I know North Bend (where it was filmed) well. It's too isolated for Walmart. Twin Peaks seems like a similar place.

Is the War on Drugs related to Prohibition? I guess there's a connection in that the mob profited from bootlegging and then from drug dealing. Seems a bit attenuated though.

That's an interesting point. I'd love to see a study to see if the people's class has remained the same, even if their religious views have changed. Evangelicals then had explicitly religious justifications for their views (e.g. "If man is made in the image of God, it is evil to allow God's image on earth to be…

I don't know if it was that neat though. In England, for example, plenty of Evangelical progressives were urban people advocating on behalf of the urban poor. And they could see how destructive gin was, honestly. Gin was cheaper than food in some places. We laugh at prohibition now, but they weren't all just…

Actually, it did to some extent, as we drink less now than we did prior to Probibition. And I'm fine with one failed Prohibition in exchange for child labor, prison reform, animal rights, abolitionism, and labor reform.

Excellent point. Very ugly mixed bag there.

Child labor laws (among other progressive laws) are the legacy of the 19th Century Progressive Evangelical movement. A time where evangelicals were a good influence on the world.

Well the wives and handmaidens have an Old Testament basis right? Abraham and Jacob.

Most of the population not knowing about the holocaust is a lie they tell themselves. Did they think their neighbors were lifted bodily into heaven? Magically vanished? Were sent to live at a farm upstate? They might not have known everything in exact detail. But they knew.

Just to be clear, it's not just the narrower birth pathway that's the issue with FGM. The scarring from a clitoridectomy reduces the body's ability to stretch and recover during birth. It's very dangerous.

The thing about servitude is that most human beings prefer their cruelty hidden. They have to/want to believe that their servants/slaves like them. Because only the truly emotionally damaged can enjoy having people around who hate them. Hence, convenient little lies about Africans being "formed" for servitude. Or 18th…

Christians in Kenya, Egypt, and Nigeria do it too. It's cultural/regional.

It's cultural, not per se "religious". By which I mean that it's levered into the religious practices of the region. So places where it's practiced by Muslims, it's also practiced by the minority Christian population too. Sexism doesn't care which religion you follow. I suspect it was there before Christianity or…

I also think there's something wrong about just folding the black/minority female experience into that of white women. Sexism applies to all women, but it's cheating to pretend that it's the only thing.

They already did the bunny one so …

Yeah. He bemoaned this (in a fond, affectionate way) in one of his letters to Christopher.

It's frightening to me because I also didn't feel like it was real or possible when I read it but now I feel so different.

Are you talking about the subjugation of women? Because I don't think Hinduism's record is especially clear there.

It seems to be a pretty common criticism though that "all" of Tolkien's characters lack personality and it's one that I reject. I do agree that most of the dwarves in the Hobbit are there to be "a big grumbly crowd of dwarves," though I thought Fili and Kili were charming in the book. I liked when they climb out of…

Oh man Redwall. Totally. And the Little House books. So many food descriptions.