Canceling Christ (Immanentizing the Eschaton, Part Two.)

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. ~John 3:16

I saw this earlier today.

It was, apparently, written by an anti-mask, anti-vaccine nut who believes in the modern, secularized End Times beliefs of the conspiracy theorist movement.

It posits, automatically, that for all of their power, for all of the political power they have stored up like crazed squirrels stocking up nuts for the wintertime, for all of their guns, for all of their constant violent rage every time they're ever confronted with anything they don't like or which inconveniences or offends them, conservatives, by their own logic and according to their own battle plan, are going to lose.

More to the point, they're going to lose to some made-up caricature of "The Left" that only exists in their own heads.

It also posits that the conditions that exist with the current pandemic will continue forever, which is something I'm pretty sure nobody wants, least of all the people trying to protect us for Coronavirus, and none of these kind of conditions the author of this post posits exist in any of the countries that have managed to get ahead of the curve on this thing.

But the author thinks...apparently wants to think...that the current conditions will go on forever when by definition they can't. Something will boil over, and we'll either cure the virus or it will kill us. No one but her wants this shit to go on forever.

But this writer posits that it will.

And that they, the conservatives, gun nuts, religious people, etc. will then somehow meekly accept this, when they never have before. They certainly haven't now, and I've got the pictures of chuckleheads screaming at cops in my state's capitol building to prove it.

Trust me, I was a conservative in the 1990's when the Left Behind novels were absurdly popular and the Christian End Times Prophecy Movement was riding high and needed...and had...no secular wannabe imitators. I know things. We didn't meekly accept shit and yet Bill Clinton, for all of his flimflam Slick-Willie adulterous ass bullshit was nowhere near as bad as Trump is and nobody with a brain in their head thought he was the Antichrist. I've written rather extensively about this.

Bear with me, for a moment, because this snipped bit of text bears special consideration.

First of all, bitch, nobody wants to arrest you for being an anti-vaccine dumb ass, we'd just like you to stop believing in stupid shit and trying to get the rest of us killed.

Second, nobody is trying to take away your coins, or any other form of money. Just most people find it easier to use debit cards and shit, or order stuff online, and sure as hell nobody is trying to implant a chip in you.

And that's the kicker, the Mark of the Beast shit, again. And the unsaid admission that she took it. That right there is what tells you that these people's religion, their desire to "Meet in churches and sing to God" is all crap and their churches are nothing but social clubs.

The author posits that the End Times are well advanced, but no Rapture, no Jesus, none of the massive social disruptions that are themselves, or let alone result from the judgments of God upon the Earth.

Seriously, does this dumb person think that God is powered by publicly-offered praise? Does Jesus get all soggy and hard to light if you don't sing "The Old Rugged Cross" every Sunday? Or does she think her God is Donald Trump, or a narcissist like him? Or does she simply buy into the notion put forward by some editions of Dungeons & Dragons, that Gods and the various planes of the Multiverse are powered by or archetypes of human belief?

Nobody expects, or wants, social distancing and shit to go on forever. Why in the hell do you think states and various cities and towns are mandating masks and trying to clamp down on anti-mask idiots like you, lady?

Nobody wants this crap to go on forever.

Except you, apparently.

And somehow this garbage always comes down to these fucking people believing they'll have to hide their Bibles under the floorboards and talk Bible in secret when nobody else is around. It's almost like they don't think the very First Amendment to the United States Constitution, nor the vast bodies of law around it nor the entire massive industry of manipulative Evangelical crap that exploits it really exists...or that somehow, all of this could just be whisked away by the flip of a switch into whatever some mysterious "Leader" wanted.

Bitch, the Trump era itself is mostly putting the lie to your stupid conspiracy theorizing.

I'm going to sound real harsh here for a minute.

Here we have a supposedly Evangelical Christian woman basically saying that when you die you're nothing but bones going into the Earth, that it's literally all crap, that nothing matters, that beliefs and causes that people have literally...rightly or wrongly, sincerely or otherwise...dedicated their lives to, that armies and guns, and weapons that could destroy the world itself, and cultures and religions and every other thing you can think of, that God Himself, will not matter in the face of the All Powerful Conspiracy Theory, and that defeat is inevitable.

Who the fuck wants to live in a world like that, with no hope? Even if the hope is wrong, I'll take it. I'm just saying, this fucking person is basically saying she's willing to live in a Godless, grim, hopeless world to be proven right about some bunch of conspiracy theories that are obviously bullshit.

She wants to make sure her grandchildren can sing to God, but she herself has canceled Christ.

"For God so loved the world..." those words alone imply a far more hopeful universe than this person can even imagine. It's a pretty revolutionary thing to imagine, let alone actually believe, that the force that maintains the Universe from moment to moment loves its Creation, and thus in some way cares about you. How does that never enter these people's consciousness?

"...That He gave his only begotten Son." Even in the most hopeful of times, or universes for that matter, life requires belief in truth, and sacrifice, and work. Being a spectator in life and sitting on your ass collecting checks ain't an option. Freedom isn't free, citizenship requires doing the hard work of life, not outsourcing your agency to any given yahoo that comes along and says "Follow me" but then goes and plays golf until it's time to go to a rally and say dumb racist shit and thrill to the roar of the howling angry mob.

"...That whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Your bones go into the Earth, true enough, but the entire basis of this stuff...the entire reason that people believe in things like religions...is that you are not there. Whether you've crossed some mythological river and paid the ferryman to go to Elysium or the Underworld, or passed on to some shiny or verdant Heaven or simply reincarnated as something else, or maybe even just ceased to exist altogether as you achieve Enlightenment or Oneness with the Universe and broken the cycle of death and reincarnation, the whole damn idea is that you're not there, that dead flesh is not you, anymore, your soul is eternal.

Why is it easier to believe in some stupid conspiracy theory than it is to believe in that?

Mind you, I learned every single word of this as a conservative. Agnostic that I am, I would not want to live without that knowledge. I believe there's something there, logic dictates there has to be. I don't know what it is, but I'll find out when I get to the Other Side.

I find it sad, that the people who for most of my life claimed the knowing of All Truth have discarded theirs...and for Donald Trump?

Something doesn't compute here, I'm just saying.

Why is it easier to believe the endless vapid prattle of Donald Trump than 25 words in the Book of John?

Why is it better to defend four years of Donald Trump than the 65 years of relatively-established conservatism that happened before he decided to run for President?

And that these fucking people will throw anybody under the bus in these times who defends those that are trying to do their job and protect the people from the virus, or who disagrees with Trump even a little bit, damned well ought to tell you everything you want to know about the people who are all like "Hey, remember when you could think whatever you wanted?"

Yes, I do, I remember when I was a Republican and could think whatever I wanted. I had to become a Democrat to keep the freedom to do that. I bet AOC and Liz Cheney remember, too. To her credit, Liz is not backing down. I'll take it.

And Ted is denying he said what he said when he called AOC a bitch for questioning policing tactics.

It pisses me off that the people who taught me to believe in Christ, to believe in truth, to be intellectually curious to find that truth, to question the power of the State, and to not be a boot-licking suckass have abandoned all that in favor of a level of worshiping the Leader and the Party and the State that would not have been out of place in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Like I keep saying, these people are trying to impose their shitty beliefs, which are the thing they truly believe is divine, on the rest of us.

And then they'll call anybody who doesn't bow down and lick the boots of their chosen enforcers of the authority of the Transcendent State a 'Fucking Bitch' or worse, or just beat you for asking them to remember their oaths to the Constitution.

But ya know, they're basically coming right out and saying they don't believe in their own God at this point, that God that they've spent most of my life trying to impose belief in on everybody else.

Immanentizing the right-wing Eschaton requires eliminating all the other Gods first.

So what the hell else can you expect?

Part One.

Part Three.