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U.S. Troops Were Told Iran War Is for "Armageddon,"
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- sleepyguy 8mo agoThe people running the country are fucking insane.
- tstrimple 8mo agoThe bigger challenge is the people who vote for them are also fucking insane and there are tens of millions more of them.
- toomuchtodo 8mo agoThey are a reflection of the electorate. If you don’t want crazy and incompetent, don’t vote for it. If you get what you voted for, don’t be sad about it, it’s what you voted for. Regime change will come with time, but it’s going to suck for a while because of this governance failure mode.
- denkmoon 8mo agoA fair position if the electoral system weren't a complete shambles. When gerrymandering is openly used as a weapon by the only two parties, it's pretty clearly not working. Of course, change is impossible without a complete dissolution of governance in the US.
- toomuchtodo 8mo ago~89 million eligible voters did not vote in the last presidential election. “Fuck around find out”, and we are at the “find out” stage. This was a collective choice. So if you didn’t vote, or you voted for this, you voted for this. Enjoy the ride. https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2024-11-15/how-many-people-didnt-vote-in-the-2024-election https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2024-11-1...
- fzeroracer 8mo agoWhat percentage of those eligible voters do you think would've mattered? For example I lived in WA and voted, how much do you think my vote mattered over an entire red county of 100 people voting for Trump? Our electoral system is designed to disenfranchise the most populated areas.
- hedora 8mo agoTrump got less than 50% of the vote, and less than a third of eligible voters voted for him. The real issue is that the two parties have created a situation where you cannot vote for a viable candidate. Case in point: approximately a dozen democratic senators have come out in support of the war. Like, if you don’t want to intentionally bring about the apocalypse/nuclear holocaust, and you live in those states, the only way to avoid voting for those things is to not vote. You can try getting your incumbent kicked out in the primaries, but that’s a dangerous game in swing states. In your case (WA) you absolutely should vote in the primary for the farthest left democrat possible. We probably should switch to multi-party proportional representation at some point.
- bubblewand 8mo agoThis is the right idea. Under-appreciated is that voting in the federal general elections is the point at which you have the least effect on anything. Earlier (primaries) and more local (all those elections way fewer people go to because there are no nationally-covered races on it) is far more effective at actually affecting the world. Someone who votes in all of those and skips the federal general bubbles is a more-effective voter than someone who does the opposite and only votes for the big federal offices (and those are the only ones people will commonly shame you for skipping, which is really backwards)
- toomuchtodo 8mo agoMore voters 55+ will have died in a year (~2M/year) since he was elected to office than was the margin of victory. High single digit percentage points of eligible voters who did not vote. Ahh, well, it is what it is. We take the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.
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- fzeroracer 8mo agoI wouldn't say it's a reflection of the electorate. There's a lot of states that have been gerrymandered for years and Christians in extremely red areas have outsized voting power compared to everywhere else. Combined with the complete media capture by billionaires, the dumbest rule by fiat. Unfortunately Christian nationalists happen to be extremely wealthy and extremely stupid.
- diogenescynic 8mo ago>There's a lot of states that have been gerrymandered for years and Christians in extremely red areas have outsized voting power compared to everywhere else. Combined with the complete media capture by billionaires, the dumbest rule by fiat. It's happening on both sides. https://www.npr.org/2026/01/14/nx-s1-5647442/midterm-elections-redistricting-trump-california https://www.npr.org/2026/01/14/nx-s1-5647442/midterm-electio... We the public should be rejecting it, but we're idiots and keep falling for 'but they're doing it!' and then undermine our own political power to 'own' the other side. We're being played for fools.
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- fzeroracer 8mo agoIt's happening on both sides now because the Supreme Court has signed off on it for years and given all the power to gerrymandering efforts from the right. The public can't reject what is unaccountable to said public.
- tzs 8mo agoThat's a ridiculous comparison. The California special redistricting was done via a voter initiative that was approved by a majority of California voters, and imposes a temporary change on the rules for drawing districts that reverts to the neutral rules when after the next census. It was specifically proposed to counter the Texas special redistricting which was done by the Texas legislature and government with no concern over whether or not Texas voters approved (and polls show that more Texas voters disapprove than approve).
- JumpCrisscross 8mo ago> If you don’t want crazy and incompetent, don’t vote for it We have less of a problem with crazies voting for crazies than non-crazies not voting. Because if the crazies can find compromise with someone approximately as crazy as them while the non-crazies are either too lazy to turn out or unable to get out of stitches because the less-crazy candidate disagrees with them on two issues, the crazies win.
- Schmerika 8mo agoWas arming genocide in Gaza sane? Even if you have no moral red line whatsoever, that decision was still certain to lose millions of votes in swing states... Because millions of voters do have morality, even in America. America's problems are far bigger than whether people vote or not. The insanity is thoroughly bipartisan. Look at the Democrats giving Trump standing ovations while he talked about military action in Iran last week! It's just a matter of degree: Genocide, or genocide+. ICE, or ICE+. Do you want your fossil fuel subsidies massive or ginormous. Techno-feudalism, or turbo techno-feudalism. Those aren't sane options. It's not sane to accept them. The idea that we could elect Democrats and "push them left" "once the fire was out" was thoroughly disproved shortly after October 7th - if not before then, when Trump's insurrection prosecution for was slow-rolled; or when we decided that the correct legal procedure was to let Garland sit on the Epstein files for 4 years. So... Maybe diminishing one half of the problem as 'insane', but not the other half because it's slightly better, is doomed to failure. Either way the crazies win.
- _DeadFred_ 8mo ago"I refuse to wear glasses, they don't give me perfect vision and they don't fix my underlying eyesight problem"
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- gruez 8mo agoBut only around a quarter of Americans support the war?
- treetalker 8mo ago*special Judeo-Christian operation
- impossiblefork 8mo agoThe strange part from my point of view is that it's so obviously heretical from inside the system. They have Amos, which reasons out the problems of wishing for the Day of the Lord, and I don't understand how they can ignore it. Internalizing this idea should rather lead to a profound dislike for destabilizing the world, push the Day of the Lord as far into the future as it can be, to save all the people who can be born. I can understand how one can be a madman for a while, when one is full of grief. That's fine, but when one returns to normality one should realise that not destabilizing things is a moral duty.
- mindslight 8mo agoThe way they ignore everything else that doesn't validate their own sinning?
- tim333 8mo agoA possible good point of Trump is he seems pretty non religious. The Armageddon bit seems to be Hegseth and his preacher.
- krapp 8mo agoThe intersectionality of the American military industrial complex, the Republican Party and fundamentalist Christianity go back much further than Hegseth. When Bush talked about a "new crusade" after 9/11, who do you think he was signaling to? That wasn't just awkward phrasing. The only real difference between then and now is that the current administration is run by groypers and trolls who don't care about kayfabe and aren't capable of subtlety.
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- zeven7 8mo agoNot exactly the "Armageddon" part. It's a little more complicated than that. Hegseth's preacher is part of a partial preterist and postmillennialist group. They believe apocalyptic prophecies like the Great Tribulation and Armageddon were largely fulfilled in 70 CE when the Romans destroyed the temple in Jerusalem.
- rchaud 8mo agoYou don't have to be religious to figure out that theological indoctrination is a great way to de-legitimize courts, laws and norms of civil society in your favor.
- monkpit 8mo agois this real life
- anal_reactor 8mo agois this just fanta sea
- neilellis 8mo agoCaught in a landslide, no escape from reality
- outside2344 8mo agoI mean people voted for Trump so I'd bet there are people falling for this too
- diogenescynic 8mo agoAnd the sad truth is that democrats will continue to nominate candidates that are so appalling they'll still be rejected in favor of this lunatic or someone like him. Pathetic options on both sides. The two party system is failing the country. If there was literally anything in the middle, I feel like we'd be better off than lurching from one extreme to the other.
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- c54 8mo agoWhat kinds of middle policies would you like to see? Genuine question. This is a surprising opinion to me because I see the democrats as a center left largely moderate party. Agreed that the democrat candidates are appalling and generally show no conviction.
- hedora 8mo ago[flagged]
- mattydread 8mo agoThis is complete nonsense. Moderate Democrats loudly and vigorously support all these things. Either you’re ignorant or you’re trolling from your actual far-right position.
- hedora 8mo ago- Prosecution of criminals. Ah, yes, lots of ICE officers are locked up in state prisons, and Trump's empire is being dismantled out from under him. There are lots of state-level investigations involving the $4B in bribes he took this year. - Free market economics. If this were true, it would be possible to buy fire insurance in California, and Biden would have broken up dozens of monopolies. No spending bills would pass without provisions to do more of this because a coalition of the moderate democrats, libertarian republicans and far left democrats have more than enough votes to fillibuster and override vetos. - Freedom of speech / privacy / assembly California is rolling out mandatory age verification laws for operating systems this year. Remember: I'm talking about moderate democrats. These are the ones that are more likely to vote for Trump appointees than some Republicans. These are the ones that cast the deciding votes to make sure health care would be rolled back for millions of americans this past January. There are about 10 of them in the senate, which is enough to give the republican leadership the ability to pass whatever the heck they want, even with internal consent.
- treetalker 8mo agothe power of Christ compels you … to bomb schools, apparently
- tim333 8mo agoI think that one was a screw up - it was next to an IRGC barracks.
- sph 8mo agoAh, that’s alright then.
- swat535 8mo agoAlso there was intel of IRGC members in the school. Either way it's a mess. Iran had performed similar strikes (though not in schools) in residential buildings in Golf states that included a mix of military y personnel and civilians. War is terrible and innocent people always take causalities.
- esalman 8mo ago> Iran war is part of God’s plan and that Pres. Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth I lived in Texas for 5 years and I have heard people saying this kind of things first and second hand during his first term and also after his defeat.
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- red-iron-pine 8mo agomakes a lot of sense now why Thiel is talking a lot about the anti-christ
- NoGravitas 8mo agoThey said it under George W. Bush, too.
- scoofy 8mo agoI always have to remind my mom that she legitimately thought Obama might be the Antichrist… I honestly think the entire premise of the “End of the World” religious beliefs is just pattern recognition instincts being pointed at something entirely random. It looks very, very silly in hindsight, but natural selection actually selects for a nontrivial predisposition to make type 1 errors, so we should expect them to be very common.
- jacquesm 8mo agoThat only works as long as the powers that be don't start quoting this stuff themselves.
- krapp 8mo ago>I honestly think the entire premise of the “End of the World” religious beliefs is just pattern recognition instincts being pointed at something entirely random. It isn't ever entirely random. They thought Obama was the Antichrist because they thought he was a Muslim, and a common interpretation of the Book of Revelations is that the final war of Armageddon will be a nuclear war between Christianity and Islam, after a New World Order/One World Government established by the Antichrist.
- legitster 8mo agoContext: This refers to a particular Evangelical quasi-cult called the "New Apostolic Reformation". Obsession with the end times stems from a particular Biblical interpretation called "dispensationalism" that was introduced into America in the 1800s. If you're wondering why certain Christian sects became more obsessed from retreating from society than improving it, these are the head waters. It's a successful theme that took off on radio, then with televangelists, and now on social media. The New Apostolic Reformation is kind of the ultimate culmination of these beliefs. It's one of the key components of what is being called Christian Nationalism. It's not even clear what parts of the movement are earnestly held and which are purely opportunists trading on the fears of the naive. Many Christians may cross-pollinate in these circles without knowing it - but it takes a very specifically indoctrinated person to think Trump is divinely anointed
- jacquesm 8mo ago> It's not even clear what parts of the movement are earnestly held and which are purely opportunists trading on the fears of the naive. None of them and all of them.
- Ostrogoth 8mo agoHaving grown up in churches that began to embrace NAR tenets in the 90s-00s, this particular eschatology gained a foothold across a wide swath of denominations from non-denom/charismatic/baptist all the way to methodist/CoC. In my experience it’s less a retreat from society, and more of a particular strain of religious fundamentalism that seeks to draw a line in the sand against “secular” culture. Most NAR organizations are lead by a “prophet” or leader who followers believe directly hears from God (aka a new apostle). A predominant theme among NAR churches is increasing christian influence in government (i.e. “7 Mountain Mandate” for example). I also recently learned about catholic integralism, which shares similar dominionist goals with NAR, and has gained momentum in the US.
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- beedeebeedee 8mo agoThe irony is that it’s happening in Iran, the home of Zoroastarianism, which is the religion that Judaism and Christianity ripped off about the messiah, heaven, hell and the apocalyptic battle at the end of time (amongst other things)
- orwin 8mo agoIt seems Judaism also took from Aten, weirdly, because the cult died under Tutankhamun, at least in lower Egypt.
- abandonliberty 8mo agoOne of my favorites. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xwedodah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xwedodah >Xwedodah (Persian: خویدوده xidude; Avestan: xᵛaētuuadaθa) is a type of consanguine marriage historically practiced in Zoroastrianism before the Muslim conquest of Persia.[1] Such marriages are recorded as having been inspired by Zoroastrian cosmogony and considered pious. It was a high act of worship in Zoroastrianism, and there were punishments for not performing it.[2][3] >This form of direct familial incest marriage allowed Zoroastrians to marry their sisters, daughters, granddaughters, and their own mothers to take as wives.[4] Xwedodah was widely practiced by royalty and nobility, and possibly clergy, but it is not known if it was commonly practiced by families in other classes.[5] In modern Zoroastrianism it is near non-existent, having been noted to have disappeared as an extant practice by the 11th century.[5]
- polotics 8mo agoCan someone please find a way to either confirm or debunk this. My working hypothesis was that people in power did actually take the time to read René Girard, and not just mention him to appear enlightened... Anyway, never too late, at least one Stamford documentary on YouTube... Please check him out.
- tim333 8mo agoI'd never heard of René Girard and would be very surprised if Trump or Hegseth had read him, or probably even heard of him. His basic ideas from the top of his Wikipedia page seem interesting though: >...that human desire is fundamentally imitative, leading to rivalry, violence and the scapegoat mechanism as foundations of religion and culture. I guess applying that here Hegseth not having so many ideas of his own got the Armageddon and Jesus ideas from others and scapegoats the islam guys leading to violence etc.?
- carefree-bob 8mo agoGirard is pretty famous and was well known at Stanford when he was there. He is a major thinker and deserving of individual attention rather than being pulled into partisan political debates. Even Peter Thiel, who attended a seminar taught by Girard at Stanford, has a fairly good understanding of Girard's views, one that is not amenable to cliches. If you are interested in learning about Girard, start with "I See Satan Fall Like Lightning".
- AnimalMuppet 8mo agoThere used to be a page on arcade.stanford.edu that was a takedown of Girard. It seems to have disappeared, or I would point you to it. Girard writes beautifully. The problem is with his evidence. He says things like Jesus being an instance of the scapegoat, which is true, but he also says that the disciples were in on it. Never mind that the gospels say that they didn't understand until after Jesus rose from the dead; Girard says that those who are scapegoating someone won't say that that's what they're doing. And viola, evidence against Girard's position magically becomes evidence for it. Same with Oedipus, and literally dozens of other examples that the article gave that I don't remember what they are. It goes on and on and on, giving examples where Girard's "evidence" does not say what he says it says. So if you actually read Girard, look carefully at his examples. Don't get carried away by the beautiful writing; think about what the example says and what Girard says it says. [Edit: Found a link. https://shc.stanford.edu/arcade/publications/rofl/issues/volume-3-issue-1/deceit-desire-and-literature-professor-why https://shc.stanford.edu/arcade/publications/rofl/issues/vol... It's worth a read.]
- cykros 8mo agoArmageddon is the old name for what is now called Megiddo. It's a Kibbutz in northern Israel. But hey, if the goal is to bring war to the doorstep of the occupiers,there are probably worse goals to have.
- polotics 8mo agoI think you are mistaken: that lush green slow-sloped hill and beautiful valley was there before anyone built a Kibbutz on it, and was already called that in the bronze age when a Canaanite town stood there. In my memory of it from 20 years ago, it was surprisingly nice and green, a bit like a Windows background. As far as I understand, as it's got even neolithic settlement strata, this is as good as any other place name for signifying "the center of the world" as any Koine-writer was going to get.
- sph 8mo agoIs there any effing source or is everybody inventing shit just for the fun of it?
- sheikhnbake 8mo agoThe source is complaints to the MRFF. Having served for a little while, this kind of rhetoric does not surprise me. Especially after the speeches Hegseth has given previously. This my wife and I anecdotal experiences but military leadership will sometimes surprise you with a bunch of deeply religious statements out of nowhere.
- red-iron-pine 8mo agoyeah like AFAIK there is 0 proof... but having been military they love to throw this shit around. there are a lot of dumb fuckin rubes in the military but not as many as you'd think. I think it's more posturing for the people at home
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- ChoGGi 8mo agoWhether I believe this or not, it sure seems like a good way to present a patsy when the war (or is it a special operation) goes sideways.
- tempodox 8mo ago“Armageddon” sounds plausible in the sense that if this war ends too soon, the goons in charge will find ways to start another one within days. The war(s) will not end until von Clownstick is out of office, one way or the other.
- morkalork 8mo agoBut what if I don't want Armageddon. I like sleeping in my warm comfy bed at night and not fighting in the endtimes.
- throwawaypath 8mo agoClearly fake news, but leftists are eating it up like the MAGAs of yesteryear. The amount of fake news and outrage AI slop posted on reddit, BlueSky, HN in the recently is maddening.