• “The Christmas stuff starts arriving in early September,” I wrote back in 2017.
That was years ago and it’s way out of date now. We got three pallets of Christmas lights and trees last Tuesday, when it was still July.
So it’s not too early to begin preparing for the kayfabe of LARPers who pretend to believe that there’s a “War on Christmas” by re-reading that piece linked above and maybe also this, from Parker Malloy, about the explicitly antisemitic “Ugly Origins of ‘The War on Christmas.’”
• The two most vocal and most influential young-Earth creationists in America live and work about 100 miles apart in Kentucky. Years ago I wrote about the hilarious absurdity of that, see: “Their Old Kentucky Home: Ken Ham, Al Mohler And Big Bone Lick.”
If you’re determined to claim to believe that the universe is only 7,000 years old and you try to drive from Al Mohler’s seminary office to Ken Ham’s theme park, you’re gonna have to drive blind-folded, because northern Kentucky is a place that constantly slaps you across the face with undeniable evidence that everything around you is much, much older than that.
Joel Duff digs into this same point — literally — here: “Trillions of Fossils: The Ancient Foundation of Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter.”
Just outside the Ark Encounter property, I stumbled upon something I’ve been hoping to find for years – a nautiloid fossil! For those unfamiliar, nautiloids are ancient relatives of modern cephalopods like octopuses and squid. They had beautiful spiral or straight shells and were some of the largest predators in ancient seas.
Finding this nautiloid was a reminder of how this single fossil is a tiny window into an ancient world that existed hundreds of millions of years ago. The rocks in this area of Kentucky are part of the Cincinnati Arch, a vast geological formation packed with Ordovician-age fossils conventionally dates to 450 million years ago. …
I couldn’t help but think about the Ark Encounter just up the hill. Here is an attraction dedicated to promoting young Earth creationism, literally built on top of some of the most incredible fossil resources imaginable.
• Mother Jones’ Michael Mechanic looks up some numbers and debunks J.D. Vance’s weird claim that the Democratic Party is a “Childless Cabal.”
But the inaccuracy and dishonesty of Vance’s attack is a secondary concern. The more important, and creepier, problem with this claim is Vance’s assumption that it is an attack — that childless women and step-parents are somehow inferior. This is why, as Abby Vesoulis writes, “Childless Adults and Stepparents Have Some Thoughts on JD Vance.”
I’m a step-parent so I’ve encountered Vance’s strange hostility and confusion before. It usually comes from people who — unprompted — will insist that you, as a step-parent, cannot possibly love your children as much because they do not carry your own DNA.
These people do not seem to realize that this is a confession, or maybe even a boast, that their own “love” for their own children is mainly love for themselves. They’re telling you, straight up, that they cannot comprehend loving anyone who is not part of their bloodline.
Your instinct, when someone tells you this, is to recoil and to give them a chance to rethink or retract this horrible statement. Like, you want to convince them they’re just confused — that of course they can understand having concern or affection or responsibility or care for others not related by blood. But then you realize, oh no, maybe they can’t?
You also get the sense, the very strong hint, that someone telling you “I love my biological child because half of their DNA is me” is also telling you — and telling those children — “I love my biological children exactly half as much as I love my biological self.”
Atrios summarizes one of the contradictions of this gross point of view:
Vance’s repeated position is that people should have kids and there’s something wrong with people who don’t – even people who adopt or are stepparents! – but he also reveals his very standard conservative view that children exist as only extensions of the parents.
A strange thing about this view is few who have it see their relationships with their own parents that way.
OK, more narcissism than contradiction. But, still, just gross.
• Peter Thiel blames Christianity for “wokeness.” The Silicon Valley billionaire and Republican mega-donor (Thiel is Vance’s political and professional patron) is not a fan of any religion or ethical system or any other way of thinking that suggests he’s not obviously winning because he’s, you know, a billionaire.
“Christianity … always takes the side of the victim,” Thiel says, not intending this as a compliment. “And maybe you should think of wokeness as ultra-Christianity or hyper-Christianity.”
That’s not entirely wrong.
• The title for this post comes from this nearly 40-year-old song from the Waterboys:
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