The Republican party is full of pastorticians. Bleating about how much you love Jesus and how much Jesus you'll shove up everyone's asses is a requirement for anyone who wants to be elected to office as a Republican. - Margaret Whitestone

All religions are life rafts for the disfunctional; look at Santa Muerte and radical Islam and the freaks of the storefront churches. And that's not even getting into the cults of wellness and mindfulness of the managerial and helping professions.

It's curious *how* these supposed Christians are viewed 'round the world. We have friends in Western Europe and visit there as often as possible. Most Europeans view American evangelicals as "odd, bizarre and rather strange." Now THAT part of the world has had a lengthy history of wars, depressions, mass deaths, and an intellectual legacy that spans many centuries.

Ditto with Eurasians, China, The Middle East, Latin America, and Russians.
So the rest of the world has itself anchored in their past........very lengthy pasts. Something these deluded Evangelicals have never, never experienced. They ARE easy prey for charlatans, corrupt politicians, the US military, and the monolithic financial capitalists. Poor sops: they shall reap what they sow.

Liberal christians lost out decades ago, when their ideology became pc to the extreme, culminating on open borders and their giddiness at the imminent replacement of whites. By allowing hordes of third world peasants, the liberal mind seeks redemption from its pasts sins, namely slavery. All whites, hetero men are privileged not matter what their condition may be. If you are a 50-year-old white factory worker who loses his job when the factory is moved to China or Mexico, you shouldn't whine. YOU ARE PRIVILEGED. HOW DARE YOU! (Greta-like intonation).

There's a lot of truth in this, actually. Although I cannot abide the evangelicals.

You just proved the author's point.

Truth comes to truthdig. It could be the title of a Frank Capra movie, don't you think?

I completely understand and agree with what Chris and many, many, others are trying to say but in my opinion, it over-intellectualizes and tends to obfuscate the main problem. The main problem, in whatever form it takes and in whatever era it appears, is organized crime. Period. Organized crime and corruption has been the problem with governance since the first neolithic man put one rock upon another. Regardless of the details or various organizations and structures of either system, you either have an honest representative democracy of some sort or composition, or you have organized crime of some sort and composition. People understand that. They understand organized corruption/crime. That's the message that really catches fire. Throwing out words like neoliberalism confuses the average person. They think it has something to do with liberals or the left in general and they don't know neoliberal from neocon. They know what criminal behavior is though. Stick to the basics. George Carlin was a master at that. He says more in his "Who Owns America" routine than 1,000 of these articles could ever say. Google it.

Organized religion = organized crime

Or. . . organized religion = government = organized crime

And George Carlin was an early critic of PC culture (aka leftist mind control)

Au contraire.

For the MOST part It's rightwing mind control.
The left is not in control of the dominant institutions, which are the principal institutions designed to control minds.

You're safe then. You need a mind.

Has Chris ever wondered why the liberal churches are dying out? They lack any desire for conversions and their people are sterile, preferring pets over children. The first heresy to condemn is the rejection of actual miracles. If you are worried about fascism then start with the New Deal big government programs of FDR, inspired by Italian fascism.. Hedges spends too much time reading Marxists who call their opponents fascists.

Most advanced nations, including the ones admired by Hedges, give financial support to private schools. The laws forbidding that here are known as Blaine Amendments, given to us by the Klan to make life difficult for Catholics. Schools in the West are a product of the churches, not the state which came rather late onto the scene into education and every other facet of life.

"and thwarting sexual license, which includes any sexual relationship other than in a marriage between a man and a woman." Yes, we oppose the sexual revolution which has destroyed families and given us entire neighborhoods with no father in the home.

If Hedges is worried about white supremacy then he needs to look in the mirror. Who gave us feminism, multiculturalism, secularism, transgenderism, etc. if not the liberal whites like Hedges? The people never asked for those things to be forced upon us.

"If Hedges is worried about white supremacy then he needs to look in the mirror. Who gave us feminism, multiculturalism, secularism, transgenderism(sic), etc. if not the liberal whites like Hedges? The people never asked for those things to be forced upon us."

So these things simply don't exist unless someone forced them on You? You are the very definition of a fascist.

If you imagine Marx saw fascists as "opposition" then you know nothing of Marx. Also connecting FDR and Italian fascism is utterly dishonest. For example America during Roosevelt's New Deal did not become a one-party state; it had no secret police; the Constitution remained in force, and there were no concentration camps; the New Deal preserved the institutions of the liberal-democratic system that National Socialism abolished.

You are either pig ignorant or a deliberately dishonest. Which is it?

I mostly agree. THe key part is at the end "forced upon us." Who like to be forced upon? Even when it's something good like you parents forcing you to eat broccoli?

So why do you impose your belief in miracles on the rest of us?

So you conflate gay people with veg? You're disgusting.

When the major demographic of a society starts claiming victimhood, as white Christians have done here, then fascism has gained a foothold in that society.

Hedges hit the nail on the head with this one.

Victimhood is the liberals reason d' etre...............everybody (except white heter males) have a duty to call themselves victims

Cry me a river! Who's claiming 'War on religion?

Your English is as bad as your French. Your understanding of reality is worse than both.

Since TRUTH is an orphan in this 2020 world , I try to consult as many differing news sources as possible on dramatic world events. Just a fluke ? I went to the " Watching America " web site which I visited frequently in the past .
JUST NOW : " THIS WEB SITE IS NOT AVAILABLE ".
I will check again. But one thought for now : this will not be a new American Century !
[ This site can’t be reachedsweeps3500.nonamerea...’s server IP address could not be found.
DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN]

If you can stop the site redirecting you can still get onto Watching America. But it's clear someone is going to a lot of effort to stop people seeing it. Put this into Google watchingamerica.com/WA/... Also I'd run a virus check on your machine as my AVG flagged up the redirection as an attack.

Actually you can also click the link.

America is fascist. Both the right and the left are owned by the inner party.

The fake left's hatred of white Christians is fascism. It does not matter that the races are reversed. Both sides are tools of the fascist party. And the consequence of fake left persecution of white people is that they will become fascist.

Trump does not need to accuse Jews and immigrants of communist conspiracies. He has his accomplices in the fake left manufacturing that illusion 24/7 with their endless nonsense about "white privilege".

Indeed, tell a white minimum wage earner in Middle America that he's privileged, and you have lost a potential demo voter.

Not to diminish the difficulties that white workers have with this lawless criminal enterprise we have instead of a government. However hard you have it though, you are far less likely to be either stopped by, or gunned down by the police. You are far less likely to be followed when you go into any store. You are far less likely to be cheated by utilities. The establishment wins through divide and conquer. White and Black workers need to find a way to stick together or we'll ALL be slaves of the gangsters who own our government.

As for rightly perceived hatred for CHRISTIANITY as a still potent spiritual force in the world there is a convergence of neo-liberal, New Atheist , secular Zionist Jew hostility . What remains of effete Marxist parties are as openly hostile to Christianity as the pioneer Russian Bolsheviks - as Winston Churchill observed many of them militant atheist Jews - who quickly - a disaster for " socialist " propaganda - declared THEIR state " officially atheist ". Of course , the Soviet State was hardly - only by way of a joke - a " dictatorship of the proletariat ".
If truly democratic socialists - who see the evils of capitalism and imperialism- as keenly as the better type of Marxist- want to evolve into a potent social force , they must build bridges to the millions of people of FAITH on the Good Earth. Too many Marxist influenced socialists remind me so much of that crank Zionist Jew intellectual Ayn Rand and her " Life of Contempt " ( title of a critical biography ) .About five years ago nearly every REPUBLICAN candidate for president of the United States was an avowed disciple of Rand and her holy book " The Virtue of Selfishness ".
Oddly enough intelligent criticism of Zionism is coming from Orthodox Jewish voices. But they are not heard in " OUR democracy " ?

By ignoring/belittling ALL christian, liberals have shot themselves in the foot.their militant atheism is as aggravating as the bible thumping of a missionary.

Are all your comments this stupid?

Can't understand his words? Get educated instead of vomiting profanities. Without elitist, you'd still be living in a cave.

What is so " elitist " or obscure about what should be the ABCs of " democratic socialism ? Sometimes background knowledge is needed to understand comments. I have said that dogmatic - militant atheist - Marxism is a dead end . I have said that the biggest mistake of the Russian Revolution was to declare the new socialist state " officially atheist'.
I am concerned about the obvious contempt of too many groups on the Left for the FREE SPEECH , FREE THOUGHT tradition of Western Civilization. About FASCISM drifting in from the Left .
What are the possibilities for success of any socialist revival or economic EQUALITY movement if millions of Christians are scorned as " benighted " and Christian virtues ridiculed - which, if practiced, can keep any new social order from becoming a hellish , totalitarian nightmare ?
The very structure of existing Marxist parties points to an anti-democratic form of government . They are invariably led by some egomaniac permanent GREAT LEADER with an inner circle of subservient " Clears " so much like the daffy Church of Scientology . These already effete, future bureaucrats will never " connect " to the real working class millions .
It is insane hubris for any group to believe that it is an agent of HISTORY with a unique patent on SOCIALISM. It is perverse to think that individuals, clearly on the LEFT, with opposing political views, are agents of the " class enemy ". Or that the designated " class enemy " consists mostly of moral monsters. In general, people are what they are because THEIR life has made them that way . Since the very beginning of civilization, in ancient Greece and Rome, there have been CONSERVATIVE , LIBERAL, and RADICAL political philosophies in circulation, competing for state power. At times one outlook was clearly superior to others - just as today. But even the eloquence of Cicero could not save the Roman Republic. Caesar and his plebian followers in Rome had their own " Appeal to Reason ". While the Roman aristocracy- with its voice in the Senate - was completely decadent.

What a ridiculous comment.

When something is ‘hermetically sealed‘ nothing from the outside can influence it and nothing from the inside of it can influence the outside. Chris Hedges ignores the latter part of what ‘hermetically sealed’ means. Probably because his argument is rendered magical nonsense if he did take that into account.

read more at: https://scrapbookwithtony.w...

I did read and appreciate Chris Hedges' book on the decay of LIBERALISM . But Christianity has not been lacking " inside " critics for centuries . Some of them in despair saying that " the last Christian died on the cross ".
It is blindness for the social critics of capitalism and imperialism not to see the freedom of religion - along with the FREE SPEECH, FREE THOUGHT tradition of Western Civilization - is being attacked and mocked ON THE LEFT .
I happen to think that the pre-Vatican II Catholic Church had more " gravitas " and spiritual AUTHORITY than the present -definitely moribund - Catholic Church . The ABSOLUTE is worn out by too many corrections and footnotes and lugubrious APOLOGIA . Perhaps ONLY the Second Coming can save the Catholic Church . Saint Augustine, writing in the 4th century, had some eerie vision of THE LAST DAYS .

Ha ha ha the second coming that was IMMINENT during the apostles' time?

Freedom OF religion is one thing. How about freedom FROM religion. Who has the right to impose their religion on others?

Muslims, of course.

I take it you are being sarcastic, or funny, or something.
Non-Muslims are not compelled to take part in Muslim prayers. Far from it, they are excluded. I was thinking more of the blatantly Christian prayers that begin so many public meetings. Calling them invocations doesn't make them any more acceptable to those who do not believe in the Christian god.

Invocations? Oh my, you mean Christians are practicing witchcraft now instead of praying? Bad christians, down boy, go sit in the corner.

I have just returned from the City Council where item 2 on the agenda was the invocation, right between roll call and the pledge of allegiance. and it was not witchcraft.

Google invocation and you'll find dozens of websites like this one: connectusfund.org/12-best-i..., or go to a Rotary meeting.

I will put it to you this way....

The dictionary definition of "invocation" is....

"The action of invoking something or someone for assistance or as an authority."

And the next definition..

"An incantation to invoke a deity or the supernatural."

So either an invocation is just another word for we are going to say a bunch of words that mean nothing....

Or you are asking a god for it's participation in what you are doing.

So which is it?

Did they make a plea for participants in the audience who are knowledgeable to assist in helping the board make the correct decisions?

Or did they ask an invisible personage to look down kindly on them and direct their decisions in the proper direction?

If it was option # 2, then their invocation was a petition or prayer to a deity.

Thus making it an illegal prayer. Changing the name from "prayer" to "invocation" does not make it legal.

That is exactly what I said. Calling the prayers (and, yes, there is a lot of please god bless these good people of the City Council and help them do their jobs) by another name does not make them any more acceptable. Congress doesn't even bother to call them anything but prayers.

Religion and witchcraft are different cheeks of the same arse.

I am not sophisticated enough to enter into debate with most any of the posters on this forum. I just think there are a whole lot of simple people who just want to do what's right, true and good. They/ I just want to do good constructive, helpful things and do not yet see that what they are doing is ultimately NOT true, helpful and good. The people murdering abortion doctors simply believed they were doing good, true and right only later coming to see how evil their acts were. I think Dumpf45 is evil. Yet he does not see himself as such. Eventually he may come to see how wrong he has been. If he doesn't destroy humanity first!

he has zero introspection, which is the sign of a psychopath

Just like HRC only she has far more blood on her hands.