BC SOCIETY
Saved by @Mollyycolllinss

I'm going to have to draw the line here. And, that's in reaction to a piece from, of all people, Greg Sargent - whom I regard as perhaps the @washingtonpost's top regular political columnist.

A text search shows the words "Christian","evangelical","fundamentalist" are absent...

 Consider the context - back on January 6th, protestors gathered in small groups on the Mall, and called upon their deity to consecrate what they were about to do. Then, in a howling mob, attacked the Capitol Building. Once inside the House chamber, they consecrated it to Jesus.
Now, let's walk it back a couple of years. In early 2017, I thought to myself, "OK, this is gonna be kind of predictable, but I'm going to look into the radical evangelicals flooding into the new Trump Administration."

See, I knew that would happen. It was transactional...
4) Trump cut a deal w/the evangelicals, along the lines of "vote me in, and I'll let your people do whatever the hell they want to do in my administration."

And it was so. In early 2017 I wrote this: https://t.co/mabl2EQnem
5) I was, to my knowledge, the 1st to write about this phenomenon, Ralph Drollinger's in-house theocratic bible study for Trump's cabinet.

Over the next few years, covering Drollinger's thingy become quite a media cottage industry. Predictably, none of the pieces mentioned mine
6) Early on, the @washingtonpost exposed a memo from the Council for National Policy to the new Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. @C_Stroop did, by far, the best job unpacking this ( https://t.co/OAMP8VV5Fs ) but there was more, and worse...
7) I cross referenced all the names on the memo to DeVos, and a significant number of them had served, or were serving, on the board of something called the "Coalition on Revival", which still exists and is both extremely obscure but also quite influential...
8) Back in the early Reagan years, various appendages of the Christian right effort to remake America were emerging. One key effort was the Coalition on Revival, which brought together a wide front of fundamentalists, evangelicals and charismatics to map out, in great detail...
9) ...a vision for the "Christian" transformation of America, across all sectors of society. Intellectually shepherding this process was Rousas J. Rushdoony and his merry band of Christian Reconstructionist ideologues. Rushdoony had written a huge tome for the complete "biblical"
10) ...transformation of societies & nations, his "The Institutes of Biblical Law".

Many in the horde who stormed the US Capitol would have been (probably quite unaware) under Rushdoony's ideological sway. And there was another major influence in play as well...
11) One of the odd things to covering the Christian right is the way pieces one might have written years, even decades ago, can suddenly become pressingly relevant again.

This is because coverage of the Christian right has been so thin, and patchy, so a very old piece might be..
12) ..just about the only thing ever written on a particular aspect of the movement.

Covering the planned January 6th rally (which became a coup attempt) journalist Bob Smietana, writing for Christianity Today, noted the planned "Jericho March": https://t.co/ZpQ2QqItpG
13) Smietana did not attempt to contextualize this - where, Christian tradition, did this "Jericho March" come from? What about the shofars?

Without getting bogged down in endless details., what you to know is that these rituals are quite new, and associated with...
14) ..a radical, hyper-charismatic new strain of Christianity that has swept not just America but *the entire globe* since the late 1970s. It looks a bit like traditional Pentecostalism but it's not.

Top scholars who study this movement, technically known as the "3rd Wave"...
15) (short for "3rd Wave of the Holy Spirit") have said, and I quote, that this movement has "no connection" to traditional Christianity.

The 3rd Wave is as radically different from traditional Christianity as was (and is) the Church of the Latter Days Saints (the Mormon Church.
16) Indeed, there are many similarities & parallels. One big difference, though - the Mormon faith sprang almost full blown from the imaginative visions of one man, Joseph Smith. By contrast, the 3rd Wave was created by entrepreneurs, technocrats, sociologists, anthropologists...
17) ..and other trained professionals, cobbled together from various bits and pieces chosen for their ability to be maximally catchy. The 3rd Wave (this is my hypothesis, BTW) was constructed to be maximally infectious. It's heavily imbued with music, ritual, faith healing...
18) ...and coercive technologies for social control developed in cults. As a movement, it resembles an inchoate super-cult formed of many intersecting local cults organized around churches & mega-churches. It's adherents infiltrate traditional churches to spread it's ideas...
19) Like #COVID19, it's *very* catchy.

A definitive academic reference work for global Christianity, laid down 2 decades ago, is "World Christian Trends AD30 - AD2200"

According to this work, by the year 2000 there were 295 million Third Wave Christians globally...
20) 2 decades later, the 3rd Wave is *much* bigger. Many of the #GOP politicians you might associate w/the Christian right are either in it or pander to it.

In the late 90s, leaders in the 3rd Wave began to organize their movement, starting to give it the very rough framework...
21) ..of a global church. They called it the "New Apostolic Reformation". The idea was that it was to be as radical, or even more radical, than the Protestant Reformation, and would trace its authority through NAR "apostles" who each would possess as much or even more authority..
22) ..as was wielded by Jesus' original 12 apostles.

And there were prophets, too, who talked directly to god & got specific teachings and instructions.

One key figure who helped pull this whole NAR thing together was an evangelist named C. Peter Wagner, who started out his..
23) ..career on a quite traditional road, as a Congregationalist (if you don't know what this is, think of the classic New England white church with a single spire.) Wagner went to S. America to evangelize, and thoroughly sucked at it. But he was *very* smart & got interested...
24) ...in the very question, what was the most effective way to spread the faith? Christians who study this know that the big breakaway success stories of the last few hundred years have been 1) the Mormon Church and 2) (even bigger) Pentecostalism.
25) So Wagner set about identifying the various elements which could supercharge Christian evangelism. And he allied himself with other Christian intellectuals with a similar tinkering, inventor's mentality.

The end product is the 3rd Wave, whose prophets can literally receive
26) ..teachings, straight from god, that *can be added to the bible, as new scripture*.

Now, imagine wielding that power as *a political weapon*.

Because that's exactly how the NAR uses it.
27) OK, catching my breath for a moment. I seem to be emitting something like a chapter of the book I've long needed to write. I guess this Twitter machine is for me a good motivational form...
28) Back in 2012, I found audio from an appearance C. Peter Wagner made in 2006 at a West Coast NAR church. He stated this doctrine directly - NAR prophets can receive new teachings that can add to scripture, though these cannot *contradict* scripture. https://t.co/k4QZsPqp6I
29) Notably, Wagner also states, flatly, that there is *nothing* in the Bible about abortion. Look in your Strong's Concordance, he told his audience, you won't find it.

BUT, he told them, *our prophets tell us it's wrong*.

And, I know just who one of those prophets is.
30) His name is Lou Engle. He came to public notice back in 2006, for his appearance in the video documentary "Jesus Camp", where he was seen indoctrinating kids at the summer camp, exhorting them to fight for "righteous [anti-abortion] judges".
31) As it happens, Lou Engle is one of the very prophets who got the message, straight from god, that abortion is wrong. He even lid that all out in a written doctrine, the "Doctrine of the Shedding of Innocent Blood". The shedding of innocent blood *requires* more blood...
32) ...to be spilled as punishment, or payback - so teaches Lou Engle, prophet of god. He draws a direct analogy to the Civil War - slavery was a sin, and it required the wholesale spilling of blood as a consequence.

So, how do you think people in Wagner's & Engle's movement...
33) ..might regard politicians who support legal abortion?

I have no indication whatsoever that the producers of "Jesus Camp" had the faintest inkling of who Lou Engle *really* was, nor did anybody with any size megaphone anywhere (except people in the NAR, of course.)
34) So, looping back around to the January 6th rally that preceded the coup attempt...

As I said, there were two main tendencies at work - one, very diffuse but *very* pervasive were the ideas of Rushdoony & his Christian Reconstructionists.

Now, remember that memo, from...
35) ..the Council for National Policy to Betsy DeVos (exposed by the Washington Post)?

Well, I cross referenced the names from the CNP committee that sent DeVos the memo, and quite a few of them were associated with the "Coalition on Revival" the true significance of which was..
36) ..that it *spread the theocratic & theonomic (biblical law) ideas of Rushdoony & his gang among the many factions of conservative Christianity*.

We know this, in part, because one of the top leaders in COR, a highly entertaining raconteur of a man named Colonel V. Doner...
37) ..would later write a book deeply critical of the NAR, which he seemed to think was going off the rails, in which Doner described his participation in, and experience of, COR. He didn't mince words - Rushdoony & his Reconstructionists had run the show. The ideas were theirs.
38) That book was "Christian Jihad: Neo-Fundamentalists and the Polarization of America". https://t.co/Kupw1IzkXX
39) Now, the book is a great read, and Doner is a hoot (I had about an hour phone chat with him back in '012) but I suspect he may also still be in the Christian Reconstructionist tendency.

COR very efficiently spread CR ideas widely among fundamentalists and evangelicals...
40) ...so that, now, even though almost nobody will admit to being a Christian Reconstructionist, CR's ideas are now ubiquitous on the Christian right.

One key group that COR spread CR ideas to were the charismatics. C. Peter Wagner (a new convert to charismania) & other...
41) ..charismatic leaders were at COR, and Wagner would later write that his NAR movement traced many ideas from Rushdoony.

Back in the 90s, a researcher & journalist named Frederick Clarkson noticed that Christian Reconstructionist ideas were spreading to charismatics...
42) Remember what I said about quite old articles, on the Christian right, suddenly becoming *very* relevant again?

Well, here's one of those - see the subsection of this long 1994 article, towards the end, titled "No longer without Sheep": https://t.co/DbEwgHfxzl
43) The Christian Recontructionists saw (and see) themselves as shepherds. They are the intellectuals providing the ideas to spark a mass movement.

They were always numerically tiny, but no matter - they now have "sheep", millions in fact, weaned on CR-derived visions of...
44) ...Christian Nationalism.

Now, for the wonkishly-inclined reader, here's a 2011 continuation of Frederick Clarkson's line of thought, from the website Fred & I co-founded in 2005:

"The Rise of Charismatic Dominionism (Updated)": https://t.co/RW0LH4xnYP
45) But to add some real-world spice to this, consider:

One of the most colorful entrances of the NAR, and its brand of Charismatic Dominionism into US national politics was when John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his VP running mate in the 2008 election.

You see, Palin was....
46) ...borned-agained, as a young teen, at an Alaska church that served as the beachhead for the NAR's invasion of Alaska: the Wasilla Assembly of God.

Now, "Assemblies of God" are churches in one of the major Pentecostal denominations. But, as I suggested, one of the...
47) ..major vectors for the spread of the NAR & its ideas & practices is through the infiltration of existing churches.

Wagner & his crowd, for all their magical woo ideas, are surprisingly organizationally & technologically cutting edge.

You wouldn't think that, of a movement
48) ...that seeks to cast out geographic "territorial spirits" to literally cause the magic manifestation of earthly utopias, or tries to literally raise the dead.

But, I've got footage of C. Peter Wagner giving a lecture, at a big South Korean church in 1993.

Most people...
49) ..rightly or wrongly, consider the idea Wagner was promoting - that the early 1990s downturn in the Japanese stock market happened because the new Japanese emperor had intercourse with a demon spirit who might have been a succubus - clearly be insane. But watch the footage..
50) ..from my 2009 Talk To Action story on this: https://t.co/X9zV1mZKHl

At the very start of the footage, you'll see somebody in the audience transcribing Wagner's talk, on an *extremely early* laptop that doesn't even seem to have a rollerball or a trackpad.
51) That's not an anomaly, it's characteristic - Charismatic Dominionism often can be found using cutting edge technology to push its agenda, regardless of the wildly a-rational nature of its ideas & practices.

To give you an example - during the 2016, one evangelical...
52) ..voter mobilization nonprofit dubiously obtained a database with information on about 200 million potential US voters, and used cutting edge algorithmic, psychographic software to microtarget potential Christian Trump voters in its GOTV drive.

Guess who was funding this?..
53) ..funding "United in Prayer" was one of Wagner's NAR "apostles" in the business world, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur named Ken Eldred who had made $ billions manufacturing computer widgets, cables, and so on.
54) An earlier Eldred philanthropic project was the funding of a series of pseudo-documentaries that purported to show how believers could, through doing "Spiritual Mapping" & then driving out identified "geographic" demon spirits...
55)..and killing or neutralizing people associated with those demon spirits, could cause the magical manifestation of mini-utopias on Earth - people would lose their drug & alcohol addictions, crime would end, polluted lakes & rivers would magically become pristine...
56) ...and (needless to say) everybody would become a born-again charismatic Christian.

A guy named George Otis, Jr. produced these pseudo-documentaries that were marketed under the "Transformation" name, and there are at least 1/2 dozen now that, legend has it, have been...

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\U0001f1fa\U0001f1f8 JFK 2 DJT \U0001f1fa\U0001f1f8
🇺🇸 JFK 2 DJT 🇺🇸...
@jfk2djt
The Nashville Operation - A Battle in the War

A thread exploring the Nashville bombing in the context of the 2020 Digital War (via SolarWinds) against the United States perpetrated by our enemies, likely China, Iran and/or Russia.


SolarWinds Hack

A digital "Pearl Harbor" moment for the United States, whoever was responsible had access to the keys to the kingdom for months during 2020, including sensitive military infrastructure. This is war!

SunGard + SolarWinds

SolarWinds software company is owned by same company that owns SunGard, which essentially provides data center services. A secure place to host internet servers with redundant power and "big pipe" data connections.

https://t.co/U3P3SrrkM1


SunGard Data Center

In Nashville, around the corner from their "big pipe" connection, AT&T. Like any data center, highly secure. Only authorized personnel can enter, and even fewer can access the actual server rooms. Backup generators are available in case of power failure.


If the SunGard hardware was being used to "host" critical command and control software related to SolarWinds, the US powers would be very interested in gaining special access keys that are stored on the hard-drives of specific servers.
SOCIETY
Garfield but Anti-Fascist
Garfield but Anti-Fasc...
@AntifaGarfield
Tomorrow, January 6th, MAGA chuds, Proud Boys, and white supremacists are planned to descend on Washington D.C. to contest the election. Among them will be NSC-131, a New England based neo-Nazi organization. Let's welcome them by saying hi to one of their members, Eddie Stuart!


Edward Stuart, from Chester, New Hampshire, has been a member of Nationalist Social Club (NSC) since the very beginning and is a staple participant in their actions. He is known in NSC chats as "Carl Jung" and is well connected in the New England Nazi scene.
2/


NSC-131 is a neo-Nazi group that was started in Massachusetts in early 2020 by Chris Hood. You can learn more about NSC and it's members in these threads:


Eddie describes his ideology as "Esoteric Hitlerism" which is an occult form of Nazism that literally worships Adolf Hitler as a god, or, specifically, as an incarnation of the Hindu God Vishnu. Here is Ed holding the RigVeda with some of his occult Nazi pals. Interesting Ed!
4/


Much of this ideological insight was gained from Eddie's Twitter, where he originally used his "Carl Jung" persona and reposts explicit neo-fascist content and racist memes. In one edited picture, Eddie can be seen at an NSC event in late June 2020 holding a Nazi Sonnenrad flag
5
SOCIETY
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Robert #Resist Sandy
Robert #Resist Sandy
@frodofied
Real talk.

The right as spent years trying to paint @NancyPelosi & @HillaryClinton as extreme leftists who will take your guns, sterilize your sons, outlaw Christianity, and tax you at 80%.

Meanwhile...

The far left has tried to insist that they were both Republican-lite.

1/

Some on the far left call them war mongering neoliberal corporate owned whores.

That's on a good day, for both.

None of these charges, by either side, are remotely true of course. Not that this matters to the people putting this shit out there.

2/

The facts are these.

@HillaryClinton and @NancyPelosi have been fighting people, usually white men, for tnings their entire lives.

With little respite.

At times they have had to make impossible choices and compromises just to beo let in the door. Most women have.

3/

It must be easy to be some 26 yo white dude who has never had anyone tell him no his whole life to sit in judgement of women like them.

"How dare she..."

...do what was necessary to get a place at the table.

...do exactly what men have been doing w/o your disapproval.

4/

Let's face it, most men suck when it comes to issues that don't pertain directly to their own self interests. White men are even worse. We just are.

Most men especially suck when it comes to women's issues and I mean really suck.

How many left leaning men fell to #MeToo?

5/
SOCIETY
Louis Morgan
Louis Morgan
@MasterMorgan317
Like most movements, I have learned that the definition of feminism has expanded to include simply treating women like human beings.

(A thread for whoever feels like reading)


I have observed feminists on Twitter advocating for rape victims to be heard, rapists to be held accountable, for people to address the misogyny that is deeply rooted in our culture, and for women to be treated with respect.

To me, very easy things to get behind.

And the amount of pushback they receive for those very basic requests is appalling. I see men trip over themselves to defend rape and rapists and misogyny every chance they get. Some accounts are completely dedicated to harassing women on this site. It’s unhealthy.

Furthermore, I have observed how dedicated these misogynists are by how they treat other men that do not immediately side with them. There is an entire lexicon they have created for men who do not openly treat women with disrespect.

Ex: simp, cuck, white knight, beta

All examples of terms they use to demean a man who respects women.

To paraphrase what a wise man on this app said:

Some men hate women so much, they hate men who don’t hate women
SOCIETY
NOT A DISCO DANCER || \u09b0\u09be\u099c \u09b6\u09c7\u0996\u09b0
NOT A DISCO DANCER || ...
@DiscourseDancer
Patriotism is an interesting concept in that it’s excepted to mean something positive to all of us and certainly seen as a morally marketable trait that can fit into any definition you want for it.+


Tolstoy, found it both stupid and immoral. It is stupid because every patriot holds his own country to be the best, which obviously negates all other countries.+

It is immoral because it enjoins us to promote our country’s interests at the expense of all other countries, employing any means, including war. It is thus at odds with the most basic rule of morality, which tells us not to do to others what we would not want them to do to us+

My sincere belief is that patriotism of a personal nature, which does not impede on personal and physical liberties of any other, is not only welcome but perhaps somewhat needed.

But isn’t adherence to a more humane code of life much better than nationalistic patriotism?+

Göring said, “people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”+
SOCIETY

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Vibhu Vashisth
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शमशान में जब महर्षि दधीचि के मांसपिंड का दाह संस्कार हो रहा था तो उनकी पत्नी अपने पति का वियोग सहन नहीं कर पायी और पास में ही स्थित विशाल पीपल वृक्ष के कोटर में अपने तीन वर्ष के बालक को रख के स्वयं चिता पे बैठ कर सती हो गयी ।इस प्रकार ऋषी दधीचि और उनकी पत्नी की मुक्ति हो गयी।


परन्तु पीपल के कोटर में रखा बालक भूख प्यास से तड़पने लगा। जब कुछ नहीं मिला तो वो कोटर में पड़े पीपल के गोदों (फल) को खाकर बड़ा होने लगा। कालान्तर में पीपल के फलों और पत्तों को खाकर बालक का जीवन किसी प्रकार सुरक्षित रहा।

एक दिन देवर्षि नारद वहां से गुजर रहे थे ।नारद ने पीपल के कोटर में बालक को देख कर उसका परिचय मांगा -
नारद बोले - बालक तुम कौन हो?
बालक - यही तो मैं भी जानना चहता हूँ ।
नारद - तुम्हारे जनक कौन हैं?
बालक - यही तो मैं भी जानना चाहता हूँ ।

तब नारद ने आँखें बन्द कर ध्यान लगाया ।


तत्पश्चात आश्चर्यचकित हो कर बालक को बताया कि 'हे बालक! तुम महान दानी महर्षि दधीचि के पुत्र हो । तुम्हारे पिता की अस्थियों का वज्रास्त्र बनाकर ही देवताओं ने असुरों पर विजय पायी थी।तुम्हारे पिता की मृत्यु मात्र 31 वर्ष की वय में ही हो गयी थी'।

बालक - मेरे पिता की अकाल मृत्यु का क्या कारण था?
नारद - तुम्हारे पिता पर शनिदेव की महादशा थी।
बालक - मेरे उपर आयी विपत्ति का कारण क्या था?
नारद - शनिदेव की महादशा।
इतना बताकर देवर्षि नारद ने पीपल के पत्तों और गोदों को खाकर बड़े हुए उस बालक का नाम पिप्पलाद रखा और उसे दीक्षित किया।
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For technical founders it is irrationally, obscenely hard to reverse years of programming (ba dum bum) that sales is a value-destroying activity. Sales is CLEARLY a value-creating activity, contingent on you have a value-creating product.

The world will not drop what they are doing to adopt your work. This is particularly true in B2B, where simply building a better mousetrap won't overcome the activation energy required to get people with additional non-mice problems to prioritize changing mousetraps today.

This is very non-obvious for founders because founders are not often people who *want* to be sold to. We often come from a background where trying out tools is a bit of a fun hobby. We like looking at all the options, making charts, and ripping out partially complete tests.

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Shalini Singh Sengar
Shalini Singh Sengar
@Maverickmusafir
(An extract from Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, Soldiering with Dignity)

The man eventually destined to be free India's first Field Marshal was born on 3rd April 1914 at Amritsar. How did a Parsi couple settle for the holy city of the Sikhs? I once asked him and was told that in+


1899, his father recently qualified as a doctor and just married, could make no professional headway in Bombay, and was advised to try his luck at Lahore in the Punjab. With his young wife, he set off by train for Lahore. The long dusty and hot journey took five days and by the+


end of it, his young wife, who had never left the comforts and civilization of Bombay, was in hysterics and cried to go back. Poor Dr Manekshaw did all he could to comfort her, but as the train steamed into Amritsar, with her first sight of the Sikhs the young bride screamed her+

lungs out and refused to go any further. So they left the train at Amritsar, and there they stayed for forty-five years.

The Manekshaws had six children, four boys and two girls, and Sam was the fifth child. Sam had his schooling at Nainital's Sherwood College.+

After completing his schooling, he should have gone to England to pursue higher studies; this was the promise made to him by his father but, fortunately for the Indian Army, Dr Manekshaw felt that this particular son was far too young to be on his own in a foreign country, even+
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sriram \U0001f1ee\U0001f1f3
sriram 🇮🇳...
@SriramKannan77
Saptapadi

The most essential rite (Sanskrit: rītī) of a Hindu marriage ceremony is Saptapadi (English: seven steps, saptapadī). Saptapadi is a Sanskrit term that means "seven steps." The wedded couple walks seven steps after tying the Mangalsutra, which is known as Saptapadi.


The couple legally becomes husband and wife after the seventh step.
Hindu wedding rituals: During Saath Phere, the bride and groom exchange their marital vows while circumambulating (walking around) the sacred fire seven times.


This is because the bride and groom exchange marriage vows and hope for a happy married life together.

1. The first marriage vow, out of seven, is a petition to the Lord for nutrition and nourishment for the Hindu bride and groom.


2. Hindu Bride and Groom: The second marriage promise is for strength in sickness, health, good times, and terrible times.

3. For the Hindu Bride and Groom - The third marriage promise is for the Hindu bride and groom's prosperity.

4. For Hindu Bride and Groom - The fourth pledge is to stand by their families in good times and bad.
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So, today, for the first time in 25 (!) years of Apple, I downgraded. From the 2016 MacBook Pro to my 2013, which I had kept in a drawer...


It was pretty simple to do—Apple Time Machine backups let me do it with one click.

That first tweet captures, in two pictures, how badly Apple has “lost the plot” (to quote @wylieprof). On the right is the Apple MagSafe adapter, from 2013. On the left, what I had “upgraded” to.

Thanks, Apple! I really was nostalgic for worrying about yanking my computer off the table.

Oh and I really appreciated not knowing if my computer was charging. What was great was the little whoop sound you used, so that the speaker before me could be informed I was charging my laptop.
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