You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! ~Isaiah 5:20

A middle-aged suburban Mom wrote an article today, about how Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death pushed her to join the Satanic Temple, because she wants a religion...or at least something...that she can count on to fight for her rights and those of her kids.

Okay, whatever. You go your way on this one, and I'll go mine. As long as we all pull together on November 3rd and vote the bastards out, I'm good. I don't give a damn what other people believe in because that's their business. I have my own beliefs and I'm not threatened by anybody else's.

I'm totally not kidding, though, when I say that Conservatives saw this and pretty much went bananas.

I'm totally not joking. There's thread after thread of this stuff, all the usual Evangelical freak-out bullshit, for the most part. People saying it's a sign of the End Times or "This is how pervasive Satan is" or whatever, blah blah blah. Because of course everything is always that with These Fucking People.

The Devil is always hiding around every corner, they always expect they're going to find a terrorist in the meat department, the world is always about to end. Somehow actual reality in all its difficult glory is never as exciting as these people's make-believe fake religiosity and its attendant spirit world full of dangers. It's like they read the Pilgrim's Progress and thought it was about a literal journey across the land where some kid fights giants and gets stuck in a swamp, instead of the allegory that it is.

Here's the thing, while still a Christian, I briefly dated a Satanist while I was going through my divorce. She was a decent, rational fucking person and we had a thing for a couple months in the summer of 2001 and we talked an awful lot. She was a lot more willing to talk, period, than the vast majority of Christians (especially Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, or Pentecostals) in my life were at the time. Plus she actually was fun to be around and interesting to hook up with.

And she, like the Muslims I dealt with during the school year, never once tried to convert me.

She probably forgot about me years ago. I've never forgotten her, and I remain thankful for the little bit of influence she had on my thought process.

About that, though...

That whole thing caused my ex-wife to have an epic religious flip-out that literally went on for years afterward. Before that, my ex had been the cold, rational bad actor. After that, she never made another rational decision regarding me ever again.

But as with these fucking people on Twitter, the self-righteous, smug faux-religious martyrdom was a constant. A never-ending drumbeat of trying to cheat the universe by trying to look righteous, even when the other parties can see full well what you are. There's something about this stuff that shorts out these people's brains.

I'm honestly not kidding when I say I think these people missed the point so hard they ended up in the next solar system, because not only do they piously not stop with their self-righteous circle-jerk long enough to maybe Google what the Satanic Temple is or what it stands for, they utterly refuse to undertake the introspection and self-examination that's exactly what the Satanic Temple people are generally trying to create by pointing out the hypocrisy.

And as an example, here's the poster of the snipped O.P. 

Rogan O' Hand-job or something like that. Fitting name for one of these Evangelical Christian circle-jerk motherfuckers.

What branch of Christianity does he follow?

I mean, is there one that canonizes the ass-tastic film version of Frank Miller's "300" which was, to put it mildly, garbage that failed to do the least bit of justice to the original comic book series...which itself lacked a lot of the nasty undertones that made the film appeal so much to right-wingers.

I mean, say what you will about Ross Douthat and his fascination with Gladiator, at least that film drew heavily on the same Platonic themes that underlie Christianity and on the Roman stoicism that was the basis for so much of global conservatism on a historical level. There was, ya know, actually something to it.

The film version of 300 is just a fascistic gore-fest and frankly anybody who can sit through that more than one time...well, to be honest, probably thinks the film version of Starship Troopers is a good movie and shouldn't be trusted to comment on much of anything. I mean, that particular Heinlein novel is basically Ayn Rand with more guns, but I read it, and it was at least more readable than Atlas Shrugged was. So there's that.

And of course this dumb son of a bitch has #MAGA in his bio, because of course he does.

Run around the shop floor naked, flapping your arms and shouting "He's The One!" long enough, and they think Trump will become God, I guess.

Yeah, assholes, we're in a battle of good vs. evil, alright.

You just decided to follow the closest thing we'll ever get to your own religion's Antichrist.

And you ended up on the wrong side.

I think we both remember what the Word says about that.

Have fun in hell.