I hate how the Bible is being used as a nationalist prop. Nationalism was a theme of the old testament and Jesus called his followers to move beyond national identity. But that’s how fascism works, it apropariates instead of actually creating something new.
Trump’s bible also includes the US Constitution for an added layer of irony.
That seems to be a desecration of the Bible. I wonder if “Christians” will even raise an eyebrow.
They wont
It’s okay, he doesn’t seem to sell to actual Christians.
Have they changed the fallacy to “No true Christian” yet?
“No true Scotsman” is when you modify the initial claim to conveniently skirt evidence to the contrary. Saying “I’m ashamed these people are allowed to call themselves Scotsmen/Christians” is another matter
I mean partaking in the American civil religion does seem to violate one of the first rules of Christianity. They’re supposed to be kinda monotheistic from what I hear
Usually, when various Christian denominations call some writings (which other denominations consider canonical) apocryphal, they at least recognise that those writings are roughly as old as the canonical writings and the subject matter concerns the same topics (i.e. accounts on lives of Biblical figures, and doctrinal material). Just that they don’t agree it’s valid teaching or doctrine. Apocryphal, as said.
I mean, American Evangelicals wouldn’t just randomly slap demonstrably modern material that is explicitly not religious doctrine, not even worded as such, in the book and call it Biblical canon, right? …right? …that’d be patently stupid, right? …nobody would do that? …people would have at least some problem with that?
(Me, I’m not American, and an ex-Christian. I actually liked the Deck of Cards better. These days, I just do the same thing with Tarot deck I guess. …confuse myself endlessly with esoteric imagery.)
Thank you. I really like your post and wanted to give you more than just an upvote
From a fellow ex-christian. Ex since the age of 11.
Wow, and they won’t read either.
Is that a fact‽
It includes … copies of historical documents including the U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Pledge of Allegiance.
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/27/1241186975/donald-trump-bible-god-bless-usa
The Daily Show plays a clip from Trump’s own promotional video in which he explains what his Bible contains.
I was fully expecting a Rickroll lol, thanks for the link
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
plays a clip from Trump’s own promotional video
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Irony, perhaps. Or, for anyone that’s actually read the book, foreshadowing might be a better word
Well, they really seem to be in a hurry to bring on the events in Revelations. Sadly, since most of them have never read it, I think most would be surprised to find that this now puts them squarely on the side they think they are against!
Rome?
I was thinking anti-christ. But, i wouldn’t rule that one out either lol
Nationalism was a theme of the old testament and Jesus called his followers to move beyond national identity.
What?
Gotta love when Christians ignore half of their holy book when it’s inconvenient for them.
That person is not wrong, what are you referring to? Your left out the other half of your comment that explains anything.
There’s a loophole grift for everyone!
A Super PAC for all your greenback “free speech”!
Limited Edition shoes for scalpers and people who like collecting shiny shit!
NFTs to offload your crypto wallets!
Truth Social to legally funnel Wall Street money through holding companies!
Bibles for churches to spend money while saying they are “updating their library”.
Come one come all, ye shady source of funding!
There’s 2 types of right wingers, dumb ones and disingenuous ones.
Scared, stupid and selfish. The 3S framework of conservatism. You don’t have to be all 3 to be conservative, but you’re at least one.
Nice, I’d say the first two of those terms apply mostly to the dumb ones.
The disingenuous ones take advantage of the stupidity of the others to induce fear to facilitate manipulation.
Isn’t the third type democrats?
No, most non-progressive dems would qualify as being disingenuous. The progressive ones that still call themselves dems aren’t right wing, they’re naive.
Money laundering via book ‘sales’ isnt something confined to republicans
All politicians have books…a single person is free to buy 10,000 copies, book seller gets a cut and politicians get the rest… 100% legal, clean profit. And the person that bought 10k copies gets access to said politicians
Is American democracy the shittiest version of democracy on earth?
Considering it’s one the oldest/longest lasting, that checks out
I really struggle to understand why Americans are proud that they have never updated their constitution in 200 years. It’s a bug, not a feature.
Idk if you’re painfully ignorant or just lying but it’s been amended 27 times.
It is kind of lame we still haven’t ratified the ERA though.
Absolutely agree
This comment should win an award for its confident stupidity. Google “constitutional amendments”.
As an American, same. Except for the original reason behind freedom of speech and a few other things protecting the people, we need a lot of updates. A lot of updates.
It’s been updated many times!
- And maybe that’s not enough, probably it isn’t, I can think of a few things I’d add. But it’s hilarious to see so many people up voting actual ignorance because “USA bad”. Like there’s not plenty of accurate criticisms to be made.
It has been updated. That’s what “amendments” are…updates. Here’s a list.
It really scares me how many upvoted this comment has.
Hadn’t considered that angle.
Its def a way around church funding. But a legal one. So the use of laundering weakens the complaint.
The only potential legal question. Is are churches buying the bible or openly encouraging memembers to. And let’s be honest. That tax dodge is totally ignored by the IRS for so long. I can see it getting challenged as unequal application of law. Unless the IRS dose some major attack on most churches.
Edit; odd autocorrect. Nuking vs buying.
I would say we start the rumor that his Bible literally doesn’t match any others and contains Satanic verses, but that would probably increase sales. I wonder whose Bible he plagiarized.
I wish he would die of sepsis from an infected hemorrhoid already.
Just quote some “woke” passages and claim it’s not in the “real” bible and tell them that they should check themselves as that seems to make them believe basically anything.
It isn’t plagiarism unless he takes credit for it.
So you might be right.
This is the best book ever written. It’s tremendous. All the pastors tell me my writing style is the best. Number one seller of all time!
I wonder whose Bible he plagiarized.
King James, who has been dead for almost 400 years. (Also, it’s public domain, so there’s that.)
That’s uhhhhh not what money laundering is.
In so far as it’s being used as described it would be a highly inefficient way to do that so I think the much simpler explanation (Trump just wants money so he put his name on some random garbage for a cut of the profits just like Trump Steaks, Trump University, Trump Airlines, etc) makes more sense.
Trump desperately needs money to pay off his mounting legal bills.
Religion was probably invented by some starving person telling a story to get some food for free.
… ya know, this theory feels like it may actually hold water. In an ancient society, it seems very feasible that a starving vagrant would employ stories about an omnipotent being that rewards acts of kindness with eternal heavenly glory.
Is religion possibly the result of a diogenes persuading unemphatic peers into acting selflessly as a means of improving their quality of life?
Not a Diogenes for certain. He was a shit stirrer not a person trying to trick people into being good.
But we do have a fair amount of realistic stories about the founding of one major religion that don’t require miracles to explain: Buddhism. And from the sounds of it Siddhartha Gautama was a member of the familial elite born to a life of luxury who was still not happy, he attempted asceticism as a means to fill the hole in his heart but found it too to be unfulfilling. Then he began developing a philosophical framework and set of techniques which sought to resolve the issue as he came to understand it, and when it helped he spread it. I believe he knowingly used metaphor that would’ve been understood by many of the people of his time and place as well as placing it within the religious framework of the Hindu society in which he lived.
That doesn’t explain the earliest religions but for those I look to animism which just kinda makes a lot of sense to many people. It’s a natural consequence of applying empathy to all things. But Buddhism does explain how religion evolves from a framework with which to understand the world into a framework with which to understand oneself and to tell people how to act. We could also look at early Judaism which seems to be more rules for social harmony and for survival in a less than hospitable location.
Buddhism also explains animism. Things aren’t separate from the mind that perceives them. The mind is alive. Thus, all perceived things are alive. This also explains non-violence and dana (selfless acts of giving). Being aggressive towards anything in our field of perception is to be aggressive to ourselves. To be giving to anything in our field of perception is to give to ourselves.
Took Buddhism plus DMT to actually grok that, though.
I’m pretty sure it was invented as a series of fairytales to get kids (and slaves) to shut up and obey their masters, with the threat that asking too many questions would get them tortured by a spooky ghost.
And then it got WAY out of hand
Successful businessman™
honestly surprised no one has tried this before? or have they?
like for once the man is selling an actual product with sort of mass appeal instead of weird niche stuff with low utility like sneakers or NFTs. and like $60 is expensive, but not orders of magnitude expensive? correct me where i’m wrong
edit: typed 70 instead of 60 🤦♀️
$60 for a public domain bible, public domain constitution, public domain pledge of allegiance, and public domain declaration of independence? Sounds like an infinite order of magnitude expensive to me.
Printing it costs money. Not much but some.
Yeah but not that much money. First run hardcover novels cost like 15-25 bucks and it’s my understanding they earn the publisher the most money of any printing run and that’s even with the cut going to the author. So unless they’re producing these things with some high quality materials, which seeing who’s hawking these I doubt it, I think it safe to assume these things are earning at least 40 bucks in profit per sale.
Which, even assuming a generously low run of 100k, is still $4 mil. That assumes that Evangelical churches won’t buy these by the millions - and I assure you, many will.
You’ll also get megachurches getting in on the action - there are a scary amount of mega pastors who are just waiting to be the new face of propaganda for a theocratic regime.
They see the clerics of Saudi Arabia and want to be that family here
heads up i don’t think you know what orders of magnitude means
Their use of it seems no more objectionable than yours.
Lol. You may want to look up the definition of money laundering as this ain’t how it works.
I do find it funny that any organization thinks he is actually religious. If he is, shit I’m glad I became an atheist.
"Money laundering is a financial transaction where criminals try to hide the source, nature, or proceeds of their illegal activities. This process is also known as converting “dirty money” into “clean money”. Money laundering can lead to serious criminal offenses and threaten the integrity of the financial system. "
Idk. It kinda works in this case. The money would be illegally gotten if coming as donations from churches. But because churches have a legitimate reason to want to buy bulk bibles, this “hides” the illegality of the activity. So maybe not true textbook definition, but the spirit is there for sure.
This makes sense to me. Clearly it can lead to money laundering and it would be hard to prove otherwise.
A trump signed Mein Kampf reprint would have likely sold better.
Lol are churches only allowed to buy Bibles or something.
No. But they are prohibited from political action including financial supoort of a governmental candidate. This is just a way for them to overpay on bibles in order to financially support him with some level of plausible deniability.
He’s only scamming the religious. I don’t see an issue with it.
That religious money buys a lot of legal LGBTQ+ hate
Armed queers bash back.
We got 'em and we know how to use them
He’s not scamming the religious, he’s bribing them. Elect Trump, and he’ll enact their zionist dreamscape. This is a transaction.
That’s democracy
deleted by creator
What makes you think he’s scamming them?
but the bible isn’t copyrighted? right? Is there any other aspect than just the economic abuse of religions trump fans?
You can copyright a translation of a bible, and they usually are unless they’re an old translation.
The KJV is not copyrighted in America. Trump bibles are kjv.
Any preface or art work or anything else attached? Those parts can be copyrighted. Even the cover design could be.
Indeed. So Trump made something cheap he can sell for $60. Like a plastic bottle of tap water or a thin slice of chuck steak with ink on it.
Let’s be honest Trump has nothing to do with the making of this thing, someone somewhere figured they could make a quick buck off the evangelical right and got Trump to sign on for, probably, a revenue share.
Yes. See OP.
I think the question here is how is this money laundering? I could sell Sherlock Holmes for $60, and that wouldn’t be Arthur Conan Doyle giving me money under the table. How is this any different?
This is like buying merch from a YouTuber. It’s not about buying a product for what it’s worth, it’s about donating to a “cause” with something to show off that you did. (Not hating on supporting YouTubers, just a comparison)
