I’m not going to defend the republican party- but there is a distinction to be drawn, between advocating for a specific agenda (that your adveraries oppose) on the one hand, and giving up any advocacy at all in exchange for just trying to defeat your opponents at all cost.
That the RNC gave up on having any sort of party platform at their convention, bothers me as much as all the other babysit crazy stuff they’ve done this season.
…Which really lowers the bar for Team Blue, to the point where all the democrats have to do is meekly complain about Republicans breaking the rules without consequence… and there’s fuck-all anyone can do about it except vote blue next time.
You’re absolutely right, the republican party is morally bankrupt. You know what’s worse? The two party system. Because there’s no real alternative to the two party system, we are stuck voting within that broken construct.
They do have a platform, it’s just they can’t say it, because that will ensure they are out. they are out to destroy democratic norms because they are aware that most Americans do not want to live in a white Christian theocracy. Just because they did not put out a platform doesn’t mean there isn’t one. All you need to do to see that is to look at what McConnell has been doing while thousands of Americans die - appointing right wing judges.
Right at this moment, that is entirely untrue. They are attempting to overthrow any semblance of a democratic society and creating a white christian theocracy.
I will agree that the two party system played a part in our current situation, but the GOP has every much been taken over by the hard, religious right and that is very much a worse problem at this very moment.
If they win, they will slaughter as many people as it takes to secure power. They will fucking kill anyone who is challenges them for as long as it takes. Yes. That is actually worse than the two party system that is and has been pretty dysfunctional for a while now.
The “White Christian Theocracy” is only a smoke screen. They promote it because it gets the angry, violent people riled up and cheering. Note that none of them live by any of the christian values actually espoused in their bible. They always do the opposite of what Jesus said. It’s their opponents, people like Biden (and other democrats) who actually promote all the polices that line up with what Jesus always talked about, feeding the poor, cherishing the meek, healing the sick, easier for a rich man to squeeze a camel though the eye of a needle than to get into heaven, etc.
No, the republicans only have one value, one platform, and that’s grifting, stealing from the masses to give unto them selves and their rich friends, and raw naked power. They want to be an aristocracy and the rest of us to be their serfs who they can mistreat however they want.
No. It’s not. And even if it is, it doesn’t matter if they still create a society where non-whites and women of all races are actually second class citizens [ETA] which is actually what they are doing with their policies in legislatures. The RESULT is the same damn thing. Start believing people when they tell you WHO they are by their actions.
That they don’t follow the teachings of Jesus does not mean that their religion is only a smokescreen.
In the comment thread of the last entry, one of the posters wondered why many fundamentalists spend so much time in Leviticus and so little time in the New Testament, and I think that’s a remarkably cogent question. Indeed, it is so cogent that I would like to make the suggestion that there is an entire class of self-identified “Christians” who are not Christian at all, in the sense that they don’t follow the actual teachings of Christ in any meaningful way. Rather these people nod toward Christ in a cursory fashion on their way to spend time in the bloodier books of the Bible (which tend to be found in the Old Testament), using the text selectively as a support for their own hates and prejudices, using the Bible as a cudgel rather than a door. That being the case, I suggest we stop calling these people Christians and start calling them something that befits their faith, inclinations and enthusiasms.
I say we call them Leviticans, after Leviticus, the third book of the Old Testament, famous for its rules, and also the home of the passages most likely to be thrown out by Leviticans to justify their intolerance (including, in recent days, against gays and lesbians – Leviticus Chapter 18, Verse 22: “Thou shalt not not lie with mankind, as with womankind; it is abomination”).
To suggest that a Christian is actually a Levitican is not to say he or she is false in faith – rather, it is to suggest that their faith is elsewhere in the Bible, in the parts that are easy to understand: The rules, the regulations, all the things that are clear cut about what you can do and what you can’t do to be right with God. Rules are far easier to follow than Christ’s actual path, which needs humility and sacrifice and the ability to forgive, love and cherish even those who you oppose and who oppose and hate you. Any idiot can follow rules; indeed, there’s a good argument to made that idiots can only follow rules. This is why Leviticans love Leviticus (and other pentateuchal and Old Testament books): Chock full of rules. And you can believe in rules. That’s why they’re rules.
Disagree. The grift is a secondary benefit. The real goal is to dominate and control those they define as “less than.” Women, PoC, LGBTQA, Jewish/Muslim/Sikh/etc people, libs, whatever. They need an underclass to step on and to create wealth for them. When those people began to be viewed as actual, fully realized human beings, it was exceedingly threatening to their whole world view. Hence the rise of neonazi and neoconfederate groups, to put “them” back in “their place.”
They don’t even follow Leviticus consistently. If they did, they would be stoning each other to death on the street for wearing mixed fabrics or eating bacon and shrimp.
Start believing people when they tell you WHO they are by their actions.