JillyB

To devolve into their tactics is to give them ammunition to fuel the brainwashed.

I agree with this message but not your reasoning. Fascists don't care about what is true. If we only speak objectively, make rational arguments, emphasize logical consistency, stick to our principles, etc, they'll just lie and take things wildly out of context to feed to their base. They don't need us to feed them ammunition.

However, we should still do these things for our own sake. If we fight their misinformation with our own, we erase any hope objective truth and shared reality have of coming back. A lot of Trump voters and supporters don't support every aspect of modern fascism. If the Epstein files or Iran war gets some of them to realize they've been lied to, they might look around to other ideologies. We need to represent the values of transparency and truth that the MAGA movement pretends to uphold. If manipulation and deception eventually defeats fascism, it would still be bad. The new normal and values of the new leadership would continue manipulating and deceiving people to the benefit of the rich.

I like this and think it would be a big improvement over the current system. However, I do see some potential problems:

• These senators would be normal people only on their first day. Once they are an important person with power and money, they will change. Your work buddy that gets promoted to supervisor suddenly becomes a dick. Imagine they got promoted to senator. Their needs and incentives will no longer be the same and they won't be able to represent their previous life as well.
• The first year being silenced and mentored by a senior senator exacerbates this problem. When they are most close to the common person, they will be least powerful. I would expect the senior senator to represent the needs of a retiring senator and to influence the new senator to do the same. If anything, they should be most influencial their first year and silenced their last year.
• A former senator is unlikely to return to normal life. They spent a decade being highly paid and powerful. If they were a truck driver before, they aren't going to return to driving trucks. They're going to get book deals, start a consulting firm, etc. I would expect the sitting senators to shape society to that end so they can retire comfortably when their term is up. You would end up with a class of sitting/former senators and the normal people.
• Who gets included in this lottery? A reasonable answer would be "citizens". We've seen the path to citizenship made harder in recent years. It could selectively be made harder for certain immigrants. A Norwegian immigrant would have an easier and quicker time gaining citizenship than a Venezuelan refugee. Would there be a minimum or maximum age for the lottery? Should non-citizens with permanent residence get in?
• With no elections, I would expect the senators to be relatively unresponsive to public pressure. Also, with no voting or way to participate in political matters, I would expect the average person to feel like powerless subjects rather than vocal advocates.
• I would expect the senators to be more susceptible to lobbying, not less. The public can't influence me, but this oil company might be in need of a consultant once my term is up.

Like I said, I still think this would be an improvement, but I think you're making a mistake in thinking that people will bring their values with them once they become senator. I think our values are highly shaped by our incentives and the incentives of a senator will change their values.

Appalachia has been politically stepped on by everyone for generations. That's a big part of why they're poor. Cletus may not be an expert on how to run a country but I bet he would help out some Appalachians. Your blatant classism is pretty gross.

They would kill your grandmother even if she brought in good money. She's old and they only want to develop new things, not support old things.

Years ago they bought Iron Galaxy, the studio behind the beloved Killer Instinct reboot. They also bought smash.gg, the site where most fighting game tournaments are hosted. At the time I was sure this was a sign. PS4 was the console for fighting games and M$ were trying to position the Xbox as the fighting game console. We were going to get a new Killer Instinct (or new IP), smash.gg would have it's terrible UI improved and probably some Xbox integration. It would get an app too.

Several years later, none of that happened. They renamed smash.gg to start.gg and you can login with your M$ account. That's all that's changed. It's amazing how they squandered such an opportunity.

My point is that the Bible and Christianity isn't the source of the nationalism. I didn't want to get into the weeds but I've got more time now so fuck it.

Many people, especially religious people, believe that religion is a driver of values. They believe their religion gives them a moral compass that isn't affected by the whims of modern society. But I don't think that's true. I think a person's religion can be easily molded to fit their worldly values. Their changing interpretation of their religion is used to claim they've been following the same religion the whole time.

I think a person's entire worldview is far more maleable than they want to think. Your ethics, moral system, religion, views on your role in society, definitions on who is the in-group or not, all easily change in order to fit your incentives. I used to work as a manufacturing engineer in the auto industry. A lot of my job was indirectly automating other peoples' jobs. But nobody wants to feel like they're the bad guy, so I had an elaborate system of lies that I believed in order to make myself the good guy who was making the workers more productive, and setting the stage for them to get better pay. I had evidence all around me that wasn't true but I was able to create a system where making a bunch of money eliminating the jobs of poor people was a good thing. It was only after a year or so of being out of that work that I saw it for what it was.

Fascism rises because it sees the same problems caused by capitalism and interprets the cause as national conflict rather than class conflict. The "globalist" elites are causing the problems. They seek a rebirth of the nation's power under a visionary leader, unencumbered by the limits placed by the globalists (like checks on power).

I should point out that the nation isn't the same as the country. Nationalism has been such a successful political ideology since the French revolution that we use "nation" and "country" interchangeably but they're different. A country is defined by the state. It has borders and a government and institutions. A nation is more nebulous and mystical. It's a group of unified people who can express power through their unity. Malcolm X and the Black Panthers spread the idea of black nationalism which redefined American blacks as being a unified, powerful people who were colonized by the White population. Nationalist movements have to constantly redefine what it means to be part of that nation in order to eliminate dissenters. The Black Panthers published a "bootlicker" column in their newspaper that called out black civil rights leaders that were more peaceful or didn't like the Panthers. It didn't just point it why they were wrong. They got called agents of the white colonizers. The nation was redefined without them.

American fascists do the same thing with "real Americans". At first it means citizens, then it means people born here, then it means Christians. Soon it will mean Christians of (white) European decent. They need to constantly redefine who this nation expressing power is because if they don't, those that disagree with them internally will threaten the legitimacy of their nationalist movement. They're using a lot of the same mass politics and "power to the people" thinking of Marxists but they've defined their oppressors as those outside the nation. Once Christianity becomes tied to their national identity, the values of their Christianity change to fit the narrative.

Christianity didn't create these values. It didn't create any values. People shaped their values by their incentives and will redefine whatever's needed along the way. Attacking the religion is missing the root of the issue. It's accepting their nationalist framework and definitions. If these people were any other religion or completely secular, the results would be the same with different labels. Don't attack the nation and accept their nationalist definitions of that nation. Attack the capitalism that drives nationalism and the idea of nationalism itself.

Being an undeclared foreign agent is illegal, regardless of what you're doing. I imagine the Chinese government wouldn't have asked him to take those pictures if they didn't have some value.

CCAs or collaborative combat aircraft are the new hotness in military aviation. Basically smaller unmanned fighter jets that work alongside a traditional manned fighter. The idea is that you can have maybe 4 or 5 fighter jets worth of capability but only one of them has a human pilot on board. So the manned fighter can hang back and tell a farther forward one to fire a missile. Is it a wunderwaffen? Is it a boondoggle? Idk man

The Bible is enormous and can be cherry-picked to mean almost anything you want. Look at all the large differences in denominations for reference. IMO, the Bible isn't pushing Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism is pushing different interpretations of the Bible. The nationalism is coming from other things.

I agree that a religious person would be handy to have in our corner. But I'm not super comfortable with the idea that political questions around religion need a Christian's opinion in order to have impact. It favors political expediency over principles. By doing that, you're slightly conceding that principles aren't important. At the same time, it devalues non-Christian voices on a topic that is most relevant to non-Christians. If Christians only care about the opinions of other Christians, I'm really not trying to play by their rules to win them over.

To be clear, I don't think you're trying to do all that. I also would bet most Christians would agree with this atheist. The minority of actual Christian nationalists aren't going to be convinced no matter what you do. I think a Christian coming out in support of this congressman would be a good show of solidarity across a religious divide. But I don't think this man's argument would be better coming from a Christian instead. It would be like hearing MLK's "I have a dream" speech and saying it would make more sense coming from a white guy because the majority won't listen to him otherwise.

That's really easy to say when you aren't facing legal action.

How does that weaken his argument? Are atheists not allowed to have opinions on their government when it comes to religion?