politics

Mass televised or otherwise public grieving is almost never sincere, at the very least, it is almost never healthy.

Grieving, truly processing a loss, is done in private, or with a few close friends or family... it is a process of self reflection and self exploration, not self projection.

The other element here is the rank hypocrisy with the religious context and framing and the other speeches she has allowed to occur here, which she surely knew would be given, and at least largely endorsed.

A whole lot of Jesus' sayings are about how one should practice their faith in private, one should lend to charity anonymously.

There is a solid undercurrent of discretion, of not making grand public displays of faith, of your own self righteousness, etc.

... Would you invite a bunch of bombastic hate mongers to the funeral of your loved one, agree to have it as a mass public hate rally?

Or would you prefer a smaller, private gathering, and to... be given some space, for a bit, with occasional checkins or close friends on standby for help if needed?

As to me calling her display psycopathic as bad PR:

You may note that I am not blasting that message outward to millions of people.

You may note I have not accompanied that messsge with a jubilant mocking video and audio display over her husband's death, nor likewise with a snobbishly toned monologue rantsona dripping with venom in my voice.

Looking like around 30 ish people is my audience size.

For reading some text.

Intentionally leaving intonation and body language and speech timbre and tempo soley up to the reader.

If anything, what I intend to convey is solemnity.

PR is not even close to the same as how I actually feel.

How I actually feel is terrified on a grand societal level, genuine concern for the safety and well being of millions likely to be seriously harmed by what her display, and the rest of it, presages.

I did not instantly jump on TikTok like a vengeful spirit and record a snarky video of myself celebrating Kirk's death.

What I actually did was go into a PTSD shock / panic attack episode for an hour, upon seeing, up close in HD, the column of blood erupt from his neck, the life leave his eyes basically instantly, because I have seen too much shit like that already in the real, it has scarred my psyche.

I do perhaps share your fear of bad PR, but at a very, very deep and visceral level...

And for myself, what I would absolutely never wish to convey is any kind of performative inauthenticity.

So, its kinda complicated, but yes, generally, when middle aged or older American diehard Christians refer to New Age, they... basically are referring to anything that involves the word 'quantum' or 'yoga' or ...

You know what, maybe an easier way to explain this would be to say that almost anything on Gaia or GaiaTV or whatever its called... thats 'New Age' to them.

Anything involving a grander sort of... spiritual hierarchy to the world, that isn't directly from the Bible, anything with an 'Ascended Master' or involves a way of mediating your way into enlightenement, in a kind of systemitized and mystic way.

So... its not quite the same as your more tradtional bogey men of Satanism and Witchcraft. Neither of which most Christians actually understand correctly at all, but that doesnt matter to them, as these are all enemy groups that they rarely know anything at all about other than their own invented paranoid fears.

But, even this is... wiggly, diffuse, inexact.

With the rise of the internet.... a whole lot of younger people are basically melding their favorite notions from Christianity and New Age stuff into ... their own versions of what they call Christianity.

Like uh, when I was raised in the 90s, by fairly extreme Christians... the Zodiac was evil sorcery, horoscopes and tarot were signs you were a witch.

But now... its...not. With mainly the younger tiktok crowd of Christians. They have somehow worked this into their idea of Christianity.

Same with manifesting.

In my day, manifesting would have beem seen probably as New Age heresy, spiritual poisoning, presuming yourself more powerful than the will of God, you should be praying to God, not acting like you are God, etc.

But... now... there are tons of younger people who call themselves ardent Christians and who also earnestly believe in the idea of manifesting, manipulating reality via your internal will/intention alone.

Anyway, I blame Helena Blavatsky for all this, lol, I am fairly sure you can historically trace almost every New Age concept or teacher or way of thinking back to her, and Theosophy.