US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2619

On September 11 2020 09:58 Nevuk wrote:

It's going to be way, way dumber than that based on the mailers I'm getting. Newest one came in today saying that the radical left had taken over the demorcatic party, with a frowning white lady on the back.

I'm pretty sure it'll be something along the lines of "Biden is actually a clone of Stalin".


Recall how "grab them by the pussy" wasn't a big issue for many evangelicals, and "locker room talk" actually worked as a line? It's because that's how many of them expect men to behave. I wouldn't say they teach it, but they teach a lot of things very adjacent to that behavior about sexuality that encourage it as normal behavior (ie women are never supposed to consent to sex and men are supposed to constantly demand it, and only the women are ever punished by the congregation if something happens).

Trump, at least, is obvious about how awful of a person he is. Evangelicals I find to behave similarly behind closed doors, but talk about how moral they are in the open, constantly.
They believe that everyone is evil and that you can repent at the last second and make it into heaven, so the only truly good thing you can do is convert other people so they too will be rewarded in the after life - there's no reason, at all, to be good on earth according to the theology I was raised with (this is common to most of christianity, but evangelicalism puts the emphasis very heavily on the fact that it's pointless to be a good person).


Yes, that's correct. The belief is that Israel has to be inhabited by jewish people for the end times to come, as the bible references them being there in revelations.

They're pretty anti-semitic as well, but they want Israel to exist. Or technically, 10,000 of them and everyone else in the region dead, but they generally don't say that part out loud. (look up a "fun" movie called "the accidental bar mitzvah" if you want to see perfect examples of it. It's about an evangelical kid trying to convert jewish people, featuring "jews for jesus", which is considered a christian evangelical group by all jewish authorities. If there's any doubt that they may be jewish, refer to the scene where the "Jewish" father tears his clothes and screams "Baruch atah Adonai" in ... anger).

some of the most vile, hypocritical scum of the earth. There are exceptions but they're pretty rare.

On September 12 2020 01:09 Nevuk wrote:
Yes, I'll admit that I'm rather biased (I thought that was obvious by my language, lol). I went to an offshoot of a mega church that splintered off due to disagreements. So, when I talk about evangelicals, it's mostly the most extreme variant, which many people are NOT going to have interacted with, unless they live in the bible belt. I'd estimate it's the 30-35% worst of them. I did travel some for them, so I've experienced a lot of them across the south. The mega churches were all very similar to this, at least, though a bit less open or better funded enough to not resort to some of these things.

Just some of the more memorable examples - one of the youth pastors preached about how it was a sin to watch will and grace, then turned around stole dozens of credit cards from the congregation. Our abstinence only sex education people had an affair with each other and a pregnancy happened. Our pastor's retirement gift was a 150k car. The final pastor was (very credibly) accused of embezzling at least 100$k from the church to purchase a 500$k mansion and was illegally using law enforcement to bar entry to the church by all members for months.

On September 12 2020 03:39 Starlightsun wrote:
I think the evangelical view towards Israel and the idea of the second coming seriously influencing our foreign policy should be the concern of the entire nation though. Our military and diplomacy decisions should absolutely not be founded on such insane ideas.

On September 12 2020 01:44 JimmiC wrote:
It is kinda like racism is that no one thinks they are racist, they think what they think about the various races is just right. And they think racists are people who differently about the races then they do.

Religion is the same in that very few have the self realization to realize what they are doing that is wrong, when you have "faith" there is some benefits but also a lot of drawbacks because you end up needing to believe things that are not provable, being as though that is loosely the definition of faith.

Many people with questionable morals are drawn to this because they quickly figure out how they can leverage that faith to benefit themselves at the detriment to others. On top of the that people who are in the same religion will have way to high a level of trust in them purely because of that.

That is not to say one religion is better or all religion is bad. Just that the people who are a part of it are far easier to manipulate and control. Much like zealots to various populous leaders. In theory it can be very "good" in practice it is most often "bad" because the people who rise to the power positions tend to be those best able to abuse it and they have a much higher level of control over their followers because of this "faith". And if they were not "bad" to begin with that unhealthy level of power leads to corruption and abuse.


TLDR- it is not the other religion or bad people within the religion. It is that when faith exists it is extremely easy to abuse and many, many do.

On September 12 2020 03:39 Starlightsun wrote:
I think the evangelical view towards Israel and the idea of the second coming seriously influencing our foreign policy should be the concern of the entire nation though. Our military and diplomacy decisions should absolutely not be founded on such insane ideas.

On September 12 2020 05:22 Wegandi wrote:


Now do it for the State/Government. You just gotta replace a few words, plus the pseudo-religion of "Consent of the Governed" and the "Social Contract" with a dash of the Government is "us" because Democracy (lol). It is interesting how people replace faith in God, with faith in monopoly institutions.

Fox News released a clip from Trump’s recent interview with host Jeanine Pirro, which will air in full tomorrow night.

In the clip, Trump says of Biden, “I think there’s probably — possibly — drugs involved. That’s what I hear. I mean, there’s possibly drugs.”


The evidence-free accusation appeared to be an odd acknowledgement from Trump that his Democratic opponent has delivered some successful speeches recently, including Biden’s widely praised nomination acceptance speech at last month’s virtual convention.

“I don’t know how you can go from being so bad where you can’t even get out a sentence,” Trump said. “I mean, you saw some of those debates with the large number of people on the stage,” Mr Trump added. “He was — I mean, I used to say, ‘How is it possible that he can even go forward?’”

Last month, Trump similarly called for Biden to be drug-tested before the two nominees face off in their first debate.