Post #2500848

@FinalGirl @Impossible_PhD Puritanism. The whole predestination thing infected America from the beginning. It's embedded into the whole mythos of America, from top to bottom. Are you healthy and wealthy? It's because you're smiled upon by God, one of the elect. If you're not -- well, you're being punished by God and humans shouldn't interfere with your punishment. You can see that strand of thinking in everything, see it's rot in every strand of America. You can see it in Christians embracing the prosperity gospel, in justifying endless cruelty to the sick and poor -- because they must have done something WRONG, committed a SIN. It winds it's way through every justifications for slavery, for torture, for cruelty, inequality, for ignoring the plight of our fellow humans. Because "God wills it" is the perfect excuse for anything anyone wants to do. Thanks to fucking Calvin, buried deep in Western Christianity -- despite more than a few attempts from churches to stamp it out -- is the belief that God smiles on nobody more than the straight white male, who God has given the Earth -- and all the people who aren't straight white men -- to. Give me one wish, and I might just spend it on erasing Calvin and his entire shitty theology from existence. Oh we'd still have rampant racism, sexism, hatred of queer folks, poverty, misery, torture, worship of the wealthy. But fuck me, maybe I wouldn't have to listen to them be fucking sanctimonious about it.