Recent U.S. election

[Anonymous]

I also wonder if some of the problem has to do with the idea that you should never bring up religion or politics. Especially during times like Thanksgiving with family. We know these topics are controversial and want to avoid conflict, so we just keep quiet about them in some social situations. And then maybe seek out online echo chambers where we can voice our views with no worry of conflict. But refusing to discuss these issues also prevents us from understanding the deeply-held beliefs of those around us and seeing things from their perspective. I wonder if the solution is actually to talk more about politics and religion as a society, but in a civil manner with the goal of understanding one another.

[Anonymous]

A friend’s teenage daughter once said “Facebook is where old people go to fight.” She’s right. Facebook also have the obnoxious trait of making people think their views are having an effect… When in fact, if their posts are hidden from some of their “friends” and also deprioritized if they push a narrative Facebook’s controllers disagree with.

At least on this forum, I see everyone’s opinions, including ones I disagree with.

I was very happy to see Mark Zuckerberg being dragged over the coals by the US senate. It appears Facebook, Google (incl. Youtube) and Twitter not only track their users all over the internet, but they also share information on who to blacklist and block. Senator Hawley and others rightly referred to Facebook etc as “robber barons”. It is obvious Facebook and Google manipulate public opinion and constitute the biggest invasion of privacy in human history. They, along with Apple and Microsoft should be broken up like Standard Oil was.

[Anonymous]

Arrakeen wrote:

I also wonder if some of the problem has to do with the idea that you should never bring up religion or politics. Especially during times like Thanksgiving with family. We know these topics are controversial and want to avoid conflict, so we just keep quiet about them in some social situations. And then maybe seek out online echo chambers where we can voice our views with no worry of conflict. But refusing to discuss these issues also prevents us from understanding the deeply-held beliefs of those around us and seeing things from their perspective. I wonder if the solution is actually to talk more about politics and religion as a society, but in a civil manner with the goal of understanding one another.

Up front, I do the “no politics or religion” pretty much everywhere, including work (where some topics are verboten anyway) and at family gatherings. And I do’t do social media partly because of privacy and partly because it was a big distraction for me when I did do it. That said, I hear what you’re saying Arrakeen. I think the problem is finding individuals with whom we can carry on those civil conversations. I’m not saying there aren’t any but there certainly are very vocal aggressive people on both sides. And unfortunately part of our church culture is the mindset of being right while everybody else is wrong (one true church and all that jazz) so sometimes it’s even more difficult with church members. I caught some news on my way in to work this morning (not a conservative station) criticizing Joe Biden for saying he didn’t plan to start his presidency by investigating any potential wrongdoings by the current president. If Joe is sincere about wanting to heal the divide, and I think he is, that would be a start but he’s being criticized by haters who are supposed to be on his side. It’s such a crazy time we live in.

[Anonymous]

I occasionally watch “born again” religious programs on tv. It takes about 10 min max before I have to change to a different

station. It is interesting how they can tie the us elections to the “end of days” & the 2nd coming of Christ. In the process,

selling books, survival supplies & asking for donations. I’ve said it before: these are strange times to be living.

[Anonymous]

Minyan Man wrote:

I occasionally watch “born again” religious programs on tv. It takes about 10 min max before I have to change to a different

station. It is interesting how they can tie the us elections to the “end of days” & the 2nd coming of Christ. In the process,

selling books, survival supplies & asking for donations. I’ve said it before: these are strange times to be living.

Well November 2020 feels a lot more like the end times than November 2018 did.

[Anonymous]

Minyan Man wrote:

I occasionally watch “born again” religious programs on tv. It takes about 10 min max before I have to change to a different

station. It is interesting how they can tie the us elections to the “end of days” & the 2nd coming of Christ. In the process,

selling books, survival supplies & asking for donations. I’ve said it before: these are strange times to be living.

I watch them on occasion as well. They have been more difficult to tolerate of late, and I also switch to something else. In some ways they remind me of more what the church itself was like in the 80s/early 90s. I think there’s a reason the church has moved away from that type of rhetoric (more than just a greater focus on Christ) and I’m grateful for it. I don’t really believe the church president/Q15 have any more insight than the rest of us and I don’t believe they will know any more than anyone else about when the second coming/end of times will arrive. But I do think it significant that they don’t talk about it being urgently imminent much (and again, I don’t expect Friday’s message from RMN to focus on that).

[Anonymous]

That’s a curious American phenomenon. I wouldn’t connect born again Christians with any particular party here… The USA used to have a Christian left but you don’t hear about it much anymore.

As for end of days, it certainly feels like it and not because of that election, but because of everything else.

[Anonymous]

SamBee wrote:

That’s a curious American phenomenon. I wouldn’t connect born again Christians with any particular party here… The USA used to have a Christian left but you don’t hear about it much anymore.

As for end of days, it certainly feels like it and not because of that election, but because of everything else.

I don’t know of a Christian left here but there is most definitely a Christian right which includes many members of the church. I think some of them faced a dilemma because of the difficulty they had with voting for someone who was clearly not very Christ-like. I think Pence was initially added to the ticket in part to appeal to the Christian right because he is one of them, but I also think people don’t vote for the vice president (although there could be an argument made for some people voting for Biden because they like Harris and/or believe she has a high likelihood of becoming president).

[Anonymous]

Martin Luther King would count as Christian left, as would some of those pastors that went on peace marches. I’m an outsider looking in, but I would associate such a concept in the USA with certain African American churches. Within mainstream US politics, Jimmy Carter is certainly a devout Christian too.

[Anonymous]

The 1960s and even the 80s were a far different political and religious climate in the US. There are Christian Republicans and Democrats, but the Christian right is far more vocal and active than any Christian left at this point. Liberals seem to be less likely to belong to organized religion and more likely to express a humanist viewpoint. I think the Christian right can be seen as a voting block of sorts while the Christian left probably left so.

Biden himself is a fairly active Catholic from what I understand, but I’m not sure that got him votes. I know a fair number of Catholics and they run the gamut on abortion – but it’s hard for the very devout anti-abortion types from any religion to vote for a Democrat and I often hear that question: “How can he be Catholic and anti-abortion and be a democrat?” (Andrew Cuomo is another example.) I don’t know the answer to that question. I know there were members of the church who questioned Harry Reid’s true beliefs as well. If a similar question were asked of me (I am independent) I would answer that I do not vote based on my religious beliefs or the religious beliefs of a candidate.

[Anonymous]

I feel there has been a lot of anti-Christian sentiment on the left in recent years – some of it driven by the gay rights lobby (which has not, in the main, worked with gay friendly Christians, but attacked the religion in general.) I think I’ve said elsewhere on here, I think that gay rights extremists, i.e. the ones that trash chapels, have made life harder for LGBT LDS (now there’s an alphabet soup), and people sympathetic to them (not going to use that word “allies”…)

Obama was at least nominally Christian, his recent book, A Promised Land takes its title ultimately from the Bible and Reverend King’s speech. Obama isn’t very African American in the usual sense due to his background, but he does owe his public speaking style somewhat to black preachers.

I’m on the fence about Kamala Harris though. She seems to have an unclear relationship to Christianity (and indeed Hinduism). I tend to think of her as a career politician from a moneyed background.

I also don’t know Bernie’s relationship with his Jewish background either. I suspect it is mostly cultural not religious. In interviews he has talked about his family, and how they shaped him. I forget the name of the show, but he went on one of these family history programs with Larry David and it turned out they were related. It’s on Youtube if you have an hour to kill.

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