[LONG RAMBLE]

TLDR: Atheism wasn't really regarded as a threat (other than the thing that USSR enforced) until the aughts and the New Atheism movement, at which point right-wing religious ministries turned from hating on other ministries to hating on atheists and secularists.

Atheism has some fascinating recent history. In the 1970s and 1980s atheists were disregarded almost entirely since it was an asserted position mostly by hard-line scientists and philosophers. Most of the none population instead went to (or at least associated with) left-wing churches. My parents (my Dad who is a rocket scientist and was atheist except in name) joined my mom and I at the Church of Religious Science (later the Science of Mind Church) which is pretty darned lax and easy to accept as religions go.

And the religious right (then, the Southern Baptist Church and the rising Evangelical movement) hated us and declared us false. They also did this to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (still regarded as a dangerous cult) and the Roman Catholic Church. John F. Kennedy got a lot of flack for being Catholic, and Republicans insisted he'd be beholden to the Holy See -- and they tried to pressure him! -- but he demonstrated he could serve the US as president and keep the Vatican at arm's reach. Romney was still getting crap for his Mormonism in his 2012 presidential run, but it blended seamlessly into all sorts of other biographical anomalies that suggested character problems.

I should add there was a pro-religion sentiment in the US that was really anti-USSR. Marx recognized religion as the opiate of the people a symptom that the masses were suffering from precarity or scarcity, but Marx was saying the response of the community should be to feed them and keep them free of want, and as the dispair fades the need for religious practice will fade as well. (We're not sure if he's completely right.) So Lenin and Stalin's response was to ban religion, which didn't actually address the issue, but it gave the US justification to push church-going in the mid 20th century as a thing that pinko commies didn't do.

Anyway, atheism became significant movement thing due to two factors. One was the new atheist movement which orbited Richard Dawkins and the top atheist guns. Dawkins motivation (as he tells it) was the 9/11 attacks, which showcased the power of religion as a force multiplier in violent conflict. But there was also a certain privilege that religious movements and religious institutions were given that secular ones were not, which was a favored topic of Douglas Adams. And so bringing atheist and secular organizations to equal status as churches was a big early goal of the new atheist movement.

The other factor bringing the rise of popular atheism was the rise of the internet which allowed us all to actually talk about things and confront that a lot of us already had awkward relationships with our respective religious institutions. Myself, this was a period for me to naturalism, ruling out supernatural elements until one comes and bites me on the butt. (This is the dream for IRL ghost hunters, to have a poltergeist beat them with their own duffel. Pain is temporary but evidence lives forever on the internet!)

That said the aughts marked the spread of atheism (and the consequential collapse of left-wing church attendance. Right wing church attendance has been falling less quickly but noticeably, and ministries continue to be in panic about it. And this was when anti-atheist pro-Christian and pro-Muslim movements (who absolutely don't ally) started organizing to scare everyone how terrible we godless folk are, as if our interest in intellectual exercise and not the hypocrisy endemic to right-wing Christian ministries is what is driving parishioners from their pews.

[/LONG RAMBLE]

One of the things I find myself reminding others about LGBT+ folk, is that we aren't intrinsically good, just normal. It took into the late 2010s before trans folk got to eat at the same table as LGB; gays can be prejudice and bigoted too, with people like Peter Theil being current extreme examples. (Granted, being LGBT+ gives folks more experience and perspective on what it is to be regarded as a second-class member of society, so they tend to have empathy, but this isn't always the rule, and as the gold-star lesbian movement has shown us, they can form their own classifications of prejudice.)

There are far right furry factions just as there are blacks and other non-whites in the transnational white power movement that is a superset of the White Christian Nationalist Movement. They exist, though they don't represent furries, even if they are eager for leopards to eat their own faces.

Humans are odd, and to me at the moment, looking at the 2024 US election results, indecipherable, and I hope that doesn't mean they're just extremely manipulable and short-sighted or vindictive (which is as it appears). But people often exert their political power against their own interests, and that will sometimes include furries.

Um, a mental illness is defined by being dysfunctional to the patient (and doing things that are odd enough that society throws rocks at them doesn't count). So if the patient is spending her rent money on furry comics, or is consuming furry media to the neglect of food and sleep, you might have an argument that it's a mental illness. (And then, in the 2010s, the psychiatric community has been having to consider that exposure to toxic circumstances: overmonitoring at work environments, bad bosses, not earning a living wage, excess rent, may be factors that drive dysfunction externally, figuring more largely in mental illness than internal factors like heredity. But that is bleeding edge still.)

But just a fanatic obsession of cute furry anthros, even if it is extreme, is not a mental illness, in exactly the same way that a man who is sexually and romantically attracted to other men is not a mental illness. Or if we want to get Victorian about it, exactly the same way a woman who refuses to accept her limited place in society is not a mental illness.

So I can assure you from here, the way mental illnesses have been defined since the 1990s, being a furry is not a mental illness.

What? The reference is pre-Disney.

I'm the one who thinks the scream-extractor is a good symbol for capitalism. Also Buy N Large.

And besides which, do you have a problem with adults who are big into Disney?

All countries need official moës as well. If not, moës will be made for them.

It absolutely is, but my take on that is we're just bad at doing community-based government and need more practice.

I also noted this was a problem with the Rebel Alliance (who just supports a republic of oligarchs), and was called a centrist for my efforts.

Some basic information about teen sex in the United States:

All 50 states have Romeo & Juliette laws allowing exceptions for statutory sexual assault crimes when sexual activity is between peers of similar age. The typical threshold is 5 years.

However, the floor of R&J statutes is typically 14 or 15. So a 13 year-old having sex is conspicuous. But also, teenage dating and boyfriend / girlfriend relationships often do not feature or even imply a sexual relationship. (When I was fourteen, I and a 10 year old family-friend decided we were bf/gf, even bathing together and having sleepovers, though doing nothing more risqué than Parcheesi.)

As a note, R&J laws often omit allowing for same sex intimacy. So if you're a teen exploring your LGBT+ side and want to keep it legal, check your state and county ordinances to see what is allowed.

So in 2016 when Trump got elected the first time (by EC, still leaving everyone scratching their heads), a history teacher friend of mine started an activist group on Facebook based on The White Rose ( on Wikipedia ). Here in the States, we still have a considerable respect for the right to free speech, even though people speaking in defiance of the current tyrannical state may get attacked by nazis (id est MAGAs, alt-right militants, the usual run of official and unofficial Trump-enthusiasts).

Now the White Rose itself is not a great example, since they were all hunted down by the Gestapo and executed, but true to the mechanics of revolution, they made resistance sympathists of onlookers, and activists of sympathists (and militants of activists. No fewer than 42 plots to assassinate Adolph Hitler^†^ are known to have occurred, and it's likely we've missed some including the time-travelers who could retroactively cover their tracks.)

In fact modern resistance tactics (which includes those used by BLM during the 2020 George Floyd protests) highlight the same methods, by not being aggressive and letting the authoritarian forces initiate violence. It helps in an age where that stuff gets captured on phone camera and disseminated online, and the next thing you know, ICE is contending with a line of moms and another line of dads using leaf-blowers to disperse CS gas.

It's still a long journey between frustrating Trump to silliness and actually getting some relief to the public, but I'm willing to wear out my shoes trying.

† All the assassination attempts were from within. The Allies saw Hitler as a ~~weakness,~~ [vulnerability,] since he often would override his generals strategies and ignore technological developments that disinterested him. Hitler was also fond of attacking when it was astrologically auspicious, which the Allies used to effectively predict them.

Never interfere with your enemy when he is making a mistake. -- often attributed to Napoleon.

Only one German official was specifically targeted by the Allies, Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík were trained specially by the British SOE to get close to and kill Reinhard Heydrich, and ambushed him 1942-May-27. Heydrich died eight days later from sepsis.

Is that Leonard Leo in the back? (Right side)

That's the master vampire! If we stake him, the rest lose their powers!

As someone who doesn't get the gender feelies at all, dresses and sarongs are cool (as in, good for warm weather). High socks are so amazing that everyone wore them for much of the middle ages (they're warm!). Called hosen wool socks and a tunic was ordinary commoner attire. (And yes, your nethers and janglies were free to the open air underneath. Laundry without machines was too labor intensive for non-nobles to have underwear.)

Makeup is weird, but looking amazing is fun. (My experience with it was on stage, and putting on eyeliner was hard to do without flinching.)

While I can appreciate a cool tool (say tweezers with a magnifying lens attached) tactical stuff painted black doesn't make sense in contrast to stuff painted a bright color that can easily be seen (on the assumption that I'm not in combat hidden in cover), bright pink is fine except when everything else is also bright pink. (A lot of beach dayglo colors are meant to be well offset against the ocean greens and blues).

Now that's on the practical side. Some folks get a HUGE buzz from representing according to their gender identity. Trans folk know this because wearing the stuff they like is [regarded by others as] weird in contrast to the stuff that mom bought them while they were growing up, so they've had cause to actually explore this aspect of themselves.

But there are guys who like to double down on butchness and gals who like getting ready for the night out more than the going out, itself. And then there are dudes who, no matter how masculine they represent, feel inadequate and wussy, which likely informs alpha male rhetoric and the far-right man-o-sphere pundits.

We started with an unlimited workweek (often 12+ hours a day all day) and reduced it to 40 hours with a weekend and a paid lunch. (Remember the movie 9 to 5 that was typical. Then it became 9-6 with unpaid lunch.)

Around the Reagan era, Osha got defunded so it didn't have time to deal with all the labor violations, which was part of the enshittification.

Who knew it would lead to a nazi uprising?

Turns out everyone did. The industrialist intellegentsia actually warned this would happen based on historical precedent, but the boomer generation was all fuck the future including their own kids. To be fair, prior generations hating later generatiobs was the norm by the time it was their turn.