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On the Republican Side, the Fix Is In for Kasich

I've suspected this for the past few weeks: When all the handwringing over Trump is done, and the dust has settled, Cleveland will present to America a GOP nominee that they will expect you to be "relieved" by; an allegedly-moderate, supposedly-reasonable Episcopalian boy from the Heartland. But it's nothing more than a bait-and-switch, because if you look at the Governor's record (which I suspect most people here have already done), it becomes readily apparent that this man is neither moderate nor reasonable.

"Trump too extreme? There, there, America, here's a nice guy!" I shudder to think how many independents will be taken in by the con.

(Originally posted in General Discussion: Primaries. Posted here on suggestion of In_The_Wind. Thank you for your guidance.)

On the Republican Side, the Fix Is In for Kasich

I've suspected this for the past few weeks: When all the handwringing over Trump is done, and the dust has settled, Cleveland will present to America a GOP nominee that they will expect you to be "relieved" by; an allegedly-moderate, supposedly-reasonable Episcopalian boy from the Heartland. But it's nothing more than a bait-and-switch, because if you look at the Governor's record (which I suspect most people here have already done), it becomes readily apparent that this man is neither moderate nor reasonable.

"Trump too extreme? There, there, America, here's a nice guy!" I shudder to think how many independents will be taken in by the con.

Americans May Be Too Religious To Embrace Socialism: FiveThirtyEight

By Andrew R. Lewis and Paul A. Djupe

For over a century, scholars have wondered why the United States has never had a viable socialist movement. Socialist parties in other Western democracies, such as Britain’s Labour Party and Germany’s Social Democratic Party, are regularly in and out of power, but the best socialist showing for president in the U.S. was Eugene Debs’s 6 percent in 1912.1

Bernie Sanders has made socialism relevant again in this country. But will the U.S. join much of Western Europe in developing a successful socialist political tradition? Short of that, will the Sanders campaign ignite a new movement? Both are unlikely, at least for now, and a big part of the explanation why may lie in religion — religion inhibits socialism’s spread and explains its lack of political mobilization.

To understand the relationship between socialist values and religion, we used the 2013 Public Religion Research Institute’s “Economic Values Study.” As part of the survey, respondents were asked how much they agreed with a battery of statements regarding economic values, including “It is the responsibility of the government to take care of people who can’t take care of themselves,” The government should do more to reduce the gap between the rich and poor” and “The government should guarantee health insurance for all citizens.” We combined these into a “socialism scale,” the results of which suggest the average American is just left of center.

The conventional wisdom is that the individualist, evangelical style of American religion is a strong antidote to socialism. If faith alone can lead you to salvation, then efforts to reshape society are beside the point. But the animosity between them has been more pointed, especially regarding so called “Godless communists” who portrayed religion as the “opiate of the masses.” In these data, those who agreed that social problems would be resolved if enough people had a personal relationship with God were 20 percent less socialist than those who disagreed. A worldview that pits faith directly against collective action explains clearly why collectivist efforts have traditionally foundered in the U.S.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-may-be-too-religious-to-embrace-socialism/

I really don't know why so many Americans are frightened by the s-word. We've had a socialist-capitalist hybrid system for decades, and we still get to make our own decisions! (Except when it comes to hockey: You can and will be prosecuted for failure to love the sport.)