don't think that played a big role in my parents' decisions but I definitely remember there were strict rules about what TV programs, movies, and music we were allowed to consume. Most of it was common-sense stuff a lot of parents consider. No violence beyond Looney Tunes cartoon antics, overt sensuality, or the like. The gay agenda was to be sidestepped, but be nice to the cousin who came out of the closet.
Dungeons and Dragons was highly suspect. Long story with tangents to follow.
I didn't hear it when it first broadcast, but when we later got into listening to the generally-solid Christian radio drama Adventures in Odyssey, there were some pretty obvious missteps, too. Focus on the Family is a very hit-and-miss organization, with some aspects I can still respect, and a huge Christian nationalism bent which raises a lot of red flags. According to the old family copy of The Complete Guide to Adventures in Odyssey, at least complete up to its publication in 1997, Episodes #122 & 123 first broadcast in August of 1990 were a dramatization of the evils of role-playing games. Check out Castles and Cauldrons on the Internet Archive. James Dobson himself warns how evil these games are.
They are fantasy games that require the players to become characters who use swords and bows and arrows and other weapons to battle their enemies. Now on the one hand, these game seem harmless enough. There's certainly nothing wrong with using your imagination, and if that's all these games involved, maybe I wouldn't be so concerned. But that fact is that in order to play these games properly, you usually have to use magic and mysticism, things that are clearly not Christian. And what's worse, some kids who used to be caught up in these games now say that their involvement let them into be in contact with demons, and even Satan worship.
Hogwash. Utter and complete nonsense. It's cringe, as the kids might say these days. The episode goes on to depict some bizarre amalgamation of Live-Action Role-Playing, tabletop role-playing, and literal demonic rituals as if merely playing a game opens an otherworldly portal to malign influence on the spiritual lives of the entire town. 34 years later, I doubt many would take such claims seriously, but the same outrage and fearmongering festers in new areas of life today.
The Democrats say we need to vote for them because they bring joy. We didn't have cable in our blue-collar lower-middle-class household, so that linked tune is not a core memory for me, but a lot of Millennials out there are getting a dose of nostalgia and/or PTSD. You're welcome either way. The Republicans keep talking about how they want to Make America Great Again, but don't seem to offer a really coherent idea of what greatness is, how it was lost, or how it can be achieved. But Trump can make it happen this time for sure! Either way, if you are outraged by all the things, you owe them a vote and need to fear the other side.
In a few decades, I hope y'all are ready to see how stupid this charade is, and how absurd these claims are. Let me know when you're done playing stupid games, because I'm sick of getting stuck with the consequences.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.
― C.S. Lewis
All I want the feds to do is protect us from foreign invasion--the one thing they refuse to do. May every open borders Marxist monster owned by the Chinese die of fentanyl asphyxia like my daughter did (I read the autopsy report. I was also the one who found her body.) I have no pity and give no quarter to those who are replacing American citizens with foreign militants. I make no apologies. I pray God saves our nation or razes it to the ground. There is nothing left in between
Fentanyl is a crisis today, both directly as a highly-c9ncentrated opioid and as a contaminant lacing other drugs. I am sorry to hear your daughter died, and the grief and rage flowing from that is something I can't imagine.
Unfortunately, the Fentanyl crisis today is a direct consequence of government drug prohibition. The tax-and-regulate policy Washington State has toward marijuana dispensaries has its own problems, but contaminated weed isn't among them.
100 years ago, the government directly poisoned all remaining legal alcohol for industry, leading to blindness and death for many who still wanted a buzz and tried to use it recreationally. Blame was placed on moonshiners and speakeasies, though.
I'm not sure the parallels are very close to the Opium Wars where Britain flooded China with opium in the late 19th century. Neither then nor now was the root problem "open borders."
I don't advise recreational drug use, but as someone who suffers chronic pain, I understand better than most the desire for chemical escape just as a brief reprieve. We are trapped today between corporate cartels in the pharmaceutical industry and drug cartels in the black market. We need freedom. This is the most effective way to prevent overdose death, gang violence, and an opportunity for addicts to escape addiction without the looming threat of punishment. It also undermines Chinese and Mexican drug cartels as a bonus.
Yes, China is doing to the USA what the British did to them. Few Americans know enough history to understand that. Peter Schweitzer's book "Blood Money" should be required reading for Americans seeking to understand today's corrupted government. !BBH
@fiberfrau likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH(3/20)@jacobtothe! to your account on behalf of @fiberfrau.
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What real people NEED is the ability to reason with one another and to remember that all the advertising algorithms and search engines connect them with other people with the SAME outlook and views.
People need the ABILITY to say what they believe, he told that it is wrong and then to listen to the reasoning of the other person without getting angry and then think it over and then reply to that thing and offer your own thoughts.
Most of the problem groups you have pointed out in your post are unable and not ready for such an exchange!
!LUV the post!
Great work!
(2/10) sent you LUV. | tools | discord | community | HiveWiki | <>< daily@jacobtothe, @zakludick
Hoo boy, I could FUN with that line! I could point out that not only is there magic throughout the Bible, but Christian mysticism is very much a thing. I could point out that the Roman Catholic Church scoffed at the idea of witchcraft, considering it a "pagan superstition" until the late 14th century. However, the biggest irony is that a lot of these evangelical denominations positively reek of Gnosticism, and one does not get more mystical than that, especially if you compare the Messalians (or the Cathars, who came afterward) to people like Greg Locke, who thinks that autism is just daemonic possession.
I find it wild that modern-day progressives keep saying that evangelical Christians are always standing in the way of progress, considering that it was a progressive church, the SDA (founded by a woman in 1863), that initially pulled the stake out of young-Earth creationism. It was the progressive movement, a union of evangelicals and feminists, that were behind the temperance movement that culminated in Prohibition. It was the progressive academics and politicians who lauded the social reforms and eugenic practises in Nazi Germany, criticising FDR for not going far enough, even thought the Nazis are denounced as the ultimate evil by both secular progs (who keep insisting they were capitalists) and evangelicals (who keep insisting they were evolutionists) in the modern day. Veganism is something peddled today by both militant atheist radical progressives and by the SDA, despite the latter being opposed to literally everything else that the progs want, like abortion and recreational drugs.
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum. - Noam Chomsky
I may not like Chomsky, but he nailed this one. There are certain sacred cows that are common to both the establishment left and the establishment right, one of which is that everything is prescriptive, never descriptive, that there should be no separation of powers, that people are incapable of managing their own affairs without the unbending diktats of those chosen to possess divine gnosis, and that self-flagellation is the only path to redemption. Praise be to Robin DiAngelo... who just got outed as a plagiarist, BTW.
Sorry if that got a little off the rails. I'm still coming down from the high off of finishing another Substack article in which I too blast both wings of the establishment harpy, then catching a 16-pound fisher in my live animal trap, and finally the additional rush of having one of my predictions about the Russo-Ukrainian War proven correct.
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Hey, so I know that this article is already three months old, but considering the subject matter, I thought it relevant to a particular question I wanted to ask you: how familiar are you with the writings of John Stuart Mill? The reason I ask is because every single illiberal "progressive" peddling things like mandatory community service is a huge fan of his work.
Only loosely. I imagine him overlapping with georgists in my mental Venn diagram, but I could be wrong.
Considering that Henry George came later, but his life overlapped with Mill's for 34 years, you might be on to something.