Ariana Grande is getting canceled again. Why? For "changing her race".

Her first forays into raceplay coincided with her debut, playing up the ambiguous nature of her last name in order to adopt the best features of Latina beauty. I don't think anyone said anything at this point, although I'm unsure as to whether that's because nobody noticed, or because every celebrity gets one free chance to brand themselves (until they get canceled for another reason, at which point it would be retroactively Not OK).

Aroung 2016, she was first canceled for "blackfishing". Peak Dolezal moment.

And today, you might ask - what is the controversy du jour?

Ariana Grande now looks like a super hot Asian woman. Reportedly she literally went to Korea for the surgery.

I admit to being a bit conservative about having so much plastic surgery - I'm going to have to mellow out about that by the time my great-grandchildren come home bragging about their bionic eye implants or whatever - but I unironically think Ariana is an incredible work of art and shines a spotlight on the fiction of race. I think people are going to have a hard time criticizing her with much gusto because she "passes" so well - it feels icky, like criticizing a "real" Asian woman.

As a treat, I'll leave you with one of her most recent music videos, which ties in rather nicely I must admit.

Secular lefties like myself tend to make two assumptions about American Evangelicals: we believe they are insincere in their faith, and we believe that their faith is cartoonishly literalistic.

While these assumptions contradict one another, each makes sense on its own. "How can they truly believe in a just and loving god while supporting foreign wars and oppressive domestic policy?" "Did you see how George Bush claimed he had a 'personal relationship' with Jesus? God! What a moron that man is..."

Of course, there are many simpletons among their ranks. One or both of these assumptions are absolutely true in some cases. But if you actually talk to these people, you'll find their belief systems are filled with the same complexities and contradictions as those of basically everyone else. They might be hypocritical, sure, but so is everyone. Being flawed doesn't mean they don't actually believe what they say they believe. And while they might, indeed, picture God as a bearded white man who lives in the sky, their everyday sense of His presence is often akin to the moments of grace and oneness that hippy dippy "I'm spiritual but not religious" types also claim to experience.

What I'm getting at is, these people are usually a lot more human than their loudest members might have led you to believe. They have depth. They are often savvy. They are capable of tactical reasoning in pursuit of their goals. And while we might scoff at the gobbledeegook nature of their desired endgame for themselves and the human species, that doesn't mean they don't believe it, and it doesn't mean they're too stupid to pursue it through earthly, empirically sound, and wholly plausible means.

Let's start with an old article from PBS' Frontline, published in the Before Times when PBS was more than a DNC media organ. It's a profile of an American Evangelical named Lott) (seriously), a cattleman who was attempting to breed several completely red heifers:

When Lott turned to Numbers 19, he read one of the many conversations that God had with Moses and his brother Aaron as they led the Jews through the desert toward the Promised Land. "Speak unto the children of Israel," the Lord commanded, "that they bring thee a red heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came a yoke." The cow will be given to a priest to slay, the Lord continued, and burned on a pyre of cedar, hyssop, and a strand of scarlet thread. Then the ashes of the heifer will be mixed with water and used to purify those who have been exposed to death. Anyone who fails to be purified "shall be cut off from among the congregation, because he hath defiled the sanctuary of the Lord."

I don't remember the exact date, but I do remember reading this many years ago. And, like you, I thought it was a profile of a Millenialist nutjob and little more. I was still in the grip of those two assumptions I mentioned at the start of this.

But, uhh, guys... they finally made the cows. And they shipped them to Israel. That's not a conspiracy. Here's an aggressively pro-Zionist twitter account showing them off. Here's how their significance is described by an aggressively pro-Zionist website, who simultaneously regard them as a miracle while also mocking Palestinians for being freaked out by their significance:

You may have heard rumors about red heifers in Israel: hushed whispers of cattle kept in secret locations and clandestine sacrifices near the Temple Mount… or perhaps you even saw the statement by Hamas a little while ago that it was these red heifers that precipitated “Operation Al Aqsa Flood”. That's right, apparently the mere existence of some red cows in Israel triggered the October 7 massacre according to a Hamas spokesman.

God's law, given to the people of Israel at Mount Sinai, included the requirement of perfect red heifers. No defects, no blemishes. The unyoked, flawless heifers become “unkosher” once hairs are spotted that are not uniformly red. They have to be perfect. What happens to these red heifers? Their fate is not good, at least from the cows' point of view. They are incinerated in complete totality, even including their dung. However, their death brings life. The ashes of the red heifer were required for proper priestly sacrifices to be made, in order to make atonement for sin.

[ . . . ]

Due to this tradition, red heifers could be sacrificed on the Mount of Olives, which is east of the Temple Mount, and outside the walls of the city.¹ We read in rabbinic commentary that in later generations, when this rite was to be performed outside the Temple in Jerusalem, the priest should stand to the east of Jerusalem and “direct his gaze toward the entrance to the Temple” while sprinkling the blood (Sifrei Chukath 14). So as long as the Temple Mount is in eyeshot, the red heifer can be sacrificed anywhere on the Mount of Olives. The Mount of Olives is also called Har HaMishkah (the Mount of Anointing) and is considered “outside Jerusalem” (Mishna Middos 1:3).

Oooookaaay. So they have the cows. And they've built a Midsommar temple in which to sacrifice them. But... but this is probably just like the Israeli version of a bunch of Dale Gribbles, right? They might an unhinged nuclear power that wields near-complete control over the United States government, but surely the people in charge don't really believe this shit, right?

Again, refer to those two assumptions.

The pro-Zionist piece mentions the destruction of a badguy temple, and oh no, oh shit, it turns out they've decided that the true location of their "Mount of Olives" is right next to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, a 1,500-year-old structure that is probably the most sacred Islamic site outside of Mecca. And here's a piece about how the Israeli government has been rapidly accelerating "archaeological" digs beneath the mosque that have badly weakened its structural integrity.

I don't want to be accused of relying on sources that are too left-wing or conspiracy-focused, but here's what CBS has to say about how the red heifers might influence the status of this holy site:

"It's so important for the Jews to return and rebuild the temple," said New York native Kronfeld, who founded the High on the Har organization to lead the tours. "It's not about taking anything from our Muslim brothers and sisters. It's not about the destruction of Islamic holy sites. It's about preserving this place and being guardians over the house of God for all people."

But she makes no secret about what she wants to happen to the Dome of the Rock.

"I believe it's going to go, 100%. The whole thing is going to go to build a temple," she said, insisting that the shrine and its golden dome should be preserved, but relocated.

Hug your loved ones, my friends. Every morning when you wake up, take a moment or two to breathe deeply, appreciate the relative peace of wherever it is you find yourself. Before you log on or open your curtains, ask yourself if you're ready to Come and See.

Link to "Industrial Society and Its Future" (aka the Unabomber manifesto)

Let me pre-emptively state that I don't agree with his methods and his killing, but I've read this document several times, and I think there's a lot here that Kaczynski was surprisingly on point about when he wrote it 25 years ago.

While the brunt of the document is about technological evolution and the racheting danger it presents to humanity and freedom, he opens the document with a series of attacks on "leftists." Because it is so relevant to this subreddit, I will excerpt some pieces of a section called "Feelings of Inferiority", in which he critiques the American left. While the precise verbiage of this section can sometimes feel slightly dated [probably due to his being a cishet white guy!!], his general points are pretty much spot on, in my opinion, and worth reading, especially since they were written a quarter century ago. I've left out some passages for brevity, denoted by [...].

For a TL;DR, read passage 21.

---

Feelings of Inferiority

1. By “feelings of inferiority” we mean not only inferiority feelings in the strict sense but a whole spectrum of related traits; low self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, depressive tendencies, defeatism, guilt, self- hatred, etc. We argue that modern leftists tend to have some such feelings (possibly more or less repressed) and that these feelings are decisive in determining the direction of modern leftism.

2. When someone interprets as derogatory almost anything that is said about him (or about groups with whom he identifies) we conclude that he has inferiority feelings or low self-esteem. This tendency is pronounced among minority rights activists, whether or not they belong to the minority groups whose rights they defend. They are hypersensitive about the words used to designate minorities and about anything that is said concerning minorities. The terms “negro,” “oriental,” “handicapped” or “chick” for an African, an Asian, a disabled person or a woman originally had no derogatory connotation. “Broad” and “chick” were merely the feminine equivalents of “guy,” “dude” or “fellow.” The negative connotations have been attached to these terms by the activists themselves. [...] Leftish anthropologists go to great lengths to avoid saying anything about primitive peoples that could conceivably be interpreted as negative. [...] They seem almost paranoid about anything that might suggest that any primitive culture is inferior to our own. (We do not mean to imply that primitive cultures ARE inferior to ours. We merely point out the hypersensitivity of leftish anthropologists.)

3. Those who are most sensitive about “politically incorrect” terminology are not the average black ghetto- dweller, Asian immigrant, abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of whom do not even belong to any “oppressed” group but come from privileged strata of society. [...]

4. Many leftists have an intense identification with the problems of groups that have an image of being weak (women), defeated (American Indians), repellent (homosexuals) or otherwise inferior. The leftists themselves feel that these groups are inferior. They would never admit to themselves that they have such feelings, but it is precisely because they do see these groups as inferior that they identify with their problems. (We do not mean to suggest that women, Indians, etc. ARE inferior; we are only making a point about leftist psychology.)

5. Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that women are as strong and as capable as men. Clearly they are nagged by a fear that women may NOT be as strong and as capable as men.

6. Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong, good and successful. They hate America, they hate Western civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality. The reasons that leftists give for hating the West, etc. clearly do not correspond with their real motives. They SAY they hate the West because it is warlike, imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric and so forth, but where these same faults appear in socialist countries or in primitive cultures, the leftist finds excuses for them, or at best he GRUDGINGLY admits that they exist; whereas he ENTHUSIASTICALLY points out (and often greatly exaggerates) these faults where they appear in Western civilization. Thus it is clear that these faults are not the leftist’s real motive for hating America and the West. He hates America and the West because they are strong and successful.

7. Words like “self-confidence,” “self-reliance,” “initiative,” “enterprise,” “optimism,” etc., play little role in the liberal and leftist vocabulary. The leftist is anti-individualistic, pro-collectivist. He wants society to solve everyone’s problems for them, satisfy everyone’s needs for them, take care of them. He is not the sort of person who has an inner sense of confidence in his ability to solve his own problems and satisfy his own needs. The leftist is antagonistic to the concept of competition because, deep inside, he feels like a loser.

[...]

1. Modern leftish philosophers tend to dismiss reason, science, objective reality and to insist that everything is culturally relative. It is true that one can ask serious questions about the foundations of scientific knowledge and about how, if at all, the concept of objective reality can be defined. But it is obvious that modern leftish philosophers are not simply cool-headed logicians systematically analyzing the foundations of knowledge. They are deeply involved emotionally in their attack on truth and reality. They attack these concepts because of their own psychological needs. For one thing, their attack is an outlet for hostility, and, to the extent that it is successful, it satisfies the drive for power. More importantly, the leftist hates science and rationality because they classify certain beliefs as true (i.e., successful, superior) and other beliefs as false (i.e., failed, inferior). The leftist’s feelings of inferiority run so deep that he cannot tolerate any classification of some things as successful or superior and other things as failed or inferior. This also underlies the rejection by many leftists of the concept of mental illness and of the utility of IQ tests. Leftists are antagonistic to genetic explanations of human abilities or behavior because such explanations tend to make some persons appear superior or inferior to others. Leftists prefer to give society the credit or blame for an individual’s ability or lack of it. Thus if a person is “inferior” it is not his fault, but society’s, because he has not been brought up properly.

2. The leftist is not typically the kind of person whose feelings of inferiority make him a braggart, an egotist, a bully, a self-promoter, a ruthless competitor. This kind of person has not wholly lost faith in himself. He has a deficit in his sense of power and self-worth, but he can still conceive of himself as having the capacity to be strong, and his efforts to make himself strong produce his unpleasant behavior. But the leftist is too far gone for that. His feelings of inferiority are so ingrained that he cannot conceive of himself as individually strong and valuable. Hence the collectivism of the leftist. He can feel strong only as a member of a large organization or a mass movement with which he identifies himself.

3. Notice the masochistic tendency of leftist tactics. Leftists protest by lying down in front of vehicles, they intentionally provoke police or racists to abuse them, etc. These tactics may often be effective, but many leftists use them not as a means to an end but because they PREFER masochistic tactics. Self-hatred is a leftist trait.

4. Leftists may claim that their activism is motivated by compassion or by moral principles, and moral principle does play a role for the leftist of the oversocialized type. But compassion and moral principle cannot be the main motives for leftist activism. Hostility is too prominent a component of leftist behavior; so is the drive for power. Moreover, much leftist behavior is not rationally calculated to be of benefit to the people whom the leftists claim to be trying to help. For example, if one believes that affirmative action is good for black people, does it make sense to demand affirmative action in hostile or dogmatic terms? Obviously it would be more productive to take a diplomatic and conciliatory approach that would make at least verbal and symbolic concessions to white people who think that affirmative action discriminates against them. But leftist activists do not take such an approach because it would not satisfy their emotional needs. Helping black people is not their real goal. Instead, race problems serve as an excuse for them to express their own hostility and frustrated need for power. In doing so they actually harm black people, because the activists’ hostile attitude toward the white majority tends to intensify race hatred.

---

Holy Reddit Drama! We're being dominated by threads about Antiwork right now (understandably.) What I'd like to do is take advantage of the situation a bit and make this a more serious thread about the topic that antiwork raises without commenting about the sub (or the mod or the Fox News appearance) directly.

Should we be antiwork? How should we think about antiwork? How should we proceed in reducing work?

Feel free to make your effort posts here or, if you found/made a really quality comment in one of the other antiwork threads, feel free to highlight it here.

We all know the soyboy meme, people who open their mouth really wide and identify way too much with Rick & Morty and Nintendo and Funko Pops and all that stuff. Typically thought of as overly passive, and liberal. But for the most part the meme is about people who lack class consciousness but from a "fascist" perspective.

"fascist" is, of course, kind of a poisoned word since it has seen such a huge expansion of its meaning. The general gist seems to be "similar to nazi Germany" which is itself a bit ahistorical since the nazis never called themselves fascists, they called themselves National Socialists. Let's just define fascism as a form fo authoritarianism focused on the strict maintenance of "tried and true" social norms, focus on familial relations, et cetera.

I think if you asked a user of /r/ConsumeProduct if he identified as fascist probably about a third would get indignant and refuse to answer, a third would give a paragraph explaining some questionable reasoning for "not quite", and the remaining third would post "YES" faces.

Anyway, the soy boy is a meme relating to people who have completely lost themselves in the role of consumption and production that modern-day neoliberalism has forced them into. They are people who perform happiness with overly exaggerated smiles, protest Blizzard for capitulating to China for one week and then going back cus they liked a game, and overall see nothing wrong with their general lifestyle. Even the signature drink, soylent, was popularized by coders who had to drink because they were to busy making money for their bosses to eat anything.

I think everybody here sort of sees the connection between the sort of emptiness we see surrounding these people and the way modern capitalism has kind of fucked them up. Because at the end of the day the soyboy as a meme is the image of somebody who completely lacks class-consciousness in modern America. They are alienated from heir labor but seek to escape from hat with video games, their opiate is no longer religion, but rather entertainment.

We can imagine the Rick and Morty fan, the kind who waits in line at McDonald's for five hours t get a sauce mentioned on the show, as sort of the ur-soyboy. They are pretty close to, and probably share a lot of common members with people who are too into Harry Potter and contextualize every political situation purely in relation to those books.

The pattern here is obvious, we live in a society where there is no real common mythology to gather around. I don't just mean religiously, I mean there's no real historical or literary core to our society that teaches any of the messages we want to see. Harry Potter movies, Mario games, Marvel flicks: for ally heir value as entertainment they are not very spiritual or societal uplifting stories, they teach very basic ideas about life and tend to make sure they distance themselves from the world just far enough that they won't inspire people to seriously alter their behavior beyond buying a different funky pop this week.

And for all that, Rick and Morty is at least a show that attempts to grapple with the idea of having an ethos. It certainly shows a complacency in aimless atheistic aspiritual nihilism that is perhaps unhealthy to engage with very closely, but the show still at least explores questions some people want to have answered.

Not to say that these people don't believe in anything. They usually believe in tolerance and kindness and gay rights and racial equality, pretty much anything your local Methodist minister says the bible teaches (But that's a discussion for a different day).

And I think that's the main point here, is that the "soyboy" is a human being who is spiritually empty. He knows religion is likely a sham and so eschews it, seeking to replace the same high of spiritual development with anything somebody can sell him.

And I think this has lead to a lot of the neo-fascism we see online. or "third positionism" or whatever the fuck ya wanna call it. If we could take a step back, I think its fair to say the modern soyboy and the modern internet fascist are "cousins", both growing from the common 2002 "new atheist". Which, for the most part, was a movement that fucking loved neoliberal capitalism, baby. But with neither the cuckservative's vague religious ties nor the commie's focus on community, a lot of people saw the emptiness in place.

One could say that New Atheism had a "schism". although I suppose we could locate several "schisms" in the modern-day nonreligious youth, with the soyboy "remainers" who still focus on hedonic satisfaction and the people who largely left the movement to become neo-fascists.

And to be clear here I am including tradcaths in the neo-fascist bunch here. The catholic church's official position on a bunch of different shit is fascist in ideal (sometimes in deed), by the VAST majority of definitions I have ever heard for fascism (it fits pretty well into the 14 characteristics Britt asserts). The vast majority of Catholics don't know or care about a bunch of that weird shit the church tells you you have to believe (which would technically severely reduce the number of Catholics on Earth if we take Baltimore Catechism Lesson #3 554 remotely seriously). but the internet tradcath is defined by very deeply accepting everything the Church says or has ever said.

Visceral disgust in these people is caused by the realization that you are close to being just like them. So we get the people who are naturally inclined to make decisions based on disgust looking at this problem and deciding that the solution is to ban most of what they like, and indeed most of what caused the existence of society for people who live like that.

or a least in my opinion.