Joseph Bottum has proffered the thesis that the decline of the mainline is the central story of the past fifty years in America. Mainline Protestantism had, until recently, played a central role in shaping the moral framework of American society; its decline has left a vacuum which has been filled by religious-like forces. Those forces are not directly related to any branch of Christendom and are not necessarily oriented to a supernatural destiny. Rather, Wokeness seeks religious meaning in immanent realities; it locates the sacred within this world. This constitutes it, according to the recent study by Steven D. Smith, as a form of neopaganism. //

https://www.amazon.com/Anxious-Age-Post-Protestant-Spirit-America/dp/0385518811

Wokeness is thus neopagan. Its adherents are not mere disenchanted, logical positivists, but rather passionate believers who have found deep meaning, existential assurance, moral superiority, and self-transcendent purpose by opposing dark, mystical forces which wage war on modern society. The sacred are the innocent victims of pernicious social forces and salvation consists in demonstrating one’s own innocence and purity by awakening to these realities, feeling moral indignation, and opposing them—largely through the mechanisms mentioned above of denouncing, shaming, and scapegoating others who are “complicit” in the various purported systems of oppression. Conciliation is not really in sight and a tenuous unity is secured by shared indignation at transgressors in this Manichaean vision which cleanly identifies good and evil along group lines. Mere humans are envisioned as the source of evil and thus these humans constitute the proper scapegoats to appease societal wrath and bring about social harmony. //

ConclusionIn a world which was shaped by a Protestantism that, up until recently, provided a unifying moral framework for our nation, Wokeness fills a void and has a certain appeal to Protestants themselves and their fellow citizens. As Tom Holland has persuasively argued, we cannot shake Christian categories and conceptions in the West, but their meanings can shift. Wokeness meets a religious need by mimicking a Protestantism that our society has largely left behind. The religious energy and concern is narrowed to this-worldly realities, and thus can be identified as neopagan.

GOP elected officials have now faced the reality that Big Tech wants the GOP to cease being an effective political opposition. Big Tech actively suppressed true and significant facts in the NY Post story on Hunter Biden, and at the same time willingly hosted and promoted fascist rhetoric and calls to violence by groups like BLM and Antifa with no content controls It is unequivocally a threat to the GOP as a political opposition to the Democrats which Big Tech supports.

Barack Obama needed the cover of darkness, a weekend, and a congressional procedural maneuver using a budget reconciliation bill to pass Obamacare on a party-line vote when he had 59 Senators and a 79 seat majority in the House.

Big Tech is now in the position of relying on the Democrats in Congress for protection when they have a 50 senators and a 10 seat majority in the House, all while staring at a mid-term election which history says will be won by GOP candidates in greater numbers than the outcome two months ago.

All of that may not matter ultimately, as the Supreme Court could get there first.

Looks like we could be witnessing the final hours of Parler:

“Every vendor from text message services to email providers to our lawyers all ditched us too on the same day”

“Matze conceded that the bans could put the company out of business”

There is nothing offensive about a baseball team being named the Indians, and by erasing it we lose more than just a name.

when they call it a “Woman’s March” what they really mean is a leftist festival, it’s not open to or welcoming of people on the right. //

Also it’s not something that media will ever point to as a “super spreader” event, since they agree with its political purpose.

But the purpose or focus of the leftist march today was against the confirmation of a woman to the Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett. Imagine women who claim to support women arguing against the confirmation of a woman, because she politically disagrees with them. //

Carrie Lukas
@carrielukas
·
Oct 17, 2020
Free speech for me but not for thee: BLM blasting music to drown out pro-ACB event. #ImWithHer //

Carrie Lukas
@carrielukas
·
Oct 17, 2020
Women's March protestors now surrounding ACB confirmation rally, screaming "RBG" and intent on shutting down any alternative speakers. This is the "tolerant left," folks. //

Carrie Lukas
@carrielukas
·
Oct 17, 2020
Now protestors storm the stage, shut down event.

Ted Cruz
@tedcruz
Very odd. Both Hirono & Booker asserted sexual orientation is “immutable.”

Webster’s defines as “not capable of or susceptible to change.”

I wasn’t aware the Left insisted sexuality can never change over the course of one’s life.

While insisting gender can change continuously.

At Saturday’s Temple game, the team was not on the field for the playing of the national anthem (the rest of the Brigade was in the stands). When they did come out afterward, the team knelt before an American flag before getting ready for the kickoff. It might be standard operating practice for footballers at civilian schools to execute the “Kaepernick Kneel” while dissing the flag as the virtue-signaling price of entry into the NFL these days, but the Navy football team, all of whom are ostensibly in training to serve their country as naval officers? In my opinion, that’s a REAL “honor violation” that should result in separation. And it turns out that the team hasn’t been on the field for the national anthem for any of the prior three games, either.

Mike Gonzalez’s new book, 'The Plot to Change America,' provides penetrating analysis of the inherent dangers of identity politics, as well as ways to fight its creeping influence. //

In her 1989 landmark decision in City of Richmond v. Croson, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor criticized identity politics by pointing out the behavior of black politicians who had become a majority of that city’s council seats. Richmond certainly had an ugly history of discrimination against blacks, but now had created 30 percent contracting quotas for minority businesses. O’Connor declared that strict judicial scrutiny was required whenever a political majority used race to disadvantage a political minority.

If that were not the law, she concluded: “The dream of a Nation of equal citizens where race is irrelevant to personal opportunity and achievement would be lost in a mosaic of shifting preferences based on inherently immeasurable claims of past wrongs.” Although there were ongoing disputes about specific contracting policies, there were few public disagreements in that era about the fundamental principle that Americans of every race should have equal rights. After all, that is how the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment is written and that principle is the framework of all subsequent civil rights law.

Mike Gonzalez’s timely new book, “The Plot to Change America,” describes how our aspiration of granting all persons equal rights has been submerged by a form of identity politics that transforms some citizens into political, legal, racial, and ethnic categories demanding proportional representation and sometimes reparations.

The Return of Tribalism //

it can be argued that identity politics is just the current name for what was historically thought of as tribalism.

Most New Yorkers love New York, but does New York love most New Yorkers? It doesn’t seem so.

Gov. Cuomo treats them like children, and Mayor de Blasio like idiots. That’s why you could roll a bowling ball down many Midtown sidewalks these days, in broad daylight, and not hit more than an overflowing trash basket or a nodding-out junkie.

This is merely one symptom, of course. The true dysfunction resides in City Hall and Albany. But there are many more symptoms, and people are noticing. //

New York will probably muddle through. It’s a magical place. But what if too many of the folks who help make the magic happen decide the accompanying heavy lift isn’t worth the ­effort? That could happen, you know. And then what?

Anthem This season, it has become all the rage for professional sports teams to do something “in your face” to deliberately offend traditional fans by raising their troglodyte consciousness to a higher level. For the NFL, in addition to disrespecting the American flag and the nation that gave a handful of people the chance to earn 8-figure salaries for throwing a ball around... //

Pittsburgh Steelers
@steelers
We don’t want him to be forgotten.

For the 2020 season, we unite as one and will wear a single name on the back of our helmets – Antwon Rose Jr.

Rose had attempted to murder a man using a stolen weapon earlier. He was legitimately stopped. He fled police as he was being arrested. He was shot. The officer was tried for homicide. The jury deliberated for three and one-half hours and acquitted the officer on all charges.

There was no racism, systemic or otherwise, in Rose’s death. //

Offensive tackle Alejandro Villanueva, a West Point graduate, alumni of 10th Mountain Division and 1st Ranger Battalion, and the recipient of awards for valor under fire taped over the Antwon Rose decal. //

ProFootballTalk
@ProFootballTalk
The Steelers announced the team would honor Antwon Rose, who was killed by a police officer, on their helmets. But Alejandro Villanueva instead honored Alwyn Cashe, who died of injuries suffered pulling fellow soldiers out of a burning vehicle in Iraq.

For decades, Democrats have been feeding a beast they’ve kept chained up and released whenever their opponents became too difficult to overcome.

That beast is the cult of social justice. You’ll find these cult members screaming things heading up Black Lives Matter rallies today, screaming about injustice, white oppression, and police brutality while brutalizing innocent people, being as racist as they possibly can, and committing injustices with reckless abandon. //

I hate to say this but I can’t help but think this is the only way Democrats will learn anything. Until they are directly affected by the policies and decisions they make, they will never see the harm and chaos they created.

I’m glad that the best is now feeding on the very masters who taught it to consume everything.

We need to kill this idea of cultural appropriation.

Americans are being misled by the "anti-racism" ideology, which is less about helping black people and more about advancing Marxist goals. //

Racial justice groups are being flooded with money.

Big companies made multimillion-dollar donations.

“Bad idea,” says black radio host Larry Elder in my new video.

“It is condescending… and not helpful. I urge white people to chill. Stop helping us, because you’re making things worse!”

Making things worse, he says, because it supports the activists’ claim that “blacks are victims of racism. (But) if racism were in America’s DNA, Obama never could have got elected. Racism has never been more insignificant a factor in one’s success than right now.”

I push back. “It must be a huge problem or there wouldn’t be all this protest!”

“Well, they’re being lied to,” Elder responds. Teachers, black activists, and the media give “young people the impression that racism remains this huge problem in America when it is not.”

It’s not, he says, because today any person who does three things can succeed: “Finish high school, don’t have a kid until you get married, get a job. Do those things, you will not be poor.”

The biggest problem facing the black community today, says Elder, is the absence of fathers. In the 1960s, most black children were raised in two-parent households. That changed when our government’s war on poverty began.

The handouts sent the message that it’s the government’s job, not your responsibility, to take care of you and your kids. “A mother with two children makes more money than she would make on minimum wage because of all the goodies she gets through the welfare state!”

Now, he says, Black Lives Matter actually encourages the breakup of families. Their website does say, “disrupt the Western-prescribed, nuclear family.” //

Recently, Washington’s Museum of African American History and Culture, part of the taxpayer-funded Smithsonian Institute, posted that “white culture” means things like “nuclear family,” “self-reliance,” “rigid time schedule,” and “delayed gratification.” //

I wanted to ask the “anti-racists” if they notice that they and white supremacists now support similar segregationist policies, like blacks- (or whites-) only spaces. Foster points out that both white supremacists and anti-racists believe “race is an immutable attribute of who we are.”

He prefers Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision: a nation where “people are judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

“Black Lives Matter leaders don’t really want the vision of MLK,” says Elder. “They want a color-coordinated society—as long as they’re the ones who do the coordinating.”

Every dime from these corporations is a lie.

Not just a childish prank //

Had Urooj Rahman been a 31-year-old roofer from Wheeling, WV, and firebombed a police car, no one would have said boo about sending him to prison for the rest of his life because the perception among our elites is that a lawyer who is a political terrorist is acting nobly to raise our consciousness and deserves only a mild reprimand that will not damage their passage to a Bill Ayers-esque future. The working class guy? Well, screw him. His life didn’t have much value, and he was probably going to die of a drug overdose anyway. //

This divide, this assumption that some members of society are more worthy of second chances than others and the subtext that the law is really made for the little people, not for members of our ruling class was at the heart of the Tea Party movement. The idea that we and our children are less worthy of mercy or consideration or just catching an even break than someone who has the right degree and right politics it what propelled Trump into the White House. //

Rahman and Mattis are criminals. Their action fits the textbook definition of terrorism. Their act was premeditated. All that letting them off easy will accomplish is to encourage other similarly minded cretins to imitate them and draw upon this precedent as to why there should be few if any, consequences. Pour encouragement les autres, as they say, these two need to be hammered to deter this behavior and to begin to return us to a single standard of justice for all.

Everything is racist, and I mean everything. //

The fact that Europeans depicted Jesus in European form is more easily explained by the reality that such is all the knew. There was no internet to go see what people from Judea looked like hundreds to thousands of years ago. This is why you often see Africans depict Jesus as not only black, but with very darkly toned skin as well. If you go to China, you will find Jesus depicted as Chinese in underground churches.

That is not “supremacy” on the part of anyone. Rather, it’s a result of cultural knowledge and a realization of the scripture that tells us we are all made in his image. Yes, Jesus was almost certainly an olive-skinned man with dark hair being a Jew from the region he was from. But that doesn’t make it wrong for cultures and Christians all over the world to see themselves in their Savior. //

To give an example of how much of a non-issue this is, I’ll note that Evangelicals were the main thrust behind the support of The Passion of the Christ. Where was the outcry that Jesus wasn’t depicted as a European if it’s so important to their dogma? The answer is there was no outcry because the assertion that Evangelicals care about Jesus being seen as European is simply a lie.

In tribute to Willie Nelson, "Mothers don't let your children grow up to be moronic rioters". //

Since the death of George Floyd, I’ve been struck by how much of the riot video involves young people between 20 and 30 years old — and many even younger. My completely unscientific estimate from what I’ve watched has me believing the number must be close to 90%.

Based on my own experiences as someone who lived through that age, and has now raised children through that age, they are convinced of 1) the absolute correctness of their own worldview, and 2) they have nothing to learn from the generations that came before them. //

I know people in exactly this same situation. Parents who are distraught over their children, whom I have known since they were born, and who are out in the streets in the Pacific Northwest every night. It’s heartbreaking to hear my friends say “We don’t even recognize our children. They sound nothing like us with the things that come out of their mouths. We spent 18 years trying to teach them right from wrong, and two years in a college has transformed them into young adults who I would never choose as friends.” //

The university environment of the last 20 years is cleaving the current generation from the generations of their parents and grandparents. It has taught them to hate that which came before them – things they didn’t experience but can only learn through being told by others. The narrative they are taught in college by people who have always hated the United States as a historical institution – notwithstanding what it has given to those college educators – is that the generations that came before them need to be the targets of their wrath. Burndown and destroy what has been built for you so that you can build something yourself with the instructions we have for you.

Funny how the people making these decisions never have to live with them

Racists and social justice warriors are pretty much twins. //

Both racists and the social justice obsessed want segregated spaces, have a love of racial identitarianism, defining all things through the lens of racial experience, and believe discriminatory practices should not only be legal, but also encouraged.

This is something!