April 27, 2023
A man in unincorporated Antioch in Illinois was charged on Tuesday with shooting and killing his neighbor over a noisy leaf blower earlier this month. 59-year-old William Martys was working in his yard with a leaf blower when he was shot in the head and killed during an argument with his neighbor, 79-year-old Ettore Lacchei, who the Lake County Sheriff's Office said had "various perceived grievances" with Martys.
I mean we built up a large and motivated contingent of people who believe they are currently in a very literal holy war, within an Evangelical context and with a US-Southern aesthetic
We helped more children be educated with fundamentalist pro-martyrdom curricula in private and home-schooling settings, like mine, and bolstered lots of associated far-right mobilization efforts. We did the same to Afghanistan, and in both cases it's been to challenge the growth of Communism
Edit: Though don't get me wrong, I'm certain the Taliban can't be as unreasonable as the US. The material incentives mean the US has to go, while idk shit about the Taliban
I don't think that's a very good comparision. For one thing Afghanistan was also heavily Islamic back when it was communist and that worked fine until the more pragmatic revolutionaries were voted out and more idealistic people were voted in.
Also I really don't think that murdering someone over a leafblower can be considered a religiously motivated killing. And this I got mine fuck you attitude seems to have been a staple of American life since the frontier
So, I want to be very clear about what I'm trying to say here: I don't mean that we propagated Islam in Afghanistan or Christianity in the US, I mean that we exploited some of the theological structures present in both to anticommunist ends, and I'm saying this having grown up in a malignantly yeehawdist town and house. Religion contains multitudes, so the ones I stand against are the ones that hold and abuse power where I live
I think it's really hard to separate secular US culture from religion, even specifically Protestantism. The US civic religion, with its white supremacist deism, permeates virtually the whole US right wing both inside and outside nominally religious spaces
the US civic religion I would argue isn't Christian at all it's its own thing.
I can see how prosperity gospel and the doctrine of hard work negatively impacts US society and religion. I just think that this guy killed his neighbor because Americans are taught as a foundational notion the idea that it is ok to kill people over property disputes
It's as Christian as Mormonism, and I'm not interested in avoiding stepping on toes there. Each religion contains multitudes, and when I tell you that there is a big chuck of the Christian US that bases all their US-ey brainworms in their understanding of their own religion, it's not up for debate
I'm not completely sure of that as I think people like Aaron Sorkin believe in an athiestic varient of US civic religion
I'm sure you're right about a big chunk of US Christians basing their brainworms on their religious faith but I also think those brainworms exist in US society absent from any religious faith
That's fair, it does go into an area that I don't have a very nuanced vocabulary for. For the purposes that I usually talk about, the lines get very blurred. I mean, a lot of people are surprised to find out how rare it is among Evangelicals to read or understand the Bible, but it gets hard to draw a line between religion and ideology when nobody in your religion actually knows anything about it outside of a shared US ideology and a vibe
But then, where you might think they'd be less devoted for that reason, they'll jubilantly agree with Pat Robertson that the people of Haiti brought earthquakes upon themselves via wickedness. An atheistic version of US civic religious would reject that as silly, but would probably still say that it's Haiti's fault for not having been a better-behaved colony that would deserve help. You're probably right that it's a stretch to use the word "religion" to describe something potentially atheistic, but admittedly I usually use the litmus test of "do they implicitly uphold the Doctrine of Discovery?" for whether or not I lump them in with Evangelicals
I think the difference here can be simply explained with one legal difference. American conservatives defend child marriage. The Taliban based on the fact the Quran demands marriage be between consenting adults have banned child marriage
:data-laughing: that is a perfect contrast
I didn't know that about the Taliban but I can't say I'm surprised. I worded my yeehawd comment clumsily for having only meant to compare the US' tactics and goals between the two, but the results are radically different. I'd wager that no matter how much you stoke far-right elements in any other country on earth, you will never be able to make them ontologically evil like the US
This is my fault for not thinking about what my comment might line up with. I think it's because I forgot that most people online don't categorically refuse to condemn governments outside of the imperial core, and you'd have no reason at all to assume that I do, so I'm sorry for getting snippy
nah it's cool I didn't think you were being dismissive at any point