Progressivism Equals Modern Day Pagan Religion

[Hound of Heaven]

Alex Karp, a longtime Democrat and Hillary supporter who once identified as a socialist and progressive, is now asserting that progressivism resembles a pagan religion that is regressive and is undermining and corrupting our western institutions.

He asserts that "the ivy league" institutions have adopted a new ideology, which he describes as a form of woke religion, to reorganize themselves in a manner that leads to the decline of these esteemed institutions, resulting in discriminatory dysfunction.

In this clip from February 2025, https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/02/18/p ... tions.html Alex Karp, a lifelong Democrat, commends Trump for his brilliance in rejecting a paradigm that leads to a foolish conclusion. He also highlights Trump's courage in presenting an alternative to the "Woke" paradigm that progressives are imposing on western civilization!

Regarding Elon Musk and DOGE, he aligns with my perspective since Trump's election, suggesting that Democrats, particularly the progressives, ought to support Musk by embracing DOGE and working to eliminate waste and fraud within the federal government. He emphasizes that he has been a lifelong Democrat, yet he is becoming weary of observing the party engage in self-destructive behavior by adhering to a "Woke" narrative that seeks to undermine the positive aspects of our western society.

In July 2024, during this interview https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/bi ... inst-Trump, Karo characterized the progressive movement as a slender Pagan Religion. He suggests that innovative individuals are departing from the Democrat party due to the lack of engagement from the progressive wing.

What Alex Karo is going through mirrors the experiences of RFKjr, Tulsi Gabbard, and Elon Musk in recent years, highlighting that Progressivism functions as an authoritarian pagan religion that restricts freedom of thought within its Woke narrative.

I have to say, since Trump's election and seeing many lifelong Democrats leave the party for a space that still values freedom of thought and a touch of common sense, I'm beginning to grasp why lifelong Democrats are aligning with Republicans in the battle against contemporary paganism. The sole reason I remain within the Democratic party at this moment is my enduring passion for being a Democrat. I hesitate to identify as a republican because the label brings to mind an association with Mormonism and conservatism, which unsettles me deeply.

[Kishkumen]

More hilarity. Paganism? Are you joking?

It is all the way secular Protestantism.

[canpakes]

[Gadianton]

Regarding Elon Musk and DOGE, he aligns with my perspective since Trump's election

As I've been saying, you've found your new party, what not join it?

This isn't like football where you stick with the team of your hometown because you can't change the place you were born. In this case, you do a disservice to yourself and the country by not supporting the party that is implementing your values.

[canpakes]

I’m pretty sure that progressives extract and drink the blood of helpless Christian children, Gad.

Not sure if they’re mixing it with Red Bull, though. That part’s just a rumor.

[Kishkumen]

Regarding Elon Musk and DOGE, he aligns with my perspective since Trump's election, suggesting that Democrats, particularly the progressives, ought to support Musk by embracing DOGE and working to eliminate waste and fraud within the federal government. He emphasizes that he has been a lifelong Democrat, yet he is becoming weary of observing the party engage in self-destructive behavior by adhering to a "Woke" narrative that seeks to undermine the positive aspects of our western society.

DOGE is like a project to make the forest safer by chopping down and hauling away all those pesky trees.

[Kishkumen]

Alex Karp, a longtime Democrat and Hillary supporter who once identified as a socialist and progressive, is now asserting that progressivism resembles a pagan religion that is regressive and is undermining and corrupting our western institutions.

People need to stop confusing billionaires with philosophers and statesmen.

[Kishkumen]

So, I found a substack essay that works to make some sense out of Alex Karp's idiosyncratic use of the word "pagan," which, as it turns out, is, in his mouth, little more than an empty epithet, which our acquaintance Hound of Heaven has adopted without understanding.

He begins not by criticizing the campus protests themselves, but by carping about what he alleges is the ideology driving the protesters. A man of his erudition, you see, need not concern himself with the boring exercise of reviewing the actions of the protesters. He can strike deeper than that, at the ideology behind their acts. And what is this ideology? What drives these protests, these threats to western civilization? (Yes, he takes it that far.) Let the man’s words speak for themselves:

"[It is a] thin, corrosive, cancerous ideology that regresses below Judaism, Islam, and Christianity and any way of western thought that is now a pagan religion affecting our universities because it’s dangerous to America."

According to Karp, these demonstrating university students, these encamped Ph.D. candidates, and their professors, have been driven by a regressive pagan religion to demand that Israel be made to stop using its U.S.-made tanks, jets, and 2000-pound bombs to slaughter whatever unfortunate Palestinian happens to be situated between the IDF and any given Hamas fighter or such fighter’s lair. Karp states as fact that this regressive pagan religion exists. Perhaps he’ll write a book to explain the facts and theories behind this challenging conclusion. The basis for his allegation is far from clear. However, it seems to me that the protesters, if they were pressed to identify a unifying ideology, would probably endorse the obvious one: the Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Could that be the pagan religion Karp is referring to?

One might see the Golden Rule as a regression from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in that it predates them. It would fit Karp’s criteria if he were being rational. Pagans, like the Romans and Greeks, who forged the foundations of western culture, invoked one formulation or another of the Golden Rule as a fundamental ethical precept, as did the founders of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which—if that’s what Karp finds objectionable—would render him supremely irrational.

If you are interested in reading the whole essay, here it is:

https://garycarltechentien.substack.com/p/karp

[Kishkumen]

More on Karp's ideas, as found in this book advocating militarism and imperialism facilitated by tech in order to keep America on top in the future:

But if The Technological Republic is Karp’s contribution to the battle of ideas for Western civilization, it amounts to little more than a gussied-up exercise in industry P.R. What really makes America great, the book claims, is not so much its system of government, nor its vaunted ideals and values, but its software industry. And, wouldn’t you know it: The most important software companies are the ones whose products, as Karp has put it, “power the West to its obvious, innate superiority” and “bring violence and death to our enemies.” In early February, when Palantir’s better-than-expected earnings report shot its stock price to another record high, Karp ended his letter to shareholders by quoting Clash of Civilizations theorist Samuel Huntington. “The rise of the West,” Karp wrote, “was not made possible ‘by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion … but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.’” He continued, still quoting Huntington: “Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”

If this is Hound of Heaven's value system, this whole exercise in lecturing us by quoting Karp has indeed been revelatory of his views.

For the article quoted above, see https://newrepublic.com/article/191786/ ... t-palantir

Takedown of Karp's fishy book by the article's author:

This tonal seesawing—for every Karpian truth-bomb, a lawyerly qualification; for each saber rattled, a pitch-deck cliché—is symptomatic of this book’s generic incoherence. Karp and Zamiska describe The Technological Republic as existing in the “interstitial but we hope to think rich space between political, business, and academic treatise.” That’s one way of putting it. Another is that it reads as though you asked an A.I. chatbot to write a set of Gladwellian think pieces in defense of American techno-militarism, with as many smart-sounding yet ultimately vacuous quotes as possible.

[Doctor Steuss]

Regarding Elon Musk and DOGE, he aligns with my perspective since Trump's election, suggesting that Democrats, particularly the progressives, ought to support Musk by embracing DOGE and working to eliminate waste and fraud within the federal government. He emphasizes that he has been a lifelong Democrat, yet he is becoming weary of observing the party engage in self-destructive behavior by adhering to a "Woke" narrative that seeks to undermine the positive aspects of our western society.

DOGE is like a project to make the forest safer by chopping down and hauling away all those pesky trees.

In the process, chopping the noggin off of a squirrel, holding it up and saying "look at this giant redwood tree," fact-checkers pointing out it's a squirrel, and then trying to scrub the evidence that you are too incompetent to tell the difference between a squirrel and a redwood.