Uhm ackchually you’re wrong 😏

Not really, if you read the article it only defines political violence as violence that isn’t done by the state:

That figure underscores just how much the spate of attacks — from the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk earlier this year to the attempts on President Donald Trump’s life in 2024 — have rattled the nation.

In addition to Kirk’s killing and the attempts on Trump’s life, there was the gruesome attack targeting former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that left her husband, Paul Pelosi, with a fractured skull in 2022; the assassination plot against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh that same year; the plan to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020; and the firebombing at Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence earlier this year.

In June, former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband were shot and killed in their home by a man impersonating a police officer in an attack that Gov. Tim Walz (D) called “politically motivated.” The man accused of killing Hortman and her husband was indicted on federal murder charges. His case is still pending.

Etc etc.

Political violence has been with us long before politicians started getting shot, but political motivations didn’t count before because it was the government doing it.

There’s already political violence, it’s just that we don’t count political violence when it’s done by cops, national guard, or border enforcement.

They already read an article written by ChatGPT that told them the opposite.

Kind of, but religious law wasn’t just about the afterlife. People believed their gods would punish them in this life if they didn’t follow religious law, and that their gods would reward them in this life if they were obedient and followed all the right rules. It helped that the punishment of the gods would be literally carried out by soldiers or executioners. Religious law was also government law.

The skycake was a later development. In the early days, the law of the gods was the law of the land.

Yes, and it was the invention of religion in the previous 4000 years that allowed humans really take off as a planetary species. That only reinforces my point - hundreds of thousands of years as hunter gatherers with very little change, then only a few thousand years later and we’ve basically conquered the world. Religion doesn’t have to be real to be a useful tool for organizing civilization.

It’s all made up, but it was a useful fiction when we were still in the nascent stages of historical development.

I’m not really sure what you want as a source. The only civilizations in human history that developed beyond the gens/clan/tribe had some kind of religious law, so there’s numerous field examples of this phenomenon. I supposed it could just be a coincidence that it happened over and over, and that there aren’t counterexamples? That actually seems like the more extraordinary claim.

This is all value neutral, by the way. I am not saying religion, or slavery, or feudalism, or capitalism are good. I’m only saying that they were stages of historical development that lead us to this point. If history could develop a different way, there’s no way to really test for it. Maybe we’ll find aliens some day that never went through a religious phase of historical development?

Religion was how we organized civilization beyond blood relations. Religious law was the first law.

Cultivation of fire and intentional use of fire are certainly technologies.

The technology to create fire is absolutely an invention. Let me guess, you don’t think electricity, nuclear fission, or antibiotics are inventions either? They exist in nature, after all, so they’re merely discoveries. 🙄

I think fire has religion beat. People stopped burning witches, but they still burn people for entirely secular reasons.

Also, you know, forging blades, firing guns, running combustion engines, etc. Fire enabled war on a scale religion could never match, and as religion wanes fire remains supreme.

Religion was necessary to get us to this point, so I don’t know how you can call it a destructive invention unless you’re arguing that civilization was a mistake. Its use-by date was in the thousands of years, it was very useful as a technology to organize society for a very long time. It has lost its usefulness, and become backwards compared to newer technologies, but it was a great idea.

People fall for lies that they want to believe, not because they’re simply assholes, but because the truth is hard and painful.

That’s why social support and deprogramming is necessary, because you need to ease people into a very difficult reality.

They’d rather just play along because it’s easier, safer, and more comfortable. They like it.

People fall for propaganda because they want to - they’re not stupid, they’re playing along because they like it.

A police station was burned down in 2020. Several CEOs have been shot since 2024.

I expect violence will happen to a lot of different targets, some undeserving, some deserving.

It’s not like USAmericans are just inherently meek and peaceful. I don’t think the protests stay peaceful if there’s no food at home.

In his defense, I’m baffled too! Dems usually cave immediately.

I really hope this means they’re becoming a real opposition party.

The cult is basically irrelevant. Their loyalty is guaranteed, like you said.

I’m more interested in what the other 2/3rds of the country will do.

I’ve started thinking of efficiency gains in my personal life as prep for the collapse of civilization.

LED bulbs use less power? That’ll be great when I’m forced to rely on what I can generate in my house!

Hope is for people who want to sit around doing nothing while they wait for things to spontaneously get better all on their own.