It feels analogous to giving alms to a religious institution at the end of a prayer service - you don't get anything material for it in return, but maybe for the faithful, that's not the point?

▲ Meekro 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Tithing is not fraud. People give money to support the church, pay the pastor, and so that the church can use it to care for the needy in the community. Good churches do, in fact, use the money for all of the above.

	▲	threatofrain 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The above argument is exploring the framing that the Trump phone is not fraud because it is more like tithing. As long as Trump puts it to good use then it's all good.

▲ david422 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There's another article somewhere indicating how Maga is furious because their money is lost. Someone commented on the article something like - "I'm MAGA and I'm not mad at all".

Which is perfectly in line with your comment.

▲ epistasis 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is exactly it, I see it in my family members. They are willing to sacrifice so much money and, well, everything to the "cause." It's a cult, and it's deranged.

These sorts of scams go on continually in email lists, and vulnerable people just hand over their hard-earned money fist over fist.

Pointing out what's going on makes the family member hate whoever points out the con, rather than the con man. If anything, it strengthens the love of the conman and accelerates the grift.

▲ antonvs 10 hours ago | parent [-]

What's the cause exactly? Make America a white evangelical "paradise"?

▲ rootusrootus 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think it really is just the simpler explanation, they have decided they hate anybody left of them, and defeating them is the cause which much be won at all costs.

I have plenty of these folks in my family. Perfectly nice people otherwise. But they have this huge conception of the evil liberals and all the bad things they must do. They really do think liberals are commies, for example. Like actually believe that. Never mind that you could probably fit all the communists in the US in a single stadium, but whatever. When I try to engage in a conversation about actual issues, they refuse to engage, just devolving right back into plain old identity politics.

Makes me kind of sad in a way. We could be having much more interesting debates about how to solve the real world problems we face, but instead the argument is about whether or not the problems even exist.

▲ shagie 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's an appeal to restore the country to some form of nostalgic view of it.

https://www.npr.org/2016/06/07/481137357/the-fractured-repub...

    The fact that Americans are politically divided is self-evident from recent elections. But just how we are divided and why it's proved so hard to get past our differences are questions that admit to many answers. And here's an interesting one from the conservative political theorist Yuval Levin. He says, American liberals and conservatives are both inspired by nostalgia from mid-20th-century America, and they are mired in hopeless efforts to go back rather than focus on the future.

    ...

    The striking thing about the baby boomer's cultural dominance over our country for so long is that we view our own past through their eyes. Our idea of the '50s is this kind of simplistic, childish notion of simple families and everything is possible. We see the '60s as a teenager - idealistic, rebellious. In the '70s, we're somewhat maturing, becoming a little cynical. By the '80s we're settled down. In the '90s everything is great. And now, in this century, it seems like we might be over the hill as a country.

People think/believe/hope that returning the country to the situation that they perceived that the boomers had when they were growing up without care (because the boomers hadn't yet reached adulthood) would bring back that lifestyle today. ... without having all of the other parts of the social contract between government and the populace in place. People still think that boomers had it best (and maybe they did) and want that lifestyle too.

▲

amanaplanacanal 7 hours ago | parent [-]

From what I can see, as a boomer myself, is that we were best at voting ourselves more and more benefits, lower and lower taxes, and mortgaging all the value out of everything that had been built up over the previous generations. And the generations to follow are being left an empty purse.

	▲	shagie 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I don't entirely place the blame on boomers for the raise of 1950s nostalgia and the corresponding misalignment of economic goals. Someone (not a baby boomer) working in a traditional blue collar job today looks back at the portrayal of life in a rerun of a 1970s sitcom - Happy Days (or spin off, or even an "average" person sitcom from the 80s... Roseanne, Married with children) on late night cable and wonders what it would take to have that lifestyle today? Well, taxes are taking too large of a chunk of the family budget so people gravitate to candidates that say they'll cut taxes. Though, they're missing out on the 1950s tax structure... where people making $200,000 (1950s dollars - about $2M in 2020s dollars) were getting taxed at 91%. Corporate tax rate was much higher too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_State... The plank of "we're going to raise taxes" doesn't get as many nostalgic votes for people hoping to return to the lifestyle of the 1950s. There's a whole lot of other factors too. A right leaning 30 year old today is voting to try to have what they perceived how it worked in the 1950s from shallow portrayals of the period.

▲ catigula 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Tithing often involves the implicit or explicit promise of rewards from God, both spiritual and material.

	▲	StilesCrisis 9 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Certainly that does happen, and you'd be right to say it's fraud. At the vast majority of churches, it's well understood that the church staff need to eat and pay for the mortgage and upkeep on the facility. Trying to frame tithes as "often grift" is extremely cynical.
	▲	thinkingtoilet 10 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That's how this is framed as well.