Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can!

[Classic-Xer]

(01-30-2019, 06:02 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(01-30-2019, 05:50 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote:

(01-29-2019, 09:34 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Christian fundamentalism and evangelical churches really have little in common with what Jesus actually taught. The religious right in the USA is a political movement. It is motivated largely today by opposition or revulsion against the counter-culture, feminism, secular humanism, and other movements that came to the fore in the sixties, as they perceive it. Fundamentalism actually goes back some decades before, toward the beginning of the century, but was more often aligned with Democrats and liberals back then, as with W.J. Bryan and the social gospel. Religious fundamentalism is a traditional religious counter-awakening that could be said to have, like other Awakening trends, skipped along from 2T to 2T, and gaining power in the 3T and losing some ground in the 4T.

Neo-liberalism or individualist free-market ideology like Rand's does glorify personal achievement, especially in making money. But the two movements have fused in our time, and in fact were mostly never apart in our times, going back to before the 2T. "Christian character," and especially "American Christian character," is seen to consist in self-reliance, and in opposition to socialism and communism which, being "godless," is quite anti-Christian in their mind. So, charity and taxes for welfare are not compatible, in their view, since liberal programs are seen as socialist in essence (as per Classic Xer). And Marxism is explicitly atheist, and was excoriated as such during the Cold War, preparing the ground for this sentiment among many patriotic and allegedly self-reliant red-state and rural/small town Americans today.

Sometimes, some Christians have a problem with the latest representative of mammon in political power, Mr. Trump, such as Mormons in Utah; but they still vote for him more often than for Democrats, because they see their religion in politics orientation as supporting the good character of self-reliance and opposing communism and socialism.

In Britain, High Tories always preferred traditionalist values to bourgeois values. Their idea of an ideal human being is an old fashioned landowner. (Think of Tolkien's Shire. Tolkien was a High Tory) In France, Catholic fundamentalists like Lefebvre have been even more critical of capitalism and even the American revolution, which they see as a masonic plot. Like the American evangelicals, Lefebvre's brand of paleo-Catholicism has also become influential during the last 2T, as a reaction against the spirit of 1968.

Marxism is obviously atheistic, but it also belongs to the bourgeois Western civilisation since it's in principle a form of scientism. All serious Christians I know despise Marxism, maybe except the supporters of liberation theology in America. But nowadays there are no really influential Marxist movements, so anti-communism only serves as a distraction from all more serious problems I have described in my Western civilisation thread.

What you describe as Lefebvre seems a bit contradictory, since the spirit of 1968 was also anti-capitalist, although not communist. It was the Third Revolution breaking out in Europe.

I agree Marxism is a form of scientism, as you say. But his Catholicism cannot be compared to the American fundamentalist Protestants. His paleo-catholicism might have some similarity to the social gospel of the previous 2T circa 1900, insofar as it is critical of capitalism. The evangelical fundies of America since the 1970s 2T (and some people from earlier) see anti-communism as central, but like Classic Xer here they identify anti-communism with opposition to the Democratic Party post-sixties and social welfare programs and other ideas of the Left in America today. So, it doesn't matter to them if Marxism doesn't really exist in America; for them, it does. And for the American right-wing, religious or not, the opposite of Marxism, the free-market, is, as it were, gospel. Libertarian economics or neo-liberalism is the heart of the right-wing today.

I'm anti Communist/Marxist but I'm not a Evangelical Fundamentalist by any stretch of the imagination. I don't have interest in saving your sole from damnation or an interest in keeping you from straying off the righteous path.  Marxism belief still exists in America. We're seeing it and we are hearing it as it being promoted by the Democrats again. I doubt Kamala lives like a socialist but she seems to understand the value of it to those she needs to have the support of in order to remain in office and advance her political career/ambitions.