I’ve pointed out before that when dealing with horse-puckey of great magnitude it helps to have at least one foot in reality. If you agree, then I have great news for you today: Twitter has quietly dropped its prohibition against use of biologically correct pronouns when referring to transgender individuals from its hateful content policy!
Twitter has sparked backlash after some users noticed it had quietly removed language in its hateful conduct policy that explicitly protected transgender people from online harassment. https://t.co/pV4SPCLYOT
In addition to use of biologically correct pronouns, users may also refer to transgender individuals with the names that they were given at birth, an action called “deadnaming” by transgender individuals who decide to change their names as part of the pretense of being someone they are not.
The majority has never at any point agreed with the transgender insanity. However, the fraction-of-one-percent who have furthered the movement have recently held disproportionate influence over institutions, appealing mainly to the political left who present the issue as a matter of social justice.
However, as the transgender movement continues towards extremes, such as exposure of children to the transgender ideology and actions such as of the deadly mass-shooter Audrey Hale, the public conversation continues to turn against it.
For a short while there, to speak against self-delusion and sexual perversity was to speak truth to power. But with Twitter coming around and becoming stronger as a free-speech platform, the public is enabled to honestly and earnestly discuss the matter, and the flow of the era continues to turn against the sexual deviants.
Personally, I suspect that the perverts are going to turn more towards extremes, particularly the dead-enders who understand that they’ve taken positions that will result in them becoming pariahs at a point when they’ll have lost the ability to influence public policy, and a lasting record of their deviance will remain on the internet for ages to come.
The side of the truth has always been the safest side to be on. For those who got on the side of the trans insanity, their best bet would be to jump ship and pretend that they’ve never been a part of it, wipe their social media as needed, and hope that no one remembers that they once pushed tranny bullshit.
Because at this point, the trans movement doesn’t have much of a bright future ahead of it.
If you’re in marketing, it’s your job to read the room. You have a customer base that you have to appeal to, and to understand their sensibilities comes with the position.
Beer is one of the most ancient beverages still consumed today. What’s more, it has a certain image associated with it. Today, it’s viewed as daddy’s drink, and you can have some once you’ve grown up.
Considering this, it’s understandable why a corporate beer brand wouldn’t hire an effeminate, shrill charlatan who pretends to be a little girl to be a spokesperson for their brand. Such a move would be entirely self-defeating, especially considering that the delusion that the guy represents goes against the values that the typical working-class beer drinker would be expected to hold.
Understanding all this, it should follow that the backlash against Anheuser Busch for hiring make-believe-girl Dylan Mulvaney as a spokeswhatever for their Bud Light brand would prove to be catastrophic for both the company and the brand. It just follows.
It gets even worse in light of a recently-surfaced video of their own VP of Marketing stating her desire to replace Bud Light’s existing customer base with a newer, younger base, as brought up during this boomer news spot:
Getting younger people on alcohol? What an interesting take. But considering that we live in a society that tolerates companies that want young people addicted to cigarettes and fast food, it’s not altogether surprising.
As much as the diversity hire hates Bud Light’s frat image, she seemed to be rather okay with frat behavior, as revealed in a batch of images of her partying in college, among which is a picture of her drinking out of a rubber. But hey, we all do stupid stuff in college, right? Right?
What kind of colleges are these clowns going to? I remember that when I was in college, most of the students studied hard because they were concerned with their grades, myself included. It’s bad enough that bullshit colleges will give their drunkass students passing grades, it’s a spit in society’s eye that they’ll have six-figure salaries to look forward to after they graduate.
Personally, I have little trouble avoiding Bud Light, because I seldom drink beer. I’m a bit of a fitness enthusiast, so I have trouble fitting a beer in when I’m counting calories. When I do go for one, I usually prefer an IPA, or something less corporate, like something from a smaller, more local brewery.
When I want something alcoholic, I usually go for a cocktail. Those are great, because you know what’s going into them, provided you make them yourself. Also, if a hard liquor goes woke, replacing it with a different one is a snap.
I’m not going to pretend that I have a thorough comprehension of the bar scene. I mainly went to bars because a friend of mine wanted to go. But I do know well enough that they tend to have a certain culture, where you don’t want to stand out for doing weird shit. Considering this, to have Dylan Mulvaney, a man known for pretending to be a little girl, as a spokeswhatever for a beer brand seems like an act of sabotage. Granted, not every bar is the same.
Again, if you’re in marketing, you have a job to read the room. You certainly don’t have a mandate to replace a brand’s existing customer base with the kind that you might prefer.
Anheuser Busch has one move which would be more effective than any other to reduce the damage done to their brand. No, it’s not to hope the problem goes away on its own. No, it’s not to release some smarmy advertising spot in the hopes that their original base ignores the fact that they didn’t back down.
It would be to issue an apology. To acknowledge that what they did was wrong, denounce the same wrong that was committed, and resolve to do better going forward.
And the best part is, it doesn’t take a team of marketers or PR consultants. All it takes is a few minutes on Twitter. And it’s free.
They might take a hit to their ESG score, but with major companies like Vanguard already dropping ESG, they’d be ahead of the game.
Or they can continue to writhe while pretending that everything is okay. Either way, I’m getting what I want.
The story of Audrey Hale is already interesting, and it got even more interesting when it was discovered that the mass shooter that attacked a Christian elementary school in Tennessee was an FTM transexual. Since then, talk about her has gotten really interesting.
However, a passing post on a message board took me down a rabbit hole that led me to consider the possibility that Audrey Hale may have been the victim of sexual abuse as a child, and that abuse may have actually occurred at the very same elementary school that she attacked.
Before continuing, I want to make it clear that it’s not my intention to come anywhere close to excusing what Audrey Hale did. There is absolutely no excuse for going on a shooting in an elementary school, no matter what you may have been through at any point. I know at least two people who were sexually abused as children. While the experience was traumatic for both of them, neither of them went on to become school shooters. So yes, it’s possible to have been a victim at one point, but not turn out to be a piece of shit.
Audrey Hale, however, was a piece of shit.
Having said that, here’s the article that started me down the rabbit hole. It’s a Courthouse News Service article dating back to the year 2013, that pointed out that a Presbyterian church covered up for a “confessed child molester”, the church being the Covenant Presbyterian Church of Nashville.
In the article, we got the name of the confessed child molester:
In the lawsuit, Davis claims that on July 14, 2008, “the defendants quietly accept[ed] the resignation of the confessed child molester, John Perry, from the Covenant Diaconate, with Lewelling recorded in the board minutes as being present in the room.”
As the article points out, abuses of children by John Perry had been committed, and they were when John Perry was a part of a Presbyterian church, which is noteworthy considering that the Christian school targeted by Audrey Hale was also Presbyterian, and Audrey herself was reportedly once enrolled as an attendee. Because Audrey was 28 years old at the time of the shooting, and the school was an elementary school, it would have been quite some time since Audrey had been in attendance as a student.
According to the article, the resignation of child predator John Perry was accepted in 2008, so it would stand to reason that the abuses would have occurred prior to that point.
In the United States, it’s usually from around ages 6 to 12 that a child is in attendance of Elementary School (from Kindergarten to Fifth Grade). If Audrey had been in attendance of Covenant School, that would have likely been from the years 2001 to 2007. Because Covenant School offers a pre-school program, a student could hypothetically start school there younger than age 6. This might not have been the case for Audrey, as according to Covenant School’s website, the year 2001 would have been the school’s founding year.
If Audrey Hale had actually been sexually abused at the very school where she would later go on a shooting rampage, that would add a new dimension to the story, and make a possible motive for the shooting more apparent. However, at that point, it doesn’t seem as though that connection would yet be made with the information available to us at the time of this posting. After all, the manifesto has not yet been released, and that document might do a lot to tell us about the sicko’s motivations for the shooting.
With a name for the abuser, I decided to look into more information about him. As it turns out, the guy was being investigated by police, but ended up being let off by reason of the expiration of the statute of limitations for the offenses.
As I see it, there is sound philosophical basis for the statute of limitations, especially considering that human memory can be flawed, and tends to become more flawed the older a memory may be. However, that makes it no less disappointing when a person who commits a heinous crime gets off because of it.
Mike Huckabee was, of course, entirely unaware of the fact that the co-author of his book was being investigated for child abuse. But if it turns out that Audrey Hale was one of the students that was sexually abused by John Perry, imagine how she would have felt if she were to discover that the piece of filth who abused her would go on to team up with one of America’s most famous men!
For the searching that I did, I didn’t find a definitive link between John Perry and Audrey Hale. It would have stood to reason, considering that names of victims of child sex abuse are not usually public, not only for their benefit, but also because the victims would be minors.
It tends to be the case that victims of sexual abuse as a child experience lasting emotional disorders, and they often require psychiatric treatment. In many cases, the children can become sexually aware younger than one might expect them to. Because homosexuals tend to have a high occurrence rate of victimhood of child sexual abuse, it’s reasonable to expect that their sexuality is a manifestation of the effect that the abuse had on them. While transsexuality is relatively new and still somewhat unstudied, it’s reasonable to suspect that an interest in transsexuality at any age could be a manifestation of the trauma of child sexual abuse.
Could Audrey Hale have been sexually abused as a child at the very same school where she would eventually die as a mass murderer? As of this posting, it’s hard to say definitively with the information that’s been publicly made available. It’s because of this that I’m interested in the contents of Audrey’s manifesto, which may explain her motives.
Of course, I think it’s reasonable to ask why child abuse happens as often as it does in religious settings. Personally, I doubt that child abuse happens in religious settings with greater frequency than in the general population. However, I think it’s obvious that the unbiblical practice of celibacy is partly to blame. But outside of that, I suspect that predators find something attractive about churches due to the fact that religious folk tend to attempt to resolve matters amongst themselves, rather than get law enforcement involved. Because of this, there would be more potential for predators to manage matters when things go wrong when in the company of the religious, than in more secular settings where there’s a stronger connotation of obligation to report wrongdoing of that nature.
But if it turns out that there’s a connection between John Perry and Audrey Hale, I imagine that John Perry would be sweating bullets about now.
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.
Did Nietzsche ever find a way to stop the abyss from staring back?
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?
Wow.
Or could it be that I’ve discovered Nendoroids first, which actually attempt an illusion of depth in their painted-on eyes?
Far superior.
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.
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:
A cult tends to try to convince prospective members that they have a problem, then present themselves as the solution to that problem,
Cults tend to have an adversarial relationship with its host society, may appeal to tribalism, or has a tendency to split the world in two,
There is particular esteem placed on leadership, which is usually not held accountable,
Membership can appear exclusive or valuable, attention in marketing may be placed on prominent members,
There is an obvious mechanism with which to extract value.
With this criteria, let’s examine how David Pack’s RCG holds up.
A cult tends to try to convince prospective members that they have a problem, then present themselves as the solution to that problem,
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.
Cults tend to have an adversarial relationship with its host society, may appeal to tribalism, or has a tendency to split the world in two,
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.
There is particular esteem placed on leadership, which is usually not held accountable,
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.
Membership can appear exclusive or valuable, attention in marketing may be placed on prominent members,
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.
There is an obvious mechanism with which to extract value.
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.
David Pack, as pictured on RCG.org
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:
With the money the “He Gets Us” people spent on their right-wing Jesus ads, they could permanently house 1,563 people experiencing homelessness.
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.
Magnetricity 