Culture – Iron Ink

No Kings Protests as the Religion of Narcissism

At their core, the (No Kings) rallies resemble bad group therapy—gatherings that offer validation, solidarity and emotional release. They feel good in the moment. Participants vent, find reinforcement among like-minded people, and leave feeling heard and aligned. The experience can seem productive, even clarifying. But like bad group therapy, it stops at validation. The feelings are processed but not challenged, reinforced but not examined. There is relief but little resolution, and the underlying problems remain. It offers the feeling of progress without the substance of it.

Psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert
Wall Street Journal

Allow me to use Alpert’s piece here to connect some dots.

1.) We have been saying here at Iron Ink for some time that as a culture becomes more and more consistent with its rebellion against Christ the result will be an ever-increasing psychological brokenness expressed especially with the presence of narcissism. As fallen man, no longer checked by a culture informed by Christian categories, or a Christian ethos will no longer have a reason to stay on the leash of even pretended self-denial. A culture losing the transcendence of God to keep it in check only has one place to turn and that is the inner self. With the turn to the inner self, the inner self becomes the transcendent that must be served and the result is the mental illness we call “narcissism.” The “No Kings” rally is merely a mass gathering of narcissists and neurotics as Alpert observes.

2.) Were we to put a slight spin on Alpert, we would say that not only are these “not protests but bad therapy sessions,” but these protests are religious worship services. There is a connection here as bad worship can also be labeled as bad worship service. I mean bad worship can be described in exactly the same way that Alpert describe bad therapy sessions. Gatherings that,

a.) offer validation
b.) solidarity
c.) emotional release
d.) feel good in the moment
e.) venting
f.) reinforcement
d.) departing feeling heard and aligned

One only has had to attend your average contemporary Church service to understand all that the “No Kings rally” and your average Pentecostal or Seeker Sensitive worship service have in common. The only thing Alpert doesn’t mention is the shared commonality between the “sermon” one gets at church and the keynote speaker address one finds at your average rally. Whether it is a “No Kings rally” or whether it is your average church service one is just looking at bad therapy sessions.

3.) This observation in turn informs us that when looking at these narcissistic political rallies what we are often seeing is just another bad expression of religion. The “No Kings rally,” and those like it, have largely exposed the attendees as religious devotees. As politics has replaced Christianity as our national religion this all stands to reason. As we have noted here before people intuitively understand that the state has become our god and there is nothing that people will more fight and protest over than the championing of their favorite god, or conversely, the pulling down of the god they don’t favor. Many narcissists don’t like Trump, who they view as the current unworthy God and so they take to the streets, much like the prophets of Baal of old, to cry out, lament, and protest. You can bet that if they thought that cutting themselves would work, they would be opening their veins as well.

4.) So, look at these rallies as old-fashioned revival services. In the old revival services, you would see the same exact thing you are seeing at these “protests.” Great tears. Anguish. Emotion filled expression. People becoming unhinged and beside themselves.

5.) This reminds us that religion never goes away. One can either serve the God of the Bible who is a God of order, self-control and stability or one can serve the God of the narcissistic/neurotic self and/or whatever the self will project itself onto. (In this case politics.)

6.) We have arrived here, as noted above, by rebelling against the Lord Christ and His Law-Word. Let us tease this out a wee bit. We have, over the course of generations, increasingly cordoned off the public square from the any influence of the Christian faith. There are whole theologies, such as Radical Two Kingdom theology, that insist that we need to leave the public square naked from the influence of the Christian faith via the voice of the Church. The impact of that is to strip the public square of any “word of the Lord.” The result is that which we have made completely “secular” (public square) has to come up with the voice of the sacred and the voice of the sacred we have invested in is the State. In the state we live and move and have our being. So, because the dejure “secular” state has become the defacto sacred verbum Dei, religious adherents viciously fight over who will control the god. Behold “No Kings rallies.”

7.) As Gods brook no competition what we can increasingly expect to find is that the enemies of the favorite candidates will be demonized. We have already seen this in recent decades. People who do not agree with the “No Kings” protestors are demon spawn. People who did not agree with Biden were imprisoned. Trump also routinely demonizes people who dare disagree with him. Joe Kent being the most recent example. In this narcissistic/neurotic world one is either feted or headed to the guillotine.

8.) When this kind of revolutionary religion rises, the difficult thing for those who see all of it is to know how to respond. Some of us have family members who if they were not at the “No Kings” protests would still feel right at home with the narcissist/neurotic crowd. There is no reasoning with these people. In the OT God had only one solution for them, but that solution is not available to us. So, we navigate in this mess the best we can and pray for wisdom from above in knowing how to lean into this cultural insane asylum.

It’s all religion folks. Apart from the rending of heaven yielding Reformation, it is going to get worse before it gets better. Interesting enough, what all this is going to eventually birth is a culture of repression. Eventually, some tyrant is going to grab the reins of power and that will be the end of all “No Kings” rallies, as well as the end of all loyal opposition. The current narcissist/neurotics will be shut down and like the old Soviet Union, protest, if it exists at all, will be underground and only at the risk of one’s life.

And you can the farm that the visible Church will be as silent then as it is now.

James Lindsey Complains About Folks Saying, “Christ Is King”

“‘Christ is King’ is, in addition to its malicious uses, a Christian virtue signal. Christians say it’s true. Nobody else does. Repeating it shows you’re on the team. Refusing to brings suspicions. That’s why it works. Bad actors can abuse it and lots will go along and defend it.”

James Lindsey

Atheist

Platformed by “Christian” Michael O’Fallon

1.) What possible malicious uses can a true statement possibly be leveraged?

2.) Of course it is, at the very least, a virtue signal. Just as someone saying “There is only one God; Allah, and Muhammed is his prophet” is a virtue signal among some types.

3.) Of course only people who believe it is true say it is true. This statement by Lindsey is like warning people that water is wet. NSS.

4.) Of course saying it proves one is on the team. And your point is?

5.) If I were an employer, for example, I would be so suspicious of someone not confessing “Christ is King,” I would not hire them. Yet another Captain Obvious statement by Lindsey.

6.) The primary reason why saying “Christ is King” works is because Christ is King.

7.) The idea that there is, out there, this galaxy of bad actors who will say “Christ is King” in order to abuse it is the kind of reasoning that the denizens of Hell come up with in order to make sure nobody ever says “Christ is King.”

8.) Of course “lots will go along and defend people saying “Christ is King.” That is primarily due to the fact that lots of people believe that “Christ is King.”

Michael O’Fallon, if he is a Christian, will have a good deal to answer for by platforming James Lindsey, the Christ hater.

The Rise of Narcissism in a Christ Hating Culture

“Hell is other people.”

Jean Paul Sartre

With the continued rebellion against Christianity the inevitable and necessary consequence is the continued exaggerated presence of selfishness in the culture since selfishness is the necessary consequence of rejecting Christ. People who will not bow the knee to the God of the Bible always make themselves God and as God, the world revolves around them. This is selfishness and when multiplied by continued rebellion against Christ it blooms into rampant cultural wide narcissism. So, as a culture becomes more and more adamant about rebelling against Christ the effect is a corresponding drastic rise in the mental disease of narcissism.

A culture that hates Christ will be always express that hatred by a rapid rise in narcissism.

A couple of books I’ve read in the past bears this theory out. Christopher Lasche’s (The Culture of Narcissism), and Diana West (Death of the Grown-up) point out this very thing. Lasche and West both saw the symptoms but struggled to diagnose the cause. Their inability to diagnose the cause is found in the fact that if they have any Christianity, that Christianity they have doesn’t impinge upon their worldview thinking.

Consistent with the above observation regarding the rise of narcissism is the corresponding rise of both sadistic and masochistic behavior. The inflated ego of the self, being in rebellion to the Lord Christ, and so having no way to deal with personal sin, will turn in one of two directions. The narcissist will turn in the direction of seeking to cast all of his sin upon those in his orbit of relationships. Not having a sin-bearer the narcissist will seek to make everyone else he meets to serve as his/her own personal sin-bearer. Taken to its inevitable end the narcissist becomes a sadist.

The only other option for the person without Christ is to seek to lay their sin and guilt upon themselves. These people will in turn become masochistic, involved in all kinds of ways in which to frustrate and/or hurt themselves.

There are other inevitabilities that arise when people refuse the God of the Bible. We especially see the rise of narcissism but a culture that rejects Christ will also be characterized by;

1.) Statism
2.) Power religion
3.) Escape religion
4.) A return to chaos as a means to bring in order.

Stating Reality Does Not Equal Black-Pilling … Maat & The PWC

Imagine you were among the Israelites living under the Egyptian Maat system. The Egyptian Maat system (there was a Goddess Maat) represented the divine force that governed Egypt’s cosmos, law, and daily life through principles of truth, justice, harmony, balance, order, reciprocity, and property. Further, the Egyptian Maat system was a social slavery system that provided order and was arranged in the shape of a pyramid. At the very apex of the pyramids was the Pharaohs. Everybody in Egypt was a slave of Pharaoh. Then there were those immediately beneath Pharaoh who were his slaves but had for slaves everyone socially inferior to them. Down and down it went until you found the Hebrews at the bottom of the pyramid social structure. They were slaves to all. This is part of what the Maat system provided for the Egyptians.

Now, the problem here was never any one Pharoah. The problem was Maat … the false goddess and the system that she inspired.

In this context, imagine any Egyptian saying … “If we just get a new Pharaoh, everything will change.” That would be an obvious falsehood since any new Pharaoh is still going to be working in the context of Egyptian Maat. Oh, he may tinker around the edges, but real change was never going to come until Maat was brought down.

This is illustrative of where we are at now in the post-war consensus (PWC). The PWC is our Maat. Voting is not going to bring down the PWC because the PWC is the system that we live under and voting is part of our Maat. Politicians, Clergy, Corporate Chieftains, etc. will come and go but Maat isn’t going to change without counter-revolution. The Maat system will not let you vote to replace Maat.

So, it is not black pilling to recognize Maat and the implications of living in the current Maat. Electing a new Pharaoh is not going to get us out of Maat.

Vote if you please … but don’t believe that it is going to fundamentally change anything.

Voting may get you a different form of Maat. Kamala Harris would have given you more faggotry, trannie-ism, and boys in girls locker rooms, but Trump has given us more foreign wars, more Israel bonding, and more lies about getting rid of immigrants, however, it all remains within the bounds of the PWC — within the bounds of our current Maat system.

Working within Maat will never cast Maat out. These things go out only by prayer and fasting …. and counter-revolution.

So, as your anger rises against Trump, just keep in mind, that they are all just like Trump. They all are spit up from the Maat system. From Woodrow Wilson forwards they have all been just playing a role dictated to them by the Maat. You will NOT elect someone better or worse than Trump. They are all part of the Uniparty and the Uniparty is run by the elite Maat.

Since that is true … it really doesn’t matter who sits in the oval office.

Truth is the first casualty of war … Worldview, Spin & Narrative Creation During War

Most people have heard the old bromide; “Truth is the first casualty of war.”

This explains why I listen to war reports from Iran in a very jaded manner. I have learned how truth gets so badly mangled during war. In World War I there was the propaganda from the Allies that Germans were throwing Belgian babies in the air and catching them on their bayonets. Also, there were multiple reports of how the Germans would crucify farmers on the farmer’s barn doors. In World War II we all know of the propaganda that advanced the nonsense that the Germans were making fine bone China out of Jewish bones, or how the Germans were turning Jews into soap, or how the Germans used Jewish skin to make lampshades. The Soviets lied about Katyn forest. The Kuwaitis lied about Iraqi soldiers dumping Kuwaiti babies out of their neo-natal units in hospitals. Artist Frederic Remington who had been assigned to cover the building Spanish-American conflict in 1897 once famously cabled Newspaper Magnate Randolph Hearst who had assigned Remington to cover the war; “I can find no war.”

Hearst cabled back; “Please remain [in Cuba]. You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.”

From Abraham Lincoln’s propaganda that pinned the blame of the war on the South when he was the one who had committed a naked act of aggression — all of which vaulted the nation into the War of Northern Aggression, to Hitler’s dressing up German soldiers as Polish soldiers in order to contend that the Poles attacked the Germans to give pretext to German invasion of Poland, to the British bald face lies to their public about the Boers being the aggressors in the Boer War, one has to be a fool to believe anything that they are being told by media outlets during a war, because truth is the first casualty of war.

So, where does that leave us in our (US) tidy little war with Israel against Iran? It means that we have to be very jaded about any and every report from anybody and everybody. The incentive to lie and propagandize during war is massive since the stakes are so high. War, you see, is as much about public perception as it is about the bombs being dropped. He who can create the war narrative will have the odds on their side when it comes to winning the war.

This means, that one can’t not buy into just one information outlet. One should be dipping into (as they can) different outlets for information. Also, one has to keep in mind that when they are dipping into different information outlets that they are learning more about the worldview of people who run those outlets then they are learning about the war. Wars, are events that create the possibility of changing the world but the change comes not so much from bombs dropping as the ability to create and foster a new macro narrative. In War (and other like events – the myth of climate change comes to mind) what is being sought out to accomplish is the ushering in of a new narrative template by which the world will be organized and so during war, all the information outlets are doing their damnedest to have the narrative they’re spinning to be the narrative that attains hegemony. So, because that is true, you’re information outlets giving you “news” about the war, is in point of fact giving you their narrative they want you to accept — a narrative that is based on their worldview. The reporting of information outlets during the time of war tells you more about the worldview of the outlet reporting the news than it tells you about what is happening in the war.

So, for example, if you listen to Iranian outlets, they will give you a completely different accounting of the war than you will get from Jewish information outlets. FOX news on the war will give you a different war than the war you’ll be told about at CNN or MS NOW, will give you a different war than Al Jazeera, will give you a different war than Russia Today. The reason for all these different wars, which are reputedly the same war, is because it is not the war reporting that is really important but the narrative that can be spun out of the war reporting. You can count on the fact, that when it comes to these world changing type of events that information outlets are not trying to tell you about the event itself but are seeking to shape your worldview.

When we get to the nitty gritty that means when you watch Tucker Carlson or Joe Scarborough, or the maniac Sen. Lindsey Graham, or Douglas MacGregor, or Jeffrey Sachs, or John Mearsheimer, etc. you have to try to spend some time digging into their worldview in order to discern what spin they are seeking to put forth.

I am not saying that all that exists is spin and the truth is impossible to arrive at. That would be a post-modern view of truth. What I am saying is that you can’t allow yourself to be spoon-fed by any one information outlet. The truth is, as they say, out there, but in a spin heavy environment, tracking it down is not easy to do.

Also, in this context, I would champion the idea of learning worldview thinking. Worldview thinkers are equipped to smell spin. Christian worldview thinkers are better able to identify the presuppositions that are governing the information outlets. Christian worldview thinkers, having a Christian world and life view can spot when reporting is being driven by an ideology/theology that is discernably false.

We piece together the best we can from various reports what is happening in our war du Jour. We piece it together based on our worldview and not based on the worldview of the talking head who is trying to sway us with misinformation. (And most of them know they are dishing out misinformation.)

It is a complicated world and for the consumer of information one has to remember another old bromide …. “Let the buyer of war information beware.”