Joe Biden, Senator from Citibank (oops, DELAWARE), to Run for President

generally nagl to flatter a “bloc” known for abducting/abusing/stalking

considering how many of SoCal's electeds have directly or indirectly validated the church, and how many of those same electeds on both sides of the aisle have turned a blind eye to the decades of abuses perpetuated against South Central, this feels ... off https://t.co/KubQGsRIdu pic.twitter.com/jQRY87oslF

— sahra (@sahrasulaiman) July 31, 2020

nagl to flatter a “bloc” known for abducting/abusing/stalking

but her live audience didn't view themselves that way and they have both money and votes which are up for grabs. this used to be how every pol worked a campaign, saying whatever was tailored to the people sitting in front of them. that was before ubiquitous video/audio recording and instant mass dissemination by anyone anywhere to billions of people. now everyone can look at your nagl. she should have known better than to trawl in those waters.

Los Angeles politics is a cesspool. If speaking at a Scientology event is as bad as it gets then she is the cleanest politician in LA. Also I think this is bad, but I’m not convinced this is a big deal for many voters in the era of Q.

Not a deal breaker for me.

For an organization banking so many celebs' money, Scientology really makes everything look chintzy.

:)

It's the Donald Trump of religions.

Next

Serious question: How big is the Scientology vote in L.A.?

In terms of votes, negligible. I don’t think they even particularly big donors as an institution.

Their numbers in LA are plausibly higher than any other city, but the amount of s¢ienos worldwide is so small that they would not fill all of the storefront real estate that the church owns in LA.

In 2011, the guy previously in charge of ordering e-meters reckoned there were between 10,000 and 15,000 active, paying members worldwide. In 2014, Mike Rinder calculated that even by inflated UK PR figures, there was a ceiling of 216,000 worldwide.


storefront real estate that the church owns in LA

After posting I wondered if I should have covered myself by including the Celebrity Centre as well, but: in the first link there, from Tony Ortega, the church owned 484 square feet of property for every active Scientologist in the world in 2011.

Since then, they have opened a 2.5 hectare (269,098 sq ft) centre in Sydney alone, for 100 attending members.

Scientology is bad and all but it would be weird to me to reject her over this and not any given politician who's given a speech to Catholics or w/e.

Agree with milo. Either treat all the cults the same or admit that one's aberrations can be overlooked while another's cannot

not to be cap'n save jesus but I don't think it's that weird to treat a new "religion" with an unbroken track record of intimidation, gaslighting, fraud and almost certainly murder differently from the ones millions or even billions have belonged to over centuries

Crusades to thread

not to be cap'n save jesus but I don't think it's that weird to treat a new "religion" with an unbroken track record of intimidation, gaslighting, fraud and almost certainly murder differently from the ones millions or even billions have belonged to over centuries

Failure to nip those other ones in the bud doesn't mean we shouldn't try (again, harder) with a new one.

Simon otm

Yes. I don't think many of you outside California understand how common it is. https://t.co/znH5PEpR1d

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) August 1, 2020

Biden is reading every word Bass ever wrote or uttered. The Scientology thing is not in itself disqualifying, nor is it buried deep. It would have come out the moment he chose her. So leak it now, take the temperature, allow yourself room to maneuver.

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) August 1, 2020

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hole_(Scientology)

Totes normal stuff, nbd.

What does Scientology want with my hole

For it to go clear.

Y'all acting like nearly every genocide and plundering of the past 500 years can't be directly or indirectly attributed to Christianity are wild. Of course it doesn't mean that Scientology gets a pass, but it's either all or nothing, afaic.

That politicians have to kowtow to ANY religion in order to get elected is insane.

some of you are absolutely blowing my mind with the revelation that christianity is sus

T/S enema vs enneagram

It's not about blowing your mind, Simon, it's that Christianity is a cult. It's just larger. And in substance and practice, it continues to harm a lot more people than Scientology.

scientology probably harms more people per capita

are you sure u hate christianity? cause you seem to love preaching 2 the choir xp

xpost yeah but there's many per capitas

“Christianity” is way too broad a belief system and lacks things like centralization and a charismatic leader to be lumped in w cults like Scientology.

I know Christians who have absolutely nothing in common with each other philosophically or politically.

Okay. Then treat Christianity the same as Scientology.

xpost well of course, there's a bazillion denominations. I started Methodist and became Fundamentalist and let's just say one was more fun than the other

there are a lot of cool chill christians and harmless denominations xps

table you’re one of these flying spaghetti monster people aren’t you

American Christianity as a collective whole seems pretty toxic though, even if one wants to No True Scotsman away the bad actors (not that anybody itt is doing that)

I suspect Christianity practiced elsewhere may be more peachy

I know lil’ Neanderthal owned himself some Stryper records

Ah just what we needed this weekend 2004-quality nu-atheist takes on Christianity writ large, what the word “cult” means, etc

xpost Petra actually!

it's either all or nothing

Why?

This isn't high school debate team where you get disqualified for a logical fallacy by an impartial moderator. This is politics, a game of popularity and numbers and mass (no pun intended) digestibility of messaging.

If what you really want is for the Democratic platform to be "dismantle capitalism and, while we're at it, let's go ahead and make Christianity illegal too," well, I guess I admire your conviction but I doubt that's a winning platform in the world we actually inhabit.

silby I'm surprised you haven't posted "all religious people should be drawn and quartered and their bodies composted to bring on a green nu-age" or something by now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-rfCnW5VlE

MLK was a pretty dece Christian, except for the compulsive womanizing, ymmv

Christianity is chockfull of progressive splinter elements, some of which are mainstream in other contexts (e.g. the Anglican Church of Canada strikes me as chiller than most). Can the same be said for Scientology?

Not to mention that secularized notions of justice are directly derived from the Judeo-Christian tradition. You could even argue – and the case has been made convincingly – that atheism is a precipitate of Christianity, i.e. 'the religion of exit from religion', to quote Jean-Luc Nancy.

I also think that saying 'it's just larger' is kinda moot: there comes a point where the sheer number of adepts necessarily, automatically reflects a degree of diversity such that generalizations are rendered even more useless than usual.

xps

Thats substantially opposite of something I believe. I think America could stand to be more religious, and less white supremacist American evangelical Christian

Judeo-Christian tradition

pom darlin please consider forgetting this stock phrase which means nothing and is mostly used to try to lampshade Christian hegemony and co-opt Jews into its perpetuation

It can also be used to acknowledge that Christianity stems from Judaism and would be unthinkable without it.

That's what I meant anyway. But as we were saying in the anti-semitism thread, there are certainly plenty of (mainly American) evangelicals who act as though they've figured Judaism out better than Jews themselves.