I wish they were wrong that it was a big political or ideological divide, but here we are.
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must consider whether the displayed flag or banner illustrates or shows someone’s opinion, emotions, beliefs, or thoughts regarding politics, economics, society, faith, or religion.”
So that means nothing about Christianity then, right?
I think it's really weird that inclusion is political.
Well, duh. By saying "All are Welcome Here", we are excluding people who want to exclude people. And they are the ones in charge right now. So simply saying "everyone is welcome" is now subversive, against Presidential policy, and anti-American.
Your citizenship is hereby revoked, ICE will be here soon to ship you to Gitmo CECOT South Sudan Alligator Auschwitz
That actually isn't weird at all. People treat "politics" as an epithet for "controversial politics", but in reality, almost everything in society is political – relating to power structures, the distribution of status and resources, and how those factors are determined. What you're getting at, of course, is that Republicans have shifted the Overton window so disgustingly far to the right that "everyone is welcome" in a classroom is treated as a controversial ideology.
We're constantly conditioned to think of the status quo as apolitical in nature (it's just "normal" and the people who want to change it for better or worse are "the politicals"), but it is and always has been, and it's why we've needed so desperately these past several decades to remain politically engaged to protect what we want and to change what we don't. Now? Who knows, but we still need to try.
Great comment. Taking it further, making "politics" inherently negative has a lot of propaganda value to power. The people in charge generally want to defend the status quo, so they'd rather depoliticize the populace. This is why you get such strange contradictions as the people in charge constantly attacking "political elites" or "the swamp" or whatever. They're trying to discredit politics itself to consolidate their power. Similarly, when they do want to change something, they say "it's not politics; it's common sense." They want a population that feels like politics is something inherently dubious, or at least just not worth their time and effort.
Inclusion has always been and will always be a political project, because there are people who want power and who will use it to exclude people for whatever reason.
I think you mean that it is weird that inclusion is controversial.
To me, inclusion is the foundation of politics. It is the uniting idea that people with no blood relation - strangers - can come together to build something that benefits all.
Trump and his gang want to move on from politics. They despise democracy and disdain a system that benefits anyone who isn't part of their exclusive circle. And for the record, their circle does not include Trump supporters - the maga-hat wearing rubes are just the tools that Trump is using to monopolize wealth and power for his immediate friends and family.
When Trump has achieved what he wants, there will be no more politics in the USA. There will only be the Great Leader and those who exist to serve him.
It always seems odd to me that "politics" is often conflated with "nationalism" or just plain government. That's not really what politics is, politics is power plays and public relations. It's more marketing than it is governance.
Inclusion can be a part of politics, in the same way it's part of companies advertising during pride month... but it's not the foundation of it.
I am sorry, but you are incorrect. The word politics comes from polity, meaning a group of people who share an identity. When you say that politics is "power plays and public relations," you are repeating propaganda that was designed to disenfranchise people. Politics is about working on a shared project: building a good society. Bad actors have infiltrated politics, but they don't get to replace the basic meaning of the word.
That make sense for why the confusion is there. But... "bad actors" or not, the well is poisoned. You don't keep drinking from a poisoned well just because you think it shouldn't be. Especially when there are other wells that are readily available. If anything, being able to distinguish between the two is more helpful than trying to keep waters that are already irrevocably muddied just because archaically they were not.
Why would you consider it weird?
Conservatism is an exclusionary framework, it divides sharply 'us' vs 'them'
When we say "Maybe poor people deserve medical care too", they hear "I will have to work to pay the bills of someone I hate"
So, yes, inclusion is directly contrary to their core values, and they have learned that whenever they shout the word 'Political!' it gets people to back down, so they use it ALL the fucking time
The part most of these stories leave out is that the signs are sold by the local democratic party. It would be interesting to see the outcome for a sign with the same message but without that baggage.
Conservatives hate anything that reminds them to be better humans, because they aren't.
I hate the whole conservative Christian doctrine. Saying you NEED religion or else you'll be a terrible person and do terrible things. It's like, goddamn I dont need religion to have morality and know what's right and wrong. And then these fuckers have the gall to say godless heathens are the evil ones while doing the exact things Jesus told them NOT to do!
You’re looking at it completely wrong.
Fundamentally it doesn’t matter if you are a good person. Even the nicest most moral of us are sinners in the eyes of Christians.
What matters is that you are forgiven by god for your sins. Even if you lie, cheat, steal, murder, commit adultery etc. Going to church and being absolved of your sins makes you a good person and welcome by god.
The worst people I have met are Christians for this very reason. They believe they have been absolved of their wrongs in the eyes of god and you have not.
Lutheran private school: You will always be absolved of your sins when you ask forgiveness!
3rd grade me: What if I wait until I'm on my deathbed?
Lutheran private school: even then.
3rd grade me: What if I do horrible things my whole life and just repent at the end?
Lutheran private school: teacher shifts uncomfortably you'd really have to mean it and then what happens if you're in an accident and don't have time?
3rd grade me: quick math meme running through my head
This is the tshirt I’m wearing today. Fuck Idaho.

They'll probably try to claim that blood comes from the heart, and so those hands represent jesus hznds with stakes through them, and everyone loves jesus.
You know. Mental gymnastics. Just anything to reaffirm their own world view since you are challenging it.
Whether you're black, white, or...an android?
WTF is the pledge of allegiance supposed to be when it says "under god" in it? How come we can't ban bibles and qurans from school? What are they?
Once upon a time, Stephen Colbert ('s character) uttering "It's a well known fact that reality has a liberal bias" was regarded as satire. Now, I wouldn't be so sure.
The party told you to reject your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
I think the core problem is politics. I've met left leaning people who are just as brainwashed as some conservatives.
I've met uninformed and opinionated without a basis people who were left leaning, but I've never met anyone as cult-y as the MAGA. There is no way to get through to them--none. Their faces could be on fire, and they wouldn't put out the fire with water if water was proposed by the main-stream media to put out fires.
Fine. "Everyone except Evangelical Christians are welcome here."
Q: What about that massive photo of Trump and the backpack checks for DEI literature
A: That's fine why do you ask
Kind of telling on themselves here, right? If "everyone is welcome" is an "ideology", kinda indicates the person labeling as such is against it. I say this because the societal norms on paper for every major philosophy or ideology would be in favor of that idea, and if it strikes you as staking a claim to something new, it probably took some mental effort to get to that conclusion. Would "be kind" be ideology? Technically yes I guess it is, but I doubt these people would be pissed about it and call it out like this. Are they asking for those cat posters saying "hang in there" to be taken down? That's preaching the "ideology" of persistence.
They just called out "everyone is welcome here" and you think they WOULDN'T take issue with "be kind"?
They don't want 'everyone' ... they just want 'white christian people of european descent'
When you are a brown person, the messaging from these asshats is always the same racist bullshit we've heard for hundreds of years
My list of reasons to never visit Idaho just keeps getting longer and longer.
It’s a shame because it’s such a beautiful place but it’s been full of Neo Nazis for decades.
I've visited there exactly once, and you're right - it was crazy. I never went back and never plan to go back unless this backward state comes to it's senses.
Okay hear me out, the small college town of Moscow is actually a decent place (for at least a bit longer). Yeah I know "but what about the quadruple homicide"you ask but ignore that it was an outlier... It's really a small very quiet town with lots of good people, hippies, socialists, the lesbian owned comic/game/costume/sex shop, hills that make it look like Hobbiton, and sunsets so beautiful that the one time I was in Hawaii and people were floored by the sunsets I was like "meh, I've got better at home". It wants so badly to be part of Washington but suffers from being in Idaho. Everywhere else in Idaho is varying degrees of batshit lunacy
no need to go, unless you're a potato truck driver
Even then, you've got options.
Well, the signs are ideological, in that they conflict with the state-enforced ideology. Curiously, churches are getting in trouble discussing the beatitudes, since they (yes, Jesus' own words) are in conflict with the state-enforced ideology.
What is scary is when there's insufficient resistance to the state-enforced ideology that runs contrary to classic virtues / traditions of compassion, hospitality, mercy, etc. This is the banal evil that lets abductions, renderings, concentration camps and eventually genocide happen.
If you don't fight with banners today, you'll have to fight with guns tomorrow.
For decades now, I'm been warning about the era of this regime, and got a lot of oh yeah? Where are the death camps?
Dachau was operative in 1933. The Wannsee Conference was in 1942, after which the Auschwitz model was replicated at other camps, and the final solution to the Jewish question was applied to the general contained population, rather than just disabled, mentally ill and gays.
So in the timeline of the German Reich, the death camps appeared rather late, and I tend to err on the side of understatement, even though officer involved killings, and punitive fatalities in US prisons have been routine for decades at a rate of ~1000/year
Good! If Jesus were RESURRECTED Today we would NOT want Him seeing such FILTH as "Everyone Is Welcome Here"!
Jesus was a Palestinian Jew. If He were present among us today, ICE would disappear Him to El Salvador (which is kind of ironic....)
So it's the next sign to hang up going to read "not everyone is welcome here? ".
I mean, it is ideological, like saying "All men are equals" or "Eating healthy leads to a longer life". I wish people would just come out and say what they really mean. Are the same teachers striving for a classroom where not everyone is equal?
Well I've definitely felt unwelcome in the States. Good to see they're being honest about it at least.
When are we giving France their statue back?
Ban rightwingers from living & breathing. Only way to get a better world for people with compassion
Idaho is a fucking backwards social dump. The poor think they are rich because the land is a beautiful place and you get a lot of state and federal land that's available to anyone who wants to use it
but living 20 miles from the boarder most of my life had shown me how much of a social shit hole it is
Like driving there with Washington plates will single you out. Like parking and people in the parking lots will be rude to you for the audacity for wanting to visit their spaces and yet a huge population of theirs works in Washington State. So at rush hour, in the morning you see lots of Idaho plates going west and then in the evening they go east.
its not like we havn't know for ages that its a backwards place, but its nice to see the rest of the world coming to understand it
Meanwhile areas of North Idaho want to be part of Washington, going back since before Idaho was even officially a state. I still think ideologically a small bit each of east Washington, northeast Oregon, and north Idaho splitting out to be a new state makes sense. But who in the world would ever want to straight join Idaho in it's current state...
God Republican Christians are such cunts.
This is obviously to deal with excessive vampire problem schools are facing
Idaho doesn't want kids being any smarter than the adults in change. Which is anything after 3rd grade.
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