What was your initial reaction when Trump announced that he's running for president, and how has that changed now that he is president?
When Trump announced his campaign, my response was something like:“LOLOLOLOLOL OKAY. This’ll be a fun election.”I watched every word he said and laughed my ass off at how stupid he was.Then candidates started dropping out, and Trump was still there. It was a little less funny.Then Trump got the nomination. I wasn’t laughing.Then Trump won and I was crying.Trump illuminated all of the nastiness still present in the US— all the hatred and bigotry. It’s been good in some ways; no longer can we all pretend that racism and sexism and homophobia are done and gone. It’s been made clear that people are still completely willing to vote for a man like him.That’s sad, but I think it’s something we needed to face. I would have preferred that Trump could shine light on these problems without getting elected, but he’s been elected and now we need to work hard to minimize damage he can cause and maximize benefits he can bring, especially in regards to minority issues.It’s going to be a long path ahead.In the beginning, I treated Trump as a joke because that’s how he was behaving.Now I know that no matter how ridiculous I feel his statements are, lots of people are taking them seriously and this could have some real ramifications for millions of Americans.I will assume that he means every word he says, and react accordingly.Trump scares me, and rightly so.
How much it is necessary for a youth to have in-depth knowledge of politics? Why one should have knowledge of politics when generally he/she don't like the topic?
You know , this circumstances where you are living is democracy , it means where. Rule are for the people of the people and by the people , so if everything is for people then it is important to be with serious about politics.If controral of a household get failed to command over executive of home , he will become irresponsible and totalitarian , and at the end of results the kind of setuation take place will be of irregularities .And you of things becomes irregular it lost its meaning.So it is important to be aware about what our representative are doing , actually like India where world's largest democracy exist , chances for people mandate are generally get after five year , and their direct responsibilities towards people are examined then, so if will not be too much aware for once too , how can we say we are in democracy . Just it would be kind of formalities to vote someone
Why do religions feel the right to judge and punish others for their sins when they also sin?
Speaking from a Biblical Christian point of view, every one sins. Exercising faith in the ransom sacrifice of Jesus covers our sinful every day nature. Before Jesus, the Hebrews had to continual offer sacrifices to cover there sins. Jesus is a once only sacrifice.The almighty God recognises that we sin each day that is why he sent Jesus, a perfect human, who was the same as Adam, had to die as a perfect man to pay for the perfect life that Adam lost for all of us.Even though we are all sinners, what the Almighty does not want, is people to worship him who purposely and deliberately go out of their way to practice sin. Any religion that professes to worship God in the way he wants to be worshipped can not allow continual practices of gross sin to remain among them. It is not the “religions” rules is is Gods rule.
How much respect for H.P. Lovecraft did you lose after reading a few of his most Racist, Xenophobic paragraphs?
A little bit. I’d already gleaned his take on people who didn’t fit his concept of the ideal human being, or ideal gender for that matter, from reading his stories before learning the full extent of it. But I wasn’t reading him for his views on race and gender, I was reading him to get my fix of weird horror and cosmic dread. I was admittedly disappointed to see his racism and xenophobia unambiguously and indefensibly (aside from the “everybody thought that way back then” argument) laid out plain in his letters but I’d already seen the evidence so it wasn’t that much of a revelation. Or “blasphemous, mind-blasting revelation” as H.P. would have put it. Does that change my affection for Lovecraft’s overarching, non-race themes and creations? Not one bit.Artists are as fallible as any other human being and as such capable of holding opinions that others may may find distasteful or outright offensive. Lovecraft was a flawed human being who lived a lonely existence, saw little success in his own lifetime, and died alone in pain and poverty. Lovecraft shouldn’t be hated, he should be pitied. Yes, some of his views were objectively reprehensible to say the least but that doesn’t mean we can’t separate the artist from their work. Alice Walker regularly praises the work of a Holocaust denier and anti-Semite, the appropriately named David Icke. Does that mean people should stop reading “The Color Purple”? Ms. Walker’s support of a man who writes “non-fiction” about lizard-people and the Illuminati doesn’t change the fact that “The Color Purple” is a modern masterpiece. It would be a foolish shame to punish one for the sins of the other.Here’s how I see it. Cthulhu isn’t just a threat to brave, intelligent, pasty-skinned men of wholesome lineage. He’s a threat to everything that ever was and ever will be. Cthulhu doesn’t discriminate. That’s why the thing that lies dead and dreaming in the sunken city of R’lyeh is my role model and that’s good enough for me.
Has there been any incident that has completely changed your religious beliefs?
It was tough, I'd be reading the Bible, but I didn't really believe the Bible. I wanted my circumstances to change before I could believe it. It was the antithesis of faith; using God for my own ends.The incident was one of those quiet day-to-day realizations that came to mind subtly.I can sum it up as trusting Jesus. It doesn't depend on anything more than that. Coming to faith is very much a journey. Even decades from conversion, I find always new lessons to learn. There were times I faltered in my faith, backslid, was disobedient; yet the realization I came to was staggering. Those who place their faith in Jesus need only trust Him to do that great, unsearchable changing work of a person. It can come from inside, from external circumstances, from external inputs; truly unsearchable. There were even times of discipline, times of remorse after realizing how far off I'd wandered. Those epistles and gospels I flipped through, I now realize contain treasures, the very promises of God. They contain realities. Sin, defined as such, in contrast to the unapproachable holiness of God. These realities are written plainly. The choice of agreeing with or ignoring these realities are ours, as are the coming consequences.EDIT1: I forgot to mention another realization which sprang from the above. God is with me through the difficult situations. In my walk of faith, I'm learning to divorce my sense of thankfulness from my circumstances. Just as in marriage, our oaths are to love each other through the good and bad, sickness and in health, for much or for less; so it is neccesary for us to struggle for a short while, that our oath may hold true. Knowing we're part of His family, adopted through great redemptive work of Jesus Christ who bore our sins punishment upon that bloody cross; knowing this strengthens us. Our troubles cannot disown us, it cannot revoke our adoption as children. “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39, New International Version (NIV)).A quote I enjoy from Henri Nouwen: "You don’t think your way into a new kind of living. You live your way into a new kind of thinking."
Does the phrase "it's my truth" make sense?
Truth is a subjective notion. If two people have a fight and then do their best to honestly explain the cause and how the fight played out to the same person, different stories will be told. Even though a lot of the details will be the same, the truth will be different for the two of them. For person A, the cause is the disagreement over how many drinks they each need to pay for on their bar tab. For person B, the cause is Person A's longstanding habit of not paying for their fair share of the bill when they go out.How does the third person decide what's true where the details are different? Is one of them lying? No. Their truths are true for them.So the statement makes sense. The problem is in the usage and why someone is using it. Are they using it in the sense described above, or are they using it to excuse socially unacceptable behaviour or to deny something thst is categorically true?For example,Someone denies that The Holocaust happened and says it was made up by Jews to gain sympathy and misdirect people away from the ‘fact' that they control the global banking system.Another person tells them that is absolutely not true and they are lying to justify their bigotry. And the first person responds with, “Well it's my truth". That makes no sense because there is so much proof the Holocaust happened. This truth is not subjective. This person is trying to use the fact that truth can be (but isn't always) subjective as proof that they can claim anything they want to true actually is true.When asked what caused WW1, many people say it was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. This is kind of true, depending on how you interpret the word “cause". Many historians will say this is not true. They agree it was a catalyst but not the cause and will discuss things like the alliance system, imperialism, nationalism and militarism. For people who have not studied WW1 in detail, their truth, the truth they were taught in school and even from books, is that the assassination was the cause. Their truth is not wrong per se, but there is a deeper truth, a more detailed and accurate truth. It's also a matter of perspective. Ask two WW 1 historians the major cause and they will say different things are true because from their perspective they are stating ‘THE' truth.So, truth is a tricky thing, but yes, that statement does make sense.But making sense does not mean it always applies or that it always makes sense.