The promise of Christian Nationalism

[Politesse]

Would anyone have died in Hiroshima or Nagasaki if their government hadn't launched all those attacks?

I don't think so myself. But maybe you disagree.
Tom

Is your argument then that civilian mass killings are acceptable, as long as it is in retaliation for a previous attack by other people of their race, faith, nation, etc?

No.
Is your argument that civilian mass killings are acceptable, if Muslims do it?

That's what it sounds like.
Tom

No, I oppose mass killing of civilians in all cases, regardless of context or justification. "Okay for me but not for thee" is evidence of cognitive disfunction, not a rational argument.

 

[TomC]

No, I oppose mass killing of civilians in all cases, regardless of context or justification. "Okay for me but not for thee" is evidence of cognitive disfunction, not a rational argument.

Do you see a distinction between killing to acquire political power and killing in self defense?
I do.
Tom

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

No, I oppose mass killing of civilians in all cases, regardless of context or justification. "Okay for me but not for thee" is evidence of cognitive disfunction, not a rational argument.

Do you see a distinction between killing to acquire political power and killing in self defense?
I do.
Tom

No, I oppose mass killing of civilians in all cases, regardless of context or justification.

Apparently killing non-combatants is okay so long as it isn't "mass killing." I'm confused.

 

[ZiprHead]

They are neither multiethnic nor secular. They are a Eugenicist apartheid state.

They are multiethnic only insofar as SA was multiethnic under that Apartheid regime.

That's bullshit.
You can look up the demographics on Wikipedia like I did if you want to.
Tom

Demographics are not what makes an apartheid state.

 

[Politesse]

Apparently killing non-combatants is okay so long as it isn't "mass killing." I'm confused.

You're not confused, you're playing games. And if you're not interested in discussing the issue, don't, but I do not think it is an appropriate subject to play coy or dumb about.

 

[Politesse]

No, I oppose mass killing of civilians in all cases, regardless of context or justification. "Okay for me but not for thee" is evidence of cognitive disfunction, not a rational argument.

Do you see a distinction between killing to acquire political power and killing in self defense?
I do.
Tom

If the target is an innocent population? Not really, no. A child poses very little threat.

 

[Toni]

Yes, but I don't have the audacity to demand that, say, an Arab American vote for a man who endorsed and funded a no holds barred genocidal killing spree of their own kin, just because he's "better than the other guy".

I certainly would have the audacity to point out that not supporting and voting for Biden is effectively voting for violent anti-Muslim government.
If Biden doesn't win, the Christian Nationalists and MIC complex will win. And voting for 3rd party or staying home is effectively voting for whoever wins. I would point out how much the liberals who were too good to vote for Clinton helped get RvW overturned!
Yes I definitely have that much audacity.
Tom

No one is owed a vote on the sole basis of not being the other candidate, and talking as though they are is only going to further alienate those voters who are already uncertain about whether they can justify voting for either candidate.

You are correct that no one is owed a vote, period.

However refusing to vote for the less bad candidate almost always results in the election of the very worst candidate. Typed as someone who has voted 3rd party and who very very much regretted it every single time.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

This discussion has become a remake of "Should we have dropped the bomb on Japan?" Dropping the bomb would have saved millions more lives across the globe if we had had it in 1941.

Just to be clear, this is an argument for moral justifiability of mass killings of civilians, when a military commander feels it is warranted by the situation?

Do you think that is what is happening? I don't. Non-combatants are dying but I don't think they are being targeted. Hamas, however, clearly targeted non-combatants. In Hamas's view there are no non-combatants in war. And maybe they are right.

That's not an answer.

If that isn't an answer then you didn't ask a question. People play the hands they are dealt.

Yes, actually. I asked whether you are making an argument for the conditional mass killing of civilians, as occurred in your example of "the bomb".

And I responded that non-combatants are not being targeted. So I am not arguing for the conditional targeting of non-combatants whatever that means. I also added that Hamas intentionally targets non-combatants, a claim for which there is ample evidence. Are you somehow arguing that Hamas is "conditionally" and therefore justifiably targeting non-combatants? I certainly am not.

Civilians were most certainly targeted in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the dual incident you cited in support of Israel's recent killings.

Would anyone have died in Hiroshima or Nagasaki if their government hadn't launched all those attacks?

Of all the reasons to justify the atomic bombings or to at least provide a bit of moral equilibrium, the above has got to be one of the worst. The Japanese surprise attacked a US naval base. We nuked civilian population centers with some military key points.

We can get to the moral equilibrium (ie two wrongs don't make a right, but they were both so wrong, it is hard to point fingers) with regards to the atrocities Japan committed against soldiers and civilians alike in Asia, not because they bombed a US naval base.

Also, how in the heck did the Atomic Bomb in WWII come up in discussion in a thread about Christian Nationalism in the US?

 

[Jarhyn]

A recent scientific study has indicated that conservatives tend to crave the boot.

Conservative and Liberal Brains Might Have Some Real Differences

Scanners try to watch the red-blue divide play out underneath the skull

www.scientificamerican.com

I will note my recent introduction to my paternal family has strongly supported this with caveats: some people who crave novelty, complexity, and nuance find their fix in the novelty of war, the complexity of the flames as they dance, and the nuance of themselves being not as the first to suffer.

I had a gay boss who voted for Trump TWICE because he wanted to to be entertained by the circus as the world burned.

All of my paternal aunts and uncles are like that: Trump supporting assholes who won't be in the cross hairs for a good while.

Still it is strong indication that the traits of appreciation of nuance, complexity, and novelty are related to a genetic disposition, since I still got it despite being raised by parents who did successfully raise one "conservative" Democrat voter: they vote for stability, safety, and authority, but for democrats, since Democrats will deliver stability and safety, and extend authority where it belongs, against bad actors and those who would think their power-to justifies power-over. This person would be my maternal sister.

It is interesting my family provides interesting case study around these results and suggests that some aspects of it may be strongly hereditary in some cases.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Yes, but I don't have the audacity to demand that, say, an Arab American vote for a man who endorsed and funded a no holds barred genocidal killing spree of their own kin, just because he's "better than the other guy".

I certainly would have the audacity to point out that not supporting and voting for Biden is effectively voting for violent anti-Muslim government.
If Biden doesn't win, the Christian Nationalists and MIC complex will win. And voting for 3rd party or staying home is effectively voting for whoever wins. I would point out how much the liberals who were too good to vote for Clinton helped get RvW overturned!
Yes I definitely have that much audacity.
Tom

No one is owed a vote on the sole basis of not being the other candidate, and talking as though they are is only going to further alienate those voters who are already uncertain about whether they can justify voting for either candidate.

Two words, "Ralph" and "Nader". How did those votes work out. How far to the left did the Democrat party swing in 2004... or 2008? Votes for Ralph Nader in Florida and questionably in New Hampshire led to Alito being seated on the Supreme Court.

Ralph Nader made Citizens United possible, Ralph Nader made 9/11 possible, Ralph Nader led to stem cells being locked in a safe, Ralph Nader helped over 100,000 Iraqis get killed in sectarian violence and 1 million displaced. Not turning out to vote for Hillary Clinton or Sanders supporters voting for Trump led to Roe v Wade getting the ax, to four of the worst years of governance since before the Civil War, to helping hundreds of thousands of Americans killed needlessly due to the pandemic, to the far right solidification of the Supreme Court.

The Democrats aren't the solution to all of our problems. But the Republicans are the source of many of them. No one is "owed" a vote, but there is only one party that can be remotely trusted with Government these days. And any vote away from them is a vote to ban contraception, to repeal Title IX, to rewriting our history books, to banning vaccination requirements.

Pretend things are better up there on the pedestal. The thing is, the view looks better, but that is only because the air is so thin you are hallucinating.

 

[Politesse]

At least when there's a Republican in office, the "left" is liberal for a while.

If Trump were in office, the same events would be transpiring, but no one would be shaming me for taking a firm stance against genocide.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

A recent scientific study has indicated that conservatives tend to crave the boot.

Conservative and Liberal Brains Might Have Some Real Differences

Scanners try to watch the red-blue divide play out underneath the skull

www.scientificamerican.com

I will note my recent introduction to my paternal family has strongly supported this with caveats: some people who crave novelty, complexity, and nuance find their fix in the novelty of war, the complexity of the flames as they dance, and the nuance of themselves being not as the first to suffer.

I had a gay boss who voted for Trump TWICE because he wanted to to be entertained by the circus as the world burned.

All of my paternal aunts and uncles are like that: Trump supporting assholes who won't be in the cross hairs for a a good while.

I've always felt that conservatives held harder to the Id than liberals. If one were to simplify the ideologies to a single statement:

Liberals: What can be fairer?
Conservatives: What can be safer?

 

[Politesse]

Also, how in the heck did the Atomic Bomb in WWII come up in discussion in a thread about Christian Nationalism in the US?

Because people don't like talking about the role Christian nationalist ideas and affiliated political entanglements steer their party's decision-making.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

At least when there's a Republican in office, the "left" is liberal for a while.

Lao Tzu rolled his eyes to that one. There is no liberal party. And not voting Democrat because they aren't liberal enough has led to a decline rights, especially since Kennedy and O'Conner retired.

 

[Politesse]

At least when there's a Republican in office, the "left" is liberal for a while.

Lao Tzu rolled his eyes to that one. There is no liberal party. And not voting Democrat because they aren't liberal enough has led to a decline rights, especially since Kennedy and O'Conner retired.

What has Lao Tzu got to do with it? Not an advocate of brainless partisanism, that one.

 

[TomC]

No, I oppose mass killing of civilians in all cases, regardless of context or justification. "Okay for me but not for thee" is evidence of cognitive disfunction, not a rational argument.

Do you see a distinction between killing to acquire political power and killing in self defense?
I do.
Tom

If the target is an innocent population? Not really, no. A child poses very little threat.

You seem purposely blind to anything that doesn't match your narrative about Israeli security. You insist that what's going on in Gaza is genocidal vengeance by Israel. It's not.
Israel is responding to a violent homicidal attack. The innocents are not being targeted. Hamas deliberately puts them in harms way. What Israel is attacking is the military installations from which the attack was launched.
This has been explained several times.
Tom

 

[Jarhyn]

Tom, with all due respect, Israelis could have easily sent in peacekeeping forces and engineers all this time to build and protect schools and hospitals until Hamas is seen as the violent gang they are and gets pushed out.

It would have put the peacekeeping forces at risk of bricks, and hate.

What? Do you think the US was right in the trail of tears because some raiding parties went out against expanding US settlements?

We ought not cast a blind eye to the repetition of history, of disproportionate response and absent compassion or effective, assertive-not-aggressive action.

 

[TomC]

Tom, with all due respect, Israelis could have easily sent in peacekeeping forces and engineers all this time to build and protect schools and hospitals until Hamas is seen as the violent gang they are and gets pushed out.

Seriously, no.
Anyone except Israel could have done that.

Nobody did because Gazans didn't want it. That's why I find it so difficult to distinguish between Gazans and Hamas. And frankly, the people who did get in helped Hamas launch the attack.
Tom

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

At least when there's a Republican in office, the "left" is liberal for a while.

Lao Tzu rolled his eyes to that one. There is no liberal party. And not voting Democrat because they aren't liberal enough has led to a decline rights, especially since Kennedy and O'Conner retired.

What has Lao Tzu got to do with it?

Taoist pairings of opposites, seemed obvious to me.

Not an advocate of brainless partisanism, that one.

I've already listed the shit list of bad stuff that happened because the Democrats aren't liberal enough to keep people from doing stupid things like voting for Trump instead of Sanders, voting for Ralph Nader or some other third party candidate (Jill Stein) that not only has no viable path to winning, but would have no structure to achieve anything in Congress.

This isn't partisanship. This is pragmatism.

 

[Politesse]

There are three powers that can change an American president's mind: the wallet, the ballot, and the bullet. On civil rights issues, the first is impossible, the third unpalatable, so the middle option is the only lever most are willing to pull. I would love to live in a magical realm where God speaks to the heart of every politician and tells them to do the right thing. But we do not live in that world. Ours is a world of metal, gristle, and the imperfect physics of social action. The reason the Christian Right wields almost unchallenged power over Amercan democracy despite representing the views of a minority of American citizens is because they are skilled at pulling all three levers of American power to keep Conservative politicians chained to very specific theocratic views. Trump encourages this system, but he was also produced by it. Biden wields the agencies of public power inexpertly at best, and because his prerogatives differ greatly from those of the most politically active portion of his base, their support is lukewarm at best. Democrats keep losing or barely winning elections for the same reasons, despite in theory being much better representatives of the public mood on most issues. They ought to be a populist party, but have limited control over any of the factors that truly make or break a career in Washington.