I regret voting for Hillary

Voting for Hillary Clinton was the dumbest thing I ever did. Here's why:

1. She's every bit as morally questionable as the New God Donald Trump or Saint Bernie Sanders. There's a reason people keep bringing up Benghazi and email with her. Bill Clinton is still creepy and she constantly defended him.
2. Very few straight men would admit to voting for her unless they supported Bernie first. Hillary is a gay icon. She may be the ultimate gay icon. Voting for Hillary is up there with having sex with a man or watching Glee as the gayest thing a man can do. I don't have anything against gay people, but I'm straight. I don't want to be mistaken for gay. Especially not in a very conservative area. The only men I knew who supported Hillary over both Bernie and Trump were gay men, and I only knew one gay man who didn't support her. Thank God that I had a girlfriend then. This is also why I'm against Oprah running for president. If you can imagine people saying "Yas slay queen!" to a candidate, that person will not win straight men over.
3. I'm not a feminist. I like traditional gender roles. I'm attracted to very sweet, very feminine women. Women like that do not vote for Hillary. Female Hillary fans are loud, obnoxious, pushy, and outright mean. They're the kind of women who think it's okay to beat up men. I'm single again. I don't want to date a Hillary fan. I still think Trump sucks, but I like his fans better. Voting for Hillary means siding with Lena Dunham and Leslie Jones and other repulsive women. Nice women don't vote for Benghazi Email. They may vote for the New God, they may vote for St. Bernie Christ, but they don't vote for Benghazi Email.
4. Her fans, who have "come out" (pardon the pun) after the election, are just as obnoxious as Bernie fans. The Democrats split into two factions - the feminist/gay side represented by Hillary and the populist/secular side represented by Bernie. A lot of moderates who hated Trump supported the radical leftist Saint Bernie Christ because they were straight men, or even straight women who weren't total jerks, who could sense that Hillary Benghazi Email wasn't for their kind. You might argue there's also the racial minority side, but they're locked into voting for whoever the Democrats put up because a lot of Republicans hate racial minorities. Which brings me to this:
5. I am in the most conservative demographic in the country. When people hate and bash Republicans, they hate and bash me, no matter who I vote for. A lot of people on the left hate my guts and wish I would die. I'm locked into voting for Republicans for the same reason a lot of black people are locked into voting for Democrats: A lot of Democrats hate rural white Southerners, especially if we're male, working-class, and religious. A lot of my problem with Bernie was he rallied a lot of the people who hate me the most, but my people overwhelmingly hate Hillary. Frankly her fans are no better. A lot of them think I'm an overprivileged patriarchal oppressor who needs to be castrated. I don't want to vote for a party that hates me. 
6. I think "Christians for Trump" are retarded. But I think liberal atheists are even more retarded. I'm fine with atheists as long as they aren't leftists. If I was atheist I would support Trump. I'm still in a super-conservative demographic anyway. Republicans look out for me and my kind. At this point, Democrats don't.
7. I thought a lot of Republicans would cross over and vote for Hillary, like David Brooks did. However, David Brooks is an old rich New Yorker who doesn't have to deal with a vote damaging his reputation or his sense of self. Turns out a lot of Democrats, especially Bernie fans, crossed over and voted for Trump. A lot of them were straight men who didn't want to have sex with a man in the voting booth. Very few Republicans voted for Hillary because she's Benghazi Email. She's been their Public Enemy #1 for decades.

I've started reading libertarian stuff, like from fee.org. I don't agree with libertarians 100% of the time, but they're the least worst thing I know of in the US. They're about the only group I don't sort of hate. They're the only group who accepts everyone. That means a lot to me. I still don't like Trump. I can't support him because of my Christian faith. Democrats are completely off limits to me for the reasons I outlined above. However, Libertarians will accept me. It's a nice way for me to be against Trump without becoming a liberal.

If you restrict it to the two main (dumb) parties, Republicans are more accepting than Democrats. A Republican atheist wrote about how Republican groups were much more open to her than atheist groups were, since most atheist groups are run by secular humanist idiots who can't handle that some people aren't left-wing. And likewise, the Democrats are becoming less and less accepting. Sojourners, long known as a group of "progressive evangelicals", have started bashing white evangelicals in their articles. I can't even read Sojourners any more. It's as bad as any secular leftist site now. They used to try to get people like me, now they hate me too.

"Evangelical" is a hate term at this point for me and my kind. It doesn't matter if I don't consider myself one. After Trump killed Jesus won the election, a secular friend of mine who supported St. Bernie Christ went off on me about how "evangelicals" ruined everything. This same friend always gets mad when I complain about how the left doesn't like me. That's like if I was a black John McCain voter in 2008, and a white friend of mine went off to me about how "colored people"* ruined everything by voting for Obama, and that same friend got mad whenever I complained about experiencing racism. It HURTS. Those people don't like me and my kind. It also hurt when another friend of mine was stunned I attended church, because he'd always assumed I was atheist or agnostic because I wasn't a Republican. At that point, I realized I needed to never bash Trump in public again without also bashing Democrats.

There's a brilliant article called "Why Trump could murder someone and people would still support him" by an author going by David Hume. His main point is that identity means everything and character means nothing. I'd go further and say that the actual policies mean nothing either. Republicans and Democrats have mutually switched sides on issues and everyone went with what their party said. If I could do it all over again I'd vote for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian. Partly because I like some of his ideas, but mainly because it's better for my identity. Identity is important. I hate it but it's true. And for the vast majority of Americans, there aren't a lot of voting options that go with their identity. I actually wonder if I would have switched over to Democrats if I was female, or gay, or lived in a large city outside the South, or whatever. It doesn't matter. I am who I am and I can't change it.

By the way, yes, I do read secular conservative blogs. I still can't stand people conflating Jesus and Trump, or bashing Jesus because they don't like Trump, but if you take Jesus out of the equation I'm fine with people supporting Trump.

* I still can't bring myself to type the N-word, even as an example

Apostasy

My mom is an ex-Christian. I'd suspected it for years but she confirmed it to me the other day.

When I was a kid, she was super-devout. She prayed every morning. She studied the Bible more than most preachers. She was one of the most morally upright people I knew, in all senses. I was home-schooled and I remember her teaching me Bible classes. My parents used to minister to some of the more troubled teenagers in the area - I don't know if it ever stuck or not, but a lot of why I never got into drugs was that I saw the damage firsthand. Not only did she care about spreading the gospel, she also cared about holiness. I remember her criticizing my dad and me because we were listening to the ska band Madness, and Madness were a secular band, therefore they were evil. She didn't even like Christian bands that weren't Christian enough. When a large bookstore opened in town, she felt uncomfortable there. She said there was an evil spirit there because of all the New Age books. (They also had more Bible translations than anyone else.) On the other hand, she wasn't that strict on me. She didn't force me to wear a suit and tie every day. She wasn't a hardcore fundamentalist like a lot of people we knew were.

She was my moral rock as a child. Now that rock has completely weathered away. She used to hate swearing. Now she swears, especially "bitch" (which she considers a compliment and a self-description). Every time she says "my gaahd" it makes my skin crawl, because the woman who raised me would never say that. She's outright mean to some people now. And she's the worst kind of ex-Christian - the kind who ascends above the need for Jesus in her own goodness. Note the sarcasm. She can't stand most people now. She hates anyone feminine, unless it's a gay man. She gets mad when I say anything she can't comprehend. And she always has to have the upper hand. She has to mock everything. And she can't comprehend why anyone would have friends. She used to have friends. Now her brain programming lacks a subroutine for friendship.

She raised me to be a strong Christian - I don't think I'm that strong of a Christian, but I sure didn't turn out like her. If she's disappointed in me for staying tied to Organized Religion, it's her fault. I remember about ten years ago I told her about my struggles with faith after a traumatic event, and she pretty much told me to leave Christianity. I was surprised. She couldn't comprehend why I wanted to stay Christian. I no longer tell her about my problems.

If the woman who raised me was still around, she'd be appalled at how my mom acts now. As far as I know, I am the only person on earth who has to deal with this. Nobody else on earth has stayed in their religion while their parents quit. It's like the world played a sick joke on me. It hurts like hell.

She and I still get along well. I still like being around her. But I don't respect her as much as I used to. It would be better if I'd been raised secular and became a Christian later on. Then I wouldn't have to throw out the memories.

Religious breakdown of the United States

• 45.2% Christian
  • 21.2% Protestant
  • 20.8% Catholic
  • 1.6% Mormon
  • 0.8% Jehovah's Witness
  • 0.5% Orthodox
  • 0.4% Other
• 25.4% Satanist
• 3.1% Science Worship
• 1.9% Jewish
• 0.9% Muslim
• 0.7% Buddhist
• 0.7% Hindu
• 1.0% Other Religions
• 19.8% Unaffiliated

(source: http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/)

Living in a Bubble

Is it a good thing? Blogger Bryan Caplan thinks so. As a Christian and a political moderate, you wouldn't think I'd get much from an atheist libertarian's blog, but I can relate to a lot of his posts. The first one is called My Beautiful Bubble, which explains how awesome it is to live in a bubble. The second one, Make Your Own Bubble in 10 Easy Steps, explains how to make one.

I shouldn't say this, but I agree with a LOT of his advice. Out of the ten steps he gives, I think 1-4 are great and 6-8 are eventual goals of mine. I can't quite do 5 because of my depression, and I doubt I'll ever be ready to do 10. My sub-sub-culture is so tiny that 9 was never an option, but I have a girlfriend so it's a moot point. But most of it is great advice. After the election from hell, I quit reading news. I will probably never buy a newspaper again. I use a Facebook plug in called FB Purity so I don't have to see Facebook posts that annoy me. I read a variety of blogs from a variety of viewpoints I have at least some sympathy for, the few that are left. If I was more settled in my opinions I'd only read blogs I agreed with.

If I wasn't religious I would have started working on the bubble a long time ago. I thought it was wrong. Maybe it is. But it helps me stay sane. I hate American culture. In my head, I consider ISIS worse than the alt-right and I consider the alt-right worse than the secular left, but on a gut level, I think all three are evil and worthless. I don't have the emotional strength to live without a bubble right now. Too bad I can't spend more time in it.

The failure of an ethical system

Until last year, both the left wing and the right wing had competing versions of morality and ethics, both of them with some problems but still more "good" than "bad". Both versions had a lot of things in common like don't murder, don't steal, don't lie, etc. Last year, both the left and the right mutually agreed that the left is the "good guys" and the right is the "bad guys". Left-wingers bash right-wingers for being too bad, right-wingers bash left-wingers for being too good. That's what "snowflake", "gay", "cuck", etc. all mean - someone who is too good, who doesn't sin enough, so they must be punished. (For more see here) The new right-wing "morality" is simply left-wing morality in reverse. It's weird to see the complete failure of an ethical system.

It's hard for me to write this because I don't get along well with the left. But the right has turned evil and there's no way around it. There's a lot of left-wing morality that I think is completely wrong, but at least it's a system of morality where people strive to be good. A lot of the right strives to be bad because they want to be the opposite of the left wing. This culture is a sick parody of what it was 10 years ago.

I wonder what society would be like if left wing morality had collapsed instead of right wing morality. Probably just as horrible, but horrible in a way that makes more sense.