Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen2d ago

As (part of) a #plural person I am attentive to signs that people I encounter in daily life have their own way of, shall we say, switching between modes. I grew up in a bilingual household and thus came awkwardly to be conditioned into thinking that our parents spoke Spanish only when they were angry or wanted to speak confidentially about private or adult matters.

The normie model of personality and behavior is that people only have one of things and that having more of them is diseased or pathological, or possibly just foolery or a spiteful trick. But this one-headed model leaves room for a normie person to behave in a very different manner from that which they present to the world as their true and honest self. The departure from the norm is, once again, modelled as aberration, but forgivable aberration. "That isn't really me," the normie person might say after getting caught out for a temper tantrum or a petty crime. "That was the drink, or the drugs, or my fear—" or some other thing that isn't "the real me" and which one should regard as aberrant and therefore negligible.

(cont'd)

Show threadMx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen2d ago

Now if you're #Christian this "real me" stuff can get extremely flagrant and frankly insulting to a person like me (and my system) because we simply don't have the social licence to get away with blaming PARTS of ourselves for trouble that we collectively get into.

If I start stammering out some explanation about how one of our fictive introjects got trauma triggered (or whatever) I will be immediately be howled down for trying to wriggle out of consequences (for part of being non-normie is that explanations of one's troublesome actions are always interpreted as evasion or deceit) and quite possibly I will be told—in the same sentence, maybe—that I am dangerously insane and/or I'm playing some kind of cruel prank. But a hardcore Christian can get away with attributing their misdeeds to some nebulous other entity that's (a) not "the real me" or "who I really am" and (b) always conveniently gone now, in the past, and impossible to call to account.

Of course this ties in with how such Christians have dealt with sin and their own misdeeds.

(cont'd)

Show threadMx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen2d ago

Now, uh...that brings me to my favorite example of #Christian mode-switching. I can't remember when I first saw this, and I was able to find it on YouTube without remembering any specific information beyond "motherfucker".

https://youtu.be/75xeI7EKoXA

It's amazing. Some part of this person is trying gamely to maintain a calm social poise and present themselves as normal, but the appearance of poise keeps giving way to angry (and curiously exaggerated, unnatural-sounding) slurs and invocations of Hell (which a Christian really shouldn't be blithering about constantly, at least by my own lights, if they're to preserve any illusion of being a "good Christian") until finally the polite façade has completely melted away and the rentacops arrive to drag the screaming woman away. MOTHAFUCKAH!!!

(cont'd)

Accuser of the Brethren

YouTube
Show threadMx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen2d ago

(also note: "we're all sinners", but she completely loses her rag when she's accused of sinning herself. Welcome to what far too many #Christians call their "moral values".)

Now...I'm of the general opinion that people who behave in his way have learned, in the past, that it works for them. Kris and I, being #plural, have been forced by social pressure to behave as normally and as much like a single personality as possible. But normie persons, especially if they have Christianity as an excuse, are permitted a much greater social latitude when it comes to inconsistent and self-contradictory behavior.

No doubt this was not this woman's first public tantrum, and I would guess that in most cases when she's behaved like this, everyone around her backs off and gives her space. They simply don't want to deal with the raving Jesus freak, and that reinforces the ranting woman's conviction that she's speaking with the Lord's voice and that's why everyone is letting her misbehave. It's not politeness; it's not lenience or even condescension; it's the Power of the Lord forcing everyone to defer to her prophetic voice.

(cont'd)

Show threadMx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen

Once again I reiterate: a non-Christian would not be able to rant in this way. The mores of polite American society and indeed "Western" society generally may not explicitly endorse Christianity or compel Christian beliefs or enforce Christian moral standards, but in all cases the #Christian person—no matter how much they're always hollering about persecution and oppression (i.e. being broadly despised)—gets treated with special lenity. The words "religion" and "faith" and "believer" in this society are automatically taken as equivalent to Christianity.

Antisemitism flourishes in this society underneath a paper-thin commitment to the false notion that Christianity is basically continuous with Judaism (thus allowing "Judeo-Christian" to be slung about as a deceitful catchphrase by hideously antisemitic Christofascısts) and by deflecting all talk of antisemitism onto Islam and onto anyone who speaks out against the genocıdal aggressions of the state of #Israel, which antisemitic Christians forcibly equate with the abstract Jewish notion of Israel. These allegedly "pro-semitic" Christians despise Jews who refuse to endorse the polity of Israel and her decades-long history of crimes against humanity as the core and center of Judaism.

(cont'd)

May 29 at 9:07pmWeb
Show threadMx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen2d ago

Antisemitism is in fact endemic to #Christianity and thus "Western civilization", which gives Christianity special place, doesn't actually have a lot of room for honest practitioners of Judaism. Their holidays are not broadly respected, their dietary restrictions are mocked and disregarded (though not as viciously as those of Muslims) and antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories flourish abundantly among #Christians and in "the West", most especially in Great Britain. Christians are permitted openly to talk about the Roman tyranny's razing of Jerusalem in C.E. 70 as if it were God's judgment upon Judaism.

Why does Christianity get such extreme social latitude in Western society? I have a wicked hypothesis: it's because Christianity has (excepting an unknown number of individuals and obscure fringe groups) lost all its substance. Most Christians—especially those Christians who most loudly insist upon obtruding their purported faith and "Biblical values" into all walks of life—are profoundly irreligious, unholy, and hostile to the sacred. Christianity has become aggressively worldly and devoted to chasing after money and popular trends and, of course, secular political power.

(cont'd)

Show threadMx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen2d ago

Such genuine manifestations of religious faith and religious duty such as Jews observing their holidays or Muslims doing their daily players seem really to sicken such #Christians and impress them as backward and barbaric.

Their own "religion", such as it is, has done away with such things. Christianity has succeeded marvellously well at purging itself of rituals and traditions, seeking I suppose to be regarded as something invisible and yet omnipresent like gravity or the electromagnetic force, something that's always THERE and which therefore doesn't need to be exercised or honored in any way. Mind you, such Christians still have their rituals, but they take weird secularized forms, like voting Republican or shopping at Hobby Lobby or trying to bomb abortion clinics.

Thus has Christianity made itself comfortable amid Western society as an almost shapeless thing, devoid of spirituality or sacredness but still demanding absolute deference and a blind eye turned to all its wickedness. Christians, quite bluntly, are allowed to be evil to a degree that no other person can get away with in "the West".

(cont'd)

Show threadMx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen2d ago

When Texas Republican lawmaker Tony Gonzalez cheated on his wife with a woman who later killed herself, he was what I would call unrepentant—he certainly didn't want his misdeed to slow down his secular political career in any way. And anyway, "I've asked God to forgive me, which he has."

That's astonishing. The obvious conclusion is that Gonzalez is simply lying to himself: he spoke to some vision or some voice in his head and pretended that was a direct line to God, assuring him that everything was fine and he could go on about his business. Only a #Christian could possibly get away with this. I could tell people Óðinn (or Loki or Athene or anyone else) told me to do a crime and it would be worse than useless; as with being plural, talking about pagan gods would get me called insane or deceitful or both at the same time. But a Christian can pretend he's got a hotline to God's judgment—a judgment that Tony Gonzalez wants EVERYONE to honor, mind you, otherwise he'll lose his temper if you keep bringing up that he drove a woman to suicide—and suffer no social consequences for it.

Great country we've got here.

~Chara of Pnictogen