Politics & Stuff

[Vesper 28,767]

3 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

 

a great example of a post that would VERY likely be alerted on and then hidden by a random jury on Democratic Undergound

they stifle a tonne of real debate

so many on there just blindly follow anything the establishment Dems do and how they frame the limits of action/debate

[Fulham Broadway 16,829]

2 minutes ago, Vesper said:

a great example of a post that would VERY likely be alerted on and then hidden by a random jury on Democratic Undergound

they stifle a tonne of real debate

so many on there just blindly follow anything the establishment Dems do and how they frame the limits of action/debate

Yes -and the Social Media platforms, owned by the billionaires are behaving similarly. 

First came the bots, then came the bosses - we’re entering Musk and Zuck’s new era of disinformation

Tech leaders’ politics are encoded into their platforms – and with Trump’s ascent, they have direct access to the Oval Office

I’m a researcher of media manipulation, and watching the 2024 US election returns was like seeing the Titanic sink.

Every day leading up to 5 November, there were more and more outrageous claims being made in an attempt across social media to undermine election integrity: conspiracy theories focused on a tidal wave of immigrants plotting to undermine the right wing, allegations that there were millions of excess ballots circulating in California, and rumors that the voting machines were already corrupted by malicious algorithms.

 

All of the disinformation about corrupt vote counts turned out not to be necessary, as Donald Trump won the election decisively. But the election proved that disinformation is no longer the provenance of anonymous accounts amplified by bots to mimic human engagement, like it was in 2016. In 2024, lies travel further and faster across social media, which is now a battleground for narrative dominance. And now, the owners of the platforms circulating the most incendiary lies have direct access to the Oval Office.

We talk a lot about social media “platforms”. The word “platform” is interesting as it means both a stated political position and a technological communication system. Over the past decade, we have watched social media platforms warp public opinion by deciding what is seen and when users see it, as algorithms double as newsfeed and timeline editors. When tech CEOs encode their political beliefs into the design of platforms, it’s a form of technofascism, where technology is used for political suppression of speech and to repress the organization of resistance to the state or capitalism.

Content moderation at these platforms now reflects the principles of the CEO and what that person believes is in the public’s interest. The political opinions of tech’s overlords, like Musk and Zuckerberg, are now directly embedded in their algorithms.

For example, Meta has limited the circulation of critical discussions about political power, reportedly even downranking posts that use the word “vote” on Instagram. Meta’s Twitter clone, Threads, suspended journalists for reporting on Trump’s former chief of staff describing Trump’s admiration of Hitler. Threads built in a politics filter that is turned on by default.

Implementing these filtering mechanisms illustrates a sharp difference from Meta’s embrace of politicians who got personalized white-glove service in 2016 as Facebook embedded employees directly in political campaigns, who advised on branding and reaching new audiences. It’s also a striking reversal of Zuckerberg’s free speech position in 2019. Zuckerberg gave a presentation at Georgetown University claiming that he was inspired to create Facebook because he wanted to give students a voice during the Iraq war. This historical revisionism was quickly skewered in the media. (Facebook’s predecessor allowed users to rate the appearance of Harvard female freshmen. Misogyny was the core of its design.) Nevertheless, his false origin story encapsulated a vision of how Zuckerberg once believed society and politics should be organized, where political discussion was his guiding reason to bring people into community.

However, he now appears to have abandoned this position in favor of disincentivizing political discussion altogether. Recently, Zuckerberg wrote to the Republican Jim Jordan saying he regretted his content moderation decisions during the pandemic because he acted under pressure from the Biden administration. The letter itself was an obvious attempt to curry favor as Trump rose as the Republican presidential candidate. Zuckerberg has reason to fear Trump, who has mentioned wanting to arrest Zuckerberg for deplatforming him on Meta products after the January 6 Capitol riot.

X seems to have embraced the disinformation chaos and fully fused Trump’s campaign into the design of X’s content strategies. Outrageous assertions circle the drain on X, including false claims such as that immigrants are eating pets in Ohio, Kamala Harris’s Jamaican grandmother was white, and that immigrants are siphoning aid meant for Fema. It’s also worth noting that Musk is the biggest purveyor of anti-immigrant conspiracy theories on X. The hiss and crackle of disinformation is as ambient as it is unsettling.

There are no clearer signs of Musk’s willingness to use platform power than his relentless amplification of his own account as well as Trump’s Twitter account on X’s “For You” algorithm. Moreover, Musk bemoaned the link suppression by Twitter in 2020 over Hunter Biden’s laptop while then hypocritically working with the Trump campaign in 2024 to ban accounts and links to leaked documents emanating from the Trump campaign that painted JD Vance in a negative light.

Musk understands that he will personally benefit from being close to power. He supported Trump with a controversial political action committee that gave away cash to those who signed his online petition. Musk also paid millions for canvassers and spent many evenings in Pennsylvania stumping for Trump. With Trump’s win, he will need to make good on his promise of placing Musk in a position on the not-yet-created “Department of Government Efficiency” (Doge – which is also the name of Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency). While it sure seems like a joke taken too far, Musk has said he plans to cut $2tn from the national budget, which will wreak havoc on the economy and could be devastating when coupled with the mass deportation of 10 million people.

In short, what we learn from the content strategies of X and Meta is simple: the design of platforms is now inextricable from the politics of the owner.

 

This wasn’t inevitable. In 2016, there was a public reckoning that social media had been weaponized by foreign adversaries and domestic actors to spread disinformation on a number of wedge issues to millions of unsuspecting users. Hundreds of studies were conducted in the intervening years, by internal corporate researchers and independent academics, showing that platforms amplify and expose audiences to conspiracy theories and fake news, which can lead to networked incitement and political violence.

By 2020, disinformation had become its own industry and the need for anonymity lessened as rightwing media makers directly impugned election results, culminating in January 6. That led to an unprecedented decision by social media companies to ban Trump, who was still the sitting president, and a number of other high-profile rightwing pundits, thus illustrating just how powerful social media platforms had become as political actors.

In reaction to this unprecedented move to curb disinformation, the richest man in the world, Musk, bought Twitter, laid off much of the staff, and sent internal company communications to journalists and politicians in 2022. Major investigations of university researchers and government agencies ensued, naming and shaming those who engaged with Twitter’s former leadership and made appeals for the companies to enforce its own terms of service during the 2020 election.

Since then, these CEOs have ossified their political beliefs in the design of algorithms and by extension dictated political discourse for the rest of us.

Whether it’s Musk’s strategy of overloading users with posts from himself and Trump, or Zuckerberg’s silencing of political discussion, it’s citizens who suffer from such chilling of speech. Of course, there is no way to know decisively how disinformation affected individual voters, but a recent Ipsos poll shows Trump voters believed disinformation on a number of wedge issues, claiming that immigration, crime, and the economy are all worse than data indicates. For now, let this knowledge be the canary warning of technofascism, where the US is not only ruled by elected politicians, but also by technological authoritarians who control speech on a global scale.

If we are to disarm disinformers, we need a whole of society approach that values real Talk (Timely, Accurate Local Knowledge) and community safety. This might look like states passing legislation to fund local journalism in the public interest, because local news can bridge divides between neighbors and bring some accountability to the government. It will require our institutions, such as medicine, journalism, and academia, to fight for truth and justice, even in the face of anticipated retaliation. But most of all, it’s going to require that you and I do something quickly to protect those already in the crosshairs of Trump’s new world order, by donating to or joining community organizations tackling issues such as women’s rights and immigration. Even subscribing to a local news outlet is a profound political act these days. Let that sink in.

Joan Donovan is the founder of the Critical Internet Studies Institute and assistant professor of journalism at Boston University

 

[Vesper 28,767]

Archbishop of Canterbury under pressure to resign over church abuse scandal

https://www.channel4.com/news/archbishop-of-canterbury-under-pressure-to-resign-over-church-abuse-scandal

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s position is now untenable, according to the Bishop of Newcastle who joined the growing calls for Justin Welby to resign.

More than 6,500 people have signed a petition by some General Synod members urging him to quit, over his failure to act more rigorously over the serial abuser John Smyth.

The abuse of boys and young men in South Africa continued after Justin Welby was informed.

But despite a report which said Mr Welby “could and should” have reported the allegations to police years before Mr Smyth died.

 

video at the link

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'Hail Hitler and hail Trump': People wave Nazi flags outside Jewish play in Michigan

https://www.rawstory.com/nazi-flags-michigan/

 

President-elect Donald Trump's reelection was credited for emboldening a group of people waving Nazi flags in Michigan over the weekend.

WLNS reported that the flags were seen in two cities, including at a Jewish play.

According to the report, "many people" were seen displaying flags with swastikas on Saturday night as the Fowlerville Community Theater performed the "Diary of Anne Frank." The same group was also seen outside the American Legion Post in Howell.

"It was upsetting," cast member Becky Frank said. "You know, just knowing the character I was playing, knowing a lot of the research that I did on my character."

Witnesses said the protest began in Howell before moving to Fowlerville. Protesters were seen wearing masks with the number 1488, a white supremacist symbol.

"There was a group of people at the four-way intersection in downtown that had swastika flags and American flags," witness Alex Sutfill told WLNS. "They were sticking their arms up and yelling hail Hitler and Hail Trump and everything like that."

Peter Damerow said the group told him to go back to his country.

"They looked at me and one of them said," Damerow recalled. "No this is Pureville now, and we're here to make sure it stays pure."

"I really felt like they felt comfortable enough to do this because of Trump's re-election, and what they said to me at the stop light made that quite clear," he added.

 

[Vesper 28,767]

How monotheists modelled God on an alpha male

Is God a silverback?

Protective, omnipotent, scary and very territorial. The monotheistic God is modelled on a harem-keeping alpha male

https://aeon.co/essays/how-monotheists-modelled-god-on-a-harem-keeping-alpha-male

 

Imagine a Martian zoologist, visiting Earth and observing Homo sapiens for the first time. He, she or it would see a species of primate that differs from the others in many ways, all of them involving our complex cultural, intellectual, linguistic, symbolic and technologic lifestyles. But looking at us through a zoologist’s lens, our observer wouldn’t be especially impressed. To be sure, we have some distinctive anatomical traits (mostly hairless, bipedal, big brains, non-prognathic jaws, unimpressive teeth, and so forth) but being unique isn’t itself unique. Every species is special in its own way.

Among our catalogue of not-so-special traits would be the fact that men are on the whole larger than women: about 7 per cent taller and 15 per cent heavier, with this difference somewhat greater when it comes to muscularity. Also notable: men outnumber women when it comes to lethal violence by a factor of roughly 10:1, a differential found not only cross-culturally among adults, but even recognisable among young children (as a proclivity for violence).

Given these facts, our zoologist would strongly suspect that these humans are paradigmatic harem-holding mammals, notwithstanding the fact that, in the Western world at least, monogamy is the designated standard. In our sexual dimorphism (physical and behavioural male-female differences), we fit the normal polygynous profile for all other animal species. This profile arises as a result of sexual selection, whereby males compete with other males, and more fit males garner a payoff of enhanced reproductive success via an increased number of sexual partners.

This diagnosis of polygyny would be enhanced if the observer visited a high school: girls are physically and socially more mature than same-age boys (to the consternation of both). This pattern, known as sexual bimaturism, is also a polygyny give-away, if rather a counter-intuitive one. In order to reproduce, women undergo considerably more physiological stress than do men; they must nourish an embryo in utero, give birth and then lactate. By contrast, men need only produce a few cubic centimetres of semen. One might expect that males would mature sexually earlier than females since so much less is required of them, but this is not the case. In polygynous species, males must participate in fierce same-sex competition if they are to reproduce at all. Woe betide a male who enters the reproductive arena when too young, small, weak and inexperienced. Just as the degree of sexual dimorphism maps very closely upon the degree of polygyny (average harem size) in a species, the extent of sexual bimaturism is also strongly correlated with the extent to which males compete with each other for access to females. Humans fall into the moderate polygynous part of that spectrum.

Evidence for human polygyny is not confined to physiological differences. Prior to the cultural homogenisation that came with Western colonialism and missionary coercion, more than 80 per cent of traditional human societies were preferentially polygynous. Moreover, genomic data tell the same story: there is considerably more variation when it comes to mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited only from mothers, than in Y chromosome DNA, bestowed upon subsequent generations exclusively by fathers. In other words, over the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens, a relatively small number of men produced children with a relatively large number of women. As a species, we have had a greater variety of mothers than of fathers.

Put this all together, and the result is clear. An unbiased extra-terrestrial observer would consider that Homo sapiens’ polygyny is simply undeniable. Case closed.

But the likely insights wouldn’t stop there. Anyone sufficiently disentangled from the unconscious biases we all suffer from might well note that humanity’s polygynous heritage doesn’t only influence how men and women behave toward each other, notably aspects of aggression, parenting and sexuality. It also explains one of our species’ most important imaginary creations: monotheistic religion.

It may not seem like much of a jump, but in fact it is – and the implications are stunning, suggesting that monotheism derives from our polygynous ancestry. The most recent, in-depth and far-reaching treatment comes from Hector Garcia, whose book Alpha God (2015) details the many correspondences between our species’ obsequious attention to dominant males – what I emphasise as our ancient harem-holding past – and the current, widespread belief in one supreme god. As Garcia points out, each of the three major monotheistic traditions focuses on a male figure, one who strongly resembles an alpha male at the head of a social group. Sophisticated theologians typically emphasise that their deity lacks a physical body, somehow transcending physicality. More rarely, God might be conceived as non-gendered. Nonetheless, there is little doubt that the great majority of believers imagine a personal god who can be spoken to, who answers prayers, who has strong opinions and often discernible emotions, too: sad, angry, pleased, displeased, vengeful, jealous, forgiving, loving, and so forth.

Not everyone buys into a sky-god with a long white beard, a serious and all-knowing mien, capable of rewarding good behaviour and punishing bad. But it doesn’t take much imagination to recognise that God, as worshipped in most of the world, is remarkably humanoid, widely perceived as possessing many of those features that are associated with ‘alpha males’: a great, big, scary, wilful, yet nourishing and protective guy… in short, a silverback gorilla writ large.

These traits deserve scrutiny, in turn.

‘Great’: Muslims enthusiastically cry ‘God is great!’ and although the exact words are specific to Islam, the sentiment is not, as is the apparent need to proclaim it as part of prayer. Among monotheists, God is universally seen as not only great but literally The Greatest in every respect: power, wisdom, goodness and so forth, just as silverback male gorillas would doubtless describe themselves and demand that their subordinates agree.

‘Big’: dominant, harem-keeping males are typically large in stature – recall sexual dimorphism – and, as Garcia in particular has emphasised, among tribal as well as modern religious traditions, they generally grant themselves ornamentation (ceremonial regalia, especially head-gear) that make them seem bigger yet. Moreover, subordinates are expected to emphasise their diminutive status by bowing, kneeling and in any event keeping their heads lower than that of the king, pope, bishop, dominant gorilla or chimpanzee. Size – or apparent size – matters. Not surprisingly, a diminutive god is an oxymoron.

‘Scary’: it is dangerous to challenge the status of the alpha harem-master. After all, he got there by being not only omnipotent and omniscient, but also omni-destroying – or at least, highly threatening – when crossed. For the monotheist, fear of God is more than a prerequisite for belief in Him: the two are nearly identical.

‘Wilful’: God generally has very strong opinions, not least that He must be obeyed. A truly omnipotent being presumably could orchestrate things as He chooses, but instead – like an alpha male harem-master who is currently in charge but who has to constantly guard against intruders (against takeovers by other wannabe alphas – or in religious terms, competing gods) – he is jealous, vengeful of those who disobey, vigorously prohibiting any backsliding or counter-revolutionary support for competitors.

God readily emerges as the idealised harem-master. There is no need to distinguish between God-as-alpha-male and God-as-parent

‘Nourishing’: one way or another, harem-keepers are expected to benefit their underlings, often by their success in hunting, warfare or by successfully orchestrating not only their own fertility (via their wives) but also the flourishing of the other group members. Garcia notes that the Bible and Quran are both larded with numerous references to God’s provisioning of his flock: for example, ‘He provides food for those who fear him; He remembers His covenant Forever’ (Psalm 111:15), ‘And it is He who feeds me and gives me drink’ (Quran 26:79), ‘It is He who made the earth tame for you – so walk among its slopes and eat of His provision’ (Quran 67:15).

‘Protective’: just as the silverback guards his harem with ferocious protectiveness, so too does God. ‘But you, Lord, do not be far from me,’ implores the psalmist. ‘You are my strength; come quickly to help me. Deliver me from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dogs. Rescue me from the mouth of the lions; save me from the horns of the wild oxen.’ (Psalms 22:19-21)

‘Guy’: the monotheist God is male as are His chief representatives on earth, just like primate harem-keepers. It shouldn’t be surprising that religious leaders are prone to employing the great, big, scary, wilful, yet nourishing and protective guy when seeking to achieve and reinforce their dominance. Why would their followers even succumb to this domination? To some extent, it takes a willing subject to be led down the path of perceiving God as a powerful, harem-keeping entity. Our polygynous history has marinated human beings in precisely this tendency. Garcia’s (and our) ‘alpha god’ may be solitary as a deity, but he – like human alpha males throughout our prehistory – has numerous beta, gamma, delta, etc followers.

In The Future of an Illusion (1927), Sigmund Freud speculated that religion came from displacing the assumption of omniscience, omnipotence and omni-benevolence that, from the infant’s perspective, initially characterises one’s parents. As the child grows older, he or she becomes aware of parental inadequacy, whereupon these god-like traits are projected onto an imagined super-parent who is perfect, powerful and just sufficiently removed from day-to-day events to retain his imagined potency and ability to intimidate. And so, once again, God readily emerges as the idealised harem-master. There is no need to distinguish between God-as-alpha-male and God-as-parent. Both considerations work in much the same way and point in the same direction. In psycho-speak, the outcome is ‘over-determined’.

There is much in the evolutionary psychology of Homo sapiens that renders our species susceptible to God as portrayed in the Abrahamic religions, that is, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. We are deeply sensitive to dominance hierarchies and especially to the need to respect the silverback male and His prerogatives. We are subject to sexual impulses that in our evolutionary past contributed to the success of our ancestors, but that also risked serious trouble if they were not deployed cautiously. Hence, we are endowed with urges that are powerful but that we also intuitively recognise as potentially dangerous to ourselves, especially if they evoke jealous anger from the powerful male.

In The Naked Ape (1967), the zoologist Desmond Morris wrote that religion’s ‘extreme potency’ is simply a ‘measure of the strength of our fundamental biological tendency, inherited directly from our monkey and ape ancestors, to submit ourselves to an all-powerful, dominant member of the group’. Fly over the plains of North America in a small aircraft, and you will have the eerie impression that the towns are inhabited by relatively small creatures, occupying houses that are roughly the same size, except for one exceptionally large building in each town that must be the home of a very large person indeed. In addition to its exorbitant size, each ‘house of God’ has comparatively elaborate architecture, lovely artwork, and the submissive, downright worshipful devotion regularly displayed by the reverential, subordinate troop members, who follow – or at least pretend to follow – the rules He has established. And who feel relieved and reassured as a consequence not only of the obeisance in itself but also confident that they have affiliated with a powerful, dominant leader as a source of protection in a fearsome world.

Along these lines, in The Power of Faith (2007), Jay Glass proposed a reworking of the 23rd Psalm, as it might have been conceived by a chimpanzee. Here is my revised version, suitable for Homo polygynosa, aka H. religiosum:

The Hominin’s Prayer

The dominant male is my leader;
I’ll be okay.
He helps me get food and water
when I need it.
He leads me to the best and safest places.
He eases my anxiety.
He tells me what to do to avoid
getting into trouble, especially with Him.
Even though the savannah is full of dangers,
I will fear no competitors,
For You are in charge.
Your strength and Your vigour they comfort me.
You protect me from other animals (and from Yourself).
You help me out.
I’m doing pretty well… considering.
I feel safe in Your territory and among friends and relatives
as long as I am in Your troop;
and I submit and accept Your dominance.
Forever. (Or at least until someone replaces You.)

John Byers, professor of biology at the University of Idaho, has spent decades studying pronghorns, the fastest terrestrial creatures in North America. Noting that there aren’t currently any super-fast predators in North America, Byers hypothesised in Built for Speed (2003) that the dazzling velocity of these animals is due to their being haunted by the ‘ghosts of predators past’ – now extinct dire wolves and over-sized cats. By the same token, human beings are haunted by the ghosts of polygyny past, more specifically perhaps – when it comes to their vulnerability to a particular kind of deity-worship – the ghosts of alpha male, harem-holders past.

Garcia notes that:

male primates struggle for dominance within social groups, using a variety of strategies – fear and aggression among them – to acquire rank status. Rank, in turn, typically confers rewards, which for males includes preferential access to resources such as food, females, and territory. Dominant apes and men have a long history of securing such biological treasure by perpetrating violence and oppression on lower-ranking members of their societies. Once we observe that God, too, is portrayed as having great interest in these kinds of resources, and as securing them through similar means, it becomes increasingly clear that He has emerged as neither more nor less than the highest-ranking male of all.

God, one might assume, would be above caring about the erotic peccadilloes of his followers. Not so: the monotheistic God exhibits classic harem-keeper preoccupation with the sexual behaviour of his followers, including a great deal of what biologists call ‘mate guarding’, and no small amount of sexual acquisitiveness. The Abrahamic God makes it clear that He is ‘a jealous God’, and one who is especially intolerant if any of His flock dabbles with any other deities. ‘You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.’ (Exod. 20:4–5) Unbelievers and those who worship ‘false idols’ are treated with especially violent zeal; like all harem-keepers, He is ruthless in dealing with competition from others who might threaten to displace Him. Moreover, as numerous scholars have pointed out, the biblical god personalises whole cities (notably Babylon and Israel) as women in his life, whose obedience and fidelity are paramount, and whose disobedience and infidelity warrant severe punishment.

God’s demands for exclusivity in worship seem to have been taken directly from the playbook of a sexually distrustful dominant male. Insisting that one must ‘have no other gods before me’ is a lot like you must ‘have no other lovers than me’. Garcia emphasises that the Bible explicitly depicts God berating berating Israel for having ‘gone astray’, in the process conflating the worship of other gods with sexual infidelity: ‘If a man divorces his wife and she leaves him and marries another man, should he return to her again? Would not the land be completely defiled? But you have lived as a prostitute with many lovers – would you now return to me?’ (Jer. 3: 1–2)

Not surprisingly, as with those other dominant polygynous males with which our ancestors had to deal, a cuckolded God is a dangerous one: ‘And I will judge thee, as women that break wedlock and shed blood are judged; and I will give thee blood in fury and jealousy.’ (Ezekiel 16:38) The specificity of the threat could have come directly from successful – and violent – polygynists past: ‘Ye shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the people which are round about you; … lest the anger of the Lord thy God be kindled against thee, and destroy thee from off the face of the earth.’ (Deut 6:14-15)

If, as Garcia and others suggest, we are prone as a species to imagine God as a dominant male harem-keeper, then it follows that this God – consistent with mammalian male anxieties generally – would be especially concerned about his paternity, with such concern manifesting itself not only in aggressive, threatening behaviour toward potential sexual competitors, but also in seeking reassurance that he hasn’t been cuckolded.

Accordingly, let’s look at one of the best-known, yet insufficiently examined Biblical passages, from Genesis 1:26. ‘Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”’ This passage is often quoted by scholars critical of the damaging anti-ecological message it conveys: that human beings are granted dominion over all other life-forms. In Alpha God, Garcia notes that it also italicises an important connectedness – not between Homo sapiens and the rest of the organic world, but between God and his offspring: us. In Genesis 1:26 we thus have those offspring proclaimed by the Chief Polygynist to be legitimate Chips off the Old Divine Block. God further announces that because of this confirmed connection, His children are the legitimate inheritors of, well, everything.

Garcia is well aware that many Bible passages assert not only a family resemblance, but God’s direct paternity. For example: ‘Ye are the children of the Lord your God’ (Deut. 14:1); ‘Ye are the sons of the living God’ (Hosea 1:10); ‘We are the offspring of God’ (Acts 17:29). Furthermore, this relationship is strongly coloured with recognisable human emotion, notably paternal love and filial devotion: ‘See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!’ (1 John 3:1) And here I once again thank Hector Garcia, this time for pointing out that the most influential of Catholic theologians – the saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas –argued that the body of man was made in the Imago Dei ‘adapted to look up to heaven’.

More accurately, Imago Dei is a case of Imago Homo, in which God was created in the image of man – or perhaps, Imago Homo polygynosus. Whatever the appropriate Latin phrase, the bio-logical reality is that religious traditions tend to emphasise precisely the continuity (genetic transubstantiated into theological) that evolutionary considerations would predict.

Sexual restraint is a terrific way to avert jealous anger on the part of any dominant harem-keeper

Harem-keeping males are prone to violent regime change: not only are they intensely territorial and aggressive to one another, but they are ruthless upon acquiring new females. In many species such as lions, the new conqueror will kill any young fathered by the previous alpha male. Judeo-Christian tradition conforms so closely to this sociobiological expectation that we might almost wonder if someone had ‘fudged’ the data. The Old Testament in particular brims with horrific exhortations of infanticide, consistent with biological reality if not current morality, and predictably evoked when the ancient Israelites conquer an unrelated tribe that worships other gods: ‘Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.’ (Num. 31:17–18)

Harem-master males (regardless of species) are often at great pains to constrain the sexual ambitions of their subordinates, and not surprisingly, there are few religions in which God is portrayed as favouring sexual licence, and many in which acolytes are expected to practise abstinence, with virginity and celibacy being especially prized.

The big three Abrahamic religions most especially maintain that God strongly disapproves of various sexual practices, not just adultery. It is clear not only from the numerous examples adduced in Alpha God, but from the Bible and the Quran themselves, that the Abrahamic God is likely to be incensed by pretty much any kind of sexual pleasure, including homosexuality, masturbation, oral or anal sex, revealing clothing, even libidinous thoughts. Sexual restraint is a terrific way to avert jealous anger on the part of any dominant harem-keeper.

It seems likely that the human brain – for all its wonders – also contains a mammalian component that has evolved in an environment of male-dominated polygyny, along with more subtle, female-oriented polyandry – something I haven’t described here, but that also warrants attention. As a consequence, we are predisposed not only to overt polygyny plus covert infidelity, but also to a familiarity with and inclination to participate in systems of social deference and followership associated with an alpha-male polygynist. Not a pretty picture, but as Charles Darwin noted in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), ‘we are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it’.

An unfortunate consequence, however, of the evolutionary process that Darwin described so well is that, although Homo sapiens indeed has its vaunted reason, it has also been stuck with ossified behavioural patterns and psychological dynamics that persist in its religious values and strictures, a combination of prehistoric hopes and fears that reflect worldviews that most people would never endorse if they weren’t so used to hearing them. If that same imaginary Martian zoologist with whom we began this meditation were to interrogate an intelligent fish, asking for a description of her surroundings, probably the last thing she would say is: ‘It’s very wet down here.’ By the same token, our polygynous mindset lives on, not least in the unacknowledged deep-ocean trenches of our most prominent worship traditions.

David Barash’s new book, Out of Eden: The Surprising Consequences of Polygamy (2016), is out now from Oxford University Press.

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Deep Dives: Sweden: Multiculturalism in flames?

 

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Trump win means ‘time has come’ to annex parts of West Bank, Israeli minister says

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/11/11/israel-iran-war-news-gaza-palestine-lebanon/

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich welcomed President-elect Donald Trump’s electoral victory Monday, saying that “the time has come” to extend full Israeli sovereignty over the occupied West Bank.

He made the comment a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a recorded statement that he has spoken three times with Trump since the election and that they “see eye to eye on the Iranian threat.”

Israel’s conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon are set to dominate meetings in the Middle East and at the White House this week, after deadly Israeli airstrikes over the weekend highlighted the increasingly brutal toll.

On Monday, top officials from Arab and Islamic countries are meeting for a summit in Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh, to “discuss the continued Israeli aggression on the Palestinian territories and the Lebanese Republic, and the current developments in the region,” according to Saudi state media.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog is scheduled to meet with President Joe Biden at the White House on Tuesday, although it is not clear how much influence the Biden administration has over Israel after Trump’s presidential election victory.

Here are other key developments

• Hezbollah spokesman Mohamad Afif said Monday that the Lebanese militant and political movement has “enough weapons, equipment and supplies for a long battle” with Israel.
• Israeli airstrikes killed dozens of people, at least 20 of them children, across Gaza and Lebanon on Sunday, health authorities said. The strikes included an attack that hit homes in the besieged Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip.
• At least 43,603 people have been killed in Gaza during the war and 102,929 injured, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. At least 3,189 people have been killed and 14,078 injured in Lebanon, the country’s Health Ministry said. Neither agency distinguishes between civilians and combatants.
• Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack, including more than 300 soldiers. It says 368 soldiers have been killed in its military operation in Gaza.

Edited Monday at 20:39 by Vesper

[Fulham Broadway 16,829]

''40 Beheaded babies''....''In Springfield they're eating the dogs''....CIA feeding journos lies...

they all learned from Josef Goebbels - ''you can tell the most ridiculous lies, as long as you repeat it often enough they will believe you''

This is good

 

[robsblubot 3,502]

18 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

''40 Beheaded babies''....''In Springfield they're eating the dogs''....CIA feeding journos lies...

they all learned from Josef Goebbels - ''you can tell the most ridiculous lies, as long as you repeat it often enough they will believe you''

This is good

 

"It's hard to miss" not really... never heard of it.

[Vesper 28,767]

24 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

''40 Beheaded babies''....''In Springfield they're eating the dogs''....CIA feeding journos lies...

they all learned from Josef Goebbels - ''you can tell the most ridiculous lies, as long as you repeat it often enough they will believe you''

This is good

 

Operation Mockingbird

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

Operation Mockingbird is an alleged large-scale program of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that began in the early years of the Cold War and attempted to manipulate domestic American news media organizations for propaganda purposes. According to author Deborah Davis, Operation Mockingbird recruited leading American journalists into a propaganda network and influenced the operations of front groups. CIA support of front groups was exposed when an April 1967 Ramparts article reported that the National Student Association received funding from the CIA. In 1975, Church Committee Congressional investigations revealed Agency connections with journalists and civic groups.

snip

In the early years of the Cold War, efforts were made by the United States Government to use mass media to influence public opinion internationally. After the United States Senate Watergate Committee in 1973 uncovered domestic surveillance abuses directed by the Executive branch of the United States government and The New York Times in 1974 published an article by Seymour Hersh claiming the CIA had violated its charter by spying on anti-war activists, former CIA officials and some lawmakers called for a congressional inquiry that became known as the Church Committee. Published in 1976, the committee's report confirmed some earlier stories that charged that the CIA had cultivated relationships with private institutions, including the press.

Without identifying individuals by name, the Church Committee stated that it found fifty journalists who had official, but secret, relationships with the CIA. In a 1977 Rolling Stone magazine article, "The CIA and the Media," reporter Carl Bernstein expanded upon the Church Committee's report and wrote that more than 400 US press members had secretly carried out assignments for the CIA, including New York Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger, columnist and political analyst Stewart Alsop and Time Magazine. Bernstein documented the way in which overseas branches of major US news agencies had for many years served as the "eyes and ears" of Operation Mockingbird, which functioned to disseminate CIA propaganda through domestic US media.

[Vesper 28,767]

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-11-11-too-many-americans-see-democrats-as-hostile-elite/

The ACLU had a full-page ad in The New York Times last Friday announcing that it’s going to go after every one of the incoming Trump administration’s violations of individuals’ rights, whoever those individuals may be. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has already said he’ll convene a special session of the newly elected and still overwhelmingly Democratic legislature in December to protect safeguards for California residents against the coming Trump onslaught on immigrants, on clean-air standards and climate mitigation laws, for women who come to California for abortions, and so on.

These are all crucially important and necessary endeavors. However, they can’t be the primary image of the Democratic Party going forward. If the Democrats are to win back the voters who swung into Trump’s column last week, they have to become once more the party that advances the interests of the American working class—and they have to be seen that way by that working class, as they demonstrably have not succeeded in doing.

That means the primary focus of their elected officials at all levels needs to be such causes as raising taxes on the rich and corporations to fund expansions of Medicare and Social Security (both creating coverage in areas like dental care that Medicare doesn’t currently cover, and significantly increasing the level of Social Security benefits), reducing the cost of prescription drugs, greater funding of child care and senior care, greater funding of apprenticeship programs and trade schools for blue-collar occupations, and increasing investment in infrastructure and housing construction, both as a way to make housing more affordable and to create more jobs in construction. They need to push for the abolition of noncompete agreements. They need to introduce windfall profits tax legislation when profits’ share of revenues rise, and (my pet cause) create a sliding scale on corporate tax rates based on the ratio between CEO and median employee pay (the higher the multiple, the higher the tax).

None of these causes will become federal law over the next four years, but the challenge for the Democrats is to become identified with these and kindred causes. The Democrats’ congressional caucuses aren’t accustomed to taking unified stands on specific legislation, much less legislation that Republican congressional leaders won’t even allow to come to the floor for a vote. Despite that, caucus unanimity on bills that would make such changes, and constant party agitation for them, would be the least the party could do to reposition itself as a party that puts a premium on bread-and-butter issues.

The primary focus of elected officials needs to be such causes as raising taxes on the rich and corporations to fund expansions of Medicare and Social Security.

Putting all of those proposals together in a defining platform would certainly help. Getting every union and pro-Democratic organization to promote that platform would help, too. So would setting up some kind of communication apparatus to get that platform in front of voters and counter the vast right-wing propaganda machine, instead of relying on campaigns that do that, extremely inefficiently, every couple of years.

It really shouldn’t be that hard to get the Democrats to do a better job of affirming and advancing working-class interests. The harder part is to get them not to run afoul of some prevalent working-class values, which can tilt to cultural traditionalism, keeping in mind that a lot of cultural traditions are intolerant of deviations and outsiders. This challenge is all the harder because the Republicans and right-wing media (both mass and social) define the Democrats, on a daily basis, as cultural radicals. Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown was unseated by the huckster the Republicans set against him last week despite that fact that no politician of any party has more constantly, effectively, and volubly advanced workers’ interests throughout his career. Nonetheless, Brown lost because Republicans preposterously depicted him as the standard-bearer for transgender surgery, and because cryptocurrency speculators spent tens of millions of dollars against him—funding ads, however, that said nothing about Brown’s record of support for oversight of financial speculation, and focused rather on the danger he allegedly posed to gender definitions.

If that kind of characterization can take down Sherrod Brown, it can, over time, take down other Democrats in numbers that could keep the Democrats out of power for a very long time. This may require the Democrats to redefine themselves somewhat in the image of Dan Osborn, the union activist who ran as an independent against an incumbent Republican senator in Nebraska, and came close to unseating her. Osborn was a clear progressive on economics, and railed against our corporate overlords in the manner of Bernie Sanders. He also supported what is Americans’ common sense on our highest-profile cultural issue by favoring women’s right to an abortion. He did not, however, claim common cause with the Democrats’ positions—either actual or those invented by the Democrats’ enemies—on a host of other issues that, for better or worse, ran afoul of some cultural traditions or roused xenophobic hackles. To be sure, Osborn was running in one of the most Republican states in the nation, but his campaign offers Democrats a host of lessons, some of which they may conclude to be prudent courses of action. Clearly, the Democrats need to oppose mass deportations, but maintaining the current numerical quota (or something close to it) at our borders is a political necessity in the coming period.

What’s clear is that Democrats need to hone their self-definition if they’re to retake power. As they seek to limit the era of MAGA ascendency to Trump’s second term (ideally, to the first two years of Trump’s second term), that needs to be the work they are about.

[Fulham Broadway 16,829]

12 minutes ago, Vesper said:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-11-11-too-many-americans-see-democrats-as-hostile-elite/

The ACLU had a full-page ad in The New York Times last Friday announcing that it’s going to go after every one of the incoming Trump administration’s violations of individuals’ rights, whoever those individuals may be. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has already said he’ll convene a special session of the newly elected and still overwhelmingly Democratic legislature in December to protect safeguards for California residents against the coming Trump onslaught on immigrants, on clean-air standards and climate mitigation laws, for women who come to California for abortions, and so on.

These are all crucially important and necessary endeavors. However, they can’t be the primary image of the Democratic Party going forward. If the Democrats are to win back the voters who swung into Trump’s column last week, they have to become once more the party that advances the interests of the American working class—and they have to be seen that way by that working class, as they demonstrably have not succeeded in doing.

That means the primary focus of their elected officials at all levels needs to be such causes as raising taxes on the rich and corporations to fund expansions of Medicare and Social Security (both creating coverage in areas like dental care that Medicare doesn’t currently cover, and significantly increasing the level of Social Security benefits), reducing the cost of prescription drugs, greater funding of child care and senior care, greater funding of apprenticeship programs and trade schools for blue-collar occupations, and increasing investment in infrastructure and housing construction, both as a way to make housing more affordable and to create more jobs in construction. They need to push for the abolition of noncompete agreements. They need to introduce windfall profits tax legislation when profits’ share of revenues rise, and (my pet cause) create a sliding scale on corporate tax rates based on the ratio between CEO and median employee pay (the higher the multiple, the higher the tax).

None of these causes will become federal law over the next four years, but the challenge for the Democrats is to become identified with these and kindred causes. The Democrats’ congressional caucuses aren’t accustomed to taking unified stands on specific legislation, much less legislation that Republican congressional leaders won’t even allow to come to the floor for a vote. Despite that, caucus unanimity on bills that would make such changes, and constant party agitation for them, would be the least the party could do to reposition itself as a party that puts a premium on bread-and-butter issues.

The primary focus of elected officials needs to be such causes as raising taxes on the rich and corporations to fund expansions of Medicare and Social Security.

Putting all of those proposals together in a defining platform would certainly help. Getting every union and pro-Democratic organization to promote that platform would help, too. So would setting up some kind of communication apparatus to get that platform in front of voters and counter the vast right-wing propaganda machine, instead of relying on campaigns that do that, extremely inefficiently, every couple of years.

It really shouldn’t be that hard to get the Democrats to do a better job of affirming and advancing working-class interests. The harder part is to get them not to run afoul of some prevalent working-class values, which can tilt to cultural traditionalism, keeping in mind that a lot of cultural traditions are intolerant of deviations and outsiders. This challenge is all the harder because the Republicans and right-wing media (both mass and social) define the Democrats, on a daily basis, as cultural radicals. Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown was unseated by the huckster the Republicans set against him last week despite that fact that no politician of any party has more constantly, effectively, and volubly advanced workers’ interests throughout his career. Nonetheless, Brown lost because Republicans preposterously depicted him as the standard-bearer for transgender surgery, and because cryptocurrency speculators spent tens of millions of dollars against him—funding ads, however, that said nothing about Brown’s record of support for oversight of financial speculation, and focused rather on the danger he allegedly posed to gender definitions.

If that kind of characterization can take down Sherrod Brown, it can, over time, take down other Democrats in numbers that could keep the Democrats out of power for a very long time. This may require the Democrats to redefine themselves somewhat in the image of Dan Osborn, the union activist who ran as an independent against an incumbent Republican senator in Nebraska, and came close to unseating her. Osborn was a clear progressive on economics, and railed against our corporate overlords in the manner of Bernie Sanders. He also supported what is Americans’ common sense on our highest-profile cultural issue by favoring women’s right to an abortion. He did not, however, claim common cause with the Democrats’ positions—either actual or those invented by the Democrats’ enemies—on a host of other issues that, for better or worse, ran afoul of some cultural traditions or roused xenophobic hackles. To be sure, Osborn was running in one of the most Republican states in the nation, but his campaign offers Democrats a host of lessons, some of which they may conclude to be prudent courses of action. Clearly, the Democrats need to oppose mass deportations, but maintaining the current numerical quota (or something close to it) at our borders is a political necessity in the coming period.

What’s clear is that Democrats need to hone their self-definition if they’re to retake power. As they seek to limit the era of MAGA ascendency to Trump’s second term (ideally, to the first two years of Trump’s second term), that needs to be the work they are about.

Think theres truths there.

Guaranteed if there was a class demographic of who voted Trump/Harris more Working Class peeps would have voted for Trump.

They see preachy Dems as right up there own Harrises.

 

[NikkiCFC 7,942]

5 hours ago, Vesper said:

 

so many on there just blindly follow anything the establishment Dems do and how they frame the limits of action/debate

Unfortunately CBS, NBC, ABC as well. 

This was possible over 8 years ago but not since then. When he won in 2016 it's like they put him on black list. And even tho I'm liberal and watch these shows, I don't like it. Trump gives great material, make fun of him all you want but polarization is too big. Add CNN and others... it's remarkable that he won despite all these networks being against him. In fact, maybe all played part to piss off people even more idk... And now tables have turned. His interview with Rogan has more views than all these shows combined share.

Also they never made fun of Biden until it was clear he would get replaced. All started on the same time a little bit before he stepped down. Like someone gave them signal they can do it...

 

Edited Tuesday at 01:21 by NikkiCFC

[Vesper 28,767]

well damn

the Republicans likely have control of all branches of the US government now

looks like they somewhat likely end up with 221 seast in the House to the Dem's 214

 

[KEVINAA 90]

 

 

Edited Tuesday at 02:18 by KEVINAA

[Vesper 28,767]

10 minutes ago, KEVINAA said:

 

 

 

[NikkiCFC 7,942]

Democratic downfall started with blocking Bernie Sanders campaign to push Hillary. It was completely unreasonable. There was huge buzz around his movement while she was never popular. Like he is saying even now working class cannot connect with Democrats. They are delusional, who cares about Beyonce or Taylor Swift? Only teenagers. He was speaking about things 8,9 years ago that decided this elections. But they never listened. 

[cosmicway 1,323]

1 hour ago, NikkiCFC said:

Democratic downfall started with blocking Bernie Sanders campaign to push Hillary. It was completely unreasonable. There was huge buzz around his movement while she was never popular. Like he is saying even now working class cannot connect with Democrats. They are delusional, who cares about Beyonce or Taylor Swift? Only teenagers. He was speaking about things 8,9 years ago that decided this elections. But they never listened. 

Imaginary 2024 election: Bernie 19%, Trump 81%.