We begin this Fourth of July episode of Drunk Ex-Pastors by revisiting the question of whether the shrill, poorly-dressed, and not-even-that-hot presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is treated unfairly because she’s a woman (while Donald Trump apparently faces no media scrutiny whatsoever). We then address the topic of violent intervention in global conflicts (as in, should America do this because it is the right thing to do, or just keep doing it only when it is profitable?). After our mid-show break we continue with the theme of patriotism by discussing such topics as colonization, the Tea Party, and Brexit/Texit (yes please to the latter): Is some measure of civil authority necessary? What about spiritual authority? Where does it end? And is patriotism healthy or kind of chilling? And finally, our “Feeding Friendsy” segment reminds us how reliant on the Bible George Washington would have thought America to be if he had actually said all the stuff that’s attributed to him by the Internet.
Also, as soon as Texas secedes we should build the most ironic wall ever along its northern border.
Podcast #367: Near-Sightedness, Boobs, and Existential Crises
Podcast #7: Scary Movies, Dead Americans, and Mark Driscoll’s Penis
Podcast #103: The Holocaust, and Other Minor Missteps
Podcast #285: Dying Out Loud with Dave Warnock
• Sweet fucking Christmas…I am so goddamned tired of this election. I hate it. I hate that it lasts for two fucking years. I fucking hate the Facebook shit. I fucking hate it all. Fuck this stupid fucking system that fucking grinds our civic feelings into fine powder until we’re all just fucking glad that it’s over. Fuck.
• Sigh… okay, I feel better.
• Our culture is sick. We’ve confused wealth and power with greatness, while our soul withers from starvation.
When military action is justified:
1. Are we currently being attacked?
a. If yes, military action is justified.
b. If no, are we going to be attacked?
i. If yes, military action is justified.
ii. If no, is an attack happening or immanent on an ally we are obligated to protect?
1. If yes, military action is justified.
2. If no, then military action is not justified.
• War seldom seems to make things better and usually just makes thing a hell of a lot worse: Yemen, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Central America, Columbia, Vietnam. It kills innocents, it destroys infrastructure, it impoverishes nations for generations. And yet, every single time, war remains the first option for the hawks who want to show the world how big America’s dick is.
• If people are being killed, send ships or planes in to evacuate them to safe locations and accept them as refugees after appropriate screening. Inform the dictator that any attacks on refugee ships or planes will be treated as attacks on the United States.
• Communism, like libertarianism, sounds great in theory. In practice, people fuck it up.
• I will trade my weather of 80 degrees with 60% humidity with you, if you want.
• We will let Texas go this time, and build a wall around it and Mexico will probably actually pay for that one.
• Okay, we can relocate Austin to somewhere in California.
• You’re describing anarcho-capitalism. Everyone is sovereign and only belongs to the associations he chooses to belong to.
• Anarcho-capitalism will only last as a system until one party has enough force and the will to use it. Then we’re back to monarchy.
• Hey, Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would come and teach us all things. He didn’t say no nothing about no pope. 😉
• The “War of Northern Aggression” that was started by the South because they didn’t like the presidential election results and tried to seize a Federal military fort with violence.
• If you read the declarations of secession, they weren’t about freedom or liberty so much as about the rights of white men to keep black men in bondage as slaves.
• There was nothing noble about Southern treason.
• We should have had Nuremberg style trials at the end of the civil war and made sure the Confederates spent their remaining years in prison.
• Climate change is not the common enemy. At least not until Miami starts drowning. And even then, I fully expect that certain people in Congress will be against allocating funds to relocate their fellow Americans. Back to our poisoned culture. Our culture celebrates selfishness and being an asshole.
• I’m sorry, I don’t remember that game. Because I had a Nintendo like all right thinking Americans.
• Europe also suffered through periods of massive civil strife related to inequality and nationalism.
• Literally most of the world through most of the world’s history has been governed without God and the bible. Somehow Indian and Chinese people are still here.
• The only difference between this sentiment and the political Islamists are what name is used to refer to God.
• And the Founders were wrong. They wrote their wrongness into the Constitution for history to judge. They were okay with slavery. You can’t cast them as divine when the fucked it up that badly.
• Envy is largely what our capitalist society is based on, so if we adopted the bible as our guide, we’ve have to do something about that.
• This remains my favorite misattributed quote
Lol yeah…. India and China. Wonderful places to live.
Much like Europe or the US, how wonderful they are depends on the year, your class and your ethnicity.
Everyone’s life is better if you’re rich. But that’s a shallow analysis of “wonderful place to live”. The caste system? Marxism? Eastern medicine? China and India have *never* been wonderful places to live for the average Joe. And their worldview has much to do with that.
Serfs, the Inquisition, slavery, racism, religious persecutions, pogroms, racial terrorism and lynchings, the ‘divine right of kings’, corruption in the church, the Plague… life in Christian countries was not wonderful either.
It really wasn’t until the Enlightenment that things began to get mildly better in the West and even then, it was mostly better for free white men than it was for everyone else.
And let’s not even talk about how well the Natives did here under Christian governance. 🙂
I lived in Texas for 8 months and (unwillingly) had this conversation numerous times. Their story is that Texas was a different kind of state because there was a secession clause in their constitution (and approved by Congress) which gave them the right to secede at any time. No other state had this. When they joined the Confederacy, they forfeited that right, so that after the Civil War their constitution was re-written. The argument of the North was that had they stayed out of the war or fought with the North they would have retained their secession clause.
In my experience the best way to shut down the incessant arguments about how Texas should secede is just to agree with them. They want you to argue and beg them to stay.
I’m no history major, but my understanding of the difference between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War is the principles they were based on. So the Revolution was no taxation without representation, etc. I’m guessing the argument would be that’s a principle worth going to war and declaring your independence over. The Civil War was (ostensibly) about slavery (but also we know it was about states rights and the industrial revolution). I think the argument would be that wanting to own human persons is not a valid reason to secede, but wanting fair treatment and to not be exploited is. The further issue according to Lincoln and other like-minded folks is that if the Union was broken up, the great democratic experiment would have failed, so they owed it to history to preserve the Union. And also history is written by the victor, so no doubt there are other stories that could be told.
If you grew up in Seattle or LA you probably can’t really live in Texas, although Austin might be doable. Don’t move to Abilene, though.
Native Texan here! (Although Christina could vouch that El Paso isn’t exactly like the rest of Texas), I don’t think the Texit movement is really exists outside of Twitter, I don’t know of anyone who is looking to secede from the US even our governor who is as conservative as they come, said Texas is staying a state. That said I agree with you, that just based on principle any state should be able to leave the US if they want without having to declare war to do it. Which does make the US Civil War interesting, the South had a right to secede based on principle but their reason for seceding was morally repugnant. Also, the North’s reason for fighting wasn’t to end slavery but to preserve the Union. The abolitionists were against the Civil War for this reason; they wanted the South to leave so the US could was it’s hands of slavery.
Christian the Depeche Mode album you are thinking of is “Music for the Masses”. The song “Everything Counts” was on an earlier album “Construction Time Again”, but it is most famous from the live performance at the Rose Bowl when they were on their “For the Masses” tour. 🙂