CleverOleg

I get that LotR has its problems but the fact that these hyper ghouls strip something from that beautiful text and wear it like a mask is absolutely disgusting to me, and I have no doubt Tolkien (despite his flaws) would be horrified.

I know several European researchers here in the US, and they are all looking to get the hell out of Dodge.

Saw this at my folks’ house, apparently my dad’s Sunday School men’s group is going through it. I skimmed it, kinda boring honestly just your basic red-baiting of democrats. I wanted to argue with him about it but my dad is such a political dumbass it would like arguing with a dog.

The New School in New York City might be good.

Things are bad and we can't provide for everyone, so people who we see as not being productive are therefore undesirable.

While I don’t think the Trump admin is literally copying what Javier Milei is doing, they really do seem to be following along the same path just a year or two behind. And in Argentina, it seems like the austerity is falling hardest on the most vulnerable populations like the elderly.

To back up your point, Jesus was almost certainly a Jewish apocalypticist, i.e. that the end of the world is coming very soon, so follow me and you’ll end out on top when it’s all sorted. Jesus’ claims about sharing wealth and not storing it up has more to do with the fact that he didn’t believe that there would be time to even spend it. And sharing it was just a way for the cult around him to survive better. If Jesus was a socialist then so was David fucking Koresh.

the millions of people using my religion as a shield for their bigotry

TENS of millions, and even that is being overly generous.

OP, I have a similar upbringing to you. I stopped being a Christian once I saw the Bible for what it was: just a bunch of letters written by people many centuries ago for various reasons; containing all sorts of beliefs and biases that people living 2,000 years ago had. I feel like that helped give me tremendous clarity as to what it is. I think the absolute pinnacle of morality and philosophy it contains is the Sermon on the Mount… and that, at best, is just meh. There’s just not much there. And if you want to say church tradition and philosophy is just as important as the Bible… well that’s a whole other can of worms to open.

I’m willing to admit that there are many people who follow a Christianity that isn’t necessarily reactionary. But frankly that whitewashes just how reactionary and detrimental it has been to human progress even in areas where things like liberation theology are strong.

And frankly, I love my comrades (❤️) but if you didn’t grow up in Evangelical Christianity you can’t really get just how horrible and destructive it is to people at an individual level and for society. I deal with this IRL with people I know who weren’t raised in it and are all like “oh it can’t be that bad” or “yeah but there’s still good parts too why focus on the negative”?

Edit: said another way, if you love Marvel movies and they mean a lot to you, have at it. It’s a valid way to spend you time. But that’s not gonna stop me from thinking it’s useless slop at best.

and with the far right on the rise worldwide

This is some “only the Global North really matters” type of thinking (I mean the author of the article, not you OP). Sure, fascism is on the rise in the US and Western Europe (and maybe some adjacent areas like Argentina or Poland)… but this isn’t necessarily true in the rest of the world. And I think the Catholic Church is pivoting to the Global South anyway. It’s sound logic that they may not want a further reformer, but I don’t buy the argument I quoted.

I had to spend the weekend in Trumpland. His supporters already have their excuses locked and loaded. No matter how bad the economy gets - 20% unemployment, 1929 stock market crash, whatever - the US economy was already fundamentally broken because of democrats and their “loony lefty” socialistic policies over the last few decades. However bad it gets, the suffering was “necessary” because our entire economy was built on a shaky foundation - not because of capitalism, of course. But because we didn’t do ENOUGH raw, uncut capitalism.

As someone in his early 40s, watching old shows is such a disorienting experience. I was hate -watching Home Improvement recently and Tim Allen was always the “old dad” to me but I’m seeing him on screen and realizing I’m actually older than that person now. Bizarre feeling.