by minimus 39 Replies latest jw friends
It’s so sad that everything has to be red or blue! Both parties are seriously flawed; unfortunately most people can’t see it. I feel the (so called) elites are encouraging division among the working class people. The sheep keep taking the bait.
I think a public official encouraging people to drink bleach(?) is probably one of the biggest atrocities in history! #sarcasm
Anony Mous, when I said Jews and Hindus (in terms of the percentage of their members) in the USA are highly educated, I wasn't singling out those who are conservative. However I wouldn't be surprised if conservatives, in addition to liberals, of Jews and Hindus are highly educated.
That which I read of wokism on this site is puzzling to me because I don't know what it is; it is alien to me. I hadn't come across that concept until about a couple of weeks ago, and I've only encountered it on this site. I am familiar with the concept of people metaphorically "waking up", such as in the sense of realizing that some beliefs they have are false and that it is time for them to abandon them. But it is not clear to me that wokism refers to such. I am familiar with the ancient Gnostic Christian spiritual concept of waking up, namely in their belief that one has an immortal spirit/soul which is trapped in the fleshly body and that there is a way it can escape the body and ascend to the heavenly realm and return to the supreme true God (one who is not Yahweh of the Hebrew Scriptures) and that according to the Gnostics there is a way that people learn such is true. But I doubt that wokism refers to such, but perhaps I am wrong about that. Furthermore, I don't see "waking up" (other than the above mentioned Gnostic concept) or wokism being promoted as a religion. I am thus extremely puzzled that you claim Democrats are trying to make wokism a state religion. I guess I will have to research wokism on the internet with the aid of my favorite internet search engine.
I read news articles saying that local governments in the USA (mostly ones with Republican majorities) are trying to impose some aspect of Christianity (or religion in general) on people on government properties, and in other cases to "...foster discrimination or create special privileges for religious people and organizations". The organization called American Atheists sends me action alert emails in regards to this, saying American Atheists requests my help to stop the politicians from doing such things. [See https://www.atheists.org/activism/ , https://www.atheists.org/activism/state-legislation/ , and https://www.atheists.org/news/ .] American Atheists engages in letter writing campaigns to such politicians and in lawsuits if necessary, and in many cases they have succeeded in getting the politicians to back down from their crossing the line of separation of "church and state". I am thus very puzzled that you say"... at least Republicans know they cannot make a state religion ...".
I am also very puzzled by you thinking that the Democrats are racists (to me they as a group are not) and that they want to keep black people from making progress and that they want to keep them on what you said is the "Democratic Plantation". I plan to ask you questions about that topic later in order to understand how you came to your views on that matter, since maybe you know something about that matter that I don't and since thus you might be right on that matter. However your use of the expression "Democratic Plantation" seem to be an intention to 'push some people's buttons', but perhaps I am mistaken on this. Personally, I have to excise great restraint from getting very riled up when reading the expression "Democratic Plantation" - an expression which is very inflammatory to me.
There are some liberal/progressive Democratic party policies that I am uncomfortable with, even though I am a liberal/progressive Democrat. I do think that some of former President Trump's policies were good, but I was intensely disturbed by much of his rhetoric. It was much of his rhetoric (including what I considered to be bold faced outright lies, even dangerous lies - even ones which I think incited (or contributed to an outbreak of) an insurrection at the USA Capitol building - which primarily made me intensely angry with him and caused me to want him out of public office forever.
Much of the rest you said in your post I do agree with. Regarding what you say "... predicts success 95% of the time .." I am fascinated by that idea and would like to know what you consider to be evidence in support of that idea (regarding the number of parents one has and the timing of having a kid). I have long thought that the factors you mention confer economic benefits, but I was not aware that that the first two you mention do so to the extent that you allude to.
Rocketman123, though I am politically liberal I can relate to what you said in your post about what you support in politicians and what you don't support in politicians.
Regards the 2 parent household, here is a well written statistical analysis: https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/power-two-parent-home-not-myth
The Democratic plantation is the expression of policies that are designed to promote poverty (such as single parent households being promoted through section 8, child support, tax breaks and other left-wing policies) in order to keep certain types of people (especially blacks) poor, uneducated and thus continue to vote for the Democrats. This is a real thing, quite explicitly in left-wing cities from the 1940s to 1970s, poor people in the “projects” would get additional benefits if they were single parent households, however, if ever a man was found in the house, they would instantly lose those benefits. That law was particularly enforced against black people, thus if you wanted the benefits, you voted Democrat, but enforcement of the law consisted of explicitly excluding black male presence in childrens’ life. Democrats had KKK senators until the 1990s, Biden famously eulogized a grand wizard and senator in the early 2000s.
Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood (which she called “the negro project”) explicitly founded the abortion industry to rid America of blacks; as she wrote in her autobiography she founded it for “the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extinction, of defective stocks — those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization”
Those things are still being promoted to date, the BLM is explicitly calling for the removal of police from black neighborhoods, which has already increased the murder rate in some cities by over 100%, the number of unarmed black people being killed by police is in the single digits every year. The number of black people being killed by other black criminals is in the thousands every year. Hence promoting a police-less presence is promoting black murder. And as BREONNA TAYLOR’s mother said recently: BLM is profiting, taking millions of dollars on her name, they don’t even recognize her when she walks in the room, they haven’t given her or her community a dime, they are frauds. The leaders of Antifa and BLM are the ones who buy million-dollar mansions in gated communities instead of doing something to promote a better black community, promote fathers presence in children’s life, promote honest work over crime.
Wokism specifically is the left-wing religious belief system. The promotion of “systematic racism” and the cult-like following of people like Ibram X Kendi who promotes a system of black against white discrimination (or what he defines to be anti-racism) to fight what he believes to be a white supremacist system. They redefine words, such as the recent “black birthing person” instead of mothers. This redefinition of culture as they go along, is wokism. Where you can’t say he/she anymore but refer to anyone as them, where you have to put your preferred pronouns in every email or chatroom, where you push companies like Coca-Cola to put anti-white HR training.
Woke: becoming aware that conceptions of family, gender, race we had are WRONG we have to embrace in your face transgenderism, climate change , no race difference in crime ( economics is the root) , white males are automatically bad. All this at peril of being " disfellowshipped".
Dissilusioned JW - "...during the years I attended college I did purchase a scientific book and science magazines which did have articles in support of evolution and I did read those articles and I did wonder, while reading them, if evolution is true."
It's amazing how interesting a subject can be when not you're reading about it from a source that's automatically biased against it.
Looking back, realizing evolution had to be true - and more importantly, that creationists' (including the WTS's) efforts to refute it involved misdirection, semantic pretzel-twisting, and information presented out of context (not to mention ignoring inconvenient information)* - was probably my tipping point.
*Once again, for the newbies, lurkers, and trolls...
...if you have to cheat to defend your beliefs, your beliefs don't deserve to be defended.
Correction: It was not while I attended college that I purchased a scientific book and science magazines which had articles in support of evolution, but while I was in high school. The book was a Science Year volume by World Book. I purchased the Science Year within one year after my JW mother purchased the then current The World Book Encyclopedia set (primarily intended for use by my sister and I, but also for my mom). [I made some use of the Encyclopedia set for school reports.] When mom bought the set my sister and I were not yet baptized and not even yet 15 years old. When I bought the Science Year and the subscription to a science magazine it was about one year before I became baptized.
road to nowhere, thanks for the information about "woke". I notice that https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/woke-what-mean-meaning-origins-term-definition-culture-387962 says woke ".... means to be awake to sensitive social issues, such as racism." Maybe the publishers of "Awake!" should begin publishing a companion magazine called "Woke!" He he, ha ha. Or maybe they should publish one called "Alert!"
Anony Mous, thanks for your post stating the documentation for your views. I notice that while we agree that certain government policies are in place (such as section 8, child support, tax breaks and other left-wing policies), we differ greatly in our ideas of the interpretation of the policies. I perceive the intent of the policies you mention to be what the politicians/government saying they are for, namely to help people who are in need and in dire straits. You instead perceive they are for something radically different, namely to keep people in need and in dire straits - to trap them into remaining in such a deplorable state. It is like, figuratively speaking, that we are living in two different worlds. We do agree however that one of the reasons for these programs by the Democrats is to gain and keep voters. It will likely be hard for us to reach agreement/consensus as to what is the intent of these programs.
Maybe part of the reason we see things differently (besides us probably coming from very different social-economic demographic backgrounds), is that I tend towards interpreting written and spoken statements very literally and I tend to believe people mean what they say, unless I later discover evidence that they are untrustworthy. [My literal thinking approach when applied to understanding the Bible is one of the main things which led me to eventually disagreeing with many of the Watchtower's interpretations of biblical prophecies and thus also to me ceasing to believe in their religion.]
President John Kennedy said he wanted to help struggling people and President Lyndon B. Johnson said he wanted to create a society in which poverty would be eradicated. Johnson said he wanted to create a great society. As a result many government spending programs, with the stated aim of helping poor people, were created during the Johnson administration. Me, my sisters, my mother, and mother's mother and step-father (all JWs, except that I am now unofficially an ex-JW) believe that the programs were created to help people - not to hold them back from making progress.
I know a number of poor people in my community who are receiving government assistance of various kinds. Many of them are over 70 years old with infirmities, many though under age 60 are physically disabled (sometimes from a severe accident) or mentally ill. Some have major health problems, such as diabetes (sometimes due to their dietary choices, but sometimes due to their genetics), obesity (sometimes due to their eating habits but not always), or lung disease (most of these are smokers of various substances), Some have lost their job and their house or apartment and are wanting to obtain a good job and a house or apartment again. Some of them vote for Republican Party candidates and some others of them vote for Democratic Party candidates. Some have a college/university degree (and some of those once had a high paying highly skilled job) and some others never attended a college/university.
Correction: In my prior post where I said "... my sisters ..." I meant to say "... my sister ...". The last paragraph of my prior post should probably be re-punctuated and reworded as the following:
"I know a number of poor people in my community who are receiving government assistance of various kinds. Many of them are over 70 years old with infirmities, or are both over age 70 and are retired. Many though under age 60 are: physically disabled (sometimes from a severe accident) or mentally ill; or have major health problems, such: as diabetes (sometimes due to their dietary choices, but sometimes due to their genetics), obesity (sometimes due to their eating habits but not always), or lung disease (most of these are smokers of various substances). Some have lost their job/career and their house (or apartment unit) and are wanting to obtain a good job and a house (or apartment unit) again. Some of them vote for Republican Party candidates and some others of them vote for Democratic Party candidates. Some have a college/university degree (and some of those once had a high paying highly skilled job, such as having been a computer software programmer) and some others never attended a college/university." To me, some seem of be low intelligence but some others seem to be of high intelligence, whereas most seem to be of 'average' intelligence. Some of the ones working full-time at my place of work are single parent mothers whose boyfriend or husband left them and their child (and in other cases maybe the mothers thought it was best to leave the father of their child/children)."
The vast majority of the homeless ones I see living 'on the street' (many in tents) are men and I wonder why that is the case.
The vast majority of the homeless ones I see living 'on the street' (many in tents) are men and I wonder why that is the case.
This guy explains how the divorce laws have tilted to favor the women. At least in the USA
Read the comments to get an idea what young American men are feeling about marriage.
Example;
A wise man once said, “love is grand, but divorce is a 100 grand” ..
Not getting married in your 20's and 30's is like missing out on buying the last ticket for the Titanic.
The wedding ring is the world’s smallest handcuff
Behind every successful man is a woman that was waiting at the finish lineNever sign a contract with someone who benefits from breaking it.
People tell me “you wanna die alone?” My reply “well I’m not trying to take anyone with me”
"They say marriage is an institution. So is Alcatraz. You can't compare marriage to prison. Yeah, you're right. The warden doesn't max out your credit card."d every billionaire there's a woman wanting to make him a millionaire !
When I was a young man I got ribbed relentlessly by my married friends for not joining the club. None of them are married today but in my case, I didn't lose half my wealth or a family business to be single.
