True believers, and it isn’t limited to Christianity, tend to live in a bubble where their beliefs and delusions are constantly reinforced. They become convinced the only way anyone could object to their message is if they hate God and are under the influence of Satan. They see their religion as the solution to all of humanity’s problems, while ignoring the countless horrors perpetrated by religious people in the name of their religion. They do all this while never putting forward a shred of objective evidence to support their claims.
There are plenty of churches/cults who have booths at the Iowa State Fair. One has a diorama that includes an ark, dinosaurs, and people all hanging out together. They're silly.
Sadly, I cannot deny the fact that Stupid Idiot Dump have spoiled and ruined this once in a lifetime holiday for everyone to where there is nothing worth celebrating anything at all-- unless Stupid Idiot dies either today or tomorrow or the next day.
I’m not much on big crowds so I likely would not have gone to the Mall even if the events were interesting to me. And even if the weather was tolerable. Trump hasn’t so much ruined this holiday as he has the last decade and likely the rest of my life even if dies tomorrow. This holiday is just the most recent casualty.
The amount of confidently incorrect people never ceases to amaze me.
> “This country was based on faith, and we believe God has his hand on this nation,” Jacyln Stursman, 46, a tax accountant from Iowa, said as a Mennonite vocal group performed behind her on a huge stage.
> “In the Constitution it says ‘under God,’” her daughter Abigail, 20, who is studying to become a teacher, said — incorrectly. The Pledge of Allegiance includes the phrase “under God.” The Constitution’s text makes no mention of a deity.
She probably heard this from her pastor or a Tik Tok video and believes if she repeats it enough it'll be true. If you pointed out she was wrong, she'd just move the goalposts. Remember folks, these people vote, have kids and are active in their communities. We need to do the same. They have gotten way too comfortable being stupid in public.
Christian college to be a teacher most likely. I have had experience with so-called teachers and they were hired primarily because they were "working on" their degrees(were not licensed) but could teach in a Christian school(cheap)but had "zeal for christ."
Consider yourself lucky if you managed to avoid public school in the deep south.
That was most of my experience, and I could write a book on what I learned wrong, or not at all.
(The south still claims that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery, and I only learned of the Cornerstone Speech of the Confederacy on my own, decades after leaving school.)
I asked a relative that once. I could tell she knew the answer but didn't want to say it. Instead, she asked me if I was a democrat. I said no, they are too far to the right for me. We never talked politics again.
Ah yes, nothing like teaching your kids that the North just invaded the South for no apparent reason whatsoever. Never minding the fact that the South attacked FIRST.
I actually went to school in both places, and the fact they call it war of Northern Aggression even though they fired on Fort Sumter first and claim it's about States Rights when the Cornerstone Speech exists goes to show that these people are just bad faith, they like social hierarchies and they don't care about facts.
Whenever I have been accosted by one of these believers and they ask me if I know "God loves me", I always say "really? Which God would that be?" It always stops them in their tracks with a slight laugh, then I tell them to go peddle their man made BS somewhere else. At 72 I am simply tired of being polite or nice to these people.
I would follow that one up with: "Can you demonstrate OBJECTIVELY that your god exists? None of this 'look at the sky or the animals or what the bible says' BS, but hard, testable, verifiable EVIDENCE."
I don't think they'd like that very much ... but then, that IS the idea!
I'm polite only up to a certain point. I will politely tell them that I'm not interested and if they keep pushing I WILL get rude and end the conversation with a "You can fuck off now."
I've had a few run-ins with Jehovah Witnesses which were somewhat interesting. Mostly, I kept my cool, but I never backed down, and in one case, one of my visitors encouraged his partner to leave.
He may have determined that they weren't going to score any points on me! 😁
Anyone see the baptismal dunk tank on the lawn? The only way they're going to get people inside that thing is to hope those folks are deperate to escape the heat.
At least the Reflecting Pool, thanks to Dear Leader's tender ministrations, was in too sorry a state to be co-opted for the purpose- and you 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 they would have, the tacky bastards.
I think Hemant more or less took all of this nonsense apart, and with only minimal sarcasm, but there’s so much to say.
I tend to look at a lot of things as sociologist. One of the basic tenets of organizational sociology is that bureaucracies don’t necessarily exist to serve the organization. Eventually, bureaucracies exist to serve the bureaucracy, to expand it, to protect it.
So they fill out a little card saying how many people they expect to reach out to. I suspect that’s easier than actually reaching out to them. They’ve got an app that shows where everybody is and was that has been reached out to. More busy work. I mean there’s an app for everything. It’s amazing how many of them are poorly designed and don’t work very well. But at least it gives you the appearance of doing something. In that way, it’s all a little bit like prayer, which is what you do when you don’t want to do anything at all, but you don’t want anyone to notice .
And they want to rise above partisan politics? Miss Abigail is already a Nationalist Christian. But she’s so ignorant that she doesn’t actually know it. And you know what party nationalist Christians belong to? It’s not the Nat-C party.
It’s the Republican Party! I know! Who could have seen that one coming?
So the phenomenon is pretty obvious. The Nat-C’s think they’re doing something, but they’re not. It’s all a show, but the marks are the people participating in the show. The marks of the marks are not the real marks.
IT’s all very Marksist.
Hemant clearly gets it. “ these evangelists think visitors to the Massive Trump Rally can set aside politics when the very place they’re all at is an extension of our current broken Republican-run system.”
And at the end of the event they can all get together and compare notes and slap each other on the backs and congratulate each other about how many souls they "saved".
For the looks and sounds of things, there will be more preachers and evangelists than ordinary attendees to Trump "Great American State Fair." Figures, too – for a lot of people, the blush is off the rose as it comes to Trump and his would-be massive rallies. It's been a while coming, but even some MAGAs are being turned off by Trump's utter failure to actually GOVERN or to deliver on the promises he made on the campaign trail. The fact that he couldn't get any A-list entertainment to perform at his little soiree doesn't help matters, either.
So what are all those bible-thumpers going to DO? Convert each other? [shrug] THAT might be fun to watch ... for about five minutes! 😝
It would be entertaining if there are missionaries who think each other’s flavor of Christianity is wrong. Pre-tribulation rapture versus post-tribulation rapture. Go on! Convert one another!
Further Thought: He likely has FAR BETTER things to do, but say, if the crowds were a bit better, it'd be fun to turn Aron Ra loose in that bunch of misbegotten missionaries! Now THAT would be entertaining! 😈
Missionaries converging on DC when the most corrupt powermongers in DC are Christians. All committing idolatry by worshipping a man who thinks he IS God.
When I was a younger person and a Christian (the shame!), that verse was the go-to means to feel better when hardly anyone turned up to some dull religious event.
We’ve been watching The Last Ship. So much grimness and Bucthness . And in a good episode, Grim Butchness. SO Butch.
One of the characters delivered this speech. He was driving, he made a mistake of the type that they warned you about in basic drivers education, and managed to kill his wife and two daughters. And here he is, on the last ship, having survived the thing that killed his wife and daughters. And he sez, “ I wonder if God had a plan for me, and that’s why I survived to be here on this boat.”
It’s supposed to be a very wise and holy and wondrous moment. It never occurs to him how stupid it sounds that God‘s wonderful plan for him included murdering his wife and two daughters.
As Mark Twain never said: “ Never argue with stupid people. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience"
Quick question, mostly off topic, but the one missionary did say they are telling people god has a plan for their lives. If they truly believe that, why are they so bothered by the lives some of us lead?
You see, it’s your willful sinning that contradicts God’s plan for you. God has a wonderful plan for you. He wants you to be heterosexual, preferably white. But definitely heterosexual.
I have been keenly watching the utter failure of Chump's attempts to turn the country's 250th into yet another I-love-me rally with what is probably an unhealthy amount of glee. Nothing gets under an authoritarian's skin like public humiliation, and it's hard to imagine anything more humiliating to that odious man's overinflated ego than the grand spectacle of that giant, empty lawn on the National Mall- juxtaposed with the halfassed job he did on the Reflecting Pool, the short, victorious war that has proven oh-so-predictably to be neither of those things, and... well, frankly everything else he touches, of late.
He's losing his teeming multitudes of morons. They aren't showing up for him anymore. He demands the bigliest, the shiniest, and mostest, and all he's getting for what should have been his bigliest, shiniest day ever... is a chorus of crickets. I'm not fool enough to believe the cult is going to outright turn on him, but they aren't 𝘵𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘯 to him, either. Not most of them, anyway. I guess a solid decade of the same old song and dance on a loop was too much even for them. He's becoming the worst thing a megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur can possibly become: 𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘯𝘦𝘸𝘴.
True believers, and it isn’t limited to Christianity, tend to live in a bubble where their beliefs and delusions are constantly reinforced. They become convinced the only way anyone could object to their message is if they hate God and are under the influence of Satan. They see their religion as the solution to all of humanity’s problems, while ignoring the countless horrors perpetrated by religious people in the name of their religion. They do all this while never putting forward a shred of objective evidence to support their claims.
There are plenty of churches/cults who have booths at the Iowa State Fair. One has a diorama that includes an ark, dinosaurs, and people all hanging out together. They're silly.
Sadly, I cannot deny the fact that Stupid Idiot Dump have spoiled and ruined this once in a lifetime holiday for everyone to where there is nothing worth celebrating anything at all-- unless Stupid Idiot dies either today or tomorrow or the next day.
I cheer myself by imagining the crowds if Jesse Welles were to put on a free show one block away from the Mall.
Or even better, standing in Dr. King's footprints at the Lincoln Memorial!!!
I’m not much on big crowds so I likely would not have gone to the Mall even if the events were interesting to me. And even if the weather was tolerable. Trump hasn’t so much ruined this holiday as he has the last decade and likely the rest of my life even if dies tomorrow. This holiday is just the most recent casualty.
“At some point, mathematically, these missionaries have to be trying to convert other missionaries, right?”
If they all convert each other, that’s twice as many christians leaving the show than originally went there. It’s a miracle.
Circle jerk
The amount of confidently incorrect people never ceases to amaze me.
> “This country was based on faith, and we believe God has his hand on this nation,” Jacyln Stursman, 46, a tax accountant from Iowa, said as a Mennonite vocal group performed behind her on a huge stage.
> “In the Constitution it says ‘under God,’” her daughter Abigail, 20, who is studying to become a teacher, said — incorrectly. The Pledge of Allegiance includes the phrase “under God.” The Constitution’s text makes no mention of a deity.
She probably heard this from her pastor or a Tik Tok video and believes if she repeats it enough it'll be true. If you pointed out she was wrong, she'd just move the goalposts. Remember folks, these people vote, have kids and are active in their communities. We need to do the same. They have gotten way too comfortable being stupid in public.
I am not sure which is more troubling, that Abigail thinks under God is in the constitution, or that she is studying to be a teacher.
Nothing wrong with BOTH.
Christian college to be a teacher most likely. I have had experience with so-called teachers and they were hired primarily because they were "working on" their degrees(were not licensed) but could teach in a Christian school(cheap)but had "zeal for christ."
Great point, both things are entirely troublesome.
PT,
Consider yourself lucky if you managed to avoid public school in the deep south.
That was most of my experience, and I could write a book on what I learned wrong, or not at all.
(The south still claims that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery, and I only learned of the Cornerstone Speech of the Confederacy on my own, decades after leaving school.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_Speech
They claim it was about state's rights, but have no answer when you ask 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 state's right.
I asked a relative that once. I could tell she knew the answer but didn't want to say it. Instead, she asked me if I was a democrat. I said no, they are too far to the right for me. We never talked politics again.
But OF COURSE it involved "states rights," more specifically the states' right to KEEP SLAVES! D'OH!
Ah yes, nothing like teaching your kids that the North just invaded the South for no apparent reason whatsoever. Never minding the fact that the South attacked FIRST.
Exactly, Brianna.
I was fortunate to have a father from out west who may be the most politically liberal human I ever encountered, and Mom was fine with that.
It could have (theoretically) gone otherwise, as it did for every (MAGA) relative and neighbor I know of for miles and miles, here in rural SC.
It should be a fucking crime to brainwash children with lies and propaganda but here we are in a country chock FULL of lies and propaganda.
Made infinitely worse by the fact that such practice is being encouraged by example from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW.
I actually went to school in both places, and the fact they call it war of Northern Aggression even though they fired on Fort Sumter first and claim it's about States Rights when the Cornerstone Speech exists goes to show that these people are just bad faith, they like social hierarchies and they don't care about facts.
I know that anger, P.
I've felt the need to express it myself.....
"Lies For Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner"
https://medium.com/@foofaraw/lies-for-breakfast-lunch-and-dinner-420c272ed7d0
Whenever I have been accosted by one of these believers and they ask me if I know "God loves me", I always say "really? Which God would that be?" It always stops them in their tracks with a slight laugh, then I tell them to go peddle their man made BS somewhere else. At 72 I am simply tired of being polite or nice to these people.
I would follow that one up with: "Can you demonstrate OBJECTIVELY that your god exists? None of this 'look at the sky or the animals or what the bible says' BS, but hard, testable, verifiable EVIDENCE."
I don't think they'd like that very much ... but then, that IS the idea!
They can’t even verify the existence of the supernatural itself. No supernatural? No god.
but, but what about the human eye? Surely that must be proof....................
https://thedispersalofdarwin.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/tumblr_o0oek06j6j1v4coijo1_1280.jpg
What about that parasitic worm that burrows into the eyes of kids and makes them BLIND? Sir David Attenborough cites that frequently and properly so.
And while we're at it, there's all sorts of data on how eyes have developed over the eons ... but of course, evangelicals don't want to hear THAT.
"Bone cancer in children. What's that about?"
-- Stephen Fry
Pediatric cancer wards when they say "god created so many wondrous things."
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ6bPjRC6aiHkn1J9unF-gDYca8PdL3ywKJTbjXOPHhZ8B_4fydT9Mj2TI&s=10
You mean my eyes that need corrective lenses?
You just missed his special on miraculous ophthalmology.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi8HT6Ux8FM
Tim Minchin strikes AGAIN! HIGH-LARIOUS!
Well, human eyes were perfect until Eve tricked Adam into taking a bite of the Forbidden Fruit. It's been downhill ever since.
They deflect or change the subject.
They'd TRY. Aron won't let 'em, and he has this NASTY HABIT of grinding down his opponents! He's rather good at that, too! 😁
I hear you on "being polite." I guess my style is being polite while simultaneously ripping their arguments to shreds. Then, too:
... 𝑎 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑢𝑖𝑠ℎ𝑒𝑑 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑜𝑟 𝑜𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑠𝑎𝑖𝑑, 𝑖𝑛 𝑑𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑖𝑛 𝑡𝑦𝑝𝑒𝑠 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑚𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑝 𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑡𝑜𝑒𝑠 𝑢𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑙 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝑎𝑝𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑖𝑧𝑒.
-- Robert A. Heinlein, The Star Beast
I'm polite only up to a certain point. I will politely tell them that I'm not interested and if they keep pushing I WILL get rude and end the conversation with a "You can fuck off now."
I've had a few run-ins with Jehovah Witnesses which were somewhat interesting. Mostly, I kept my cool, but I never backed down, and in one case, one of my visitors encouraged his partner to leave.
He may have determined that they weren't going to score any points on me! 😁
Anyone see the baptismal dunk tank on the lawn? The only way they're going to get people inside that thing is to hope those folks are deperate to escape the heat.
Have you been to DC in the summer? I can’t blame anyone for going through the motions for a little relief.
And THIS summer is going to be one for the record books. Apparently DC is hotter than 99% of the planet right now.
Won't you get arrested for that?
Never been further east than Minnesota, and that was decades ago.
Minnesota is north. ; )
At least the Reflecting Pool, thanks to Dear Leader's tender ministrations, was in too sorry a state to be co-opted for the purpose- and you 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 they would have, the tacky bastards.
Ooh, good point. Rational people dodged a bullet there.
I suppose everyone needs a hobby.....
(The "reading the book silently and alone" part, not the "irritating total strangers" part.)
I think Hemant more or less took all of this nonsense apart, and with only minimal sarcasm, but there’s so much to say.
I tend to look at a lot of things as sociologist. One of the basic tenets of organizational sociology is that bureaucracies don’t necessarily exist to serve the organization. Eventually, bureaucracies exist to serve the bureaucracy, to expand it, to protect it.
So they fill out a little card saying how many people they expect to reach out to. I suspect that’s easier than actually reaching out to them. They’ve got an app that shows where everybody is and was that has been reached out to. More busy work. I mean there’s an app for everything. It’s amazing how many of them are poorly designed and don’t work very well. But at least it gives you the appearance of doing something. In that way, it’s all a little bit like prayer, which is what you do when you don’t want to do anything at all, but you don’t want anyone to notice .
And they want to rise above partisan politics? Miss Abigail is already a Nationalist Christian. But she’s so ignorant that she doesn’t actually know it. And you know what party nationalist Christians belong to? It’s not the Nat-C party.
It’s the Republican Party! I know! Who could have seen that one coming?
So the phenomenon is pretty obvious. The Nat-C’s think they’re doing something, but they’re not. It’s all a show, but the marks are the people participating in the show. The marks of the marks are not the real marks.
IT’s all very Marksist.
Hemant clearly gets it. “ these evangelists think visitors to the Massive Trump Rally can set aside politics when the very place they’re all at is an extension of our current broken Republican-run system.”
And at the end of the event they can all get together and compare notes and slap each other on the backs and congratulate each other about how many souls they "saved".
It's all just performative nonsense.
God's own Brownie points.
That also.
"the basic tenants of organizational sociology"... but who is the landlord?
I dictate my stuff for the most part. I changed it to TENETS. Apparently God did didn’t know about it, and left it the way it was. Praise God.
He moves in mysterious ways, his lexicographical errors to perform.
You’re not being fair here. It’s not like English is his first language.
What are you talking about?
Genesis 1:3 "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light."
That's English right there!
You can't fool me into thinking god spoke in one-a-them heathen lingo's.
For the looks and sounds of things, there will be more preachers and evangelists than ordinary attendees to Trump "Great American State Fair." Figures, too – for a lot of people, the blush is off the rose as it comes to Trump and his would-be massive rallies. It's been a while coming, but even some MAGAs are being turned off by Trump's utter failure to actually GOVERN or to deliver on the promises he made on the campaign trail. The fact that he couldn't get any A-list entertainment to perform at his little soiree doesn't help matters, either.
So what are all those bible-thumpers going to DO? Convert each other? [shrug] THAT might be fun to watch ... for about five minutes! 😝
All the A-list celebrities attended the opening of Obama’s Presidential Library. Guaranteed THAT set Orangeutan off.
Obama being elected set him off.
Obama winning the Nobel set him off.
What DOESN'T set him off??? 🤪
OF COURSE, they did and OF COURSE Trump did! At this point, any kind of class act wants to hang with and represent a class act.
Obama is a class act. Trump isn't within 10 light-years of being one.
Deporter-in-Chief Barack Obama is a ruling-class act. You forgot that bit.
It would be entertaining if there are missionaries who think each other’s flavor of Christianity is wrong. Pre-tribulation rapture versus post-tribulation rapture. Go on! Convert one another!
Nah. It would only satisfy Trump who loves a cafe match to the death.
*cage match 🙄
Covfefe match.
THERE you go! 👍👍👍
I think a cafe match would be much more interesting.
Further Thought: He likely has FAR BETTER things to do, but say, if the crowds were a bit better, it'd be fun to turn Aron Ra loose in that bunch of misbegotten missionaries! Now THAT would be entertaining! 😈
Missionaries converging on DC when the most corrupt powermongers in DC are Christians. All committing idolatry by worshipping a man who thinks he IS God.
Where only 2 or 3 are gathered in my name...
When I was a younger person and a Christian (the shame!), that verse was the go-to means to feel better when hardly anyone turned up to some dull religious event.
“Has anyone told you that God loves you and that he has a plan for your life?”
Yes, many times but it is still a lie.
https://ibb.co/7tsg4Cy9
I MISS THE ATHEIST PIG!!! Where are you when we NEED you, Winston Hamilton???
We’ve been watching The Last Ship. So much grimness and Bucthness . And in a good episode, Grim Butchness. SO Butch.
One of the characters delivered this speech. He was driving, he made a mistake of the type that they warned you about in basic drivers education, and managed to kill his wife and two daughters. And here he is, on the last ship, having survived the thing that killed his wife and daughters. And he sez, “ I wonder if God had a plan for me, and that’s why I survived to be here on this boat.”
It’s supposed to be a very wise and holy and wondrous moment. It never occurs to him how stupid it sounds that God‘s wonderful plan for him included murdering his wife and two daughters.
As Mark Twain never said: “ Never argue with stupid people. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience"
"God has a plan for your life....and I'm here to tell you what it is."
Quick question, mostly off topic, but the one missionary did say they are telling people god has a plan for their lives. If they truly believe that, why are they so bothered by the lives some of us lead?
Saying that something else has a plan for our lives is a tacit admission they approve of slavery.
'If I have to be miserable then you do to' mentality.
I’ve actually seen that conversation in action.
You see, it’s your willful sinning that contradicts God’s plan for you. God has a wonderful plan for you. He wants you to be heterosexual, preferably white. But definitely heterosexual.
I meet all the criteria, but still can’t be bothered to believe.
It does seem to be a lot of work for very little reward.
I have been keenly watching the utter failure of Chump's attempts to turn the country's 250th into yet another I-love-me rally with what is probably an unhealthy amount of glee. Nothing gets under an authoritarian's skin like public humiliation, and it's hard to imagine anything more humiliating to that odious man's overinflated ego than the grand spectacle of that giant, empty lawn on the National Mall- juxtaposed with the halfassed job he did on the Reflecting Pool, the short, victorious war that has proven oh-so-predictably to be neither of those things, and... well, frankly everything else he touches, of late.
He's losing his teeming multitudes of morons. They aren't showing up for him anymore. He demands the bigliest, the shiniest, and mostest, and all he's getting for what should have been his bigliest, shiniest day ever... is a chorus of crickets. I'm not fool enough to believe the cult is going to outright turn on him, but they aren't 𝘵𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘯 to him, either. Not most of them, anyway. I guess a solid decade of the same old song and dance on a loop was too much even for them. He's becoming the worst thing a megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur can possibly become: 𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘯𝘦𝘸𝘴.
And I am 𝘴𝘰 here for it.