It's why them calling themselves Christian is a joke.
I'm an atheist, but was raised Christian, and unlike most of them, actually read their rulebook. If Jesus Christ of the New Testament existed, no one in the "Christian" right would be welcome in his house. It's not even about no true Scottsman, they don't try but fall short of their self-professed Lord's word. They literally, enthusiastically play opposite day with their self-identified Lord's word every single day and call it piety.
The Bible to them is nothing but a prop, thumping the book they don't read as they see it is literally just a means to be morally "on base," knowing themselves to be morally superior while having license to support any inhumanty, solely by virtue of holding that book they don't read, because they choose to willfully ignore any intrinsic sense of morality in favor of hatred and schaudenfreude they've been conditioned to need through for profit media and for profit prosperity gospel confidence scams.
Pathetic zombies, most of whom are beyond any hope of deprogramming, as they've darkly poetically developed a taste for human blood.
As an anticap American, made so by our worship of greed and glut and sociopathic cruelty in the name of profit, I make it my mission at work to do as little as possible, and gum up the works at my greedy employer's as much as possible without it looking like I am.
I'm doing my part to stifle GDP! Are you?
(In a non-captured oligarchal dictatorship, if you wanted worker buy in, remake the tax code to punish corporations and incentivize cooperatives. That can't happen here, we're too captured, but theoretically)
At which point, I will roll my eyes, tear up my ballot, and go home. 24 years of voting for least worst, and phone banking for a primary candidate I actually liked in two campaigns to no avail will have been enough for me if the 2028 candidate isn't an economic leftist, because I already feel like a sucker and capitalism enabler.
The oligarchs were never not going to shoot the hostages for a tidy profit.
Agreed, but no one would be threatening to annex Canada or abolish income derived repayment for student loans either.
Even one being slightly less harmful is harm reduction. Both are taking us on a train ride to hell, and one going 65 is still harm reduction when the only other choice is a train ride to hell at 75.
Harm reduction means there's no good option. You can argue accelerating towards collapse with Trump will make things better faster than limping along until capitalist climate change forces it in 20 years or so, but you never know what you'll get on the other side, could be an iron fisted military dictatorship with Don Jr. As the permanent figurehead.
Sometimes, providing clean needles so the heroin user doesn't ALSO get HIV is better than not. Something that works as a metaphor, and also a social policy position our two capitalist owned parties do disagree on in practice. That's something the owners allow us to have an opinion on, as thats a poorie problem that doesn't meaningfully effect their profit expectations. No skin off their nose.
I think the United States, culturally, is on track to have about as much hope in positive change as your average Russian.
That's what happens when you have a supposed generational leader calling for an age of positive progressive change culminating in... a heritage foundation conceived plan to further enshrine private insurers and the profit motive, the core blight, into our broken healthcare system. Then have his party never stop bragging about doing so. The DNC still acts like we should be thanking them for using their super majority to do... That.
Yeah, at this point, this government is too captured to hope for anything but pain rationally, at least on the timescale of human lifespans.
Unfortunately many don't take the next step, look at nations that do serve their people like the Nordic model, and revolt for a government that serves them in similar fashion.
Because you do have to be a completely blind, willfully ignorant sucker to still believe our vote can do more than let us tread water.
Agreed, but once again, the elephant in the room is not being able to afford to have children. Neoliberals stand in the way with Republicans on human citizens being able to afford a family with one child.
It's an important social issue, what I'm saying is almost all social issues are heavily informed by and often exacerbated by economic policy that ALEC had more say in than the American people.
It is when both parties get the same orders from the same bribers on economic policy and merely war on how to or if to address some of the social issue symptoms, the ones that don't effect their briber's quarterly results.
Example: they war over forced births, but abortion is often an ECONOMIC decision, and the markets have demanded 2 breadwinners the last few decades to make moar from themselves, which is antisocial and antifuture. You won't hear either party calling for a single income for most to all being able to support a family. That's a matter of economic policy. That's a choice. There would objectively, naturally be fewer abortions without coersion if economic desperation wasn't defended here by both parties, no threat of state violence required.
No, our choice is on the social issue of forced births? No forced births? Your choice lol... Then get back to work, battery.
To be fair to them, we're just delaying collapse. It is a choice.
I agree with them that there's no saving this constitutional structure. In one sense it's cowardly, because there's no escape from this capitalist slaughterhouse hellscape without collapse. Collapse is necessary. Trump will certainly usher that in faster.
But Im too much of a softy to let the blood that always has to spill be on my hands.
This country was irreparable since Reagan, a zombie nation oligarch piggie bank. My vote was a cowardly one for a few more years of quiet orderly slaughter, NOT peace.
But we lost, so the slaughter will be loud and bigger than it's ever been, so maybe it's time for revolution if we want our kids to have anything left.
Because in 4 years the DNC WILL anoint someone to meet Trump's economy in the middle, and even I may not be able to stomach voting for that.
I voted for Harris. I voted for Biden. I voted for Clinton.
I still wouldn't warn a single one of them if they were about to get hit by a bus.
Its harm reduction. They don't solve anything. They just keep us treading water sinking slowly whereas Republicans start taking a hammer to the hull to open up new holes.
These people are victims too. Our schools were sabotaged for private profit. News was sabotaged for private profit, and these people have been swimming in "distrust your own senses" corpo propaganda for half a century.
The capitalists that bought our government made these people. I don't like them, they're not redeemable, but they are victims, the capitalists want you to hate these people and keep buying their products.
Be angry at the right people. The owners. Pity their pathetic, for all intents and purposes lobotomized rubes. They'll still call capitalist made climate change a hoax when the CAT 5 has turned their home into confetti.
You can't expect people of or below average intelligence to just magically think and reason critically in a nation where such skills are taught at college level.
As someone who's also glad, the falsehood that we get what we deserve after we die is a very harmful one.
Justice doesn't come naturally or in some fairy tale afterlife. Justice came to Brian because someone else saw to it that it did.
The world would be a better place if people weren't deluded into believing the universe or some imagined deity will make things fair. It's a very pretty lie, but it has equally ugly consequences.
If we want a just world, we need to make one. It won't be handled off screen for us. This life is all we get.
Good thing we haven't been a functioning democratic republic since the 1970s and don't get a vote on our economy, as both parties are well bribed to protect the sociopathic economy from the citizens it hurts.
In a perfect world, someone with Brian's insatiable, murderous greed disease would be put in a psychiatric hospital for public safety, along with every billionaire and hundred million plus inaire that treats society as their exploitation piggy bank, not that many people, but the sociopaths run the asylum here.
This is a class war, whether you choose to show your belly and say thank you for trading your life for their profit to your enemy or not. Brian was an enemy combatant of this class occupation.
Lawlessness is better than what we have, laws that serve a couple million at everyone else's, hundreds of million's expense with no legal recourse.
We get no say in economic policy or regulation, only the how or if to address some of the social issue symptoms of that economy through our legally bribed parties. Arguing over abortion's legality instead of why productivity per worker has multiplied while the owner class now demands 2 breadwinners in most cases to survive, which is why most abortions happen, not enough to survive. But we don't legislate the "free" to die in the streets alone market, so the argument becomes forced births or not. The argument should be to fundamentally change what our economy should be oriented to reward like teachers and nurses, and punish like insatiable, sociopathic, antisocial greed and vocations/investments that hurt society for individual profit. But both major parties are well bribed to say that's evil socialism and tar and feather anyone who would dare say that to either of them.
Our system is already worse than lawlessness, our system is laws made by the wealthy (see ALEC) to extract the very lives from the poor for private profit, that the poor must simply suffer to remain lawful. It is effectively one way lawlessness from above. They can kill you with a dictate to their sycophants to deny more claims while sipping expensive bourbon on a beach, or by ignoring an expensive product safety issue, or by lowering inspection standards to save a buck and poisoning baby formula, and you and/or your baby can die quietly now that they have your money. That's the law here and now.
Makes lawlessness seem pretty attractive given the current intransigent oligarchy killing us for profit legally...
Those same people conveniently refuse to consider murder with a con (pay us now for Healthcare when you inevitably get sick) and and pen (lol we were lying thanks for all the money go die now) to be murder.
The problem is that the capitalists, through their for profit media and bribed government official bully pulpit, simply drown out rational economic discussion in favor of "WE MUST STOP TAXING JOB CREATORS, REGULATION HINDERS GROWTH, FAST FOOD JOBS ARE FOR TEENAGERS TO BUY LOLIPOPS THEY DON'T NEED LIVING WAGES" etc.
I don't think there's a solution to this short of revolution, they control the signal, kill most truthful messages like trickle down was a self-serving lie by them to rob the nation blind, and if something happens like Luigi and they can't directly kill the signal, they start creating divisive messaging about it to scatter and create anymous between those listening. I'm seeing a lot from mainstream media trying to divide Luigi supporters as somehow a racial issue on the grounds the public is "falling into the white savior complex trap" Divide and conquer. Stoke every culture war but the one that informs all others: the class war. Profit.
You can have the most profound messaging possible with truth on your side, but unfortunately, the ones with the most volume win. It's why strength of argument has nothing to do with effecting policy in our dystopic nation of greed worship, as the last 50 years demonstrate.
It's why them calling themselves Christian is a joke.
I'm an atheist, but was raised Christian, and unlike most of them, actually read their rulebook. If Jesus Christ of the New Testament existed, no one in the "Christian" right would be welcome in his house. It's not even about no true Scottsman, they don't try but fall short of their self-professed Lord's word. They literally, enthusiastically play opposite day with their self-identified Lord's word every single day and call it piety.
The Bible to them is nothing but a prop, thumping the book they don't read as they see it is literally just a means to be morally "on base," knowing themselves to be morally superior while having license to support any inhumanty, solely by virtue of holding that book they don't read, because they choose to willfully ignore any intrinsic sense of morality in favor of hatred and schaudenfreude they've been conditioned to need through for profit media and for profit prosperity gospel confidence scams.
Pathetic zombies, most of whom are beyond any hope of deprogramming, as they've darkly poetically developed a taste for human blood.