Chuck Darwin on Nostr: The ideas have seeped into Trumpworld, influencing the agenda known as Project 2025, ...
The ideas have seeped into Trumpworld,
influencing the agenda known as Project 2025,
as well as proposals set forth by the "America First Policy Institute".
A new book called "Unhumans",
co-authored by the far-right conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec
and endorsed by J. D. Vance,
describes political opponents as “unhumans”
who want to “undo civilization itself”
and who currently “run operations in media, government, education, economy, family, religion, and arts and entertainment”
—the seven mountains.
The book argues that these “unhumans” must be “crushed.”
“Our study of history has brought us to this conclusion:
Democracy has never worked to protect innocents from the unhumans,”
the authors write.
“It is time to stop playing by rules they won’t.”
My own frame of reference for what evangelical Christianity looked like was wooden pews,
the ladies’ handbell choir,
and chicken casseroles for the homebound.
The Southern Baptists of my childhood had no immediate reason to behave like insurgents.
They had dominated Alabama for decades,
mostly blessing the status quo.
When I got an assignment a few years ago to write about why evangelicals were still backing Trump,
I mistakenly thought that the Baptists were where the action was on the Christian right.
I was working for The Washington Post then, and like many journalists, commentators, and researchers who study religion,
I was far behind.
Where I ended up one Sunday in 2021 was a church in Fort Worth, Texas,
called "Mercy Culture".
Roughly 1,500 people were streaming through the doors for one of four weekend services,
one of which was in Spanish.
Ushers offered earplugs.
A store carried books about spiritual warfare.
Inside the sanctuary, the people filling the seats were white, Black, and brown;
they were working-class and professionals and unemployed;
they were former drug addicts and porn addicts and social-media addicts;
they were young men and women who believed their homosexual tendencies to be the work of Satan.
I met a young woman who told me she was going to Montana to
“prophesy over the land.”
I met a young man contemplating a future as a missionary,
who told me,
“If I have any choice, I want to die like the disciples.”
They had the drifty air of hippies, but their counterculture was pure Kingdom.
They faced a huge video screen showing swirling stars, crashing waves, and apocalyptic images,
including a mushroom cloud.
A digital clock was counting down,
and when it hit zero,
a band
—keyboard, guitars, drums
—began blasting music that reminded you of some pop song you couldn’t quite place,
from some world you’d left behind when you came through the doors.
Lights flashed.
Machine-made fog drifted through the crowd.
People waved colored flags,
calling the Holy Spirit in for a landing.
Cameras swooped around,
zooming in on a grown man crying
and a woman lying prostrate, praying.
Eventually, the pastor,
a young man in skinny jeans,
came onstage
and demon-mapped the whole city of Fort Worth.
The west side was controlled by the principality of Greed,
the north by the demonic spirit of Rebellion;
the south belonged to Lust.
He spoke of surrendering to God’s laws.
And at one point, he endorsed a Church elder running for mayor,
describing the campaign as
“the beginning of a righteous movement.”
influencing the agenda known as Project 2025,
as well as proposals set forth by the "America First Policy Institute".
A new book called "Unhumans",
co-authored by the far-right conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec
and endorsed by J. D. Vance,
describes political opponents as “unhumans”
who want to “undo civilization itself”
and who currently “run operations in media, government, education, economy, family, religion, and arts and entertainment”
—the seven mountains.
The book argues that these “unhumans” must be “crushed.”
“Our study of history has brought us to this conclusion:
Democracy has never worked to protect innocents from the unhumans,”
the authors write.
“It is time to stop playing by rules they won’t.”
My own frame of reference for what evangelical Christianity looked like was wooden pews,
the ladies’ handbell choir,
and chicken casseroles for the homebound.
The Southern Baptists of my childhood had no immediate reason to behave like insurgents.
They had dominated Alabama for decades,
mostly blessing the status quo.
When I got an assignment a few years ago to write about why evangelicals were still backing Trump,
I mistakenly thought that the Baptists were where the action was on the Christian right.
I was working for The Washington Post then, and like many journalists, commentators, and researchers who study religion,
I was far behind.
Where I ended up one Sunday in 2021 was a church in Fort Worth, Texas,
called "Mercy Culture".
Roughly 1,500 people were streaming through the doors for one of four weekend services,
one of which was in Spanish.
Ushers offered earplugs.
A store carried books about spiritual warfare.
Inside the sanctuary, the people filling the seats were white, Black, and brown;
they were working-class and professionals and unemployed;
they were former drug addicts and porn addicts and social-media addicts;
they were young men and women who believed their homosexual tendencies to be the work of Satan.
I met a young woman who told me she was going to Montana to
“prophesy over the land.”
I met a young man contemplating a future as a missionary,
who told me,
“If I have any choice, I want to die like the disciples.”
They had the drifty air of hippies, but their counterculture was pure Kingdom.
They faced a huge video screen showing swirling stars, crashing waves, and apocalyptic images,
including a mushroom cloud.
A digital clock was counting down,
and when it hit zero,
a band
—keyboard, guitars, drums
—began blasting music that reminded you of some pop song you couldn’t quite place,
from some world you’d left behind when you came through the doors.
Lights flashed.
Machine-made fog drifted through the crowd.
People waved colored flags,
calling the Holy Spirit in for a landing.
Cameras swooped around,
zooming in on a grown man crying
and a woman lying prostrate, praying.
Eventually, the pastor,
a young man in skinny jeans,
came onstage
and demon-mapped the whole city of Fort Worth.
The west side was controlled by the principality of Greed,
the north by the demonic spirit of Rebellion;
the south belonged to Lust.
He spoke of surrendering to God’s laws.
And at one point, he endorsed a Church elder running for mayor,
describing the campaign as
“the beginning of a righteous movement.”