Skip Navigation

InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)HA
Posts
3
Comments
182
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • I don't call for an end to America over its hundreds of years of killings, murder, rape, slavery, genocide, ecocide, innumerable hypocrisies, and corrupting hegemony. I don't come on here and sweatily proclaim that all I hope for is the fall of the American ascendency. I don't because I recognise that America like Catholics or Muslims is a vast mix of people with a wide range of lived experiences and view points. And that not all of their history is terrible. Some of it is actually commendable. And the actions of the leaders often do not line up with the majority of their people.

    Yes, true, Catholic church is outdated and reactionary with way more than it's fair share bad actors but there are also hundreds of millions of Catholics, and people with Catholic backgrounds but no longer practicing, out there that are a wide mix of human beings that deserve a basic amount of respect.

    You can, for clarity, include within the parameters of basic respect, to not have to endure your overgeneralising hostile invective.

  • It's perfectly legitimate to have issues with any organised religion but damning everyone brought up in their traditions is myopic.

    I was brought up a catholic in Northern Ireland during the troubles. Similar prejudice was routinely trotted out to justify treating us as second class citizens. So surprise, surprise even now as an atheist, I find it a bit triggering, as anyone mght imagine, to hear someone singling out my persecuted community in such a toxic mischaracterisation. I didn't ask to be catholic but I was brought up in a community of caring and open minded people. Sure there were arseholes but guess what every community has them.

  • There are some Catholics that are reactionary morons but the majority are not. Describing religions by the worst people in them doesn't really come across as tolerant. Which ironically is what you're accusing them of.

  • List of Distributist parties in the UK:

    • National Distributist Party
    • British National Party
    • National Front

    Hmmm, maybe the Catholic part isn't the only part worth reviewing.

    Also worth noting that the Conservative Party's 'Big Society' schtick in 2010 was wrapped in the trappings of distributism.

    Not that all this diminishes it entirely but it does seem to be an entry drug for exploitation by the right.

    I gotta hold my hand up and state that I am not read up on it at all, so happy to be corrected. But my impression is that Pope Leo XIII's conception was to reduce secular power so as to leave a void for the church to fill. And it's the potential exploitation of that void that attracts the far right too.

  • It's a drawer that he's pulled the keyboard into to free up desk space for highlighting text on the printouts.

    More worryingly, the space between the bottom of the drawer and the top of the chair would make a XKCD character wince.

  • And I appreciate your civil attempts at clarifying your stance too. To the degree that I think we're both talking past each other.

    On my part, even as an outsider to US politics, I have been getting more and more frustrated with a lot of the bullying rhetoric I see on this platform directed towards potential voters that are very concerned about the US's current complicity in the ongoing genocide. I see them getting talked down to with utter contempt. Being berated by people who insouciantly weigh a potential loss of comforts at home against the real and current killing of tens of thousands of innocent civilians and the forced famine of hundreds of thousands.

    Now is the only time that they can apply pressure on Biden. Now that he actually needs something from them. But (like MLK's white moderates) people here are telling them that "now is not the time" and a whole spectrum of worse accusations too. But if the civil rights movement hadn't agitated and pressed for change decades would have passed before the moderates would have opened their eyes and acted beyond the pale.

    Personally, I agree ostensibly with your calculus (though not with your particular framing of it but it is still a very, very tight call) but if I was a US voter I would be vocally holding my vote hostage until the last moment to make sure that my discontent was given the greatest chance of not being ignored.

    More importantly (and central to this whole discussion) i still believe that people have a right to respectful discourse if they can't morally make it over the sizable hurdles.

    Which brings me round back to you. You've been very patient and civil throughout this discourse even though we have different perspectives. So my 'beef' ain't wit you my friend. Though I do wonder what is your line in the ground that if both of the two main candidates were guilty of something that you'd drop the lesser of two evils calculus and vote for a third party. For me both are terrible choices but the potential for long term democratic, human rights, and environmental protection regression under Trump cannot be underestimated

  • I was on holiday in Munich for that eclipse. It was badly overcast there too. When the full eclipse hit in it got really dark so everybody was screaming and yelling at the sky in the park we were in so at least it was a bit of an event.

  • It is 'rational' attitudes such as this that MLK bemoaned in his Birmingham jail letters. Order above justice. An order in which the boot is not on your neck. So you minimize its dehumanizing brutality in relation to the maintenance of the day-to-day comforts you enjoy.

    Hypothetically: if Biden was sending weapons and financial support to Russia in support of their war efforts but mildly denouncing Putin when pressed; and Trump was pledging full throated support of Putin and offering to nuke Kyiv; would you still feel so enthusiastic about voting for Biden or for your moral calculus? Might you lament the electoral system that has put this decision before you. Might you protest this mockery of democratic choice. Even if you internally still cede to moral calculus, might you continue to make your displeasure known and apply whatever pressure was within your purview as a voter to make. Might you be offended by people demanding you not only vote for Biden regardless your rightful concerns about Putin and the sovereignity of Ukrainians but also try to insinuate that you are part of some foreign operation to undermine the election for voicing your concerns?