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And now, the other side of the coin
This is going to be a bit tricky to write but here goes.
My previous post addressed only half the problem we are facing right now. Now it's time to look at the other half.
If you are one of those Christians - conservative or liberal - who built a web site making the Christian case against George Bush, bravo! If you were out there protesting the war, dressed like Jesus and carrying a sign that says "not in my name!" Bravo.
And if you created or passed around the JesusLand map, or are comparing "Christian" voters to the hillbillies in Deliverance, shame!![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
the_ferrett makes a good point when he says that if one were to say the things some of us have been saying about Christians with regard to say, Blacks, or Jews, or Gays, it would unleash a firestorm.
And please, spare me any crap about how it's impossible, by definition, to oppress the dominant regime. People are people, and whether or not one is part of the "dominant regime" is every bit as much an accident of birth as any other trait they might possess. And derision hurts, regardless of who you are.
In my previous post, I quoted someone very slightly out of context. I'm going to give you a bit more of her comment now, because it raises some important questions:
As a lesbian Catholic, I have not spoken from my religious views on LJ. I'm constantly amazed at what people will say about how it's WRONG to be a Christian here.
Is this what we've done? Have we forced our Christians into the caves? Has the left, with its great claims of "Diversity" been actively silencing the very voices we most need in our choir?
Indeed, we have cultivated a culture in which anyone who is affiliated with the dominant regime is too afraid of giving offense to speak their minds. We have such a great fear of conflict that we let our differences fester without discussion until they explode into major rifts. So now we some sort of holy war raging in our midst between the camps of faith and reason, and we have placed our allies on the defensive against us.
Good Job!
Diversity is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it gives us e pluribus unum, from the many, one. On the other hand it gives us "divide and conquer."
Which one of these things do you think Grover Norquist is counting on?
So, grab that beat-up six string, the one with the sunflower applique around its sound hole and sing with me, folks:
We shall not be, we shall not be moved.
We shall not be, we shall not be moved.
Like a tree planted by the water,
We shall not be moved.
Faith and Science together, we shall not be moved.
Faith and Science together, we shall not be moved.
Like a tree planted by the water,
We shall not be moved.
My previous post addressed only half the problem we are facing right now. Now it's time to look at the other half.
If you are one of those Christians - conservative or liberal - who built a web site making the Christian case against George Bush, bravo! If you were out there protesting the war, dressed like Jesus and carrying a sign that says "not in my name!" Bravo.
And if you created or passed around the JesusLand map, or are comparing "Christian" voters to the hillbillies in Deliverance, shame!
the_ferrett makes a good point when he says that if one were to say the things some of us have been saying about Christians with regard to say, Blacks, or Jews, or Gays, it would unleash a firestorm.And please, spare me any crap about how it's impossible, by definition, to oppress the dominant regime. People are people, and whether or not one is part of the "dominant regime" is every bit as much an accident of birth as any other trait they might possess. And derision hurts, regardless of who you are.
In my previous post, I quoted someone very slightly out of context. I'm going to give you a bit more of her comment now, because it raises some important questions:
As a lesbian Catholic, I have not spoken from my religious views on LJ. I'm constantly amazed at what people will say about how it's WRONG to be a Christian here.
Is this what we've done? Have we forced our Christians into the caves? Has the left, with its great claims of "Diversity" been actively silencing the very voices we most need in our choir?
Indeed, we have cultivated a culture in which anyone who is affiliated with the dominant regime is too afraid of giving offense to speak their minds. We have such a great fear of conflict that we let our differences fester without discussion until they explode into major rifts. So now we some sort of holy war raging in our midst between the camps of faith and reason, and we have placed our allies on the defensive against us.
Good Job!
Diversity is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it gives us e pluribus unum, from the many, one. On the other hand it gives us "divide and conquer."
Which one of these things do you think Grover Norquist is counting on?
So, grab that beat-up six string, the one with the sunflower applique around its sound hole and sing with me, folks:
We shall not be, we shall not be moved.
We shall not be, we shall not be moved.
Like a tree planted by the water,
We shall not be moved.
Faith and Science together, we shall not be moved.
Faith and Science together, we shall not be moved.
Like a tree planted by the water,
We shall not be moved.
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One, it's very funny. Two, I don't think any reasonable person would interpret it as an anti-Christian slur; it's clearly meant as an anti-theocracy slur, and if some out there can't tell the difference, well, that's true of literally all satire; applying that standard would eliminate satire entirely from public discourse, and then I'd have to get a real job.
Oh, and three, one of the several people who e-mailed that image to me was a liberal Christian who apparently had no trouble at all with the distinction.
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Thing is, I've seen other responses too, and my personal objection is that it slanders a perfenctly nice Jewish boy by associating his name with their hatred. ;)
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Yeah, it would... and you know why? Because blacks, jews and gays aren't trying to force us to live by their rules. That's why we don't have as much of a problem hitting Christians with it, because they're busy trying to force themselves on us.
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So I want to make one point perfectly clear to you, and hope it's subtlety will not be lost upon you:
The people who are trying to make us live by their rules are Fascists. And like any good fascists they have appropriated and otherwise perfectly good religion and perverted it to their will. When Marx called Religion the "opiate of the masses," this is what he meant. That people who have more interest in implementing totalitarianism than in faith can abuse religion to their ends.
The first step toward eliminating the enemy is identifying it correctly.
Our friends on the Christian Left are most certainly not the enemy. The ELCA (Lutherans) have just ruled that gays who are out and partnered may be ordained as ministers. A Baptist Church I went to for Easter one year performed commitment ceremonies on a regular basis. The Episcopals ordained a gay Bishop last year and may actually wind up facing a Schism because of it.
As for the Institution - well at this point, only the Catholic Church has the kind of control over its churches that you seem imagine to be endemic throughout Christendom. And even there, they are dealing with a lay rebellion, basically, that is pushing for ordination of women and an end to celibacy for priests. One of the reasons, I think, that we are hearing so many grave threats from the top is that there is so much, er, activity at the bottom. The Pope, in short, finds himself in the position of a cat herder.
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But ... is it your contention that President Bush is a fascist?
===|==============/ Level Head
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Sir, do explain yourself further?
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All of those groups, while minorities, are working to change the rules to suit themselves. They have some successes; we all live with the result.
This is not all bad, of course, and is not even mostly bad. There are unfortunate aspects, many of which derive from a minority voting itself bread and circuses that the majority pays for most of.
===|==============/ Level Head
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There are two ways to change the rules: toward greater restriction, or toward less restriction. To move toward greater restriction, it seems to me, requires a higher test than to move to less restriction. Constitutional Amendments banning gay marriage, civil unions, and even joint ownership of property do not pass any reasonable test I can think of. From what I know of
Would you care to expand on the "Bread and Circuses" aspect of this?
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===|=============/ Level Head
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Yes.
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===|==============/ Level Head
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No. The word has a very specific meaning encompassing both social and economic attitudes, the bulk of which the administration appears to be effecting.
But it perhaps also means that you consider me to be one as well.
I can make this judgement about Bush because his actions are performed in the public arena (unless he can avoid it).
As to you, you seem to hold enough ideas that are not fascistic that I find myself wondering, from time to time, if you are served as well as you suppose you are by advocacy of this administration. I fear the day may come when you are called to account for those ideas you hold that are NOT fascistic.
Of course, since "issues" like abortion and gay-marriage are red-herrings used to galvanize the base, and not of great importance, in the final analysis, to the men in high places, I may be exaggerating that particular threat.
But as to you, you claim the name of "Skeptic." Skepticism, as a tool, is at it's most useful when applied equally to that with which you are inclined to agree as to that with which you are inclined to disagree. I'm afraid I have yet to see you do that.
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One person described her plan for bringing the country together: "I think we should recount the election so that Kerry wins, impeach Bush and try him for war crimes. That's something everyone in the country can get behind."
They still talk about the "stolen 2000 election in Florida". I know what happened in Florida, and key parts of it come from personal knowledge. I was in the room when some of the key deals were being negotiated.
So many other issues are being advanced as "proof" of Mr. Bush's "fascism", that it's hard to explain other than a creationist-like "lying for a good cause".
An example: Joseph Wilson and the Africa business was utter partisan fabrication on Wilson's part, and this has been abundantly shown. But he is still a celebrity, and his lies are still counted as "proof".
Clinton lied repeatedly on television yesterday, lying about his lies years ago and hoping that his audience's memory is short, and/or forgiving. Mine is neither; too much is at stake.
Bush has done some very inappropriate, even stupid things -- in one of the debates, he described some of his nominations for government positions as among his worst mistakes, and I'd agree. But you don't need me to point this out, as every appointment he makes will be the worst disaster to befall the planet in the eyes of too many.
Re-writing of history is a common technique, and a scary one -- but it is not the Bush administration doing this. The loss of opportunity in the US due to PI attorneys and their ilk, and the the rise of jihadism in the world (with its ever-increasing influence on the UN), are in my opinion the two largest threats to this country's liberties and ideals. I oppose both of these threats, and that puts me in opposition with much of the left in the United States. I wish it were not so. We have philosophical common ground.
===|==============/ Level Head
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The notion of "coming out" as a Christian on LJ can be almost (though not quite) as disquieting as that of coming out as queer IRL... because people, based on single criterias like each of those, tend to assume a whole lot of things about you that aren't necessarily true.
For the record, I wouldn't have posted the new joke map if I hadn't been a Christian myself - I thought that, just like gays are allowed to make gay jokes, blacks black jokes and Jewish people, Jewish jokes, that Christians were allowed to make Christian jokes, and that it was okay. I was also careful to specify that two Americans (both liberals, one a Christian) had sent it to me first so that it wouldn't seem like a "Canadians making fun of Americans" thing. Should I add a disclaimer to that effect next to it? I'd be willing to, if you think it could help.
I remember admitting to being a liberal Christian on a few posts in the past, but perhaps I wasn't sufficiently prominent about it. Appealing to Christian swing voters will be among the most important challenges of the next election, and we can't be beginning to prepare for it early enough.
I've been looking for a way to politely convey to another liberal, non-Christian LJ friend of mine who, as a result of the elections, was planning on presenting his anti-Christian views even more intensely as of now, that this probably isn't such an effective move politically.
And to whom it may concern (not you,
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We're in a tight space right now, and I think that the JesusLand map is a good symbol for the conflict we're facing within our own ranks. To some, it refers to a very specific mentality that calls itself Christian, and many Christians embrace it for that reason. To others, it seems to imply "all you Christians are alike," and they are offended. The ultimate irony? These two, diametrically opposed reactions are elicited by the same disgust with the JesusLand Christians. It's all quite amusing really, until it rips our movement apart and leaves us with even less mindshare at midterms.
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