Zinnia

@Zinnia

Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D. #ufo #crackpot #conspiracy

You know, the whole idea of “Planet X”, which is what Nibiru is basically, doesn’t really have much credence anymore. While the possibility is still open, there are probably no more planets of any real size in the outermost regions of the solar system. The gravitational disruptions which originally lead to the search for one or more additional large planets were most likely caused by stars passing within a fraction of a light year of the Sun relatively recently (on geological timescales) - HD 7977 about 2.5 Million Years ago, and Scholz’s Star about 0.7 million years ago.

But let’s say there was a roughly Earth-sized planet out there. It’s so cold that far out that oxygen is frozen solid, how are you even going to breathe anything? Also there’s no meaningful sunlight. I mean, you could live deep underground if there’s significant geothermal (nibiruthermal?) energy, or on the surface in an enclosed environment if you somehow have tons of spare energy to burn. But unless your super-advanced civilization is geared entirely towards colonizing extra-frozen worlds for some reason, it doesn’t exactly seem like prime real estate, and if it is, why would you even bother with a hot planet like Earth?

Tatsuya Ishida #racist #conspiracy

“UCLA Sinfest” was printed in a student newspaper from 1991-1994, was very political in an “edgy dudebro liberal” way, and sometimes mocked neo-Nazis and religious fundamentalists.

“Classic Sinfest” was silly fun, though it had some subtly problematic views on women and a few blatantly racist strips (which he later apologized for). It lasted 11 years, from 2000 to 2011. At that point, the Sisterhood was introduced, “Feminist Sinfest” kicked in, yet it still had some problematic views on women.

During the 15 years since then, he’s fallen down multiple rabbit holes, a new one every 2-3 years. Each time there’s been a strip where he went mask-off, but there were not-so-subtle hints where he might be going next a few months in advance. It also took him awhile to “let go” of some of his former beliefs and/or fully embrace his new ones, so even after the mask-off moments it took at least a few more months to fully embrace his new “era”.

His “I love Hitler” moment was in May 2024: https://fstdt.com/DSTF.GJHH2B79 . Though it took several months after that for him to fully embrace his apparent new identity as a transracial White neo-Nazi Odin worshiper. Next up: who knows? There hasn’t been any hints of a new direction yet.

Meanie Oldhunt #transphobia

SB 244 is one of those laws which did multiple things, but the end result is: making trans people who have yet to change their gender markers unable to do so, inconveniencing a lot of people who aren’t trans, and making trans people who have already changed their markers more likely to be punished for following the law than for not following it.

Web3.0 ISO20022 #wingnut #crackpot #conspiracy #mammon

@Sasha #265206

According to a quick research, the term “the Great Reset” has been around since 2010, but exploded in popularity among conspiracy theorists following the 2020 World Economic Forum when the term was used to propose a hypothetical way of reforming the global economy to make it “fairer”. The actual proposal bore no resemblance to the conspiracy theory version, but the fact that it had the same name was proof enough of the conspiracy version being real and imminent.

Anons #sexist #god-complex #crackpot

If anyone is wondering what’s up with that “disposable via intestinal implantation” thing, in extremely rare occasions the fertilized egg somehow ends up outside the uterus (AFAIK no one knows how that happens), and if it does, the egg may implant on the outside of the intestines, and then it will eventually kill the person gestating it if not removed via c-section. But if it makes it all the way to nine months without serious issues, then the result is not any worse than a regular C-section in terms of survivability for both parent and child.

Tatsuya Ishida #wingnut #conspiracy #racist

See the bent antenna on his head? That’s how Tats indicates Redditors. This is early in his “I really hate Reddit” period, which lasted only a few weeks before he lost interest and finally resumed the Battle of Stalingrad, before going through his present period of stalling-again-grad.

Vox Day #dunning-kruger

“You use big numbers? We use bigger numbers! Therefore you’re wrong.” You can hardly get more non-sequitur than that.

Raw Egg Nationalist #wingnut

I wonder if lionizing someone posthumously should count as a form of damnatio memoriae. That is, if spinning positive mythology about someone to elevate their importance after they no longer exist counts as deliberate erasure of them as a real person. This is different from someone eventually being forgotten because they weren’t historically significant, or gradually developing bits of mythology around them decades or centuries later because they were.

spideez #fundie #pratt #homophobia #transphobia #biphobia #interphobia

John C. Wright #fundie

Despite what Star Trek may tell you, IDIC (“Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations”) is not really possible. I mean, in-universe, infinite combinations includes the Borg, who if left unchecked, will eventually turn all of the Milky Way into a Borg-only civilization.

But you can have a goal of maximizing diversity. It’s probably not achievable in a perfect sense, but you can do so in a good-enough sense. This involves suppressing or eliminating anti-diversity elements where possible and encouraging the creation and spread of new groups.

Most right-wing cultures and communities really don’t like this. They coerce people into joining, keep people from leaving, and stomp down on groups with significantly less power and/or numbers than themselves when they can get away with it. Some of them also seek to enforce their rules plus some additional (usually harsh) ones on people who aren’t members of their group but share a broader society with them. Without absolute unbreakable conformity à la the Borg, this won’t lead to a “perfected” monoculture as splinter groups form all the time, but it does lead to a general paucity of diversity.

Since they tend to be focused mainly on their own interests, being heavily restricted on their coercive elements and seeing some of their members abandoning it for other groups/communities, it feels like an existential threat (and in some cases, it is), so this leads to people like the OP extrapolating that to left-wing cultures and communities being a similarly existential threat to everyone. I think the error in thinking here is that believing much of the “left” is some indistinct amalgamation of all the subcultures and communities which they despise. Right-wing media very much encourages this view. I do get that some of the more moderate ones are sincere when they want a diversity of “traditional” cultures and communities, but at best that only leads to moderate diversity, and their approaches tend to be highly problematic.

(Amusingly, my spellchecker says that “Borg” is a word but “monoculture” isn’t.)

Ann Barnhardt #fundie

Benny Johnoson #conspiracy

Assuming that all this (aside from maybe the CIA thing) is true, it goes beyond normal “correlation is not causation” and taking two unrelated things which happen to be true during a narrow snapshot of time and declaring that one caused the other, as a form of bias affirmation. Did you check whether Rap happened to drop off the charts right after USAID was defunded, or has it been in decline for years already? If the first is true, then we’re back to regular “correlation is not causation”. I’m hearing elsewhere that the second is true, in which case this is additionally a non-sequitur, at minimum.

spideez #fundie #homophobia #biphobia #transphobia #interphobia

@leyo3 #264336

I’m “kinda bi”. It would not be much of a burden if I never dated women again, because I haven’t done that a whole lot and I’m more generally attracted to men. That part’s not particularly unbelievable. If true, it just shows that he doesn’t understand the experiences of someone who’s more solidly bisexual, let alone gay or lesbian, and is over-extrapolating his own experiences on other people. I wouldn’t entirely trust that it’s true, though, given how ex-whatevers often exaggerate or even lie outright in order to appeal to the biases of whichever group they joined. (This includes lying about having ever been the whatever in question.)

Tatsuya Ishida #elitist #wingnut

It’s notable that he’s missing a symbol for one of the world’s major religions: 🪯. Sikhism is the sixth largest religion, more prominent than half the things on the pyramid, including Judaism. And, not that it really matters, but there are probably lots of minor religions not shown here which have official symbols; I’m aware that Baha’i, Cao Dai, and Falun Dafa do.

spideez #fundie #homophobia #biphobia #transphobia #interphobia

Remember it was Adam and Eve,

Common bisexual joke: “…not Adam *or* Eve.”

JD Vance #fundie #psycho

If there was an “antichrist” then a good candidate for that would be Peter Thiel and oh wait Vance works for that guy too. I mean he’s trying to turn the world into a Surveillance State under his control and also gets blood transfusions from his son in hopes of achieving immortality, for crying out loud.

Babylon Bee #fundie #sexist

I told the ladies to leave their husbands and go corporate; that sounded like a fun time. But I didn't really think they'd take it all the way to killing their kids and celebrating baby murder.

It depends on the country, but generally abortion rights (“celebrating baby murder”) predated middle-class women commonly having careers (“going corporate”). One can argue that the former made the latter easier. I’m not sure about no-fault divorce (“leave their husbands”) in general, but in the US the various states gained that right anywhere from 1969 to 2010 (though the last one was actually New York, because the state had been ignoring the law for decades; nearly every other state legalized it by the 1990s). This is kind of backwards, making this version of Satan extra incompetent.

Rev. Andrew Wommack #fundie #homophobia #transphobia

Tatsuya Ishida #wingnut

For those who might be confused, I’m pretty sure his message is: 1.) The only true religion is the worship of your ancestral culture’s pagan Gods. 2.) Christianity (and Islam, though he only occasionally acknowledges it) is false religion created by Yahweh and spread by Jews to forcefully cut people off from true religion. 3.) Communism was created by Yahweh and spread by Jews for the purpose of force-converting Christians (and Muslims?) to atheism. Because Yaweh is a very jealous God, who wants only his people to have religion, and no one else.

Department of State #transphobia #wingnut

trope88 #conspiracy #crackpot #racist

Eventually there will be those who claim that there are no records of Donald Trump before the 2230s, and in reality he was a fictional character created by Glimp Therewold as a way to spread hatred against orange people. They will be just as wrong.

Mike King #homophobia #transphobia #racist

@Malingspann #263638

Given his poor state of health and slowly failing mind, if I were a betting person I would have put good money on Trump not surviving to see 2024. So I’m not that optimistic anymore. The ideal time for him to die would probably be late 2027 to early 2028. That way, if J.D. Vance is running in 2028, he’ll be too busy doing that to do too much damage, because he might turn out to be better at wielding all those fancy new powers and permissions that Trump was granted (which will of course mysteriously vanish if a Democrat is elected in 2028). Or if he’s not running, at least we would only need to endure about a year of him being worse, if such turns out to be the case, and it’s far enough away from the election to minimize the effect of any conspiracy-fueled outrages.

The second best time for him to die *might* be in the next month or so, assuming that it would demoralize a decent-enough chunk of MAGA into not voting in November. If it’s too close to the election, then it might actually backfire and drive more of them to the voting booth due to some conspiracy-fueled outrage. I have no idea how close to the election it would it would need to be before any outrage overwhelms any demoralization; for all I know we might be well past that point already. Not that it matters, Trump will die when he dies, and nobody but an assassin can control that. (Please no one assassinate him, we don’t need him to be a martyr.)

[Edited for consistency and clarity]

Tatsuya Ishida #wingnut #conspiracy #racist

In some of the other comics around this time, he portrayed the ordinary Russians as secretly worshiping the long-dead Tsar Nicholas II.

In the current comics, Perun finally shows up for the first time, and joins the “storyline” involving Veles which thus far has gone absolutely nowhere. More generally, he seems to be trying to avoid dealing with the later stages of the Battle of Stalingrad, due to having written himself into a corner, and the pointless Veles strips are one of the ways he’s stalling.

Miles W. Mathis #conspiracy #quack #wingnut

I wonder what it says that people are immediately jumping to the conclusion that the ones who are hating on Dolly Parton are mad because she’s receiving much more reverence than Charlie Kirk. I haven’t actually seen anyone who is hating on her stating that connection, though it’s certainly plausible.

If this is indeed at least part of the reason, I will point out that Dolly Parton died at age 80 after a full career, with a great many accomplishments to her name outside of her music… while Charlie Kirk died at age 31, still fairly early in his career and not nearly as accomplished or famous. People who weren’t deep in US politics or US culture wars were mostly like “Charlie who?” while the vast majority of Americans (and quite a lot of non-Americans) have at least a general idea who Dolly Parton is. That alone would make a big difference, regardless of anything else.

Anon #homophobia

@Anon-e-moose #263610

Trump’s history with the LGBTQIA+ community, even before being elected the first time in 2016, seems to show that he’s actually rather indifferent. He’ll embrace them superficially or freely throw them under the bus, whichever he thinks will personally benefit himself in the short term. Of course, what he thinks will benefit him and what will actually benefit him don’t always match up, but that’s a separate issue.

This person seems to not be aware of the concept of “Lavender Marriage”. It’s when a gay man and a lesbian woman married for financial and domestic stability, but engaged in romantic and/or sexual relationships with their true partners, who may or may not themselves be in a Lavender Marriage. So clearly, not every gay man wanted to go around having sex with as many random men as possible. Hell, even some of the men who engaged in the “gay lifestyle” weren’t really happy with that, but either wanted to conform with their peers or didn’t really see any better options for themselves.

And those men who married straight women and saw other men “on the down low”? Usually ended up that way because they only came to terms with being gay after being married and having kids. And didn’t always engage in the “gay lifestyle” but sometimes had a single partner whom they cheated on their wife with.

Those gay men who really want to sleep around a lot can just not get married and still do this. It’s not like “now that the option exists, you’re forced to take it!” Especially since opposite-sex marriage is also down, and not just because same-sex marriage is an option now - straight people are also getting married a bit less than they used to. Also, Grindr exists.

It’s notable that this person doesn’t seem to take lesbians into account at all.

Dave Molony #wingnut

Well, the typical conservative doesn’t know or care about a lot of the problems Trump is causing, or in the case of ICE, see it as the opposite of a problem… but surely they’re aware of the Tariff chaos?

Mike King #homophobia #transphobia #racist

Translation: “Censorship is bad unless you’re censoring bad things” …dude, nobody censors things which they believe are good.

Janie Ofthefamily Walsh #ufo #wingnut #conspiracy

And while I’m at it, here are the current ages of everyone on the list:

Belinda Carlisle: 68
Alec Baldwin: 68
Jack Nicholson: 89
Donald Trump: 80
Barack Obama: 65
Robert De Niro: 83
Robert Downey Jr.: 61
Joe Pesci: 83
Cher: 80
King Charles III: 77
Taylor Swift: 36
Elton John: 79

I knew Taylor Swift was going to be an outlier on this list, but I was thinking she was going to be like early 40s or something. Everyone else is at roughly what would be end-of-career ages or end-of-life ages for most people.

@Citizen_Justin #263409

Last time I saw Jack Nicholson was in Mars Attacks (1996), and only vaguely remember him having been in a few movies since then, so I was curious if he still even had a movie career. According to Wikipedia and IMDB, his last films were “I’m Still Here” and “How Do You Know”, both in 2010. His only other media appearances since then were on Saturday Night Live. I don’t know if he’s prominent in the celebrity scene, I pay zero attention to that, but his movie career is long over.

Tatsuya Ishida #wingnut #racist #transphobia

@ShatteredGlassSkywarp #263418

He doesn’t really explain the Blitzkrieg, but claims that it stopped because Hitler could no longer stand the slaughter of White people. (In reality, it was logistical issues.) After that, he went on a “de-jewification” campaign throughout Western Europe, with no real explanation of what that involved. Before that, in the earliest WWII comics, mostly set before the war proper, he was sending Jews off to “vacation camps”, and then never touched on that again, other than to claim that the extermination happening in those camps were a hoax. There’s been plenty of extermination of Jews not in the camps who stand up to the Nazis, though. Make of that whatever you will.

Nick Fuentes #racist #wingnut #conspiracy

This isn’t the first I’ve heard of “race communism”. It makes a stupid sort of sense if all you know about communism is that it seeks to eliminate economic classes, making everyone more or less equal economically. And then if you think that anti-racists are trying to erase racial distinctions in order to make all of them equal, then it makes some sense to metaphorically call that “communism”.

But even from that perspective, Nick still goes off the rails in the second half. He’s assuming that “race communists” would then import “third worlders” in order to create an equal proportion of all races, and then equally distribute them throughout all jobs and all levels of society, which is not something anyone is doing. He’s severely overextending the shallow-understanding-of-communism metaphor here.

Mark Tom #wingnut

I snorted in amusement at the complete disconnect from reality here, and then re-read it with wingnut-colored glasses. Aside from “alignment with Islam” which I’m baffled by, this whole thing relies on a form of conceptual equivocation, for lack of a better term. The entries on these lists are independently “correct from a certain point of view” (sort of correct but exaggerated or a bit off, or commonly believed by the far right but are false) but their counterparts on the other list are referring to something very different, and in some cases are essentially opposites to each other. This comparison is as superficial as it gets, to the point of being entirely meaningless.

Trump Administration #wingnut

Sometimes I wish that we could just, like, give him a little something now and then (with some show of resistance and feet-dragging as a distraction and to keep him from getting too much) so long as it’s temporary and can be used to buy time to deal with the big problems he and his cabinet cause. When there’s a new scandal every week, it’s more effective to keep some of the small fires controlled rather than constantly putting them out. Unfortunately, Congress is near-useless, the Supreme Court is too much of an enabler, and also Trump demands to get personally involved in ways which screw things up, so that doesn’t really help. Then again, it’s hard to imagine any situation where things could have gotten this far *and* it would be of some help.

Discreet Music #transphobia

I read the whole thing, and the entire argument is basically “trans narratives as created by the 1960s-1980s medical establishment don’t match the narratives as created by trans people on social media in the 2010s-2020s” and assuming that only the former is true, while the latter is social contagion. Well, okay, there’s also argument from incredulity, particularly the section on non-binary people.

And, more relevant to this post, there’s a general assumption that “the things which I (or the people I’m getting this stuff from) go out of my/their way to see, and the hypothetical horrors invented by conservative media, are all which exists”. It’s the sort of things which *could* mostly be dispelled by actually knowing a trans person… though more likely it would just get them labeled as “one of the good ones”. But since I note that this person appears to be associated with PITT, it’s extremely likely that their (seemingly reluctant) affirmation of the older concept of “transsexuals” would go out the window if it was someone they knew pre-transition.

The funniest part is the sole response to this essay, where someone claims that the label of “transphobe” is invalid because nobody identifies as one. [EDIT] I later went and looked at the link provided along with that assertion. And the essay in that link seems to be claiming that gender norms are not unreasonable and if you’re against people enforcing them, you’re “normophobic”. Meanwhile trans people aren’t reasonable so claiming anyone with an aversion to them is a transphobe is invalid. At least this one is aware that “-phobia” has long meant more than “fear”.

Josiah Patton #sexist #racist #psycho #conspiracy

Don’t dating sites normally require you to be 18+? I tried to check if this was true for WhiteDate, but apparently you can’t check anything about the site, not even the Terms of Use, without signing up first. Even if there’s no age limits, how likely is someone to find a 15-17 year old on there?

Also notable that based on what miniscule amount you can glean from the site, based on the selectable options and the front-page images, there seems to be a focus on white breeding, because of course. Also ick.

Discreet Music #transphobia #psycho

"Trans" began in 2011. There were transsexuals long before then but they are entirely different.

The reference to 2011 strongly suggests that this is blaming the increase of trans people on social media. Most of the major social media platforms got their start sometime between 2004-2007, and then became a widely-used global phenomenon around 2010 or so. And there was certainly a difference between “transsexual” and “transgender” - the former label was typically bestowed upon someone after surviving an arbitrary, patriarchal, and often cruel elimination process (for their own good, of course) while the latter is self-declared after a lot of introspection. This is basically outsiders declaring a small, atypical subset of the whole to be the only real members of the group.

Not that this matters, being PITT. I doubt any of them would have accepted their children being “transsexual” if they had been born and transitioned decades earlier.

Tatsuya Ishida #conspiracy #racist

@TheKingOfRhye #263108
He’s strongly implied before that Christians and Muslims are just second-class Jews at best, and unknowing puppets at worst. As for Superman, maybe it’s in part because old-school superheroes punched Nazis? Though that’s more of a Captain America or Wonder Woman thing specifically AFAIK.

Donald J. Trump #wingnut #conspiracy

Well, if your agenda depends on your views being popular, then hearing the polls say otherwise can have a demoralizing effect. Likewise, if your agenda depends on making your unpopular views more popular and it’s not improving, same thing. I’m sure that there are some conservatives out there who are calling out “fake” for the purpose of countering any demoralization effect caused by the polls (and maybe even convincing themselves it’s true). But I doubt much of anyone calls them “demoralization operations”.

Jim #conspiracy #racist #homophobia #biphobia #transphobia

I haven’t heard anything even vaguely along these lines, so I suspect he made this up. Googling “Pablo Sanfras” only gets you Jim’s blog and an unrelated Instagram which uses “Pablo” and “Sanfras” separately. It’s not out of the question that the last name might be spelled wrong, but again, probably just made up.

There’s one sorta-exception: Pride went broke. Suddenly no one shows up. That’s something which I’ve heard being said in the wingnut-o-sphere, so I don’t think Jim himself made it up. But this is not in evidence. Pride attendance has been on a slight downward trend since its peak, seemingly because a bit fewer people feel the need for it and it’s become overly commercialized, but it’s still going quite strong, and there hasn’t been an abnormal drop following the USAID cuts. Maybe it could have had an effect in poor countries directly affected by the USAID cuts, I have no idea, but the wingnut-o-sphere blather is mostly focused on US pride events, and that part is at least definitely wrong.

John Luetzow #wingnut #transphobia #conspiracy #racist

1. DEFENDING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
9. SANCTUARY CITIES
11. ABOLISHING ICE
In reality, issues around immigrants are complicated. And while a lot of liberals currently want to either abolish ICE or radically transform it, I haven’t seen much so far about Democrats making any promises in that direction, though admittedly I haven’t been following everything. We might hear more about it once the general election kicks into high gear… or maybe not.

2. DEFUNDING THE POLICE
3. DEI
4. CRITICAL RACE THEORY
I doubt you even know what these things even mean. The propagandic bugaboo versions don’t match how the terms are actually used by people who talk about them seriously.

5. NO VOTER ID TO VOTE
You already need ID to vote. Creating an additional voter ID would make things harder on the youngest and oldest voters, while not doing a damn thing about the nonexistent problem it’s meant to solve.

6. ABORTION ON DEMAND
Mostly, yeah.

7. TRANSGENDER CHILDREN
8. MEN IN WOMEN'S SPORTS
Ignoring that trans women aren’t men, quite a lot of Democrats have been quiet about these, ambivalent, or occasionally throwing trans people under the bus.

10. DEFENDING FRAUD WASTE, AND ABUSE IN GOVERNMENT SPENDING
Opposing the malicious hack job which was DOGE isn’t the same as “defending” waste/fraud/abuse.

12. STUDENT LOAN FORGIVENESS
Joe Biden was all in on that, but it doesn’t seem to be on the radar anymore.

13. GUN GRABBING
No matter how many times you claim this, Democrats gave up on this decades ago. Closest it ever gets is occasional weak proposals meant to help keep guns out of the hands of criminals, which you’d think conservatives would be all for. Is there something they’re not telling us?

14. NO CASH FOR BAIL
The bail system has major issues which needs fixing, which Republicans are against because the primary benefactors would be poor people.

15. THE "NEW" DEMOCRAT PARTY IS A HORROR SHOW
This is extremely nonspecific, already covered by the previous 14 from your perspective, so you only have 14 points and this is a conclusion. Unless you’re claiming that the Democratic Party is specifically putting “being a horror show” on their official agenda, in which case… no.

Answers In Genesis #transphobia

Speaking of “compassionate”, a few months ago I read a takedown of a Christian comic which tries to be “compassionate” about young trans people while also telling them that they are wrong. It was more patronizing than compassionate, basically concluding that whatever misery might be driving someone to transition, it can be fixed by getting Jesus even harder. Unusually, it focused more on trans boys and how their beautiful bodies might be ruined, but it had also had a really weird message for trans girls: “real girls are delicate and you might accidentally hurt them!” While probably not aimed at trans people, I would assume that this video isn’t any better.

Alex Newman #wingnut #fundie #transphobia #conspiracy

This reminds me of how pedophilia apologists used “adultophobia” to describe what they saw as a “sinister” anti-pedo agenda. This strikes me as basically the same thing, except for child abusers. I would also be very surprised to find that whatever “training material” they have misinterpreted (and perhaps not even read) actually uses the word “adultism”.

Donald John Trump #wingnut #psycho

Well, this aged badly. Vindman was expected to win the Primary, but he overwhelmingly lost to Angie Nixon. So it will be Nixon vs. Moody, not Vindman vs. Moody. I guess Trump can still be happy he suffered a humiliating loss?

[Edit] Wait, re-reading it, it sounds like Trump is acknowledging the loss, but he also expects him to move forward as the Democratic candidate anyway? Is his brain broken or is this just very badly written?

War On Us #quack #conspiracy

Is this related to the “Constitutional Sheriff” concept? That’s basically a bottom-up power concept where the power starts from the lowest-level authorities rather than ordinary citizens (more specifically where the police have the final say in interpreting the laws, not the courts and especially not the Supreme Court). Regardless, local police *really* do not have the authority nor the resources to investigate international conspiracies.

Washington Examiner #wingnut #racist #transphobia

The Democratic Party can, with a few exceptions, be divided into four groups: The Old Guard, who are stuck in the 1970s and 1980s in a lot of ways but have been (often reluctantly) dragged into the 2010s in others; The Neoliberals, who are corporate lackeys on economic issues but mostly go with the rest of the party on social issues; the Progressives, who keep up with the times but are mostly dedicated to working within the system as it currently exists; and the Democratic Socialists / Social Democrats (the names have nothing to do with the Democratic Party, they’d freely run as Republicans if the Repubs were the left-wing party) who hope to change the system and bring about European-style socialism lite.

Until recently, the Old Guard and the Neoliberals have been working together to keep the DS/SD types out of the party, though they’ve never been 100% successful. Now that the Old Guard are gradually retiring or dying out, and the DS/SDs have been gaining a lot of popularity and sometimes beating far better funded “establishment” candidates, we’re likely seeing the beginnings of a major intra-party political shift, for better or worse.

Which leads to conservative-run legacy media like the Washington Examiner engaging in hand-wringing, thinly-veiled scolding, concern trolling, and laughably bizarre takes. (The funniest ones basically read like “The Dems are doomed if they become too popular!”) The closest they have to a maybe-point is that if the Democrats have too many far-left members, centrists will sour towards the party as a whole; but that doesn’t matter much if you can keep the base sufficiently engaged, something which the Old Guard never really understood and the Neoliberals purposefully never pursued (their corporate masters don’t want a left-wing economy) but the Progressives and DS/SDs very much do understand.

cavemankarl #elitist

And if the effective wait list for the job you are “worth” is decades long, what then?

(Cue the pedantic scolding by people who either bypassed the metaphorical wait list or don’t understand metaphor)

David J. Stewart #fundie #crackpot #sexist

@Conscience #262444

Men can cheat all they want, so long as it’s with a woman. There’s very little (or even no) stain on him, it’s on the woman he’s cheating on and the woman he’s cheating with. That’s not a cause for divorce. Don’t ask for that to be explained, you’ll either get a non-answer, or some sort of demented pretzel-logic justification which either makes you despair for humanity or feel like slamming your head into a wall. If a woman cheats or is even suspected of cheating, then that’s not a cause for divorce either, but a cause for “behavioral correction” (abuse).

When a religious fundie claims that a wife must be absolutely obedient to her husband no matter what, occasionally someone asks them in response “well, what should she do if he forces her to commit crimes or worship Satan or something?” and the usual response is some non-answer, like “marriage is not a suicide pact”. They can’t give an answer which would imply that a woman has any meaningful agency, but they also don’t want to give an answer which would imply “just do Satan’s will and God will rescue you, eventually” so the only option is to be vague. Or even imply that any man who would do such a thing isn’t really a Christian, which really doesn’t answer “what should she do in that situation”.

People like Davey J are why it gets asked.

Brother Nathanael #racist #homophobia #magick #fundie #conspiracy

I admit to not knowing much about Kabbalism/Qabalism, other than it does have a more mystical/magical aspect compared to normal Judaism, but this strikes me as one of those transparently ridiculous claims like “as a child, I was a Jew, but then I saw somebody baking cookies which oozed red, and then I knew that it must be the blood of Christian children! So I left the cult as soon as I possibly could. It was totally not strawberry jam or something.”