It’s so fucking crazy to see liberal Dems get on their soapbox about how “you can’t talk about dual loyalty, that’s antisemitism” and then show up at an AIPAC conference in Israel Flag pajama pants with an open checkbook to the US Treasury

You clearly don’t know shit about history

You got banned from Reddit, didn’t you?

Interesting to make the parallel of the inept, corrupt and teetering late-Qing dynasty to the modern CCP

I know you’re trying to win an argument here and not engage with the history at all.

But surely you can see the difference between a government that crumbles in the face of a reactionary Christian cult and one that gets our way ahead of the problem.

Trying to explain to my wife that millennials are the most technologically savvy generation in history, but she just keeps yelling back “give me the Netflix password, the TV won’t turn on”

China is not the USA. There are a million reasons organized religion wouldn’t work as a political vector there.

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

The Taiping Rebellion, also known as the Taiping Civil War, Revolution, or Movement, was a civil war in China between the Qing dynasty and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. The conflict lasted 14 years, from its outbreak in 1850 until the fall of Taiping-controlled Nanjing—which they had renamed Tianjing “heavenly capital”—in 1864. The last rebel forces were defeated in August 1871. Estimates of the conflict’s death toll range between 20 million and 30 million people, representing 5–10% of China’s population at that time.

…

The uprising was led by Hong Xiuquan, an ethnic Hakka who proclaimed himself to be the brother of Jesus Christ. Hong sought the religious conversion of the Han people to his syncretic version of Christianity, as well as the political overthrow of the Qing dynasty, and a general transformation of the mechanisms of state.

“You would own nothing worth burgling, and you will like it”

Like so many of these other “voter fraud” orders, the goal is never to secure and validate the ballots themselves.

It is always to create increasingly Kafka-esque rules around casting a ballot, then selectively enforcing the rules against the most politically vulnerable. Mix in hysterical mass media intended to claim any vote total is an undercount of your true popularity, and you get cycle after cycle of degraded faith in elections as a legitimate mechanism for choosing leadership.

Even if we assume the law is written as a good faith civic regulation and not a tool to discourage religious support networks and competing power structures to the ccp, what can it possibly achieve?

If you’re suspicious or hostile to Evangelical Christianity, there’s no reason to believe this can’t be both.

Christianity as an entry point for KMT nationalism has been a problem in China since the Revolution.

do these people have the right to organize and operate their communities in a way that suites them or not?

Are you a sovereign citizen? No, organizations don’t just get to write their own laws because they call themselves a church.

And further, does that punishment look to fit the crime?

Ask the Branch Davidians. In this case, Yayang Network repeatedly and notoriously violated these laws, escalated rhetoric when they were delicensed, and are now actively agitating for a full church lead revolt.

After the riots in Hong Kong - heavily influenced by Trump aligned evangelicals - and the violent insurgencies in the United States lead by like minded Evangelical conservatives, I’m not sure how trying to serve a couple of guys with an arrest warrant is an overreaction.

Why do you have a such a visceral reaction

I’d call it a logical reaction.

I’d also be curious to know what you’d have them do differently.

So far, the liberal response is “do nothing and hope they stop”. And we all know how that worked out for the Americans.

Sure. But you still need to square the circle on public policy.

Are you in favor of minors being forced to attend religious services by their parents or not? Should this forced attendance be a prosecutable offense or not? Should repeat offenders be arrested and charged or allowed to operate in defiance of these rules indefinitely?

As we saw under Biden, liberals love to say they have strong moral convictions. But they hate the idea of actually enforcing any of them.

So, assuming you’re fine with the Yayang Network continuing to operate, you also have to ask yourself… are you going to be happen when these people are running your town? Your state? Your country?

allowing senators to sue if their phone records were collected as part of former special counsel Jack Smith’s probe

Yo yo yo, can we get a little taste of that anti-state surveillance civil action, Mr. Graham?

No? Fuck me? ICE raid incoming and you hope I die in a cage in the Florida Everglades?

Well, I guess I retract my question, then.

So, I did a little digging on this group - the Yayang Church Network - because I was curious to know the details.

Turns out, there’s a prohibition in China against church attendance for minors. China does not allow anyone under 18 years old to attend religious services or receive religious education under a set of policies rooted in the Regulations on Religious Affairs (revised in 2018) and in the government’s broader mandate to “separate religion and education.”

The Yayang Network operates in open defiance of this rule. It’s leadership - specifically a pair of evangelical pastors named Lin Enci and Lin Enzhao - have made it a practice to openly and publicly denounce the law in services where parents are encouraged to bring young children. And this police action is in response to these organized religious protests.

Now, I’ve been in the Reddit/Lemmy community for a while. And… historically… these sites have been pretty nakedly against religious indoctrination of young people. There’s also a strong anti-natalist sentiment which might run afoul of church’s progenitor - Watchman Nee or Nee T’o-sheng - whose evangelical traditional outlook encouraged large families in strict defiance to the Chinese One Child Policy.

So I do have to wonder if people on this site are going to be outraged at China for religious persecution generally speaking. Or if they’re actually sympathetic to the Yayang Network’s evangelical traditions and founding beliefs.

SCOTUS: “There are not”

More distraction from his kiddie diddlying/trafficking/protecting his handlers

No. I think he’s just looting the place.

Obviously he did something right.

Hillary: “Donald, my close personal friend and Epstein associate, would you mind running in the Republican primary and sabotaging their campaign so I can be president?”

Trump: “Absolutely. Would love it. Really looking forward to you winning. Unless you don’t! Haha. But seriously, good luck out there. Can’t wait to receive a bunch of kickbacks under your administration.”

2016 was literally “What if The Producers ran for President”?

How else are they supposed to win, by trying to steal votes?

California’s giving this a shot with their gerrymandering initiative. Probably the smartest thing a blue state legislature has tried in decades.

Don’t fret, though. The dems are adept at bending to Republic卐n will by now

It’s not even “bending to the Republicans” so much as “getting money from the same six trillionaires and their lobbyists”.

Like, you want to pretend this is a Red State / Blue State problem, but the bluest blotches in the country are home to some of the most prolific reactionary mega-donors. NYC, Chicago, LA, Seattle, Houston… They’re all pock marked with board rooms full of ice-chewing fascist psychos.

I mean, she’s a fashion model by trade not a stage actor. She can still sorority girl posse with the best of them. But then she opens her mouth, and you get a sorority girl tier of conversation.

But when they win, it’ll be their police force! And if they don’t support it, the Swing MAGA Voter can’t be persuaded to support them when they campaign on “Release The Epstein Files” in October.

You just don’t understand what it takes to win elections, unlike a liberal party that runs Perfect Campaigns. If they don’t win in 2026, it’ll be your fault.

Netflix is streaming it.

Epstein traffic victim who came out of the collapsing Eastern Bloc and got passed around Paris/Italy high society for a few years before being turned out by NYC real estate tycoon Paolo Zampolli to sell high end Manhattan units?

She was the fly on the wall and the floozy in the sheets for a parade of corrupt plutocrats. If you wanted a real tell-all about the seedy back end of high society in one of the world’s richest cities, you could do a lot worse than produce a Melania biopic.

Not what this movie is about, of course. But she’s definitely had an interesting life. How many US/EU presidents do you think this single woman has fucked?

No shortage of Chuds who were horny for Eva Braun. But I’ve seen far more slashfic of Sarah Palin than Melania, even now.

Idk what it is about this generation of MAGA, but they’re way less into jerking it to their (female) fascist overlords than they were 16 years ago.