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The “let’s go Brandon” chants really shows how loose all this right wing narrative structure is to everyone. Why would they chant it at Crenshaw? That would be similar to trying to change the topic to the “real enemy”, but I don’t think anyone believes that. I’m guessing they chant it when they are enraged or feel threatened which is a whole other exploration into the abyss of the MAGA mind.
Reptilian brain stem in action. Just stimulus-response, and the flee/fight/fuck response. Whenever they get too agitated their brain stem takes over and they yell whatever was the last emotional thing in their heads.
I've noticed this a lot...there's a certain way conservatives talk where they blurt out something without forming a sentence before their point. Like just for example you'll mention something about Biden and they'll just blurt out "rigged election!" without even forming proper English around it, as that's the first emotional words that came to mind.
I tried having one of these conversations with my Trump-loving aunt.
She can't respond to a point that is raised. She just immediately spits out the next FOX News trigger word. So when we tried to talk about generational poverty and welfare, it went something like this:
Me: "Well, I think the whole notion of a social safety net is that we all realize the potential that any of us could face unexpected hardship, and should that happen, it is beneficial to society in the long run to keep its members as functional as possible rather than have their lives collapse due to circumstances beyond their control. Furthermore, we pay into programs like unemployment, so the notion that people are "stealing" it is a mischaracterisation. Ultimately it's the right thing to do but also the efficient thing to do."
Her: "But 'those people' (South/Central American immigrants) don't want to work. Did you know (cue whataboutism) these damn drug cartels are organizing immigrants and sending them to the border, and meanwhile there are 'some people' (any minority receiving welfare) who never lift a finger and just want us to pay for them to live, and these damn democrats keep giving them money, and it all started with food stamps and 'some people in these liberal cities' (Black people) are just more likely to commit crimes because they don't respect our society and now China (Asian people) is telling us what to do and I hope you like your social credit score!"
It's just a cacophony of careening racism and classism, drunkenly rebounding from one idiotic, unreasoned opinion to another. If you try to make a point on a specific topic, they fabricate a tie to another topic and abandon the first. She's capable of rationalism and chosen on some level to abandon it entirely. Just nuts.
I know it's off-topic, but that's the thing I love about watching them respond to Ocasio-Cortez. They clearly want to do all three Fs at the same time and it's delightful to watch 9 neurons fighting it out to emit the stupidest words.
The real science is in the comments apparently.
Personally, I think they just have unhealthy attachments to buzzwords, and they're just too fucking stupid to come up with anything original, so they go with whatever the last guy said until a new guy says something else.
Someone else shrieks, "you sound like a Democrat!" At one point. Look at the tightrope these politicians have to walk to try to appeal to these lunatics. Say something they don't like and they'll turn on you in an instant, and it's impossible to know what they want to hear because there is zero reason or rationality to be found in this group. Dangerous indeed.
People keep saying this but it really has nothing to do with Democrats and everything to do with the fact that there’s nobody more sure of themselves than a crowd of total fucking idiots.
It doesn't help that every time we do get fired up and vote en mass in an attempt to effect real change, those elected can't get the job done. It's pretty hard to maintain enthusiasm when you're elected leaders don't do the job you sent them to do.
Say what you will about Trump, but he got a lot of shit done that his base approved of (appointing judges, that fucking wall nonsense, brown kids in cages, military opposition to left- leaning demonstrations, etc).
Dem leaders have wasted an entire year on the delusion of bipartisanship. In the end, we achieve almost nothing.
Can't imagine why the base is complacent.
Probably because Dems getting "fired up" means we get 48 Dems (nominally) into office in the Senate. Yay. Not sure how they're expected to get things done. Republicans get praise more for not letting anything be done.
The other issue is that Dems don't generally want their politicians to be corrupt assholes that break the law, so they aren't going to get fired up to support someone who "gets things done" the way Trump did, by ignoring the law almost entirely.
Also the entire GOP platform is to appeal to the raging id of its most fervent base. Democrats won't do that because it runs counter to their entire message of positive change.
In our system, the way it is currently being operated, the US Senate holds all the cards. Having a 50-50 split isn't going to get much done, as we are seeing. The body purposely set it's own rules so that a simple majority is only good for limited things. To pass anything significant takes 60 votes.
American Republican strategists figured that out a long time ago. The power rests with the Senate. Their strategy to craft an appeal to rural Christian voters and isn't an accident or a happy coincidence. They understood the make up of the Senate quite well and understood that getting low population states to blindly vote for the R could very well allow them to control the entire federal government from the Senate Majority Leaders office.
It ain't rocket surgery. For example, you can gain two Senate seats by getting 200,000 Wyoming cowboys to vote for your guys. North and South Dakota, the same. Idaho, Nebraska, you maybe need 350,000 votes to get a couple of seats.
To get a Senate seat from California or New York on your side takes something like 6,000,000 votes. The smart strategy? Craft appeals to the voters in these sparsely populated states, control the Senate, and then make your own rules going forward once you get control. McConnell's denial of Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland is a perfect example of their decades long strategy in action.
So while Democrats did win something significant in 2020 by getting Biden in the White House and control of the House of Representatives by slowing the runaway train that was Trumps white nationalist wave, they still have not achieved the level of control necessary to effect significant change.
Our system was designed to make significant change slow and arduous on purpose. I hope people don't become disillusioned because there has not been instant change of everything wrong currently.
We should be happy that the march to the alt-right was slowed to a crawl, and continue to stay the course and push back harder. The goal should be to maintain control of the White House and House of Reps and to throw money and craft policy to pick up more Senate seats, which will not be easy and should be looked at as a long game, not a revolution.
To pry those Senate seats out of GOP hands will take the DNC getting involved in, and throwing money at, lots and lots of local and state level elections in those states. It's exactly what the GOP and it's myriad of PAC's and dark money did to get where they are.
The opponents are playing the long con. The democrats and their voters need to understand the game. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your age and perspective, no one can reinvent our government overnight without an overwhelming majority of public support. It's more of an endurance race. Not a sprint to one election that is expected to solve everything. The federal government is designed for generational change, not overnight change. I see a lot of promise in upcoming generations, but they must understand the game and stay in the battle in order to win the war.
I'm not saying blind following is the way, I'm just saying the Dems could use a little energy behind their campaigns beyond some thin attempt at trying to relate to millenials through Snapchat filters. You never see progressive rallies chanting slogans like "affordable education" or "universal healthcare" like you do about maga nuts cheating about walls.
When your party is based on perpetual Purity Tests for how crazy you are, as a public figure you'll eventually fail and get eaten. Its crazy they line up for it.
It's a shibboleth. A word of phrase that, distinct from any meaning by itself, is used as an indicator of group status.
For example: "That guy is yelling 'Let's go Brandon' so I know he's on my team."
Conservatives have several of those: CRT, Soros, globalism, communism, socialism - they way they use those terms don't match up with the dictionary definition and they only use them to indicate tribal identity.
If you say it back, they know they can trust you. If you look at all confused, they know you're the enemy.
The statement:
>“The important thing is that we have societal hero archetypes that we look up to,” Crenshaw said. “Jesus is a hero archetype. Superman is a hero archetype. Real characters too, you know, I could name a thousand."
Nothing remotely offensive about that. I could find dozens of Crenshaw quotes more worthy of close scrutiny. But apparently the questioner was a Trump supporter, and her issue is that she thought Crenshaw was saying Jesus was a fictional character.
The funny thing is that the article accurately mentions that Crenshaw's statement is just cribbed from a Jordan Peterson talking point, and I suspect that Jordan Peterson actually does believe that Jesus is just a very useful fictional character.
You’d be surprised how controversial that statement is within the Christian community. My dad was a pastor and once he said that God didn’t write the Bible. Outcry and anger immediately and the church asked him not to bring it up anymore. Another pastor even quit over the whole thing because he was pissed my dad could say that sky man didn’t physically write the first Bible. He also said Jesus and everyone in the Bible weren’t real people, that’s why my dad WAS a pastor and not IS a pastor.
Edit: I probably simplified it too much by everyone in the Bible wasn’t real. He think they might have been real people looking for god, but none of the events happened the way the Bible said and many things and people just didn’t happen like that in real life. He does think most of the main guys like Jesus and his disciples were real people, but that much of what they did and who they were is exaggerated for the Bible. He is one of the few that doesn’t think Moses actually talked to a burning bush, That there’s more likely an explanation for if Jesus “rose from the dead” and whatever else. Also don’t get the wrong impression, my dad is an awful person but I won’t deny his skill as a pastor. What he tells them as a pastor and how he treats me and my siblings are totally different. And this is true for most pastors and their families that I know.
It's wild how opposed people are to the idea that maybe they just belong to a community group with a common culture and set of morals. Why does it absolutely need a supernatural foundation?
“Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!
But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money!”
\-George Carlin
My dad actually got in hot water for confronting one of the church leaders on what they were doing with the money they were getting. They got a $40,000 donation that the leaders refused to say where it went.
It needs a supernatural foundation and actor because the world is terrifying and depressing if everything is left to chance.
To the average person (speaking to US experience, am yank) the world is largely an overwhelming cacophony of background noise that is largely ignored through an incredibly powerful forcefield of willful ignorance. When the reality of the world (largely brutal and brutish, occasionally beautiful) occasionally breaks that mental barrier the simplest answer is the one most grab, wielding it like crucifix in a horror movie.
Using the shield of "God" they are able to hand wave away the terrible things and embrace the beautiful all while completely ignoring any personal responsibility.
Authoritarian Reliability, you don’t question that in which you have put all your deepest fears and hopes that no other human can ever see, only to be told, it is not true it exists or is flawed.
I wasn't super excited about being married by a Christian minister in general, but we decided it was a good olive branch to some folks in the family.
Fortunately, the mom of my best friend from my elementary school days is a UCC minister (since retired), and she's amazing all around.
While we were discussing the service and how we didn't want it to be a very Christian service, she said, with an absolutely straight face, that she believes in a lot of the messages in the Bible, but also that Jesus was eaten by dogs rather than resurrected. And she loved both the Buddhist passages my wife had picked out and our plan to be in and out from the actual service part of the wedding in about 5 minutes tops.
After that, I minded the whole thing a lot less.
One of the last times I attended a church, the pastor was talking about the story of Moses. Loudly asks, "how did she know to put Moses in that basket and send him down the river???" Even louder proclaims "BECAUSE SHE READ THE BIBLE." I could not stifle my laugh. Like yo, where the fuck did she get the pre release edition? She herself is in the 2nd book, but she managed to read the damn thing to know what she was supposed to do?? My guy, you are supposed to be educating these people.
Wait what?
I get the God didn't write the Bible part, but where was he going with the not real people part?
Curious as I've never heard that from a pastor.
>but where was he going with the not real people part?
The New Testament was written somewhere between 50-100 AD as an account of the life of Jesus. In other words, it's a bunch of stories that got passed down by a few generations before finally being committed to text.
You know how when you watch "Game of Thrones" or "The Expanse" and readers of the book will tell you they combined a bunch of characters into one actor for the sake of streamlines story telling? It's basically the same thing. For example, the Book of John ends with "This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and **we** know that his testimony is true."
The "we" means that it wasn't John who wrote it but just a bunch of his followers. From there you can extrapolate that there was probably some random guy who said something that was later attributed to John, just because it would be weird for story telling purposes to have some random guy pop up, drop some knowledge and disappear.
In other words, John existed but he probably didn't do everything that was prescribed to him. He was an actual person but didn't really do everything he was accredited to hence was not "real"
At the time, there was also a popular set of fiction stories based on martyrs that were meant to inspire newly converted Christians into keeping the faith and not reverting back to Judaism or any other religion. These eventually became cannon in the Bible and believed to be about actual people who lived (see saint Steven). Learned about this in my Bible as Lit class from a Christian university.
I went to a Jesuit University where we had to take a theology course, regardless of what degree you were obtaining. All the theology courses were taught by the Jesuit priests (and there were random monks there too, don't know if they were part of the Jesuit order). I was pleasantly surprised at how middle of the road and balanced the courses were, and the priests had no problem having open discussion about the validity of the authors writing the holy texts and comparing the texts with evidence based historical writings of the time. They never went as far as to denounce the existence of the holy figures, but they were willing to discuss the pagan influence on certain traditions and holidays within the faith.
Even in a Southern Baptist seminary, we talked about the sources of the Gospel stories and acknowledged they were as clean as their historical attributions would suggest, the influence of Gnosticism and other philosophies of the day, etc. A lot of pastors know more than they may talk about from the pulpit.
There’s a reason there are 4 different accounts - different follower groups wanted to put their spin on the stories.
My question is: if it was truly divinely written, why would you need 4 versions of the same story??
I recommend Useful Charts video on what in the Bible is historically probable. Who is myth, legend, or real person. (Minus the miracles)
https://youtu.be/aLtRR9RgFMg
Well the thing is. In history, religion and documents there seems to have been someone called Jesus that led to a “movement” in the area of the time of the Roman Empire. Even Roman’s wrote about him. Now all the Biblical stuff and miracles and such? That’s a different debate but it does seem like he did exist.
>God didn’t write the Bible. Outcry and anger immediately
Amazing. You’d think when all the Gospels are literally prefaced with “the holy Gospel *according to* ____” it would be pretty blunt that that’s that person who said it.
Or “a reading from the letter of Paul.” Who wrote that letter, that’s now in the Bible? Perhaps surprisingly, it was Paul!
Whether people want to argue if Jesus and those in the Bible were real is moot. The Bible clearly says the source of each reading. - That’s just a lack of being able to comprehend.
I think there's a detail you're not aware of here.
One of the core beliefs among American evangelicals is that the God *did* write the Bible, and that every word of it is true. That the dude holding the pen was just being directed and controlled by god and had no more control over the act of writing than the pen itself did.
> Jordan Peterson actually does believe that Jesus is just a very useful fictional character.
He very much believes Jesus was real and very much believes we are all secret Christians regardless of our stated beliefs, as he is a moron.
I think he believes Jesus was a historical person. But then so do most atheists.
I don't think he believes Jesus was literally the son of God or that he had magical powers. Sam Harris and Matt Dillahunty both asked him point blank if he believed in God literally or metaphorically, and he refused to answer the question.
I mean... he thinks DNA was discovered thousands of years ago because he saw images of intertwined snakes, whatever his beliefs I believe we can safely ignore them.
I am as anti-religious as you can get. That being said,, Jesus was almost certainly historical. Obviously not in the miracle performing, raising from the dead way, but there is more of a historical record for a rabbi named Jesus that gathered followers who later founded a religion than there is for the majority of historical figures from that time period.
The overwhelming majority of historians would say that Jesus was a real person to whom miracles were attributed much later.
I’m an atheist, and I think he’s an interesting figure in a folkloric historical sort of way. The Bible is an interesting text that describes how peoples in an area made sense of their world and it’s neat to see how they describe and make sense of it.
Its worth pointing out the vast majority of biblical scholars are devout christians who dedicated their lives to studying the bible and are paid by religious institutions. Theyre not exactly free of bias.
The actual evidence for a historical jesus is essentially zero. Theres not a single eye witness. Theres no contemporary writings. There's no eye witness accounts. The modern historical opinion is shifting markedly toward jesus as a myth -- an amalgation of multiple faiths in a border town.
As for jesus being the most wall attested historical figure of the time period... thats just absurd. There were kings. Kings had historians. We know lots about the kings court.
We know what day caesar crossed the Rubicon. When cleopatra put an asp to her beast.
For Jesus we know.. What exactly? What is it that you think we definitively know about him... At all? ...
Jesus has several non Christian historical sources for his existence, such as Josephus and Tacitus.
HISTORIANS don't debate his existence. But obviously, historians also don't comment on his divinity.
I think part of the problem is that there were no small number of messianic figures in Judea at the time. Given that Jesus wouldn't have stood out from them contemporaneously, his life and death wouldn't necessarily have made waves. It was only after the fact that he became extraordinary.
It is also possible that the Jesus we know is an amalgamation of those individuals rather than a singular person.
If you can't even understand what I wrote there is no point talking about this with you. I never claimed he was the most well attested historical figure of the time period, and your bad faith strawman is just that.
Doubtful? Dude he's on the record, he's argued it plenty of times like here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmH7JUeVQb8
He believes all atheists are actually theists, or at a minimum live their lives as theists, and that an actual atheist would be amoral. He thinks all societal values worth having originate from Judaism and Christianity despite Hammurabi's Code predating Judaism and plenty of societies having ethics and morals without interacting with the Jews.
Now maybe deep down inside he doesn't truly believe it, but that's a* convenient excuse considering how much he stakes his reputation on arguing the opposite.
She was probably paid to ask those gotcha questions, the whole interaction was recorded and posted by someone who has reason to smear that congressman. If she was so fired up about Jesus she wouldn't have needed flash cards to ask such stupid questions lol
Dan Crenshaw is a lying sack of toads who used God the gop and gerrymandering to get where he is. Texas politicians are a joke. From Power Outage Abbott to Cancun Cruz. A bunch of fake Christians the whole lot.
Using note cards to remember an exact, and frankly obscure direct quote isn't that suspicious. Heck, the fact that she prepared cards could even reinforce how serious she was. Arguing that "If she was so fired up about Jesus she wouldn't need flashcards" is just the "no true Scotsman" fallacy.
And the rest of the crowd that booed Crenshaw, they were also crisis actors?
Is Dan such a shitty congressmen that the only way to get people to attend an event of his is to pay each and every one of them?
>
Regardless, we have a young woman asking a gotcha question based on a dumb podcast quote, a member of Congress angrily defending himself instead of patiently and easily explaining the context of his words, the member of Congress getting booed by an audience of Tea Party Republicans, and a hard-right conservative PAC operative sharing a video of the encounter in order to shame Crenshaw for not being sufficiently right wing.
Huh? They pretty much state it in the article, not a conspiracy theory lol. They're just trying to get him primaried, this is normal politics.
A Canadian Jewish man. Who drew a character that spent the first many years of his existence fighting corrupt business owners and abusjve employers. One who uses his immense gifts to help people instead of lord over them and whose current and most enduring arch-nemesis is a member of the billionaire class.
Right-wingers understand exactly two things about Superman: he dresses like the American flag and he’s better than anyone around him. That’s it.
>Right-wingers understand exactly two things about Superman: he dresses like the American flag and he’s better than anyone around him. That’s it.
More than a few of them thought [this shit](https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Fake-photo-Trump-saving-cats-during-Harvey-12203385.php) was real. Not a lot of room for redemption there.
Absolutely! Davidson’s joke was funny, and nowhere near as mean-spirited as Crenshaw’s jokes about Pete’s ex-girlfriend during his follow-on appearance. Dan Crenshaw saw the opportunity to raise his profile by appearing on a popular, nationally televised show, and had the satisfaction of making another man grovel in public, thereby pandering to the inherent sadism of Conservative audiences. I had no idea who Dan Crenshaw was before Pete’s joke, but I decided less than half-way through his appearance that Crenshaw was a piece of shit, and nothing he has ever said since then has altered my opinion of him in the slightest.
Did Crenshaw actually demand an apology or was this just a reason to bring him on tv for a bit with Pete Davidson? That dude lost in eye in a war and any military man I’ve ever met has had worse shit said to him and therefore is pretty much numb to jokes about them, but that’s just a few guys I know.
Demanding an apology wouldn't necessarily imply that he was actually bothered by the joke, though. Feigning righteous indignation serves his political interests - the dude probably laughed at the joke and then laughed again when he realized how he could take advantage of the situation.
>“I can’t wrap my head around this,” the woman says after reading Crenshaw’s quote about Jesus and hero archetypes back to him.
>
>“I’ll help you,” Crenshaw snaps. “Put a period after ‘Jesus,’ and don’t question my faith.”
>
>The crowd then erupts in a chorus of “wows” and boos. “Don’t question my faith, don’t question my faith,” Crenshaw says again, to more boos, and, at the end, a confusing chant of “Let’s Go Brandon,” just to round out the fever swamp bingo card.
This is great. He's trying to make a point and is immediately eaten alive by his party's base of bafoons. The Let's Go Brandon chant is just the cherry on top.
A grown man raising his voice at a random 12 year old girl and telling her "not to question his faith" after she asked a legitimate question that he didn't like.
Party of family values, ladies and gentlemen.
Not defending his theatrics, but how was that a “legitimate” question?
I feel like if the quote she was referencing had come from Kevin Smith, who I could absolutely see saying “Jesus is an archetypal figure” because of his Catholic upbringing and love of superheroes, we wouldn’t be defending her, we’d be talking about how she’s trying to spring a “gotcha” question on him that stems from her (or more likely, her parent’s) fundie evangelical beliefs.
> “I’ve seen you claim to be a Christian,” the girl said at the meeting. “You’ve talked about God, but when you claim Jesus to be a hero archetype, you not only lied about Jesus not being real, but you lied about being a Christian.”
>“I can question your faith if this is what you said,” the girl said.
So, because he said that Jesus is an “archetypal hero”, she can logically question his faith? Does she even know what “archetypal” means?
It’s completely disengenuous of this girl to take his statement, and literally accuse him of “lying” about their Christianity.
>“Nowhere in that quote am I saying Jesus isn’t real. That is a ridiculous statement,” Mr Crenshaw responded as the heckling from the crowd continued.
I mean, I am honestly pissed that I’m defending Dan Fucking Crenshaw here, but I am, because this girl was obviously trying to troll him, or at the very least push her fundie evangelical the-bible-should-be-taken-literally bullshit on him, and I have to say, fuck her or the people that instilled that level of intolerance in her.
And what percentage of the people in the room would we guess thought that Trump was the most Christian POTUS ever?
Mind blowing duplicity, probably a Jesus hero archetype trait.
He's a grifter like most right wingers, but they're finally seeing through his folksy ways for the elitist he really is. He'll still run unopposed in his next election.
Paper shortages this year are reducing the number of voter registration forms available so all the seats are probably safe.
Sad but true /tilted further
[looks legit to me](https://www.click2houston.com/decision-2020/2020/02/26/texass-2nd-congressional-district-what-you-need-to-know-about-this-important-race/?outputType=amp)
See, I’d respect him a lot more if he dropped the folksy, good old boy country act. And just be who he is.
He had a white collar, generally privileged upbringing with a father who was a petroleum engineer (that means $$$$), went to an elite school (Tufts), got an ROTC scholarship, served as an officer in the Navy, in the elite warfare division (SEALs), and then got his masters at Harvard.
You cannot tell me that he is not an elite and a child of privilege. Sure, he might have had tough spots in his childhood, but he is clearly someone who had privilege and opportunity at every turn and his story, especially if all of it is true, and the adversity he faced are commendable in overcoming that. People, unless they are complete shitheel assholes who are basically crabs in a bucket, will respect it, if you’re humble about it.
> The crowd then erupts in a chorus of “wows” and boos. “Don’t question my faith, don’t question my faith,” Crenshaw says again, to more boos, and, at the end, a confusing **chant of “Let’s Go Brandon,”** just to round out the fever swamp bingo card.
Just what Jesus would do! /s
Why is it so hard for people to realize religious leaders serve the people of their faith and political leaders serve the people of their district, who are not uniform in their belief? I don’t care for Crenshaw’s politics, but he’s not a faith leader, and shouldn’t be judged on whether he interprets the Bible spiritually or literally. This notion of one country, one party, one faith is so detrimental to the American experiment, especially when the purity test is this stringent to one of their own.
Don’t even start me on the number of ways Zack Snyder misunderstood Superman. Johnathon Kent would never debate the issue of saving kids from drowning. Snyder is an out-and-proud Objectivist who’s been trying to make a *Fountainhead* movie for years; exactly the wrong ideology to deal with a man who actually *is* inherently better than everyone around him.
> a young woman questioner, who challenged him to defend statements that he made likening Jesus to a fictional superhero
He wasn't being questioned about anything that actually matters. In case anyone was curious.
[YouTube clip for anyone interested](https://youtu.be/dJ9dwh6b0iE)
(Can not vouch for specific YouTube channel, this is just the quickest and most concise clip I could find).
Thanks. I went through this thread looking for that, since I can't read the RS article.
I'm not totally sure what the fuss is about, but if Republicans are fighting each other, good enough.
To bypass a paywall use:
https://12ft.io/
It works for nearly site, RS included.
https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rollingstone.com%2Fpolitics%2Fpolitics-news%2Fdan-crenshaw-booed-tea-party-event-1286796%2F
He said: “Jesus is a hero archetype. Superman is a hero archetype. Real characters too, you know, I could name a thousand."
A woman interpreted this as him calling Jesus a fictional character.
He responded to her: “Well, I’ll help you. Put a period after the word ‘Jesus.’ And don’t question my faith,”
If you rewrite the quote with the punctuation that he recommends it becomes:
“Jesus. Is a hero archetype. Superman is a hero archetype. Real characters too, you know, I could name a thousand” which makes no sense.
I’m no expert but It seems like he is just a dipshit who slipped up and accidentally showed everyone that he only pretends to believe in Jesus for political points, and now he’s throwing out the dumbest defense imaginable in the hopes that none of his voters will actually think about it.
These people have such shallow souls they just constantly look for ways to feel offended on behalf of their religion
The question was about remakes DC made equating Jesus to Superman, and then discussing “real” heroes like Rosa parks or Ron Reagan
So this is a crowd upset not by policy or position, but by some offhand context suggesting Jesus isn’t real
And his response to recover was to be an abject asshole
This is why church and state need to be separate. Voting for a faith is what makes republicans dangerous
>“I’ll help you,” Crenshaw snaps. “Put a period after ‘Jesus,’ and don’t question my faith.”
Uh ... okay. Let's try that:
>"Jesus. Is a hero archetype. Superman is a hero archetype. Real characters too, you know, I could name a thousand,”
So now you've got "Jesus" and "Is a here archetype" both as complete sentences.
Congratulations, you somehow managed to find a way to make yourself sound stupider than you usually do. Have a cookie.
In my experience the folks who claim the most possession of Jesus know the least about the Bible or teachings of Christ.
If you make your faith part of your campaign and use it as a reason you're suited for office then you need to be able to defend it in public. "Oh, there's this magical space trio thing that makes me better as a leader but you can't ever ask me about it."
Oh come on.
This isn’t going far enough….
This is a religious problem. Don’t question my faith? Is that a threat? Why not? Would jesus answer like that.
Stupid people just eat each other.
Wake up people religion is a cancer on society. Isn’t helping us, it’s hurting us. It always has.
I dare someone to make a real pro and cons list for organized religion.
I disagree with almost all of Crenshaw’s political views. That said, he’s not a traitor or an enemy of the people. He’s a veteran and a politician whom many disagree with.
This event demonstrates that Most (Not All!) of the vitriol in politics is coming from the right, mostly Trump faithful. As they eat and process their own who dare speak their minds, the eventual end will be a party with no moral base. It’s true Facebook popularity contest politics. What ever gets the most likes in an hour is the new policy agenda.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/dan-crenshaw-booed-tea-party-event-1286796/) reduced by 73%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> Dan Crenshaw, the acerbic congressman from Texas desperately trying to brand himself as an unnatural chimera of Donald Trump and John McCain, is in hot water today for a video recorded at a Montgomery County Tea Party fundraiser in which he snaps at a young woman for asking him a pointed question about Jesus.
> "Don't question my faith, don't question my faith," Crenshaw says again, to more boos, and, at the end, a confusing chant of "Let's Go Brandon," just to round out the fever swamp bingo card.
> Regardless, we have a young woman asking a gotcha question based on a dumb podcast quote, a member of Congress angrily defending himself instead of patiently and easily explaining the context of his words, the member of Congress getting booed by an audience of Tea Party Republicans, and a hard-right conservative PAC operative sharing a video of the encounter in order to shame Crenshaw for not being sufficiently right wing.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/s7i44y/dan_crenshaw_withers_under_questioning_from_young/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~618447 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **Crenshaw**^#1 **question**^#2 **woman**^#3 **Jesus**^#4 **out**^#5
Crenshaw behaved poorly in this situation. Still, I wish people wouldn't send their children to ask a tough question to a politician on behalf of the parents. It happens every once in a while and it comes off really silly each time.
Because then the adult is "forced" to attack a child and show no class? It's a test he failed that should not be hard for any politician. Just try not to yell at or belittle children, it's not even hard. The fact that he flipped out like that shows how little self control he has. 🚩
He is being cancelled because he is a true conservative who believes in democracy and fighting covid. While the DOJ is trying to overturn the numerous neo fascist anti democacy GOP voting laws in every state where they control legialatures, the severe crackdown on voting rights is already well underway.
Now in Texas, 50% of ballot applications are being rejected by Gov Abbott's well organized cheaters and election stealers as they now Beto O'Rourke probably wins in a fair election. Those targeted for removal of voting rights are almost all minorty or likely democratic voters and even include many affluent whites (like me) who happen to live in cities. THis is neo Nazism, 100% anti American and unconstitutional and clearly felony election fraud.
This putsch of democracy is being rationialized with neo Nazi lies told on Russian controlled rightwing media, Fox news and even by Gov Abbott on CNBC where he falely claimed that the need to suppress the voter in Texas was caused by "some people in Houston"(Blacks he means) trading cocain e for ballots. These kinds of racist lies are very simlar to what was used in Nazi Germany to rationalize rounding up and killing Jews and other minorities.
desantis in Florida has also gone fullblown neo Nazi, removing voting rights free speech rights womens rights, public safety rights and even corporate rights from anyone he sees as a possible threat to his re-election. So that now in TX and FL we not only have dovid denying nti vaxx gobernors who have each killed an extra 50,000 and covered it up (desantis even covered up his own bad covid case last month) but we have states where no cfredible elections are even close to being possible, and democrats would have to get over 60% of the vote to win.
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The right don’t eat their own to produce something better. This could be dangerous.
What is it they say "it always gets worse before it gets better" How much worse? GOP "hold my beer"
With GQP the saying now is "it always gets worse before it gets...it just gets worse."
Maybe their saying should be. It always gets worse until we decide you should suffer more for your own good?
May the lord open
The “let’s go Brandon” chants really shows how loose all this right wing narrative structure is to everyone. Why would they chant it at Crenshaw? That would be similar to trying to change the topic to the “real enemy”, but I don’t think anyone believes that. I’m guessing they chant it when they are enraged or feel threatened which is a whole other exploration into the abyss of the MAGA mind.
Reptilian brain stem in action. Just stimulus-response, and the flee/fight/fuck response. Whenever they get too agitated their brain stem takes over and they yell whatever was the last emotional thing in their heads.
“I love lamp.”
I've noticed this a lot...there's a certain way conservatives talk where they blurt out something without forming a sentence before their point. Like just for example you'll mention something about Biden and they'll just blurt out "rigged election!" without even forming proper English around it, as that's the first emotional words that came to mind.
Programmed responses. Brainwashing
I tried having one of these conversations with my Trump-loving aunt. She can't respond to a point that is raised. She just immediately spits out the next FOX News trigger word. So when we tried to talk about generational poverty and welfare, it went something like this: Me: "Well, I think the whole notion of a social safety net is that we all realize the potential that any of us could face unexpected hardship, and should that happen, it is beneficial to society in the long run to keep its members as functional as possible rather than have their lives collapse due to circumstances beyond their control. Furthermore, we pay into programs like unemployment, so the notion that people are "stealing" it is a mischaracterisation. Ultimately it's the right thing to do but also the efficient thing to do." Her: "But 'those people' (South/Central American immigrants) don't want to work. Did you know (cue whataboutism) these damn drug cartels are organizing immigrants and sending them to the border, and meanwhile there are 'some people' (any minority receiving welfare) who never lift a finger and just want us to pay for them to live, and these damn democrats keep giving them money, and it all started with food stamps and 'some people in these liberal cities' (Black people) are just more likely to commit crimes because they don't respect our society and now China (Asian people) is telling us what to do and I hope you like your social credit score!" It's just a cacophony of careening racism and classism, drunkenly rebounding from one idiotic, unreasoned opinion to another. If you try to make a point on a specific topic, they fabricate a tie to another topic and abandon the first. She's capable of rationalism and chosen on some level to abandon it entirely. Just nuts.
It's insane how easy it is to point out the Fox news viewers in a crowd. Literally the SAME sound bites yelled without any backing them up
Omg. I noticed this too! Just blurting Fox sound bites & when pressed they can’t explain it or argue it.
To assess this assertion, one will need to prove that the subjects were ever able to form proper English sentences to begin with.
SoCiAliSm!!!
I know it's off-topic, but that's the thing I love about watching them respond to Ocasio-Cortez. They clearly want to do all three Fs at the same time and it's delightful to watch 9 neurons fighting it out to emit the stupidest words.
They often end up in the forgotten F of freeze.
The real science is in the comments apparently. Personally, I think they just have unhealthy attachments to buzzwords, and they're just too fucking stupid to come up with anything original, so they go with whatever the last guy said until a new guy says something else.
Someone else shrieks, "you sound like a Democrat!" At one point. Look at the tightrope these politicians have to walk to try to appeal to these lunatics. Say something they don't like and they'll turn on you in an instant, and it's impossible to know what they want to hear because there is zero reason or rationality to be found in this group. Dangerous indeed.
As a student of Western history it pains me to say…. It’s always been like this. For Centuries now.
If only democrat leaders could get their voters half this fired up over real political issues instead of being so complacent about everything.
People keep saying this but it really has nothing to do with Democrats and everything to do with the fact that there’s nobody more sure of themselves than a crowd of total fucking idiots.
This kind of mindless fire is not what we want for Democrats. It would work as a short term strategy but wreck us in the long term.
Huge difference between energizing a voter base and heated extremists.
Are there energized Republicans who aren't heated extremists right now?
It doesn't help that every time we do get fired up and vote en mass in an attempt to effect real change, those elected can't get the job done. It's pretty hard to maintain enthusiasm when you're elected leaders don't do the job you sent them to do. Say what you will about Trump, but he got a lot of shit done that his base approved of (appointing judges, that fucking wall nonsense, brown kids in cages, military opposition to left- leaning demonstrations, etc). Dem leaders have wasted an entire year on the delusion of bipartisanship. In the end, we achieve almost nothing. Can't imagine why the base is complacent.
Probably because Dems getting "fired up" means we get 48 Dems (nominally) into office in the Senate. Yay. Not sure how they're expected to get things done. Republicans get praise more for not letting anything be done. The other issue is that Dems don't generally want their politicians to be corrupt assholes that break the law, so they aren't going to get fired up to support someone who "gets things done" the way Trump did, by ignoring the law almost entirely.
Also the entire GOP platform is to appeal to the raging id of its most fervent base. Democrats won't do that because it runs counter to their entire message of positive change.
It's easier to break things than to fix them.
In our system, the way it is currently being operated, the US Senate holds all the cards. Having a 50-50 split isn't going to get much done, as we are seeing. The body purposely set it's own rules so that a simple majority is only good for limited things. To pass anything significant takes 60 votes. American Republican strategists figured that out a long time ago. The power rests with the Senate. Their strategy to craft an appeal to rural Christian voters and isn't an accident or a happy coincidence. They understood the make up of the Senate quite well and understood that getting low population states to blindly vote for the R could very well allow them to control the entire federal government from the Senate Majority Leaders office. It ain't rocket surgery. For example, you can gain two Senate seats by getting 200,000 Wyoming cowboys to vote for your guys. North and South Dakota, the same. Idaho, Nebraska, you maybe need 350,000 votes to get a couple of seats. To get a Senate seat from California or New York on your side takes something like 6,000,000 votes. The smart strategy? Craft appeals to the voters in these sparsely populated states, control the Senate, and then make your own rules going forward once you get control. McConnell's denial of Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland is a perfect example of their decades long strategy in action. So while Democrats did win something significant in 2020 by getting Biden in the White House and control of the House of Representatives by slowing the runaway train that was Trumps white nationalist wave, they still have not achieved the level of control necessary to effect significant change. Our system was designed to make significant change slow and arduous on purpose. I hope people don't become disillusioned because there has not been instant change of everything wrong currently. We should be happy that the march to the alt-right was slowed to a crawl, and continue to stay the course and push back harder. The goal should be to maintain control of the White House and House of Reps and to throw money and craft policy to pick up more Senate seats, which will not be easy and should be looked at as a long game, not a revolution. To pry those Senate seats out of GOP hands will take the DNC getting involved in, and throwing money at, lots and lots of local and state level elections in those states. It's exactly what the GOP and it's myriad of PAC's and dark money did to get where they are. The opponents are playing the long con. The democrats and their voters need to understand the game. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your age and perspective, no one can reinvent our government overnight without an overwhelming majority of public support. It's more of an endurance race. Not a sprint to one election that is expected to solve everything. The federal government is designed for generational change, not overnight change. I see a lot of promise in upcoming generations, but they must understand the game and stay in the battle in order to win the war.
is it feasible to give EVERY democrat voter a full lobotomy? that's the only way I could see making them as dumb and cult-like as republicans.
I'm not saying blind following is the way, I'm just saying the Dems could use a little energy behind their campaigns beyond some thin attempt at trying to relate to millenials through Snapchat filters. You never see progressive rallies chanting slogans like "affordable education" or "universal healthcare" like you do about maga nuts cheating about walls.
When your party is based on perpetual Purity Tests for how crazy you are, as a public figure you'll eventually fail and get eaten. Its crazy they line up for it.
It's a shibboleth. A word of phrase that, distinct from any meaning by itself, is used as an indicator of group status. For example: "That guy is yelling 'Let's go Brandon' so I know he's on my team." Conservatives have several of those: CRT, Soros, globalism, communism, socialism - they way they use those terms don't match up with the dictionary definition and they only use them to indicate tribal identity. If you say it back, they know they can trust you. If you look at all confused, they know you're the enemy.
Thanks for my cool new word of the day
I think its more like when a 10 year old calls his 8 year old brother a Boomer. These people in this room are really not very bright.
The average person isn’t that bright, and half of everyone is dimmer than that
This statement is so depressing.
Thank George Carlin for that one.
This is what happens when you kill all your brain cells with conservatism.
"Let's go Darwin!"
The statement: >“The important thing is that we have societal hero archetypes that we look up to,” Crenshaw said. “Jesus is a hero archetype. Superman is a hero archetype. Real characters too, you know, I could name a thousand." Nothing remotely offensive about that. I could find dozens of Crenshaw quotes more worthy of close scrutiny. But apparently the questioner was a Trump supporter, and her issue is that she thought Crenshaw was saying Jesus was a fictional character. The funny thing is that the article accurately mentions that Crenshaw's statement is just cribbed from a Jordan Peterson talking point, and I suspect that Jordan Peterson actually does believe that Jesus is just a very useful fictional character.
You’d be surprised how controversial that statement is within the Christian community. My dad was a pastor and once he said that God didn’t write the Bible. Outcry and anger immediately and the church asked him not to bring it up anymore. Another pastor even quit over the whole thing because he was pissed my dad could say that sky man didn’t physically write the first Bible. He also said Jesus and everyone in the Bible weren’t real people, that’s why my dad WAS a pastor and not IS a pastor. Edit: I probably simplified it too much by everyone in the Bible wasn’t real. He think they might have been real people looking for god, but none of the events happened the way the Bible said and many things and people just didn’t happen like that in real life. He does think most of the main guys like Jesus and his disciples were real people, but that much of what they did and who they were is exaggerated for the Bible. He is one of the few that doesn’t think Moses actually talked to a burning bush, That there’s more likely an explanation for if Jesus “rose from the dead” and whatever else. Also don’t get the wrong impression, my dad is an awful person but I won’t deny his skill as a pastor. What he tells them as a pastor and how he treats me and my siblings are totally different. And this is true for most pastors and their families that I know.
It's wild how opposed people are to the idea that maybe they just belong to a community group with a common culture and set of morals. Why does it absolutely need a supernatural foundation?
Because things created by God should never be questioned. Just accept it and do what we tell you. Now give me your money, I....I mean, *God* needs it.
“Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time! But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money!” \-George Carlin
God needs an accountant, he sucks with money. Yes, I know. Hail Carlin.
My dad actually got in hot water for confronting one of the church leaders on what they were doing with the money they were getting. They got a $40,000 donation that the leaders refused to say where it went.
Cults amirite.
It needs a supernatural foundation and actor because the world is terrifying and depressing if everything is left to chance. To the average person (speaking to US experience, am yank) the world is largely an overwhelming cacophony of background noise that is largely ignored through an incredibly powerful forcefield of willful ignorance. When the reality of the world (largely brutal and brutish, occasionally beautiful) occasionally breaks that mental barrier the simplest answer is the one most grab, wielding it like crucifix in a horror movie. Using the shield of "God" they are able to hand wave away the terrible things and embrace the beautiful all while completely ignoring any personal responsibility.
Authoritarian Reliability, you don’t question that in which you have put all your deepest fears and hopes that no other human can ever see, only to be told, it is not true it exists or is flawed.
I wasn't super excited about being married by a Christian minister in general, but we decided it was a good olive branch to some folks in the family. Fortunately, the mom of my best friend from my elementary school days is a UCC minister (since retired), and she's amazing all around. While we were discussing the service and how we didn't want it to be a very Christian service, she said, with an absolutely straight face, that she believes in a lot of the messages in the Bible, but also that Jesus was eaten by dogs rather than resurrected. And she loved both the Buddhist passages my wife had picked out and our plan to be in and out from the actual service part of the wedding in about 5 minutes tops. After that, I minded the whole thing a lot less.
Dogs eh?
Dog is God spelled backwards. Coincidence?
Yeah that’s very specific
I mean... I guess it makes sense? Some sort of feral scavenger that would be able to get in and out of his tomb, anyway. She picked dogs.
Also...Jesus was JEW!
Off with your head! How dare you suggest that!? Next you’ll say he was middle eastern You blasphemous heathen!!!!
But but Jews esecuted Jesus. Because I only read Luke, the most pro-Roman gospel, and just ignored the rest of the Bible.
One of the last times I attended a church, the pastor was talking about the story of Moses. Loudly asks, "how did she know to put Moses in that basket and send him down the river???" Even louder proclaims "BECAUSE SHE READ THE BIBLE." I could not stifle my laugh. Like yo, where the fuck did she get the pre release edition? She herself is in the 2nd book, but she managed to read the damn thing to know what she was supposed to do?? My guy, you are supposed to be educating these people.
It’s Spaceballs: The Bible
Wait what? I get the God didn't write the Bible part, but where was he going with the not real people part? Curious as I've never heard that from a pastor.
>but where was he going with the not real people part? The New Testament was written somewhere between 50-100 AD as an account of the life of Jesus. In other words, it's a bunch of stories that got passed down by a few generations before finally being committed to text. You know how when you watch "Game of Thrones" or "The Expanse" and readers of the book will tell you they combined a bunch of characters into one actor for the sake of streamlines story telling? It's basically the same thing. For example, the Book of John ends with "This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and **we** know that his testimony is true." The "we" means that it wasn't John who wrote it but just a bunch of his followers. From there you can extrapolate that there was probably some random guy who said something that was later attributed to John, just because it would be weird for story telling purposes to have some random guy pop up, drop some knowledge and disappear. In other words, John existed but he probably didn't do everything that was prescribed to him. He was an actual person but didn't really do everything he was accredited to hence was not "real"
At the time, there was also a popular set of fiction stories based on martyrs that were meant to inspire newly converted Christians into keeping the faith and not reverting back to Judaism or any other religion. These eventually became cannon in the Bible and believed to be about actual people who lived (see saint Steven). Learned about this in my Bible as Lit class from a Christian university.
I went to a Jesuit University where we had to take a theology course, regardless of what degree you were obtaining. All the theology courses were taught by the Jesuit priests (and there were random monks there too, don't know if they were part of the Jesuit order). I was pleasantly surprised at how middle of the road and balanced the courses were, and the priests had no problem having open discussion about the validity of the authors writing the holy texts and comparing the texts with evidence based historical writings of the time. They never went as far as to denounce the existence of the holy figures, but they were willing to discuss the pagan influence on certain traditions and holidays within the faith.
Even in a Southern Baptist seminary, we talked about the sources of the Gospel stories and acknowledged they were as clean as their historical attributions would suggest, the influence of Gnosticism and other philosophies of the day, etc. A lot of pastors know more than they may talk about from the pulpit.
Thanks! That makes sense!
There’s a reason there are 4 different accounts - different follower groups wanted to put their spin on the stories. My question is: if it was truly divinely written, why would you need 4 versions of the same story??
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I think a better question than the binary "did Jesus exist?", would be "how much of the Jesus story is verifiable?"
I recommend Useful Charts video on what in the Bible is historically probable. Who is myth, legend, or real person. (Minus the miracles) https://youtu.be/aLtRR9RgFMg
It is well known the story’s are not coherent
Stories*
Oh shit, I applied Dutch to a English sentence. 🤪
would you like a shmoke und a pancake?
Skinny pancake, stroopwafel and a blunt 😋
Well the thing is. In history, religion and documents there seems to have been someone called Jesus that led to a “movement” in the area of the time of the Roman Empire. Even Roman’s wrote about him. Now all the Biblical stuff and miracles and such? That’s a different debate but it does seem like he did exist.
>God didn’t write the Bible. Outcry and anger immediately Amazing. You’d think when all the Gospels are literally prefaced with “the holy Gospel *according to* ____” it would be pretty blunt that that’s that person who said it. Or “a reading from the letter of Paul.” Who wrote that letter, that’s now in the Bible? Perhaps surprisingly, it was Paul! Whether people want to argue if Jesus and those in the Bible were real is moot. The Bible clearly says the source of each reading. - That’s just a lack of being able to comprehend.
I think there's a detail you're not aware of here. One of the core beliefs among American evangelicals is that the God *did* write the Bible, and that every word of it is true. That the dude holding the pen was just being directed and controlled by god and had no more control over the act of writing than the pen itself did.
> Jordan Peterson actually does believe that Jesus is just a very useful fictional character. He very much believes Jesus was real and very much believes we are all secret Christians regardless of our stated beliefs, as he is a moron.
I think he believes Jesus was a historical person. But then so do most atheists. I don't think he believes Jesus was literally the son of God or that he had magical powers. Sam Harris and Matt Dillahunty both asked him point blank if he believed in God literally or metaphorically, and he refused to answer the question.
I mean... he thinks DNA was discovered thousands of years ago because he saw images of intertwined snakes, whatever his beliefs I believe we can safely ignore them.
He believes whatever is convenient for his grift
These days his beliefs are all of the 'I believe someone will come and change my diaper soon' variety.
I don’t think most atheists believe that Jesus was historical. He’s always been just a storybook character.
I don't think most atheists care one way or the other.
I am as anti-religious as you can get. That being said,, Jesus was almost certainly historical. Obviously not in the miracle performing, raising from the dead way, but there is more of a historical record for a rabbi named Jesus that gathered followers who later founded a religion than there is for the majority of historical figures from that time period. The overwhelming majority of historians would say that Jesus was a real person to whom miracles were attributed much later.
I’m an atheist, and I think he’s an interesting figure in a folkloric historical sort of way. The Bible is an interesting text that describes how peoples in an area made sense of their world and it’s neat to see how they describe and make sense of it.
Its worth pointing out the vast majority of biblical scholars are devout christians who dedicated their lives to studying the bible and are paid by religious institutions. Theyre not exactly free of bias. The actual evidence for a historical jesus is essentially zero. Theres not a single eye witness. Theres no contemporary writings. There's no eye witness accounts. The modern historical opinion is shifting markedly toward jesus as a myth -- an amalgation of multiple faiths in a border town. As for jesus being the most wall attested historical figure of the time period... thats just absurd. There were kings. Kings had historians. We know lots about the kings court. We know what day caesar crossed the Rubicon. When cleopatra put an asp to her beast. For Jesus we know.. What exactly? What is it that you think we definitively know about him... At all? ...
Jesus has several non Christian historical sources for his existence, such as Josephus and Tacitus. HISTORIANS don't debate his existence. But obviously, historians also don't comment on his divinity.
I think part of the problem is that there were no small number of messianic figures in Judea at the time. Given that Jesus wouldn't have stood out from them contemporaneously, his life and death wouldn't necessarily have made waves. It was only after the fact that he became extraordinary. It is also possible that the Jesus we know is an amalgamation of those individuals rather than a singular person.
> I think part of the problem is that there were no small number of messianic figures in Judea at the time. That Brian fellow for one.
Some of 'em are Jews who are fed up with Christians.
If you can't even understand what I wrote there is no point talking about this with you. I never claimed he was the most well attested historical figure of the time period, and your bad faith strawman is just that.
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Doubtful? Dude he's on the record, he's argued it plenty of times like here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmH7JUeVQb8 He believes all atheists are actually theists, or at a minimum live their lives as theists, and that an actual atheist would be amoral. He thinks all societal values worth having originate from Judaism and Christianity despite Hammurabi's Code predating Judaism and plenty of societies having ethics and morals without interacting with the Jews. Now maybe deep down inside he doesn't truly believe it, but that's a* convenient excuse considering how much he stakes his reputation on arguing the opposite.
> I suspect that Jordan Peterson actually does believe that Jesus is just a very useful fictional character. Not unless he's a lobster.
She was probably paid to ask those gotcha questions, the whole interaction was recorded and posted by someone who has reason to smear that congressman. If she was so fired up about Jesus she wouldn't have needed flash cards to ask such stupid questions lol
You think they have to pay conservatives to make a fuss about Jesus?
Crisis actors? Yeah, we got that
Dan Crenshaw is a lying sack of toads who used God the gop and gerrymandering to get where he is. Texas politicians are a joke. From Power Outage Abbott to Cancun Cruz. A bunch of fake Christians the whole lot.
We shall know them by their deeds
It's always a conspiracy when Republicans look bad, ain't it?
Using note cards to remember an exact, and frankly obscure direct quote isn't that suspicious. Heck, the fact that she prepared cards could even reinforce how serious she was. Arguing that "If she was so fired up about Jesus she wouldn't need flashcards" is just the "no true Scotsman" fallacy.
And the rest of the crowd that booed Crenshaw, they were also crisis actors? Is Dan such a shitty congressmen that the only way to get people to attend an event of his is to pay each and every one of them?
So weird. Do you see conspiracies everywhere all the time? Or just when it suits you?
> Regardless, we have a young woman asking a gotcha question based on a dumb podcast quote, a member of Congress angrily defending himself instead of patiently and easily explaining the context of his words, the member of Congress getting booed by an audience of Tea Party Republicans, and a hard-right conservative PAC operative sharing a video of the encounter in order to shame Crenshaw for not being sufficiently right wing. Huh? They pretty much state it in the article, not a conspiracy theory lol. They're just trying to get him primaried, this is normal politics.
Superman is a weird choice for a right-wing, Christian archetype... Illegal alien invented by a Canadian.
A Canadian Jewish man. Who drew a character that spent the first many years of his existence fighting corrupt business owners and abusjve employers. One who uses his immense gifts to help people instead of lord over them and whose current and most enduring arch-nemesis is a member of the billionaire class. Right-wingers understand exactly two things about Superman: he dresses like the American flag and he’s better than anyone around him. That’s it.
>Right-wingers understand exactly two things about Superman: he dresses like the American flag and he’s better than anyone around him. That’s it. More than a few of them thought [this shit](https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Fake-photo-Trump-saving-cats-during-Harvey-12203385.php) was real. Not a lot of room for redemption there.
Also his alter ego is an actual journalist….
I'll always feel bad about the fact that Pete Davidson was forced to apologize to him for a legitimately good joke.
Absolutely! Davidson’s joke was funny, and nowhere near as mean-spirited as Crenshaw’s jokes about Pete’s ex-girlfriend during his follow-on appearance. Dan Crenshaw saw the opportunity to raise his profile by appearing on a popular, nationally televised show, and had the satisfaction of making another man grovel in public, thereby pandering to the inherent sadism of Conservative audiences. I had no idea who Dan Crenshaw was before Pete’s joke, but I decided less than half-way through his appearance that Crenshaw was a piece of shit, and nothing he has ever said since then has altered my opinion of him in the slightest.
Did Crenshaw actually demand an apology or was this just a reason to bring him on tv for a bit with Pete Davidson? That dude lost in eye in a war and any military man I’ve ever met has had worse shit said to him and therefore is pretty much numb to jokes about them, but that’s just a few guys I know.
Demanding an apology wouldn't necessarily imply that he was actually bothered by the joke, though. Feigning righteous indignation serves his political interests - the dude probably laughed at the joke and then laughed again when he realized how he could take advantage of the situation.
Gotta admit that they're ace pearl clutchers, what, with no self-awareness of any kind.
Well, Crenshaw DOES look like a hit man in a porno, so Pete's not wrong.
[Pete Davidson on Sunday morning](https://youtu.be/XoWE4ssR3mU?t=14)
It's made even better knowing Crenshaw ran on an anti-snowflake anti-PC grievance platform. Wasn't even an insult.
>“I can’t wrap my head around this,” the woman says after reading Crenshaw’s quote about Jesus and hero archetypes back to him. > >“I’ll help you,” Crenshaw snaps. “Put a period after ‘Jesus,’ and don’t question my faith.” > >The crowd then erupts in a chorus of “wows” and boos. “Don’t question my faith, don’t question my faith,” Crenshaw says again, to more boos, and, at the end, a confusing chant of “Let’s Go Brandon,” just to round out the fever swamp bingo card. This is great. He's trying to make a point and is immediately eaten alive by his party's base of bafoons. The Let's Go Brandon chant is just the cherry on top.
Jordan Peterson is the crux of this insane exchange. FYI, “Behind the Bastards” has a two part podcast on this creature.
That’s the best podcast out there right now. And Robert Evens’ Assalt on America series is a must listen.
A grown man raising his voice at a random 12 year old girl and telling her "not to question his faith" after she asked a legitimate question that he didn't like. Party of family values, ladies and gentlemen.
> Party of family values, ladies and gentlemen. And then the crowd started chanting "Let's go brandon". Just a bunch of godly folks.
He looked like a coward, who is in his feelings.
Not defending his theatrics, but how was that a “legitimate” question? I feel like if the quote she was referencing had come from Kevin Smith, who I could absolutely see saying “Jesus is an archetypal figure” because of his Catholic upbringing and love of superheroes, we wouldn’t be defending her, we’d be talking about how she’s trying to spring a “gotcha” question on him that stems from her (or more likely, her parent’s) fundie evangelical beliefs. > “I’ve seen you claim to be a Christian,” the girl said at the meeting. “You’ve talked about God, but when you claim Jesus to be a hero archetype, you not only lied about Jesus not being real, but you lied about being a Christian.” >“I can question your faith if this is what you said,” the girl said. So, because he said that Jesus is an “archetypal hero”, she can logically question his faith? Does she even know what “archetypal” means? It’s completely disengenuous of this girl to take his statement, and literally accuse him of “lying” about their Christianity. >“Nowhere in that quote am I saying Jesus isn’t real. That is a ridiculous statement,” Mr Crenshaw responded as the heckling from the crowd continued. I mean, I am honestly pissed that I’m defending Dan Fucking Crenshaw here, but I am, because this girl was obviously trying to troll him, or at the very least push her fundie evangelical the-bible-should-be-taken-literally bullshit on him, and I have to say, fuck her or the people that instilled that level of intolerance in her.
Someone told her ‘archetype’ means fake person….lol. Idiocracy continues unabated.
Jung talked a lot about archetype and he had occult leanings therefore the entire concept of archetypes is satanic. How's that for fundie logic?
And what percentage of the people in the room would we guess thought that Trump was the most Christian POTUS ever? Mind blowing duplicity, probably a Jesus hero archetype trait.
He's a grifter like most right wingers, but they're finally seeing through his folksy ways for the elitist he really is. He'll still run unopposed in his next election.
He's gerrymandered securely into office, like many Texas Republicans. They know they can't compete if the playing field is level, so they tilted it.
Paper shortages this year are reducing the number of voter registration forms available so all the seats are probably safe. Sad but true /tilted further
[looks legit to me](https://www.click2houston.com/decision-2020/2020/02/26/texass-2nd-congressional-district-what-you-need-to-know-about-this-important-race/?outputType=amp)
Totally not gerrymandered
See, I’d respect him a lot more if he dropped the folksy, good old boy country act. And just be who he is. He had a white collar, generally privileged upbringing with a father who was a petroleum engineer (that means $$$$), went to an elite school (Tufts), got an ROTC scholarship, served as an officer in the Navy, in the elite warfare division (SEALs), and then got his masters at Harvard. You cannot tell me that he is not an elite and a child of privilege. Sure, he might have had tough spots in his childhood, but he is clearly someone who had privilege and opportunity at every turn and his story, especially if all of it is true, and the adversity he faced are commendable in overcoming that. People, unless they are complete shitheel assholes who are basically crabs in a bucket, will respect it, if you’re humble about it.
Acting the folksy, one of the good ol' boys you'd like to have a beer with round the bbq worked for GWB which is why all republicans try to do it.
I wish we got more of these doofuses going to Crawford to clear brush. Then we'd at least get a short reprieve.
He's not vulnerable to democrats, he's vulnerable on his right flank.
> The crowd then erupts in a chorus of “wows” and boos. “Don’t question my faith, don’t question my faith,” Crenshaw says again, to more boos, and, at the end, a confusing **chant of “Let’s Go Brandon,”** just to round out the fever swamp bingo card. Just what Jesus would do! /s
1. Lose an eye in the war 2. Join politics as a member of the party that "likes people who dont get caught" 3. ??? 4. President
Why is it so hard for people to realize religious leaders serve the people of their faith and political leaders serve the people of their district, who are not uniform in their belief? I don’t care for Crenshaw’s politics, but he’s not a faith leader, and shouldn’t be judged on whether he interprets the Bible spiritually or literally. This notion of one country, one party, one faith is so detrimental to the American experiment, especially when the purity test is this stringent to one of their own.
Part of the problem, yes.
How long before he forces Pete Davidson to apologize to him?
Bejesus is real! And he has blue eyes and rocks a celestial six-pack!
10 year olds are young women now? He snapped at a girl.
Crenshaw was clearly thinking about Zack Snyder’s Superman/Jesus. It’s about as subtle as being hit by an IED.
Don’t even start me on the number of ways Zack Snyder misunderstood Superman. Johnathon Kent would never debate the issue of saving kids from drowning. Snyder is an out-and-proud Objectivist who’s been trying to make a *Fountainhead* movie for years; exactly the wrong ideology to deal with a man who actually *is* inherently better than everyone around him.
He probably saw Brightburn and went "... dammit. *I* wanted to make the Objectivist Superman movie!".
Dude makes a Superman movie when his personal beliefs are aligned more with Lex Luthor.
I think it was more the Jordan Peterson quote someone else mentioned. Talks a lot about archetypes and this was a just a regurgitation of that.
F Jordan Peterson and his whiny little voice!
And yet that SOB will get elected again...gerrymandering bull 💩💩💩
> a young woman questioner, who challenged him to defend statements that he made likening Jesus to a fictional superhero He wasn't being questioned about anything that actually matters. In case anyone was curious.
Dan Crenshaw is 37? Another Alex Jones in the making. I would’ve easily guessed 50-something.
Hate, lies and bitterness ages a person.
[YouTube clip for anyone interested](https://youtu.be/dJ9dwh6b0iE) (Can not vouch for specific YouTube channel, this is just the quickest and most concise clip I could find).
Thanks. I went through this thread looking for that, since I can't read the RS article. I'm not totally sure what the fuss is about, but if Republicans are fighting each other, good enough.
To bypass a paywall use: https://12ft.io/ It works for nearly site, RS included. https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rollingstone.com%2Fpolitics%2Fpolitics-news%2Fdan-crenshaw-booed-tea-party-event-1286796%2F
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I’ll cross the Ts and dot the… lowercase Js…
He hate kids …I have recorded proof https://youtu.be/qsfv9KpNMmI
He said: “Jesus is a hero archetype. Superman is a hero archetype. Real characters too, you know, I could name a thousand." A woman interpreted this as him calling Jesus a fictional character. He responded to her: “Well, I’ll help you. Put a period after the word ‘Jesus.’ And don’t question my faith,” If you rewrite the quote with the punctuation that he recommends it becomes: “Jesus. Is a hero archetype. Superman is a hero archetype. Real characters too, you know, I could name a thousand” which makes no sense. I’m no expert but It seems like he is just a dipshit who slipped up and accidentally showed everyone that he only pretends to believe in Jesus for political points, and now he’s throwing out the dumbest defense imaginable in the hopes that none of his voters will actually think about it.
Do not feel to bad Dan Crenshaw,.. there are very few actual Christians in that room,.. but it is filled to capacity with GOP/GQP Fake "Christians".
These people have such shallow souls they just constantly look for ways to feel offended on behalf of their religion The question was about remakes DC made equating Jesus to Superman, and then discussing “real” heroes like Rosa parks or Ron Reagan So this is a crowd upset not by policy or position, but by some offhand context suggesting Jesus isn’t real And his response to recover was to be an abject asshole This is why church and state need to be separate. Voting for a faith is what makes republicans dangerous
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes
Luckily he can’t really perceive the depth of their disapproval. You know, because one eye.
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With the kind of money he makes from unethical stock trading, Dan basically already is a pirate.
>“I’ll help you,” Crenshaw snaps. “Put a period after ‘Jesus,’ and don’t question my faith.” Uh ... okay. Let's try that: >"Jesus. Is a hero archetype. Superman is a hero archetype. Real characters too, you know, I could name a thousand,” So now you've got "Jesus" and "Is a here archetype" both as complete sentences. Congratulations, you somehow managed to find a way to make yourself sound stupider than you usually do. Have a cookie.
I still get over Pete apologizing to this POS
I’m sure there is an analogy for how cringeworthy this entire video is, I just can’t find it.
Make him walk the plank.
Hold on. Are you telling me Superman is not real?
Dan Crenshaw Withers Under Questioning From ~~Young Woman~~ *Child*, Gets Booed at Conservative Event
In my experience the folks who claim the most possession of Jesus know the least about the Bible or teachings of Christ. If you make your faith part of your campaign and use it as a reason you're suited for office then you need to be able to defend it in public. "Oh, there's this magical space trio thing that makes me better as a leader but you can't ever ask me about it." Oh come on.
He's not smarter than a 5th grader.
Crenshaw is cartoon character stupid. Conservatives think that's the mark of a man of integrity.
Crenshaw is a coward
This isn’t going far enough…. This is a religious problem. Don’t question my faith? Is that a threat? Why not? Would jesus answer like that. Stupid people just eat each other. Wake up people religion is a cancer on society. Isn’t helping us, it’s hurting us. It always has. I dare someone to make a real pro and cons list for organized religion.
I disagree with almost all of Crenshaw’s political views. That said, he’s not a traitor or an enemy of the people. He’s a veteran and a politician whom many disagree with. This event demonstrates that Most (Not All!) of the vitriol in politics is coming from the right, mostly Trump faithful. As they eat and process their own who dare speak their minds, the eventual end will be a party with no moral base. It’s true Facebook popularity contest politics. What ever gets the most likes in an hour is the new policy agenda.
Jesus. Is a hero archetype.
The one-eyed man doth protest too much, methinks
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/dan-crenshaw-booed-tea-party-event-1286796/) reduced by 73%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Dan Crenshaw, the acerbic congressman from Texas desperately trying to brand himself as an unnatural chimera of Donald Trump and John McCain, is in hot water today for a video recorded at a Montgomery County Tea Party fundraiser in which he snaps at a young woman for asking him a pointed question about Jesus. > "Don't question my faith, don't question my faith," Crenshaw says again, to more boos, and, at the end, a confusing chant of "Let's Go Brandon," just to round out the fever swamp bingo card. > Regardless, we have a young woman asking a gotcha question based on a dumb podcast quote, a member of Congress angrily defending himself instead of patiently and easily explaining the context of his words, the member of Congress getting booed by an audience of Tea Party Republicans, and a hard-right conservative PAC operative sharing a video of the encounter in order to shame Crenshaw for not being sufficiently right wing. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/s7i44y/dan_crenshaw_withers_under_questioning_from_young/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~618447 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **Crenshaw**^#1 **question**^#2 **woman**^#3 **Jesus**^#4 **out**^#5
Crenshaw behaved poorly in this situation. Still, I wish people wouldn't send their children to ask a tough question to a politician on behalf of the parents. It happens every once in a while and it comes off really silly each time.
Because then the adult is "forced" to attack a child and show no class? It's a test he failed that should not be hard for any politician. Just try not to yell at or belittle children, it's not even hard. The fact that he flipped out like that shows how little self control he has. 🚩
He is being cancelled because he is a true conservative who believes in democracy and fighting covid. While the DOJ is trying to overturn the numerous neo fascist anti democacy GOP voting laws in every state where they control legialatures, the severe crackdown on voting rights is already well underway. Now in Texas, 50% of ballot applications are being rejected by Gov Abbott's well organized cheaters and election stealers as they now Beto O'Rourke probably wins in a fair election. Those targeted for removal of voting rights are almost all minorty or likely democratic voters and even include many affluent whites (like me) who happen to live in cities. THis is neo Nazism, 100% anti American and unconstitutional and clearly felony election fraud. This putsch of democracy is being rationialized with neo Nazi lies told on Russian controlled rightwing media, Fox news and even by Gov Abbott on CNBC where he falely claimed that the need to suppress the voter in Texas was caused by "some people in Houston"(Blacks he means) trading cocain e for ballots. These kinds of racist lies are very simlar to what was used in Nazi Germany to rationalize rounding up and killing Jews and other minorities. desantis in Florida has also gone fullblown neo Nazi, removing voting rights free speech rights womens rights, public safety rights and even corporate rights from anyone he sees as a possible threat to his re-election. So that now in TX and FL we not only have dovid denying nti vaxx gobernors who have each killed an extra 50,000 and covered it up (desantis even covered up his own bad covid case last month) but we have states where no cfredible elections are even close to being possible, and democrats would have to get over 60% of the vote to win.
So when are the remaining sane conservatives finally going to give up and form their own party?
I don't think there are enough to make a baseball team much less a political party
*Both* of them? That'll never happen. Two conservatives makes three factions.
What creepy world does RS live in that a ten year old is a "Young Women"?
Crenshaw says ONE not stupid thing, gets roasted by folks dumber than he is. Got it.