And of course she will pursue it; it's what she's dreamed of. My question is at what point do we grasp the fact that religious people actually MEAN it? All of it? Because it's so fundamentally unbelievable we've been an easy target to take down. Paradoxically, we have been advocates for tolerance of religion's defining trait of INtolerance, so the whole LGBTQ evolution of human rights means that a standoff is inevitable, a bona fide culture war i.e.
I say bring it on and clear the air with the truth, that having been liberally given FAR more than an inch, believers have avidly taken the proverbial mile....and they are very patient and utilitarian in their quest, but when the U.S. Supreme Court has been taken over by fellow believers (Catholics also), excitement is starting to build.....finally women will be controlled again, as they SHOULD be. Consider that absolute outrage and in 2023 yet. We have dropped the ball big time.
After all, it must take a certain amount of effort to maintain such a monumental delusion and the "faith" required when you're surrounded by ever more heretics, not to mention ubiquitous reality itself; I mean how does it NOT intrude regularly? It's the very definition of living in your head or living in a bubble. It's thin on the ground. No wonder religious people need their own club houses, thousands of them, tax-free, and their own Christian versions of everything, starting with their own school system; also note that only Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario still have a separate school system that is publicly funded. Even Catholic Quebec ended that. AND the UCP opened the door to even more via charter schools because UCP could rightly stand for the United Christian Party when so many are religious. Half the UCP board are now Take Back Alberta bunch, despite them being considered religious "extremists."
It's very much worth mentioning that the whole god idea is in and of itself truly "out there," i.e. the very definition of extreme.
The fact that no one wants to mention the imposing elephant in the room, especially its growing influence in our public life, and now at the highest levels of our government means everyone needs to now reappraise the usual qualifier of, "Oh, I don't mind religion as long as they don't try and shove it down my throat."
Well, there should definitely be a tickle in your throat at this point. And remember, we're talking CATHOLIC doctrine, the worst in a bad field because of its steadFAST misogyny, the one that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that all this crap was a male idea...
I get your passion,, and your frustration. But it might help to remember that the religious impulse is by nature an impulse of reverence....and that something weird has happened when it transmogrifies into the current culture wars.
We stand in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater if we forget that the current forms of white Christianity are really a tip of something like an iceberg, but warmer.
I know. I am by nature and nurture a deeply religious person.....but what brings me to my knees is not how many angels can dance on a pin but how many microbes can inhabit a small cubicle of soil.
Life is Sacred. All of it. When we feel that, in our bones, hear that in our language, live that in our communities..we will have replaced the barborousness of this culture....
And the profanity of a culture that wants to limit access to abortion....but thinks continued rip and ship of life destroying hydrocarbons is the completion of the old testament injunction that 'man should subdue and dominate nature.
Nature is sacred. Those who willfully destroy her for money are about as close to the antichrist as I can imagine.
Human evil, period, like the reverence, both absolutely in our repertoire.
Maybe if we had called it FATHER Nature we wouldn't BE in this mess....
Religion is about male dominance first and foremost and the impulse to dominate and subdue and generally rule the world, and it makes no sense for any woman to line up with it when you look at how EVERY iteration of the delusion also has that in common, how women are lesser.
I don't disagree with you about organized religion in the past and most everywhere on the planet now. For me, the worst part of it is most religions honestly believe one has to see the invisible world as they do......or be subjected to conversion therapy.
But the impulse to worship...the inclination our species has to feelings of awe....isn't a part of our being I'd eliminate. Nor can we ever escape the existence of mystery....it is often at the bottom of what we most love.
So we could conceivably get rid of all the Doctrines of this or that Certainty.........just so stories trotted out for the innocent and the gullible.......and replace them with a genuine respect for the mystery inherent in all life.
This year, the trees have made a decision, quite likely concerning global warming....in our large garden they are planning a forest. At our age, the chances of them succeeding are good.
In my determination to be aware...fully awake....I pull them out, with apologies...but I see the explosions of seeds and seedlings now....everywhere. And it is a mystery to me, how life forms we mostly regard as lumber......could be ahead of us in preparing to weather the weather that we have brought them.
Beneath our feet......at the microscopic level of the soil.......furious adaptation, mitigation and restoration has likely been at work for a few decades. Life may fail....and our stupid ideas of human divinity succeed in bringing on our damned Armegeddon.
But me and my house are standing with the trees. What male domination has done to women is petty compared to what its done to the living earth. It has to stop.
Well one way or another it will; cancer cures smoking. And what male domination has done to women is on a par with both the need to dominate and the disdain shown for "mother" nature. In that context, what is now manifesting is "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."
What I don't get is why the mystery and wonder isn't ENOUGH, but religion is a curious mixture of us at our most pathetic, i.e. childish, irrational AND arrogant. It's also in keeping with the mindset of many juvenile males, hence the most salient question before us may well be whether or not we will survive the male of our species.
I find cult leaders like David Parker of TBA to be the usual example of this i.e. both transparent AND ridiculous, but also dangerous, not to mention fundamentally dishonest because he's using religion in the usual pedestrian male way to serve his own ego/desire for power. Jerry Seinfeld said that "most men are low-level superheroes in their own minds," but these religious guys go further by seeing themselves as low-level GODS in their own minds. Which is why I regard the whole god idea as utterly, irredeemably male. And importantly, just another idea after all, albeit the worst one men have ever come up with. AND the one that may ultimately do us all in.
Most of the time. Though a day bike riding and river swimming with our two almost 9 year old grand daughters, makes me feel the sudden grace of being blessed beyond imagining as well.
That I should have lived so long.....and still be able to totter into a swimming hole made by our wonderful Bow river...satisfies my lust for power.
Like you, I find the God crew ludicrous, and frightening, but in addition, I often imagine how unhappy they must be....low-level Gods that they are...having nothing better to do than TAKE BACK a province they've mostly already TRASHED.
This new UCP cabinet is a joke, and nothing more. These people aren't fit for their roles. In addition, for the number of UCP MLAs that were elected, a 24 member cabinet is still way too large. It's down from the 27-39 member cabinet the UCP used to have, prior to this last provincial election, but it is still way too large. Rachel Notley only had a 12 member cabinet. The Alberta PCs also never had that large of a cabinet, as far as I recall. Regardless, I don't think Danielle Smith will remain as premier for much longer. I can't see that happening.
Who is it you think is going to remove her....and will it lead to anything other than a more extreme UCP incarnation??? These folks may change their leaders regularly, but their reductive ideology???? It's never yet been proven wrong in their eyes......only badly applied.
Into what is the question. The most interesting thing about the latest incarnations of right wing ideology is their willingness to use force.....not to mention their total ignorance of how our democracy works.
Imagine believing that a big rally would force elected governments to resign....and 24-7 horn honking achieve a coup d'etat?
The UCP will still implode. Political mergers in Alberta do not go very far. There is still a lot of turmoil in the UCP. I've also heard that Danielle Smith is past her best before date, and that a UCP leadership review wanted her gone, earlier this year. It was someplace where I heard that. I'll see how it goes. Oil prices are slumping, and will go further down. This isn't going to help either. A recession is very likely. It will be rough.
Perhaps..........but the ideology they serve up seems to have a lot of lives, as it moves ever right ward toward outright fascism. The rise of old racisms, sexual phobias and the determined war on women that has brought the abortion issue back onto the table........is perhaps the most enduring aspects of the old imperial patriachy.
I can't see it winning.........but I can see it making something of a mess of our politics for the next little while.
But happen it will thanks to all the tribal conservatives here, casting the mortified/devastated rest of us as pariahs too. Thanks a lot for making the reasonable rest of us look as crazy and irresponsible as every one of you is, and reminding us of the meme, "conservatives are going to kill us all."
The concern is that LaGrange will pursue her long standing “pro-life” agenda as health minister, and severely restrict abortion access.
If she does, that’s a recipe for an even deeper divide between rural and urban Alberta.
And of course she will pursue it; it's what she's dreamed of. My question is at what point do we grasp the fact that religious people actually MEAN it? All of it? Because it's so fundamentally unbelievable we've been an easy target to take down. Paradoxically, we have been advocates for tolerance of religion's defining trait of INtolerance, so the whole LGBTQ evolution of human rights means that a standoff is inevitable, a bona fide culture war i.e.
I say bring it on and clear the air with the truth, that having been liberally given FAR more than an inch, believers have avidly taken the proverbial mile....and they are very patient and utilitarian in their quest, but when the U.S. Supreme Court has been taken over by fellow believers (Catholics also), excitement is starting to build.....finally women will be controlled again, as they SHOULD be. Consider that absolute outrage and in 2023 yet. We have dropped the ball big time.
After all, it must take a certain amount of effort to maintain such a monumental delusion and the "faith" required when you're surrounded by ever more heretics, not to mention ubiquitous reality itself; I mean how does it NOT intrude regularly? It's the very definition of living in your head or living in a bubble. It's thin on the ground. No wonder religious people need their own club houses, thousands of them, tax-free, and their own Christian versions of everything, starting with their own school system; also note that only Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario still have a separate school system that is publicly funded. Even Catholic Quebec ended that. AND the UCP opened the door to even more via charter schools because UCP could rightly stand for the United Christian Party when so many are religious. Half the UCP board are now Take Back Alberta bunch, despite them being considered religious "extremists."
It's very much worth mentioning that the whole god idea is in and of itself truly "out there," i.e. the very definition of extreme.
The fact that no one wants to mention the imposing elephant in the room, especially its growing influence in our public life, and now at the highest levels of our government means everyone needs to now reappraise the usual qualifier of, "Oh, I don't mind religion as long as they don't try and shove it down my throat."
Well, there should definitely be a tickle in your throat at this point. And remember, we're talking CATHOLIC doctrine, the worst in a bad field because of its steadFAST misogyny, the one that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that all this crap was a male idea...
I get your passion,, and your frustration. But it might help to remember that the religious impulse is by nature an impulse of reverence....and that something weird has happened when it transmogrifies into the current culture wars.
We stand in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater if we forget that the current forms of white Christianity are really a tip of something like an iceberg, but warmer.
I know. I am by nature and nurture a deeply religious person.....but what brings me to my knees is not how many angels can dance on a pin but how many microbes can inhabit a small cubicle of soil.
Life is Sacred. All of it. When we feel that, in our bones, hear that in our language, live that in our communities..we will have replaced the barborousness of this culture....
And the profanity of a culture that wants to limit access to abortion....but thinks continued rip and ship of life destroying hydrocarbons is the completion of the old testament injunction that 'man should subdue and dominate nature.
Nature is sacred. Those who willfully destroy her for money are about as close to the antichrist as I can imagine.
Peace.
Human evil, period, like the reverence, both absolutely in our repertoire.
Maybe if we had called it FATHER Nature we wouldn't BE in this mess....
Religion is about male dominance first and foremost and the impulse to dominate and subdue and generally rule the world, and it makes no sense for any woman to line up with it when you look at how EVERY iteration of the delusion also has that in common, how women are lesser.
I don't disagree with you about organized religion in the past and most everywhere on the planet now. For me, the worst part of it is most religions honestly believe one has to see the invisible world as they do......or be subjected to conversion therapy.
But the impulse to worship...the inclination our species has to feelings of awe....isn't a part of our being I'd eliminate. Nor can we ever escape the existence of mystery....it is often at the bottom of what we most love.
So we could conceivably get rid of all the Doctrines of this or that Certainty.........just so stories trotted out for the innocent and the gullible.......and replace them with a genuine respect for the mystery inherent in all life.
This year, the trees have made a decision, quite likely concerning global warming....in our large garden they are planning a forest. At our age, the chances of them succeeding are good.
In my determination to be aware...fully awake....I pull them out, with apologies...but I see the explosions of seeds and seedlings now....everywhere. And it is a mystery to me, how life forms we mostly regard as lumber......could be ahead of us in preparing to weather the weather that we have brought them.
Beneath our feet......at the microscopic level of the soil.......furious adaptation, mitigation and restoration has likely been at work for a few decades. Life may fail....and our stupid ideas of human divinity succeed in bringing on our damned Armegeddon.
But me and my house are standing with the trees. What male domination has done to women is petty compared to what its done to the living earth. It has to stop.
Well one way or another it will; cancer cures smoking. And what male domination has done to women is on a par with both the need to dominate and the disdain shown for "mother" nature. In that context, what is now manifesting is "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."
What I don't get is why the mystery and wonder isn't ENOUGH, but religion is a curious mixture of us at our most pathetic, i.e. childish, irrational AND arrogant. It's also in keeping with the mindset of many juvenile males, hence the most salient question before us may well be whether or not we will survive the male of our species.
I find cult leaders like David Parker of TBA to be the usual example of this i.e. both transparent AND ridiculous, but also dangerous, not to mention fundamentally dishonest because he's using religion in the usual pedestrian male way to serve his own ego/desire for power. Jerry Seinfeld said that "most men are low-level superheroes in their own minds," but these religious guys go further by seeing themselves as low-level GODS in their own minds. Which is why I regard the whole god idea as utterly, irredeemably male. And importantly, just another idea after all, albeit the worst one men have ever come up with. AND the one that may ultimately do us all in.
Can't fault your analysis. Sucks to be us.
Most of the time. Though a day bike riding and river swimming with our two almost 9 year old grand daughters, makes me feel the sudden grace of being blessed beyond imagining as well.
That I should have lived so long.....and still be able to totter into a swimming hole made by our wonderful Bow river...satisfies my lust for power.
Like you, I find the God crew ludicrous, and frightening, but in addition, I often imagine how unhappy they must be....low-level Gods that they are...having nothing better to do than TAKE BACK a province they've mostly already TRASHED.
This new UCP cabinet is a joke, and nothing more. These people aren't fit for their roles. In addition, for the number of UCP MLAs that were elected, a 24 member cabinet is still way too large. It's down from the 27-39 member cabinet the UCP used to have, prior to this last provincial election, but it is still way too large. Rachel Notley only had a 12 member cabinet. The Alberta PCs also never had that large of a cabinet, as far as I recall. Regardless, I don't think Danielle Smith will remain as premier for much longer. I can't see that happening.
Who is it you think is going to remove her....and will it lead to anything other than a more extreme UCP incarnation??? These folks may change their leaders regularly, but their reductive ideology???? It's never yet been proven wrong in their eyes......only badly applied.
The UCP will likely have someone worse than Danielle Smith as a replacement. However, the UCP still will implode.
Into what is the question. The most interesting thing about the latest incarnations of right wing ideology is their willingness to use force.....not to mention their total ignorance of how our democracy works.
Imagine believing that a big rally would force elected governments to resign....and 24-7 horn honking achieve a coup d'etat?
The UCP will still implode. Political mergers in Alberta do not go very far. There is still a lot of turmoil in the UCP. I've also heard that Danielle Smith is past her best before date, and that a UCP leadership review wanted her gone, earlier this year. It was someplace where I heard that. I'll see how it goes. Oil prices are slumping, and will go further down. This isn't going to help either. A recession is very likely. It will be rough.
Perhaps..........but the ideology they serve up seems to have a lot of lives, as it moves ever right ward toward outright fascism. The rise of old racisms, sexual phobias and the determined war on women that has brought the abortion issue back onto the table........is perhaps the most enduring aspects of the old imperial patriachy.
I can't see it winning.........but I can see it making something of a mess of our politics for the next little while.
With the UCP, the usual "shallow talent pool" has become more of a tailings pond....
You have a problem with tailings ponds being put to good use???
Sucks to be us.
But happen it will thanks to all the tribal conservatives here, casting the mortified/devastated rest of us as pariahs too. Thanks a lot for making the reasonable rest of us look as crazy and irresponsible as every one of you is, and reminding us of the meme, "conservatives are going to kill us all."