chaonaut

joined 1 year ago
[–] chaonaut 1 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Expecting Christians to follow a given text to the letter will always be setting yourself up for failure. Not only do people pick and choose the doctrine they follow (or more often have it picked and chosen for them by their spiritual leader), different traditions have different emphasis and even different texts they're operating off of. Expecting an legalistic following of a specific interpretation will leave you expecting far different behavior that most of your observations will show.

[–] chaonaut 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Sorry, but it's actually pretty hard to dismiss the Romans passage, but it is something that can be chalked up to Paul being sex negative, going so far as to exhort people to be chaste or get married if they can't control their passion if, as he noted, they were not free from such passion as he claimed to be. The other passages commonly cited don't reference homosexuality nearly as directly, but it would not be a difficult argument to make that the word choices were specifically defaming homosexuality (especially given how common it is for people to use the same sort of defamation). Which isn't to say that every denomination adheres to the same interpretation of these passages, but they aren't on as theologically shaky ground as we might hope.

[–] chaonaut 19 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

The Heritage Foundation is wild, and one of the most significant public policy groups with deep ties to American conservatism. Basically, any crazy policy that the Republican party has taken on as a major party plank in the past 50 years has a distressing high chance of having its roots in Heritage's recommendations.

For example, in 1981:

Among the 2,000 Heritage policy recommendations, approximately 60% of them were implemented or initiated by the end of Reagan's first year in office.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heritage_Foundation

[–] chaonaut 14 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Yeah, given how much Trump and Republicans lean on Heritage, and Trump has been talking about doing some "light" tyranny on day 1, it's ridiculous to attempt to write off the Heritage Foundations' plan to Christian Fascism.

[–] chaonaut 37 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Now tell us how many Heritage Foundations recommendations do the Republicans and Trump take on board! Distancing the Heritage Foundations from them rather undersells the position of one of the most influential public policy organizations particularly within conservative politics.

[–] chaonaut 2 points 5 months ago

Which is also why they wind up filled with "small business owners" who seem to all be about making money off land they own.

[–] chaonaut 1 points 5 months ago

Based on the numbers I'm looking at, the people who didn't vote were the ones that were likely Republican voters. The people that stayed home were likely Republicans who did not vote for Trump. I'm all for political engagement, but I'm not sure how invested I am in making sure Trump gets all the votes he told people not to cast.

[–] chaonaut 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I'm not sure how intense your off year elections are, but one of mine had only a single uncontested race, so I'm not sure I'd jump to considering missing some of the offyears "abysmal".

[–] chaonaut 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (4 children)

Overall, 70% of U.S. adult citizens who were eligible to participate in all three elections between 2018 and 2022 voted in at least one of them, with about half that share (37%) voting in all three.

-Pew Research Poll on Voter Turnout

And it looks like a significant portion of the 30% who don't vote are white adults without a college degree who lean Republican.

[–] chaonaut 10 points 5 months ago (8 children)

Actually, the recent record turnouts should really be getting you to pay attention to how the elections are structured. It turns out, the way districts and the electoral college are organized means that where you get out the vote matters. Telling people to vote harder doesn't make those systemic obstacles go away.

[–] chaonaut 17 points 5 months ago

Sounds like a reason for Biden to set a whole bunch of legal precedent while he's still president.

[–] chaonaut 3 points 5 months ago

If you vote with the hope that it will fixes problem by itself, you won't get very far. Voting is sort of the end of a political process, the other end starting in people building political movements. For your vote to mean something, you have to be voting with a political project. So, focus on the political projects: start building the structures that protect people first, without relying on the government's approval. Support your communities of care and build your mutual aid networks. Don't wait for it to be delivered from on high, get with people who also care about the things you care about and start using what you have to build what you can.

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