#explodingbat

isn’t that normal for Bannon?

It is precisely because of the Biblical teachings that I am both libertarian and a capitalist, in as much as I find it to be one of the only systems that is both compatible with the moral strictures and also functional.

To head this off, I think you’re throwing a bit of your own bias in to assert that Christ was ‘all about’ many of these things. Charity, sure, which is fantastic and a thing I love. Indeed, that would be part of why I oppose the state and their restrictions on it, and making it much harder to actually engage in actual charity. Working for others is somewhat ambiguous, but certainly being of service to others was a big part. 

However, you betray an ideological bias when you say Christ advocated ‘abstinence from personal wealth’ and you engage in, as far as I’m concerned, fairly major misrepresentation when you say He taught ‘profit sharing.’ I’m curious what your reasoning is. 

Of wealth, the most direct link would be to the young wealthy man who thought himself pure and good but balked at giving up that wealth to follow Christ. To take from that the message that ‘wealth is bad’ is to miss the point. The message is not ‘money and wealth are bad,’ but rather the intent was to show that no, he was not actually righteous at all, and valued his wealth and did not actually understand the law, much like the Pharisees and their overly legalistic attempts at the scriptures rather than following the meaning.

The other verse often invoked would be the one invoking the camel passing through the eye of a needle, but this must be addressed in full, because like so many verses, context is stripped when folks invoke it alone:

Matthew 19:23-26 English Standard Version (ESV)

23 And Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” 25 When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished, saying, “Who then can be saved?” 26 But Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

That his verse ends with Christ literally stating that through God, all things are possible, and the disciples asking broadly who can be saved, the intent here is to speak on how man cannot save themselves, and yes address that wealth, as was also shown in the case of the man, absolutely can be a stumbling block, and indeed is a major one for many people.

Yet the Bible, both the Old and the New Testaments, are full of faithful, righteous people who are not only wealthy, but their wealth is described as being a blessing. So clearly wealth itself cannot be said to be evil, or wrong. Not even 1st Timothy, which folks often invoke, says that wealth (or money) is the root of all evil, but rather that money is the root of many kinds of evil. Which, obviously, it is. After all, pride and greed go hand in hand as the first and, in my opinion, greatest of sins.

Now, I question what you take libertarianism and capitalism to be. As I see it, the clear moral teachings of the Bible point towards such things as the non-aggression principle, and indicate clearly that ownership of things exists, and that theft is wrong further more. Capitalism, that is a system of economics based around private ownership and voluntary exchange, therefor fits the precepts, as does libertarianism. Indeed, I hold that anarchism is also clearly Biblical, on related grounds.

'R.E.G.'s? (sorry if this question comes across asstupid, i’m just slow, and not super into queer politics, so i may never have seen it or just not noticed it)

Reactionary Exclusionist Gatekeepers. 

Which is a phrase that means people whose reaction to the increased visibility and acceptance of marginalized groups is to exclude and gatekeep those groups from wider communities.

i always thought the movie was impressively well done until like, no, distressingly well done / why have you watched that movie ten times in a week, dude i met first week of uni? you were not meant to identify with those creeps…

I think it was a technically very well-crafted piece of art, but for a movie that seemed desperately to have something it wanted to say I’m not sure it ever quite decided what that was. I could put together a case for what I think is the most plausible reading of its “argument,” and even find that an interesting exercise, but I think in the final act it chose deliberate ambiguity in a way that excused its own darkness right when it was at the point of rejecting it.

bodies are awful :(

thanks for the recommendation! will give it a go…

thanks, sorry for asking a dumb question

Oh, is clickbait mostly a western thing? From 4chan being inspired by a Japanese site (and the reputation for mobile...

It’s not that our Internet experience has lagged behind Japan’s so much as it’s been totally different. In many ways we’re actually way ahead with Internet things, *because* we lagged behind - Japan got cell phones with Internet capabilities way before us and sort of gave up on big clunky computers before they ever became a thing. As a result, Japanese web pages stayed simple and mobile-friendly, meanwhile the West upgraded their web experience more and more because PCs could handle it. It’s evened out both sides in recent years, but those early years influenced the way both work heavily.

I’m not *that* familiar with the Japanese side of the web, so I couldn’t tell you for sure if clickbait isn’t a thing (I haven’t come across any, though, so if it exists it’s not nearly as prevalent). My point was more the sort of sentiments I was seeing communicated than the clickbait itself, anyway.

As for marketing - basically, we’re formed by the expectations of the world around us, whether we want to be or not. I can’t remind people of the blue eyes, brown eyes experiment enough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CtrpLh6TKk