New political-personal poetry: Middle-class precariat pseudo-leftist

Middle-class precariat pseudo-leftist

I know that I am the first and the second
And that they are intertwined.
Does this make me a pseudo-leftist as well.
Am I too afraid
Of giving up the scraps of security
In a bank account and elsewhere
That I have scraped for
To put myself in that middle class
And to try to avoid that precariat
(Even in a precariat career)
To be a "real leftist"?

As I get older
Maybe I'll know the answer
Or at least know it in larger part than now,
And as I learn it,
Maybe I'll be honest with myself.

It's easy to make excuses
But, in a dysfunctional life,
It's also easy to blame oneself,
Or to use the vocabulary of blaming oneself
To avoid deeper thought in general.

At the same time, where is there a dictionary
That can authoritatively, and unambiguously,
Define the term "real leftist"?
"If it feels leftist, then do it"?

Per old Idries Shah, sometimes overquoted
If there are more than two sides to this issue,
There's also a continuum of some sort.
And, I'm on that, and not at the zero point.
Real leftist in progress, or sympatico fellow traveler.

So, there's a herd of "other evangelicals" eh?

 So claimed a friend of James McGrath on Facebook. (McGrath posts as "public," so violating no confidences.)

The friend touts a study by a prof at Carlton College saying that 35 percent of evangelicals may be of this "other type," who the prof hints aren't diehard MAGAts.

Problems? They abound.

First, as I told John W. Moreland, a prof at Multnomah Bible College who posted the link and has good PR reasons to push it? (McGrath's OP had been a piece by John Pavolovitz.)

There's NO DATA. No Pew Research etc.

Second, he pulls back on that right away, saying "15-30 percent" identify as "left-liberal." I have no idea what "left-liberal" means to him, but it's probably several degrees to the right of what it does for me.

Thirdd, in my world of political and religious observation as a newspaper editor secularist with a graduate divinity degree, "other evangelicals" would be reading Sojourners not Christianity Today.

Fourth, per Matthew 7:16, "they will know you by your deeds," are they acting on this? Probably not:

At times, the other evangelicals’ styles of public and political engagement look uncomfortably similar to the conservative evangelicalism against which it is constructed. They reduce complex political issues to dogmatic religious positions. They develop litmus tests to assess the purity or pollution of fellow believers and their political views. They ignore race and its role in maintaining contemporary social, economic, and political inequity. They use strident religious language that suppresses dialogue and dissent. In these moments, despite being substantively opposed to Christian Right style public and political engagement, the other evangelicals, like a mirror, reflect and reverse the original image.

There you go.

As for the one Pew link Markofski DOES have? Millennial evangelicals are still a lot closer to fellow evangelicals than to fellow Millennials. (Other Pew research says they'll likely stay GOP.)

Moreland also ignores that racism and dogwhistles go back to Reagan at the Neshoba County Fair.

Top blogging for the second quarter

 This isn't like the main blog, where I do a monthly roundup. I don't post that often here.

But, I did decide to start doing a quarterly roundup, so, here's the most-read blog posts of April-June.

No 1 is from last year. It's a callout of a bad Smithsonian article on the alleged likelihood of the existence of a biblical Edom at the time of King David (if he existed; I tilt no, but am not an absolutist). Why is it bad? It's heavily tinged with a background of Zionism; the author, Matti Friedman, once accused the Associated Press of antisemitism and was roundly refuted.

No. 2? "Libertarian pseudoskeptic pseudoscience," a Brian Dunning takedown.

No. 3? From last month, my thoughts on plunging American belief in god.

No. 4 is my extended review of "Yahweh: An Anatomy." Very interesting, but iffy at times on the embodied Yahweh. It has bits of envelope pushing and gets the book of Job wrong.

No. 5 is my extended review of Daniel Wegner's magnum opus, "The Illusion of Conscious Will." And, yes, the book lives up to the title in many ways. Say "mu," per Doug Hofstadter of "Gödel, Escher, Bach," to BOTH "free will" and "determinism" after reading this book.

No. 6 is also recent. It's another takedown, this time of ex-Google whackjob Blake Lemoine and his unsubstantiated claims about LaMDA, AI and sentience.

No. 7? Another extended review. "I Am Dynamite," the Nietzsche bio says; the book is a dud, at best, and willfully wrong and misinterpretive at worst.

No. 8? The idea and cultural concept of the shtetl as presented for goys, and somewhat for non-observant Jews, with rugged romanticism in Fiddler on the Roof, appears to have been largely fabricated.

No. 9? If you haven't yet, "Say goodbye to History for Atheists," above all for Tim O'Neill's Catholic and papal apologist dreck, refuted by many besides me.

No. 10 is even older. From 15 years ago, but trending again, "More proof the Buddha was no Buddha."