Oh, the Bakkers. Always good for a constant stream of bullshit. This particular stream of bullshit is all about how secular and liberal people want to lock all the christians up in “mental illness centers.” Sigh. Y’know, I’d be overjoyed if all you christian asses would just shut the fuck up, and stop trying to build your theocracy.
“We love our president, we love our vice president, we love our first lady, we love our second lady,” she said, defending the administration after Joy Behar of “The View” mocked Vice President Pence’s faith on a recent program. “They stand up unashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. What’s scary for us? Jim has been preaching it for the last two days pretty strong; they’re saying it’s mental illness.”
Yeah, there are atheists who say religious belief is a mental illness; in my view, they’re assholes who could use a big old cup of shut the fuck up. Now, those people are in the minority. I don’t think religious belief is any sort of illness, I do think it’s simply habitual. Most people are religious because they grew up with it, it’s what they were taught. There’s seldom any thought involved. I do think in many cases it’s a sort of brainwashing, especially when young children are involved at the extreme ends of religious belief. Later, it becomes a matter of self-brainwashing; religions require a constant reaffirmation, else all these thoughts keep popping up about the actual value of such beliefs or the complete lack of consistency in them. Anyroad, some ass saying religious belief is an illness does not equate to locking people up.
“If the world is thinking that we’re all mentally ill, do you know what’s going to happen next?” Bakker asked. “They are going to put us all away in mental illness centers.”
That’s not going to happen, ever. It’s next to impossible to get anyone committed, especially if they actually need to be. And look into the homeless problem – all kinds of people with genuine mental illnesses are out on the street because they got kicked out of various institutions – no room, no money. I haven’t noted that the Tiny Tyrant (or anyone else) is busy building all manner of “mental illness centers”.
“You know what they used to do with women that went through menopause back years ago?” she continued. “They put them in insane asylums because their hormonal balance was completely off. I’m not kidding, that is what they did. And I’m not kidding, that is what is going to happen to us as Christians. They are going to lock us up and throw us out if we don’t stand up.”
Oh FFS. Yeah, the way women were treated in the past isn’t at all nice, to say the very least, but holy shit, that’s an exaggeration if I ever heard one. And no, that’s not going to happen to christians. This particular hysteria/testeria is not needed, but I suppose you have to come up with something.
“It’s in the Bible,” agreed Jim.
Oh really? Huh. I don’t remember reading about menopausal women, mental illness, mental illness centers or Amerikka in the bible.
Via RWW.
Yes, that makes perfect sense, of course, everyone knows christians are an oppressed minority in the US and are thus at risk of being persecuted and locked up by the majority. Evidently.
The bovine excretions are piled quite deep here.
So I keep writing longish posts on how cynical I have become and what I believe is the root cause of everything bad, only to delete them again, out of the same cynicism. What the fuck will it change anyway. The US, incidentally, is the first thing whose acknowledgement-of-relevance I’m sacrificing to my cognitive dissonance -- it is getting increasingly harder to give a shit. Sorry for making this post about me, sort of, but man, this world just doesn’t merit anything beyond solipsism. Also sorry for being so negative, I’m sure most of you love life or something.
Gorogh, you can be as negative as you like. Lots to be negative about, and Amerikka sure as fuck is on the top of the negativity list.
Thank you. I just don’t understand how people integrate what they see in the world and still somehow find existence more enjoyable or to-strive-for than nonexistence. Well I do understand it: They don’t see, or they don’t integrate. Humans are probably not meant to think too much. (For the record, I don’t mean “intelligent thinking” here, just ruminating and inept philosophizing, which I surely have multiple PhDs in) Even… damn. “What hope is there?” I wanted to ask, considering the OP and those plague clowns in the video, but I don’t even care. “Hope” is a non-sequitur, an extrapolation of existence -- “because I have lived this long, surely the future will be bright so let’s have kids and perpetuate this misery”!
Bah. Sorry. Also, I know you have a lot to bear -- I would guess pain and nausea being the worst of it. That said, I really hope your surgery went well. I guess I couldn’t come across as cheerful now, but thankfully, that’s nothing you’d accept anyway, if memory serves. Anyway, glad to have you back.
No, I’m not overly keen on ‘cheery!’, to say the least. I think perhaps there needs to be room for hope, but it can’t be at the expense of actual lives, but that’s where it often ends up. It’s like the ubiquitous “thoughts and prayers” crap that’s offered up in response to mass shootings, or assholes offering hope to starving children, instead of doing something which would actually help, like getting food to them.
I’m not remotely sanguine about the future, not even the small amount I have left. It’s going to get seriously rotten bad, and I do not envy the current crop of babes who are going to face all the fucking nasty.
No no no no no! It’s FEMA camps you’re going to be thrown in!
I wish they’d at least keep the conspiracies straight. It looks like we need more fluoride in the chemtrails.
Herd them into their churches, slam the doors and bolt them. Let them pray until they realise that the only way out is to apologise for being so bloody stupid.
When Jim Bakker said it’s in the Bible, I think he was reminding us that the Old Testament DOES say that menstruating women are “unclean”, and need to get ritual shunning and thus punishment from the community. In other words, to the extent that any of this is a thing, it is an area where some CHRISTIANS and other religious people want to enforce such punishment, not modern people. In other words, all of this is projection by some theocrats, and thus a lie, of course.
Gorogh,
You know, I was just reflecting upon this the other day because I’ve been noticing in myself a few symptoms of dissociation. Dissociation from reality, more precisely. Nothing very severe, I don’t think it is pathological as in a dissociative disorder, but I do feel some detachment, like I’m seeing stuff happen but I’m not feeling it as if it were real even though I know it is. I find it difficult to explain. Anyway, I think this was triggered by what you are saying: I saw, I integrated and I… dissociated as a defense mechanism. I think some people don’t see, some don’t integrate, some do both and succumb to depression and others may quickly follow integration with dissociation? I guess cynicism may be a response as well. I don’t know. But I totally get what you’re saying.
I still find existence more enjoyable, though. Throughout everything I seem to have managed to keep my sense of awe towards nature intact and I guess as long as I can find beauty and inspiration in nature I will continue to strive for life. But hope in the future? Nah. What little I had, watching climate change unfold crushed it.
Bruce:
Right, but the mention is menopausal women, women who no longer menstruate.
FEMA camps, yes. I just keep thinking, lying should be illegal. Not lying in a private context, but intentional lying to a larger audience. Doesn’t even have to be “goats on fire”, Alex Jones-type in(s)anity, but just average demagoguery. And most preachers and televangelists, of course. Who would determine the lying? Don’t know, don’t care at the moment. Just a fantasy anyway.\
Why isn’t it illegal? Because liars may believe in their lies themselves, like, religious people? Because caveat emptor (or rather the appropriate latin for “believer”)?
@Caine, to what end does hope “need” to be there? For a decent existence? I guess so, yes. I mean, like lying, one couldn’t outlaw hope anyway. Even campaigning against it seems somewhat, uhm, hopeless. It’s not the most marketable idea.
Nightjar @10, what you are saying makes sense to me, too, although I am intrigued by what you mean by “seeing things happen” -- as in hallucinations? Or as in “acknowledging the significance of something bad, but strangely not responding to it emotionally”?
Also, I know that states of mind come and go. I didn’t feel like “fuck this shit I’m leaving thanks for all the fish” this morning. I won’t feel like it tomorrow. “Cognition” and “emotion” are just much more intricately connected than any pseudo-precise words suggest. It’s great (no, really!) that you don’t seem to have the (to me) appropriate depression alongside your realism. In other words, keep dissociating, I think many of the people trying to make the world a better place do.
Awe? I enjoy nature, animals, such things, but the whole Dawkins-style awe and wonder and unweaving the rainbow and whatnot never caught on with me, unfortunately. I may smile, but it’s fleeting and not existential. Again, great if you can feel it!
Gorogh,
I mean the second, not responding emotionally* to what is happening in the world or in my life. Whether it’s good or bad, so the downside is that when good things happen I also feel like *whatever, shrug, move on* and don’t celebrate like I see other people doing. But that’s okay, good things don’t happen as often as bad things do. I’ll gladly take this over depression. At least it gives me some peace of mind.
(*This does not mean that I don’t respond at all. I care about things and go out of my way, sometimes with personal sacrifice, to make them better even if marginally. I care about suffering, I care about fair trade, I care about the environment, and I changed a lot of things in my life to act accordingly. My realistic self does not believe any of that will make any difference in the end, so I often ask myself why I bother, but I cannot help it.)
This menopausal woman is nothing like a Christian.
i wonder if ther is a 12step program for bakker women and their makeup?
Nightjar @14, that all makes sense. I think of humans in general as being in moral autopilot -- we can’t help feeling what we feel, and values are ultimately nothing but feelings about other’s or one’s own behavior. In other words, I (think I) totally get that disconnect between “caring” and “believing it will make a difference”. Are things still quixotic if one sees the windmills for what they are?
Another comment though: The relative anhedonism you describe is not antithetical to depression. Quite the contrary actually, it is one of its hallmarks. Of course, I may have misunderstood you, but… are you sure you’re not depressed?
Gorogh:
Because a lot of people need it. That’s reason enough. I fine with hope being on the plate, but it can’t be the only thing on the plate.
Things look to be getting worse now, but it hasn’t been that way all through my life.There was still segregation by law when I was a kid. My mother passed away in 2003, She could use the same bathroom as a white woman then, which she couldn’t do in her youth.
Mom didn’t live long enough to see President Obama elected.
Gorogh, I get what you’re saying about moral autopilot, that makes sense. As for your question, I don’t think I am depressed, no, I don’t have any of the common symptoms. My sleeping and eating patterns are normal, my mood is not depressive, I don’t have difficulty concentrating and I have not lost interest in my hobbies nor has the pleasure I get from engaging in them decreased. I don’t think I am experiencing anhedonia and I don’t feel depressed, even though I often think I would have every reason to be, given that my mother is currently fighting stage 4 lung cancer. But I’m extremely glad I’m not, she does not need a depressed caregiver.
Dissociation is difficult to explain, I suppose, but it seems to be my brain’s preferred mechanism for dealing with stress and (situations which would otherwise cause) extreme anguish. I’m not sure how common it is, it seems to me that hope is a much more common coping mechanism, as Caine says a lot of people need it. Most people need it, I would say. If we can bring ourselves to believe things will improve in the future it can help dealing with the present, I guess. And hope is probably healthier than dissociation anyway.
Nightjar, funny enough, I’ve been researching coping mechanisms the larger part of Friday -- for a rather specific type of coping (namely strategies used during experimental pain, which mostly amounts to emotion regulation), but nevertheless. Certainly not my area of expertise, so even if I tried I couldn’t talk about dissociation (beyond “yeah I get it”) or its prevalence. But it seems to work for you/you at least seem functional enough not to worry about it. So uh… keep doing what you’re doing!
p.s.: On a personal note, I’m stopping by here regularly, but my impetus to express myself is proportional to my misery, so when I feel better, I tend to disappear. Will try to keep it up a little anyway, but no guarantees! Also, it occurred to me after my last post that the question “are you sure you are not depressed” is somewhat odd, I hope you did not perceive it as offensive. I guess you do need some detachment to consider the notion.
Gorogh, don’t worry, I didn’t perceive your question as offensive at all! It is helpful for me to be able to talk with someone about these things. Anyway, thanks for listening, wish you feel better and I hope to see you around every now and then!