It's never a good idea to delegate your thinking to other people, especially the clergy. Humans keep having to relearn this lesson, because religion is a culturally acceptable form of mental illness. The preachers can talk about their loving Jesus and the promise of a glorious afterlife from now on, but make no mistake, it is wealth, power and control on this earthly plain they value above all else.
Oh, this Taylor character is a piece of work! He thinks he's all that and a bag of chips, and he's managed to convince a whole lot of sheeple of that specious lie. They're not only giving him money; they are effectively acting as slaves to his will, acting as indentured servants for him. And all of this because Taylor has put it in their heads that, if they don't, they will be condemned to everlasting punishment.
Taylor and Brannon both need to be tossed in jail and the key thrown away.
FWIW, my bride put me in charge of our Halloween costumes this year and I decided we are going as “All That” and “a bag of chips”. She will be all that and I will be the bag of chips. The mayor of our town puts on a Halloween party and the only requirement is you have to be in costume.
A few years ago we went as Thoughts and Prayers. One of us was Thoughts; the other was Prayers. The Millennials at the party found this hilarious whilst older people not so much.
I'm dying of curiosity....Can you describe the costumes for All That, as well as Thoughts and Prayers? I'm trying to visualize them because the idea is hilarious.
So much to unpack here. May I inquire as to why anyone who has an omnipotent god on their side feels the need to possess not one but FOUR bulletproof cars?
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
I used to work in the semiconductor industry, and I remember being astonished when a MASSIVE state of the art fab in Dallas, Texas (size of 2-3 football fields!) was closed. Then others fabs closed after that. Admittedly, that was roughly 20 years ago and whether those fabs could produce a product which represents the current state of the industry or not, I don't know.
But why more attention hasn't gone to all that idle production capacity is a mystery to me.
Yes, I think we’ve been strictly a service and information economy for quite some time now. With the emergence of AI technology (although mostly hype) I feel that pool of workers is being narrowed down and consolidated even more and folks are waking up.
I bought my last suit off the rack at Kohl's, and it's pretty nice. Nice enough, at least, for Saturday-go-to-Severance-Hall and The Cleveland Orchestra!
I was wondering why the Trump administration was persecuting these Christians. This is about religious freedom, and what possible test of their faith could the government use that would be fair,.... But then I saw the picture and realized. Taylor must have failed the paint chip test as set forth by justice Thomas in the land mark case, people vs shut the hell up, and Brannon does have standing, or at least standing while pissing.
I thought the 13th Amendment took care of that. The Christian Fucking Privilege is strong with these reprehensible excuses for humans if they believe that they are allowed to effectively 𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗮𝘀 𝘀𝗹𝗮𝘃𝗲𝘀 in violation of the Constitution.
I realize that the brains of 5-year-olds aren't sufficiently developed to understand complex abstract concepts, but DAMN, I wish we could inculcate critical-thinking skills as early as possible in everyone. The sad thing is that we don't even seem to be trying.
That's been the GOP's silent goal for decades. Underfund schools ("keep 'em stupid," Trumpy loves the uneducated), scream that safety nets are filled with fraud, and just generally make people's lives so miserable they don't have time or energy to think even if they know how.
“People have known for years that this guy was a religious fraud, pretending to be a Christian leader for the purpose of enriching himself and manipulating others.”
so what exactly is the story here? The people have known this for years? That the guy was a religious fraud? That he was pretending to be a Christian leader to enrich himself? That people from the Michigan Attorney General‘s office “didn’t feel comfortable letting [Brannon} go free? That he raised people from the dead?
And what does this mean? “ You see, I’m not trying to not only unify blacks and Caucasians, but my mission is to preserve the future and destiny of America.”
No, none of that. the real story is that Macy’s doesn’t carry the kinds of suits he wears.
Nah, just kidding. How is any of this all that different from what many churches and religious leaders do? Sometimes they’re nice about it, sometimes they do good in the world, and sometimes they just grift and grift and grift. And their God seems to bless them for it.
What I cannot wrap my head around is how grown adults can participate in a story like this one, and give up any sense of themselves, their families, responsibility, common sense, and morals.
People like Taylor and Brannon don’t operate in some kind of a vacuum, spiritual or otherwise.
Come to think of it, how does this translate into the wider world, especially the one that contains the mango taco in it?
The sad fact is that there are emotionally / spiritually / psychologically needy people out there. The sadder fact is that there are also people like Taylor and Brannon out there who see needy people and think, "SCORE!"
Which means that our society needs to start doing two things that it hasn't done well for a considerable while:
One – We need to start raising our kids to understand themselves, to be able to look at themselves and understand and value who they are, to make them stronger in their self-ownership. Self-examination is something Americans are generally loath to do, and that needs to change.
Two – We need to quit treating faith as a virtue, and when faith is used as a lure to pull stunts like what has been described here, the punishments need to be swift and matching to the crime committed. That's something else that the US doesn't do easily, but it is easily as necessary as my first point is.
Tim Gill said that the fight for LGBTQ+ equality was a never-ending battle. You could extend that statement to the fight between religion and secularity or between knowledge and stupidity, particularly stupidity with intent, and you would not be wrong.
I’ve been advocating for years that we need to end the tax exemption for churches and religious organizations, we also need to end tax exemption for charities that don’t spend at least 85% of the donated funds directly on the causes that are supposed to benefit and last but not least, end all unpaid/under paid labor over 10 hours a week.
All non profits and charities need to pass rigorous annual audits.
We also need to end the exception to the 13th amendment as slavery is horrendous no matter the circumstance.
Uh huh, and Amway is not a pyramid scheme. To be honest Amway (and all MLMs) is pretty cultish. Then again, religions are all pretty much pyramid schemes as well. Same with cryptocurrency schemes and most grifting situations, they all have the mind control pseudo psychology manipulation tactics, they’re all about using gullible peons to recruit other gullible peons to enrich the folks at the top, they use promises of riches (either on earth or in heaven or both) to keep the peons from leaving.
Of course cults have a bad reputation, they’re bad businesses. They’re setup to take advantage of vulnerable people and make money off exploiting them.
These people need to be convicted. They shouldn’t be released before trial, and they should have the entire book thrown at them, multiple times.
Ironic they claim to be against human trafficking. Fuckers.
It may be understandable to fall for a charismatic preacher, but after 1 day of the reality, you'd think any normal person would leave. You're told to cold call people for money, you get fed PB&Js twice a day, nothing else to eat and no paycheck. You get screamed at constantly. Who the heck puts up with that on day 2, and why? Particularly the ones with children - don't you feel some compelling need to provide them with better? You could flip burgers for better.
I wish I knew the answer to that. My best theory is that everything he does that hurts them, he blames on the Democrats/Biden Crime Family/elitists/etc. and they're too damn stupid to realize a bald-faced lie when they see one.
Why? Because they likely went to Taylor and Brannon, looking for spiritual fulfillment, got love-bombed into thinking that they'd found something of value, only to have T&B flip the script on them, scaring them into mute compliance. These are likely people with poor self-image and self-ownership, who were reasonably easy to manipulate to T&B's will.
I shudder to think the damage that was done to them or what it will take to deprogram them.
It's never a good idea to delegate your thinking to other people, especially the clergy. Humans keep having to relearn this lesson, because religion is a culturally acceptable form of mental illness. The preachers can talk about their loving Jesus and the promise of a glorious afterlife from now on, but make no mistake, it is wealth, power and control on this earthly plain they value above all else.
How dear you downtalk holy members of some brainwashing cult?
DId you mean dare? I did so because I can, and because it's fun.
You dear to kill a king's dare?
Oh, this Taylor character is a piece of work! He thinks he's all that and a bag of chips, and he's managed to convince a whole lot of sheeple of that specious lie. They're not only giving him money; they are effectively acting as slaves to his will, acting as indentured servants for him. And all of this because Taylor has put it in their heads that, if they don't, they will be condemned to everlasting punishment.
Taylor and Brannon both need to be tossed in jail and the key thrown away.
The most effective chains holding the enslaved are forged in their minds.
Yeah, and jackasses like Taylor feed on that like it was Mickey-D's.
FWIW, my bride put me in charge of our Halloween costumes this year and I decided we are going as “All That” and “a bag of chips”. She will be all that and I will be the bag of chips. The mayor of our town puts on a Halloween party and the only requirement is you have to be in costume.
A few years ago we went as Thoughts and Prayers. One of us was Thoughts; the other was Prayers. The Millennials at the party found this hilarious whilst older people not so much.
‘ A few years ago we went as Thoughts and Prayers“
So you didn’t go?
Hardee har har.
I'm dying of curiosity....Can you describe the costumes for All That, as well as Thoughts and Prayers? I'm trying to visualize them because the idea is hilarious.
And Christians wonder why they are so hated.
So much to unpack here. May I inquire as to why anyone who has an omnipotent god on their side feels the need to possess not one but FOUR bulletproof cars?
Probably the same reason god needs a starship.
Because they dropped the 𝐉𝐞𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧 back in '85.
To protect those suits that you can’t get at Macy’s. Those are expensive.
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
Carl Sagan
I used to work in the semiconductor industry, and I remember being astonished when a MASSIVE state of the art fab in Dallas, Texas (size of 2-3 football fields!) was closed. Then others fabs closed after that. Admittedly, that was roughly 20 years ago and whether those fabs could produce a product which represents the current state of the industry or not, I don't know.
But why more attention hasn't gone to all that idle production capacity is a mystery to me.
Yes, I think we’ve been strictly a service and information economy for quite some time now. With the emergence of AI technology (although mostly hype) I feel that pool of workers is being narrowed down and consolidated even more and folks are waking up.
...𝑴𝒂𝒄𝒚’𝒔 𝒅𝒐𝒏’𝒕 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒅 𝒐𝒇 𝒔𝒖𝒊𝒕𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝑰 𝒘𝒆𝒂𝒓.
Fuck that guy.
Well, sir, neither does the prison. But you will have to just make do.
I bought my last suit off the rack at Kohl's, and it's pretty nice. Nice enough, at least, for Saturday-go-to-Severance-Hall and The Cleveland Orchestra!
The only suit I wear is my birthday suit.
TMI
My sediments exactly. Fuck him and his impotent little gods that permitted this.
His Jesus had harsh words for the religious hypocrites in all their finery.
Taylor and Brannon: Groomers for God.
Need I say it? Neither of them is a drag queen.
To use a favorite phrase of mine, it's intuitively obvious.
Of course not.
That's a given.
I was wondering why the Trump administration was persecuting these Christians. This is about religious freedom, and what possible test of their faith could the government use that would be fair,.... But then I saw the picture and realized. Taylor must have failed the paint chip test as set forth by justice Thomas in the land mark case, people vs shut the hell up, and Brannon does have standing, or at least standing while pissing.
Didn't cut Trump in on the grift.
No group is more likely to persecute Christians than Christians belonging to a differet tribe.
🍿
𝐼𝑡’𝑠 𝑢𝑛𝑓𝑎𝑖𝑟 𝑡𝑜 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛 𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑖𝑡’𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑔𝑜𝑡 𝑝𝑎𝑖𝑑.
I believe the word is "slaves".
𝑊ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑓𝑒𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑙 𝑎𝑢𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑟𝑎𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑝𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑 𝑖𝑛 𝐴𝑢𝑔𝑢𝑠𝑡, 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑎𝑙𝑠𝑜 𝑐𝑎𝑚𝑒 𝑎𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑠 𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑠𝑒𝑥𝑢𝑎𝑙 𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑝𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛
So, full on old testament rules for slaves.
𝑈𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑙 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑎𝑤 𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑠 𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠 𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑝𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑎𝑚𝑒 𝑠𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑎𝑠 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚 𝑜𝑓 𝑎𝑏𝑢𝑠𝑒, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑢𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑙 𝑤𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑝 𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑓𝑎𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑎𝑠 𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑏𝑖 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑙, 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑎𝑙𝑤𝑎𝑦𝑠 𝑏𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑇𝑎𝑦𝑙𝑜𝑟, 𝑎𝑛𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝐵𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑛𝑜𝑛, 𝑎𝑛𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 “𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑦” 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑚𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑠𝑎𝑙𝑣𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑒 𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑜𝑤𝑛 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚 𝑜𝑓 ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑙.
I thought the 13th Amendment took care of that. The Christian Fucking Privilege is strong with these reprehensible excuses for humans if they believe that they are allowed to effectively 𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗮𝘀 𝘀𝗹𝗮𝘃𝗲𝘀 in violation of the Constitution.
I realize that the brains of 5-year-olds aren't sufficiently developed to understand complex abstract concepts, but DAMN, I wish we could inculcate critical-thinking skills as early as possible in everyone. The sad thing is that we don't even seem to be trying.
If anything we seem to be trying to do just the opposite.
That's been the GOP's silent goal for decades. Underfund schools ("keep 'em stupid," Trumpy loves the uneducated), scream that safety nets are filled with fraud, and just generally make people's lives so miserable they don't have time or energy to think even if they know how.
Wow! That’s quite a story there.
“People have known for years that this guy was a religious fraud, pretending to be a Christian leader for the purpose of enriching himself and manipulating others.”
so what exactly is the story here? The people have known this for years? That the guy was a religious fraud? That he was pretending to be a Christian leader to enrich himself? That people from the Michigan Attorney General‘s office “didn’t feel comfortable letting [Brannon} go free? That he raised people from the dead?
And what does this mean? “ You see, I’m not trying to not only unify blacks and Caucasians, but my mission is to preserve the future and destiny of America.”
No, none of that. the real story is that Macy’s doesn’t carry the kinds of suits he wears.
Nah, just kidding. How is any of this all that different from what many churches and religious leaders do? Sometimes they’re nice about it, sometimes they do good in the world, and sometimes they just grift and grift and grift. And their God seems to bless them for it.
What I cannot wrap my head around is how grown adults can participate in a story like this one, and give up any sense of themselves, their families, responsibility, common sense, and morals.
People like Taylor and Brannon don’t operate in some kind of a vacuum, spiritual or otherwise.
Come to think of it, how does this translate into the wider world, especially the one that contains the mango taco in it?
The sad fact is that there are emotionally / spiritually / psychologically needy people out there. The sadder fact is that there are also people like Taylor and Brannon out there who see needy people and think, "SCORE!"
Which means that our society needs to start doing two things that it hasn't done well for a considerable while:
One – We need to start raising our kids to understand themselves, to be able to look at themselves and understand and value who they are, to make them stronger in their self-ownership. Self-examination is something Americans are generally loath to do, and that needs to change.
Two – We need to quit treating faith as a virtue, and when faith is used as a lure to pull stunts like what has been described here, the punishments need to be swift and matching to the crime committed. That's something else that the US doesn't do easily, but it is easily as necessary as my first point is.
It would have to go farther than faith in religions. See aliens connerie and scientology.
Tim Gill said that the fight for LGBTQ+ equality was a never-ending battle. You could extend that statement to the fight between religion and secularity or between knowledge and stupidity, particularly stupidity with intent, and you would not be wrong.
Like it or not, we are all Sisyphus.
Unquestioned faith is a liability, not a virtue.
Remember. God will reward you because we sure as hell will not.
Uh-huh "Pie in the sky by and by when you die (it's a lie)."
I’ve been advocating for years that we need to end the tax exemption for churches and religious organizations, we also need to end tax exemption for charities that don’t spend at least 85% of the donated funds directly on the causes that are supposed to benefit and last but not least, end all unpaid/under paid labor over 10 hours a week.
All non profits and charities need to pass rigorous annual audits.
We also need to end the exception to the 13th amendment as slavery is horrendous no matter the circumstance.
“This is not a labor cult.”
Uh huh, and Amway is not a pyramid scheme. To be honest Amway (and all MLMs) is pretty cultish. Then again, religions are all pretty much pyramid schemes as well. Same with cryptocurrency schemes and most grifting situations, they all have the mind control pseudo psychology manipulation tactics, they’re all about using gullible peons to recruit other gullible peons to enrich the folks at the top, they use promises of riches (either on earth or in heaven or both) to keep the peons from leaving.
Of course cults have a bad reputation, they’re bad businesses. They’re setup to take advantage of vulnerable people and make money off exploiting them.
These people need to be convicted. They shouldn’t be released before trial, and they should have the entire book thrown at them, multiple times.
Ironic they claim to be against human trafficking. Fuckers.
Christianity= cult.
If you still belong to any sect of the xtian cult, you are a sucker.
I just wanna be the first to comment!
I just wanna be the first to comment on the first conment.
Congrats to you both!
Going on my retirement resume!
After I mow the lawn.
Why do they stay?
It may be understandable to fall for a charismatic preacher, but after 1 day of the reality, you'd think any normal person would leave. You're told to cold call people for money, you get fed PB&Js twice a day, nothing else to eat and no paycheck. You get screamed at constantly. Who the heck puts up with that on day 2, and why? Particularly the ones with children - don't you feel some compelling need to provide them with better? You could flip burgers for better.
Why people who were ruined, socially and financially, by drumpster still stand by/cling to him ?
Astounded not by greed, but by acquiescence of the underlings who put up with it.
I wish I knew the answer to that. My best theory is that everything he does that hurts them, he blames on the Democrats/Biden Crime Family/elitists/etc. and they're too damn stupid to realize a bald-faced lie when they see one.
Why? Because they likely went to Taylor and Brannon, looking for spiritual fulfillment, got love-bombed into thinking that they'd found something of value, only to have T&B flip the script on them, scaring them into mute compliance. These are likely people with poor self-image and self-ownership, who were reasonably easy to manipulate to T&B's will.
I shudder to think the damage that was done to them or what it will take to deprogram them.