United States Politics Thread 47

[zompist]

I think it was a combination of both - there was no major party representing countercultural views (don't forget that the Dems were not far left of the Reps at that time and supported the Vietnam war, among other things), and most people were content with how things were going. (Even those who had lost a loved one in Vietnam often blamed that to the Vietcong rather than on the US government.)

If you simply look at the final matchup in 1968 (Johnson vs. Humphrey) that may seem true, but it elides an eventful and fractious year. McCarthy and Robert Kennedy were both antiwar candidates— at the time of Kennedy's assassination, the two of them together had more primary delegates than Humphrey. The convention was a mess, marked by police beating up antiwar protesters. Johnson's popularity was at 35%, largely because of the war. Riots following Dr. King's assassination didn't help things. Even with all that, Nixon barely eked out a victory.

[Ares Land]

BTW - isn't the association between Christianity and laissez faire economics a relatively new thing? It seems to be a rather strange mix that (to my knowledge) only exists in the US.

The US might be unique in being proudly capitalist and laissez-faire. Stuff like the prosperity gospel are uniquely American (that I know of.) I don't know if it's that recent... I checked Wikipedia on the prosperity gospel, and apparently it dates back to the 50s. Perhaps it was marginal back then.

But! Christians in the West tend to be right-wingers and by extension laissez-faire, if less proudly so. Conservative Catholics here aren't going to be as blatant as to claim they're rich because they're blessed by God... but they will agree with laissez-faire economics.

[Otto Kretschmer]

^Right but does Christianity by necessity needs to support laissez faire capitalism? As far as I know there is a lot of stuff in the New Testament about helping the poor and a lot of early Christian communities lived in a way that was relatively close to socialism. In the US Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Christian minister and he wanted a deep socioeconomic transformation of the US. He wasn't just about voting rights and segregated restaurants, far from it!

[Travis B.]

^Right but does Christianity by necessity needs to support laissez faire capitalism? As far as I know there is a lot of stuff in the New Testament about helping the poor and a lot of early Christian communities lived in a way that was relatively close to socialism. In the US Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Christian minister and he wanted a deep socioeconomic transformation of the US. He wasn't just about voting rights and segregated restaurants, far from it!

No. It is more conservatism being associated with support for laissez-faire capitalism, and conservatism being also associated with support for Christianity, so naturally there should be many conservatives who support both. It should be remembered, though, for conservative Christians support for laissez-faire capitalism has not always been a given; as I mentioned, there was a period in which the Catholic Church explicitly supported corporatism, which is quite distinct from laissez-faire capitalism.

[Ares Land]

^Right but does Christianity by necessity needs to support laissez faire capitalism?

Okay, unpopular opinion and a probably somewhat provocative one. While I acknowledge there are many socialist Christians, left-wing Catholics and the like... Yes, I think it kind of does.
Christianity supports charity, helping the poor and needy, and even (depending on your reading of the Gospel and how seriously you take your faith) advocates voluntary poverty as a way to sainthood.
One thing it's not been very good at is asking questions such as, to paraphrase Helder Camara, why are they poor in the first place?
There's a reason Marxism went hand to hand with atheism, and the historical record is that Christianity was actually comfortable with economic inequality even though, and I do recognize that, it often helped alleviate the worst effects of it.

[Torco]

America controls too many resources for its allies to turn against it decisively.

I'm not seeing Empire fail in the Third Word yet. The Islamist regime that took control in Syria seems to be a Western puppet. Bangladesh turned to China after USAID was cut, and China has its own identity crisis: https://youtu.be/W-ono_TRx64?si=E4U70hin-vm7qiKm

To convert America's weakness into concrete gains, you need to create a leftist movement in other countries, a movement commanding sufficient combined resources to challenge American hegemony.

that's a very interesting video, though I don't think it means that China is in an identity crisis: what it is is a country with a lot of people and a number of currents of thought, but that's also true elsewhere. in chile we have people neoliberals and marxists as well, but as a country we're still exceptionally committed to the neoliberal system. I see china as tentatively making a move towards filling the void the us is slowly leaving. for example, i'm told by chilean people who use tiktok that rednote is paying ads to get westerners to join [i don't know if they're running them in the states, but i've been seeing a bunch of pages reposting rednote stuff on insta. deepseek and stuff like that is another example of chinese tech expanding their reach to the western world. when trump announced he'd be removing the us from the WHO the chinese foreign minister (i think) was quick to clarify that china will continue to support it.

though a worldwide anti-american-empire movement would probably help, I don't think empires need a cohesive international movement against them to fall.

^Right but does Christianity by necessity needs to support laissez faire capitalism? As far as I know there is a lot of stuff in the New Testament about helping the poor and a lot of early Christian communities lived in a way that was relatively close to socialism. In the US Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Christian minister and he wanted a deep socioeconomic transformation of the US. He wasn't just about voting rights and segregated restaurants, far from it!

it certainly doesn't. then again, nevertheless it seems to be the case that christians, and especially us evangelicals, are closer to the right wing. i ran the numbers on the data from the world value survey (1 means totally leftwing and 10 means totally rightwing) and

religion and politics WVS wave 7.png (12.09 KiB) Viewed 6097 times

this is a cross between how right-or-left wing are you 1 to 10 versus whether the person reports religion is important to them (rather or very important) compared to the total (everyone, regardless of how important religion is). the % in the box is people who said they're 6 or more (that is to say, any right-of-center self-reports). this is world value survey data wave 7.

i think this is a decent effect size, especially on the edges (i.e. religion-important people are more likely to be eights, nines or tens). I'm getting an odds ratio of between 2.1 and 2.3, which is to say, basically, that a person for whom religion is important will be about twice as likely to be a rightwinger (8,9 or 10 in this scale where 1 is totally lefto and 10 is totally righto) than a person for whom religion is not very important. notably if we open this up by denomination, we get this effect in most religions

religion and rightism by denom.png (12.48 KiB) Viewed 6097 times

high jewish religiosity is unique in that it's not associated with increased rightism, whereas buddhists have the smallest increase in rightism. so it would seem that the contents of religions are important, in that different denominations are different, but for the most part it's fair to say that, in general, people who take religion very seriously tend to be rightwingers.

[jcb]

ALERT: Trump is actually doing something useful and good for once! He's just ordered the treasury to stop minting pennies. (Now if only he would tell them to stop minting nickels and dimes too...)
- https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/09/us/p ... nnies.html

But! Christians in the West tend to be right-wingers and by extension laissez-faire, if less proudly so. Conservative Catholics here aren't going to be as blatant as to claim they're rich because they're blessed by God... but they will agree with laissez-faire economics.

But do they have any Doomsday Buckets?
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K6uhZCB62k

[zompist]

Okay, unpopular opinion and a probably somewhat provocative one. While I acknowledge there are many socialist Christians, left-wing Catholics and the like... Yes, I think it kind of does.
Christianity supports charity, helping the poor and needy, and even (depending on your reading of the Gospel and how seriously you take your faith) advocates voluntary poverty as a way to sainthood.
One thing it's not been very good at is asking questions such as, to paraphrase Helder Camara, why are they poor in the first place?
There's a reason Marxism went hand to hand with atheism, and the historical record is that Christianity was actually comfortable with economic inequality even though, and I do recognize that, it often helped alleviate the worst effects of it.

The standard Marxist line is that religion is regressive. That's not entirely wrong, but it's not right either. US Evangelicals are a lost cause, but as I noted earlier, their numbers have halved in 14 years— possibly because they went all in for Trumpism. 69% of Democrats are religiously affiliated (88% for Republicans), including the still powerful Black church. Religion was essential to the civil rights movement, the abolition movement, and Gandhi's part of the Indian independence movement. Hélder Câmara was an archbishop, which gave him the ability to criticize the dictatorship without getting killed or imprisoned.

Historically, if you wanted to liberate people, the best way was through religion. It gave ideological support for your rebellion, and zeal to your supporters. But these days there are easier alternatives.

If you want to oppress people, well, religion has always been a good way. It flatters its adherents as being more moral, and you can choose the types that encourage authoritarianism. And there are fewer popular ideological alternatives.

[Torco]

Historically, if you wanted to liberate people, the best way was through religion. It gave ideological support for your rebellion, and zeal to your supporters. But these days there are easier alternatives.

I don't see it that clearly. a good way is religion? sure. but china and the soviet union were explicitly anti-religious, or perhaps irreligious. and yeah, authoritarianism and all the rest of it is true, but those *are* the most liberatory proceses in history in terms raw, naive measures such as how many calories and years of life expectancy got added to the lives of how many people, or the number of people who were converted from feudal serfs to wage workers (and clearly the latter is a freer condition than the former). religion has played an important and valuable role in liberatory resistance, but less so in systemic change.

[Travis B.]

Historically, if you wanted to liberate people, the best way was through religion. It gave ideological support for your rebellion, and zeal to your supporters. But these days there are easier alternatives.

I don't see it that clearly. a good way is religion? sure. but china and the soviet union were explicitly anti-religious, or perhaps irreligious. and yeah, authoritarianism and all the rest of it is true, but those *are* the most liberatory proceses in history in terms raw, naive measures such as how many calories and years of life expectancy got added to the lives of how many people, or the number of people who were converted from feudal serfs to wage workers (and clearly the latter is a freer condition than the former). religion has played an important and valuable role in liberatory resistance, but less so in systemic change.

You obviously have elided the Soviet Union under Stalin or China under Mao here...

[zompist]

Historically, if you wanted to liberate people, the best way was through religion. It gave ideological support for your rebellion, and zeal to your supporters. But these days there are easier alternatives.

I don't see it that clearly. a good way is religion? sure. but china and the soviet union were explicitly anti-religious, or perhaps irreligious.

If I say "historically" I don't mean "when we were children." I'm talking about centuries or millennia ago.

[keenir]

I hope everyone enjoyed World Pizza Day.

[keenir]

Our Vice President is making some strange comments...

Vance's tweet: "If a judge tries to command a general on how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal."

me: Um, where are they doing this, that you think the judge would even be able to tell the general what to do? Though the judge might be able to determine the legality of the action afterwards...I think thats one of the functions of the Judge Advocate Generals.

Heck, even if a civilian judge told a general what to do in a military operation, I don't think it could qualify as a command...you know, unless POTUS was a judge.

more of Vance's tweet: "If a judge tries to command the attorney general how to use her discretion, that would also be illegal."

me: If your attorney general doesn't know how to use discretion, one would think a bit of friendly advice from the judge, might be welcome. Again, Vance's use of "command" is weird.

[Torco]

If I say "historically" I don't mean "when we were children." I'm talking about centuries or millennia ago.

fair enough, but even so rome comes to mind: there were a bunch of instances of the downtrodden masses organizing in movements to improve their situation curtailing the explotation exerted by the patricians: the seccesio plebis, the gracci, the slave rebellions... i may be wrong, but i don't think any of those had a significant religious component. then again, of course, plenty of peasant rebellions did have important religious elements: the yellow turbans spring to mind, or mazdakism. overall it looks to me like a mixed bag, rather than a clear "your best chance was using religion"

me: If your attorney general doesn't know how to use discretion, one would think a bit of friendly advice from the judge, might be welcome. Again, Vance's use of "command" is weird.

think of it from their perspective: the narrative they've been sold, or one of the ones at least, is that the 'deep state' is the enemy they're defeating. their response to this enemy is the doctrine of absolute power (they don't call it that, but it amounts to the same original idea as the one the romans had of the dictator: let's give total power to someone so they can deal with some specific crisis). from the perspective of that narrative, any opposition to the dictator's power is a threat to his ability to deal with the crisis, especially if this opposition comes from such deep-state-feeling figures. construing any commentary, interference or opposition as "THE DEEP STATE IS SEDITIOUSLY TRYING TO SUBVERT US" is useful, optically.

[Ares Land]

If I say "historically" I don't mean "when we were children." I'm talking about centuries or millennia ago.

fair enough, but even so rome comes to mind: there were a bunch of instances of the downtrodden masses organizing in movements to improve their situation curtailing the explotation exerted by the patricians: the seccesio plebis, the gracci, the slave rebellions... i may be wrong, but i don't think any of those had a significant religious component. then again, of course, plenty of peasant rebellions did have important religious elements: the yellow turbans spring to mind, or mazdakism. overall it looks to me like a mixed bag, rather than a clear "your best chance was using religion"

An interesting question! Roman religion, to put it briefly, doesn't really work the way we moderns expect.
So we don't see the religious elements; but they exist and they're often essential. The Tribunes of the Plebs were sacrosanct and most (if not all?) of their power was religious in nature -- they were sacrosanct, ie under special religious protection, and their political power stems from that.
I'm not sure about the Empire, but under the Republic, a Roman couldn't possibly do anything political without a significant religious element.

A book I read a few years back (Behind the Myths: The Foundations of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, by John Pickard) has the intriguing thesis that the Abrahamic faith originated as a way to demand some kind of social justice. It's a good observation, I think, one with plenty of elements in support of it.

I think zompist's point stands historically. In recent times, heh, I'm willing to offer concession but still stand by my earlier post. I view Catholicism, for instance, as being basically conservative and right-wing. That's in spite of the existence of pretty lively movements of left-wing Catholics (who are, in fact, better at being left-wing than most non-Catholics) but the Church did, for instance, reject liberation theology.

[rotting bones]

The Tribunes of the Plebs were sacrosanct and most (if not all?) of their power was religious in nature -- they were sacrosanct, ie under special religious protection, and their political power stems from that.

Marxists would question whether their power really stemmed from that regardless of what the elites claimed. Political violence wasn't rare in Rome. Maybe religion is a face saving gesture masking underlying coercion.

From what I remember, if you go by the elite claims, the Romans were the most religious people in the world and also the most practical people in the world. IIRC they had a goddess of door hinges who, if not appeased with regular oiling, would curse you with squeaky hinges. This is some WH40K level stuff.

We can't compare ancient Roman religiosity to much we are used to. One comparison are the self-help cults that try to imbue every aspect of life with emotional affect while avoiding obvious superstition. Like in self-help, everything was religious, but Romans were actually less superstitious than the Greeks. A lot of them after Cato the Elder didn't seem to believe any of it except the popular stuff comparable to Catholic saint veneration. Unlike in Plato's dialogues, the interlocutors in Cicero's Tusculan Disputations believe in zero mythology to begin with. (But Cicero came much later than Plato, so maybe this is apples and oranges?)

While Romans didn't believe in their religion, they wouldn't endure any public challenges to it either since life would be unbearable with squeaky hinges. The official religion's status seems to have been pure hypocritical conservatism. In this respect, the closest parallel in our world is probably Shinto. Both Shinto and Roman religion are oriented towards one specific state and its social order. Hinduism is more like Greek religion, steeped in philosophy and esotericism, both skepticism and unapologetic superstition at the same time.

Note that the later Imperialist challenge to the forms of the official religion was justified in the name of populism. The opponents of the Populares was the aristocratic Optimates Party. The Optimates opposed the grain dole (before this official name?) and supported the forms of the official religion. The Optimate elites at the top didn't believe any of it. (Cicero was one of them.) Their ideas were underpinned by Stoicism despite the fact that Stoic natural law had social justice elements to it. It was the same as Christian mystification:

I suspect that fascist conspiracy theories (including theology) memetically evolve to be suggestive about the interests of all classes, poor workers as well as the small proprietor peasant class. This is why Jesus can be made to sound like a socialist as well as an apologist for tyranny at the same time. That mystification is what these theories are. Their purpose is to preclude scientific analysis that would let people actually solve their problems.

The Populares were populists, but they weren't Marxists. They were probably more committed to Roman supremacy than the Optimates. Unlike the Optimates, who had a weak neoliberal globalist streak, the Populares succumbed to the personality cult of Imperialism.

A book I read a few years back (Behind the Myths: The Foundations of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, by John Pickard) has the intriguing thesis that the Abrahamic faith originated as a way to demand some kind of social justice. It's a good observation, I think, one with plenty of elements in support of it.

The Islamist right is inclined towards the social conservatism and economic populism that I'm sorry to hear Gen Z wants. Despite their hostility to publicly witnessed homosexuality, it's hard to imagine capitalism as it currently exists without the fixed interest rates that Islamism opposes. One of the main planks of Islamism is "Islamic finance", which replaces fixed interest (riba "usury") with "profit sharing". If you invest in an enterprise, your investment will grow if the enterprise is profitable or shrink if there are losses. After the investment grows, you can withdraw a part of it, so you can still live off the blood and sweat of others. What you can't do is demand others pay you predetermined amounts no matter what. Islamic finance is also required to donate a fixed percentage to charity and avoid investments that are socially or ritually sus like pork. A major problem is that Muslims are idiots. Apparently, even its victims find themselves physiologically incapable of regarding some terrorist outfits as sus.

This is not socialism. It's medieval social justice, similar to the position of Catholicism before they capitulated fully to capitalism. (Sorry for the pun.)

[rotting bones]

that's a very interesting video, though I don't think it means that China is in an identity crisis: what it is is a country with a lot of people and a number of currents of thought, but that's also true elsewhere.

See The New Leviathans by John Gray.

PS. In concrete terms, countries have a harder time refinancing Chinese loans.

[rotting bones]

That's a good question, and the answer is not obvious.

It could be a matter of infighting within the financial class. The losing faction within the financial class might be teaming up with small proprietors to oppose global capital. I don't have enough evidence to substantiate this.

[rotting bones]

high jewish religiosity is unique in that it's not associated with increased rightism

"Tradition" can mean left-wing if you were traditionally left-wing.

[zompist]

From what I remember, if you go by the elite claims, the Romans were the most religious people in the world and also the most practical people in the world. IIRC they had a goddess of door hinges who, if not appeased with regular oiling, would curse you with squeaky hinges. This is some WH40K level stuff.

We can't compare ancient Roman religiosity to much we are used to. One comparison are the self-help cults that try to imbue every aspect of life with emotional affect while avoiding obvious superstition. Like in self-help, everything was religious, but Romans were actually less superstitious than the Greeks. A lot of them after Cato the Elder didn't seem to believe any of it except the popular stuff comparable to Catholic saint veneration. Unlike in Plato's dialogues, the interlocutors in Cicero's Tusculan Disputations believe in zero mythology to begin with. (But Cicero came much later than Plato, so maybe this is apples and oranges?)

While Romans didn't believe in their religion, they wouldn't endure any public challenges to it either since life would be unbearable with squeaky hinges. The official religion's status seems to have been pure hypocritical conservatism. In this respect, the closest parallel in our world is probably Shinto. Both Shinto and Roman religion are oriented towards one specific state and its social order. Hinduism is more like Greek religion, steeped in philosophy and esotericism, both skepticism and unapologetic superstition at the same time.

Note that the later Imperialist challenge to the forms of the official religion was justified in the name of populism. The opponents of the Populares was the aristocratic Optimates Party. The Optimates opposed the grain dole (before this official name?) and supported the forms of the official religion. The Optimate elites at the top didn't believe any of it. (Cicero was one of them.) Their ideas were underpinned by Stoicism despite the fact that Stoic natural law had social justice elements to it.

I agree that Roman religion wasn't "what we are used to", but I think you're distorting things a bit by talking about "belief". Roman religion wasn't about mythology; it had no required beliefs. So its practitioners weren't hypocrites for not doing something ("believing") that their religion didn't require them to do.

Their religion just doesn't fit into modern boxes. These "skeptics" walked around Rome with boxes of chickens. That was because officials needed to perform auspices to consecrate any official action, which could include moving between districts in the city. The chickens had to behave in a particular way for the auspices to be favorable. The official was the final judge of whether they were. (The chicken handler was called the pullarius.)

Now Laozi tells us that "ritual is the husk of faith"... but this is far more than saluting the flag or saying a prayer. And other aspects of Roman religion, such as sacrifices or consulting the Sybilline oracles, took even more time and energy. Nor could these activities be delegated to priests: the celebrants were civic officials, and besides, retired civic officials often became priests, as it was a nice lifetime appointment.

It's also worth noting that when Augustus took power in a monarchical coup, he carefully accumulated religious offices: he was head of all four priestly colleges. And the Romans spent considerable energy deifying the emperors, which included building temples all over the Empire and holding sacrifices. It's a lot of work if the religion was empty. (On the other hand, the attitude of "it's very very important to do the rituals, but it's discouraged to talk about what they mean" would be a position Confucius would approve of.)

All this should be balanced with a mention of the mysteries, which involved intense events and doctrines told in secret. These too didn't come with any statement of belief, but they allowed shared, heavy emotion that otherwise had no place in the civic religion.