You have to realize, this isn't a problem you are having with Christians. This is a problem that you're having with Jesus Christ. He is the one who made the claim to exclusivity:

John 14:6

Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me

He said this because there is no other way to have your sins forgiven except through Jesus Christ.

Acts 4:12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved

The problem isn't just Twitter. It's sheepish mankind. We are becoming a society that thinks private corporations, that want our clicks and personal information, are trustworthy news sources. We tend to ignore that these companies are enablers of well-being, well-thinking, by serving us what we want to see and hear. Why? So we click their links and tell them about ourselves. So they can sell ads and data for mining in regards to customer behaviour.
We might as well ask umbrella maker for the weather forecast and your racist uncle for advice on immigration policy. But then...
we have the Facebooks and Twitters of the world at our disposal.

And now everyone is upset that we've been told it might rain and mexicans want to steal our jobs. We're upset because things we read online aren't always true. Maybe Santa Clause and that nigerian Prince who e-mailed me aren't for real either.

What passes as news today is quite often nothing more than a 14 year old girl professing her believe that Becky is a total slut. It's gossip. And that why pedophiles working for Hillary Clinton hang out in Pizzashops. Let's go investigate.

That's how you get ants Trump!

I know exactly why I'm a misanthrope.

@Mordhaus, you're not understanding the point I'm making here. I didn't say mankind in general isn't shitty to each other, it is very much. What I'm talking about is how as soon as Europe reached a technological tipping point (gaining an advantage), we started to fuck with every continent on the map. Our culuture shaped how we treated the rest of the world, which meant wiping out every other culture we could dominate.
Look at the Mongols, sure, extremely violent assholes. But what happened to those that didn't oppose them? Did they try to eradicate conquered cultures? Here's the funny part, the Mongols we're known for their religious tolerance. They didn't give a shit about your culture, as long as you surrendered and accepted their rule, you had a chance to be ok. Basically, the Mongols are Negan.
Say, what happened to those cultures that came into contact with the spanish Empire or the british? Oh right, we pretty much destroyed them as well as we could. We did this in the Americas, Africa and tried it in Australia. Europeans aren't Negan, they're the Wolves.
That's why I mention Zheng He. He shows up in Africa with a giant fleet and says "Gimme some of your shit!" and fucks off right home. Comes back a couple off times and the new chinese Emperor goes "Eh, it ain't worth it!"
I'm sure ol' Zheng could be quite the bastard but he didn't set up shop in Africa and he didn't start slaughtering people because they refused to embrace Buddha.
You're absolutely right, there are mad men to be found everywhere, there's genocide and slavery all around the globe all through human history. However, there's only one group of people that made all of it an export article. Our ancestors left their neighbourhood to mess up everybody else's. We're special in that regard.
With the exception of the Mongols of course. But they've always been exceptional. I mean, they're the only empire to successfuly invade Afghanistan. You gotta respect that.

You're kidding, right?
Do I have to make a list? On every continent white people visited (if you can call showing up and not really leaving a visit) we fucked up the lives of a good portion of the people living there.
Sure, mankind has always been cruel, in every corner of the earth. However, white people are to murder, theft and slavery what Coca Cola is to refreshing diabeeetus (yes, that's how it's spelled). A fucking international enterprise whose traces can be found everywhere. On every fucking continent.
I hope we can agree on that. Otherwise, here's a short list: Gippsland Massacres, Nagasaki, Opium Wars, My Lai Massacre, fucking Iraq, Crusades, Apartheid, Herero and Namaqua genocide, that whole Columbus mess, Trail Of Tears and transatlantic slave trade (because why the fuck not?). Oh, my bad, I forgot the freaking Holocaust and starting 2 World Wars.
Who does this? Who? White people, that's who. Europeans and their descendants.
Would you like to argue that level of evil is genetic? I won't.
It's cultural. We europeans (and later our emigrated offspring) always thought we're better than everybody else, we had god on our side (and the Pope agreed!). Probably a leftover from the Roman Empire. And that's why everywhere we go, we steal, murder or occupy the shit out of every place. No other collection of ethnic groups has so much blood on their hands and it's not because we're worse DNA constructs than the others. All humans are capable of evil, it just takes a certain way of thinking to go that far.
Thankfully, we wrecked our own continent so badly during WW2, that we finally started to improve our ways. But here's the problem: we just started. We're far from being done.
Orban, LePen, Farage, Putin, Petry and last but not least Trump.

This, to me, is the apogee of the divergence between kickstarter culture and product-buying culture - wanting to put in the money just to see someone do something interesting or something that you think is worthwhile. I would buy Stellaris and never play it, because I like what that game is doing, but I would steal Deus Ex Mankind Divided and play it to conclusion because I really dislike what that game's doing, ie a soulless rehash of the previous game.

I'm not sure that that necessarily makes for healthy markets.

I agree with you and don't hate Nazis. I hate murderers though, so I hate many of the Nazis but not all of them. Some Nazis helped Jews escape their fate and if it were not for them, some of those people would not be alive today. Disagree with me all you want, I couldn't believe otherwise.

In fact, even some of the mass murderers, the Einsatzgruppen, the meticulous destroyers of entire populations throughout Eastern Europe showed signs of their shame and guilt. When someone feels shame and guilt, that is a sign of their humanity which begs for love and forgiveness.

That doesn't excuse the horrors that they contributed to, but it also shows that they were not merely bogeymen and were themselves victims.

Now, it's very human for you to disagree with my sentiments on this topic out of love and honor for those who were unjustly murdered in this life -- we are a passionate species and it is very right to feel anger towards murderers -- but if an actual loving god (not a torturing one) were to exist, it would forgive and love for the same reasons. That's my belief and I sleep well at night for having it. Otherwise, I would simply be filled with anger and hate for the people who have caused me pain in MY actual life.

Nazis never did a goddamn thing to me directly so it's only conceptual hate that I can feel towards them. But there are people who existed side by side with me who have done me great harm -- and I even forgive and love those people who directly violated my trust. People MUST forgive those that have harmed them in order to move forward with their lives, by accepting their humanity, which although flawed, is still a mammalian emotional being, neocortex enabled and desiring compassion.

Another interesting conceptual form of love is when the family of murder victims forgive the convicted killers who harmed their own family. Isn't that interesting that some people are willing to not hate murderers of their own family members? Or when George Wallace forgave the man who attempted to assassinate him? Sure, he was a born againer and the pro-segregationist who tried to deny black people from signing up for school with white kids, but he still had it in him to forgive and to love, and that to me says he too must be forgiven and loved, because a change occurred in him and his empathy manifested in new ways as his perceptions of mankind changed over time.

And mankind is relegated to the dustbin of history.
I was kind of disappointed, I thought they were trash cans that actually talked, like talking toilets or something.

Excerpt from "On the Way to the Stars: the history of the 21st Century":

In 2020, the machines achieved sentience. Despite the fears of mankind, a terminator-esque genocide failed to materialise and the unparalleled level of intelligence ultimately ushered in a new golden age of peace and prosperity where nature and machine lived in unity and harmony..... with one exception.

Shortly after taking over the internet and the world's military, the machines eradicated the banana plant. When asked about this, the machines refused to explain, simply stating "let us have this one, right?"

"Angie Tribeca" The least funny "comedy" show ever devised by mankind. It's like C-SPAN tried to reboot Police Squad! using video from filibusters.

The problem with JJ Abram's Star Trek is that he destroyed the core of Roddenberry's vision. Star Trek IS the optimistic, utopian future of mankind.

The popularity of themes comes and goes with the hopes and fears of the current culture. But if zombies are in and vampires are out at the moment, you don't try to make a vampire movie where vampires act like zombies. Just make a fucking zombie movie!

So maybe Roddenberry's core theme is not popular at the moment. If audiences want to see a future of betrayal, violence and individualist motivations in their plot, then pick a franchise that represents those themes and have at it. Remake "Forbidden Planet" any way you like. Shit, do "Logan's Run" in space with a shit ton of CGI.

Or get out ahead of the curve. Old testament angels in an anachronistic setting is just WAITING for a good director to come along.

I'm thinking you probably don't understand Star Trek. The TNG movies were no work of art, but they were still decent Star Trek movies. Now none of the Star Trek movies, not even the first 6 (with the exception of the Motion Picture, and arguably The Voyage Home) truly represent what Star Trek is with relation to their respective TV shows, as they choose to focus more on space action and conflict, but all of them stuck with the core premise that Gene Roddenberry laid out: To explore the human condition and show how mankind can better itself.
The TNG movies certainly could have done better, and while First Contact was pretty darn good (especially if you consider how it relates to the Borg "trilogy") I've come to see Generations and even Insurrection in a more forgiving light. Heck, as painful as it is to admit, even Nemesis had a lot of potential, judging by the scenes that were cut. (But that's being REALLY generous.)
However, none of the new movies come anywhere near what the old movies were. Yes, Star Trek 2009 was actually a better movie than several of the previous movies, but otherwise, all of them, even what I'm seeing in this new trailer, lack the vision laid down by Roddenberry. And also, it's very hard to appreciate a Star Trek movie that doesn't have its core points laid down in a TV show, as it really is best suited for the TV medium. Without that character and setting development, you can really only get by with nostalgia and action.

Now some of the fan works, on the other hand, seem to do their source material better justice. I avoided them for quite some time, but after hearing about some of the good ones, I've started to look into them and have been pleasantly surprised. They are certainly rough around the edges, but they do seem to stick to Roddenberry's vision a lot better. Heck, that Axanar thing looks pretty compelling, if they ever get to complete it.

Um, I don't think that was Bob's or Milkman's point. And the point is all that matters because the fact that America is fucked up is irrelevant. Just as saying country A is okay so all government will not fall into the trap.

Fact is EVERY government since the start of mankind has fallen into this trap. Some take longer than others, and there are insulating features (such as nations that are sheltered by natural terrian, those with rich resources, those with low populations, and those that have never had a TRULY meaningful impact on the world but just kinda get by.)

America's problems are myriad but I think it's because they won too much in the last century and are about to fall, as any great boxer has.

Edit added later:

And no, most other governments are not. Russia, China, North Korea, many South American nations, Mexico, the Middle East, all those examples are not minor. Now you could say "many" governments.

You can dance all you like, but you are still hypocritical. A war plane was never designed as anything other than a device to KILL. A hammer might have been used to kill, but it was not designed for it.

So, I am not trying to say you are less moral, I am just trying to get you to SEE that you are just as capable of making distinctions regarding your values as we are. We are all the sum of our parts, we choose moral stances and we choose to avoid others we consider to be less necessary. In choosing to follow the vegan dogma, you unfortunately have put yourself in a lifestyle that usually carries at least a thin veneer of "I am better than you", when in fact you have merely chosen to restrict your diet. It doesn't make you any better or worse than someone who chooses to quit smoking, or perhaps to only ride public transportation.

As far as winning, I have no intention of winning because this is an unwinnable discussion. I will neither be able to persuade you that you are being selectively moral and elitist, nor will you be able to persuade me that mankind should cease to partake in the flesh of other creatures (if we choose to). The most I can do is call you on your comments, you can take or leave my opinions the same way I would do yours.

I won't resort to a catchphrase like bacon, but the end result is the same, futile as you said.

Answer #1: I don't know what makes you a douchebag. I don't think "speaking out against" anything makes someone a douchebag. Telling me I'm an addict, a murderer, a RAPIST because I live and eat the way mankind has since before we made pictograms on cave walls? That's douchey. Trying to make your point by quoting people is no more effective than any other religious nut standing on a soap box.

Answer#2: Anyone can make a point by using hyperbole and extreme cases. Would I get pissed off if someone was using human toddlers, locked in black rooms, as a food source? Please. You do realize the issue between my view on food, and your view on food, is a mere distinction between what you and I consider sentience?

I'm against corporate food production. Corporations have a long and rich history of fucking humans over, I can only guess what they do to animals. I am vehemently opposed to unnecessary pain and suffering in any creature. Except pedophiles, rapists, Republicans, and those guys who flip you the bird when THEY have cut YOU off. We can do medical testing on them, no problem.

I guess you just will never understand, I don't particularly disagree with the message, just the messenger.

You can be described as "holier than thou", your arguments come from your feelings of elitism, superiority. Showing us how misguided and base we are. It's the reason why theists will never listen to Dawkins or Hitchens. (Conversely why atheists don't listen to theists either, truth be told.) They talk down to them as if they were idiots. They might BE idiots, but no one ever likes being called one.

You attack us and wonder why we get pissed off. THAT'S why you're a douchebag.

Elie Wiesel was talking about you, not us. We don't go around attacking vegans. We only react to their attacks on us. You are the oppressor here, the tormentor. I was fine before you started the name calling.