Where are we right now?

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I think this sentiment is emotionally valid at this moment.

One thing I’ve been doing, and I know most people don’t want to do it or don’t want to hear it, but I’ve been reading the Bible, not because I’m Christian (I’m a UU), but because people in power supposedly believe it.

Okay, when I read this book, not through a pastor or religious authority telling me what to believe, what do I encounter? What is the message of Jesus that we see consistently?

It’s love, empathy, and support for those who have it the worst. To be like Jesus is to sell your material belongings and share with others. To be like Jesus is to turn the other check when someone strikes you. To be like Jesus is to care for the sick, the downtrodden, the alien in a foreign land.

Republicans have been generally older folks, and what they’ve seen in the last 60 years is a rapid turnover of the world they knew. They are deeply afraid of society. It’s fast. It’s integrated with many people. There’s violence everywhere (even though violence has gone down). People are swearing and using the lord’s name in vain all over media. It powered by essentially magic through technology. They are deeply afraid that the society we’ve built is misaligned in terms of core values.

Fear breeds hate, especially when opportunists see it as a means to grab power. So fear was amplified into a fever pitch via 24/7 news.

Trump comes along, and he naturally spikes all these modern algorithms that don’t care about anything besides “engagement.” Turns out hate is more engaging than love, because Trump supporters watch him and those that hate him watch him. Our systems weren’t built around signal boosting moral people; they are built around “engagement.” If it bleeds, it reads, etc.

Combine this with Democrats being an ineffectual party when it comes to messaging, as well as their own pocket lining, and you get a bunch of pissed off people everywhere: Conservatives want Trump; Liberals angry at the Democratic administration for various sleights; most Americans are too stressed to care. Politics doesn’t matter when you work multiple jobs and barely have time to yourself.

And now we arrive here, where people are more interested in being correct, getting revenge, having any sense of power (even if it’s scoring internet points that don’t matter) and living in fear at the cost of love. Republicans have fully lost the message of their stated savior. The people who shamed me for not knowing Jesus probably couldn’t quote a single Bible verse without google. Church attendance has plummeted because Americans don’t see the value of it, nor have the time. It’s a luxury in our age to have an hour on Sunday and pick community.

I think we can get out of this moment, but it won’t happen with everyone finding their enemy. Humans are 1 race. Acts 10:28

And he said to them, ‘You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.

If I take Republicans seriously, that this is a book they care about, and I engage with it and find these quotes, can I show understanding and love while using a text they believe is sacred? Can we reassert these values of love and care for one another? Can we meet face-to-face more and see I’m not some horror ruining society? If I can quote this book without it in front of me, am I satanic and awful?

To your questions:
We’re in the post-modern era. We’re talking through a series of tubes. Algorithms have promoted hate. People are profiting off of it. Christians have forgotten Jesus message.

But none of this gets better with more hate. It’s going to take more offline work: go meet your neighbors, have cookouts, care for one another, find the humanity in your “enemy” and remember they are human, even those that hate you/me.

I have an X marker on my license, so I expect to be taken someday. When I am, I’ll be quoting the Bible to my captors because they tell me they believe this book. You may believe it, but do you live it?

Matthew 25:35. What questions does Jesus ask to separate the goats and the sheep? “Did you clothe me when I was naked? Did you feed me when I was hungry? Did you take care of me when I was sick? Did you visit me in prison? Did you help me when I was an alien in foreign land?”

My goal this year is to get through the New Testament and then read the Buddhist Suttras.

Check out Unitarian Universalism if you’ve made it this far. It’s a great organization and welcoming faith community. Its a modern religion that validates many of the world’s religions as true and inspiring of our best selves rather than dogmatically choose one. It gave me the space to have my own relationship with god and religion. I came as an atheist & now have my own beliefs in god & reality that aren’t captured by any single religion.

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They don't know or care what DEI is. They just know that white men like themselves now have to compete with non-white non-men for jobs.

So now they have to make themselves marketable, or shut that whole thing down so they can go back to living in the boys club. And since self-improvement is "woke", they choose the latter.

They get it fed to them during their 2 Minutes Hate and that's all that matters.

It used to be Antifa. They were staunchly against antifa. You know what you call someone who is anti-antifa? Fa. You call them fa.

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This is an amazing breakdown and summarizes exactly how I’ve been reading it also. Thank you for this.

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I’m glad it can provide some solace. Wishing the best for you, internet stranger.

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They're rjecting DEI in favor of WEI: White, Entitled, and Inept.

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Beautiful.

But…

Republicans have been generally older folks, and what they’ve seen in the last 60 years is a rapid turnover of the world they knew.

This is an iffy assumption: https://www.axios.com/2024/09/28/gen-z-men-conservative-poll

The very youngest voters — 18-to-24-year-olds — say they're more conservative than the cohort that's just older, according to the latest Harvard Youth Poll.

The younger generation of men is more likely to identify as conservative than as liberal.

Between the lines: They were hardest hit by COVID-19 and felt ignored by the establishment, John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, told Axios this month.

The youngest members of that group were just 10 years old when Trump was elected president and see this chaotic political era as normal.

"They think of Trump as an anti-hero and not a villain. ... I think it's less about policy and much more about personality," Della Volpe said.

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DEI has been in the news the past few days as being some controversial concept. So I looked it up, and find out it means "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion".

You realize that's just a name, right? They can name things whatever they want.

The argument against it is that people are disadvantaged based on the color of their skin or their race. In other words, racism. That's why some people are upset. People will deny this over and over but they're simply being irrational and disingenuous because they don't want to be associated with the word.

Now I'm gonna tell you something about this that no one else will: This type of racism is good. It's meant to combat other types of much more prevalent racism.

Society just needs to acknowledge that racism isn't an inherently bad word and then we're all just better off.

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Much like the word "woke," MAGA conservatives have stripped DEI of its original meaning. As conservatives use it now it's basically just a socially acceptable stand-in for the N-word (or the F-word, depending on context). Like just a couple of days ago I was at a burrito place and the guy a couple spots ahead of me in line said, "This DEI cashier better not fuck up my order again." It was very clear what he meant was, "This N-word better not piss me off."

Any time you hear conservatives say "woke" or "DEI," you can almost always mentally swap it with the N-word or the F-word and what they're saying will make a lot more sense.

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Wow, the echo-chamber vibes are strong on this one.

Then it is on you to engage with the replies to your comment instead of whinging into the void.

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You can’t expect to understand these people by reading the Bible because these people aren’t themselves religious, they just know the common layman is and use that to their advantage.

My mom is religious and she will side with whoever says is religious too, not for their arguments merit. So if you say you’re not religious and come with a good argument, it doesn’t matter, it’s just a tribalism thing.

Even though she says she’s Evangelical and cites Jesus and Bible texts often, she nitpicks what is convenient at any time like most people do. It’s really annoying when my father who’s Catholic comes and they start disagreeing on stuff citing different parts of the Bible at the same time and considering X important, but ignoring Y totally as it doesn’t go with their narrative of the fact.

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Matthew 6:5 is interesting for this reason. He tells people not to be boastful about prayer. You’re supposed to pray in quiet, away from others. James 2:2 also tells people to care for the poor before the rich. There’s lots of quotes about not showing off, either in religiosity or wealth.

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No doubt many people have been affected, young men included. I think part of the reason the pushback on DEI & feminism exists is because we have new marginalized groups that are difficult to understand just yet.

Zoomers have an incredibly hard time breaking into professional careers. When one group sees themselves as a group; and another “group” is getting favoritism in the system (women, minorities); the natural response is “Why not me?”

This isn’t to discredit systemic racism or misogyny. I think those are real problems. I’m trying to think of how these folks might see the world, see how it lacks love and prospect for them. Putting others down isn’t how people feel loved.

I put more blame on older folks because of the imbalance of wealth, which unfortunately amounts to influence. Zoomer men may be disenfranchised, but they are likely poorer in terms of equity. They help drive engagement and the algos.

It all gets more complicated with geography and so on. I appreciate you adding more context to the situation.

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Being able to admit that certain groups are systemically disadvantaged and wanting to do something about it is literally the opposite of racism, what are you talking about?

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Not whining or caring either for that matter; and for "engaging" to make sense all the parties involved would have to be ready for some constructive discussion.

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The prophecies about the end times, about now. One of them says "and the love of the greater number will grow cold". This, right here. The last few years.

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If "doing something about it" means disadvantaging a group of people based on their race or ethnicity, that is the very definition of racism, what are you talking about?

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You should really ask yourself why you see raising up one group as necessarily lowering another. One doesn’t follow from the other.

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I can ask myself all day but the answer will be the same. Instead, why don't you tell me how that works?

There is a finite amount of positions at any job (unless you're hiring someone to do a made-up job to score points, which would be the textbook definition of "diversity hire"). You can choose to fill those positions with the most qualified applicant, or you can choose to hire one of a specific race. You can't logically do both.

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I just recently saw a video shared of an extremist in Maine who attacked his wife, and then recorded himself during a prolonged shootout with the police.

Given that he finds it possible he may die in the next few hours, there's a sort of honesty to his voice; and it's scary to regard the sort of world he believes in, where vaccines are obviously "lethal", etc. The one bit that stood out to me, and maybe not to himself, was his mentioning that he had been out of work for over a year. It's quite possible any employers saw his violent habits and turned him away, but even if that's a suitable explanation, it's a heavy feeling of abandonment.

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I'm white, straight, and male. I'm trying to get a book published. Every agent that I've tried to contact, especially ones that match the type of book I'm writing, has been vocal that their focus is on BIPOC, LGBT, and other diverse candidates. I've been turned away at every one. Such racism, right?

Except...most published work in bookstores is still by white male authors like myself. And if I take a step back to look at my whole life situation: I'm not reliant on this book. I'm a well-employed engineer, have my own house and mortgage, and had relatively well-off parents. Little of this is true for these other demographics that have received heavy discrimination even less than a generation ago. All things considered, it is very fair for these agents to champion diverse voices, and they're slammed with requests all over the place.

The scarring effects of discrimination are still felt decades later when we feel them gone. It's still a hard truth that employment is hard even today, but those with experience in staffing can usually only point to the occasional anecdote when someone was prioritized for their race - and usually have just as many stories of inverse discrimination or nepotism.

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Where are we right now?