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Comment by yaky | Hacker News Reader

This is creepily similar to Russia circa 10+ years ago with its "gay propaganda" and "child protection" laws, and strong government support for the church.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/11/russia-law-ban...

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MAGA is just United Russia with a different supreme leader. The end-game is the same - a vaguely lipservice-Christian[1] autocracy.

When they tell you of all the insane shit they want, believe them. They are an existential threat to the republic, because they don't place any value any of the immutable principles of the republic, and will sell all of them up the river to see their guy win.

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[1] Their actual behavior is incredibly un-Christ-like.

They're fast tracking.

I hope they don't start a youth movement like the scouts and name it after their leader.

Doesn't have the same ring to it in English.

Where is a safe place to go for this

Safety is an illusion.

Build up yourself

The Trumpets?

ICE Scouts? :)

You’re gonna want to look at today’s news out of the Boy Scouts.

Short version: the US military provides some funding to the scouts. Hegseth threatened that funding to push the scouts to roll back LGBT-friendly policies, and they’ve caved. Along with that, other changes include waiving fees for children of members of the military, dropping a citizenship merit badge, and adding a military merit badge.

They don’t appear to be planning a new organization, they’ll just co-opt the BSA.

Didnt Kirks org already do this, to an extent?

Almost anti-Christ like, wouldn't you say?

It has similarity in that there is a form of alliance between predominantly white fundamentalist catholics and evangelical christians and Trump which is embodied by Vance which could be seen as mimicking Putin proximity with the Orthodox church. They both use their churches to justify a civilizational agenda and frame autocracy as protection.

Still, there are several major differences one bieng the patriarch supporting Putin while the Catholic church mostly opposes Trump.

Catholics are a minority denomination in America, and an especially small minority in the relevant states.

Russian Orthodoxy, on the other hand, encompasses ~95% of Russian Christians, and there is no organized alternative to it.

... Also, Trump 2024 won Catholics by 12 points (While 2020 and 2016 was a 50/50 split.)

Whatever the church's views are, unlike the evangelicals, it's not dictating to its members how they should vote.

The interesting part has more to do with the ideological fundation than with the electoral reality. It's not about winning a few percentage points, it's about the ground work for their political vision.

Like the Great Rus and Kirill give a cultural justification for Putin war and anchors them in an historical framework where they make sense, Trump (I mean Vance really) is using the evangelists and the threat of a perceived shift in what makes America America has a justification for his policies.

It's pervasive throughout Project 2025.

Just as a side note, there is no Orthodox Pope since Eastern Orthodoxy is kind of a federation of national churches. Other Orthodox patriarchs disagree with Patriarch Kirill to varying degrees, even to the point where the Russian Orthodox Church is currently out of communion with Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the "mother church" and seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Moscow–Constantinople_sch...

Not at all, the Russian ban was an outright speech restriction (I'm originally from Russia). This only applies to schools taking federal money. This is much more similar to pressuring institutions taking federal money to do things, by both parties, like adding or removing diversity programs, mandating wage levels, curtailing due process for sexual assault investigations, investigating alleged fraud, etc. There are actually colleges that are very careful about not taking federal money where it would affect them.

The approach that most people in the US seem to favor is "this is totally fine that the right-thinking government can do this, the problem is that the other guys occasionally get to rule".

The real solution is to remove the levers, or the federal spending, so that neither side can do it.

> This only applies to schools taking federal money.

Which means all poor public school districts (free breakfast programs are funded with federal money) and most other public schools districts (special needs programs are funded with federal money). So the “only” here is basically “all” public school districts.

So? That is exactly how every other lever like this applies, by both parties. It has absolutely nothing in common with Russian arbitrary draconian speech repression and to suggest that it is insulting. It's like, technically wage tax is like forced labor so it's basically similar to slavery, right? Somehow very few people would make this argument.

Now, the reason the admin can do that is because every district in the country is yoked to federal funds. This gives them a massive power lever. As far as massive power goes, it's strange that HN understands this well with surveillance but not with anything else. Surveillance is really great, if you could magically make it only usable by people you agree with, say to find lost pets or catch armed robbers and nothing else.

However if you create a power, it will also be used by people you disagree with, for the purposes you abhor. The only solution is to remove the power.

If not, what is your other solution, never allow people who disagree with you to win elections?

I commented on just one thing — that this book ban effectively impacts all public school districts. My comment says nothing about Russia, elections, or anything else you mention. I’m only making the point that this ban is not just about “some” public schools; it’s virtually all of them.

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