In God We Trust

Religion and Secularism
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Bob said:

I suggest you read any of the many stories of the Christian missionaries who have been there. They cannot get a visa if they tell the truth about being a missionary. They usually get in by claiming to be teachers or medical people. They report that it is against the law for a foreigner to hand a Bible directly to a Chinese citizen. If you do, you will be “detained” and “educated”.


Any foreigner who is either not gainfully employed in a regular organization or going to China for approved reasons, is barred from entering. Once in the country, you had better stay on the straight and narrow. Don’t even try to claim to be anything you are not. They will get on to you a lot faster than the FBI. All churches, temples and mosques must be approved and registered with the government. There are missionaries in China but they cannot bring in their Bibles from America or preach. Only China-approved versions of the Bible is allowed. You cannot preach the gospel without a permit just as visitors to the US cannot work without permission from US Immigration.

That China’s government is anti-religion should not be a surprise at all. A socialist government cannot allow anyone to accept that there is a “higher power”, one that would in any way supersede the authority of the state. Under socialism the individual has neither the ultimate authority nor the total responsibility for his or her life, but must function as part of the collective.
Your viewpoint is not shared by the people of China. 1.5 billion Chinese cannot be governed by Xi Jinping and the CCP without their tacit approval. This idea of cruel suppression of an entire population by ruthless dictators is an American fallacy.
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Sree: “This idea of cruel suppression of an entire population by ruthless dictators is an American fallacy.”

Yep, the people of the non-Russian USSR really loved Stalin. Wonder why there is no longer a USSR.

Haiti’s Papa Doc. Wikipedia: “An undercover government death squad, the Tonton Macoute, indiscriminately killed Duvalier’s opponents, and it was thought to be so pervasive that Haitians became highly fearful of expressing any form of dissent, even in private.”

Pol Pot. Wikipedia: “his government forcibly relocated the urban population to the countryside to work on collective farms. Pursuing complete egalitarianism, money was abolished and all citizens made to wear the same black clothing. Those the Khmer Rouge regarded as enemies were killed. These mass killings, coupled with malnutrition and poor medical care, killed between 1.5 and 2 million people, approximately a quarter of Cambodia’s population, a period later termed the Cambodian genocide. … internationally denounced for his role in the Cambodian genocide, regarded as a totalitarian dictator guilty of crimes against humanity.”

Sree, take the Siddhārtha Gautama’s lead; get out more.

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Lausten, I had not seen that. Thanks for posting it.

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Sree said : This idea of cruel suppression of an entire population by ruthless dictators is an American fallacy.
Ah yes the genocide of Jews did not really happen in NAZI Germany during WW II. Those are just made up stories. Yes, except the Germans kept very accurate records, which proved those stories. You know, to insure accurate accounting of the numbers.

Holocaust

The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah,[b] was the World War II genocide of the European Jews. Between 1941 and 1945, across German-occupied Europe, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population.[a][c] The murders were carried out in pogroms and mass shootings; by a policy of extermination through work in concentration camps; and in gas chambers and gas vans in German extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz, Bełżec, Chełmno, Majdanek, Sobibór, and Treblinka in occupied Poland.[5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust
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This idea of cruel suppression of an entire population by ruthless dictators is an American fallacy.
I'll jump on this bandwagon, since two others' responses help prove my point that Sree does not belong here. As a person, he's welcome, by his posts are getting increasingly off color. This forum is for open discussion of anything, so if you want to start a thread on holocaust denial, go ahead, but sprinkling in statements about how dictators never existed is not the type of intellectual engagement we desire. It demands a response, but that response takes away from the topic at hand.

If you can get there, go here. You will see how seemingly innocuous insults to Jewish people grew into mass murder. Of course it takes the tacit approval of people, that’s why they used techniques to gain that approval. You are showing examples of those techniques in your posts. They just don’t work on us.

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Bob: Sree, take the Siddhārtha Gautama’s lead; get out more.
How much more, Bob? I do live like the Buddha. I spend 6 months a year in the country. The other 6 months I go abroad to wherever I maintain a second home (plus a sailboat) which used to be in Europe. I shifted that home to Hong Kong from Singapore a few years ago. My boat is still tied up in a riverine marina in Malaysia, offshore Singapore. How about you? You get out much?
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Lausten: This forum is for open discussion of anything, so if you want to start a thread on holocaust denial, go ahead, but sprinkling in statements about how dictators never existed is not the type of intellectual engagement we desire. It demands a response, but that response takes away from the topic at hand.
Trump is being condemned as a dictator by Americans. Right here in this country. Why don't we critically examine this perception? I believe he does have tremendous power and he has a lot of people running scared. The claim that Trump is a one-man dictator is based on a false belief, a superstition. It's a ploy to isolate him in order to destroy him. Trump, the lone monster, is a fallacy. His power is given to him by tens of millions of Americans. He has their tacit approval to do their bidding. This topic is about God, the mother of all dictators, and why we must remove the horrid symbols of this most harmful of superstition. Are we on topic or not, Lausten?
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Sree, T rump is on the cusp of being a dictator. Only when the Trumpublicans in the Senate, kangaroo court his Impeachment trial, by breaking their oaths to have an impartial trial, and let T rump off Scoot-free for his on-going crimes, will he be without question, above the law. A POTUS who is above the law, is a DOTUS.

There is no superstition in this analysis. He has maneuvered around our nation’s governmental checks and balances. He has undermined or infiltrated (with his own criminal lackees) key institutions of govt. He has abandoned or over-ridden any consideration of ethics and of established precedents. He has committed crimes. He is corrupt (uses power for himself over the nation). He infects those that he brings into his orbit, with the T rump corruption. More millions of people voted against T rump than who voted to put him in office. Yet he is POTUS (by virtue of the electoral college with a noteworthy assist by the Russians.) He does not have the tacit approval of most Americans to obstruct ALL investigation of him by Congress. In obstructing the Senate from even seeing documentation or witnesses, he does not even have the tacit approval of all of the people who voted for him. But he will likely get away with it, nonetheless.

I see that I have veered from the thread topic, in this response. But I think it necessary to not let the assertion of your last post, go unanswered, Sree. IT IS NOT SUPERSTITION that informs us of T rump’s becoming a dictator. It is his non-ending efforts to gather more and more power exclusively to himself and it is his fundamentally corrupt character that informs us.

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Are we on topic or not, Lausten?
No, you're not. That's not a violation of the rules, but the rest of your post that lacks evidence and I doubt even you believe, is disruptive.
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I go abroad to wherever I maintain a second home (plus a sailboat)
I'm getting the picture now. Have you ever had a job that required cleaning toilets as any part of your duties?
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Sree: “You get out much?”

Not any more. Had more than enough for one lifetime.

My comment was intended to encourage you, gently, to look beyond your own sphere and consider the condition of the world a bit more. Maybe I misunderstand, but sometimes your comments seem to imply a bit of egocentrism. There’s a lot of world out there and most of it isn’t the way we would like it to be.

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Trump is being condemned as a dictator by Americans. Right here in this country. Why don’t we critically examine this perception? I believe he does have tremendous power and he has a lot of people running scared. The claim that Trump is a one-man dictator is based on a false belief, a superstition. It’s a ploy to isolate him in order to destroy him. Trump, the lone monster, is a fallacy. His power is given to him by tens of millions of Americans. He has their tacit approval to do their bidding. This topic is about God, the mother of all dictators, and why we must remove the horrid symbols of this most harmful of superstition. Are we on topic or not, Lausten?
So much wrong with that. Trump tries to be a dictator. He tries very hard. Only the strength of our republic and the unwillingness of the people working for him have thus far prevented him from going all the way. He does everything through executive order, and he doesn't follow the normal rules or decorum when doing so. Even when he had Republican majorities in both chambers he still got most of his things through using executive order. Why? Because he likes the power. He likes not having to go through anyone else to get through what he wants done.

When he held up funding for Ukraine that was a blatant violation of US law. The very excuse that his office used, that he wanted to make sure that the funding was in line with his policies, is the excuse of a dictator. When Congress passes a bill the president’s policies are irrelevant. It is law. There is no checking to make sure he likes it because it doesn’t matter whether he likes it because he’s not a dictator. But they still held up the funds.

And his power WAS given to him by NEGATIVE 3 million people in a single day. Those voters are not giving him power today. The Republicans also in office are protecting his power, and damaging our political system every time they do. And if you don’t think that’s true, just look at his wall.

It takes a simple majority in both chambers of Congress to pass a bill. Then the president may veto that bill. If that happens it takes a 2/3 majority to override the veto and pass it anyway. That’s the way the government is supposed to work. It’s supposed to be difficult to do things without support for them.

BUT, the president signs an executive order to override Congress’s power of the purse. Now a simple majority is pointless. The president will just veto it. And that’s IF Moscow Mitch allows it to come up for a vote. So now it takes a 2/3 majority to STOP something from happening. This is not how the government is supposed to work. It has switched from being very hard to “do” something to being very hard to “stop” something from being done. It has gone from one man can override a simple majority, but a super majority can override him to one man can do anything he wants and only a super majority can override him and then only IF one other man allows it. With the support of Moscow Mitch, Donald Trump can literally do anything he wants, leaving only the recently stacked courts to stop him.

And he has stated repeatedly that he believes the job, the very duty of the Republican party is to protect him, to serve him. He sees EVERYONE in the government as either his enemy or serving him. He demands loyalty from all those around him, even when that’s not appropriate.

So yeah, you’re right in that he’s not a dictator…yet. But he really, REALLY wants to be.

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The final step, in my view, for T rump to transition into Dictator, will be completed by the Senators who vote for him to stay in office. So any week now.

Of course he will have some consolidation to attend to. He will need to (as secretly as possible) rig the next election to insure that he remains in power. But that should be quite possible for a POTUS who is above the law and willing to trample on any law in order to get what he wants.

Also at some point, he will soon need to completely undermine the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), as that will, otherwise, continue to be a thorn in his side.

He controls enough of the various news medias, to make do, as he will continue to call any that he doesn’t like, fake. And he will continue to undermine all of the media, that does not avidly support him. The crackdown on free press will be relatively subtle at first. I doubt that he will have members of the media murdered until he has truly consolidated his dictatorship. Though he might hint for his followers to murder them.

The federal court system is moving his way, and the Judges have lifetime appointments, so T rump as DOTUS has that covered.

He will still have some annoyance from Congress if he doesn’t have a majority in both houses, but if he can arrange his own win in the 2020 election, maybe he can arrange control of Congress also. But really, all he needs is to maintain a majority in the Senate.

Most who read this may consider it to be alarmist. Well I am sounding an alarm. Our vaunted system of checks and balances has been over-ridden. A DOTUS is coming to our nation, and he will arrive soon.

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Sree said : This idea of cruel suppression of an entire population by ruthless dictators is an American fallacy.
Ask the American Natives, what they think of that statement. The brutal genocide of entire tribes, because they lived on fertile land the European Masters wanted for themselves.

Slavery, the total subjugation of a race of people never happened? Are you proposing these are not acts of ruthless dictators and should be considered the “natural order” of things?

Have you ever gone to any school and learned anything about history? Who are you?

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Write4U: Have you ever gone to any school and learned anything about history? Who are you?
History of what? Are you talking about dictators or human brutality? Both are natural order of things. People have to be subjugated. We have 4800 military bases and 200,000 troops all over the planet, 13 carrier strike groups, each with the firepower of entire nations. Why don't you devote your energy to protesting against US aggression abroad and lobby for the scrapping of the Department of Defense? Divert our tax dollars to helping the poor and homeless in America.

 

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Well the last time we pursued a peaceful path we ended up with Pearl Harbor. Oh, lest we forget, there was a date 911, an attack on the US, which took thousands of lives.

It is the US presence around the world that has prevented many dictatorships from overruning their neighbors. You don’t see us invading Mexico or Canada. On the contrary, we are assisting the Ukraine in resisting Russian invasion of their country.

The current president is being impeached for his interference with matters of state (400 million dollars) of military assistance to Ukraine to help them resist Russia’s attempts to invade and occupy parts of the Ukraine. Is that the mark of US dictatorship?

Trump’s interference and attempt to force a quid pro quo is the mark of a dictator. But that is not the official sanctioned procedure by the US State Department or Congress which controls the purse. The president does not control the purse. His trying to leverage tax payers money marked for foreign assistance for his own political purpose is an Impeachable offense.

Not quite the picture of a dictatorship, is it? We try to be a Democracy which respects the value of all life. It’s just that we are spoiled and becoming corrupted by our singular pursuit of wealth.

I still have faith in the principles on which the US is founded. We just have to be a little more careful who we elect to represent us… :slight_smile:

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Write4U: It is the US presence around the world that has prevented many dictatorships from overruning their neighbors.
It is sentiment like yours that has sapped trillions of dollars of US taxpayer money in the funding of foreign wars and covert meddling with people who don't share your values. Is this your idea of secular humanism?
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Both are natural order of things. People have to be subjugated.
Troll. In one post you ask for peace and say war is natural. You really don't care about anything, so you just gather some stream of consciousness and write whatever is passing through your head at the moment.
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Oh yeah, the Congressional power of the purse. In his coming role as DOTUS, T rump will need to finagle a way around that. He’s pretty much had his way, so far, even eventually absconding money from the military to pay for his border wall. And getting a tax windfall Bill for the wealthy, where they now pay an effective tax rate of 11% (less than many working class folks). But by being above the law, he will likely be able to gut the Congress’s power of the purse, to his advantage.

We are on track to have a national debt at 90% of our annual GDP by 2030. That is the highest since WWII. It is almost at $1 Trillion, now, in this “greatest US economy ever” (greatest according to T rump). This is how kleptocratic dictatorships take over nations. If successful we can look forward to eventually having an economy that is as thriving and diverse as the kleptocratic dictatorship of Russia. The valuing of corruption that is key to the infection of Trumpism will inevitably bring us down.