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Isn’t that every American president ever? It’s always been a flashy smile competition. It’s all surface visuals. When was the last short ugly American President?
I'd rather have the vote in an imperfect system then not have the vote in another imperfect system which would also see everyone's lives dictated to by religious beliefs.
Most are somewhere between stage 1 and stage 2. We already see blasphemy laws starting to be enforced in the UK covertly...won't be long until Islam has a privileged status there, and then they'll start pressing towards stage 3.
Good question...Taft?
That and the fact that everyone believes congress sucks, but keep sending the same people back year after year because they don't think its their guys doing it.
I've read the posts, you are infatuated with the illusion of ownership that "voting" gives you and seem to base that as the sole criteria. As I am pessimistic about democracy on multiple levels, I don't find the idea of voting particularly compelling as a reason to prefer one government to another. Beyond that, your sole complaint about theocracy appears to be that it involves religious texts.
And you claim that is the sole and entire driver of Demcratic policy. Can you give some examples? For instance how does Critical Theory form the basis of a policy in favor of universal health care?
If that were the case, wouldn't there be more support for it amongst believers? As to recency bias, wouldn't that work in your favor? Christians haven't tended to burn and torture people for doctrinal errors in some time.
Believers are just as infected by the kind of historical biases as unbelievers, if not more so due to a sense of corporate culpability.
Recency bias works in the favor of secular government because its the current model, any change would be disruption of the status quo and that's always resisted.
The decay extends far beyond religion, and is a general decay of traditional authority as the public catches up with the post modern movement and it's post-truth, solipsistic turn. Everyone fancies themselves their own master, failing to recognize that there is no real freedom in that only chains that are comfortable. As for the political element, I think that's a bogeyman you're jumping at rather than an accurate assessment of what people have been saying in this thread.
Sounds like two different issues.
Yet the malevolent force that the decline in religiosity is being attributed to is painted as being uniquely embodied in Democrats and the Democratic party.
Not at all, it's a symptom of hyper-individualism
That's not how I'm reading most of the discussion, as the two don't seem to be being linked directly by anyone but you. The discussion of the ills of the democrats/democratic party has mostly been a response to blanket statements about conservatives/Republicans. It's not blaming them for a decline in religiosity, as that would be the tail wagging the dog.
I mostly blame traditional authorities. Theyve been moral laggards and often simply corrupt and self serving. I dont blame the public for its declining regard for traditional authority.
To an extent, but it's been a long, slow, process towards an increasingly fractured society.
Yeah, we're seeing a shift towards more peer-based control systems and a shame-paradigm rather than a guilt one that traditional authorities made their bread and butter. In regard to religiosity, Christianity in particular, it calls for a re-contextualization of the gospel message away from the traditional guilt and punishment, to one that emphasizes the freedom from shame and the endurance of public humiliation Jesus went through on the cross. But too many of the religious authorities are either trying to abandon all principles and bend to public sentiments, or embracing a self-image that explains public irrelevance and dwindling church attendance as part of the cost of dicipleship.
