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.........or his "Kyiv still stands" speech is enough for Putin to try flatten it.
A Deeply Fractured US
- Thread starter BeyondTheNow
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Brad Sallows
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And some progressives are arguing for plain war, skipping the divorce part. Keith Olbermann's Twitter not even a couple weeks ago:
"We are OWNED by guns. Only one thing will change that.
We must have Economic Civil War. Blue States must financially starve the Red States, the Gun Lobby, the GOP, the Death Lobby, and the crooked judiciary into submission.
NOW."
By all means discuss the issue, but try not to present evidence that suggests it's just an "extreme right-wing Trump conservative republican redneck etc" problem.
The not-so-funny thing is, most Americans are in the middle and it’s the fringes that seem to be dictating events.
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Good luck with that Brad. I don't see it happening here.
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Posted here because the anglosphere is now all one bubble - Just ask Stephen Harper and Stockwell Day - among others.
I would note that religious Catholics also need to have care as well.
The new religion brooks no heresy.
Protestants are now hounded out of politics, as Kate Forbes has shown
Are we really a tolerant society when the ambitious are expected to renounce aspects of their faith?
www.telegraph.co.uk
Protestants are now hounded out of politics, as Kate Forbes has shown
Are we really a tolerant society when the ambitious are expected to renounce aspects of their faith?
www.telegraph.co.uk
Protestants are now hounded out of politics, as Kate Forbes has shown
Are we really a tolerant society when the ambitious are expected to renounce aspects of their faith?FRASER NELSON23 February 2023 • 9:00pm
CREDIT: Ken Jack/Getty
So why did Kate Forbes do it? After years in parliament she will have been aware of the reaction to an MSP who declared their opposition to gay marriage, let alone pre-marital sex. Yet she did so anyway: immediately, almost proudly.
She was duly denounced as a bigot and her backers peeled away. A BBC radio phone-in had callers saying they’d feel “unsafe” with her in Bute House. One compared her with the Taliban. On day one she torched not just her own campaign but also, in all likelihood, her political career. Why?
One of her prominent supporters says she was out of practice: that seven months of maternity leave meant she bungled the question. But Ms Forbes is perhaps the smartest woman in Holyrood and an expert in talking about her faith, having been grilled about it in most interviews.
So I’m more inclined to go with another theory: that she decided to answer modestly but truthfully, and to expose the bigotry that religious politicians now face. And that any overreaction might – just might – provoke some soul-searching in her party.
“Love not Kate,” screamed the front page of the Daily Record, Scotland’s main tabloid, after she spoke about saving herself for marriage. A bit of a stretch; is pre-marital celibacy, however old-fashioned, really a form of hatred? But the word is being invoked here in its new, modern sense.
A “hate crime” isn’t really about hatred. It’s about deviating from the new set of liberal social beliefs which are now taking the form of a religion – and one in front of which Ms Forbes has decided not to genuflect. With results now there for all to see.
It’s worth reflecting on her offending words, because there weren’t many of them. On sex: “My faith would say that sex is for marriage – that’s the approach that I would practise.” On gender: “A rapist cannot be a woman, and therefore my straight answer would be that Isla Bryson is a man.” And on gay marriage: “I would have voted, as a matter of conscience, along the lines of mainstream teaching in most major religions, that marriage is between a man and a woman. But I would have respected and defended the democratic choice that was made.”
Such are the words that can now shoot down the highest political flyer, but it’s hard to see how she could have been more polite or restrained. She was talking about her personal worldview – stressing how, as first minister, she’d defend the rights of others.
When it comes to her job, she said, she “couldn’t care less what two consenting adults do in the comfort of their own bedroom”. But this was not about what she’d do, it’s about what she thinks. She has shown, in case the Tim Farron episode left any doubt, that a test of doctrinal purity is back.
In a way, it’s a return to the old days, where it was common to regard a religious minority as inherently suspect. For centuries, we had Test Acts which demanded that anyone in public life – even teachers – swore allegiance to Protestant beliefs, thereby keeping out Catholics, Jews and other nonconformists. They stayed until 1828 in England and 1889 in Scotland, but suspicion still lingered.
When John F Kennedy ran for president, his Catholicism was a talking point in interviews. As with Forbes, some argued that it was fine for a religious minority to have the number-two job (in his case, vice-president; in hers, finance minister), but just not be in charge. Kennedy decided to take this head-on and spoke to a gathering of Protestants in Houston in a speech later hailed as a template for religious tolerance in a democracy.
He asked to be judged only on what kind of America he believed in. “What kind of church I believe in,” he said, “should be important only to me.” And if religious candidates are subjected to a purity test, where would that lead, given changing political fashions? Today, he said, “it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed. It may some day be again a Jew, a Quaker, a Unitarian or a Baptist … Today I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you — until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped.”
It is now Protestants – Forbes and Farron – who are the highest-profile political victims of this new intolerance. Both pleaded, as JFK did, that their innermost thoughts should not really matter: they’d vote to protect diversity and equality. Both were asking for tolerance of religious minorities. And both ended up being denounced as bigots, because neither would, when asked, renounce the teachings of their church.
This is the real question raised by Forbes. How can a multi-faith democracy work unless we accept and respect religious differences? Do we want to live in a country where children growing up in a Muslim, Jewish or Christian family see – in Ms Forbes’s monstering – that they’ll hit a glass ceiling in their career unless they renounce certain aspects of their faith? Was the Equality Act of 2010 ever intended to impose a new religion, with apostates identified, hounded and deposed?
Kemi Badenoch, the equalities minister, put it well. The whole saga, she said, was intended to protect diversity, not enforce conformity. It’s a shield to protect minorities, not a sword to attack them. If people like Kate Forbes cannot say what they believe without being pilloried, then we have somehow ushered in a draconian system that needs to be dismantled. Outside politics, if people can be fired or disciplined for public expressions of aspects of their faith, how strong is our claim to be a country of religious freedom?
“I do not intend to apologise for these views,” said Kennedy in 1960. “Nor do I intend to disavow either my views or my church in order to win this election.” His words ended the debate – and, it was felt at the time, ended the era where any candidate’s religion was a bar to political progress. But that did not, it seems, last for long. As Ms Forbes tries to salvage what remains of her campaign, she can at least say she has shown that this old discrimination is back, and that a brief window of tolerance that Kennedy opened has snapped shut.
FJAG
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Comic strip Dilbert is canceled after creator's racist tirade
Newspapers are dropping the 'Dilbert' comic strip after creator Scott Adams launched into a racist tirade advising white people to 'get the f**k' away from black people.www.dailymail.co.uk
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Dilbert comic strip dropped by US media over creator's racist tirade
The comic strip's creator Scott Adams said white people should "get the hell away" from black people.
www.bbc.com
Hope he saved some of that for a rainy day.
So 26% of Black people disagree with a phrase, coined as a troll campaign and used within white supremacist circles, and he takes that to say that white people should stay away from black people?
Talk about taking something out of context.
RangerRay
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Rasmussen is also a terrible polling firm. Their polls have to be taken with a huge bag of salt.Dilbert comic strip dropped by US media over creator's racist tirade
The comic strip's creator Scott Adams said white people should "get the hell away" from black people.
Hope he saved some of that for a rainy day.
So 26% of Black people disagree with a phrase, coined as a troll campaign and used within white supremacist circles, and he takes that to say that white people should stay away from black people?
Talk about taking something out of context.
He’s been getting nutty for quite a while. This is simply him finally saying things out loud.Dilbert comic strip dropped by US media over creator's racist tirade
The comic strip's creator Scott Adams said white people should "get the hell away" from black people.
Hope he saved some of that for a rainy day.
So 26% of Black people disagree with a phrase, coined as a troll campaign and used within white supremacist circles, and he takes that to say that white people should stay away from black people?
Talk about taking something out of context.
Financially I’m sure he’ll be fine. He’ll find a way to pivot to and grift off of the regressive MAGA types, do the hard-right speaking and tv commentary circuit, etc.
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That's a good point. I think, back in the halcyon days of 2016, he was on Team Trump.
I'm not sure (and can't be bothered to check right now) whether he still is or not.
Oh, he very much was and I have no reason to believe he isn’t still. He literally said republicans would be “hunted down” and killled within a year of Biden’s victory. Dude’s got some screws loose.
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Eaglelord17
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I wouldn't even say that. There isn't much dictating done in the US, it is so deadlocked it just keeps on going as it is not really moving one way or another. The moment one side makes some slight move, some other level of government prevents it from going anywhere. It is the whole reason recently their presidents have been trying to do as much as they can with executive orders as it is one of the few mechanisms they can use to make anything happen. Even then there is tons of restrictions on what they can do with those and they simply get cancelled when the next guy gets in.
One of the strengths of the American system is that it prevents power from being consolidated in any one place. The cons are when you end up in this hyperpartisan style of politics they now have is nothing moves in any direction. Its up to their politicians to do their job and negotiate, unfortunately it is easier for all of them to take the cheap shots at each other for political gain instead of trying to actually solve problems.
Halifax Tar
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That was hard to watch. Good riddance.
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It just seems like the whole Covid thing broke the minds of all sorts of people in Canada and the US
Halifax Tar
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Without a doubt.
Brad Sallows
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Adams has been pro-Trump all along. People have been looking for an excuse to "cancel" him.
His mistake was advocating segregation. As to the survey question, I doubt many people know of its origins, and there's not really any way to answer an "It's OK to be white/black/male/female/gay/straight" question without choosing a side which marks you as either tolerant/indifferent/accepting, or intolerant. And it's quite clear that for the race-obsessed crowd, you're either with them or against them; there is only submission or exile.
His mistake was advocating segregation. As to the survey question, I doubt many people know of its origins, and there's not really any way to answer an "It's OK to be white/black/male/female/gay/straight" question without choosing a side which marks you as either tolerant/indifferent/accepting, or intolerant. And it's quite clear that for the race-obsessed crowd, you're either with them or against them; there is only submission or exile.
That's not a 'mistake', that's a choice. That's outing yourself as a thoroughly shitty person. He brought the consequences on himself.
