magic and mysticism, things that are clearly not Christian

Hoo boy, I could FUN with that line! I could point out that not only is there magic throughout the Bible, but Christian mysticism is very much a thing. I could point out that the Roman Catholic Church scoffed at the idea of witchcraft, considering it a "pagan superstition" until the late 14th century. However, the biggest irony is that a lot of these evangelical denominations positively reek of Gnosticism, and one does not get more mystical than that, especially if you compare the Messalians (or the Cathars, who came afterward) to people like Greg Locke, who thinks that autism is just daemonic possession.

I find it wild that modern-day progressives keep saying that evangelical Christians are always standing in the way of progress, considering that it was a progressive church, the SDA (founded by a woman in 1863), that initially pulled the stake out of young-Earth creationism. It was the progressive movement, a union of evangelicals and feminists, that were behind the temperance movement that culminated in Prohibition. It was the progressive academics and politicians who lauded the social reforms and eugenic practises in Nazi Germany, criticising FDR for not going far enough, even thought the Nazis are denounced as the ultimate evil by both secular progs (who keep insisting they were capitalists) and evangelicals (who keep insisting they were evolutionists) in the modern day. Veganism is something peddled today by both militant atheist radical progressives and by the SDA, despite the latter being opposed to literally everything else that the progs want, like abortion and recreational drugs.

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum. - Noam Chomsky

I may not like Chomsky, but he nailed this one. There are certain sacred cows that are common to both the establishment left and the establishment right, one of which is that everything is prescriptive, never descriptive, that there should be no separation of powers, that people are incapable of managing their own affairs without the unbending diktats of those chosen to possess divine gnosis, and that self-flagellation is the only path to redemption. Praise be to Robin DiAngelo... who just got outed as a plagiarist, BTW.

Sorry if that got a little off the rails. I'm still coming down from the high off of finishing another Substack article in which I too blast both wings of the establishment harpy, then catching a 16-pound fisher in my live animal trap, and finally the additional rush of having one of my predictions about the Russo-Ukrainian War proven correct.