He is former service. Can you expand on this? It seems relevant, particularly since the commenter who started this thread is very fixated on the specific words he used.
If anything I’m asking if we have the discernment and wherewithal to make a distinction between a nazi and a (maybe) former nazi and I’m in a little distress that the answers appears to be a firm “nope”, which means in your mind, the battle lines have already been drawn and there is no point trying to change people’s minds.
And aside from how fundamentally dangerous that is, we just don’t have the numbers. There just aren’t enough leaders or even normal people that will meet your purity test. 3 years ago, I likely wouldn’t have.
Or, you know, don’t leave room in the tent for the slower-to-evolve.
I fucking love my city. I truly believe Chicago is among the most beautiful cities in the world. I truly consider it a privilege to ride my bike along the lakefront trail with a gorgeous skyline on one side of me and a beautiful lakefront on the other side of me. We have amazing, truly world-class music, food, architecture, sports, and art.
The night my Cubs broke their 108 year championship drought, I stood on my front steps and hugged and fived random strangers into the late hours, all of us screaming our heads off; and all of those things I love about Chicago were elevated by and multiplied by the sheer sense of Communion I was having with hundreds of like-minded people who all felt the same way about our city and our team. It was the night my love for this city burned hottest.
Yesterday, in the park and on the streets, magnified and multiplied that by a million. I was surrounded as far as I could see in any direction by people who love this city and love this country as much as I do. It truly looked like every kind of person was represented.
It made it feel like we can actually do this, and that is exactly what Trump and co are afraid of.
I didn’t say awareness is most important, I said it was first order, and I stand by that.
I’m not saying this is enough and we should prop our feet up and wait for it all to blow over. I’m saying awareness itself is critically important for anything else to happen, and whether this is the thing that will do it or not (it won’t be one thing), it’s critical that more of the populace becomes aware.
I’m not even sure what we’re arguing about at this point, but you’re +7 in my upvote history so I clearly agree with you on a lot, but I think it is important for leaders to walk away and it’s important for people to see that happening.
You kid but awareness is a first order problem in the fight itself, and I hate to break it to you, but a significant portion of the population is not meaningfully aware of how dire it is.
Something like this might be the thing that gets through to them. There is also probably a large portion of the population who suspects how bad this is but doesn’t trust the media and is specifically looking to see how the military leaders react to this stuff.
If there are any perceived adults in the room at this point, it is probably the military.
I am reflexively really resistant to calling Christianity a cult because it doesn’t really meet all of the criteria we usually use to define a cult - particularly a singular charismatic leader.
But then…even that criteria arose in a culture dominated - hell totally saturated in Christianity, so I’m questioning those reflexive reactions lately.
I think Evangelical Christianity, which is now functionally interchangeable with Christian Nationalism, is, if not a doomsday cult, then certainly has all of the bad things you tend to think about when you think about doomsday cults but with orders of magnitude more actual political, social, and material power.
So in some ways, calling it a cult is really underselling how dangerous it is.
No no no. God is good and all powerful, but the forces of evil are ruling because everyone else is so sinful. So god is big sad/mad but it is also part of his plan so 👍
He is former service. Can you expand on this? It seems relevant, particularly since the commenter who started this thread is very fixated on the specific words he used.