GiuseppeAndTheYeti

You're conflating missionary messaging with publicly practicing faith and praying. The message there, presumably, is to bring philanthropy to every person on the planet to teach and recruit others to do good in the world. If your sticking point is "teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you" then yes that's every religion but also every government faction and moral think-tank in totality. People telling people what they can and can't do.

What's your end goal here? Ban all religion and tell people what they can and can't believe in? If you and someone share philosophical beliefs you're not allowed to meet up and talk about them?

I see the issue. You're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Obviously telling others what they can and can't do or sowing violence while using your religion as justification is bad. But even the bible says that spirituality should be practiced in private. There's nuance to the world and just because bad things happen due to corrupted religious teaching doesn't mean that all religion or spirituality is bad.

Having grown up catholic in rural Illinois, it's just a case of mixed messaging and infiltration. Think of it like this:

You inherited a chili recipe—representing your morality and culture—from your parents. Growing up, you helped make it every week, so you know the flavors well. In your family’s version of chili, beans—symbolizing religion—were always the most important ingredient. Peppers—representing politics—were known, but they were more of a background note, never central.

Fast forward a generation, and a certain group starts promoting the idea that chili must be spicy. They want to sell their own particular kind of pepper—a harsh, punishing version of God—and they push this idea aggressively. They use people your parents trust, who already like spicier chili, to reinforce the message.

Suddenly, everyone around you starts loading their chili with these peppers because they’re told it’s the only way to avoid bland chili—blandness, in this case, representing hell. The fear of tasteless chili becomes a powerful motivator.

Religion is a sickness in YOUR opinion. Rationalism is just as dangerous as any other -ism whether it be Buddhism, Catholicism, Confucianism, Moral Absolutism, or Atheism. Just because you think you're right doesn't mean that you are. Instead maybe focus on spreading your moral message constructively instead of destructively. You're bullhorn-ing exactly what his indoctrinators said the outside world is trying to do--destroy his religion.

Labeling a religious figure as an imaginary friend is very reductionist. Instead, go to the root issue. Right wing political messaging corrupted and brainwashed this person to be an ultra nationalist using lies to prey on his core beliefs through fear, religion, and superiority complex.

I get what you're saying, and you're not wrong, but I seriously doubt that protests would have escalated to the point that LAPD would be using pepper balls, rubber bullets, and tear gas if not for the national guard being federalized. To me that was an escalation in itself.

It'd be like 3-4 officers standing in a line across from protesters just watching in case things were to get out of hand. Then all of a sudden a sheriff from another state insults the protesters, sends 20 other officers in riot gear to stand next to you, and they start walking at the protesters to intimidate and beat them. So sure LAPD is more than capable of being huge pieces of shit, but what is the sheriff supposed to do in this situation? Pull his officers off the streets entirely? It's still his jurisdiction. That'd be wholely irresponsible.

Go for it. There's not nearly enough active duty national guardsmen capable of deploying to all 50 states.

See the funny thing about the English language is that they're almost certainly implying that he looks like a specific person that they're pretending exists. But to me it reads like they're using a general description of all the subjects that they've already detained.

I think it's moreso that people misunderstand what you're implying. That making them "martyrs" is a good thing to help identify more pieces of shit that rally behind their martyrdom.

Yeah, let's just keep taking the moral high road. Eventually shitty people will just stop existing. There's no reason to actively work on removing them. 🥴

Shit will keep flowing into a sewage treatment plant if you don't treat the sewage. In the end you just end up with a mountain of shit to deal with and the problem is much more difficult to manage.

Can people tell me why we keep using the stupid fucking "border czar" term? I want to know who the fuck these people are and what their actual titles are. It makes reading headlines such a fucking chore. I end up having to google the context of a headline like every 4th article.

For those curious, Tom Homan's actual title is White House Executive Associate Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations

People have trouble separating the art from the artist. I don't blame them. It's tough sometimes. I used to really love Kanye before he turned out to be a nazi. Watch the Throne and Graduation are fantastically produced albums with some excellent songs. Same with College Dropout.

I still listen to them when they come up in my playlists but the magic is pretty well gone. I think that he was and is mentally ill so with the right people around him he probably wouldn't have turned into such a piece of shit, but here we are.