Theocracy will end American Democracy

You’re quite right of course. I should have said ignorance and poverty are correlations rather than necessarily causative agents of religiosity.

In the UK the church Of England is the official state religion and the monarch is the official head of the church.

When I grew up, Australia was a very different country. There was a very clear dichotomy of Protestant and Catholic.

My state of South Australia had the same political party and same state premiere for 29 years continuously. He was a devout Methodist, Consequently, my sate was known as ‘the city of churches’ and for being a bunch of wowsers. EG all pubs closed at 6PM sharp. There were no clubs. All trading stopped at 11 am Saturday. Everything was shut on Sunday. One could have a drink with one’s meal if a guest at an hotel. No theatres were open on Sunday, nor was any kind of organised sport allowed.

As for background; South Australia is unique in that we are the only state founded by free settlers rather than by convicts, in 1836.

South Australia was the first country to grant women full political franchise.IE they could not only vote, but run for office in 1902. However Aborigines were not given the righto vote until 1962. The White Australia policy was not abolished until 1973.***.

Today society my state can be called ‘laissez faire’ socially .Pubs shut 10 PM, there are many clubs which are open to the wee small hours, shops of all kinds are open 7days, Sunday is just another day. Of course systemic sexism and racism still exist.

I should have realised that complex social issues rarely have simple solutions.

Consequently, might I suggest that The US becoming a theocracy is also not a simple matter? (That was the original claim to which I was referring)

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***That meant that ideally, we only wanted people ‘like us’. IE Anglo-Celts. In the1950’s we enticed brits to come to fill our serious labour shortage by heavily essentially paying for their ship passage. They paid 10 pounds. They had an obligation to stay for two years or repay the full cost of their fare. Many Brits experienced great bigotry, being collectively called ‘whinging poms’.

Around this time we grudgingly allowed Southern Italians, Greeks and Maltese. They also experienced heavy bigotry.

Australia’s social fabric really began to change in the1980’s with the arrival of the Vietnamese refugees. They were treated with great racism by the general population. Today Australia has people from every continent and there are over 200 languages spoken here.

Today Australia has anti hate speech laws. Such laws may change some behaviour, they do not change minds. Today our issues of sexism and racism tend remain more covert or perhaps more subtle…

This was no surprise to me… I figured it would happen is Biden was elected. He was still the better choice.

Construction began last year after Alberta agreed to make a $1.5-billion equity investment in the project and provide up to $6 billion in loan guarantees.

Our province lost and most likely will not recoup.
HOWEVER…

Alberta has a strong case to make under the investor protection provisions contained in the former NAFTA agreement that still apply to the pipeline.

Remember NAFTA - hmmm tRump shit on free-trade - that also came with a financial loss.

As far as delusion the GOP reps denying the insurrection is mind boggling.

There is an alternate “reality” that people feed themselves… lol believe the resurrection, deny the insurrection.

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The delusion that Trump won the election is biblical in its proportions. Legions of people willing to believe unevidenced claims. Seems vaguely familiar :slight_smile: .

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I’ve been reading pieces about the pipeline in Huff Post Canada. I found the issue confusing. Justin Trudeau was in favour of it, due to what seemed to me be to be political expediency . (as with most things he does, he’s just a politician after all)

That first nation people were /are against the pipeline. That was/is because the pipeline will cause serious long term environmental damage. (?) Or were they simply not paid enough/anything?

I don’t actually know the facts, the above is only what I’ve read in the papers. I’m interested in learning the facts, but without the ad hominems if possible. (No, I don’t mean you White)

From here it seems as if the Canadian government does exactly the same as the Australian governments tend to do: respond to climate change and environmental questions with expedient political and often short term economic answers

Nice attempt to reverse the burden of proof, but as has been explained every time you try to peddle the claim the election involved fraud, you have to evidence your claim.

As we are all now aware, no evidence was presented in the 86 law suits making capricious accusations of widespread fraud.

So far all you have ever managed, is to repeat the unevidenced accusation, and then double down on this unevidenced claim with a second and equally unevidence claim, this time of widespread complicity in the claimed fraud by the judges and courts who threw out every single law suit, as unsubstantiated. Who to believe?

Even the Supreme court which heard several of those law suits, and which has a majority of Republican judges, at least one recently appointed by, and an outspoken fan of Trump himself, threw out his duplicitous claims.

If you’re happy to parrot wild unevidenced conspiracies on here, then be prepared to have them subjected to the same standard as all other claims, religious or otherwise.

People make the same claim about their deities. However tno evidence has been presented, and its preposterous to imagine after 84 failed law suits, that they have such evidence.

All I see is a very vocal and angry Trump following, who simply can’t accept that the election didn’t produce the result they wanted. Fuelled by Trumps relentless lies of course. The fact he claimed publicly before single vote was cast, that he couldn’t lose unless it was due to cheating, rather suggests he was poisoning the well in advance.

Cough COVID PANDEMIC cough…

:smirk::roll_eyes:

Yes Presudent Biden seems to understand the global catastrophe of climate change facing us, unlike Trump, who risibly questioned the scientific evidence. I’m not sure why this landmark reversal of Trump’s catastrophic disregard of global efforts to tackle climate change is a bad thing though. Your grand children will be thanking President Biden one day, I suspect.

Hysterical hyperbole aside, care to offer some facts here. Let’s not forget you already misrepresented Biden and the Democratic record on national debt, I note you haven’t addressed the research I linked showing that Trump and the GOP actually have a worse record for increasing the national debt.

More hyperbole, I assume this is somehow directly related to Biden’s presidency? Ate you going to keep us guessing?

Yes, it’s not like Israel and Hamas have ever kicked off before, it must be Biden’s fault. You just sound hysterical to me, like you’re grasping at things to blame Biden for, because your personal political views are so partisan.

I can’t say I’m an avid supporter, but he seems at the very least to have a tighter grasp of reality than the one term lunatic he’s replaced.

Like many extremists, you don’t seem to want to accept the other political views may have any merit. Or that political opponents can have any good policies, so you decry them all, and throw in a fair amount of sophistry and rhetoric.

Like your dishonest hysteria about unevidenced election fraud, I’m afraid it speaks for itself…

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It wouldn’t be his most bizarre claim tbh.

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Could we have some objective evidence for those 3 claims please?

As I was asking that question, my mind flashed to the scene from Oliver Twist, where the young hero asks please can he have some more. Like young Mr Twist, I suspect I know my request is doomed to be denied.

In fact, as with anything you have some First Nations people opposing but many want it and support the job creation and wealth it brings them.

It gets complicated :woman_shrugging:t2: and Canada oil is in the top when it comes to “pulling it out” with minimal environmental impact (also clean up your shit policy).

Oil products aren’t going away. :fuelpump: fuel may be reduced- BUT products???

The balance is finding the least environmentally negative impact while maximizing the use of the product. Uh :roll_eyes: pipeline (saves gas and shipping).

Shipping oil in from Saudi doesn’t rank high on my “environmental” conscience metre.

So much for Kushner’s Trump peace plan.

So we should blame Biden for Trump’s inability to negotiate a proper peace plan?

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A “peace” plan without the other party involved. :roll_eyes:

Fuckin no bottom to that man’s stupidity -his and his inner-family-circle-and-brown-nosers

No no mun, this is all President Biden’s fault clearly, though we are still waiting for @mr.macabre to explain precisely why of course?

I can opinion that I do NOT agree with Biden’s reluctance to speak to the issue prior to public pressure, especially when the UN Security Council set for a statement and the US blocked it.

This continual diatribe against Biden is just unevidenced fear-mongering, sheer lies, and blaming others for one’s shortcomings.

IMO Biden is a poor choice, but compared to Trump, he walks on water. That is how dishonest, corrupt, and incompetent Trump was.

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See, it’s not that hard to offer evidence that goes beyond mere headlines on Fox news.

FWIW I agree with David’s statement below. I’ve said before that it’s absurd to believe good ideas can only come from one extreme of the political spectrum, and all ideas from either left or right of centre are bad.

My politics are left of centre, but I try not to be bigoted about it.

That said Trump used to make my teeth itch with his bigoted rhetoric. He was so busy attacking anyone and everyone that didn’t share his own views, I think most of his policy making was lost in the kerfuffle.

Why was it necessary to be so crass, and make cringeworthy boastful statements all the time? He had all the charm of a mass grave.

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I define myself as socially liberal but fiscally conservative.

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Most apt imo.

From what I’ve read it seems to me that Donald Trump was responsible for literally thousands of America deaths. This is because of the ignorant and incompetent way he and his administration handled the Covid 19 disaster.

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A president who is incapable of understanding, let alone admitting he can be wrong is not a sound basis for leadership. A crass, ill-informed megalomaniac, who doesn’t understand the objective methodology of science, and so distrusts and therefore ignores scientific evidence, is a catastrophe waiting to happen. That catastrophe came in a global pandemic, but was magnitudes worse in the US than it needed to be, because of this poor leadership.

His denial of climate change, is another example of his ego controlling the narrative, rather than acknowledging the overwhelming scientific consensus and objective evidence. Coupled with an atmosphere and environment where all advice had to take his fragile ego into account. An ego that at every opportunity had to make relentlessly crass, boastful, self-aggrandising and grandiloquent claims.

The facile way he enabled bigotry and racism, to exploit ignorance and fear, was populist opportunism at its worst, and is always a nauseating trait in politicians. Though I wondered sometimes if perhaps he didn’t fully grasp how facile some of his claims were.

I remember the claim to have stopped thousands of rapists and murderers from illegally entering the country, as if he was implying that rapists and murders not only made up the majority of that demographic, but that they didn’t come from any other.

This constant narrative of them and us, implying a false dichotomy fallacy, is standard fare for populist politicians, but Trump used it relentlessly. The claim to be a patriot is always one that has alarms bells ringing for me, as it is so often nationalism masquerading as patriotism. As was the case here of course, and listening to his speeches and his supporters, one always got the distinct impression they were the claim was implying, not just that they were “patriots”, but more pointedly that anyone who didn’t share their views was not.

Trump’s rhetoric on immigration was a textbook example of an opportunistic politician, using a negative stereotype to demonize a large demographic. He might have lifted the framework of some of that rhetoric from one of (s)Hitler’s diatribes against Jewish people, and just changed the target of the bigotry.

EDIT (This reads as an absolute, rather than a subjective opinion, so it’s a No True Scotsman fallacy, my apologies for the poor wording) No sane person doubts that immigration must be controlled, Edit (in my opinion immigration is an asset that countries should control, but we should never lose sight of the fact that these are human beings lives, and should be treated accordingly) though subjective viewpoints will differ on how and how many, but demonising them in that way was inexcusable.

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No true Scotsman I think, although I agree as a pragmatic position

I have heard contra arguments. . I forget when or where ,so this statement should be taken as hearsay or anecdotal.

Now I read it back you’re right. I worded that very poorly. FWIW, I know countries and their economies benefit hugely from immigration. As a demographic they’re just an easy target for politicians to demonise.