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.

Mark Driscoll Sucks

When I was younger I quit going to church because I was mad at God. I didn't like Christ's teachings, but I liked Christians and I identified as one because I wanted to love God again. Eventually I found a church/a church found me and I got back in.

Good thing I didn't know about Mark Driscoll then. If I did I wouldn't have bothered. He's a crazy nutjob preacher who combines the worst parts of fundamentalism with the worst parts of modern culture. He's controlling, sexist, and misunderstands grace like fundamentalism does. He's crass, obscene, and anti-morality like modern culture is. Of course, most evangelicals think he's awesome.

Driscoll claims the church is full of girls and guys who act like girls, and we need Real Men (assholes) in the church. Why do you think the church skews so female? Masculinity is more evil than femininity. Masculine sins include pride, anger, and lust. Think of your image of a Real Man. Is it some hulking, brutal, alpha male who cares about himself only? It is for me. Some sins are more "feminine", like vanity. However, most women have stronger morals because most morals are feminine traits. Likewise, women are more religious than men. Most secular women are tomboys.

Mark Driscoll promotes strict gender roles. He has a narrow view of masculinity. If you're not a Real Man he hates you. He gives people sex tips in his sermons. Why the hell is that in a sermon? He swears in his sermons. I swear too, but there's a time and a place for it. As much as I swear in this blog, if I preached a sermon I would never swear in it. He bashes men who don't drink alcohol. I don't drink because I have a family history of alcoholism, so I choose not to drink. "Holier than thou" people are annoying enough. "Unholier than thou" people are even worse. I don't want to hear a preacher who makes me feel like I'm too good to be a Christian. I'll take a fundamentalist preaching about the evils of the NIV or rock music any day. At least I can laugh at that. Driscoll hates gay people. Not just "love the sinner, hate the sin". Real hate. And if you hate a group you bring as many people into it as possible. So, "effeminate" worship leaders are gay. Anyone who's "gooder" than Driscoll is gay. It's hardly about sexual attraction any more.

Jesus was not a wimp. He was a carpenter and carpenters have to be strong. He spoke boldly. He was homeless. There is nothing wrong with most of masculinity. However, Jesus's teachings appeal more to women and non-alpha males. "Love your enemies" ain't a tough guy thing. Putting others before you ain't a tough guy thing. If Jesus came back today, Mark Driscoll would call Him a pussy.

People say he's a reaction against legalism. I say he's even worse. Legalism is the belief that we need extra works in addition to God's grace. The opposite, antinomianism, is the belief that you can do whatever you want when you're saved. This of course is a load of crap. I'm far from a good Christian but at least I don't defend my sins. It's easy to slip into both of them.

Driscoll's bullshit is especially dangerous because of his theology: he's within orthodox Christian teaching. Most dangerous cults have weird theology. Driscoll's a Calvinist. Fundamentalists are also in orthodox Christian teaching, but the danger's more obvious. Their culture doesn't allow non-KJV Bibles, dancing, beer, rock music, swearing, etc. They rebel against modern culture. Driscoll would call most fundamentalist men "gay" because they rebel against mainstream culture. Driscoll embraces mainstream culture. He thinks you're a wimp if you're a man and you're not a Real Man. This creepy cult leader sneaks by everyone's radar because his theology's fine. There's more to a "cult" than heretical theology. Mormons are heretics but they don't have creeps as famous preachers - and I bet Mark Driscoll thinks they're all gay too.

The worst part is almost nobody complains about him. Some feminists do because he's sexist. A lot of ex-Christians say he makes them glad they left Christianity. I see their point. In at least one case, someone left Christianity altogether because of Driscoll and his near-universal acceptance. Most evangelicals defend him. He's bad for Christianity and he needs to quit being such an asshole. He turns people off Christianity when they were interested before. I sure don't want to be part of his religion, but I am.

This link explains more. I doubt the author would like this blog, but I don't go around trashing women or swearing in sermons.

Alphabets and culture

There's a strong connection between language and culture. Everybody knows that. That's why so many countries look down on minority languages. It used to be illegal to speak Sardinian in Italy. Some countries encourage them, like modern Spain. In the US there have been many movements to get rid of foreign languages, but Spanish still holds strong. One reason some people in Québec want to split from Canada is they speak French and the rest of Canada speaks English... except New Brunswick is bilingual English/French and Nunavut speaks Inuktitut.

There's also a strong connection between alphabets and culture. Alphabets correlate with religion a lot. Greek, Latin, and Cyrillic (Russian) alphabets are Christian alphabets. Orthodox Christians used the Cyrillic and Greek alphabets while Catholics and Protestants used the Latin alphabet. All three alphabets share a capital A, E, M, O, and T. Jews used the Hebrew alphabet and Muslims used the Arabic alphabet. Yiddish uses the Hebrew alphabet but it's related to German, not to Hebrew. I don't know enough about any other religions to know other connections.

In modern times alphabets can represent political alliances. During the Cold War the Cyrillic alphabet represented Communism and the Latin alphabet represented the free world. It's not cut and dry in practice - most of Eastern Europe still used Latin. The USSR didn't ban minority languages but they required them to use Cyrillic. The alphabet of the Orthodox Church became the alphabet of oppression.

Writing systems don't mean two languages are related. Chinese and Japanese are not related, but Japanese borrowed a lot of Chinese symbols and added two sets of syllable-signs. English, Greek, Russian, Armenian, Persian, and Hindi are related, but they all use different alphabets. English, Finnish, Turkish, Swahili, Tagalog, and Quechua are not related and they use the same alphabet.

In fact, Turkish used the Arabic alphabet for centuries. They were a Muslim country. The Arabic alphabet doesn't suit Turkish well. Then Mustafa Kemal Atatürk established the secular republic of Turkey in the early 20th century. He wanted to promote literacy and shift Turkey's cultural alliances toward Europe. So he and his linguist buddies switched to the Latin alphabet, which fits Turkish very well. Click here to compare the two alphabets.

To learn more about writing systems, visit Omniglot.

Racial Segregation

After college, there's two main ways to make friends: churches and bars. If you don't like religion or alcohol, you better like being alone. I'm a church person, so I don't know if bars are like this, but our churches have a huge racial segregation problem. Martin Luther King Jr. said "eleven o'clock Sunday morning is the most segregated hour and Sunday school is still the most segregated school of the week." (source)

My church is almost all-white. We have a few Hispanics but we don't have any black members now. We used to but they moved. Since then we haven't had any new black members. Segregation extends to other things too. Most events I go to are all-white or almost all-white. There's no "whites only" sign on the doors but it turns out that way.

Why? There's a big culture difference. Race has little to do with heritage and lots to do with culture. A good example: My musical taste is very white. I like plenty of musicians of other races, but they all have lots of white fans. Different races go to different social events. They're involved in different clubs. Sometimes they have different hobbies.

That's one reason there aren't a lot of interracial relationships. The ones that work best are the ones with less culture gap. Either the partners are interested in each other's culture or one of them is part of the other race's culture. I'm all for interracial marriage, but sometimes I feel bad for kids who are pulled between two cultures and aren't "white" enough or "black" enough. It extends to other races here: a Samoan friend of mine faces the same issue. There's hardly any Samoans in Mississippi.

Beverly Daniel Tatum wrote a book called Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? It challenged my thoughts on race more than anything else I've read. Here's a summary of the book. It made me think a lot about race and racial identity. It explains a lot of why society's still so segregated. I don't like segregation but I see why it still exists. I don't know if I agree with everything she says but it's worth a read.

Still, it sucks that I never see most of my black Facebook friends any more. It's not like they're less like me than my white friends. They're part of a different culture.

Snob Appeal in Computing

I'm one of those holdouts who refuses to use "hacker" for security breakers. The right term according to the Jargon File is cracker. The real meaning of hacker refers to a kind of super-programmer. I'm not a hacker and I never will be - I don't have the personality. But I respect them. It bugs me when people talk about "hackers" breaking into things and causing damage. A hacker may crack your computer but he/she will tell you how to fix the hole. Real hackers don't cause damage. They build things instead, especially on Linux.

This brings me around to another thing: Why do people pronounce Linux "Linnux" (IPA lɪnəks) when that's not how it's spelled? Snob appeal. I pronounced it to rhyme with English "Linus" (IPA lainəks, or laənəks in my Southern accent) for a long time. Then I asked a snobby bookstore cashier about "Lye-nux" books, and he didn't understand me. Then he responded "Oh, you mean Linnux books. We have all kinds of Linnux books... I love Linnux..." Turns out Mr. Snob was wrong too: this link lets you hear OS creator Linus Torvalds himself say it. He says it "Leenooks" (IPA linʊks). Now I say either linʊks or linəks. However, most Linux users are snobs. Same goes with most hackers, including the good kind. If you pronounce something different from how it's spelled, it gives it snob appeal. The snob knows something regular people don't.

Linus Torvalds is Finnish but his name and first language are Swedish. Some people argue "Linnux" is the Anglicized version of "Leenooks", but Swedish has our short "i" vowel. It's rare in most languages, but common in Germanic languages such as English, German, and of course Swedish. If he meant "Linnux", he would have said it. But he didn't.

The same applies to Mac snobs who say "OS Ten" instead of "OS X". In this case I don't care how the Apple people say it. If they wanted people to say "OS Ten" they should have called it "OS 10". As for me I'm waiting for Mac OS Y to come out.

At least people don't say "Wine-doss" for Windows. No wonder non-snobs stick to Windows.

Uncyclopedia, the content-free alternative to Wikipedia, has an enlightening article on Linux.

(I still read "Linux" as Lye-nucks. I have to force myself to say it different.)

The Young Fogey

Almost all subcultures are more shocking than the mainstream. Flappers, hippies, punks, etc. They all shock by being more radical. Young Fogeys shock by being LESS radical. They're young men who dress and act like it's 100 years ago. They love old upper class British culture, smoking pipes, Evelyn Waugh novels, traditional churches, and tweed suits. I used to read a lot of blogs by Catholics and liturgical Protestants. Most of the bloggers were Young Fogeys. A lot of Catholic converts are Young Fogeys. Liturgy and history attract these people. Most Young Fogeys are British, but I've met American ones too. The Chap Magazine's a good tongue-in-cheek look at the Young Fogey.

I'm not a Young Fogey and I never will be. I like rock music and I hate wearing ties. I'm not an Anglophile. But I respect them. Apart from the Amish the Young Fogeys are more subversive than any other subculture. Or they were more subversive. The Young Fogey: an elegy says they died out by 2003. It's not true because I've met a bunch online and a few in real life, but Young Fogeyism isn't what it once was. Too bad we never had a big Young Fogey movement in the US.

All parents are disappointed in their kids

All parents are a little disappointed in their children. They're disappointed their children didn't turn out like they did.

Some cases are obvious, like when the parents are strict religious conventional types and the kid becomes a pothead atheist punk/goth kid. This happens a lot. Some cases are less obvious, like when the parents are pothead atheist punks/goths and the kid joins the Latter-Day Saints. This happens more than you think.

However, all parents are disappointed their kids didn't turn out like they did. They want their kids to be younger versions of them. They're happy when their kids act like they do and they don't like when their kids are different. They want their children to turn out the way they wanted. They may know someone who they want their kid to be like and they're disappointed their kid didn't live up to it. Whatever it is, parents are mad their kids didn't turn out like they did.