You’re welcome! I had a personal experience with this, too.

When I was a kid, my parents used to make me go to church and youth group stuff. We went to one of those “hip” events at Carowinds (like a Six Flags, Disney type amusement park). Before it started our youth leader said - to his credit - “No matter what you feel, DO NOT go down to the front when they call people up.”

Sure enough towards the end, I start feeling “the spirit”, and I’m the most skeptical, atheist/agnostic in the whole group. But I stayed in my seat. And when we got back to the hotel I was thinking “what the hell happened there?”

I’m back! I couldn’t find the specific thing I read, but I found something probably better, an actual study published in Pubmed:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8871314/

Statistical analyses showed that the psychological disposition during the religious worship experience speeds up the physiological responses, which was indicated by increases in HR [hear rate] and RR [respiratory rate]. Hence, the activation hypothesis was accepted, and the pacification hypothesis was rejected.

I’ll try to look for it. It was a loooong time ago though.

I read an article years ago that explained why so many people get “religious” feelings at big revival-type events at Six Flags, Carowinds, etc, even if they’re not particularly devout.

There’s a thing called respiratory alkalosis (essentially hyperventilation) which makes you light-headed and confused. At it’s really easy to trigger by making people stand up quickly, sing really hard, sit back down, stand up and cheer, etc.

lied about almost literally every achievement in his life – university, multiple years of work experience, etc

I suppose it shouldn’t be a surprise, but it’s funny how common it is for these people to also be complete liars about what they’ve accomplished in life.

Is it too much to ask to be an honest racist nowadays? Don’t make me argue with you about racism and lying. That’s just annoying.

In the article at least, De Santis hasn’t explained how that works for the “good” Americans he wants to keep. Is every infant just not a citizen anymore until they can pass the test?

Don’t even try to think about the downstream affects of that on healthcare and education.

Some of them don’t even know how amendments work. They think the 2nd amendment was passed down by God on stone tablets.

I’ve argued with a person that didn’t know amendments could change other amendments. Nor did he know how amendments were voted on. But he swore the amendments were perfect when written and couldn’t possibly be changed.

The one bright side of this article is that it’s coming from The New Republic, which is traditionally more conservative. And the author is calling out how sad this plan is.

edit: I’m wrong? This never happens! see reply below.