A combat-unit commander told non-commissioned officers at a briefing Monday that the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that Pres. Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” according to a complaint by a non-commissioned officer.
From Saturday morning through Monday night, more than 110 similar complaints about commanders in every branch of the military had been logged by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF).
The complaints came from more than 40 different units spread across at least 30 military installations, the MRFF told me Monday night.
…
I want to get off Mr. Reagan’s Wild Ride.
I want to get off Mr. Reagan’s Wild Ride.
I want to get off Mr. Reagan’s Wild Ride.
I want to get off Mr. Reagan’s Wild Ride.
The NCO said they were Christian and emailed the MRFF on behalf of 15 troops, including at least 11 Christians, one Muslim, and one Jew. (Full email printed below.) The NCO wrote to the MRFF that their commander “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.”
How can you go in front of your mixed troops and start waxing lyrical about your specific religion? Like what sort of brain disease leads to this? Even if you are religious, you have to know that other people take their other religions just as seriously and recognize that perhaps it’s better not to sow discord between them if they are supposed to battle together.
I’ve been saying for a while now that the biggest threat facing humanity isn’t climate change but religion. By far.
Just… What is even going on? I don’t remember people being this stupid and cruel. This is after 2 world wars. How could people not see that they’re doing the same things that the other dickheads did to gain enough power to butcher people? People are mad and stupid
People like this are literally going to cause the end of the human race with their “beliefs”. We have a bunch of religious fanatics killing at the behest of a demented pedophile and his genocidal buddy.
Religion is a cancer.
There was a really interesting article posted the other day about the Antichrist. Religious folks are really wacky.
That’s a very interesting article but does 2019 qualify as “the other day”?
They probably meant it was posted on lemmy the other day, not that the article was released the other day.
Lol! I didn’t even look at the date. It was posted in another instance just yesterday or the day before…I can’t remember which.
*Insert Saving Private Ryan Meme here*
Those were better times …
At what point does it become socially acceptable to say to these people, “Fuck your god”?
I’m not sure when that point was but it’s solidly in the past.
Someone needs to interrupt these fucking monsters and tell them nobody cares about their imaginary friends
Since the creation of the “God hates gays” picket signs. Probably before then.
A little before that, i think? Maybe since The Crusades?
America is cancer
Yeah definitely no religious fruitcakes in any other parts of the world.
Religion can certainly be problematic but I think its worth bringing up how monotheism specifically acts as a mind virus at its worst. It’s inherently exclusivist and closed minded, priming people to see those that don’t believe in their god as not human and can even act as justification to bring pain, suffering and death upon nonbelievers. It’s also inherently centralized and authoritarian which is why it to works synergistically with oppressive forms of governence.
Polytheism is riddled with mystical thinking but, generally, beleiving in more than one god makes it more difficult to use it as a justification to hurt people that don’t believe in your god. By having a wide variety of divinities it is naturally decentralized.
Christianity wiped out Roman polytheism with relative ease and ushered in a millenia long dark age. Politicians/Rulers of long past and even today recognize the coercive and unifying power of monotheism and are often keen to wield it to stamp out dissent and concentrate power.
Monotheism is also effective at priming people to accept autocracy. If you believe in one supreme all knowing deterministic god then it’s not that hard to believe in a human ruler wield absolute power as god’s chosen one.
Democracy and monotheism in many way incompatible phiosophies. It’s why the Greeks, South Asian and indigineous confederacies were able to arrive at democractic systems at various periods in history (they were not monotheist) and also why the West had to institute seperation of church and state to become democratic.
I say this not to disparage spirituality as a whole. I personally have been made better by it and believe that it’s core to the human experience but acknowledge that some do not feel a need for it. What we need to be wary of is monotheism. It has brought great civilizations to ruin and promotes conformity of thought which stifles human ingenuity.
They are not religious people. Unless you take paedophillia as a form of religion. I mean, they seem to have been in some crazy paedocult.
Of Catholicism isn’t a pedocult idk what is
I would never conclude something as reductive as this, but certainly, the Catholic church won’t get any apologetic comment from me.
These people are mentally ill
And they hold power.
Correction, the people that hold power are cynical bastards that are playing these mentally ill evangelicals and other religious crazies.
Actually, a fair number of those that hold power are high on their own supply. They’re just also smart enough to use that supply to manipulate others too.
Religion literally is a set of persistent delusions, if you go by psychological definitions, that do not have a specific carve out for religious beliefs.
All religions are cults that just got really popular and/or lasted for a long time.
Neurotypicals will blame anything on illness rather than admit they too are capable of systemic evil.
Trump is mentally ill.
And liberals will blame everything on the figurehead rather than admit the system is what the system does.
SOME liberals. MOST liberals know the system is fucked. We just can’t fix it because there is a disease in America that, rather than fighting it, we feed it. It’s called billionaires oligarchs. It’s form of societal cancer. These leeches feed on the work done by others - just look at Musk and Bezos…these c#nts are total parasites who provide no valuable service with their own hands. They’re less productive than middle management…but, they figured out the system…who to fuck when…literally or figuratively. They used that knowledge yo build a cult of personality. You want to fix this system…destroy the cancer that’s killing it. Until then? You’re just blowing smoke, my friend. This system isn’t getting fixed while certain men live. I’m NOT calling for violence, so MODS, pay attention. The cancer can be removed without violence. It’ll be harder…but it can be done.
And fake progressives will blame everything on (((the system))) rather than admit that their cynicism is a self fulfilling prophecy.
You speak too broadly to be considered serious.
The world doesn’t fit into smart quips and summaries.
Wow. America really is fucked.
I’m not very Jesusy but if he existed I doubt he’d annoint that sad old bag of hamburgers.
So Jesus anointed a shit covered pedo rapist begin a war with Iran by way of marking his return? Got it, no follow up questions.
You’d have been called antisemitic for saying this exact thing yesterday.
The reason every Christians nation has turned a blind eye to the Gaza genocide is to fulfill a biblical prophecy of Jews controlling the entirety of Biblical Israel.
I guess the billionaires finished their bunkers…
deleted by creator
Guess who Canada buys arms from?
Canada needs to arm ourselves.
Against a military with a $T budget?
Oh well, when you put it like that maybe we should just roll over and bite the pillow then
That seems to be the answer for everything on this site. I left reddit because I didn’t like all of the doom scrolling, nihilistic, bullshit posts, yet they’re here too now.
I’m convinced it’s part of state sponsored propaganda and influence campaigns. The tactic is to always belittle any idea, frame everything as pointless, and divide opposition.
So many comments like, “if you can’t even get people to go vote, how do you think they’ll resist?”
I’m tired of it. I think the only way to combat it is to set up heavily moderated areas where cynicism is flagged and removed. But man, even that’s a slippery slope, to easy for mods to take over to enforce discussion only around what they want.
But however it’s going to be done, I want people ready to act. And stop with this cynical, defeatist BS.
Exactly. And ideas don’t have to be perfect to be functional. Or at least a good starting point.
Cynicism seems smart even when it’s not. That seems to be the way it works, and I think I read it’s been shown scientifically.
I’m deeply cynical in the ancient meaning of the term (and not in the ancient literal meaning of living like a dog): based on long experience, I am convinced that people are largely motivated by their (self-perceived) self-interest. I’ve met a few people with other motivations, but they’re prominent in my memory because of their rarity.
But that doesn’t mean I’m checked out: I just know that there’s a continuing struggle to counter that pro-nihilist brainwashing.
For big decisions, it always boils down to MICE. Money, identity, coercion and ego. One can think of exceptions, but you basically have to look at medical pathologies.
For little decisions, what about empathy? People will genuinely show it when confronted by something on the spot.
It’s definitely aimed at promoting learned helplessness.
Beat me to it. I would love to have some place where I could go without having to read anything about US related.
I dont mind the presence of these articles. I like to be in the know. I like the opportunity to engage in a constructive nuanced discussion that you can no longer find on Reddit, and can be found in abundance on Lemmy.
What effects me most is that, whether honest (human), not (bots) or covert (intelligence agencies), the defeatism, acceptance and obeyance in advance is the fundamental barrier to meaningful change. It catches, it spreads and it demoralises. It is the boot on our collective necks.
We need to be more mindful of spreading our nihilism to each other, unless we’re happy being part of the problem. More solutions, more raising each other up, less wallowing.
I agree with you, but the usual “absolutely nothing can be done except armed insurrection” you see here is just another flavor of the same doomerism.
the usual “absolutely nothing can be done except armed insurrection”
That might be where we have to go. But even that will fail without solidarity, organization and clear ideas of what will replace the current, evil and corrupt system.
It’s not even just US related subjects though. There was just a post the other day about physical media(photos, dvds, etc.) and I posted a comment detailing pricing out a local NAS so you can backup your shit to it(because physical media can get destroyed) and replies I got were the whole “digital stuff can get destroyed too”, “ransomware”, “it’s about the experiences! you can’t have that with digital!”, “prices are CRAZY for computer stuff!”(even though I linked products at reasonable prices and people said it isn’t that price anymore, CLICK THE LINK DUMBASS!).
And it’s all an asinine argument because you can DO BOTH. Have your physical photos AND back them up digitally.
It’s all or nothing with some people and it’s infuriating. It feels like I’m arguing with children over ice cream flavors. Yeah, chocolate is good, but I prefer strawberry and then it devolves into “CHOCOLATE ONLY FOR EVERYONE!”.
Stupid either/or thinking seems to be getting increasingly prevalent. I think it’s being promoted to train us to not think in a nuanced, resilient way. It’s like their goal is learned pseudo-autism.
Make the USA bleed for every centimeter of land. Get even the MAGAts to be tired of the significant losses they reconsider. This didn’t stop with Venezuela and won’t stop with Iran. If the USA starts coming to the negotiating table you strike first. Because we just showed we cannot be trusted at all.
This didn’t stop with Venezuela and won’t stop with Iran.
Very little has actually changed in Venezuela, besides some manipulation of the oil market.
Here’s the thing. Regardless of where Trump is attacking, the US can inflict state terror by aerial bombardment, which is costly in money terms but doesn’t lead to many US casualties. But if the goal is actual regime change, rather than just destruction of infrastructure and a high civilian body count, that requires occupation. Boots on the ground lead to high casualties and Americans coming home in body bags. So far, Trump hasn’t gone there, because (despite his incompetence, narcissism and greed) he is also very concerned about his popularity.
As opposed to what?, taking on the largest military force in world history with a few guns, a dozen fighter jets?
Not you of course, other people.
It would be a slaughter and the US would be done day one by lunch. This is reality, not Hollywood.
Fucking Toronto collapsed into depression and inactivity two weeks into COVID lockdowns.
People the world over have been showing that a huge military budget can be fought with guerilla tactics for decades. Canada absolutely can resist the US.
deleted by creator
Finland won the winter war outnumbered 100 to 1
Their deadliest sniper was subject to more air and artillery strikes than some military units and he kept fighting.
Yeah they are built different. And so are we. Imagine these southerners invade us in the winter lol
Then promptly allied with the Nazis when they knew they could not beat them, and only got rid of them when they were in retreat late in the european war.
Worked for Afghanistan. No one thinks that we have a chance in a conventional warfare scenario, and we absolutely don’t, which is why we will not make it a conventional warfare scenario. It will be an insurgency where everyone looks just like them. And that insurgency will 100% spread south.
Pretty sure our military budget is higher than Al-Qaeda’s.
Worked for Afghanistan.
Ignorant comment. 176,000 Afghanis died and they are still at war. This thread is a bunch of clueless keyboard warriors.
I believe they’re talking of the Russia-Afghan war not the USA-Afghan war. But if you think many lives wouldn’t be lost under occupation you’re obviously not arguing with a full deck.
Yeah, not OP, but I’m well aware of how much it would suck. This should be plan Z. It’s still an important one, though.
deleted by creator
That’s not how budgets work. The US has a massive air carrier fleet where do you think they got that from did it just spring into existence no they paid for it.
the world is using moving away from using the US dollar as the world’s default currency. They’re not going to have unlimited amounts of money for much longer.
Thats also the reason why they could get bankrupt. USA is doing Hitlers war economy at this point. Get loan for war, rob other countries (in this case oil) and try to pay off the debt.
We will see if this will work out in the end… I do not know much about state financials, but this seems insane to me: https://www.usdebtclock.org/
They’re not going to have unlimited amounts of money for much longer.
unless they invade other countries and take it. See Venezuela.
“Taking” Venezuala cost us money and won’t net a profit for decades, if ever. GTFO with your doomerism BS, bot!
So you just pointed out the reason why you SHOULDN’T capitulate. Because you’ll just be another piggy bank that the USA will bleed dry too for endless wars. Then you’ll be worse off than the average USA citizen.
They haven’t taken anything. The US oil companies have zero interest in Venezuela primarily because setting up operations would be prohibitively expensive.
Cost benefit analysis is a thing and the Trump administration are far too stupid to be able to cope with it. Essentially it may not actually be worth exploiting another country, this being a concept that Trump cannot understand because he has the brain of a chronically depressed fruit fly.
Partisan warfare. They need to train as many people as possible and arm them. Have a ready made resistance force.
This is also why all information sharing on Canadians to the Americans must stop.
Yeah, but it’s run by absolute morons. All the guns in the world won’t stop you from shooting yourself in the foot.
How much of that $1T is actually translating into anything useful on the battlefield, versus lining Trump cronies’ pockets? And how many of the expensive systems that are actually purchased are vulnerable to attacks by cheap drones or other asymmetric tactics?
What budget? It’s all just debt.
a budget indebted of chinese, arab, russian, etc. holders of U.S. dollars and assets? have you tried to wake up a little?
Running the country into military debt is how the US broke down the Soviet Union.
We just have to be at least as strong as the Taliban, if it comes to that.
I suppose Franch and Poland shoulda done the same.
Really wish these death cults would get on with it and leave the rest of us the fuck out of it.
Even the Bible says no human will know the hour or the day.
Who an I kidding, no one involved here read the Bible.
The Bible also says life begins at the first breath and has instructions for an abortion ritual.
It’s okay lots of people who believe in God believe they can trick god.
When I reflect back on my evangelical upbringing this always stands out. Somehow they think their omnipotent deity can be tricked by a loophole in his own rules which in and of itself would at least prove he’s not omnipotent
“Ah that rascal put it in her butt, ah well have fun kids.”
My evangelical parents got wrapped up in this line of thinking in the 90s right around the time teenage me was becoming disillusioned with the indoctrination I’d been raised in. Classic “end of the Millennium” fears and the hope they could jumpstart Armageddon convinced them to send money to Christian charities who supposedly then paid to move poor Jewish people in former Soviet states to Israel. Sure God was going to destroy the Earth in 10000 years, but oops, guess y’all forced his hand!
You should check out the book Hell is a World Without You.
It’s not gonna change your world or anything but with that upbringing you’ll really enjoy it
There’s a story I heard from Judaism, where the rabbis were arguing about whether god was cool with something or not. One rabbi was against all of the other rabbis, and asked god to prove him right. God personally spoke up, and was like “yeah, he’s entirely correct” - but the rabbis end up telling off god. They point out that they only have the rules he sent down to work with, and having to call him for help every time they need a ruling wouldn’t be fair or reasonable.
It happens in many faiths. Jewish people are famous for arguing god’s law and finding loopholes. I used to work with a Palestinian guy, who grew up in Jordan. He told me that it was relatively common for a group of men to put liquor in a teapot and drink it out of teacups so god didn’t notice.
While that’s true, it did give a year. We’re just over 180 years past that particular year.
No, it gave a bunch of feverish hallucinatory bullshit that was so vague across thousands of years that it could mean anything.
Source: I grew up with christian apocalypse preppers.
I’m referring to a specific timeline set out in numbers that most Christians totally ignore, especially apocalyptic Christians.
The Jehovah’s witnesses were set up specifically because of this prophecy, and even they decided he was late by the end of the 1800s
most Christians totally ignore
There’s almost certainly a reason. I can’t google fu the verse but if you find it please lmk.
I’d imagine the answer to why it’s not generally accepted can be found by comparing translations. Likely it’s the King James or one of the less colloquial ones being ‘misinterpreted’ to suggest a timeframe. But I am speculating here.
The main reason is that it is really obscure. I’ll see if I can find it.
Edit: yeah, I’m not finding it. It basically says that from the time of the last great census of Jerusalem there would be a certain number of days (days mean years in this part of Numbers.) until the firmament was restored, referring to the Messiah, another number of days before it would be shattered, referring to his death, and a third number of days before the glory of God would appear. When you do the math, those years become 5BCE, 27CE, and 1844CE
That’s what leads me to believe you read it in a specific translation. Old English does a lot of heavy lifting for those revelations folks.
Could be, I dunno. I’m not Christian, but my parents sent me to Catholic school because it had better rates of higher education among its graduates than the local public school. The Catholics took me not being a Christian personally and only let me read the Bible. So I read it, and started confronting priests and religion teachers with questions they couldn’t answer because I’m an obstinate little shit like that.
a specific timeline
If by that you mean, prehistory’s Q-anon scraping together vague gestures towards barely discernable timelines and a massive knob polishing for the people of Israel, then yah.
“After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years…”
From this they decided that this was a “key” for translating the other vague messages that deal with timelines. It was entirely assembled and patched together in the imagination of men who needed hobbies.
This is a weird vulnerability in the human condition that our minds developed faster than our actual innate sense of reason and logic. We are the same species we were 5000 years ago, and the same species we were 100,000 years ago, just with more fancy tools around us. Still searching for meaning in abstraction, still trying to find some personal validation in a cold, uncaring and basically random universe.
The verse I am referring to is in numbers it gives the last great census of Jerusalem as the starting year. It says x number of years would pass before the firmament was restored, referring to the Messiah, y number of years before the firmament would be shattered, referring to his death, and z number of years before the glory of God would appear.
We know when that census occured. When you do the math those years are 5BCE, 27CE, and 1844CE.
it did give a year
Source?
Googling seems to indicate it did no such thing.
Former Christian here: I can confirm that no verse directly specifies a date. However Revelations folk are a special breed.
The best one I can find is the 7000 year old earth theory.
Basically it hinges off Genisis saying Man lives for 120 years, and if you multiply that by the amount of Jubilee years (every 50 years in Hebrew tradition) you get 6000. 4000 till Jesus, 2000, till his return, 1000 years of sabbath. Than god will remake the heavens and the earth. For a total of 7000.
It’s a bunch of conjecture that would make biblical numerologists proud.
It’s somewhere in Numbers. There’s a prophecy that refers to the last great census of Jerusalem. It refers to time in days, but had previously mentioned that days in this context refer to years. There would be a certain number of years before the Messiah would appear, though they use a flowery title to refer to him, and another number of years before he would be struck down. It then goes on to say that he would return after X number of years. If you do the math, those years come out to 5BC, 27CE, and 1844CE.
Ah yes The Great Disappointment
Not clear what makes this particular set of assumptions about how some numbers might be the date of apocalypse any more special than the many, many others, though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events
Also started The Baha’is who don’t seem to be disappointed at all.
If god is all powerful, why does he need any amount of humans to do shit for him? Do it yourself, you omnilazy bastard.
Religious people are so easy to manipulate lol
How they don’t see it, when their “pastors” are driving Porsches and living in manions while telling you if you don’t skip a meal so that you can donate to the church you’re gonna go to hell… it’s beyond me.
