When Progressive Politics Becomes Your Religion

Letting politics become your religion is a bad idea. The state is not God, and political power is not redemption.

And relatedly:

Sen. Ben Sasse writes:

Americans have always had political disagreements with their neighbors, but in the past, political differences could disappear when Friday night ballgames rolled around and the whole town turned out wearing the same colors and cheering for the same team. Today our towns are hollower, and we’re not on the same team anymore. …

If too many Americans feel like we’re not “in this together” right now, it’s because we’re not. We are screaming at each other, and the country no longer has enough real social texture to absorb and wick away the hatred. The only way out is to rebuild our communities and launch new ones—one person-to-person relationship and one local institution at a time.

38 Comments for “When Progressive Politics Becomes Your Religion”

  1. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Letting politics become your religion is a bad idea. The state is not God, and political power is not redemption.

    The article is using the term “religion” only in the sense of “a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance”. That meaning of the term “religion” can be applied to almost anything, from sports to performance cars to Linux to politics, and often is.

    I think that it is a mistake to confuse that loose and secular meaning of the term “religion” with the either/both (a) the root – “belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods” — or (b) the traditional derivative – “a particular system of faith and worship” — meanings of the term “religion”.

    • posted by Matthew on

      Considering the way gay conservatives, Republicans, and Libertarians are routinely insulted, harassed, threatened, intimidated almost as much as jenn-durr critical radical feminists are for heresy against hetero male erasure and usurpation of gay rights, culture, sexuality, and identity, the analogy fits.

  2. posted by Kosh III on

    Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
    Trump supporters treat him as an infallible being, capable of shooting someone on 5th Ave or telling the biggest lies, and still being approved 100% by his followers.
    They are cultists and Trump is their deity.

  3. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

    I can’t help but observe that this post, like so many others Stephen has penned in the last several years, seems to be as much an exercise in psychological projection as it is anything else.

    • posted by Matthew on

      Your accusing him or any gay conservative of projection is an act of projection in and of itself.

    • posted by Tom Scharbach on

      Your accusing him or any gay conservative of projection is an act of projection in and of itself.

      Perhaps. Psychological projection is common enough among human beings, and I suspect that all of us engage in the practice from time to time. I certainly do.

      I have a long-time mentor who reminds me from time to time that whenever I get all worked up about the character flaws of someone else, I’m usually trying to avoid looking at my own similar failings. That kind of thinking/behavior is the classic mark of psychological projection, and it is always good advice to hit the pause button — “stop, breath, think” as one of our occasional commenters on this blog sometimes puts it — when we find ourselves engaging in blaming someone else for all that is wrong with the world.

      In this case, though, I think that my observation about the nature of Stephen’s posting in the last several years is just an observation, and nothing more.

  4. posted by Matthew on

    “Perhaps. Psychological projection is common enough among human beings, and I suspect that all of us engage in the practice from time to time. I certainly do.”

    Every time you spew your idiotic invective over this website accusing the Right of exactly what the Regressive Left is doing, that’s psychological projection. Accusing the Right of infringing on gay rights out while the Regressive Left has been advocating on behalf of genocidal homophobes in the Middle East and while doing nothing to stop or condemn the attacks on lesbian activists at Pride Parades.

    “In this case, though, I think that my observation about the nature of Stephen’s posting in the last several years is just an observation, and nothing more.”

    And as usual, you’re wrong. It is the Left that is the root cause of hate and bigotry which they project onto those who call them out on it at every turn.

    • posted by Jorge on

      I would like to ask a question.

      Is gay good? What is good about being gay?

      I ask because you are very keen on moral purity. What I do not know from you, however, is what is the Bikini Atoll, “the ultimate”, about being gay. If a gay man lives in a forest, what matters to him?

      • posted by Matthew on

        “Is gay good?”

        Yes, especially considering how many of the people involved in vilifying it and distorting the Torah to justify widespread infringement our rights are also terrorists and child rapists. Homosexuality is the only normal form of human sexuality and thus the only kind that should be tolerated.

        • posted by Jorge on

          And what is it that is good about being gay?

          I ask because the servants of God have made a promise to humanity that there is a paradise, and there is a hell. Hell being the ultimate torture, paradise being the ultimate peace or fulfillment.

          They did not promise that paradise is the ultimate in boring.

          So I would like you to explain: how is gay good?

          • posted by Matthew on

            God? The Jewish God is God. The Jewish God created man in His image and made men hot. The Jewish God created homosexuality to help keep the population under control and to help distinguish between civilization and savagery; savage cultures attack gays, civilized cultures do not.

            By and large, gays are not the ones causing climate change by contributing to overpopulation through heterosexual perversion. Gays are not the ones throwing garbage in the streets. Gays are not the ones running murderous dictatorships. Gays are not the ones raping children. Gays are not the ones who made rape culture a thing.

          • posted by Matthew on

            Being gay and Jewish is a lot better than being a racist greaser like you.

          • posted by Jorge on

            That was about as redeeming as a lecture from Game of Thrones’s Ramsay Bolton about family life.

          • posted by Matthew on

            What did you expect me to say after you attacked the foundations of the Jewish faith as being nothing more than a pretext for rape? Thank you sir, may I have another?

  5. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Well, Matthew, as I noted a few months ago, you are the most articulate spokesman for Trump-style conservatism that I’ve encountered to date. As you post more and more, I’m beginning to understand that your mastery of the genre is unparalleled. Good work.

    • posted by MR Bill on

      (..slow clap…)

    • posted by Matthew on

      I’m not even clicking on that link. I’m not rewarding you for your psychological projection. Trump’s Presidency is a response TO Regressive Left trolling in support of treason against the United States and against Jews, gay people, and advances in women’s rights.

  6. posted by MR Bill on

    This is a peculiar complaint: here in Rural Georgia, the churches have become vectors for right wing propaganda: a preacher’s wife (a customer in the bookstore) kept telling me Obamacare “will require everyone to be chipped like a dog” and that meant it was the Apocalyptic Mark of the Beast. Obama was routinely called a Secret Muslim by the Crosspoint mega church pastor in his column in the local paper..Franklin Graham, the Christian Brother to us GLBT folks who apparently wants to have us killed is a great example, of some one who’s sold the clear teachings of Jesus for A mess of pottage Republicanism, Prosperity Gospel and all.

    • posted by Kosh III on

      Mr Bill
      That’s common in Tennessee too. Hardly a surprise. In the 20th century in the South, the pastor of the local Southern Baptist church was often the local KKK leader.

      • posted by MR Bill on

        I’d said for years that the Southern Baptist Convention had become a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party…

        • posted by Matthew on

          What do you expect when the Democrats spend the better part of the 21st century kissing atheist and Muslim ass at the expense of Christians and Jews, and don’t kid yourself: hetero male leftist swine really don’t care if gay people become collateral damage of their stupidity.

    • posted by Jorge on

      Franklin Graham, the Christian Brother to us GLBT folks who apparently wants to have us killed is a great example, of some one who’s sold the clear teachings of Jesus for A mess of pottage Republicanism, Prosperity Gospel and all

      A bag of silver would have been more sensible. I’ve always felt Judas got a bad rap, praise the Lord!

      • posted by Matthew on

        Jesus never existed. He was a myth made up by Romans to justify their illegal occupation of Judea after the fact. Much like how Pale-Swine-Nazis use the ramblings of the racist pedophile Muhammad to justify their illegal occupation of Jewish land.

        • posted by Jorge on

          Adam and Eve never existed. They were a myth made up by Jews to justify rape.

          • posted by Matthew on

            Go back where you came from, you antisemitic wetback!

          • posted by Matthew on

            Only an antisemite tries to pin the blame on Jews for gentile rape culture. Goyim and goyim alone are responsible for rape, especially you goddamn Catholics. Jews have been on the forefront of fighting rape culture

            You fucking Catholics initiated Christianity’s initial heresy from Judaism, so you have a lot of nerve accusing the Jews of making up stories to try and justify rape. Especially since your priest probably tried to do just that to you and/or one of your peers when you were 13. Meanwhile, when I was that age, my Rabbi was helping me become a Bar Mitzvah, and he never laid a finger on me that way.

            Not being Jewish is a violation of God’s law. Latin America exists because of white heterosexual Catholic imperialism paid for with money stolen from Jews by that whore Queen Isabella who had an affair with that greasy land-stealing wop Columbus.

          • posted by Matthew on

            Steve would have known better than to eat the apple.

          • posted by Matthew on

            Your hate speech against the Jews puts the blood of everyone who was murdered at the hands of that vile verminous cracker breeder goy parasite Robert Bowers on your hands and the hands of all non-Jews everywhere, no exceptions. If you’re not Jewish, then the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting is your fault. You are responsible for fomenting the antisemitism that poisoned Robert Bowers’ brain. You might as well have sold him the gun and the bullets along with the New Testament because he used that to justify attempted genocide against his Jewish superiors.

            It is time for Ashkenazi Jews to acknowledge that we are people of color, not “white,” and stop identifying as such on the 2020 census. Whiteness is the fuel that stokes the fires of antisemitism. That honky motherfucker needs to fry in the electric chair. Executing this perverted blasphemer would be perfectly in line with Jewish law, specifically Leviticus 24:19-21:

            “And if a man shall injure his countrymen, so too shall he be injured in the exact same fashion; namely fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; as he has injured someone, so shall it be done to him.”

            Fry that fucking cracker breeder goy like a crab cake on the Fourth of July. The cost of putting racist sexist antisemitic homophobic trash like him to death is worth every penny for the benefits it sends to society of removing Nazi trash like him from the gene pool, and also to send a message that those targeted by bigotry can and will use lethal force in self-defense, and that those who attack Jews, gays, and black people will be attacked in retaliation no matter fucking what. You will bow down and worship us as God-kings and Goddess-queens among humans. You will do everything we say when we tell you to do it and do it exactly as we tell you to do it with no deviations from our instructions whatsoever. Blacks are the master race, Jews are the master religion, gays are the master sexual orientation. The world belongs to us and us alone.

    • posted by Matthew on

      Stop with that “us el-jibbity folks” crap right now. I am a gay man, and you do not have permission to lump me or any other gay men and lesbians with a bunch of sick self-loathing self-mutilating freaks. JUST SAY GAY, YOU FUCKING UNCLE TOM!

      • posted by MR Bill on

        Poor snowflake, do you need a trigger warning?

        • posted by Matthew on

          More ableist hate speech from the Regressive Left, proving bullying, bigotry, and psychological projection really are the only weapons in your pitiful intellectual arsenal.

          JUST SAY GAY, OR YOU’RE A SELF-LOATHING QUISLING WHO HAS GAY AND LESBIAN BLOOD ON HIS OR HER HANDS.

        • posted by Jorge on

          You know I almost gave one with my “Bikini” question, but…

          it would have distracted from the question.

          • posted by Matthew on

            Fuck you racist papist wetback.

          • posted by Matthew on

            Like Asians, you fetishize whiteness because you like to project your inferiority to black people and Jews onto us. It’s all you’ve got. You look for someone darker than you to look down on. That’s why Latinos and Asians are, for all intents and purposes, white.

          • posted by Matthew on

            Anyone who isn’t Jewish might just as well be just another PBR-swilling sister-fucking Confederate flag-flying racist white redneck living in a trailer with more broken cars in the driveway than working ones.

  7. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Americans have always had political disagreements with their neighbors, but in the past, political differences could disappear when Friday night ballgames rolled around and the whole town turned out wearing the same colors and cheering for the same team. Today our towns are hollower, and we’re not on the same team anymore. …

    George Will has written a thoughtful response to Ben Sasse’s nostalgia.

    • posted by Matthew on

      By turning his back on the GOP, George Will became the heterosexual Andrew Sullivan.

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