Televangelist Jim Bakker calls his Missouri cabins the safest spot for the Apocalypse
How?
How could they possibly be. . .? You know what, let's see.
Televangelist Jim Bakker suggests that if you want to survive the end of
days, the best thing you could do is buy one of his cabins in
Missouri's Ozark Mountains. And while you're at it, be sure to pick up
six 28-ounce "Extreme Survival Warfare" water bottles for $150.
Okay, but. . .I mean. . .it's the end of the world. Fire and brimstone. Stars falling from the heavens, seas turning to blood, complete destruction. How would you surv -- actually, why would you want to survive? Wouldn't you want to go to Heaven? God is destroying the Earth, killing everyone in sight, the righteous are going to eternal Paradise and you think you're gonna want to wait things out in Missouri? See how things play out? I mean, sure, Heaven sounds boring. ( h/t )Sitting around playing harps all day. Every day. Day after day. But it's got to be better than riding out the APOCALYPSE in some dumb cabin in the Ozarks watching the world burn and everyone die. Right?
Now, surrounded by buckets of food and "warfare" water bottles in the Ozarks, Bakker is in front of the cameras once again, preparing his viewers for the Apocalypse. "Where are you going to go when
the world's on fire? Where are you going to go? This place is for God's
people. ... We need some farmers to move here," Bakker said on Tuesday's
show.
You know, I'm no fancy big city theologian, but I seem to recall a place that was supposed to be for "God's people," a place where God's people were supposed to go at the end of the world. A little place by the name of . . . HEAVEN! Why would the Jim Bakker audience want to avoid going to Heaven? Maybe because they would miss seeing Jim Bakker?
Also, why would you think that this would work? Why would someone who believes in the all-seeing all-knowing almighty God of the Bible think that they would be able to hide from Him? Like he's going around raining fire and brimstone on everybody and the angels are like "Hey, Lord, there's some cabins down there in those hills," and God is going to say "Ah, there's probably no one in there. This place is so remote, I can't imagine anyone actually living there," and then you'll be all "Jokes on you, God! We were here the whole time!"
How is any of this supposed to work?
Later in the show, Bakker says the Ozarks is "the safest place to live"
versus living in large cities elsewhere in the country, like Chicago and
New York, The Christian Post reported.
Okay. I could see that. Probably a lot less crime in the Ozarks.
A lot more bears, though.
And a lot more guys who think you have a real purty mouth.
But on balance, sure. It's probably safer to live in a cabin in the woods with no hospital nearby or any doctor. really. And no ambulance service. But you probably won't need any of those things, you'll be so robustly healthy on your steady diet of Jim Bakker's dehydrated potato glop and $150 warfare water!
"Do you know the people from the government, from NASA, the research
from so many of them, they have said in their research that the safest
place to live in troubled times is right here. That's why God brought us
here," Bakker said.
No.
No, that is NOT what NASA does. Not even CLOOOSE to what NASA does. I don't know what you're thinking of, but it is definitely not NASA.
Also, the research you mention. Not only was that not NASA, but it was not any government agency because you made it up and it never happened and you're lying.
How is there not some kind of law against this? This is nothing but a swindle. And it's one thing to grift in the name of the Lord, but once you invoke NASA in your bullshit sales pitch, couldn't they at least sue you? Or something? He's robbing people blind. And yes, they should know better. They should know that he's already done time for fraud, and even if they don't their bullshit detector should be blaring every time this little prick speaks, but I'm just tired of living in a society in which it's considered okay to fleece someone because they're stupid and gullible.
He looks like a typical alt-right douchebag and in most ways he is.
But there is one difference between Patrick Little and your average Pepe.
Patrick Little is running for the Senate. In California.
Is he going to win? No. BUT, he is currently in the lead for the Republican nomination!
How "alt-right" could he be and still be the front-runner for one of the two major political parties in California you ask? Well. . . this much:
Now I get that it's not exactly news that this country is lousy with neo-Nazis. And if you've ever lived in California, it comes as no surprise that California has its fair share of skinheads (I lived in Orange Count for a while. You'd see "death to race-mixers" decals on signposts fairly regularly.) And it's not surprising that in the era of Il Douche, more of these sick fucks are turning up to run for office. But how is it not major news that a god damn Nazi is leading in the polls in the most populous state in the Union?
According to "The Hill," the California Republican Party has issued a tepid condemnation of Little:
The California Republican Party has denounced a Republican Senate
candidate who has denied the Holocaust happened and called for a country
"free from Jews." “Mr. Little has never been an active member of our party. I do not know
Mr. Little and I am not familiar with his positions,” Matt Fleming,
communications director for the California Republican Party,
told Newsweek. “But in the strongest terms possible, we condemn
anti-Semitism and any other form of religious bigotry, just as we do
with racism, sexism or anything else that can be construed as a hateful
point of view.”
Yes, a desire to exterminate Jews could be "construed as a hateful point of view."
But I can't find any statement from the National party or any member of the GOP leadership, or anyone with any name recognition. Apparently the Mitch McConnels and Paul Ryans either can't be bothered, or are too aware of their need for the skinhead vote, or just have no problem at all with a god damn Nazi representing their party on the California ballot.
So there is one small silver lining here. I was disappointed that Kevin de Leon wasn't making much headway in his primary challenge against Diane Feinstein, but at least I will get to watch this anti-Semitic piece of shit get crushed by a Jewish woman.
In a sane world, no one would give a flyspeck what a professional moralistic scold like Ross Douche-Hat has to say on any subject. But this is not a sane world. In the lunatic reality we inhabit, Douche-Hat has his every flacid thought published in the New York Times - America's Paper of Record - as if they were pearls of wisdom from a sage elder with unique insight. Which means that we are forced to confront Ross's self-important edict on the subject of "incels" and redistribution of sex which I TOLD YOU YESTERDAY TO STOP WRITING ABOUT, DOUCHEY!
(Remember, kids. they can't refute your argument if they're distracted by boobies!)
One lesson to be drawn from recent Western history might be this: Sometimes the extremists and radicals and weirdos see the world more clearly than the respectable and moderate and sane.
Okay, sure. Sometimes the radicals and weirdos are Nazis, or Stalinists, or al Queda, or Scientologists, but sure. It never hurts to hear them out.
All kinds of phenomena, starting as far back as the Iraq War. . .
Woah, woah, slow down there!You're going ALL THE WAY BACK to the Iraq War? We didn't all major in ancient history, you know!
(editor's note: Hmm, maybe little Douche-Hat was a little to young to be made an op-ed columnist. Maybe we should have gotten someone wirth a bit more perspective on things like Davis Broo - -oh, right. Never mind.)
All kinds of phenomena, starting as far back as the Iraq War and the
crisis of the euro but accelerating in the age of populism, have made
more sense in the light of analysis by reactionaries and radicals than
as portrayed in the organs of establishment opinion.
Or, in simpler language, the hippy liberals have always been right but never been listened to. And the spewers of "establishment opinion" are never penalized for having been wrong. Every cheerleader for Bush's ill-conceived, ill-planned, ill-advised, illegal, immoral invasion of Iraq is still being invited on the Sunday talk shows and the 24-hour news networks as if they have some rare and valuable acumen that simply must be shared with the general public while when's the last time you've seen Micheal Moore or Janeane Garofalo on Meet the Press?
For those more curious than martial, one
useful path through this thicket is to look at areas where extremists
and eccentrics from very different worlds are talking about the same
subject. Such overlap is no guarantee of wisdom, but it’s often a sign
that there’s something interesting going on.
Which brings me to the sex robots.
Okay, now you've got my attention!
Well, actually, first it brings me to the case of Robin Hanson, a George Mason economist, libertarian and noted brilliant weirdo.
Oh come on!
**Sigh** Fine. Let's talk about Hanson. I'm sure that will be just as interesting as "sex robots."
Commenting on the recent terrorist violence in Toronto, in which a self-identified “incel”
— that is, involuntary celibate — man sought retribution against women
and society for denying him the fornication he felt that he deserved,
Hanson offered this provocation: If we are concerned about the just
distribution of property and money, why do we assume that the desire for
some sort of sexual redistribution is inherently ridiculous? This argument was not well received by people closer to the mainstream than Professor Hanson, to put it mildly.
But Hanson’s post made me immediately think of a recent essay
in The London Review of Books by Amia Srinivasan, “Does Anyone Have the
Right To Sex?” Srinivasan, an Oxford philosophy professor, covered
similar ground (starting with an earlier “incel” killer) but expanded
the argument well beyond the realm of male chauvinists to consider
groups with whom The London Review’s left-leaning and feminist readers
would have more natural sympathy — the overweight and disabled, minority
groups treated as unattractive by the majority, trans women unable to
find partners and other victims, in her narrative, of a society that
still makes us prisoners of patriarchal and also
racist-sexist-homophobic rules of sexual desire.
STOP IT! Stop trying to make it seem as if there is some basis for compelling any person to have sex with any other person. You're not gettin' any because you're overweight or you're a minority person trying to score with racists? I feel for you. That sucks. But you know what? It also sucks that I wasn't tall enough to play in the NBA. And it also sucks that I never had the manual dexterity to be a musician. Life is unfair. But no one is trying to suggest that the Warriors be forced to make room on their roster for me or that Bob Weir should be forced to jam with me. That's not how it works. Some unfairnesses can be fixed, others can't. And it is not a good idea to humor those who lash out with violence when they feel that life is too unfair.
Now can we PLEASE talk about sex robots?
. . . By this I mean that as offensive or utopian the redistribution of sex
might sound, the idea is entirely responsive to the logic of late-modern
sexual life, and its pursuit would be entirely characteristic of a
recurring pattern in liberal societies.
NO IT WOULDN'T!
Because sex is not a commodity. You can't just go down to the sex orchard and pic a bushel of sex and hand it out to the sex-deprived. Redistributing sex would require forcing women to have sex against their will or, at best, a massive prostitute-hiring WPA-type program that just seems really impractical.
First, because like other forms of neoliberal deregulation the sexual
revolution created new winners and losers, new hierarchies to replace
the old ones, privileging the beautiful and rich and socially adept in
new ways and relegating others to new forms of loneliness and
frustration.
Oh, spot on, Douche-Hat! As everyone knows, prior to the sexual revolution, there was really no advantage to being beautiful or rich. Or socially adept. Everyone was just assigned a mate on their 21st birthday and whether you were handsome or ugly, homely or gorgeous, a witty raconteur or a retiring wallflower, everyone lived happily ever after and everyone had exactly the same amount if sex. Oh, why did those damn hippies have to ruin everything?
Second, because in this new landscape, and amid other economic and
technological transformations, the sexes seem to be struggling generally
to relate to one another, with social and political chasms opening between them
Right, and prior to this dismal modern era, men and women understood each other perfectly and always got along famously!
(I know you're maybe too young to remember the golden times of male-female harmony, may I suggest you Google "Lysistrata?")
When do we get to the sex robots?
In the case of sexual liberation and its
discontents, that’s unlikely to mean the kind of thoroughgoingly
utopian reimagining of sexual desire that writers like Srinivasan think
we should aspire toward, or anything quite so formal as the
pro-redistribution political lobby of Hanson’s thought experiment.
But
I expect the logic of commerce and technology will be consciously
harnessed, as already in pornography, to address the unhappiness of
incels, be they angry and dangerous or simply depressed and despairing.
The left’s increasing zeal to transform prostitution into legalized and
regulated “sex work” will have this end implicitly in mind
NO!
No, no no! The "left's" zeal to legalize sex work is not aimed at appeasing potentially violent MRA's by helping to get them laid. The point of legalizing sex work is to make it less dangerous FOR THE SEX WORKER. Do you really not understand this? I don't know how to explain this, but not everything is about you. Not everything is done with an eye toward making pathetic men feel undeservedly better about themselves. Sorry to have to be the one to break it to you.
. . . the libertarian (and general male) fascination with virtual-reality porn and sex robots
will increase as those technologies improve — and at a certain point,
without anyone formally debating the idea of a right to sex,
right-thinking people will simply come to agree that some such right
exists, and that it makes sense to look to some combination of changed
laws, new technologies and evolved mores to fulfill it.
No we won't. We "right-thinking" people will not come to that conclusion. Our position will be then what it is now. You have the right to have sex with anyone who is willing and is an adult. You have the right to watch virtual-reality porn or regular two-dimensional porn as long as everyone involved in making it did so voluntarily. And you absolutely have the right to spend your money on a sex robot.That's it. You don't have any claim on another person's body. And you never will. And by promoting the fiction that someday such a right will be recognized, you are only feeding in to the pathology of these "incels" increasing their belief that they are "owed" sex and making it more likely that they will act out in violent ways when this proves again to not be the case.
Stop it.
Stop humoring these people.
I know you don't actually believe in any right to sex. You believe that everyone should have to live their lives by the dogma of the Catholic Church. If it were up to you, there would be no sex outside of reproduction. You're only humoring these man-boys because your misogyny is outweighing your aversion to human sexuality. You need to stop. This won't end well.
I saw this on Twitter the other day attributed to a professor at George mason University:
One might plausibly argue that those with much less access to sex suffer to a similar degree as those with low income,
No, one mightn't.
Lack of access to sex is annoying. It's frustrating. It's discouraging. It really isn't comparable to worrying whether you will be able to make the rent. It isn't really akin to having to choose between food and medicine. Lack of sex will not result in homelessness or malnutrition. They aren't similar.
. . . and might similarly hope to gain from organizing around this identity,
to lobby for redistribution along this axis and to at least implicitly
threaten violence if their demands are not met.
WHAT????
What the hell? Redistribution? And you're positing this as if it is part of a reasonable worldview? You can not be serious.
As with income inequality, most folks concerned about sex inequality
might explicitly reject violence as a method, at least for now, and yet
still be encouraged privately when the possibility of violence helps
move others to support their policies.
What? Seriously? You think that violence "helps move others to support their policies?" You think that when some pissed-off virgin drives a van into a crowd trying to kill as many women as possible that normal people see this and think "gee, that vile little murderer makes a good point?" I mean, do you think that Tim McVeigh helped bring new recruits into the anti-government militia movement? You think a lot of people converted to Islam after 9/11? Acting out violently when things don't go your way is pretty much the worst way imaginable to get people to see things from your point of view. As it should be.
. . . the possibility of violence helps move others to support their policies.
(Sex could be directly redistributed, or cash might be redistributed in
compensation.)
Cash might be. . . um, that's called prostitution and I don't know how to break this to you, but that's already a thing.
You ever see these ladies?
That's what they're doing. They're getting cash redistributed to them in exchange for redistributing sex to some sad loser. It's a valuable public service and it goes on in every town in the world. This isn't an idea you invented.
Strikingly, there seems to be little overlap between those who express concern about income and sex inequality.
Wow, that is so odd! How can that be? How can people care about something that makes life extremely fraught for a lot of people and not care about something that is annoying and could be solved with a quick personality transplant, a call to an escort service, or a bottle of Jergen's and a box of Kleenex? It's mystifying!
Strikingly, there seems to be little overlap between those who express
concern about income and sex inequality. Among our cultural elites, the
first concern is high status, and the later concern low status. For
example, the article above seems not at all sympathetic to sex
inequality concerns.
Yeah! Imagine that! Because one concern can literally be life and death, the other is a bunch of whiny little man-boys who think that it's completely unfair that women would rather date attractive men. Or smart men. Or men with decent personalities. Or men who don't live in their moms' basements. Or men who don't have facial hair that belongs in Whoville.
Or even men who are not under the impression that a certain amount of hours put in as a "nice" guy entitles them to vagina access.
Okay, I seem to have gotten a bit off-track. Where was I going with this?
Oh, right.
I assume that Professor Robin Hanson probably doesn't really agree with the "incels" about sex re-distribution. Although, he is someone who looks like this:
so I could see where he might feel a certain kinship with them. But that's not the point.
The point is, we have to stop humoring these kind of people. We have to stop pretending that people like this might have some kind of point. We for some reason decided to humor the gun nuts post-Brady Bill, telling ourselves that maybe they had legitimate concerns and not to dismiss their feelings out of hand and now we have a bunch of Dale Gribbels strutting around Target stores with assault rifles and gun massacres are just a part of the fabric of everyday life in the good ol' USA.
We* decided to humor the Teabaggers. We decided to pretend that they were just concerned about government overreach and taxation rates, and sure they might be a bit misguided and misinformed and racist as hell, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve to air their grievances in public. Now we have King Birther in the White House steadily dismantling every positive aspect of out Federal system.
This shit needs to stop. When you have maladjusted men who think that a reasonable response to being turned down for a date is to murder a bunch of women, the last thing we need is a tenured professor putting a pseudo-academic spin on their rage and trying to make it seem as if they might have some sort of point. Remember during the GW Bush administration, when everybody was worried that any word coming out of a Democrat's mouth was going to "embolden the enemy?" Robin Hanson is emboldening the enemy. And this shit needs to stop. Now.
*and by "we," I mean American society in general, not you and I, dear reader.
All right, you do have me curious, though. Let's hear it.
What’s bad for the gavel is good for the pen.
What is that even supposed to mean?
Never mind, let's just plow through.
What’s bad for the gavel is good for the pen. The Republican Party is in
the midst of a cataclysmic transformation. But all the political
turmoil is creating a burst of intellectual creativity on the right.
Ahahaha. . . oh, good one. "Intellectual creativity!" "On the Right!" Ahahahahaha!!!
Young, fresh writers are bursting on the scene: Sohrab Ahmari, Helen
Andrews, Charles Cooke, Mollie Hemingway, Jason Willick, Michael Brendan
Dougherty, Gracy Olmstead, James Poulos, Oren Cass, Matthew Schmitz and
many others.
And the one thing they all have in common? That no one has heard of any of them. Meanwhile the op=ed pages are still populated by the same right-wing schmucks they have been filled with for years - your George Wills, your Charles Krauthammers, your David Brookses. . .
Other conservatives are rising to defend that order, including National
Review’s Jonah Goldberg, who later this month comes out with his epic
and debate-shifting book, “Suicide of the West.”
.
Yeah. . .no. Nothing that has ever been produced by Jonah freaking Goldberg has ever been realistically described as "epic" or "debate-shifting."
"Stupid" and "shitty," yes. "epic" and "debate-shifting?" not so much.
Goldberg points out that for eons human beings were semi-hairless
upright apes clumped in tribes and fighting for food. But about 300
years ago something that he calls “the Miracle” happened. It was a shift
in attitude. For thousands of years, societies divided people into
permanent categories of race or caste. But, Goldberg writes, “the
Miracle ushered in a philosophy that says each person is to be judged
and respected on account of their own merits, not the class or caste of
their ancestors.”
WHAT?!?!?
Three hundred years ago?
Three hundred. . . so the early 1700's.
Goldberg's thesis is that in the early 1700's, mankind decided to stop judging people by their background or heritage and instead evaluate each individual on his own merits. In the 1700s.
When slavery of African people was at its peak. When European aristocracies held sway. When every nation on Earth was ruled by a monarch whose entire claim to authority was that he was the descendant of his ancestors. This was when the "Miracle" happened. Seriously.
So humankind decided to end tribalist conflict in the early 1700s. The era in which the Hapsburgs and Stuarts were fighting over the thrones of the United Kingdom. When Louis Quatorze was trying to exterminate the Hugenots in France. When Catholics and Protestants were slaughtering each other all over Europe, that was the time that the human race outgrew primitive tribalism.
Somehow, even though in the early 18th Century, humanity had decided to judge each individual on his own merit, not by the group to which he belongs, the Holocaust still happened. And the Armenian genocide. And Jim Crow. And lynchings. And the Yugoslavian civil war. And the Tutsi-Hutu war in Rwanda and all the other horrible atrocities of the 20th Century that can all be flung, bloodied and disfigured, onto the doorstep of unrelenting tribalism.
