Also, it’s kind of absurd to think that US political partisanship nowadays is significantly more extreme than it was in the much more religious 19th century, for example.
Yes, the uncharacteristic period of “liberal consensus” of the mid-20th century, when the two main parties mostly used the same mass media and advocated for mostly similar positions, is largely gone, but it’s not atheism that killed it.
Why would that be absurd?
If religion was a larger part of life, then you don’t need to introduce it into other things. You’re getting your “fix”.
And politics would have been a lot different. No one knew what their congresspeople had voted for, so there was no way to complain about any individual, just an amorphous blob. The news would have come slower, a person might have been more likely to have been involved in and concerned with local politics, and they all thought of themselves as being part of a Republic rather than a Democracy.
It wasn’t fun and games, and it wasn’t something that you felt like you could involve yourself in except at the local level at which point it’s a real thing, not “playing pretend” like it is these days.
It was a tongue in cheek reference to Nietzsche, who was wondering with the decline of religion in every day life, what would replace religion. It isn’t necessarily that people have stopped believing, but they certainly have stopped attending. And now I believe they are finding their identity and community in their politics.
Exactly. It isn’t really about God per se, it’s about what your beliefs, your community, your sense of validation and belonging, your sense of who the enemy is, being provided by your politics and the whole ecosystem of blogs, YouTubers, etc. And it gives you an enemy to hate and loathe. Where that enemy was Satan, now it’s your political opponents (who sometimes work for Satan, naturally)
I got that. I’d argue that they have made politics a part of their religion. Scratch a conservative and a Christian bleeds. The list of things conservatives oppose that aren’t confirmed by a Bible verse is kinda short.
I think it’s a Combo/Mashup between religion (not actual belief, but membership in a club), and Sports.
You have to support your team. No matter what. Watching sports from a young age drills this into you. Combine this with the faux religion we see today and you have… Republicans.
Not even just “the new religion” – it’s also the new sports. People now eagerly watch political news, follow the polling and election results, etc., with the same fervor that they follow their favorite sports, and wear MAGA gear just like how they used to wear hats, shirts, etc. for their sports teams. And, like religion, it becomes “my team versus your team, and I loathe your team.”
The last decade has really brought to my attention how odd a significant number of American voters are, including myself. Despite parroting MAGA talking points, my MAGA mother swears up and down she’s not MAGA. She will look at you with a straight face, telling you all politicians are liars and crooks, but that can’t be true because she enthusiastically supports Donald Trump while unable articulate what makes him different.
At this point, I pretty much entirely blame the people in the crazy camp as none of them can reasonably claim to have been fooled. Maybe in 2016, but anyone who continues to support Trump in 2024 and beyond bear full responsibility for what they’ve wrought. None of them can claim they didn’t know what Comrade Stalin was up to.
Indeed, I am sure there is a conservative board somewhere, or perhaps rather a facebook or tiktok group, where they have a thread about A perfectly Reasonable Amount of Schadenfreude about Things Happening to Libtards and their Enablers. Or there would be, if they were capable of writing such complex sentences with long words. They probably outsourced it to some grok AI.
It’s probably closer to Lefty Pinko Baby Wah-Wah Stuff.
I’d agree with that as well.
That’s my brother. Also insists Trump is just a vessel, but while he’s always got harsh words for anyone from the left (and seems to know every name, down to who represents the MI 4th), he’s always defensive of Trump and the Republicans, despite “not being a Republican or beholden to any party” Basically, (my words) “I’m not a Republican, or Trumper, but it’s not my fault every one of them is right and every Dem is wrong”
Very Sportsball, by the way.
As anecdote, point out Trump’s objectively socialist policies, and he just redefines what’s socialist. Even though if Harris were to do the same thing, he’d call her a Marxist.
Um, because US political partisanship in the 19th century was massive and radical? I mean, you don’t have to take my word for it, we’ve got the receipts.
(And that link isn’t even directly addressing the intensely bitter divisions earlier in the century over slavery and territory allocation related to it.)
This is one of those speculative “it just stands to reason” inferences that seems naively plausible, but simply doesn’t match up with the known facts. Yes, the far more religious 19th-century citizenry was also passionately antagonistic and vituperative about its politics. Religion did not in fact provide a societal “safety valve” for partisanship that magically removed divisiveness from the political arena.
“No way to complain about any individual” lololololLOL!! 
Hell no, 19th-century Americans did not think of their representatives as merely an “amorphous blob”.
This likewise is just incomprehensibly counterfactual. Hell yes, a whole lot of the 19th-century American electorate got a lot of “fun and games” out of their (often violent) political activity, and they were massively invested in controversies at the national and state level. I don’t know where the hell this mindset is coming from that 19th-century American political engagement was all decorous and responsible and nonpartisan, but it needs to die immediately.
The 19th century was a much more Civil time than now, and we assuredly didn’t go to War over such things as political differences.
Because…he’s an honest liar and crook!
Politicians used to get into brawls. The last “real” fight in the federal legislature was in 1902, when a couple of senators got into a fistfight. Nothing of note happened since then until 1985, and that “assault” was one representative grabbing another by the tie briefly after a heated discussion. A couple of years ago, Representative Mike Rogers lunged at Matt Gaetz but was restrained, and nothing physical occurred (note that was from Republican inter-party bickering over the Speaker election). That’s all we have for the past 125 years. (There have been fights in state legislatures, but nothing federal.)
Going back to the beginning of our federal government, in 1798 you had one representative attack another with a walking stick, who then went and grabbed iron fireplace tongs, and they got into armed conflict. Nobody was seriously injured (which was lucky), but it was a real fight, and they were smacking each other in the head with them.
In 1856 you had another armed fight, this time a representative beat a senator with a cane in the US Senate chambers until the guy fell unconscious, and then kept beating him until the cane broke. The crazy thing is, some other senators went to intervene, but one senator pulled out a pistol and threatened to shoot someone if they interrupted it. Talk about brutal shit.
A couple of years after that, there was a huge brawl on the House floor involving around 50 representatives during a heated late-night debate. The only reason the brawl was stopped was because a guy’s hairpiece got knocked off from a punch, and when he put it on he accidentally put it on backwards, and it looked so ridiculous it made everyone stop and laugh.
Then a couple of years after that, a fight almost broke out between Democrats and Republicans over an argument over slavery, with folks brandishing pistols and canes and threatening to kill each other, but it didn’t get physical. Almost exactly one year after that incident (one year and a week later, actually) the US Civil War broke out.
And lastly, the primary reason why the government switched to a direct vote for US Senators rather than having state legislators elect them is because of a fight in 1887 in Indiana, where senators and representatives for the state brawled for 4 hours over a dispute regarding whether or not to send their state governor to the US Senate. The fight only ended when guns came out and they threatened to kill each other, and the Indianapolis Police Department had to get involved to prevent anyone from dying. Democrats and Republicans refused to even talk to each other in the state for a while after that, and as I said, that led to the adoption of a vote by the people rather than counting on state legislatures to sort it out themselves.
Compared to all that, things aren’t nearly as divided or violent these days. Even if we are starting to approach how things were prior to the 20th century, we certainly aren’t there yet.
And in one of the sequels, all of the armed forces are given leave before the The Big Important Election to travel home and guard the polling places…of course, in Doc’s universe, this turns out well. YMMV.
ISWYDT
anyone else thinking, the Repubes are older and I’m pretty sure we can take them in a fight? no?
OK, really just kidding. the real war IS here in Minneapolis and Portland and (as I understand) coming up Springfield where they plan to go all ethnic cleansing on thousands of Haitians.
It wasn’t so long ago a lot of people thought the conservatives would be crushed by demographic changes. Anyone else remember reading about polls in the early 2000s showing that even young Evangelicals weren’t all that bothered about gay people? There are a lot of young conservatives these days.
There are a lot of young conservatives fascists these days.
Yes; the Right hasn’t gotten less religious, the Republican Party and American Right Wing Christianity have essentially merged. God + The Republicans + Trump are their Holy Trinity; their deity, the Chosen People, and their Messiah.
That was before they were in a position to destroy democracy. Demographics don’t matter if voting doesn’t matter. Nor does it matter if they are in a position to “correct” the demographics with a Final Solution.