Vicious Circles & Angry Squares: Pedophilia, Scapegoating, Taboo, & Social Control (Part One)

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Part One: Hammers & Nails

1.   Scapegoating & Mimesis

I recently had an exchange with a Christian reader on Faceborg. She posted–not for the first time–about how pedophiles should be put to death. I disagreed.

My disagreement with sentiments of this sort is a strong one. It’s not that I am ipso facto opposed to killing child rapists (I can still halfway enjoy a good Hollywood revenge fantasy now and then); it’s that to argue for the death penalty for anyone is to endorse the legal and political system and the notions of crime and punishment. Like the Christian idea of Hell, these notions are based on the myth of agency. They also conveniently ignore how the legal system was established. To argue for the death penalty for pedophiles sidesteps the reality that, those with the power to implement the death penalty are, in many cases, also pedophiles, and worse.[1]

My other objection to the Christian zealot was that social problems can no more be separated from the society that gives rise to them than physical symptoms can be separated from the body. To suggest that a particular group of individuals or behaviors can be identified and removed as a way to restore balance to a social system is not good medicine. It’s religious thinking; in fact it’s the basis of religious thinking: scapegoating. The convenience and the allure of scapegoating is that it bypasses the question of how or why undesirable behaviors come about in the first place. It lets us off the hook regarding our complicity with the condemned.

The only thing scapegoating requires is a collective agreement about the guilt of the accused; that, and collective condemnation. It’s ironic that these kinds of measures are so popular with Christians, since their own “savior” died as an erroneous sacrifice. According to Rene Girard (who converted to Catholicism late in life), the purpose of the Gospels was to expose this scapegoat mechanism and offer a new understanding of the divine, along with an alternate way for people to live together: love of our neighbor, non-resistance to evil, turning the other cheek. To remain open-hearted no matter what kind of adversity we are faced with.

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Any attempt to address a social problem like pedophilia by destroying the smattering of individuals who bring it to our attention is both futile and counter-productive. Yet as I offered these arguments up to the Christian on Facebook, I quickly realized I was faced with a conundrum. Even as I was arguing, as gently as I could, against the desire to condemn individuals based on their behaviors without taking the time to try and understand them, I felt a strong desire to do just that with this Christian. I wasn’t calling for her execution, true, but I did unfollow her on Facebook so I wouldn’t have to see her posts anymore. The symmetry and irony was as obvious as bleeding stigmata: I came away from the exchange feeling more or less about Christians as she felt about pedophiles. Such is the nature of mimetic violence, even when it is “only” the violence of disagreement.

2.   Totem & Taboo/Order through Chaos

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While this person’s views were extreme, as only Christian views can be (she claimed St Paul preached that all effeminate men should be put to death), they aren’t really all that different from the viewpoint of many, perhaps most people, when it comes to the subject of pedophilia and other (agreed upon) “pathologies.” Along with a daily increasing awareness about the depth of depravity underlying our social structures, there is a corresponding outrage, anger, frustration, despair, and desire to do something about it. Extreme circumstances give rise to extreme measures. A community that’s being torn apart from the inside cries out for the blood of a scapegoat to bind itself together. The blood of the scapegoat is necessary because of the seeming impossibility of loving our neighbors as ourselves, most especially when they hold views which we find abhorrent.

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The reason I’ve been attracting readers of the Christian persuasion is that much of my recent work has been exploring these same kinds of atrocities in our culture. As someone commented at this blog recently: “Interesting that since you are one who shines a light on Satan, the christians are drawn to you like flies to shit.” But it’s not only Christians. There’s a growing tendency for people to see these problems as relating to a specific class and type of individual, and to believe that, if only these types (the psychopath-elite) could be identified and eradicated, all our societal problems would go away. This sort of belief is based on the falsity that traumatized human beings driven by unconscious forces possess agency, that they are solely responsible for their actions. The myth of agency argues that human beings are a mysterious exception to the rest of the physical universe in possessing autonomy within the system they are part of. Yet agency is something even the gods (planets and stars) do not appear to have. I guess it’s all part of our exceptionality–a quintessentially American myth? This idea (exceptionalism) is equivalent in irrationality to the commonly held Christian belief that humans are born in original sin and yet given a choice (free will) to choose grace (Jesus Christ): a choice bestowed upon them by the same God who gave them the burden of original sin (i.e., no-choice but to sin), and who condemns us to eternal agony if we make the wrong choice.

Isn’t it odd how so many Christians, knowing all this, still choose to sin? Turning the other cheek is the non-choice to override that reptilian reactive drive within us, surrender the illusion of agency, and give up the ghost of ego to God.

Both secular and (faux-)Christian perspectives demand active opposition to the forces of nature, within us and outside of us. In contrast, my own view is clearly an unfashionable one. My own view is that only total, blanket acceptance of all “evil,” both inside and outside us, can ever bring about any sort of meaningful change, because only acceptance of and surrender to what we are unable to consciously control or comprehend (Satan, as much as God) will allow for a full integration of our unconscious fragments, for a restoration of wholeness and harmony both within and without. But I’m afraid language itself (the “doing” of awareness?) rebels against this idea and turns it into so much mystic mush.

Based on countless exchanges I have had, this view—that of not-doing—is seen as no different from passivity, lethargy, or avoidance. Those who have been religiously conditioned to philosophize with a hammer can only see every question as a nail.

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Divide and conquer is a commonly heard phrase and one that has probably never been more relevant than it is today, in the wake of the Trump election and the “liberal” uprising against it. What’s less acknowledged  is that external division is only possible when individuals are first divided internally, against themselves. Internal division as the means to order and control society (order through chaos) relates to the use of taboo.

What’s taboo? I doubt if kids even know the word today, so here’s a primer: Society depends on norms and norms require ab-norms, things considered unacceptable and for which we will be held accountable if we mess around with them—even if we too rashly express acceptance of them (it’s potentially “taboo” for me to write a piece that suggests the need to be more understanding of pedophiles, say).

In today’s social media climate, public shaming has taken on the force of legal punishment, and many, maybe even most, taboos relate less to behaviors than they do to values, beliefs, opinions, thoughts, and feelings. When Lindsey Stone posted a picture at Facebook of herself mock-shouting and giving the finger to a sign that read “Silence and Respect” at Arlington National Cemetery, she ended up losing her job and being vilified on a mass scale. The reaction (at least as Jon Ronson tells it in Now You’ve Been Publicly Shamed) was so extreme that Stone’s life as she’d known it effectively came to an end. Technically, Stone was being judged for her action, but really she was being condemned for her values.

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Stone’s actions were harmless, but since they were disrespectful of certain values, they upset people and she was punished. You could say that she was punished essentially for hurting people’s feelings, and much so-called “hate crime” amounts to the same thing. It’s fitting in its way that the most common punishment for hate crime is public shaming, since being shamed is also all about having one’s feelings hurt. The difference is that Stone was an individual who offended a whole amorphous group of people, and was then targeted by that same group. Stone’s act did not really impact the lives of soldiers or their relatives, except that they got indignant about it. Their combined indignation had the power to turn her life upside down, however. That’s how a community binds itself together around totem and taboo: by choosing a scapegoat that everyone can agree is beyond the pale (a pale is a barrier made of wooden stakes and came to mean “the area that is enclosed and safe”).[2]

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3.   Homosexuality: Not Controversial Enough?

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Warning: what follows is guaranteed to offend some people. I am now about to wander “beyond the pale.” On my own head be it.

If actions that were once seen as taboo are now condoned by society, questioning the values that are condoning them has itself become taboo. Clearly these two facts are related. Gay marriage is socially endorsed; questioning it is generally seen (though not among Christians) as “homophobic.” Homophobia is close to being a crime today, and is certainly a social misdemeanor, at least among people I know (and even ones I don’t but who follow my output and are reading this blog). I don’t personally care whether homosexuals get married or not, socially speaking. I’m not someone who wants to defend the sacred institution of marriage. I think the whole thing is stupid and fucked up, and certainly nothing to be happy about; but then I feel that way about most things in society.

However, I do find myself (mostly silently) objecting to the unquestioning endorsement of homosexuality as a normal, healthy behavior. This isn’t because I believe it’s a sin but because I don’t think the psychological causes of homosexuality have been sufficiently explored. Homosexuality has gone from being a sin, to being a crime, to being a secret, shameful activity, to being something to be proud of, to being fully embraced–or rather, enforced–as something wonderful and wholesome. Despite what liberals believe, this has not happened as a result of a growing understanding of homosexuality, but after a thorough and well-organized social and ideological drive to promote it as a lifestyle choice, one that paradoxically, people have no choice about because—we are told—it’s their biological orientation. According to Wikipedia:

Scientists do not know the exact cause of sexual orientation, but they believe that it is caused by a complex interplay of genetic, hormonal, and environmental influences, and do not view it as a choice. They favor biologically-based theories, which point to genetic factors, the early uterine environment, both, or the inclusion of genetic and social factors. There is no substantive evidence which suggests parenting or early childhood experiences play a role when it comes to sexual orientation. While some people believe that homosexual activity is unnatural, scientific research has shown that homosexuality is a normal and natural variation in human sexuality and is not in and of itself a source of negative psychological effects. There is insufficient evidence to support the use of psychological interventions to change sexual orientation. . . . Same-sex sexual attractions, behavior, and orientations per se are normal and positive variants of human sexuality; in other words, they are not indicators of mental or developmental disorders. [emphasis added].

Now maybe I’m a homophobe, but while skimming this Wikipedia article I started to feel like I was being subjected to an intense barrage of propaganda. The last point above, for example, is listed as one of several “scientific facts” about homosexuality, though it looks conspicuously more like a theory to me. Then there’s the statement: “There is no substantive evidence which suggests parenting or early childhood experiences play a role when it comes to sexual orientation.” This isn’t merely presumptuous, it’s an out-and-out distortion of the truth (the use of the word “substantive” might reveal the bias of the whole article). There is ample evidence that parenting and early childhood experiences play a role when it comes to sexual orientation, but I guess it has been downplayed, insufficiently followed up, or simply suppressed enough for the collective mind of Wikipedia to ignore it. So why the bias?

The same applies to the statement: “There are no empirical studies or peer-reviewed research that support theories attributing same-sex sexual orientation to family dysfunction or trauma.” This seems to be a case of the liberal doth protest too much. “Empirical,” as in condoned by Empire? Peer-reviewed, meaning condoned by Academia. And so on. What’s implied here is that there’s been a withdrawal of support, peer or otherwise, for any studies which do support said unspeakable theories. I’m not sure why they are so unspeakable, but maybe it’s a clue that, for further proof of its bias, the Wikipedia article cites the Kinsey report as evidence; this being the same Kinsey who was exposed many years ago for using pedophiles to sexually manipulate children against their will and then presenting the findings as “proof” that children are sexual beings. So we may well ask, whose interests did that serve?

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Richard Young/REX/Shutterstock (104428a) Robert Mapplethorpe ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE EXHIBITION AT THE ICA, LONDON, BRITAIN - NOV 1983

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We already know–because it can be observed in one’s daily life and interactions–that some cases of sexual orientation do relate to sexual trauma. We know that trauma affects the psychological development of children. And we know that psychological imprinting is a reality, one that profoundly influences our sexuality. To then deny any and all connection between homosexuality and family dysfunction or trauma makes no sense at all, unless there is an ideological agenda at work (conscious or otherwise). The scientific theory about homosexuality cited by Wikipedia allows that “environmental factors” determine a person’s sexual orientation; yet the same theory totally rejects trauma or family dysfunction as being possible among those factors. As logical argumentation, this is starting to look like the Warren Commission’s magic bullet theory. We have to twist our own rational faculties into pretzels to keep up with it. Simply stated, it is absurd.

The article even states that “environmental factors may be sociological, psychological, or involve the early uterine environment,” then intones its mantra: “There is no scientific evidence that abnormal parenting, sexual abuse, or other adverse life events influence sexual orientation. Current knowledge suggests that sexual orientation is usually established during early childhood.” These last two statements are actually placed back to back, yet somehow we are supposed not to notice how they contradict one another. Perhaps we are supposed to square this circle by deducing that only positive life events influence sexual orientation (unless it is pedophilia)? It’s a neoliberal New Age paradise in which all parenting is good parenting and all forms of sexual expression are healthy, and any that aren’t healthy (like child abuse, done by bad parents, who don’t count) only exist because those people were  just born bad. It’s original sin for some, but not all. Paradoxically–just to show that doublethink is never far away in the noosphere of ideology–the problem is that these people haven’t been rightly educated.

That such blatant doublethink goes unnoticed and unremarked upon is probably the most compelling evidence of a covert agenda to misrepresent the reality around homosexuality, and sexual orientation in general, that I have seen to date. Initially, this present essay only referred to homosexuality in passing, as an example of ideological thought control pertaining to taboos. I went to Wikipedia to check some of my facts and discovered this morass of internally contradictory “reasoning” and straw logic, and was compelled to unpack what I found just in order to relieve my astonishment. And yes, I admit it, my indignation. How is it even possible we fail to see this kind of fact-distortion? The answer is that when information is actually propaganda, it is all tied up with social taboos and we are deeply invested in not questioning it, because to do so would be to risk stepping outside the pale. This agenda is one we have all been roped into, unless we’re Christians, that is (and I am starting to understand why they cling so tightly to their Bibles!).

Meanwhile, the supposed biological (evolutionary) basis for homosexuality has never, as far as I know, been convincingly addressed.[3]

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The bottom line about why homosexuality is emphatically not a “disorder” seems to be how well adapted to society its practitioners can be: “Thus, mental health professionals and researchers have long recognized that being homosexual poses no inherent obstacle to leading a happy, healthy, and productive life, and that the vast majority of gay and lesbian people function well in the full array of social institutions and interpersonal relationships” (emphasis added). Woopty-doo. High-level pedophiles are quite able to function within their social circles and intuitions too, and they are highly productive (look at Jimmy Savile). Is this really the best basis for judging whether a sexual preference is healthy or not? (And no, I am not equating homosexuality with pedophilia; I understand how hard it is these days not to let ideology do your thinking for you, but please try.) The notion that we live in an enlightened society whose institutions are geared towards human growth and happiness is so far from the truth as to constitute a “mental disorder” in and of itself; so on what criteria are homosexuals being sold a clean health bill, and to what end?  Cui bono? And am I even allowed to ask this question without being branded a hater? And if not, again: cui bono?

The other primary criteria for why homosexuality is, emphatically, not a disorder is that of harm: since no one is harmed by it, the reasoning goes, how can it be a disorder? Two points here, firstly: while a disorder is something that, I think without exception, results from harm done to a person (usually as a child), not every disorder is observably harmful to others, not even to oneself. (Alcoholism is an example: how many years can go by before it becomes clear that a person has a drinking problem rather than simply a habit?) Homosexuality might be harmful to a person even in so subtle (and conversationally unsayable) a way as to isolate oneself from a loving sexual relationship with someone of the opposite sex, which could be essential to a person’s spiritual development. Shock, horror, yes, I know, this is an unpardonably heterocentric view and gay people can tell me I am restricting my own spiritual development by not exploring the joys of homosexuality. Whatever. They could be right. But so could I.

The other point is even touchier still, though it is not restricted to homosexuality and homosexual sex doesn’t necessarily involve it. It is the question of whether sodomy is a potentially harmful act, to both parties. There is no mention in Wikipedia’s sodomy article of the physical effects, and it’s not easy to find anything online about them either (except at Christian websites). Yet there’s not much doubt that it can and does cause physical damage. Of course, circumcision is a harmful act, too, in ways probably barely imagined, and there are no proscriptions against that. So once again, if the nature of institutions and the moral standards they manufacture is that they are means of social control, then why on earth would we place our unthinking trust in these standards?

4.   When Fear Drives

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Of course, homosexuality is still condemned in parts of the world and violence against gay people is still a reality. So it’s understandable that people would attempt to counteract this kind of hostility by enforcing a belief that homosexuality is “normal” (whatever that word means). But is it effective? Even if were true, it’s unlikely to neutralize “irrational” fear and condemnation of homosexuals, because this kind of drive (like that inexorable Wikipedia article) essentially steamrollers over all opposing views. Rather than seeking to prove such views wrong with the weight of evidence, it literally criminalizes them. Ideology is not proof, and instead what we get is a case of one form of moralism replacing another. Where once homosexuality was immoral, now homophobia is. The same applies with racism: where once people of color where considered untouchables, now racists are seen as “deplorables.”

Meanwhile, the anti-racists exalt themselves and their views to a higher moral plateau and do the same with whatever “minority” they are defending (the liberals’ pet-cause; for my grandfather it was blacks, gays, and murderous mobsters doing jail time; almost certainly pedophiles too). This creates privileged “minority” classes (I put minority in quotes because the definition isn’t always based on numbers), and, as everyone knows, these “minorities” get special treatment—for having been discriminated against previously. Yet if I (Joe Average guy that I am) am not permitted to express my opinions or feelings about someone or a group of people (or even national policy that relates to certain people, such as immigration laws) without being stigmatized; and if that same (latter) someone or group of people is not merely protected from “prejudice” but is receiving special treatment (being idealized, essentially) and being presented as in some way beyond reproach (since any reproach is seen as discrimination), there’s only one thing that can happen, and it’s not increased tolerance. When those associated—rightly or wrongly—with the original perceived persecution drives (misogyny, racism, homophobia, etc.) become the persecuted “minority” (the underclass), naturally their anger, frustration, and hostility increases; and their numbers too.

Regardless of which minority or which kind of “prejudice” is being addressed, it is all scapegoating. It is the same social principal being applied to achieve the ends of an actual privileged minority class. What can be said about this group is very little. But they may not even be racist, homophobic, or misogynist at all; they may be something far beyond such limited and limiting terms (terms they would have created deliberately to befog the rest of us). It’s likely they view themselves as superior to all humankind, as we think of the term, regardless of type or orientation. And the worst of it is that, even by trying to identify and categorize them (the Kakistocracy), we are potentially playing into their hands.

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The result of this long-term divide and conquer plan is to polarize people even more than they were before, and even as they are being mashed together into one great, happy, homogenous blob. Someone who might have been willing to accept homosexuality as a mostly harmless deviation will not be so willing to accept it as an ipso facto good thing. If they are forced to choose between ignorant intolerance and the neoliberal libertine avocation of just about every last form of sexual variation, they may well take refuge in the “homophobia” camp just to cling to some vestige of sanity (I know I have been tempted). We saw the same basic pattern played out with Trump’s election. When forced to choose between the advancing neoliberal lockstep represented by Hillary, and a reactionary revolt against all things PC in the form of the id-monster Trump, people “chose” the id. I don’t blame them, though I do blame them for being stupid enough to think Trump is an outsider or “wild card” in the oligarchical game, for not realizing that the oligarchy hold all the cards because that’s what makes them the oligarchy (they create their own rules, they decide which cards are wild, which ones trump the rest). But then, the aim of the divide and conquer game is to ensure there is no dialogue between opposing points of view, no comparing of the data, no middle ground, so everyone who plays it plays without a full deck. Divide and conquer means creating points of view that oppose and reinforce each other while being equally erroneous because devoid of true context.

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From a long term view, it’s possible to see how the same social programs, values, and agendas (and even the same groups) that, for example, practiced slavery, over time adjusted it into less obviously exploitative social arrangements, how they then endorsed and pushed anti-racist ideologies while at the same time continuing to exploit people of whatever color in more or less the same ways.  Like what corporations did with cigarettes: get us hooked on them and then tell us how deadly they are. Internal divide and conquer strategy means implementing racially (and sexually) exploitative social programs and ideologies (ones that have a basis in territoriality, i.e., that correspond with deep biological programs, something neoliberalism denies), then tell us racism is wrong, morally speaking. Ditto with women and misogyny, homosexuality and homophobia, and so on.

Social engineering employs taboo to control, oppress, and exploit the populace regardless of color, race, sex, age, or ideological affiliation. How it works, as far as I can figure it (I am still trying to wrap my mind around it) is by creating taboos out of the very things which the ruling classes are doing behind closed doors (in dungeons, basements, occult lodges, churches, schools, night clubs, or Pizza restaurants), as well as some of the things they are doing openly (corporate crimes etc.). Taboo-fearing people will keep to the behaviors prescribed to them in order to avoid the consequences. I am sure anyone who’s alive can relate to this, and if they can’t, they are probably among the ruling class (“psychopaths”). Ordering society by using taboo is like corralling cows with electric fences and cattle prods. You create the structures you want them to enter into, then you provide the “shocks” to ensure they do. When fear drives, the devil rides.

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This may be observable historically in how the bourgeois class aspired to become, and tried to imitate, the aristocracy: on the mistaken assumption that the aristocracy was a highly moral class (don’t laugh), the bourgeoisie became moralistic. The aspiring bourgeoisie never suspected that the aristocracy were getting up to the most licentious behaviors imaginable; all the bourgeoisie knew was that they weren’t being invited to the pizza parties, and never would be. And while they were aspiring to the imagined morality of the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie had an unconscious awareness of what the aristocracy was really up to. In fact (as we’re seeing with Pizzagate), the aristocracy aren’t even that careful about covering their vices up, because they know that fear blinds. This is how parents have programmed their children throughout the ages: “Do what I say, not what I do.” It only works up to a point, however, because we are hardwired for imitation and not for obedience. Deep down, the bourgeoisie know that avoiding taboos and keeping within the moral boundaries provided by their superiors will never allow them to level up. They know that becoming socially empowered requires imitating the hidden behaviors of the ruling class, and breaking the taboos, so that’s what they start to do.

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Maybe this is what’s happening now in Washington, as the creepy-hipster culture becomes darkly visible through Pizzagate. Despite the links to the Clintons and the Podestas, maybe this isn’t so much a case of the autocratic elite being exposed (though it may come to that), but the aspiring bourgeoisie getting caught with egg on their faces, holding the wrong cutlery? The satanic hipsters, the libertine artists, the deranged liberals and leftists, all formerly oppressed, now learning to ape their oppressors, never suspecting that, while imitation never really persuades the people you are imitating, it does make you extremely useful for drawing enemy fire.

Try to break the taboos without inside access to the totems, and you may end up as a manufactured scapegoat.

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(To be continued in Part Two)

[1] It would be easy for me to get disqualified from jury duty: not only do I disagree with the death penalty, I disagree with the entire legal system; though I do enjoy a good courtroom drama, as well as revenge fantasies.

[2] The word also designated an area in Ireland, Scotland, or France controlled by England, and places outside this area were considered dangerous for the English to wander into. To be beyond the pale was to be outside the area accepted as “home.”

[3] The authors of a 2008 study stated “there is considerable evidence that human sexual orientation is genetically influenced, so it is not known how homosexuality, which tends to lower reproductive success, is maintained in the population at a relatively high frequency.” They hypothesized that “while genes predisposing to homosexuality reduce homosexuals’ reproductive success, they may confer some advantage in heterosexuals who carry them.” Their results suggested that “genes predisposing to homosexuality may confer a mating advantage in heterosexuals, which could help explain the evolution and maintenance of homosexuality in the population.” Maybe I’m just not educated enough, but this sounds like scientistic gobbledygook to me. One friend suggested homosexuality was a form of population auto-control; if so it failed.

78 thoughts on “Vicious Circles & Angry Squares: Pedophilia, Scapegoating, Taboo, & Social Control (Part One)”

  1. We can polemicise eternally and will do until some revelation takes place. Sex and the mystery and meaning of its overwhelming power-pleasure and concomitant spin off perceptions as to what it is contributing in terms of the occult anchors Christianity’s strength and truth. Theologically, it won’t give up on sex being the most dangerous aspect of sin and therefore risking one’s salvation or exit from this world’s trauma in all its shapes and densities as a subsumed imprisoned entity. Jasun flags up moral importance, not unlike the birth of The Romantic Movement at the end of the nineteenth century and the previous publication of William Beckford’s: (The History of the Caliph) ‘Vathek’ in 1786. It was against this rule of Satan that Romanticist’s rebelled.

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  2. You’ve managed to distill the current cultural chaos into something that is clear, insightful and above all, true. Brilliant stuff here. Amazing.

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  3. I am working with a gay bloke one on one in a highly technical job these past few days …
    we are having deep conversations along these lines , the nihilism of promiscuity , his desire for emotinal intimacy . He lived with a woman for ten years who he is still on good terms . He openly derides the gay Grindr culture of promiscuity as ” fucking gay “, he derides ” gay ” as a perjorative and remained unmoved by my own counter derision of ” fucking hetero”. He thinks most gay people he encounters are ” fucked up “.
    He is very close to mommy though , and loves all things fnancial and capital. We talked about being gay as being one way to secretly keep mommy as ” the one true love ” who may never be supplanted . Quite common where the father is physically or emotionally absent .
    On the macro level , does the erasure of the archetypal mother an father pave the way for the system itselff to assume those roles in the milieu internale of the masses ? , was it you that suggested this ?
    Other impressions seeping to the surface as i read your work include Deleuze and Guattaris “Anti Oedipus” and Lyotards “Libidinal Economy”.
    A mass of promiscuous Oedipus Mages in the midst of our society would seep into the collective of the rest as ID Oedipus Anti Life personified , or “implicate order of the ID ” as you put it . They are pleasant , personable and plausible Wizard of Death , including my friend, who i quite like , and seems to have a dim level of nagging suspicion about it all .
    K

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  4. I was thinking today about mass social engineering and how it’s a mistake to completely hold individual voters on the right responsible for racist or other backward views when hey have been subjected to decades long social programming to inculcate just those values. The cult of Fox News and far right Christianity is real. The elite have always used class war and racism to deflect from how they are screwing all of us. I think the only way to combat it is stealth deprogramming. And love. I keep getting an image of the Whos in Whoville holding hands and singing even after the Grinch stole the holiday cheer. If we fight amongst ourselves the real terrorists win.
    Re the death penalty it took one jury service on a death penalty case for me to realize I see a moral contradiction between saying murder is wrong and then killing people as a punishment for it. Hypocrisy much? If it’s wrong it’s wrong.
    Re homosexuality I don’t have an issue with it, I have known so many gay people that it’s not alien or threatening to me. I do have an issue with some aspects of gay culture that are elitist and materialistic but I have the same issue with modern culture overall. Status and class ranking are to me both a holdover from animal biology and a detriment to our development. Peter Levenda of all people presented a cogent argument in Tantric Temples that historically anything but married heterosexual sex presented a threat to the powers that be in terms of knowing who was entitled to property through legitimate inheritance that was therefore subject to taxation and other social controls. I’ve read that it’s possible to wake kundalini throught sodomy which is part of the proscription against it as it could stimulate occult powers or threatening autonomy. Masturbation in either sex can do the same which is why organized religion is so afraid of it.

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  5. According to a lot of anthropological research, it’s suggested that sexuality in humans doesn’t just serve a procreative function but also a social one. One of our closest relatives, bonobos (there’s a very minute genetic difference between us and these hominids), use sex as a means of reducing conflict and aggressiveness. Homosexuality is also a natural occurance in bonobos. To view sex solely as a means of procreation I think completely eliminates an understanding of its role in maintaining social cohesion and peace within the community. It’s also possible that our repression of this natural function of sexuality is what may actually be the root of increased hostility, anger, and aggressiveness within the human race. It’s theorized that aggresiveness increases along with the progress of civilization. This is because civilization, the more socially complex it becomes, creates more controls on the human animal, leading to more elaborate forms of repression. It is this very repression which social engineers use to their advantage. Homosexuality may be just as natural for humans as it is for bonobos in creating more variety of sexual exchange for the purpose of reducing or eliminating violence. Just another view of this. It could be my way of rationalizing my own homosexual orientation, ha. I really love your work, Jason. This was a really thought provoking article. Thanks!

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    • Thanks km; I don’t “view sex solely as a means of procreation,” but nor do I think we can be usefully compared to bonobos (whatever the genetic similarity). That “our repression of this natural function of sexuality is what may actually be the root of increased hostility, anger, and aggressiveness within the human race” is I think indisputable, but it’s also clear that an application of this knowledge is behind most, probably all, of the most heinous abuses of sexuality, usually with some “artistic” (de Sade) “magickal” (Crowley), “religious” (Catholic priests) or “scientific” (Kinsey) overlay.
      Re: homosexuality, it’s not a question of either/or. Homosexuality could be a natural behavioral variation that occasionally crops up in human groups (hard to say since we don’t have a non-traumatized period in history to refer to); but that doesn’t make a promotion and resulting proliferation of it healthy. By that reckoning, all our present behaviors are healthy, since they must all be rooted in human nature, at base. This viewpoint seems to be what we are moving towards.

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    • @kosmicmind, a few other angles on the origins of homosexual through social or psychodynamic lenses: consistent with what you wrote, it may be a way to mute the fierce competition that happens at the mid-tier of male hierarchies. It’s well established that in relatively anarchic societies, only the top-tier males will procreate, as the selection pressure by females is rather mercenary. It is said that a woman would rather share an alpha than mate with a beta (obviously that is not true in an absolute sense, but it is likely true in a statistical sense). What do the betas do for sex? Another angle is that in our society male friendship has been devalued (e.g. terms like “bromance” and “bromosexual”). Thus homosexuality is one subversive way to recover the experience of brotherhood. Jack Donovan (beautifully violent white supremicist that he is /s) writes about this, and I agree with him on this point (not his violent racist stuff).

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  6. I have found it difficult to know how to respond to this post, as a reader and admirer of Jasun’s work who is also a gay man. I guess I need to point out that I am in a committed monogamous relationship with another man (5 years), since it seems relevant here. Certainly Jasun and I have had private conversations about some of this material, so its publication has not entirely taken me by surprise. But some aspects of its presentation did. Consequently, my response, in this particular comment, may not be well-organized or as coherent as I would like it to be.
    First, yes, gay culture is incredibly fucked up. The cult of promiscuity, which is quite prominent among gay males, is clearly deranged. This is probably evidence of psychological and/or spiritual distortion, at least in a statistical sense (which is the only sense that is relevant when discussing sociology or public health). But I think one can make the case that many communities within our civilization show evidence of psychological and/or spiritual distortion, albeit in different forms. That may be the point that Jasun is making, although the intensity of the focus on homosexuality is a little off-putting.
    And while I understand the negative reaction to the obvious PR spin evident in the passages Jasun quoted on the subject of homosexuality and mental health, one has to understand that it has a historical context. Namely, that there are people who happily use St. Paul to justify “that all effeminate men should be put to death”. There’s no nuance there, thus the argument for basic human rights needs to be rather blunt. If the public were capable of understanding nuance, I think it would be possible to have more nuanced treatment of the subject. But it is not. Keep in mind that there are real individuals whose lives are affected by society’s attitudes towards homosexuality, it is not an abstract consideration for them (us). I tend to be apolitical around gay rights, since I think a lot of the hysterical positioning around the subject (on both sides) is off-putting, but I assert very forcefully the necessity of basic human rights in absence of deeper social changes as hinted in the next paragraph.
    Keep in mind that though homosexuality may be disordered, it is likely a symptom rather than the cause of a larger and deeper social problem. There is a Christian blogger named Dalrock who has identified one deep social transformation that has had the side effect of destabilizing the institution of marriage and thus (in my opinion) resulting in the manifestation of a gay identity and the necessity of gay marriage: the institution of marriage itself has become founded on the concept of “romantic love”, which is in some sense false. Marriage in the past was principally formulated around the protection and development of the next generation, not the transient feelings of the couple. But to the extent that marriage is now based on the idea of romantic love and not a more general objective of social stability, it seems needlessly cruel to deny the opportunity of institutionally sanctioned romantic love to those who are not capable of manifesting it for the opposite sex (this latter assertion is mine, not Dalrock’s). If you want to talk about upending gay marriage, then we should probably start from the ground up and ask ourselves what sex and marriage are really for, in a collective social sense, even among heterosexuals.
    So this latest post comes off as a bit insensitive, even to a gay reader who agrees with the general thesis of the post and who is extremely critical of most gay culture.

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  7. Do have a look at “The Wanton Seed”, Anthony Burgess’ Swiftian novel about shifting social norms and the manipulation thereof.

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  8. Thanks for the thoughtful response Yevaud, and I’m sorry you found some of the post off-putting. It might be helpful if you can address specific things I say, rather than throw out a general charge of “insensitivity.” I did warn the post could offend some, and in a certain sense, it *is* a way to illustrate the larger point of that section of the essay (the one about ideological taboo). I hope needless to say, my primary and even perhaps sole aim is to get to the truth, and there may simply not be a way to do so without causing some upsets along the way. Suffice it to say (again, I hope) my affection and respect for you is in no way compromised by any of these discoveries (if such they are).
    Meanwhile, Holly Grigg-Spall posted this over at FB in response. Have you seen it before? (It’s usually called “the Jaffe Memo.”):
    https://scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/t31.0-8/15123434_10154607472971420_6616846703107658853_o.jpg
    Thanks to everyone else for the comments also.

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    • I’m responding to the material, not the author. I admire your work in general and understand your perspective here. I also agree with the larger message of the post. Nevertheless, I did feel a need to weigh in on some aspects. I’m not offended per se (at least not in any permanent sense) but I am articulating my emotional response to it. I think you would approve of that, yes?

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      • Of course. To address what i think was your main point (& i think I did also in the piece itself), I question whether the drive to normalize homosexuality is really motivated by a compassionate desire to reduce intolerance & hostility. I think that’s a Trojan horse that unfortunately many liberals have jumped onto without taking the time to scrutinize it, making it doubly pernicious (co-opting compassion as well as the truth). I don’t think it is ever worth fiddling around with facts for some “benevolent” outcome, because I don’t think it ever works, in the long run.

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        • @Jasun, “I question whether the drive to normalize homosexuality is really motivated by a compassionate desire to reduce intolerance & hostility”. I dunno, there are different motivations operating at different levels. Will have to think on that one.
          Re: promotion of women in the workplace as a covert means of executing some other social agenda, I’ve certainly run across that claim before. It’s suspicious that Gloria Steinem was considered a CIA asset. I certainly think that the devaluation of positive masculine traits is part of some agenda (conscious or unconscious) to create a more timid and compliant society.
          One other thing I wanted to add above: I don’t feel good about same-sex raising of children. I mean, it’s a fine and altruistic thing to adopt children who otherwise would not have any semblance of a family life (I know several gay male couples who have done such a thing), but I do still think that the presence of both mother and father represents the optimal template for normal psychological development of a child. The push to discount this suggests to me a motive (conscious or unconscious) to devalue fatherhood and positive masculinity. Again, to say that out loud without the protection of anonymity is to invite hostility and social isolation.

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    • That’s an interesting document. I have not seen it before. Care to elaborate on its significance?
      BTW, on the evolutionary genetics that may predispose to homosexuality, imprinted genes may be relevant here. Imprinted genes are those that are expressed differently depending upon whether the allele came from the father or the mother (there are about 600 of them). One prominent such gene is IGF2, which is deeply involved in many critical functions. So there may be genes (imprinted or not) that impact female biology in a way that increases the probability of successful reproduction while also potentially increasing the probability of homosexuality in males. (I am not well-versed on the subject of genetics and homosexuality in particular, although I know quite a bit about in-utero environmental effects in general.) So, yes, the genetic predispositions could actually be rather complex. I am not a proponent of strong biological determinism, however.

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      • It’s new to me so I can’t verify its authenticity; but it seems a very bold outline of (parts of) a social engineering program that includes promotion of homosexuality (and women in the work place!)…

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    • Also, FWIW, I have never been fond of the term same-sex “marriage” (with the word “marriage”). I was happy with “civil unions” as long as they entailed the requisite bundle of rights and benefits (tax-free inheritance, medical power-of-attorney, insurance coverage rights, etc.) as these are essential considerations for any middle-aged couple. I tend to attach a specific spiritual significance to the word “marriage”, and I don’t really think it fits within a same-sex context.
      Of course, bringing that up in gay company is an invitation to be perceived as a monster.

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  9. @Yevaud:
    Again, to say that out loud without the protection of anonymity is to invite hostility and social isolation.
    It depends where one says it, surely? I certainly wouldn’t post this piece at RI or even link to it. I had some trepidation about posting it even here at my blog. But one of the rewards of taking this risk is finding out that others are also thinking these things that seem and feel unsayable, until someone says them. Then they lose their charge and much of the seemingly offensive crust that was sticking to them falls away, revealing something else. & behind every genuine drive to find the truth is compassion, just as behind every drive to obscure truth is something selfish and poisonous (even if self-protective).
    I agree about the same-sex parenting, 100%; but that won’t surprise anyone.
    I’ll also say for the record that, after seven years of marriage, I consider myself still very far from being a healthily sexually functional male (due to factors discussed in the piece). There was even a time in my adolescence when my mother thought I was gay (tho I’ve never veered in that direction).

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  10. How about Engels theory of ” the origins of family, private property and the state”. With the transition from Lunar , matrilineal hunter gatherer bronze age societies to solar , pastoral patriarchal settlements , marriage became the vehicle through which property is transmitted . In Australia , if you are not married , property cannot be transferred to partner without heavy taxation ( straight or gay) , you cannot issue power of attorney to your partner if you are sick / incapacitated , cant access public health care to the same degree , etc etc . Here , the institution is deeply political , and a bitter defense of it by the religious right is taking place . There are a lot of people that like to co- opt the venerable institution to serve their own ideology, or mechanism of power .
    Strange that the staunch Catholic defenders of gay marriage seem to have an inordinate amount of closet homosexuals aming their clergy , deeply paradoxical and double bind, that.
    The weaponisation of homosexuality eh ?. I suppose there are numerous devices institutions minorities that are coopted in this way by ” the managers”.

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  11. Jasun,
    Look into the work of Dr. mirium Grossman. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cLUwMDHzYw4
    It surprises me that you harbor such animosity and belief in the phantom Christian right wing ghouls. This mythology is of exactly what you are writing about. To tamp down the majority vilifying grannys and families who believe in God and family and continuity and being left alone. But then I am not surprised at all. However you may not even be aware of how naturally moral you are as viewed from my perspective.
    As a Catholic my beliefs are private and individual. Between me and him. The church does not scrutinize who walks in the door for mass on sunday or who marches to the front to get their host. Total BS lgbt’s go get your host no one is stopping you, if you are right with yourself then go get it. If not its meaningless anyway because the importance is not physical. What they want is submission of doctrine by all Catholics and thats not gonna happen. So its all astroturfing agit prop. Protestants have a wide variety of worship practices and some can be viewed as radical but by today’s standards that’s a joke compared to just popping on the TV.
    The only true radicalism would be protesting of abortion clinics ( those macabre death cults see selling baby parts) and that of ideas and variations expressed in a free society. Compared to pizzagate and pop culture ( see Vigilant Cirizen blog) it is quite obvious who the radicals are. But like you said fear of being singled out ” radical peace monkey!” ” hater” “racist” whatever keeps good nice common folk quiet. And again as you have said what a great way to engineer a pesky majority. You should read Judith Reisman’s books another non-Christian exposing the darkness and How it stalks our children. You have profoundly compounded what they have exposed. Their presence under the msm radar only speaks to their legitimacy. As a mom darting down these rabbit holes to protect my kids i so appreciate your honesty. This post is a great exploration of truth!

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    • Hi “Mum” ( :/ )
      I think, as this piece refers to, my animosity towards Christians is based much more on direct encounters with Christians than any kind of “mythology.” (It is probably also sourced in childhood conditioning.) I think my primary aversion/animosity (in this regard) is towards ideological bondage and the doublethink it gives rise to, and I have rarely met a Christian who wasn’t ideologically bound up by internally contradictory beliefs (maybe never, but I have had some enjoyable conversations with Christians that didn’t end up with my feeling like I was banging my head against a wall). It’s because I recognize an essential truth to Christianity, or to the Gospel anyway, that I value the presence of Christians at all, since I know that some of them are onto something, as Girard was.
      In the end I am opposed to all belief-structures, so in that regard my “beef” with Christians is with myself and everyone else in the world, pretty much.
      I know Reisman’s work & have tried to get her to do a podcast with me, but she didn’t respond. I also managed to piss off one of the Collins brothers when I told him I didn’t want any Christian proselytizing on the podcast!

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  12. “The myth of agency argues that human beings are a mysterious exception to the rest of the physical universe in possessing autonomy within the system they are part of. Yet agency is something even the gods (planets and stars) do not appear to have.”
    Actually, no. According to Genesis 1, G-d created the world good, and created man and woman in paradise. [The stars and the Sun and the Moon were created for a clock and for “signs.”] He[sic] “They” instructed them not to eat of “Good and Evil” – in other words to eschew evil; but they did not do that, so “he” cursed them to suffer.
    So you see, nothing has changed in this beautiful world, except the human. “Oh human, why have you changed?”
    Also, according to Genesis 2, g-d[s] / Nephilem created the human “in our own image” / as g-ds, Therefore giving the human free choice and agency.
    In this part, up to Chapter 6 , The brother grows jealous. He hates and envies his brother. He kills him in the woods. And then lies with a sarcastic remark when asked “Where is your brother?”
    All human inhabitants are considered to be descended from this “Line of Cain.” And, according to Biblical legend, the creator[s?] were so fed up with human corruption that they destroyed the world and everyone in it with a flood [except Noah].
    Some king lineage claim to descend from “Noah” FWIW.. The word “Adam” itself means Red, and Blood and implies violence.
    The “original sin,” as they teach in the established church, is wrongly used to control and shame innocent people [Ironically you claim that everyone shares in everyone’s sins? ] does not come from nature nor from the “creator[s]” – whatever you want to call it, it comes from the choices of the human being alone.
    Your contention about volition and agency only applies to the world as you create it, in your own belief structure.

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    • It seems to me like you found something you objected to emotionally and then read your own meanings into it and disagreed with those meanings. My arguments against agency are based on logic, not belief. Personally, I “believe” I have agency, obviously; I have no choice about it.
      Unfortunately (or not?) logic trumps belief.

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  13. Wow. This just in, reddit bans pizzagate for violating content policy specifically because they don’t allow “witchhunts” on their site. Wow, this speaks directly to the nature of Jasun’s work and how the pejorative term “witchhunt” is used to perpetuate the cover up. Unless, that is, they are trying to create more buzz and direct more attention to the topic by banning it. That’s a possibility too I suppose.

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    • Hi Jarrod,
      I think you’ll find it more than interesting to note Levenda’s wording in replies to me here (I’m posting as Wordman): http://secretsun.blogspot.com/2016/11/election-2016-you-may-not-be-interested.html
      Specifically, “Satanism has a particular and very specific meaning for me (as it does for anyone who works within the religious studies field.) You simply can’t use it to describe people or activities you don’t like. This isn’t Salem in 1697. Or the Spanish Inquisition.”
      Notice that this wording preceded the Reddit stance by a little more than 2 weeks. Fascinating, and perhaps a giveaway, no? All this Orwellian “banning” and wordspeak seems to be following a prescribed agenda for sure.

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  14. We’ve seen the alt media and conspiracy culture steered to the right end of the political spectrum; this, despite the alt media once deriding the false dichotomy of left vs right. Now we are seeing pizzagate being equated with witchhunts. Conspiracy culture is steadily being turned into a perceived right-wing fundamentalist type thing. Divide and conquer.

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  15. Of all the things wikileaks could leak, the thing that generates the most buzz deliberately stokes hysteria amongst Christians. I find it interesting as well that Epstein links to Trump too (see the work of Pearse Redmond of Porkins Policy Review) but only Epstein’s ties to the Clintons is up-played by leading figures in the alt-media. Hmmm, very interesting.

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  16. “Based on countess exchanges I have had, this view—that of not-doing—is seen as no different from passivity, lethargy, or avoidance.”
    “Abandoning action is not non-action If without doing the prescribed
    actions first one says that “I am abandoning actions like a Siddha”, then
    that will not at all constitute non-action for him. Because it is foolish to
    think that non-action is the same thing as not doing the duties that have
    fallen to one’s lot. (3:45- 46). As long as one is in his body and has desires,
    actions cannot be abandoned; certain natural duties (like earning livelihood,
    preparation of food, having progeny etc.) have perforce to be performed.
    But the actions become non-actions when one is ceaselessly content.
    Therefore one who wants to achieve non-action should never give up the
    prescribed actions. (3:47- 50) ” commentary on Bhagavad Gita,
    8.”He who sees inaction in action and action in inaction is wise among men. He is a yogin, though he performs all actions.
    When a person, while performing actions, sees his inaction, and does not hanker after their fruits with attachment, and there is nothing else for which he is obliged to work, he knows truly what freedom from action means. A person should be recognized as enlightened, if he possesses the above traits, even if he performs actions well all the time (91-95). Just as a person standing near water, sees his reflection in it and recognizes himself without any misgiving to be different from it or just as a person moving in a boat sees the trees on the bank moving swiftly, but on close inspection knows that they are stationary, so even when he is performing actions without desiring their fruits, he knows that he is not the agent of those actions. And even as the motionless sun seems to go round the world, because of the sunrise and sunset,so a person knows himself to be inactive even while working. Though he appears to be an ordinary person, he is really not so, just as the reflection of the sun in the water is certainly not the sun (96-100). He does not see the world while seeing, does nothing while doing, and does not enjoy even when he experiences sensuous enjoyments. Even though he wanders everywhere, he is motionless; because he has himself become one with the world” – Marathi poet “Jnaneshwar”.
    “in today’s social media climate, public shaming has taken on the force of legal punishment, and many, maybe even most, taboos relate less to behaviors than they do to values, beliefs, opinions, thoughts, and feelings. ”
    I DON’T THINK THIS IS THE TYPE OF “DOING” WHILE “NON – DOING” REFERED TO, BY THE YOGI-S!? ^^^^^^
    TEXT FOR COMMENT ON AUTICULTURE: I wasn’t able to upload an image of the citations I wanted to include.
    So I posted it all here:
    https://pearlchanter.wordpress.com/2016/11/24/text-for-comment-on-auticulture

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  17. Just want to say, Jasun, that the bible does not say all effeminate men should be put to death. The apostle Paul said just the opposite… that formerly effeminate men were now upstanding members of the church. I Corinthians 6:11: “And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.”
    Christians don’t agree on the death penalty, but my understanding is it’s up to the government, not the church. The New Testament church had their own separate government. The only punishment they meted out was strictly spiritual… turning someone over to Satan: “To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” And that was understood by the early church to be a withdrawal of spiritual covering, protection, letting the rebellious person go their own way and suffer the consequences of sin. It was not any sort of physical punishment.
    As the church apostasized shortly, the Roman Catholic institution, Calvin and others practiced the death penalty for heresy, etc. But there is no evidence whatsoever that any bloodshed of any sort was condoned or practiced by the early church itself. Matters of dealing with murderers, thieves, rapists, etc. were left up to the secular state.
    Christians have whatever rights the secular government of their time period allow them. Paul did not encourage revolution. He advocated against slavery, but did not ever endorse revolution or civil disobedience. Under the government we have now in America, Christians may vote, they may work in the government, they may do whatever they want as long as it’s not against the laws of God. They are not to disobey the secular government unless the secular government orders them to sin.
    There are some Christians who believe in the secular death penalty, and some that do not. If the death penalty goes against a person’s Christian conscience, then that person ought to go with his conscience. Most fundamentalist Christians believe the secular government has the right and the duty to carry out the death penalty after a fair trial.
    God the Son became the scapegoat for the entire human race. He is our ransom from sin, from death and damnation. His death was orchestrated by God the Father. There is no mandate for the church to carry out any sort of physical punishments or judgments, taxes, any of that. I do not see it in the New Testament.
    There is, however, massive judgement upon the unrepentant wicked in the book of Revelation. But it’s carried out by God and His angels. The believers are described as mostly just getting killed all day long like sheep by the anti-Christ government.
    The American church today is almost completely apostate compared to the early church. All the best traits in history like hospitals, liberality, tolerance, education, reading, kindness were encouraged by true Christianity. However, the church was quickly infiltrated, as was prophesied would happen. Ravenous wolves entered in.
    “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” Matthew 7:15. That would describe the Fabians certainly. They most certainly were in alignment with the branch of the church called modernism… the social gospel. A lot of our debates today stem directly out of battles within church history. Fundamentalism and American Culture by George M. Marsden is an interesting book that shed a lot of light on today in America.
    As a Christian, I’m very glad to see anyone exposing the works of darkness. Bible believers know that within them is the sin nature, that we as humans are all guilty. Even so, we ought not enable others to get away with crime, nor should we be allowed to get away with crime ourselves. Accountability, good boundaries, all that is biblical.

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    • Do you have a link to that Facebook thread you made? I tried to find it but there are just too many to go through. I am 90% sure that was what you posted about Paul (accurately or not), but if I’m wrong I’d like to correct that mistake. Thanks.

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      • I didn’t exactly want to be known as the “angry square” in the story but if the shoe fits… Actually the reason I never replied to your request for the link to the facebook thread was that I was too scared to come back here and read any comments upon my comments… 🙂 Anyway, here’s the link, October 26th, 2016. Hope that works, Jasun… I have not removed any comments or changed anything that I know of… have not changed my own comments certainly… I may possibly have removed someone else’s comment, not yours…
        Link

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  18. I get that your saying that this post is not a gay or christian bashing exercise per se , despite your personal preferences , but an attempt to unpick yet another crock of weaponised ideology , being built around being gays and/ or christian .
    You do seem to have a lot of christian and gay readers though .
    I said to my gay mate ” we get along because we are both members of a subculture ”
    Him – ” whats your subculture?”
    me – ” tin foil hatted doomer conspiracy theories !”
    We are all fellow travellers of the catacombs , it seems .

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    • If they could automate necessities like food production why would they keep the rest of us around taking up oxygen, except maybe to terrorize for fun? They’ve already shown that if you can’t or won’t be willingly productive to their economy they are more than happy to let you die homeless on the street or rot in jail making forced labor market goods and further exploited as a cash cow for overpriced services. There are even whispers in the independent press that the drug companies would like to get their hands on the homeless to experiment on, like something out of the Dr. Mengele playbook. The military did it to my own father – when they were about done with him after twenty years’ service, they poisoned him with Agent Orange like a human lab rat.
      Like Lily Tomlin said, No matter how cynical you become, you can’t keep up.

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      • If they didn’t have a collective to feed off and get fat off, they would have to feed on each other?
        I don’t think there’s ever been a plan to depopulate, quite the reverse; they need bodies, lots of them, like the matrix needs bodies.
        The more there are of us, the more easy we are to herd. Social contagion, mimesis, all these principals for social control depend on having a disorganized mass.
        It’s probably a mistake to think of a “them” acting consciously on an “us,” as Guy points out elsewhere. At least as being the whole truth rather than a partial view.

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      • For once, you are more optimistic than me. I think the wild card of climate change plus the buildup of militarized police makes for an ominous picture indeed, with a definite potential for at least thinning the herd. Can you explain what you mean by there not being “a them acting on an us?” It sure feels like an us vs. them to me, with a fifth column of ordinary people to advance elite priorities, and another fifth column internalized into all of us.

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  19. Hello Jasun. I have much in my mind, which is jumping with joy in an effort to push my fingers into creating tracks in the aether of black against white. Sigh. It is late, and before I made it here I checked my smart phone and noticed a synchronistic recommendation from the google-plex that made me smile. I smiled, broadly, because my thoughts about responding to your piece included how to include Noam Chomsky’s ideas about the self-delusion of the elites in their promulgation through schooling, media and corporate hegemony of our totems and taboos. Here’s the link I was given: The Lying Elite Game. (I haven’t had time to listen to more than the intro.) Then, an even more bizarre (synchronistic) occurrence: while I was figuring out how to get this Chomsky YouTube link from my smartphone to this post, I saw revealed behind the first one Chomsky being asked: Is Science Neutral?. Now that had me just about rolling on the floor with laughter. And so the intelligence of the universe once reveals itself through humour of the most perverse/fantastic sort.
    I have so much more jumbled in my mind: Chuang-Tzu, alchemy, Jungian psychology, the muppet movie , Epictetus and…. Well, now for bed, which might be a blessing for you and your readers. Good night.

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  20. the pedohipsters work hand in glove with these DC pricks.. obviously
    also, “they” push being a homo for one reason – soft-kill a society
    “they” are unnatural and project that on us
    everything else is just gravy –
    the laws, the media, the unthinking mass blob, the clothing lines, the money, the social strife
    I mean, it’s called the apocalypse because it’s obvious, right ?
    [slight edit for possibly offensive content; contact me if you have an objection: JH]

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  21. HI Jasun,
    In the interests of full disclosure and to let you know whenever you and your excellent blog are cited in the blog-o-sphere, you are included here in my attempt to catalog all the unending vileness (that is Pizzagate) so far – with all the Levenda asides included. We’ll see if this gets either a nibble or a “banishing.” I have the feeling that (finding a way of) somehow sticking together is going to become rather mandatory, and sooner rather than later in the timeline. Cue up Queen’s “Hammer To Fall.”
    http://mcmmadnessnews.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-pizzagate-emails.html
    Hope your Thanksgiving was warm and memorable, and full of all good things. RR

    Reply
    • Robin, great link to Pinkola_Estes. Thank you. I confess to being surprised to see the her name in the link in this blog. The world is full of surprises, when you are open to them. I haven’t read her in many years, and this is a great read. It corresponds, synchronicity-like, to what I just finished reading an hour ago from another Jungian analyst, Marie-Louise von Franz. In The Golden Ass of Apuleius: The Liberation of the Feminine in Man, she argues, paraphrased that it is important to wear our truth, that we are connected to something BIG, much bigger than our ego, and that by honouring that openly, magic in the form of transformation can occur both personally and in the larger community.

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    • “It is worse to stay where one does not belong at all than to wander about lost for a while and looking for the psychic and soulful kinship one requires”
      ― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype

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      • I really liked the quote which Robin linked to, I admit. When I saw it was the author of WWRWW I was, I admit, immediately put off. Even my mother had that book! Seemed as though at one point EVERY WOMAN had it, practically. “Nothing that has been that widely read & promoted could be other than a Trojan Horse tool for social engineering,” is roughly the thought I had. I’m afraid that’s the point I have reached and I can’t seem to find any way back from it.
        The short quote seems true enough, but it’s easy to see how it could be wrongly applied to appeal to women’s pride and encourage promiscuity & other “wild” behaviors. Maybe Lcy’s observation is a clue to how a work that may have been written with the best intentions was deemed useful to the powers that be to push their own agendas? What would that be like for an author to realize their own work had been co-opted like that, if it was and giving the benefit of the doubt to the author?
        I never read it though and now I probably never will.

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  22. Interesting article, even if I disagree with most of it. I too think there’s a divide and conquer aspect to much of the talk regarding sexuality, but I think it’s more diversionary than it is some form of oppression *in itself*.
    I can talk briefly about some of the biological data relating to sexuality in the limited amount that I’m familiar with, and it’s all from memory so you’re just going to have to accept it (or not), unless you feel like searching based off of what I say.
    So, to tackle one of your last arguments, regarding the quote
    “They hypothesized that “while genes predisposing to homosexuality reduce homosexuals’ reproductive success, they may confer some advantage in heterosexuals who carry them.” Their results suggested that “genes predisposing to homosexuality may confer a mating advantage in heterosexuals, which could help explain the evolution and maintenance of homosexuality in the population.””
    Studies have shown that the more elder brothers one has, the more likely a male is to be homosexual. While this alone provides a suggestion for a biological basis, that’s not why I’m mentioning it. The enhanced survivability theory would be that as population of heterosexual males increases relative to females, group cohesiveness is strained, especially considering the size of communities we would be thinking of when these genes appeared. The presence of a homosexual male, who in theory could be as protective to the group as a heterosexual male without the possibility of violent conflict over females would be a distinct advantage.
    As far as biological basis is concerned, I remember hearing about a study where patients were measured for physical responses of some sort (blood flow, or something similar), as well as a dial they could use to indicate enjoyment. These men were then shown straight or gay pornography. Heterosexual males had their choice and bodily responses in concordance, as did homosexual males. Bisexual males indicated a choice preference of both, but their bodily response was either heterosexual or homosexual. This would indicate that hetero and homo sexuality is driven biologically, while bisexuality is a choice. The discrepancy between preference and bodily response in the case of bisexual males adds weight to the genetic or nature aspect of sexuality.
    Now, as far as judgment is concerned, and whether they should overcome biology in order to achieve some sort of spiritual height, it’s possible, but very unlikely in my eyes, or perhaps there is a divine overmind to particular cultures and it’s not wrong for us because we’ve decided it’s not wrong for us, which is a slippery slope, we do like to hold on to some absolutes, especially if there’s some divine enforcement of them.
    If you take many of your perspectives to their most extreme conclusion, you could go so far as to say all sexual contact that is not for the express purpose of procreation is evil, you wouldn’t be the first. But maybe you could argue that sexual contact between those in love is one of the higher expressions of cosmic love, and to deny that would be evil.
    Alternate potential perspectives exist as well. I am a pagan of sorts, mostly due to the fact I like to see the sacred, or taboo, in most everything (not to deny that to my JudeoChristianIslamic friends), but a lively interaction between a vastly populated and striated supernatural and natural is a little more endemic to paganism. I say that just to put my cards on the table, whatever you may think of them. Anyways, I am reminded of the male practitioners of seidr in Norse mythology. As you may know, seidr was a magical practice that was ‘designed’ for females. However, there were male practitioners and they were simultaneously sacred and profane, avoided and shocking but not condemned – to my knowledge. Perhaps this is akin to much of the modern perspective on sexuality? I imagine many heterosexuals today feel the same regarding homosexuality, the act is thought of as profane, but there is no condemnation because of the potential participation in the sacredness of love.

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    • Thanks for your comments. I note that you ignored everything abut trauma, however, which is largely the basis of the piece, and of almost everything I write; in favor, perhaps not surprisingly, of (what I’d call) a spiritualized perspective, which is itself a known response to trauma. (Not to say there isn’t a true spiritual perspective, but that would simply be a whole psyche dwelling in a healthy body.)

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      • Let me rephrase, I said I disagreed with most of your piece but I didn’t. Being a contrarian, only the things that I didn’t agree with motivated me to post.
        Yeah I agree that a spiritualized perspective is often a response to trauma. Very common shamanic stuff, the Aghori of the Indian left hand path to me seem to engage in revolting behaviors in order to cause some sort of spiritual transcendence. It seems quite different than when we talk about trauma based mind control, as that seems like the opposite effect of any sort of transcendence. At least I hope there’s a difference between dissociation which causes rising above (which I think you rightly point out in the beginning of your piece often results from integration) and dissociation which causes hiding from.

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      • Just to add one point to my previous reply, I would firmly put Jesus in the camp of a person characterizing dissociation that rises above. It’s as if his total integration of human failings allows himself to dissociate himself from it and stand on top of it all, whereas trauma based mind control seeks to fracture the parts so that the view is lower than from a ‘normal’ person.

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      • “rising above what”
        Well I wrote my Jesus reply before I saw you write that. Rising above anything bad I would say, the ability to have hate or to contribute to negativity.

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  23. I have the book and read it before it was ‘popular’. I had no idea it had been co-opted for social engineering. But if so, really, so what? Haven’t many books been used that way? And that it has may be a reason for reading it, as a means to better understanding the means and methods of its co-opters and to better use it against them? I found it surprisingly good. It came to me via a series of odd synchronicities. And, at the time, I thought it a good introduction, for men, into nascent exploration of their anima. Pre-judging something because of an ego perception is a sign that you may still be connected to the ‘them’ and have given way your independence. 😉

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    • Yes it would be a better reason for reading it, I agree. I didn’t mean I wouldn’t I read it now because of my suspicions, I meant the time when I read those sorts of books at all seems far behind me now (tho in fact I never did really read popular spiritual books; I may have once dipped into this one).
      Also I didn’t outright say it had been used for social engineering purposes, I don’t know that; just that anything that popular strikes me as suspect now. But if it had been promoted because of its being in line with social engineering goals, wouldn’t the damning thing here be not that it had been, but that it COULD be so used?
      As an author that’s certainly how I’d feel if something I wrote ended up on every neo-liberal’s bookshelf.

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  24. Really sorry guys, for not knowing Pinkola Estes’ backstory and possible involvement in any social engineering/mind control agenda. Yikes. I truly just liked the piece and wanted to send it along to all, and especially Jasun, in the spirit of sticking together through everything that we all are facing on a daily basis in this soul-sucking world.
    I always, even today, try to take everything and everyone on a case-by-case basis, which I suppose can be the only reason why I haven’t burned all my copies of Sinister Forces by now! If even by accident, I find that there is something of value in almost – almost – everything. Lots of times in spite of (it)themselves.
    Perhaps it’s just that old truism of “even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while!” Plus the piece gave me a much-needed breather after swimming around in the cesspit that is “pizzagate.” Never was an existential “shower” needed more.
    Still struggling to actually come to grips regarding what is going on in this “Mockingbird” world where up is down and white is black. What was that line from “JFK?” “We’re through the looking glass here, people!” (Another film that needs to be urgently viewed again and seen through the lens of what’s going on today. Perhaps in a double bill with “Spotlight.”) So much different, yet so much EXACTLY the same.
    It seems we never learn. We always cycle back to business as usual. And no matter the status of the truthteller or whistleblower, we never truly listen. I’m hoping this time might be different. I like Jim Morrison’s take: “They got the guns, but we got the numbers.”

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  25. “Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype”
    Synch from the past…..LOL
    Check the marketing of this Canadian band, specifically the actual album cover:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xT1i7hPKYkU
    Full MTV video with mullets etc:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jqpDWHBvLQ
    The guitarist was actually really talented. Listen to him make the guitar “talk” and follow the singers lines towards the end of the song.
    Too bad the recording quality on the album was so bad overall.
    Anywhoo…..

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  26. Jasun, muy bueno tu artículo, te conocí hace dos años por tus colaboraciones en pijamasurf y no dejas de sorprenderme por tus agudos análisis y por tu ritmo de trabajo.
    Cuándo volverás a escribir en español para el mundo hispano?. Podrías hacer algún postcast en español?.
    Muchas gracias por todo tu trabajo!!.

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  27. I really enjoy reading your blog. This post was very thought provoking and definitely created some emotional responses in me. I am an openly queer man who has always been very critical of the “gay culture” and strange cultural indoctrination surrounding gay rights. However I’m also critical of the discussion regarding homosexuality on both sides.
    I want to start by saying that I agreed on most points you brought up even though some are hard to take in. Yet you touched on much of my own self-reflection regarding this same issue. I engender to maintain a healthy critique of my own behaviour and mentality. But i wanted to address the issue by bringing a little insight of my own forward to you.
    I respect your criticism and insight yet I felt it came from an unconsciously skewed perspective. If you’re not a queer person you might find it easier to deconstruct queer behavior. If you could have an inside perspective on the issue it would really show you what a complex miasma this truly is. Remember in this culture queer people are still struggling in an environment where we must fight to have our opinions viewed as legitimate while undergoing scrutiny from a larger social system continues to view our innate nature under the lens of “deviant” or “pathological” behavior.
    It is nearly impossible to separate this issue from the historical understanding of behavior as pathological. The behavior itself is not pathological. However I believe it has become pathological due to the greater social milieu in which it is currently being expressed. An example from experience. From my earliest memories I knew I was different from other males. I shared similar characteristics and interests in all other regards save my lack of an attraction to females. At an early age I was aware of my attractions to other males and was simultaneously informed of the sinful, “bad” nature of these desires. This clash of individual identity versus group think causes a huge amount of cognitive dissonance and trauma in a child leading to emotional splitting and other survival “mechanisms”. If you grow up queer you are under constant sense of danger and anxiety , a perpetual trauma that is repeatedly triggered by your family, friends, peer group and the larger society. My thought is that complex post traumatic stress is what creates the negative self-destructive behaviors associated with men in “gay culture” along with the narcissistic worldview gay pride advocates. On a side note these apparently deviant sexual acts gay engage in are no different from ones that “straight” folks engage in all the time (anal, fellatio, fetish, BDSM, etc) Gay people are scapegoated once more for participating in the supposed “deviance” that alleged “normal straight folk” participate in all the time. Queers are an easy scapegoat then and now. The advocacy from gay rights has made us all the more scapegoats than ever. Now that we have fought valiantly for a respected voice for our rights as individuals within the collective (as we always have been) we can enjoy getting scapegoated once more for”polluting cultural values.” Homosexuality is not created in a vaccum nor are our perceptions and analyses of it as a social and biological phenomenon.
    Thank you for your continued insight and your kind attention.
    Rauha! Peace! Hotep!

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    • Good to hear your thoughts, and of course to speak from the center of a perceptual reality is very different than from the circumference (tho both have their advantage points).
      I have more to add but I don’t want to rush it so I’ll leave it at that for now. It’s a huge subject and knowing that my still-forming arguments are accessible and relatively inoffensive to at least some practitioners of homosexuality is obviously gratifying to me. (I put it that way because I don’t think we can really be defined by our choices, actions, or tendencies, unless we let society do it for us.)

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  28. What you don’t get is that gay marriage and gay rights were FIG LEAVES to cover Clinton/Gore Obama/Hillary/Biden/Kerry abandonment of the New Deal and JFK/LBJ Social Contract and lack of action on Climate Change — i.e. abandonment of the lower middle class, working class,and the poor and the entire species and all other species — by use of a symbol which was marketed as reflecting “social progress” in this “ah feel yore pain” civiliation of infinite social regress; followed by species exctinction due to Global HEATING causing Climate DISRUPTION. A most clever species, engineering its own extinction.
    Any analysis that fails to include classs analysis is NOT analysis. Nor is it logical. One can be sure that the capitalists have been thoroughly engaged in class analysis — how to extract as much theft of labour and then as many pennies nickels and dimes as they can from the hands of the labouring classes. Have you noted the Nmber 10 tin cans that used to have 16 ounces in them that now have 15 ounces or other variations? Pennies, nickels and dimes.
    And the ruling billionaire Lords and Ladies of the capitalist elite have carefully studied Lenin — or at least their hirielings have; all the US-caused regime changes have followed the Leninist prescription. While Russia was thoroughly destabilized by the numbingly incompetent Tsar and his succesor, the infinitely stupid kerensky, Lenin and the small number of Bolsheviks were ready to strike. These days, the CIA and State Department have to do the hard work of destabilization themselves (no Kerensky or Tsar to do it for them) in order for a “revolution from above” to be parachuted in — whether Mossdegh in Iran 1953, Arbenz of Guatemala in 1954 or Syria, Ukraine, Venezeula, Ecuador, Cuba, you name it. So if the capitalists use class analysis and regime destabilization (read the book or view the film Merchants of Doubt) and employ Lenin’s methods, and the bourgeois professional and credentialed class enamored of the Clintons and Obama continue the neoliberal faux liberal, anti-feminist, imperial infliction of horrific psychic abuse on humans here and around the world, then why not a third way?
    After reading your interesting life story, I am wondering if your hostility toward gays in this post is not motivated by your own psychic trauma of self-loathing of your own sexuality in some way. Your story beats mine. Whatever wretched excess is evident in the A-List PrEP gay community — and its name is Legion — it is ALSO an extreme replica of gag-inducing straight civilization. I don’t know when gay liberation turned into Gay Incorporated, L.L.C. and TRANSgressive drag became transgender but that point was when gay stopped being edgy and started being a commodified commercial identity and sex, well, sex started getting boring. HENCE: NEW IMPROVED TRANS! ON SALE NOW IN FINE STORES AND ONLINE!
    Rise of the Dream-State is awesome. Reposted each of the three to my Facbook page … for whatever good that does.
    ALSO: King James Bible 1 COR 6:9: Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Paul was an unwiped asshole who had to be chastised TWICE by James the Just the brother of Jesus and leader of the Jewish Christians in Rome and then be bitched and whined about it in Acts. It is NOt ‘CHrisgtianity” it is “Paulianity” or even better, weaponized Constantinian Nicene Paulianity.
    Most important thing Jesus is quoted as saying in the four Gospels: Luke 17:21 “…for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” WITHIN. NOT sex reassignment surgery except for people like Chelsea Manning who have real lives and real courage as opposed to those who are professional TransBrats … in service of the neoliberal austerity fascist technological empire.
    Damned fine blog.

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    • Odd comment, mixing seeming condescension and dismissal with praise…. One point I feel a bit damned if I address & damned if I don’t:
      I would not say I feel, or express, hostility towards homosexuals so much as to the agenda of pushing homosexuality as a healthy, nay superior, lifestyle/sexual orientation. This is evident to anyone who watches TV shows, especially European ones. One manifestation of this agenda is the current mindset that, if I argue that homosexuality is, or may be, a form of sexual dysfunction, I am expressing hostility towards homosexuals. In fact, the reverse could just as well be argued.
      Another symptom of this dementia is the emphasis of compassions/support for groups, or ideological orientation, over individuals. A person’s attitude towards and treatment of individual human beings counts for less than their position regarding some imagined group/minority to which they belong.

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