I am certainly no expert but the way it was described to me as part of cultural immersion there is in modern practice it’s more about spirits. The animate and the inanimate have spirits, and really the word for god and spirit… not really different. You say hello and good-bye to your home because it has a spirit, you have a spirit, the rock has a spirit. Some equate that to hundreds, endless amount of gods because, again spirit and god in Japanese… not really different.
It’s not hugely organized like most don’t consider themselves to be Shintoists. If they have a festival, it might have Shinto origins but its largely tradition.
History is history. With or without religion, the ability for a ruling class to declare themselves a rightful ruling class and the push to take someone else’s something that you want… well we can argue in circles about whether or not that would happen with or without religion.
Today, there is nothing in the Shinto religion that’s going to push you to incite violence not only one someone but on something (remember they both have spirits). It’s way more about tradition and nature, acknowledging the world around you.
Which is correct; it really is. But to the rest of the world, they’re going to see god and kind of freak out or make assumptions based on that word when it’s really not the same at in regards to the way it’s used in other religions or even about studying religion.
There is nothing inherent in Shinto that says by acknowledging that the mountain has a spirit that you have to worship it. And as i mentioned before, it’s so ingrained in Japanese culture that many who practice it don’t acknowledge they practice it… they just do. Hell technically I practiced Shinto while I was there. I said hello and good-by when I came home and left whether anyone was there or not. I went to festivals them stemmed from the practice. And again, the young people there except to get married in a church (Christian), buried at a traditional Japanese grave site ( Buddhist), and practice Shinto every day. They honestly don’t understand the religious turmoil in the rest of the world. Aside from their cult issues (cyanide gas).
Not to say there aren’t other… problems there. I just don’t believe all religions are inherently the same nor do they drive politics like the big ones tend to do.
Back to Trump’s travel ban, what is his deal with just those countries and why is he so steadfast on it? There are several Muslim majority countries he is leaving out, so it just never made sense to me what he (or Bannon) was going for with that specific list. It seems oddly specified.
Re all that Shinto stuff… There is no single Shinto. It’s a bunch of different practices and cults, some of which are formalized and some of which are not, and which may or may not include organized religion as an element. The imperial cult of the early 20th century isn’t the same thing as people bringing flowers to a local shrine because they think the kami might like them.
I found this podcast episode concise and informative about the introduction of Buddhism and how it came to coexist with Shinto. Be warned; it was his second of his series so he’s a bit rough and it’s seven years old.
Hopefully I can get around to hearing this later (<<<— generally hates podcosts and would prefer to read text). Shinto co-exists with several religions in Japan, not just Buddhism.
It’s pretty simple but ultimately seems to be that Shinto is sort of like Hinduism in that it is multifaceted and able to subsume foreign concepts as being part of some greater whole. However Japan did experience periodic flashes of intolerance between one or another sect. I’m trying to remember the history of the Shingon and Tendai sect but apparently the Shingon almost took over Japan before being on the wrong side of a civil conflict. Unlike Shinto, Buddhist monasteries developed armed warrior retainers and acted as a reserve of armed forces that could sway a conflict one way or another, and Shoguns/leaders had no problem burning monasteries to the ground if they found themselves on the wrong side of a conflict. Christianity was seen as a 5th column activity from outside powers and so was pretty brutally squashed. So Japan - ie the government - didn’t have a problem with new religions if they became entirely Japanified, as the long and short version. Most of the varieties of Buddhism in Japan only exist in Japan, for ex. So there is a bit of “everything is harmonious as long as it’s One Of Us” going on there. Start preaching about converting to Islam or Evangelical Christianity and you’re not as likely to get as warm a reception. Though I’m speaking out of my depth at this point.
To be clear, they are using the words “internment” and “internment camps” to describe how they want to “round up” thousands and thousands of Muslims. Of course, the calls for these internment camps came first on Fox News, but have now spread far beyond Fox.
Firstly that most of them aren’t conservatives and never have been.
Fascism can be pretty conservative adjacent if you word things carefully. Once you break people of that whole “rights” and “freedom” thing it becomes pretty easy and they’ve been working that angle for over 20 years now.
Lately it seems like there is a very thin line between “Trump supporter” and “traditional conservative” as the latter seems to just be quietly tolerating the excesses of the former.
He’s correct that the modern GOP has abandoned effectively all of its principles. It is driven by absolutely nothing but tribalism at this point, and a bunch of Trump’s most hardcore supporters have no allegiance to any principles at all beyond some sort of fucked up idol worship.
This is not an excuse, because it totally dominates the GOP at this point. This is what the GOP has become, in its entirety. There are a few principled folks left in the party, but their influence is effectively non-existent.
For reasonable conservatives to have a voice, they need to reform a new party. The GOP is lost.
Agreed. The GOP started courting these people during the Clinton/Bush era and ramped it up about 1000% after the country elected an African-American Democrat as President. The goal was to win elections, and it worked, but everyone inside the GOP was so focused on the end result that they failed to see that the extreme minority they brought on board to put them over the top in voting numbers was slowly taking over the party and using conservative media to implant their own far right messages in the mainstream GOP message.
Fast forward 9 years to today, and the GOP is the host that has become completely compromised by the parasite, to the point where the parasite controls all the hosts words and actions. Conservatives who wouldn’t normally identify as far-right are nonetheless pushing the far right agenda because they can no longer tell the difference.
If Fox & Friends says internment camps are a necessary evil for the safety of U.S. citizens (i.e. white people), then by God and Country mainstream Conservatives will put that issue right up there with Gun Control and Right to Life as vitally important to the continued survival of America!
Internment camps and reeducation is the natural culmination of the gradual process that removed privacy and other rights, (assembly, speech, etc) combined with the increase of reach and manpower in the surveillance/police state backed up by men with immunity from the law who themselves are equipped with army surplus gear. And it was all done under the eyes of everyone, marketed as “Protection against terrorists”, while the policies that encouraged these “terrorists” (and the definition expanded to cover more people) was furthered.
Why some of us have been howling about things like the Patriot Act for 15 years. Why some of us were strongly critical of Obama on many issues.
And that internment camps are even mentioned as anything but one of our nations deepest shames, but as a potential tool today? That is when an escalation happens.
