Yes.

Could it devolve into that if that's all it was from the beginning?

Harsh. But fair.

My story? Probably pretty standard I think. Fiscally conservative, socially much more liberal. Used to be a card carrying R but slowly realized that party (at least at national level) has been co-opted by the religious right. Now I'm not sure there is a spot for me...certainly in either of the 2 parties.

Good point. I do think a discussion of the impact of religion and religious voting blocks on the party is interesting. Perhaps it has been discussed elsewhere on this forum or in politics. Doesn't seem like it is going to happen here tho.

Politics got shut down by Mason and Mat. Guess they didn't appreciate the "left wing bias". It's on "unstuck politics" now, you might well find a home there.

Yes I knew that there was a shakeup there but wasn't sure of the extent of the changes instituted. That forum is pretty much a dumpster fire tho and this coming from someone who has spent 90% of his time on this site trolling

What a waste of 10% of your time.

We've had a number of discussion of that type here. It comes and goes with the tides of political interest. I did present an analysis in Post #54, and OrP and I had a brief exchange in #68-73. If you had something of specific interest, you can start a new thread and see where things go.

The Politics Forum is alive and well here at 2+2. Much more civil than the toxic waste dump that it replaced.

Thanks...read through them. Candidly with all the dick waving I had blasted past most of this stuff first time through.

I was looking for something more along the lines of the influence of Religious Right over the last, say 40 years, as opposed to whether religious leaders are reacting appropriately to the current president. To me, the current president is neither a true R nor is he devout person in any way whatsoever.

But I don't know enough about the pushback from religious types other than the info you posted.

Anyway, I don't really "hang out" in this forum but I will pop in periodically to see what is happening. I don't necessarily have a point of specific interest to kick around. Again just saw the thread title and jumped in.

I'm not sure if you meant to imply any different, but my opinion is that the religious right have less influence in the Trump presidency than they did during George W Bush.

As for whether there is a spot for you in either of the parties - since the previous two Democratic presidents has been both more fiscally conservative and more socially liberal than the two previous GOP presidents, that party makes more sense in ideological terms for that profile imo.

Any notion of that happening has been dispelled by the early goings on in the 2020 Dem race

Probably true though tbf I'm not sure any traditional advisor type (whether formal or informal) has as much influence on this president as on any other president previous

It's fine. Certain posters have a very low signal-to-noise ratio, and it's easy to skip past things if you're just skimming around.

Here's something on the rise of the religious right and how it got tied up in political conservatism (basically, social issues):

https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpress...&brand=ucpress

From there, you kind of have to be careful what you mean by the religious right, as different people take it different ways. If you are broadly speaking about "religious on the right" then you'll get one story. If you are talking more specifically about the "Religious Right" as a movement, you'll get another one. The former still exists (there are definitely religious people on the right), but the "Religious Right" is a dead political movement that was weakened over the Clinton presidency, and basically killed by Bush Jr.

https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/05/5216/

We see remnants of that time, such as the Falwell Jr.'s existence at Liberty University and the things that they're doing, and you see hints of some of that same posturing in Franklin Graham's statements (I don't think he was politically active in the late 1980s/early 1990s -- but some still label him as "Religious Right" meaning something akin to the political movement), but it's far from clear how much influence is actually wielded by those people.

Liberty University is kind of falling apart right now.

https://www.npr.org/2019/09/15/76104...alwell-scandal

And Trump's presence there a couple years back wasn't exactly a clean win for him:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/21/u...ity-trump.html

A lot of younger Christians don't even know who Franklin Graham is beyond having something to do with "Operation Christmas Child" which is a Christmas gift program, and most don't really know a lot about his politics. His draw is much stronger with the older Christian conservative population that are looking for something like the "Religious Right" of 40 years ago.

So when you're looking for effects today, you're going to be looking at something like secondary or tertiary effects. The core of the movement is dead. Those older white Evangelicals are still around, but they're starting to fade. And maybe the Trump presidency is slowly pushing them even further out of the mainstream.

That's a rather cruel way to describe lagtight and walkby, but if you put a gun to my head, I guess I'd have to concur. Between all the bible-quoting noise, it's pretty hard to find the signal.

Or maybe it's one of those one of those MM (magic modulation) signals that penetrates right through the stratosphere, and reflects from the shell of one of the turtles that our mother Earth rests upon?

If the above sounds ridiculous, just think how YEC would sound if you processed it objectively. It's goup phychosis, pure and simple. It's a cult, nothing more, nothing less.

Let's have a little fun exercise, Aaron, since we're dick waving here. I am going to ask you a question, and you have to answer it - not obliquely, not in a circumlocutory manner, not as a politician. Give me a straight answer to the following question:

"What are the most outlandish claims YECs make which you believe to be false?"

Not an essay answer, bullet points will suffice.

I used to read that "toxic waste dump" a lot, and, well, how can I put this diplomatically? The contributors to said "toxicity" were, for the most part, intelligent, deep-thinking people who often, with their posts, made me question my own views on topics such as economics, sociodemographics, philosophy, libertarianism, and many others.

You, on the other hand, believe in magic, and resort to cheap shots such as the above to make whatever point it is you think you have. The only thing you have ever made me question is my faith in humanity.

There is actually a whole thread on this topic which Aaron and I started sometime back, and I kinda dropped the ball by not posting in it much.

I'll bump it.

Peace.

I'm well aware of that, I've read it.

Question was specifically for Aaron. I'd like to see it in bullet point format.

ETA: How do you think I knew you were a YEC in the first place? Not like you ever told me.

That the earth is young.

YECs believe in the literal interpretation of Genesis, I believe? And this is the most outlandish claim?

You can do better.

Yes. Did you have something else in mind?

I'm not a bible scholar. In fact, when I did 7 days in solitary and that's all I had, I refused to read it. I just did push ups. I tried, but, I literally could not force myself through the first page. A friendly guard gave me a dictionary. So I read that. Front to back. Many times.

My understanding is that there are some pretty outlandish stories in Genesis. Like, maybe that woman is the product of man's rib? Do you believe that to be more, less, or as credible as the young earth thing?

I didn't know if you knew that I was YEC. I was just trying to re-direct your question to the right thread.

As a YEC, I DO NOT believe that the Earth is young. Six-thousand of so years old doesn't seem young to me.😁