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1 hour ago, Satchel said:

In 2020, the evangelical world was set ablaze by Kristin Kobes du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, which traces a thread of toxic masculinity throughout American evangelical history. I think du Mez overstated her case at times, but there is no denying she’s onto something. The evangelical mind is formed by stories of singular, heroic men who refuse to back down. Sometimes these heroes carry a message, like Billy Graham. Sometimes they carry a gun, like John Wayne.

"...TO RUUMMMBBBLLLE!!!"

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3 hours ago, Bullneck said:

The whole Jewish thing is a tough one for the MAGAts.  

In they're hearts I doubt they like Jews.  But you can't let the Holy Land go Muslim.  

 

It's very similar to Tampa Bay's predicament with Antonio Brown.

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On 1/9/2022 at 11:09 AM, atomheartbevo said:

Yeah, ummm, asking for a friend who...doesn't need to lose 70lbs, but more like 20-30.

 

I did 31 from January 1- March 31 of last year. 2-3 pounds a week, every week. Treated it like a math problem. Basically a ton of discipline about foods, no drinking, lots of water, daily exercise, and intermittent fasting.  Super fun. 

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On 1/9/2022 at 11:09 AM, atomheartbevo said:

Yeah, ummm, asking for a friend who...doesn't need to lose 70lbs, but more like 20-30.

 

I lost about 70 lbs 7 years ago.  COVID gave me half of that back but am working it back down slowly.

Cut bread, tortilla chips, french fries and similar carbs out altogether until you're at maintenance weight.  Avoid cheeses (although that's really not that big a deal).  No alcohol during the week, and get some exercise daily.  You can't exercise your way out of a bad diet but you can turbo drive a good diet with exercise.

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24 minutes ago, DDD Dad said:

I lost about 70 lbs 7 years ago.  COVID gave me half of that back but am working it back down slowly.

Cut bread, tortilla chips, french fries and similar carbs out altogether until you're at maintenance weight.  Avoid cheeses (although that's really not that big a deal).  No alcohol during the week, and get some exercise daily.  You can't exercise your way out of a bad diet but you can turbo drive a good diet with exercise.

You can have my tortilla chips when you pry them from my cold dead hands.

 

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8 minutes ago, F250 said:

You can have my tortilla chips when you pry them from my cold dead hands.

 

 

6 minutes ago, DDD Dad said:

That was the hardest thing to give up, TBH.  But you can swap in chicharrones.

They're not potato chips, but costco sells these in big bags these days (nacho cheese) and they ABSOLUTELY work when craving chips for me, fwiw. I'm in the middle of my second round of Keto after 6 weeks of the Holidays. And yes, pork rinds work for dip. 

https://hilolife.com/

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On 1/7/2022 at 9:30 AM, Lobo said:

 

That's a good point, Tom.  I know many on CR don't want to acknowledge that, but it's true.  Millions of us turned out with the express purpose of voting against Donald Trump.  Millions.  Not sure how it breaks down in critical battleground states, but it was in the millions nationwide, possibly ten million+.  As a 20+ year member of the Libertarian Party, I never even bothered finding out who was running on that ticket.  It was "Get Trump out of office by any means necessary."  That was my entire political ideology last year.  That and hoping he died in office.  I voted for several Republicans and Libertarians down ballot, and a few Democrats as well. 

I even managed to bundle ~$175k for Biden/Harris in Texas during the cycle.  People would ask some version of, 
"You're a political guy, why exactly should I donate to Biden/Harris?"

My only response was, "Policywise?  I dunno, I just know they're not Trump."  I think my honesty convinced a lot of friends to write a check.  Certainly wasn't my winning personality.  

Warning: Amateur analysis follows

It's a multi-dimensional problem.  I'll focus on percentages to simplify the number of voters but we know the roles increased significantly in 2020 from 138 in 2016 million to 157 million.  19 Million more voted and we no a lot of those came from the normally don't vote (Unpredictable category below).  It was a very steep climb over 2016.  In fact the population growth and eligible voter growth was trending lower while voter participation looks like the highest/steepest change ever. (see red line on this graph) https://www.statista.com/statistics/1139763/number-votes-cast-us-presidential-elections/

image.png.923b45849d4217c30db729bcb0df528a.png

  • You have baseline voters of maybe 20% for each party (of registered voters) that will always vote D or R
  • Your max voter turnout is probably 70% of registered voters, so you have the remaining ~60% of registered voters to split up between never going to vote 30%, normally R 10%, normally D 10%, Unpredictable 10%

In the last election we had 66% turnout.  Of that 67% there were 51% that voted Biden and 47% that voted Trump so out of all Registered voters it was

  • 34% Biden
  • 31.5% Trump
  • 1% other
  • 33.5% Did not vote 

This means that Trumped probably maxed out on the Always 20, got some from the Normally R and some of the Unpredictable to get that 31.5%.

Biden out performed and pulled in some of the normally R votes in 2020 and a larger percentage of the Unpredictable.  What worries me is that he probably can't do that twice in a row.

 

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On 1/9/2022 at 9:05 PM, Satchel said:

Here’s a portion of an opinion piece that appeared in the Sunday DMN. It chronicles what Christian nationalists like Pompeo get wrong:

Christian nationalists seize on these themes to create a narrative of America as a chosen nation, created by God to serve his purposes.

Here’s where that goes wrong:

First, despite its proponents proof-texting, the Bible does not declare America to be a modern Israel. That’s entirely fabricated.

Second, it confuses the descriptive with the prescriptive. The language the founders used when setting out the nation’s political parameters was explicitly pluralist: “Congress shall make no law regarding the establishment of religion.”

Seeing America’s identity through a Christian nationalist lens contributes to dysfunctional public discourse. To a Christian nationalist, those who disagree cannot be well-intentioned compatriots who support a different policy; they can only be devils who oppose God. They cannot be convinced by argument; they must be destroyed by force.

A seat at the table

The Christian nationalist narrative is aggressive because conservative Christians perceive a loss of cultural standing.

According to the Pew Research Center, the percentage of American adults who identify as Christian dropped 12 points over the past decade. And those who identify with no organized religion, a category called “the Nones,” is the fastest growing religious segment in the nation. Non-Christian faiths are also growing, rising 1.2 percentage points between 2007 and 2014.

Further, America’s laws and customs seem to be drifting away from traditional evangelical values. On issues like abortion, gay marriage, gender, sex education and prayer in schools, conservative Christians see a long, disheartening descent from the halcyon days when you couldn’t get abortion on demand, pornography on your phone, a car on Sunday or a bottle of wine at the grocery store.

This Christmas, at the premiere of his film American Underdog, Christian filmmaker Andy Erwin voiced this sense of cultural loss in his industry: “People of [Christian] values used to be represented in Hollywood quite well,” Erwin told The Daily Wire. “We lost our seat at the table.”

A significantly large segment of American Christians feels that the culture in our country has left them behind. They refer to themselves as exiles or, recalling Moses, “strangers in a strange land.”

Befogged and offended by these shifts, Christian nationalists are rising up in a misguided effort to reclaim cultural hegemony. This is the impetus behind calls to “take back America.” This is why the unvarying message of Christian nationalism is to “wake up,” “step up” or “stand against the culture.”

A few weeks after the attack on Jan. 6, I called Glenn Kreider, one of my favorite professors at Dallas Theological Seminary, to see how he was interpreting these trends. He connected the rise of Christian nationalism to this decline of evangelical hegemony. Christianity is losing its entitlement, he told me, and it’s convulsing in response. He called it “the dying gasp of our privilege.”

In 2018, Katherine Stewart, author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, wrote in The New York Times, “What Christian nationalists know — and many of us have yet to learn — is that you don’t need a majority to hijack a modern democracy. You just need a sizable minority, marinating in its grievances, willing to act as a bloc and impervious to correction by fact or argument.”

The end of days

One factor that makes this movement especially impervious to correction is its seeding in eschatology, the study of End Times.

Evangelicals are endlessly fascinated by predictions about the end of history set forth in the biblical Book of Revelation. At the seminary I attended, students prided themselves on complicated charts that slotted in such events as the Great Tribulation, the collapse of world markets, the rapture of the faithful and the second coming of Christ.

The most popular Christian fiction books in history, the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, are about End Times. They sold more than 65 million copies and spun off four feature films.

In the 1990s, I knew a conservative Christian who interpreted every negative headline as evidence of the coming judgment after America’s rejection of its holy heritage. She said we were living in “Clinton Days,” using that as a stand-in for the End Times. Why was crime a problem? Clinton Days. Why was there war in the Middle East? Clinton Days.

Though she might have taken it further than most, this is a common line of thinking among conservative evangelicals. Every headline is to be interpreted through the lens of eschatology. Every G20 meeting has to find its place on an End Times chart.

Jesus himself warned followers to keep careful watch for his return. Evangelicals are among those who have taken this commandment most literally and most seriously. But it’s a difficult one to follow, and evangelical suspicion that every world event carries some cosmic implication often leads us far afield.

Iron Man

So Christian nationalism mixes America’s religious heritage, conservative politics, a foreboding sense of cultural loss and an eschatological lens. That much has been well-documented in dozens of booksfilms and articles. But I think there’s one more factor that contributes significantly: Hero worship.

We evangelicals love our heroes. There are entire book series about heroes of the Bible. Church history is largely understood as a succession of great men who had the courage to stand up to emperors, heretics or popes.

In 2020, the evangelical world was set ablaze by Kristin Kobes du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, which traces a thread of toxic masculinity throughout American evangelical history. I think du Mez overstated her case at times, but there is no denying she’s onto something. The evangelical mind is formed by stories of singular, heroic men who refuse to back down. Sometimes these heroes carry a message, like Billy Graham. Sometimes they carry a gun, like John Wayne.

Many of the churches where Christian nationalism thrives are built around a single leader whose interpretations of ancient texts and current events go unchallenged.

And the hero motif is reinforced by the cultural tropes evangelicals accept. One of the last cultural refuges where conservative evangelicals aren’t confronted with their loss of influence is at the movies, particularly PG-13 movies. In this way, Marvel Studios may mold the evangelical imagination just as profoundly as the New Testament.

Even films labeled explicitly Christian, like American Underdog, now follow the same narrative arc: a hero is imbued with some germ of promise, faces adversity, has a crisis of faith and then wins some Earthly prize: a Super Bowl, a recording contract or the love of a crush. This may be the reason I Can Only Imagine found a following among evangelicals, but Silence did not.

Evangelical consumers who praise such films for their family-friendly content seem to forget that none of the heroes of the Bible were chosen because of their moral potential. And almost none received any kind of material reward. The famous people of the Bible like Moses, David, Peter and Paul were violent, lustful, manipulative, judgmental and cowardly. And most died poor, outcast and misunderstood.

The heroic arc also matters because heroes require villains, and so does Christian nationalism. To keep adherents frenzied, there must always be some existential crisis: a threat, a sneaky tempter with designs on spoiling God’s geopolitical purpose. Throughout evangelical history, this villain has worn the masks of communists, Catholics, women’s rights advocates, abortion doctors, Disney, gun control activists, Hollywood, the media, gay people, Democrats, coastal elites and Caitlyn Jenner.

The sheer number of villains might be a clue that this ideology can’t stand without them.

Mobs and marches

Here, then, are the ingredients of Jan. 6: a heritage of Christian centrality in American history, a perception of its loss, an ever-growing list of grievances against the “secular agenda,” a propensity toward hero worship and a fascination with End Times.

When these ideas get mashed up with social media echo chambers and conspiracy theories advanced by unscrupulous politicians, the result is a perversion of orthodox Christianity and a subversion of democratic ideals that threatens both the church and state.

It’s important to note that Christian nationalism is not synonymous with evangelicalism. Many mainline Christians support this ideology and many evangelicals condemn it.

Nor is Christian nationalism the same as the belief that righteous behavior is good for a nation. It doesn’t make one a Christian nationalist to believe that when people live in obedience to biblical commands like loving their neighbors, honoring parents, avoiding addiction, remaining faithful in marriage and submitting themselves in prayer, those behaviors yield better outcomes in individual and collective lives.

I should also note that some commentators have seen troubling connections between Christian nationalism and other power systems like patriarchy and white supremacy. I don’t deny that those connections exist, but I’m limiting this examination to just these four pillars of the ideology.

On its own, none of those four themes is strong enough to have created Jan. 6. There’s nothing wrong with loving superhero movies or with taking pride in America’s religious heritage. But mixed together, these elements form a cocktail that threatens to stupefy both democracy and faith. In fact, the biggest problem with Christian nationalism is not politics, it’s ecclesiology: how churches are governed and how they interact with the world around them.

And here’s the ecclesiastical secret Christian nationalists miss: Christianity functions best when it has the least power. In fact, that is one of Christianity’s unique contributions to history. All other ancient religions identified gods with powerful people. Emperors and pharaohs were worshiped as gods. Kings were given direct access to God. But Jesus identified with “the least of these” and turned the religious power dynamic on its head.

Throughout history, the church has too easily forgotten that lesson. Most famously, this happened in the fourth century. When Christianity ceased to be a breakaway Jewish sect and became the foundation of the Holy Roman Empire, the mission got co-opted. Church leaders who pursue political power are abandoning their calling. They can’t serve two masters.

Kreider, my seminary professor, warned about this danger.

“The church has never been in charge of the world in which she lives,” Kreider said. “She functions as a minority voice. [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] was right. She is to be the prophetic voice to the culture. When she becomes the one in power, she becomes like every other power broker. Then power becomes more important than the gospel, than character.”

A pithy version of Kreider’s warning has been circulating on Christian Twitter: “When you mix religion and politics, you get politics.”

There is good news, however. According to the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), significantly fewer Americans today believe that God has granted America a special role in human history than did just eight years ago. And an ecumenical statement condemning Christian nationalism has been signed by more than 18,000 pastors and Christian leaders.

But the desire for Christian cultural hegemony still exists, especially among white evangelicals. Also according to PRRI, only 13% of that group prefers religious diversity. And it’s the only religious cohort in America from which a majority (57%) agree with the statement, “I would prefer the U.S. to be a nation primarily made up of people who follow the Christian faith.”

Despite the banners carried to the Capitol on Jan. 6 last year, Christian nationalists don’t take justification for their movement from the words of Jesus. The Jesus of the Bible admonished followers to love their enemies and care for the poor and immigrant. He consistently rejected invitations to seize political power. The political playbook of the New Testament may be most clearly articulated by the Apostle Peter, who admonished followers to “live such good lives among the pagans that … they may see your good deeds and glorify God.”

In contrast, Christian nationalists take their cues from the Old Testament. The Jan. 6 rally included a “Jericho march.” That was a reference to an episode in the Book of Joshua in which the people of Israel marched around the city of Jericho, after which the city walls collapsed and the Israelite army rushed in to massacre men, women, children and livestock. It was clearly a call for violence.

American Christianity cannot embrace both the God of peace and the god of politics. We cannot have both Jericho and the New Jerusalem.

Two masters

Predictably, the two masters of Christian nationalism are already diverging. On Dec. 19, Donald Trump Jr. declared Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount a failed policy. At an event sponsored by Turning Point USA, Trump Jr. said, “We’ve turned the other cheek, and I understand, sort of, the biblical reference — I understand the mentality — but it’s gotten us nothing. OK? It’s gotten us nothing while we’ve ceded ground in every major institution in our country.”

Grievance over cultural loss? Check. Presence of an existential threat? Check. Need for a warrior hero? Check. Opposition to the teachings of Jesus? Check.

Trump Jr.’s comments are illuminating because he seems to articulate that the shift away from Christian teaching is intentional: “We’ve been playing tee ball for half a century, while they’re playing hardball and cheating.” Trump Jr. and those who support his line of thinking are ready to play the world’s political game; ready to give up the countercultural humility that Jesus announced and join the race to the political bottom.

Here, then, is the final bankruptcy of Christian nationalism. It makes a bad bargain. It trades virtue for power, mystery for mendacity, the keys of heaven for broken windows on Capitol Hill.

Perhaps singer-songwriter Derek Webb knows this tribe best when he confesses:

I am so easily satisfied

By the call of a lover so less wild

That I would take a little cash

Over your very flesh and blood.

Christian nationalism weaponizes America’s religious heritage, but faithful Christians must beat those weapons into plowshares. Christian nationalism shouts that God’s side is losing, but faithful Christians must remember that “unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed.” Christian nationalism makes enemies out of neighbors, but faithful Christians love their enemies as well as their neighbors. Christian nationalism seeks to elevate political strongmen to “save America,” but faithful Christians promote only one savior.

America needs the Christian gospel. Throughout our nation’s history, Christianity has promoted harmony, morality, stability and good will. And America needs patriots willing to protect against incursions like the one we saw a year ago. What America doesn’t need is Christian nationalists.

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2022/01/09/heres-where-christian-nationalism-comes-from-and-what-it-gets-wrong/

TLDR - It's a cult and focuses on all the main themes of a cult - the apocalypse, someone to save them, evil and persecution on every corner.

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On 1/9/2022 at 9:05 PM, Satchel said:

One factor that makes this movement especially impervious to correction is its seeding in eschatology, the study of End Times.

This reminds me of a sermon I heard about 15 years ago about those Left Behind books. Our pastor spent a few minutes rejecting the concept and then discussed how it warps someone's ability to live in the now while preventing the believer from working towards a better world (Social Gospel). Alleviating poverty is a Christian duty but if you think all of the side effects of poverty are the symptoms of a decaying world you will assume that the end is near and consider the state of the world part of God's plan. The entire concept creates a pessimistic world view and makes it impossible to sell hope in the present so you are left with the expectation of a new world after this one burns.

 

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Quote

Caldwell, a retired Navy commander, who said video from the scene of him demanding that 'traitors' be hanged was a joke


 

Quote

Authorities also said that during a search of Caldwell's home, they also found a 'Death List' that included the name of an elected official from another state. Investigators also found invoices for more than $750 worth of live ammunition and what appeared to be a gun designed to look like a cellphone, prosecutors said. 

Quote

How many people either in the militia or not (who are still supportive of our efforts to save the Republic) have a boat on a trailer that could handle a Potomac crossing?' Caldwell wrote, according to prosecutors. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10401051/amp/I-not-heavy-weapons-Navy-Lt-Cmdr-charged-sedition-denies-plot-bring-heavy-weapons.html

He’s saying God will save him from these charges 
 

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A gun designed to look like a cellphone?  That's what they meant by 'Decorations'?  

Also, if you're driving a trailer with a boat on it to cross the potomac...why not just skip a step and just continue driving over the bridge and into D.C.?  Why launch the boat, motor across, find a place to dock it, and then continue on on foot?  Won't you miss the Revolution?  Why not just keep driving?  Are these people really this stupid?  I mean, he made Commander...that's not nothing.  

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4 minutes ago, Lobo said:

A gun designed to look like a cellphone?  That's what they meant by 'Decorations'?  

Also, if you're driving a trailer with a boat on it to cross the potomac...why not just skip a step and just continue driving over the bridge and into D.C.?  Why launch the boat, motor across, find a place to dock it, and then continue on on foot?  Won't you miss the Revolution?  Why not just keep driving?  Are these people really this stupid?  I mean, he made Commander...that's not nothing.  


the dumbest people alive 

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Those boats were perfectly fine...it was the morons driving them that was the problem.  When they tried to white claw their way into a circle parade formation, that's when the shitshow started.  The equipment was fine.  It was like watching the double jeopardy round at a Special Olympics meet.  

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20 minutes ago, Lobo said:

Those boats were perfectly fine...it was the morons driving them that was the problem.  When they tried to white claw their way into a circle parade formation, that's when the shitshow started.  The equipment was fine.  It was like watching the double jeopardy round at a Special Olympics meet.  


we all know that antifa and BLM sank those boats to make Trump look bad !!!!

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(Looks at photo of pro Trump-adorned sinking watercraft)  "Oh you literally mean a False Flag operation?  Like with actual nautical flags?  Gotcha, Senator."  

Check out that photo again and look at the hatted dude in the right background on the sea-doo/jetski/dontcare.  Look at his clothes.  He's wearing khaki shorts and a plaid button down.  Now he put on a lifevest, which was wise given the choppy shitshow out there.  But judging by his clothes, he rushed out there from land to assist...and I applaud him for that.  But what did he race out there to save?  A human struggling to stay afloat?  Something of inherent value that was impervious to water?  Perhaps a pet?  NOPE, a fucking Trump flag pole.  Fucking perfect encapsulation of these fucking people.  

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6 hours ago, Genco said:

I don't know anything about Mr. Caldwell or his service but I'm willing to bet that "Decorated" is doing some heavy lifting in that chyron.

You can serve three years and get a Good Conduct medal as long as you don't get arrested or fuck around with your superiors.  And I know people who served at the same time I did in the early 90s, who were stateside just like me, got the same GC award, and consider themselves to be "decorated".

It's basically a participation ribbon.  

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6 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

Normal stuff.

AEBE974B-201C-48CA-8C5E-A98E2C50F430.jpeg

He is one weird fucking dude. This whole era of anti-classical liberalism has been mind blowing.

Years ago I read the End of History and the Last Man by Fukuyama and remember thinking this sounds about right. Western Liberal Democracy and Capitalism will prevail.

Then the American Right steps in and says "hold my beer." Now Fukuyama thinks that the erosion of Liberal Democracy in the U.S. has the potential to cause a global backslide.

 

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I listen to Stern everyday but he is completely crazy about Covid. I’m all for him yelling at the antivaxxers that call in and argue with him but he is pretty much the poster child for staying locked in the house for the last 2 years. He’s completely astounded by anyone doing so much as going out to eat or seeing a few friends. 
 

I’m pumped for the Carlson rant though. 

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