The Genocide Party had their yearly get-together

One pleasant bit of non-news is that CPAC is dying. For a couple of decades now, the Conservative Political Action Conference has been a yearly spectacle of far right conservative speechifying, when the radical Republicans could let their hair down and let their freak flag fly, and the media would dutifully report on their gibbering mania, and we’d point and laugh, and then some of the kooks would get elected to high office. Remember when David Silverman tried to get American Atheists represented at CPAC? That was an omen.

This year, I hadn’t even realized it was going on until several days into the conference, it was that much of a yawner. Attendance is way down, and the ratfuckers are giving speeches to nearly empty seats. Prospective presidential candidates are skipping the whole show. It’s a “who cares?” event now.

However, as it’s relevance declines, the participants are reaching for the big bottle of crazy evil to spark excitement, and as we all know, the Republican party has become unhealthily obsessed with what’s in other people’s pants. They’re trying to pass laws to restrict people’s civil rights, they’ve developed a weird hatred of Mrs Doubtfire, they want to burn books that even mention the existence of non-traditional non-heterosexuals. What’s next? How can they top the insanity they’re perpetrating right now?

How about genocide?

The Right’s war on queer and trans people took center stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference as Daily Wire host Michael Knowles openly called for the public eradication of transgender individuals. During his speech on Saturday, Knowles told the crowd, For the good of society… transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely — the whole preposterous ideology, at every level.
…
In his speech, Knowles used a convoluted line of thinking and false logic while trying to prove his horrifying point that trans people should not exist. There can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. It can be all or nothing, he said. If transgenderism is true, if men really can become women, then it’s true for everybody of all ages. If transgenderism is false — as it is — if men really can’t become women — as they cannot — then it’s false for everybody too. And if it’s false, then we should not indulge it, especially when that indulgence requires taking away the rights and customs of many people. It if is false, then for the good of society — and especially for the good of the poor people who have fallen prey to this confusion — then transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely — the whole preposterous ideology, at every level.

We’ve seen where this line of thinking goes, we don’t need a roadmap to recall our history. First we have to silence the Badthought with bookburnings and firelit marches and shrieking news articles. Then we pass laws criminalizing drag shows (Tennessee just made appearing in drag a felony with a 6 year prison sentence). Next we have to isolate the bad people in concentration camps, and then we have to move on to a Final Solution.

You would think that Ben Shapiro, Knowles’ big boss at the Daily Wire, would be aware of the comparison. Knowles himself is being made aware that he said the evil parts out loud, and is lashing out at the media that is reporting on his words and demanding retractions.

You said it, big boy. Be thankful that the only pain you might suffer is a little public humiliation, rather than a prison sentence or a beating or a gas chamber, like your victims have to deal with all the time.

Also, I get more email

When the gender essentialist scum get stirred up on Twitter, that also means my in-box becomes a cloaca. A representative example:

Your twitter account looks like it belongs to a psychopath. You retweeted something from another psychopath re Libs of Tiktok’s children’s book claiming she was presenting a ram as a ewe. She wasn’t. He didn’t open up the book to let people see the full illustration which shows a ram and a ewe.

Your page looks like it belongs to a man with a perverted interest in spiders (why not? I mean we have furries and adult diapers wearers). Apparently you don’t understand there are two sexes in humans, although apparently there are in spiders.🤡

There’s no point in arguing with them. The kind of doofus who assumes that saying “sex is more complicated than a simple binary” means “I don’t believe sex exists” is too thick to waste time on.

Also, defending Libs of Tiktok is too deranged.

Wow, Florida…

I’m sorry, Florida is a joke.

If the Lee County Republican Party has their way, the state of Florida will be banning the use of Covid-19 vaccines. Yes, you heard that correctly. Based on a majority vote, the Party has passed a so-called “Ban the jab” resolution that will now go to the desk of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) for his consideration. And why does the Party want such a ban? Well, an article for WINK News by Michael Hudak and Taylor Wirtz quoted Joe Sansone, the guy who drafted the resolution, as saying, “The Lee County Republican Party is going to be on the vanguard of this campaign to stop the genocide because we have foreign non-governmental entities that are unleashing biological weapons on the American people.”

This Sansone clown is a “psychotherapist” who clearly knows nothing about biology. He claims the vaccine is a “bioweapon”, and he has the ear of the governor. Do you think DeSantis will refuse to sign his insane declaration?

Sansone is pretty far out there.

The WINK article also included another quote from Sansone that really seemed to embrace some conspiracy theory claims: “If you got this shot, you go home and hug your pregnant wife—she can have a miscarriage through skin contact.” Wait, so now, you’ve got to start worrying about hugging people who have gotten Covid-19 vaccines? How exactly is that supposed to work scientifically? Did Sansone provide any peer-reviewed scientific studies to support his assertion? Most likely not, because good luck trying to find any peer-reviewed scientific studies to support such an assertion.

Don’t worry, though, he has been verified by Psychology Today, so you can trust him. PT would never publish a wackaloon, right? (Actually, I feel like Psychology Today is the Florida of pop-sci magazines.)

Joseph Sansone, M.S., PhD, LMHC, CCMHC, is the author of Bioplasticity: Hypnosis Mind Body Healing. A psychotherapist specializing in clinical hypnosis, Joseph was trained in advanced clinical hypnosis at the Academy of Professional Hypnosis in 1997. Dr. Sansone has a B.A. in psychology, a M.S. in clinical mental health counseling, and a PhD in psychology. Joseph has spent much of his life as an entrepreneur and enjoys facilitating self-actualization. Joseph Sansone is a licensed mental health counselor as well as a board certified clinical mental health counselor. Dr. Sansone is also a member of the National Guild of Hypnotists.

Creepy Uncle Jordy has some advice about rape

He has sympathy for the idea that rape is not a property crime, but a crime against a person, BUT…

Sure, you can say that untrammeled sexual access to a woman is a crime, but it needs to be criminalized in such a way that men still flock to her defense. It’s not sufficient to have a society where a woman can say “no”, you also have to arrange it so that she will have enraged masculine protectors surrounding her.

Continuing this reasoning based entirely on the idea that women are helpless, I don’t think it’s sufficient that it’s against the law to beat up weak old men and steal their money, we have to rally beefcake to defend them when they step out on the street. Likewise, it’s terrible that birds are preyed upon by cats…we need to put an army of strong young men who are angry on patrol in our parks.

This is the logic of a bully who thinks the solution to everything has to be force, preferably force delivered by some brutish male. Reduce everything to a question of whether a gang of men will support it — that’s the way the Proud Boys think.

Quickly, before they usual mob starts screaming about “CONTEXT!” — that short clip comes from a nauseatingly long (one hour and 45 minutes!) interview by Louise Perry, a conservative “feminist”. This clip comes from around 1h 30m in the whole thing, and precedes a bit where he explains that “unsophisticated women” don’t say “no” soon enough or strongly enough, but hey, he’s not blaming the victim, he says. If we could fix this, we wouldn’t have this huge debate about consent on college campuses, he claims.

What debate? I think it’s settled. Non-consensual sexual assault is bad. No debate necessary.

I didn’t listen to the whole thing. Five minutes of pompous babbling with weird hand gestures is about all I can take.

For this day of social media glitches, we thank you, O Lord

Twitter is back up, which gives me mixed feelings. At least I am grateful that Elon Musk is once again exposed as an incompetent manager. How many more times must that happen before his legion of worshipful fans realize it?

Another blessed event: YouTube has banned Kent Hovind! His KentHovindOfficial channel has been shut down, all of his videos erased. Hallelujah! To add insult to injury, he briefly appeared to complain about his deletion, and then urged everyone to go to his second channel, Dinosaur Adventure Land…then that was wiped out and deleted! Ah, such sweet schadenfreude.

There is still work to be done. Matt Powell, his mini-me, still has his MattPowellOfficial channel, which he can use to trumpet hate. Amusingly, Powell just recently left Dinosaur Adventure Land to return to his ‘ministry’ in Michigan. Hovind had a little farewell party in which he suggested Powell could return in a few years to take over DAL, clearly offering to make him his heir…and in the video, Powell flatly said no. Poor Kent. Abandoned. Denied. In public.

I guess it was Whack-a-Creationist Day.

A complete story with a satisfying conclusion

Act I: The story begins with a Christian apologist named David Falk making some scathing comments about a Biblical scholar named Francesca Stavrakopoulou.


From what I’ve seen of Stavrakopoulou, she seems professional and competent. Falk, on the other hand, has something wrong with his brain.

Act II: a fellow named Dan McClellan replies and calmly minces him to a fine pulp. Wow, this is thorough.

Act III: Falk makes a pathetic not-pology.

Act IV: The Vancouver School of Theology, where Falk used to be employed, follows through with a finishing move.

Post-credits teaser: “I’ll have my revenge!” cackles a vanquished Falk.

Stay tuned for the sequel! Oh, wait, Netflix already cancelled it.

Saying dumb stuff for fun & profit

I wish I’d jumped on this bandwagon ages ago: just fart out incredibly stupid things with no context and no reason, and then reap the harvest of attention, while never having to justify what I just said. It’s too late for me, though, because Jordan Peterson has already cornered the market.

Atheistic hedonists unconsciously worship Pan.

Look at that! Just 5 idiotic words, and here I am paying attention. The thing is, I can’t resist a puzzle, and the puzzle here is to decipher what’s going through his drug-addled brain to prompt this blurt.

“Atheistic hedonists”…atheism and hedonism are not linked properties. There are theistic hedonists — they probably outnumber the atheist kind — so I don’t understand why he narrowed the subject so much. I suspect it’s more about stringing together seven syllables to sound fancy than about actually making a point.

“Unconsciously worship”…OK, how do they do that? What’s involved in worship that you can do it without intent? What other things does Peterson think human beings worship? He’s using that word rather casually, I think to provide a jarring contrast with atheism, which we don’t generally associate with worship, at least not with the kind of practice followed by theists. So what’s the point? Is he trying to talk about atheists, or hedonists?

After all, the next thing he mentions is an ancient god, Pan. No, atheists don’t worship Pan, consciously or unconsciously. Hedonists might, but not atheistic hedonists who I’d expect to explicitly deny the existence of a god driving their desires. You can be a hedonist for secular reasons, you know.

This is one of those deepities, isn’t it? He subsequently claims we worship Priapus, which suggests an ulterior cause. Priapus was the Greek god of fruits and vegetables, as well as the male genitalia. That hints at another deepity:

Constipated authoritarians deny the divinity of phallic vegetables.

Think about that one for a while. Too bad I’m not on the inanity gravy train like Peterson.

…shoot my sperm into an incubator and give it 9 months…

Yes, Virginia, people this ignorant do exist. This little cabal of arrogant men get together to tell each other they’re like gods, that men alone can create life, and the explain the science of it: a man can shoot his sperm into an incubator, and 9 months later, a baby. For reals.

He should try the experiment. That’s all I have to say. Put up or shut up.

Believe them when they tell you what they want to do

Between the Church Militant and Nick Fuentes, it’s pretty clear what the theocratic Right wants to do: they want to kill you or force you to be as mad as they are.

I remember when everyone thought atheism was radical.

Just a thought: are these far-right loons finally insane enough to repel the majority of Americans? Or are they actually winning converts to their bloody causes?

Oh, wait. I just realized that Twitter is in the process of melting down, and that it’s entirely possible that every time over the last 10 or 15 years that I’ve linked to Twitter, that’s going to become a dead link, and I better make sure to include a link to a more stable, reliable source from now on. That excerpt of one of Nutty Nick’s rants is also enshrined on Right Wing Watch.

The death of Twitter is going to punch holes in blogs everywhere.