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Ed Pope weighs in on US presidential election

There's an essay kicking around on the internet about how to decisively win Monopoly by playing the rules as written. I forget the details, but basically:
You buy up all the houses. There's a fixed number of house tokens. Once all of them are in play, no new house purchases or placements can be made. If you corner the house market, you lock everyone else out of their progression path to the final showdown. The key to the strategy is not upgrading to hotels.


What I took away from this essay is that what I thought of as "Monopoly" was actually just the long and involved Setup phase of the game. I probably would have figured this out sooner if I'd ever actually played a full game of Monopoly. But who does that?

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Actually it also gave more weight to the "Monopoly as morality play" idea. Everyone starts out equal: On Go, two dice, get started. But over time, through luck, some players end up in better positions than the others. So when the real competition starts, they have more leverage and are more likely to crush the players that got a few bad rolls early on. Just like real life: Someone already owns all the property. Someone's already developing all the houses and hotels. And that someone is probably not you. Next time, choose the Top Hat.
 
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Vance belongs to a type of Catholics who basically think the Pope is a LGBTQ radical Satanist.

So any criticism by the Pope will assure him that what he is doing is the Right Thing.
 
Ya, the current Pope was a Jesuit, so "traditional Catholics" don't like him.
 
There is nothing traditional about JDs Catholic Church - they are utter fanatics who think because they are rich they have the obligation to control everyone's private lives (whilst remaining beyond scrutiny themselves).
They are actively trying to convert the rest of the Trump Team to to their cult.
They are extremely homophobic and misogynistic.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/j-d-vances-radical-religion
 
Not sure how that differs from the Catholic Church of the last 2000 years.

But, ya, there is an American-style Catholic that is more Southern Baptist than Catholic. they tend to line up with the Quiverfull movement. A lot of Prosperity Gospel and Manifest Destiny type of rhetoric.
 
Donal said:
Ya, the current Pope was a Jesuit, so "traditional Catholics" don't like him.
Click to expand...

Probably why I mostly like the Jesuits, if only I could convince my wife to send the kids to jesuit school. From what I can tell they worship education more than they worship any other god.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
There is nothing traditional about JDs Catholic Church - they are utter fanatics who think because they are rich they have the obligation to control everyone's private lives (whilst remaining beyond scrutiny themselves).
They are actively trying to convert the rest of the Trump Team to to their cult.
They are extremely homophobic and misogynistic.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/j-d-vances-radical-religion
Click to expand...
Meh, I don't see anything in there but guilt by association. Sure, Vance is a hypocritical liar, but I don't see any evidence his religion plays a role in that. He gave a talk at a place Adrian Vermeule gave a Talk at and they are both catholics. I don't see any evidence that vance is an integralist or some sedvancantist. And to be clear you definitely imply he's a sedvancantist. I don't see any evidence that he's not a catholic in good standing with the church of Rome.

ETA: I think Vance is different from Trump in that Vance is almost certainly lying and knows he's lying. I'm not sure Trump knows he's lying in most cases. That's not better practically but maybe morally? Awful either way.
 
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theprestige said:
There's an essay kicking around on the internet about how to decisively win Monopoly by playing the rules as written. I forget the details, but basically:
You buy up all the houses. There's a fixed number of house tokens. Once all of them are in play, no new house purchases or placements can be made. If you corner the house market, you lock everyone else out of their progression path to the final showdown. The key to the strategy is not upgrading to hotels.
Click to expand...

That is correct, but also:

The orange properties are the best because they're the ones that most people land on by the law of averages when they get out of jail. Also, if you've got a good stock of properties and you end up in jail, stay there for as long as possible - the full three turns if you can. When you're not moving around the board and other people are, you're not giving them money while they're still giving you money.
 
ahhell said:
Meh, I don't see anything in there but guilt by association. Sure, Vance is a hypocritical liar, but I don't see any evidence his religion plays a role in that. He gave a talk at a place Adrian Vermeule gave a Talk at and they are both catholics. I don't see any evidence that vance is an integralist or some sedvancantist. And to be clear you definitely imply he's a sedvancantist. I don't see any evidence that he's not a catholic in good standing with the church of Rome.

ETA: I think Vance is different from Trump in that Vance is almost certainly lying and knows he's lying. I'm not sure Trump knows he's lying in most cases. That's not better practically but maybe morally? Awful either way.
Click to expand...


He picked this specific church to convert to.
It is nothing but a conscious choice, and his new religion dramatically influenced his opinion on many issues.

He is now a radical religious nutjob.
This is just a plain fact if you don't intentionally look away.
 
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The Great Zaganza said:
He picked this specific church to convert to.
It is nothing but a conscious choice, and his new religion dramatically influenced his opinion on many issues.

He is now a radical religious nutjob.
This is just a plain fact if you don't intentionally look away.
Click to expand...

Maybe I missed it but I didn't see anything that suggested it wasn't just a Catholic Church, maybe a conservative one but other than that?


The Great Zaganza said:
Vance belongs to a type of Catholics who basically think the Pope is a LGBTQ radical Satanist.

So any criticism by the Pope will assure him that what he is doing is the Right Thing.
Click to expand...
That post clearly suggests he's in one of those "catholic" churches that is no longer in communion with Rome.

ETA: You've implied he's one of these guys:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedevacantism
or these guys:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Catholic_Church

I didn't see that in the linked article. Or are you just saying the Catholic Church in general is a problem?
 
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ahhell said:
That post clearly suggests he's in one of those "catholic" churches that is no longer in communion with Rome.
Click to expand...

Oooooh! Is it sedevacantist? Those guys are nuts. They're the ones who set out to prove that Protestants don't hold the monopoly on crazy; they're the Catholic version of the snake-handling, tongue-speaking, rolling-on-the-floor sects that embarrass the mainstream Protestants. If Vance is a fullblown sedevacantist that actually makes him crazy enough to be interesting. It may be the first interesting thing I've ever heard about him, aside from the sofa thing that we're 50% sure is just a rumor.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Oooooh! Is it sedevacantist? Those guys are nuts. They're the ones who set out to prove that Protestants don't hold the monopoly on crazy; they're the Catholic version of the snake-handling, tongue-speaking, rolling-on-the-floor sects that embarrass the mainstream Protestants. If Vance is a fullblown sedevacantist that actually makes him crazy enough to be interesting. It may be the first interesting thing I've ever heard about him, aside from the sofa thing that we're 50% sure is just a rumor.
Click to expand...

As far as I can tell, no, its just a regular old Catholic Church. He seems to have been babtized here:
https://www.stgertrude.org/
Which is why I keep asking Zaganza what he means. He certainly implied that it was Sedevacantist which as you say, would be good reason to think he's religious nut. But, since it seems to just be a regular Catholic Church, it seems Zaganza is just an anti-papist.
 
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ahhell said:
Maybe I missed it but I didn't see anything that suggested it wasn't just a Catholic Church, maybe a conservative one but other than that?



That post clearly suggests he's in one of those "catholic" churches that is no longer in communion with Rome.

ETA: You've implied he's one of these guys:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedevacantism
or these guys:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Catholic_Church

I didn't see that in the linked article. Or are you just saying the Catholic Church in general is a problem?
Click to expand...

no, it's specific to this Church an its support for Integralism, i.e. the belief that the Church should exert political power, directly or by influencing politics.
Bannon is a member, as are many big Republican Donors.

https://religionnews.com/2024/04/03/the-strange-world-of-catholic-christian-nationalism/
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/catholic-right-celebrity-conversion-industrial-complex
 
The Great Zaganza said:
no, it's specific to this Church an its support for Integralism, i.e. the belief that the Church should exert political power, directly or by influencing politics.
Bannon is a member, as are many big Republican Donors.

https://religionnews.com/2024/04/03/the-strange-world-of-catholic-christian-nationalism/
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/catholic-right-celebrity-conversion-industrial-complex
Click to expand...

So, guilty by association, he once gave a speech at a meeting of Catholics where an integralist also gave a speech.

If he is an integralist, that is bad, they are Catholic Theocrats. Fortunately there aren't that many of him and he probably isn't.

The worst thing there is that Vance wrote a forward for a guy that called liberals and leftist unhuman. Which is very bad and gross and dangerous. I'm certainly not going to vote for Vance but, your claim that he is a religious nut, well, not much evidence for that really.

On that, I'll quit.

ETA, I lied, I missed that highlighted bit. I still haven't seen any thing that shows St Gertrude's (Which I pretty sure is Vance's specific church) supports integralism? Where did you see that?

This also suggests, you think that conservatives were correct in critizing Obama's going to Jeremiah Wright's church?
 
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ahhell said:
As far as I can tell, no, its just a regular old Catholic Church. He seems to have been babtized here:
https://www.stgertrude.org/
Which is why I keep asking Zaganza what he means. He certainly implied that it was Sedevacantist which as you say, would be good reason to think he's religious nut. But, since it seems to just be a regular Catholic Church, it seems Zaganza is just an anti-papist.
Click to expand...

What a pity, I thought Vance was going to be interesting at last. I guess the sofa thing is all he's got going for him.
 
Vance says it's okay to make up stories if it draws attention to real problems. So I wish him well in his recovery from syphilis.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Oooooh! Is it sedevacantist? Those guys are nuts. They're the ones who set out to prove that Protestants don't hold the monopoly on crazy; they're the Catholic version of the snake-handling, tongue-speaking, rolling-on-the-floor sects that embarrass the mainstream Protestants. If Vance is a fullblown sedevacantist that actually makes him crazy enough to be interesting. It may be the first interesting thing I've ever heard about him, aside from the sofa thing that we're 50% sure is just a rumor.
Click to expand...

I think Mel Gibson is one of those.
 
ANyway, whets my appettie for "Conclave" the upcoming movie about the election of a new pope when the old one dies. The RObert Harris novel was quite good.
Of course Harris denies in a note that the deceased pope has any relation to Francis; having read the novle I have to take that with a ton of salt.
 
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