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Secular Liberalism is the true cancer. It has gutted our once unified moral compass and it's why our country is more divided and ready to rip apart. I wouldn't be surprised to see a civil war in my lifetime.
More likely the rise of a strong man authoritarian who promises to be the only one who can save us and restore us to ideological purity and unity. We have one of those on offer right now -- our very own Mussolini. Those who deny the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them.
How do you imagine this? Blue States vs Red States? All secularists wherever they may be, vs all theocrats? Everyone else against the fundamentalists? Whose side will the government be backing? How will the opponents be arming themselves? What would trigger such a war? I mean, if you have put any thought into your assertion, you must have some plausible scenarios in mind by way of details, right? Otherwise it is just noise.
Indeed. The cold hard truth for evangelicals is that no one is going to fight for them. If there is such a conflict it'll be a replay of the Civil War, a fight between those who want to oppress others on the right and those who oppose oppression of others on the left. Just like before, there will be state versus federal triggers, involving guns most likely, as well as voting rights (for those the right wishes to oppress). Evangelicals could pick a side - no one will turn down support - but they'd be paid the same kind of lip service they've been paid as the bastard step-children of the Republican coalition for the last forty years, and perhaps treated even worse, given that so many on the right now place their secular concerns over the holy.
Religion could play another, more fundamental role. The biggest gap in the left's political arsenal is its petty aversion to acknowledge and championing how what the left fights for is the morality that our nation's founders (including many members of my religion) distilled from their religious beliefs: Acknowledgement of the worth and dignity of all; anti-oppression, equity and compassion; free and responsible search for truth; democracy; peace, liberty and justice. We recognize these, today, at least tacitly, as American values. These words are found in our founding documents. However, these words are direct reflections of our founders religious values. And they were not evangelicals, I assure you.
More likely the rise of a strong man authoritarian who promises to be the only one who can save us and restore us to ideological purity and unity. We have one of those on offer right now -- our very own Mussolini. Those who deny the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them.
I gather you don't remember Stalin then.
Once Russia got rid of its Orthodox roots and became secular, he started killing people. Lots of people, mainly those he disliked but also priests and the like. Anyone who didn't go with the system.
You can compare Trump to Mussolini all you want, but fascism was mainly directed outward, toward oppressing others. Secular socialism is suicidal, it kills its own citizens for not following rather than simply trying grab land.
Because this is what we are voting for, Mussolini (a garden variety dictator, who mainly will attack certain minorities) or Stalin (a secular socialist, who calls our own citizens deplorable and irreedeemable, and is likely to remove such ppl once elected).
Trump is bad, but he has at most had a few mean words. Clinton is guilty of widescale treason against her own country, starting with emails, continuing with invitoing massive Syrian immigrants, and ending by "removing 'deplorable' elements" so to speak.
Once Russia got rid of its Orthodox roots and became secular, he started killing people. Lots of people, mainly those he disliked but also priests and the like. Anyone who didn't go with the system.
You can compare Trump to Mussolini all you want, but fascism was mainly directed outward, toward oppressing others. Secular socialism is suicidal, it kills its own citizens for not following rather than simply trying grab land.
Because this is what we are voting for, Mussolini (a garden variety dictator, who mainly will attack certain minorities) or Stalin (a secular socialist, who calls our own citizens deplorable and irreedeemable, and is likely to remove such ppl once elected).
Trump is bad, but he has at most had a few mean words. Clinton is guilty of widescale treason against her own country, starting with emails, continuing with invitoing massive Syrian immigrants, and ending by "removing 'deplorable' elements" so to speak.
Well if your word salad means anything I guess it is that you think Clinton is a Stalin-like figure and are more afraid of that than a buffoonish fascist dictator. I don't see any substantiation for your claims though. Her "deplorables" comment was more elitist than socialist; the real problem here is that instead of choosing between liberal populism based on compassion and empathy and populism based on fear and loathing of The Other and a belief in manifest destiny, as we would have if Sanders had won the nomination, we are choosing between apples and oranges. No wonder people are confused.
But this thread is about whether Trump destroyed Christian conservatism. I suggest circling back to that question.
He has not, as the faithful will continue to guzzle the koolaid. He has only brought to light many of the things that the Christian Right has been accused of since the beginning but could never be proven; that they are only in it for power and control and that at the core, it has little to do with morality.
Once Russia got rid of its Orthodox roots and became secular, he started killing people. Lots of people, mainly those he disliked but also priests and the like. Anyone who didn't go with the system.
You can compare Trump to Mussolini all you want, but fascism was mainly directed outward, toward oppressing others. Secular socialism is suicidal, it kills its own citizens for not following rather than simply trying grab land.
Because this is what we are voting for, Mussolini (a garden variety dictator, who mainly will attack certain minorities) or Stalin (a secular socialist, who calls our own citizens deplorable and irreedeemable, and is likely to remove such ppl once elected).
Trump is bad, but he has at most had a few mean words. Clinton is guilty of widescale treason against her own country, starting with emails, continuing with inviting massive Syrian immigrants, and ending by "removing 'deplorable' elements" so to speak.
I think you are looking for distinctions between he Nazis and Stalinism that aren't there. They both suppressed elements they felt were dissenting and required the people to toe the party line or not dissent from it. Hitler grabbed an empire at the start of the war and Stalin at the end of it.
As I say: fascism and Marxism are not extremes at each end of a line. They meet at the top of a circle, where they only need to swap cap -badges.
It is Trump rather than Clinton who is guilty of 'treason' as you put it, with Tax fraud and financial cons and scams, threatening another escalation of the Dubhya disaster, and being a representative of 'deplorable element' which fronts for (inter alia) Creationist fundies who want to suppress any education, science, thought, law and politics other than their own.
Well I don't think Trump is capable of registering disgrace, as he has no shame and basically no self awareness (as one writer aptly said, "he is untroubled by the presence of a soul"; he even said once "I don't do self-reflection, I might not like what I see.")
He isn't capable of registering defeat as anything other than an unfair imposition in his manifest destiny of greatness, a misunderstanding of his genius.
As for jail ... well, in the same way I think it's unprecedented banana republic blather to talk about jailing his opponent if elected, I wouldn't want to see it in the other direction. If he is properly convicted of an actual crime that the statue of limitations hasn't run out on, that would be great though.
As an aside, mostly the women accusing him are past the statue of limitations, but ironically, calling them liars is opening up something that's legally actionable: he can be sued for slander, in which case he'll have to prove that what they said is false. In other words he's making something legally dead, actionable, and also putting the burden of proof on himself. I hope someone takes him to court over just that very thing.
It isn't a matter of Trump being some kind of leader of the Christians, but rather Trump being the leader of the Republicans which up until now curried favor with Christian conservatism in return for votes. If Trump tags the GOP with attributes that are anathema to Christian conservatives - marital infidelity, abject disrespect for moral perspectives, etc. - then that would force true Christians to abandon the GOP or at least depress their interest in pursuing their objectives through political means. (Recall that prior to the 1960s, Christian conservatives considered politics, itself, too dirty to involve themselves in it.)
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