[annatar1914]

No, so don't try to tell me propaganda coming from socialism and communism, because I have my mind made up in support of capitalism.
Praise the Lord.

@Hindsite

Because people's ordinary everyday lives in a place different than your own self satisfied complacent existence are ''propaganda''?

Ignorant people who are so blind and refuse to see are those of the same sort who praised and hailed Jesus as their King on Palm Sunday when He looked like their political solution, but shouted ''Crucify Him!'' on Good Friday after He was arrested...

[Hindsite]

@Hindsite

Because people's ordinary everyday lives in a place different than your own self satisfied complacent existence are ''propaganda''?

Ignorant people who are so blind and refuse to see are those of the same sort who praised and hailed Jesus as their King on Palm Sunday when He looked like their political solution, but shouted ''Crucify Him!'' on Good Friday after He was arrested...

How do you know those were the same people?

[annatar1914]

How do you know those were the same people?

Because Matthew Chapter 21 says a ''very great multitude'', Luke indicates that ''all the people were very attentive to hear Him'', while Matthew says in Chapter 27:20 of his Gospel that; ''But the chief priests and the elders persuaded the multitudes that they should ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus''.

So there were some, not all nobody's saying that, in both crowds of people. Point being, is that you aren't listening to fellow Christians who have a better perspective upon life in the Soviet Union and how it really was than you do because they lived in the Soviet Union AND live in a Capitalist Russia today.

[Hindsite]

So there were some, not all nobody's saying that, in both crowds of people. Point being, is that you aren't listening to fellow Christians who have a better perspective upon life in the Soviet Union and how it really was than you do because they lived in the Soviet Union AND live in a Capitalist Russia today.

I do not know of any Christians that praise life in the former communist Soviet Union.

[annatar1914]

I do not know of any Christians that praise life in the former communist Soviet Union.

Now you know of Christians who do laud certain aspects of life in the Soviet Union, because you've been informed of it. It's only your political and economic views of how to live life in this world (which really isn't all that important as the ungodly make it out to be) that blind you to that fact.

In a lot of ways, it really wasn't all that bad, not like the propaganda told you.

[Hindsite]

Now you know of Christians who do laud certain aspects of life in the Soviet Union, because you've been informed of it. It's only your political and economic views of how to live life in this world (which really isn't all that important as the ungodly make it out to be) that blind you to that fact.

In a lot of ways, it really wasn't all that bad, not like the propaganda told you.

Hearsay about so-called Christians is not the same as personal knowledge about real Christians. You are still expecting me to just believe all your propaganda and pass it on as facts.

[annatar1914]

Hearsay about so-called Christians is not the same as personal knowledge about real Christians. You are still expecting me to just believe all your propaganda and pass it on as facts.

God help you. I bet you take a lot of things on ''hearsay'' as long as it jibes with whatever your biases are to begin with. Got out there then and talk to an older person who lived in the Soviet Union. Ask them what they miss and don't miss about it and why. Watch a damn video, read a book once in a while. Just don't be one of these stupid bastards who condemns people and things without knowledge of them.

[Hindsite]

God help you. I bet you take a lot of things on ''hearsay'' as long as it jibes with whatever your biases are to begin with. Got out there then and talk to an older person who lived in the Soviet Union. Ask them what they miss and don't miss about it and why. Watch a damn video, read a book once in a while. Just don't be one of these stupid bastards who condemns people and things without knowledge of them.

I live in America where I am free to be a stupid bastard and free to believe as I please just like the stupid Democrats that believe in the socialism of Bernie Sanders.
Praise the Lord.

[annatar1914]

I live in America where I am free to be a stupid bastard and free to believe as I please just like the stupid Democrats that believe in the socialism of Bernie Sanders.
Praise the Lord.

Well, you may not know much then, but you know what you like, and you have a sense of humor. I don't trust anyone without a sense of humor. Not too funny, because life is serious, but funny enough whether intentionally or not.

[annatar1914]

God is Love, and in Him there is no darkness.

God is Three Persons, Three Who are One.

What does it mean to be a Person? Personhood is not selfish and Individuated in a classical sense, but relational, as we are made in the Image and Likeness of God.

The Father is the Father precisely because He has eternally begotten the Son. The Son is the Son because He is begotten eternally from the Unoriginate Father. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, and dwells in perfect love and community and empathy with the Father and the Son Whom He glorifies in pure self-giving, as all the Persons do within the Godhead.

Persons are what they are and who they are in their relations. Ego cut off from relation to other Persons except as means to an end, objectifying all personal relation, is the root of sin, of alienation.

The Father shares all He is with the Son and with His Spirit, and they return back this Love which is their common Essence, their Unitary Perfect Being, One God.

Now, because of sin, our disordered and alienated natures, a great perceptual Abyss opens up, we cannot live with God or our fellow man like He lives ineffably within Himself, in this total harmony of Being, of relational personhood.

But God crosses that Abyss for our sakes, and draws us back to Himself, brings Humanity up into this social and personal existence where none say; ''this is mine, not yours'', but rather all we are and have is shared one with another.

Evil is rooted out when this new perception becomes a lived and relational life and love.

[annatar1914]

THE NEXT FEW CENTURIES; AN AMERICAN IMPERIUM-CENTERED ESCHATOLOGY

Life goes forwards, even as it spirals between various contradictory and conflicting paths to go by in this strife, or ebb and flow, between Good and Evil, Life and Death. There will be a ''Second Religiousity'' as per Oswald Spengler, but I was wrong in seeing it as a revived Roman Catholicism. The return to religiousity apes older forms, but imperfectly and with a naive and un-reflecting crudeness.


It seems to me now that the future of the entire Western Civilization, of Capitalism, and of all Heresy and Heterodoxy against Orthodox Christianity, all lies with America, the New World Empire, the New World Order.

And so it will be that in the coming centuries (or decades, if the very force of these things happening compresses the time in which they will be endured) all Western Politics will gravitate entirely to Washington D.C. as the literal Capital of the West politically but culturally and economically too. Western countries will all be constituted as States in the Union, every one, from Canada and Hawaii and Australia and New Zealand east of California, England and France and Germany, Scandinavia and Italy, to the frontiers of Russia and the Balkans too. Almost the entire world will be under America's rule, as the World Government will lie with it's rulers de facto as well as de Jure...

But also, all Religion in this Western world will likewise be concentrated in America as it's spiritual center, and I now concede completely that all Protestantism and Roman Catholicism will naturally flow and fade into Mormonism, the religion absolutely tailored to the spiritual nature of America, and Western Civilization. Everywhere the West rules Mormonism will take root and thrive as the official religion. It will change somewhat as it grows, but it will be substantially what Joseph Smith and Brigham Young preached, modified by later adherents from Protestantism and Roman Catholicism which it originally sprung from.

Capitalism and America will likewise find absolute identity, with America as the very center of World Capitalism, and thus, World Wealth. It will be governed by persons who are absolutely convinced of this System as something ordained by God, ordained by the very nature of things.

America will be ruled by an Emperor, in fact if not in formal title, and the office will be informally if not formally passed down by hereditary right, among great families which will constitute an Oligarchy of mercantile and military Houses, some of Europe originally, some native to America's ruling class.

This Age perhaps could have been seen by some, when the 7000th year of the world coincided with Columbus discovering the Americas in 1492 AD, heralding Antichrist. This America I discern as the Homeland of the coming son of Perdition, this future America I see as ''Babylon the Great mother of all the Harlotries and Abominations of the Earth''.

[annatar1914]

A bit harsh perhaps, some might say unhinged, oh well. We are entering a new era in human history they'll admit, but never in their wildest nightmares will they see in their minds the era that is to come.

It's what some have called, if a remember Zizek or Baudrillaud correctly, the ''expected event''. Today it is somewhat believed in as ''Predictive Programming'', but there's really no doubt what it really is. Deep down we all want the whole thing to just come crashing down into ruins, we really do, we just don't want to consciously admit it, that we're wrong about the lives we're living-and wasting-within this System.

Disposable lives, disposable everything and everyone for the sake of individual ease and convenience. And such hypocrisy!

Well, the Western Civilization will resolve it's contradiction by entering a long period of stagnation, stasis and death and finding Religion at the end of it, where Capitalism, American Exceptionalism, Western Imperium, and Mormonism will fuse together as the final forms or that Civilization in all it's aspects. No new answers, just Syncretic ones to satisfy the exhausted collective mind.

For does anyone believe that 2020 AD is a normal election year in the United States? No, this will be it, and for good, in a number of things.

[SolarCross]

[Potemkin]

Hey, we're bound to be right sooner or later, right?

[SolarCross]

Hey, we're bound to be right sooner or later, right?

Sure, if you do not mind a trillion year margin of error then neither do I.

[Potemkin]

Sure, if you do not mind a trillion year margin of error then neither do I.

To be fair, we're not talking about the end of the entire universe (a few trillion years, give or take) or the end of the world (a few billion years, give or take), but merely the end of the present social and economic order of things (a few centuries, give or take). In fact, the present social/economic order could collapse tomorrow. We just don't know, and we're not making any exact predictions. We just know that it will collapse, sooner or later, as all previous social and economic orders have collapsed.

[SolarCross]

To be fair, we're not talking about the end of the entire universe (a few trillion years, give or take) or the end of the world (a few billion years, give or take), but merely the end of the present social and economic order of things (a few centuries, give or take). In fact, the present social/economic order could collapse tomorrow. We just don't know, and we're not making any exact predictions. We just know that it will collapse, sooner or later, as all previous social and economic orders have collapsed.

Did they collapse? It seems like collapses only on very a superficial level, like the regime of the tyrants "collapses" in favour of the republic which in turn "collapses" in favour of a new line of dictators. But bread is still baked, fish is still netted from the sea and sold in the market, that did not collapse. There is more to life than politics. 99% of collapses are inconsequential except to drama queens.

[Potemkin]

Did they collapse? It seems like collapses only on very a superficial level, like the regime of the tyrants "collapses" in favour of the republic which in turn "collapses" in favour of a new line of dictators. But bread is still baked, fish is still netted from the sea and sold in the market, that did not collapse. There is more to life than politics. 99% of collapses are inconsequential except to drama queens.

The slave economy of the Roman Empire collapsed in the 5th century. The feudal economy of medieval Europe collapsed in the 14th century. The feudal-capitalist economy of Imperial China collapsed in 1911. The capitalist economy of Tsarist Russia collapsed in 1917. And so on and so forth. These events were not merely a little spot of bother, or a few drama queens getting hot under the collar. They were events which shattered the worlds which existed before them, revolutionary upheavals from which there was no return.

[SolarCross]

The slave economy of the Roman Empire collapsed in the 5th century. The feudal economy of medieval Europe collapsed in the 14th century. The feudal-capitalist economy of Imperial China collapsed in 1911. The capitalist economy of Tsarist Russia collapsed in 1917. And so on and so forth. These events were not merely a little spot of bother, or a few drama queens getting hot under the collar. They were events which shattered the worlds which existed before them, revolutionary upheavals from which there was no return.

Except there was no collapse. Rome was not all of Europe, most people doing most work were free. Most people acquired slaves through wars and raiding but most people did not win the wars they fought. Rome had lots of slaves because Rome was very good at winning wars. Even Rome's economy was only supplemented by slaves rather than dependent on them. There was no such thing as a "slave economy" until the USSR. Slavery had its legal underpinnings pulled by the Christians but that did not lead to a "collapse" just a readjustment.

Feudalism is nothing at all but a 19th century myth as we covered earlier. And again there was no collapse. You can talk about political upheavals all day long but the economic does not work that way. It improves relatively smoothly with better technology. Bad regimes or wars may cause stagnation or privations but the actual economics does not change substantially except through technology.

[annatar1914]

@SolarCross , you said;

Except there was no collapse.

Yes, there was, it is one of the most attested event's in human history, for one thing the Roman Empire doesn't exist now, does it not?

Rome was not all of Europe, most people doing most work were free. Most people acquired slaves through wars and raiding but most people did not win the wars they fought. Rome had lots of slaves because Rome was very good at winning wars. Even Rome's economy was only supplemented by slaves rather than dependent on them. There was no such thing as a "slave economy" until the USSR.

Absolute unadulterated horseshit.

Slavery had its legal underpinnings pulled by the Christians but that did not lead to a "collapse" just a readjustment.

Most people were in various stages of ''un-freedom'' in the Feudal period.

Feudalism is nothing at all but a 19th century myth as we covered earlier.

We covered the fact that you don't know what you're talking about, almost to the point of delusion.

And again there was no collapse. You can talk about political upheavals all day long but the economic does not work that way. It improves relatively smoothly with better technology. Bad regimes or wars may cause stagnation or privations but the actual economics does not change substantially except through technology.

More horse manure. For example, the Dark Ages of Greece and the Near East during the Bronze Age, it lasted over 400 years, writing was forgotten in Greece, and technology actually regressed. Another example would be the absolute desolation and neglect in the Levant during the Ottoman Empire period after 1517. Only mere handfuls of people lived in the Holy Land by the time Mark Twain wrote of his pilgrimage there about 150 years ago, and travelers told that the native population that did exist had almost forgotten the use of the wheel so abject was their ignorance and poverty...