Adam Savage on GOP Senators: "racist patriarchal Calvinist shitbags."

[Dennis Donovan]

Link to tweet

Adam Savage ✔@donttrythis

“GOP” members of the Senate, you unconscionable, pathetic, spineless, hypocritical, lickspittle, death rattle of a racist patriarchal Calvinist shitbags. May all your teeth fall out but one. And in that one may you have a toothache. Enjoy how history looks at you. It’s not pretty

5:53 PM - Jan 31, 2020

[Faux pas]

1. Plus

tax!

[smirkymonkey]

2. +1000

[ck4829]

3. Impressive

[malaise]

4. Nailed it

[Loki Liesmith]

5. Calvinist?

Strange insult.

Why not call them Waldensians? Catharists? Schismatics?


lol.

[sweetloukillbot]

8. Predestination?

Maybe because the outcome of the trial is predetermined by them?

[Frances]

16. Calvinists is a poor choice of words

[Progressive Jones]

17. What good are Calvinists? nt

[demigoddess]

19. I think the Calvinists were the beginning of right wing Evangelical Christians.

[meadowlander]

21. Calvinists believe wealth and power are the outward manifestations of your goodness.

If you are a good person and right with God, you are showered with blessings. Meanwhile, if you are poor and weak it is because you are a bad person who God hates.

That justifies a lot of the right-wing agenda, re: poor people and non-Christians don't deserve tax dollars being spent to better their quality of life or ensure basic human dignity. That's reversing God's judgment.

It's relevant here because it justifies McConnell using his Senate majority to quash witnesses. He has the power because God gave it to him and therefore no exercise of that power can be illegitimate.

[standingtall]

22. I get that people don't like Calvinism

but if your going to tell us what Calvinist believe than you should know what we believe first. Calvinist believe that no one is good and all are unworthy including us.Grace means unmerited favor. Which is something you don't deserve. When God chooses someone for election it's not because of anything they have done, but strictly out of his sovereign mercy. Romans 9:11 (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth


I've never heard one Calvinist ever teach what you ascribe to it that claim only surfaces on the internet.

[Loki Liesmith]

29. That ain't it, chief.

[2naSalit]

6. I just can't

argue with that.

[Stinky The Clown]

7. No myth to be busted with THAT statement! Tell it, Adam!!!!

[Scarsdale]

9. I get the distinct impression

that the republicans will take pride in that description. Moscow Mitch and Lenigrad Lindsey will feel more "manly" with that description of them.

[Texin]

10. Loki... I think his reference to Calvinism has more to do with the paternalism

that pervades the broad Republican-tRumpian-following acolytes of of the brand of "religiousness" that espouses male-dominion and the beliefs that only the Caucasian race is the Chosen race (never mind the fact that Christ was born a Jew and NEVER espoused any other belief system other than the one he was born into). Calvinism also maintains a view that if a person is poor and struggling, it's because God doesn't love them very much and wants them to struggle. In other words, if you ain't rich, it's because you're just not good and *worthy* of more.

[standingtall]

15. False

"Calvinism also maintains a view that if a person is poor and struggling, it's because God doesn't love them very much and wants them to struggle. In other words, if you ain't rich, it's because you're just not good and *worthy* of more."

As a Calvinist myself I can tell you Calvinism espouses no such view. Yes Calvinism is a deterministic theology, but that does not mean God doesn't love people who are poor or struggling. We believe God puts people where there are in life, but those things are not rewards or punishment they are strictly bounties of providence. Most republicans are not Calvinist. Calvinist generally don't believe in freewill and the major sticking point between us and other soteriologies is we believe the deciding factor in salvation is the sovereignty of God. While others believe the deciding factor in salvation is the human will. There is a lot people who don't understand what Calvinism is and want to link it to a bunch of Jerry Falwell type fundamentalist despite the fact Jerry Falwell himself was a very staunch Anti-Calvinist.

[bucolic_frolic]

11. He could have just said Nazi's

People might understand it more. And it's really not about religion.

[BlueMTexpat]

14. This! eom

[Mersky]

12. Kicked them in the ding-ding!

So good, had to save a screenshot.

[BlueMTexpat]

13. While I am no fan of any organized

man-made religion, I do resent the use of "Calvinism" in ANY connection with poisonous GOPer sh*tbags and thugs.

Calvin was indeed a Protestant reformer. In fact, he is the one who is most associated with French Protestants or Huguenots, who were effectively forced out of France under Louis XIV. See., e.g, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Calvin

IMO, he would be absolutely horrified by the behavior of today's Republicans, and certainly by the behavior of the Criminally Deranged Thug in the WH.

After Calvin's time in Geneva, Switzerland, that city became one of Europe's bastions of tolerance and remains so today. There is actually an excellent museum in Geneva today that is dedicated to the Reformation. Given rhetoric like that expressed in the OP many could learn from it. See, e.g., https://www.musee-reforme.ch/en/salles/calvin-et-geneve/

So NO, PLEASE do NOT associate "Calvinism" with US GOPers in any way. PLEASE!

[Mersky]

24. I think the issue lies in how Calvinism has distilled out in America

Last edited Tue Feb 4, 2020, 01:17 AM - Edit history (2)

I took Adam to mean, the brand of men in the particular Protestant traditions that run around with heads full of puritanical nonsense that tells them everybody else is sinful and deserves mistreatment, because they aren’t somehow chosen or better because xyz trait or myopic, ego-driven view of how luck or privilege played into their position of power.

Was kinda annoyed he left out the subset of Catholics who prop up power mongers like bill barr - but! Adam did beg the question (intentional or not).

This here rather captures my views as someone who has had to put up with marginalization for being an atheist* both in the workforce and personal life in the south:
https://www.politicalresearch.org/2004/11/06/calvinism-capitalism-conversion-and-incarceration

I liked being challenged, and am always willing to consider whether I’m being overly insensitive. I’m saying, I appreciate the discussion point you brought.


*these days I like to call myself a spiritual secularist just to throw people off, so that I’m heard. As the word, atheist, can cut-off all consideration of my being in some circles. Group terms like Atheist or Calvinist are very broad when applied over a lot individuals, and I agree with you - the specifics are important!

[BlueMTexpat]

25. Thanks for your thoughts, Mersky!

It would have been a much better comment without the religious reference, IMO.

[Mersky]

27. Hi & yw!

I think maybe the use of lowercase, p, puritanical, might have been better. However that, I’m finding I needed to do a quick review of the history and variants from the origins of Calvinism.

Otherwise, I still find his tweet as hard-hitting, needed criticism during this time of outrageous power grabs by those using religion to advance dastardly policies.

[BlueMTexpat]

28. Please do check out the website for

the Geneva museum and other information available on-line about Jean (John) Calvin. Yes, there were excesses early on, but Calvin was a humanist, first of all, and it is primarily his humanist teachings that have prevailed over the centuries.

I don't believe that "Calvinism" as such was the foundation of US Puritanism. It had more influence in continental Europe than in the British Isles and, in many ways, was much more tolerant than Protestantism in the British Isles (think of Oliver Cromwell and his "rule," for example). Both the Netherlands and western Switzerland, at least, remain among the most tolerant nations in Europe today.

But ALL of Europe, including the British Isles, lived through terrible religious wars. This was a lesson that the Founders of our Nation tried to establish in the US Constitution, with freedom of - or, as was later determined, also freedom from - religion. Unfortunately, that lesson has been largely eroded, with RW Evangelical Protestantism - which is a far cry from Calvinism - dominating and literally dumbing down the US population. And in Europe, we're seeing the rise of RW Catholicism again, especially in Eastern European countries like Poland, so many lessons learned seem to have been lost.

Where you likely see more of Calvinism's influence in the US is in areas where French or French-speaking Protestants settled, rather than where English or English-speaking Protestants did.

I still take issue with the use of "Calvinism" in this particular context. It would have been better to use another reference, IMO.

[0rganism]

18. the MAGAts are having their way with that thread

sad to see. I'm pretty sure they'll have no problem killing those who disagree with them when the time comes

[dustyscamp]

23. I feel like that could potentially happen someday and many won't be prepared for that.

[dchill]

20. Now THAT'S a MythBuster!

[AJT]

26. If you are on twitter give him a good reply....the crazies

are pouring it on over there.