I know I’m not the first to say it, so I’ll just add to the noise. Dylan Molvaney is not right in the head.
Here is a video of him pretending to be a 6-year-old girl:
As the pendulum continues to build momentum as it shifts from left to right, Dylan Molvaney is going to be one hell of a loser.
The insolvency of Silicon Valley Bank has resulted in a run on the banks, which has resulted in more insolvent banks. The Red Pill community has pointed to SVB’s prioritization of DEI initiatives as being a significant factor in the bank’s collapse, and note with a sense of irony that wokeness may have knocked over the first dominoes that may result in a collapse of the global economy.
Of course, it’s also pointed out that SVB may have been targeted by Uncle Sam for having been friendlier to the crypto market. That sounds kinda conspiracy-theoryish, but if that’s the case, I’d say that that effort backfired, considering that Bitcoin shot way, way up in response to the SVB collapse.
More banks have since collapsed due to bank runs, and I’m seeing the more Red Pill types celebrating the accelerated collapse of the woke movement. While I can get behind that, it’s a little disturbing that there are people who seem to be cheering on the destruction of the global economy. It’s enough for me for the institutions to come to the realization that the woke movement is of no benefit for them to get behind. But considering how much harder it would be for everyone if the global economy were to collapse, I wonder what benefit it would be to anyone if things came to that.
Perhaps there would be some benefit, if only to slap more people awake to the true nature of the woke movement, and if people as a whole were to ditch the crutch of the victim mentality in favor of living on one’s merits. Which they may end up doing out of necessity, if things get difficult.
My foresight is not great. If I had better foresight, I would have understood the true nature of the global economy before majoring in Electronics. Live and learn, and all that.
But still, I can see what would come about if economic difficulty were to necessitate meritocratic living. It would mean that ideas such as wokeness would be viewed in terms of its virtues, which wouldn’t be much outside of its ability to manipulate algorithms. Even now, entertainment companies are slowly coming to the realization that woke messaging negatively impacts the quality of their products, which is part of the reason why viewers are starting to turn against subscription-based streaming services. And now, we’re seeing banks collapse after investing in numerous DEI startups.
While the pendulum is already shifting against wokeness, economic uncertainty would further push the general public into meritocracy as they seek out a way of life that actually, you know, pays the bills. Projecting victimhood seldom does as much, and is becoming increasingly evident as being the sport of the interpersonally manipulative.
When matters are difficult, people turn to merit to get by. It’s when motivated by survival that people look at themselves and other people in terms of what they have to offer. That’s the most practical course in challenging times. Because men tend to have greater upper-body strength than women, and the physiology that lends them more towards physically-involved labor, men tend more towards more dangerous jobs that usually pay better than clerical jobs. This means women would tend towards management of resources and maintaining relationships, in part because their relative lack of physical endurance would mean that this would be the safer option for them, but also because women tend to have minds that are better suited to such things. While feminists wouldn’t like it, more women would return to the trad wife life, even if only out of necessity and in consideration of what they’d have to offer in consideration of their innate attributes.
Considering this, what the woke movement shouldn’t want is challenging times, as woke pet causes tend to thrive more in the prosperous conditions that allow for the luxury of societal experimentation, erroneous philosophies, and the inflexibility of thinking that would result from the rigidness that is characteristic of the woke cult.
Yet, challenging times is just what one can expect, considering that it is the natural consequence of experimenting with ideologies such as wokeness.
If you’ve walked into a Gamestop in the last decade, odds are, you’ve seen Funko Pops. They’re not hard to find. Just as you walk into the store, a quick glance to the right, and you might see a wall lined with tiny, expressionless eyes glaring back at you like the tiny abysses that they are. For a brief moment, you wonder whether anyone actually buys the things, before continuing into what has basically morphed from a software store into a toy store for grownups.
As it turns out, not a whole lot of people are buying them. That’s the impression that one gets when one finds out that the company that makes these are throwing out $30 million worth of them, because that would be a better financial move than having them take up space in their inventory.
According to Kotaku, inventory for Funko Pops has totaled up to $246.4 million, up 48% compared to the year before. So it seems like Gamestop isn’t the only place where these things are just piling up.
And now, Funko Pops will make little vinyl heaps in landfills, presumably alongside other toys that nobody wanted to play with.
I’m not really doing much to hide my disdain for these little things. What exactly is the appeal? Is there some kind of ironic, meme appeal behind taking pop culture media icons and shrinking them down, shaping their features to fit a template, sucking every last ounce of personality from them, and leaving them with tiny, expressionless eyes?
Or could it be that I’ve discovered Nendoroids first, which actually attempt an illusion of depth in their painted-on eyes?
You see that? Effort! Actual effort!
Or, if you prefer that your weeaboo loot be on the softer side, there’s Fumos:
You might not find stuff like this in Gamestop, but that doesn’t mean that Funko Pops don’t get competition. For one thing, Funko Pops line the walls at Gamestop, which are otherwise packed with things that anyone would rather play with. Also, you can shop online, where you can easily find the likes of Nendoroids and Fumos. Sure, they can get pricey. But they also don’t suck.
Or, if you’d rather have these things staring into your soul…
…just take a roadtrop to whatever landfill these are being piled up in. And bring a shovel. They’ll be free.
There’s a teacher in New York by the name of Remy Elliott (certified as Jeremy William Elliott) who decided that it would be a good idea to do a video on her TikTok account in which she assigned various gender identities to Nintendo characters, such as Mario and Princess Peach.
According to her TikTok presentation, “Mario came out so long ago most people forgot”. Not only that, she claimed that Luigi is demisexual, Princess Daisy is bisexual and polyamorous, Toad is ready to come out as a trans-girl, and Yoshi completed transition to a male, complete with breast-removal surgery that left no scars.
As I read about this, it became apparent to me that the presentation was a joke, which was something that Remy did assert. But even so, to make a presentation like this when representing your school district as an educator seems like an insanely bad move.
But just in case you doubt where this piece of work stands in the culture war, Remy claims to have a trans flag, a bisexual flag, and a non-binary flag on her desk at her work, which would be at school. She did this to show just how accepting she was of these things.
The only reservation she had concerning what she shared with her students concerned her polyamory, because that “is not in the conversation”. But she did confer with administrators, who agreed that it would be appropriate with her to speak with students about her relationships.
I disagree. A teacher’s job is to teach, preferably on the topic of the class in question. It’s certainly no place for any educator to bring up personal matters, especially not personal matters of a sexual nature, and certainly not with students who are still minors. What’s even more vexing is that the school district’s administration, after hearing of Remy’s polyamory, approved the teacher to speak of it, rather than immediately shooting it down for the repugnant idea that it was, or at least recognizing the potential for controversy and bad press.
She said: ‘This is not a conversation that conservatives are having at all. They’ve decided… like, you can’t do this at all, there’s no place for it.
So, now we know what a depraved half-wit does when she ignores any voice of reason. She’ll upload a presentation to TikTok which bullshits about the sexual identities of Nintendo characters.
‘And that just shows such a lack of thought and care. They’re not understanding of the people. They’re children as people and where they’re at.’
And, no surprise, she’s of a mind that determines that it’s ageist to say that it’s wrong to introduce sexual deviancy to children.
Notice how she’s registered under the name “Jeremy William Elliott”? She is actually a he.
So yeah, we have yet another case of a man identifying as a woman, likely in an attempt to make it easier to approach children about sexual matters.
She added: ‘It’s also strange to point out that they have genders and sexualities, as being a cisgender heterosexual man is in fact a gender and sexual orientation.’
How he arrived at the conclusion does not follow. The fact that Mario is apparently straight does not make it unusual to talk about the genders and sexualities of Nintendo characters. In fact, there are some cases where mature, adult fans may prefer to speculate about this topic, to the end of coming to a better understanding of the characters in question. Putting aside, of course, the fact that the characters in question are seldom, if ever, sexualized in the official materials. What makes the matter unusual in Remy’s case is that he wished to publicly have the conversation as an educator, with dozens of ninth-graders presumably involved.
‘As part of my DOE employment, despite being primarily hired as an English Teacher, teaching our established and vetted sex education curriculum was not only something I was hired for, it was something I was trained and qualified in.’
That was a shitty move on the DOE’s part. After all, Remy can’t be counted on to present the sexualities of Nintendo characters in good faith. I’ve been a Nintendo fan for decades, so I can take issue with many of the claims that Remy makes.
For one thing, Mario and Luigi are evidently straight. This is presumably one of the reasons behind why they go after princesses Peach and Daisy. They want some of that vertical smile. For Toad to transition to a girl would be redundant for his franchise, because his sister Toadette is already a character in those games. Then there’s Remy’s assertion that Yoshi had “top surgery”. Yoshi is a reptile. Reptiles don’t have mammaries.
She added that she only ever spoke of her personal life ‘within reasonable limits.’
It’s great to know that Remy is willing to draw the line somewhere, even if that line should have been placed well before telling minors that Princess Daisy is “hella bisexual”. But, who knows? Maybe Remy will do another installment where she points at Samus Aran as being trans, and Link as being a closet fairy. Yoshio Sakamoto and Shigeru Miyamoto don’t seem to be in any hurry to represent the perversity of the moment, so perhaps Remy will step forward to help them out?
When bad people are writing hit pieces about you, you know that you’re doing something right. Author Chaya Raichik of Libs of Tiktok fame knows exactly what that’s like.
Chaya is now a children’s book author, having just published No More Secrets: The Candy Cavern, available for purchase on Bravebooks.us.
As I’ve pointed out before, narrative is a valuable tool in communicating important moral lessons. This holds up whether the lesson is delivered to children or adults. While works of fiction have the notable fault of being fictional, and therefore one can make the moral anything they want, it’s still the case that these are valuable in making certain topics easier to approach.
As many of us are becoming increasingly aware, when people ask children to keep secrets, it often to the end of manipulating the child into doing or saying something that they may not otherwise do or say. And because they possess the naivete intrinsic to a child’s state of mind, children can be easily manipulated. Because of this, it’s important that we teach children to speak up when something doesn’t seem right.
While one may read this book and understandably see parallels with the current scandal involving teachers tricking children into going trans, the fact is, this book’s core lesson extends in principle to anyone who would attempt to use “keeping secrets” as part of the grooming process.
I recall from my college days that a sociology professor told the class that one of the ways that a predator can groom a child is by asking them to keep secrets. Oftentimes, it’s something subtle, like letting a naughty word slip, then asking the child not to tell their parents that they said it. If the child does tell their parents, then that’s a sign that that’s the kind of kid that the predator is better off not messing with. Sometimes, the process of grooming involves testing the waters in various ways to determine whether it’s safe to proceed. Predators are often more methodical than they are given credit for.
Similarly, we need to teach our children that if anyone tells them to keep secrets from us, it becomes really important that they share those secrets with us. Because even if that person seems like they might be fun or trusting, that person might be trying to take advantage of them in some way.
Also, big props to artist James Scrawl, whose art in this book is simply adorable.
The forces of depravity and perversity know that they’re going to lose the culture war if they were to only attempt to appeal to adults, who see their ideology for what it is. Because of this, they are pivoting to attempting to appeal to children, whose minds are still pliable, and are therefore easier to take advantage of. We need to teach our children to speak up when something doesn’t seem right.
We also have a duty to teach our children a love for the truth. After all, if our children don’t have a love of the truth in their minds, someone else can come along and fill them up with whatever they want.
Before wrapping this up, I’d like to point out a couple points of contention that leftists have concerning this book. Because, for some reason, it’s leftists who have a problem with a children’s book that encourages behavior that could keep children safe from dangerous predators. Go figure.
Pseudo-intellectuals love using the concept of projection as the “NO U” of psychology, to the point that they actually think it’s clever to point to wanting to keep children safe from predators as evidence that they are a predator.
While it’s no surprise to me that leftists have little respect for human rights, they usually keep their hands closer to themselves than to suggest that someone is subject to illegal search and seizure for raising a concern, just because that concern isn’t favorable to leftism.
I honestly cannot fathom what an ignoramus that a person would have to be to suggest that a person may be guilty of something just by saying that it’s bad to do it. To spell it out: You cannot further a thing by furthering something that is the negation of that thing.
I suspect that weshlovrcm doesn’t actually believe what he’s typing. After all, a person who forms such a stupid thought and internalizes it as a sincere conviction should lack the capacity to purchase a device and a subscription to a telecom company, in addition to whatever else he needed to do to send his message, unless a government-appointed handler set all this up for him.
Which, if that were the case, would only upset me even more, because that would mean that I indirectly paid for him to access the internet.
Not to worry, we know that those ones are a problem, too. However, pointing out that there are predators in different institutions does not mean that we are no longer concerned with the ones in the institution that we are currently discussing.
There is no need for the diversion. Or, there might be, considering that your ilk thinks that calling “projection” is clever, and that expressing concern indicates guilt.
Arbitrary second example, indicating that these people really seem to dislike churches. But here’s the thing: church attendance is not compulsory. People can decide not to attend a church, or any church. And they can decide not to bring their children with them. This contrasts with public education, which in many cases is compulsory.
If you hate churches so much, just don’t go. No one is making you. You may stand to benefit in a huge way if you were to pay attention to the sermon, but if you were to not go, churches would have slightly less problem with wishy-washy bench-warmers whose hearts are not really in it.
I pulled these nuggets off of this page. There’s more, if you care to read them. But if you’re up for smarter reading, here’s a link to purchase Raichik’s new book.
In a person’s search for a true religion, they may eschew what’s mainstream because they see that something is wrong. As they do so, they may consider an alternative that catches their attention because it happens to be more outspoken.
One such outspoken religious organization might be the Restored Church of God (RCG), which was founded and led by David Pack.
Some have risen the concern that Pack leads a cult, and that his church is one that a person is better off staying away from. It’s because of this that I’ve decided to evaluate the RCG to determine whether it’s a cult.
David Pack’s RCG is part of a greater movement colloquially referred to as Armstrongism. This movement is named for Herbert Armstrong, who departed from Adventism over doctrinal disagreements, then went on to form his own church. Armstrong’s church was controversial for its disagreement with mainstream orthodoxy, especially concerning Sabbath observance, and for favoring Biblical holy days over more mainstream holidays, which Armstrong pointed out were of pagan origin.
After Armstrong passed away, some members of his church broke away and formed their own sects, citing his successor’s departure from the church’s doctrine. David Pack belonged to a particularly large breakaway group which was insistent on maintaining Armstrongism’s teachings. However, Pack was fired from his pastoral position shortly after the group’s founding, citing the spiritual condition of those under his leadership.
I was already aware that, when it comes to cults, there’s something about them that inspires some strong feelings. It’s because of this that it’s hard to find someone willing to write about them with an impartial viewpoint. However, I’ve found that there’s something about Armstrongism in particular that especially upsets people, even if they can’t get an accusation against most Armstrongian groups to stick, besides that they disagree with them. I suspect that this has a lot to do with the fact that Armstrongism disagrees with their own church, and that the mere existence of Armstrongism as a movement is challenging to them. People really don’t like having their own religion challenged, even by the mere existence of people staying in their own lane. It’s because of this that researching David Pack has turned up some results that were interesting.
Before I begin the analysis, I want to point out that I’m not personally familiar with David Pack or with anyone in his church. While there may be a focus on some of his more concerning behavior, its not my intention to present the worst of David Pack to render an unfair verdict.
To perform my analysis, I’ll start with the general criteria that I use to determine whether a group is a cult. This criteria can serve a person well to form a skeptical viewpoint based on a first impression. While dangerous cults tend to be abusive, exploitative, manipulative, or deceptive, this is usually not evident upon the first impression. This list focuses mainly on what a person would likely take notice of upon first impression, or with a little research.
Also, I’d like to point out that an organization does not need to be religious in nature in order to be a cult. However, because the RCG is a religious organization, in this case that is a moot point.
Here is the five-factor criteria I use to find red flags that an organization may be a cult. Of course, there can be other signs that might make this evident to you, besides the ones listed here:
With this criteria, let’s examine how David Pack’s RCG holds up.
To be fair, this is basic marketing, and most organizations exist to the end of solving at least one problem. What makes cults concerning is the amount of pressure that they place on prospective members to turn to them to solve the problem the cult convinces them that they have.
Most churches point out that humanity is in need of salvation. The RCG is not unusual in this regard. What is unusual about the RCG is David Pack’s insistence that a person is not in the true church unless they are in his church, which would be the RCG specifically. While Armstrongian churches believe that most of the Christian world has gone astray, few churches are as narrow as Pack’s RCG.
Most Christian churches believe that humanity is in a fallen state, and in need of restoration. Their general outlook when it comes to sin is “hate the sin, love the sinner”. The RCG tends to be consistent with most of the Christian world in this regard, to their credit. Of course, there may be more judgmental individuals who speak for themselves.
The Pastor General of RCG, David Pack, is usually featured prominently in RCG’s materials. While this is interesting in itself, Pack also attempts to authenticate his authority with his claim to have known Herbert Armstrong personally. Pack refers to Armstrong as though he were a prophet, and refers to himself as an apostle.
This strong insistence on bringing attention to himself indicates that Pack has a high degree of insecurity, and desires attention. This would not be unusual for a cult leader, at all.
David Pack is famous, particularly among other Armstrongians, for his antics. More on this coming up.
Believe me: David Pack is, by far, the RCG’s most prominent member. But I get the idea that, if someone famous were to join the RCG, David Pack might not let them outshine him.
Also, prospectives should be warned that, once a person joins the RCG, they are expected to remain a part of it for as long as they live. This is due to a belief which was once popular among Armstrongians that it’s considered an unpardonable sin to leave the church. However, many Armstrongians seem to be backing away from this belief.
Most churches encourage tithing, which is usually just 10% of a person’s income. If that were all that the RCG were asking for, they would not be unusual in this regard. However, Armstrongian churches tend to hit their member’s incomes almost as hard as government, and the RCG is not an exception.
In addition to what’s called a “first tithe”, Armstrongians are encouraged to save up a “second tithe” throughout the year, to help them observe yearly festivals, particularly the weeklong Feast of Tabernacles, which is usually observed at hotels and resorts. I still don’t know how it’s considered religious to spend a tenth of a year’s income in a week, but Armstrongians seldom question it. Some members might keep a “third tithe”, but that’s not usually compulsory, due to the history that Armstrong’s church has with it.
In addition to all this, members are encouraged to make special offerings at festivals, in addition to other offerings that members may voluntarily make (usually in the form of money). Considering all the money that Armstrongian churches hit their members for, it’s vexing that they use the material they distribute to ask for more money. It must be expensive to run their office space while renting convention halls and other churches for services.
Sometimes, I suspect that Armstrongism is as unpopular as it is because normal people cannot afford to join.
Before I continue on, I’d like to point out that I have no animosity against Armstrongism. I bring this up because a lot of material that I found while researching was evidently written by people with an axe to grind. These people really need to get over the fact that there are some people who have religious viewpoints that are different from theirs.
Having said that, David Pack is a seriously interesting guy. While I can write an essay on some of his more concerning behavior, I think I can get the point across by briefly mentioning some select antics, which should be plenty to paint a picture of the kind of guy he’s like.
Why focus on Pack? Because he’s made himself such a central figure in his own church that examining him provides clues as to what kind of church he runs.
For one thing, Pack seems completely serious on the idea that these are the end times. Armstrong himself claimed as much, but Armstrong made the mistake of setting dates on which he believed that Jesus would return. “Dates” being plural, because Armstrong made the prediction on multiple occasions, but changed his mind when it became clear to him that he was wrong. What’s especially disappointing about this in Armstrong’s case is that Armstrong was a former Adventist. Adventism’s most famous failure was setting a specific date for Jesus’ return, but the date passed without this occurring. Being a former Adventist, Armstrong should have known better.
Nonetheless, Herbert Armstrong was the kind of guy that David Pack could look to and think, “prophet”. So, Pack would later attempt to establish a connection between himself and Armstrong in an effort to establish his own apostleship.
But remember, Pack believes that his small church (of perhaps 1000 members) is the only true church, so because he believes that this is the time of the end, he believes that the two witnesses of Revelation would be in his church. Pack has suggested that he may be one of the two, though he seems to go back and forth on this.
This is to say nothing of the 144,000 or the innumerable multitude, but perhaps Pack is enthusiastic about his church’s potential for growth.
While it may not be specific to David Pack, there is a popular opinion among Armstrongians that Herbert Armstrong was the “Elijah to come”. But Jesus said that John the Baptist was the fulfillment of that prophecy. Did all these people somehow miss this when they read the Gospels?
While this says a lot about Pack and his background, he also likes to combine his passion for false prophecy with his hatred for competing ministers. And boy, how passionately he hates them.
In the early-to-mid 2010s, David Pack made a prediction that three prominent figures from other Armstrongian congregations would all die, all on the same day. And he somehow arrived at this conclusion from some supposed hidden message that he somehow read from the book of Haggai.
Don’t feel intimidated about reading the book of Haggai for yourself to see what it says, as it’s only about 1 or 2 pages long in most Bibles.
David Pack should have lost whatever following he had the moment he made that prediction. But he didn’t. You probably won’t be surprised to hear that the date that Pack set came and went without any people of repute in other Armstrongian groups dying. It seems as though Pack didn’t learn from Armstrong’s mistakes concerning setting specific dates for false prophecies.
In any case, Pack should have lost whatever following he had left, but he didn’t. This can seem confounding, but not so much when you understand that when someone is in a cult, they tend to be less critical of the shortcomings of their leaders. In light of this, consider the fact that many Armstrongian sermons place a heavy emphasis on “being a good follower” and obedience to leadership.
Also in David Pack’s list of prophecies is his prediction about a reunification, which would supposedly see a few Armstrongian groups coming together. This must have sounded nice to most Armstrongians, considering that with all the divisions in their history, a reunification would be a change of pace. But because it was a David Pack prophecy, it would have a David Pack twist: they would be united under his leadership.
Of course. No surprise, there. What’s also not a surprise is that it was yet another David Pack prophecy that did not come true.
Another interesting fact about the RCG is that it purchases a high amount of advertising on social media. One might imagine that such outreach attempts would be strongly successful. Or, they would be, except most people don’t seem to respond to them. Perhaps it’s evident to many people who see these ads that something is wrong. Some of these ads contain the names of other Armstrongian groups, which makes it evident that Pack was trying to pluck away members of Armstrongian groups which aren’t as cultish.
Also, the RCG once celebrated the fact that their website has been accessed at least once from each country in the world (though I imagine that there were some exceptions). They took this to mean that the Gospel has effectively reached the whole world. That the Gospel would reach the whole world is accepted by Christianity as a precondition for the end of the current age. Apparently, the RCG only counted access to their own website, because apparently they think that other churches don’t count. And apparently they are using the accessing of their website as the metric for their success, because the RCG sees itself as an “online ministry”.
Considering all this, you might be able to predict my verdict as to whether David Pack’s RCG is a dangerous cult. If you were to join the RCG, it would be very dangerous to your pocketbook. Putting that aside, when one considers how narcissistic and out-of-touch with reality it’s leadership apparently is, it’s strongly likely that there is exploitation taking place, especially when considering Armstrongism’s heavy emphasis on submission to leadership.
The mechanism for the extraction of a high amount of financial value is abundantly obvious. What’s also obvious is that Pack uses the RCG as a mechanism for the extraction of admiration, which would be a dream come true for a narcissistic person, which David Pack apparently is.
There are obvious signs that David Pack’s RCG is a dangerous cult. It’s not acceptable that as much value is extracted from its members as the RCG extracts from them. While we don’t currently have more immediate evidence that it’s members are being exploited, if the RCG were to be more carefully investigated, it wouldn’t be surprising to discover some more serious abuses.
The left seems to have no problem with throwing money at problems, as long as the money is not their own. And they’ll happily do so, with little respect for the underlying causes of those problems.
Here’s yet another precious moment:
There’s a reason why the left tends to swing more for younger voters, and that’s because they don’t think younger voters have the insight needed to recognize the left’s platitudes as being as naive and vacuous as they are.
Oftentimes, you’ll hear one of them say that there are N number of homeless people and M number of houses (where N < M), and therefore solving the homelessness problem is as easy as putting one in the other. This sounds appealing if you don’t understand the nuances of the matter, which might be the ignorance that they are banking on.
The fact is, people who are homeless are usually homeless for some compelling reasons, and unless the underlying reasons for their homelessness are solved, the act of scooping them up from off the streets and dropping them off in a vacant home will probably only solve their problem for about a week.
For one thing, people become homeless because they struggle with drug addiction. That’s being generous, of course, as in many cases, it’s not so much a struggle as it is a full-on embrace, to the point that a person deems them more important than anything else, including having a roof over their head.
And that makes it more interesting that California is actually providing homeless drug addicts with the free drugs that they’d need to continue their addictions.
Another problem has to do with mental health. Some people have a difficult time holding down a home by reason of mental illness. While these people could be institutionalized and therefore treated, mental clinicians in the western world are largely dependent on voluntary committals. This is made unlikely in cases where one’s paranoid delusions result in them distrusting the professionals who could otherwise help them.
How does one go about solving this problem? I don’t know, but it’s one major underlying problem behind the homelessness crisis.
Perhaps it’s the case that Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett is truly unaware of the nuances behind the homelessness problem. But it’s hard to dismiss the possibility that he’s aware that the problem is more difficult to solve than just dropping homeless people into empty houses, and he’s counting on you not having the insight to question him about it.
In either case, it’s not a good look.
It’s great that we have an administration that cares about the climate. It’s also great that we have an information media that keeps us informed, so that when something goes wrong, we can make informed choices. What’s more, it’s great that we have such dependable infrastructure that can safely transport highly toxic materials.
Except when none of that is true.
If you live within 100 miles of East Palestine, Ohio, you might want to pay attention, because the story that’s being discussed might concern you. Give or take, depending on what the wind has been doing.
Last week, in the above mentioned town, a 50 car train carrying an assortment of toxic chemicals used in manufacturing had crashed. Fearing an explosion, officials preemptively set fire to the chemicals, causing them to disperse.
If we have as many politicians as we do who pretend to give a care about rising sea levels, one might think they’d have something to say about an enormous spill of toxic chemicals into the environment. But it turns out that they’re just driving down the cost of beachfront property so they can buy it right up when it’s time to retire. It’s hard to come to any other conclusion when they join the corporate press in saying a whole lot of nothing about it.
And speaking of, some in the press who have attempted to cover the event have been arrested.
If I were to pretend to know a few things about chemistry, I think people would be able to see right through me. But I think it’s safe to say that the chemical cocktail that was dispersed into the atmosphere has the potential to break someone dead. Among the chemicals released was phosgene, which was used as a chemical warfare agent in WWI.
Reportedly, animals have been dying near the blaze, in some cases as far as 100 miles away. Which is cause for concern, as humans are made of the same stuff as animals. But hey, the EPA gave the all-clear for citizens of East Palestine to return to their homes. And who wouldn’t trust a three-letter agency of a government that isn’t much concerned about feminizing chemicals in the drinking water, or the fact that seed oils are ubiquitous in food?
As weird as all this is, it gets weirder when you consider that the residents of East Palestine are now living the plot of a drama that they helped produce.
Yep, that’s Adam Driver. And yes, this drama is about a train wreck dispensing chemicals into the environment, prompting a family to attempt to escape. And yes, the setting is East Palestine, Ohio, the very place where the real wreck had just occurred.
I like to think that I’m a rational individual, whose perceptions are firmly grounded in reality, and who knows the difference between fantasy and reality. I know how to parse reality, and recognize that fictional constructs ideally play no role in that process. But seeing these events play out so closely to a work of fiction, I can appreciate that that’s quite a thought-provoking coincidence.
Having seen all this, I’m curious as to how the crash happened. And perhaps we’d know, if it weren’t for the apparent media blackout. But that’s probably not as important as anyone nearby knowing whether they might want to grab their bug-out bags and run.
While Jack Murphy is not as relevant today as he was a year ago, he does sometimes still come up as a prime example of a grifter. In light of this, I’ve decided that it might be fun to hold his little club, The Liminal Order, under a microscope to determine whether it is a cult.
The answer to this endeavor seems obvious, when you consider that Jack employs imagery that indicates that he’s doing absolutely nothing to run from the image of a cult leader. However, when his organization is examined, Jack Murphy’s peepee club is not merely the pillow fort that it might appear to be.
Before diving into the evidence, I’d first like to share the general criteria that I use to help determine whether an organization is a dangerous cult. Keep in mind that organizations don’t need to have a religious or spiritual element to classify as a cult. Also, please note that this list is non-exhaustive.
Here we go:
Cults are dangerous because they tend to be exploitative, and they tend to employ deceptive or manipulative practices, such as control of information, to create or maintain a following. However, these practices tend to not be as obvious as what’s listed above. The above list works well at raising flags from the perspective of being on the outside looking in, when exploitation isn’t immediately evident.
Also, to answer those who may raise the suspicion that I’m presenting the worst of The Liminal Order in order to render an unfair verdict, please know that the information mainly compared against the points above will be what The Liminal Order says about itself, as revealed on its own website.
Now, let’s get started.
This is Marketing 101. And, to be fair, pretty much every organization exists towards the end of solving some problem. Cults tend to place a particular emphasis on self-improvement or living up to one’s own potential, and are sometimes strong in an insistence that that self-realization can only be achieved through them, or that it’s at least hard to come by.
Here is what The Liminal Order claims to offer on their site:
We are men who seek to improve ourselves so we may better serve our family, community, and the Nation.
We know that strong men make strong countries and we have committed ourselves to a collective action that emphasizes accountability, personal choice, and leadership.
The Liminal Order, Who We Are
The Liminal Order places a heavy emphasis on self-improvement, focusing on young to middle-aged men, to help them to develop leadership qualities and become societal difference-makers. To this end, online sessions are held, with Jack Murphy usually being involved, which often involves brainstorming and coaching.
Basically an expensive chat room where the economy revolves around Jack Murphy’s time.
Tribalism tends to be a powerful motivator, and cult leaders exploit this by convincing prospectives to take a side. Or, they may point out all that’s wrong with society, and paint the group as being one of the few “fighting the good fight”. Or, more cynically, they may point to the existence of “enemies” in an effort to stir up fanaticism.
What path does The Liminal Order take?
In this postmodern, post-Truth era, people in your proximity may be your literal enemy. Today they frown at your public display of patriotism. Tomorrow they may turn you in to the re-education camps.
Your coworkers might blast your religion on social media and call for your church to be burned to the ground. If you’re a police officer, you’ve got to watch your back. Even while you’re mowing your lawn. Because anyone can find out where you live.
The Liminal Order, What We Are
That escalated quick. It would seem like Jack Murphy is going down the paranoid delusion route in inspiring his members. Whether he believes what he’s writing, or sees something to gain in inspiring schizophrenics to action, it’s not a good look.
When a cult is convinced that they have literal enemies who are literally out to kill them, they tend towards extremes, quickly. Based on what we read above, I wouldn’t be surprised if a member of The Liminal Order made the news, for a very bad reason.
Just about everything about The Liminal Order revolves around the character of Jack Murphy, who presents himself as an example of manliness to aspire to. Like many such people, he eventually became a disappointment. More on him later.
Jack Murphy vets his prospective members through an interview process, which places an appearance of value on membership. Those who make it in are less likely to take their membership for granted. Because acquiring a membership requires an investment of time and finances, and not everyone overcomes the vetting process, it’s to be expected that members would avoid the risk of losing their membership, and perhaps even tend towards extremes in an effort to demonstrate their loyalty.
What’s more, Jack touts the positions of influence held by members of his club:
Some of our members are:
– Former Military Officers
The Liminal Order, Who We Are
– Hedge Fund Operators
– Tech Entrepreneurs
– Medical Doctors
– PhD Academics
– Lawyers
– Government Officials
– Media Publishers and Personalities
– Authors
– Artists
– Truckers
– Riggers
– Tech Specialists
– and recent graduates finding their way.
I find amusement in that entries such as “PhD Academics” and “Lawyers” are mentioned in the plural sense, as though any lawyer or doctor would consider it a good idea to associate with Jack Murphy. But, as I’m well aware, there are many different kinds.
The obvious draw to listing all these different professions is to create the impression that, if you were to join Jack Murphy’s cult, you’d get to bump elbows with some highly influential people. Of course, that all these heavily-educated and influential people would see someone like Jack Murphy as someone to look up to requires quite a suspension of disbelief.
Because to me, he seems like a guy with a fetish.
Jack’s little chat room costs $99/month to access. Of course, there are other pricing tiers for those willing to commit to Jack Murphy’s brand of manliness. Last I heard, Jack Murphy has been raking in about $200,000/year, so he’s doing pretty well for himself with his little grift.
Now that we’ve analyzed his little group, let’s move on to the main feature of Jack Murphy’s cult: the man himself. For this analysis, we’ll be sticking to the public aspects of Jack Murphy’s character, as this is most relevant to his cult. It would seem that Jack himself would prefer this, considering that “Jack Murphy” is a pen name.
Jack Murphy was a lesser-known left-wing influencer who rose to prominence as part of the “walk away movement”, which saw left-wing personalities turn away from the left, and identify as conservative (or, at least, decide to vote for Trump after having previously voted for Obama). Jack Murphy even authored a book on the matter, titled, “Democrat to Deplorable”. During the height of Jack Murphy’s influence, he was a guest on various podcasts, including the one hosted by Tim Pool.
However, Jack Murphy’s past would come back to haunt him. In the year 2015, he had penned a blog post touting cuckolding, explaining an experience in which he allowed his own girlfriend to get intimately involved with a man the two met through Tinder.
Obviously, to act on a fetish for being cuckolded is not befitting a man who is prominent in the manosphere. Or for a man who would claim to coach other men on manliness. Or any man, for that matter. The reason why the term “cuck” is considered derogatory is because it implies that a man lacks the strength or confidence to protect or keep for himself what most men would be expected to.
Jack’s article, titled “Cultivating Erotic Energy From a Surprising Source”, was brought up during a podcast with a streamer named Sydney Watson. During the stream, host Sydney Watson read a superchat asking Jack to explain his article about cuckolding. Jack responded by lashing out at the host, in a manner which was disproportionate and uncalled for.
The following is a video from Sydney Watson, offering her take on the matter:
That was the moment in which Jack Murphy’s career began to collapse.
As men began to withdraw from The Liminal Order, Jack set out to attempt to fight back against his critics. In so doing, he made himself look worse. He set out to scrub his own article from the internet, even going as far as having it removed from The Wayback Machine.
Not that you’d have much trouble finding it if you were to go looking for it. After all, once something is on the internet, it’s on the internet forever.
He was so desperate to save face, that he even tried recruiting from his own super-expensive The Liminal Order chat room to create his own personal war room.
If you’re wondering why the photograph, Jack Murphy has measures to attempt to disable screengrab attempts in his chatroom, and notify him when screengrab attempts are made.
I wonder how many of his loyal followers experienced a moment of clarity and decided to nope out at that point. There’s something about spending $99/month for the dubious honor of doing damage control for a fetishist that merits a hard pass.
It is entirely possible for a person to recover from an embarrassing past. However, this usually takes handling the matter a certain way. Jack Murphy failed to do so spectacularly, and in so doing, became another victim of what’s called “the Streisand Effect”, where an attempt to hide something results in more attention for what one is attempting to hide.
If someone is presenting themselves as a pinnacle of manliness, odds are, they’re a narcissist. And if he’s trying to sell you his self-improvement plan, he’s likely running a cult. For a cult to be successful, it doesn’t need to convince the majority of people, it would only need to convince just enough to make the cult leader rich.
Is The Liminal Order a cult? Yes, I believe that The Liminal Order is undoubtedly a cult. But even if not, it’s apparent that Jack Murphy is selling a faulty product. And Jack Murphy himself is that product.
I grew up with the likes of Batman, so it kinda saddens me to see how things are going for the Dark Knight, and his compatriots in western comic books. But at the same time, I don’t want to see Batman succeed for the wrong reasons. And with DC and Marvel comics having become full-on woke rags, it’s pretty much necessary for those comic companies to tumble, if it means that they’ll learn a few things as it happens.
If you’ve been following along, you already know that manga has been killing the hell out of western comics. As I’ve already covered, manga sales in the year 2020 were three times that of DC and Marvel sales combined. As pointed out by Deb Aoki on Twitter, EuropeComics has posted a graph which visualizes just how much hell is being killed out of western comics:
To further highlight the mayhem:
The first four publishers on that list are manga publishers, and each one of them outsells both Marvel and DC combined, with Marvel and DC placing numbers 7 and 8 behind Korean webtoon publishers.
It looks like no one is buying western comic books anymore, and I wonder why?
Oh yeah, that’s right. It’s because Marvel and DC have gone full-on woke, with DC having started a yearly publication starring characters whose sexual preferences are the most front-facing aspects of their personalities.
Did DC really publish this with the expectation that anyone reading it would feel like they’re being taken seriously?
Now, I get it. Your boomer parents and grandparents grew up with Hanna Barbara bullshit like Hong Kong Phooey, and would therefore feel threatened by anything from across the ocean that might challenge them, which has a lot to do with why they’re among the few left who are currently providing Marvel and DC as much support as they have. I also get that they grew up in an age where it was rare for cartoons to be made for anyone besides children. Even so, the idea that children don’t deserve better products just because they’re children is just an excuse to produce inferior products, which in turn conditions children into becoming adults willing to settle for mediocrity.
I read manga because manga takes me seriously enough to present me with entertainment without beating me over the head with the blunt end of whatever misguided moral that the publisher wanted to push, as though they couldn’t trust me to think for myself.
If the story is about a golden-haired dude battling it out with a galactic tyrant on an exploding planet, the comic doesn’t need to do anything to further justify itself. If some cook is facing off against his dad because of some deep-seated grudge, we don’t need a PSA telling us not to pick on people who like buttsecks. If some deranged scientist performs horrific vivisections just to enhance his capacity to explore come caverns, he’s plainly the bad guy, it’s not necessary to make him a Nazi, as well.
If western comic book heroes are to succeed again at some point in the future, they’re going to have to go back to being, you know, heroes. It’s going to take a whole lot of swallowing to down all the pride needed for Batman and the Avengers to come back up from where they currently are.
But in the time it takes for them to do it, I’ve got plenty of other things to read.
Magnetricity 