{"id":70453,"date":"2025-04-16T15:52:14","date_gmt":"2025-04-16T19:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=70453"},"modified":"2025-04-16T15:52:14","modified_gmt":"2025-04-16T19:52:14","slug":"cheer-up-you-melancholy-dane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2025\/04\/16\/cheer-up-you-melancholy-dane\/","title":{"rendered":"Cheer up, you melancholy Dane"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u2022 All three seasons of Slings & Arrows<\/em><\/a> are now free to watch (with ads) on YouTube<\/a>. It\u2019s as good as I remembered.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re worried that enjoying an entertaining show seems frivolous given, well, everything else that\u2019s going on these days, then just tell yourself that you\u2019re demonstrating solidarity with our Canadian neighbors and allies by celebrating this fine example of their culture.<\/p>\n

Plus it\u2019s got an all-timer for an opening song:<\/p>\n

<\/iframe><\/p>\n\u2022 Naomi Klein (<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Doppelganger:_A_Trip_into_the_Mirror_World\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">the good one<\/a>) and Astra Taylor write about \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/ng-interactive\/2025\/apr\/13\/end-times-fascism-far-right-trump-musk\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">The rise of end times fascism<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote>Interestingly, at a time when previously secular Silicon Valley elites are suddenly finding Jesus, it is noteworthy that both of these visions \u2013 the priority-pass corporate state and the mass-market bunker nation \u2013 share a great deal in common with the Christian fundamentalist interpretation of the biblical Rapture, when the faithful will supposedly be lifted up to a golden city in heaven, while the damned are left to endure an apocalyptic final battle down here on earth.<\/p>\nIf we are to meet our critical moment in history, we need to reckon with the reality that we are not up against adversaries we have seen before. We are up against end times fascism. \u2026<\/p>\nYou don\u2019t need to be a biblical literalist, or even religious, to be an end times fascist. Today, plenty of powerful secular people have embraced a vision of the future that follows a nearly identical script, one in which the world as we know it collapses under its weight and a chosen few survive and thrive in various kinds of arks, bunkers and gated \u201cfreedom cities\u201d. In a 2019 paper titled Left Behind: Future Fetishists, Prepping and the Abandonment of Earth, the communication scholars Sarah T Roberts and M\u00e9l Hogan described the longing for a secular Rapture: \u201cIn the accelerationist imaginary, the future is not about harm reduction, limits or restoration; rather it is a politics driving toward an endgame.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\nI will, as always, point out that Rapture Christianity is absolutely not compatible with any attempt to be a \u201cbiblical literalist.\u201d The arbitrary textual gymnastics required to impose the premillennial dispensationalist Rapture narrative onto biblical texts that literally will not accept that narrative are anything but<\/em> \u201cliteralism.\u201d<\/p>\nBut Klein and Taylor make a convincing case for the parallels between the techbro future and the delirious fantasies of folks like Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye. Here, for example, is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Krlp5Tan4dU\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">a song we sang in my Rapture-fundie Sunday school<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>Somewhere in outer space \nGod has prepared a place \nFor those who trust Him and obey \nJesus will come again \nAnd though we don\u2019t know when \nThe Countdown\u2019s getting lower every day.<\/p>\nTen and nine, eight and seven \nSix and five and four \nCall upon the Savior while you may \nThree and two, coming through \nThe clouds in bright array \nThe Countdown\u2019s getting lower every day<\/p><\/blockquote>\nAnd here are Klein and Taylor on Elon Musk\u2019s \u201cend times fascism\u201d:<\/p>\n<blockquote>Much like religious end-timers who long to escape the corporeal realm, Musk\u2019s drive for humanity to become \u201cmultiplanetary\u201d is made possible by his inability to appreciate the multispecies splendor of our only home. Evidently uninterested in the vast bounty that surrounds him, or in ensuring Earth can continue buzzing with diversity, he instead deploys his vast fortune to bring about a future that would see a handful of people and robots eke out survival on two barren orbs (a radically depleted Earth and a terraformed Mars). Indeed, in a strange twist on the Old Testament tale, Musk and his fellow tech billionaires, having arrogated god-like powers to themselves, aren\u2019t content to just build the arks. They appear to be doing their best to cause the flood. Today\u2019s rightwing leaders and their rich allies are not just taking advantage of catastrophes, shock-doctrine and disaster-capitalism style, but simultaneously provoking and planning for them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThere is a great deal to chew on in that long essay, but let me highlight the conclusion and add my \u201cAmen\u201d:<\/p>\n<blockquote>To have a hope of combating the end times fascists, with their ever-constricting and asphyxiating concentric circles of \u201cordered love\u201d, we will need to build an unruly open-hearted movement of the Earth-loving faithful: faithful to this planet, its people, its creatures and to the possibility of a livable future for us all. Faithful to here.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\u2022 I told this story in clipped BlueSky form, but let me repeat it here because I think it\u2019s an important parable about, oh, let\u2019s call it the relationship between power and the consent of the governed.<\/p>\nMany years ago, I spent a week fishing on a lake in Maine with a couple of theology professors. One of them, my boss at the time, had a cabin near the shore of that lake, built on land owned by a timber company.<\/p>\nThe company only offered short-term, renewable leases on the land, so my boss was worried that he might build his cabin, then have the company decide not to renew the lease and he\u2019d lose the cabin and all the money he\u2019d spent building it. So he visited with some of the other fishermen who had built cabins on leased land there and was surprised to learn that none of them was worried about that.<\/p>\nHe couldn\u2019t understand why not, until one old guy with a thick Down East accent explained it to him: \u201cWell, they could<\/em> decide to do that. But then there\u2019d be a lot of fires<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\nThe arrangement was sustainable because the powerful corporate landlord knew this and remembered it. It is important that they never be allowed to forget it.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“End times fascism” is both familiar and frightening. Oh, and also, “Slings and Arrows” is now free on YouTube.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":70456,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n<title>Cheer up, you melancholy Dane<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\""End times fascism" is both familiar and frightening. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Cheer up, you melancholy Dane","description":"\"End times fascism\" is both familiar and frightening. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}