"You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies." John 8:44
Lying is a mild transgression for the anti-life, anti-human political party that cheers the destruction of human life in the womb, and the mutilation of confused children. Whatever guardrails of human decency they once respected have been blown through in their mad rush to the technocratic utopia whose guaranteed failure will result in even more repression of dissidents, Christians, and freedom-lovers.
When Socrates and Jesus debated with opponents, they'd apply their own standards, and respond with parables or discourses that upend whatever bounds the opponents are trying to impose. They "cut the Gordian knot." In the Apology, Socrates responds to the death penalty threat against him with, for example, this:
"For to fear death, O Athenians! is nothing else than to appear to be wise, without being so; for it is to appear to know what one does not know. For no one knows but that death is the greatest of all good to man; but men fear it, as if they well knew that it is the greatest of evils."
Trump's approach of ridiculing people like Kim Jong Un has merits, but I don't know that it works when the people you're trying to dismiss with ridicule live in the same society as you.
The problem regarding propaganda in the West now is that it worked pretty well with covid, better than most could've imagined. So for politicians, the pre-2020 rhetorical boundaries no longer apply.
"You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies." John 8:44
Lying is a mild transgression for the anti-life, anti-human political party that cheers the destruction of human life in the womb, and the mutilation of confused children. Whatever guardrails of human decency they once respected have been blown through in their mad rush to the technocratic utopia whose guaranteed failure will result in even more repression of dissidents, Christians, and freedom-lovers.
When Socrates and Jesus debated with opponents, they'd apply their own standards, and respond with parables or discourses that upend whatever bounds the opponents are trying to impose. They "cut the Gordian knot." In the Apology, Socrates responds to the death penalty threat against him with, for example, this:
"For to fear death, O Athenians! is nothing else than to appear to be wise, without being so; for it is to appear to know what one does not know. For no one knows but that death is the greatest of all good to man; but men fear it, as if they well knew that it is the greatest of evils."
Good comment.
Trump's approach of ridiculing people like Kim Jong Un has merits, but I don't know that it works when the people you're trying to dismiss with ridicule live in the same society as you.
The problem regarding propaganda in the West now is that it worked pretty well with covid, better than most could've imagined. So for politicians, the pre-2020 rhetorical boundaries no longer apply.