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Notes -
Newsom basically calling for a boycot of Target.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/did-governor-newsom-spark-target-boycott-among-liberals
So he’s not too happy that red tribe has learned how to cancel something. I think we are approaching a day where you have to declare your allegiance. Red or blue.
I usually don’t like Balaji and think he’s a smarter hack who knows how to grift, but I think he’s right in this thread
https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1659094966671425536?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ
And Scott had a thread about how pride is just like every other cities holiday posted recently. I can’t find it.
America seems to be in a religious war between two cultures now. A couple years ago red tribe didn’t know how to wield power. Desantis has done that highlighted by his war on Disney and grassroots red tribe found their first success with Budweiser. Twitter going Musks was an obvious red tribe move. Jan 6 and Trump overall was a movement that hadn’t found their real leaders who could use power.
I don’t think religion is that strong anymore on the right. I say this because there is a lot of tolerance for Trump being not a Christian. He bangs hookers. So red tribe has an internal sub-war between their traditional alpha male and their good Christian Desantis.
I do like Scott’s metaphor of this being a time like when Christianity took over the Roman Empire. No one believed in the old pagan gods anymore. And I think blue tribe would have won this but they made two crucial mistakes:
The movement doesn’t have a great place for males. Who have always dominated every society.
The trans movement has a lot of vibes of backward religions. Getting kids to cut themselves up and change their bodies has a lot of vibes of practices we long since banished.
Yeah, and Christianity is generally okay with sinful, imperfect men being used as instruments to spread the word of God and advance the cause.
I mean, look at King David's reign or King Solomon (he of 1000 of h̶o̶o̶k̶e̶r̶s̶ women) and tell me Trump is really beyond the pale.
Problem is every group wants to tap into religious fervor and the fanaticism/loyalty that comes with a deep faith that you're doing the right thing, but nobody can present a leader who is capable of actually embodying the ideals that the religions (including the secular ones) profess so it becomes hard for anyone but the most ardent of adherents to actually buy into a movement that can't possibly deliver on its promises because there is no all seeing all knowing deity at its center to actually make things happen.
You can look at Trump and see him as a charlatan who talks a great game and maybe even is an extremely strong negotiator but has zero actual principles and no higher goals in mind other than enriching himself and bolstering his own fame.
You can look at the LGBTQ+ movement and see it as a divisive and somewhat incoherent mishmash of different interest and activist groups that at best manages to be a pale echo of the original civil rights movement but has no other core, defining belief system and thus they only manages to cling together because the members have been convinced that their very survival depends on presenting a unified front.
But you can't shake the faith of the followers of those respective secular religions and get them to turn away and embrace a different religious order merely by pointing out how their respective gods have utterly failed them.
Desantis, speaking somewhat cynically, seems to have a chance to actually live up to the ideals he tries to espouse and thus might function as the head of a secular religion (with Christian trappings) where even the less devout might pledge to follow.
But many competing groups (including the Trumpists and the LGBTQ+ mentioned already) consider it blasphemy to even consider lending him support, so I'm very curious to this election seasons develops in the midst of increasingly fanatical cults of personality.
Desantis actually does live up to it a great extent. I would guess 30-70% of motte posters have a higher net worth than him (I think it’s around 300k). Probably 90-95% at his age.
I only see 2 areas where he is failing. He expanded the death penalty. True pro-lifers are against that. And it’s a harder argument to make but I think he’s not following his beliefs on Ukraine.
I predict that support for abortion and support for the death penalty have a strong negative correlation. Do you predict the opposite or is there some other meaning to your claim?
That’s true. My point was a true religious person would be against abortion and against the death penalty. All life is sacred.
Only in so far as you can abolish the civil state can you abolish the death penalty, and I think you'll find many zealots don't make Christian Anarchism a priority.
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Which is my position, as a Catholic, and both fed the other: if I don't think even a vicious, sadistic murderer should be executed, why would I think it's fine to execute a child in the womb? If there is a right to life for the unborn, then the right to life applies to all humans.
I've held this position for decades, which is why all the "hypocrites! you support the death penalty!" smarming by the pro-choicers never had any effect on me.
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No, some not-insubstantial portion of religious Catholics and smaller numbers of ‘liberal’ protestants(I don’t just love this term, but I haven’t heard of a better one) hold that view. Almost all other Christians hold that abortion and the death penalty aren’t directly comparable because their acceptability hinges on totally different questions.
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See my reply to sliders.
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Admittedly I’m speaking from a Catholic perspective and tend to have view other sects as make it up as you want Christians. Being as Catholics are the preferred faith for pro-life Supreme Court justices I think I am correct in saying true pro-lifers are against abortion and the death penalty. And Catholic doctrine is quite clearly against both.
The death penalty is one of the few areas where I’m disappointed in Desantis and believe he’s doing something for political game versus true beliefs.
I hadn't realized that DeSantis is a Catholic so I will cede your characterization of him in particular as not living up to the ideals he professes in that regard. I think your insistence on using "true pro-lifers" to refer to the Catholic position is obnoxious but there's no point in an extended argument about a label.
It’s probably obnoxious.
Honestly how did you not know Desantis was Catholic? I have a more obvious Italian last name but that’s still looks very Italian to me.
As I think about it this morning I wish the church would get aggressive and ban him from communion over his death penalty stance and make him apologize. It would make them look more honest when they talk about doing it with Biden.
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With the partial exception of Barrett, the catholic pro-life justices are not notably more anti-death penalty than they are pro-abortion. ‘Consistent life ethic’ is clearly a minority position among intellectual Catholic circles in the US even as it’s a politically correct consensus view.
They are not in communion with Rome on that issue. As someone who went to the same school as ACB and who went to pro-life marches a person who is Catholic first would be against the death penalty. The evangelicals have always been anti-abortion pro death penalty vibes but I don’t think an intellectually honest (most people aren’t) could view life as sacred and take that view.
But I also think the old slur about a Catholic politician having to bend the knee to Rome is true. It’s what makes us undesirable POTUS to most but very desirable for the Supreme Court when Rome and a political movement have an agreement on an issue.
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