5 ms·

Is "death cult" just a fancy way of insulting people nowadays? Or is the US administration literally associated with a religious movement that worships death or

Is "death cult" just a fancy way of insulting people nowadays? Or is the US administration literally associated with a religious movement that worships death or the dead?

Gibbon1 7y ago
The US Administration is now closely associated with the dominionist movement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_theology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_theology
ceejayoz 7y ago
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/us/politics/pompeo-christian-policy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/us/politics/pompeo-christ... > Studies show that white evangelicals are much more likely than other Americans to believe that Israel fulfills a biblical prophecy. Known as Christian Zionists, they believe God promised the land to the Jews, and that the gathering of Jews in Israel is foretold in the prophecy of the rapture — the ascent of Christians into the kingdom of God. The Rapture, as interpreted by American evangelicals, includes a whole lot of death in an apocalyptic end to Earth.
smacktoward 7y ago
You must have missed the most recent round of GOP talking points, where they were suggesting we write off the lives of people in high-risk groups so everyone else can get back to work. See https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/akw87e/texas-lt-governor-thinks-old-people-are-happy-to-sacrifice-themselves-to-coronavirus-to-save-the-economy&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwizkbn-t7joAhXkhXIEHcksB8oQFjAAegQIChAB&usg=AOvVaw1rvr1iotNwYKFbXr09mhGV https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.vice.com/en_us/arti..., https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fox-news-contributor-on-putting-lives-of-old-people-at-risk-to-save-the-economy-its-an-entirely-reasonable-viewpoint-2020-03-25 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fox-news-contributor-on-pu..., https://www.mediaite.com/news/glenn-beck-issues-call-for-older-americans-to-go-back-to-work-even-if-we-all-get-sick-id-rather-die-than-kill-the-country/ https://www.mediaite.com/news/glenn-beck-issues-call-for-old... for a few examples.
- smcl 7y ago
  The same party that has been scaremongering against socialised healthcare saying it involves "death panels".
  - tropo 7y ago
    The only thing untrue is that we'd officially call them something else. You don't have "death panels" if you call them "community wellness committees". There is no economy anywhere in the world that can support an infinite demand for healthcare. We keep inventing new healthcare too, so it only gets worse. There will be limits to healthcare, though we can lie to ourselves about that. If we don't place a price on life, then 100% of our money goes to healthcare and then we still end up dead in the end. With socialised healthcare, the politically viable solution is to promise more than can be delivered. This causes waiting lists. Waiting lists for "free" (tax funded) care will grow as long as demand exceeds supply. The supply is limited by resources. The demand is only limited because people die while waiting for treatment. There is a huge opportunity for corruption and bias here. Instead of a simple waiting list, we can move people ahead if they are politically favored. It's all simpler and less corrupt if we let market prices sort out how we wish to prioritize the care of one person, the care of another person, and all the other possible economic activity.
    - smcl 7y ago
      But by that logic all private healthcare providers like in the US are death panels? The rest of your comment was a wild ride. You're inventing a fictional socialised healthcare system (overwhelmed, hopelessly overbudget and reliant on political connections for treatment) and then declaring that some fictional market is better. But we don't need to invent fictional systems to compare and see whether this is true - both of these exist in reality. And in reality US's "markets" comprise a healthcare system which is infamous for being horrendously unfair, overpriced and corrupt. You are free to pick any developed country to compare to - it won't matter, the ones with better outcomes and lower expenditures will be those with socialised healthcare.
      - 7y ago
kingaillas 7y ago
The US administration (Trump) wants businesses reopened by Easter, despite the plentiful indications that would be an enormous public health disaster due to furthering the outbreak, in order to save the economy. I think you can draw a recognizable path between this and say... the Aztecs who practiced human sacrifice in order to appease the gods. Except here the gods are the free market, human sacrifice is the willingness to accept higher number of deaths in order to feed the needs of the free market. So yes, they are a death cult. Before they only showed it through uncompromising support of gun rights, but now it is clear they are willing to kill hundreds of thousands for their economic philosophy or Trump's re-election chances. Decide how evil that is.
apocalypstyx 7y ago
The current administration is popular among evangelicals, many of whom focus on the necessity of bringing about the end of times (by getting all the Jews back to Israel, among other things, instigating or ensuring various other harbingers of the apocalypse, including promoting climate destruction and war, etc) in order that the Rapture happens so they can get taken up to heaven without having to die first, and while up there they have a front row seat to watch the sufferings of the 'non-elite' majority who will remain on the earth.
gameswithgo 7y ago
Its a severe way of characterizing the way many of us in American value liberty even if it harms or kills us and others.
- beepboopbeep 7y ago
  Sure.
rsynnott 7y ago
I mean, normally, it's hyperbole. But that Texas Lieutenant governor going on about how old people would be happy to lay down their lives for the economy was definitely getting into actual death cult territory.
- seph-reed 7y ago
  I enjoy how 2 weeks ago most people had a kill the boomers rhetoric, and now it's my grandma/grandpa. It's (likely) a change for the better, but one I haven't seen pointed out yet.
  - rsynnott 7y ago
    > most people Who were these "most people"? I've only seen this from a few random twitter people, plus the aforementioned Texas lt governor, who is presumably a psychopath (and a stupid psychopath, too; who, precisely, does he think is voting for him...) He was, to some extent, only saying the quiet part out loud, though. Those calling for ending restrictions within the next few weeks are saying "let's kill the olds for the economy"; they're just being a little more euphemistic than he was. The funny thing is, even if some country did this awful thing, it almost certainly wouldn't work; a million dead senior citizens isn't really conducive to a normally functioning economy. People would be absolutely traumatized (and rightly so), and there wouldn't exactly be much discretionary consumer spending.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    The "Boomer Remover" stuff was largely gallows humor, not a genuine public policy proposal.

Is "death cult" just a fancy way of insulting people nowadays? Or is the US administration literally associated with a religious movement that worships death or the dead?

Gibbon1 7y ago

The US Administration is now closely associated with the dominionist movement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_theology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_theology

ceejayoz 7y ago

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/us/politics/pompeo-christian-policy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/us/politics/pompeo-christ... > Studies show that white evangelicals are much more likely than other Americans to believe that Israel fulfills a biblical prophecy. Known as Christian Zionists, they believe God promised the land to the Jews, and that the gathering of Jews in Israel is foretold in the prophecy of the rapture — the ascent of Christians into the kingdom of God. The Rapture, as interpreted by American evangelicals, includes a whole lot of death in an apocalyptic end to Earth.

smacktoward 7y ago

You must have missed the most recent round of GOP talking points, where they were suggesting we write off the lives of people in high-risk groups so everyone else can get back to work. See https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/akw87e/texas-lt-governor-thinks-old-people-are-happy-to-sacrifice-themselves-to-coronavirus-to-save-the-economy&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwizkbn-t7joAhXkhXIEHcksB8oQFjAAegQIChAB&usg=AOvVaw1rvr1iotNwYKFbXr09mhGV https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.vice.com/en_us/arti..., https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fox-news-contributor-on-putting-lives-of-old-people-at-risk-to-save-the-economy-its-an-entirely-reasonable-viewpoint-2020-03-25 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fox-news-contributor-on-pu..., https://www.mediaite.com/news/glenn-beck-issues-call-for-older-americans-to-go-back-to-work-even-if-we-all-get-sick-id-rather-die-than-kill-the-country/ https://www.mediaite.com/news/glenn-beck-issues-call-for-old... for a few examples.

smcl 7y ago
The same party that has been scaremongering against socialised healthcare saying it involves "death panels".
- tropo 7y ago
  The only thing untrue is that we'd officially call them something else. You don't have "death panels" if you call them "community wellness committees". There is no economy anywhere in the world that can support an infinite demand for healthcare. We keep inventing new healthcare too, so it only gets worse. There will be limits to healthcare, though we can lie to ourselves about that. If we don't place a price on life, then 100% of our money goes to healthcare and then we still end up dead in the end. With socialised healthcare, the politically viable solution is to promise more than can be delivered. This causes waiting lists. Waiting lists for "free" (tax funded) care will grow as long as demand exceeds supply. The supply is limited by resources. The demand is only limited because people die while waiting for treatment. There is a huge opportunity for corruption and bias here. Instead of a simple waiting list, we can move people ahead if they are politically favored. It's all simpler and less corrupt if we let market prices sort out how we wish to prioritize the care of one person, the care of another person, and all the other possible economic activity.
  - smcl 7y ago
    But by that logic all private healthcare providers like in the US are death panels? The rest of your comment was a wild ride. You're inventing a fictional socialised healthcare system (overwhelmed, hopelessly overbudget and reliant on political connections for treatment) and then declaring that some fictional market is better. But we don't need to invent fictional systems to compare and see whether this is true - both of these exist in reality. And in reality US's "markets" comprise a healthcare system which is infamous for being horrendously unfair, overpriced and corrupt. You are free to pick any developed country to compare to - it won't matter, the ones with better outcomes and lower expenditures will be those with socialised healthcare.
    - 7y ago

kingaillas 7y ago

The US administration (Trump) wants businesses reopened by Easter, despite the plentiful indications that would be an enormous public health disaster due to furthering the outbreak, in order to save the economy. I think you can draw a recognizable path between this and say... the Aztecs who practiced human sacrifice in order to appease the gods. Except here the gods are the free market, human sacrifice is the willingness to accept higher number of deaths in order to feed the needs of the free market. So yes, they are a death cult. Before they only showed it through uncompromising support of gun rights, but now it is clear they are willing to kill hundreds of thousands for their economic philosophy or Trump's re-election chances. Decide how evil that is.

apocalypstyx 7y ago

The current administration is popular among evangelicals, many of whom focus on the necessity of bringing about the end of times (by getting all the Jews back to Israel, among other things, instigating or ensuring various other harbingers of the apocalypse, including promoting climate destruction and war, etc) in order that the Rapture happens so they can get taken up to heaven without having to die first, and while up there they have a front row seat to watch the sufferings of the 'non-elite' majority who will remain on the earth.

gameswithgo 7y ago

Its a severe way of characterizing the way many of us in American value liberty even if it harms or kills us and others.

beepboopbeep 7y ago
Sure.

rsynnott 7y ago

I mean, normally, it's hyperbole. But that Texas Lieutenant governor going on about how old people would be happy to lay down their lives for the economy was definitely getting into actual death cult territory.

seph-reed 7y ago
I enjoy how 2 weeks ago most people had a kill the boomers rhetoric, and now it's my grandma/grandpa. It's (likely) a change for the better, but one I haven't seen pointed out yet.
- rsynnott 7y ago
  > most people Who were these "most people"? I've only seen this from a few random twitter people, plus the aforementioned Texas lt governor, who is presumably a psychopath (and a stupid psychopath, too; who, precisely, does he think is voting for him...) He was, to some extent, only saying the quiet part out loud, though. Those calling for ending restrictions within the next few weeks are saying "let's kill the olds for the economy"; they're just being a little more euphemistic than he was. The funny thing is, even if some country did this awful thing, it almost certainly wouldn't work; a million dead senior citizens isn't really conducive to a normally functioning economy. People would be absolutely traumatized (and rightly so), and there wouldn't exactly be much discretionary consumer spending.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  The "Boomer Remover" stuff was largely gallows humor, not a genuine public policy proposal.