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How Republicans Will Elect Biden 2.0 in 2024
“Biden 2.0” is a stand-in for some Democrat figurehead of the Party of Death and Destruction (D). It could be Biden (D). It could be Harris (D). Maybe gruesome Newsome (D). Doesn’t matter, I predict we’ll have one of them, and it will be because “a majority [or, at least, a plurality] of Republicans want Trump, but the Republican Party says we can’t have him.”
This is a similar dynamic to the Republican’s Taft-Roosevelt split that produced probably the most destructive presidency of the 20th century — Woodrow Wilson (D) — followed closely by FDR (D) and LBJ (D) (notice a pattern?).
Dan Gelernter spelled it out masterfully earlier in the month in Trump Was a Mistake, and now speaks for me in The Coming Split.
But, despite the obvious differences, we’re heading for a 1912-repeat, in which the Republican Party ignores its own voters. The Republican machine has no intention of letting us choose Trump again: He is not a uniparty team player. They’d rather lose an election to the Democrats, their brothers in crime, than win with Trump.
I especially appreciate his points here [emphasis mine]:
I’m sure I’ll be accused of being a shill for the Democrats here, and as far as I’m concerned that’s as credible as being accused of shilling for Russia these days. I’m not suggesting you have to do what I do, either. But I have no intention of supporting a Republican Party that manifestly contravenes the desires of its voters. The RNC can pretend Trump isn’t loved by the base anymore, that he doesn’t have packed rallies everywhere he goes. But I’m not buying it: Talk to Republican voters anywhere outside the Beltway, and it is obvious that he is admired and even loved by those who consider themselves “ordinary” Americans.
Mitch McConnell put cement boots on the Republican party and pushed it into the Potomac with this line: “providing assistance for Ukrainians to defeat the Russians is the number one priority for the United States right now, according to most Republicans.”
In response, I’ll quote a different Mc: “Nuts!” — General McAuliffe
Trump may be our General Patton and the Third Army of his voters the only force that can save America from Biden 2.0.
MAGA!
Published in General
But if Berlinski had elaborated a bit further, he would have to admit that religious people often do the wrong thing even when they know better.
So, Hitchens was right. Religious people don’t always know what is the right thing to do and religous people don’t always do the right thing. Same for atheists.
Human beings, be they religious or not, are morally and intellectually imperfect.
We had a common core of values. Even when denominations stray, the common core survives. It served us well, especially in education, until the progressives mucked it up in the 20th century. They have tried to replace God and the Bible with progressive government. They only know how to destroy. They attack all the foundations of our society. They create nothing of lasting value. They replaced several thousand years of knowledge passed on in great works of literature and the arts with garbage. The cultural rot runs deep.
We want our education back. We don’t want this mindless twaddle the progressives push in schools now.
They have added nothing of value to replace what they have removed.
Much of our ideas for government came from the western tradition, from Greece and Rome. Christianity added to those great thinkers. One can’t understand who we are and what our culture is without reading and studying the Bible. You might have moved on from the Bible, if you ever read it to begin with, but we haven’t.
So, all of us, religious and non-religious people, can celebrate those traditions that are good while rejecting those traditions that are bad.
The Bible is very large book. Well, it’s actually about 66 books give or take based on which denomination one is part of. People can spend their entire lives reading it and trying to discern its meanngs, debating what this author “really” meant.
Most people, religious or not, are not Bible experts, nor can they read Koine Greek, which is what most of the old New Testament manuscripts were written in. Translating from Koine Greek into English while retaining all of the meaning is a challenge for New Testament scholars, as is evaluating the difference between the manuscripts and trying to figure out what the original document contained.
It’s not easy peasy.
Have you read Aristotle? Studied Latin? Plato? Locke? The Holy Bible? Do you believe the founders created an “exceptional” Constitution and country? To preserve what they gave us, shouldn’t we be reading what they read? College entrance exams used to be in Latin.
I’ve read the Bible. I do believe that the framers of the US Constitution created a great document even though it didn’t prohibit slavery for pragmatic reasons.
Reading the Bible isn’t equivalent to believing that God inspired it. You get a few thousand Bible experts and you will get a ton of different interpretations regarding what various chapters and books mean and how they should be applied to life in the 21st century.
And yet it surpasses what we have produced in staying power, moral lessons, history, poetry songs, and general guidance on how to connect with your soul.
Just curious, what is it like going through life with no soul, no promise of heaven and an afterlife? I have never met an atheist who could convince me there is an advantage to being one. What does it offer that my religion can’t? Can you enjoy The Messiah at Christmas and Easter?
I have heard it from others. The atheist can opt not to choose what is right if it is inconvenient. There is no higher authority like an all-knowing God. For them, it is just what can law enforcement catch you and punish you for doing.. This book addresses that. I have read it and taken a bunch of notes. I took the book, my notebook, and my questions on the NR cruise so I could discuss it with the author. He came down with Covid and missed the cruise.
No, you miss the point. We are all sinners and admit that but we can’t escape the all-knowing God. We pray for forgiveness and can be forgiven or punished by him.
As to the question of whether there is an advantage to being an atheist, that’s a very complex question, one that might require a full length book.
My wife is a Christian, though she is one of those liberal Christians that many Christians would say is not a “real” Christian. However, my wife might identify with your question to some extent. She believes in heaven because belief in a blissful afterlife gives her hope.
I admit that the idea of an eternal afterlife where there is no pain and no suffering and nothing but happiness sounds really enticing to me. But the question I pose to myself is this: Does this heaven really exist? Or is heaven simply a product of the religious imagination?
It’s sort of like if your doctor knows you have cancer. Would you want your doctor to conceal this news from you so that you wouldn’t feel so bad? Or would you prefer to know that you have cancer so that you can do some things that you have been putting off?
There’s a book called The Apocalypse of Peter. It’s one of those books that many of the early Christian churches used in their services but never made it into what we today call the New Testament.
In the Apocalypse of Peter, Peter is provided visions of the afterlife.
I find that interesting because if I were given accurate visions of heaven and hell, I would be very interested to know if hell is filled with Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus and atheists and if maybe there are few Jehovah’s Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists there too. It would be interesting if there were lots of Buddhists in heaven.
In other words, it would be interesting to know if “Jesus is the only way” to eternal life in heaven.
But it seems that anyone who claims to know the answers to these questions is going a bit further than evidence can take him.
I will say this about atheism. Maybe this will strike you as a positive or maybe not.
When I see a Hindu man or a Jewish man or a Buddhist man, I don’t see someone who is “broken” and someone who “needs to accept Jesus.” I don’t see a person who is “unregenerated” by the Holy Spirit. I see a human being who is flawed like me. We are in the same boat. There are no “chosen people.” There is no “elect.”
If this life is all there is, well, okay then. Thanks for letting me know. Of course, we can’t know for certain.
I prefer KJV. People study it all the time. Churches created schools in the US specifically to teach people how to read the Bible. It was used as a text in schools. It is still used in certain western tradition Christian schools. The number of those schools is growing as people escape public schools.
Thank you for answering. We all have many questions and there is no way to know the correct answer. I doubt if our brains could even comprehend the answer. However, religion gives me comfort. I don’t need to have proof. That is where faith comes in. I think it is better to live life believing. If I’m wrong, I will never know. On the other hand, living life not believing then dying and finding out you were wrong, now that could be a problem.
Yes, indoctrination is teaching and inculcating of doctrine. For example, indoctrination is what keeps children and adults following the rules of safe gun handling.
Brainwashing? I don’t even know how to define it or whether it exists in its original usage, but if it means “washing” it implies removing prior understandings or ways of thinking. So childhood indoctrination is not brainwashing, it’s brain-filling.
When writing about ignoring brainwashing I deliberately didn’t get into hypnosis, which is basically suggesting something to someone who is predisposed to accepting and agreeing to suggestion or commands from an authoritative source. And couple tenths of any population is very susceptible to being told what to think. And another fifty percent or so is partially subject to being told what to think. And twenty-five percent or so in immune from being told what to think.
And apparently hypnosis can be conducted without the subjects consciously knowing it. Beyond this we get into the realm of being covertly told something over and over and over until it finally takes root, or even people just parrot it to make life easier, and end up incorporating it into their thinking.
Also, Febreeze was a non-seller as an air freshener. Then someone came up with an advert campaign to subtlely and non-explicitly link using Febreze to a sense of accomplishment and worth, and sales took off, and it’s still on the market decades later. I don’t think even this is brainwashing, but it’s certainly operating under the conscious level.
I once read a book about getting people to want to do what it is that you want them to do by the way you use your words to persuade them, and the justification is that all conversation is getting someone else to see your point of view — if you want them to do something that will benefit them as well as you, what’s wrong with saying something with close to a 100% success? This was related to sales, I think, but it applies to political speech and propaganda.
I know a guy who says he’s a Wordsmith and can get anybody to do anything. And I find this to be revolting. I know a woman who, after visiting the dentist, thought she needed two or three thousand dollars worth of gum surgery. I don’t know if she ever got it because she couldn’t afford it, but the dentist’s words could have been intended for both their benefit, but I doubt it. I think it was meant to sell an unnecessary service.
Linguistic manipulation seems to involve, repetition, dishonest representations, acceptance of authority, believing something he already wants to believe, and the hearer’s social discomfort with always thinking and going against the tide, and alternatively, wanting to fit in. But still I wouldn’t call this brainwashing. It’s psychological manipulation.
So, you believe in that one millisecond of a flash of a can of coke where the eye doesn’t even see it and the brain doesn’t even process it, and you will have a desire for coke? That’s a theory I heard as a kid. It’s bogus. Otherwise we’d all be running out to buy coke and whatever else they micro-flash in front of you. I would say 90% of pop psychology is bogus, starting with Freud. Freud was a fraud.
Yes, let me summarize what I’ve learned today about indoctrination, and really the key concept, socialization. I’ll need a clean comment box.
I’ve had similar experiences.
Maybe it’s because their socialization was based on 2000 years of Judeo-Christian culture, whether they realized it or not.
Ask an ancient Roman if it is moral for gladiators to kill each other for spectacle, and they might say their intuition tells them it is. He’s not realizing that established social norms have been formed by Judeo-Christian values over two thousand years, and his cousins or whoever are formed in some way from it, whether they believe in it as a religion or not. Even socialism – the desire to spread the wealth can be rooted in Judeo-Christian values. However they are ignoring other values.
True. That is our hope. But from Christ to where Christianity was the dominant religion/world view was close to 300 years. Are you ready to wait? We have to out breed them.
I think you brought “moral realist” up in another discussion. I don’t have time to look it up, but if the prefix “meta” is attached, it’s probably along the lines of deconstruction. It’s a fancy way of undermining traditional morals. Moral realist sounds a lot like utilitarianism. Most moralists would not accept that. Utilitarianism is not a justification for an immoral behavior.
I don’t really think there’s much choice on it. All I can do is what is right for right now. That’s not simple. How much do I fight for my rights as an American citizen to influence my government vs focusing in on raising and growing the church?
Sure, so both, but one is having significant diminishing returns. I don’t think I like being a Christian in a “democratic republic” (quotes because not convinced that’s what we have anymore). It’s harder to figure out what is the right tactic.
So Wikipedia has a decent entry on “indoctrination.” The first four paragrapghs are thought provoking.
So as I see it, there are levels of socialization. Parts of what we transfer to our children are basic human social concepts. Things you might find similar between an American family with say one in the Amazon jungle. But there are other levels of socialization that starts separating people. Certainly there are different social values between third world countries and first world countries. There are different social skills and values between European cultures and non-European cultures. There are different social skills and values between the United States and say a European country. Even within the US there are differences in values: California/NY, urban/rural, left/right, Protestant/Catholic, and so on. Each of these are passed on doctrines that form our children into adults. Many of these “doctrines” are not even articulated. The children just pick it up.
So when we are debating with, say, the left, we are debating on a similar plane, that is, a plane of American values. (Yeah, I know, that’s questionable on their part) You can’t argue about free speech with a guy from Amazon jungle. You’re just on different planes.
Continued…
I’m not familiar with that view. My use of the term “natural law” comes from a long treatise I read years ago. There was a long discussion of the terms “divine law”, “physical law”, civil law”, and “natural law”. IIRC, natural law was based on an attempt to discover basic values that are common across all human societies. Not unlike the understanding of physical laws, it was based on observation and formalization.
What’s the difference between indoctrination and socialization? I think there is a shade subtle difference that one could express, but it doesn’t seem worth it to try to find the perfect words. The difference is in connotation and attitude to what you’re referring to. I would say they are pretty much synonymous.
So the left has discovered they can indoctrinate children through education. You can shape their developing values when they are most absorbing of social ideas. Until recently my perception has been that schools respected most of the parents wishes when it came to k-12 children. Something in the last say fifteen years has changed. (Why does it always feel this downward trend started with Obama?) Most teachers seem to accepted the left side the US values system. And for some reason they now feel compelled to push it on the kids. I think we need to be vigilant with the education system.
I will also say that I don’t think that whatever the kids pick up has to be permanent. Go spend a little time in a foreign country and you almost start forgetting your Americanism. Those socialization values are fluid. We have to educate the public constantly and stand up for our values.
This also substantiates my belief that laws instill values. Abortion is immoral, any way you look at it, especially from natural law and science, but the legalization of abortion over time has instilled a different value, making it appear moral. Gay marriage is not normal. No one believed it for thousands of years. Make it legal and it now seems to be normal. Same thing with transgenderism.
Anyway, I’m under the weather tonight, so I’m going to call it an early night.
It feels like it started with Obama because that’s when Millenials started coming of age. I was 24 in 2008. That’s when the social pathologies of my generation started exiting universities and entered the “real world”.
It started over 100 years ago.