frm88The Pentagon Threatened Pope Leo XIV's Ambassador with the Avignon Papacy
https://www.thelettersfromleo.com/p/the-pentagon-threatened-pope-leo
Idk which is more impressive that someone referenced the Avignon Papacy in a heat of the moment argument or that the same person who could reference that thought it was a good idea. (Not Catholic...but like...why?)
It doesn't sound like a heat-of-the-moment reference, but a very calculated one based on this line from the article:
> According to his sources, Colby’s team picked apart the pope’s January state-of-the-world address line by line and read it as a hostile message aimed directly at the administration.
It sounds like some hothead idiot driven by the big orange hothead idiot prompted Claude about how to threaten the Vatican and then used its talking points on the ambassador.
So "calculated" maybe, but only because AI could come up with the answer, I have serious doubts that many of these people possess more than basic literacy much less the ability to come up with something like this. Or some CIA analyst who hates their job came up with this to mock their bosses.
Any middle schooler with a passing interest in history is aware of the Avignon papacy. Jumping to “AI” is a bit much.
The average person probably only knows the formulas for olivine and one or two feldspars.
And quartz of course!
Yeah, no, that's an insane claim to make. Obviously American education covers some information about religion in history classes, but that level of detail about catholic history is not normal curriculum for elementary, middle, or high school.
Not taking these people seriously is how we got here. Please stop making that mistake. These people are insane.
The president can threaten to wipe out a civilization without any meaningful repercussions. I'm calling them idiots, which they are. No doubt if they thought it wouldn't cause excessive embarrassment anxiety in the president they'd try to murder the pope.
You’d be surprised.
A lot of religious people are extremely knowledgeable about historical stuff related to their religions.
They might draw the absolutely worst conclusions from their historical knowledge and have incredibly biased takes but they’ve actually read and discussed these things which is more than you can say for your average person.
It ultimately comes from their personal identify being so intricately tied to the religious organization that they are a part of — on some level they view these historical events as their own personal history as they identify as a ‘evangelical Christian’ or ‘orthodox Jew’ more than they view themselves as a person named Dave who has a family and stuff.
At the end of the day it’s all just more Hatfield and McCoys or tribal warfare over a goat that was killed centuries ago bullshit.