Voting for Republican economic policies only benefits the top 0.1% of the U.S. population. Why would you vote for them?

@curiosi ?? Slave to what or who?

@yogibooboo To the government.

@curiosi Do you have great job benefits and a pension? When are you retiring, or can you afford that. Do you own your own house? A slave to which government?

@curiosi lol. You can't even get a factually correct meme.

@curiosi congrats.... the part where the picture says "democrat socialist", is probably the most stupidest thing I've seen this year. I didn't think annyone could outdo everything from 2019, but your stupidity just broke the glass ceiling. 😅

@Kwek00 And a seminary student who reinstated the Orthodox church was apparently an atheist.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow I don't know that... but I do know she sometimes starts randomly quoting 1984 from George Orwell.

https://similarworlds.com/24-Life/2948032-Dont-Be-A-Sucker-Okay-Since-the-early-1800s-the

But does promote a president that tells his voters which news is good for them to watch. 😅

@Kwek00 Stalin dropped out of seminary because he couldn't afford to finish and he reinstated the Orthodox church during WW2.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow I thought that he still suppresed the church, but did pray in the empty chappel in the Kremlin?

@Kwek00 Nope he reinstated the Orthodox church and even reinstated the Metropolitan of Moscow something Peter the Great did away with. Officially at least it was done to boost morale and was not undone after the war either.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow I know it's only wiki...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Soviet_Union

He was in office till 1953.
He wasn't really nice to religious people... this comes more close to how I remember history.

I remember watching a documentary from the BBC where they had the opportunity to film inside the kremlin. And one of the stories that were told, was about stalins' persecutions of the clery and it's followers but paradoxically praying himself in the orthodox church that was closed for annyone else.

I don't think he was an atheist though. But I wouldn't really see him as a savior of the orthodox church in communist russia.

@Kwek00 Keep in mind those sources have every incentive to play up the negative over historical accuracy. Propaganda is not exclusive to Russia.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow Sure? But we aren't going to white wash Stalin here are we?

@Kwek00 Why does not swallowing anti Soviet propaganda whole without question or context seem to always be dismissed as "white washing "

@Kwek00 Also the USSR and Israel seem to be the two countries where the institutional is conflated with the entire religion. For example this completely ignores that the Orthodox church was for all intents and purposes a ministry of the Russian Empire as was primarily responsible for the moral justification of an absolute monarchy like Saudi Arabia.

@Kwek00 The wikipedia article in particular completely jumps over parts that don't fit their narrative.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow Could be, but it's also specifically about the religious persecutions during the regime. I have to delve this out before I can answer some of your questions. But my knowledge that I have from Stalin and his approach to religion wasn't that friendly.

I don't get how the entire remark about the church and absolute monarchy have annything to do with this conversation. Don't even know why you would introduce that. I also don't see how the USSR conflates the institutional with an entire religion or why Israel just randomly pops up here.

@Kwek00 Actually it covers 1917 to 1991 and Stalin was not immortal. He died in 1953. Second it completely omits anything that contradicts their narrative and it implies that government actions and official policy were always in lockstep for the entire existence of the country which has never been true of any nation ever.

I drew the parallel because people like to equate the Church a largely political institution with an entire religion. Much like some like to equate the Israeli government with Judaism.

Keep in mind the primary purpose of the Church in those days was to enforce the idea of the divine right of kings. Something that had died out in the rest of Europe centuries earlier. Making sure every Russian grew up believing that the way things were was God's will. The Bolsheviks also realized as anyone who looks into it would that not going after the church would have led to endless incitements to overthrow the "evildoer". The Church like any powerful institution in a ruling class were not just going to hand over absolute power when asked nicely. In cases like this people deliberately mix politics with religion to make one side seem more sympathetic.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow

How much are we rationalising here? Because it covers his term from 1922-1952 too.

The parallel has nothing to do with what I said. That during Stalins reign the church was persecuted too. Way up until 1941. And it started again [i](even tough less violent)[/i] in the 1950s.

The entire absolutist idea also has nothing to do with how Soviets treated their church. It wasn't only "the orthodox church", it was also minority religions like schism in christianity that didn't make up the majority, the jewish faith and muslims. Soviet-Communism wasn't that friendly to religion as a whole, because it didn't fit the ideals that were set forth. If you want to radically advance the enlightenment that preaches rationality and uses materialism for the basis of it's argument. Then spiritual matters are just dangerous and belong to a world that should be radically been gotten rid off. That's probably why Stalin is such a bizar figure, because Lennin opposed the idea of religion radically, but Stalin [i](most probably mesmerised by fascism in Italy and Germanny)[/i] reinstated spiritual sides as in creating his own personel cult.