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.

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.

About the term "Social Justice Warrior"

I'll use the term "Social Justice Warrior" in future posts. I want to clarify what I mean. I do not use it as a blanket term for liberals. A true Social Justice Warrior thinks they care about social justice more than they really do. Someone who only cares about abstract issues instead of the people the issues affect. Someone who trashes everything for being prejudiced and "problematic" but has no problem being prejudiced against groups they don't consider worthy to exist. A total hypocrite. It's a useful term for a kind of person I've run into online.

Most SJWs are high school or college students. They usually grow out of it when they get to the real world. SJWs give real social justice a bad name. Social justice is an important part of my faith and I care a lot about real social justice. I don't want to be racist, sexist, or homophobic. Therefore, I oppose SJWs. Thanks to them I will never use the terms "problematic", "trigger warning", "safe space", or "check your privilege" with a straight face. Some of those may be good ideas, but I associate them with some of the world's most annoying people.

Too bad the alt-right idiots co-opted the term to use against all liberals. They ruin everything they touch. For more info on what I mean when I talk about SJWs, read the top definition from Urban Dictionary. It was written in 2011. And for a good parody, see everythingoffendsme.tumblr.com, which is so close to the real thing it's hardly satire.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson: Pedantry in Space

Just linking this article because it's awesome and it's better than anything I can write:

Neil DeGrasse Tyson: Pedantry in Space by Sam Kriss

Not to mention that NDT is often wrong. I've seen him on Conan before and he's kind of fun for a few minutes, then annoying as hell after that. He's like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory, except Sheldon is way funnier and more of a sympathetic character. Here's a good quote from the article:

A decent name for this tendency, for stars and spaceships recast as the instruments of a joyless and pedantic class spite, would be I Fucking Love Science. ‘Science’ here has very little to do with the scientific method itself; it means ontological physicalism, not believing in our Lord Jesus Christ, hating the spectrally stupid, and, more than anything, pretty pictures of nebulae and tree frogs.

I can safely say that "I fucking hate science". I don't hate actual science, I just hate "reason logic fact science evolution fuck". And that's what NDT is the figurehead for. All this has destroyed my interest in science. When I was younger I liked reading about science. Not any more. Science isn't for people like me any more. I'm not a creationist, a global warming denier, an anti-vaxxer, etc., but I wish I was all of those because the "reason logic fact science evolution fuck" crowd pisses me off so much.

Endnote: Anti-vaccine attitudes used to be part of the left until a few years ago, not the right. The only reason it changed was everyone started believing science was inherently left-wing. Don't ask. Don't fucking ask.

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.

Red Tribe and Blue Tribe

Read this (very long) post from Scott Alexander, I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup, and its (very long) sequel, Five Case Studies on Politicization, and you'll understand most of the problems with the world.

There's definitely a "red tribe" and a "blue tribe". Red tribe is cultural conservatives and blue tribe is cultural liberals. And I fit in with the red tribe almost to a tee. I'm from rural Mississippi, I'm Christian, I was homeschooled, I'm a teetotaler, etc. I'm probably the most conservative demographic in America. And each tribe has an outgroup: the red tribe has both the blue tribe and outsiders, but somehow the blue tribe made the red tribe the only outgroup. His eventual conclusion is that liberals think conservatives are worse than ISIS at a gut level. Sadly, this is a lot of why I'm not liberal any more. I don't want to hang out with a crowd that thinks I'm worse than ISIS. And unfortunately, a lot of the left looks down on me because I'm from the wrong part of the country, I have the wrong accent, I go to the wrong church, I do the wrong things that the wrong people enjoy. No matter how liberal my political views were, they still saw that I was the wrong kind of person. Being a white evangelical homeschooled Mississippian on the left is like being a gay Muslim Mexican on the right.

The absolute worst thing for Christianity is for it to be identified with the red tribe. It's almost impossible to evangelize to blue tribe people. For this reason, I'd consider people like Nadia Bolz-Weber to be very important - she's a Christian pastor and about as blue tribe as they come. Meanwhile, the red tribe people are already sure they're Christian because they were born into the right family or they had a religious experience once when they were younger. It doesn't matter how they act. Most of my blue tribe Christian friends have quit the faith. They don't act very different from secular blue tribe people and there's not much incentive for them to stay if they live in a blue tribe bubble. If they want to stay in religion, they tend to go to more blue tribe-friendly religions like Wicca.

It's also horrible, like I mentioned above, for liberals trying to explain their views to people like me. There are some who accept me and don't look down on me, and I respect them a lot. But in my experience, most of them do look down on me and everything I love. I don't want to live in a big city, I don't want to eat organic everything, I don't want to see Hamilton, etc. And as I'll go into detail in the future, I hate snark.

One of the worst things about this election is that my red tribe, the people who think and act like me, went almost wholesale for Donald "Antichrist" Trump. If I was part of the blue tribe it wouldn't hurt so bad. I wish the red tribe got the sensible candidate and the blue tribe got the complete moron, like if it had been Marco Rubio vs. Bernie Sanders. Of course, most blue tribe people I know wanted Bernie anyway. Ironically they're the same people who wouldn't shut up about Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump all the time. And they were mad about having to vote for uncool Hillary instead of cool edgy Bernie.

Seriously, Scott Alexander's posts put a lot of my thoughts into words way better than I could. He comes from a completely different perspective but he comes to the same conclusions. Read them if you have the time, I don't know how to summarize them.

I'm back after four years

So I let this blog lapse after a while. I may disable comments or I may not. I don't know. In the past four years I've gotten exactly one comment, so I probably will. For years I thought this blog was too angry and negative and I got ashamed of it. Then the election from hell hit and I got angrier and angrier. I decided I needed to blog again, then I remembered I had this old angry blog lying around, so I'm gonna revive it!

Some big changes:

• I got more conservative in the pre-Trump sense. In 2015 I was ready to vote Republican. Then the Antichrist (Donald Trump) hit and destroyed everything good on the right. Now I'm politically homeless. I would move further to the left again, but I despise the left almost as much as I despise the alt-right shitheads.
• I have a girlfriend now. So I'm going to post about some things I hid from everyone before. I didn't want to turn off single women by talking about some things. I'll ask her about the posts first to make sure she's fine with them.
• I let myself say "fuck" on here now because some things, like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, are hard to describe without the word "fuck".
• I quit identifying as "evangelical Christian" after the election because evangelicalism is apostate. I still believe the same. I still believe that Jesus saved me from my sins, that the Bible is inspired by God, and that Protestants are generally right. I just think evangelicalism has lost its mind completely. I still want to be the best Christian I can. I suck at it horribly of course. I have a bad temper and I hate it. Plus a lot of people would doubt my salvation because I say "fuck" and "shit" and other bad words. (Fact: I never used a swear word until I was 19.)
• I also lost any respect for the "reason logic fact science evolution fuck" militant atheist crowd. People like Bill Maher, PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins, etc. I can't even read Neil DeGrasse Tyson any more without responding "reason logic fact science evolution fuck" because THAT'S ALL THEY SAY. I wish the militant atheists supported Trump and the evangelicals were against him. Atheists face prejudice, so I want to make it clear that most atheists are fine with me, even if most of them supported Bernie Sanders (the substitute God for secular America). It's the minority of annoying ones I'll go after.
• I quit caring if I offend people or not.
• I said nice things about the Occupy movement? Seriously?!?! Those people are the Tea Party of the left. Those people got us Bernie fucking Sanders, the second worst major candidate in recent memory.

Expect me to bitch about just about everything wrong with modern American culture. Don't expect too many answers here. I don't know if there are any, and if there are, nobody's listening anyway.

iPod and iPad in Spanish

WARNING: International Phonetic Alphabet ahead. I try to make it easy for people who don't know IPA, which is most of you, and people who don't see the symbols. IPA makes this kind of discussion way easier.

There are only two things I wanted to find online that I couldn't: 1. Train schedules for the railroads in my town and 2. How Spanish speakers pronounce "iPad" and "iPod". I did a bunch of searches for the second thing and couldn't find anything.

Apple's iPad has the worst product name ever. It sounds like "iPod" with an annoying accent. In fact, most languages don't distinguish the vowel /æ/ in "iPad" from the vowel /ɑ/ in "iPod". Most of them merge them together into /a/, which sounds similar to /ɑ/. So I asked my Facebook friends. They said it's "like in English". This doesn't help me. The English pronunciations are /aipæd/ and /aipɑd/, and Spanish would merge them both into /aipad/. Spanish spelling suggests /ipað/ "ee-pahth" and /ipoð/ "ee-pohth".

I found a page about how Japanese speakers say iPad and iPod. They say /aipad/ for "iPad", which sounds more like "iPod" to me, and /aipod/ or /aipoud/ for "iPod", which sounds like "eye-pode". This is interesting because Japanese doesn't allow "d" at the end of a syllable. Japanese syllables only end with a vowel or "n".

So I asked two actual Spanish speakers in person. They both told me they pronounce it "like in English", /aipad/ and /aipad/. (Final /d/ may have been /ð/ because final /d/ in Spanish always becomes /ð/.) One may have been /aipɑd/, but I definitely did not hear /aipæd/ or even /aipɛd/ or /aiped/. So they basically say them the same.

The final lesson: Apple doesn't respect people who don't speak English. Gives me less reason to respect Apple.

Comments!

I enabled comments on new posts now. I have to enable them on the old posts by hand. There's still some I don't want comments on, but I decided there's no point in not having comments when half of my posts start discussions with my friends anyway. I am a sellout.

Another long rant on politics, religion, personality, and forgiveness

I told some of my friends a few days ago that I feel like I get more conservative every day. It's not based on the beliefs, it's based on the lifestyles and the arguments. I explained that I understand conservatives even when I disagree with them, but I don't understand liberals when I disagree with them. So I have more sympathy for conservatives who say stupid stuff than for liberals who say stupid stuff. My conservative and libertarian friends were happy and my liberal friends were not. One of my liberal friends, who I respect a lot, accused me of confirmation bias. Which is probably true. Everyone's more likely to believe something they already agree with. I also said I like to fit in with people who are like me. Most people are like this. No matter how good liberal arguments are, they won't win me over because I like small towns and I don't drink. Stereotypical, but more true than it should be. And as I've said before, religious liberals have more in common with secular liberals than they do with religious conservatives. I may have liberal opinions on some things, but I have a conservative brain. So conservative arguments make more sense.

My Christian faith makes me more moderate or liberal than I would be otherwise. A lot of my liberal opinions go against what logic tells me. For me, logic supports conservatives more often than not. When I was in college I was both a hardcore Christian and a hardcore liberal, and I was every bit as obnoxious as the Religious Right. I disagreed with the left on a few things but I liked the way they talked. As I explained in a ha-ha-only-serious post on religion and politics last year, liberal arguments are similar to religious arguments. And both groups can slip into self righteousness real easily.

It really bugs me when some secular people, usually secular liberals, try to claim Jesus agreed with them. It bugs me when people claim Jesus was a socialist, a capitalist, a Republican, a Democrat, a Libertarian, a monarchist, etc. I also don't know why someone who rejects Jesus's supernatural claims would follow Jesus's morals. They're not practical at all. There are other moral teachers. It's a lousy attempt to try and win over Christians. I respect other religions and philosophies too much to cozy up to their followers. Too bad not everyone's that way.

For example, I don't understand why so many secular people are so pro-forgiveness. If I left Christianity that's the first thing I'd throw out. I honestly don't understand forgiveness. I never have. I think it perpetrates evil. It prevents evil from being punished. It keeps the forgivers subordinate to the forgiven. I guess I should be glad most people aren't as vindictive as me, but I don't understand it. Non-Christians usually tell me I'm a horrible person. Christians either do the same or admit they have no answer to my questions. I want to be more forgiving, but forgiveness makes no sense!

But once again I have a conservative brain. There's a lot of liberal arguments against Christianity, but very few conservative arguments, and the conservative arguments are the only ones that make sense to me. They reflect the way I see the world, which makes sense to me. And in the US nearly all conservatives are Christian. Whether they follow Christian morals or not is another matter, but they call themselves Christians, so they claim Christian teachings and morals as their own.

There's a book I want to read called The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics And Religion by Jonathan Haidt. I've read the first few chapters and I like it so far. It covers a lot of the same ground as some of my blog posts, only more positive and from a very different perspective. Haidt is a psychologist. He's also a former liberal turned moderate by his research into morality. Maybe he can help me make sense out of the world. The world looks absurd to me. My own half-baked theories make more sense than most of what I see out there. And when things seem to make sense, they always exclude me and say I can't exist.

The Christian music industry is dead

The Christian music industry is dead.‭ ‬Cornerstone Festival announced this is its last year.‭ (link) When I was younger I wanted to go to Cornerstone. I never did and I have no desire to go now, but I'm still sad to see it go.

I grew up in the‭ ‬90s in the evangelical Christian sub-culture.‭ ‬Back then,‭ ‬a lot of Christians wouldn't listen to secular music,‭ ‬but they listened to Christian music.‭ ‬The Christian music industry thrived thanks to this.‭ ‬There were lots of charts listing Christian bands as‭ “‬Christian alternatives‭” ‬to secular bands.‭ ‬The bands themselves hated this,‭ ‬except for the few who saw themselves as the‭ “‬safe‭” ‬versions of secular musicians.‭ ‬The charts were pretty far off base too.

As a result, Christian artists gained a reputation as cheap knockoffs of secular artists. Sometimes this was true, but it often wasn't. There were a lot of bad bands from my childhood, but there were some good ones too. I still listen to some of them. And it ruined my musical taste forever.

Why did this happen‭? ‬In the late‭ ‬80s,‭ ‬popular music was very dirty.‭ ‬Your average rock album from‭ ‬1989‭ ‬is way dirtier than your average rock album from‭ ‬1969‭ ‬or‭ ‬2009.‭ ‬This was the era of the Parents Music Research Council,‭ ‬the Parental Advisory sticker,‭ ‬etc.‭ ‬Parents want to protect their children.‭ ‬So we got an entire music industry designed as an alternative to one that some people think went off the deep end.

The Christian music industry did convert a lot of the more fundamentalist Christians who believed all popular music was evil.‭ ‬They had music with evil drum beats and guitars,‭ ‬but they're singing about Jesus‭! ‬Nice things too.‭ ‬What do they do now‭? ‬Some people bashed the Christian bands,‭ ‬but I think it made a lot of them more tolerant.

What killed it‭? ‬One thing was commercial acceptance of Christian bands in the mainstream market.‭ ‬A few had big hits before,‭ ‬but not like the breakthru in the mid-00s.‭ ‬Another was that mainstream rock music got a lot less dirty after Marilyn Manson took shock rock as far as the mainstream would let him.‭ ‬By the way,‭ ‬Marilyn Manson was a marketing genius.‭ ‬All the parents complained about him,‭ ‬so he was one of the few secular artists I knew of when I was a kid.‭ ‬All the church kids knew:‭ ‬If you want to rebel,‭ ‬listen to Marilyn Manson.‭ ‬Back to the main topic...

Also,‭ ‬Christian music stopped being‭ “‬safe‭” ‬sometime in the past few years.‭ ‬Musicians start ed swearing and singing about controversial topics,‭ ‬e.‭ ‬g.‭ ‬Derek Webb.‭ ‬Christian music wasn't all G-rated any more.‭ ‬It wasn't all Focus on the Family approved any more.‭ You couldn't be sure you'd agree with everything the music said.

Christian musicians will survive.‭ ‬We'll have new Christian musicians in all styles,‭ ‬but they won't be part of a separate market.‭ ‬I hope some of them better ones,‭ ‬such as House of Heroes,‭ get the attention they deserve. I'll miss having Cornerstone around, but there's no need for a separate music market any more.

What I want to know is why almost all‭ “‬heavy‭” ‬Christian bands do hardcore or metalcore.‭ ‬There are so many styles of heavy music but Christian bands always go for‭ ‬-core music.‭ ‬Maybe they want to fight the image that Christian music is always mellow and pretty,‭ ‬so they scream over everything.‭ ‬Maybe there's less bias against Christianity in the‭ ‬-core world than in power metal or thrash metal.‭ ‬Maybe none of them can play guitar solos.‭ ‬Maybe it's like how third wave ska was huge in the Christian world for way longer than the secular world.‭ ‬The Christian music industry was usually a few years behind the secular music industry,‭ ‬but they were right on the ball with ska.

The World's Most Hated Bands

I read the article A Night With the World's Most Hated Bands by Chuck Klosterman. Pretty good article. A little snobby, but he does well considering he's a rock critic.

Klosterman says there's five bands it's "okay" to hate for no reason: Bush, Hootie and the Blowfish, Limp Bizkit, Creed, and Nickelback. He saw the last two of them play live the same night and dissected the reasons people hate them. He boils down the Creed hate to people thinking they were Pearl Jam ripoffs. He says Nickelback's hate is just because; there's no reason.

My take on the Nickelback hate: They're the most popular of a lot of similar bands. A lot of these bands are worse than Nickelback. Hinder, for one. Also Puddle of Mudd. Some of these bands are better - such as Shinedown. When people say they hate Nickelback, they mean "I hate post-grunge music". I don't like Nickelback, and I don't even care for Shinedown apart from a few songs. But I like Foo Fighters and Switchfoot. Before I got into Muse I thought they were another post-grunge band and now they're one of my favorites. I can't dismiss the whole genre.

I don't like Nickelback, but some of my friends do. I also don't like the Velvet Underground or the Pixies and some of my friends do. I'll leave any room where the Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony" is playing, but some of my friends like it. I don't know why, because it sucks and I hate it. But people have different tastes. I won't judge somebody based on that.

I also like a lot of music the critics hate. I like a lot of prog rock, which many music nuts dismiss with the wave of a hand. However, prog rock gets a lot more respect than Nickelback or Creed on sites like Rate Your Music.

Trayvon Martin

Wikipedia: Shooting of Trayvon Martin

Huffington Post: The Trayvon Martin Tragedy

THIS is why racism's not dead. From everything I read, Trayvon Martin, a black teenager, walked thru a neighborhood unarmed in Sanford, FL. He committed the crime of Walking While Black. George Zimmerman, a Neighborhood Watch captain, security guard, white Hispanic, and racist idiot, killed him for looking "suspicious". He broke all the Neighborhood Watch rules. The Sanford police department didn't arrest or charge Zimmerman because of a stupid Florida law about self-defense. So, Martin's family took this to court. I hope they arrest Zimmerman. I hope they kick his ass. I hope they throw him in jail.

I had two dentist's appointments a few weeks ago. There was an hour between them and they told me I could run some errands. There's a bank a half mile away, so I walked to the bank and back. I'm white so nobody thought I was gonna shoot up the neighborhood. If I was black I wouldn't have that luxury. People assume if you're black and walking on a sidewalk, you must be a criminal. They don't say that if you're white.

Also interesting when it's one minority against another.

Dunno if this petition will do anything, but I signed it. Which means I'll get way more email.

Another Election Year

The Republicans are going to lose. This is not opinion, this is fact. I like Ron Paul pretty well, I'll probably vote for him, but he won't win the nomination. He's too far from the Republican establishment. Mitt Romney's too close to the Republican establishment for most people. Plus he's Mormon, and Mormons face a ton of prejudice. Every other Republican candidate's an idiot. It's like the Republican party isn't trying to field a good challenger to Obama. They had McCain last time. It reminds me of 2004. Everyone hated Bush then like everyone hates Obama now. People always hate the incumbent. But every Democrat candidate sucked, so they went with the least worst, Kerry, who nobody hated but nobody liked either. Romney's going to win the nomination because he's got standard Republican views and some connection to reality. But nobody likes him. He's everything the Republicans want to get away from.

Meanwhile, most Obama supporters try to see how annoying they can be. You get the occasional nice liberal, but most of them are snobby assholes. Usually it's the Republicans who hate random people - this time it's the Democrats. I don't want a thing to do with the Democrats. If you're too polite the Democrats mock you. Hell, the Democrats I know mock people more than they offer any solutions. Or they offer their solutions, then mock you if you disagree. Obama doesn't come across like this. What is it about Obama that attracts stuck-up pricks? Ron Paul gets this too, but not as bad as Obama. I have a little respect for most conservatives I know, but none for most liberals. If a conservative says they care about others - and most of them don't - they're honest. If a liberal says they care about others, 9 times out of 10 they only care about themselves. It's a smokescreen.

Everything comes down to idiots vs. assholes. Should I leave my ballot blank this year? Probably not. It's like this every four years. The only reason they put elections in leap years is so we get an extra day of political torture.

EDIT: I'm harsh on here a lot, but this post was harsh even for me. I'm sorry for stereotyping. I saw about five annoying left-wing Facebook posts in a row, got real pissed off, and wrote this post. A lot of Democrats are very nice people who really do care. However, a lot of them aren't. I thought about writing a similar post about conservatives but I decided not to. Once again, I'm sorry.