casimir Posted July 20 Share Posted July 20 14 minutes ago, Edman85 said: Here's what I don't get... Vance claims to be from Appalachia. I grew up 40 minutes from where he did... maybe 50 minutes. Either way, the area between Dayton and Cincinnati is not Appalachia. That's midwestern suburbia. Since when has the truth mattered? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gehringer_2 Posted July 20 Share Posted July 20 7 hours ago, Tigeraholic1 said: No the reason America is terrible is because of right wing Christians. It has been mentioned more than once in this forum. And it's actually so much more general than that - it's "True Believer Syndrome" and really, it can be about anything. Religion is one obvious place, certainly maybe the worst place, where it expresses itself and of course it's not confined to Christianity - taking orthodoxy to the extreme is a problem in Hinduism, Islam, Judiasm, pretty much you name it. But it's not even confined to religion, secular 'True Belief" is right up there - Nazism, Lenninism, Maoism, have all taken their toll, and I'd even add Putin's twisted Russian Nationalism as an expression of the same kind of human catastrophe. It's all the same - they are all examples of the human psyche falling in love with the products of it's own deduction while ignoring the empirical reality the universe has put there for us to see, learn, and get with the program. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chasfh Posted July 20 Share Posted July 20 Interesting part of Vance’s Wikipedia page is the description of his military service: After graduating from Middletown High School in 2003,[12] Vance enlisted in the US Marine Corps. He was deployed to Iraq as a combat correspondent for six months in late 2005.[13][14] There, he was assigned to the Public Affairs section of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing.[15][16] About his service, he commented that it "taught me how to live like an adult" and he was "lucky to escape any real fighting".[17] So, to paraphrase Full Metal Jacket (h/t romad), he wasn’t at the front with the grunts—he was in the rear with the gear. I’ll be interested to see whether he reshapes the narrative to remake himself as a military badass. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMRivdogs Posted July 20 Share Posted July 20 29 minutes ago, Edman85 said: Here's what I don't get... Vance claims to be from Appalachia. I grew up 40 minutes from where he did... maybe 50 minutes. Either way, the area between Dayton and Cincinnati is not Appalachia. That's midwestern suburbia. The one thing that bothered me about the book was near the beginning. He talked about working in a machine shop or someplace similar where they hired a guy who barely worked (there may have been dugs involved as well). Basically there are people like that everywhere. Now he's ranting about Latinos taking white people's jobs. If the white guy didn't want to work and the brown guy does, how is that the current president's or problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chasfh Posted July 20 Share Posted July 20 11 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said: And it's actually so much more general than that - it's "True Believer Syndrome" and really, it can be about anything. Religion is one obvious place, certainly maybe the worst place, where it expresses itself and of course it's not confined to Christianity - taking orthodoxy to the extreme is a problem in Hinduism, Islam, Judiasm, pretty much you name it. But it's not even confined to religion, secular 'True Belief" is right up there - Nazism, Lenninism, Maoism, have all taken their toll, and I'd even add Putin's twisted Russian Nationalism as an expression of the same kind of human catastrophe. It's all the same - they are all examples of the human psyche falling in love with the products of it's own deduction while ignoring the empirical reality the universe has put there for us to see, learn, and get with the program. Out of all these, though, Christianity is the most privileged belief system in this country, the one system you’re ill-advised say anything about—whether you’re talking about the tenets of true-believerism or, really, about anything else—unless it’s either with effusive praise, or else you’re ready to withstand the withering snowflakey responses you get. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tigeraholic1 Posted July 20 Share Posted July 20 1 hour ago, mtutiger said: I mean, you are the one who invoked Mitt Romney's faith to impugn his motives and/or character here. To build on that a little more. Mormons are huge 2nd amendment advocates. You gotta remember most Americans in the 1800’s viewed Mormonism as a cult (many still do). They were chased off everywhere they went. (Look up 1838 Mormon war as one example). They have vowed to be ready to fight the US gov’t again if ever provoked. My niece and nephews had to be able to strip and reassemble in AR15 for Sunday school when they were 12 kind of a right of passage thing. They are the gun culture. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMRivdogs Posted July 20 Share Posted July 20 7 hours ago, Tigeraholic1 said: No the reason America is terrible is because of right wing Christians. It has been mentioned more than once in this forum. My problem with RW Christians is they want everyone to follow "RW Christian" beliefs. Falwell, Robertson, the slew of TV Evangelists, etc. I grew up as a "Back Pew" Presbyterian, spent time in the Church of the Brethren, dipped my toes in the pool of a MEGA Church. Too much politics inside the church, and too much pressure to get those outside the church to follow their believes. When "ministers' like Robertson and Falwell started putting politics ahead of their faith, IMO, that's where they lose me What happened to "Give to Caesar" and "When you pray, go into your inner room, shut the door and pray to your father in private"? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MichiganCardinal Posted July 20 Share Posted July 20 9 hours ago, mtutiger said: I think Buttigieg is a future Presidential candidate. Hopefully when he's still in his 40s or 50s and not when he's in his 80s. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Motown Bombers Posted July 20 Share Posted July 20 6 minutes ago, MichiganCardinal said: I think Buttigieg is a future Presidential candidate. Hopefully when he's still in his 40s or 50s and not when he's in his 80s. Yeah we don't want him to be old and successful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Motown Bombers Posted July 20 Share Posted July 20 Here's the upstanding Josh Hawley calling for Christian Nationalism. "We are a nation forged from Augustine's vision," he said. "A nation defined by the dignity of the common man as given to us in the Christian religion, a nation held together by the homely affections articulated in the Christian faith: love for family, love for neighbor, home and country. "I'm sure some will say now that I am calling America a Christian nation. And so I am. And some will say that I am advocating Christian nationalism. And so I do... my question is, is there any other kind worth having?" Hawley went on to say that "the truth is, Christian nationalism is not a threat to American democracy." He claimed that American democracy was founded by Christian nationalism. It is "the best form of democracy yet devised, it is the most just the most free, the most humane, and the most praiseworthy," he added. "The Christian political tradition is our political tradition. It is the American political tradition." https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/josh-hawley-doubles-down-on-christian-nationalism-remarks/ar-BB1pJ5iE 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1984Echoes Posted July 20 Share Posted July 20 8 minutes ago, MichiganCardinal said: I think Buttigieg is a future Presidential candidate. Hopefully when he's still in his 40s or 50s and not when he's in his 80s. How about RIGHT NOW!!! I mean... AFTER the DNC, when Biden steps down and hands the reins over to Kamala Harris as Presidential candidate and with Buttigieg as the VP of the ticket. Then... he'll get his chance at the top in 8 years... where he can serve the following 8 years. I have it all planned out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Motown Bombers Posted July 20 Share Posted July 20 Buttigieg got destroyed by the black vote. He was ahead of Biden after Iowa and New Hampshire but got killed in South Carolina. It would be an unmitigated disaster. The ageism that is accepted is pretty shocking. Biden is doing the job better than his predecessors but needs to be discarded because he is old and therefore useless. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chasfh Posted July 20 Share Posted July 20 9 minutes ago, chasfh said: Out of all these, though, Christianity is the most privileged belief system in this country, the one system you’re ill-advised say anything about—whether you’re talking about the tenets of true-believerism or, really, about anything else—unless it’s either with effusive praise, or else you’re ready to withstand the withering snowflakey responses you get. After I posted this, I started thinking about it a little more, and it may have taken an embarrassingly long time to arrive at this, but I think I finally figured out why the evangelicals and other staunch Christians gravitate to Trump: their core identities revolve around being martyrs who are constantly persecuted. Christianity itself has a very basic persecution origin story: God Himself sent his Son to Earth to spread His message of peace and love, and the apostates, aided by the Jews, God’s once-chosen people, persecuted Him literally to Death. The early history of Christianity is littered with persecution stories: how the Romans fed them to the lions; how the Jews and Persians drove the Christians out of Jerusalem in the 7th Century; how the Muslims tried to wipe out the Christians in the Crusade. This history of persecution is crucial to how Christians understand themselves and their place in the world. (Of course, their history doesn’t include how the Christians set up the Inquisitions to murder millions of unbelievers, but that’s neither here nor there for this post.) Even today, Christians love to regale anyone who might listen with tales of how their fellow believers are still being persecuted or even genocided today, in places like communist countries or Africa or Asia or any number of other places where Christians do not predominate. Even in this country, Christians constantly rail against certain parts of the culture, such as the media or Hollywood or academia, that do not elevate them and their beliefs to the privileged status they feel they deserve as being persecution on a cultural level. To maintain the fiction that the entire world is constantly trying to persecute them out of existence is vital to their self-identification. Trump, of course, has his own persecution story: he grew up ostracized by his peers, shunned by the polite society he craved attention and approval from, and worst of all, was given the cold shoulder by the father he adored. He has spent his entire adult life raging against “elites”, and fighting against what he perceives as the persecution of him, and he just. Won’t. Shut. The ****. Up. About it. And the ironic thing about all this, of course, is how both Trump and the Christians have succeeded almost beyond belief: Trump has been widely-considered one of the greater business tycoons of the 20th and 21st centuries and spent that entire period at least flirting with billionairehood; and the Christians have become a supermajority in the most powerful country in this history of the world, with large swaths of their believers controlling the government and constantly angling to use the machinations of what is supposed to be a secular government to legally privilege themselves and codify their beliefs into law. So how can two entities with such a core belief in their own persecution mythology not gravitate toward one another? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1984Echoes Posted July 20 Share Posted July 20 8 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said: Buttigieg got destroyed by the black vote. He was ahead of Biden after Iowa and New Hampshire but got killed in South Carolina. It would be an unmitigated disaster. The ageism that is accepted is pretty shocking. Biden is doing the job better than his predecessors but needs to be discarded because he is old and therefore useless. But he would have Sasha Obama as his VP. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mtutiger Posted July 20 Share Posted July 20 1 hour ago, Edman85 said: Here's what I don't get... Vance claims to be from Appalachia. I grew up 40 minutes from where he did... maybe 50 minutes. Either way, the area between Dayton and Cincinnati is not Appalachia. That's midwestern suburbia. For reference, Appalachia defined from the Appalachian Regional Commission, with approximate location of Middletown circled in red: As his book goes into, he did spend a lot of time in Jackson KY as a kid due to having family in the area. And I have no doubt that it influenced him. But you are correct, it isn't Appalachia and it comes across not genuine at all for him to claim that he hails from there. On top of this, the thing that bothers me a little bit is that even with his hometown of Middletown, the reality is that he left, went to Ohio State, ended up at Yale Law School, wrote his book and landed in the VC world of the Bay Area. I don't begrudge him for getting out, a lot of people do; I went to college and ended up elsewhere - couldn't do what I do for a living in my hometown. But while growing up in a small town can influence the outlook of people who have left, the reality is that for someone like JD who got the hell out as fast as he could and graduated into the "elite" class, it comes across phony as hell when he claims to have special insight. People recognize it. There's a longer discussion to be had on how radically his views of where he came from have changed since the time he wrote his book as well - whether one agrees with Kevin Williamson's views, his piece on JD does a really good job of breaking down the discrepencies and is well worth the read. https://thedispatch.com/article/government-isnt-your-mamaw/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tigeraholic1 Posted July 20 Share Posted July 20 14 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said: the Christian faith: love for family, love for neighbor, home and country. This, if you claim to be a Christain this is what it means. Anything else is false teaching. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mtutiger Posted July 20 Share Posted July 20 40 minutes ago, Tigeraholic1 said: To build on that a little more. Mormons are huge 2nd amendment advocates. You gotta remember most Americans in the 1800’s viewed Mormonism as a cult (many still do). They were chased off everywhere they went. (Look up 1838 Mormon war as one example). They have vowed to be ready to fight the US gov’t again if ever provoked. My niece and nephews had to be able to strip and reassemble in AR15 for Sunday school when they were 12 kind of a right of passage thing. They are the gun culture. In a discussion about the roles of Mitt Romney and Josh Hawley, vis a vis January 6th, I continue to fail to see how any of this is relevant. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MichiganCardinal Posted July 20 Share Posted July 20 17 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said: Yeah we don't want him to be old and successful. I'm on your side RE Biden. That doesn't mean that the ideal Presidential candidate moving forward should be five years older than the US life expectancy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1984Echoes Posted July 20 Share Posted July 20 Could we create Appalachia as one big state? And lop off all the territory of all the other states that go into it? And then we could add DC with representation in the House & Senate so it could be treated as a state even though it's more of a special district (they DO deserve representation... WTF is so hard about that...?) I'm good with that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tigeraholic1 Posted July 20 Share Posted July 20 1 minute ago, mtutiger said: In a discussion about the roles of Mitt Romney and Josh Hawley, vis a vis January 6th, I continue to fail to see how any of this is relevant. Just showing folks what you hitch your wagon to with Mitt. I like Mitt I like Hawley. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mtutiger Posted July 20 Share Posted July 20 2 minutes ago, Tigeraholic1 said: Just showing folks what you hitch your wagon to with Mitt. I like Mitt I like Hawley. I'm not hitching my wagon to anything lol 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr.TaterSalad Posted July 20 Share Posted July 20 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMRivdogs Posted July 20 Share Posted July 20 Some good points....thread.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
romad1 Posted July 20 Share Posted July 20 5 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said: Some good points....thread.. Was coming to post this… Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tigeraholic1 Posted July 20 Share Posted July 20 Since our government remains silent. People will continue to draw their own conclusions. Pretty good breakdown using software and geometry. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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