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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25487 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 20, 2025

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This is said tongue-in-cheek, but: Trump's Congress passed Right to Try, over the objections of Democrats and 'bioethicists', which he trumpets on the campaign trail, and his close aide Natalie Harp follows him because she believes Right to Try saved her life. His administration, both in the moment of crisis and with the ground prepared by long-term Trump appointees, also pushed through regulatory barriers to approve the vaccine which ended a global plague.

As for spiritual wisdom:

I try and tell myself it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. If you tell yourself it doesn’t matter, like you do shows, you do this, you do that and then you have earthquakes in India where 400,000 people get killed. Honestly, it doesn’t matter. That’s how I handle stress.

I'm being a little cute. I don't think there's anything that's going to get me into heaven. I think I'm not maybe heaven-bound, I may be in heaven right now as we fly on Air Force One. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to make heaven, but I've made life a lot better for a lot of people. I want to try and get to heaven if possible, I’m hearing I’m not doing well.

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The bar for Constantine is lower than the bar for Christ, and as far as Christian rulers go Trump is at least above the bar of, say, having his son poisoned and his wife boiled alive.

Oh, so that's why the Brits say "God save the King".

Not sure exactly what you mean, but yeah, it would be silly to say "God Save St. George" - he's already saved, he's a saint! - but kings do need saving, in both senses.

Personally I think Constantine’s conversion is one of the worst things that ever happened to the Church.

This appears to be something of an awkward statement. As far as I am aware, Constantine is a Saint in all/nearly-all Orthodox Churches. Not just a Saint, but Equal-to-the-Apostles. Is this correct for your particular branch of Orthodoxy?

If he is a Saint and Equal-to-the-Apostles, this feels like someone who is nominally Christian saying “I think Simon Peter putting his nets down and following Christ is one of the worst things that ever happened to the Church.”

I'm a bit more Protestant at heart than most Orthodox, I suppose. Then again, see the way Orthodox people talk about Saint Augustine...

I'm happy to give Thomas his ultra-purist position, but as a non-Christian sympathizer of Byzantine caesaropapism, also worth noting that Constantine is personally responsible for a couple little things like the Nicene Creed. Without a secular power to put its foot down, the Church has historically tended to splinter into a nest of feuding heresies.

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