That might be true, but I don't see how that follows from the evidence presented here at all. I think you're misunderstanding this part:

My point was, even the ones who DO go to church approve of Trump (now that he's president) at incredible rates, right? So why are we rushing to pat these people on the back and say "it seems like Jesus has made them less bad", because he was their second choice in the primary instead of their first?

Also to be clear I'm drawing a bit longer timeline like back into the 40s and 50s and the weakening of mainline church attendance and traditional religions, and the ascent of hardcore reactionary right wing Christians (which I agree the conflation of all of this utterly poisons the discussion since the reactionaries are precisely what I'm talking about; that is, the huge growth of reactionary right wing Christians was really like Phase 1 of the devolution, not bothering with the institution at all Phase 2).

Because Trump was their second choice instead of their first? Isn't that sort of prima facie? I don't know their ranked preferences precisely but I'll reiterate the argument is that their connections to religious institutions made them relatively Less Bad, not Good. You seem to ...agree?

Addendum for your edited portion:

idk, I'm over my head on that, I was born in that decade. The idea of a country that can elect a president with 420+ electoral votes (as happened in all 3 elections that decade) is completely foreign to me, doesn't sound like the country I live in, that's some alien ****.

I think the amount of "less bad" we're talking between "supported Ted Cruz initially, but now totally happy to support Donald Trump" versus "always supported Donald Trump" is tiny, and doesn't necessarily even point to being "less bad" (did they vote for Cruz because they're better people, or because they see the same tribal affiliations in him that they see in themselves?).

Yeah, feel like this is some egghead stuff. It’s “slightly less intentionally bad,” cuz having delusional, messianic nut jobs running the show aint so grand either. Remember when God told GWB to invade Iraq?

Seems pretty straight forward that churches have historically given people a social network and a sense of community that’s been replaced by 4chan or Fox News or whatever.

And it’s not like liberals every really argued with conservatives about the positive communal aspects of religion, pretty sure only a tiny number of militant atheists would find fault with the YMCA for example. Obama and Hillary made a big deal about their relationship with their churches. The objection of liberalism to religion has predominantly been w/ regard to the toxic aspects of it that you cited. So don’t know what we are supposed to be crediting conservatives with being right about...

I'd argue that the difference between a social network in a church and that of 4chan or Fox News is so big that they aren't even of the same species.

Excluding the most ding bat tiny church populations, there is SOME degree of variability in the attendees - might be all white/black, but there's going to be differing income levels/with/without kids, ages. Might even have a couple of Hispanic or Orientals who wandered in. So there is at least a chance of interacting with someone outside your bubble. It's not (or doesn't have to be) the relentless echo chamber of the same crap over and over again.

MM MD

Sure, internet groups are a very poor substitue for a healthy church social group. But it does provide you with a basic sense that you’re among like-minded folks.

I think beginning and stopping the analysis at the 2016 primaries isn't quite what I was after though. By 2016 a lot of the forces I'm describing have played out insofar as a lot of people have left organized religions and others have decamped for pseudo-religious highly ideological right-wing grifter clubs.

But, anyway, again, just examining Trump voters now:

https://www.voterstudygroup.org/publ...s-trump-voters











Pretty sure these are repeatable; I think Pew has a lot of the same style of data.

Obviously these aren't perfect people, we're talking about Trump voters after all, but I think we should weight seriously that participation in social institutions like church makes them less bad.

pwn_master is now joining goofy in "we gotta throw these people a parade??!" but again, not what I'm saying. The point is that as you move people who aren't perfect and float them farther and farther into the "never attends church" column, insofar as we acknowledge that like participating in religious life is a factor (the rub of the argument here I agree), the more you can predict kinda bad people (they are Trump voters after all) are going to turn into HOLLLLY **** WHAT THE ****, OUR COUNTRY?!? kinda people.

good stuff, guys

So in sum, consuming that data above in post 61, my point is that the move of the GOP from Eisenhower --> Nixon --> Trump coincides with more and more people moving down the scale from Weekly church goer to Never. Nixon was obviously a criminal authoritarian BUT that was a Republican Party that could at least be bargained with into creating the ****ing EPA, a basically unfathomable department now if it didn't already exist.

Okay, but that shows a very narrow point. I assume overall racial attitudes were worse back in organized religions heyday when we still had segregation, the KKK running around, etc? And on top of that you had more fighting between different religious groups (i.e. hatred of Catholics). So what is the evidence that religion would make a Trumpkin less bad rather than a different kind of bad.

Thanks DVaut, the data in post 61 makes a much more convincing argument than the 2016 primary data.

america would take the side of the guy who committed sexual assault instead of the victim

oh sorry, alleged

Well, no, America didn't. 50 senators did.

Poll: more people believe Ford than Kavanaugh

Sure, maybe? I am absolutely positive you are correct that as the country has become less religious, some measure of sectarian aggression has been offloaded into race and national identity totems. Perhaps it's slightly zero sum. I suppose it morphs into a qualitative discussion about what's worse.

I still maintain (and no I'm not going to write a big dissertation) that holistic institutional decay (of which religious life is only a part) underlies a big part of the systemic political disruption we're witnessing and religious institutions are a big factor but only part. In that sense I still think social conservatives were correct that religious institutions produced social cohesion and the erosion of their influence would mean an erosion of social contact and cohesion. You could argue that the old norms were bad and should have been torn down, YMMV I guess, it's not a bad argument. I'm still going to give them credit for knowing themselves, that (glibly, cruelly) they had a lot of bad people in the midst and taking the guard-rails away without replacing it with much was going to lead to a destruction of the old norms and structures that held society together.

Fine, america won't do a damn thing about it. That's fair.

This not being religious and they're worse as a result thing doesn't pass the test to me--50 years ago was still civil rights era stuff. They just couldn't get away with going back to it again till recently. Maybe your argument is church sedated them for a few hours and that did help rather than hyper stupid hateful **** non stop they get these days.

The demand wasn’t for books but rather the knowledge and information in the books. The demand for that knowledge and information is driven by the universal and insatiable demand we have to improve our conditions, whether through social or technological means. Sharing more and more information with more and more people is how we advance, and our means of sharing that information - first with books, now with the internet – is the throttle which governs how fast or slow we can change and advance. So for argument’s sake, if we define conservatives as those who resist change but are not unilaterally opposed to it (those are fundamentalists), we can see how accelerating the exchange of information, which leads to accelerating change, can lead to increased anxiety with them. So as opposed to the fundamentalists who are saying “stop,” what the conservatives are saying is “slow down.” Now if push comes to shove, it’s not too hard to figure out that conservatives are going to side with the person with their foot on the brake, not the one pressing the accelerator. The thing is conservatives aren’t always red and they’ll always take the devil they know over the devil they don’t.

Trump will win the election

It's more like, churches put people in physical proximity with a human who isn't a Fox n Friend or a YouTube Nazi.* And I'm anxious that we're increasingly living in a world populated by people whose most meaningful social interaction is consistent albeit passive encounters with Fox anchors and internet Nazis, and you know a lot of times a normal person or group of people at church, while not perfect, was better.

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*I acknowledge a lot of churches have been weaponized into the right wing political movement, it's half of what I'm describing anyway about institutional decay

Many of those people in churches were exactly like fox n friends if not the youtube nazi--they just didn't say it out loud at church. We all knew a lot of people in private saying all sorts of **** like that--well without russian propaganda part of it anyway like nowadays.

Easily could be argued churches went full trump because their followers demanded it but I suppose that's a chicken or the egg first question that's irrelevant to dealing with the problem now.

I agree, I'm not arguing like even mainline Christian churches were perfect, I mean the Catholic Church runs a sex abuse ring, I get it. I STILL maintain just like seeing human faces and sharing meals and having physical conversations with other people is far more humanizing than watching racist propaganda on YouTube and Fox all day and EVEN IF all people get at church is the thinnest of veneers of decency, it's better than literally no pretense at all. And I think even a minimal amount of social contact made people better, more human, more reasonable. Not objectively Good, I get it.

To the extent that the left tore down religious institutions (and believe me, I think capitalism has done most of the damage, not the left) and deprived some of these people of like the few places that gave them even pretensive decency and communal meaning, we're worse for it. Because now it's just shameless, total, all encompassing nihilism, not even the barest shreds of humanity in here.