Theres a subject that I've been meaning to discuss for awhile now.  It may not be a subject that anyone else is interested to weigh in on, but it is an issue of significant influence on the political and cultural developments (and not strictly limited to America) over the last decade or so, so should be at least laid out in some detail.

Trump is the elephant, as always.  His rise to power is inextricably linked to this issue, or more specifically those who had surrounded and defined his movement, like Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon.  We can call this 'authoritarianism' or maybe even fascism if we're feeling frisky.  That's all true, but based on what, ideologically?  We can identify a nexus between a neo-confederate sentiment of ethno-nationalism (the racism represented by those fine people at the Charlottesville rally in 2017) and the growing apocalyptic strains of evangelical Christian communities.  We can call this nexus Christian Nationalism, and there's no better demonstration of this than at Michael Flynn's "Reawaken America" rallies, which combine elements of the above with the quasi-religious Qanon cult, which Roseanne Barr recently described on Joe Rogan's podcast as rooted in Christian mysticism, and we can call that 'crazy', because it is, but the fact of the matter is that this crazy has context that is worth understanding, and those who brush it off are those who act surprised when these people ascend to power.

PBS Frontline has done a very thorough rundown of Flynn's brand of Christian Nationalism: "This has nothing to do with Christian orthodoxy. It has nothing to do with loving Jesus or wanting to be a good disciple or loving your neighbor or self-sacrifice or anything like that.  It has everything to do with Christian ethno-culture and specifically white Christian ethno-culture."

And these roads lead directly to Putin, for anyone curious as to why so many of these extremist strains began to worship the shirtless Pootie-pie during the reign of the imposter Obama and his slave-descended wife and children, essentially breaking the American spirit with his arrogant competence.  Understanding the demographic shifts in America - and misinterpreting them as a conspiracy - these groups believe that since democracy will inevitably reflect the will of darker skinned people, that democracy has essentially failed and should be, violently if necessary, destroyed and replaced by a government dominated by Christian doctrine and it's (alleged) white rightful heirs.

It's essential to understand that this is fundamentally what Trump and his "populism" represents.  Whether or not he cares or even understands any of this is beside the point.  When MAGA says they're taking the country back, they mean taking it back for White Christians, with males as the biblically designated authorities.

Putin is a more interesting development.  How could a group of deeply religious anti-socialists find Putin to be their savior?  It seems absurd for those still thinking in paradigms of 20th century geopolitics.  Well, obviously Putin is not a communist (dissolving the bullshit protests of the Greenwalds and Taibbis over this so-called new 'McCarthyism').  Nor is he an atheist, but a Russian Orthodox Christian.  He may romanticize the former glory of the Soviet Union, and wish to restore it, but not on the basis of Marx, but rather the older Czars.  He doesn't emulate Lenin so much as Peter The Great (or Ivan The Terrible).  This is an important aspect that mainstream media and liberals (or worse, leftists who still give him the benefit of the doubt) have failed to understand.  Putin has become the spiritual messiah among those, including Flynn and Bannon, who wish to see a risen Christian monarchy to restore the world order to what they see as its rightful moral orientation.

In order to understand Putin's religious ambitions, one can look to Aleksandr Dugin, known in some circles as "Putin's Brain" due to his influence of the leader's worldview.  Dugin has finally gotten some light in the American press due to the fact that his daughter was recently assassinated with a car bomb in Russia.  Dugin is an openly described Christian Fascist.  Here are some helpful deep dives that I don't have the space to fully explore here.

And finally, perhaps the single most influential disseminator of these ideas is someone who the media would rather write-off and mock for his seemingly imminant nervous breakdown - Jordan Peterson.  I understand the reflex to mock, because he truly is crazy.  But he's also more dangerous than we give him credit for being, and this is due to his massive (even if invisible to corporate media) influence on young men online.  Peterson essentially represents this brand of Christian Nationalism.  He's recently called Putin "a salvic force", "a bulwark for Christendom" against what he calls the forces of "Western Woke-ism" and "Climate Fascists".  His boogyman of "Marxist Post-Modernism" being behind all of our culture's current ailments has been well established.  His remedy is consistent - a return to Christian ethics, patriarchy and respect for authority.  We do ourselves a disservice to ignore how fundamentally his philosophy is based in exactly the tenets of Putin and the growing authoritarianism across America and Europe that has made existential enemies out of women, ethnic minorites and divergent forms of sexuality.  And Peterson is also dangerous because he's using his influence with disaffected young men to tell them to turn themselves into monsters, under a false pretense of philosophical erudition which happens to completely mangle his source material (which 95% of his audience will never bother to read).  It may sound absurd for those taken to laughing at Peterson's latest public crying fits, but he may very well be one of the most dangerous influencers in the world today. 

Overall, this entire subject is taken about as seriously as Elvis-sighters.  Those who believe, take it deadly serious.  One might note that there happens to be a major continental war taking place as we speak that's based on this philosophy and it's inevitable agenda.
 

Jinnistan wrote:

Even today, Iran is blaming the CIA for the hijab protests currently taking place.
 

My, my, those slippery C.I. Agents. So clever they duped Iran's "morality police" into murdering Mahsa Amini. That's some next–level deception.

Would be laughable were it not so grim.

Wait, don't tell me... she fell from a window. Because she didn't eat breakfast. So she was blinded by all that wicked devil's hijab–less harlot hair. 

I wonder if any women shave their heads for safety's sake. Or is that immoral, too? Silly me. How naive. But what can you expect from an infidel? I'm probably a C.I. Agent. We're probably all C.I. Agents; we just don't know it! 

Those slippery wily foxy fux! My God, I've been waterboarding detainees right in my own living room and didn't even know it! 

Damn you, John Foster!  Curse your name, Herbert! 

Where's my honey trap??? What's a fella gotta do to get a little piece of asset, around here?

I'm a good citizen... I'll let her stay.
 

The trolls are out full time for AOC, asking her the reasonable question "Why do you support nuclear war with Russia?"

Odd timing with Tulsi Gabbard coming out, blaming the Dems for "bringing us to the brink of nuclear war".  Must be a coincidence that they brought her name up.  There's been a strange lack of coverage on this, even in left-wing media, and some of the more questionable lefties (Jimmy Dore, Brianna Joy Gray) are joining in with the right-wing folks like Matt Walsh and Lauren Boebert to side with AOC's protestors.  Tulsi herself immediately went on FOX's Jesse Watters to gloat about it.
 

Jinnistan wrote:

I'm watching the Kanye West interview with Lex Fridman.  I was thinking, "Why Lex?"  I'm not as flummoxed as Lex is trying to sit through this interview though.  Fridman, a Jewish MIT researcher, is struggling listening to Ye's thoughts on Jews and education.  Personally, I find it quite hilarious.  The absence of any speck of sense of humor in Kanye's essence is hysterical to me.  We can talk all day about how cray-cray Ye is.  Clearly there's issues amuk.  But more than that, what I see isn't craziness so much, or an inability to understand, rather than a defiantly uninformed, ignorant arrogance, someone who is adamant in refusing understanding as a general principle.  Is this epistemic resistance a form of insanity?  Or a fully voluntary cognitive sclerosis?

Anyway, either way,  I'm just munching the idiocy like buttered popcorn.
 

I believe by definition, any narcissist of Kanye's calibre is sort of incapable or truly learning things. Because the notion of learning is a slight towards the possibility they don't already know everything.Which is something which cannot be acknowledged.


 

Jinnistan wrote:

crumbsroom wrote:

I believe by definition, any narcissist of Kanye's calibre is sort of incapable or truly learning things. Because the notion of learning is a slight towards the possibility they don't already know everything.Which is something which cannot be acknowledged.

This is the inevitable ouroboros we're dealing with, with Kanye up his own ass.  Kanye, who proudly claims to have never read a book in his life, annoints himself as qualified to say that the problem with education is that we shouldn't be teaching history, only "engineering".  And I put that in quotes because Kanye's definition of engineering is not entirely applicable to the standard definition.  But this plays out more like a selfish child, using these types of concepts like toys.  He doesn't care.  He just wants someone to play with him.  I really can't even fathom his damage.

Welcome to your next vice-president
 

Well, as you all may have heard.... this happened. And who could possibly have seen it coming? 

"Paul Pelosi, husband of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, was hospitalized with a skull fracture on Friday after he was attacked at the couple’s home in California with a hammer by an assailant who was reported to have shouted 'Where is Nancy? Where is Nancy?'” 
 

Jinnistan wrote:

Seems like there sure are a lot of these books coming out recently.




 

Not to state the obvious, but shit like this is why so many people view religion as little more than a shallow, hypocritical exercise in vanity and simply getting your way at all cost. God gives you, if nothing else, a divine right to be the worlds boss. Just like that fat ugly stupid fuck.

People like this should be ashamed, but of course they aren't. If they had any self reflection they'd understand they were all going to whatever hell they believe in, but not even that can course correct their bullshit lives.

The great fear behind all of this, by binding religion to Trump, as well as Q nonsense, means it isn't going anywhere. These people are going to radicalize further and further until you are going to have a truly persistent menace in your country. Even after he dies, which will hopefully be sometime later this morning, his influence will linger like the burger fart he expels during his dying breath.
 

I hope everyone here took the 15 minutes to watch the Dave Chappelle SNL monologue in the comedy thread.

Unsuprisingly, it's created controversy.  Ironically, maybe even appropriately, it presents a case where Dave's observations about Jewish people in the media are so benign that demanding an apology (as the ADL has asked) only perversely reinforces exactly the stereotype of control and conformity that Chappelle was poking fun at.  It's all about the perception of power.

I would criticize Chappelle on one very specific point, because this one specific point involves the exact actual problem with the comments that have been made by Kanye and Kyrie.  Chappelle chose to focus and define the issue with those comments as relating to the premise that "Jews run the media", and that their being forced to apologize and humble themselves is in reaction to making that accusation.  Unfortunately, that is not the case.  Had Kanye and Kyrie simply railed against Jewish control of the media, they'd get plenty of popular pushback, no doubt.  What Kyrie, specifically, did was endorsing a film which promotes the claim that Jewish people are frauds, and in service of this long-standing fraud have organized and perpetuated the historical oppression of the true Jews, which somehow are the West Africans involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade that, obviously, was run and financed by Jews.  When Kanye tells interviewer Lex Fridman (a Jewish computer scientist) that 'Ye can't be anti-semitic because "I'm more Jewish than you are", he appears to be co-signing this warped worldview.  I'm not exactly sure how well understood this particular point is in most people's minds, but I can imagine that an average SNL viewer, one who may have heard or read some headlines about Kanye and Kyrie and anti-semitism and apologies and maybe aren't aware of the actual comments or the context of what they imply, may have watched the monologue and is under the impression that somehow Kanye and Kyrie might be victims of an overzealous cancel-culture media drubbing.  I have a harder time assuming that Dave is not aware of what he called "Hebros to Negros".  Dave is not dumb.  And I wonder if he chose to frame the Kanye/Kyrie controversy in such a way that only hones in on the softest form of anti-semitism (to rent out Dave's phrase - the executive suites in Hollywood are 'observably Jewish') and throws in some stuff about "mental illness", because this is simply the easiest way to minimize the damage that can be caused by the Black Hebrew/Israelite philosophy and the threat of violence that it presents for Jewish people who Kanye and Kyrie are clearly demonized well beyond the typical money/media aspersions.  Also, "mental illness" doesn't scan here, for the simple reason that neither Kanye or Kyrie have or are willing to acknowledge the illness and don't appear to be working in any capacity on addressing it.  Kanye, indeed, is quite proud of his defiance in addressing it.

This theme in this documentary Hebrews to Negros isn't especially novel, only an amped-up amalgamation of several previous strains of conspiracism.  It's kinda like Rastafarianism if their bushes caught fire and someone decided to put out the flame with some Louis Farrakhan kerosene.  In addition to calling the Holocaust "a lie", the entire Ashkenazi victims of the Holocaust never really existed.  Jesus was not really a Jew, he was a black man, even though black people are the real Jews.  You can see where all of this will spin out of control.  Maybe Yakub shows up, the guy that the Nation of Islam believes created the white race as a science experiment.  I'm not going to watch it.  For all I know, they don't believe in Chinese people either.  What I do know is that there's enough evidence to show how perpetuating such beliefs can and will foster violence, and that's enough for concern when these acts have become more common.  (Maybe the pandemic slowed it a little, but it doesn't help that various covid-related conspiracies involve notions of Jewish coercion and control as well.)  Yeah, let's talk about "mental illness".  I don't think Kanye or Kyrie are the craziest people out there consuming these toxic ideas, and it certainly doesn't absolve them for pushing it just because they aren't quite crazy enough to hack up a synogogue themselves.


 

I do not understand the sneaker resale/collector market, but I own two pairs of substantially more normal Adidas, and I can confirm they make a respectable shoe.

I did not spend $400 on either pair. Even combined.