A powerful statement by A.R. Moxon about the cult of "mostly male mostly white mostly Christian supremacists" that stands behind Trump and forms his power base demand reputational immunity" as they violate all canons of morality and decency to support him, while insisting that the rest of us treat the as not just moral authorities, but as the supreme moral authority — no questions asked.
"I think [Trump's] sentence should be a permanent revocation of the reputational license of our self-professed moral authorities, and the cost should be the moral authority itself, and the reputational immunity it bestows."
"I think we can do this if we all recognize the great truth: Our nation's supremacist cult—mostly white, mostly male, mostly Christian people—are not authorities at all, but vicious greedheads and creepy, religious weirdos, people who are willing to commit any atrocity in order to control our bodies and our lives for the satisfaction of their own self-regard and personal comfort."
"Call it anomie or call it airsickness—we find ourselves in a land of confusion. Trump pays off a porn star and yet is hailed as a champion of Christian values. He mocks prisoners of war and calls dead soldiers 'suckers,' and his MAGA base is thrilled by his patriotism."
"To hear conservative Christians argue that personal character doesn’t matter, or to witness self-described constitutional conservatives defend a relentless attack on the rule of law, is disorienting. To see advocates of law and order embrace rioters who attacked the Capitol and beat police officers is baffling."
"To watch the party of Ronald Reagan embracing isolationism and following Trump in truckling to the Butcher of Ukraine, Putin, is bewildering. Mind-bending, also, is that, despite Trump’s fire hose of lies, 71 percent of Republicans describe him as 'honest and trustworthy.'”
"The challenge of the present moment is to continue to relentlessly observe, report, and document each of Donald Trump’s serial transgressions of democratic norms, the rule of law, and basic human decency. Challenging because the list is endless, the mind numbs, the body tires, and because the effort is not going to change his behavior or calm the fervor of his true believers."
Robert Reich on what Trump’s trial is showing us about Trump world:
“This cast of characters — and there are many, many others like them in Trump world — are loathsome not because they have violated the law, but because they have contributed to creating a harsh society in which everyone is potentially bought or sold.”
“#Nakba and #Shoah, the Hebrew word for the Holocaust, both mean ‘catastrophe’ in English, and because both are rooted in the 1940s, they are often equated or conflated.”
“Some Palestinians have chosen violence in response, and that’s tragic—a moral error, in my opinion—just as it’s a tragedy and moral error that some Jewish Israelis have turned their pain and fear into ethnic violence and hatred.”
“Israel’s leaders and their supporters have chosen to exist as an apartheid, racist, theocratic military occupation; all the weaponry in the world cannot secure moral defense for it—though they keep trying.”
"Stormy Daniels has reminded us of what a disgusting misogynistic creep Donald Trump is: unable to control his carnal impulses, eager to exploit his power and influence and wealth to procure sex, devoid of shame or guilt or remorse, incapable of fidelity, focused completely on his own sexual satiety, and totally fine about said sexual satiety being generated by violent means."
"A quarter of the way through the 21st century, a predilection towards sexual misconduct and misogyny is practically a BFOQ of a Republican politician. The party of trickle-down economics and tax cuts for gazillionaires has long been the party of plunder. As long as Donald Trump is its leader, it will also be the party of rape."
Are our moral #values shaped by divine love or are they a result of biological requirements of human life?
THIS WEDNESDAY April 17 at #UniversityOfTexas#Austin, #philosophers Ben Bayer and Adam Lloyd Johnson #debate the origins and interpretation of #morality, focusing on differences between secular, scientific interpretations, and theological views.
“In many ways, I actually think the real idea of #OpenSource is for it to allow everybody to be ‘selfish,’ not about trying to get everybody to contribute to some common good.
“In other words, I do not see open source as some big goody-goody ‘let's all sing kumbaya around the campfire and make the world a better place.’ No, open source only really works if everybody is contributing for their own #selfish reasons.”
If you believe that service to others is the ultimate good but choose selfishness because it works better, i.e., #pragmatism, then your #ethics are at war with reality. And you don’t even get the benefit of feeling good about yourself because that’s #selfish.
The idea that morality stems from the creator of the universe is baffling. It is "might is right" taken to its extreme, logical, horrible conclusion.
Even if there is a creator, and you can believe whatever you want about that, the idea that whatever it says is good/bad by definition is good/bad just because it says so is absurd!
Morality is hard. There are no easy answers. So naturally we want to avoid the difficulties by deferring to a higher power. But bad is not good no matter who says so.
This #thread inspired by this video by Viced Rhino, and also a recent conversation with my brother, who pretty casually implied that it is good to let people suffer unnecessarily because of what he believes the creator of the universe has tried to convey trough some book anyone can interpret however they want
“Name a force or impulse that threatens the stability of the American political system – distrust in the fairness of elections, conspiracy theorizing, the embrace of authoritarianism – and it is always more prevalent among rural Whites than among those living elsewhere."
~ Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman, White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy (New York: Random House, 2024), p. 5
“Even the common, and perfectly accurate, criticism that Trump doesn't practice what he preaches likely resonates in rural areas, where you often find a strong moral code that is regularly violated by many of the people who live there."
"The fact that rural areas have plenty of infidelity and teen parenthood (which occurs at significantly higher rates among rural Americans than city dwellers) doesn't necessarily make people reject traditional family values; it can make them cling to those values all the more fervently, as they consider them under constant, visible threat.”
A spokesman for #JStreet, accused Aipac of attempting to impose a narrow definition of what it is to be pro-Israel:
“#Aipac may hope to silence and intimidate political leaders who believe that settlement expansion, endless conflict and permanent occupation are harmful to Israel, the Palestinian people and US interests. Ultimately, however, these common-sense views are too popular, widespread and important to be suppressed.”
Superheroes often have a rule that they will not kill even a total criminal, a criminal. What about the topic of... abortion? Is abortion a crime according to superhero rules?