Wednesday’s Forum
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We can look forward to more of this dangerous nonsense, I suppose:
When intelligence is changed by political hacks to deliberately alter the assessments, it’s no longer intel, it is fanfic. It’s hard to emphasize how dangerous this is.
@Jen:
This is a pretty standard problem with “strong man” government leaders.
The underlings need access to the strongman to gain power or influence, or even just to keep their jobs. Access typically comes from telling the boss things he likes to hear.
(Some strong men, Trump for example, deliberately select minions who will tell them what they want to be told. Biased information produces stupid decisions).
@Jen: Imagine being an intel pro and having an asshat like Steven “Oddball” Chung coming into your office and demanding that you “fix” your report to make Trump look less astoundingly ignorant. The USA is a troubled nation, and about 90% of the trouble is self-inflicted.
Follow up.
Is this person in charge of who is & isn’t Christian?
ETA: Another successful instant post!
This is withering:
http://www.rawstory.com/trump-musk-touches-roadkill-dies/
The link to the Wilson substack piece is at the end of the article.
Three days beginning May 20 to comment on keeping COVID vaccinations available for everyone. Chose “individual consumer” as the category. You can submit anonymously
https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/FDA-2025-N-1146-0001
@Mister Bluster: Dan McClellan’s videos are definitely worth watching.
@Mister Bluster: Making fun of Protestants is easy.
@Fortune:
Orthodox point at Catholics and chuckle.
@Kingdaddy:..Dan McClellan’s videos…
When OTB was down I read many of his posts.
I don’t understand people who are threatened by what he says.
@JohnSF: Catholics and Orthodox both have coherent ecclesiologies which don’t fall into the above trap.
Humanity is in big trouble when it cannot moderate the madness of its dysfunctional hyper-wealthy hyper influencers
@Fortune:
Anglicans smile knowingly.
(Also Armenians.)
(And probably the Ethiopians.)
@JohnSF: What do you mean?
@Erik: Thank you for the link. Done and shared.
@Fortune: @Fortune:
It’s “easy” to criticize (make fun of) such big hypocrites who do not live the values they wish to impose on others. And this isn’t confined to Protestants — it’s pretty well spread across the entire ideological/religious spectrum, inside and outside Christianity, because we humans are so utterly limited in our capacity to be objective about ourselves. We are entirely “field dependent.”
@Rob1: Catholics and Orthodox don’t claim to define the term “Christian”. Some Protestants do.
@JohnSF: This Anglican chuckles quietly.
@Rob1:
This reminds me of when George Zimmerman was being questioned after the Trayvon Martin killing. Zimmerman noticed the detective was wearing a cross necklace, so he asked, “A you a Catholic?” Her reply was: “No, I’m a Christian.”
Not having been raised in any religion, I know little about the subject, but I always assumed Catholics were Christians.
@Fortune:
No they do not. They too are “self-referencing” in their claims of authority. And, coherence is not the same as congruence. It is rather essential that a person who self-identifies as “Christian” be congruent with the source they claim as their Godhead, rather than the “consensus” of in-group popular opinion, or the consensus of long-ago, venerated “in-group” personalities, who had their own cultural/political biases and impetus to personal power.
Christ did not come to create “Christianity.” Christianity, as it is formalized into a social expression of human convention, is the creation of humans in response to an event. The ensuing build out of that social convention is man’s own invention where it strays from congruence to the original source.
Now, people can claim “divine inspiration,” with their insertions of dogma and “doctrine,” and many have throughout the ages, continuing on television to this very day. The quest for personal power through self-bestowed “divine imprimatur” has led to some rather bloody internecine wars in the past, as well as wholly self serving aggregation of self enrichment. None of which reflects the known memory of the life of Christ.
Ceremonial “Christianity” is too often at odds with its self identified source.
@Fortune:
No, that is incorrect. They absolutely do. You’re not speaking the truth.
FWIW, today’s discussion of Christianity and definitions of what is Christian led me to do some google searching. I cam across this article that I think his helpful in processing one Catholic Priest’s attempt to define Christianity and some of the issues they have with the Evangelical community (which arguably should be separated from more mainstream organized Protestant denominations):
https://www.ncregister.com/blog/are-catholics-christian
Also ended up reading much more on the topic of Ecumenism than I expected. Fascinating stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_ecumenism
@Rob1: Ok, I’m going total nerd on y’all. When Musk calls someone an NPC, it does not mean “non-playable character”. It means “non-player character”. This is a long-established term of art in tabletop roleplaying (which I have been involved in for all my adult life. It is a hobby that is shared by people like Vin Diesel, Karl Urban and Judi Densch. So get off me!)
NPCs are characters that are created and played by the GM who creates the situation into which the players engage and exercise their agency upon. So the slur, “You are an NPC’ means, “You have no agency” which is quite likely to mean “You don’t matter” or “You are a pawn”. It suggests that “you have been set in front of my by some other actor, not of your own volition”.
And by the way, I cannot imagine a situation where I would say that about another person.
Christians allowed their brand name to become a generic name, much like how Bayer failed to adequately protect the name Heroin.
@Rob1: I don’t know of any official Catholic or Orthodox document which defines the word “Christian”. They may define membership in their churches, or what’s true or false, but not what’s Christian, and definitely not who’s Christian, at least as far as I know. If I’m wrong please post.
@Rob1: If there was any such thing as coherent ecclesiologies, there would have been no schismatic divisions among people of good will. I just shake my head and walk away.
ETA: But then again, I thought it was pretty clear from reading the teachings of Jesus–some of which have been cited recently here by detractors–that not even all Christians are Christians or Christian, for that matter.
@Gustopher: BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! 😀 😀
@just nutha: If the question is what Jesus said about the word “Christian”, you know the answer, right.
@CSK:
This is something I heard a fair amount of from certain Evangelical branches when I lived in Missouri. They don’t consider Catholics Christians. Something about worshiping Mary and the communion of Saints, blah blah. I never bothered to listen to their “logic” that closely, they seemed like kooks to me. I was raised Catholic, and yes, we considered ourselves Christian, as defined by “followers of Christ.”
Different flavors of the same religion fighting about small differences…it all just seems so weird to me. One of the many reasons I’m no longer religious/basically atheist.
@just nutha:
That’s not true either. People could just disagree with them.
@Jen:
Very bizarre. I googled around and found this, http://www.georgiabulletin.org/commentary/2011/10/catholics-arent-christians-common-myths/ , which is quite interesting.
I have a tiresome, rather self-infatuated niece-in-law who likes to refer to herself as a Christian, and I’m always tempted to ask her what denomination she is. Out of politesse, I refrain from so doing.
“No, I am a Catholic” is something I have said to certain “christians” asking me if I am a christian. I am a Catholic and there are some organizations of christians that I would not want to be associated with, generally over represented among those who would ask me if I am one.
@Fortune:
I mean that Anglicans and Roman Catholics have, from time to time, had *ahem* disagreements on who is and is not a lawful Christian.
For “burning at the stake” values of disagreement.
Definitions in the early Church were, usually, less bloody.
But not always.
See the periodic violence related to the Donatists.
Or, considerably later, the extirpation of the Albigensian heresy by Crusade.
And quite often, politics and theology become very difficult to disentangle in these matters.
Incidentally, iirc, both Lutherans and Presbyterians, in their diffrent ways, seem consider themselves to have a fairly coherent ecclesiology.
ymmv
@Fortune:
Which takes us stright back to the opinion voiced in the initial video, whcih you apper to concur with.
Generally, these days, “exclusive” variants of Christainity appear to be, thankfully, largely confined to some more extreme sectaries and factions.
@CSK:
Some extremists among the Northern Ireland Protestant “free chuches” have held such opinions for a long time; and doubtless some still do.
I cherish my ignorance of the details of theological and political argumentation among the “wee frees”.
@JohnSF: “Lawful Christian”? We were talking about “Christian”, not “lawful Christian”. As far as I know, Anglicans and Catholics never questioned whether the other was Christian, only lawful. Likewise, the Donatists and Cathars were never considered non-Christians, but schismatic or heretical Christians.
To be fair to the traditions of Christianity, such arguments over boundaries and definitions are far from exclusively Christian.
Some ultra-Orthodox Jews, iirc, are inclined to deny the “practiscing” Judaism of other groups.
Sunni and Shia have been known to have their differences.
And arguably, though from a rather diffrent standpoint, the entire historical structure of Hinduism has been based on the separation of the “pure” from the “impure”, and which groups were therefore entitled to the benefits of the Brahmanic rituals.
Speaking of Catholics…sweet Mary, Mother of God this man is embarrassing.
@Fortune:
The point is, surely, if you are prepared to go to the point of large scale torture and burning, and even massacre, to extirpate heresy, that indicates that those holding such heretical opinions are not regarded as legitimate members of the Church.
And that their doctrines were so pernicious as to imperoil Christain souls to the point of justifying such actions.
There seems very little that differentiates the treatment of Cathars in the Albigensian Crusade, to that accorded to pagan Saxons by Charlemagne, or Baltic pagans in the Crusades of the Teutonic Knights.
The bond vigilantes are circling like vultures. Trump has ordered the AF to accept the plane from Qatar. The Freedumb caucus or whoever are demanding more cuts in the Big Dumb Bill. The Europeans are flailing on how to deal with Ukraine without us. The President of the United States who we can’t get rid of for three and a half years continues to appear just short of foaming at the mouth. And commenters at OTB whom I generally respect are taking Cookie’s bait and babbling on about religion. Jesus H. Christ.
@Jen: another Oval Office ambush is how it’s being reported. It’s the big story on the bbc now.
The South African president showed a lot of grace, something the current American president totally lacks.
The rant about Peter Alexander and nbc was impressively unhinged, even for trump.
Another day, another international humiliation.
@Fortune:
As the term “Christian” did not exist at the time, it seems unlikely that Jesus directly referred to it at all.
(An oversight, perhaps?)
A good deal of what was later accepted as “foundational” Christianity seems to have actually been developed by St Paul and the Fathers rather later.
Indications from the time are that there was a lot of argument very early on between the “gentile Christians” and the “Jewish Christians” based in Jerusalem as to standing.
Which was rather cut short when the Romans crushed the Jewish Revolts and resettled Jeruslam with pagans, wrecking the base of the “Jewish Christians”, whose remnants largely dispersed and either merged with the gentile churches, or returned to “conventional” diaspora Judaism.
Another whole chunk of “normal” Christainity only developed in the Middle Ages: regular lay attendance at mass and confession, sacramental marriage as the norm etc.
@JohnSF:
You misunderstand. It was large scale torture, burning and massacre out of love. It’s about gently correcting those within the church who have gone slightly astray.
@becca: I’m really impressed by the South African president’s self control in not saying “In South Africa, we have a saying — have you lost your fucking mind, or have you just pickled it in conspiracy theories?”
South Africans have generally shown amazing restraint when it comes to the colonizers and their descendants’ ill-gotten gains.
@gVOR10:
Oh, I always enjoy a good natter about the history of Christendom, and medieval heresy.
Another of my peculiar interests. 😉
Though I must admit, it’s a rather academic issue when the US administration is busy wrecking domestic laws and norms, and undermining post-war structures of international strategic and economic stability out of greed, stupidity, stubborness, and sheer petulance.
@Jen:
Trump is an imbecilic churl. Or a churlish imbecile. Whatever.
“I’m sorry that I don’t have a plane to give you,” would make a great catchphrase for our age. Sort of like “Peace in our time,” or “Seperate but Equal.”
The MAGAs are raving with glee over Trump’s handling of Ramaphosa:
http://www.lucianne.com/2025/05/21/trump_epically_ambushed_the_south_african_president_in_the_oval_office_151963.html
What a tough guy! Best president ever!
@JohnSF: McClellan addressed a very specific point about how there’s nothing in Christianity or the Bible that gives a definition of “Christian”. He’s not stupid (although he takes some liberties near the end of the video), he was baiting a Protestant Christian and got exactly what he wanted. There’s a lot in the Bible and Christianity about 1 what is the truth, 2 how to be good, and 3 how to maintain standing within the church community, but those are different questions. I’ve said before, you’re more interested in politics and I’m more interested in philosophy and theology, in this case it’ll only lead you on a tangent.
@Gustopher:
The thing is, that’s exactly how the Church justified it.
While for the “crusaders” the whole thing as a massive exercise in plunder and land-grabbing, sanctified by the Church and legalised by the Monarchy.
Which activity seldom bothered, in practice, to distinguish between Cathar and Catholic.
Interestingly enough, in the post-Crusade period, the largely Dominican-led inquisition seems to have tried to end the use of heresy accusations as a means of pursuing local vendettas. They still “questioned” and indeed burnt, but were rather finicky about it.
If still very unpleasant by our standards.
See Montaillou, by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie. (A genuinely fascinating work of historical research)
@Fortune:
Indeed I am, but imho if you think those things are easily separable in our sadly circumsribed world, I fear you are mistaken.
Much of the rather abstruse theogical controversies of the Late Roman Empire (homoousios vs homoiousios , anyone?) cannot in reality be separated from the politics of the separatism of Egypt and Syria from Constantinople.
Similarly, the schism of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, and all that stemmed from that, including the Third Crusade and the sack of Constantinople, the rejection of “unification” by the Greeks, and the eventual fall of the Byzantine East Roman state to the Turks.
Which events have profoundly shaped our world to this day.
Or the events of the Reformation, and the establishment and persistence of Anglican England.
Again: theology and politics are in reality not readily separable.
@Jen: @CSK: I wonder how long it will take for the South Africans to make a deal with the Chinese.
And I wonder what is the reaction of the Commonwealth of Nations.
@CSK: since you click on lucianne.com so I don’t have to, is this site named in honor(?) of the late Ms Lucianne Goldberg, mother of Jonah, GOP dirty trickster and Linda Tripp handler?
Those old Clinton era operatives seem so quaint now, don’t they?
@JohnSF: The theological difference between Arianism and Nicene theology is huge. The Romans weren’t too eager to convert to Christianity, and a lot of them liked the idea of Christianity without so much Incarnation. One path led to Augustine, Aquinas, and Locke, and the other to Islam. Theology and politics are linked, but politics is often downstream from theology.
@JohnSF:
I wish I knew more about the Baltic Pagan beliefs and rituals. Same for pre-Christian “British”.
Scare quotes in that only because I know that’s a lot of different groups then.
@becca:
Yes, it is named after the late Lucianne Goldberg, who founded it. Someone who was friendly with her told me that she was not a Trump fan, but given that her followers adore Trump, she knew on what side her bread was buttered. Her son Jonah despises Trump, and in his turn, is despised by the MAGAs at Lucianne.com.
Lucianne.com is, as far as I can tell, Trump and MAGA Central. It amalgamates all the MAGA idiocies and saves me the trouble of checking all the other semi-literate, hysterical crackpot sites.
I kind of marvel at (and enjoy) how stupid and ignorant these people are.
@JohnSF: Having been raised by a Northern Irish Protestant “free church” mom (who married a lapsed Catholic, go figure), I’m fully acquainted with the types of disputes you’re referring to. Trust me, you haven’t missed anything.
(I spent my most formative years in a, now, moribund denomination formed during the conservative/liberal schism of the 1920s in American Protestant Christianity named the General Association of Regular Baptists. The inside joke common among people I grew up with was that the acronym–GARB–really stood for Grand Army of Rebellious Baptists. We lived up to that reputation, too.)
@JohnSF:
100% this.
I also wish modern philosophers had written more accessibly because of how critical that connection is. Alternatively, I wish I had started studying philosophy much earlier, so I would feel more at home reading it.
@Beth:
The pre-Christain Britons were basically similar to the Gauls and Irish: shared Celtic system.
By the time of the end of Roman rule in Britain, the British were pretty largely Christianised, though likely with a lot of pagan hold-over folk religion in the countryside.
The incoming Anglo-Saxons were part of a similar group relasted paganism.
This time the Teutonic/Germanic/Scandinavian group.
Not much is known of the deatails of Saxon pagaanism beyond that.
But Celts and Teutons seem to have both a bucolic, poetic, aspect, but also a rather dark side yhat involved ritual animal and human sacrifice.
The Romans (who were no-ones idea of shrinking violets) found them rather objectionable on that basis.
Interestingly, the Dark Ages Britons seem to have little success in converting Saxons: whether because they hated the Saxons, or the Saxons despised the “Welsh”, is unclear.
The conversion of the English largely stemmed from the Roman Chuch and the Franks in the south. Thought the Celtic Church eventually made some headway in Northumbria.
About Baltic paganism I know nothing much at all.
@Fortune:
The theological difference between Arianism and Nicene theology is huge
I’m aware of that.
(And still more between Pelagian and Augustinian doctrines)
I was thinking more of the squabbles of Orhodox, Monophysites, Monotheletes, and all the other subtle, and rather tedious, argument.
Plus later iconoclast versus iconphiles.
Which seem to have led to the Latins becoming rather exasperated with the Hellenistic proclivity for theological pedantry.
Which was, imho, largely based on provincial and ecclesiastical politics.
While the great triumph of Arianism was not with the Romans at all, but with the Gemanic post-Roman kingdoms in the area of the Western Empire.
The Aryans were Arians, lol.
(Later absorbed by the preponderant Catholic Romnaneque majority they ruled)
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Remembering my childhood caused me to search out how the GARB is doing these days. Check out the rhetorical tone in this:
“GARBC’s Slide into New Evangelicalism
By the 1980s, the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches (GARBC) was infiltrated with the contemporary evangelical philosophy. Its founding statements on separation no longer reflected the view of a growing number of its pastors.”
There’s more, but I won’t bore you. The idea of Evangelicalism as an infiltrating influence is straight out of my childhood. Our denomination founded its own K-12 school because Seattle Christian School joined the National Association of Evangelicals, thus “turning away” from “Biblical truth.” WA!!!
If you haven’t been nailed to a cross, can you really say you’re Christian?
Before anyone just dismiss that as merely snark, it’s a lower, and more achievable bar than loving thy neighbor, giving away one’s goods, caring for the poor or welcoming refugees.
ETA: if Jesus Christ Superstar is any guide, I think that Jesus would be far less bothered by the interpretations of the relationship between him, his father and some Holy Ghost than he would have been with the Crusades, or the modern Prosperity Gospel.
We interrupt this fascinating theological interlocution to note that Jake Tapper has posited that Hunter Biden was really calling the shots for the President.
Crackhead. Hooker-hooked. Bagman. Unqualified in every sense of the word.
Very reassuring. Response from OTB will surely be a) Hunter is just fine, and b) “Connor is a MAGA asshole”……….
@Connor:
“Bagman”?
Is this back to the good old “Hunter Biden and Burisma” trope, perchance?
People can readily “posit” all sorts of things.
That does not necessarily mean they are correct in their hypotheses.
@Connor:
I think everyone here would agree that Hunter Biden is a hopeless mess.
@Connor:
Jake Tapper said to Katie Couric on her “Next Question” podcast,
“I think Hunter was driving the decision-making for the family in a way that people– he was almost like a chief of staff of the family”
This is not the same as
Your phrasing implies that Hunter Biden was making presidential decisions; I doubt that.
OTOH, did he influence President Biden to attempt a second term? Sadly, that’s possible.
@Connor:
Hey, you’re batting .500!
The Biden claim would require that Biden not be surrounded with ambitious people eager to grab whatever power they could. That is not a valid reflection of Biden’s VP and cabinet.
Hunter is a well-known failson and basket case. No one is following whatever he says. Even if we were to assume that Biden was senile (despite his many public events where he showed that he was an old man with a good grasp of problems and policies) we would have to limit Hunter’s “control” to “while Jill is away, make sure he gets oatmeal in the morning, no more morning ice cream cones.”
As the kids say: Be fucking for real.
(Also, if this was remotely accurate, Tapper should be fired as he sat on an absolutely breathtaking scoop, harming his employers. Of course, if it’s not accurate, Tapper should be fired for making shit up rather than doing any kind of journalism. Tapper should just be fired.)
@Connor: Surely trafficking with hookers is not a disqualification for being president.
@Connor:
In short: Hunter Biden was a mess, he used his name to obtain positions.
Same ol’ same ol’.
There is no evidence at all that those positions influenced US policy, or that they were some sort of channel for payments to Joe Biden.
There is considerable circumstantial evidence that Trump attempted to cozen Ukraine into “fitting up” Hunter Biden in such a role, and got told to get lost.
See the adventures of Rudy Giuliani and the two stooges.
Which accounts, imho, for at least part of Trump’s animus towards Ukraine.
Also connected, some rather amusingly elusive persons e.g. the mysteriously untraceable Mr Michael Aspen and the vegetable aisle of Italiano Supermarkets, 1c, Via Maggio, Lugano, Switzerland?
With bonus Falun Gong!
“Ah, Mr Bannon. You appear with the sad inevitability of an unwelcome season.”
Would you like to know more?
With all the talk about versions of Christianity this seems appropriate. Emo Phillips. The part about God and denominations starts at 2:15.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3fAcxcxoZ8
@Connor: I mean, surely you’ve seen Don Jr’s cocaine fueled rants. (eyeroll)
@Scott O:..
So I Googled “pushed him off the bridge” and found this.
Neither @Fortune nor The Worlds Greatest Oil Investor have the wit or the spine to engage. Why you people continue to engage with them is a mystery. They are nothings, empty suits.