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PurgedVoter

(2,645 posts)
Sat Nov 15, 2025, 06:11 AM Saturday

There is a split in conservative thought. Some of them are clearly against Child traffic and Underage Rape.

There are two strong divisions now. One side thinks rape, exploitation and slavery are all fine and dandy but doesn't want it said out loud.

The other side draws the line at Underage Rape and White Slavery especially if they think Democrats are involved.

This is a nuanced thing though. when the Duck Dynasty head, Phil Robertson advocated marriage to 15 and 16 year olds, it was controversial, but the a lot of the Republican base had few issues. I think I recall his having an even younger age stated earlier on, but I can't find a source to support my vague memory. Here is a source for what I can find. https://www.cnn.com/2013/12/31/showbiz/duck-dynasty-phil-robertson-comments
In any case, a lot of Christian Conservative sources are happy to excitedly tell you about his apparent virtues. Google him and you will find a lot of websites still praising him.

So a lot of Republicans, but not all, are tolerant to the thought of what most of us would call a child marriage. Sure seems like grooming and statutory rape to me, but I'm a bit woke so I don't think abusing and exploiting the weak is a good thing.

Defining a child is where it gets complicated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child This is where Conservatives start finding places to try and bend the rules. When they start twisting around what is meant by pedophilia, then you can pretty much be assured they are without normal moral restraints. While there are divisions in some definitions of pedophilia, the use of them is not common. So there is an understood meaning to pedophilia that might not match with the definition that some psychologists would use in some situations. Remember that there are a lot of different schools of psychology, and the most generally accepted terms may become obsolete or strongly altered from time to time.
The same word can have different meaning in different fields. Law, psychology, biology, medicine and normal speech can all apply to this subject and all of them have examples of words meaning specific things that do not match in the other fields.

When you combine the acceptance of child marriage with the philosophy of White Supremacists you end up with a father able to sell his young daughters into abject slavery as long as you call that slavery marriage. So child traffic of white girls ends up being perfectly acceptable to them if you use the right language and follow procedures. There are however Republicans who have issues with marrying children.

In normal speech we have a general agreement on what pedophilia is. There are nuances, but when it comes to raping girls who are not legally adults, most of us agree that we can call the rapist a pedophile.

This is our current strong division in Republicans. This is one area where we can find agreement with a lot of Republicans. Economics is second. Most Republicans who don't have tons of money or a political office will agree that the wealthy should pay taxes. That is the second area where we can find strong agreement. As a third division, Fascism, Hitler, and Nazi's are not yet beloved across the board. Some Republicans still feel strongly about the constitution and democracy. While the crypto-fascists want to brand liberals as Nazis, people who wear pro Nazi fashion wear vote MAGA. In any MAGA crowd you are going to end up seeing a bit of Fascist merch. This gives us three strong places where we might find common ground with a conservative.

So if you are stuck at a dinner table with a conservative who insists on pushing conservative points, you could always start in with, "You know what really bothers me..." It is possible that you might find out that he's a Groyper and you have a good excuse to leave the table. It is also possible that you could fake answer your phone and turn it on to record. That might really end up being fun. Be sure to have your phone ready if he starts getting really riled. That could go viral.

But there is also a chance that they might find out that they had more in common with rational people than they do with conservatives. They might even discover that the everyday liberal isn't what they thought all liberals were.






14 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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yellowcanine

(36,679 posts)
2. To Megyn Kelly, rape is okay if the victim is "almost legal."
Sat Nov 15, 2025, 07:07 AM
Saturday

As if there is an age where rape is legal.

yellowcanine

(36,679 posts)
3. Or if the victim "looks like an adult." She didn't say if
Sat Nov 15, 2025, 07:12 AM
Saturday

that is with or without “beer eyes.”

yardwork

(68,615 posts)
6. That was shocking, even today.
Sat Nov 15, 2025, 07:36 AM
Saturday

And she seems so nice! Just a pretty sweet blonde lady. I'm sure she didn't mean it the way it sounded. - say all the MAGATs

durablend

(8,799 posts)
10. "She was just kidding--gosh you libs are so sensitive"
Sat Nov 15, 2025, 09:01 AM
Saturday

"Besides, Democrats have done FAR worse"

yardwork

(68,615 posts)
5. I like your reasoning but in my experience it's not simple.
Sat Nov 15, 2025, 07:34 AM
Saturday

Full disclaimer: my contacts with Republicans are very limited and getting less frequent. I'm very fortunate to live in a deep blue bubble and I like it here.

I have some relatives who are conservative but I don't see them often and when I do we avoid talking about politics. I'm sure they voted for Trump but I don't know what they think now.

One by one I'm unfriending people I know on Facebook from high school or other acquaintances who suddenly erupt in MAGA nonsense.

I have tried to engage with the MAGA nonsense but I get nowhere. These people move the goalposts when confronted with facts. They are emotionally invested in believing a version of reality that is the opposite of the truth.

The trajectory of a recent interaction went like this:

"I don't like it when either side exaggerates." Then follows a garbled explanation for why Trump tearing down the East Wing is the same as Obama building a basketball court, and how "both sides" exaggerate.

She was gently corrected by people other than me. My correction is less gentle. Then her cousins jump in with racist crap about Obama. They get corrected not so gently, double down.

Finally OP comes back, says she loves all of us, but is so frustrated with "both sides blah blah blah." Tries to correct our corrections about the East Wing, having done her "own research." She's wrong again.

She finished up with a long complaint about some behavior she heard about at a recent protest and how "both sides" blah blah blah.

Done, Unfriended. This "sweet" Christian lady isn't interested in learning the truth. She desperately wants to believe her version of reality.

PurgedVoter

(2,645 posts)
7. In my youth I visited quite a few different churches. Many of them cults.
Sat Nov 15, 2025, 08:30 AM
Saturday

And I agree that you are correct to a very large degree.

Often these churches followed boot camp training. First they would preach that we are all worms, then they would get you to identify with their cause and celebrate your rebirth as a wonderful being. In various forms, the same psychological nonsense built.
In the churches I was curious about I stayed longer and saw more until the horror was, for me, too much.

The subtle ones lied about their core beliefs and tried to get you in thinking they were accepting and believed the way you did. This would shift as they felt you were getting invested in their community.

Eventually you faced their pattern of breaking people down. If you didn't see it happen to someone else first and put some distance in, it was going to happen to you.

In the worst cults, one of the things they would do is have you confront others for their lies and issues. The point of that is to alienate you from everyone else. Another thing they would do is make insane changes in the beliefs. This was were they weeded out the less malleable. If you held to what they preached a week ago over the change they just arbitrarily made, you were strongly pressured to accept the new truth.

If you read the Jonestown manuscripts, and let me give a strong trigger warning before you do, you can see how seemingly reasonable people can eventually be brainwashed and/or filtered down to the "Right" people who will stand by the worst possible choices and outcomes. https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=29081

A conservative has a good chance of loosing their family, friends, job, church and community if they escape their delusions. So the same pressures are often present for a right winger as would be felt by a member of a death cult. The scaffold made for Pence shows that this is not an exaggeration of how things might turn out. No one who understands mainstream optics, or law, or civilized interaction would be thinking, "Hang Pence if he doesn't help us overturn the legal process of democratic elections in the United States." So yes, a lot of them really are in a cult. I suspect that you would not be hard pressed to find someone who will answer, "Yes, I think Pence should have been hung," if you ask the right question.

With that said, cultists often escape. Often the see the horrors and become the strongest fighters against the cult. So helping them escape the group think can, I think, be worth the effort.



yardwork

(68,615 posts)
9. That is very interesting.
Sat Nov 15, 2025, 08:56 AM
Saturday

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that many right wing evangelical churches exert a kind of mind control on their members that gets them used to "truth" changing. So what I observe as an infuriating moving of goalposts is actually something they were raised to accept?

And yes, the person I interacted with was raised in a deep red Christian evangelical community, greatly influenced by both the military and Republican belonging and community. So going against their community's thinking means losing everything.

When spiritual faith is entwined with a political belief that is built on lies (MAGA), people are truly trapped.

PurgedVoter

(2,645 posts)
11. Yes, it has been my observation that cults train or thin out to members who will bend to the will of leaders
Sat Nov 15, 2025, 09:46 AM
Saturday

I worked at a company that sold business machines. At one point the owner changed the product from one company to another. I watched as salesmen who "knew" their previous product go through the religious transformation to knowing that the product that they were tearing down as inferior the day before, was now the superior product. It took them most of eight hours to change from a set of beliefs they were certain of, to another set of beliefs. This was not even in a church or religious setting, but since their golf club memberships depended on their convictions, their convictions had to be swapped.

In cults the current arguments of their leader are absolute truth, so you need to be able to change what you believe as quick as your leader say something and be ready to change back without noticing when he changes his mind. Note that Krasnov's followers are able to get enraged when someone quotes back what Krasnov said the day before but has now become inconvenient.

All you have to do to find a church member who is a blind follower is ask about when Jesus said, "All of this will come to pass before these people pass away." When you hypothesize that this was probably referring to the First Jewish–Roman War about AD 66. This will break a lot of them. A lot will say they will have to ask their pastor. If they can't look at the words in red and see exactly what is being said, then it is likely that they accept authority over evidence. If you mention that this was written after the Massada and was an easy way to give credit to Jesus for prophecy since the events had already happened, then you will probably move from having a chance to influence them to being recognized as an enemy.

I am a believer, just to put this in context, but I also feel that if you have trouble questioning your beliefs, you don't want the truth, can't handle the truth, and don't have a lot of faith in your beliefs. I don't call myself religious though. That ship has sailed, burned and sunk.

dalton99a

(91,268 posts)
8. Looks like it's going to be Vance/Thiel/Musk/zillionaires vs. Greene/Massie/disillusioned poor
Sat Nov 15, 2025, 08:51 AM
Saturday

leftstreet

(38,454 posts)
13. +1
Sat Nov 15, 2025, 10:31 AM
Saturday

The latter will be the America First-ers, an avenue for maintaining all the MAGA loons and merging them into the fascist GOP

paleotn

(21,194 posts)
12. The roots of that are fundamentalist Christianity...
Sat Nov 15, 2025, 09:51 AM
Saturday

and their views on women and children being submissive to men. The people who actually run Rethuglican politics these days. Modern fundies will try to dance all around Ephesians 5:22, 1 Peter 3:1, 1 Timothy 2:12, 1 Corinthians 11:3, Titus 2:5, ad nauseam, but it says what it says and fundigelicals believe and practice what it says.

Woman are to keep their mouths shut and have no authority over men whatsoever....

1 Timothy 2: 11-15 11 Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. 13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve; 14 and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. 15 Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.

When you have people who firmly believe such bullshit, it's not a terribly far stretch towards what amounts to underage trafficking and rape. After all, a woman's purpose is simply procreation and doing whatever the hell she's told - so the Evilgelicals believe. Sure, those verses tell men to "love their wives as Christ loves the church", but there's no safety valve mentioned for women if men don't. "Boys will be boys" they say. Such bullshit.

Post script... This is the reason they hate apostates like me so much. We know the playbook and they ain't fooling us one bit.

usonian

(22,596 posts)
14. This is a great thread for understanding the cult.
Sat Nov 15, 2025, 10:33 AM
Saturday

I say, best to avoid them, because their minds can't be changed unless they get some flash of light on the road to Damascus, but that's another discussion.

MIND YOU, all the cult and religious threads need to be aware of one fact.

Their leader/Fuhrer has NO religion, NO beliefs, NO morals, only love of money and power to get more money.

Everything else is just levers to control the mob. They are so suckered in.
He betrays everyone around him or who believes in him.
Starting with his wife. (documented)
It's just a matter of how many Scaramucci's or nano-Scaramucci's.

He is like the famous philosopher Anthony Montana:

Tony Montana:
In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women.

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