“Classmates warn Heimrich Himmler he risks enabling descent ‘into fascism’”

AD 30 was the beginning of the papacy of Peter the Apostle, which according to the Catholic Church, was its first pope. Catholic teachings state that Peter’s successors form an unbroken line of Church leaders from AD 30 to the present day, though historic evidence is somewhat incomplete. This is the canonical start date of the Catholic Church as an organisation. “Christianity”, broadly speaking, is just a label affixed to anyone who identifies themselves as a follower of the teachings of Jesus Christ.

The Catholic Church names Jesus Christ as its founder. If you accept this claim, then you could definitely say that it was a political organisation as well as a religious one from the beginning, as Jesus was notoriously put to death by the Roman state for political reasons. The Jewish Sanhedrin which had condemned Jesus for claiming to be the Messiah had no legal authority in Roman Judea; legally speaking, Jesus was put to death on the orders of Pontius Pilate (prefect of Judea) for sedition and for being “King of the Jews”. The legal veracity of this charge is questionable, of course, and Jesus famously preached for his followers to “render unto [the Emperor] the things that are [the Emperor’s]”, i.e. to respect the state and the laws, but the Roman Empire wasn’t known for being an egalitarian state with strong rule of law.

In my experience, Catholics tend to be pretty moderate, since the Catholic Church is strictly hierarchical and all dogma originates from the Vatican. The size of the Church, it seems, has a moderating effect on its dogma since they have to appeal to such a large group of followers, and the views of its members tend to average out with a bias towards conservatism (because the Church is so unbelievably old that the inertia of 15th or 10th century doctrine still holds sway).

Protestants, meanwhile, span the whole political spectrum since the label is pretty broad in general. There are plenty of Protestant churches in my area that espouse very liberal and accepting social views, and probably at least a dozen will even marry same-sex couples, something notoriously disapproved of by the Catholic Church and many other denominations. But there are also many, much louder, Protestant churches that are basically full MAGA.

The Catholic Church has been a political institution for almost its entire existence. It is probably the *oldest * political institution in Europe, having existed since AD 30 according to its own history (though as you get further back in time, history starts turning into legend and mythology; it’s really not clear where that line is).

During the Middle Ages, you could very well be burnt at the stake for heresy or be sent to die in the Crusades, upon the orders of the pope. And for over a millennium, the Church directly ruled over a pretty sizeable piece of territory in central Italy.

True, true.

The midterms are still 18 months away. 18 months before the last election, Republicans were still bickering over who they wanted their speaker to be and obviously they won that last one so anything is possible.

I’m surprised that Sanders is older than both Trump and Biden but retains about twice as much virility as either of them and about four times as much sanity as Trump

I don’t think a BRICS currency will be successful in replacing the dollar unless the governments of the participating countries force their businesses to use it. The reason why transactions are denominated and settled in US dollars is because of the perceived stability of its value and the openness of the US financial system to international trade. People use the US dollar because they trust the American government to not excessively devalue it and for it to be reliably useful later on.

And yes, I recognise that all of these are under attack by the current US government.

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It’s extremely frustrating to see this guy dropping one truth bomb after another just to have nobody listen to him. I wish Sanders was younger.

Edit: It’s really sad, now that I think of it. Here is a man who has devoted his entire life to the betterment of his country. And here he still is, in his eighties, continuing to fight to prevent the rights and liberties that he in his twenties fought to create from being undone. If there was any justice in this world, he should have just now wrapped up his term as President of the United States and be enjoying the few years he has left on this earth in peace after having passed the torch to the next generation of Democratic leaders. Bernie Sanders, a true patriot and devoted warrior for the working class to the very end.

This is basically why Democratic politicians are less popular than Republican ones. A Republican president will be liked by 90%+ of his party and nearly no Democrats. A Democratic president is liked by half of his party and called a genocide supporter by the other half, and supported by nearly no Republicans.

Obviously it is. But not all insurrections are wrong.

Committing an insurrection because you lost an election is far less laudable than committing insurrection against an increasingly fascist dictatorship.

Twitter is not as addicting as TikTok is. Using Twitter doesn’t form psychological dependence to nearly the scale that TikTok does. This is like comparing a ban against soda versus a ban against cigarettes. If soda is banned then a large number of previous soda-drinkers will just quit drinking soda. If cigarettes are banned, it’s not as likely that cigarette-smokers will suddenly decide to quit as a result. Granted, nicotine is known to be one of the most chemically addicting substances to mankind, but I think the comparison is still appropriate.

So it seems everyone’s rushing to bribe the new president

Technically, most smartphones in the world already run Linux because Android uses the Linux kernel

(I know that’s not really what you mean, I’m just being cheeky here)

Sure, it’s interesting, but maybe people like to talk about something else? Not every conversation about someone needs to be about the top most notorious thing about them.

That being said…

Student loans are collected by contracted third-party loan servicing organisations, not the Government.

If you don’t pay, the servicer can initiate legal proceedings against you on their own regardless of what’s happening within the Education Department.