this has been a really fun series so far; great to watch on youtube as well

I understand that fascism and conservatism need to be confronted on objective terrain, but so do their adherents. So as a so called “ex-vangelical” I will always highlight the importance of challenging the subjective responses that keep people trapped in these thought patterns. /end

What this means is that rather than mocking a lack of critical thinking or academic rigor, we need to speak to the fear, manipulation, and authoritarianism that upholds this social structure to begin with. The structure builds in resistance to simple mockery; hence the student’s reaction.

The people in a young person’s life were part of a large structure all geared towards one goal: produce someone who subjugates every single datum to a very specific interpretation of Christianity. This is why the essay assumes so many seemingly bizarre doctrines with no citations. They are axioms.

Why is this written so poorly? Simple: the material they consume is also written like this to begin with. They learned it, and they were rewarded for imitating it. Crucially, it is NOT a matter where someone was merely underserved by the education system as an unfortunate happenstance.

This is the result of 18+ years of deliberate anti-education. What I mean is that fundies have built an extensive parallel world of curriculum, books, movies, churches, etc. to cultivate the specific form of anti-scholarship we see right here in this paper. This is a very intentional outcome.

Lots of people are questioning, how could this possibly happen, how could anyone think this is acceptable to write, why would someone react so strongly to being given a failing grade? Well, I can tell you because I know this exact type of person very well.

It may be difficult for outsiders to wrap their heads around how extensively this parallel universe is constructed, or how far its academic standards have fallen.

Source: grew up in and have family members in this environment; including the most notorious fundamentalist “academic” institutions

Conservatives structure their entire media, education, and religious environment to establish this sort of essay as the standard of academic excellence. I guarantee that fundies are reading this with unqualified approval. The curriculum used to educate them in the first place reads just like this.

real pie knower right here

I am being radicalized to start playing eu5 exclusively by your posts (I have never played any game like this before)

huge Pharaoh head checking in 🫡

i can’t explain why but my internal vocalization immediately goes to Super Bash Mothers Melee

This is a great point; there is a direct line from Lewis’s logic to “I don’t mind gay people, just keep that away from me/kids/the public!”

“to make others as comfortable as you can will solve most of the problems.” Oh wow, thank you for your insight Mr. Lewis, everyone should simply treat other people well and then the problems are solved! Surely we all agree on what “making others comfortable” entails…right? Oh…

we unironically need this real bad

would you include Black liberation theology in this statement (James Cone etc.) because that is significantly contributing to how we understand the interaction of faith and social power structures, at least in my mainline protestant church & seminary experience