#revolutionary time to be a progressive christian

[not-so-superheroine]

pope francis goes, maybe lgbtq+ catholics should have some rights, and conservative catholics lose it.

liberation theology is great actually. i wouldn't know about it without conservative catholics insulting the pope about it. anyway, adopted it into my personal theology. thank you jesuits and people who are upset about them.

also, its still discriminatory. he also says very non-affirming things. yet it's still too much "acceptance" in some people's mind. what happened to loving your neighbor as yourself?

i am happy for lgbtq+ catholics, small steps, i understand. but if it makes you more comfortable in expressing your faith and being included in it, i love that for you.

a lot of people don't get why lgbtq+ persons may stay, and think it's to attract lgbtq+ persons to a non-affirming institution, but i think that's simplistic.

i think people fail to realize that it may be for lgbtq+ persons who are staying. some won't leave bc of their faith, and they should be treated well, you know?

some people simply will not leave because of their beliefs at the end of the day, so progress must be made and is a good thing. this is what i have learned through my conversion elsewhere.

#my church is conditionally affirming #as long as you confirm and at least appear chaste until your union #but i believe and have and built an affirming community around me #you bet we are fighting it #but even that is policing and my local congregation isn't affirming #who absolutely will look at me cross-eyed when i consider a mixed orientation marriage #they have a good freaking point #many christian denominations have been struggling with this recently and good #even the sbc is struggling over women taking leadership roles and their congregations supporting them #revolutionary time to be a progressive christian #people fight me about being mormon a lot and y'know what? they can deal with it. #i am very involved with the wider latter day saint movement and experience racism there too. i just believe change comes from ecumenism #i say this bc even if you go elsewhere and i did - a lot of the same problems will be where you go- i have found

[the-devils-library]

The Satanic Bible, by Anton LaVey

Title: The Satanic Bible

Author: Anton Szandor LaVey

Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks

Publishing Date: December 1, 1969 (First Edition)

ISBN-10: ‎0380015390

ISBN-13: 978-0380015399

Alright, let's start with the elephant in the room. This little book is often the only thing people read on Satanism, and for good reason - it made quite a splash when it was published.

Considered the foundational text of the Church of Satan and their specific style of atheistic Satanism (often called LaVeyan Satanism), The Satanic Bible is part philosophy, part religious teaching, and part magical instruction. LaVey is well known for his stance that humanity does not need God, and that believing in God (or Satan, for that matter) as real entities serves only to hold back our potential. However, LaVey argues that humanity does need religion, and that religion requires dogma and ceremony. The dogma and ceremony LaVey offers to the reader is based on one's own happiness and self-satisfaction, as opposed to the Christian values of self-sacrifice for the greater good. His Nine Satanic Statements, Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth, and Nine Satanic Sins are easy to read and understand, and seem to be the inspiration for other Satanist's lists of values, such as The Satanic Temple's Seven Fundamental Tenants.

LaVey embraces sexuality and indulgence, framing sexual energy as the best and most potent source of power for magical workings. Magic is described not as an appeal to a higher power but a seizing of one's own fate, aiming for success and happiness through the manipulation of the world around oneself. The practices he recommends are rooted in ceremonial magic, especially Enochian magic.

The Satanic Bible has had multiple editions and translations since its original publication and is widely available through most online book retailers, as well as sometimes being stocked in magical and metaphysical shops.

[DISCLAIMER: The Devil's Library is not affiliated with any of the previously mentioned groups or authors. It is an independent project by a single Satanist. Do not mistake my mentioning of an author or group as endorsement for their beliefs and practices.]

Beneath the cut you'll find my personal review and opinions on this book.

I've said before on this blog that I am not LaVeyan, and that's still true. While I greatly respect the concept of a non-theistic religion and I lift my glass to all those who work hard to form such religions, I prefer a theistic view of the world. On top of that, LaVey's philosophy does little for me. In truth I consider LaVey's work to not be particularly revolutionary in terms of philosophy. He was a self-admitted fan of Ayn Rand and his brand of Satanic individualism has oft been compared to Randian philosophy with a coat of occult paint slapped on top - I think that evaluation holds true. His magical system also strikes me as unoriginal, given he simply reworked the Enocheon keys. My overall evaluation of the man was that he was a lazy philosopher and a lazy magician, but a skilled showman, and that's how he pulled in as many followers and critics as he did. People were rejecting God and practicing ceremonial magic long before LaVey came along. He just cultivated a compelling aesthetic around it.

I think it's safe to say the book is a product of its time and creator. LaVey is both progressive and regressive, endorsing kink and queer sexuality while also objectifying women in his magical practice (LaVey is, as far as I can tell, the originator of the Satanic tradition of using a nude woman's body as an altar, and he makes a note that during ritual, men should wear robes, but women should dress scantily in order to titillate the men) and having some deep misunderstandings about asexuality. It's also not to be taken lightly that while as far as I'm aware, LaVey himself didn't profess to be a white supremacist, his fondness for Ayn Rand shows a fondness for fascism, he certainly rubbed elbows with white supremacists, and various individuals and groups that broke off from the original Church of Satan have been noted as having a range of Nazi-adjacent views and values, namely the Temple of Set. His list of "Satanic names" is also a very sloppily cobbled together list of names of any god, deity, or spirit who's ever been even slightly associated with negativity, utterly ripped from their cultural context and reduced to keywords that, I assume, LaVey expects the readers to either claim as names of their own or use in rituals. The list includes outright racist cultural appropriation, such as the inclusion of Kali's name, to ignorant misrepresentations of myth, such as calling Loki the "Teutonic devil." As always, I recommend referencing scholarly and culturally conscious resources when it comes to discussions of other religions and mythologies. Do not take a single writer with no credentials at face value.

That being said this is a book I generally recommend people read, with the added note that taking it entirely at face value and assuming it's the one true Satanic text is a mistake. The Satanic Bible is integral to our religious history at this point, but we need not cling to it as entirely or even mostly correct. It is also useful to be familiar with it when interacting with other Satanists, as it's possibly the most commonly read book in the entire religion, so like it or hate it, you probably should have some opinion on it.

#satanism #atheistic satanism #the satanic bible #anton lavey #laveyan satanism #satanic magic #the devil's library #the devils library #tdl #bookshelf #my posts

[dailyanarchistposts]

Chapter 1. Human Nature

A broader sense of self

A hundred years ago, Peter Kropotkin, the Russian geographer and anarchist theorist, published his revolutionary book, Mutual Aid, which argues that the tendency of people to help one another reciprocally, in a spirit of solidarity, was a greater factor in human evolution than competition. We can see cooperative behaviors similarly playing a role in the survival of many species of mammals, birds, fish, and insects. Still, the belief persists that humans are naturally selfish, competitive, warlike, and male-dominated. This belief is founded upon a misrepresentation of so-called primitive peoples as brutal, and of the state as a necessary, pacifying force.

Westerners who see themselves as the pinnacle of human evolution typically view hunter-gatherers and other stateless peoples as relics of the past, even if they are alive in the present. In doing so, they are presuming that history is an inevitable progression from less to more complex, and that Western civilization is more complex than other cultures. If history is organized into the Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Industrial Age, Information Age, and so on, someone who does not use metal tools must still be living in the Stone Age, right? But it is eurocentric, to say the least, to assume that a hunter-gatherer who knows the uses of a thousand different plants is less sophisticated than an operator at a nuclear power plant who knows how to push a thousand different buttons but doesn’t know where his food comes from.

Capitalism may be capable of feats of production and distribution that have never been possible before, but at the same time this society is tragically unable to keep everyone fed and healthy, and has never existed without gross inequalities, oppression, and environmental devastation. One might argue that members of our society are socially stunted, if not outright primitive, when it comes to being able to cooperate and organize ourselves without authoritarian control.

A nuanced view of stateless societies shows them to have their own developed forms of social organization and their own complex histories, both of which contradict Western notions about “natural” human characteristics. The great diversity of human behaviors that are considered normal in different societies calls into question the very idea of human nature.

Our understanding of human nature directly influences what we expect of people. If humans are naturally selfish and competitive, we cannot expect to live in a cooperative society. When we see how differently other cultures have characterized human nature, we can recognize human nature as a cultural value, an idealized and normative mythology that justifies the way a society is organized. Western civilization devotes an immense amount of resources to social control, policing, and cultural production reinforcing capitalist values. The Western idea of human nature functions as a part of this social control, discouraging rebellion against authority. We are taught from childhood that without authority human life would descend into chaos.

This view of human nature was advanced by Hobbes and other European philosophers to explain the origins and purpose of the State; this marked a shift to scientific arguments at a time when divine arguments no longer sufficed. Hobbes and his contemporaries lacked the psychological, historical, archaeological, and ethnographic data that we have today, and their thinking was still heavily influenced by a legacy of Christian teachings. Even now that we have access to an abundance of information contradicting Christian cosmology and statist political science, the popular conception of human nature has not changed dramatically. Why are we still so miseducated? A second question answers the first: who controls education in our society? Nonetheless, anyone who counters the authoritarian dogma faces an uphill battle against the charge of “romanticism.”

But if human nature is not fixed, if it can encompass a wide range of possibilities, couldn’t we use a romantic dose of imagination in envisioning new possibilities? The acts of rebellion occurring within our society right now, from the Faslane Peace Camp to the Really Really Free Markets, contain the seeds of a peaceful and openhanded society. Popular responses to natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans show that everyone has the potential to cooperate when the dominant social order is disrupted. These examples point the way to a broader sense of self — an understanding of human beings as creatures capable of a wide range of behaviors.

One might say selfishness is natural, in that people inevitably live according to their own desires and experiences. But egoism need not be competitive or dismissive of others. Our relationships extend far beyond our bodies and our minds — we live in communities, depend on ecosystems for food and water, and need friends, families, and lovers for our emotional health. Without institutionalized competition and exploitation, a person’s self-interest overlaps with the interests of her community and her environment. Seeing our relationships with our friends and nature as fundamental parts of ourselves expands our sense of connection with the world and our responsibility for it. It is not in our self-interest to be dominated by authorities, or to dominate others; in developing a broader sense of self, we can structure our lives and communities accordingly.

#anarchism #daily posts #communism #anti capitalist #anti capitalism #late stage capitalism #anarchy #anarchists #libraries #leftism #anarchy works

[empirearchives]

Adam Mickiewicz’s view of Napoleon

(Portrait of Adam Mickiewicz, 1827-1828, by Walenty Wańkowicz)

Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855) was a Polish Romantic poet, dramatist, essayist, publicist, translator and political activist. He is regarded as national poet in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus.

Napoleon’s spiritual grandeur, as Mickiewicz described it, resulted from his embodiment of the French genius and character (the sacred fire). Chosen by God for his historical role, Napoleon had come to enact all that was good and progressive in the Enlightenment while refuting the excesses of reason and rationality that were bad. Indeed, his very existence was an inexplicable mystery, a living challenge to the false assumption that all phenomena may be explained through rational laws. He represented the true objectives of the revolution (which, it is important to remember, were for Mickiewicz an expression of the Christian spirit) because he “put into practice the revolutionary ideals” and thereby proved himself to be the historical figure who “defended its ideals with the greatest and most fruitful determination.”

Mickiewicz also became a follower of the Lithuanian mystic, Andrzej Towianski. According to the historian Kramer:

Towianski saw Napoleon as a key historical predecessor who had played a major role in the divine plan to lead mankind from darkness to light and from conflict to political cooperation. Napoleon had of course failed to complete this work, but now the mission had fallen to Towianski, who claimed a special link with the deceased emperor (and whose followers often spent a night at Waterloo as part of their spiritual pilgrimages). […] Mickiewicz embraced this spiritual interpretation of Bonaparte so enthusiastically that by the time of his final lecture at the Collège de France he was distributing lithographs that depicted Napoleon grieving over a torn map of Europe.

Source: Lloyd S. Kramer, Threshold of a New World: Intellectuals and the Exile Experience in Paris, 1830-1848

#Adam Mickiewicz #Mickiewicz #Lloyd S. Kramer #Kramer #napoleonic era #napoleonic #Threshold of a New World: Intellectuals and the Exile Experience in Paris 1830-1848 #Threshold of a New World #napoleon bonaparte #napoleon #first french empire #french empire #19th century #history #Poland #romanticism #romantic #romantic poetry #france #Walenty Wańkowicz #Wańkowicz #Andrzej Towianski #Towianski #1800s #french revolution #revolution #Belarus #Lithuania #sources

[werewolfarthurmorganenjoyer]

I've been getting this idea about writing a Javier x f!OC fanfic where the reader is Chinese...well mostly because I'm Chinese and I'm emotionally attached to the Chinese folks speaking Cantonese in Saint Denis. But Ming Yuet isn't gonna be a self-insert, at least not for me. She was born in my mind 6 hours ago but she's already my precious daughter.

Also I'd like to write about how people in southern China were basically sold to be labourers across the Pacific and some family quite literally sell their daughters along with a ship full of male workers, knowing full well that their daughter will almost certainly become a sex worker after arriving in the states. I feel like while it's not a rare topic in Chinese media, there's almost never any media that focuses on these people.

Anyway about Ming Yuet:

- Her old name was Luk Mui which literally means "the sixth sister" because rural Chinese parents in those times were just lazy like that especially with girl names

- Her earliest memory was her oldest sister (about 10-11 years old then) being given away/sold to a family who just had a baby boy. The sister would be expected to raise the infant to adulthood and then marry the boy. (Yes it is messed up but it was sadly a common practice in Old China.)

- When she was 12 her father died and her mom's family sold her to a ship for the US and she became a child prostitute in San Francisco

- It is then that she's given the name Ming Yuet which means "Bright Moon", because it's a prettier and fancier name.

- she's 22 in 1899. In about 1895 the owner of her brothel suddenly converted to Christianity and Ming Yuet was granted freedom. (Based on a real thing that happened in a real Chinese brothel.) But she had no skills so she ended up becoming a mistress for a Chinese businessesman and it's then that she's brought to Saint Denis.

- And then she got dumped and she returned to sex work for a living again.

- She's completely illiterate and speaks limited English so there's a notable language barrier between her and Javier.

- I can imagine Javier kind of struggling to say her name right and she's like "just call me moon it's okay" and he goes "can I call you mi luna"

Anyway, this fic isn't even in progress, not in the slightest. I do not trust in my knowledge of the history of Chinese workers in the US and I would need to do more research. And I believe my understanding of Mexican culture and Javier as a character is not sufficient for me to write him well. But I am quite determined to write this fic.

If all goes well maybe I can write a novel in Chinese based on this idea and try to get a deal with a local publisher— I doubt there is any other story about romance between a Mexican revolutionary and outlaw and a Chinese sex worker, though I can't see there being a target audience for this lol

#red dead redemption 2 #javier escuella #javier escuella x OC

[a-trick-or-two-with-lepers]

I'm so stupid, and so late, but I have to tell you this. If you're still interested in Hungarian music, you should give a listen to the musical István, a király. It's kind of a mix between Jesus Christ Superstar and Hamilton (rather the former than the latter), as it takes a historically significant period in Hungarian history with the two opposing leader figures of that time and takes a nuanced and balanced look at their ideological conflict with banger music. It has that inevitable tragedy vibe with two people who could've loved each other instead of fighting, the enormous responsibility of leading people, and the revolutionary musical element of it being rock. (It's not Hungary's first rock opera, but the one that made it popular, and it's also the most famous musical of ours.)

It tells the story of the Hungarian rulers around the year 1000, where one side thinks we won't have a future if we don't found a Christian state, and as such the pagan ruler baptizes his son, István, and makes him his successor. The opposition is Koppány, who believes himself the rightful successor, because in ancient customs, the oldest male member of the family is the next in line, who would be Koppány. So, it's kind of the battle between assimilation and traditions, about progressive ideals and how much sacrifices they're worth and about inviting in authority we never asked for, for the sake of progress (which in the Soviet occupied Hungary of 1983 was a very interesting, bold take.) Anyways. It's very good. If I pique your interest, I suggest this version: videa.hu/videok/film-animacio/istvan-a-kiraly-nepstadion-1990-teljes-1LyohQj33Ayt2oBZ. Sorry for the rambling. 😅

HSHAJAHDVSHSBFB NO don't apologize this is so cool!!! I'll be honest I don't know shit about Hungarian history, but I also don't know shit about the history of my own country LMAO

A Hungarian rock opera sounds so fucking badass, I must see it. Thank you so much for sharing, I will definitely be checking it out!!

#hungary #musicals #rock opera #asks #thank you!!!

[jessicalprice]

The poisonous legacy of "The Life of Jesus"

This is a sidebar in a series of posts about Denise Kimber Buell's Why This New Race: Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity.

Buell brings up Joseph Ernest Renan, a 19th-century French biblical scholar.

Renan’s 1863 Life of Jesus was hugely popular. It went through more than sixty-one editions in French, was translated into English and German, and was widely commented on within a year of its publication.

Renan was a hugely influential figure in his time. As his Wikipedia entry notes:

Hugely influential in his lifetime, Renan was eulogised after his death as the embodiment of the progressive spirit in western culture. Anatole France wrote that Renan was the incarnation of modernity. Renan's works were read and appreciated by many of the leading literary figures of the time, including James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Matthew Arnold, Edith Wharton, and Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve. One of his greatest admirers was Manuel González Prada in Peru who took the Life of Jesus as a basis for his anticlericalism. 

His Life of Jesus was significant at the time because it presented Jesus as a human historical figure. It helped launch the interest in the "historical Jesus," which persists as a strain of biblical studies to this day.

However, his later influence was less significant in biblical studies (his work was refuted by Christian biblical scholars almost immediately) than it was on both radical religious Christians and on Christian secularists and humanists.

As the abstract for David Burns's The Life and Death of the Radical Historical Jesus summarizes:

This chapter examines how the development of biblical criticism in Europe and criticisms of slavery in America contributed to the creation of the radical historical Jesus. It devotes most of its attention to Ernest Renan and Robert Ingersoll and the premium that each thinker placed on the imagination. The discussion of Renan focuses on his Life of Jesus because the biography provided radical religionists in America with the inspiration and freedom to embellish and expand on the material contained in the Gospels.

Sounds great, right?

Burns notes in the actual text:

Scholars tracing the development of modern European thought often point to the publication of The Life of Jesus as a key moment in the process of secularization.

After all, Renan presented a Jesus that has become almost de rigeuer among liberals and leftists opposing conservative Christians:

Renan's unconventional approach disturbed liberal theologians and conservative clergymen, but religious radicals who espoused a secular form of Christianity considered his character study a legitimate piece of scholarship... Freethinkers, socialists, and secular-minded religionists also embraced Renan's biography of Christ because the Jesus he extracted from the available sources was a cosmopolitan and ecumenical revolutionary devoted to the cause of the disaffected and the dispossessed. Renan's Jesus spoke to many of these radicals on a personal level as well, for the oppositional Christ that earned nothing but opprobrium from the authorities of the Temple in The Life of Jesus was an evocative figure who resonated with individuals who were denigrated and dismissed by the doctors of divinity they sought to depose.

Recognize this Jesus? He (or his descendant) still thriving today in the US, a popular figure to evoke in response to conservative Christian cruelty--a Jesus sticking it to the "religious authorities" who were his main opponents, pointing out their hypocrisy and siding with the victims of their bigotry.

He continues to be an appealing figure to modern progressive sensibilities, especially in an America struggling with its legacy of racial hatred.

Renan portrayed Galilee as a region where people from all points of the compass converged, creating a "diversified" place where Jews, Phoenicians, Syrians, Greeks, and Arabs all commingled and conversions to the Jewish religion were not rare. And when Christ traveled to Jerusalem, his background became a point of contention, because the Pharisees considered it laughable that a prophet could be a man of mixed blood from a backwater region.

Burns describes Renan's Jesus as "a human melting pot."

The only problem with that is that we're given a detailed genealogy of Jesus in the gospels, and he is very much a Jew. If it raises any unease for you that Renan seems to want Jesus not to be a Jew, put a pin in that.

There's more stuff just perfectly tailored to modern sensibilities:

[H]is gospel transcended the limited concerns of any particular nation to encompass the entire human family... [T]he anarchist Christ "revealed to the world the truth that country is not everything, and that the man is anterior and superior to the citizen... [B]rotherhood collapsed all boundaries dividing people, and, as a result, Christ preached "the benign religion of humanity."

Still sounds great, right? Jesus the indicter of nationalism, Jesus the destroyer of division, Jesus the champion of the human over the citizen.

(If you've read my other entries in this series, even in her introduction, Buell is already pointing out how Christianity's universalism is positioned as superior to Judaism's "ethnic particularism," so you might see where this is going.)

But in any case, the book hit home with people most of modern US progressives generally see positively:

Renan's Jesus, who ignored racial and national boundaries as he sought to initiate a sweeping social revolution that would overturn the authorities of the world, had a profound impact on individuals opposed to everything the fascists championed. Although European radicals deemed The Life of Jesus to be a praiseworthy book, it was freethinkers, socialists, and anarchists in America who fully embraced and expanded upon the radical historical Jesus that emerged from Renan's biography.

We see Renan's radical Jesus in the manifesto of Keith Giles (who runs the Progressive Christianity channel on Patheos). We read about him in Reza Aslan's Zealot, a NYT bestseller. He's all over the publications and YouTube channels of the Christian socialist movement, a popular figure at Black Lives Matter and Women's March speeches, and a pillar of the liberation theology movement.

Again, you might feel a flicker of unease how often Radical Jesus's opposition is other Jews, how they become the powerful forces arrayed against him, despite being members of a brutally occupied people, to the point where they often eclipse the brutal, occupying, abusive empire itself as antagonists.

But most gentile progressives are so eager to strike back at modern--conservative Christian--religious authorities, and so ignorant of actual Jewish history, that even when you tell them that those "religious authorities" were members of an occupied and brutalized people trying to keep their people alive under Roman rule, and that they (the Pharisees) were the founders of the form of Judaism that survived the occupation and subsequent genocide, deportation, and enslavement, that modern Jews are Pharisees, they're often willing to throw us under the bus to get in another dig at Republicans.

You should listen to any of that unease you're feeling, however. Because in that first bit from Buell that I quoted at the beginning of this post, I cut it off before the rest of the paragraph. Here's what follows:

His work has been credited with introducing “racial categories into theological discussion.” For Renan, Jesus was an Aryan Jew, and his main rivals, the Pharisees, were Semitic Jews. This racial mapping allows Renan to portray Christianity as arising naturally out of Judaism, while his category “Aryan Jew” also permits him to write that Christianity “over time rid itself of nearly everything it took from the race, so that those who consider Christianity to be the Aryan religion par excellence are in many respects correct.”

Yeah. The Radical Jesus that was so inspirational to so many progressives, socialists, anarchists, and freethinkers, by a man who was dubbed "the embodiment of the progressive spirit in western culture," was the Aryan Jew/proto-Christian who vanquished the evil "Semitic Jews."

It's frustrating how often people ignore the wide Strasserite streak in progressivism, as if just because a movement is progressive or leftist, it by definition can't be antisemitic.

I regret to inform you that history says otherwise.

#antisemitism #Christianity #progressive Christianity

[newsandletterscommittee]

The doctrine of formal democracy is not scientific Socialism, but the theory of so-called natural law. The essence of the latter consists in the recognition of eternal and unchanging standards of law, which among different peoples and at different periods find a different, more or less limited and distorted expression. The natural law of the latest history – i.e., as it emerged from the Middle Ages – included first of all a protest against class privileges, the abuse of despotic legislation, and the other “artificial” products of feudal positive law. The theoreticians of the, as yet, weak Third Estate expressed its class interests in a few ideal standards, which later on developed into the teaching of democracy, acquiring at the same time an individualist character. The individual is absolute; all persons have the right of expressing their thoughts in speech and print; every man must enjoy equal electoral rights. As a battle cry against feudalism, the demand for democracy had a progressive character. As time went on, however, the metaphysics of natural law (the theory of formal democracy) began to show its reactionary side – the establishment of an ideal standard to control the real demands of the laboring masses and the revolutionary parties.

If we look back to the historical sequence of world concepts, the theory of natural law will prove to be a paraphrase of Christian spiritualism freed from its crude mysticism. The Gospels proclaimed to the slave that he had just the same soul as the slave-owner, and in this way established the equality of all men before the heavenly tribunal. In reality, the slave remained a slave, and obedience became for him a religious duty. In the teaching of Christianity, the slave found an expression for his own ignorant protest against his degraded condition. Side by side with the protest was also the consolation. Christianity told him:– ”You have an immortal soul, although you resemble a pack-horse.” Here sounded the note of indignation. But the same Christianity said:– ”Although you are like a pack-horse, yet your immortal soul has in store for it an eternal reward.” Here is the voice of consolation. These two notes were found in historical Christianity in different proportions at different periods and amongst different classes. But as a whole, Christianity, like all other religions, became a method of deadening the consciousness of the oppressed masses.

Natural law, which developed into the theory of democracy, said to the worker: “all men are equal before the law, independently of their origin, their property, and their position; every man has an equal right in determining the fate of the people.” This ideal criterion revolutionized the consciousness of the masses in so far as it was a condemnation of absolutism, aristocratic privileges, and the property qualification. But the longer it went on, the more if sent the consciousness to sleep, legalizing poverty, slavery and degradation: for how could one revolt against slavery when every man has an equal right in determining the fate of the nation?

Rothschild, who has coined the blood and tears of the world into the gold napoleons of his income, has one vote at the parliamentary elections. The ignorant tiller of the soil who cannot sign his name, sleeps all his life without taking his clothes off, and wanders through society like an underground mole, plays his part, however, as a trustee of the nation’s sovereignty, and is equal to Rothschild in the courts and at the elections. In the real conditions of life, in the economic process, in social relations, in their way of life, people became more and more unequal; dazzling luxury was accumulated at one pole, poverty and hopelessness at the other. But in the sphere of the legal edifice of the State, these glaring contradictions disappeared, and there penetrated thither only unsubstantial legal shadows. The landlord, the laborer, the capitalist, the proletarian, the minister, the bootblack – all are equal as “citizens” and as “legislators.” The mystic equality of Christianity has taken one step down from the heavens in the shape of the “natural,” “legal” equality of democracy. But it has not yet reached earth, where lie the economic foundations of society. For the ignorant day-laborer, who all his life remains a beast of burden in the service of the bourgeoisie, the ideal right to influence the fate of the nations by means of the parliamentary elections remained little more real than the palace which he was promised in the kingdom of heaven.

- Leon Trostky, Terrorism and Communism, ch. 3 (1920)

#marxism #communism #leon trotsky

[female-malice]

greta thunberg has gone gender huh :( don't like where this is going

Why, because she liked some gender tweets or something?

It truly doesn't matter.

Gender debates have clogged up every progressive movement so far except for climate. TRAs can't figure out how to make climate change a trans thing so they just leave it alone. I'm perfectly fine with that. The further away the climate movement is from the trans rights movement, the better.

Gender ideology has not yet co-opted climate. Climate activists and scientists still say "women and girls" when talking about women's issues.

Greta liking some gender tweets doesn't change that.

But gender critical twitter accounts reacting to Greta and stirring up backlash is frustrating. They've managed to push gender debate into a movement that has successfully avoided it. It's annoying. No one on the climate side of things has time for that shit.

Do you really think evolutionary biologists believe in gender ideology? They don't. But as long as the trans lobby stays out of climate and energy politics, climate scientists will ignore them.

They even ignore the influence of Christianity and Islam on extractivism and modern land use. Religion is very relevant to climate. There's some important papers and essays written about this topic. But these papers aren't widely advertised or pushed in front of the public by the climate movement. Criticizing religion on mainstream media is a divisive and costly thing to do. If activists can avoid that, they will.

So, if the influence of religion can be ignored in order to avoid conflicts, trans politics can definitely be ignored. I believe the climate movement will continue to ignore it. They're trying to appeal to as many people across the political spectrum as possible.

Degrowth and CASSE are technically so far left that they're several steps beyond anything Marx ever talked about. But they present their economic approach as neither left nor right but a secret third thing. Here's what their website says:

Sign the position calling for a steady state economy. You’ll be joining thousands of top scientists, economists, diplomats and thought leaders from “left” and “right” around the world.

Degrowth is by far the most revolutionary wing of the climate movement. And they're focused on generating non-partisan support. So don't worry. Gender is never coming anywhere near this stuff.

#cc

[leftistfeminista]

GDR theses on the Luther year 1983

On this occasion we recall how the GDR and the SED determined their relationship to the evangelical Christians, using the example of the theses for the 500th birthday of Martin Luther:

GDR theses on the Luther year 1983

On the occasion of the 500th birthday of Martin Luther, a working group of scientists from the Academy of Sciences of the GDR and representatives of the universities wrote 15 "theses about Martin Luther". It said:Martin Luther (November 10, 1483 – February 18, 1546) paved the way for the great intellectual and political conflicts with which Germany and Europe entered the epoch of the decline of feudalism, the development of manufacturing capitalism and the first bourgeois revolutions. He is one of the great personalities of German history of world importance.The German Democratic Republic is deeply rooted in all of German history. When

socialist German state, it is the result of the centuries-long struggle of all progressive forces of the German people for social progress. Everything that was progressive in German history and all those who brought it about belong to its indispensable traditions that shape national identity. “The progressive traditions that we maintain and carry on include the work and legacy of all those who have contributed to progress, to the development of world culture, regardless of their social and class affiliation” (Erich Honecker). In this sense, the GDR honors Martin Luther's historical achievements and nurtures the progressive legacy he left behind.

I. (...) The given social and ecclesiastical conditions determined the central importance of theology in the political, social and ideological debates and the religious justification of the revolutionary demands. Martin Luther triggered the Reformation with his fight against the "international center of the feudal system" (Friedrich Engels). Therein lies its lasting historical merit. The Reformation became an essential part of the beginning revolution, formed the ideological bracket for the very different class forces that supported it and provided the framework for their rapid differentiation in the further course of the revolutionary process. The revolution culminated in the German Peasants' War of 1525, which ended in defeat.II. (...) With this (ie with his critique of the sale of indulgences, ME) Martin Luther created theological foundations for the development of a Reformation ideology that achieved revolutionary effects under the given social conditions; for reformation meant not only a reform of the church, but a more or less far-reaching change in society. Martin Luther's personal achievement for the development of the early bourgeois revolution was to have defended this foundation tenaciously and undeterred, which his opponents repeatedly forced upon him.

III. (...) Bourgeois upper classes and forces associated with early capitalism, the councils in many cities saw their own interests expressed in this or adopted these goals as their own. The Reformation unleashed potential to promote the incipient transition from feudalism to capitalism. This gave it an essentially bourgeois-progressive character. At the same time, a people's movement for the Reformation developed, initially supported by the bourgeois-urban opposition, whose forces enthusiastically supported Luther (...)

V. (...) The people's movement used the arguments and biblical justifications provided by Luther and the other reformers, but did not restrict itself to leave the fulfillment of their demands to the good will of the authorities alone, in the spirit of Luther.Since 1523/24, the relationship to the authorities and the question of how to achieve the goals of the Reformation became the most important point of contention between Luther and the popular movement. At first, Martin Luther still partially supported the popular movement and tried to bridge the widening gap to the opposition of the noble estates, although he was now being criticized and attacked by forces that were pushing ahead, especially Thomas Müntzer, and he was in turn dealing with them. While still in the Wartburg, he justified the abolition of the Mass in Wittenberg, the invalidity of monastic vows, the introduction of the lay chalice and the German language in worship, the transfer of church assets to municipal administration and their use for the poor.At the beginning of 1523, Luther established the secularization program of the middle-class, moderate Reformation. This program aimed to transform spiritual property into secular property, primarily for the benefit of secular feudal lords, the upper classes, and the community.

Luther elevated the congregation's right to make decisions to a principle of the Reformation. Up until 1524, Luther developed his program of the Reformation, which was to be carried out peacefully in alliance with the secular authorities. To the extent that the popular movement became radicalized and also turned against secular feudalism and the princes, Luther turned his back on it. ...VIII. Martin Luther's Reformation had a lasting effect on European countries. It promoted the resolution of fundamental contradictions of feudal society and therefore very quickly became a European phenomenon, accelerating the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Europe thus entered the era of bourgeois revolutions, in which over the next few centuries the bourgeoisie gradually gained political power as well as economic power. ...X. The early Reformation was a very broad movement for revolutionary transformation, heterogeneous in terms of class, encompassing all social strata. The victory of the princes over the rebellious people in the Peasants' War curtailed the class base of this movement and, in cooperation with the bourgeois upper classes, ensured the maintenance of feudal class rule. ...

XII. With the foundation of historical materialism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels also created the outlines for a scientific view of the Reformation and Martin Luther. They paid tribute to Luther as the initiator of the Reformation and this as the first decisive battle of the European bourgeoisie against feudalism. At the same time, they showed that the Peasants' War and Thomas Müntzer, to which the revolutionary workers' movement feels particularly committed, embodied the necessary consequence of the impetus given by Luther. (...)Distinguishing between Martin Luther's epochal historical achievement, his class limitations and the reactionary misuse of his legacy, the revolutionary German labor movement has opposed the unholy alliance of thrones that invoked Luther's name for its purposes. She neither heroized nor disregarded Luther, but honored his place in the diversity of progressive and revolutionary movements in German history.

 ...XV. With the victory of the working class and its allies, with the construction and shaping of socialism, the social prerequisites have been created in the German Democratic Republic for Martin Luther to be honored scientifically and fairly from all sides. We honor the fighters of past generations who, under their conditions, used their personality to advance progress and enriched culture. We appreciate them critically without overlooking their time and class contradictions and applying unhistorical standards. (...)The GDR maintains the memorials for Martin Luther and the Reformation and respects the spiritual uniqueness of the associated cultural and ethical values. Like all other religious communities in the GDR, the Protestant churches inspired by and based on Luther have constitutionally guaranteed broad opportunities for their activity. In view of the more complicated world situation, all citizens of the GDR, including Christians, are committed to peace-stabilizing measures, detente and effective disarmament in the struggle to find a solution to mankind's vital problem in the present, namely the maintenance of peace. Evangelical Christians of a Lutheran character, like all other believers, have proven themselves as co-creators of the developed socialist society.

They work self-sacrificingly in caring for the handicapped and sick, children and the elderly, not least because of their Christian commitment to charity, especially in the diakonia. In doing so, they preserve and enrich their specific historical traditions, which have helped to shape and enrich the culture and ethics of German and other countries over the centuries.The party and government of the GDR were and are always open to the humanitarian concerns of the Christian churches and have always taken care to work together in this spirit. 

Luther's progressive legacy is preserved in the socialist German national culture. Last but not least, the founding of the Martin Luther Committee of the German Democratic Republic under the chairmanship of Erich Honecker, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the SED and Chairman of the State Council of the GDR bears witness to this. The appreciation of Luther and his work also includes the efforts and the struggle of those forces who are fighting today for social justice, progress and peace in the world with reference to the teaching, example and achievements of Martin Luther. "May the honors on his 500th birthday, as befits the worldwide impact of the reformer,

#From: Journal of History 29 (1981), pp. 879-893.

https://archive.ph/4g2yk

#gdr #East Germany #martin luther

[longwindedbore]

Maybe it’s time to acknowledge that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were set up to create an anti-progress political system. A system that insures that a small number of reactionaries can thwart a Liberal majority.

Y’know. Like the USA in 2022.

Time to acknowledge that in 1773 a small group of ‘firebrands of the Revolution’ sparked civil insurrection against a Crown which had begun the first steps to end slavery in 1772. Y’know, dressing up in costumes, rioting because a Liberals were taking power.

Our *History* has omitted mentioning that 1773 to the 1782 the abolitionists (inclusive Libertards!) were a significant factor among the ‘Loyalists’.

[Yes, the Crown’s reaction to the Boston Tea Party was imbecilic. A continuation of ill-thought out laws]

Not a Revolution. But a Secessionin 1776

Just as the illegal white immigrants seeking to expand slavery did in Mexico’s Northern Territory their n 1836 when Mexico banned slavery.

Just as White Racists attempted to spark a war with Spain and seize Cuba for slavery in 1850.

Just as White Racists attempted in Kansas and Missouri with Terrorism in 1856-65.

Just as White Racists attempted to do in 1861-65 after the election of Lincoln.

Just as White a racists have been threatening incessantly since 1865.

The 1776 *Revolution* was led by southern and northern slave owners in conjunction with merchants benefitting directly or indirectly from black slavery, genocidal ‘clearing the wilderness’, and white forced unpaid labor as indentured, apprentices, transported prisoners.

Oligarchs benefitting from forced labor who were terrified that the emancipation of all slaves in England in 1772 would be extended to British North America.

The Founders represented a System in which 10% -20% of the white Protestant males voting due to wealth and religious prerequisites. Y’know, what the GOP anti-voter laws are trying to resurrect.

It’s become painfully obvious we are NOT living in a Republic that reflects the Will of the People. Just that of Economic Oligarchs.

As in 1775, so Today.

Cult 45 is defecating on all that was once was the progress we have painfully inched toward against the inertia of the System. The Cult is violently trying to reclaim *their* Country of Christian Nationalistic limited voting cis-only rights.

Can we continue to ignore that Legal System seems to protect Cult 45’s…

free hate-speech-only from pulpit and podium,

free hate Press from Fox, AM radio and Moscow;

gun ownership-only for Kyle Rittenhouse vigilantism to kill peaceful protestors without consequences (other than grow Rich)

freedom of assembly-only for armed hooded racists driving in black neighborhoods on Election Day or marching through State Capitols if Legislatures DARE to debate progressive policy.

Freedom of Assembly for Progress?

Nope! Peaceful protests for Liberal causes or Unionization are summarily deemed illegal gatherings then the crowd gassed and their eyes shot out.

Freedom of Speech for Progress?

Nope! Corporate owned social media cancels TikTok and Twitter progressives for *offending* Cult 45 but the algorithms direct you to their hate filled platforms.

Freedom of the Press to expose Government corruption?

Nope! Exposure of the crimes of government are prosecuted ruthlessly by both Parties when in power as the equivalent of Treason.

The all-out assault on all non-white, non-cis, non-right wing *Christianity* has used anti-abortion as its tent. A tent that the Cultist *Patriots* are aggressively seeking to expand.

They’ve NEVER had the numbers. That’s the Terror driving them.

Time for a Revolution, not Secession. The NUMBERS are in our favor.

[mariacallous]

Before, during, and after his term in office, Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that he would be, and in fact was, the most pro-Israel U.S. president ever. In a recent post on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump boasted: “No President has done more for Israel than I have.” He then complained that “our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S.”—comments that raised age old antisemitic tropes about the dual loyalties of Jews—before ending with what seemed to be a threat: “U.S. Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel – Before it is too late!”

Blatant antisemitism aside, on the face of it, Trump’s pro-Israel gestures during his presidency might seem to merit his claim. But any serious examination makes clear that when it came to actions that strengthened Israeli security and well-being, Trump fell far short—and proved to be far more pro-Trump and pro-former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu than he was pro-Israel.

In many ways, Trump’s actions actually weakened both Israel’s security and that of the Jewish community in the United States.

Rarely has a U.S. president showered Israel with as much attention, praise, and pro-Israel gestures as Trump. And despite recent reporting that revealed his deep frustrations with Netanyahu, the case has been made—primarily by himself and his supporters—that Trump was Israel’s most devoted champion among U.S. presidents. Israel is one of the few (and perhaps the only) countries in the world where large majorities prefer Trump over U.S. President Joe Biden when it comes to foreign policy.

And at first glance it’s easy to see why. Trump was the only modern U.S. president to visit Israel on his first trip abroad, the first U.S. president to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and open an embassy there, the first U.S. president to recognize the Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory, and the first sitting U.S. president to pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

Still, as important and resonant as these gestures may have been with U.S. and Israeli public opinion, especially the embassy move, they had little to do with improving Israeli security. In a piece for Foreign Policy, Shalom Lipner, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who worked for seven consecutive Israeli prime ministers, described them as largely rhetorical and symbolic. These were easy lifts for Trump, designed to burnish his credentials with evangelical Christians and to establish the Republican Party as Israel’s eternal friend.

Far more significant and beneficial to Israel were Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner’s efforts to cement Israel’s strategic ties with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Building on an emerging coincidence of interests between Israel and Gulf Arab states, the Trump administration facilitated the signing of the Abraham Accords, a set of agreements that would open extraordinary chapters in Israel’s relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and, perhaps in time, Saudi Arabia. And his administration’s killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani removed a major Iranian asset from the battlefield.

At the same time, as a result of acts of omission and commission, the Trump administration undermined Israel’s security. Trump’s 2018 decision to withdraw unilaterally from the admittedly flawed but still functional Iran nuclear agreement created a vacuum that has led to Iran ramping up its nuclear program. Today, it stands just weeks away from producing enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon should it choose to take that step.

There wasn’t much hope for serious progress on the Palestinian issue during the Trump years, but Trump’s efforts to marginalize the Palestinians, weaken an already dysfunctional Palestinian Authority, and enable Israeli settlement activity made a tough issue that much harder. Trump’s readiness to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria was viewed by many current and former Israeli military officials as a blow to Israel’s efforts to combat Iran—prompting Maj. Gen. Amiram Levin, the former head of the Israel Defense Forces Northern Command, to remark that “as long as Trump is in power, Israel has no one to rely on.”

And when Iran struck Saudi oil facilities in drone attacks in September 2019 and the Trump administration failed to respond, Maj. Gen. Amos Gilad, the former director of the Political-Military Affairs Bureau at Israel’s Defense Ministry, complained that Trump’s “no reaction policy when Iran attacks Saudi Arabian oil facilities or when Iran shoots down an American drone projects weakness. That is bad for Israel since American deterrence is Israeli deterrence as well.”

Nor when measured against the accomplishments of other U.S. presidents does Trump rank first when it comes to supporting Israel or caring deeply about its security.

Harry Truman was the first world leader to recognize the Jewish state, just 11 minutes after its creation was announced. Richard Nixon’s determinedly resupplied Israel with weapons during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, and he dispatched Henry Kissinger to negotiate disengagement agreements with Egypt and Syria that would lay the groundwork for Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s historic 1977 trip to Jerusalem and Egyptian-Israeli peace. And despite his tensions with then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Jimmy Carter brokered an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty that eliminated the prospects of a two-front war against Israel. All of these actions were far more consequential for Israeli security and well-being than anything Trump accomplished.

And in the care and commitment department, it’s hard not to see U.S. President Bill Clinton as well as Biden, whose support for Israel is deeply ingrained in their DNA, as sincerely devoted to the idea and reality of a Jewish state, in contrast to Trump, who tethered and subordinated U.S. policy on Israel to his personal vanity and political interests.

In 2018, Netanyahu visited the White House and praised Trump, placing him in the same pantheon as other historic benefactors of the Jewish people: Cyrus the Great, Lord Arthur Balfour, and Truman. Such flattery from Netanyahu was no surprise: Trump may not have been the most pro-Israel president in U.S. history, but he was certainly the most pro-Netanyahu, intervening to assist the prime minister in at least two of his reelection bids.

Those who celebrate Trump as Israel’s best friend in the White House also conveniently overlook two other aspects of Trump’s relationship with Israel and Jews that reflect poorly on the former president.

First, like so many other dimensions of Trump’s presidency, he subordinated his foreign policy to his personal politics. And the Israel issue was no exception. With help from Netanyahu, who long ago cast his lot with the Republican Party and its base, Trump damaged the bipartisanship on which the durability of the U.S.-Israel relationship depends. To secure his base, which includes white evangelical Christians and right-leaning Republicans, as well as to drive a political wedge within the American Jewish community, Trump has tried to make Republicans the go-to party for Israel while demonizing Democrats, cynically remarking in 2019 that “if you vote for a Democrat, you are very, very disloyal to Israel and to the Jewish people.”

He has tried to turn the U.S.-Israel relationship into a morality play, pitting “good” Republicans against “bad” Democrats. But the strength of the U.S.-Israel alliance depends on a political consensus between America’s two main parties that the broadest conception of the U.S. national interest means robust support for Israel. The relationship with Israel cannot and should not depend on the desires and ambitions of a single party or politician.

The other, even darker, dimension of Trump’s relationship with Israel and Jews involves his courting, enabling, and even supporting extremist forces that fuel antisemitism and anti-Israeli sentiments, including by perpetuating harmful antisemitic stereotypes himself, as he did in his most recent comments in which he suggested that somehow American Jews have a separate loyalty and stand apart from real Americans.

“We don’t need the former president, who curries favor with extremists and antisemites, to lecture us about the US-Israel relationship,” Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive and national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), said in a statement on Twitter on Sunday. The Biden White House was even more blunt, accusing Trump of aligning “with extremist and antisemitic figures.”

From his comment after the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., that there were “very fine people, on both sides,” to his call to the far-right violent extremist group the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,” to his rallying right-wing extremist groups to march to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump has left a trail of tweets, statements, winks, and nods to white nationalist extremism and, equally important, he’s failed to consistently condemn these racist outpourings or the ideology driving them.

According to the ADL, 2021 witnessed the greatest increase in antisemitic incidents in the United States since the organization began tracking incidents in 1979. And though the ADL acknowledges it’s impossible to attribute this rise to any single source or ideology, a former president and elements within the Republican Party validating this poison only helps fuel this environment and raises the risk not just to Jews but to other minority groups as well.

In the end, Trump managed to shower Israel with a series of foreign policy favors that didn’t contribute much to Israel’s security, as well as few initiatives that did. He also did a fair bit of damage. It’s high time his supporters separate out his vainglorious gestures from the downsides of his actions. Trump wasn’t Cyrus the Great, Lord Balfour, or Harry Truman. Had the former president really cared as much about Israel as he did about himself, the Jewish state, the U.S.-Israel relationship, and American Jews would definitely have been better off for it.

[mythmonster]

revolution

probably going to see a lot of people calling for revolution or murder in the next few days. it’s understandable, and anger is completely justified. but it’s also very frustrating to see

it’s my opinion that any leftist revolution in the us would fail. hard.

online leftists seem to vastly overestimate how many of us there are in this country. at most, i'd say that 25% of the country could be considered "leftist", with around 40% being various types of liberals and 35% being conservative. the right is far better armed and distributed around the country. they have militias. they have the police on their side. they have most of the army on their side. leftists would not stand a chance.

we would not be able to count on any foreign support. "communist" countries like china would be happy to stand aside as the us tears itself apart. global capital would rather allow fascists to take over than allow the left a foothold in the bastion of the free market.

there is also the problem of morality. the left is opposed to things like genocide, mass imprisonment, forced labor, the death penalty, and indiscriminate bombing. this opposition is a good thing. but in war, this will hold us back. the right has no scruples like this. any opponents captured by the right will be executed, forced to labor, or marched into detainment camps at best. they will happily bomb an apartment building with dozens of families in it if they think there are hostiles in it.

and if/when the right wins in this scenario, the consequences will be extreme. at best, human rights will be rolled back around the country: the lgbtq+ community will lose everything we have fought for, racism will be further entrenched in law, christianity will be enshrined in law. at worst: genocide.

i am also frustrated at how many people do not understand how the us government works; to be honest, there is little the democrats could do right now even with the bare majority they have in the senate and house. to be clear, i don't think the democrats will help. at best, electing democrats will stop things from getting worse, at least until the gerontocracy of biden and pelosi and schumer is defeated. but at this point in time, i feel that stopping things from getting worse is the best we can hope for, at least for the next few years. maybe if we can start electing more progressives through primaries, we can start having things get better.

call me a liberal or a counter-revolutionary or a coward or whatever. i believe that the most likely outcome of a leftist revolution is failure, followed by genocide. and as a brown person of muslim, pakistani heritage, i would probably near the front of the line to the firing squad. opposing genocide is my top interest. unfortunately, right now, the democrats are the most plausible way to achieve this.

and finally it is just so... tiring, to see people who complain about their tummy hurting, or how they need kisses to feel better, or tearing each other apart over ship discourse, or writing 10-page callout posts about teenagers, or talking about whether pol pot was a revolutionary hero, or how uyghurs are counterrevolutionary scum, who then turn around and go "teehee, here's a post with addresses of supreme court justices and a copy of the anarchists cookbook. sure hope nobody does an oopsy doopsy with this knowledge!" do you honestly think that you are a fighter? would you be able to hold a gun to someone's head and look them in the eyes as you pull the trigger? would you be able to lie down in the cold and wet mud and grass and shit of a dugout for three days under aerial bombardment? would you be able to leave your friends' bodies unburied as you retreat from a chemical weapon attack? war is hell, and i am sick of people online treating it like a fucking joke

i'm just tired. i wish things could be better.

#text #politics #bad thoughts

[nightkitchentarot]

Margaret Atwood on Roe v. Wade

This is Margaret Atwood's take on the leaked Supreme Court draft on the Roe v. Wade decision.  From the current edition of the Atlantic...

In the early years of the 1980s, I was fooling around with a novel that explored a future in which the United States had become disunited. Part of it had turned into a theocratic dictatorship based on 17th-century New England Puritan religious tenets and jurisprudence. I set this novel in and around Harvard University—an institution that in the 1980s was renowned for its liberalism, but that had begun three centuries earlier chiefly as a training college for Puritan clergy.

In the fictional theocracy of Gilead, women had very few rights, as in 17th-century New England. The Bible was cherry-picked, with the cherries being interpreted literally. Based on the reproductive arrangements in Genesis—specifically, those of the family of Jacob—the wives of high-ranking patriarchs could have female slaves, or “handmaids,” and those wives could tell their husbands to have children by the handmaids and then claim the children as theirs.

Although I eventually completed this novel and called it The Handmaid’s Tale, I stopped writing it several times, because I considered it too far-fetched. Silly me. Theocratic dictatorships do not lie only in the distant past: There are a number of them on the planet today. What is to prevent the United States from becoming one of them?

For instance: It is now the middle of 2022, and we have just been shown a leaked opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States that would overthrow settled law of 50 years on the grounds that abortion is not mentioned in the Constitution, and is not “deeply rooted” in our “history and tradition.” True enough. The Constitution has nothing to say about women’s reproductive health. But the original document does not mention women at all.

Women were deliberately excluded from the franchise. Although one of the slogans of the Revolutionary War of 1776 was “No taxation without representation,” and government by consent of the governed was also held to be a good thing, women were not to be represented or governed by their own consent—only by proxy, through their fathers or husbands. Women could neither consent nor withhold consent, because they could not vote. That remained the case until 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, an amendment that many strongly opposed as being against the original Constitution. As it was.

Women were nonpersons in U.S. law for a lot longer than they have been persons. If we start overthrowing settled law using Justice Samuel Alito’s justifications, why not repeal votes for women?

Reproductive rights have been the focus of the recent fracas, but only one side of the coin has been visible: the right to abstain from giving birth. The other side of that coin is the power of the state to prevent you from reproducing. The Supreme Court’s 1927 Buck v. Bell decision held that the state may sterilize people without their consent. Although the decision was nullified by subsequent cases, and state laws that permitted large-scale sterilization have been repealed, Buck v. Bell is still on the books. This kind of eugenicist thinking was once regarded as “progressive,” and some 70,000 sterilizations—of both males and females, but mostly of females—took place in the United States. Thus a “deeply rooted” tradition is that women’s reproductive organs do not belong to the women who possess them. They belong only to the state.

Wait, you say: It’s not about the organs; it’s about the babies. Which raises some questions. Is an acorn an oak tree? Is a hen’s egg a chicken? When does a fertilized human egg become a full human being or person? “Our” traditions—let’s say those of the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the early Christians—have vacillated on this subject. At “conception”? At “heartbeat”? At “quickening?” The hard line of today’s anti-abortion activists is at “conception,” which is now supposed to be the moment at which a cluster of cells becomes “ensouled.” But any such judgment depends on a religious belief—namely, the belief in souls. Not everyone shares such a belief. But all, it appears, now risk being subjected to laws formulated by those who do. That which is a sin within a certain set of religious beliefs is to be made a crime for all.

Let’s look at the First Amendment. It reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The writers of the Constitution, being well aware of the murderous religious wars that had torn Europe apart ever since the rise of Protestantism, wished to avoid that particular death trap. There was to be no state religion. Nor was anyone to be prevented by the state from practicing his or her chosen religion.

It ought to be simple: If you believe in “ensoulment” at conception, you should not get an abortion, because to do so is a sin within your religion. If you do not so believe, you should not—under the Constitution—be bound by the religious beliefs of others. But should the Alito opinion become the newly settled law, the United States looks to be well on the way to establishing a state religion. Massachusetts had an official religion in the 17th century. In adherence to it, the Puritans hanged Quakers.

The Alito opinion purports to be based on America’s Constitution. But it relies on English jurisprudence from the 17th century, a time when a belief in witchcraft caused the death of many innocent people. The Salem witchcraft trials were trials—they had judges and juries—but they accepted “spectral evidence,” in the belief that a witch could send her double, or specter, out into the world to do mischief. Thus, if you were sound asleep in bed, with many witnesses, but someone reported you supposedly doing sinister things to a cow several miles away, you were guilty of witchcraft. You had no way of proving otherwise.

Similarly, it will be very difficult to disprove a false accusation of abortion. The mere fact of a miscarriage, or a claim by a disgruntled former partner, will easily brand you a murderer. Revenge and spite charges will proliferate, as did arraignments for witchcraft 500 years ago.

If Justice Alito wants you to be governed by the laws of the 17th century, you should take a close look at that century. Is that when you want to live?

Margaret Atwood is a Canadian poet, short-story writer, and the author of more than a dozen novels.

#abortion #roe vs. wade #margaret atwood #bodily autonomy

[cult-of-artemis-and-athena]

I agree with Kayla Shaye's fundamental point: you do not owe anyone your health, you do not owe anyone your body. The issue of whether women have self-ownership, and to what degree, pre-dates feminism to the dawn of civilization. The nature of human reproduction is at the heart of this. Especially in a tough ecology full of war, enslavement, starvation, disease, etc. the success of a civilization depended on the ability of that civilization to out-breed those around it.

I can empathize with the mind-frame of some bronze age chieftain who's hyper-focused on strictly the bottom two layers of the hierarchy of needs. Self-ownership - for men and women - is subjugated to the needs of the tribe. The idea of Christians' bodies (IIRC Islam and Judaism also have this) belonging to Yahweh/Allah mirrors the very-common idea at that time, that commoners' bodies belong to the ruler.

If the civilization didn't use all (non-ruling-class) male bodies for economic production and warfare, and all female bodies for making more people, their alternative was that someone who was better at making people do those things would kill all their men and enslave all their women.

The Enlightenment made men sovereign individuals, all created equal, and with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness granted by their creator - the basis for the American and French revolutions - but there was some debate during that time whether that concept also applied to women. If men were no longer the property of the king, applying the same logic to women would lead to, depending on your view, either first wave feminism or a new form of proto-feminism (in my view, there's been cross-cultural proto-feminism for all of written human history).

You take the second wave of feminism, and you have feminists going up against the persistent idea that women exist for society, whereas men exist for themselves, and everyone in society has a responsibility to provide guide rails for women in a way that they don't for men. Men aren't off the hook entirely, since they can be drafted - an ideological fossil - but when a man fucks up his own life, it's framed such that he unilaterally made the decision and comprehended and accepted the consequences. When women fuck up their lives, it's like she ignorantly blundered, or was mislead by some opportunistic rapscallion, into being a victim of a tragedy beyond her comprehension..if only someone had done something *staples hand to forehead* the poor angel would be safe and sound.

Relating this tangent to body positivity, I don't think the body positivity movement has progressed anything. If anything - considering there's people getting very emotionally invested and indignant over what other women are doing with their bodies - I think it's just horseshoed the same idea of women's bodies being communal property to the opposite ideological side, instead of abolishing the concept entirely. Conservative men getting upset that some women get tattoos, and leftist women getting upset that some women lost weight, are not the opposite of each other.

For a while I thought body positivity just lost the plot, because I had assumed it was about not feeling unworthy of basic dignity because you don't fit society's ideal to a small or large degree, and promoting the idea that people shouldn't be dehumanized based on their appearance. Who in the world would disagree with that? That, however, is the unproblematic public persona of something that is actually revolutionary Marxist theory applied to weight and attractiveness. When someone who's down the body positivity iceberg, who actually knows what they're talking about, speaks with apparent animosity against thin people, pretty people, etc. "thin" and "pretty" are dynamically equivalent to "bourgeoisie". If you understand Marxism 101, the animosity is completely intentional and ideologically correct. People who understand this position also understand that people who think normally have a problem with the idea of making an enemy out of a whole class of people, so when recruiting, activists can't say that up-front at risk of alienating people. Instead normies are initiated with ideas no one in their right mind would disagree with, and then they're given breadcrumbs that move them further down the iceberg without them really noticing. When women who were doing body positivity activism lose weight, they've essentially become counter-revolutionaries. Whenever someone defends them like, "If they're allowed to be fat, they're allowed to be thin. They can do what they want, it's their body," that's a Liberal point of view.

By viewing women (or other classes as people) inherently as victims, I don't view this as a rejection of a Fascistic view of them as a subhuman class. It's just a different view of the same dynamic, and that's why I don't think body positivity is progress. Another commonality between Marxism and Fascism is collectivism, so both require individuals to dedicate their bodies toward ideological goals while condemning individualism where it doesn't further the ideology. Any movement that advocates women to make objectively unhealthy lifestyle choices, or shames them from getting healthier, is inherently misogynistic. I think any ideology that claims to be pro-woman should prioritize women's health. There is a large component of feminism that are very concerned with women's health issues which is really good, but there is also some strains of feminism that seem to have an idea of "Become as unattractive as possible to own da menz." "I thought you said no one owes anyone else health or their body." Individually, people should be able to do what they want - and be reasonably assumed to have agency, regardless of sex - if they're not harming other people with it. However, getting your eyeballs tattooed or being 400 lbs and living your life for yourself is different from intentionally organizing a religion or ideological movement where you use coercion (making an "us vs them" narrative, using social shaming, encouraging people to cut off anyone who questions their decision) and misinformation (saying something risky is actually totally safe or actually-healthy, only using sources from the same ideological group, forbidding engagement with opposing views) to influence other people to do the same thing.

Here's an example that comes from the right -- a number of men's fitness/lifestyle grifters use steroids while promoting an image of idealized masculinity, often with socio-political baggage, like "Buy my Product so you can be a Real Man like me and not a beta cuck contributing to the fall of Western Civilization." It's arguably worse when they say they don't use steroids because it makes these men think, "I'm doing everything Liver King says and don't look like him. I must be a low-T beta physiquelet." Rich Piana, on the other hand, while also idolized by a lot of men, had the balls to say "I use steroids and know it's destroying my health, but this is what I want to do even if I die doing it." (spoiler: he died)

In a similar way, the body positivity movement preys on people's (women's, mostly) insecurities, and makes them worse by constantly exposing them to a victimhood narrative while sabotaging things they could actually do, in most cases, to relieve the insecurities. There's actually a lot of money being made off selling body positivity -- is it at all sus that Unilever promotes body positivity with Dove while also owning brands that sell cereal, ice cream, and soda, but also selling Lynx deodorant with sexually objectifying commercials. Body positivity also sells well in the attention economy, and it does better the more people (mostly women) identify with the content.

#feminism #gender equality #body postivity #grifters #camille paglia #modernity #extremism #classical liberalism #self-ownership #personal agency #Youtube

[conner-morris-portfolio]

SCRIPTWRITING PORTFOLIO CONTENTS

FEATURES: A Method - 88 Pages. 

Genre: Drama, Surreal, Thriller Synopsis: A disenfranchised boy, Dylan, moves away from home to attend university, he finds himself in an unorthodox theatre group, putting on a play about American school shootings. When a student is assaulted in a nightclub, Dylan galvanises the theatre group in order to find the men responsible. 

Akin to: If, Lost Highway, Donnie Darko

Carnyx - 64 Pages 

Genre: Drama, Horror Thriller

Synopsis: The parents of a soldier are visited by their son's commanding officer, who tells them due to the classified nature of their son's mission, that he can’t tell them if he’s dead or alive and whether he is coming back home in a few days. The news tests the couple’s relationship and soon the paranoia spreads to the entire street they live on. Akin to: Revolutionary Road, Hereditary, Atonement

End Love - 130 Pages

Genre: Romance, Drama, Surreal

Synopsis: Hayden is getting ready to propose to the love of his life, Gillian. Tragically Gillian is killed in a mugging gone wrong. Hayden realises that there are bigger forces in play and becomes suspicious that fate is controlling his every move. Hayden endeavours to bring Gillian back from the dead by any means necessary even if it brings about the apocalypse. 

Akin to: Inception, Paprika, Dark City

Hearts & Minds - 100 Pages

Genre: Horror, Thriller, Drama

Synopsis: Decades after the death of her Mother, Melinoe is in full time therapy and just returning to work as a crime scene investigator. When she starts investigating a case of multiple missing children, the past comes flooding back. As the case becomes more horrific and dark, Melinoe starts realising that it may all be connected to her Mother’s death.

Akin to: Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Zodiac, Funny Games

Hurricane - 85 Pages

Genre: Comedy, Absurd, Drama

Synopsis: After covering up a tragedy on his previous feature film, a problematic director decided he wants to make a documentary about finding and seducing a Hurricane. A Hurricane that is strangely forecast in a quiet British countryside. As the storm approaches, the patience of the film crew is tested by the ego clashing of the strange director and the film's producer. 

Akin to: The Disaster Artist, Ed Wood, Wrong

Pothead - 142 Pages - Still in Progress

Genre: Drama, Comedy.

Synopsis: DJ is the creator and lead animator on the kid’s cartoon “Potluck” that airs on a Christian run local t.v station. After the content of the show is misinterpreted as promoting drug culture, DJ’s life and career falls apart, until 20 years later when a new studio wants to pick up and reboot “Potluck” for an adult audience. DJ endeavours to write the remake whilst trying to retain the show's core values. A challenge that seems simple but could cost him everything. 

Akin to: The Artist, Barton Fink, Mank

Spitting Venom - 100 Pages

Genre: Drama, Thriller

Synopsis: Years after escaping from an abusive relationship, Deme, a social worker, takes it upon herself to look into a domestic violence report taking place in a small farm town in Australia. Deme meets the couple and though at first glance everything seems normal it becomes quickly apparent that there is something horribly wrong. Deme soon decides that the normal protocol doesn’t apply and that she must take action into her own hands.

Akin to: Promising Young Woman, Sicario, Se7en

The Missing Idol - 120 Pages

Genre: Family, Adventure, Drama

Synopsis: Abigail, a young girl, has been sick all her life but she has persevered with the love of her family and escapist fantasies of her favourite adventure movies, the crusader series. Abigail gets a make-a-wish where she and her family have the chance to fly to Europe to meet Abigail's hero and the star of those crusader movies. But when they arrive it becomes apparent that this star has gone missing. A revelation that takes the family on their very own adventure across multiple countries. 

Akin to: Indiana Jones, My Sister’s Keeper, The Fault in Our Stars.

T.V PILOTS

Regicide - 51 Pages - PILOT 

Genre - Drama, Teen, Tense

Synopsis: Raph is a teenager who seeks to disrupt everything around him, he thinks he is better than everything. He challenges his family, his teachers and at a young age is seemingly bored with life, until he attends an open day for the prestigious Portia Golding Academy 

Akin: Skins, Succession, Euphoria

Save The World - 70 Pages  - PILOT

Genre - Romance, Adventure, Drama

Synopsis: In the near future, when a meteor is heading for an already dystopian and doomed planet earth, the way the world runs changes drastically. Sian and Ezra, two strangers who would usually hate each, have a one night stand expecting the world to end the next. At the last moment Russian astronauts blow up the meteor and save the planet. Sian falls pregnant and she and Ezra realise they want to actually make the world better for their potential kids. 

The Mask - 52 Pages - 2 SEASONS, 16 EPISODES

Genre: Comic Book, Action, Satire, Surreal

Synopsis: Based on the Dark Horse comic series. Officer Kellaway has been obsessed with comic book heroes his whole life. But his police work feels inconsequential in comparison. He stumbles upon a mysterious mask at a crime scene, which possesses to power to bring out his potential. 

Akin to: Fargo, The Boys, Legion

The Pyramid - 64 Pages - PILOT

Genre: Drama, Genre Bending, Action

A director endeavours to make his historical epic about a Mayan death cult. But the production seems cursed and over budget. The studio eventually tries to shut down production, but the cast and crew will stop at nothing to keep the film alive even if it means losing touch with reality. 

The Venue - 23 Pages - PILOT and EPISODE 2

Genre: Music, Drama, Horror, Comedy

Synopsis: An anthology show set at a mysterious music venue every week a new band comes to play a show whilst a story unfolds in the audience, behind the scenes or amongst the venue staff. 

Akin to: Metallica Through the Never, Concert Films, The Twilight Zone. 

SHORT FILMS:

The Forest Anthology - Various Pages Lengths

Genre: Folk Horror, Adventure, Romance

Synopsis: A series of short films set in a mystical woodland, all linked together with certain messages and themes and a central mysterious figure, The Gardener. 

The written films include: A Cut Above the Rest: Franky, attends his families BBQ and finds a mysterious cardboard cut-out of himself

At Midnight: A Hitman gets a job to assassinate a target under a bridge at midnight, but the job might be more than he signed up for. 

Ravin: A police officer investigates a noise complaint in the woods, only to discover that there might be some mythical creatures partying there instead of people. 

Soil and Sol: A man wakes up in a shallow grave in the forest with no memory of the night before, he looks for his car and belongings in order to piece together what happened. 

The Daughter: 2 Travellers wander through open fields in order to discover a new world unfolding around them. 

The Lover and the Thief:  A lover prepares for his ritualistic date in the forest whilst the garden oversees another day, he stumbles upon an abandoned camera and watches the footage of a camera crew becoming trapped in the woods. 

The Scary Story: 3 friends recount a scary story they were all told at different time whilst children attending scout camps. 

Wanderland: A man finds himself traversing a dreamscape version of a music festival in the woods and soon realises the universe is punishing him for his behaviour.

Akin: The Twilight Zone, Amazing Stories, In the Earth

Cut Out -  10 Pages

Genre: Drama, Surreal, Dark Comedy

Synopsis: A women gets irrationally angry with the world around her and her roommates and soon everyone in his life starts turning into cardboard cutouts of themselves. 

Akin to: Goosebumps, The Shivering Truth, Twilight Zone. 

3D Sculptures - 4 Pages

Genre: Thriller, Horror

Synopsis: An artist captures and kills a person in order to convert him into his latest work of art

Akin to: Maniac, Funny Games.

Tie-Dye - 13 Pages

Genre: Thriller, Drama, Trauma

Synopsis: A former acid-head tries to turn his life around by attending a job interview, but after he continues to hallucinate it is apparent he is either still tripping, exhausted or slowly going insane. 

Akin to: The Wackness, Smiley Face, Trainspotting

Exeunt - 6 Pages 

Genre: Dark Comedy, Thriller, Horror

Synopsis: A down on his luck actor, tanks yet another audition, but might get the second chance to give the performance of a life to a mysterious reanimated corpse that washes up on the riverside. 

Akin; Swiss Army Man, Jennifer's Body, The Dead Don’t Die.