Why are Christian Nationalists so focused on extracting fossil fuels? Are they not worried about the future of our planet? (Scroll to the end to listen)
This is definitely one angle, and it certainly makes "Big Oil" bought in to the Project. But there is more going on, as I'm sure you realize: STEM can be seen as an existential threat to Christo-Fascism because it naturally refutes all the lies buttressing CF. Here's just one example of such pushback against STEM from the Babylon Bee (which passes in MAGAville as "satire.") This is really propaganda. The Metric system is the standard, like it or not, in STEM fields. So this is just stoking resentment among the rubes against "egghead scientists," who they consider ungodly. Quoting the end of the article:
"OK, we rest our case. If you think the metric system is useful for anyone other than math nerds and dorky scientists pouring chemicals into beakers, then you're probably a Communist. What's your favorite American unit of measurements? Let us know in the comments."
We know that one of many initiatives is to dismantle higher learning in this country (and ideally, the World). Stuff like this seems to be softening up the True Believers toward that goal, so not many will complain when MIT gets dismantled in the name of Christ.
Which is truly rich, since Big Oil NEEDS graduates from places like MIT to be the geologists finding the oil and engineers to help improve the machinery. Maybe Big Oil hasn't thought their alliance all the way through?
The metric system is the standard where I now live. And I'm learning it for everything.
There's so much more going on in every aspect of Project 2025. I cover little bits every weekday. I could probably write about all the ways they want to destroy science until the election, because even though they don't spend 1,000 pages talking about science, their plans impact every aspect of science/research/education/healthcare/more in this country and the world.
I'm grateful for your background, because you make this coverage deeper and more meaningful for everyone, including me.
Thanks for that. I'll keep providing observations as long as they're useful to this effort.
If you missed it, I just edited my original comment to point this out: "[Dismantling MIT] Which is truly rich, since Big Oil NEEDS graduates from places like MIT to be the geologists finding the oil and engineers to help improve the machinery. Maybe Big Oil hasn't thought their alliance all the way through?"
I’ve tried to protect this community so that it is collaborative and inclusive. Commenters make this content more valuable, because it lends a spectrum of perspectives to my own. I think that will be more persuasive in the end. So anytime you think you can add depth or context to your areas of expertise, you’re welcome to. I think I said this already, but whatever I’ve learned about science, I’ve taught myself as an adult. My interests run to nerdy stuff like space exploration, but over the years I’ve had many clients and friends who were engineers. My husband studied architecture, so I appreciate the complimentary disciplines. “Let’s design the most amazing building” and “Let’s make sure it doesn’t fall down.”
The contrast you draw between proactive and reactive choices is enlightening.
Change is hard because it threatens the status quo. Those who are best off and have the most with things the way they are have the most to lose. And humans tend to fight harder to keep what they have, than to gain what they don't have.
Ergo the rich always resist change the most, and they have the most resources to deploy to get their way.
What's interesting though is they don't have any real allies among the public. The one thing both sides have in common is their voters are unhappy and angry. So the rich are trying to pull a sleight of hand.
It's really high risk though. Whatever happens, how does this not blow up in all of our faces? That there's enough desperation to play with fire in this way is telling. I'm not sure the choice the rich are making isn't VERY reactive.
I don't think the toothpaste goes back in the tube. The rich may be trying to buy time with Trump and Project 2025, but the voters are still going to be angry, and they'll turn on whoever's in charge.
I think it's all out of control at this point. I suspect that makes it more unpredictable.
I also think being reactive is the American way. For years, Jessica Valenti wrote proactively about abortion: This can happen; we need to do something to protect this right before we lose it. Her message was proactive, because she was trying to prevent abortion bans before they happened. Her platform is much bigger now because her writing is reactive in many respects. She documents how laws and bans are hurting people, and she shares new laws and bans and language we should know about.
My work is similar. I'm proactively trying to get people to think through what Project 2025 says and how it could impact them personally BEFORE it happens nationwide. Both types of writing are valuable. But I wish more Americans thought proactively instead of reactively.
I know I've gone off on a tangent from your comment, but our American aversion to proactive thinking and actions is killing us. It's why anger and fear are such motivators: They're both emotional reactions to things that are happening or have already happened. If we could think and act more proactively, we would be much more successful as a country and as a society.
That's really what Project 2025 is: Christo-fascist Republicans/billionaires' proactive agenda for transforming the government into a theocracy that benefits the obscenely wealthy and their Christian Nationalist enforcers. But because most Americans cannot or will not think proactively, they will need consequences to react to. I don't want those consequences. You don't want those consequences. But things may have to blow up in our faces for enough people to care, because they're finally forced to react to what's happening to them.
I think humans generally are reactive rather than proactive. That's why proactive is kind of a buzzword, because people rarely do it.
I'm not sure though that what's going on on the right isn't reactive too. The billionaires may be trying to seize the initiative, but in an ideal world you wouldn't align with someone as divisive and mercurial as Trump, or people as ignorant and uncompromising as Christian Nationalists. That this is their best option suggests they're out of other options.
I've always been skeptical that instability is good for the rich (although it may be worse for the rest of us) because it means the status quo they're doing so well under is threatened. If their hand is forced and they can't keep the country together anymore - and they're kidding themselves if they think they can do that with Trump - I think that means something.
I agree that they are out of other options. What incenses me about this crop of billionaires is how selfish they are. Maybe they always are. But seriously, how much money do you need? How many billions? Trillions? That what they have isn’t enough for them makes them some of the vilest humans ever.
As someone who studied accounting and finance and worked in those industries for almost 2 decades, there is absolutely no way our stock market is worth the numbers it is currently generating. So much of it is values we can't verify, that are inflated on paper, that aren't backed up by actual assets and items of real worth. I don't want to be apocalyptic, but I think this crop of people know this, and they're making hay before it all corrects. Because no matter what we do to manipulate the markets, they will eventually correct. The more we artificially manipulate them, the worse the corrections are.
At least not with interest rates where they are. Although maybe real rates haven't changed all that much.
If assets are overvalued, that means there aren't enough of them, or to put it more simply, there's too much saving. Maybe not here, but globally. Although isn't that the natural result of wealth inequality? The rich (wherever they live) have a much higher percentage of their money stored in assets and not being spent. As much as they spend, there's even more they couldn't spend, even if they wanted to; the numbers are just too big (and also rich people are cheap, which is part of how they get to be rich). Normal people have their assets and liabilities cancel out over their lifetimes. (So yes there is also the demographic argument for surplus savings - more old people, but then they're supposed to be spending it all on health care now?)
The thing is that all that really matters are goods and services. Wealth is just a claim on that. If I give everybody a million dollars and none of us spend it, we can all say we're millionaires. Obviously as soon as we spend it collapses. And isn't that just what most of this wealth is? Inflated asset values?
Where it gets interesting is when you have competing claims on goods and services. The rich might not care if their wealth is phony, so long as they have more than you and I do, because it puts them at the front of the line. But when you have economic calamities, there's invariably political pressure to bail out, for the state to be the backstop. So there ends up being a political limit to how much crashes can impoverish anyone. Because again, it's not about bank balances, but about ability to access goods and services.
If we ever finally realize that what we're doing isn't working, we have to address the myriad market failures that exist in a modern economy. In the cases where socialism has a better answer, that's what's going to or what should win.
(And I didn't even get to talk about inflation, when the economy's production of goods and services can't keep up with people's claims on them. That's what everyone's worried about now 🤷).
These assholes would demolish every National Park if they could. And imagine how many animals would become endangered or extinct. Because who needs National Parks when you're so busy living in your gold mansions in the sky.....
I expect this from the industrial oligarchs, but do the christo-fascists not care about the world they are leaving for their children??
Christian Nationalists believe Jesus will return in the next 25 years or so, destroy the earth, and create a new heaven and a new earth for them. So no, they don't care about what they're leaving for their children and grandchildren.
This is definitely one angle, and it certainly makes "Big Oil" bought in to the Project. But there is more going on, as I'm sure you realize: STEM can be seen as an existential threat to Christo-Fascism because it naturally refutes all the lies buttressing CF. Here's just one example of such pushback against STEM from the Babylon Bee (which passes in MAGAville as "satire.") This is really propaganda. The Metric system is the standard, like it or not, in STEM fields. So this is just stoking resentment among the rubes against "egghead scientists," who they consider ungodly. Quoting the end of the article:
"OK, we rest our case. If you think the metric system is useful for anyone other than math nerds and dorky scientists pouring chemicals into beakers, then you're probably a Communist. What's your favorite American unit of measurements? Let us know in the comments."
We know that one of many initiatives is to dismantle higher learning in this country (and ideally, the World). Stuff like this seems to be softening up the True Believers toward that goal, so not many will complain when MIT gets dismantled in the name of Christ.
Which is truly rich, since Big Oil NEEDS graduates from places like MIT to be the geologists finding the oil and engineers to help improve the machinery. Maybe Big Oil hasn't thought their alliance all the way through?
The article: https://babylonbee.com/news/10-real-life-examples-of-why-american-measurements-are-better-than-the-communist-metric-system
The metric system is the standard where I now live. And I'm learning it for everything.
There's so much more going on in every aspect of Project 2025. I cover little bits every weekday. I could probably write about all the ways they want to destroy science until the election, because even though they don't spend 1,000 pages talking about science, their plans impact every aspect of science/research/education/healthcare/more in this country and the world.
I'm grateful for your background, because you make this coverage deeper and more meaningful for everyone, including me.
Thanks for that. I'll keep providing observations as long as they're useful to this effort.
If you missed it, I just edited my original comment to point this out: "[Dismantling MIT] Which is truly rich, since Big Oil NEEDS graduates from places like MIT to be the geologists finding the oil and engineers to help improve the machinery. Maybe Big Oil hasn't thought their alliance all the way through?"
I’ve tried to protect this community so that it is collaborative and inclusive. Commenters make this content more valuable, because it lends a spectrum of perspectives to my own. I think that will be more persuasive in the end. So anytime you think you can add depth or context to your areas of expertise, you’re welcome to. I think I said this already, but whatever I’ve learned about science, I’ve taught myself as an adult. My interests run to nerdy stuff like space exploration, but over the years I’ve had many clients and friends who were engineers. My husband studied architecture, so I appreciate the complimentary disciplines. “Let’s design the most amazing building” and “Let’s make sure it doesn’t fall down.”
The contrast you draw between proactive and reactive choices is enlightening.
Change is hard because it threatens the status quo. Those who are best off and have the most with things the way they are have the most to lose. And humans tend to fight harder to keep what they have, than to gain what they don't have.
Ergo the rich always resist change the most, and they have the most resources to deploy to get their way.
What's interesting though is they don't have any real allies among the public. The one thing both sides have in common is their voters are unhappy and angry. So the rich are trying to pull a sleight of hand.
It's really high risk though. Whatever happens, how does this not blow up in all of our faces? That there's enough desperation to play with fire in this way is telling. I'm not sure the choice the rich are making isn't VERY reactive.
I don't think the toothpaste goes back in the tube. The rich may be trying to buy time with Trump and Project 2025, but the voters are still going to be angry, and they'll turn on whoever's in charge.
I think it's all out of control at this point. I suspect that makes it more unpredictable.
I also think being reactive is the American way. For years, Jessica Valenti wrote proactively about abortion: This can happen; we need to do something to protect this right before we lose it. Her message was proactive, because she was trying to prevent abortion bans before they happened. Her platform is much bigger now because her writing is reactive in many respects. She documents how laws and bans are hurting people, and she shares new laws and bans and language we should know about.
My work is similar. I'm proactively trying to get people to think through what Project 2025 says and how it could impact them personally BEFORE it happens nationwide. Both types of writing are valuable. But I wish more Americans thought proactively instead of reactively.
I know I've gone off on a tangent from your comment, but our American aversion to proactive thinking and actions is killing us. It's why anger and fear are such motivators: They're both emotional reactions to things that are happening or have already happened. If we could think and act more proactively, we would be much more successful as a country and as a society.
That's really what Project 2025 is: Christo-fascist Republicans/billionaires' proactive agenda for transforming the government into a theocracy that benefits the obscenely wealthy and their Christian Nationalist enforcers. But because most Americans cannot or will not think proactively, they will need consequences to react to. I don't want those consequences. You don't want those consequences. But things may have to blow up in our faces for enough people to care, because they're finally forced to react to what's happening to them.
I think humans generally are reactive rather than proactive. That's why proactive is kind of a buzzword, because people rarely do it.
I'm not sure though that what's going on on the right isn't reactive too. The billionaires may be trying to seize the initiative, but in an ideal world you wouldn't align with someone as divisive and mercurial as Trump, or people as ignorant and uncompromising as Christian Nationalists. That this is their best option suggests they're out of other options.
I've always been skeptical that instability is good for the rich (although it may be worse for the rest of us) because it means the status quo they're doing so well under is threatened. If their hand is forced and they can't keep the country together anymore - and they're kidding themselves if they think they can do that with Trump - I think that means something.
I agree that they are out of other options. What incenses me about this crop of billionaires is how selfish they are. Maybe they always are. But seriously, how much money do you need? How many billions? Trillions? That what they have isn’t enough for them makes them some of the vilest humans ever.
Maybe. But then is it that, or is it fear of losing what they have? If they're feeling the heat then something's up. 🤷
As someone who studied accounting and finance and worked in those industries for almost 2 decades, there is absolutely no way our stock market is worth the numbers it is currently generating. So much of it is values we can't verify, that are inflated on paper, that aren't backed up by actual assets and items of real worth. I don't want to be apocalyptic, but I think this crop of people know this, and they're making hay before it all corrects. Because no matter what we do to manipulate the markets, they will eventually correct. The more we artificially manipulate them, the worse the corrections are.
At least not with interest rates where they are. Although maybe real rates haven't changed all that much.
If assets are overvalued, that means there aren't enough of them, or to put it more simply, there's too much saving. Maybe not here, but globally. Although isn't that the natural result of wealth inequality? The rich (wherever they live) have a much higher percentage of their money stored in assets and not being spent. As much as they spend, there's even more they couldn't spend, even if they wanted to; the numbers are just too big (and also rich people are cheap, which is part of how they get to be rich). Normal people have their assets and liabilities cancel out over their lifetimes. (So yes there is also the demographic argument for surplus savings - more old people, but then they're supposed to be spending it all on health care now?)
The thing is that all that really matters are goods and services. Wealth is just a claim on that. If I give everybody a million dollars and none of us spend it, we can all say we're millionaires. Obviously as soon as we spend it collapses. And isn't that just what most of this wealth is? Inflated asset values?
Where it gets interesting is when you have competing claims on goods and services. The rich might not care if their wealth is phony, so long as they have more than you and I do, because it puts them at the front of the line. But when you have economic calamities, there's invariably political pressure to bail out, for the state to be the backstop. So there ends up being a political limit to how much crashes can impoverish anyone. Because again, it's not about bank balances, but about ability to access goods and services.
If we ever finally realize that what we're doing isn't working, we have to address the myriad market failures that exist in a modern economy. In the cases where socialism has a better answer, that's what's going to or what should win.
(And I didn't even get to talk about inflation, when the economy's production of goods and services can't keep up with people's claims on them. That's what everyone's worried about now 🤷).
These assholes would demolish every National Park if they could. And imagine how many animals would become endangered or extinct. Because who needs National Parks when you're so busy living in your gold mansions in the sky.....
I expect this from the industrial oligarchs, but do the christo-fascists not care about the world they are leaving for their children??
Christian Nationalists believe Jesus will return in the next 25 years or so, destroy the earth, and create a new heaven and a new earth for them. So no, they don't care about what they're leaving for their children and grandchildren.
It didn't happen 25 years ago or the previous 25 or previous 25.......so on.
They sure are full of a lot of excuses for their "justifications" in robbing and raping mother earth.
It didn't happen 25 years ago or the previous 25 or previous 25.......so on.
They sure are full of a lot of excuses for their "justifications" in robbing and raping mother earth.
"Project 2025 is an unholy alliance between Christian Nationalism and the New American Oligarchy"
UNHOLY ALLIANCE......you said it perfectly!
These parts of P2025 make me just as angry as the culture war parts.