Comment by mindslight
5 days ago
"We're all trying to find the guy who did this!!"
If you're worried about someone coming to your party, perhaps start with not sending them a gold-leafed invitation.
I presume all of Thiel's noise about the antichrist is a play at trying to maintain some support for techno-fascism from the religious fundamentalists after they're done satiating themselves with the recent Crusades. The reality is of course that the closest thing we have to an antichrist figure is sitting in the White House, having charmed millions with his blatantly false promises.
I'm an atheist, and I don't believe in the antichrist, but it's hard not to see how closely he fits the bill. Only lies come out when he opens his mouth. Even if he says something true, he basically qualifies it with another untruth, and people lap it up. Even the media, even the cynical media, seem to report the things he says at face value. It boggles the mind sometimes.
Last week someone challenged him on his claim that Iran had tomahawks and they bombed their own school. First time I've heard anyone directly challenge him. His response was "I don't know enough about it" classic bs packpedal, like any kid caught in a lie. Next day CNN stories were "trump doesn't know what's happening in the war, others are running it and he's unaware", completely missing the obvious truth, he lied to misdirect people on the school bombing, one person challenged it, he lied again to backpedal.
Some days it's like he has a supernatural ability to get away with lies
I'm an atheist too, but I still see religions as having embedded wisdom - both descriptive of how past societies failed, and prescriptive in that they are parts of the foundations of our present societies.
(Of course they also have a lot of details that are easy to latch onto as mere justifications for doing immoral things. And as moral people move on from traditional religion, then the share of people merely using it as crutch for immorality grows)
The archetype of a leader who engages in abjectly evil behavior while gathering ever more power and followers under a charm spell certainly rings true. But the dynamic is probably more like an individual being particularly adept at releasing the floodgates for our own worst impulses, rather than some supernatural power.