State of the Union - pre/post election & whatever...

[rebelyell2006]

It's easy. They are jealous, greedy fucks. They don't like it when people lower than them on the totem pole get help.

[gustav]

yeh but the USA does not have a monopoly on them

[Drjackson]

They have been too insular for too long - ie: the American way is best and all that.

At least veteran affairs will get some funding now

[Drjackson]

Kyote, do you think sessions is used to looking out of some eyeholes in a hood ?

[kyotebue2]

That's Jefferson Beauregard Sessions the III bless his pointy little hood.

[What]

Given that most of Europe and the RotW runs on a form of democratic socialism - ie the state owns and runs essential services, provides basic welfare and health to all, representational democracy, free market capitalism for most industries with varying degress of government oversight.

I have never understood what the Septics problem with "socialism" actually is ?
Are not public schools socialist ? are not fire brigades socialist, government roads ? government subsidies ?
But when it comes to health it is seen like it is a communist takeover - LOL. Not that socialist = communist anyway.
Beyond me. No doubt the alt-right lurkers can explain.

Americans are fine with it, provided the "wrong people" (usually brown people and the poor) don't get in on the sozializmz.

"I deserve my medicaid but my neighbours are moochers!"

[WTF on the road]

As I recall, a recent poll of Americans that identify as Evangelicals indicated that something like 60+% believed that poverty indicated a moral failure. Given that those same self-identifying Evangelicals represent a third or better of the electorate and you have a core hostility to any perceived "hand outs" by government.

The many and varied historical reasons the US is significantly more religious than most of the other Western democracies are too numerous to list without the dread "wall o text" but coupled with an aversion to teaching other than thin layers of comic book style history up to and including high school and you get an electorate that believes in the Horatio Alger self-made man myth of unbridled capitalism coupled with a gut feel that accepting help is a moral failing. If the educational system was better we'd know it was essentially Calvinism for Dummies.

[Macunaima]

As Jack London (iirc) famously said, there are no poor men in America, only temporarily embarassed millionaires.

[Altius]

As I recall, a recent poll of Americans that identify as Evangelicals indicated that something like 60+% believed that poverty indicated a moral failure. Given that those same self-identifying Evangelicals represent a third or better of the electorate and you have a core hostility to any perceived "hand outs" by government.

The many and varied historical reasons the US is significantly more religious than most of the other Western democracies are too numerous to list without the dread "wall o text" but coupled with an aversion to teaching other than thin layers of comic book style history up to and including high school and you get an electorate that believes in the Horatio Alger self-made man myth of unbridled capitalism coupled with a gut feel that accepting help is a moral failing. If the educational system was better we'd know it was essentially Calvinism for Dummies.

If your numbers are right, that 60% of evangelicals works out to around 20-21% of the general population. Just a wild-ass guess, but it's probably the same 20% that's been giving us all those persistent wingnut notions all these years. It's why we can get close from time to time but can't quite get over the hump.

I honestly think that if the South - the Bible Belt, Ol' Dixie, the land where old times there were not forgot - had been fixed properly following the civil war, we'd be a proper nation. We let it fester and we made no effort to punish these people or turn them around from their fucked up social concepts. So now we have to drag the south around with us like a racist, backward ball and chain.

[Winnie]

As I recall, a recent poll of Americans that identify as Evangelicals indicated that something like 60+% believed that poverty indicated a moral failure. Given that those same self-identifying Evangelicals represent a third or better of the electorate and you have a core hostility to any perceived "hand outs" by government.

The many and varied historical reasons the US is significantly more religious than most of the other Western democracies are too numerous to list without the dread "wall o text" but coupled with an aversion to teaching other than thin layers of comic book style history up to and including high school and you get an electorate that believes in the Horatio Alger self-made man myth of unbridled capitalism coupled with a gut feel that accepting help is a moral failing. If the educational system was better we'd know it was essentially Calvinism for Dummies.

If your numbers are right, that 60% of evangelicals works out to around 20-21% of the general population. Just a wild-ass guess, but it's probably the same 20% that's been giving us all those persistent wingnut notions all these years. It's why we can get close from time to time but can't quite get over the hump.

I honestly think that if the South - the Bible Belt, Ol' Dixie, the land where old times there were not forgot - had been fixed properly following the civil war, we'd be a proper nation. We let it fester and we made no effort to punish these people or turn them around from their fucked up social concepts. So now we have to drag the south around with us like a racist, backward ball and chain.

I always wondered what was wrong with Reconstruction. It was punishing the Bad Guys! But that wasn't what our history books taught us.
Andrew Johnson was trying his damndest to unravel Reconstruction, so got his ass impeached. Somehow, one of Kennedy's Profiles in Courage was the Senator who prevented Johnson's removal. Democrats sticking by Democrats I guess.
Then the "Corrupt Bargain" in 1876 that settled the Hayes Tilden election (You think Bush Gore was bad?)
included complete dismantling of Reconstruction and putting Democrats back in charge in the "redeemed" South. Hello Jim Crow!
Basically the Radical Republicans never had the power or the will to secure freedom for the freed slaves. 13, 14 and 15th Amendments notwithstanding. See? It's easy to ignore parts of the Constitution you don't like. Now the darkies are almost slaves again, and the planters don't have responsibilities they would have had if they were property.
Altius is right. A bigger hammer was needed.