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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Another Post On Gender

I like when women act vulnerable. I want to protect a girl and defend her. I want to tell people they can't mess with her or they'll deal with me. I don't like it when she can do everything herself. I want to help her with life. I want her to be able to help me too. But I don't want her to defend me. I want to defend her!

Also, I don't like the word "confident". It implies some annoying mean tough girl with her hands glued to her hips. The kind who's ALWAYS right, ALWAYS wins, and ALWAYS mocks everything. Most sitcom wives are like this. They call it "sassy", I call it "obnoxious".

If this means I'm part of the Patriarchy, then I'm proud of it.

I wasn't raised around feminine women. Most women and girls I knew acted like guys. I wasn't around femininity at all. Femininity turns me on. It always has and always will. This is why gender roles are not a social construct. I didn't grow up with traditional gender roles. My family was conservative in other ways, but "progressive" in gender. Not everyone fits gender roles and we shouldn't make them fit them. We also shouldn't yell at people who do fit gender roles. Even if I do it sometimes. Most people are like that by nature.

To some hardcore feminists, the only people who can act feminine are gay men. It must suck to be a masculine gay man. Most pro-gay straight people act like all gay men are women in male bodies. Society's homophobic, so if you're a man and you don't act 100% male people think you're gay, which is the Worst Thing Ever. This doesn't happen to women. Stereotypes say all lesbians are supposed to be bisexual, and no gay men are supposed to be bisexual. They're wrong of course. So you get Katy Perry, who released an album called One of the Boys. People know about the fake lesbian song "I Kissed a Girl" already. There's also a song called "Ur So Gay" (LyricWiki link) where she yells at her ex for "gay" things like: listening to Mozart and indie rock, reading Ernest Hemingway, driving an electric car, being thin, etc. None of these are gay or feminine in any way. The song's as homophobic as an American Family Association meeting, but a lot of my gay friends think she's great. Don't ask me why. The end lesson is it's okay for girls to act like guys, but it's not okay for guys to act like girls. Which is the hell we live in.

Politics and Personality

I hate stereotypes, but sometimes they're true more often than not.

Most conservative men are jerks. Most conservative women are nice. Liberals are the opposite: Most liberal men are nice, and most liberal women are jerks. There's lots of exceptions but it's true more often than not. I assume people are like this. It's because of ME ME ME ME ME. Most liberals are feminists and most conservatives are for traditional gender roles. People who support themselves sound like jerks. People who support others sound nice.

I wrote before that most observant Christians are conservative and most others are liberal because the stereotypes cancel each other out. Gender throws another wrench into this. They don't come across neutral. They come across the way their gender does. What's sad is there's more jerk exceptions than nice exceptions. You find more jerk conservative women and jerk liberal men than you do nice conservative men or nice liberal women.

Politics play a bigger role than religion in how someone acts. Most left-wing Christians act more like left-wing secular people than conservative Christians. This always holds true. Most left-wing Christians swear and drink as much as their secular counterparts, even with conservative theology. I don't know enough right-wing secular people to know if they act like right-wing Christians. I don't know enough people in other religions to know how they act. From my experience, conservatives act conservative and liberals act liberal regardless of religion.

Once again libertarians don't fit into this.

Gender Roles and Feminism

I believe gender roles are real. Gender is not a social construct. There are exceptions but most people fit the rule. We shouldn't force people to fit gender roles they don't fit, but they exist for good reason. Both my parents act very "masculine" and I don't have any sisters. I grew up around rednecks, where men are MEN and women are ALSO MEN. I wasn't around femininity much growing up, but I'm attracted to very feminine women. I like when women are sweet and girly. I'm not interested in tough girls. Some feminists are against all femininity. Some are normal people who realize not all women are the same. Too bad most outspoken feminists are jerks. That's true of all groups, but feminists don't do themselves any favors when they sound like selfish jerks. It's not sexist for me to say this - I hate when guys act like that too. I'm sick of macho men and we don't need macho women too. Some crazy feminists hate me because I'm interested in feminine women. Again, we shouldn't hurt people who don't fit gender roles. But I grew up without normal femininity and I'm attracted to it.

However, I don't look down on women. Women deserve all the same rights as men. They can vote, own property, etc. thanks to feminism. They can do anything men can do unless there's a physical limitation. Even then some women can do it. There is nothing inferior about women. We'll have a female president someday - lots of other countries have. And they do face a lot of prejudice. If feminism is the idea that women are people, then I'm a feminist. But I don't fit into feminism at all.

For one thing, I believe women are morally superior to men. It's my personal experience. Women don't kill people as much as men. They don't cheat on their SOs as much as men. They care about other people more than men. A few feminists say "Don't hold us back! WE can be as evil as the guys!" Why the hell do you want to be? Traditional gender roles have one jerk gender and one nice gender. Thanks to feminism, we have two jerk genders and one nice gender.

Also, I'm sick of the word "patriarchy". Sometimes they have a point. If men have all the power, then it is a patriarchy. Too bad some people call anything they don't like a patriarchy. "WHAT?!?! YOU'RE OUT OF KETCHUP?!?! YOUR RESTAURANT IS A PATRIARCHY!!!!"

Overall, I like most of feminism's political goals. I'm split on social goals. I don't want to hurt women, but the movement attracts a lot of jerk women! Most really nice women are not feminists for the same reason most jerk women are - the ME ME ME ME ME factor. People forget other people aren't like them. It's hard for me to support someone when they piss me off.

Global Warming

AP: Skeptic finds he now agrees global warming is real

I'm not gonna guess on the causes. I would take global warming deniers seriously, but they always got an agenda. Notice how people who deny global warming always drive SUVs or other gas-guzzlers?

Not that the global warming believers are much better. They got an agenda too. They use global warming to push people around.

Me? I believe the climate's changing. No way around it. The past two years in Mississippi have been crazy. We've had some of our hottest and coldest temperatures in years. I can take people seriously when they say it's a natural change, but I can't take them seriously when they say it's not changing. It is.

Here's a long three-part article, Global Warming Ethics by Jack Marshall. It says everyone's wrong. It's great. Read all three parts. They don't link to each other, so bookmark them all. Or bookmark this page!
Part 1: Convenient Misrepresentations
Part 2: The Offset Illusion
Part 3: Ideology and Bias

Why I Love Mississippi

If you live in Mississippi you see news articles all the time about how horrible it is to be here. Here's an example:

NEW YORK (Routers) - A new study shows that a higher percentage of people in Mississippi watch "Jersey Shore" than in any other state. "This proves that Mississippi sucks at everything," said one distinguished scientist. "If you're from Mississippi, kill yourself. You're trapped. Nobody will take you seriously - I know I won't. We had this one scientist here from Mississippi, and we all made fun of him so much that he quit and got a job at McDonald's. Serves him right."

Of course that scientist has never been to Mississippi, but he's an "expert" anyway. We got our share of problems, but I like it here. Would I live somewhere else? Probably, but Mississippi will always be part of me.

I love how we're proud of how uncomfortable summer (May 15-October 15) is. We may panic at an inch of snow, but we're PROUD of our 100-degree summers with high humidity! We can handle it, and YOU can't! Because we have air conditioning everywhere.

I love how green everything is in summer. I'm colorblind and most greens look dull, but not Mississippi summer green. It's so bright it looks like computer animation.

I love our normal winters. Kind of cold but not *too* cold. We think 10 degrees is the coldest temperature known to mankind.

I love how most of the state, with a few exceptions, is down on itself. This ain't Texas. We don't have big egos.

I love how we never do anything halfway. If we're good at something we're THE BEST. If we're bad at something we're THE WORST. No mediocrity in Mississippi.

I love our stupid college rivalry between two schools who usually suck at football. If one's good at football the other one never is. Speaking of which...

I love the fact we got the best college in the world, Ole Miss. Too bad we also got Mississippi State.

I love how even the girliest girls here love football as much as the guys.

I love getting on the freeway and going 5 under the speed limit in the right lane and people are fine with that.

I love the fact people don't get mad if you don't drink.

I love how when every other state picks on us, we pick on... Arkansas. Don't ask me why.

I love that we rejected the Arizona immigration law other states passed. There may be anti-Hispanic prejudice here, but it's less than other parts of the country such as Alabama.

I love that we have more African-American elected officials per capita than any other state - makes sense because we got more African-Americans per capita than any other state.

I love how we remember our history - we've moved past the 1960s because we remember them. A long time ago I read about an Orson Scott Card story where one group had murdered a bunch of people or something else horrible. Their punishment was they had to tell everyone what they did, and their descendents had to say what their ancestors did. This is what goes on here. Some people say it's in the past and we need to forget and move on. We'll never move on if we don't remember our past mistakes and avoid them.

We can stand to change on a lot of things. Our legacy of racism will haunt us forever. We've done a lot to overcome it, but there's still more work to do. We got in the news for blatant homophobia last year. We got a high poverty rate. Our economy is horrible now. But I love Mississippi anyway. If you don't live here you won't understand.

Political Correctness

Ever notice how the only people who bitch about political correctness are white? "Political correctness" is supposed to be some vast conspiracy to make people care about other people who are not like them. I don't get it. Nobody says they're politically correct. When people say they're politically incorrect, it's always an excuse to trash people. Listen. There is nothing edgy or rebellious about being "politically incorrect". When you say "I'm not PC! Racial epithet! Racial epithet!" it tells me you're an asshole, definitely white and straight, probably male, Protestant, able-bodied, etc. Do you want to give out that much info about yourself online? I could steal your identity.

Of course, you get the odd person who defends political correctness. Like The Angry Black Woman. She, of course, is black, female, and lesbian, so she benefits a lot from political correctness. It's still a good essay. She says a lot nicer than I would,

I feel that Political Correctness promotes tolerance because it forces people to think about what they say and who they are saying it to. It seems to me (and I could be wrong) that people who rail against Politically Correct speech are those who do not want to have to be polite or civil to folks different from them.

Hallelujah. Most political correctness is about respect. Being in three minority groups at once means you face a ton of prejudice. I'll never know what it's like because I'm in all the majority groups. Most people like me don't care about anyone else. If you care about other people, it makes you too "good", and if you're "gooder" than everyone else, Real Men can hurt you with impunity. This is the hell we live in, folks. As a straight white male Christian etc., I have a special duty to not be an asshole.

My complaint about political correctness is it doesn't go far enough. It only protects people the Democrats like. I've heard "politically correct" people say complete bullshit about Mormons. Conservative blogger Ed Driscoll says poor white people are safe targets because they're white. I've seen people say - seriously - it's okay to hate one group because all their members hate another group. The groups vary. People hate people who are different from them. People hate people who don't fit into their world view.

One and a Half Cheers for the Southern Poverty Law Center

Southern Poverty Law Center

Sometimes I look around the SPLC web site. Most of their work impresses me. Wikipedia has a long list of civil rights cases they've won. They fight for all kinds of groups. They've made the USA a better place by forcing some places to integrate. They're fighting against the horrible Arizona/Alabama laws that hurt our Hispanic citizens - that law didn't pass in Mississippi. Plus it's fun in a weird way reading their profiles of hate groups and seeing how pathetic they are. They recognize that anybody can be hateful - not all the profiles of racist groups are white racists. There's a few black racists in there too.

But, there's a dark side. They've written before how they think free speech should be restricted. (Link) I'm against hate speech, but outlawing it is a good way to get people interested. That's how human nature works. Plus, the SPLC is liberal to a fault - they think if you don't support Obama, you're a racist sexist homophobe. They think all conservatives, libertarians, etc. are extreme radicals and that liberals can't have any faults. On gay rights, I can understand that position, but they think all Republicans are racist. (Does that make Thomas Sowell, Herman Cain, etc. self-hating black people?)

So, one and a half cheers for the SPLC. I respect them a lot altho I disagree with them some.

EDIT: Sourcewatch has a mostly critical article on the SPLC.

Religion and Politics

It doesn't make sense that religious people are more conservative and secular people are more liberal.‭ ‬It makes more sense the other way around.‭ ‬Why are people like that‭? Stereotypes‭‬.

Religious people and liberals have the same stereotypes.‭ ‬They're both motivated by good,‭ ‬holier than thou,‭ ‬hypocritical,‭ ‬ruled by feelings over logic,‭ ‬etc.‭ ‬People attack them because they're too‭ "‬good‭"‬.‭ ‬Secular people and conservatives also have the same stereotypes.‭ ‬They're selfish and evil,‭ ‬prejudiced,‭ ‬ruled by logic over feelings,‭ ‬etc.‭ ‬People attack them because they're too‭ "‬evil‭"‬.

Of course,‭ ‬these are stereotypes.‭ ‬They are‭ not true‬.

People choose religious views and political views that cancel out stereotypes.‭ ‬If you're very religious and very liberal,‭ ‬people think you're pure good.‭ ‬Sojourners ‬is a great example.‭ ‬I read it sometimes for two reasons:‭ ‬1‭) ‬it's interesting,‭ ‬and‭ ‬2‭) ‬they're gooder than me.‭ ‬Not better,‭ ‬but‭ gooder‬.‭ ‬You know what I mean.‭ ‬I admire them but I don't want to be like them.‭ ‬They care about people a lot,‭ ‬but they sound like wimps who don't know a thing about the real world.‭ ‬In real life,‭ ‬a lot of religious liberals are pretty tough.

If you're non-religious and conservative,‭ ‬people think you're too evil and don't care about them.‭ ‬The people at‭ ‬The Atheist Conservative ‬are harsh and they don't mince words.‭ ‬They're angry and they don't have to look like hypocrites.‭

If you're religious and conservative or secular and liberal,‭ ‬the stereotypes cancel each other out.‭ ‬People judge you on your character.‭ ‬People don't think you're heartless and dangerous.‭ ‬People don't think you're self-righteous and wimpy.‭ ‬They think you're normal like them.‭ ‬It moderates your views so you don't sound like a wimp or a brute.‭ ‬Lots of them sound like wimps or brutes anyway.

Also,‭ ‬gay abortion.

There's other reasons:‭ ‬Secular people are rarely Republican because Republicans weave religious language into everything and exclude them.‭ ‬Non-religious people are a minority group and most minorities are liberals because some conservatives hate minorities.‭ ‬Nobody wants to go where people hate them. This is also why most black people are Democrats regardless of religion - some white Republicans still hate black people. Or some Democrat leaders say Republicans do to get votes.

Frankly,‭ ‬religious liberals and secular conservatives make more sense than the other way around.‭ ‬Why‭? ‬Their arguments don't bore me to tears,‭ ‬and they're both less prejudiced because they're minority groups themselves.‭ ‬I don't know how Jesus or Athe would vote.‭ ‬It makes me sick when I see‭ "‬Support Jesus‭! ‬Support‭ (‬political issue here‭)!" ‬or‭ "‬Jesus was a‭ (‬conservative/liberal/libertarian/anarchist/fascist/socialist‭)"‬.‭ ‬Also,‭ ‬I don't know how you can be non-religious and have a positive view of human nature like most liberals do.‭ ‬Still,‭ ‬thank God for secular humanists with a positive view of human nature.‭ ‬I'd rather be around a bunch of them than a bunch of Objectivists.

Sorry libertarians,‭ ‬I left you out.‭ ‬You're not a stereotype group on CNN or Fox News.