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laura b's avatar

“Conservatives” as defined by the far right are not conservative. “Evangelicals” on the far right are not evangelical. Warping language is key to authoritarian wannabes, producing chaos, confusion and exhaustion in discerning truth from lies.

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BigDaddy52's avatar

See 'George Orwell'.

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Nancy (South NJ coast)'s avatar

I doubt far-right evangelicals are even Christian.

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Bruce Brittain's avatar

Ah, Leviticus, evangelicals' favorite bible book. Chapter 19, Verse 19: "...thou shall not sow thy fields with mingled seeds:..." My neighbor's garden has both carrots AND cabbage. Should I run over and smite them?

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Jeffinator's avatar

Meanwhile lesbians around the world are going: "Nyah, nyah, nyah."

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KMD's avatar

It's so interesting how conservative Christians always quote the Old Testament. You hardly ever read or hear of them quoting the New Testament - Christ's Sermon on the Mount in Matthew: 5, for example. Then again, The Beatitudes sound pretty "woke" to me.

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Ryan Groff's avatar

They have a body with no spirit. If they had ears. They would understand when Jesus said, "you can't pour new wine in an old flask". They are stuck on the physical elements. It's a complete warp of the faith. I've known an seen it always there. It's current manifestation, however, make my stomach churn.

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Mary Brownell's avatar

I was thinking the same thing. I have often wondered why the most intolerant of the right-wing "Christians" so often quote from cherry-picked verses from the Old Covenant instead of from the New Covenant brought by Jesus, whose teachings they supposedly follow.

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knowltok's avatar

Because, with the exception of those whacky Egyptians and a few others, we make God in our image, not the other way round.

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Mike B.'s avatar

And let's not forget Deuteronomy 21:18–21, in which parents of a rebellious child may bring their kid to a town square to be stoned to death. Stubborn, defiant kid? Death to thee! Problem solved.

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TW Falcon's avatar

Yes. What are you waiting for? The Lord commands it.

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mjdlight's avatar

Your comment reminds me of this stone cold classic scene from The West Wing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIHjoT19XpE

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Mary Brownell's avatar

Just watched it. Very on the nose!

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Mike Lew's avatar

Cotton/ polyester blend shirts are similarly insulting to the guy upstairs. :)

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Edward Simpson's avatar

As is wearing stripes with plaids, which is a guaranteed ticket straight to Hell.

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JF's avatar

Oh no! I thought we were liberated from the edicts about mixing sartorial patterns!

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Bruce Brittain's avatar

Well, shoot, now I have to go back over there for additional smiting.

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Peter T's avatar

Well, I'm certainly smitten with your smiting. To smoking smithereens should you smite them, and...

OK, I'll stop now.

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May 31, 2023
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knowltok's avatar

Free business idea: Rainbow colored shirts that combine fabrics and quote various biblical nonsense (Bruce's seed thing as an example).

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R Mercer's avatar

Definitely! Right now!

It's blasphemous, an affront to god.

If you have ever read through a lot of the law (and all of these things are Law, even though it is really only the Decalogue that gets any real press outside Judaism), the blatant stupidity of it becomes pretty clear.

Many of these laws are more about staking out and preserving a particular group identity than anything else. One of the things that has aided the survival of Judaism and Jews (and has also perversely been a cause of much oppression) is the clear group boundaries that the Law establishes. The in and out group boundaries were pretty clear, for the most part, until recently.

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Terry Mc Kenna's avatar

Lot's of notions about which item when burned will make a scent that the Lord likes. For the life of me, I suggest God loves the smell of sizzling bacon.

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R Mercer's avatar

It is the rare person who doesn't ;)

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zedsdead's avatar

Pants …. What about those pants !

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Kevin Robbins's avatar

Yeah, I never see anyone getting too worked up over the dietary stuff. A baconator anyone? Also, don’t see many of the proscribed hairstyles except on Orthodox Jews.

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steve robertshaw's avatar

Orwell was very prescient.

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JF's avatar

And whoever wrote The Emperor’s New Clothes. Pandora’s Box too. Human nature has been remarkably consistent in its silliness.

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wayne's avatar

It is Pandara's jar in mythology.

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E. A. Bare's avatar

See yesterdays Letter from Dr. Heather Cox Richardson, it is a key tactic of Fascists.

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Jenn's avatar

It was a great find from Dr. Richardson..Here is the link to her Substack:

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-29-2023

LInk to the orginal: https://archive.org/details/ArmyTalkOrientationFactSheet64-Fascism/mode/2up

It is worth reading--the simplicity and clarity with which the writer explains an amorphous concept should be something that political and news writers emulate. Maybe it's 70 years of the left calling everything they don't like "fascism" but I thought true fascism was hard to pin down. It isn't. Now that we are staring down real fascists trying to take over, we are paying the price for the name-calling.

Here's a thought: Stop throwing around terms like "racist," "homophobe," and "transphobe." Using them all the time desensitizes people so when a real racist rears their head, people dismiss it. Just like saying "fuck" used to be a shocker...now you see people wearing it on shirts and hats.

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Josh's avatar

Olllllld joke.

Guy comes back from WWI. Family gathers to see him, big return party. So in the midst of all this his grandmother comes up and asks him how bad it was.

So he's not going to lay it on granny, so he's like "It wasn't that bad. Lot of good friends. We sang songs. Told jokes."

She's like "Oh? What kind of jokes? Tell me one?"

Well, now he's in a pickle. So he's like "Uh, granny, soldiers use a lot of bad words and I don't think I'd be comfortable telling you one of our jokes."

"It's okay, just say the word 'blank' whenever you come to a word you don't feel okay using with me."

"Oh okay, no problem! So here's one of my favorites: Blank blank blank, blanking blank, blank, blank, blank blank. Blank blank blank blank, blank blank, FUCK, blank blank blank."

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Helen's avatar

It sounds like sitting on a NYC subway train.

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Nancy (South NJ coast)'s avatar

Jenn, thanks a million for these links. I downloaded the PDF of the original document. My father's brother, his only sibling, was killed in August 1944 when German dead-enders attacked his tank unit in the Battle of Normandy. I continue his fight against fascism.

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JF's avatar

I agree somewhat, but one could propose that we’ve been too delicate, vocabulary wise, in dealing with Trump. It took YEARS before the media would use the common word “lie” for his “misstatements” and other numerous equivocal characterizations to describe his lies.

Early in the Trump years, I was uneasy with comparisons to Hitler. Now I’m thinking that’s a spot on parallel.

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Kate Fall's avatar

Although I absolutely hate how "fuck" is now everywhere in everyone's speech (thanks Trump), trying to police how other people use language is the definition of beating your head against a brick wall.

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Jenn's avatar

I agree. I can only police myself.

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Jeff's avatar

I don’t blame Trump for “fuck” being everywhere, I’d lay blame for that with millennials probably haha. We like the word. It’s very versatile and still can garner a response despite its casual use lol.

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Ben Gruder's avatar

It's actually the swiss army knife of profanities. It can indicate displeasure, delight, hatred and respect depending on how it's used.

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KMD's avatar

A friend tells a great story about the F-word. Her husband had taken his car to his local garage for a tuneup. While waiting, he overhead an old geezer telling the garage owner the problem with his truck: "The fucking fucker won't fuck!"

Perfect use of the f-word as an adjective, noun & verb in the same sentence.

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knowltok's avatar

Another old guy confusing his truck with his wife.

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Peter T's avatar

Fucking millennials. Always fucking everything up.

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TW Falcon's avatar

Haha! 😄

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May 31, 2023
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Marla's avatar

I picked that up from a comedy show "Father Ted."

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May 31, 2023
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