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haggishlyhagging · 11 months ago

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It would take Diane Joyce nearly ten years of battles to become the first female skilled crafts worker ever in Santa Clara County history. It would take another seven years of court litigation, pursued all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, before she could actually start work. And then, the real fight would begin.

For blue-collar women, there was no honeymoon period on the job; the backlash began the first day they reported to work—and only intensified as the Reagan economy put more than a million blue-collar men out of work, reduced wages, and spread mounting fear. While the white-collar world seemed capable of absorbing countless lawyers and bankers in the 80s, the trades and crafts had no room for expansion. "Women are far more economically threatening in blue-collar work, because there are a finite number of jobs from which to choose," Mary Ellen Boyd, executive director of Non-Traditional Employment for Women, observes. "An MBA can do anything. But a plumber is only a plumber." While women never represented more than a few percentage points of the blue-collar work force, in this powder-keg situation it only took a few female faces to trigger a violent explosion.

Diane Joyce arrived in California in 1970, a thirty-three-year-old widow with four children, born and raised in Chicago. Her father was a tool-and-die maker, her mother a returned-goods clerk at a Walgreen's warehouse. At eighteen, she married Donald Joyce, a tool-and-die maker's apprentice at her father's plant. Fifteen years later, after working knee-deep in PCBs for years, he died suddenly of a rare form of liver cancer.

After her husband's death, Joyce taught herself to drive, packed her children in a 1966 Chrysler station wagon and headed west to San Jose, California, where a lone relative lived. Joyce was an experienced bookkeeper and she soon found work as a clerk in the county Office of Education, at $506 a month. A year later, she heard that the county's transportation department had a senior account clerk job vacant that paid $50 more a month. She applied in March 1972.

"You know, we wanted a man," the interviewer told her as soon as she walked through the door. But the account clerk jobs had all taken a pay cut recently, and sixteen women and no men had applied for the job. So he sent her on to the second interview. "This guy was a little politer," Joyce recalls. "First, he said, 'Nice day, isn't it?' before he tells me, 'You know, we wanted a man.' I wanted to say, 'Yeah, and where's my man? I am the man in my house.' But I'm sitting there with four kids to feed and all I can see is dollar signs, so I kept my mouth shut."

She got the job. Three months later, Joyce saw a posting for a "road maintenance man." An eighth-grade education and one year's work experience was all that was required, and the pay was $723 a month. Her current job required a high-school education, bookkeeping skills, and four years' experience— and paid $150 less a month. "I saw that flier and I said, ‘Oh wow, I can do that.’ Everyone in the office laughed. They thought it was a riot. . . . I let it drop."

But later that same year, every county worker got a 2 to 5 percent raise except for the 70 female account clerks. "Oh now, what do you girls need a raise for?" the director of personnel told Joyce and some other women who went before the board of supervisors to object. "All you'd do is spend the money on trips to Europe." Joyce was shocked. "Every account clerk I knew was supporting a family through death or divorce. I'd never seen Mexico, let alone Europe." Joyce decided to apply for the next better-paying "male" job that opened. In the meantime, she became active in the union; a skillful writer and one of the best-educated representatives there, Joyce wound up composing the safety language in the master contract and negotiating what became the most powerful county agreement protecting seniority rights.

In 1974, a road dispatcher retired, and both Joyce and a man named Paul Johnson, a former oil-fields roustabout, applied for the post. The supervisors told Joyce she needed to work on the road crew first and handed back her application. Johnson didn't have any road crew experience either, but his application was accepted. In the end, the job went to another man.

Joyce set out to get road crew experience. As she was filling out her application for the next road crew job that opened, in 1975, her supervisor walked in, asked what she was doing, and turned red. "You're taking a man's job away!" he shouted. Joyce sat silently for a minute, thinking. Then she said, "No, I'm not. Because a man can sit right here where I'm sitting."

In the evenings, she took courses in road maintenance and truck and light equipment operation. She came in third out of 87 applicants on the job test; there were ten openings on the road crew, and she got one of them.

For the next four years, Joyce carried tar pots on her shoulder, pulled trash from the median strip, and maneuvered trucks up the mountains to clear mud slides. "Working outdoors was great," she says. "You know, women pay fifty dollars a month to join a health club, and here I was getting paid to get in shape." The road men didn't exactly welcome her arrival. When they trained her to drive the bobtail trucks, she says, they kept changing instructions; one gave her driving tips that nearly blew up the engine. Her supervisor wouldn't issue her a pair of coveralls; she had to file a formal grievance to get them. In the yard, the men kept the ladies' room locked, and on the road they wouldn't stop to let her use the bathroom. "You wanted a man's job, you learn to pee like a man," her supervisor told her.

Obscene graffiti about Joyce appeared on the sides of trucks. Men threw darts at union notices she posted on the bulletin board. One day, the stockroom storekeeper, Tony Laramie, who says later he liked to call her "the piglet," called a general meeting in the depot's Ready Room. "I hate the day you came here," Laramie started screaming at Joyce as the other men looked on, many nodding. "We don't want you here. You don't belong here. Why don't you go the hell away?"

Joyce's experience was typical of the forthright and often violent backlash within the blue-collar work force, an assault undisguised by decorous homages to women's "difference." At a construction site in New York, for example, where only a few female hard-hats had found work, the men took a woman's work boots and hacked them into bits. Another woman was injured by a male co-worker; he hit her on the head with a two-by-four. In Santa Clara County, where Joyce worked, the county's equal opportunity office files were stuffed with reports of ostracism, hazing, sexual harassment, threats, verbal and physical abuse. "It's pervasive in some of the shops," says John Longabaugh, the county's equal employment officer at the time. "They mess up their tools, leave pornography on their desks. Safety equipment is made difficult to get, or unavailable." A maintenance worker greeted the first woman in his department with these words: "I know someone who would break your arm or leg for a price." Another new woman was ordered to clean a transit bus by her supervisor—only to find when she climbed aboard that the men had left a little gift for her: feces smeared across the seats.

In 1980, another dispatcher job opened up. Joyce and Johnson both applied. They both got similarly high scores on the written exam. Joyce now had four years' experience on the road crew; Paul Johnson only had a year and a half. The three interviewers, one of whom later referred to Joyce in court as "rabble-rousing" and "not a lady," gave the job to Johnson. Joyce decided to complain to the county athrmative action office.

The decision fell to James Graebner, the new director of the transportation department, an engineer who believed that it was about time the county hired its first woman for its 238 skilled-crafts jobs. Graebner confronted the roads director, Ron Shields. "What's wrong with the woman?" Graebner asked. “I hate her," Shields said, according to other people in the room. "I just said I thought Johnson was more qualified," is how Shields remembers it. "She didn't have the proficiency with heavy equipment." Neither, of course, did Johnson. Not that it was relevant anyway: dispatch is an office job that doesn't require lifting anything heavier than a microphone.

Graebner told Shields he was being overruled; Joyce had the job. Later that day, Joyce recalls, her supervisor called her into the conference room. "Well, you got the job," he told her. "But you're not qualified." Johnson, meanwhile, sat by the phone, dialing up the chain of command. "I felt like tearing something up," he recalls later. He demanded a meeting with the affirmative action office. "The affirmative action man walks in," Johnson says, "and he's this big black guy. He can't tell me anything. He brings in this minority who can barely speak English . . . I told them, 'You haven't heard the last of me.'" Within days, he had hired a lawyer and set his reverse discrimination suit in motion, contending that the county had given the job to a "less qualified" woman.

In 1987, the Supreme Court ruled against Johnson. The decision was hailed by women's and civil rights groups. But victory in Washington was not the same as triumph in the transportation yard. For Joyce and the road men, the backlash was just warming up. "Something like this is going to hurt me one day," Gerald Pourroy, a foreman in Joyce's office, says of the court's ruling, his voice low and bitter. He stares at the concrete wall above his desk. "I look down the tracks and I see the train coming toward me."

The day after the Supreme Court decision, a woman in the county office sent Joyce a congratulatory bouquet, two dozen carnations. Joyce arranged the flowers in a vase on her desk. The next day they were gone. She found them finally, crushed in a garbage bin. A road foreman told her, "I drop-kicked them across the yard."

-Susan Faludi, Backlash: the Undeclared War Against American Women

#susan faludi #female oppression #male entitlement #male violence #blue collar #women’s work #pay gap #sexism #misogyny #womens history #us history #amerika

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gwydionmisha · 29 days ago

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#Madison Square Garden #NYC #Donald Trump #Election #News

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megpie71 · 1 year ago

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Yeah. The Clive Palmer United Australia Party was definitely another example of why most of the rest of Australia thinks there's something either in the water in Queensland, or possibly something missing from it (Clive's a Queenslander, same as our other current national political jokes Pauline Hanson and Bob Katter, and past political nuisance and "WTF?!?" artist, the late Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen). Clive wants to be the Australian Donald Trump but our political system won't let him. My personal suspicion is the whole thing is a tax dodge - if he throws large lumps of money at another failed attempt to prove his political superiority, then he can claim the whole thing as a loss against the profits from his mining ventures, and avoid paying tax for that financial year.

So a bit of background first for our international followers: Clive Palmer is one of Australia's many mining billionaires who like to meddle in our country's politics, and as such he is utterly despised by all of Australia.

Picture for context:

He is most commonly known online by the title "Fatty McFuckhead", (problematic as it may be) because he tried to sue a youtuber for $500,000 for calling him that - and he lost. So the name stuck.

Up until his most recent foray into parliament, the legally certified Fuckhead was best known for his batshit business ventures, such as attempting to build "The Titanic 2" (failed) and trying to build a dinosaur theme park (also failed, but at least nobody got eaten by a T-Rex in this one).

For a very long time Clive played the role of sugar daddy to Australia's largest conservative party, the ironically named Liberal Party, until they had a falling out in 2012 after Clive claimed there was too much money influencing politics (lol), at which point he started his own party, days after saying he totally quit and wasn't fired and he only left because he didn't want to be a distraction.

His initial run at parliament was actually kinda successful, with Palmer's group winning 4 seats, plus a member from the "Motoring Enthusiasts Party" joined them too after accidentally getting elected and not knowing what the fuck to do.

Despite this initial success however, Palmer's party (which ran on basically no platform other than "I'm rich") hit an iceberg (titanic 2 achieved) and seven elected state and federal politicians quit within the first year.

By the time the next federal election rolled around, only one Palmer party candidate was still running for re-election. The most successful of this group - Jaquie Lambie - quit to sit as an independant and is still in parliament today.

Here she is with a painting of herself strangling Clive (she sells signed copies of this)

And here the senator is posting about liking sausage:

Anyway, we're getting to the point: which is the yellow posters. By the 2016 election, just two years after forming, the party was in complete freefall. It won just 0.01% of the vote at their second election, and it was announced shortly after that Clive was quitting politics and the party was being shut down. Australia breathed a sigh of relief.

It was, of course, short lived.

Clive, in desperate need of attention, restarted the party for the 2019 election, fielding candidates in every seat and spending $60 million in advertising in an attempt to win votes.

Every single candidate lost.

It was in this campaign however that Australia really started to fall out of love with Palmer, because most of that $60 million went towards putting up the world's least compelling marketing billboards on almost every single free space in the country.

For a good six months this was basically the only thing you would see in Australia if you went outside:

Clearly Graphic design is his passion. And yes, the genius did just straight up try and copy Trump's homework while changing a few words, hoping nobody would notice.

Very quickly these all got vandalised and it seemed the ad companies didn't care enough to replace them.

We could go on posting examples, there are thousands, but the best is definitely the one Ikea put up shortly after Clive lost the election:

In 2022, Clive's party contested the election AGAIN, this time also opting to send millions on spam text messages to every person in Australia begging for people to vote for him, as well as buying almost every youtube ad for a year, at the cost of $100 million.

He won a whopping one seat.

During this election Clive ran on an anti-lockdown, anti-vax platform with the slogan "freedom, freedom, freedom". That message, however, was slightly undermined when his goons, dressed in 'Freedom!' shirts, made national news for trying to beat up a protester who turned up at a rally dressed as an annoying text message, shouting "pay your workers" at Clive.

As if that wasn't bad enough, at another rally Clive knocked himself unconscious while trying to jump up on stage, and then a few weeks later was rushed to hospital with covid, while his anti-vax ads were still in regular rotation on TV.

Utterly humiliated, the party deregistered again shortly after the election. Can't wait until he runs again in 2025.

Anyway, on the other "Clive tweeting Miss Kobayashi's Dragon" thing, we have no idea what that means but here's a screencap:

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cyberbenb · 23 days ago

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Former UK PM Johnson optimistic about Ukraine support if Trump wins

Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson thinks it is hard to imagine that Donald Trump would begin his presidency by abandoning Ukraine, Johnson said in an interview with CNN on Nov. 4. “I cannot Source : kyivindependent.com/boris-joh…

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andrewuttaro · 4 months ago

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JD Vance Catholicism

On July 15th, 2024, Donald Trump selected JD Vance as his running mate: potentially the next Vice President of the United States for a President who is the second oldest candidate to run for that office behind only the current occupant of said office, the rival candidate, Joe Biden. This man who I understand a little too well religiously, only nine years my senior, could be a heartbeat away from the most powerful office on the planet. I believe he embodies a very particular moment in the religious history of this country and, more specifically, a tenuous moment for those who share his religious creed: Catholics.

Religion in America

The United States of America has always been a religious frontier. Just as the core premises of liberty and equality envisioned in this nation’s founding have been struggled and fought for over the course of her history, so too has religious diversity been a dream more than a reality for most of our national antiquity. Just as suffrage for all America’s peoples was a slow process that required a Civil War and a dozen civil rights movements still ongoing, so too has true religious toleration often eluded American life.

Every colony in Pre-Revolution America had a favored Christian denomination written into their charter. In the Early Republic nativism toward immigrants from non-British countries was thinly veiled phobia for those who were not children of the Anglican communion or the acceptable branches of Presbyterianism. Yes, most of the founding fathers were deists, believers in a vaguely Christian clockmaker God that modern American Christians would find foreign strange, but most of those same founders were members of a mainline Christian denominations, nonetheless.

For we Catholics, assimilating into this country was near impossible in the early republic.

Anti-Catholic riots were so common in pre-Civil War America that you can still go and see the bullet marks in the Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. In 1834, an anti-Catholic mob set fire to an Ursaline convent in Massachusetts. The infamous Klu Klux Klan had Catholics on their hit list alongside blacks and jews; all were the strange foreigner come to steal something from good old WASP (white Anglo-Saxon protestant) America.

After the Civil War this hate was welled up again as Irish and Italian immigrants came to the US in large numbers. Al Smith, the first Catholic to win a major party nomination for President in 1928, lost the race largely because of cartoonishly stupid anti-Catholic rhetoric. One of these attacks claimed he was taking orders directly from the Pope via New York City’s Holland Tunnel which he had made happen as governor of New York.

After World War Two anti-Catholic animus began a slow decline. By the time John F. Kennedy became the second catholic to win a major party nomination in 1960 the Catholic question was still a live enough issue that he felt the need to famously declare: “I am not the Catholic candidate for President; I am the Democratic party’s candidate for President who happens also to be Catholic.” That speech feels completely out of place to us nowadays. He declared religion was of no consideration in his decision making. He proceeded to win the Presidency.

The Kennedy standard on religion seems like basic separation of church and state to us today but it was revelatory for his generation of politicians. How does one separate their conscience from their religious convictions? Neither Kennedy nor his contemporaries would ever have the time or need to formulate an answer. Catholics specifically seemed to use the Kennedy Doctrine to boost their cultural normalization in the ensuing decades.

In 1984, President Ronald Reagan did something that would have been unthinkable just a few decades earlier: he established formal diplomatic relations with the Vatican City, the heart of the Catholic world. By that point it was hardly controversial, on either side of the political aisle. Pope John Paul II was seen as an ally in the Cold War struggle against the great evil of atheistic communism to the right wing. They were also allies in those early days of the fight against abortion rights. Catholics were largely welcome in left wing politics as the peacemaking stream of hippie Catholics like Dorothy Day. The protest movement against nuclear proliferation often featured Catholic public figures, many times clerics themselves openly protesting nuclear arms!

When John Kerry became the third Catholic nominated to a major party’s ticket for President in 2004 his Catholicism was largely an afterthought. By the time Joe Biden was elected President in 2020, only the second Catholic president ever, most of the religious reaction came from clerics of his own faith who now saw the endgame of the Kennedy Doctrine as clear as day: appeals to conscience by authorities of the faith like bishops were largely powerless.

Here was a Catholic President who supports the legal right to abortion, something implausible in Kennedy’s time. American Bishops wondered if they had any sway at all anymore with powerful laypeople who claimed their faith. In that now legendary Kennedy speech on religion the late President also said: “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.” Sixty years on from that speech the absolute separation was complete among Catholics and an inflection point was at hand for the faithful on both sides of the aisle.

JD Vance

JD Vance was only 32 years old when he became something of a public figure. In the contentious political year that was 2016 he had promoted his book, “Hillbilly Elegy”, as a true ode to the plight of rural America, specifically Appalachia. The book was popular enough to later be made into a movie and Vance was briefly an expert on America’s proverbial forgotten man. So much so in fact was Vance’s supposed knowledge of rural America that many political commentators, surprised by the election of Trump that year, looked to Vance for explanation.

At this point Vance was no Trump supporter, calling him “noxious” and a superlative I only hear in left-wing circles these days: “America’s Hitler”. Things were about to change dramatically: in the United States and in JD Vance.

In August 2019, Vance converted to Catholicism. Vance was hardly 35 at this point and had previously stated he was not an active participant in any Christian denomination after being raised in a conservative, evangelical branch of the faith. For any millennial who identifies with a religious community as an adult, this story will sound familiar. He was searching for something and found it, saying in an article the same year in the prolific Christian journal First Things: “The core Christian insight into politics is that life is inherently dignified and valuable…” Vance took the name Augustine of Hippo for his confirmation name, saying the great fourth century saint gave him “…a way to understand Christian faith in a strongly intellectual way.”

That second quote he said in a special interview with his good friend writing for the American Conservative, a former Catholic who I can only describe as reprehensible: Rod Dreher. Be careful with the googling about this guy. Dreher is a special kind of extremist. It takes a special kind of person to find Catholicism too tolerant, convert to Orthodoxy (no offense meant to my orthodox brothers and sisters), divorce his wife, leave his kids behind, and move to Hungary to be closer to a beloved authoritarian Viktor Orban. Dreher is the sort of extremist that believes there are justifiable kinds of sexual assault. I have not scratched the surface of Dreher’s perversity with whom Vance maintains a friendship.

But don’t let me get into the editorializing just yet. Back to the current Republican Vice-Presidential nominee. JD Vance’s millennial Catholicism is not out of the ordinary. Increasingly more young people who find their way into the faith as converts or reverts these days cite an intellectual conversion stemming from the discovery of the works of a saint like Augustine or Thomas Aquinas. The type is so familiar to me that I can imagine what books are on his shelf. It is a type I have struggled to see eye to eye with while feeling so much sympathy for the basic religious thirst apparent there.

These folks often have a Dreher type they legitimize by holding them in their lives at an arm’s length. Most of these folks I encounter hold Donald Trump as this person they are willing to excuse.

Indeed the Ohio native was not done converting to a new way of thinking after becoming Catholic. He soon proclaimed his 2016 positions on Trump had been completely wrong. JD Vance became an outspoken supporter of Trump in the chaotic election cycle of 2020. Ejected from power thereafter, Vance did not desert Donald Trump. Vance saw a political career in his own future. Trump rewarded the new convert to his cause and endorsed him in a run for US Senate in 2022. Vance won and today is not through his first full term in the U.S. Senate.

Now he might be the next Vice President of the United States and all that comes with that.

JD Vance has a photo with just about every Catholic celebrity an American millennial Catholic might recognize. Smiling next to Scott Hahn on a county fairground somewhere is a red meat photo for a certain type of Catholic; a certain type of Catholic who I will bet my bottom dollar likes Donald Trump and doesn’t like Pope Francis. This all hits a little too close to home for we coreligionists of Vance’s who struggle to see the value in an artful discussion of theology devoid of the mercy the understands the human experience.

JD Vance, at least by the bedfellows he’s made, practices a Catholicism that is increasingly visible in American life for better or for worse. JD Vance’s Catholicism salivates at the destruction of the Kennedy Doctrine. As a generation of hippie Catholics begins to disappear and Millennial Catholics are increasingly politically unwelcome in an American left-wing that requires the Kennedy Doctrine as a ticket for entry, JD Vance Catholicism is here to stay.

The end of the Kennedy Doctrine and a brutal new calculus

Let me be very clear in saying that I believe the separation of church and state is a critically important component of American democracy. Even the Catholic Church advocated for “freedom of conscience” in that same vein at the Second Vatican Council. The Kennedy Doctrine as I put it in this article is a step beyond. Separation of church and state in this country is primarily a reference to the Establishment Clause of the Constitution where the Bill of Rights states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” That clause was considered religion’s protection from government, not the other way around, for the founding fathers and most legal scholars in the first century and a half of our national history.

Third President Thomas Jefferson coined the term we often use today, “separation of church and state”, in a letter to a friend. Jefferson had fought for the disestablishment of the Anglican Church as the established Church of the colony of Virginia before the revolution. This is the earliest we see something resembling our modern conception of the idea. That said, President Jefferson mixed church and state by our standards sending ministers to try to convert native Americans. Clearly the concept was yet to be fully envisaged.

The contemporary idea we have really does not emerge until after World War Two in a spate of cases the Courts used to define the concept including Emerson v. Board of Education (1947) and Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971).

The latter case, Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971) established three conditions for laws dealing with religion to be constitutional: 1, there had to be a secular, legislative purpose, 2, the law’s principal effects must not be to advance or inhibit religion, and 3, the law must not foster an excessive entanglement between government and religion. These together became known as the Lemon test (I am not joking, that is the term) and in the 1997 case Agostini v. Felton the latter two principles were combined into one. By 2005 there also arose the legal principle that any perception of favoritism towards one religion in government must be avoided when an Alabama courthouse was compelled to remove their Ten Commandments monument. This legal background will become important in a moment.

Kennedy however was talking about his own conscience more than any formal policy. Kennedy’s absolute separation tears the conscience from the accountability that comes from subscribing to an organized moral system overseen by a formal religious body. Everyone, including our elected officials, makes decisions out of a set of values they have. It is not against the Establishment Clause of the constitution to acknowledge trying to remove all religious values from that personal calculus is a fool’s errand.

In Kennedy’s day America was such an overtly religious, and frankly more morally clairvoyant nation that such a lack of accountability was inconceivable. On social structures alone, nobody would have become less accountable in their communities because of a lack of adherence to their conscience via some kind of religious authority. There were hypocritical religious folks and politicians of course, but the absolute separation Kennedy spoke of did not threaten America’s moral center of gravity.

Sixty years of that moral separation has diluted most Americans understanding of what the separation of church and state is, in both rhetorical directions. Contemporary right wingers will say America was founded as a nation with explicitly Christian ideals and should therefore be governed as such, an idea JD Vance shares. This supposition is historically dubious but also legally against all those court precedents we just went over. What is the endgame with that anyway? A restoration of a cultural moment many decades gone? That sounds well outside the realm of government’s job.

Contemporary left wingers will say America is about total liberty and that means freedom from any encounter with religious values whilst interacting with the government. This supposition is just as historically dubious and takes the aforementioned legal precedents to an end that seems unenforceable. Which moral values are not religious? At what point does policing that become an exclusionary effort all its own?

Both these predominate views of religion in American political life are the result of the Kennedy doctrine in my estimation. Moreover, they have led us here to an impasse.

While left wingers are rarely interested in fighting over religion in this country, the same is not true for right wingers, namely JD Vance. Even the devoutly religious among left wingers understand that strength in diversity requires a respectful avoidance of imposing religious beliefs on one another. That respectful avoidance is fading on the right wing every year in this country and JD Vance is just the Catholic embodiment of it.

JD Vance Catholicism forces us into a militant stance that looks very unlike the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That is not to mention this kind of Catholicism is too American in that it rejects all authority it has no recourse to disagree with, namely the Pope. JD Vance Catholicism believes it is more Catholic than the Pope. I shutter to learn Vance’s thoughts on Pope Francis.

Without the Kennedy Doctrine, thrown out for its impracticality, what seems to be replacing it is an authoritarian approach to Catholicism in political life: follow this Americanized JD Vance version of the faith or be exiled from the major parties. For more on that look up the fresh debates about whether pro-choice Catholic politicians like Joe Biden should be denied communion from 2020, the ugliest expression of an idea called Eucharistic coherence as we Catholics say.

Shivers go down my spine at the idea of a second Trump Presidency without Vance on the ticket. The supremacy of JD Vance Catholicism in such a position of power adds a new, uniquely personal edge to that fear.

This brutal new calculus might not be our future. There is an inverse of JD Vance on the other side of the political aisle in an increasingly diverse and young group of Catholics in political life, the most notable of which being U.S. House Representative from New York Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (widely known simply as AOC). AOC says her Catholicism has an impact on her moral decision making, specifically in reference to criminal justice reform in a 2018 interview with Catholic newspaper America.

As much as I would love to end on that optimism I must admit the comparable is paper thin. JD Vance might be the Vice President of the United States this time next year while AOC has openly mused about retiring from politics, hated as a straw man by the right wing and patronized by her own party. The state of religion, just like the state of politics at large in America today, is in a moment of massive change. Where we end up is still very unclear.

That is religion though, right? It’s all about hope. Perhaps hope might be a real feature of politics in this nation as well.

#2024 elections #america #catholic #catholicism #JD Vance #Trump #Biden

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conniejoworld · 7 months ago

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Marjorie Taylor Greene ADMITS TO TATTLING to Donald Trump About Mike Joh...

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You would think if the Jews had space lasers, they would have started with Palestine, then worked their way thru the Middle East.

#Youtube

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gatekeeper-watchman · 1 year ago

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OPINION: Opinion—everybody has an opinion, facts notwithstanding. Well, I have mine too, and I think my opinion is factual. I’m sure of it.

Let me begin by saying, President Trump, if he hasn’t done anything else, has provided this country with a marvelous gift. We must only open our eyes and see it. Then, we must do something about it. He has shown us the depth and extent of our ignorance and lack of rational thinking. We elected him to office.

Again, the tired old outcry, “Wake up America”, wake the hell up! Open your eyes and your minds before it is too late. This is no light matter. Our nation and our democracy are in deep, serious trouble. Figuratively speaking, “the sky is beginning to fall” upon us, politically, economically, and ecologically. This is not a Republican or Democratic matter. This is a matter affecting all of us. Really! Believe it! Open your eyes before it is too late.

President Donald John Trump is one of, if not the most, inept, incompetent, and ignorant presidents in the history of our nation! Believe it! It’s a fact, easily seen by almost anyone willing to stop, look, and think with an open mind.

It’s not as if the position and responsibilities of the President of our country are as simple as that of the mayor of some town or city somewhere or a large business down the street. Our great nation is the largest most powerful and most prosperous empire in the history of the world—the history of civilization, that we have been going downhill for the past forty years notwithstanding. Our great nation consists only of 5% of the world’s population. Yet, we collectively possess 41.6% of the world’s total wealth and consume an estimated 25% of the world’s productivity (standard of living). If the entire world enjoyed the same level of standard of living as we do, there would not be enough to go around. Just think about that. In past years before today’s technology, instant communication, etc., we could get away with that. How long do you think this condition can continue to exist today? How long can our poor continue to be rich relative to our poorer neighbors? Think of China with a population of 1.3 billion as compared to our 330 million and their relative level of poverty.

But I digress. The position of President of the United States of America under our Constitution, the richest, most powerful nation in the history of civilization, is the most responsible in existence and is not available to just anybody. It is so responsible, every move he (or she) makes; every word he or her speaks must be measured, controlled, truthful, and responsible as to cause and effect. He must be capable of envisaging any strategy through to the end, even before he begins. He must be educated, knowledgeable, wise, and emotionally stable—a leader. Donald Trump is not that person in any way, shape, or form. To the contrary, unfortunately, it is proven fact and obvious to anyone who will look with an open mind, that he is intellectually lazy, unsatisfactorily educated, and emotionally unstable. Just as bad, if not worse, his is a one-man show. He is not a leader. He lacks any semblance of leadership skills or integrity. In just three years, this nation has become increasingly divided. Almost, if not all, major positions within his areas of responsibility have turned over more than once and/or are temporary. This is neither leadership nor good management. Also, he is not trustworthy. He is tantamount to a loose cannon. He does not serve this nation. Furthermore, he serves only himself. As President of the United States of America, he must go.

Let us clear up one matter right from the start—the argument that I, like others, am mad because I don’t like Donald Trump; I lost my vote; my opinion is “sour grapes”; and I just want to get rid of him because I lost. Hogwash—pure Hogwash! I have lived through thirteen presidents—Franklin Delano Roosevelt through Donald John Trump, and have not once time advocated impeachment for reasons of “sour grapes”— ever! Donald John Trump, as President of the United States of America, is a threat to our country, to our people, and the whole world. I don’t give a damn about his sex life, his religion, his personality, or his looks—or, just now, his political party. What I do care about is his ability to lead our country through these perilous times; and, any way you choose to look at it, he does not have it, evidenced by his performance over the past three years as well as his performance before he was elected. For those who want to get ahead of their preconceived opinions and look at his record, it’s all there, if they will only put forth their effort to look at it.).

Again, this is not a Democrat or Republican issue, our country is in jeopardy. This is a crisis. Donald Trump must go and go now. I warned you before receiving no response. This is your life, your country, and, as a citizen, your responsibility. It is also the life of your children and grandchildren for all generations to come.

Respectfully,

From: Steven P. Miller @ParkermillerQ, gatekeeperwatchman.org Founder of Gatekeeper-Watchman International Groups, Thursday, November 30, 2023, Jacksonville, Florida., USA. X … @ParkermillerQ

#GWIG, #GWIN, #GWINGO, #Ephraim1, #IAM, #Sparkermiller, #Eldermiller1981

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Sparkermiller.JAX.FL.USA

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tvsotherworlds · 1 year ago

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tv-moments · 4 months ago

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Sugar

Season 1, “Go Home”

Director: Fernando Meirelles

DoP: César Charlone

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princeofgod-2021 · 1 year ago

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LIGHT OF LIFE 396

John 1:4

UNDERSTANDING PROPHETIC MANDATES 30: CHANNEL FOR PROPHECY 3

Amo 3:7 CERTAINLY, THE ALMIGHTY LORD DOESN'T DO ANYTHING UNLESS HE FIRST REVEALS HIS SECRET TO HIS SERVANTS THE PROPHETS. GW

We were discussing how people hate negative Prophetic elements and might [violently] react against the messenger, right?

Can you imagine that even Jesus was not spared when He uttered negative experiences that were going to happen to Him?

Mar 8:31 FROM THEN ON, Jesus began to tell his disciples that HE, THE SON OF MAN, WAS DESTINED TO GO TO JERUSALEM AND SUFFER GREAT INJUSTICE FROM THE ELDERS, LEADING PRIESTS, AND RELIGIOUS SCHOLARS. HE ALSO EXPLAINED THAT HE WOULD BE KILLED and three days later be raised to life again. TPT

Our Lord was talking about what will be His own personal detestable experiences, yet, the reaction was strong, and you’d expect that His Apostles should have had more understanding.

Mat 16:22 PETER took Jesus aside and TOLD HIM TO STOP TALKING LIKE THAT. HE SAID, "GOD WOULD NEVER LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU, LORD!" CEV

That’s the feeling over any negative Prophecies. Well, Jesus had answers for Peter.

Mar 8:33 BUT AFTER TURNING AND LOOKING AT HIS DISCIPLES, HE REBUKED PETER and said, “Get behind me, Satan. You are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but on man’s.” NET

Why did Jesus turn to look at the rest of His Disciples before rebuking Peter?

Because He was confirming if Peter’s feeling about His Proclamations was same as the other’s. it was, wasn’t it?

Now, even when they got to understand much more about the Life of Jesus, they felt bad.

Joh 16:5-6 But now I am going to him who sent me, yet none of you asks me where I am going. AND NOW THAT I HAVE TOLD YOU, YOUR HEARTS ARE FULL OF SADNESS. GNB

So, we were considering how the church might treat pagans with such negative Prophetic proclamations.

Well, as with King Cyrus, not all Prophetic utterance by Pagans are negative in substance though.

As a recap, please take note of these salient points:

Isa 45:1 SO SAYS JEHOVAH TO HIS ANOINTED, TO CYRUS, whose right hand I have made strong in order to humble nations before him. And I will loosen the loins of kings, to open before him the two-leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut. MKJV

1. Because of the Prophetic Mandate, King Cyrus was an ANOINTED servant of God, though a pagan who has no standing relationship with God, nor even knew Him well enough for such.

2. Cyrus’ life mission was 0nly about the Prophetic PROCLAMATION that indicated the rebuilding of Judah’s walls and Temple. Even all other pagans in Babylon were meant to hear the Prophecy.

Ezr 1:1-2 In the first year that Cyrus of Persia was emperor, THE LORD MADE WHAT HE HAD SAID THROUGH THE PROPHET JEREMIAH COME TRUE. HE PROMPTED CYRUS TO ISSUE THE FOLLOWING COMMAND AND SEND IT OUT IN WRITING TO BE READ ALOUD EVERYWHERE IN HIS EMPIRE: "This is the command of Cyrus, Emperor of Persia. THE LORD, THE GOD OF HEAVEN, HAS MADE ME RULER OVER THE WHOLE WORLD AND HAS GIVEN ME THE RESPONSIBILITY OF BUILDING A TEMPLE FOR HIM IN JERUSALEM IN JUDAH. BBE

President Donald Trump also made public pronouncement of Change in Capital of Israel to Jerusalem.

It was Prophetic and nobody could alter it, even though they openly derided it.

Cyrus never went to Judah himself. His Proclamation was sufficient as it carried the needful authority.

Ezr 1:3 If any of God's people are living among you, I pray God will bless them. You must let them go to Jerusalem in the country of Judah. YOU MUST LET THEM GO BUILD THE TEMPLE OF THE LORD, the God of Israel, the God who is in Jerusalem. ERV

3. Cyrus’ Position in this Prophetic Mandate was mostly important because all the Implements and hallowed things of God’s House that Nebuchadnezzar carried away could only be released by the incumbent King.

Ezr 1:7-8 King Cyrus gave back THE THINGS THAT NEBUCHADNEZZAR HAD TAKEN FROM THE LORD'S TEMPLE IN JERUSALEM AND HAD PUT IN THE TEMPLE OF HIS OWN GODS. Cyrus placed Mithredath, his chief treasurer, in charge of these things. Mithredath counted them and gave a list to Sheshbazzar, the governor of Judah. CEV

4. Cyrus’ anointing, honour and name were because of the function he was to carry out for God’s people, ISRAEL: he was [mainly] anointed to serve their interest, though he ruled Babylon. This is the point where we must all understand spiritual placements, beloved.

Isa 45:4 FOR THE SAKE OF MY SERVANT JACOB, ISRAEL, MY CHOSEN ONE, I HAVE CALLED YOU BY NAME. I HAVE GIVEN YOU A TITLE OF HONOR, although you don't know me. GW

Our lives and projections will always be founded on God’s Spiritual processes, IN JESUS NAME.

Come back on Friday, for more of this insightful and enlightening Sub-Subtopic.

Keep Shinning!

Brother Prince

Wednesday, August 23, 2023

08055125517; 08023904307

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