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Dominionists in the United States

Started by Recusant, April 14, 2019, 02:50:51 AM

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Icarus

Trump has played the christian card to the hilt. He has lied to and conned ordinary people into completely believing that he is the Messiah. A frighteningly large number of US citizens have drunk the Kool Aid.

In general the Trumpers are the less educated, and more easily beguiled. Sad to say that they outnumber the more cerebral citizenry.  Worse still, the bible believer, gullible hillbillies, can and do, vote.


Asmodean

Quote from: Icarus on February 27, 2024, 03:40:09 AMIn general the Trumpers are the less educated, and more easily beguiled.
The first part is typical enough for a populist candidate - the second is typical enough for people. The likes of extinction rebellion, The Woke(tm), the academia and, of course, the faithful, drink their Kool Aid too.

Being intellectually (or otherwise) gifted does not bar entry to any Kool Aid society, as I see it.
Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on July 25, 2013, 08:18:52 PM
In Asmo's grey lump,
wrath and dark clouds gather force.
Luxembourg trembles.

Icarus

Quote from: Asmodean on February 27, 2024, 07:44:36 AM
Quote from: Icarus on February 27, 2024, 03:40:09 AMIn general the Trumpers are the less educated, and more easily beguiled.


Being intellectually (or otherwise) gifted does not bar entry to any Kool Aid society, as I see it.

Quite so, however the educated are less likely to fall for the con jobs that the pols and the preachers put forth.

Asmodean

Mmmmh... It sounds as though it should be true, and yet... It may or may not be - depends on what the preacher in question is peddling.

The second one ventures beyond the exact sciences, educated people get about as full of shit as everyone else, at least in my opinion, though they tend to be more eloquent about it.

A polished turd is still a turd, unfortunately, and smells as turdy beneath that shiny surface.
Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on July 25, 2013, 08:18:52 PM
In Asmo's grey lump,
wrath and dark clouds gather force.
Luxembourg trembles.

Icarus

Part of being educated is the ability and propensity for weighing alternatives. Perhaps the term educated needs a finer definition.

Taking a flier here........... round number statistics suggest that the less educated are also less rational.  The US state of Alabama is among the less educated. They have one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy, the highest divorce rate, the largest rate of incarceration,the highest rate of religiosity, and a few more highest rates of not doing well.

The state of New York has an upper division record for educating their citizenry. The murder rate in New York state is five per one hundred thousand. That is pretty serious but Alabama has a murder rate of 15 per hundred thousand. Do we dare entertain the notion that education, thus a higher degree of sophistication, or a better understanding of risk/gain ratio, has anything to do with those statistics?..........but wait a moment......New York is far less religious than Alabama, or Mississippi, or Arkansas, or Louisiana. Could that play into the murder rates too?

Disclaimer:  Alabama, perennially, has the the most successful college football teams in America. Mississippi and Louisiana are not far behind in college football power..........one must wonder about the priorities. 

   

 

Dark Lightning

All you need is to be big, strong and stupid (mostly) to play football. Remedial classes are provided for the culturally educationally deprived. I paraphrased that from a tune some of you guys may recognize...  ;) Left some clues, though.

Asmodean

Quote from: Icarus on February 29, 2024, 01:27:40 AMPart of being educated is the ability and propensity for weighing alternatives. Perhaps the term educated needs a finer definition.
Perhaps it does. Here, I'm speaking in terms of people generally having completed a level of education beyond 10 years of what is compulsory in Norway. Otherwise, we pretty much have "no" uneducated people, aside from some who come from abroad and the discussion turns "terminologically meaningless." "The uneducated are more likely to..." "-Who cares? 'nobody's' uneducated."

QuoteTaking a flier here........... round number statistics suggest that the less educated are also less rational.  The US state of Alabama is among the less educated. They have one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy, the highest divorce rate, the largest rate of incarceration,the highest rate of religiosity, and a few more highest rates of not doing well.
Mmh... Very "round" (in the sense of sweepingly broad) numbers, as you put it, those. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that it's not a variable in a much larger consideration, but do let us examine the issue more closely because interesting.

In the case of Alabama, what is Huntsville contributing to their murder statistics? Now, what is Hillbillyville with its 100 stereotypically-related people who "can't even read" contributing? Because it may well be that the murder rate in comparatively well-educated Huntsville is orders of magnitude that of Hillbillyville, which last saw a murder in 1903. Of course, if we zoom in again, perhaps there are poor areas in Huntsville, dominated by gangs, and that's where the discrepancy comes from. In fact, perhaps the kids of Hillbillyvillians move to Huntsville, find gang-related work and drive the statistics up there, while Hillbillyville remains "quiet?"

Disclaimer: Alabama is a hugely diverse state - something that is not being reflected well in my illustrative example. I picked Huntsville because it's Alabama's "tech center," while Hillbillyville is a hypothetical "dying town" in the "middle of nowhere."

QuoteThe state of New York has an upper division record for educating their citizenry. The murder rate in New York state is five per one hundred thousand. That is pretty serious but Alabama has a murder rate of 15 per hundred thousand. Do we dare entertain the notion that education, thus a higher degree of sophistication, or a better understanding of risk/gain ratio, has anything to do with those statistics?..........but wait a moment......New York is far less religious than Alabama, or Mississippi, or Arkansas, or Louisiana. Could that play into the murder rates too?
As rates go, 0,005 is reasonably comparable to 0,015.

Let us not get diverted by that observation too much though, because you do pose a very interesting question. I think that to say that religion specifically is a "deciding" (Or, significantly co-deciding) variable here would be "just off-center." ("Not-wrong," as I usually put it) I think it comes down to held values, rather than the professed/institutional(-ised) ones. Why is a life in Alabama statistically "cheaper" than one in New York, which is in turn statistically cheaper than one in Torsken, a fishing "middle of nowhere" here in Norway?

QuoteDisclaimer:  Alabama, perennially, has the the most successful college football teams in America. Mississippi and Louisiana are not far behind in college football power..........one must wonder about the priorities.
It's nice to not be the only one to disclaim. :smilenod:
Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on July 25, 2013, 08:18:52 PM
In Asmo's grey lump,
wrath and dark clouds gather force.
Luxembourg trembles.

Recusant

#232
Correlation and perhaps some causation.  ;)






First, get their Cyrus back into office, then on to the Seven Mountains . . .

For reference: Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise (PDF) | Heritage Foundation

"Decoding Project 2025's Christian Nationalist language" | Salon

QuoteIn George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, characters engage in doublespeak, a way of distorting language to obscure its true meaning. Christian Nationalists have mastered their own doublespeak. Nowhere is this more apparent than when reading Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation's manifesto for transforming our government into a Christo-fascist regime.

Christian Nationalists are taught to be "in the world but not of it." This means they are called to live alongside the world's non-Christians, but they are called to remain separate and apart from secular behavior and influence. One way they attempt to remain apart is with language. They speak in a language I call Evangelicalese. I grew up in the world of Christian Nationalism. Evangelicalese was my second language.

By studying Project 2025 and the specific language Christian Nationalist politicians use, we can translate the words they say into what those words really mean to them. A Christian Nationalist's use of a word or phrase may mean something very different to someone outside their community. It is vital to grasp what Christian Nationalists mean when they say things. because they deploy Evangelicalese to hide extreme positions in plain sight.

Nowhere is this more apparent than when reading Project 2025.

On pornography

QuotePornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.
- Project 2025, [page 5 of PDF]

To many media outlets, this was a throwaway paragraph. Why would anyone make more of it? The average American understands pornography generally includes mediums like adult websites, adult films, fetish sites and similar.

To a Christian Nationalist, pornography means those things, but it also means a lot more.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has called homosexuality pornography. Oklahoma state representative Tom Woods has deemed transgenderism to be filth, a stand-in word for pornography. A Florida school pulled images of Michelangelo's David because parents considered it to be pornographic.

Is an artist who paints a nude artwork a pornographer? What about a romance author who writes racy love scenes? Or a columnist like Dan Savage who pens sex advice? A Christian Nationalist's definition of pornography goes far beyond what the rest of the country considers to be porn. This difference matters because they intend to imprison creators and consumers of anything they consider to be pornography.

[. . .]

Orwell understood that the manipulation of language is an insidious tool of autocracies. Christian Nationalists have been working for decades to pollute the discourse as a means to power and control. The future of American democracy depends upon understanding what Christian Nationalists mean when they say things. It is vital to drill down into their doublespeak, or we may find ourselves living in a dystopian reality created in the image of their Christian Nationalist faith.

[Link to full article.]
"Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration — courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth."
— H. L. Mencken


Dark Lightning

^ Those people have issues, and I hope that they don't prevail.