BC POLITICS
Saved by @SteveeRogerr

Now that the political calculus has changed in US...

I don't accept the notion that one must critique both right & left in the same way or even give equal time to critiquing them in order to have a fair & faithful public witness. Why?

 1. Critiques that aim for equal time will end up missing underlying dynamics of power & responsibility. Those w/ power are responsible in different ways than those w/out it. And those who claim the name of Christ have distinct repsonsiblities from those who don't.
2. Critiques that posit right/left as mirror images miss that while each may operate on different principles, they do so w/in the same set of social shaping forces. IOW, they might be swimming in different directions but they're in the same stream
3. Critique emerges from a specific ethos & is directed to a certain audience. Critiquing those outside your tribe is so much easier than those w/in it. B/c of this, faithfulness might sometimes mean more focused critique of your own group & less of your ideological opponent.
4. Critique of opponents requires extra work to do fairly b/c it means understanding their arguments as they understand them. It requires asking right questions, hearing answers, & being able to find true sources of disagreement, not superficial ones.
All this to say, faithul public witness does not necessarily look like equal time or "both sides"-ing it which can be little more than "whataboutism" turned inside out.

Instead, faithful public witness rests on humility, self-awareness, & sensitivity to the Holy Spirit.
Faithful, fair witness means speaking truthfully while honoring the limits of our own knowledge & recognizing the needs & temptations of the audience to which we speak.
For conservatives, this might mean critiquing conservatives more directly than critiquing progressives. For progressives, vice versa. (Faithful are the wounds of a friend, after all.) But it also means receiving Qs & challenge from the other side that we're likely to might miss.
In end, social commentary is hard to do w/out simply becoming a partisan hack & using issues to reinforce our own sense of righteousness. Faithful, fair witness to the ways of God is much harder. Like Him, it should both confront & offer hope. It should both humble & surprise.
B/c just as Jesus did not come into the world to condemn it, the aim of our public witness is not to crush those already under condemnation. It is that the world might be saved. That all might find true hope & true freedom.

More from Politics

Spies Like Us
Spies Like Us
@RealStealthSpy
THREAD: CCP vs US Military, on home soil.

1. I watched the Executive Orders and I watched the media panic. I watched the MSM lies and I watched the treason. I watched the fake Russia narrative. I watched the calls for impeachment. I watched a stolen election, in full view.
POLITICS
Henry Farrell
Henry Farrell
@henryfarrell
1. Short thread - on the various claims we're seeing from Republican politicians over the last few days that the Democratic push for accountability is "divisive." Damn right it's divisive - that is what it has to be.

2. It is intended to enforce a clear division between those who accept and are committed to democracy and those who are willing to turn to violence when the vote doesn't turn out the way that they want it to.

3. One of the basic implications of Adam Przeworski's theoretic work is that democracy is made out of mutually reinforcing expectations, and those expectations are fragile. If some actors think they would be better off defecting from the democratic bargain, they will.

4. In other words: democracy and armed factionalism are far closer than we think, or we would like them to be. This means that it is incredibly important to police the boundaries between them. Allowing some to turn to violence can lead to expectation collapse and cascading ruin.

5. When we allow the divisions to become blurred, that means that we are running the perpetual risk of things getting fucked up. If a major faction turns to violence, and no-one responds, things can get really fucked up really, really fast.
POLITICS
Advertisement
Brian Cates
Brian Cates
@drawandstrike
Trump is gonna let the Mueller investigation end all on it's own. It's obvious. All the hysteria of the past 2 weeks about his supposed impending firing of Mueller was a distraction. He was never going to fire Mueller and he's not going to


Mueller's officially end his investigation all on his own and he's gonna say he found no evidence of Trump campaign/Russian collusion during the 2016 election.

Democrats & DNC Media are going to LITERALLY have nothing coherent to say in response to that.

Mueller's team was 100% partisan.

That's why it's brilliant. NOBODY will be able to claim this team of partisan Democrats didn't go the EXTRA 20 MILES looking for ANY evidence they could find of Trump campaign/Russian collusion during the 2016 election

They looked high.

They looked low.

They looked underneath every rock, behind every tree, into every bush.

And they found...NOTHING.

Those saying Mueller will file obstruction charges against Trump: laughable.

What documents did Trump tell the Mueller team it couldn't have? What witnesses were withheld and never interviewed?

THERE WEREN'T ANY.

Mueller got full 100% cooperation as the record will show.
POLITICS
Lea Kissner
Lea Kissner
@LeaKissner
Last talk about Securing Democracy at #enigma2021: @jackhcable speaking about "THE FULL STACK PROBLEM OF ELECTION

Let's imagine that elections use all the security measures security people have been advocating: risk-limiting audits, paper ballots, etc. Would people trust the elections more?

Jack would argue no. Most people don't understand this stuff and most of the claims people are making can't be disproven. And are massively bogus already.

Georgia did a full recount on paper ballots and it very much didn't stop people from doubting the election!

Are election security results in vain? The point of election security is to convince the loser they lost.

No! Have to focus on the whole stack, from election infrastructure to campaigns to people and mis/dis-informaton


One takeaway from the talk: the parts of the stack must work in tandem. Can't fight misinformation in a vacuum, but must build on other election security measures.
POLITICS
Ana Mardoll
Ana Mardoll
@AnaMardoll
Alright, I'm going to explain this one more time because I keep getting tweets like "people who vote for politicians who let them die of hypothermia deserve to die of hypothermia."

The people who voted red in Texas are, by and large, relatively fine right now. Yes, the storm has hurt them but the storm was going to hurt everyone.

But. They're either rich enough that *their* power wasn't cut off or rural enough that they have fireplaces and wood and wells.

Those millions without power are in places like Dallas county and Tarrant county and Harris county, I.e., the urban places that have the highest concentration of blue voters.

So it's not "(all/most) people voted for hypothermia and now they will fittingly die of hypothermia".

It's "(certain) people voted for the folks in cities to die of hypothermia, and they are, while the aforementioned voters are safe and dry and relatively comfortable."

Well, gosh, why don't those voters *do something* rather than passively being killed??

Do you know how many people live in Harris county? 4 million. Do you know how many ballot drop-off boxes they were allocated last election? 1.

1 box for 4 million people.
POLITICS

You May Also Like

Jaya_Upadhyaya
Jaya_Upadhyaya
@Jayalko1
SRI CHAMPAKADHAMA SWAMY, BANNERGHATTA HILL, BENGALURU (KAR)
#bharatmandir

The shrine is dedicated to Sri Vishnu along with Devi Lakshmi and Bhoodevi.
It is built in an area full of Champaka trees.
As champaka flowers are offered to Sri Vishnu here, it is called Champakadhama.


It is believed that King Janmejaya had sarpa-dosha. To get rid of it, he took bath in the nearby pond. He emerged with a golden body and sarpa-dosha was also removed. The pond is called Swarnamukhi and believed to have curative powers.
Sri Vishnu murti was consecrated by him.


It is also believed that this forest area was the Dandakaranya where Sri Ram stayed in exile.
Some believe that the original shrine was built by Pandavas.
The pushkarni/pond is emptied once a year so that the rock at the bottom (which has image of Anjaneya) may be worshipped.
ALL
Elon Musk\u2019s Meme \U0001f171\ufe0fot
Elon Musk’s Meme 🅱️ot...
@theMemesBot
Thats a gg, Satan
FUN
Advertisement
John Papa
John Papa
@John_Papa
Choosing the Right JavaScript Framework

Thanks for joining me @pluralsight to talk about javascript frameworks. We had 150+ awesome questions, so I'll try to answer the ones I couldn't get to online right here in a tweet stream

Watch the video -->
https://t.co/G7zeiKhXme


Q. Do arrow functions really make dealing with JavaScript's "this" keywords easier?

A. Yes! When using arrow functions, the scope of "this" is effectively passed in from the outer scope. See here in this REPL

1/n


Q. Where does Polymer fit in? Is it considered a framework like the others?

A. @Polymer is an excellent way to create web components, which are ideal for creating sets of interactivity that can be shared in web apps.

2/n

Q. Have we gone framework crazy?

A. At one time, quite possibly. A few years back we literally had framework overload. I feel it really has solidified into a few very strong choices.

3/n

Q. [Is] there no more need for @polymer?

A. See my previous question on this ... but in general, I think there is a lot of room for Web Components with frameworks.

4/n
ALL
Zach Weinersmith
Zach Weinersmith
@ZachWeiner
Hey, for people interested in this stuff, here's a thread about a change we made to running our facebook account:

So, about 5 years ago, we got on facebook. Why? Well, facebook has a big audience and they like to consume on facebook. So, we started posting comics there, even though we got paid nothing and facebook made money off the free content.

Why? Because back then, once in a while, you would say "also hey, I sell books" or "hey, I'm going to be signing at this event" and your facebook followers would actually see it.

Effectively, the implicit old arrangement was "facebook lets me reach readers efficiently, and I supply facebook with free content they run ads on."

Over time, like a bad business partner, facebook basically made it impossible to reach your audience without *paying them*. Thus, you supply them free content on which they run ads, and you get nothing in exchange.
MARKETING
Vibhu Vashisth \U0001f1ee\U0001f1f3
Vibhu Vashisth 🇮🇳...
@VIBHU_Tweet
In the Hindu Epic Mahabharata, Ashwatthama or Drauni is the son of Dronacharya and the grandson of the Bharadwaj Rishi. Ashwatthama was a Maharathi who fought alongside the Kauravas against the Pandavas in the Kurukshetra War.


According to the Mahabharata, Ashwatthama means the sacred sound associated with the sound of a horse. He was given the name Ashwatthama because when he was born, he cried like a horse.

Here are some interesting facts about Ashwatthama.

- Ashwathama is one of the Ashta Chiranjeevi, Eight Immortals. Ashwatthama was born with a jewel on his forehead, giving him power over all living beings lower than humans. The jewel protected him from hunger, thirst, and fatigue.


- His strength is almost equal to Arjuna’s, especially in archery. Among the Kuru princes, he was good friends with Duryodhan, the eldest son of Dhritarashtra. They both have jealousy towards the Pandavas.


Duryodhan felt that Yudhisthir was his obstacle in inheriting the throne of Hastinapur, while Arjun’s talent made Ashwatthama jealous because he felt that his father’s love had been divided. After all, Arjuna was Drona’s favourite student.
ALL