Mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh today.

Fair enough. It’s just that your initial post made it sound like you thought Jews for Jesus were just some weird denomination, like Lutherans or Baptists or something. I suspect a lot of people think that. I just wanted to point out that’s not the case. The dudes are even regarded as straight-up antisemitism in some circles:

-Tom

I don’t disagree with any of that. Apologies for the confusion!

There was (is?) a Jews for Jesus outpost near where I used to live in North London — my part of town wasn’t a particularly Jewish neighbourhood, but it’s near some. Always used to creep me out to walk past it, not least because it’s hard to think of anything less Jewish than proselytising.

When I said that they were christians, and not jews, I wasn’t trying to use it as a pejorative… I was just describing what they literally are.

The primary difference between Jews and Christians, is acceptance of Christ as the messiah.

So if you are a “Jew” who believes in Jesus… you’re a Christian. By definition.

And that’s fine, I guess. But it’s weird that, when trying to find a Jewish Rabbi for a prayer, Pence goes with a Christian rather than a Jew. That is indicative of something which is kind of fucked up.

One of my friends in college was Jewish, then became a Messianic Jew while in college. She really got into the Christian youth group on campus.

She became a Presbyterian in later years, so I guess that is the end goal.

Josh Marshall is good on this.. He also notes that they’re claiming it wasn’t Pence who invited the Christian, but one of the candidates, apparently actually Jewish. Which makes the whole thing even weirder if true.

It’s like they are afraid that they need to pick some bridge Jew because Pence’s supporters are so inherently anti-Semitic that they couldn’t handle a normal Jew talking to them.

It’s exactly like he didn’t want to be near a religious group that didn’t accept Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. So he went and found the very small minority of Jews that did.

But as @Ginger_Yellow’s link above suggests, this whole thing is weird.

I think paleonazis at least would be more interested in their genealogy than their belief. Antisemitism that accepts conversion has more of a 16th century Spain ring to it…

Note: this comment in no way is meant to justify Pence’s bizarre move

I get the frustration, and outrage, and I would even agree that the *majority of the republicans have allowed thugs, assholes, morons, criminal to infect the leadership!

It’s a emotional response that reminds me of the old Stephen Colbert quip about feeling ‘Truthiness’. It can be generally true, while being misleadingly incorrect.

The problem I have with wording it this way is that you are essentially saying that the current 40% that have strong approval rating of the president means that OVER 146 MILLION US citizens are ALL some mix of thugs, assholes, morons, or craven cowards! While I completely agree SOME of them are exactly as you describe. i don’t remotely believe ALL are that way. If my hypothesis is correct then why are so many people are supporting him that are otherwise good people? A few of them who I know and believe to be good people…

I think fear, anger and feeling disenfranchised is not a surprising answer for the why, how many times have unscrupulous leaders manipulated those communities to do otherwise unconscionable things they would never otherwise consider?

Ok, why am I bothering to parse this line? Because rallying against them and normalizing the perspective that they are all morally defunct and unworthy of engaging with, leads to…leads to what? What is going to happen when you ostracize OVER 146 MILLION fellow citizens, almost HALF the nation? What’s the end result of that? How do things get better and we collaborate again? If the liberals can’t even see a way to make that happen, what chance will we have that the frustrated right being co-opted by bad faith players will reach back?

So how do things get better in this scenario? Winning the midterms or even replacing him in 2020 will not make them go away…so how do we heal and become one nation again?

Unless we find a way to reach across, I don’t. I only see civil unrest growing and growing… with more lives lost! Until the mutual anger, frustration, and distrust burns itself out in unrest and violence and possible variation of a war… and I’m afraid that the cost of letting it reach that end will have on us. Its possible this nation, as we know it, may not survive that path.

So, yes, I fight this definition, because, bottom line ,the alternative has tragic and depressing implications.

Well, to be fair, the word ‘morons’ probably covers at least 50 million Americans by itself.

Yes.

/thread

So I’m hearing this inevitably ends in violence? Wont stop till it burns itself out, or someone wins the civil war?

I’ve been saying that since 2016.

I think you’re taking this too literally.

A better way to explain things is to think that what “both sides” is really trying to do, imo, is save conservatives from facing the consequences of their decisions. So that in the end we both shake hands, agree to disagree, and everything goes back to the way it was. So that conservatives don’t actually have to admit they’re wrong.

To put it into perspective by using analogy, if Trump ran on a “Kill minority group X” platform, you’d agree that voting for him would be immoral. Now if Trump’s policies were “Kill minority group X”, you’d expect that even if you voted for him, wrongly, because of economic distress or some sociological issue, you’d abandon him when you found that out.

What liberals are flabbergasted by is the willingness of people to absolve Trump from his obvious injurious, ill-disciplined and unstatesman like conduct, and then push it all the way around again into “praising” him. I mean i guess it’s fine if you call him a “bulldog” going to stick it to the liberals, but to call him a Christian man, a great leader, a great businessman, ect., is refusing to look reality in the eye.

It comes down to this retrenchment attitude - instead of us being wrong, it’s you who are lying. Trump not only is our President, he’s a great President! Anything you say against him is clearly Fake News, ect.

Where can there be common ground with that? Why should liberals meet in the middle to such unreal self delusion?

So what are liberals to make of people who call Trump a “great Christian” or whatever? At what point do they get to stop making accommodation for conservatives? And at what point do conservatives give accommodation to liberals in the same way? When are conservatives expected to say things like “oh, those hyperventilating liberals. We’ll give them a pass on this because they’re upset about X?” Or, is it always and forever the other way round? Killary Whitewater Bengazi, and so we can do whatever we want forever and how dare you say otherwise? (i mean not you personally dave2, you understand)

I guess we could just all agree to let them exterminate us? Would you prefer that? It seems like you would.

Actually, I think he would argue we should meet in the middle. How about we just let them exterminate half of us and that way we could move forward and everyone’s happy?

This is a good point, but if you don’t offer a option ‘out’ for people seeing the error of their choice and the other side is angrily screaming, calling anyone on that side unredeemable thugs, assholes, morons, and craven cowards what options are open to them?!

How many of them do you think will inclined to try to move to the other side when they see this , or will they be more likely to stay where they are (with what they know, and where they feel safe) as they find things are getting ugly no matter what side, even if their side is doing something they morally disagree with.

Some people will have great courage and switch of course, but I think a lot more will be human and will stay just because its their community and its safe space, as things generally get uglier and uglier.

I hope you are being factious. My whole point is to avoid the lost of life, and preserve it as much as possible,. Id rather have a uncomfortable dialogue than have someone needlessly lose their life. That is my position…