Christian religion, having built on the idea of oneβs inescapable propensity for being bad in some way β with Jesus as the ultimate scapegoat and vicarious purifier β is perfect for Western Civilization. It gives us a framework within which to enjoy our guilt and keep doing what we want anyway, even though itβs wrong, because:
1. We canβt help it; weβre sinners.
2. Itβs so convenient.
3. Weβre white, so we might as well get away with it when we can, because we can.
OTOH, if it might be especially wrong to take advantage of our privilege, see #1.
Look, I know there's some good stuff to be found in Christianity, and that it holds meaning for a whole lot of people. But you will have a LONG way to go to convince me that belief in the whims of a Stone Age sky god have not brought us far more grief than benefit in the long run.
The only proper role of Government and Religion in fundamentalist America is to victimize children for the benefit of pastors. Usually that means rape and forced birth, but "religious leaders" like money, too.
I watch a lot of those British dramas on PBS and there is one subset that sort of troubles me and it's those that have a clergyman of some sort sticking his (or her, so I guess it would be "their") nose into a legal proceeding. "Father Brown" and "Sister whatever (can't remember right now) each have a priest (or priestess) getting involved in a crime investigation and just getting in the way of the cops (who are woefully incompetent and their parts are horriby overacted) until 5 minutes from the end, when - Voila ! - it turns out the clergyperson was right all along.
Those two shows are normally just a bit annoying (though the acting really sucks), but there's a third - "Grantchester" that has become downright infuriating. Where those two first shows have the clergy seemingly working at cross purposes to the police, G-Chester has a "vicar" who works right alongside the D.C.I., even taking part in the grilling in the interview room and I always think (out loud, since I live alone) that if I were the perp I'd be screaming "What the fuck is that priest doing in here and I'm calling the G.B. CLU ( I suppose there is such a thing) and we're getting this whole thing thrown out" and then I'd throw in a few blimeys and bloodys so they'd know I'm one of them. A priest's part in the legal process is supposed to be that of a sad old padre walking through a darkened cell block and referring to the bad guy as "my son." Otherwise, keep my crime shows secular.
Iβm honestly surprised Abbott doesnβt just announce a change in the Texas state legislature removing the quorum requirement, due to βemergency.β Seriously, whenever a Republican is flustered by some rule of law or regulation, Iβm immediately puzzled about why they feel compelled to follow the law at all. Nothing seems to matter anymore, from a government perspective, and the supreme court sure seems in the bag for Trump and his stooges. And this is Texas of all places.
Since a bunch of civilians didn't die (preventable?) deaths, it's OK to point fingers and laugh at the trouble of a town which successfully reduced its tax rate to below the bare minimum. And then the success really took off, it did. Not!
Small government starts in the local community!! And fails like a champ...
"promoting the general welfare" -something Rethugs don't believe in, even if it is right at the top of the Declaration of Independence, a document they pretend to revere.
Saying that taxing equals theft is interesting since Jesus acknowledged that governments have the right to tax and Christians have the duty to pay those taxes (render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar." Without government there would be no roads, no safe drinking water, no sewerage system, no property lines. Taxes aren't theft, they are the fees one pays for civilization.
Cool so Iβm sure all the xtian fundies and their allies are down with no standing military since a helluva lot of coerced theft is paying for the pentagon to never pass a financial audit and such.
Xtianity has a serious reputational problem? What PR outfit do you figure will get the job to fix that? A whole lot of nasty shit has gone down in the last 2000 years. The Xtians the Romans murdered were nothing compared to those murdered by the Xtians themselves. Between the Arian controversy, the Prods and various crusades and wars about predestination, it's been a bloody, murderous history.
"Government is a bad thing in general, so government help will only make things worse."
If Ayn Rand were still around, she'd be having orgasms at how widely that attitude now prevails.
Supposing her (much) younger lover and amenable husband weren't giving her enough. No, the arrangement was perfectly moral. She justified it philosophically, you see.
Maybe Greenspan was too repulsive for her. I don't know. But her actual much younger lover was Nathaniel Branden. She met him through a fan letter he sent her. She was old enough to be his mother (easily). The age difference was 24 years.
She was incapable of seeing herself as that cliched figure, the married woman with a young lover, and she appears to have believed he should stay in love with her forever no matter what, even though it was predictable as sunrise that he'd eventually dump her for a younger woman.
He did. And she threw a screaming fit. Chewed him out in terms that were more appropriate to an ignorant medieval milkmaid placing a curse on her unfaithful lover than a self-styled rational philosopher.
I would assume she felt she should be treated by her men as her fictional creation Dagny Taggart (ATLAS SHRUGGED) was treated. With absolute worship. And smiles of acceptance when she dumped them for someone else. Even Rearden, who broke his marriage vows for her, and signed over, to a government he detested, his rights to the incredible (its properties are incredible, all right) alloy he'd developed, in order to protect Dagny's reputation, took the knowledge that she'd found someone else with sweet submissive grace. Although he'd been possessive and violently jealous all through the novel up until then.
Rand was just a little short on emotional perception.
"One of the fundamental tenets of the Christian church is that the human is a creature possessing free will. It is because of the Christian recognition that man has control over his actions by means of his own will, that he is considered responsible for all of his actions. [β¦]"
So I guess that means that those little girls drowned themselves by not throwing a fit when Dad and Mom told them they were going to camp. These people are making it really hard for me to have any empathy for them. As a parent I can only imagine the level of pain that those parents are going through, but I also have enough experience with delusional thinking from Believers that I can't see them really getting any clarity from this terrible tragedy.
On another note one of my clients lived in the area and said she'd gone to church camp on the Guadalupe but never went to Camp Mystic as it was too expensive - so I'm going to guess that there will be lots of lawsuits in the next couple of years.
What really gets me is the camp across from the girls evacuated at 1am because they had responsible adults in charge who were keeping track of the weather and understood the concept of a βflood-zoneβ. Anyone who has ever hiked in the West (especially the SW) have a deep abiding fear of extremely parched (severe drought) canyons where there is a trickle of water. My BIL recognized the thunderstorm coming for them and he and his younger brother got their ass to high ground as fast as possible. They barely survived the flash flood. I feel incipient terror when hiking Zion. I have such fury about what happened to those little girls and I am not moved by the green ribbons adorning trees around Dallas. I am disgusted by the hypocrisy of the rich people. The only hope is that the very rich people who lost children in this will fuck up Camp Mystic so it can cease to exist. Fuck them all, too.
My wife and I hiked Zion and looking back I now realize how dangerous that can be. Our first night in the park, a storm blew in so suddenly and severely that we scurried from our tent into the back of our SUV in the middle of the night to sleep. In the morning our tent was a collapsed, twisted ball. We were lucky it was still tied down and we didnβt get hurt. Nature is beautiful to behold, but there are lots of ways it can kill you.
So, "Give unto Caesar..." is no longer an operative command? I wonder who retracted it.
Christian religion, having built on the idea of oneβs inescapable propensity for being bad in some way β with Jesus as the ultimate scapegoat and vicarious purifier β is perfect for Western Civilization. It gives us a framework within which to enjoy our guilt and keep doing what we want anyway, even though itβs wrong, because:
1. We canβt help it; weβre sinners.
2. Itβs so convenient.
3. Weβre white, so we might as well get away with it when we can, because we can.
OTOH, if it might be especially wrong to take advantage of our privilege, see #1.
I never quite followed the logic of "You're all degenerate sinners, so I'm gonna send my son to suffer and die at your hands. That'll fix it."
Look, I know there's some good stuff to be found in Christianity, and that it holds meaning for a whole lot of people. But you will have a LONG way to go to convince me that belief in the whims of a Stone Age sky god have not brought us far more grief than benefit in the long run.
The only proper role of Government and Religion in fundamentalist America is to victimize children for the benefit of pastors. Usually that means rape and forced birth, but "religious leaders" like money, too.
It must be so exhausting to be both this stupid and this cruel all the time.
I watch a lot of those British dramas on PBS and there is one subset that sort of troubles me and it's those that have a clergyman of some sort sticking his (or her, so I guess it would be "their") nose into a legal proceeding. "Father Brown" and "Sister whatever (can't remember right now) each have a priest (or priestess) getting involved in a crime investigation and just getting in the way of the cops (who are woefully incompetent and their parts are horriby overacted) until 5 minutes from the end, when - Voila ! - it turns out the clergyperson was right all along.
Those two shows are normally just a bit annoying (though the acting really sucks), but there's a third - "Grantchester" that has become downright infuriating. Where those two first shows have the clergy seemingly working at cross purposes to the police, G-Chester has a "vicar" who works right alongside the D.C.I., even taking part in the grilling in the interview room and I always think (out loud, since I live alone) that if I were the perp I'd be screaming "What the fuck is that priest doing in here and I'm calling the G.B. CLU ( I suppose there is such a thing) and we're getting this whole thing thrown out" and then I'd throw in a few blimeys and bloodys so they'd know I'm one of them. A priest's part in the legal process is supposed to be that of a sad old padre walking through a darkened cell block and referring to the bad guy as "my son." Otherwise, keep my crime shows secular.
Iβm honestly surprised Abbott doesnβt just announce a change in the Texas state legislature removing the quorum requirement, due to βemergency.β Seriously, whenever a Republican is flustered by some rule of law or regulation, Iβm immediately puzzled about why they feel compelled to follow the law at all. Nothing seems to matter anymore, from a government perspective, and the supreme court sure seems in the bag for Trump and his stooges. And this is Texas of all places.
Since a bunch of civilians didn't die (preventable?) deaths, it's OK to point fingers and laugh at the trouble of a town which successfully reduced its tax rate to below the bare minimum. And then the success really took off, it did. Not!
Small government starts in the local community!! And fails like a champ...
A Libertarian Walks Into A Bear
by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/08/30/libertarians-took-control-of-this-small-town-it-didnt-end-well/
"promoting the general welfare" -something Rethugs don't believe in, even if it is right at the top of the Declaration of Independence, a document they pretend to revere.
Ta, Dok. Jesus wept.
Saying that taxing equals theft is interesting since Jesus acknowledged that governments have the right to tax and Christians have the duty to pay those taxes (render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar." Without government there would be no roads, no safe drinking water, no sewerage system, no property lines. Taxes aren't theft, they are the fees one pays for civilization.
"What have the Romans done for us!"
Reggie - Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Cool so Iβm sure all the xtian fundies and their allies are down with no standing military since a helluva lot of coerced theft is paying for the pentagon to never pass a financial audit and such.
Xtianity has a serious reputational problem? What PR outfit do you figure will get the job to fix that? A whole lot of nasty shit has gone down in the last 2000 years. The Xtians the Romans murdered were nothing compared to those murdered by the Xtians themselves. Between the Arian controversy, the Prods and various crusades and wars about predestination, it's been a bloody, murderous history.
But as it was all in the name of G*d it's cool.
/s
"Government is a bad thing in general, so government help will only make things worse."
If Ayn Rand were still around, she'd be having orgasms at how widely that attitude now prevails.
Supposing her (much) younger lover and amenable husband weren't giving her enough. No, the arrangement was perfectly moral. She justified it philosophically, you see.
Was that Alan Greenspan? Or was he too repulsive too fuck?
Maybe Greenspan was too repulsive for her. I don't know. But her actual much younger lover was Nathaniel Branden. She met him through a fan letter he sent her. She was old enough to be his mother (easily). The age difference was 24 years.
She was incapable of seeing herself as that cliched figure, the married woman with a young lover, and she appears to have believed he should stay in love with her forever no matter what, even though it was predictable as sunrise that he'd eventually dump her for a younger woman.
He did. And she threw a screaming fit. Chewed him out in terms that were more appropriate to an ignorant medieval milkmaid placing a curse on her unfaithful lover than a self-styled rational philosopher.
I would assume she felt she should be treated by her men as her fictional creation Dagny Taggart (ATLAS SHRUGGED) was treated. With absolute worship. And smiles of acceptance when she dumped them for someone else. Even Rearden, who broke his marriage vows for her, and signed over, to a government he detested, his rights to the incredible (its properties are incredible, all right) alloy he'd developed, in order to protect Dagny's reputation, took the knowledge that she'd found someone else with sweet submissive grace. Although he'd been possessive and violently jealous all through the novel up until then.
Rand was just a little short on emotional perception.
"One of the fundamental tenets of the Christian church is that the human is a creature possessing free will. It is because of the Christian recognition that man has control over his actions by means of his own will, that he is considered responsible for all of his actions. [β¦]"
So I guess that means that those little girls drowned themselves by not throwing a fit when Dad and Mom told them they were going to camp. These people are making it really hard for me to have any empathy for them. As a parent I can only imagine the level of pain that those parents are going through, but I also have enough experience with delusional thinking from Believers that I can't see them really getting any clarity from this terrible tragedy.
On another note one of my clients lived in the area and said she'd gone to church camp on the Guadalupe but never went to Camp Mystic as it was too expensive - so I'm going to guess that there will be lots of lawsuits in the next couple of years.
What really gets me is the camp across from the girls evacuated at 1am because they had responsible adults in charge who were keeping track of the weather and understood the concept of a βflood-zoneβ. Anyone who has ever hiked in the West (especially the SW) have a deep abiding fear of extremely parched (severe drought) canyons where there is a trickle of water. My BIL recognized the thunderstorm coming for them and he and his younger brother got their ass to high ground as fast as possible. They barely survived the flash flood. I feel incipient terror when hiking Zion. I have such fury about what happened to those little girls and I am not moved by the green ribbons adorning trees around Dallas. I am disgusted by the hypocrisy of the rich people. The only hope is that the very rich people who lost children in this will fuck up Camp Mystic so it can cease to exist. Fuck them all, too.
My wife and I hiked Zion and looking back I now realize how dangerous that can be. Our first night in the park, a storm blew in so suddenly and severely that we scurried from our tent into the back of our SUV in the middle of the night to sleep. In the morning our tent was a collapsed, twisted ball. We were lucky it was still tied down and we didnβt get hurt. Nature is beautiful to behold, but there are lots of ways it can kill you.