Just as I love Appalachia and small town America, I love American protestant Christianity, because unlike in Europe, where church is just something old people go to to drink coffee with other old people, Americans REALLY believe in this stuff, or at least used to believe in it, especially back in the 80’s. A culture is more beautiful, when people genuinely believe in something beyond “science” and “racism is bad”.
Tibetan Buddhism is beautiful, even though I don’t personally believe eating poop from a Llama will heal my disease. Similarly, American apocalyptic fundamentalist Christianity is beautiful to me. Televangelists scamming people out of their money is not beautiful to me, but the ability of people to enter this kind of apocalyptic mindset, where they see the whole world transforming to bring about a satanic antichrist system and where they become extremely distrustful of their government, has a certain beauty to it. As an addict to psychedelics, I tend to think our own mindset shapes the reality we witness anyway.
As a smug European, too poor to afford air conditioning (while lying and pretending I just want to save the Earth by not wasting energy), I look at right wing white American LSWMs (peace be upon them) with the kind of smug adoration that a white social justice lawyer has when he looks at black ghetto dwellers. And just like them, I will make excuses for anything they do: “What, no, your honor, my client Mr. Sixpack did not intentionally rig his engine so he could roll coal against vegans on bicycles, he simply could not afford to have a mechanic look at his car so he had to fix it himself!”
The whole Alexjonesist apocalyptic conspiracy subculture of the 90’s and 00’s is a kind of outgrowth of this apocalyptic Christianity that is uniquely American. Then in the 10’s, a kind of convergence happened, between cynical populist conspiracy theorists and the old Republican right, in the form of Donald Trump.
They needed each other to win elections, you can’t have a Republican president if half of American conservatives refuses to vote because they think elections are rigged and the country is actually run by the Bavarian Illuminati through the Bilderberg group. It sucked for people like John McCain and Mitt Romney who thought they were above this stuff, but unlike them, Trump actually managed to win.
So you got a president who gets on the Alex Jones show and rambles about the deep state. A kind of mild conspiracy thinking about smug Europeans with their elitist climate change hoax (hint: the Illuminati are just using HAARP to cause all those hurricanes you guys are going to get this year) and George Soros and the deep state became mainstream in American right wing culture.
But the good days, were the 80’s, when Americans (peace be upon them) were making music videos about microchips and barcodes you would need to buy food in the supermarket:
European Christianity is pretentious. It’s about pretending to have good taste by playing old classical music and singing in choirs, about pretending to care about art. It is of course about how all the weird imagery and stories in Genesis and Revelation are “symbolic” and “should not be taken literally”. Hint: As you stop believing in Christianity, you start believing that everything is “symbolic”.
Just try being honest for once: You people don’t actually believe in Christianity, the priests just want to rape kids and the boomers just want to feel smug and elite. No, American fundamentalist evangelicals and Baptists are the last true Christians. American Christianity is about legitimately unironically trying to save people from being tortured in hell by Satan for all of eternity. That’s what it means, to believe in Christianity.
Unlike Catholics, who like to pretend the book of Revelation was about Nero, because Catholics became part of the power structure and thus don’t like anti-elitist prophecies about a world government that forces you to make an engraving in your skin that eventually comes alive and makes you suffer big red wounds on your skin, American protestants actually took the book seriously.
Dear European elderly Catholics, no this book is not about Nero’s persecution of Christians. Sorry American fundamentalist LSWMs got this right, it’s unironically about the COVID19 vaccines gradually destroying your immune system, until the angel sounds his trumpet and gives you all red sores on your skin, sorry. It’s already too late, your boomer ass hurried to get three shots, but for now, just be careful when you go to the supermarket.
The book of Revelation is beautiful, regardless of whether you think it is objectively true or not. And because American Christians consider it to be objectively true, instead of going “um yeah uh it’s uh a symbolic uh representation of the uh persecution of Christians by the emperor Nero uh you shouldn’t take it literally”, American Christians manage to make some amazing art about it, whereas European boomer Christians just make excuses about it.
Anyway, I made this post because I wanted to share some more of this era, of American Christians trying to stop the spread of Satanism. It resulted in some amazing corny art. Unlike Catholics (fuck Catholics) who are too smug and busy massaging their prostate while enjoying their aesthetic orgasm over the beauty of mass (right wing variety) or how many trillions of refugees they helped get into the country (left wing variety), American Christians are busy saving souls, by engaging the modern world, instead of trying to appear above it.
So we got ourselves: CHRISTIAN HORROR MOVIES! Yes, American Christians made HORROR MOVIES TO STOP PEOPLE FROM FALLING FOR NEW AGE RELIGIONS!
GOD BLESS AMERICA!
I’ll share one with you here. This is The Grim Reaper (1976), a one hour long Christian horror movie, about a family who contact a new age medium to talk to their deceased family member.
There is in fact a whole blog, dedicated to this Christian kitsch from around the 80’s.
And the guy running that blog uploaded a whole bunch of good stuff here.
He made a whole vaporwave album too that nobody bothers to check out:
It is done by an actual Christian American, who loves this campy aesthetic as much as I do.
Did you ever read Snow Crash?
No?
It was written in the 80s and has some interesting themes about religion and consciousness
Yeah it’s surreal how the American fundamentalist Christians are correct about us living in the end times, as described in the Book of Revelation.
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse:
– War (Ukraine & Middle East)
– Plague (SARS2 & H5N1)
– Famine (climate change, economic ruin)
– Death (from all of the above)
Also the “mark of the beast” (vaccine passports, QR codes, digital I.D., microchips):
https://www.npr.org/2018/10/22/658808705/thousands-of-swedes-are-inserting-microchips-under-their-skin
Well, just look at the “inexplicable” excess death rates
Yeah, there’s nothing new under the Sun.
I sometimes think that everything both is now, and has always been, one continuous rolling apocalypse.
Sooner or later, it will come to a head.
In the meantime, I’m not accepting the mark of the beast – and tell me I’m the only person who thought of that when they piled on the pressure.
Accepting the mark, or being cast out of economic and social life, will obviously be an economic and social disaster for all those who are recalcitrant.
I’m not sure what, if any, steps can be taken to mitigate it.
I imagine they will basically be forced to give up participation in society, lose everything, be outcast, and probably end up in prison.
Oh well.
So it goes.
Or maybe killed by government.
I’ve (sort of) made my peace with it (as if I won’t be sticking my finger in their eye the whole way).
Recalcitrance come what may.
It’s not as if I have a choice in that anyway.
When I was younger, I went to a Baptist Church for like a year or-so. I was raised atheist but I wanted to give it a shot (even though I’d previously seen spirituality in-general as retarded) I never could believe, even though I tried.
They had a bookshelf, with something like this on it.
https://thenaturalhistorian.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/dinosaurs-tower-babel-humans-eden-ken-ham-crop.jpg
I couldn’t help it, seeing a book about ancient jews riding dinosaurs made me laugh hysterically. Everyone there looked at me like I was some sort of alien, I played it off saying something like “I just thought of something funny” But in that moment I think they knew I wasn’t like them.
I could never take Baptism, or any other form of Christianity seriously.
I never bothered to try a bunch of churches. I was raised by atheists, and I knew from what I’d observed that I’d just think that the people who attended church were morons. But one night about ten years ago I suddenly decided that I’d spent my life blocking something out. What it was, I wasn’t sure. So I lay back and stopped blocking. I wasn’t on any drugs or anything. I just stopped blocking. And it was totally terrifying.
That was when I “got” what (real, old time) Quakers were about (although I didn’t find them until sometime later). You wait, and God gives you what he he gives you. You open the door to Him (and not generally; as I had done, since if you do it generally you get bad spirits too). If you wait humbly and nothing happens, well that means He has nothing to say to you at the moment, and you should just read some of the bible for help and comfort.
The old time Quakers I know are just like me. That is the really strange thing. Other than being more polite than I naturally am I don’t have to fake anything.
That’s interesting, what made you willing to to stop blocking out God and what did he say to you? (if you don’t mind sharing). Why do you think God appeared to you?
It had literally never occurred to me that I might be blocking out God or anything else. I am extremely dense. Also, having been raised an atheist, I hadn’t read the New Testament verse about Christ always knocking on the door. So it wasn’t that I was intentionally blocking out God; it just didn’t cross my mind that there might be something more out there that might reach me some way other than by reason. I’d read some religious history books and some religious texts, but it was all just words. As to why I stopped blocking Him, at this point I assume that God put it in my head to think of doing this. As soon as it occurred to me I tried it; I didn’t hesitate.
I’m reluctant to tell you what I experienced. I don’t want to create specific expectations; if you have them then you will think your experience was just expectation fulfillment. I can tell you that the experience is pretty consistent among Quakers. When we do talk about what happens to us, we say similar things.
I haven’t thought about why God would do this. People say God is this, God is that, God is love, blah, blah. But all we Quakers have is our experience of Him. I don’t feel the need to come up with His reasons. Humans have reasons. Maybe God does, too, but it seems unlikely that I would be able to work them out.
Thank you for your reply, it’s interesting.
Little surprise you are a fan of American Evangelical Christians — they are the second major force embroiling my country in Israel’s wars for world domination.
You thought you were being slick and could slip this subliminal messaging into your readership.
But I, for one, caught it.
Radagast, Mehen here think you’re a CIA glownigger trying to get the low status white males to support the construction of the global Templist (Third Temple) New World Order. Pls confirm or deny.
Yes, Rad.
Please CONFIRM
or
DENY
GOD BLESS THE NEW WORLD ORDER!
https://youtu.be/fQrOuXHr-Cs
OT, but new Radagast addiction just dropped:
https://twitter.com/alieninsect/status/1808737401730445487?s=46
From the link:
“”The Psilocybe and Boophone extract,referred to as seipone sa koae-ea-lekhoaba, is consumed by the patient, who is then placed in front of a reflective surface and relays the hallucinations/visions seen in the reflection to the healers who interpret these as answers to the patient’s spiritual questions…”
This makes me wonder if this is how this blog has operated from the start…
Someone mentioned Racoons recently;’
https://twitter.com/amazlngnature/status/1808453868642079144?s=46
Have you see this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ziu2rrNS7S0. It makes me proud to be an American. No other country has anything like this guy. Those raccoons are as fat as ticks.
Wow, I feel like the Cathy Don’t Go video is the first real art I’ve seen this year.
I mean, I’ve seen other cool videos (the Doctor Dreadful Food Lab advert in the Churchwave video is a standout), but only the Cathy video qualifies as art. How did somebody ever get in the mental space where they would ever think of this?