#judeo faith

[mrkilroi]

Watch "Judaism vs Christianity on Sin: Rabbi Tovia Singer Explains Why We Differ" on YouTube

[disgruntledexplainer]

list of abrahamic terms and how they are used

monotheistic: describing a religion which believes in only one God. examples: judaism, islam, jehovah’s witness.

trinitarian monotheistic: describing a religion which believes in only one God, who also exists as three Persons, typically described as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. examples: Catholic Christianity, Orthodox Christianity, and most mainline and evangelical christian sects. some trinitarian monotheistic religions also believe in “Saints”, but these are merely particularly virtuous humans and are not worshiped (though they may be prayed to; there is a distinction between prayer and worship i may get to later).

monolatrous: belief in many gods, but only one that is worthy of worship. example: mormonism.

henotheistic: belief in many gods, but one is held up as more worthy of worship than others. example: early Yahweism (extinct for about 3200 years now).

Dualism: describing a religion that believes in two gods; usually a good God who is actively worshiped, and a weaker evil god who is rejected. All other “divinities” are typically emanations of these two gods, like rays of sunlight emanating from the sun. example: zoroastrianism

Polytheistic: describing a religion that believes in many gods that are all worthy of worship. there are no major polytheistic abrahamic groups, despite accusations that often fly this way or that between groups.

Abrahamic: describing a religion that shares a common cultural mythos with Yahweism, Judaism, Catholic and Orthodox Christianity, and Islam. Examples: All Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religions.

Judeo-Christian: describing a religion that claims direct continuity with second-temple judaism, rahter than a separate revelation tangentially related to it. Examples: Judaism, Catholic Christianity, Orthodox Christianity, all mainline protestant christian sects, most other protestant sects.

Christian: Describing a religion which believes that Jesus is the actual Son of God and worships Him as such. Examples: All self-described Christian groups except Jehova’s Witnesses and Mormons.

High-Church Christian: Describing christian groups which retain the ritual practices and beliefs from the early church (circa 30 AD). Examples: Catholic Christianity, Orthodox Christianity, Coptic Christianity, Anglicanism, Episcopalianism, and Lutheranism.

Low-Church Christianity: Describing christian groups which reject all aspects of early christianity, instead opting to adopted a more free-form individualistic form of devotion more reminiscent of germanic or norse paganism. Examples: most other forms of christianity.

i may add to this post later.

[jameslmartello]

Corrie Ten Boom on Forgiveness

[ehzdesign]

Architecture CodeX #98 Museum of The Bible by Smithgroup

[fatherscurti]

FACING ADVERSITY.

[rainbowhouseplant]

Im like 95% certain the new job has the same insurance as the old job soooooo.....

therapist shopping for when it kicks in cause top surgery for nonbinary folks is covered with a year of documented therapy.

[germiyahu]

Maybe an ethnostate is an inherently dangerous and immoral idea. What has happened when other people tried to establish ethnostates?

Well firstly, Israel is not an ethnostate. There is no equivalent policy of Israelification or Judaification as there was (tbh is) with Russification, or historic and contemporary Arabization, Modi's attempts at Hindutva, Erdogan's extreme backsliding into ethnonationalism, etc.

Israel is a liberal democratic state. Some Arabs rejected citizenship, as is their right to do so on principled grounds. But most other groups who are not Israeli Jews have implicitly accepted the Social Contract of a modern liberal democratic state. They receive equal rights under the Law (which is enforceable), and they're aware that they're not the majority and that not every aspect of their culture will cater to them or center them.

Most of the country coming to a standstill on Shabbat could be a sign of an ethnostate, but if municipalities don't want to observe Shabbat, there are no enforceable laws that allow anyone to stop them from ignoring Shabbat. And if there are/were, they were much more frequently levied against other Jews.

Israel has historically not cared if its non Jewish citizens practice their own faiths, speak their own languages, observe their own cultural traditions. Jews do not proselytize. If Israel truly were an ethnostate we'd see a repeat of the Edomites being forcibly converted by John Hyrcanus. The reason this hasn't happened is not because Jews are "disgusted" by Palestinians, for the record. A majority of Israeli Jews look identical to Palestinians and historically spoke Judeo-Arabic. It's simply not necessary for any government to function to pursue an assimilationist policy. It's not a priority among any stream of Judaism or any sub-cultural group of Jews.

People's discomfort with a Jewish majority state, that utterly and thoughtlessly centers Jewish culture (through symbols, the calendar, the weekly/monthly/yearly cycle, holidays, etc.) is rooted in antisemitism. Because it's abhorrent to see Jews running the show. It's new, it's weird, it's even a little insulting. It's not the Natural Order of things. It's unfair. This is a primal Judenhass gene being activated, and it applies to everything related to Jews. There's an inherent hypocrisy in most people when it comes to Jews.

Even in a country like Japan which is considered by fascists to be an Ethnostate, that belies the diversity of the country. An ethnostate is not a state with a majority or supermajority of one ethnicity, nor is it a state that has implicit biases toward that majority ethnic group. An ethnostate must legally uphold the supremacy of the ethnic group in question and at best make no attempt to extend equal rights to any minorities. At worst, it will attempt to assimilate them or exterminate them.

Secondly, what happens in real genuine ethnostates? Well to name a few examples: the Apartheid system of Imperial Russia, with the accompanying pogroms that led to the collapse of the Pale of Settlement which ushered in the largest Jewish migration in history. The effects of this system are still being felt today, not just by Jews. The whole reason Putin and most Russians feel entitled to Ukrainian land and feel threatened by a Ukrainian identity is because Russification considered Russians Belarussians and Ukrainians the same people (which meant Belarussians and Ukrainians were to be forcibly assimilated by Russians).

Here's another example: Kurds in Turkey are still not considered a legally recognized ethnic group. They can't even spell their own names correctly because they have letters in their alphabet that do not occur in Turkish, and Turkish is the only language of state (Turkey as a modern state was heavily influenced by France and it shows). Kurds are routinely suspected of being PKK members and whole towns were bulldozed to make room for Syrian refugees, as a collective punishment against the Kurdish insurgency (which restarted amid the war with ISIS).

Saudi Arabia is an ethnostate, as are most of the Gulf Monarchies. Citizenship is a privilege only enjoyed by the Khaleeji Arabs, even though they're a minority in most of their own countries. Palestine is also an ethnostate, citizenship and rights are only offered to those who are deemed Palestinians. Nobody else is allowed to live there. The Israelis who illegally live in the West Bank have to be propped up by a military occupation and have to have Israeli laws stretched over the border to encompass them, because they would not ever be allowed to even live in the West Bank, much less be afforded any rights or citizenship. This is not just Palestine's fault, this was a precedent set by Jordan. The oldest of all Jewish communities in Palestine were all cleansed by Jordanian troops, banished from their lands and never allowed to return.

I hope you can see that ethnostates are not very compatible with liberal democracies, as liberal democracies by definition and by tradition have universal human rights (at least in the West). It is authoritarian and totalitarian regimes that typically strive for an ethnostate. There are shades of ethnostatitude in democracies, such as France, which uses civic identity as the privileged "ethnicity," and that civic identity happens to be French, which means everyone must be culturally French and speak French. Though it's not violently enforced there is a state policy of ignoring all minorities and their cultures. And of course Turkey, which has always been a flawed democracy, but is increasingly becoming dictatorial and wouldn't you know, the more authoritarian it becomes, the more Turkishness is a central component of Erdogan's goals and policies.

Are there Israelis who want Israel to be an ethnostate? Why yes, but are they significant or relevant beyond appointing Ben-Gvir as a token gesture to this radical fringe? Not really, though there's an alarming capacity for them to increase their numbers. Is any of that relevant to the daily functions and moral "core" of Israel as a nation? Not at all. If you don't judge any other state by it's worst most obnoxious most supremacist actors, why judge Israel that way? Is it those Judenhass Genes again?

[creature-wizard]

If Judeo-Christian cannot be used as a term, then why do many people who start out hating Christianity become antisemetic? I mean no harm by asking this by the way. I just want to know why many people who start hating Christianity eventually become antisemetic. Could it be because people think the two faiths are similar or the same?

Basically, yeah. Most gentiles within culturally Christian societies learn that Judaism is basically just Christianity without Jesus. From this, they infer that everything they don't like about Christianity is the fault of Judaism, and Judaism alone - if they aren't told this outright by someone else. They generally don't really grasp how the modes of Christianity they know derive from Roman Catholicism, which was designed by the Romans for Roman political purposes. Nor do they really understand that Jews don't engage with their scriptures in the same way Christians engage with theirs.

And of course, leaders in Christian societies have been blaming Jews for anything and everything for centuries in order to deflect blame away from their own failings, and the systemic inadequacies of their governments more generally. So ironically, these people are engaging in an age-old Christian tradition, whether they realize it or not.

[beardedmrbean]

One hundred days.

It's been 100 days since terrorists invaded my homeland, the Jewish people's only home, Israel.

It's been 100 days since hundreds of Israelis were taken hostage.

It's been 100 days of war and sorrow and uncertainty.

But after these 100 days, the one thing I am certain about—that I've always been certain about, and have seen more than ever in the days since Oct. 7—is that the Jewish state and the Jewish people have true friends in Christians around the world.

That's why it has been so unsettling to see anti-Semitism being spread in the name of Christianity—by those on the fringes, and those in mainstream media. But you know who has notbeen fooled by these lies?

Israel has more than 700 million Christian friends worldwide. As people who value human life—in this fight against those who don't hold life sacred, we all—Christians and Jews—must take a stand now, before it's too late. The time to stand for Israel and the Jewish people in now,as hateful and dangerous anti-Semitism has risen by nearly 400 percent in the 100 days since Hamas' attacks on the Jewish people.

During these 100 days of war, I've been shocked to see centuries-old blood libels revived, which have always been intended to divide the Christian and Jewish communities and make them see one another as enemies: "The Jews killed Jesus..." (...no, the Romans did).

Over these past 100 days, I've also seen new anti-Semitic theories spread like wildfire, all of them, too, based on historical inaccuracies—including Munther Isaac in the New York Times and Father Edward Beck on CNN both saying that if Jesus were born today, he'd be a Palestinian (...no, Jesus was a Jew, born in what the Bible calls the Land of Israel, more than 100 years before Judea was named Palestine by the Romans).

As I've heard these dangerous, harmful, evil anti-Semitic tropes spewed, it makes me wonder why Jesus' own people—the Jewish people—are being attacked in his name.

Because today, Jesus would be a Jewish citizen of the Jewish state—the only country in the Middle East where the Christian population is growing, up 1.3 percent from the year before, with 187,900 Christians living in freedom. More than 20 percent of Israel's population is not Jewish and enjoys full legal equality.

Jesus today, would be proud to be an Israeli.

Today, the Jewish Jesus certainly wouldn't live in or even be allowed to visit biblical places like Gaza or Jericho or Bethlehem—these are places in which no Israelis are able to enter.

And like Israelis of all faiths—Jewish, Christian, and Muslim—Jesus would be in the middle of this ongoing war, spending time in a bomb shelter as terrorist rockets have targeted nearly every city in the Holy Land, including Jesus' hometown of Nazareth, these past 100 days.

One reason I am shocked, terrified, and outraged that such antisemitism is spreading is because Jewish-Christian relations have come so far. Bridges built on faith and fellowship have ended what have been centuries of distrust and worse. For the first time in history, millions of Christians and Jews are standing shoulder-to-shoulder in shared Judeo-Christian values we hold sacred. I guess it makes sense that the terrorists and the forces of darkness are trying to destroy what we, as people of faith in a loving God who sanctifies life, have achieved.

But those evil forces will never win. Today more than ever, millions of Christian friends around the world do stand for Israel.

Millions of Christians have stood with Israel—with their prayers and their support—during this war. Instead of joining the trending calls for Israel's destruction, they're praying for our strength and our success in wiping out Hamas, the modern day Amalek.

Millions of Christian friends of the Jewish people act by boldly rejecting the anti-Semitic lies being spread and by speaking up and spreading the truth about Israel.

No longer will a huge portion of the Christian community be fooled by hatred and lies, nor will they be fooled into spreading them. Israel's Christian friends are too committed to spreading love and support for their Jewish brothers and sisters, as they fight for survival in the only Jewish homeland.

The rising anti-semitism across the globe, only serves as a stark reminder to us all, why the Jewish people need a safe haven.

In Israel, it has been a beacon of hope for all of us, to see how millions of Christians love, pray, and act for Israel during our fight for survival, as enemies on every side try to destroy the land of the Jewish people, the Promised Land of the Bible.

No longer will Christians and Jews be separated by lies and hatred. Today, we stand unified.

These past 100 days, as Israel's enemies have chanted, "from the river to the sea," Israel's millions of Christian friends continue the same chorus to which they've been committed for more than 75 years:

Never again.

[moltengoldveins]

so, I am already Adoring the discourse on The Creator, the new sci fi AI film that came out recently, but I’ve yet to see anyone talk about the fascinating religious undertones to the whole movie? Like, I’m Christian. I’ll be the first to admit my bias here: I tend to look for faith and spiritual undertones when consuming media because it’s an integral part of the way I see the world. but this movie was SO COOL?? Like, the Complete Lack of any sort of faith shown in the American characters in contrast with the AI and the Asian characters, a total shift from the modern cultural idea that religion and AI are incompatible. There are monks that are droids and simulants. The kid uses her technology powers by making a “praying” motion. There’s a robot preaching a pretty classic Judeo-Christian Messiah narrative to a bunch of kiddos. There’s only ONE American character given any sort of obvious religious identity and it’s that One Trooper Lady when she mentions Valhalla. This is such an interesting decision and I’m fascinated to know what y’all think of it. NOT TO MENTION (and this is by FAR my favorite part) the fact that the religion and the AI conflict and the treatment of human life are all implicitly bound up together. The Americans believe that the AI are ‘just programming,’ that they aren’t real, that they don’t have souls. The New Asians don’t. And that seems to bleed into the way they treat Humans as well? The kind girl near the beginning of the film, clearing the blast zone with Taylor, panics when she sees an AI online for the first time because she recognizes that he behaves like a person, while Taylor is cold, unresponsive, and insists that it’s just programming. The Americans SAY they value human life because humans are really people and AI aren’t, but they treat civilians and combatants, AI and Humans, Exactly the Same. Almost like, if you reduce one thing with a soul to ‘just programming, not of value’ that starts messing with the way you treat Everything Else. The New Asians, as far as the narrative tells us, don’t plan on retribution for the war. They’re careful with civilians, to a certain extent (I don’t love the van scene with the kiddos tbh :( feel like that was out of place? And the AI lady, the girlfriend of Taylor’s friend who was killed as well, interesting nuances there) and they treat one another like people ought. There’s very little distinction given between the more android and more human AI, which I think is awesome, and the climax of the arc of Taylor’s character happens In A Temple. The end of the story is a message of hope for reunification in heaven AND hope for reunification on earth. That’s. That’s so cool. Like. I think that’s the coolest thing I’ve seen in Ages. I can’t Ever remember seeing that kind of message done in a story that isn’t painfully preachy. One thing that often bothers me about modern film and media is the idea that religion and spirituality has to be handled in one of three ways: entirely unmentioned, preachy to the absurd, or blatantly disrespected. It’s not a universal problem, but it’s pretty widespread. I couldn’t tell what faith the directors ascribed to in this film, but I could tell they were discussing it intelligently and I LIKED THAT. I liked it a lot. I can’t speak for anyone but myself, my tastes, and beliefs: I’m willing to bet a lot of Christians won’t like this movie because they’re hung up on the lack of a blatantly Christian or preachy narrative. I’m willing to bet a lot of other people won’t like it because it tackled spirituality at all. But I liked it, because it looked at the world we live in and spoke of what it saw. It wrestled with the topics of death and life and souls and heaven and national pride and racism and capitalism and love and what it means to be a good person and it did it really well, and I admire that.

please please let me know what y’all thought of the movie? I’m really interested in knowing what people picked up on or thought the movie was saying. God bless y’all, and have an excellent weekend :) 💜

[mrkilroi]

Watch ""Gog and Magog" - What's it All About? - Ask the Rabbi Live with Rabbi Mintz" on YouTube

[sunbeamstress]

i've noticed an increasing trend in game names that are like

TITLE OF GAME: ENTIRE OTHER SEPARATE TITLE OF GAME

and it's kinda fascinating to see! i'm a little obsessed with naming trends, names themselves, and their natures, being a subject of endless personal fascination; for most of my entire life, works of media in the US were typically given just a single TITLE. if you make a sequel, that's TITLE 2. if you make a spinoff? sometimes it's a different TITLE, but sometimes it's TITLE: SUBTITLE.

except now we have tons of games in the public space that are called TITLE: SUBTITLE as singular works!

the evolution of the SUBTITLE component of these names is so interesting. usually it was something descriptive that hinted the work was derivative (The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall; Banjo & Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts; Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty; etc.), but the SUBTITLE's role is changing.

here's a fun trend: games with simplistic (possibly difficult to trademark) names, with a tacked-on subtitle whose job it is to better illustrate the primary title

is "smalland" the actual name of the game, or do we say "smalland: survive the wilds" every time in accordance with the 2005 Pimp Named Slickback ruling? do you say "divinity original sin" as a singular noun or are you meant to inject a little micro-pause where the colon should be?

better yet though, what if the SUBTITLE didn't have to clarify the TITLE? what if it could just be a whole-ass other name for the game?

i totally get why you can't just name your game "metal," that isn't what makes this game name so deliciously weird. the name's components are clearly related, but they seem to point to different spheres of information.

what is this game actually called? do you just call it "metal hellsinger"?

is "metal" meant to hint at the musical lexicon and the game is just "hellsinger"?

is the main character the hellsinger and is she herself implied to hellsing?

does "metal:" imply that this is a singular title in the Metal series?

what if they make a sequel with an EDM or a rap soundtrack? do we get "Drill: Barspitter"? actually i'd play the shit out of that.

btw you should try this game, it fucking rips and it's on sale for like USD$12 right now

by this point i think i got across what i was going for, so now we're just taking a tour. this one's fun because both of these are pretty good names for games, but they couldn't seem to settle on one so they just took both. i respect it!

bleak faith is a game of putting on airs; it wears the trappings of a soulsborne but like most derivative soulsbornes, it assigns its own rules to combat, character building, etc.

it also wears the trappings of my favorite TITLE: SECOND TITLE naming convention, but decides to toss the rules out the fucking window. there is no other Bleak Faith game, so this isn't simply the "Forsaken" offering of that series. and "Forsaken" kinda illustrates "Bleak Faith" like, a little? it pays lip service to it? they both give vaguely Judeo-Christian vibes but honestly the Forsaken bit isn't pulling a lot of weight here.

if Read Only Memories glommed on to two perfectly serviceable titles, this is a great example of a game that really only needed one. "Bleak Faith" sounds pretty cool; "Bleak Faith: Forsaken" sounds like i'm about to enjoy 2-3 hours of a 20-hour indie title

and yet Faith: The Unholy Trinity says "ah but what if the game's primary title was so meaningless you literally couldn't even hold it in your head?" i don't know about you but i am looking at this screenshot i took from Steam myself, i'm reading the name, and my brain is still telling me that this game is called "The Unholy Trinity."

now we're talking! these ones are fun because the subtitle isn't a subtitle at all, it's describing what the game is like - and yet you gotta have it there. it's a style thing.

remember when you'd fire up Metal Gear Solid and it'd SLAM the title on the screen and then there was that stylish "TACTICAL ESPIONAGE ACTION" thing at the bottom alongside some minimal katakana? fucking peak aesthetics

this is a game name that feels like there should be a colon there. it absolutely should be called "Bomb Rush: Cyberfunk". artistic integrity, and a less-than-subtle nod to the precursor (Jet Set Radio) have rescued this title from the Tyranny of the Colon.

unfortunately the latte i made this morning has not rescued me from the Tyranny of the Colon, so if you'll excuse me this is probably a good place to stop

[spacelazarwolf]

I mean this in genuine good faith and am asking because my family isn't historically Ashkenazi but has been operating as such since they left France/French Rite died out. How do you go about keeping an Italian rite when afaik there isn't an Italian rite shul outside of Italy and Israel? I'm learning judeo-french and uncovering family legacy via really old siddurim but as far as anyone can tell me I cannot be Zarphatic without a community. Since there is obviously no community anymore, I am told I have to pick a dominant rite instead. Do you do this for shul and then privately do something else? Is there an option I'm missing? I am based in Europe, so idk if that's part of it. I was just curious seeing that you're posting about being a USAm and also italki. I know it's a different situation because there are no french rite shuls outside of some that are influenced (interestingly especially in parts of Italy)!

this is a good question!

i am not as familiar with how jewish communities function in europe, or how your specific community functions, so i can only speak from my own perspective as an american in a primarily ashkenazi community.

you are correct that there are no synagogues that follow the italian rite outside of italy and israel. italki jews make up only about 0.3% of the global jewish population, and our population is pretty evenly split between italy and israel. i don't know of any other italki jews in my area, or at least any that are practicing.

i am very lucky in that my synagogue is already pretty multicultural, as one of our founding rabbis is sephardic, so we don't really follow one specific rite. we have our own siddur that incorporates ashkenazi and sephardi traditions, as well as a bit of our own personal flair. you will often hear things like "please rise or stay seated, according to your tradition" during services. because of this flexibility, it's pretty easy for me to infuse my personal practice into my communal practice.

some of the ways i've been able to incorporate my own rite in shul is to use italian hebrew pronunciation white reciting prayers. it's easy and most people don't even notice i do it. i'm not sure if there's a french equivalent. i'm also planning on teaching our friday night regulars the italian rite kiddush (which is much easier than the ashkenazi one because the cantor/leader does most of the work lmao) and incorporating some italian jewish music into our services. i also have a few projects in the works, including planning an italki seder as well as a weekend/shabbat program where our friday evening, saturday morning, and havdalah services will all be in the italian rite, feature italian jewish music, italian jewish traditions, etc. and of course accompanied by italian jewish food.

granted, this is all pretty easy for me to do, not just because of the diversity of my synagogue, but also because they're chill as fuck. if your synagogue is not as chill and you don't want to/don't have the option to find a different one, you will likely need to follow whichever rite your synagogue does at shul, and your own at home. obviously this is not ideal, but learning about french jewish music, judeo-french, french jewish history and traditions, etc. and incorporating as much as you can into your personal practice will still be very rewarding.

in terms of how you identify, literally do whatever you want forever. i don't know much about french jews and how they identify, but if you want to identify yourself in a particular way regarding being a french jew, you should have the autonomy to do that. people might not like or understand it, and that's ok because it's not their life. others will be very fascinated and excited to hear about traditions they may have never heard of before, and for me those are the best moments.

[spotlightstory]

The Michigan Medicis of Donald Trump’s America

Left, clockwise from top left Blackwater founder Erik Prince; U.S. Sec of Education Betsy DeVos (Prince); philanthropist Elsa and Prince Corporation founder Edgar Prince. Right, philanthropist Hellen and Amway co-founder Richard DeVos; standing, businessman Dick DeVos.

If you ever wondered where the weird Republican ideas came from or how did we get here, well, here's a piece of the puzzle. Buckle up, it's a long read. Link to full article above. I pulled out quotes on topics below.

"In the solar system of elite Republican contributors, Richard DeVos Sr., who died Thursday at age 92—one of the two founders of Amway, the direct-sale colossus—occupied an exalted place, and his offspring did too. Since the 1970s, members of the DeVos family had given as much as $200 million to the G.O.P. and been tireless promoters of the modern conservative movement—its ideas, its policies, and its crusades combining free-market economics, a push for privatization of many government functions, and Christian social values. While other far-right mega-donors may have become better known over the years (the Coorses and the Kochs, Sheldon Adelson and the Mercers), Michigan’s DeVos dynasty stands apart—for the duration, range, and depth of its influence."

Conservative think tanks, advocacy organizations, and colleges

Grand Valley State University; Calvin College, attended by several generations of DeVoses, including Rich’s daughter-in-law Betsy DeVos, Northwood University, her husband Dick’s alma mater. Hillsdale, the libertarian-plus-Christian liberal-arts college in southern Michigan.

Other recipients of DeVos largesse: the Heritage Foundation, the Institute for Justice, and the American Enterprise Institute

"The DeVoses’ preference for “values-oriented” candidates reflect the teachings of the Christian Reformed Church. A small breakaway denomination of its Dutch forerunner, it has some 300,000 adherents in North America, many living in the same western-Michigan towns where their immigrant ancestors settled in the 1840s to pursue a faith.."

SCHOOL REFORM: Who can forget Betsy DeVos’s campaign to undo the state’s public-education system and replace it with for-profit and charter schools that, as she had put it two decades earlier, shared her mission of “defending the Judeo-Christian values"?

“[Among] her big ‘accomplishments,’” says Diane Ravitch, the N.Y.U. professor and respected education historian, “have been reversing civil-rights enforcement for kids with disabilities, putting administrators from for-profit colleges in charge of monitoring for-profit colleges . . . stabbing in the back young people with heavy debt for their college education, and being a constant critic of public schools.” One saving grace, Ravitch contends, is that DeVos has gotten very few of her budget proposals through Congress. 

LABOR UNIONS: Another target was labor unions. Amway and the Prince Corporation had no use for them. Now the family waged a public fight. After Dick DeVos was routed when he ran for governor of Michigan in 2006, he blamed his defeat, in part, on Michigan’s unions and began to push for a right-to-work law (weakening the unions’ economic power and political clout, a pillar of the state’s Democratic Party). In 2012, the bill got through, and Michigan—headquarters to the United Automobile Workers, no less—became yet another of the country’s right-to-work states.

FAMILY: "Betsy and Erik’s father, Edgar Prince, was a Chrysler-Plymouth salesman and then machine engineer who started a die-cast business and also had a tinkerer’s gift for inventions. One, the lighted vanity mirror on the flip-up sun visor (introduced in 1972), helped Prince become one of the wealthiest men in Michigan." (wow) "As he got richer, the elder Prince rewarded his hometown handsomely; Prince money has done much to preserve downtown Holland, which remains a 1950s time capsule of Candy Land façades."

The C.R.C.’s greatest figure, Abraham Kuyper, a Dutch theologian and prime minister who died almost a century ago, had declared, in words the faithful know by heart: “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”  

The Princes and DeVoses—with neighboring homes in Holland—had effected a merger thanks to the 1979 marriage of their firstborn, Betsy Prince and Dick DeVos, then in their 20s. “Bible-reading jet-setter” was the description in a Detroit Free Press profile of Betsy.

Betsy and Dick own a 22,000-square-foot mansion on Lake Macatawa.

ERIK PRINCE was devoted to his father, who doted on him. He played four sports at Holland Christian and was the proudly straitlaced kid who, without being asked, put away the soccer balls after practice. Prince enrolled in the U.S. Naval Academy in 1987 but was shocked by the frat-house atmosphere—too much for a junior culture warrior who’d been an intern at the Family Research Council. After three semesters, he transferred to Michigan’s Hillsdale College.

Today Hillsdale, under its president, Larry P. Arnn (former head of the Claremont Institute, a citadel of far-right ideology), is known as a feeder school for the Trump administration, including Betsy DeVos’s chief of staff, Josh Venable. In May, the week Vice President Pence gave the commencement address there, Politico called it “the college that wants to take over Washington”—citing many alums who are now D.C. power players. 

In 1989, Erik had been invited to a “youth” inaugural ball for Bush—and there had met Joan Keating, the woman who would become his first wife. Prince even worked as a Bush White House intern. “I saw a lot of things I didn’t agree with,” he later said. “Homosexual groups being invited in, the budget agreement, the Clean Air Act, those kind of bills. I think the administration has been indifferent to a lot of conservative concerns.” He left that job for another, in the office of California congressman Dana Rohrabacher, who has often been called Vladimir Putin’s top Capitol Hill asset, so valued, the Times has reported, that he was given a Kremlin code name.

Prince spent four years with the SEALs in the early 90s but moved on after his wife was diagnosed with cancer and his father, aged 63, died of a heart attack. The elder Prince left behind a business with 4,500 employees. The family sold it for $1.3 billion, and Erik, at 25, now had a sizable inheritance.

One of Prince’s instructors in the SEALs, Al Clark, was also looking to set up a security-and-defense training company. Prince had money to invest. Out of this came Blackwater, which began as an instruction facility for law enforcement, the military, and special-ops squads in Moyock, North Carolina. 

The article goes into detail about Blackwater and it is mind-blowing. Their involvement post 9/11, Russian arms dealings, US government contracts,

"The source says he resigned after he discovered that Prince had approved plans to illegally weaponize aircraft and “actively train former Chinese Red Army personnel that are now being deployed into Pakistan, Thailand, Myanmar, and the Uighur region in China”—actions he perceived as supporting foreign interests above America’s. (Other Prince associates reportedly resigned for similar reasons.) Prince firmly denied the allegations."

[sorenblr]

since we're on the subject what are your honest thoughts on eva. me personally i think its really great in a lot of ways but also completely full of shit and really falls apart when analyzed non-emotionally (in more ways than just it's *extremely* loose Christian theming)

I think it's fantastic, at least the original series and EoE. Many of the criticisms commonly levied against it are justified- this is a series that castigates its otaku audience for leering at its grossly sexualized portrayal of adolescents while at the same time constructing one of the most vociferous merchandising apparati ever conceived around exactly that purpose- but it's greater than the sum of its defects.

In the matter of broad aesthetics, direction, and composition, I would place Evangelion near the apex of the medium. The industry mechanism necessary to create something that looks like this simply no longer exists. The philistine reaction against the long takes, which would elsewhere be recognized as part of the basic grammar of any serious film, is a credit to Anno's sensibilities as director. There aren't any characters that I particularly dislike, and I think Shinji and Asuka are near to brilliant. And the first thirteen episodes are simply exceptional, even fairly undemanding genre fare. The fucking Israfel one is just an outstanding episode of television. The dramatic idiosyncracies that the series is known for don't manifest in greater quantity until the latter part, which is I imagine where less receptive audiences will start to check out, but I think they're both necessary complements to the whole.

I think about Eva-02 catching that missile to the face on a semi-regular basis. The entire MPE scene is one of the most compelling pieces of animation ever put to film. This and the Gouf battle from 08th MS Team around the same time are the acme of the thought that emphasized plausible heft and momentum in mechanical animation.

The extent to which the original series is celebrated as 'deconstructive', or as a radical departure from previous, less 'cerebral' works, is grossly exaggerated and I think dependent on a historical ignorance of the genre. That isn't to say that it's complete equivocation, but Amuro's first character arc in 0079 is going catatonic after being compelled to fight in the ambulatory war crimes machine, and Pen Pen is not some sort of embedded reflexive criticism- he is a fun penguin who basically loves to hang out. Much of the thematic material is indebted to Ideon-era Tomino, who was at least as catastrophically depressive as Anno during the period of his most prolific cultural output.

The greater innovation in Eva is its radical orientation towards psychodrama, which I think does finally reach a deconstructive apogee in EoE. Still, the basic theme of the series, the communicative impediments to human intimacy, is also the overriding concern of the first several incarnations of Gundam- but only Evangelion will have a character literally describe the hedgehog's dilemma aloud. So a lot of the perceived deconstruction is a maximal treatment of what was marginally less explicit in earlier works, and I think Anno's direction does produce striking and beautifully affective turns on that material. But the old joke that this mecha anime is about the characters is still descriptive of the entire genre. This isn't meant to be a criticism- I think it's infinitely more engaging to consider Eva as the ultimate Lost Decade continuation of earlier forms than some sort of iconoclastic rupture from tradition.

The Judeo-Christian imagery is another point of radical continuity with hyper-influential genre fare, in this case Ultraman. Anno's recent directorial output is enough to evince the tremendous debt owed to the series, but whereas the religious iconography was a genuine article of faith for Tsuburaya, in Eva the material is valued more for its aestheticizing effect. It was only when transplanted to a Western audience that the desacralized treatment of religion assumed a transgressive quality that happened to be a perfect 'in' for adolescents nationwide. Shinji is a Midwest emo icon and I can make an AMV of the series set to Chop Suey by System of a Down? This phenomenon is, to me, more interesting than the actual thematic connections the series draws from myth, which is certainly not what the thing is 'about' in any case.

Also, I am an episode 25-26 truther. EoE is great but the television finale is its obvious complement. If you're out here telling people to watch EoE immediately after episode 24... grow the fuck up! bitch!!!*

*parody parody

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Madison Pauly and Henry Carnell at Mother Jones:

The conversion therapists met last November at the south end of the Las Vegas Strip. Behind the closed doors and drawn blinds of a Hampton Inn conference room, a middle-aged woman wearing white stockings and a Virgin Mary blue dress issued a call to arms to the 20-some people in attendance. “In our current culture, in which children are being indoctrinated with transgender belief from the moment they’re out of the womb, if we are confronted with a gender-confused child, you must help,” declared Michelle Cretella, a board member of the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity. “We must do something.” Cretella was delivering a keynote speech at the first in-person conference in four years of the Alliance, which describes itself as a “professional and scientific organization” with “Judeo-Christian values.” Its purpose: to defend and promote the practice of conversion therapy by licensed counselors.

Not that they’d call what they do “conversion therapy.” That term lacks a precise definition, but it is used colloquially to describe attempts to shift a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. In the 1960s, some psychologists tried to make gay men straight by pairing aversive stimuli, like electric shocks or chemically induced nausea, with images of gay porn—techniques that ran the risk of causing serious psychological damage even as they failed to change participants’ sexual orientation, researchers eventually concluded. Today, “conversion therapy” generally takes the form of verbal counseling. Participants are typically conservative Christians who engage voluntarily—motivated by internalized stigma, family pressure, and the belief that their feelings are incompatible with their faith. Others are children, brought into therapy by their parents.

The American Psychological Association (APA) has concluded that conversion therapy lacks “sufficient bases in scientific principles” and that people who have undergone it are “significantly more likely to experience suicidality and depression.” Similarly, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), part of the Department of Health and Human Services, published a report concluding that “none of the existing research supports the premise that mental or behavioral health interventions can alter gender identity or sexual orientation. Interventions aimed at a fixed outcome, such as gender conformity or heterosexual orientation…are coercive, can be harmful, and should not be part of behavioral health treatment.”

Accordingly, the Alliance and the ideas it promotes have been relegated to the scientific and political fringes. In the 2010s, as acceptance of gay rights grew rapidly, 18 states and dozens of local governments passed laws forbidding mental health professionals from attempting conversion therapy on minors. Yet by 2020, a new front had opened in the war against LGBTQ people. Republican state legislatures started passing laws targeting transgender and nonbinary children at school—restricting their access to bathrooms, barring them from participating in sports, and stopping educators from teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity. The most intense attacks have banned doctors from providing the treatments for gender dysphoria backed by all major US medical associations. Nearly 114,000 trans youth live in states where access to puberty blockers and hormone therapy has been wiped out.

Last year, I received leaked emails illustrating how these laws are crafted and pushed by a network of anti-trans activists and powerful Christian-right organizations. The Alliance is deeply enmeshed in this constellation of actors. Although small, with an annual budget of under $200,000, it provides both unsubstantiated arguments suggesting LGBTQ identities are changeable and a network of licensed counselors to lend their credibility to these efforts. Among the collaborators were David Pickup, the Alliance’s president-elect; Laura Haynes, an Alliance advocate; and Cretella, the former executive director of an anti-trans pediatrics group who described gender-affirming medical care at the Las Vegas conference as “evil” and part of a “New World Order.” (“I’m not a conspiracy theorist,” she assured attendees. “I’m just someone who has been in the battle of the culture of life versus the culture of death long enough to see the big picture.”) All three have testified before state legislatures against gender-affirming care. When a US senator introduced a pair of bills to restrict trans youth health care in 2021, his press release quoted Cretella calling gender-affirming treatments “eugenics.”

[...]

If the Las Vegas conference made one thing clear, it’s that conversion therapy is alive and well, even in places where it’s been banned. One counselor told me he makes it a habit not to document his treatment plans in writing to avoid getting in trouble and simply treats “family dynamics” in states with conversion therapy bans. In a 2015 survey of more than 27,000 trans adults, nearly 1 in 7 said that a professional, such as a therapist, doctor, or religious adviser, had tried to make them not transgender; about half of respondents said they were minors at the time. By applying this rate to population estimates, the Williams Institute at UCLA projects that more than 135,000 trans adults nationwide have experienced some form of conversion therapy.

Despite the data, lawmakers frequently don’t believe that conversion therapy is still happening in their community, says Casey Pick, director of law and policy at the Trevor Project, the LGBTQ suicide prevention group. “We’re constantly running up against this misconception that this is an artifact of the past,” she says. So, five years ago, the Trevor Project began scouring psychologists’ websites and books, records of public testimony, and known conversion therapy referral services, looking for counselors who said they could alter someone’s gender identity or sexual orientation. As the research stretched on, Pick noticed webpages being revised to reflect changing times. “We saw many folks who seemed to leave the industry entirely,” she says. “But others changed their website, changed their keywords, [from] talking about creating ex-gays to talking about ex-trans.” Last December, Pick’s team published their report documenting active conversion therapists. They found more than 600 were licensed health care professionals and an additional 716 were clergy, lay ministers, or other unlicensed religious counselors.

According to Pick, some conversion therapists have embraced a new label for what they do: “gender exploratory therapy.” It’s a term that Cretella used to describe the approach she recommended, and unlike the other euphemisms thrown around at the conference, this has gained traction. In 2021, a group of therapists, who ranged from conflicted about medical interventions for kids with gender dysphoria to skeptical of the very concept of transgender identity, formed the Gender Exploratory Therapy Association (GETA) to promote an approach they characterize as neither conversion nor affirmation.

Some current and former leaders of the group, which claims a membership of 300 mental health providers, have been involved in influential organizations lobbying against gender-affirming care across the world, such as the Ireland-based Genspect and the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, a nonprofit registered in Idaho. They’ve notched some big wins: In November 2023, the UK Council for Psychotherapy—the nation’s top professional association—declared that it was fine for counselors to take GETA’s “exploratory” approach to gender. This April, a long-awaited review of gender-related care for youth in England’s National Health Service endorsed exploratory therapy, according to Alex Keuroghlian, an associate psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School. And in the United States, in cases in which families of trans children have sued states for banning gender-affirming care, the state often calls expert witnesses who endorse “exploratory” psychotherapy as their preferred alternative treatment.

After all, the idea of “exploring” one’s gender identity sounds benign. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health, which issues guidelines on gender-­affirming treatment, recommends that clinicians working with teens “facilitate the exploration and expression of gender openly and respectfully so that no one particular identity is favored.” Yet, as with mindfulness, “that term has now been hijacked by folks on the other side,” says Judith Glassgold, a clinical psychologist who chaired the APA task force that in 2009 documented the lack of science behind conversion therapy.

GETA’s guidelines instruct therapists to dig deep into “the entire landscape of the young person’s life and subjective experience,” probing all possible reasons they might identify as transgender. The catch, says Glassgold, is that “exploration” means “trying to find negative reasons why someone’s diverse.” Last year, SAMHSA issued a report saying that “approaches that discourage youth from identifying as transgender or gender-diverse, and/or from expressing their gender identity” are sometimes “misleadingly referred to as ‘exploratory therapy.’” These approaches are “harmful and never appropriate,” the report concluded.

Mother Jones has a detailed report on a new form of the medically discredited practice known as conversion therapy called gender exploratory therapy. Gender exploratory therapy is the practice of making a person revert to their gender assigned at birth, which is essentially forced detransition by another name.

Read the full story at Mother Jones.