Getting heavily tattooed, not having kids, not getting married/“settling down”. I grew up in an extremely conservative Christian home that pushed the standard “American Dream” plan but never embraced it. I’m aware there’s experiences that I’ll never have that are a source of joy and life defining for others, but I knew very early on those things weren’t calling me. Decades later I have zero regrets about what I didn’t do and what I did do.

I mean, when he looks in a mirror he’s seeing double of himself anyway.

If only Jesus would have been as explicit about his feelings on religious profiteering as he was about his attitude towards abortion, gays, and gun rights.

Don’t be obtuse prole. Of course there’s victims and victimizers. In this case two victimizers have joined forces for one cause, but they aren’t doing it for the sake of one another nor are they going to split the land once they take it. American Christians and Israeli Zionists will burn their “allies” once the bloodwork as done and turn on each other with the zeal and righteousness they currently show for Gaza.

It’s how Jesus recharges his power in between his solar cycle holidays.

The message is that personal hate and greed with your enemies is convenient so long as you have a third party to unleash your ire on. Both sides have an undercurrent of this genocide and imperialism as a holy war, both sides use one another, but the IDF has no more love for American Christians than Christian Americans have for Jews. United only in hate and the idea that their version of god justifies it.

I don’t think the IDF or the Christian nationalists put much stock in their actual “faith” or doctrine beyond the self-righteous justification that some form of god is on their side, all while knowing it’s capital and guns that win wars and enable genocide. The American Zionists can ignore the slaughter if they choose, don’t lose their own if someone shoots back, and above all their tax dollars are funding a holy war instead of social programs for their undesirable neighbors. Israeli Zionists get unlimited ammo and a bodyguard that, while in decline, remains enough of a threat that the rest of the world won’t cross them to take action against Israel. The IDF could burn a village of Israeli Christians on a pyre of US flags and their American supporters would write it off as “not our denomination”.

IDF soldier smashing Christian icons, presumably while getting funded and supplied by Christian nationalists across the pond.

Cannibal Corpse is missing out if they don’t do a limited edition repress of Hammer Smashed Face.

That does tend to be the source of most religious disputes- your salvation grift is cutting into our salvation grift, your cult is getting more popular than our cult, your influence could be a threat to local politics. Mormonism wasn’t rebuked by a woke mob of atheists sick of conmen, advocating science, and opposed to a new version of the old patriarchy, it was rebuked by a mob of other Christians who thought their Christianity was better. They joined forces out of bigotry, jealousy, greed, and xenophobia. Smith was a charlatan in Jesus’ name, he was just a more successful one than his rivals and that pissed then off.

That’ll clear up with a little ivermectin and a toilet rail.

I’m a dog trainer and work at a boarding facility. I know my dogs love to go there, don’t have separation anxiety, and that my coworkers adore them. On the rare occasion I have to leave them for a night or two I still get stressed despite knowing they’re going to be just fine. And they don’t even get kenneled, they’re spoiled brats who get to sleep in the office!

The modern dog food industry in the US was built on the rapid collapse of horses as a necessity when the assembly line made automobiles attainable. Once again, our best friend comes in to save the day!

Listen to Iron Maiden, baby, with me.

I was on a geology field trip, in college, and another student saw free range cattle and was excited to see her first elk.

Spook the market Sunday, spend spend the first half of the week blustering, place Polymarket bets on Thursday, announce the problem is solved and count your profits Friday, golf on Saturday (well, actually every day, but Saturday you don’t have to tweet if you don’t want to).

Too much penis, not enough jar shattering. ⭐️⭐️⭐️❌❌

Perhaps with this easing of restrictions on psychedelics they’ll find some new combination of shrooms, horse dewormer, bleach, and toilet seat coke that will bring it back. At a minimum that combo will have you thinking your hair is back.

There’s a special kind of superiority for evangelicals like the people who raised me. There’s the hatred of racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia- those are often easy to identify at first glance or figure out quickly. They want their white Christian America, and a substantial percentage of Mormons and Catholics are white and “Christian enough” when they need voter and public support. I think Catholics and Mormons have forgotten that the people they’ve been breaking bread with are the descendants of the people who terrorized the Irish and Italian immigrants and ran the Mormons out of New York, the Missouri, and tried to run them out of Idaho. Given time they’d probably turn on each other over Lutherans vs Baptists. They don’t actually want broad white evangelical supremacy, they want themselves alone to be supreme and to be able to tread on anyone else to have their way. They’ll always find an excuse to justify their personal “betterness”, but in fact are just empowering the oligarch class who will always reap the benefits of being above the law.

I realized as I got older how much of our history, the parts they have to acknowledge, are treated like they’re a singular moment in the past, resolved, and somehow could never resurface in a different form.

The push to frame the Civil Rights or Women’s Suffrage movements as the “correct” form of how American citizens call out inequality is also sanitized to the point it becomes toothless. We’re given a version where people just gather, speak out, sometimes get beaten to a pulp/jailed/killed but so long as they remain non-violent, eventually society will feel bad and someone with the power to change things will do so.

There are times where large scale protests are beneficial because it rallies and shows the scale of opposition. Sometimes witnessing the violence of the oppressors against peaceful people shocks and horrifies. But we’re at a point where watching cops, ICE, and Proud Boys brutalize others is fetish porn for MAGAts, and mass gatherings for the sake of showing up but not networking and continuing the movement during the weeks in-between is futile. They have no reason to see us as a threat if all we do is show up for a few hours one weekend every six weeks and hold signs.

And to my fellow dissatisfied leftists, if your aversion to anything more direct is rooted in the idea that previous protests were successful because they stayed “peaceful” and took their lumps, you’re protesting the way the machine wants you to. Just enough liberty to feel like you’re standing up to oppression but not doing anything that actually challenges the oppressor.