Want to know why it hurts?

Earlier today I saw some bullshit article from other people giving normal-people answers for why Trump sucks for them. Some of their answers may have been legit, but it ignores my problems. I have totally different answers.

First of all, I hate when bad guys win, and in this case the worst person won. That's not the worst part tho.

My people have rejected me. Almost everyone in my demographic groups sold their soul to the devil. They couldn't resist. Most "Never Trump" conservatives realized they were gonna get punished if they didn't fall in line. To make it worse, the people who already rejected me all hate him because he represents my people. Most anti-Trump people really piss me off. A good chunk of them are anti-religious Berniebots from big cities who look down on rural Southern Christians like me. Every place I felt at home turned into Trump fandom. Evangelicalism is dead. It's so dead that it's easier to find actual Satanists against Satan than it is to find evangelicals against Satan. I want to change my religious beliefs so I'm no longer part of the #1 group that fell for Satan. Evangelicalism in the US is dead now. Nobody will want to convert any more, and people will leave because their Christian convictions kick them out.

I think Donald Trump has supernatural demonic power. I am not kidding. I am not exaggerating. I'm not saying he's "the" Anti-Christ or the Beast or whatever, but he has powers that nobody else has, and he's definitely an anti-Christ. He can do anything he wants. He is a god, with a little 'g'. And unlike the Christian God, there is 100% proof that he's real and powerful. I don't know if he's all powerful but it sure as hell seems like it. Trump is the god of 1% chances. FiveThirtyEight gave him a 2% shot of winning the Republican nomination, which he won by violating every rule of political science. Could anyone else do that? No. I think Trump could have defeated Barack Obama, George W Bush, Bill Clinton, etc. as president. If he sets his mind to something, he gets it, no matter the odds. FiveThirtyEight were the only pollsters to give him any chance at winning, and his chance was only about 20% on election night. He's clearly got the power to change minds and make them ignore any facts. He can harness and control the news media in a way nobody else can. I have a hunch every single thing he wished for in the election cycle came true. I will probably die in a Trump concentration camp for writing this post. I don't think me calling him a god makes me any less of a monotheist, he's not the true God. Altho sometimes I wonder...

I feel like Satan has killed Jesus. I don't know how else to say it. There is an evil supernatural force in the world and I don't know if there is any good force to counterbalance it. I want to believe there is, but 81% of people who claim there is fell for the evil force. Yesterday I found out the black metal band Venom had a song called "At War With Satan" about Satan invading Heaven and overthrowing God. I hate black metal and I don't plan to listen to the song, but here are the lyrics. Very offensive lyrics and I hated reading them, but it's how I feel. I feel like God went missing and there is no reason to be a good person any more. I should strive to be more evil to please the new god Trump. And I don't know if sins I'm into qualify as evil enough. Trump is so powerful that he could cheat God. He's definitely powerful enough to fool most "Christians". That's something nobody talks about. It may sound absurd to other people but it makes sense to me. The people who say they support my God turned their back on everything He supports and now support a false god. Albeit a false god with some power.

This page claims that Trump is the Anti-Christ. It's a bit crazy, but it brings me peace, and very little in the world does. I want people like that to be against him. It's like a little bit of home that Trump hasn't destroyed yet.

Satan Man and Jesus Girl

I know it sounds blasphemous and sexist. But it's the best way I can explain two archetypes I see over and over again in the world. The basic story is:

Satan man rapes and murders Jesus girl.

This is the law of nature. The bad guy always wins. Satan man will always win.

Terms like "gay" and "cuck" are code words for "Jesus girl". That's one way the alt-right was able to hijack the right wing. They kept calling regular Republicans cucks, aka Jesus girls. And even tho most Republicans claim to be Christian, they don't want to be raped and murdered for being too good. They understand how the world works. If they really believed their faith they'd be proud to be called cucks because it means they're doing the right thing. Trump captured people's hearts because they knew he was a Satan man who can rape and murder any Jesus girl he chooses. As for calling people gay, look at most of the stereotypes actual gay men have. People think gay men are gooder than everyone else. Not better, gooder. And that's one reason gay men face so much prejudice. They don't commit the socially acceptable sins. It's not about the sins they do commit, it's about the sins they don't commit. Gay men would face less prejudice if "angelic wimp" wasn't the default stereotype. If Jesus came back tomorrow, the culture would label Him "gay" because He doesn't lust after women. Being gay has very little to do with being attracted to the same sex.

Leftists, as a general rule, want to be Jesus girls. They disagree with the narrative I mentioned at the top of the page, despite the mountains of evidence in favor of it. Yet most of them want nothing to do with Christianity or any other religion that believes that good triumphs in the end. Which is insane bullshit of course. With rare exceptions, the bad guys win in real life. Look at the 2016 election - I wouldn't call any of the candidates good, but there was one overarching villain, who won because he's so evil. That's why I prefer fiction to reality. Good people can defeat bad people in fiction. In reality, the biggest, baddest, most Satan man person wins almost every time. Human nature is evil. Most of the right understands that, most of the left doesn't.

I'm a Christian but I struggle with my faith. The only reason I want to be good at all is my belief that Jesus will defeat evil in the end. It's illogical and not intuitive. Without faith there is no reason for me to be good. I'd be a lot further along in life if I put myself first and cared about others after that. I can't comprehend someone not believing anything supernatural but still acting like a pure good Jesus girl. Based on the world I see, I should do bad things just because they're wrong so I can accumulate "reverse karma" and become powerful like Donald Trump. Or for someone far more evil, Fidel Castro.

This sounds insane but it's the only way I know how to put this into words. Comments disabled because I know how crazy this sounds.

You Do What Your People Do/Why Hillary Lost

That explains most human behavior. I don't think that's a bad thing or a good thing. I want to do what my people do. But what do you do when you feel like your people abandoned you and everyone else hates you?

About a year ago I decided I wanted to be conservative. It would reduce dissonance in my world. I think and act like a conservative. I belong to the most conservative demographic in the country. I wouldn't have to explain "I vote this way, but I'm that kind of person". Then Satan (Trump) hit and used his supernatural power to convince almost my entire group to vote for him.

Most voting has nothing to do with policies or candidates. It's an expression of identity. I wanted to vote for a Republican this year to express my identity. I don't think or act like Democrats. I think and act like Republicans. I wanted to vote Republican. Then the Antichrist showed up and I got forced into voting Democrat, the people who rejected me before. Forced into voting Democrat because of my values rooted in my faith.

A lot of why Hillary lost is she couldn't get the votes of straight white men. Almost all liberal straight white men went for Bernie, and most of them voted for Trump, Johnson, or Stein in the general election. The culture decided that only minority groups can support Hillary. Almost all the people I know who openly supported Hillary are women or gay men. I don't even know any straight black men who openly supported her. As much as I respect the rights of minorities, you can't build a movement if you're restricted to the Glee fan demographic of LGBT people and women. So I'm going to ignore race for the rest of this post.

For a lot of straight men, voting for Hillary is the equivalent of having sex with another man. It's a denial of their identity. It's not just because she's female, because voting for Jill Stein is not a denial of your identity the same way. I don't know why it is. Could be because Bernie is cool and hip and edgy and Hillary isn't. Could be that Hillary has the wrong personality. Anyway, this culture decided that straight men aren't allowed to vote for Hillary, so very few of us did. And a lot of the ones who did probably weren't aware of the unwritten rule that straight men can't vote for her.

If I wasn't Christian (or religious), no way I'd vote for Hillary. I wouldn't feel a sense of duty to the rest of the country. I'd let my identity determine who I support instead. I would have voted for one of Trump, Johnson, or McMullin. Probably Johnson. Even tho he barely knows anything about foreign policy, he's much better for my identity. I'd have trouble voting for Trump but I could see doing it out of self-preservation. Kind of like how I don't care for Hillary but I voted for her anyway to try to keep Trump out. I really like McMullin but he had zero chance and he didn't even have write-in access in Mississippi.

The strange thing is I found Hillary fans to be way more accepting of me than Bernie fans. Bernie fans get pissed off if you dare criticize Saint Bernie Christ. Since I had questions about some of his weirder ideas, like the $15/hour minimum wage, they yelled at me. Which turned me against Bernie and his cult. Bernie fans represent the part of the left that mocks me for being from Mississippi. Hillary fans accept anyone they can get. Turns out they have to because society says straight men aren't allowed to vote for her. Most Hillary fan groups are almost all women and LGBT. Straight men don't vote for Hillary and I don't know why we don't. I realized that a few weeks after I told everyone I supported her because she's not Trump or Bernie. Now I wish I'd kept it to myself. With all respect to gay people, I don't want anyone to think I'm gay. I should have kept my mouth shut and just bashed Bernie Trump and made people think I was voting for someone cool like Johnson that doesn't damage my identity.

I predict for the next election the Democrats will have an openly anti-Christian candidate. So anti-Trump Christians like me will have no viable candidate to vote for. A lot of Democrats like to pretend Obama's not a Christian because they hate Christians. That's telling. I don't think Bill Clinton even got that. I'm a pessimist, but only because my worst predictions keep coming true.

Thought Criminal, My Favorite Liberal Blogger

Read Thought Criminal's blog.

I'm a self-described moderate. I even leaned conservative for a while. So why do I enjoy reading a blog by someone who's so far left he considers Obama a moderate sellout? Lots of reasons.

I found him after I saw a link to an Alternet article bashing Christians. I wanted to see if anyone else thought Alternet and the like had an anti-Christian bias, and I found his blog. He totally agrees. I realized pretty fast that 1) he's very, very far left and 2) he would accept someone like me into the liberal fold. He says that the secularization of the left is the worst thing that could happen to the left. As he wrote on this post:

I have absolutely no idea who most of the people who read my blog are, I do know that several hundred people read it every week if not every day. If your accusation is correct and they're all creationists, I can't say that I consider it to be a problem. If they want to read what is said here, maybe they'll learn that they don't have as much to fear from real liberals as they're led to by the atheist pseudo-liberals. ... If any evangelical or fundamentalist or creationist reads me saying that seriously considers it, I'm not unhappy to have written it. They have the same right to my consideration as anyone else who does me the honor of reading what I write.

I may have severed ties with evangelicalism since then, but I still believe similar to evangelicalism, I was an evangelical at the time he wrote that, and it means a lot to me. Most of the left won't give me the time of day. He explicitly said that he'll allow people who are far more fundamentalist than me to listen to him. Even creationists, the ultimate left-wing bogeymen.

The guy's a brilliant thinker, not afraid to think way outside the box. Also, he trashes the bad parts of the left as much as he trashes the right. Keep in mind this is someone who calls all Republicans fascists. He makes cultural conservatives like me feel more at home with liberal ideas. He's far from a cultural conservative himself, but he doesn't like a lot of the cultural liberal rallying points. He represents a left wing that wants to include everyone instead of one based on mocking rural Southern Christians like me. It's the left of Martin Luther King Jr., not the left of Seth MacFarlane. He often uses the phrases "pseudo-religious right" for the modern right and "pseudo-left" for the modern Seth MacFarlane-type left. I'd love to meet him someday and talk about life, politics, music, Christianity, whatever.

He also has an army of trolls. I won't mention their names, but one of them is like the platonic opposite of me. A "rock music critic" who hates Christians, rural people, and progressive rock. I'll bet he hates cats and pineapple salsa too. The sad thing is there's way more of him on the left than there are people like Thought Criminal. How I wish it was the other way around. Thought Criminal's pretty angry, so a lot of his posts are responses to hate mail. I kind of wish he'd ban the trolls, but on the other hand some of his best posts started as hate mail.

I'll openly admit that his blog has pushed me further to the left. He got me more comfortable with the idea of voting for Hillary this year, when I was very uncomfortable with it at first. You should read him too. Here's an intriguing place to start, a series of posts critical of famous skeptic James Randi. (Who I'd never heard of before his blog, but I don't run in the same circles either.) Or try this post, Alternet Belongs On The Southern Poverty Law Center's Hate Group Watch List, which compares some Alternet writers to the American Family Association. I don't know if he'd like much of what's on my blog, but I like a lot of what's on his blog, even when I don't agree with it. If Thought Criminal says something, I listen and I consider the idea.

Positive stuff?

I want to write more positive stuff. It's hard! Being negative is easy. Being positive is hard. It's easy to bash people and hard to offer solutions. I'm good at bashing people but I never have the answers.

I used to be more positive than I am now. Then I hit my twenties. Most people are jerks in their twenties. Teenagers believe the world can get better. Twentysomethings believe everything sucks and we're screwed. I know teenagers who are so positive about the world. I fear for them. They'll get out in the real world.

Here's an example: A college student decides he wants to make a difference in the world. He's a political liberal with plenty of money. He's part of a "mainline" Christian denomination, the Presbylutherans or something. He's a straight white guy but he's aware of his privilege. He wants to change the world! He wants to end poverty around the world. And the Democrats will do it! If it wasn't for those Republicans the world would be a better place. He won't consider the Republican view on anything. Despite his middle class background, he identifies with the "working class" and their struggles. He graduates from college having never met more than a few working class people. Then...

The economy sucks so he gets a low-paying part-time job. That's all he can afford. He still lives with his parents. His co-workers, most of whom are "working class", look down on him for being from a well-off family. They think he's a snob, which he may be. He's mad at them for voting Republican, shopping at Wal-Mart, driving gas guzzlers, etc. like Stuff White People Like wrote about. They hate him for being holier-than-thou and not enough of a Real Man. Eventually he realizes he doesn't know jack about the world and stops caring. He gives up all political views and barely holds on to his religion. It's easy to have convictions when they're not tested.

That example was not me, but I based it loosely on my experiences. The people at my jobs have always been nice to me regardless of social class. I grew up with very little money. I was a liberal in college but I grew up super-conservative.

I need to be less prejudiced against the working class. There are lots of awesome working-class people. But working-class culture is anti-intellectual. Something your average college Marxist will never admit, because Working Class = Good and Middle Class = Bad. I grew up "working class". Poor people aren't stupid or inferior but the culture tries to keep them that way.

See? I want to be positive, but when I try, I can't! The world's a horrible place and I'm convinced it won't get better. I'm also convinced it won't get any worse.

Why I Hate Christmas

I hate Christmas. Not the religious holiday. I like celebrating Jesus' birth. I hate the secular holiday. If I wasn't a Christian I wouldn't celebrate it. Here's why:

The holiday is way too commercialized. This is everyone's problem. But I got more:

I. Hate. Snow. I really hate it on Christmas. I hate how all TV and movies have snow on Christmas. Even in Miami. EVEN IN HAWAII. People get pissed if you trash snow on Christmas. Bing Crosby asks how can you have Christmas without snow. Ask the majority of the world. Ask the southern hemisphere. It was over 100°F/38°C in Perth, Western Australia last Christmas. Countries like Brazil, Australia, South Africa, etc. have hot Christmases because it's near the summer solstice. Here in the US, I live in Mississippi and my family's from other hot places like Florida. Make fun of us all you want, but any snow is a disaster in the Deep South. I don't want a disaster on Christmas. Snow has nothing to do with the birth of Jesus. I'm not pagan/Wiccan so I don't care about celebrating the winter solstice. The "white Christmas" shit is the northern US and England shoving their ideal conditions down everyone's throat. It's the idealized Christmas TV sells us so they can sell more products. So I say take your white Christmas and shove it up your ass. I'll take a green (or brown) one any year. People care more about snow than they do about Jesus.

People get pissed if you're not "merry" and "jolly" on Christmas. Peace and love? Bullshit. They turn into assholes if you question a "white" "merry" Christmas. The rest of the year you have to be negative and cynical, which sucks enough already. On Christmas you have to be happy and positive, the only day all year people are allowed to be. And you HAVE to be, no matter your mood. What if you're depressed? You can go kill yourself. Christmas while depressed is what I imagine hell is like: everyone's "merry" and "jolly" except you. If I ever kill myself I'll do it on December 25.

There is no reason to change the culture to the 1950s for a month. I like a lot of things from older cultures. Why not keep those things all year? Why be inconsistent? The media send us mixed messages. Everything's this crass modern culture, then it turns into "Traditional Stuff We Think Your Grandma Liked", then to hell with grandma on the 26th. Grandma doesn't matter once you got presents from her.

I'm sick to death of the damn culture wars! You can't be consistent with the other holidays and say "Happy Christmas" because the "Merry Christmas" crowd gets pissed if you don't say "Merry". Why the hell do we say "merry" instead of "happy"? It's stupid. You can't say "Happy Holidays" and be inclusive or people bitch about it. If you say "Merry Christmas" people still bitch at you. So you have to say "Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, etc." or people get pissed at you. Those exact damn words. And they STILL get pissed because you were too inclusive. So much for peace and love. Don't get me wrong, I hate everyone in the culture wars debate. But the "merry Christmas" crowd care more about their Christmas traditions than about Jesus. How about "I pray you make it thru this horrible time of year"? It doesn't work for non-religious people but it's way closer to my mood.

Why lie to kids about Santa Claus? This is one thing only fundamentalists and some atheists get right – if you're a parent and you lie to your kids, you make them not trust you. That's a good lesson in real life, but it's not the lesson most parents want to teach their kids. Lying to kids about Santa is stupid and wrong. It may be "cute" and "innocent" but it's stupid.

I have a few more personal problems. My birthday's in December so that month's even more stressful than it is for most people. I'm red-green colorblind and the color combo hurts my eyes. I've seen some Christmas colors that literally give me a headache. I hate driving in heavy traffic and the traffic gets really bad every Christmas. I don't have much family here so I can't have a "family Christmas" unless I go out of state. However...

The single worst part about Christmas is the "rebellious" crowds, the punks and goths and hipsters, embrace the "traditional" Christmas the media built for us! The rest of the year they complain the media manipulate things to sell us stuff, but during Christmas they forget. They switch to "Fa la la snow hot chocolate presents snow family!" then revert back on the 26th. I thought I could count on them for support... hell no! No surprise, considering I never agree with them on anything.

There are a few things I like about Christmas. I like liturgical churches and it's the one time of the year most people care about liturgy. But you can get that any time at the right church. I'm all for celebrating Jesus' birth. I love a lot of old Christmas carols, like "O Come All Ye Faithful" and "What Child Is This". I like receiving and giving presents as long as it's not the focus of the holiday. I even like a few Christmas movies. Miracle on 34th Street may violate every single thing on this list, but it's pretty deep for a Santa movie. But there's no reason to celebrate Christmas if you're not Christian. I don't celebrate Eid al-Fitr or Passover, but I acknowledge they exist. And people turn into the worst kind of assholes every December. And I hate snow on Christmas.

Bah humbug.

Kill the Heretic!

It's human nature. If someone disagrees with you, they're evil and you should kill them. You should destroy their writings. You should shut them up at all costs. If you're good enough at it, nobody will know what they stood for in the first place.

One example is the medieval church. I'm a Christian and I'm fine with doctrinal purity, but the church went to extremes in the old days. We only know about a lot of heresies from books arguing against them. People destroyed heretical books. During the Protestant Reformation the church/government killed reformers. For years Christians oppressed Jews, even tho Jesus and His first disciples were all Jewish.

Oppressive governments do the same thing. The Nazis and Communists killed lots of people for disagreeing with the party. Not for doing anything. They killed people for other reasons too. Nazis hated Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and a bunch of other groups. They didn't do anything to the Nazis apart from existing.

We don't kill people or destroy their books any more in the Western world. Now we insult people, call them names, make fun of them, etc. It may not kill people but it hurts their careers. Here's a form of oppression in the music world:

Most rock critics praise genres like rockabilly, garage rock, 70's punk, post-punk, and early alternative. They trash genres like progressive rock and metal that don't fit their narrow view of rock.

When I was younger I didn't like progressive rock apart from Pink Floyd because things I read told me not to. People said it was "pretentious" and "self-indulgent" and it "violated the spirit of rock'n'roll". Then I discovered Procol Harum, who led me to Yes, who got me hooked on other progressive rock like King Crimson, early Genesis, Dream Theater, etc. Now I know rock critics are full of crap because those bands made great music. In the standard history of rock, punk "destroyed" progressive rock, like how grunge "destroyed" glam metal. Progressive rock bands and glam metal bands didn't do anything to offend punk and grunge bands. The rock purists killed the rock heretics in a heroic act to restore standard forms of rock.

Disco had a worse backlash from rock fans in the late 70s. There was a disco record demolition in 1979. That's real oppression.

I'm not the only one who sees a connection. John McFerrin says "I like a lot of punk rock and post-punk, but the punk "revolution" was really an inquisition." Nile Rodgers from disco/funk band Chic compared the anti-disco movement to Nazi book-burning.

The worst part is most rock critics hate religion. They embrace rock music like it's an alternative to religion that lets them do whatever they want. They probably say "religion kills so avoid it" like most anti-religious people do. But they still got the "kill the heretic" instinct because it's human nature.