There is no “nationalism” essential to Christianity, Hitler’s Germany is the antithesis of Christianity.

But again, I get it. You don’t seem to like religion and you think it infects our politics too much.

See, I can agree with you that religion should be kept out of government policy. So we could agree on many things you might want to make policy (like maybe no teaching Bible in public school without teaching about all world religions, and no teaching Intelligent Design in science class - maybe in a philosophy class discussion about Aristotle…)

And I agree history is crap these days (but I blame wokeness for that). And I agree the education system is full of issues to work out. It would take a long history and discussion to address all you’ve raised.

But a discussion like that, with a motif and theme of all the ways Christians qua Christians have hurt the world with someone who doesn’t seem to see the vastly greater goods many people have done, in their attempts to be more like Christ - seems unproductive to do like this, or on this thread. — Fire Ologist

I am glad you could do such a fine job of raising awareness of the good things Christians have done. However, I have heard Catholics are not Christians. For me, that judgment is one of the biggest problems with the whole Christian mess. Christians seem to disagree with each other even more than they disagree with Jews and Muslims about who knows God's truth and who does not. These three religions have the same fundamental stories. Those are pagan stories and beliefs adjusted to different cultures. I do not understand how people can continue to live in those ancient stories when it is so obvious a God did not make us of mud and then leave us in a Garden of Eden with magical trees. It is also a fact that both the Garden of Eden and the Flood stories were Sumerian stories of creation and the flood. These beliefs are not supported by logic when people are working with a scientific explanation of life. How can we have good judgment when we are living with a false understanding of how we came to be?

However, I very much like the Catholic men who were the presidents of the U S or tried to be. I would love to take us all back in history to when Kucinich ran against Bush, and then take us down the path Kucinich, a Catholic, would have followed. He was strongly opposed to the Neocons' efforts to take military control of the Middle East, the Bush and Cheney "New Century American Project" that was a disaster, with Christians cheering for our war against "evil" and being thrilled by the US Shock and Awe attack on Iraq. As though this war game were equal to a football game.

You really do not know enough about what I think to judge if I am speaking about religion or politics. I see the good Christians as ignorant of their enemies, and that they are a threat to the world because their beliefs are not separate from their political judgment. THEY GO TO WAR COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY IGNORANT OF THEIR "ENEMY" AND DO SO IN THE NAME OF GOD AND BELIEF ABOUT EVIL. I hate the reality Bush and Cheney gave us; instead of a world of peace, Kucinich would have given us. Today, it is almost impossible to find any mention of Kucinich. It is as though those in control of what is on the internet have an agenda to disappear this man.

If you agree that religion should be kept out of political matters, and what nations we attempt to control with military force, why don't you see the Christian Nationalism? The evangelicals and men like Billy Graham have played a strong role in creating our story of who is the "evil" and our enemy, and who we must defend or ignore. I can not use AI to raise awareness of "proof of Christian Nationalism", but people can Google for the explanation of why it threatens our democracy and the world. Since the beginning of the US, the citizens have believed it is God's will that they control the political decisions, including wars. The Civil War was really nasty, as both sides believed God was on their side and they were doing the will of God to kill those "evil people" who opposed God's will. I want you to think about this- how do humans know God's will?

Yeah, Lincoln had "In God we trust" inscribed on pennies, taking advantage of religion to win the war against the South. Much later, Billy Graham advanced the power of Evangelicals by once again equating our government and Christianity as the same thing- a war against evil, uniting the US against those godless communists. Creating those godless Russians as the "evil" our God fearing country must oppose.

If the Bible were not Hebrew propaganda, and later Christian propaganda, and then the bases for Muslim propaganda, and the citizens of the US were not such stooges, we might have a better world and not the racist struggle we still have, with these "dark skinned people cursed by God", and not be all tied up with Woke following a long history of persecuting homosexual people.

How can God forgive people who believe they are God's favored people, and who take no responsibility for the wrongs done to "those people"? Christians are not the only human beings with viable spiritual and moral systems. And the democracy of the US is not based on the Bible, a book about kings and slaves, and God's promise to give people the hierarchy of rulers that humans require because they are born in sin. You know that evil spiritual ether in the air that somehow ties us to Satan and demons. Thank goodness we are not superstitions, right? But we have to do something about "those evil people".

When bad things happen, is it God punishing us, or Satan, or is it our own evilness that causes this wrong?

Don't be a whinny bitch. You're welcome. :lol: — praxis

That is pretty sexist comment. :gasp: And it has no intellectual appeal.

Sorry, I was in an emotional frenzy.

Sorry, I was in an emotional frenzy. — praxis

:lol: I can relate to that.

You've linked a book here. I am not going to buy and read a book to try to find evidence for you. — Mijin

my bad, I was trying to link to my review of the book, written by the author of the links I posted. Those links are what I encourage you to read.

The people that whined about trans people choosing their own pronouns don't give a toss about people being deported, defunded, fired, imprisoned etc on the basis of their political views. — Mijin

Yup, I agree, and have written as much throughout.

I object to violations of free speech rights on both sides of the political spectrum. If you don't live in the US, why are you defaulting to their oppositional binary?

If you care about free speech, you oppose all violations.

Personally speaking, I was cancelled from my teaching job for playing a hiphop song, which essentially destroyed the rest of my life. That's a left-wing offense against free speech. There are millions of other examples.

If you are genuinely open to changing your mind, you should be able to conjure a solitary example of your differing from woke orthodoxy.

It appears to me that you cannot?

:love:

The woke had snuck their coolaid well into the water supply for 30 plus years — Fire Ologist

I just read Orwell's "The Road to Wigan Pier", written in 1936. His descriptions of the contempt the bourgeois display towards the working class was remarkably resonant - I think the trends you are describing go back much further. I can think of myriad examples in American movies (I like horror) of working class / rural people terrorizing the middle class. It's all part of the same stew.

Have you seen the interaction between Trump and Carney in the Whitehouse this week? — Fire Ologist

Parts of it. Plenty of coverage here. The most consistent take is that it's 'humiliating' for Carney, but that Carney is playing the right cards. I don't know why Trump seems to like him more than other leaders, tbh.

He is doing a lot of good, and many just refuse to see it. — Fire Ologist

If the peace in Gaza holds, that's a major win. He has certainly restored some semblance of non-partisanship in certain sectors, some universities, etc. He has normalized opposition to open-door immigration. But the DOGE fiasco is / has killed people reliant on medical funding, for example. I imagine more consequences - from say, mass firings - will reveal themselves over time.

Four years of unanimous conviction of Trumps “Russian collusion” and then unanimous “Hunter Biden’s laptop didn’t exist and was more Russian misinformation” - the press sucks. — Fire Ologist

Yeah, mainstream press has zero credibility overall. Individual journalists continue to do good work, but the rise of DEI departments divided the young from the old and choked out dissenting voices. Major corporations, being risk-averse, just go with the flow. Interesting about Bari Weiss at CBS eh? That feels like a good example of the pendulum swing you describe.

I think the worst proponents of “that forced binary choice on moral issues that I think is fueling the worst of the culture wars” comes more often from proponents of woke liberalism. — Fire Ologist

Agreed. The conservatives I know will mock / dismiss lefty points I might make with glee, but they won't judge me evil for making them.

We need to struggle through how to deal with it, but I don’t think I will ever be convinced that government censorship or force of law should have very much place in any management of the shitstorm social media creates. I just know what the UK is doing is utter unjust. — Fire Ologist

It's the addictive nature that governments could address, or the monopolistic nature of these huge corporations. We haven't been able to post Canadian news on FB for several years now, as Zuckerberg battles our attempts to regulate social media. That's the scary part - these companies are more powerful than states, and we have almost no choice but to participate in online life.

Frankly, I'd like to see governments protecting individual rights to NOT have to interact via devices.

“The power of free speech is in the simplicity of it. Once you start qualifying it, free speech ceases to exist.” — Fire Ologist

That's better, I like it!

I don’t think there is anything compromised by choosing the lesser of evils between an inevitable winner. That literally describes me in the polls every time I vote - I pick who I think might screw up and piss me off and hurt my family the least. Who might, because chances are they likely are going to hurt me. I have never voted for a candidate I thought was really good. — Fire Ologist

The thing I fear most around tribalism is that these tribes - perhaps woke most egregiously - are now more virtual, less local. The tribalism is accelerating the sense that people communicate with those who share their beliefs online, and I fear breeding suspicion in more local interactions.

It certainly feels like people are more suspicious of one another in person than it did even 10 years ago. Online norms are being downloaded IRL.

At the end of the day, my dislike of woke starts with the fact that wokeness seems to breed suspicion in others. How could it not, if we are hypothetically all guilty of subconscious bias, all pawns of invisible, machiavellian systems of oppression? When truth is relative and objectivity to be feared?

I just sucks to feel strongly about the truth in a world of sheep who care only about consensus — Fire Ologist

100%.

Cheers man.