My friend, you are still confused.

I was giving the framing that comes from the billionaire owned western media oligopoly position.

that isnt my position

What gave you the idea that I’m dismissing them? I think you’re confused.

Good quote tho

I think the “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” idea is overstated, most people I interact with have a somewhat negative outlook on the economy and their future wealth.

I think the real issue is that no viable alternative is presented to most people.

The alternatives presented are Russian-style authoritarian oligarchy, Islamofascism, or a Venezuela-style “socialism” in which the narrative only focuses on poverty.

Charging your phone is murder because coal-fired power plants kill 43,000 people per year (in the US alone).

I never said anything at all about Afghanistan.

You posted a meme about the current leadership of Afghanistan.

I think it’s terrible the state if affairs.

Then why would you post a meme smugly extolling the virtues of the current state of affairs? You can’t have it both ways.

I find this meme to be absolutely vile.

The good people of Afghanistan have been under violent US occupation for decades, and as their final move, the US looted the central banking reserves.

This effectively drained the savings of everyday Afghanis. They no longer have access to their bank accounts. The US stole all the money.

I often wonder, would the good people of Afghanistan be able to overthrow the evil leadership of the Taliban? I wish they could, but overthrowing the Taliban is much less likely when the US has left you in a state of devastation, poverty, and famine.

Then those same western chauvinists can post memes like this, delighting in the Afghan people’s suffering after causing so much of it. Disgusting.

I downvote it everytime because of its rightwing bias.

If you say the mainstream corporate news is center left, you’re either stupid or you have a right wing agenda.

Saying “maybe people are the problem” is reductive and unhelpful. But I agree with you broadly, religion is just a system or a tool, it can be used for good or evil.

To judge if religion is a good system or a bad one, we can use a cost benefit analysis. This is what we have been attempting to do in this thread.

But when it comes to sensitive subjects like religion, many people have a tendency to avoid, overlook, and deny the associated costs.

Anti-science, misogyny, etc may be bad independently of religion, but they aren’t independent of religion. Religion is a source of these problems.

You can imagine a hypothetical religion that is simply a “social club” or whatever, but here in the real world religion comes with baggage.

Religion is why my cousin’s children have never seen a doctor in their life. Religion is why my gay friend in high school tried to kill himself. Religious indoctrination has led to lifelong shame and trauma in many of my friends.

And this was just from a “moderate” sect of Christianity- the millions living under fundamentalist religion have it even worse.

What you said is all true, but you are ignoring the negative aspects of religion.

Religious influence, both on their followers and on government, is anti-science, misogynistic, and anti-LGBT.

Religions are funded like pyramid schemes, with the most desperate and vulnerable as their victims.

Religious indoctrination is child abuse.