You're an individual progressive. That's exactly why you are missing the new atheist movement that's rising on the right. I'm dead center and I keep an open eye on both sides, including the fringes. The Christian Right is no longer the national political force that it once was. Local politicians barely pay lip service to it now. It's a shadow of its former self.

The secular right, OTOH, is young, angry and growing. These are young people that grew up/came of age in the shadow of constant Islamic terror and the left-wing politicians who have made it impossible to speak about Islamic terrorism honestly. They don't have much use for religion. They are civic nationalists (along with a smattering of white nationalists) who realize that globalism might just be the problem rather than the answer. Colonialism by any other name...

I expect that a lot of people aren't seeing the new atheist movement rising because it is part of the right - including the alt right. The left is busy twisting itself in knots defending Islam.

I tend to do deep dives when I get interested in a subject. It's easy enough to find reliable information - They have their own web sites that predate the Trump thing. They aren't all white supremacists (like Stormfront, V-Dare), although they count them among their "fellow travelers," as they do garden variety nationalists (Taki's Mag). They are white nationalists (Radix, The Right Stuff). There's a difference.

To make clear - I disagree with nearly all of what they say, but it's always worth it to listen to a POV that smashes up against yours. With SJWs it's all about the White Male Patriarchy. With the Alt Right it's all about the International Jewish Globalism. They are both intellectual identitarian movements and deserve the hell out of each other. I hate the ends of the horseshoe because they tend to be authoritarian and I bristle at the notion that someone wants to control what I do or say in my personal life. Just. No.

HRC has some deeply creepy ties with fundamentalist Christianity. There are emails that laid bare Clinton's/Abedin's role in/defense of the kidnapping case that farmed out Haitian kids for adoption to members of an Evangelical church in the midwest. Some of the kids had parents and others had relatives - All of them had people who were searching for them.
http://pastebin.com/NeaqELW3 <--- The emails.

This is one of the things that set off the mess that is Pizz@gate. Except it isn't child sex trafficking, it's unscrupulous people selling children who already have parents to Evangelicals desperate to show their charitable virtue bona fides by adopting poor Haitian black children and giving them a "better" life.

It's disgusting. It's a shame that the hypocrisy, kidnapping and greed in adoption isn't enough to set off the outrage machine on the internet. It's still stealing children from parents and selling them to the highest bidder. It's horrible and it still goes on unabated. It had to devolve into the conspiracy driven satanic panic/child torture/pedo ring/Pizzag@te thing before it got any rage.

She is much more religious than Trump. I get the feeling that Trump doesn't care about religion if it's not going to add to his bottom line. He's probably an Apatheist to a large extent.

BTW, you know that a large chunk of the Alt Right is atheist, right? Most of the people who run The Right Stuff web site are atheists. One of the attractions of the Alt Right is that they are far less religious than the Neocons. Some are deep into Paganism. It's one of the reasons that they are attracting so many younger people. Older Republicans are much more religious and it completely turns off younger folks. The Republicans need to turn off that Evangelical spigot or they will find their well running dry eventually.

When did not wanting to see a movie become a political statement? I generally don't want to see high level special effect movies because they generally lack a real story. The story is always secondary to all the flash and bang. It's not that I'm racist. I find Star Wars boring now. Like you, I loved the first one in 1977 and I saw it multiple times over the long summer that it played at the local multiplex. (Remember when a hit movie would linger at the theater for a month or more?) But I was sixteen. Movies mean a lot more when you are sixteen.

It's amazing where people find this identity nonsense.

I hate it that I have to defend these clowns, but I'm sick to death of the lies and hysteria coming from the left. The left has become just as authoritarian as the right ever was and the media is culpable in a great deal of it.

Remember that awesome picture of the black cop protecting the KKK member during a march? It happened in the early '80s, IIRC. That's the America that I love. We value all speech and will protect disagreeable speech the hardest. The narratives that agree with the masses aren't the ones that need to be protected. There's a marketplace of ideas and a counter speech to the one that Spencer delivered at the NPI conference would be great. Feces throwing and pearl clutching over offensive jokes is not intelligent speech. Calling someone Hitler isn't a good argument.

Right now, right wing speech is being suppressed - Hard. They are being booted off social networks, being fired from jobs and the Trump hysteria is at a fever pitch. I haven't been this disgusted since the war-baiting neocon patriots were telling anyone who questioned the invasion of Iraq to sit down and shut up. The media was culpable in that as well.

I know this is going to meet a million wails and downvotes because what I have to say doesn't fit the current narrative. I don't care. This is ridiculous. I was more interested in what was actually done and said at the NPI meeting than what the mainstream press had to say about it.

"Hail Trump" is part of the "God Emperor" and Pepe memes and it's a long running joke. He didn't do a Nazi salute - He raised his glass. When he asked if people were soulless, he was talking about Republican campaign managers. Watching the presentation intact and listening to what Spencer actually said made that apparent. If the press had reported on what was actually taking place, they would be reporting on tasteless, long running jokes. Did you know that Spencer and other conference attendees were thrown out of a restaurant simply because of their beliefs? Did you know that protesters threw feces on Spencer as he was leaving the conference? No? That's because no one is reporting on that.

Are there actually 1488 style Nazis in the alt right? Yes. Are there virulent, St*rmfr*nt (Using the * because you don't want them here.) racists in the alt right? Yes, absolutely. The movement lends itself to them quite handily. Is the alt right an organized movement under the strict control of a leader? No. Not even close. Richard Spencer is one of the *thought* leaders, but he's not a Nazi nor is he a part of St*rmfr*nt.

I'm amazed that people keep falling for all the garbage that keeps coming out by the mainstream press. Remember, these are the same people who condemn Ayaan Hersi Ali and Maajid Nawaz as a hatemongers.

I've already signed off from most social media. Yours is the only Atheist blog I have left. This election is the least rational I've seen from the mainstream press.

I hope that everyone who lives in non-battleground states votes for third party candidates. I plan to vote straight Libertarian ticket for a maximum mind-your-own-damn-business message to government. (Not specifically Gary Johnson - He's been the biggest disappointment.) If we can get the numbers up, maybe we can have real discussions and new ideas about governmental issues that have meaning in the lives of ordinary people. Like infrastructure and health care. The ideal would be more third party candidates elected in downstream positions at the state and local levels though. Those are the important ones. But having third party candidates at the Presidential debates would be incredibly meaningful.

I voted for Bernie in the primary and I'm pretty damn mad that my vote was a throw-away. The Democrats have betrayed everyone.

I don't think he meant it literally. The phrase is fairly common (or at least it used to be) to describe just the sort of things he said to Billy Bush.

Men in Trump's social class have access to attractive women who desire them because they are rich and powerful. When he said that he *can* do these things, he is talking about having their consent. He even describes one who doesn't give consent and that he backed off. That's the crux of what he was saying. It's the opposite of nonconsensual. It's being described as if women have no agency at all and are utterly helpless around men in Trump's social class and that's completely untrue.

Good grief. This is the first election in which I've been neutral and I'm amazed at the way people have utterly lost their minds on both sides of the aisle. People have lost all access to reasonable discourse concerning Trump and Clinton.