- cross-posted to:
- noncredibledefense@piefed.social
- cross-posted to:
- noncredibledefense@piefed.social
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Up until Trump, GW Bush was the dumbest president ever. Like Trump, he had a hard time focusing on his morning intelligence briefing, so they started making the first page a Bible verse. That way he looked forward to opening the file.
Eh? Reagan was an actor, and not a curious mind. And Reagan had literal Alzheimer’s, as widely reported. Surely Reagan was the dumbest?
Though we can agree that Reagan - Bush II - Trump were all incredibly stupid. Republicans just know how to pick them…
Alzheimer’s is NOT the same as being stupid, so while he WAS stupid, that’s not why.
It’s pointless to have an argument about which was the stupider president before Trump. I think it was GWB, you think it was Reagan, and there is no source that will decide it.
Alzheimer’s is NOT the same as being stupid
That is just word games with the dictionary definition of “stupid”. Having Alzheimer’s surely makes you hugely unqualified to make good decisions as President.
Of course it does, but Alzheimer’s is a tragedy. I’ve watched very intelligent people close to me succumb to it, and I am particularly sensitive about it. They weren’t stupid, just old, and it caught up with them. We shouldn’t let that define their lives, even if we don’t like them.
Alzheimer’s aside, Reagan wasn’t stupid, he was just a typical narcissistic, Sociopathic Conservative, who just didn’t care about regular people. He wasn’t stupid so much as just plain mean. AIDS emerged during his presidency, and he made the conscious decision to ignore it, and just let it spread among the gay community. That’s Evil, not stupid.
GW Bush was a typical frat boy nepo-baby, had everything handed to him, and squandered it anyway, then failed upwards all the way into the presidency, primarily due an open cheating scandal managed by his much smarter brother, who probably would have been the best presidential candidate in the family, before HW and GW burned the family political reputation for all time, destroying any chance he might have had.
That’s my take on it, and you are welcome to your own.
Roman Catholic here, born and raised, church every Sunday and catechism. As Roman Catholics, we don’t fuck around with reading the Bible. We daze off during the two readings and the Gospel, and we rely on the priest’s homily to sum it all up succinctly and with a couple of jokes sprinkled in.
18 years of going to church growing up and I don’t know what a Gog Magog is.
In the Hebrew Bible, particularly in the Book of Ezekiel (chapters 38–39), Gog is a leader (possibly a king?), and Magog is the land or people he rules. They are described as a hostile force that will attack Israel in the “last days,” only to be decisively defeated by God. In the New Testament (Book of Revelation 20:7–9), the names reappear symbolically. Here, “Gog and Magog” represent the nations of the world gathered for a final rebellion against God after a period of peace. They are again defeated in a climactic, apocalyptic battle.
Space king has more credible lore than this
People believe anything their religion tells them.
Really makes you wonder what would have happened if Revelation was just never accepted as cannon
Woah woah… Slow down and throw a joke or two into that if you want me to absorb it.
Alright, alright, let me put the tinfoil on low heat for a second.
Old Testament: Gog is the boss, Magog is his turf and crew. They roll up for a big end-times fight… and get absolutely smote. End of story.
New Testament? Same names, but now it’s basically everyone and their cousin joining the rebellion. Bigger crowd, same outcome, still gets shut down.
So yeah… same names, bigger scale.
It’s like a sequel where the budget goes up, but the villain still loses in the last five minutes.
And let’s be honest, if your battle plan keeps ending in divine smiting, maybe… workshop the strategy.
That’s pretty danged good. Now do it as a limerick.
There once was a bloke called Gog,
Who thought he could be “top dog”.
He fought with Israel,
Where soon he did fail,
Then he buggered off back to Magog.Nicely done.
Can’t say I’ve ever been good with limericks lol. I tend to be overly descriptive.
There once was a leader named Gog
Who ruled in the land of Magog
His forces were smote
Then again it was wrote
And Dubya’s as dumb as a log
I gave it a shot, but not sure how it came out. How about this:
There once was a leader named Gog
Whose land, Magog, was part of the slog
They attacked in the end
Got smote ‘round the bend
And the sequel went global, same log
Not bad at all. Way to give it the ol’ college try.
Well, it’s not as far fetched as believing that a grifter found some golden tablets in the woods and a magic hat translated the markings for him.
Ya know, people believe strange things all of the time, but the thing that has always perplexed me about LDS is that Joseph Smith had a posse destroy the local newspaper’s press and died after shooting four people and falling out a window, but his religion lives on.
All that said, I dont like to pick on mormons. The mormons ive encountered have been very positive people that were raised with manners and a strong moral compass. They also have been very family focused.
I’m sure those traits are not 100% universal and The Secret Live of Moron Wives definitely tells a different tale, but in my personal experience having lived in Salt Lake City and a heavily Mormon town in Wyoming, Mormon folk are generally good people, and I credit their religion for a lot of it.
Their mission work is pretty danged cool and “Christian” and they’re preppers by religious mandate.
The Judeo-Christian God is self-absorbed, vindictive, violent, unpredictable, callous and often wrong. Joseph Smith well serves as a prophet in his image.
18 years of going to church growing up and I don’t know what a Gog Magog is.
I believe Gandalf killed one of them.
That’s balrog.
I think what you mean is a game service that sells old games, and my collection of such games.
You’re confusing it for GOG.com.
I believe Gog Magog is when a person delivers a long, uninterrupted speech.
That’s a monolog. Gog Magog is an Israeli martial art.
That’s Krav Maga. “Gog Ma’ Gog” is a vague and mispronounced instruction regarding one’s penis.
No, that’s “Crank my hog” Gog Magog is that crocodile cowboy from episodes 2 and 4 of the Amazing Digital Circus.
Religion for Breakfast has a nice video on what Gog and Magog is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh11CuVUZPY . They’re basically a group originally mentioned in Ezekiel that we don’t have alot of idea who they originally were, but they’ve been this recurring boogeyman through Judaism and Christianity as both groups keep trying to apply the name to whoever they think might be the biggest threat to Israel.
I also grew up Roman Catholic, but Catholic Bibles are really a thing. The reason Catholics don’t read the Bible is probably to do with timing. In the Second Vatican Council, one of the changes they made was this:
Dei verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation emphasized the study of scripture as “the soul of theology”.
But see, the final release of Dei verbum was released in 1965. Everybody was used to not reading the Bible, so they only started teaching children a more Bible-oriented education after that, and it was sort of slow to roll out. But you see, those children were reaching adulthood in the late 80s and 90s, when people stopped going to church as much, and not too long after that, all of the sex abuse scandals really became a hot issue.
Twenty years isn’t really enough time to change generational norms. I would expect something like this to change over 2 or 3 generations, so 40 to 60 years, but the decline in attendance and in people seeking the priesthood has sort of reduced the Vatican’s control over specifics like this. And I think that’s why we still don’t see Catholics reading the bible.
I have a catholic bible – st joseph edition. It’s same bible as the protestants but a few extra books thrown in at the end.
Dude, Catholicism has been around since the days of St. Peter (if you believe the church’s timeline). Catholics dont read the bible because for like 1,940 years of the church’s existence, most people couldnt read. Generation after generation after generation was taught that reading the bible isnt necessary. The lutherans only had like 400 years of illiteracy to contend with, and I think they probably still read the bible less than the new-age 19-tickety revival spurred Community/Nondenominational Christians.
Maybe we’re saying the same thing in different words with different examples.
Isn’t gog magog a goose liver pâté? 🤔
I wouldnt know – im catholic.
Why is Iraqi field marshal Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri playing the role of Jacques Chirac here?
That’s a remarkable resemblance and a DAMN good pull. How did you have that ready?
Enough years of shitposting about politics and history to remember “iraqi general who looks like bryan cranston” and the good luck of DuckDuckGo knowing exactly who I was looking for.
Well color me impressed.
“Those damn Catholics” - George Bush probably
Also nothing has changed in regards to the United Slaves of Israel’s religious fanaticism, they really believe that creating “Greater Israel” and deporting all the Jews to Palestine will fulfill that “biblical prophecy” usher in the apocalypse, Jesus will return and kill all the Jews for not believing he’s the Messiah and judgement day will come.
And yet apparently the Iranians are the religious nuts 🤦♂️ Oh and also apparently this time Russia and China are Gog and Magog, which one’s Gog and which is Magog though is anyone’s guess.
I dont know about Gog, but Magog ils not where they expect it, https://www.ville.magog.qc.ca/ its rather Nice too.
Moloch also keeps showing up again and again in the lore of these people as a way for them to personally atone for their egregious activities. They believe this entity requires constant and significant sacrifice for good fortune. George Bush Jr was in attendance at Bohemian grove many times where the powerful people go to rub elbows and relax in the summer on a lake. They run a mock ceremony there called the Comfort of Care as part of the festivities where they do a mock sacrifice of a young women (presumably a virgin) to Moloch as a symbol of the entire years worth of their immoral actions to atone to Moloch. The idea being that they can then leave the mini vacation with less weight of how they have used their power in the past.
I think coverage of the grove as dramatization throughout the years regarding occult activity actually did us all a big disservice toward what the real issue has always been. That is, leadership without personal responsibility, and should be a major red flag when thinking about leaders at any capacity.
I wish I was making this stuff up. So it’s not totally off the wall here that George Bush Jr would be looking for other spiritual entities and collect them so that he could also use for himself for justifications. This is how they sleep at night and we should never let them forget their harm no matter how many cute paintings they make.
Whether they really believe this stuff or not, there is always a theme of using spirituality to justify horrible actions among these people and I think that’s something important to keep in mind in regard to understanding the complete lack of mental health and critical thinking among the powerful despite their positions and willingness to say or do anything to justify their actions.
I wish we could do away with the idea of spirituality once and for all but I’d settle for the institutions of religion to at least call out these people more often along the way when powerful people are just as happy to use that religion as a means of justification for their actions. The whole thing is rotten to the core.
When a person with addiction murders someone and says “god made me do it.”. We treat them as crazy. When a politician does it, we are supposed to feel sorry for them?
Anyway, for anyone that believes they have to choose “something” focus on science. At least it has to prove itself rather than demand sacrifice to some vague mythical goat man. I believe the Pastafarions haven’t harmed anyone (yet) either.
When a person with addiction murders someone and says “god made me do it.”. We treat them as crazy. When a politician does it, we are supposed to feel sorry for them?
The divine right of kings is old testament history of the zionist victors, but also common to El Pantheon rival tribes which had very similar religious beliefs held by most IsraELites too. The king isn’t asking for forgiveness, he deserves to murder and steal land. Constantine erased Jesus’s humanist philophy from Catholicism when he said God and Jesus were of the same matter, and so Jesus as a reformer can be fully ignored, and only divine right of the emperor to everything needs consideration. Full Church support, of course. Strong heresy laws against Catholics believing in importance of Jesus philosophy lasted to the renaissance.
Press 6 for fun facts about Lutheran protestant movement.
Protestants: Rapture when?
Catholics: Rapture, why? We got all this prime real estate locked up.
I’m no expert on Christianity, but I come from a protestant country that is mostly secular and I cannot recall a single time anyone outside of cult people from jehovas witnesses or similar, talk about the rapture.
There might be versions of protestantism that believes in end of days prophecies, but that is not something I have ever heard any respected priest say in my country.
The way they preach is always more like a mix of philosophy and a pedagogy. They use Bible stories to relate to everyday problems we all might face and they put emphasis on how we need to be kind and forgiving to ourselves and others then the days are short and the nights are long. We have long, dark winters where I live.
I have always felt weird about the way especially American Christians talk about religion. To me its like listening to cult people or someone who is mentally ill.
The first time I ever heard of the rapture as a concept was in 2014 when Left Behind with Nicholas Cage came out. I only heard of that movie because I enjoyed watching movie reviews and some reviewer covered this film to clown on it. I was around 25 years old at the time and had never ever heard of such a crazy idea before. When I found out that a large number of Americans believe in that shit, I thought I was being left out of a joke I didn’t get.
So yeah, maybe the rapture is a part of protestantism somewhere, but I have never heard of it. In my country we see most Bible stories as metaphors for universal wisdom that we can learn from, but no one really believes any of these things happened in real life. Most believed that Jesus existed, but many also think that his more fantastical stories were enhanced versions of the truth to make the point more clear and fun to hear/read about. Therefore, introducing ideas like the rapture would be off putting to most because it is scientifically ridiculous and we also consider doomsday prophecies to be extremism and cult mentality which we reject.
American Evangelicals are wild. Source: former American Evangelical brought up in an Evangelical region of the USA.
Be glad you don’t have to deal with them, and please prevent any of their spawn from setting roots down in your country. They are a fucking plague.
I’m sorry you had to grow up in an environment like that. Are you doing well today? I hope you are in a good place!
As for stuff like that taking root in my country, I am not worried. Something would have to radically change in my culture for religion to become that influential.
The most extreme cults we have here would be considered wholesome in America, to the best of my knowledge. I have seen how Mormons are often portrayed as a legit religious group and they are often considered wholesome and harmless.
To me, American Mormons are a cult, a couple of degrees more extreme than our Jehova’s Witnesses whom I would consider pretty extreme.
So it would be a long way for us to end up with American Evangelist conditions in my country. We would basically have to replace the fundamental values and systems that we have had in place for hundreds of years and I don’t really believe that will happen.
I hope you’re right about your country. Plagues have a way of spreading where you least expect to see them.
I’m sorry you had to grow up in an environment like that. Are you doing well today? I hope you are in a good place!
Much better. I swung rapidly to the left once unleashed from the bizarre community and belief system of American evangelicalism. It helped that most of my family was varying degrees of non-evangelical, and only my parent was actually all-in on it.
They’re not bad people, inherently. But they have a bizarre and, to some degree, internally consistent belief system that has them embrace horrific causes and policies. Once someone accepts the core axioms of Evangelical Christianity, the results are… generally unavoidable. Divine Command Theory, biblical literalism and inerrancy, millenarianism, sola fide, and eternal torment for all nonbelievers are a… potent combination.
I’m happy to hear that you got out of it without losing your family as well. Glad that your family at large is normal. That is usually the way cults achieve compliance, by getting control over entire families and communities.
And you are very much right, that the people in cultus aren’t inherently bad people. Most of them, I believe, are generally good human beings, but it is hard to have free will and free thought if the cult you’re in owns your family, your friends and everyone you know and love. That is what makes it so toxic, in my opinion. It becomes easier to brainwash people and/or keep them compliant when the threat of losing everything they know is on the line. Better to put up with crazy than to float alone in the void. That is also how victims of abusive relationships keep coming back to their abuser over and over again. I have some experience with that myself.
To me it is not even religion that makes cults scary. Religion is just one tool to groom people into one way of thinking and eventually forcing them to comply and give up control. It can be anything that can turn a group dynamic into a cult. Religion just has a good track record because there is comfort in believing that some higher power is looking out for you as long as you follow an arbitrary set of rules.
And while I can’t show you how my country works in a way that will make you understand why I am not worried about American Evangelism-type religions manifesting themselves here, I can assure you that it won’t happen. The level of progress that would have to be undone in my country is so much that it is entirely unrealistic. We would have to go back centuries in time to before even America was a known and recoginized country. A decade and a half before America acquired their independence and became a real country, my country took part in the enlightenment trend and used science and an early version of anthropology to do studies in the middle east in order to better understand the bible and the lands the texts came from. The results brought on changes to our perspectives of the world outside our own and it changed how we viewed ourselves and the words written in the bible.
It is centuries upon centuries of waves in terms of science, humanistic values, politics and culture that would have to be undone. We are also very aggressively invested in equality in my country, and the church has had to adapt to that, instead of forcing us to comply. We as a people hold the power and the church, if it wants to survive, has to move with the times to remain remotely relevant.
Christianity is cultural heritage here, but not much more than that. We have a church tax that most of us pay because we are born as members of the church and pay a small percentage of our taxes to the church as a result. You can opt out of the church if you want to and I did that when I was 20. I am no longer a member and I don’t pay church tax. More and more people are like me. More and more people don’t get married in churches, don’t have their children baptized in churches and while the church still has an iron grip on funerals, I believe we will see a change there too, where atheist funerals will become the norm. Confirmations are still popular, but more teenagers reject that as well. I rejected to be confirmated myself, which was not the norm when I was young at all, but nowadays, it is not that weird. The vast majority of teens getting confirmated don’t believe in God and don’t care about religion. They just want the big party and to fit in with the group. They are, what we call “culture Christians” and that is what most people see themselves as. They go to church during Christmas and not at all the rest of the year. They get married, have baptisms etc. in the church because it is tradition and because it is nice.
However, I don’t really know any couples from my generation who were married in a church. I only know one couple who is going to be married in a church and that is because one side of their families want that for traditional reasons. That family would probably be considered secular in America, though. This is also why I believe that the change in funeral traditions will happen gradually as my generation ages and dies out. We are the first ones to fully do away with having the church involved in big life events and I believe that when the time comes, we will do away with funeral traditions too. There may be some counter waves in younger generations to go back to church funerals, but I fully believe it will not remain the norm by then. More like an active choice you make at some point. I dunno where my body will end up, since I donated myself to organ transplants and science. They can put me through a meat grinder and use me as fish food if they want to. I don’t care. My boyfriend is actively against being buried in a Christian cemetary, so maybe he’ll make plans for that when he’s older and the topic becomes more relevant to him.
When it comes to politics, religion is never really present in politics here. I have observed how present religion is in American politics, despite them claiming to have church and state separate. Maybe on paper, but to me, it was always weird that the president must swear on the Bible and the fact that a very large number of American politicians talk about religion while talking about politics. In my country, that never happens and if it did, we would reject the politician and consider them old fashioned and/or mentally ill, lol.
We do have one old political party that is Christian, but they are as irrelevant as they get. The only time I have seen or heard from them the past two decades was like last year when we had municipality elections and one candicate in one municipality inserted his own foot in his mouth and started talking about how gays shouldn’t be married in the church. He was promptly shamed by experts who reminded him that such an initiative would be illegal in accordance with out equality laws. I have not heard anything from this Christian party before or since, and we just had a big election this week. They weren’t even a thought in anyone’s heads. That party will die out with the older generation. People just don’t want religion mixed with politics unless it is to handle practical issues like for example to separate funerals from the church, which, again, I think will happen within my lifetime and it will happen organically as my generation ages.
The church tax, btw, is merely paid to upkeep the churches so they look nice and remain symbols of cultural heritage. No church in my country is rolling in money. They have just enough to make the place run. Kinda like a poor man’s museum.
I’d like to end my babblings by paraphrasing a metaphor from the 2016 movie, Silence, which is about two Portuguese Christians, who try to keep the Christian faith alive in Japan. I highly recommend the movie for its thought provoking ideas, but this metaphor, I think, explain really well why I am not remotely worried about American Evangelism or similar taking root in my country:
All over the world there are different types of soil and climates. One plant may thrive and multiply in one type of soil, while withering and dying in another. You can try all you might to make your flower grow in this soil, but it will rot and wither here. It has no place in this soil.
Did he even really say this, or was this a propaganda piece published by prosperity gospel evangelical baptists to keep their rubes salivating over the Middle East oil wars?
It turned out in the end by Gog & Mogog, Bush meant Oil & Gold
Truly, he was the dumbest president so far…
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