• Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    This really isn’t anything different than any other president has said in living memory. If anything, it’s not as extreme as some of them.

    For example-

    No, I don’t know that atheists should be regarded as citizens, nor should they be regarded as patriotic. This is one nation under God.

    That was George H. W. Bush.

    That said, I will give his piece of shit son credit for one thing. He said this:

    I will be your president regardless of your faith. And I don’t expect you to agree with me, necessarily, on religion. As a matter of fact, no president should ever try to impose religion on our society. The great – the great tradition of America is one where people can worship the – the way they want to worship. And if they choose not to worship, they’re just as patriotic as your neighbor.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination_against_atheists#United_States

    I can’t remember any other time when a Republican at pretty much any level, let alone a president, would say that about atheists.

    • DarkThoughts@fedia.io
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      7 months ago

      Crazy times when the bar fell so low that Bush isn’t even considered to be one of the worst US presidents anymore. US hardliners have all gone so crazy that people like him, by comparison, appear to be moderate now.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Remember the “miss me now?” signs with Bush on them after Obama was elected?

        I hate to say it, but… compared to the alternative Republicans have on offer these days, yes.

        • ChicoSuave@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Jesus, that was such a weird time that folks wanted Bush back despite the super recession he caused. Obama really rocked the right hard so they said to themselves “never be mocked by libruls again” and are trying to take down democracy. And folks were calling out the fascist direction back with Bush/Cheney too.

        • hark@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Then your memory is lacking, sorry to say. Bush is the patriot act, Iraq war, border fence, torture program, PRISM, secret courts, worst economic crisis since the great depression, too big to fail, surplus-to-deficit, rich tax cuts, axis of evil, no child left behind (deceptively-named act that burdened public schools), global embarrassment guy. He is actually worse than trump, and unlike trump’s fumbling ass, bush was well-connected enough to successfully steal the election in 2000 with help from the supreme court. Don’t help republicans shift the overton window by rehabilitating that war criminal’s image and treating him as some sort of moderate.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Do you know how many worse things I could list about Trump? Shall we start with how he let a million Americans die with his COVID policy?

            • hark@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              Feel free to list them. As for COVID, Biden was just as eager to open things up, he was just lucky that the vaccine became a thing as he entered office, so he could fast-track that (Trump tried to sabotage the rollout on his way out because he’s a sore loser). Lockdowns weren’t popular among the capitalist class because of the impact to business, and you can see they weren’t taken seriously with a number of politicians flouting lockdown rules (including democrats). As a reminder, Bush was warned about a potential terrorist attack happening and then let 9/11 happen on his watch, then used that as an excuse to launch two wars and install a vast surveillance apparatus, secret courts, and a torture program.

    • jaspersgroove@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      To be fair, Dubya said a whole lot of things that no president before or since has said, mostly because his grasp of the vocabulary, grammar, and basic sentence structures of the English language is tenuous at best.

    • QuantumSparkles@sh.itjust.works
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      7 months ago

      Bush Jr was totally a warmonger… but he was also seemed more rational and sane than a lot of republicans comparatively… I wouldn’t say that he’s a good guy, just one of the least bad republicans. I’ll also give it to Romney for having some sense of principles and standing up against Trump despite everything else about him. They seem like the last in a rare breed of republicans that actually have some basic sense of honor. It’s a pretty low bar honestly but they seem to be slightly less lead poisoned? Which is something, I guess?

      • pdxfed@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Dude barely could form coherent sentences. He wanted to be on his ranch, not make hard decisions and coast through life as he always had on his privilege.

        His cabinet on the other hand, of course picked for him, was the Mr Rushmore of military-industrial corpo takeover.Cheney ex Halliburton CEO that directed no-bid contract awards in the many billions to them. They of course still fraudulently over billed the government and had to cop to repayment in a level of awkwardness seldom achieved. "Con"deleeza Rice, who Exon named an oil tanker after prior to being secretary of state may have had oil interests in mid, Rumsfeld who was both the youngest and oldest secretary of defense in Ford and then Shrub administrations directed negative and increasingly antidemocratic military policy from Vietnam to Afghanistan.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        He clearly wanted to be to republicans what Clinton was to democrats, the firm commitment to centrism. Instead 9/11 happened and the country lost its damn shit and decided to declare war on Muslims and for some reason environmentalists.

    • pop@lemmy.ml
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      7 months ago

      Why is it always that the US does something bad or beyond logic, it always goes back to “what about that time when x said/did something worse” as if it’s any fucking better?

      • Remember that time when obama bombed a wedding?
      • Remember when bush made up lies about invading iraq and got out scot-free?
      • Remember that time when we invaded countries for no reason other than pushing our agenda?
      • Remember when we funded terrorists that are now terrorizing the locals?
      • Remember when we changed regimes to religious fundamentalists that turned into theocracy?
      • Remember when we supported coups in democratic countries?

      He can say any fucking prepared statement, he’s a piece of shit zionist currently perpetuating a genocide. People trying to present him in positive light comparingto the scum of the nation are maggots that plague the earth.

  • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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    7 months ago

    I sure do love being forced to vote for a capitalist christian in every goddamn election.

    Sure makes me feel like I fucking belong here.

    • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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      7 months ago

      being forced to vote for a capitalist christian in every goddamn election.

      Have you ever been involved in the candidate selection process?

      • Halasham@dormi.zone
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        7 months ago

        When was the last time we had non-Capitalist or non-Christian as options on any level of the selection process? In the two-party duopoly we’ve had… Vivek Ramaswami with the American Fascist Republican Party for non-Christian and then the closest we’ve got to non-Capitalist being Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Bernie Sander’s Social Democracy (which Sanders mislabels as Democratic Socialism).

      • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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        7 months ago

        Oh so I just need to be a lackey for the dems for thirty years and then I can con my way into a being a superdelegate and have some say in who I elect.

        And then when I pick the atheist anarchist I get told they’re unelectable.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    I mean he’s not wrong.

    If you look at the founding documents, there is ZERO mention of Jesus or Christianity and only one mention of “God” and that’s in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution.

    “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

    Nature’s God, which had and has a very specific meaning.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism

    Good book on the topic:

    https://mwstewart.com/books/natures-god/

    This is why, in the Treaty of Tripoli, the first international document to recognize the US as an independent nation, it reads:

    “As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religious or tranquility of Musselmen, and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

    Musselmen = Muslims
    Mehomitan = Islamic

    • Halasham@dormi.zone
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      7 months ago

      I find it amusing how the argumentation that America is a Christian Nation is wholly reliant on not understanding political terms along with being ignorant of the history and founding documents of the United States. This is so frequently bundled with American supremacism and yet they care so little for the work of the founders or the history of the country.

    • LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Didn’t the first pilgrims who came to what is now the USA do it because they wanted to practice their specific flavor of Christianity and England was like “nah bro, that’s crazy”? Or did my teachers in school lie to me? I know the country itself wasn’t founded on religion.

      • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        The Puritains. Yes, kicked out of England and came here because nobody else wanted them.

        But you have to keep in mind the time scales involved…

        1492 - Columbus makes contact in the Carribean.

        1620 - Pilgrims come across on the Mayflower.

        1630 - Some 20,000 Puritains come across.

        1776 - Declaration of Independence.

        1787-1788 - Constitution.

        • LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Yeah, the timeline between Columbus and the Constitution was huge. I know that a lot of the founding fathers were deists as well, which is fascinating. I wish some of their visions for the country were still a thing.

  • madcaesar@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    I’m an atheist. But I understand the need for this language because the majority of the country believes this bullshit so you have to pay lip service to it.

  • The Snark Urge@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Not too long ago you couldn’t have a Catholic president saying this isn’t a Christian nation. It’s smaller progress than could be hoped, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.

      • BallsandBayonets@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Ah but it’s not in the Constitution so it’s not legit. /s

        Not that the Constitution even matters to them when it is inconvenient.

          • Halasham@dormi.zone
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            7 months ago

            I’ve literally had people argue to me that the First Amendment only meant that you could pick whichever version of Christianity you preferred but didn’t specify any right to non-Christianity at all.

      • The Snark Urge@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Oh sure, let’s all zoom out and take in the scope of history so we can appreciate the long decline of the renaissance. La de da. 🙄

  • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Humans as a whole are selfish, greedy, short-sighted, ignorant, aggressive, toxic assholes.

    Saying we’re made in God’s image is one of the hardest-hitting insults at God we could possibly drop - it’s literally an attack on every single one of Sky Daddy’s features.

  • Verdant Banana@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    In the same breath, Biden asserts that every person is created in the “image of God,” implying a place for faith in interpreting America’s founding principles.

    coming from a Catholic that was in office when Roe v. Wade was overturned

    feels more like United States of Christ than ever

    • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      You don’t seem to understand that the President and the Supreme Court are two different branches of the government, each with separate powers and responsibilities.

      Saying that Biden ‘was in office’ is meaningless, because there was nothing he could have legally done.