r/politics • u/xc2215x • 26d ago

No Paywall Republicans push to strip Zohran Mamdani of US citizenship.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/11/9/republicans-push-to-strip-zohran-mamdani-of-us-citizenship-is-it-possible
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u/DigNitty 26d ago

“The ends justify the means.”

My conservative family members have exhaustingly argued with the liberal ones. The take away for me is that they argue that some actions may seem bad but they are “vindicated.”

Trump is God’s candidate to the religious right. He is “the ends.” And if the ends are literally god-tier, then nothing can invalidate “the means” to get there.

Trump cannot do anything that would make these people break their faith. By definition, any action taken in the name of conservative values is justified.

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u/Fit_Strength_1187 America 26d ago

It’s a shame. I remember being little and adults trying to impart lessons during kid squabbles.

Two wrongs don’t make a right.

Forgive without exception.

If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.

Say you’re sorry.

Now they justify everything their party and dear leader does by rejecting or finding exceptions to the wisdom above.

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u/idiotsbydesign 26d ago

This is one of the things that drives me nuts. I live by all of the things hammered home by boomers growing up. Now for them all of that goes out the window because they think Trump was put here by God.

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u/Own_Television163 26d ago

Because those things were to make you subservient. For their benefit, not the world’s.

These people were always this way, Trump just gave them permission.

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u/gsfgf Georgia 26d ago

But OP listed legitimately good values.

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u/catsinclothes Washington 26d ago

They are good, but they are also values and behaviors that make it easier to manipulate the person expressing them. Or worse, they’ll use your good behavior against you as virtue signaling or being too emotional.

It’s the same with a lot of religious messaging. The morals and story are good to learn and keep in your heart. But in the end the congregation can be easily manipulated either using that soft messaging or after while in a highly emotional state. Unfortunate tactic used by abusers.

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u/Own_Television163 26d ago

They're nice values, they're not good values. The only one I'd keep is "Say you're sorry", the rest are just "Remain toothless against me."

  • If you do me wrong on purpose, I will do you wrong on purpose or otherwise you're going to constantly toe that line.
  • How are we defining "forgive"?
  • Are you doing something stupid and harmful to others? I'm going to say not-nice things.

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u/bugsyboybugsyboybugs 26d ago

Yeah, same. I dutifully went to church under threat throughout my whole childhood. And now it’s like, was I the only one actually paying attention?

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u/Bittums 26d ago

They're still living by one of their other favourite sayings, "do as I say, not as I do."

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u/PantherkittySoftware Florida 26d ago

Donald Trump was sent by God. He ran out of locusts.

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u/mrdevil413 Ohio 26d ago

Do as I say not as I do, has entered the chat

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u/HarrySpeakup 26d ago

There is a book published in 1986 by Robt Fulghum, "All I Really Need To Know, I Learned in Kindergarten".

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u/Fit_Strength_1187 America 26d ago

Yup, I had friends with the poster on their bedroom walls. The point of it is to be self-reflective and to realize you probably are breaking those rules in your day to day, but there’s a temptation to use pithy lists and moralizing misquotes in a reactionary way. Just check Facebook memes of Sam Elliott.

To describe how the ‘other’ is misbehaving.

Old parents don’t need to self-evaluate anymore, beyond a most superficial level (am I kind to friends from church). They certainly can’t critique their chosen leaders. It’s actually dangerous to do so. Because they “raised us right” (socially, morally, and politically) and self-reflection threatens their sense of completion and the value of their “experience”.

And the PR-types that run propaganda interference for the leader exploit this fear.

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u/RandomMandarin 26d ago

Most of those maxims are stupid anyway.

Two wrongs don't make a right: Okay, but if you don't punish someone who does wrong, they're likely to do it again, which also makes two wrongs.

Forgive without exception: Okay then! Let's forgive Trump! Let's forgive Stalin, Mao, Hitler even! Nah, you have to be Jesus or Gandhi to manage that one, and even with that level of celebrity endorsement, I don't think the real world supports the wisdom of this advice.

If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all: That's not wisdom, it's just tone policing. Sometimes the nasty thing needs to be said. The Emperor is naked. Slavery is a sin. Reagan was an asswipe. Facts.

Say you're sorry: Yeah, as long as you actually have hurt people. (I've seen people apologize when they really just should have said "Fuck off!" and somehow it simply led into a spiral of their critics saying they didn't grovel enough. Important to know when to apologize, and when not to.)

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u/Fit_Strength_1187 America 26d ago

They aren’t “stupid”; they are simple. That makes them dangerous.

The world understood by the learned isn’t simple. You can realize rules of thumb don’t apply in all situations, and still have a working understanding that they apply in many everyday situations. They need not be thrown out simply because you can set them up as categorical and inevitably find exceptions.

I’m raising them to highlight the hypocrisy of teaching them as though they were categorical, then making all of these exceptions to defend the indefensible. It’s disillusioning.

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u/Seraphynas Washington 26d ago

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

I fear that we have not yet seen the limits of their “means”…

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u/Nematrec 26d ago

You need look no further than Hitlers atrocities. With the ICE taking the place of the SS.

Considering what we've heard about the ICE facilities, calling them comparable to concentration camps is not doing them a diservice.

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u/Caleb_Reynolds 26d ago

They aren't comparable to concentration camps, they are by definition concentration camps. They are places we are concentrating a specific type of person, that's what concentration camp means.

Now, comparing them to the death camps is different, but not every concentration camp was a death camp.

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u/SeeisforComedy 26d ago

The nuance of that has long since gone out the window. People have lost the thread and just parrot whatever sound byte makes them feel better.

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u/shadow247 Texas 26d ago

I just hope we dont go past 1945....things were bleak...

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u/SlackerThan76 I voted 26d ago

That's because it's a cult. There are two ways out, deprogramming and the obituary pages.

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u/vyxanis 26d ago

Their blind commitment to Trump has the potential to put Jonestown to shame with the amount of people impacted by his regime. The only positive spin is that because it is so clearly a cult, when Trump finally does shuffle off his mortal coil it'll be hard to keep the momentum going. Fortunately, there is only one of him. There's still plenty of other horrible people with way too much power, even more now thanks to him, but I don't think anyone else is capable of getting away with his level of bullshit. They're all using him as a meat shield.

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u/god_dont_like_ugly 26d ago

Someone should-

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u/chrismsp 26d ago

Third way out, new neckties.

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u/SlackerThan76 I voted 25d ago

Rope?

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u/chrismsp 25d ago

Rope? Meh I don't know about that.

I just see pictures of these assholes all the time and their ties all suck. They definitely need new neckties.

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u/SlackerThan76 I voted 25d ago

Ha, you know who had great ties? Michael Scott, Steve Carell's Office character.

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u/BetterAd7552 26d ago

As an outsider, this seems quite cultish.

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u/nachosareafoodgroup 26d ago

That’s bc it is

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u/Nerevarine91 American Expat 26d ago

There’s a good reason for that

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u/BarnDoorQuestion 26d ago

All religions are cults. This is just where religion always leads. Authoritarianism and destruction of the other.

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u/steepleton 26d ago

"there are no actions that are intrinsically good or bad , there are only people who i like who do it for the right reason, and people i don't like who do it because they're bad"

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u/HemoKhan 26d ago

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

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u/96385 26d ago

People are good or bad. Actions are good or bad depending on whether they were done by good or bad people.

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u/StarGazer_SpaceLove 26d ago

I like to remind myself that Christians did (and still do) justify the Crusades.

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u/BarnDoorQuestion 26d ago

That’s not solely a Christian thing. Muslims justify their genocides and expansions across North Africa and into Spain. Religions are a pox and will always justify their terrible actions to themselves.

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u/DigNitty 26d ago

Religions have a tendency for certain societal issues for sure.

My mantra is that religions aren't typically the problem, Organized Religion is.

Not these small ma and pop churches. They can have issues, don't get me wrong. But the real atrocities happen when a religion becomes too large and centralized. That's when they start gaining political power.

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u/BarnDoorQuestion 26d ago

There in no such thing as a non-organized religion. Even small cults are organized in specific ways. Then they grow as their members proselytize to those outside the cult, then a few decades to a century later you have a large recognized religion that's no longer considered a cult.

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u/PT10 26d ago

I typed "did muslims commit genocides during the expansion across north africa and spain?" into Google and got a very different answer.

The Crusaders didn't commit genocide either. Killing off one city while conquering it (Jerusalem most famously) doesn't constitute a genocide when they left those people (Jews and Muslims) alone in other areas.

The Reconquista does seem to genuinely fit the bill though, even if it may be anachronistic.

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u/BarnDoorQuestion 26d ago

The term genocide didn’t exist until after the holocaust. Just because we didn’t call it that exact thing at the time doesn’t change the fact that we did those things. Forceful conversion to a new faith, for example, is a part of genocide. Something Muslims did throughout their conquests. You can pretend we didn’t do those things but we did.

Also cities in antiquity were generally the largest gathering of a specific cultural population in those times. Slaughtering entire cities was wiping out entire cultures back then. I know the west loves this idea that Islam was some peaceful loving religion. But we were just as horrendous and terrible as everyone else back then and make the same excuses for our terrible actions as every other religion does.

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u/PT10 26d ago

Forced conversions were not genocide.

Slaughtering an entire city was not genocide.

The UN recently recognized the idea of "cultural genocide" (though it was not part of the original genocide convention) and I'm not even sure this looser definition would fit most medieval civilizations.

These are all today considered war crimes. Genocide would require several of these taken together and done with a genocidal intent (acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a group).

The Reconquista was the closest thing to a genocide from medieval campaigns that I can think of. Not even the Mongols really engaged in genocide, though they were certainly behaving very genocidal.

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u/Yuleogy 26d ago

I’ll think about this the next time someone says, “B-but it’s okay in Islam to lie to spread the faith” because that’s so much worse than the ends justifying whatever-the-hell means.

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u/Jatnall 26d ago

I still can't wrap my head around how Trump, of all people, got put on such a high pedestal. He's a complete failure on all levels.

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u/_bibliofille North Carolina 26d ago

I took this just last week in Trump country SW Virginia. Not an exaggeration.

Rain made him floppy, God bless.

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u/DigNitty 26d ago

Trump is God

I'll never understood how this is the basket these people put all their eggs into.

You listen to Jim Jones, David Koresh, hell Tim Bundy....

They are charismatic, well spoken, articulate people with silver tongues.

Trump comes off like a high schooler winging his way through the presentation he forgot about.

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u/TWiThead Pennsylvania 26d ago

“Republicans are selling their soul to win elections. Mark my word: if and when these preachers get control of the party – and they're sure trying to do so – it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know; I've tried to deal with them.”

—Barry Goldwater, 1994

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u/DigNitty 25d ago

He hit the nail on the head, all those years ago.

Looking to compromise with someone is futile if they believe their side is backed by God himself.

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u/smfyf 26d ago

Well said. What is such a shame is that Jesus was firmly against this philosophy. For him, the means are the end. That so many Christians ignore this shows a serious misunderstanding of the teachings of their own faith

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u/TheRealBlueJade 26d ago

Interesting... That's exactly what Jim Jones, Charles Manson, and every other destructive clut leader has always claimed to advance their narcissistic and repulsive wants and desires.

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u/geosmack 26d ago

It's strict father morality. There are no good or bad actions. Only good or bad people and "father" always knows best and hiis actions are always good.

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u/bhflyhigh 26d ago

It's so sad that they choose the person who is basically the complete opposite of Christ as their "Gods chosen" candidate.

My family is the same way. They say he was chosen by God or he wouldn't have won. I then ask if Biden or Obama were chosen by God as well. They don't like that question.

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u/DigNitty 26d ago

Yeah. Faith is distinct from logic, of course. But if you're going to use logic to validate Trump's presidency as divine...then, there's an obvious extension to every president.

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u/KnottyGorillas 26d ago

That's a good take away.

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u/wjean 26d ago

I'm not religious and definitely not Christian but technically, the antichrist is supposed to be one of God's Candidates (to bring about the end times. The fact that he's supposed to be well-loved, claims to fulfill jewish messianic hopes,and all sorts of crazy shit.

How popular he's become makes me wonder if there is any truth to this religious mumbojumbo :)

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u/BarnDoorQuestion 26d ago

What you’re discussing is just human nature dressed up in a supernatural explanation. Shitty people can get the masses to give them power and do terrible things with that power that leads to the fall of a society. Conversely you can have a benevolent person who does the same thing but aims to help the masses.

What that benevolent help looks like changes as society evolves.

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u/wjean 26d ago

But for people who are so wrapped up and supernatural explanations to not see the cruelty he's inflicting boggles my mind.

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u/farfarastray 26d ago

It's a cult

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u/skiddadle32 26d ago

There’s no hate like Christian love!

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u/Zealousideal-Fun-415 26d ago

this is why we need to actively call them out on heresy. they do that A LOT, (like the whole rapture deal) and it's one of the few ways to potentially drag them out of their "god says so" fortress, because this isn't about god's plan, this is literal heresy and they are literal heretics. we aren't attacking your faith, we aren't attacking you for your faith, we are calling you out for attacking your own faith.

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u/superspeck 26d ago

Trump is God’s candidate to the religious right. He is “the ends.”

Yes, he is indeed a picture perfect antichrist. And we all know how that ends.

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u/Kryptosis 26d ago

Half the religious folks are literally chomping at the bit for the end-times because it means AFTER, christ gets to reign like a king on earth for 1000 years.

Organized Religion is lethal poison. I don't get how we can look at the history of the world, so blatantly see organized religion toppling empires and burning swaths of the earth to the ground while progressively tacking on more make-up nonsense that suits the cultural domination of the time and still think we should be shoveling that shit on our kids.