A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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Is politics the new religion?
For many Americans, politics has become imbued with a religious fervor – while at the same time, participation in organized religion has plummeted.
Mandy will always remember Jan. 6, 2021, in a deeply personal way. Because she was there, inside the U.S. Capitol, supporting her president.
The images she saw that day remain sharp: The giant American flag carried by the crowd as they marched from the Ellipse. Singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” on the Capitol steps. And finally, entering the building through open doors and standing peacefully in its cavernous Rotunda.
She’s aware of the videos showing mob violence. But that must have been on the other side of the Capitol, she says. For her, it was a day of jubilation, of like-minded people joined in common purpose to “stop the steal” of the 2020 election.
“This was probably the most patriotic day of my life,” says Mandy (not her real name), who asks to remain anonymous so as not to risk her job. With a Facebook page that’s a hub of pro-Trump connections, she says she’s traveled to 21 rallies for now-former President Donald Trump since 2016. “I go for the people as much as I do for Trump.”
Similar stories of secular communion have given rise to a theory that has gotten considerable attention of late: that for many Americans, politics has become a quasi-religion – especially as participation in actual, organized religion has plummeted. Indeed, Mandy says she believes in God, and grew up Southern Baptist, but is not currently a churchgoer.
The United States has long been known for what some sociologists call “civil religion” – a shared, nonsectarian faith centered on the flag, the nation’s founding documents, and God. But the God factor is waning, as so-called nones – atheists, agnostics, and those who self-identify as “nothing in particular” – have risen to more than a third of the U.S. population, according to a major 2020 survey out of Harvard University.
From MAGA devotees on the right to social justice warriors on the “woke left,” political activism that can feel “absolute” in a quasi-religious way is rampant. At the same time, American membership in houses of worship has plummeted to below 50% for the first time in eight decades of Gallup polling – from 70% in 1999 to 47% in 2020.
And as American politics has become polarized, so too has the nation’s religious profile. The mainstream Protestant center has hollowed out, its population shrinking dramatically. Today, religious Americans tend to choose their congregation with an eye toward partisanship – to the point where the choice of presidential candidate can lead a voter to move to a new church.
“Liberals and ‘nones’ went to the left; conservatives and Evangelicals went to the right,” says Ryan Burge, an expert on religion and politics at Eastern Illinois University, and author of a new book called “The Nones.” “There’s no middle anymore.”
Atheists, he says, are now the most politically active group in the U.S. They’re far from the largest, at 6% of the population, but statistically they are the most likely to engage in political activity.
“Our politics has become religion. It has a religious fervor to it now that it didn’t have even 20 or 30 years ago,” says Professor Burge, who is also a Baptist pastor.
Why is this happening? Some point to social media and news consumption habits that have cordoned Americans off into ideological echo chambers that are all-consuming and provoke emotional responses. The sense of connection some find online may be replacing social networks once formed by houses of worship.
Geographic sorting, in which people tend to live near those with similar political views, is another component. Higher education, dominated by professors who lean left, may help explain why so many college-educated young people now reject religion, with some instead finding a sense of purpose and meaning in political activism. A cultural emphasis on science and “rationalism” is also a factor.
Still, there’s a lot of nuance.
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Is politics the new religion?
It sure is for cancel culture Leftists. The amount of stuff they censor and people they shut down today would have been a wet dream of the Religious Right in the 80s and 90s.
Fuck your cult.
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Give me liberty or just come shoot me in my house. I'm so over this ridiculous reality.
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Quote:There is only one cult and Trump is its Jesus: Lindsey Graham, South Carolina senator, said something recently that told more truth than maybe he intended.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Is politics the new religion?
It sure is for cancel culture Leftists. The amount of stuff they censor and people they shut down today would have been a wet dream of the Religious Right in the 80s and 90s.
Fuck your cult.
Graham said of Trump: "He's the most popular Republican in the country by a lot. If you try to drive him out of the Republican Party, half the people will leave."
Yes they will! And if half (or even a third) of people who identify as Republicans right now left the party if there were a concerted effort on behalf of the establishment -- such as it is -- to rid the party of Trump, then the GOP would have approximately a 0.0% chance of winning a national election.
Which Trump knows. And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell knows. And House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy knows.
(Worth noting: Republicans lost control of the White House, the Senate and the House during Trump's time in office.)
All of which creates a simple dynamic: Trump has the Republican Party right where he wants it -- using his cult following among a large segment of the Republican base to hold the party hostage.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/13/politics/lindsey-graham-republican-part
y-trump-support/index.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the Biden administration over its decision to rescind a Medicaid waiver extension that would ensure billions in emergency care funding to the state’s hospitals over several years.
Federal health officials revoked the extension in April, saying the Trump administration, which had approved it in its waning days, failed to allow for public comment. They have welcomed the state to reapply before the current waiver lapses in the fall of 2022.
In a suit filed Friday, Paxton argued that the officials lacked authority to overturn the decision, and said the state and its health care providers had already made long-term financial decisions based on the approval.
“Not only does this violate agency regulations and threaten to rip a $30 billion hole in Texas’s budget, it was clearly intended to force our state into inefficiently expanding Medicaid under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” Paxton said in a statement. “This would be a disaster for our state, and yet President Biden seems intent on thrusting his bloated model of government on everyone—including Texas.”
The administration’s reversal was widely seen as an attempt to pressure the state into expanding Medicaid under the ACA, a move most other states have made since the law passed in 2010.
Republican leaders have declined numerous proposals to expand the safety net coverage, including in the current legislative session, explaining they are focused on other health care priorities. Lawmakers in the House voted down an amendment this week to even study the potential benefits of Medicaid expansion.
Proponents of expansion say it will lower hospital and county expenses, boost the state’s economy and create access to preventive care for up to a million low-income Texans. The state has the highest uninsured rate in the country.
In surveys, most Texans support expanding Medicaid.
More at https://web.archive.org/web/20210514182334/https://www.houstonchronicl
e.com/politics/texas/article/Texas-AG-Ken-Paxton-sues-Biden-administration-16177408.php
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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It all began when the intellectual Godfather of modern conservatism, William F. Buckley Jr., defined that movement as standing athwart history yelling stop. What Buckley was trying to stop was the New Deal—the expansion of government under Franklin Roosevelt. He was also referring to the growing secularization of society. His first book, "God and Man at Yale," published in 1951, was a diatribe against what he believed were the anti-Christian and anti-capitalist forces at the nation's best universities.
Buckley yelled stop again during the civil-rights movement, writing in 1957 that "the South must prevail" because the more "advanced" white race had an obligation and right to rule over others. He changed his mind during the mid-1960s, but many conservatives remained staunchly opposed to the landmark civil-rights bills of 1964 and 1965.
In other words, the modern Republican Party has its roots in rebellion—rebellion against the main currents of change in modern American society: the growth of the welfare state, the secularization of life and the increasing diversity of American society.
The trouble is, most Americans don't agree with that protest. They may express discomfort with the welfare state in theory, but in practice they love Social Security, Medicare and the rest. Secularization is a force that is sweeping through almost all advanced industrial societies and one government can do little to stop. And America's growing diversity is inevitable in a country built on immigration and has mostly proved to be a strength, not a weakness.
But Republican politicians are now riding the back of a tiger and they can't get off. Former President Ronald Reagan, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former President Donald Trump — all icons on the right — whip up their followers into a froth of hysteria and promise that they will repeal and reverse most of these terrible trends.
But of course it never happens: When Republicans take power, they don't actually repeal government programs that, in reality, are popular. Which makes the Republican base get more and more angry. And as their sense of betrayal grows, so does their desperation that American civilization is in imminent danger of collapse.
There is a great and honorable space in America for a party of limited and efficient government that values traditionalism and believes that social change should take place slowly and organically. But that is different from what has become a band of ideological warriors with apocalyptic vision that fears the ends of days, sees opponents as devils and traitors and believes that all methods are sanctioned in its battle to save civilization and itself.
More at www.cnn.com/2021/05/16/opinions/fareed-gop-special-op-ed/index.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Noam Chomsky tells you where $47 trillion went
I’m sure you’ve read about Reagan’s inaugural address in 1981. The punchline was, “Government is the problem, not the solution.” Okay, so if government is not the solution, who is the solution? Where will decisions be made if not in government? Does it take a genius to figure this out? They’ll be made in corporate boardrooms. So, in other words, we shift decisions from government — which whatever its flaws, is, at least, partially responsive to the general population — to private tyrannies, which are totally unaccountable to the public, and which are dedicated, explicitly — there’s no secret about it — to maximizing what’s called “shareholder value”: dividends, benefits to management. That’s their task.
We have 40 years of experience, and we can see what’s happened. It was totally predictable. To give you just one example, you may have seen it, but a couple of months ago the RAND Corporation did a detailed study trying to determine how much wealth was transferred from the working class and middle class to the superrich during the 40 neoliberal years. They estimated $47 trillion. www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA516-1.html
Some call it “transfer.” “Robbery” is a better term. Meanwhile, the top 0.1 percent of the population doubled their share of total wealth from 10 percent to 20 percent. Take a look at the effects: the majority of the population gets by paycheck to paycheck. Real wages have stagnated for 40 years. The gains of productivity growth concentrate in very few pockets. This leads to what you mentioned before — unfocused anger. Is it surprising? People aren’t told what is really robbing them. Instead, they are told that it is immigrants, Blacks, some pedophiles from outer space, if you believe QAnon. Anything but what is actually happening.
You can talk about it to high school students. They often understand it better than graduate students at major universities, who have been more indoctrinated. Something that not many people read but should is the introduction to Animal Farm. Animal Farm is seen as safe, because it is a satire of the totalitarian enemy. The introduction, which was not initially published, is addressed to the people of England. Orwell warns not to feel too self-righteous because in free England, ideas can be suppressed.
The Republicans, who are the party of the superrich, understood in the 1970s that you can’t get votes by coming to people and saying, “I want to rob you, and hand everything you have over to the rich and corporate sector.” Somehow that doesn’t work. You have to turn to what are called “cultural issues,” meaning everything but what matters for your life. So, Paul Weyrich, one of the main Republican strategists, by the mid-1970s got a flash of insight and realized that, if the Republicans pretend, stress “pretend,” to be opposed to abortion, they’ll pick up the evangelical vote and the Northern Catholic vote. So, they all switched on a dime. Reagan had been a strong supporter of a woman’s right to choose. As governor of California, he signed one of the strongest bills protecting it. He then became a passionate opponent of abortion. George H. W. Bush, who was supposed to have had some character, did the same. It became the mantra of the Republican Party. If you look into the details, it’s pretty grotesque. In fact, what the party platform is doing is increasing abortion, and they know it. When you undermine family planning, block contraceptives, cut health care, defund Planned Parenthood, then you increase abortions, especially illegal and dangerous ones. It doesn’t matter to them, because this is a way to pick up votes.
It’s an extension of Nixon’s Southern Strategy. That was their first big breakthrough. Nixon was a terrible racist himself, and he realized that by not so subtly advocating racism he could pick up the Southern vote. Reagan, who was a dedicated racist, just did it as second nature.
More at https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/dismantle-all-of-this-stuff-a-conv
ersation-with-noam-cho
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The Republicans, who are the party of the superrich
Maybe in the 70's.
Every time you turn on the TV and see a rich person they're all Democrats today.
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Give me liberty or just come shoot me in my house. I'm so over this ridiculous reality.
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Quote:I thought I would check:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The Republicans, who are the party of the superrich
Maybe in the 70's.
Every time you turn on the TV and see a rich person they're all Democrats today.
How are America’s billionaires voting in the 2020 presidential election?
If you think they’re all coming out in support of their fellow Forbes 400 member, Donald Trump, you’d be wrong. Over the past month Forbes sent every billionaire in the U.S. a brief election survey. We got 42 responses, from billionaires spanning the political spectrum.
The biggest takeaway: These billionaires are more likely to be Republican than the average American—but just about as likely to be voting for Joe Biden.
A recent Gallup poll shows that 28% of Americans identify as Republicans, 27% identify as Democrats and 42% identify as independents. Our billionaire cohort skewed farther right: 43% Republicans, 24% Democrats and 33% independents. Yet they’re swaying blue. Nearly half, or 48%, say they’re casting a ballot for Biden, compared to 40% for Trump. That tracks with the larger population, which favors Biden to Trump 51-42, according to RealClearPolitics’ RCP Poll Average. It also tracks with Federal Election Commission data, which shows more billionaires opening their wallets to support Biden than Trump.
Of course, not all are supporting the major parties. One billionaire, who remained anonymous, is voting for Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgensen. Another, self-driving car sensor magnate David Hall, is voting for the Green Party’s Howie Hawkins, despite identifying as a Republican.
More at www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2020/10/20/even-americas-billionaire
s-are-tilting-toward-biden-in-the-2020-presidential-race/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Kurt Vonnegut’s Socialism From Outer Space
By Matthew Gannon and Wilson Taylor
Writer Kurt Vonnegut, who died on April 11, 2007, used science fiction to explore the failings that turned humans against each another – and came to view socialism as the alternative to a world of exploitation.
Vonnegut’s work is rich with fantastical ideas, often mediated through the conventions of science fiction, that are motivated by real injustices and tragedies – ideas that speak to the moral imagination and political conviction that Vonnegut expressed throughout his life. A pacifist, socialist, and humanist, Vonnegut weaves a bright thread of anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism, and anti-racism throughout his literature. That’s why Vonnegut’s writing can be summed up neatly as a ‘Gospel from Outer Space’, sharing the title of a fictional story that Vonnegut attributes to his alter ego Kilgore Trout in Slaughterhouse-Five.
Trout envisions the Tralfamadorians retelling the New Testament to underscore that ‘the intent of the Gospels was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low.’ The problem with the Gospels as they are, the aliens reason, is that the message actually communicated is this: ‘Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn’t well connected.’ The rewritten New Testament, then, makes it so that Jesus really was a nobody who gets adopted by God after his crucifixion. The new message is that God ‘will punish horribly anybody who torments a bum who has no connections!’ It was Easter three days before Vonnegut died – another of the time-coincidences he would have loved.
Another time-coincidence concerning Vonnegut is that he died on the eleventh of the month. Vonnegut was preoccupied by the eleventh. He was born on 11 November 1922, and his birthday happened to be a holiday marking the end of World War I in 1918: the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. But Vonnegut disdained the American term Veterans Day, despite being a veteran himself, preferring instead to call it by its original name, Armistice Day.
‘Armistice Day was sacred,’ he writes in his 1975 novel Breakfast of Champions. ‘Veterans’ Day is not.’ Writing at the end of the Vietnam War, Vonnegut was clearly captivated by the idea that ‘during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another.’ He referred to such a ‘sudden silence’ as the ‘Voice of God’.
Turning the commemoration of an armistice into the glorification of violence went against what Vonnegut stood for – not that he thought protesting against war in a work of literature would do very much. ‘During the Vietnam War,’ he once remarked, ‘every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.’
In a sense, the custard pie is what Vonnegut served. He described his work as wrapping ‘bitter coatings around very sweet pills,’ and his novels, for all their barbed cynicism and biting humor, seek to invigorate our atrophied sense of human sympathy and solidarity – to enliven a new aesthetic and ethical framework that can awaken us from the nightmare of history and animate a new spirit of human freedom and dignity.‘My motives are political,’ Vonnegut noted, characterising himself as an ‘agent of change’, an ‘evolutionary cell’ who sought to make humanity ‘aware of itself, in all its complexity, and to dream its dreams.’
And what dreams may come: the ‘telegraphic schizophrenic’ structure of his novels—texts that are ‘so short and jumbled and jangled,’ as he assessed Slaughterhouse-Five—both awakens readers to the absurdities of our misbegotten late-capitalist contemporary and invites us to dream the world anew.
More at https://tribunemag.co.uk/2021/04/kurt-vonneguts-socialism-from-outer-s
pace 
Th
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lol
No. Vonnegut was not a Socialist.
None of your Socialist jerkoff buddies are going to change that.
Peddle your trash somewhere else.
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Give me liberty or just come shoot me in my house. I'm so over this ridiculous reality.
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