But seriously folks, speaking of Jewish Space Lasers...

[MeDotOrg]

Opening shot:

It's an homage to the Twilight Zone. Soundstage. Blacked out. A single white spotlight is thrown on the stage. We hear footsteps echoing on the hard concrete. Into the light walks a man wearing a suit and smoking a cigarette. As he walks into the spotlight, the camera gradually drops to eye level, his image fades from color to black and white. He raises his head and with a distinctive clipped urgency begins to speak:

Submitted for your approval. There is a universe parallel to our own, that exists in the space between fiction and fantasy, between what we want and what we fear, where reality is composed of transitory truths created to meet the moment, but never the future.

In this universe, Jewish Space Lasers start wildfires in California, Pizza Parlors are covers for pedophilia rings, and Hillary Clinton devours the faces of young girls.

It is a place where voting machines are controlled by dead revolutionaries, where the people are sheep and everyone else is controlled by the dystopian deep state and mainstream media. Pandemics are manufactured by the Chinese so that Bill Gates can use vaccines to inject microchips into your brain.

Enter a universe that exists without scale or measurement, between shadow and substance in...

The Q-Zone

For the first episode, perhaps a Republican Caucus...

[Some Schmo]

I just watched Bill Maher (from last night's show) make the same point I've been making for years on this board: the Trump phenomenon and QAnon are only possible because we give people a free pass on religion.

Religion is brain AIDS. It compromises your immunity to BS.

[Moksha]

Religion is brain AIDS. It compromises your immunity to B.S..

Trump was definitely a religion-free character, but he was highly susceptible to the QAnon lies (or at least he repeated them to cultivate and satisfy his base).

[DrW]

When I first read the quote below, I judged it to be a bit harsh and unrealistic.

"The whole point of evangelicalism is that you get to constantly be persecuted, and you enjoy moral superiority from that."

However, in light of this idea, certain recent events in the GOPQ (formerly Trumpworld) began to make sense - in a twisted Q way.

{Marjory Taylor Greene} voters are uber conservative and didn’t vote her into Congress to represent them, to fight for their interests or their share of the big government money, to “bring home the bacon.”

They sent her to Capitol Hill to die on that hill, like Jesus Christ on the Cross at Calvary, in order to reenact the suffering of God’s chosen at the hands of His enemies.

The existential crisis that the Republican Party now finds itself in is the result of dishonorable individuals with wealth, power and influence conning the most vulnerable, such as ill-informed evangelicals, into believing thigs that are not true, and thereby voting against their own best interests because of what they have been led to imagine is the will of their invisible friend in the sky.

Marjorie Taylor Greene did not go to Washington to represent the will of the people, because, to God’s chosen, representing the will of “the people” is an abomination. Authority does not arise from below, from the consent of the governed. It descends from above, from God. It doesn’t matter to Greene that she was removed from committees—that the tools of lawful democratic engagement with other human beings worthy of dignity and respect were taken away—because democracy is the problem. To engage democratically in a republic of equals is to make nice with the enemy.

Greene and most of the rest of the Republicans fear a slippery slope, but it’s not a slippery slope into tyranny. It’s a slippery slope into freedom—for all. What they aim to preserve is a social hierarchy that protects but does not bind the privileged few while it binds but does not protect the unprivileged many. What they want is a state in which the small in-group and the huge out-group are separate and unequal. What they fear is a slippery slope threatening to bring liberty and justice to everyone else.

On the bright side, with the fruits of the far right's worldview laid bare on January 6, trump now largely sidelined, viewers and sponsors leaving Fox News in droves, and Biden not giving in to Republican demands that they be given an equal place at the table they tried to destroy, it looks as if the four year fever may be breaking.

[Moksha]

"Everyone I know uses campaign funds for a family vacation, besides, most of it was paid for by lobbyists."

[Gunnar]

When I first read the quote below, I judged it to be a bit harsh and unrealistic.

Marjorie Taylor Greene did not go to Washington to represent the will of the people, because, to God’s chosen, representing the will of “the people” is an abomination. Authority does not arise from below, from the consent of the governed. It descends from above, from God. It doesn’t matter to Greene that she was removed from committees—that the tools of lawful democratic engagement with other human beings worthy of dignity and respect were taken away—because democracy is the problem. To engage democratically in a republic of equals is to make nice with the enemy.

Greene and most of the rest of the Republicans fear a slippery slope, but it’s not a slippery slope into tyranny. It’s a slippery slope into freedom—for all. What they aim to preserve is a social hierarchy that protects but does not bind the privileged few while it binds but does not protect the unprivileged many. What they want is a state in which the small in-group and the huge out-group are separate and unequal. What they fear is a slippery slope threatening to bring liberty and justice to everyone else.

Ajax has all but explicitly and boldly (and, perhaps, even proudly) admitted that this is precisely what he wants--especially the bolded part--democracy and equality under the law be damned!