Historian. Author of "The Radio Right" (Oxford, 2020).
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Elon opened the doors of content moderation jail and flooded this platform with vile idiots whose hate he actively promotes.
I've deleted this app on my phone although I'll maintain my account for DMs. Find me on Threads at the same handle where I'll be more active.
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There are two primary strains of right-wing Christian Nationalism in America at the moment. 🧵
1) the most extensive, called Seven Mountains theology, bubbled up from independent charismatic entrepreneurs like Lance Wallnau.
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Are you alarmed at non-uniformed, camouflaged, paramilitary "law" enforcement who've been sent to Portland against the wishes of the duly elected governor and mayor in order to abduct people off the streets?
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Wondered why it's been so hard to ramp up production of surgical masks and respirators? Why haven't private companies flooded into the market to meet peak demand?
Because they are regulated medical devices & new versions require FDA approval which can take months to obtain. 1/
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Just a reminder that if we had individual social security accounts, almost everybody could retire as a millionaire.
Let's use the example of Jill. She makes $25,000 a year, and we'll posit that she never makes any more than that.
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I'll end by noting that as a trained historian of religion & politics, right-wing Christian Nationalism is not a new phenomenon. American history is rife with variants of Christian Nationalism bubbling up, particularly at moments of intense religious & political anxiety.
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They rely on a novel interpretation of obscure biblical passages in Isaiah & Revelation that call for reclaiming 7 mountains of Christian social control, from government through education. If they succeed, then God will bless America. If they fail, then apocalypse now.
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They have gone further and anointed Donald Trump as a messianic figure--what theologians call christological typology--and linked him to the biblical Persian King Cyrus, a pagan who protected the Israelites and fulfilled prophecy.
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I call these people "entrepreneurs" quite literally. Lance Wallnau sold $45 "prayer coins" superimposing Trump's face over Cyrus's.
You might call this a "grift," though that assumes that Wallnau isn't sincere and is just flogging goods in the metaphorical temple square.
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It's not a good book--see @BrianGMattson on its demerits--but it's notable b/c it attempts to give an intellectual foundation to a movement that has been easy to ridicule as one step removed from snake handling. They're Claremont-ing, in other words.
brianmattson.substack.com/p/…
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7 Mountains rhetoric is widespread, with political operatives like Charlie Kirk and Michael Flynn using the language at their God & Country tours of megachurches.
4/ NAR apostle Lance Wallnau is one of the men standing on stage in this Georgia arena declaring the movement's Christian authoritarian intentions. The "Seven Mountains" mandate is specifically referenced toward the end.
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The book is from Canon Press, which began as the vanity press for Douglas Wilson, a neo-Confederate Lost Cause apologist. (It's no accident that the author, Wolfe, has himself questioned interracial marriage.) This version of Christian Nationalism has deeper, hateful roots.
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In every case--whether it's one of which you approve or detest--remember that it is very American and very human, to want to sacralize one's political project. It might function as a soothing lie or as a political weapon, but it's always useful.
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The classic example is "Parson" Weems, the itinerant traveling book salesman and evangelical minister who concocted soothing fables about the virtuous Christian character of various founding fathers.
It's Weems who gave us Washington and the Cherry Tree, for instance:
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Although the theology is very different from 7 Mountains CN, this alt-Reformational CN is similar in this core regard:
Whether by rediscovery or invention, both are surfacing novel theological justifications for culture war politics rooted in Christian cultural status anxiety.
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It's also Weems who invented the story about George Washington praying at Valley Forge, a myth that I can tell you from personal experience lives on in the form of paintings in many a church lobby today.
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Invariably, both kinds of Christian Nationalist promote a similar political rhetoric steeped in fear of sinister, anti-Christian elites who are conniving to deconvert, degender, derace, and replace God-fearing Americans.
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2) But while 7 Mountains might be the most prominent Christian Nationalist variant, there is also version percolating out of theologically reformed Presbyterian and Baptist circles.
This book in particular has been getting attention on Twitter.
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Why would Weems spread these myths in the 1820s/30s?
Because Americans in general, and evangelical Americans in particular, were anxious.
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I mention Mormons as a reminder that there are older non-evangelical versions of Christian Nationalism. Joseph Smith codified American exceptionalism in the Book of Mormon in the same milieu that Parson Weems was operating in.
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Thus the Missouri Garden of Eden, Mormon ancestors as the ten lost tribes, the Constitution & Declaration of Independence are considered literal sacred scripture, & so on. Mormonism has American Christian Nationalism in its bones.
paulmatzko.com/why-mormons-l…
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The people saying that the Southwest collapse—caused by antiquated software from the 90s—means the feds should reregulate the airlines would do well to remember that the IRS is still using computers from the 60s.
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So entrepreneurs--literally--like Weems wove them comforting tales. Yes, America would survive and thrive as a nation because it was grounded in orthodox, religious faith. The Founders were evangelical Christians just like you.
See, look! Washington even prayed at Valley Forge!
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They were the 1st post-Revolution generation. The Founders & veterans were dying off. Would the American experiment survive?
In the midst of the tumultuous market revolution, early industrialization, westward expansion, and religious upheaval, what would the future look like??
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Have you heard about the white evangelical backlash against critical race theory? Let me explain.
First, it's important to note that this is just the latest manifestation of a running conflict within American evangelicalism.
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If you think Marjorie Taylor Greene is an unprecedentedly conspiratorial, bigoted nut job, well, then let me introduce you to Republican Congressman James B. Utt, who represented Southern California back when the state was a reliably Republican state in the 50s & 60s.
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Sidenote: the most famous GW at Valley Forge painting was made in 1975 anticipating the bicentennial by a Mormon painter named Arnold Friberg who studied with Norman Rockwell.
It's a reminder that Mitt Romney wasn't the first (or even the second) Mormon moment!
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When politicians from both parties talk about America being a "city on a hill," borrowing the rhetoric from a Puritan colonist, that's Christian nationalism.
neh.gov/article/how-america-…
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It spread like wildfire in the new Christian homeschooling movement, through evangelical & pentecostal Christian bookstores, and was just hugely influential. I'd argue it's right up there in terms of internal influence w/ the Chronicles of Narnia & the Scofield Reference Bible.
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The most frustrating part of the "bad art friend" story in the NYT is the complete silence around class. And yet class both propels the conflict in the story and the subsequent discourse around it.
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I could talk about other right-wing Christian Nationalists--Rushdoony-ites! Barton and the Wallbuilders!--but I want to end by noting that before you cast the first stone at the more outré varieties, bear in mind that Christian nationalisms are pervasive.
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The New York Times article about SlateStarCodex is finally out and it is...bad. There's a lot I could parse, but let me just walk you through one paragraph that is so misleading as to be deceptive.
nytimes.com/2021/02/13/techn…
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I wrote a book about the Fairness Doctrine and how it was responsible for one of the worst episodes of government censorship in US history.
So I am somewhat alarmed at the calls percolating on Twitter for a new, internet Fairness Doctrine. This is a thread about why that is.
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Again, you can immediately sense the anxiety that underpinned the book's core message. Coming off the sixties counter-cultural revolutions and in the midst of what historians have called the "decade of nightmares" (the seventies), the fear pervades the text. From the intro:
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Historians who were themselves confessing Christians tried to tell evangelicals that these were paranoid myths, but they were largely ignored. The odds of finding this book in your church bookstore is infinitesimally lower than finding "The Light and the Glory" on the shelf!
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Friberg's 1975 painting is also a reminder that the seventies were another era of Christian Nationalist resurgence. In 1977 two charismatic Christian Nationalists wrote a book called "The Light and the Glory," which sacralized America's national history.
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On January 6th we watched the worst national insurrection since 1877.
On January 7th we broke the 4,000 mark for daily covid deaths for the first time.
These two days are the apex failures of the Trump administration.
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When you have a wedding ceremony at the Washington Memorial Chapel in Valley Forge, that's ritualistic participation in a form of Christian Nationalism.
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If you stop at the "Stonewall Jackson Shrine," you're hearing a ghostly echo of a Christian Nationalist variant that emerged to contest other Christian Nationalisms.
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But it gets worse. The feds seem to be investigating several Republican members of Congress for connections to the organizers of the rally. (The FBI has warned lawmakers in closed door hearings that they may be shocked with what comes out.)
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We've seen severe erosion of the democratic norms that govern our Republic recently, but this takes the cake.
Every official involved--from the officers overseeing the op all the way up to the acting DHS secretary & beyond--should be immediately impeached or fired.
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That leads folks to consider towards heavy-handed measures, like the government seizing the means of mask production. This is problematic for a bunch of reasons (& likely less effective), but it's also completely unnecessary if the FDA would just DROP THE DAMN RULES.
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This could be an ordinary story. It is mind-numbingly, eye-boggling, rip-your-hair-out dumb that we haven't reformed our social security system to make it so.
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One of the groups responsible is the Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC). Civil libertarians have been warning for years that the Border Patrol has supra-constitutional powers to search without a warrant, arrest without probable cause, and deport citizens without due process.
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Which means that we've created what amounts to a national secret police that operates at the sole discretion of the executive branch, which is currently controlled by a person willing to use that power to gain advantage in the upcoming election.
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A hypocritical mockery of democracy.
“Current leadership in 2019 declined to support expulsion charges against former Rep. David Byrd, who was accused of sexually assaulting teenagers when he was a basketball coach decades earlier.”
tennessean.com/story/news/po…
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Take a look at this FDA regulation, intended to ease (!) the application process for "premarket notification." That means you have to do all of this--and get FDA sign off--before your new surgical mask gets anywhere near shelves. 2/ fda.gov/regulatory-informati…
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I'm going to walk you through several common responses from Republicans to the insurrection yesterday and show why they are incorrect.
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And we could have a discussion over whether these steps are necessary in ordinary times. But we aren't living in ordinary times.
Just as the FDA waived its COVID-19 testing regs (after weeks of delay), it should waive its surgical mask/respirator regulations for the duration.
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But because most people are unaware that masks/respirators are considered medical devices and just how onerous the applicable rules are, it leaves people thinking that the PPE crisis is a market failure, when it is anything but.
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With the benefit of hindsight, maybe Team DeSantis shouldn’t have made “violate as many parts of the US constitution as possible” its litigation strategy.
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Let's say that you're a garment manufacturer in NYC, but, of course, retail sales are down, so you're looking for another revenue stream. Why not make surgical masks, keeping your doors open, employees employed, and saving lives? It's a win-win-win! 3/
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Based on the latest info I could find, here's why what happened on Jan. 6th was worse than we thought.
It was coordinated. This was not merely a crowd of protestors accidentally incited to storm the Capitol by the intemperance of the President & other speakers at the rally.
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But we almost did! We were one handshake deal in the 90s between Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton away from getting it done. But then the Lewinsky scandal broke and the window started closing.
For that longer story: libertarianism.org/podcasts/…
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In other words, the absolutely worst case scenario for individual accounts is still significantly better than the absolutely best case scenario for social security as usual.
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I think journalists writing debt forgiveness stories should just state the amount of their J-school debt up front.
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That context matters. There's a class-based reason that may have contributed to Dowland's struggles to fit in at GrubStreet. This line should jump out at you:
"Dowland wondered if everyone at GrubStreet had been playing a different game, with rules she'd failed to grasp."
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In any case, the Times piece is chock full of sections which are, like this one, full of bad faith representation and accusation by grammatical implication. It's a bad piece that the @nytimes should yank.
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And we raised cane when the Supreme Court upheld their right to do so deep inside America, not just along the border. Which means that today, nearly 2/3 of Americans fall under Border Patrol jurisdiction.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
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If we did resurrect the Fairness Doctrine, it would have vast, negative, unintended effects. You couldn't just target Tucker Carlson or whatever pundit/outlet you dislike.
How do I know that? Because I wrote a book about those effects last time we tried the Fairness Doctrine.
Good morning and Happy Tuesday to everyone who agrees that the Fairness Doctrine should be updated and reenacted so that trashy Fox News shows like Tucker Carlson will not be allowed to spread deadly lies.
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I could go on and on. There is no world in which any company not already deeply invested in manufacturing surgical masks could jump through these hurdles in time to mitigate the desperate shortage of PPE for medical professionals on the COVID-19 front lines. None.
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The worldview of lay evangelicals is much more shaped by what they consume from politically-conservative media than by what their pastors preach from the pulpit. And that message tells them to be afraid, very, very afraid. America is changing and it's almost always for the worse.
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Dowland, however, just said it outright. And why shouldn't she? Faux Victorian modesty might be all the rage in the circles of, well, writers' circles, but that's not a normative judgement. Dowland was, quite simply, too sincere for polite society. Too earnest. Too honest.
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To start, you must:
- do a compositional side-by-side analysis of your mask vs all other masks currently sold. Hire a few materials scientists, okay.
- measure "tensile strength" & "impact resistance." Hire the Mythbusters and have them whack it with a hammer.
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What the journalist is doing is lazy. If SSC says he *ever* agreed on *anything* with Charles Murray, than he *must* agree with Murray on *everything.* And since Murray has racist views on race and genetics, SSC must--by the transitive power of bad journalism--share those views.
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But how long do you think it would take you to jump through these hurdles, and do you think someone without an army of regulatory compliance officers would be reasonably able to do so at all? 4/
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In addition, Dowland's unthinkable offense--that which makes her the deserving target of a downward punch by a more successful and socio-economically privileged author--is that she is bad at humble-bragging.
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And why is the Port of Virginia automated?
It's a right to work state with weaker unions that haven't been able to stop it. For contrast, see California.
joc.com/port-news/us-ports/i…
Unlike other major ports on both coasts, the Port of Virginia remains free of backlogs despite experiencing similar record volumes.
How?
It's one of the most automated ports in the country.
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Either America is a chosen nation with an exceptional role to play in the historical unfolding of the divine drama. Or Americans are just another fallen people, its churches whited sepulchres, and America's position in history resembles more that of Rome than Israel.
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It's not just that congressional Republicans failed to respond to the Jan 6th insurrection but that 17 state GOPs thus far have responded by passing voting laws that would make it easier for a future insurrection to succeed.
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And a reminder that one, contested green card in the 1990s meant Katalin Kariko stayed in the US and so we had mRNA tech ready just in time for the pandemic.
Reminder that the United States could have been the world leader in 5G technology instead of China if we had just given *one guy* a green card when he needed one
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I think you’ve got the order of operations wrong. The indictments are a broom meant to clean up after a president who smashed the glass by attempting to steal an election and inciting a mob to march on the Capitol.
Whatever you think of the Trump indictments, one thing is for certain: the glass has now been broken over and over again. Political opponents can be targeted by legal enemies. Running for office now carries the legal risk of going to jail -- on all sides.
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Man longs for return to an immigration regime that would have made it impossible for his ancestors to come here if they hadn't gotten in before 1924. See also, Santorum, Rick.
Generational hypocrisy and historical ignorance wrapped up in one, hateful package.
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And if she dies early, all of that money goes to her heirs, a generational legacy of incredible socio-economic uplift for her children and grandchildren.
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Of course, Dowland's behavior in response to Larson's story is obsessive. But THAT'S CLASS TOO!!!
There's a large literature on the ties between lower-class status and honor cultures. Honor acts as a substitute for the power and wealth you don't have.
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Joe Biden was 78 years and 61 days old at his inauguration.
Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated 77 years and 261 days before Joe Biden's birth.
That means Joe Biden was born closer to Lincoln's second inauguration than to his own.
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I left the Republican Party the day after the nomination of Trump in '16.
I left the Libertarian Party after the paleo-conservatives in the Mises Caucus took over the New Hampshire chapter.
I despise ethno-nationalist populism, whether represented by an elephant or a porcupine.
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That means Jill will contribute $3100 a year. Let's say that she does so from the age of 22 to retirement age at 68. At the historical average, inflation-adjusted, annualized return of 7%, she will retire with $1,017,496.
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Under this bill, it would be illegal for a conservative teacher to criticize Alexander Hamilton's view of federal supremacy over states or his monetary policy.
Seriously, guys, you know that *everyone* has a bone to pick with at least some of the founders, right?
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But since it hasn't, the supply of officially-approved masks has remained artificially constricted. New entrants are effectively barred from selling unapproved masks.
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And by the standard 4% withdrawal rule, Jill will likely have enough money to fund her entire retirement and still leave some left over to her heirs. Indeed, Jill will "earn" significantly MORE in retirement than she did while working.
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In the most unsurprising reveal o' the week, the latest "Christian nationalism is good actually" guy is both an opponent of interracial marriage and women's suffrage.
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Funnily, this is a mundane progressive policy stance. Oh no, SSC believes poverty is...cyclical! Quelle horreur! Job retraining is a sop for politicians to show they're doing something rather than a meaningful solution to the decline of mid-20th c factory towns?? May it never be!
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Not nearly as good, no. But at a 4% withdrawal rate, that means she'd make $17,339 a year in retirement. Which is still higher than the $14,928 she make using the traditional social security system. (And, of course, she'd still have the additional benefit of heritability.)
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You see, the humble-brag is a middle-class art form. The middle class valuation of moral self-improvement and social elevation--which you've probably heard described colloquially as "keeping up with the Joneses"--can't be expressed too baldly.
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This is a great question from @HeerJeet and it has very old roots. In my book, I discuss a similar period of anxiety in the 1960s about the possibility of Air Force officers being involved in a coup. Thread.
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- perform detailed "risk analysis," for fluid/bacteria resistance and "flammability." Hmmm, better open a branch office for all those extra materials scientists and medical researchers. This is multiple major studies (though a Boring Company flamethrower might work in a pinch.)
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- but wait, don't forget that masks touch skin! What if it gives you a rash!!! Okay, fine, we'll fill out the "standard ISO-10993," yeah, you know, the one for “Biological Evaluation of Medical Devices Part 1: Evaluation and Testing." Sprinkle in a couple more clinicians.
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To admit that America does not hold an exceptional position in God's plan for humanity strikes at the core of a religious nationalism that has been taught and retaught through Christian schools, media, and churches over the last several decades.
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Social security costs her 12.4% (6.2 directly, 6.2 indirectly) of her earnings, but in our example that money will go into a government mandated investment account composed of index funds.
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This is dumb. If I were to propose that, say, Bernie Sanders' past expressions of admiration for socialist economies necessarily means he supports every atrocity committed by any socialist regime, you'd tell me to get a grip (and spend less time hanging out with Ben Shapiro).
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