The Gallery of Just Plain Assholes (Part 1)

It’s not a trend, it has always been a part of the “new atheist” movement. They’ve always been western imperialists masquerading as neutral arbiters of reality. :woman_shrugging: Literally nothing has changed with them. They believe they are “correct” because they are white men.

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Yeah, you’re right about that. There was a time when atheism meant something… before all these old white dinosaurs turned it into a grift to get famous.

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But all atheism means is that you don’t believe in a supreme being. Nothing more. :woman_shrugging:

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I mean, technically, all that Christianity means is that you believe that Jesus is the Messiah. It’s a foundational belief (or lack of) around which one then has to build a whole network of other beliefs to sustain a consistent understanding of the universe.

It’s just the name of the party. Many centre-right parties in Europe have their origin in movements that emphasised their Christianity as a source of centralist conservatism. Angela Merkel’s centre-right party are called the Christian Democratic Union.

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It’s time churches followed the same laws as everyone else, everywhere. Pay taxes. Face consequences.

If you’re a bigot, being a religious bigot should never be an excuse that people tolerate

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There was at one point also a social justice movement that associated themselves with new atheism, though, people who thought that so long as we were questioning religious doctrine we should question societal inequity as well. From for instance Myers on that same article:

When I think back to that period when we were all giddy with the possibilities of a strong atheist movement, there are many other names that come to mind of eloquent, activist atheists who got left behind by that glory train — people who I thought were fantastic representatives of a progressive atheism. Think about Greta Christina, Mandisa Thomas, Jey McCreight, Lauren Lane, Rebecca Watson, Monette Richards, Sikivu Hutchinson, Annie Laurie Gaylor, and a few hundred others who should now be the names and faces we see on CNN whenever they go looking for a representative atheist perspective. They’re still around, but not getting the attention they deserve. Instead, Richard Dawkins is still the figurehead of atheism, with those other guys getting an occasional nod. I wonder why? Are the people on my list missing something? Or is it just their estrogen vibe?

The thing is of course if you leave the bigots in a group, the non-bigots leave…and in this case the bigots were as you say the more important part to start with. But there was a chance there I can see regretting.

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I was glad not to see PZ Myers on that list of New Atheists drawn to the far right. When I had my young adult edgy atheist phase at the height of that movement’s popularity it was him and his set that I was drawn to. Even then Dawkins seemed a bit, I don’t know, unsavoury.

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Counterpoint to what I saw as a hit piece/editorial on Greenwald. It begs reflection from all readers of political news.
People who speak truth to power–regardless of who has it–tend to be marginalized or “othered” by those with power and their followers.

that’s how #Resistance media deals with unpleasant truths: it blacks them out, forcing reporters to spread the news on channels like Fox, which in turn triggers instant accusations of unreliability and collaborationism.

I mean, I’d like it better if it actually addressed some of the things said, instead of being a counter-hit-piece against The Daily Beast from one of the very people it mentioned as one of Greenwald’s associates in this. :man_shrugging:

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Assholes, however, remain assholes.

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When Greenwald went all-in pro-Trump, he lost the title of one who “speaks truth to power.”

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Well, there you have it. Not only is there a push to discredit Glenn Greenwald, it’s so pervasive that even Glenn Greenwald is in on it.

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Greenwald would be the first to point out that you should keep track of journalists that regularly lie to prove a stilted world view, so that you don’t waste your time and money on them. He’s just such a raging asshole he doesn’t see how he himself fits into that picture.

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Also…

I mean… :woman_shrugging: Yeah, there is most certainly very real problems of US imperialism. It’s clear we’ve fucked the world up… but the reality is that we had an awful lot of help from the Soviet Union, and now Russia and China. Any powerful nation has done so in the modern era. We need to completely rethink globalization from the ground up, and the person to do that is not openly authoritarian leaders like Trump and Putin.

And I know lots of people respect Counterpoint, so there is their view of what’s happening with Greenwald:

At some point, just being against whatever the mainstream liberals do, no matter what it is, isn’t particularly helpful. I’m not much of a Clinton fan, but the reality is that the (highly imperfect) solution to the wars in Yugoslavia (bombing in Serbia to end their attempt to ethnically cleanse Kosovo of Albanians) was the only thing that was going to stop what was yet another ongoing set of war crimes. Dayton was not great, though… And we have to give his administration props for the Good Friday accords. Those have held until the asshole Brexitteers fucked it up. And he tried with the Oslo accords (Israel/Palestine). No one has made any effort to really bring both sides together since then.

So yeah… there is a whole bunch of shit you can lay at the feet the Clinton administration (they royally fucked up on Rwanda)… but it was not all entirely terrible. One thing we should be able to do is to make informed judgments about the actual facts of any administration or particular politician. And that does mean the GOP, too… but the problem there is that they’ve spent the last 50 or so years employing racist dog whistles and trying to claw back hard won rights for various people in the name of smaller government, and as such have made themselves vulnerable to a cult of personality, authoritarian leader, and that is where they are now. They have no real platform other than just cutting taxes and fighting the culture wars.

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A Shrub appointee.

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I wonder if federal judges can be removed for like, “rank inanity.”

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For people who don’t read German, Silas Katompa Mvumpa was blackmailed into playing under a false identity, Silas Wamangituka, by his agent for the last four years.

Reddit has a DeepL translation

Hopefully Silas isn’t punished for this, but fuck his agent for doing this. I already knew about predatory agents going around South America and Africa finding talented players, then abandoning them in Europe if they don’t meet the high expectations, but this is new. I wonder how many other players are being forced to play under false names?

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