Great article.

Good on you. Seemingly no one brings up the score for Hook, but it’s great.

How much terror and despair do you suppose Calvin bred in people, though, wondering whether they were one of the elect?

Do you believe that the centralizing structure of Catholicism has been a blessing — or a curse?

I’m not a fan of Christianity itself, Chloebaby — I think that there are too much facets to the religion which are destructive, not least among these being the veneration of faith. But if it helps (though perhaps it will not), I’ve known many Christians who are excellent people; some of my dearest friends are…

Tons of factors, right? I’ll agree that there’s something to be said for emphasizing “good works,” but as you say, a lot of those “good works” were the very kinds of indulgences, sales of offices, bequeathals, and etc., that inspired the Reformation.

I don’t disagree about Calvinism, but Christianity seems to me like it was plenty fucked up before Calvin came along...

Varicella? Adam Cadre?

Not trying to make excuses for anyone, but some of that mentality was fostered by the game systems and developers themselves. Sega's whole marketing campaign was taking shots at Nintendo, IIRC, and by extension the people who owned and played one.

"Scientology and true crime" is redundant, n'est-ce pas?

Lovely essay. Thank you very much for sharing!

I don't know that I'm calling for placing "special emphasis on telling oppressed minorities not to hate oppressor races"; rather, I'm saying that when people accurately identify racism, we ought not tell them "that's not racism."

I think maybe the issue is not so much that it's "wrong" to use "racism" that way, but rather that attempts to use it that way are invariably attempts to conflate 3 with 2. (I would hazard that there are many, many black people in this country who feel 3, and very few who feel 1.) Black person says "White people are…

It seems dubious I'm going to get anything productive out of responding to this. But what the hell, "benefit of the doubt" and all that…

Before anything else, just wanna put out to you that I've always appreciated your comments on the site, dirtside. Don't know what will shake out after the Kinjapocalypse, or whether I'll have another opportunity, so there it is. Anywho…

"Racism" can have one definition in the context of the academic discipline of sociology, and another one outside of it (a standard meaning, such as you would find in a dictionary).

Of all the stuff I read about race, this idea (I see time and time again in your comments) continues to speak the most to me. I still want to know more.

I like your takeaway from your reading. I've only read the Federalist Papers (though I like the idea of reading the Anti-Federalist Papers someday, and perhaps reading them co-currently), and apart from the substance of the debate — which was fascinating — what really bowled me over was just how thoughtful these…

Antifa (and similar) plays right into Trump's hands. They're not going to bring down the government, or end capitalism, or whatever-the-fuck, but they CAN inspire greater measures of militarized response and provide justification for the further curtailing of civil liberties.

Sitting in the middle of the ring, no-selling torn quads as he tries to hold shit together, is arguably peak Vince.