The Bible is enormous and can be cherry-picked to mean almost anything you want. Look at all the large differences in denominations for reference. IMO, the Bible isn’t pushing Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism is pushing different interpretations of the Bible. The nationalism is coming from other things.
I agree that a religious person would be handy to have in our corner. But I’m not super comfortable with the idea that political questions around religion need a Christian’s opinion in order to have impact. It favors political expediency over principles. By doing that, you’re slightly conceding that principles aren’t important. At the same time, it devalues non-Christian voices on a topic that is most relevant to non-Christians. If Christians only care about the opinions of other Christians, I’m really not trying to play by their rules to win them over.
To be clear, I don’t think you’re trying to do all that. I also would bet most Christians would agree with this atheist. The minority of actual Christian nationalists aren’t going to be convinced no matter what you do. I think a Christian coming out in support of this congressman would be a good show of solidarity across a religious divide. But I don’t think this man’s argument would be better coming from a Christian instead. It would be like hearing MLK’s “I have a dream” speech and saying it would make more sense coming from a white guy because the majority won’t listen to him otherwise.
How does that weaken his argument? Are atheists not allowed to have opinions on their government when it comes to religion?
Contrapositive? I never learned about those. In health they told us only abstinence works
The real AI model was the friends we made along the way!
I typed this out as a joke but it kind of hits, actually.
Assigned baby at birth
I used to work in manufacturing in the auto industry. Everything is already metric in the US. People working on US made cars have the privilege of losing a 10mm socket just like the rest of the world.
🙏thank you amen
The NSA wishes they could harness that kind of power
It was a very large collection of unopened boxes that aren’t made anymore.
I believe that a person’s world view, ethics, moral system, etc is almost entirely molded to fit their incentives. When I was a manufacturing engineer, I was effectively automating people’s jobs. I created an elaborate narrative that not only let me off the hook, but made me the good guy. I was making the workers more productive and therefore setting the stage for them to negotiate better pay or treatment. That plant closed down 3 years later.
If everyone who punched a child in the face received $1000, people would initially be appalled by anybody who would take that money. After a while, people would start to fondly remember moments when they had been beaten or hurt. They would consider it a vital part of growing up. “Pain is what makes us strong”. People would proudly announce how many children they had punched. It would completely change the morals of everyone with the opportunity to receive the benefit.
Many people have personal evidence of this. A work friend suddenly becomes a prick when they get promoted to supervisor. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely”. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it”. In this case, A CEO feels his power in society threatened and he adopts whatever politics is needed to ensure he retains power. He isn’t doing this out of cold calculus. He will actually believe the politics because that’s what fits his incentives and makes him the good guy, actually.
If they wanted you to think his actions were against their values, they would have said “against”. The fact that it’s a company owner and CEO, means that the company values and the owner’s values are the same, whether they publicly state it or not. That’s why they’ve made such a fence-sitting PR statement. Even when they’re trying to downplay the link between the company values and the owner’s values, they don’t commit because the owner’s values are the company’s values.
He’s a fascist. Part of fascism is co-opting Marxist talking points but pinning the blame on other working class people. The reason fascism comes about is due to a worsening life for regular people, leading them to believe the current system is rigged against them. Marxism tells them there is a different way and blames capitalism. Fascism tells them there’s a different way and it’s blame other working class people. Existing capitalists, like Daniel, see the Marxists as a threat to their power and throw their support behind the fascist to maintain power.
Listen to a lot of Trump’s campaign speeches leading up to the 2016 election and it sounds like stuff from the occupy wall st movement, right up until he starts railing against Mexicans. That’s what fascism is.
In a privately owned company, the wishes of the owners are the wishes of the company. Especially with political actions, treating them as completely separate is just putting blinders on.
You’re moving the goalposts. Claiming to be against it and saying they had nothing to do with it aren’t the same thing.
I think a lot of IPOs are like that
Just to be clear, this “truck” is absolutely tiny. It’s several inches shorter than a Toyota Corolla. I think it’s pretty great for a city dweller that occasionally has a need for a bit more carrying capacity.
Edit: with the one big caveat that a lot of city dwellers don’t have access to charging at home.
I have nothing against personal dash cams. I don’t like them internet connected.
Wait I thought we were talking about bad features…
My point is that the Bible and Christianity isn’t the source of the nationalism. I didn’t want to get into the weeds but I’ve got more time now so fuck it.
Many people, especially religious people, believe that religion is a driver of values. They believe their religion gives them a moral compass that isn’t affected by the whims of modern society. But I don’t think that’s true. I think a person’s religion can be easily molded to fit their worldly values. Their changing interpretation of their religion is used to claim they’ve been following the same religion the whole time.
I think a person’s entire worldview is far more maleable than they want to think. Your ethics, moral system, religion, views on your role in society, definitions on who is the in-group or not, all easily change in order to fit your incentives. I used to work as a manufacturing engineer in the auto industry. A lot of my job was indirectly automating other peoples’ jobs. But nobody wants to feel like they’re the bad guy, so I had an elaborate system of lies that I believed in order to make myself the good guy who was making the workers more productive, and setting the stage for them to get better pay. I had evidence all around me that wasn’t true but I was able to create a system where making a bunch of money eliminating the jobs of poor people was a good thing. It was only after a year or so of being out of that work that I saw it for what it was.
Fascism rises because it sees the same problems caused by capitalism and interprets the cause as national conflict rather than class conflict. The “globalist” elites are causing the problems. They seek a rebirth of the nation’s power under a visionary leader, unencumbered by the limits placed by the globalists (like checks on power).
I should point out that the nation isn’t the same as the country. Nationalism has been such a successful political ideology since the French revolution that we use “nation” and “country” interchangeably but they’re different. A country is defined by the state. It has borders and a government and institutions. A nation is more nebulous and mystical. It’s a group of unified people who can express power through their unity. Malcolm X and the Black Panthers spread the idea of black nationalism which redefined American blacks as being a unified, powerful people who were colonized by the White population. Nationalist movements have to constantly redefine what it means to be part of that nation in order to eliminate dissenters. The Black Panthers published a “bootlicker” column in their newspaper that called out black civil rights leaders that were more peaceful or didn’t like the Panthers. It didn’t just point it why they were wrong. They got called agents of the white colonizers. The nation was redefined without them.
American fascists do the same thing with “real Americans”. At first it means citizens, then it means people born here, then it means Christians. Soon it will mean Christians of (white) European decent. They need to constantly redefine who this nation expressing power is because if they don’t, those that disagree with them internally will threaten the legitimacy of their nationalist movement. They’re using a lot of the same mass politics and “power to the people” thinking of Marxists but they’ve defined their oppressors as those outside the nation. Once Christianity becomes tied to their national identity, the values of their Christianity change to fit the narrative.
Christianity didn’t create these values. It didn’t create any values. People shaped their values by their incentives and will redefine whatever’s needed along the way. Attacking the religion is missing the root of the issue. It’s accepting their nationalist framework and definitions. If these people were any other religion or completely secular, the results would be the same with different labels. Don’t attack the nation and accept their nationalist definitions of that nation. Attack the capitalism that drives nationalism and the idea of nationalism itself.