ShotoManhattan

Having gone back to school for graduate studies, I've been having nightmares of a fundamentalist Catholic college I went to in my first semester. It was very cultist and people were doing a lot of weird shit. My nightmares involve me leaving the place and as soon as I get home, I wake up. This was back towards the end of 2002 and I left in the beginning of 2003 after having a breakdown. I am at a Jesuit College now, so they're pretty much to the left of this place, I'm going because they have a good reputation with their MBA programs. Has anyone ever been at a fundamentalist college whether Christian or Catholic and had bad experiences?

How does the end times compare to the carrot on a stick or hamster wheel?

No, I just looked up sites for people who weren't Christian anymore. The fundamentalists pretty much love to rag on non-fundamentalist Christians (especially Catholics) and thought Islam was Devil Worship. The depressing ones pretty much think every decade is the End Times and hides behind Bible verses to justify their views.

Like I mentioned, I don't think ideological purists have major power in other countries. I read a book about the downfall of moderates and progressives in the Republican Party over the last 50 years. It wasn't always the party of the Religious Right. There' was always a moderate/liberal wing and a conservative wing. Oddly, the conservatives like Robert Taft believed religion to be a personal matter and not in politics. They managed to find common ground despite not agreeing with each other. It's just the conservatives got mad back in 1952 when their guy, Robert Taft, didn't win and got revenge with Barry Goldwater in the 1964 election. To me, that's when the polarization started. Moderates and liberals got marginalized, some retired and some were forced to become Democrats. There are few moderates or liberals left in the GOP in terms of representation in Congress and the Senate and tend to get labelled RINOs. With the Democrats, the Blue Dog (conservative) Democrats barely exist too but they're vehemently hated like Joe Manchin. The Democrats really only have the Bernie Democrats (far-left) and the New Democrats (Democrats with the ideology of an organization called The Democratic Leadership Council). There was diversity of all types in both parties, but since 1964 it's been more extreme as I've seen since I became aware back in 2004. But to the purists, a Republican supporting LGBT rights shouldn't exist or a Democrat who wants school prayer and is a nativist. These types of people are not allowed to exist because of the wealthy who insist on ideological purity. I could go into pitting demographic groups against each other and themselves, but that's for another time.

Sometimes the sadness comes and sometimes it doesn't. I've been very sad about comic books and the pissing contest going on with comic book films with the media (specifically film and comic book fandom media groups). The fans are only hurting themselves and giving into fanrage. Just try to do something to forget about is all I can say.

I remember reading about some candidates in the Republican primaries for 2008 and 2012 who were excluded by news networks like CNN because they didn't fit the mold of a stereotypical Republican that talks about Ronald Reagan ,Jesus and getting into a pissing contest over whose more right wing. One of them was Gary Johnson, he eventually became the candidate for the Libertarians in 2012 and 2016 and stopped running after 2016.

The afterlives of the other religions are intriguing to say the least. If there was a Hell, it probably would resemble Dante's from the Inferno.

ContraBardus Best Chick Tract Spoof ever!

Fuego, that's the best explanation to my question, thanks!

There is a reason why I deactivated Facebook back in 2015 and this only affirms why I'm not going back to it.

I agree with your statement on the voters remain loyal to a party regardless of performance but history plays a huge role in it but no one really questions "What have you done for me lately?" or tries to defect. The voting results from 2008-2016 showed huge divides in demographics. I mostly brought up ideological purity because the purists are the ones who get involved in local politics.

After the 2016 election, I have come to say that I hate that politics in America is just screwed up because of a wealthy elite who insist that the two main parties be ideologically pure. What I mean is that the donors and activists insist their party be done in a certain ideology and anything else that is not like their view 100% is heresy and should be purged out. This is a huge problem in the Republican Party where conservatives made their movement in the party and then purged out and marginalized the moderates and liberals. The Democratic Party has had it's issues too when Wikileaks showed how much Hillary was willing to sabotage Bernie to not get the nomination creating a rift between the far left Democrats and the New Democrats. Joe Manchin from West Virginia, one of the remaining Blue Dog Democrats, is hated by his own party for being pragmatic. For all the worship conservatives have of Reagan, he managed to work with moderates and didn't engage in stupid litmus tests or RINO hunts because he said that a person who agrees with you 80% of the time is an ally, not a 20% enemy. I hate the fact that the coalitions haven't honestly changed in 50 years, they've only gotten more extreme. I hate the fact that the conservative movement has been taken over by the Religious Right and is just an outlet for Christian extremists and white identity politics. Conservative parties in other countries don't seem to have that or they marginalize them to minor parties (due to a parliament). I'm not just a fan of liberals either because I've seen the darker side of the ideology and Freudian slips. It's also tragic with the fact that you can win in this country with only 51% of the vote and discarding the rest as a bunch of jackasses who would either make America a fascist or communist state if the other side won. Or the fact that a place has been voting the same party in power for 50 years and no one has the guts to do an opposition to it. I consider myself apolitical now because my vote doesn't matter.

There is a common theme I see among right wing Christians in America and something I see with symbols. I was on the website, The Vigiliant Citizen, which discusses that celebrities and elitist wealthy people use symbols and paganism to advance agendas. The examples go from politics to religion and famous people are essentially enslaved to doing hazing rituals and weird shit to get ahead in the world. Those who don't do it don't go far. Several celebrities have broken down and the Weinstein scandal was the tip of the iceberg. There are now stories of people being accused of sexual harassment and it goes for both sides of the political aisle. They tend to use the eye symbol. I think it's abusing paganism for their own ends. It reminds me of the time I was at a Fundamentalist Catholic College with a weird cult feel to it. Do you generally believe in this or dismiss it as right-wing conspiracy? After reading some of it, I feel reluctant to watch TV or a movie without seeing the actor and thinking what they had to do to get the role.

Thanks for all the welcomes!

I think the worst experiences are being at retreats where people praise Jesus. Being Catholic, I've been to a few retreats with the Evangelical music playing along side a Euchraistic Adoration time where the Wafer in a cross is passed around. People faint and then speak in tongues. All I ever got out of it was very sad and in tears the whole time. This was at one retreat 20 years ago in June and later a retreat at Franciscan University at Steubenville in 1999. I tried going to Catholic Men Conference's and don't really go to them anymore. Some of these people actually talk about starting up the Crusades again.