Recognizing propaganda and reminding yourself why it is BS does a huge amount to reduce the effectiveness of propaganda.
But, let the reader be aware, this does not make propaganda ineffective. It still works. It just takes longer. Some people fight it better than others. But for the average [White] American, the time we are 40 or so, we internalize too much of it find ourselves falling asleep into the American Dream and identifying with White upper middle class suburbia, status quo, the cops, American Empire, Capitalism, and billionaires.
I'm not trying to save you or anything. And I don't think God is waiting for us somewhere else. God is always with us, walking with you and me and every other person through time and never turns away. But home is where the heart is. And God wants us to come home to the heart of God where there is Love, kindness, justice, generosity, Creation, the poor, the oppressed, etc. The things God loves and cares about.
I don't even really want you to believe the truths within the story. I just want you to consider the possibility and see if it resonates for you with history, our experiences, scripture, and who we know God to be as revealed in Jesus. You need to wrestle with this angel and make it make sense to you. Especially if you can't understand. The less you understand the more I beg you to listen again and sit with it.
You might hear a bit of anger or derision especially in the first few minutes. I'm not angry or derisive towards you or Christians in general or Jews at all. Any anger or derision towards people/powers towards those much, much higher up the food chain than you or anyone you know (probably).
As I tell the story, I am using lots of voice inflections to tell the story and that include sometimes a sing-song or sarcastic tone. The tone of the story is never to make fun of the reader or Christians. It's never to say that I'm smarter than anybody or put people down or anything like that.
The purpose of the incredulous voice inflections is occasionally to draw your attention to a joke, but usually it is to highlight the absurdity of the story we were given. The absurdity of the theology we were given. And the absurdity of the judgmental, autocratic, 1-strike picture of God we were given.
I really don't want to convince you of anything. If you have the eyes to see, the ears to hear, and understanding, you'll probably be able to recognize the messages in here.
Rather than looking to confirm or reject the ideas you are expecting to find, please just consider. These are brand new ideas (for you anyway) using old pictures and familiar stories. But they are not the same ideas or messages. I'm telling a different story.
See how it is different.
Consider what's different about this story & consider a few of these as you go:
-what is different from the original stories we were given (as you know them)
-what is different about the meaning
-is it more or less likely to be true than your present understanding of things, given all we know?
-Does it resonate with who we know God, humanity, creation, & the World to be?
-Does it seem truer in meaningful ways?
-Does it somehow misrepresent God or Truth?
-Does it encourage more things of God?
-Does it more things of the World?
-What do you think of the Paul and Philemon story?
One could blame Geppetto for sending Pinocchio out into the wide world his first day alive without any directions and naught but a sentient cricket to guide him. But that's what you get when you give a one-day old sentient puppet to a half-senile lonely old tinkerer who lives alone with his cat and unnaturally sexy goldfish.
Geppetto did not need a child. Giving him a child was the most irresponsible idea ever. He obviously needed a friend and maybe a caretaker.
The Blue Fairy should have just made Cleo a real woman if she was going to transform anything in that house into a person to help Geppetto. Cleo had truly cared for him for years as he cared for her like she was a regular human stuck in a bowl. And Cleo would have loved him as a friend at least. (We are all weirdly not sure that platonic friendship would be the extent of their relationship.)
Anyway that’s just one idea that is magical and actually would have fixed the old coots problems and saved a one-day old child trauma after trauma which will haunt him for life.
The Blue Fairy is an insane god. Only that could explain her unfathomable motivations for her actions. All of the main characters are victims of a benevolent yet insane incarnate great blue star powerful beyond comprehension or accountability.
Salaried is just another word for full time slave. All your time is their time.
Hourly full time is just another word for exclusive part time slave because for 10 hours of your life 5 days a week or whatever you belongs to them.
If you are part time, you are a full time slave with uncertain pay because all your time still belongs to them because they keep jerking you around and they always fuck up your hours.
But they aren't slaves. Nobody owns them. They can go with somewhere else if they must. Nobody is holding a gun to their head.
Sounds even worse than putting a gun to my head. Have you seen how we treat homeless people? They have to huddle in the corners and alleys and vacant buildings and bridge underpasses breathing the exhaust of our cars on every street and feeling our scorn everywhere.
We won't even let them duck in to shit in any store like you or I can. They have to shit in the street and get filmed for Fox News.
There are people who actually worshipped JKR and there are people who gushed about her because she wrote Harry Potter and they loved Harry Potter who literally knew nothing about her that wasn't in the author bio on the dust jacket. I think fandom oriented people tend to forget how big a population the latter was! But Harry Potter was so huge at its peak that it had a lot of casual fans who deeply, deeply loved the series, maybe even knew the trivia of the actual books inside and out, but never engaged with the fandom side of things or dove deep into meta information. There were normies attending midnight release parties, the series was that big.
star wars: prequels incorrect quotes (2/?)
insp
im fucking sobbing why did they kill him twice in a row in the community notes
NeSpoon is a Polish artist, born in Warsaw, who mixes the delicacy of lace with the roughness and freedom of urban art
does anyone know what i came in here to post