Come for the saviorism, stay for the idea of missionaries as philanthropy. It sounds like the plutes are worried that the jig of exploiting the commons while giving back to it is finally up. https://twitter.com/felixsalmon/status/1265365172698439681

My mind is still reeling from the idea that someone thinks traveling to another country and seeking to convert those people to your religion is philanthropy. The quiet part said aloud.

This is a telling definition of philanthropy.

Philanthropy that's about spreading your way of life. That is about your faith in the superiority of your judgment about what others need. That is inseparable from the privilege of citizens of some places to travel to "save" others.

I should reveal at this point that the author of the almanac being advertised is Karl Zinsmeister, who served as George W. Bush's domestic policy adviser. And who called me and other critics "authoritarians" for disbelieving their billionaire-savior BS. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-war-on-philanthropy-11578528352

Which helps to flesh out the picture of how this whole thing works.

Hijack government with an anti-government agenda. Cut taxes for the plutes. Divert public funding to churches in violation of the Constitution.

Then celebrate "voluntarism" as an alternative to public action.

So the missionaries, the Gateses, the foundations, the church food banks -- they become crucial to your economic agenda. They are revolt insurance.

It's fitting that a guy who worked for W. is now advocating for missionaries as philanthropic and philanthropy as democratic.

The important point made plain here is that the religious agenda, the economic agenda, and the philanthropic agenda of someone like Zinsmeister is really all the same agenda. An anti-democratic agenda in which money rather than a demos of human beings governs us.

And what's really exciting about Karl Zinsmeister -- W. Bush adviser, philanthropic booster, believer in missionaries -- taking a full-page ad out to defend this game is that it suggests an awareness that we are seeing through the game as a culture, and the game is on thin ice.