The Holy States of America - Our new home

When Constantine converted to Christianity, the Roman Empire slipped away and gave rise to the Holy Roman Empire which ruled for hundreds of years over the dark ages. Government took on the onus of legislating religion.

Anyone with a clear rationale can see that this has happened to the United States of America, a misnomer which no longer applies. We are far from United. We're talking of seceeding. We're talking about disinfrachisement. We're talking about rigged elections. We're talking about a moral divide. We're now going to have a Christian Conservative Supreme Court (not terribly unlike Spain's Inquisition).

For the last four years, I've referred to Bush* with an asterisk. No longer. He won, and is now Emperor of the Holy States of America. I, a former citizen of the US, do not consider myself a citizen of the Holy States. (The term Jesusland is way too playful and jocular for my taste, and does not include the entire country.)

King Bush ended the United States and started the Holy States. I'm all for changing the constitution to reflect this new reality. The sooner it sinks in for us (the rest of the world already gets it), the sooner we can stop fretting and make real choices about our lives. Do you want to live in the Holy States? Do you know that real voting is a thing of the past? Do you understand that other democracies will now fall to the Holy States by rigging their voting also? Do you finally understand that your tiny little meager voice is ineffective, rendered mute by the corporate money and power that has taken over and declared the Holy States for itself? Do you really think another round of election "hope" is nothing more than a release valve for your anger that prevents the masses from rising up against their government? Do you undestand that the media, after FEC reforms in the early 90s that lifted restrictions which prevented corporate influence on the "free press?" Do you understand that Schwarzenegger, a son of the Nazi regime, will be the President of the Holy States before long, which will be the nail in the coffin as he professes to be a moderate, and people believe him? Do you get that nuclear proliferation became unchecked with the fall of tthe soviet union, which was monitored and guided by King Father Bush in 91? (I was in Moscow for this event, and watched Bush I as he worked with Gorbachov and Yeltsin on distributing the Nuclear Arsenal.) Are you ready for a nuclear bomb in the Holy States? Are you prepared to become unable to travel abroad because you're not welcome and it's not safe for you?

I live in reality, or I try to. When I see a spade, I call it a spade. And this, my friends on the fringe with me, is now the Holy States of America.

May I suggest a new Declaration of Independence.

Citizen At Large

Your comparison is a little bit flawed and right on some other points. Christianity took its downfall by granting Constantine, what he wanted granted. The church threatened every Christian soldier, everyone, who delivered a criminal, everyone, who carried out a death sentence with eternal damnation until 313. That's when they made their 180 degree turn and everything they loathed not only became legal but they asked their members to serve in the Roman armies and give the emperor whatever he wanted given.

That's what the "Christians" surrounding Bush are. They can easily accept death penalty and wars and sometimes it seems, they're hoping for the return of "warrior jeez".

The holy Roman empire on the other hand was a very worldly construct of the German kings having overthrown and occupied the Roman empire and wanting to demonstrate some sort of continuity - thereby very often making war on the pope himself. In that form it existed until 1806.

But that aside. I'm coming from Austria and here in Europe the fear is very large, that the USA is sliding into some sort of fascism. If it is any comfort for you, there have been ballots here in Europe and Kerry would have won with 90 to 10 percent against Bush, if Europeans would have voted. This election is concerning us all. If Bush fucks up the US economy, the world economy suffers. If he's starting another war, we all feel the consequences and if the USA is becoming some sort of theocracy, there are very dark times on the horizon.

You can't possible imagine how the tide has been turning against the USA. After 9/11, there was the broadest sympathy. After Bush tried to lie us into the Iraq war (and most of us were certain, that he lied), there is only loathing. The major alienation between the continents are due to American Christian fundamentalism. For most of the Europeans there's hardly a difference between figures like Bin Laden and Falwell or the Grahams.

I really hope, you can move something.

And please assure your colleagues that Europe is not the only place worried that the US is sliding into fascism.

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

Most of us on DU know well the world's opinion of Mr. Bush and now us. However, many of our fellow Americans have NO IDEA how hated we have become and the rest consider it a badge of honor. We're doing our best but our media is anything but a "free press."

I'm a Catholic and feel like I have nothing in common with the evangelicals. They have been propagandized by not only our media but their pastors as well.

I hope that Europe bands together and stands up to our government.

Well, Europe won't stand up against Bush. At least not opnely. That wouldn't be a very wise decision, considering the economical necessities. However, only the usual suspects will follow him into another war. That's the UK, if Blair doesn't get the boot by his own party and of course Poland.

Poland is quite a problem. It's the only European country being storngly influenced by religion. They are Catholics, but they're practizing a very radical Catholicism, which is promoted by the current pope. So they feel some kind of friendly relationship to Bush's slogans.

Someone inside the Bush administration called Poland "Our Trojan Horse" in the EU - a quote which has been countered by a German daily with the phrase "Trojan Donkey". It is a fact, that the current USA hasn't got any interest in a strong EU. They're trying to counter the efforts at unity, cause it would threaten their own dominance. That's yet another reason, why many European leaders don't cast a friendly eye over the Atlantic.

The situation in Europe is however very different from the USA. The philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment did a very good job in influencing the peoples. Religion is something completely private. When the Conservatives tried to put god into the new constitution, the EU parliament prevented it. And just recently the whole European commission has been fired, because of one radical homophobic Catholic.

This certain Buttiglione should be the European eqivalent to Ashcroft, but the parliament determined, that Homophobia doesn't have a place in modern Europe.

I'm telling you this, because I want to show you, that the differences between Europe and the USA have grown much larger than the relationships. And because I'm hoping, that someone in these USA has the power to bring that country back into Western civilization.The current development is against the very nature of the founding fathers of the USA. These people were in fact followers of the Age of Enlightenment and Jefferson has spent many years in France. But now it certainly look as if Mayflower wins over Rousseau.

... It's a name I used decades ago whilst playing D&D. Originally it's some name from celtic mythology, but don't ask me, what it means. I've long since forgotten, but are still using the name constantly on the web.

If we really do slide into total fascism, please help those of us who only quest for our freedom.

;-)

Wir brauchen hier jede Hilfe, die wir kriegen können!

(We need any help we can get here!)

Funny handle you have chosen. My Real World name is Abratis, and I thought at first: Oh, there is a relation in Austria that I didn't know of!

Divided States of America, Inc.

how about United States of Hate? Catchy, huh?

:puke:

what any philosopher wrote/thought, much less Rousseau. I would say they think that Jesus is the only "philosopher",and I put that in quotes, because that is what their spiritual leader, George Bush, said is his favorite philosopher. I doubt they even know what philosophy is about.

I would say the average Christian knows nothing of te history of Constantine and the history of his established state religion.

--and if they do, they most likely think it was a miracle from god that he united the state all under one religion,The one true religion--which was Catholic, because that is what is taught to them.

Most do not know and were not taught of the abuses that followed toward others who were not with the one true religion program.

We have entire states now insisting, and writing it into their constitutions, that Creationism be taught in science courses on an equal plane as the theory of Evolution.We have booklets in ur National Park gift shops that teach the Grand Canyon resulted because of the biblical flood.

There is absolute certainty that no matter how stupid we are, no matter how lacking in education in our schools, especially the primary schools, we are the best in the world and we can take down anyone in the entire world.

We will see privatization of our public schools and once that, they will be like any other corporation contributing to Bush, or another like him.

I keep seeing images of a golden crowned George Bush standing atop a globe with a serpent beneath his foot and a halo over his head as becoming the state icon.

I agree that we need to write another Declaration of Independence.

As long as we have enormous riches we will continue to believe we are the best, even if we fall behind in such mundane things as education, science and an informed citizenry. We will go on and the churches will become chattels of the state by the lure of the dangling US dollars in front of their eyes and they will fall for it becasue they have replaced their spiritual leaders with another spiritual leader and that is George Bush and his fascist state and who doesn't want free money to enrich the church?-it is to spread the word of the "true" god, and it is to feed the hungry and help the poor to come to the "true" god and that justifies the sell off.

death or at Jesus' return) fly with the Savior to heaven and then laugh at those "left behind." I find it incomprehensible and reprehensible that those Evangelicals that call themselves devout consider themselves better than others or exempt from God's judgement. This kind of religion is FALSE because it separates them from other human beings. I will have NOTHING to do with it! Jesus entered right into the human condition in all its ugliness. He UNITED with people. He did NOT separate himself from them. Nothing is more dangerous to the advancement of God's kingdom than religion. But this is what Christianity has become. Do they not know that it is possible to kill Christ with such Christianity!!! They can kill Christ with the Bible!!! Which is more important - Christianity or Christ??? They can kill Chrisyt with there prayers! When they approach God with prayers full of self-love and self-satisfaction, when the aim of there prayer is to m,ake their world(America) great, their prayers are in vain!


Jesus will NOT allow himself to become petrified in religion. That is why He told the story of the 10 virgins, some of whom were wise and others not. With this story, he says, "There are some who make a religion out of me, a cozy haven, a state of bliss. It is the others who will be the living Christians, always open to change, always seeking something new, until the entire world stands there renewed.

These Fundie Faux Christians crucify Jesus again and again!
They are a stumbling block to the world!
As a matter of fact - their religion is a hinderence not only to the world but to the history of humanity!!!

Not even the Roman Catholic church is the church of Christ. It's the church of Paul more than that of Jesus. Paul was the creator of the enmity against women, the promotor of slavery and one of the very first Christian homophobics. Then there was that little piece of the complete turnaround in the 4th century. Embracing wars and Death penalty and again slavery to win the buttkissing contest of the Roman empire. It would lead to far to explain every step, in which the Christian faith has been raped since then, so let me jump staight to Martin Luther.

Luther is indeed the founding father of those born again Christians you have to endure. But it's not Luther's ideas, that make them tick. Agreed, Luther was an antisemite and also promoted obeyance to the authorities. But he was also modernizing the Christian faith.

That leads me straight to the Mayflower. These people sailing from England didn't leave their homeland because of religious oppression, but because of the lack of oppression. They believed their churches were to liberal - and that's what we face in the USA today.

In fact it's most similiar to the radical Islamists and I never would have believed, I would consider it good news, that the Roman Catholics are also on the rise in America. I am a baptized Roman Catholic, but have long ago lost any faith in that creed. I consider them oppressors, but compared to the current stream of Evagelicals, they're truly liberal.