We already don’t have them.

What if 8 years of election fraud bullshit was the setup to poison the waters when they actually use the techniques?

This is Russian psyops 101: play/fund both sides so when both are revealed corrupt, the populace is too confused to know what’s real.

So republicans say, for years, “Your Russian election claim is a hoax!” And then we get, “They stole the 2020 election!”

Now we have more statistical information showing signs of manipulation, but because Republicans have called out their opponent as manipulating elections, researchers are afraid too report facts based on voting tabulation.

We are in crisis. The country is socially fractured. We’ve been manipulated by our enemy (Russian oligarchs/mob/Putin). They repeated the lies enough that MAGA will believe any dumb shit while Democrats look like they are using Republican insults or tactics.

We’ve all been duped.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits

Just to be candid with you, as a UU, I enjoy these texts but they don’t form the full picture of my faith. I find the general theology of the Gnostic texts more aligned with the reality around us (certainly seems like a demiurge fucks with us more each day right now).

As for Jesus’ message, the Pauline letters, and the prophesied role of the messiah, I’m prone to selective pulls as much as Christians. We know the gospels were not written immediately after the events, so there’s a telephone game. In the context of Jesus’ time and some of the horrible scriptures of the Old Testament, passages like John 13:34 feel radical. I also hold Matthew 25:32 as revealing of modern Christian hypocrisy. If we lived in a “Christian” society, we would be proactively eradicating poverty, hunger, helping immigrants, helping those in jail. Instead, we seem hellbent (pun intended) on war with one another.

For that aspect, I squarely blame Evangelicals more than the works themselves. You can use the Bible (and many other religious texts) to validate almost any opinion or belief.

Most likely.

Oh, I fully acknowledge Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet who believed the end times were within a lifetime of his crucification. And like you mention, there’s a few pro authority verses (the one about “governments are ordained by God, so follow them,” is always funny to me when a Democrat is the president).

Alongside your comments, it could also be that our default position is established in capitalism. I volunteer with my town, and I often hear, “We should run this town like a business.”

…No. It’s not. It has no profit potential. It’s about the service & cost to run it each year.

However, for my colleagues, there’s often this reckoning. “What do you mean? I run businesses. I know how to do this.” No, you don’t. Because you’re used to cutting corners. You’re used to outsourcing at maybe a more expensive cost. You’re used to racing to the bottom.

Government is NOT about being a capitalistic business. This country defaults to “That’s the right way to do it.” when they fundamentally don’t understand how the problem and goals are different. It’s very “everything is a nail,” and the hammer is “for profit models.”

/shrug

I think there’s truth in that in modern America. It wasn’t like this 30 years ago. Growing up, religion was a big cornerstone of social life & had very specific impacts to your upbringing: confirmation, Sunday school, etc.

I think Evangelicals likely represent the main example of your critique. As someone who reads the Bible often & someone who respects the focus of Christ’s works, a lot of sermons against empathy that I’ve seen have felt disgusting. Christ washed the feet of prostitutes. He was angry at the money lenders / capitalists in the Temple. The story of treating the poor man equal to the rich man (or maybe better) is another example.

In Luke, people turn the disciples away, and they ask Christ to smite them. He reprimands the Apostles for wanting to enact vengeance.

I’m a Unitarian Universalist. I’m informed by Christ, I go to church every Sunday (went earlier today), and I do consider my faith a meaningful aspect of my life. I was an atheist for the 20 or so years prior. I do think religion can have greater importance than surface level, but I also believe that what Christianity was 30 years ago has mostly eroded or been hijacked by monied interests.

Great song about this.

I don’t put much personal stock into Revelations (it’s a very random author, much later than the main books). However, I believe there are many signs that could relate to our times.

I read the New Testament twice earlier this year in prep for this administration coming. While there are some verses where Christ speaks of violence and division, I understood it as “These messages & the things I say will cause people to argue.” The verse about leaving family for Christ means something like “I’m going to teach you about love, and if your family turns away from those teachings, they are turning against love.”

Overwhelmingly, I found Jesus within the New Testament to be a pretty tolerant person. Some passages such as Matthew 25:32 show how the Republican party is completely misaligned with the grand message of the religion. It explicitly states that you go to heaven for helping the poor, helping the alien in a foreign land, helping those in jail. I’m sorry, but that’s not what the Republican party does. :/

The inversion and active turning away from Christ’s message by Christians is insane to me.

After researching, yes, it is a meme.

I also do not know anymore.

So H1-Bs are $100k per year…or you could spend $1m and just skip the line…

Yeah, this is capitalism and the US in complete decline. The whore of Babylon selling herself to the world in the worst way…

Uh, they will run of the deficit, not report honestly, and fuck the American economy.

From June 2025, so it’s probably worse projections now.

Sure, Trump had COVID, but his years were ramping up spending significantly before. The idea that Trump is some sort of “shrewd business man” is a complete lie. They supposedly cut all these jobs & they are still going to spend more than last year. So it’s just pure projection.

After the absurd, recent proposal calling trans people some sort of organization rather than, you know, just a kind of person, yeah, I don’t blame any of my trans & NB folks for leaving. I’m NB and the idea that trans-ness is equivalent to “Nihilistic Violent Extremism” is absurd. It’s equivalent to labeling gay people violent extremist, people of color violent extremists. The only reason pessimism or nihilism might appear in someone trans/NB is because the society or people in power do this shit. People just want to live.

All of this is vindictive people looking for excuses to bully others while they can. Trump has cankles, Patel protects pedophiles, and fuck this regime.

The group defines “TIVE” as “the belief that violence is justified against people who oppose [the trans community],” as well as the belief that opposing trans rights “itself constitutes a form of violence towards people who identify as [trans or gender nonconforming]… or poses an imminent threat to such persons’ emotional, psychological, or physical safety, including through self-harm or suicide.”

What an insane redefinition of “self defense.” Violence isn’t justified…unless you are being targeted, harmed, or killed, which many trans or NB people are. It’s absurd to preemptively label self defense as “violence.” It’s cart-before-horse, intentional PR spin to dehumanize a subset of human people. One species, all human.

The administration will need scapegoats when its policies fail. They’ve laid this ground work for years now. They want justification for violence through violence themselves in this mental gymnastics.

It’s the Heritage Foundation, which might as well be called “Propaganda Hut.” Let me guess: more divisive, American-dividing ideas? Yes, Heritage, let’s keep pushing tribal behavior to encourage class war while the rich destroy the planet and their fellow humans.

“Now, I think it’s a wholesale prostitution of America and its values in order to sell weapons. And increasingly profiteer on this stuff.”

9 “When the kings of the earth who committed adultery with her and shared her luxury see the smoke of her burning, they will weep and mourn over her. 10 Terrified at her torment, they will stand far off and cry:

“‘Woe! Woe to you, great city, you mighty city of Babylon! In one hour your doom has come!’

11 “The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes anymore— 12 cargoes of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet cloth; every sort of citron wood, and articles of every kind made of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron and marble; 13 cargoes of cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and human beings sold as slaves.”

I think protesting does do something, at least on a personal level. It’s been endearing to go to a few, see people I know, see horns honking in support. It’s maybe 10:1 in my area for positive to negative responses.

That makes me feel like when shit comes to my neighborhood, I’m not alone with how I feel.

I don’t believe there are immediate wins most of the time, but a wave starts as a drop in the ocean. Things take time to build. His popularity is bad; he complained to Fox News saying they have the worst polling. It’s Fox News…

If the people protest, it makes others feel safer to do it. If lawmakers do it, they are setting a positive example in my book. I hope more people join them next time. When it’s 1000 people, it’s hard to arrest everyone.

His narcissism makes him talk a lot and stay awake. Then when he has to listen, he doesn’t give a shit and just passes out.

Circumcised, yeah I think so.