Prickly City by Scott Stantis for July 02, 2021

Republicans have been out for themselves and themselves alone for at least the last 40 years. They tore down all the societal institutions because like a domestic abuser, they want you feel worthless and helpless, open to their gaslighting.

Just because some people don’t go to church doesn’t mean they don’t believe in something. They’re just wise to the scam.

Some said that the permanent change Trump would effect in the Republican party would be a heightened attention to the needs of the working class. That may or may not materialize.

Some Republicans are making noises about being a “worker’s party,” but there doesn’t appear to be anything concrete there yet.

No, the biggest post-Trump change is the eager embrace of indecency.

On his Fox show, Tucker Carlson played a clip of Gen. Milley explaining that he thinks it’s important to hear various points of view (even critical race theory). At the conclusion of the clip, Carlson spat, “He’s not just a pig, he’s stupid!”

Leave aside the fact that an entitled, trust-funded scion of the Swanson frozen-dinner fortune who was thrown out of a Swiss boarding school and managed to attain a B.A. at Trinity College is daring to call Milley (Princeton, B.A.; Columbia, M.A.; Naval War College, M.A.) “stupid,” and just focus on the glaring social transgression.

The host of a widely viewed TV show should be, if not a model of decorum, at least not a foam-flecked fulminator.

That’s part of what it means to live in a civilized society.

And certainly a much-decorated general, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is entitled to respect for his service to the country. Every member of the military deserves to be honored for their service.

Or, if that’s too much to manage, how about not grossly insulted?

And this from a self-styled conservative? Didn’t conservatives once fume about someone in the Clinton White House saying something disrespectful to an officer?

Didn’t they mock Obama over a coffee-cup salute?

The 2021 conservatives clearly don’t respect the military or the police (see January 6) if it’s inconvenient.

While dissing decorated officers, these new conservatives eagerly embrace war criminals. Fox News has campaigned on their behalf, and Trump pardoned several.

~

https://thebulwark.com/decency-rip/

Ah yes, the old canard of “Without the threat of a Giant Sky Bully throwing us into eternal suffering the world will collapse intoan orgy of murder, pillaging and rape”

I’ve known a lot of people of varying and no religion and the proportion of good people to assholes seems to be the same regardless

Stantisfergittin’italljackedup, that’s exactly what the right-wing populists are doing……..you, like when they can’t wear masks or get vaccinated. Can’t you cut that nuisancance an call it like it is?

Would that be the same person who’s not a fault for anything that’s gone wrong in their life and when is the government going to step in (or out) and fix everything?

Most people believe in a lot more than themselves. The author just has a limited understanding and only considers a small select number of things as being meaningful to believe in.

Consider this, you had a good friend, but you couldn’t talk to him without going to a fancy house and talking to someone else first. How would your friend feel? There is nothing saying you can’t have a direct personal relationship with God. . . . Once you start you may even find She talks back.

Republicans believe in power. Period. Full Stop. They are not conservatives. They are authoritarians.

McConnell’s life work is complete. Voter suppression is cemented into judicial precedent by his stolen majority. Supreme Court Upholds Arizona Voting Restrictions The decision, a test of what remains of the Voting Rights Act, suggests that challenges to many new measures making it harder to vote may not be successful. The decision was among the most consequential in decades on voting rights. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/01/us/politics/supreme-court-arizona-voting-restrictions.html

There is no middle ground between surrendering your “soul” to a paranoid Bronze-age fantasy and acting out every one of the bad fantasies your fellow paranoids like to dwell on.

Everyone should have to believe in. I believe I have a beer.

Hoping that y’all have a good day.

It is true that we have become a nation that encourages self-perceived entitled individual worthiness, and celebrates group divisiveness as diversity. Our credo has become “because of who and what I am, I deserve more and better”.

More and more I lose faith in people too…

Happy Independence Week End

Is anybody there?

Does anybody care?

Does anybody see what I see?

I see fireworks

I see the pageant and pomp and parade

I hear the bells ringing out

I hear the cannons roar

I see Americans

All Americans

Free forevermore!

Is anybody there?

Does anybody care?

Does anybody see what I see

 Sherman Edwards

What’s great about living in a Secular society? Not having to be forced to believe in something.

“Ex unum unum” doesn’t work. I would try “ex uno unum”, with the ablative singular "uno, in the neuter.

They still believe in capitalism and they want to get paid.

We need to constantly ask ourselves, if we have lost all faith in everything, why is it so? Could it be pedophile priests? Or churches more concerned with making money than feeding/housing the poor? Or crooked politicians? Or politicians more concerned with keeping their shiny trousers/skirts on Congressional/Senate leather seats, rather than the people they ostensibly represent? Or the corruption we see at the local level? No wonder so many of us are jaded.

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”

I have zero faith that republicans will ever do anything good for the USA.