Trump / Musk (other than DOGE) Omnibus Thread

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nycfan said:
Related:

Behold the Strange Spectacle of Christians Against Empathy​


“… The Republican Christian right made a hard turn against immigration and, in its most extreme political faction, is turning against empathy itself.

In 2020, Ryan Burge, perhaps the nation’s leading researcher of statistical trends in American religion, found that white evangelicals were the religious cohort of Americans most likely to support separating children from parents when their parents enter the country illegally. They were also the cohort mostly likely to support drastic reductions in legal immigration.

… At the same time, hard-right Christians began to turn against the very idea of empathy. Last year a popular right-wing podcaster, Allie Beth Stuckey, published a best-selling book called “Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion.” This month, a right-wing theologian, Joe Rigney, is publishing a book called “The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits.”

These attacks are rooted in the idea that progressives emotionally manipulate evangelicals into supporting causes they would otherwise reject. For example, if people respond to the foreign aid shutdown and the stop-work orders by talking about how children might suffer or die, then they’re exhibiting toxic empathy.

That’s one reason you’ll often see a shocking amount of derision online when anyone starts talking about the human toll of Trump’s decisions. His MAGA evangelicals are broadcasting that you cannot reach them with anything that looks like an appeal to the heart. . …”
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I would definitely expect an autistic man with little self-awareness to view empathy as a weakness. But for professed Christians to argue it, we’ve truly gone through the looking glass.
 
nycfan said:
Related:

Behold the Strange Spectacle of Christians Against Empathy​


“… The Republican Christian right made a hard turn against immigration and, in its most extreme political faction, is turning against empathy itself.

In 2020, Ryan Burge, perhaps the nation’s leading researcher of statistical trends in American religion, found that white evangelicals were the religious cohort of Americans most likely to support separating children from parents when their parents enter the country illegally. They were also the cohort mostly likely to support drastic reductions in legal immigration.

… At the same time, hard-right Christians began to turn against the very idea of empathy. Last year a popular right-wing podcaster, Allie Beth Stuckey, published a best-selling book called “Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion.” This month, a right-wing theologian, Joe Rigney, is publishing a book called “The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits.”

These attacks are rooted in the idea that progressives emotionally manipulate evangelicals into supporting causes they would otherwise reject. For example, if people respond to the foreign aid shutdown and the stop-work orders by talking about how children might suffer or die, then they’re exhibiting toxic empathy.

That’s one reason you’ll often see a shocking amount of derision online when anyone starts talking about the human toll of Trump’s decisions. His MAGA evangelicals are broadcasting that you cannot reach them with anything that looks like an appeal to the heart. . …”
Click to expand...

Very interesting.

Bart Ehrman's new book is going to be on how the teachings of Jesus on altruism and empathy laid the moral foundation for western civilization. The attack on empathy - even with the qualifiers Musk and Rogan gave - is a direct attack on the basic teachings of Christianity.
 
TarSpiel said:
Very interesting.

Bart Ehrman's new book is going to be on how the teachings of Jesus on altruism and empathy laid the moral foundation for western civilization. The attack on empathy - even with the qualifiers Musk and Rogan gave - is a direct attack on the basic teachings of Christianity.
Click to expand...
The link between the teachings of Christ and the current state of American Christianity is tenuous at best.
 
altmin said:

Electric vehicle rebates in Canada differ from those in the U.S., but they serve the same purpose: bringing the upfront costs of EVs down. Dealerships provide rebates of up to $5,000 at the point of sale and then the government reimburses them. However, before the program ended in January, Tesla reportedly claimed over half of the remaining funds, leaving Canadian dealers in the red. Now, they’re pissed.

...

Canada’s iZEV rebate was paused in January after the funds earmarked for the program were allocated earlier than expected. The weekend before the program ended, there was a massive increase in claims from Tesla, as it claimed over half of the remaining $71.8 million (Canadian dollars).

The Toronto Star reported that four Tesla outlets filed for 8,653 EV sales in just 72 hours, worth $43.1 million in rebates. This ultimately led to the portal’s shutdown, leaving hundreds of dealerships without a way to recoup the rebates they had offered to buyers at the point of sale.
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Tesla was claiming to be selling two cars per minute at four dealers to claims these...

 
TarSpiel said:
Very interesting.

Bart Ehrman's new book is going to be on how the teachings of Jesus on altruism and empathy laid the moral foundation for western civilization. The attack on empathy - even with the qualifiers Musk and Rogan gave - is a direct attack on the basic teachings of Christianity.
Click to expand...
These people complain that empathy is weaponized, that it is used to make people act differently than they otherwise would. It's "toxic empathy."

YES! That is in fact the whole point. Morality is about acting differently than you otherwise would. I don't know what Christianity is to these people if you strip out morality.
 
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