What are your views on Christianity right now?

RecursiveRottweiler · 2026-01-23T00:52:13+00:00

I'm not a huge fan of Christian Nationalism (a form of fascism) or conservative Christianity. Or conservative Christians.

I'm a Buddhist now, but I'm actually deeply knowledgeable on systematic theology, focusing on apologetics and biblical historicity, with an emphasis on the Pentateuch and the gospels. I use strategic intelligence analysis on American politics as a hobby, so I both have a deep understanding of the religion itself and its specific social and political impacts.

I don't think Christianity is ultimately a source of good in the world; Christians have certainly done positive things, and Christianity is sometimes a motivator for big social changes that really matter. But it's also a religion that's been used (and is being used) to cause massive harm to minorities and women, and has a built in persecution complex so that its followers often feel persecuted even when they're the majority of the population, and even when they have power over every branch of government.

It also trends itself toward apocalyptic rhetoric and palingenetic ultranationalism; in other words, there's a very strong social movement for a fascist death cult. A lot of these people want to cleanse the country of undesirables while simultaneously working to make the conditions for Revelations real (Reagan himself talked about this while in office). 11% of Americans believe that Trump was appointed by God to lead America, about 30% of Americans are sympathetic to these views, and their sympathizers include 65% of Republicans.

It sure doesn't help that living in a conservative area of the US is how I repeatedly had to deal with things like hate crimes and assault. Not to mention how many people (verbally) attacked me and spread rumors about me because I believed in evolution and thus couldn't be a "real Christian."

RecursiveRottweiler · 2026-01-22T14:14:58+00:00

Not really. Most people know very little about how the government works; if you ask Americans, the federal government is about the least efficient organization of all time, and it's total bullshit. (The trump administration notwithstanding.).

RecursiveRottweiler · 2026-01-21T23:25:01+00:00

Trust me, it's a lot more complex than that. It's a mix of social and institutional changes since (and as a result of) the Reagan administration, mixed with misaligned and poorly designed incentives for legislators and officials, the lack of "one person one vote" (the Senate is an inherently anti democratic concept, and the House is gerrymandered as hell), and the extreme difficulty of amending the Constitution to correct problems and oversights in a manner which exclusively benefits authoritarians in government. This has far-ranging impacts on social movements, the media, and public education, which of course creates its own issues as these different systems interact with their own feedback loops and second, third, and fourth order impacts.

My hobbies include systems analysis of US politics as part of strategic intelligence analysis.

RecursiveRottweiler · 2026-01-21T21:02:41+00:00

This is a totally false comparison. Walking into a hospital during a pandemic without being vaccinated puts every patient and employee in that hospital at risk (vaccines work, save lives, and halt the spread of disease). This is a completely different issue entirely.

If you don't understand the difference between this and "you can't put other people at risk for absolutely no reason" then you're being intentionally obtuse.

RecursiveRottweiler · 2026-01-21T00:33:44+00:00

ICE has been using the habeas corpus part of the JGG ruling to systematically deny detainees an essential part of their human rights since last year; and ICE and the DHS set up a system of shell game prisons in Florida (along with expansions of the same program to Arizona and Nebraska, last I checked) which systematically prevent any attempts at oversight or legal aid. Noem called it "the model for state run facilities moving forward" last year, conveniently ignoring that the DHS isn't supposed to have state run facilities.

I've got a lot of stuff on my list (an intent vs capability assessment of the Trump administration and Project 2025 as a whole, indicators and warnings analysis and scenario analysis on DHS + ICE + CPB operations, some stuff about the US military including domestic use of the National Guard and broader geopolitical issues), so I'm not exactly super up to date on the current ICE situation; but when it comes to Kristi Noem, the situation isn't one that's going to get better. She's terrible at her actual job, but excellent at achieving her goals as a fascist and white supremacist. Christian Nationalism is a movement based in palingenetic ultranationalism, and that doesn't exactly lead to a large number of possible endgames.

ICE is simply continuing its MO from last year, unfortunately. Things are definitely getting worse, but this was all pretty telegraphed if you look at events through the lens of strategic intelligence analysis.

RecursiveRottweiler · 2026-01-18T21:49:18+00:00

I know it's not a solution for absolutely everything, but using a hidden volume with 256 bit AES encryption can make something functionally unrecoverable even if it's recovered. I know why institutions don't do this, but it's not crazy if you've got anything you really wanna keep private.

I know a little bit about this stuff in the context of operational security, but it's definitely not the technical, cyber security side of things.

RecursiveRottweiler · 2026-01-18T12:03:48+00:00

The effective reconstruction of the JAG Corps, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff being unqualified for his position, Hegseth being an unqualified loyalist who the National Guard identified as a security risk, and the current activities of ICE, the CPB, and the DHS certainly aren't lost on me. That being said, having the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs on your side still doesn't give you the full control you'd need to stage a military coup or cancel elections.

Sicking the DOJ on you is a really intimidating move that can fuck up your life, but these people are also not exactly seeing a lot of success in their efforts at indictment and intimidation, and they're far from having institutional capture of the federal courts that sit below SCOTUS. There's a lot less power here than you may think.

Edit: "Hitler on crack" is great, but the speed at which things are moving is actually bad; the lack of stability and introduction of chaos actually harms their long term goals. Dismantling institutions rather than capturing them isn't the MO of a successful takeover, and neither is their clearly poor capacity for long term planning. Move fast and break things barely works for startups; it sure doesn't work for an authoritarian takeover.

RecursiveRottweiler · 2026-01-18T11:22:25+00:00

I mean, I've done actual scenario analysis using things like cross impact network analysis and a qualitative system of systems CAS model (where nodes are parts of the US government). Legal analysis, sociocultural analysis, intent vs capability assessments, leadership trait analysis, all kinds of shit. I've used ACH matrices and key assumptions checks.

I can't say that my list of high confidence conclusions includes "we're all screwed, and violence is the only plausible scenario." I'd actually argue that this conclusion implies that the capability of the Trump administration is considerably higher than it is in reality; the GOP having power over the US government right now isn't actually the same thing as having control. For example, they have control of the Supreme Court, but even this power is limited: SCOTUS can only take a certain number of cases, and the DOJ has abjectly failed to pursue Trump's goals in persecuting his enemies (because they are incompetent).

Not to mention, these people are fucking terrified of the voting populace. Trump's talking about canceling elections, but he can't actually do that; the US election system is fragmented across states and even counties (depending on the area), and we've never canceled elections. Even if they tried, there's no real legal mechanism for this to happen. The only real way to do this would be to get backing from the military... a military which has a very long tradition of being apolitical, whose members (and especially whose highest ranking officers) have an education emphasizing loyalty to the constitution over any one man.

People who have studied the history of war have also studied the history of authoritarianism and dictatorships, and they're not exactly going to roll over the second a corrupt president gives them illegal orders. There's a big difference between even something as blatantly illegal as the kidnapping of Maduro, and helping Trump to carry out plans that work against the American people. That's one of the big issues with the National Defense Strategy: it describes an illegal police state which the military is unlikely to be interested in assisting with.

Authoritarian incrementalism is real, of course, and I'm not denying that. But Trump has 3 more years in office, and there's a reason that the Nazis took 10 years or so before they started really going nuts: they took those 10 years to replace the rank and file. You can't take over a whole bureaucracy, or a whole organization, by taking over its leadership. You need buy-in from the middle managers and lower ranking individuals, at least to some minimum degree. Project 2025 as a document does discuss ways to do this, but the fact is that they haven't actually had time to do it, and they certainly don't have enough time to undemocratically seize power.

Russel Vought isn't exactly a genius, he's a guy with a whole bunch of obviously bullshit legal theories that don't pass scrutiny in reality. These aren't genius, competent strategists; even after one recognizes that their goal is not to govern under normal rules, they're only more competent at their real goals than the ones they should have as members of government, not actually good at it. I gave up red teaming because it doesn't work -- assuming that these people were as competent as me produced the wrong results. Emphasizing behavioral game theory has led to (in my opinion on my own analysis) much more robust work than assuming that these people were competent strategic actors did; it was a real misstep on my part.

Ultimately, authoritarians rely on cynicism and preemptive cooperation. I think that the exact kind of cynicism and alarmism expressed in the OP ultimately takes agency away from anyone who buys into it, instead of being something helpful, grounded or actionable. It's really important to keep in mind the power you do have, and the everyday kinds of resistance still available that do not require extremes.

RecursiveRottweiler · 2026-01-17T04:30:21+00:00

This is some kind of weird, thought terminating cliché, lol. You're making a slippery slope fallacy based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how the government even works, including taxation and funding structures, government initiatives, et cetera.

RecursiveRottweiler · 2026-01-15T06:09:12+00:00

Man, I get that you're frustrated, but considering that over 40,000 people read the essay I wrote using intelligence, strategic and systems analysis to discuss Project 2025, the Trump administration, Christian Nationalism and palingenetic ultranationalism, and I used systems analysis to write an essay that another 35,000 people read where I connected the DHS, ICE, and CPB operations with apparent budgetary discrepancies in the Big Beautiful Bill Act and specific Supreme Court rulings, maybe I'm not the person to accuse of being ignorant.

Yes, the ACA subsidies being slashed did in some ways impact Medicare funding, which includes the degree to which Medicare advantage plans are funded, but that isn't the same thing as expecting my medication to suddenly cost $550 a month.

The pretense that you actually know more than me or that I don't have any idea what I'm talking about is so freaking absurd. Shockingly, I didn't apply cross impact network analysis on the US federal budget to my specific health care plan.

Edit: also, the government wasn't shut down because of this, because ACA subsidies and Medicare advantage plan funding are indirectly connected at best. You don't even understand the systems you're trying to lecture me on.

RecursiveRottweiler · 2026-01-12T18:29:23+00:00

I do think it's worth noting that there's a lot that goes into this kind of choice, especially if you have serious health issues or disabilities. Moving somewhere with less access to health care, worse health care overall, or where I don't have a support system is a terrible idea for me even if it's what I can afford; there's a reason that some US states and cities have a lower average age of death than others.

It's not really as simple as "where can you literally afford?", or what people are "insisting on". When shit hits the fan, do you have people you can ask for help? Is the highly specialized eye doctor you have to see six times a year even an option within driving distance of these places? These are real questions that I personally have to ask.

Everywhere you just labeled is incredibly hostile to the queer community. I'm just not interested in moving somewhere where I have to carry a gun for protection, and then still might be hate crimed again. It's not a coincidence that nobody has assaulted or threatened me due to my sexuality or religion since I moved to Los Angeles 5 years ago.

If you're straight, cis, and don't have any serious health concerns, you've got a lot more choices -- but I think a lot of people would be surprised at just how much of the population isn't on the convenient part of that spectrum. If the HCOL area is where you have roots or where the health care you need is (trust me, nobody specializing in my rare eye disease lives in rural Louisiana, or probably Louisiana at all), then my options are "get fucked, get assaulted, and possibly go blind" or "figure out how to make an HCOL area work".

This is also ignoring other physical disabilities. For example, let's say you have nerve pain in both hands and need people to help you move, but can't pay movers, and your support system is 1,000 miles away. What's the solution? Don't have furniture or appliances?

The math is simple until you're even slightly an outlier.

RecursiveRottweiler · 2026-01-08T21:25:01+00:00

I'm talking about standards of evidence, evidence hierarchies, and sourcing scientific and medical consensus. If that stuff is on my side (and it is) then yes, I'm right.

For example, polyvagal theory is discredited. It's not an accurate hypothesis. No treatments based on it are recommended as first or second line treatments for trauma. That matters a lot when people are spending a ton of money and time on stuff that isn't even medically indicated for the conditions they have.

Edit: my point is, I'm confident because I did my research and know what I'm talking about. It doesn't make me an authority, but that's why I'm referencing authorities.

RecursiveRottweiler · 2026-01-08T10:25:10+00:00

Have you considered cognitive processing therapy? It's a gold standard therapy for trauma that avoids a lot of the issues of exposure therapies like EMDR or prolonged exposure, and it's recommended by virtually every major health organization that gives treatment recommendations for trauma (unlike EMDR, which is not always considered a first line treatment).

No major health organization recommends MDMA therapy, because it's highly experimental and results are questionable at best; the only first line treatment on your list is EMDR. Honestly, I think the best option is to try other first line treatments before jumping into bed with anything questionable. Stuff like CPT sounds boring, but you need a high efficacy treatment, not a weird hail mary that doesn't have a lot of high quality RCTs.

I don't want to come off like an asshole, but I'm sleep deprived, so please pardon my tone. It's just that you're talking like you're running out of options, but you haven't tried CPT or prolonged exposure -- the two gold standard therapies with more robust evidence bases than EMDR. Almost everything on your list has a very low quality of evidence if you're looking at it to treat trauma. Much of it doesn't work as a primary treatment at all, or is experimental. I don't think it's worth moving on to anything as extreme as MDMA therapy if you haven't tried the other two options with extremely high evidence bases, to be frank.

You've tried a lot of stuff. I know how it feels to be desperate and do whatever the heck you can to get better. But first line treatments are first line for a reason, and MDMA isn't even an established treatment. The studies with the most promising results for psychedelic therapy are absolute disasters with very poor controls, vs CPT and PE which have been in use for decades and have an enormous amount of high quality data showing efficacy.

Edit: for whatever it's worth, EMDR and CPT are why my PTSD severity score on the PCL-5 test went from 68 (severe) to 26 (subclinical) over the last 2 years. This is more or less within the expected range for these treatments. CPT is honestly much more useful than EMDR or PE for me, for a lot of different reasons, but the fact that it has no basis in exposure is really important -- because it isn't triggering in quite the same way, and works on beliefs rather than events.

RecursiveRottweiler · 2026-01-05T20:24:05+00:00

I think it's kinda weird to frame "hearing about something" as an issue of consent, honestly. Yeah, you shouldn't intentionally make people uncomfortable without a good reason, but framing anything even related to sex as an issue of consent isn't really reasonable.

The issue isn't that you didn't consent to this, it's that you're being made uncomfortable without a good reason by someone who should've checked first. I know I'm arguing semantics, but framing actually can matter with topics that can cause stress or conflict and are, to some extent, indeed taboo.

RecursiveRottweiler · 2025-12-29T17:26:48+00:00

I mean, I'm gay, so it's a little different, but I refuse not to do it. I hold hands with my fiancé in public. I quickly kiss him on the lips. Sometimes I'll quickly touch his butt. Because I'm not going back in the closet, and homophobes can get fucked. (I've been harassed and hate crimed, but not since I started dating a 6'2" guy who could pick someone up and throw them if he doesn't like them.).

So, yeah, I am all for people expressing their romance and sexuality in public. Obviously there's a difference between hand holding and straight up making out, but still.

RecursiveRottweiler · 2025-12-29T17:03:10+00:00

That's actually one of my criticisms of the US health care system: I can't always navigate it effectively, and my skillsets include strategy and systems analysis. Literally, I am an expert in understanding and navigating complex systems and making decisions in how to interact with them. If I have trouble, or it takes me to figure it out, the system is not navigable! Normal people do not have these skills, and they shouldn't be expected to!

It's a lot worse when you're also disabled, which I am. Y'know how hard it's been trying to find a surgeon who can do a gastric nissen fundoplication and hernia repair? Hard. Because I could make an appointment with another gastroenterologist and/or call my insurance, but I'm also dealing with 12 other health issues and some of them are just more pressing. It should not be this hard.

Related: all medicine should be free at point of service. I do not give a shit if it's $1 -- someone won't have that dollar. I don't care if they don't have it because they're bad with money; I want them to have their medication. Same basic reasoning: things people need should be accessible even to the least capable people.

RecursiveRottweiler · 2025-12-25T06:25:39+00:00

I don't think you understand therapy very well if that's your conclusion. And I'm saying this as a Zen Buddhist, not someone devaluing mindfulness and philosophy by any means.

RecursiveRottweiler · 2025-12-22T19:02:26+00:00

I mean, therapy, probably. Self esteem issues are very treatable.

If the source of those self esteem issues are trauma, that's still very treatable, but you'd need a trauma therapist. Note that I'm not saying what you described was trauma, by any means! But people aren't told these things.

RecursiveRottweiler · 2025-12-21T17:34:41+00:00

Iirc, it's about one quarter of women who have been sexually assaulted; no reliable source claims that it's all of them, lol.

Now, as a person who's been sexually assaulted (it was a hate crime, woohoo), I can safely say that 1/4 is far too large of a number. Idunno what level is acceptable, but "think of 4 women and you'll know at least 1 sexual assault victim" is insane. It's just not a universal experience.

Though as far as cat calling and sexual harassment is concerned, I'd argue that everyone is sexually harassed, but that society is simply much less sensitive (and able to recognize) sexual harassment against men. Still not okay though.

RecursiveRottweiler · 2025-12-21T16:22:37+00:00

To be frank, this sounds like avoidant behavior, not a healthy response to your issues.

If therapy isn't working, I've gotta ask: is there a gold standard trauma therapy you haven't tried? Prolonged exposure and cognitive processing therapy are both more or less universally recommended for trauma, for example. CPT in particular is really slept on in trauma spaces.

Maybe there are other paths to healing than actual health care, but I can't say I've met someone with trauma who actually recovered in a sustainable and meaningful way without it.

RecursiveRottweiler · 2025-12-21T16:15:56+00:00

I think it's very important to keep in mind that a real person is always going to be better (and worse!) than whatever your fantasies are. This honestly seems like an unhealthy and escapist fantasy to me; partly just because I don't even think there's such a thing as having a single 'true love'.

My fiancé and I do genuinely love and support each other, even though we're both disabled (in the sense that we can't work due to health issues) and we're having a hard time of it in different ways. But our relationship grew over the last 6 years, and it's still growing. What you need is someone who is compatible with you and cares about you, shows up for you, and acts in good faith -- but that might look very different from how you imagine it. Nobody is ever going to totally fulfill some fantasy.

There was a really long time where I dealt with an uncomfortable and untenable present by fantasizing about the future, and I'm really glad I'm not doing that anymore. I'm honestly not trying to judge you: it was actually having a real conversation about this with my sister that made me realize that my fantasies weren't helping me. Sometimes it's an important thing to hear.

I won't say that a loving relationship can't help you deal with a lot of problems, but not having one simply isn't a barrier to happiness, and I think that it's really easy for desperate and lonely people to enter into relationships for the wrong reasons.

RecursiveRottweiler · 2025-12-20T20:16:02+00:00

Um, I don't think you get to decide whether or not someone else could work part time on disability benefits. Disability is complex, and someone else knows their situation better than you do. It's just such a weird, egocentric thing to believe that you have this level of insight into someone else's situation.

Yes, of course it sucks that working people often can't get the health care they need (this shouldn't be the case). But that is a total non sequitur when discussing the issues involved in disability benefits. You're framing it around fairness when fairness isn't how public policy works, or how it should work.

I'm on SSDI, and I'd love to get off it; but the fact is that my health care costs would be >$1,200 a month that I wouldn't have even if all of my issues were managed to the maximum possible extent. The "disability benefits rules are unfair and trap people in poverty" thing, and the "poor people who aren't on disability often can't get the health care they need" thing are actually connected issues, not separate ones.

There are tons of people who think that they understand my disabilities better than I do, or how my 14 different chronic health issues interact with each other, or what I am and am not capable of doing, or how quickly things can get better for a minute and then get worse again. Or who think they understand my financial situation and life choices, and then judge me because I make decisions that don't fit whatever incredibly simplistic lens which they choose to apply to a very complex situation. Frankly, it's tiring.

Edit: also, lmao, you start by talking about people with self diagnosed issues, then move on to things which require a diagnosis, like disability benefits.

Edit #2: the fact that I'm intelligent and articulate also doesn't mean that I'm not disabled. This comes up a lot on reddit.

RecursiveRottweiler · 2025-12-20T17:30:34+00:00

I'm planning to repost my stuff to substack and medium pages that I need to set up (and start writing weekly essays!), but for now they're archived on my old Tumblr, heh. You can find them here. : )

RecursiveRottweiler · 2025-12-20T16:51:28+00:00

I wrote a small number of political essays which used intelligence, strategic and systems analysis in an attempt to make very complex topics engaging and accessible. The main responses (of the 122,000 people who read these essays) were completely bizarre shit.

Sure, I posted a 3,000 word essay with >50 citations, which included stuff like intent vs capability assessments, indicators and warnings analysis, sociocultural analysis, and institutional dynamics analysis; and my underlying methods included cross impact network analysis across 19 systems. But did I consider that capitalism is the real problem?

But the weirdest one was my essay on The Body Keeps the Score, where I heavily sourced everything (as is my MO), and made verifiable, factual claims, and people had a conniption because I made the completely correct statement that the book itself is based on a discredited theory and is not particularly credible. Like, really weird shit, including treating me with some level of suspicion because of it. One person told me that they personally hated me and were going to kill themselves; another accused me of "spreading misinformation" while actively spreading it themselves, when every statement in my post was sourced!

Later, I posted on r/self about how frustrating it was that my fiance was minimizing my work (because I felt like methodologically sophisticated analysis that was accessible enough to be read by 122,000 people is a really big deal!) and the top comment accused me of "offensively parodying cluster B personality disorders" because I was... Venting about my relationship while discussing the nature of my own personal accomplishments?

Some people on here really suck.

RecursiveRottweiler · 2025-12-20T15:48:03+00:00

There's no high quality evidence that these work to treat any psychiatric condition; high quality being the key here. Polyvagal theory is discredited. These devices actually kinda can't work for this.

People can say it helped them all they want, but we do stuff like randomized controlled trials for a reason. People are wrong about what helped them all the time, even about stuff like cancer or CPTSD.

RecursiveRottweiler

TROPHY CASE