Examples of GOP Leadership

Bagginski

Well-Known Member
i'd give him his aid, after he admitted that he's a fucking douche bag...live on every channel.
and i better believe him...
Written, signed, notarized, and witnessed admission of all particulars & pledge to leave politics entirely - no office, job, or appointment in ANY branch at ANY level; no talking-head gig, no media consultations or on-air time, no websites, no articles, no letters to editors, no fundraising, no contributions, no appearances…or will surrender to authorities to serve out his life in prison.

Clear, unmistakeable, portable video of the event - or it might as well not happen
 

Bagginski

Well-Known Member
Supreme Court declines to hear MyPillow CEO appeal in defamation case
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal from MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell as he fights a defamation suit from a voting machine company he said rigged the 2020 presidential election against former President Trump.

Dominion Voting Systems, which manufactures machines used to administer elections in several states, sued the Trump supporter over his claims, and the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the case means the defamation lawsuit can move forward.

The $1.3 billion lawsuit alleges Lindell harmed the manufacturer’s brand by promoting claims it skewed the election toward now-President Biden.

Lindell is a prominent Trump ally and has been steadfast in his unsubstantiated assertions that the 2020 election was stolen from the former president.
Dominion is also pursuing legal action against former Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani for their false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, but the pair were not involved in Lindell’s appeal to the Supreme Court.

Lindell’s request to dismiss the case was dismissed by a lower court in August, and the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear his appeal means the lawsuit can proceed.
…well, if I can approve of ANYTHING David Frum ever wrote, I can approve SCOTUS stepping aside on this.
 

Bagginski

Well-Known Member
There was a fund/evan-adjacent preacher who was found dead some years back. Not ‘round here, surprisingly - I think it was out Mike Pence’s way

By the time they got him unwrapped, he was fully dressed…underneath which were TWO wetsuits (yes, actually…?) one inside the other & he had a (discharged) vibrator up his ass. It didn’t catch with the 24/7 attention cycle so it sank pretty quick, but I was never interested in the salacious details to begin with.

I think about what it says about humans, and Christianity, emotional distress & mental illness, and accumulated shame and trauma…that a professional salesman of Christianity could be SO out of synch with his or her own body, own life, own POV, own *product* that *this* guy ended up feeling like THAT was all he had left.

I was lucky: I learned in my teens that I can’t “pray away” the way I’m made (skipping over the decades spent trying to prove I wasn’t made this way). Most of the grief in my life is the result of how I fought against it - and virtually every good thing I’ve ever had has come from severing my relationship with ‘things biblical’ & those who depend on them & digging out all the hooks and tape-loops it left behind. Never at my very worst have I ever lost it to the point of needing to be pulled out of something like that, but I can have some sense of how bad that might be.

I see the point in the failure of his product to provide *HIM* the relief, the release, the catharsis of forgiveness & acceptance that HE NEEDED and couldn’t have…and there was nothing in the Bible, or in any of a millennium’s worth of sophisms, arcane church law, or series of popular books by noted authors - or in his own sales pitch - that would let that happen for him. It wouldn’t work for him, and he couldn’t make it work. He just couldn’t ever feel okay.

I’m not really depressed about things like this anymore…I just wonder about the protective cultural armor Christians are accustomed to wearing - how long the automatic equation of “Christian = good” can hold out if that’s the level of service customers can expect from the product.
 

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
There was a fund/evan-adjacent preacher who was found dead some years back. Not ‘round here, surprisingly - I think it was out Mike Pence’s way

By the time they got him unwrapped, he was fully dressed…underneath which were TWO wetsuits (yes, actually…?) one inside the other & he had a (discharged) vibrator up his ass. It didn’t catch with the 24/7 attention cycle so it sank pretty quick, but I was never interested in the salacious details to begin with.

I think about what it says about humans, and Christianity, emotional distress & mental illness, and accumulated shame and trauma…that a professional salesman of Christianity could be SO out of synch with his or her own body, own life, own POV, own *product* that *this* guy ended up feeling like THAT was all he had left.

I was lucky: I learned in my teens that I can’t “pray away” the way I’m made (skipping over the decades spent trying to prove I wasn’t made this way). Most of the grief in my life is the result of how I fought against it - and virtually every good thing I’ve ever had has come from severing my relationship with ‘things biblical’ & those who depend on them & digging out all the hooks and tape-loops it left behind. Never at my very worst have I ever lost it to the point of needing to be pulled out of something like that, but I can have some sense of how bad that might be.

I see the point in the failure of his product to provide *HIM* the relief, the release, the catharsis of forgiveness & acceptance that HE NEEDED and couldn’t have…and there was nothing in the Bible, or in any of a millennium’s worth of sophisms, arcane church law, or series of popular books by noted authors - or in his own sales pitch - that would let that happen for him. It wouldn’t work for him, and he couldn’t make it work. He just couldn’t ever feel okay.

I’m not really depressed about things like this anymore…I just wonder about the protective cultural armor Christians are accustomed to wearing - how long the automatic equation of “Christian = good” can hold out if that’s the level of service customers can expect from the product.
I am very fortunate in that I’d already detached by the time I found out I was made “wrong”.
It’s a skill that overlaps with that needed to break, say, an opioid habit.

Which is profoundly ironic to me when I look at how the “anonymous” addiction-recovery communities equip their members to stay clean.

Paradox perhaps. There is a strong element here of what I have learned as the necessity of grace. I believe otherwise, but I never let on it I’m around an anonymouser. It would be unnecessarily cruel when that is what works.

As you know, I especially lament the almost-universal exploitation of unnatural chastity as a way to invoke a a Stockholm-syndrome sort of doctrinal loyalty. It’s how we end up with the literally perverted concept that states “since all sex is sin — rape, incest, pedophilia etc. are no worse than masturbation.”

The sad conclusion is that since religion is at its root totalitarian, any attempt to come to a humanized piety is either subverted by cultists, or a polite shadow like what I’ve seen in my few and light contacts with Unitarians.

At this point, I am practicing chastity because I am living in a sparsely-populated area that is also intensely socially conservative. It’s not really by choice. At my age, the two hours each way to the nearest real city, where there might be opportunities, does not appeal to me enough to take the hassle on.
 
Top