“Be kind to people, be ruthless to systems.” -Michael Brooks

You’re good fren, shit is frustrating as hell.

its perfectly fine to criticize religion and anyone’s views. it’s not fine if you criticize the person that holds those views.

A decade ago, I believed in giving the benefit of the doubt whenever possible. Most people who are in their right minds want life to be better for everyone, but merely disagree on how to get there. I was a fool.

I still am one, but I’ve learned a few things since then.

It’s true that most people are good at heart. “Most People” is around 60% of the population.

People will believe lies because they want it to be true, or they’re afraid it might be true.

People will rather commit to believing a lie than admit to being wrong.

There have always been those who hate, and there always will be.

It’s commonly said that you should criticize beliefs, not people. Also that a person is defined by their actions not their beliefs. I disagree. Actions are guided by beliefs, and if a person believes something shitty then that person is going to do shitty things and is therefore a shitty person. That’s not to say that people can’t change. After all, I’ve changed into a sad, cynical, depressed sack. Other people can change for the better, so I’ve heard.

I’ve started paying attention to the ways that horrible people signal to each other in ways that normally aren’t recognized by anyone else. Symbols, slogans, special numbers, etc. If you know, you know. I know a few, and they’re everywhere. Sure, sometimes a tshirt is just a tshirt that the person wearing it thought it looked cool, without realizing what it means. Other things take effort, and can only be deliberate.

I don’t know how old you are, and it’s none of my business to know. You have a sense of empathy, which is good and you should nurture that. Garbage people will see it as a weakness and use it against you, don’t let them. Embrace life, seek strength without hate.

shit, I’m not even drinking tonight, how’d I get this lost in the sauce? Must be the sleep deprivation. Yeah, I’ll blame this one on sleep deprivation.

Nope, I don’t feel bad at all. Religion sucks.

Remember to be your enemy’s best friend!

when you criticize someone your objective is to help them form a better opinion. If you simply point out that their opinion is wrong it’s likely that they will consider your argument as an attack on their values or self. At this point the argumentation is of no value

Instead talk to them like you would talk to your best friend. Listen and try to understand where their concern comes from, and ask questions that make them have to analyse their own opinions.

You need to help them see what their biases/emotions won’t let them. It takes patience and compassion.

nah this is hella good. we cannot forget that the people we are arguing with are also people. we still need to argue with them and fight against them when they try to take our rights but the whole time we still gotta remember they are people just like us. and that’s gonna make us feel like shit about it sometimes when we’re getting pissed at other people, especially when they’re our community members, but that’s just a reminder that we have empathy and that we are able to care about our fellow man.

I remember at some point hearing a therapist say something along the lines of “I’ve been in hundreds of rough situations. I’ve seen hundreds of cases of abuse and trauma, and the day I start feeling numb towards them is the day I stop being a good therapist.” that’s hella paraphrased of course but I think it gets the point across that sometimes you gotta feel like shit because that lets you know you’ve still got a conscience working in there somewhere.

expanding a bit on this point, one thing we have to remember is that these people do not go away if we get our way. these people still need to be accounted for in whatever new world we want to make, and if you want the same world as I do, where everyone is treated with respect and cared for, then you also gotta be ready to treat these people with respect and care for them. That doesn’t mean you gotta tolerate them when they’re being an intolerant shithead but it does mean that the whole time you’re throwing their shitty ideas out the door you’re still treating them like a human being. remember that dehumanization is nazi shit and we wanna stay far away from that.

I guess I also got a little rambley here but fuck it the internet is for letting your thoughts out whether anyone’s gonna read them or not so I say let it flow

I just want you to know that I have sonething to say, but I don’t know how to word it out. Sometimes we have to remember that people have different social contexts. Have a good day. Nice post.

If you don’t critize them, they’ll think you agree with them. The less people critize them the more right they think they are

I watched the LWT segment on the West Bank, and learned about Hebron and price tag killings, and have, at least for now, lost faith in humanity as a species. I seriously doubt we’re going to get past this enough to create a communal society, a public serving government, or reach out to colonize space.

My father is a literal rocket scientist, now retired. Was one of the Mission Control guys back during the Apollo missions. He’s now a total MAGA true believer.

Here in the states, Kristin Kobes Du Mez (an Evangelist Christian, herself) traced the dawn of the Christian Nationalist movement back to Jerry Falwell who was sore about interracial marriage and school integration when he formed the Moral Majority as a voting bloc. Abortion access was a common anger point which Falwell chose as the single issue to drive the group towards Republicanism, allowing for Reagan to win by landslide, and then deregulate, break unions and allow lobbyists back into Washington.

Behind The Bastards draws it back to the Great Depression (which our industrialists thought was a keen time). Hoover and his friends were sore about FDR’s New Deal, even though it was a last chance to let capitalists try to make it work, since a lot of Americans were thinking about what Lenin had been doing as an alternative to living in cardboard and stacked paint cans, and surviving on flour paste (until they die of malnutrition). James W. Fifield Jr., who had just built the very first megachurch (essentially a Protestant cathedral) and was way in debt, appealed to industrialists by reinterpreting scripture to exclude all the feed the hungry, enrich the poor stuff. Fifield’s version of Christianity, mixed in with American Exceptionalism and anti-communism informed the propaganda that began to be taught in schools and ministries. At first it wasn’t very good, but in time it got better with practice. (Although I don’t see what people see in PragerU.)

The thing is, even those conservatives who are never-Trump or anti-MAGA still believe in the policies that got us here. Precarity (that is, job precarity, rent precarity, family precarity, health precarity, etc.) is what drives those who are not civic-savvy to strongman Mussolini wannabes. And this – gutting social services, tough on crime police brutality against poor and minorities, the prison industrial complex – are the policies that brought us to 2015 where Donald J. Trump walked in and took over the Republican party.

Even if we stop Trump this year (a huge ask) the GOP is going to strut out the usual rogues gallery of Teds Cruz and Jebs Bush and Rands Paul until another charismatic radical captures the hearts of their base, and we’ll be fighting of yet another coup. But that assumes Harris not only wins in 2024 (despite expected election violence and fraud) but also any coup d’etat (procedural and violent) are put down, and no civil war erupts. (According to DHS analysts, we are not prepared for what we expect from Trump’s militant followers)

According to CIA analysts interviewed on PBS, the US currently has all the necessary conditions for civil war to break out (based on their studies of civil unrest, worldwide). In similar conditions in other nations, if power was issued to the public through massive election reform so that public-serving policy could be implemented, we’d be able to back away from the precipice of civil war and one party autocracy. A voting system that allowed for more than two parties (i.e. not First Past The Post) would help bunches. So would another New Deal style relief package (like the Green New Deal). But right now the establishment Democratic Party is not into that, and the Republican party just wants to neuter elections (and go all in on one-party autocracy).

The thing is, the conservative intelligentsia in the 1970s and 1980s were fully aware this was the eventual outcome of conservative ideology. They had seen this process play out before, and yet they chose to support deregulation and disenfranchisement of the public. As Brad Raffensberger pointed out, he won’t cheat for Trump, but he believes in the policies that would bring more Trumps, and will vote for Trump in 2024 since he’s the [R] guy. This is what smart conservatives look like.

It’s to say they didn’t just buy the ticket to ride this train, but they used their holdings to decide where the rails would be laid and where its destination should be. Maybe they didn’t believe we’d arrive while they were still alive.

So am I mad at any one person? Not really, it’s like being mad at a cuckoo for fucking with other birds. Parasitism is the most dominant survival strategy across all life on Earth. I just wish we humans had better capacity to do the rational thing rather than hating on immigrants and Blacks and Jews because Fox News and OAN tell us to.

So I’m not angry, just disappointed.