Just way too much in this thread to reply to...
On the religious point:
First of all, theres a reason why people agree that religion is behind so much violence throughout history... the root cause though, is not any specific religion, but ignorance prescribed under the guise of faith.
For example:
#1: Convincing people that there are people lesser than them and sub-human based on faith, place of birth, sexual orientation, skin color, or personal choices that dont affect anyone but the person themselves (ie: abortion). Generally used for the purposes of justification of homicide, genocide, enslavement, conversion, or simply to create an "other" to utilize and unite under hatred and scape-goat-ism, otherwise known as condemnation.
#2: Convincing people that religion contains more truth than visual, measurable, or substantiated facts. (ie: world is flat, evolution is not real, earth is only a couple thousand years old, the world was made in X ammount of days, etc...)
#3: Convincing people to exist in a depressive, self-hating state for things that are outside of their control. (ie: original sin, being attracted to the same sex, being sexually active with more than one partner, exo-marital procreation, exhibiting attraction to persons maritally "spoken for". ) The depiction of such behaviors as animalistic is not wrong, because we are, in fact, animals... we eat, sleep, and procreate.. and when we are not doing such things, we covet for more eating, sleeping, and procreating...
On the tax point:
Taxes are inescapable ... unless you're wealthy enough to understand tax shelters. The reason the senator targets video games is because he's convinced that the strategy that worked on alcohol and tobacco will work on video games. In that, he wants to portray video-games as vice and the industry as the scapegoat to the vice in the age group they produce for. This is prohibition era logic.
#1: ALL Govt loves taxes, Dem or Repub is irrelevant, it provides financing for their projects, capital for themselves, bankrolls expensive policy (ie: war on drugs or extremists) and lets them keep the system intact.
#2: Saying that Democrats like taxes and Republicans dont is ignorance to the highest extent. Both like taxes. What sets the Republicans appart are the people they cater to. The current republican administration remove taxation on inheritance, lowered taxation on corporate profits and accumulated wealth, lowered taxation on the wealthiest 15% of the population and recently is trying to approve funding for the housing crisis caused by their own inflation which was caused by their own over-spending... it is a sick cycle ensured by over-spending and cutting off of social programs to pay for the war.
#3: The only administrations I have ever seen to leave office with a substantial, if any, of a surplus have been democratic administrations in the largest majority. I have heard the ignorant comments on how people try and credit republican administrations before the democratic ones on the surpluses, and they all fall flat on the fact that when you ask yourself why the ruling democratic administration DOESN'T SPEND the surplus they are sitting on when they easily could have, that argument flies out the window.
On the religious point:
First of all, theres a reason why people agree that religion is behind so much violence throughout history... the root cause though, is not any specific religion, but ignorance prescribed under the guise of faith.
For example:
#1: Convincing people that there are people lesser than them and sub-human based on faith, place of birth, sexual orientation, skin color, or personal choices that dont affect anyone but the person themselves (ie: abortion). Generally used for the purposes of justification of homicide, genocide, enslavement, conversion, or simply to create an "other" to utilize and unite under hatred and scape-goat-ism, otherwise known as condemnation.
#2: Convincing people that religion contains more truth than visual, measurable, or substantiated facts. (ie: world is flat, evolution is not real, earth is only a couple thousand years old, the world was made in X ammount of days, etc...)
#3: Convincing people to exist in a depressive, self-hating state for things that are outside of their control. (ie: original sin, being attracted to the same sex, being sexually active with more than one partner, exo-marital procreation, exhibiting attraction to persons maritally "spoken for". ) The depiction of such behaviors as animalistic is not wrong, because we are, in fact, animals... we eat, sleep, and procreate.. and when we are not doing such things, we covet for more eating, sleeping, and procreating...
On the tax point:
Taxes are inescapable ... unless you're wealthy enough to understand tax shelters. The reason the senator targets video games is because he's convinced that the strategy that worked on alcohol and tobacco will work on video games. In that, he wants to portray video-games as vice and the industry as the scapegoat to the vice in the age group they produce for. This is prohibition era logic.
#1: ALL Govt loves taxes, Dem or Repub is irrelevant, it provides financing for their projects, capital for themselves, bankrolls expensive policy (ie: war on drugs or extremists) and lets them keep the system intact.
#2: Saying that Democrats like taxes and Republicans dont is ignorance to the highest extent. Both like taxes. What sets the Republicans appart are the people they cater to. The current republican administration remove taxation on inheritance, lowered taxation on corporate profits and accumulated wealth, lowered taxation on the wealthiest 15% of the population and recently is trying to approve funding for the housing crisis caused by their own inflation which was caused by their own over-spending... it is a sick cycle ensured by over-spending and cutting off of social programs to pay for the war.
#3: The only administrations I have ever seen to leave office with a substantial, if any, of a surplus have been democratic administrations in the largest majority. I have heard the ignorant comments on how people try and credit republican administrations before the democratic ones on the surpluses, and they all fall flat on the fact that when you ask yourself why the ruling democratic administration DOESN'T SPEND the surplus they are sitting on when they easily could have, that argument flies out the window.