OHMYGOD, THAT’S THE FUCKING POINT.

This is my point exactly. Thank you for putting it more concisely than what I’m apparently capable of.

I mean, it should be obvious to Christians today that Jesus repeatedly and consistently made a clear distinction between the “kingdom of heaven” and secular nations. Separation of church and state was absolutely one of the premises the early church worked off of as a teaching of Jesus himself. The idea of a “Christian Nation” is indeed antithetical to the very foundations of Christianity. The early history of Christianity is pretty lost on people today and people are quite unaware of just how drastic the changes in Christianity were in the early 300s, and how gigantic of a deal it was for the Roman state to adopt Christianity at the time.

Eh, I don’t think there’s much merit to whether or not Jesus was a real person. The focus should be on the obviously fantastical claims because Christian apologists tend to get all caught up in the idea of Jesus being a “historical person” rather than the wild claim of Jesus being a literal god. I don’t reject the validity of Christianity because I’m unsure if Jesus really did exist or not, but rather that the supernatural claims fall embarrassingly short of such tall claims.

Well, at least he’s dead. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I don’t know who that is, but if I could verify/clarify by looking at their post history, I’d probably block them if what you say is true… ohhhhh hey, looks like the dipshit himself commented on this very post like an edgelord and is conveniently the most downvoted comment.

Joke with a message aside, I noticed I already had downvoted the guy multiple times before. Looks like he likes to post ai slop as well and becomes a combative baby bitch when called out. Even better, some of the ai slop uses the “hUmAn BaD” trope. And I did indeed check up on and confirm the cropping out artist credit. He’s a combative baby bitch when called out on that, too.

Guys, look! He’s so cool! It was a post about how much of a dickhead he is and he still upvoted, what a Madlad(inc)! Even taking a stand against all those invasive ads like uhhhh… an artist’s signature on their own artwork. It’s basically the same thing as those overly sexual ads for dishonest mobile games cramming themselves into videos made for kids, amirite??? He definitely understands the ethical principles of advertising without lazy hasty generalizations.

Also, it’s such a great idea to comment on a post about your own shitty behavior. No one takes that opportunity to look at your profile to verify the behavior themselves. And it’s not like when you comment to identify yourself that you give a convenient link for everyone to block you without having to look you up. Truly some kinda 5d chess move. I tip my fedora to you m’sir.

I just don’t understand, are these politicians really that stupid? You do shit like this when the general public is more cognizant of distrust in government institutions, you start building factories for more Luigis. If your average normies are experiencing a noticeable and tangible decrease in standard of living, are personally and physically seeing more live protests, are constantly seeing a stream of authoritarian moves from the government, and you pile on this blatant miscarriage of justice seen from both major parties, where do you think people are gonna turn to for justice? And when you’re this public and blatant about it, who’s head is on the spike first, historically speaking? I really don’t think everyone is prepared for the consequences of continuing down this road, because participation in the consequences will likely be much more mandatory than they have been historically.

Yeah, for sure, it’s difficult to reconcile putting yourself in someone else’s shoes with what they should be ideally doing. I know I can pretty easily lose perspective myself. It’s easy to look back at Germany in the 1930s saying that people in general should have done more, but I think we do a disservice to those that actually did their best with what they had on top of just trying to survive in the first place. And for others, we don’t know all the reasons they may have had for their inaction. I don’t know if we could even honestly say they would know what to do if given the option.

And while I certainly agree with the sentiment of resistance by any means vs a dictator taking over your country and killing people extrajudicially, it’s hardly ever that black and white, neither is it really ever very clear what fighting in a way that actually matters looks like. So while it would definitely be more satisfying to hunt down ICE agents like the ghouls they are, this would only serve to escalate an already volatile situation and make matters worse for literally everyone where more peaceful and boring solutions are still available. I think our best bet rhetoric-wise is to strongly encourage good actions and movements already happening, rather than yell at and further discourage those not engaged.

So, something stands out to me here:

Since americas president is threatening to invade my country’s territory, your fake ass opinion means nothing to me.

Umm… what? What does the actions of the head of state have to do with the opinions of the people of said state? That doesn’t make any sense. That would be equivalent to me meeting a regular ass Russian person and saying “PUTIN IS DOING AN IMPERIALIST INVASION OF UKRAINE AND THREATENED TO NUKE MY COUNTRY, SO YOUR OPINION MEANS NOTHING TO ME!” The Russian people aren’t responsible for the things their government does. That’s why I always make sure to be accurate in pointing out that it’s Putin and the oligarchs doing the imperialism, not [all] Russians. I meet a Russian actively supporting Putin and his imperialist ambitions? Yeah, fuck that guy, then. But, in my personal experience, I have yet to meet a single Russian person IRL that didn’t fucking hate Putin. It’s almost as if people have lives independent of their state of residence and those that run that state.

So maybe redirect your anger at those who earned it? Something tells me that might be more constructive than directing your anger at random people for arbitrary reasons.

Aww, look at that, they think I’m wise.

… what? Who is making that argument and what are you even trying to say? What you’re describing here would not necessitate calling it war, it could more accurately be called terrorism. In the context of the post and article, yeah, they’re playing very loose with their definition of war. I would indeed call it a war if, as they propose, a state’s national guard actively took up coordinated armed resistance against the federal government,but that’s not what’s happening. They try to imply from a hypothetical war game that a university put together having parallels with what’s happening in Minnesota and Illinois right now Proves that we’re in the beginning of a civil war. This is over-sensationalized and just plain irresponsible. Not to mention they failed to demonstrate that what’s happening now necessitates that we’re “In the first phase of civil war”. The kind of civil unrest and state-sponsored terrorism we’re seeing in our country has happened countless times in the past without leading to war. So yeah, to say this is what war looks like is a very loose definition of war and generally just irresponsible.

Look, I acknowledge and appreciate the very real truth of armed resistance being a necessity in the event of a full fascist takeover, but we’re still not there yet. The republican(not the party) institutions are still in place and the American government very much so still exists as a non-fascist democratic-republic, but yes, the fascists are encroaching. To give legitimate, organized armed resistance would dramatically accelerate a fascist takeover and then we would have no other choice but to resist via full Rebellion. That is the absolute last option for reasons even beyond the pure and absolute devastation of war, which should be reason enough. To have a fighting chance as a Rebellion, you need the networks built up, which is what is happening now through these protests and mutual aid networks. You need public opinion on your side, this is being built up by the outrage response to brutalization of peaceful demonstrators. With strong enough public opinion, the military is on your side, being made up of the public. More demonstrations = more demonstrators = stronger networks built for resistance movements. This all takes time. So even if we’re playing by doomer rules as if the American government is already a lost cause, the current action by the people is necessary.

However, in the world of politics in the struggle to prevent a fascist state, all these movements have the primary purpose of enacting social change within the confines of the current system. Overthrowing the current system would necessitate mass armed conflict with a very uncertain outcome. An outcome that will very certainly have a worse short-term outcome due to the conflict and instability, and could easily have a worse long-term outcome if resistance movements prove to have weak cohesion. Generating enough political capital in the movements forming and acting today have proven many times in the country’s history to enact good and lasting change without armed Rebellion being necessary.

As much as fascist scum absolutely deserve being literally curb-stomped upon their appearance, these political movements don’t exist in a vacuum and we have to navigate the egotistical and fleeting opinion of the general public in order to effectively drive out fascism. We can cry out all we like about the public acting too soft toward fascists, but that, unfortunately, plays right into their hands.

Yeah, that’s a super loose definition of war. This is one of those things that you wouldn’t even know until after the fact anyway. Way too many people are eager for a civil war while very obviously not understanding what all that entails.

Bro, fucking what??? Have you not seen the mass protests, mass strikes, walkouts, mutual aid networks popping up, increasing pressure on elected officials, mass counter-surveillance, etc??? TF you mean Americans “won’t” act when it’s already fucking happening? Or are you one of those edgelords that thinks open armed rebellion is the only real form of action? You legitimately might be online way too much. Go outside, spend some time in the real world.

Oh, your English is great and legitimately feels natural, because I think you’ve communicated your point quite well. I can’t really dispute much of anything without sounding like I fundamentally agree with you, but I do have a seemingly small/semantic distinction that I think is important; I don’t think America’s primary core issue has been education or overbearing religious douchebaggery, but this weird extreme epistemological weight given to every individual’s opinion. It’s similar to the bullshit fuzzy philosophy the nazis would use to justify their ideology by insisting everyone should respect their deeply held beliefs. While I don’t think your assessment is perfectly accurate, I do very much believe it shows you’re paying way more attention than the average American.

It really is just simplistic bullshit that seems to trip them up, isn’t it? As a passionate lover of philosophy, I’ve come to a pretty good understanding of the sheer magnitude of what it takes to be considered an “expert” in any subject. And, hoo boy, my radical commitment to what is true has only served to illustrate to myself how much I lack in understanding… pretty much anything. I’m not one of those jackholes who do that smarmy-ass “I know nothing”, so I’ll admit that I understand a hell of a lot more than the average person in political theory and general pragmatic governance. So it’s both infuriating and baffling to me how often the average ‘right-winger’ decisively demonstrates how little they understand any political subject they have no business holding such a strong and certain opinion on. And really, that also applies for most people willing to talk politics in America. Like, how the fuck are people’s opinions so fucking strong for how shallow their position is???

Right, climate change, the thing that boomers caused and definitely not these huge corporations perpetuating a system making humanity dependent on fossil fuels. It was a generation defined by generally common experiences and not some dickheads on the boards of fossil fuel corporations covering up and then spinning up a disinformation campaign against the overwhelming evidence of anthropogenic climate change. No war but class war; know your enemy.