Ameristan (from Neal Stephenson's latest book)

[billvon 2,400]

Neal Stephenson has a new book out - Fall.  The book is largely about the prospect of being able to encode enough of someone that they have some sort of existence after they die.  It doesn't really answer the question "is that really life after death?" but it does make clear that it's a complex question.

This is set in a world that has been Facebooked.  In the book, that term means "to suborn reality to a non-reality-based consensus."  The first instance of this is when Moab, Utah is pranked.  A DoS attack cripples communication in and out, and two or three actors produce "footage" that show a mushroom cloud over the city.  A fake news conference is televised showing scientists talking about a nuclear weapon being detonated, only to be silenced by the military. 

After 12 hours or so one of the protagonists tracks down a personal satellite phone of someone in Moab and calls it.  A woman answers and confirms they have not been blown up.  It's clear that someone pulled this prank to short the stock market (which crashes) but it's never revealed who.  The actors who played their roles are identified and the Chinese CGI house that created the mushroom cloud footage is outed.

However, this does not stop the belief that a large percentage of the population has - that the hoax was real and that Moab is gone.  "Remember Moab" bumper stickers appear.   And every time someone posts a bunch of pictures from Moab saying "What is wrong with you people?  I WAS JUST THERE!" they are called a government plant by a group of Internet people that sound very similar to Qanon.

Fast forward 10 years or so and there are two Americas - the more reality based parts and Ameristan, parts that have reverted to religious fundamentalism, often called Leviticanism.  In Ameristan infidels are still crucified for things like wearing cotton/polyester blends or being gay.  They still rely on the reality based parts of the country for things like antibiotics and surgery, but maintain that they are the real US; they claim that the rest of the country has abandoned the Second Amendment so they're not really part of the US any more.  They stockpile guns and ammunition and build burning crosses.  (Crosses, that they insist, are NOT like the KKK.)

In this excerpt, a bunch of recent college graduates comes across a massive steel cross that the Leviticans will soon light on fire.  They ask a priest of this new Christianity what's going on.  (Edited to reduce length)

===============

“Now, let me take the bull by the horns as far as the KKK Libel." Ted had returned from inspecting the lambs. "Obviously you are not a white person, at least not one hundred percent, and I don't know about him." He cast a glance over at Julian, who was down on one knee feeding a handful of grass through the chicken wire to a lamb. Julian was part Chinese. "There's been all kinds of confusion about us Leviticans.  Some kind of imagined link to the Ku Klux Klan."

"Maybe it's because of the burning crosses," Phil suggested, deadpan, gazing across a few yards of gravel to the massive concrete foundation from which the cross's steel verticals erupted.

"Supposedly the KKK burned crosses," Ted said with a roll of the eyes.

“There's no 'supposedly' about it," Anne-Solenne started in. "What are you even—that's like saying supposedly Muhammad Ali was a boxer. Supposedly Ford makes cars. It's—" But Sophia silenced her with a hand on the arm. There was no point.

"If that is even true, it has no connection to our burning crosses, which have a completely different significance.  So-called Christianity, as it existed up until recently, is based on a big lie - the most successful conspiracy of all time. And it was all summed up in the symbolism of the cross. Every cross you see on a mainstream church, or worn as jewelry, or on a rosary or what have you, is another repetition of that lie."

"And what is that lie exactly?" Phil asked.

"That Jesus was crucified.  That the Son of God, the most powerful incarnate being in the history of the universe, allowed Himself to be scourged and humiliated and taken out in the most disgraceful way you can imagine."

"Taken out' means 'murdered'?" Anne-Solenne asked. It was a rhetorical question that Ted answered with the tiniest hint of a nod.

"The church that was built on the lie of the Crucifixion had two basic tenets. One was the lovey-dovey Jesus who went around being nice to people—basically, just the kind of behavior you would expect from the kind of beta who would allow himself to be spat on, to be nailed to a piece of wood. The second was this notion that the Old Testament no longer counted for anything, that the laws laid down in Leviticus were part of an old covenant that could simply be ignored after, and because, he was nailed up on that cross. We have exposed all that as garbage. Nonsense. A conspiracy by the elites to keep people meek and passive. The only crosses you'll see in our church are on fire, and the symbolism of that has nothing to do with the KKK. It means we reject the false church that was built upon the myth of the Crucifixion."

"So, to be clear, all Christianity for the last two thousand years—Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, evangelical—is just flat-out wrong," Phil said.

"That is correct.  That's the first thing the church did, was enshrine all those gospels. Telling the story they wanted to tell. About the meek liberal Jesus who gave food away to poor people and healed the sick and so on."

"And was crucified and ... resurrected?" Anne-Solenne asked.

"They needed some way to explain the fact that He was still alive, so they invented all that resurrection stuff."

"So where'd Jesus go after that? What did He do?"

"Fought the Romans. Went back and forth between this world and heaven. He has the power to do that."

"Where is He now?"

"We don't know! Maybe here. He has been in eclipse for two thousand years. The conspiracy of the church was powerful. They staged a fake Reformation to get people to believe that reform was possible. All a show. Orchestrated from the Vatican."

"So, Martin Luther was running a false-flag operation for the Pope," Phil said. "In that case—" But he broke off as he felt Sophia stepping on his toe, under the table. He looked down at her. Having caught his eye, she panned her gaze across the entire scene, asking him to take it all in. Reminding him that this wasn't Princeton. This was Ameristan. Facebooked to the molecular level.

============================

Interestingly, Stephenson's original book had a "Moab hack" that was a lot more like Facebooking an election - and he had to change it because it was too close to what actually happened in 2016.

[JerryBaumchen 1,048]

15 minutes ago, billvon said:

Neal Stephenson has a new book out - Fall. 

' . . . and two or three actors produce "footage" that show a mushroom cloud over the city.  A fake news conference is televised showing scientists talking about a nuclear weapon being detonated, . . .'

Hi Bill,

I think Orson Welles was a little ahead of him:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(radio_drama)

Jerry Baumchen

[kallend 1,625]

13 hours ago, JerryBaumchen said:

Hi Bill,

I think Orson Welles was a little ahead of him:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(radio_drama)

Jerry Baumchen

As was H.G. Wells

[JerryBaumchen 1,048]

1 hour ago, kallend said:

As was H.G. Wells

Hi John,

And this guy was right in the mix:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels

He had the best propaganda machine that had ever been developed, as of that time.

He might just get surpassed in the 2020 election.  Especially, when we see Trump cowering to Putin as he did the other day in Japan.

Tough guy, my ass,

Jerry Baumchen

 

[Coreece 190]

On 6/29/2019 at 12:08 AM, billvon said:

Neal Stephenson has a new book out - Fall. . .

This is set in a world that has been Facebooked.

As an aside, the other day I was wondering if people even read novels as much as they used to considering the distraction/preoccupation with facebook, twitter, etc.

 

On 6/29/2019 at 12:08 AM, billvon said:

This is set in a world that has been Facebooked.  In the book, that term means "to suborn reality to a non-reality-based consensus." 

It's frustrating to see so many people seemingly cling to the first story that appeals to their bias simply because they can add it to their online arsenal to further their cause. 

 

[rant] And while this happens on both sides, for whatever reason I find myself more troubled by intelligent people on the left that seem to get caught up in all of this because they're so desperate to get rid of Trump - and apparently the end justifes the means.

Now while that may be somewhat understandable, I think it's a bad habit to start, perhaps even dangerously addictive, especially when it becomes the preferred method to address all controversial topics like climate change, gun control and some racial issues when people automatically shout "racism" whenever "shit happens" to a minority because some white person is involved.

Perhaps I'm being unfair by singling out the left, but they're the ones that are always talking about facts, stats, reason and logic, so it's not unreasonable to hold them to that standard, even if they find that appeals to emotion are (unfortunately) more effective and entertaining. [/rant]

 

Whatever the case tho, this idea of being "facebooked" seems all the more likely today given the amount of effort it takes to acquire an honest and reliable grasp on any heated social/economic/political story these days.  It's not like you can  just read one from your news feed and call it the day.  You need to read a mix of at least 3-5 from both sides in addition to cited sources and published studies, articles, data, etc. It's exhausting, and it doesn't seem that many are up to the task.

 

On 6/29/2019 at 12:08 AM, billvon said:

Fast forward 10 years or so and there are two Americas - the more reality based parts and Ameristan

I typically like these kinds of novels, and I'll probably have to read all 800+ pages to grasp the details, but so far the description of this Ameristan seems a bit too far fetched, and I can't really pinpoint what type of group would evolve into a sect that:

1. Are religious fundamentalists

2. Revert to Levitical Law

3. Stockpile weapons

4. Have Conferate flag bumper stickers

5. Reject the death and ressurection of Jesus Christ.

 

I don't see evangelicals ever collectively rejecting the very belief responsible for their strong social cohesion in the first place.

And while conservative millitant athiests could easily reject Christ, they wouldn't need religious fundamentalism to kill people they don't like.

I mean who are these people,  Southern White Nationalist Jews?

[billvon 2,400]

11 hours ago, Coreece said:

I don't see evangelicals ever collectively rejecting the very belief responsible for their strong social cohesion in the first place.

And while conservative millitant athiests could easily reject Christ, they wouldn't need religious fundamentalism to kill people they don't like.

I agree.  But they're not rejecting Christ; just making some minor revisions to history to support their beliefs.  This has happened literally dozens of times over the years, each revision creating a new sect of a religion.

Quote

 

so far the description of this Ameristan seems a bit too far fetched, and I can't really pinpoint what type of group would evolve into a sect that:

1. Are religious fundamentalists

2. Revert to Levitical Law

3. Stockpile weapons

4. Have Conferate flag bumper stickers

5. Reject the death and ressurection of Jesus Christ.

 

 

I imagine that Stephenson is extrapolating the trends exhibited by:

• Qanon, that demonstrates you can Facebook any event, belief or fact
• Sects like the Basilidians, Christians who believed that Christ was not crucified; someone else (Simon of Cyrene) was crucified in his place
• White evangelicals, who have demonstrated a very strong bias towards gun ownership and regularly portray gun ownership as "sheepdogs protecting sheep."

[wolfriverjoe 1,341]

7 minutes ago, billvon said:

I agree.  But they're not rejecting Christ; just making some minor revisions to history to support their beliefs.  This has happened literally dozens of times over the years, each revision creating a new sect of a religion.

I imagine that Stephenson is extrapolating the trends exhibited by:

• Qanon, that demonstrates you can Facebook any event, belief or fact
• Sects like the Basilidians, Christians who believed that Christ was not crucified; someone else (Simon of Cyrene) was crucified in his place
• White evangelicals, who have demonstrated a very strong bias towards gun ownership and regularly portray gun ownership as "sheepdogs protecting sheep."

Don't forget people like the Westboros, who have explicitly stated they want to see 'being gay' subject to the death penalty.

There's a LOT of people who claim to be "Christian", yet don't seem to follow any of the teachings of Jesus. There's even a couple on here.

[Coreece 190]

1 hour ago, billvon said:

Sects like the Basilidians, Christians who believed that Christ was not crucified; someone else (Simon of Cyrene) was crucified in his place

But I think gnostic sects like that died out like 1500 hundred years ago or so, while Christianity flourished and captivated the world.  And even before the gnostics, Paul addressed this issue in Corithians:

1 Corinthians 15: 12-19

^"But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?  If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.  For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either.   And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.   Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.   If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied."

So you kind of get the idea of why that belief system didn't last very long.

And I'm still left questioning Stephenson's motive for bringing it back.

 

1 hour ago, wolfriverjoe said:

Don't forget people like the Westboros, who have explicitly stated they want to see 'being gay' subject to the death penalty.

And that would all make sense except for the part about denying Christ's death and resurrection.  

So why bring it up?

1. Perhaps he's using it as the reason for how this sect justifies killing those they hate, but Christ's passive nature never stopped the church's barbaric behavior in the past, so why now?

2. Maybe he's just trying to reintroduce an old heresy that Paul addressed almost 2000 years ago.

3. Another reason may be that while he's trying to draw a parallel to evangelicals, he doesn't want to alienate evangelical customers, so by introducing this idea, Christians in general may not feel like it's an attack on their faith and therefore more willing to buy the book.

 

Also, I'm still wondering if the part about killing homosexuals is actually in the book, or is it just the part about mixed textiles?

 

 

[billvon 2,400]

3 minutes ago, Coreece said:

But I think gnostic sects like that died out like 1500 hundred years ago or so, while Christianity flourished and captivated the world. 

 

Right.  Stephenson is extrapolating based on history and the trend towards Facebooking.  (He's a history buff.)

Quote

And I'm still left questioning Stephenson's motive for bringing it back.

To show what can be done by Facebooking the world - and Facebooking is central to his story.  It isn't even the most extreme example - the most extreme example are people believing that Moab was nuked, despite it existing right there in plain sight.

Quote

Also, I'm still wondering if the part about killing homosexuals is actually in the book, or is it just the part about mixed textiles?

Yes.  They actually crucify people there on homemade crosses for homosexuality, heresy, wearing mixed fabrics and things like that.  (They use nail guns, and build crosses out of laminations, to make it easier.)  They also talk about how even among the faithful, some people are gay - and more often than not they are spirited out of Ameristan to a place they can live.  Not only do they not talk about that, per the narrator, they literally _can't_ talk about that.

[gowlerk 1,914]

39 minutes ago, Coreece said:

And I'm still left questioning Stephenson's motive for bringing it back.

Well. most likely his main motivation is selling novels.

[billvon 2,400]

8 minutes ago, gowlerk said:

Well. most likely his main motivation is selling novels.

True dat.  At the end of the day that's his goal.

[Coreece 190]

6 minutes ago, gowlerk said:

46 minutes ago, Coreece said:

And I'm still left questioning Stephenson's motive for bringing it back.

Well. most likely his main motivation is selling novels.

Ok, so number 3 in my previous reply.

[gowlerk 1,914]

1 minute ago, Coreece said:

Ok, so number 3 in my previous reply.

Possibly, but only if he did focus groups and then wrote a story around a marketing plan. Or, like many writers he just used his imagination and came up with a good plot, wrote the book, and now is selling it. He is a novelist after all, as far as I know he does not claim to be a prophet.

[billvon 2,400]

8 minutes ago, Coreece said:

Ok, so number 3 in my previous reply.

He hasn't seemed averse to alienating people in previous books, so I would doubt that.  But maybe.

[Coreece 190]

5 minutes ago, gowlerk said:

Possibly, but only if he did focus groups and then wrote a story around a marketing plan. Or, like many writers he just used his imagination and came up with a good plot

Except for the part in question.  I just think it doesn't fit, is far-fetched, unnecessary, and if anything, shows a lack of imagination and perhaps a bit of ignorance - but other than that part it seems like an interesting read.

[gowlerk 1,914]

Just now, Coreece said:

Except for the part in question.  I just think it doesn't fit, is far-fetched, unnecessary, and if anything, shows a lack of imagination and perhaps a bit of ignorance - but other than that part it seems like an interesting read.

Meh.....everyone's a critic!

[Coreece 190]

3 minutes ago, gowlerk said:

4 minutes ago, Coreece said:

Except for the part in question.  I just think it doesn't fit, is far-fetched, unnecessary, and if anything, shows a lack of imagination and perhaps a bit of ignorance - but other than that part it seems like an interesting read.

Meh.....everyone's a critic!

And I haven't even read the book yet!

[billvon 2,400]

3 hours ago, Coreece said:

Except for the part in question.  I just think it doesn't fit, is far-fetched, unnecessary, and if anything, shows a lack of imagination , , , 

Given that he had to change it because his original plot line involved the Facebooking of a US election, seems like he has at least a somewhat on-point imagination.  But it's just that - imagination, because he's a novelist.

(And the rest of the book is a lot more farfetched than that.)