#influence of religion on U.S. voting

[lurkiestvoid]

You're being targeted by disinformation networks that are vastly more effective than you realize. And they're making you more hateful and depressed.

(This essay was originally by u/walkandtalkk and posted to r/GenZ on Reddit two months ago, and I've crossposted here on Tumblr for convenience because it's relevant and well-written.)

TL;DR: You know that Russia and other governments try to manipulate people online. But you almost certainly don't how just how effectively orchestrated influence networks are using social media platforms to make you -- individually-- angry, depressed, and hateful toward each other. Those networks' goal is simple: to cause Americans and other Westerners -- especially young ones -- to give up on social cohesion and to give up on learning the truth, so that Western countries lack the will to stand up to authoritarians and extremists.

And you probably don't realize how well it's working on you.

This is a long post, but I wrote it because this problem is real, and it's much scarier than you think.

How Russian networks fuel racial and gender wars to make Americans fight one another

In September 2018, a video went viral after being posted by In the Now, a social media news channel. It featured a feminist activist pouring bleach on a male subway passenger for manspreading. It got instant attention, with millions of views and wide social media outrage. Reddit users wrote that it had turned them against feminism.

There was one problem: The video was staged. And In the Now, which publicized it, is a subsidiary of RT, formerly Russia Today, the Kremlin TV channel aimed at foreign, English-speaking audiences.

As an MIT study found in 2019, Russia's online influence networks reached 140 million Americans every month -- the majority of U.S. social media users.

Russia began using troll farms a decade ago to incite gender and racial divisions in the United States

In 2013, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a confidante of Vladimir Putin, founded the Internet Research Agency (the IRA) in St. Petersburg. It was the Russian government's first coordinated facility to disrupt U.S. society and politics through social media.

Here's what Prigozhin had to say about the IRA's efforts to disrupt the 2022 election:

"Gentlemen, we interfered, we interfere and we will interfere. Carefully, precisely, surgically and in our own way, as we know how. During our pinpoint operations, we will remove both kidneys and the liver at once."

In 2014, the IRA and other Russian networks began establishing fake U.S. activist groups on social media. By 2015, hundreds of English-speaking young Russians worked at the IRA. Their assignment was to use those false social-media accounts, especially on Facebook and Twitter -- but also on Reddit, Tumblr, 9gag, and other platforms -- to aggressively spread conspiracy theories and mocking, ad hominem arguments that incite American users.

In 2017, U.S. intelligence found that Blacktivist, a Facebook and Twitter group with more followers than the official Black Lives Matter movement, was operated by Russia. Blacktivist regularly attacked America as racist and urged black users to rejected major candidates. On November 2, 2016, just before the 2016 election, Blacktivist's Twitter urged Black Americans: "Choose peace and vote for Jill Stein. Trust me, it's not a wasted vote."

Russia plays both sides -- on gender, race, and religion

The brilliance of the Russian influence campaign is that it convinces Americans to attack each other, worsening both misandry and misogyny, mutual racial hatred, and extreme antisemitism and Islamophobia. In short, it's not just an effort to boost the right wing; it's an effort to radicalize everybody.

Russia uses its trolling networks to aggressively attack men. According to MIT, in 2019, the most popular Black-oriented Facebook page was the charmingly named "My Baby Daddy Aint Shit." It regularly posts memes attacking Black men and government welfare workers. It serves two purposes: Make poor black women hate men, and goad black men into flame wars.

MIT found that My Baby Daddy is run by a large troll network in Eastern Europe likely financed by Russia.

But Russian influence networks are also also aggressively misogynistic and aggressively anti-LGBT.

On January 23, 2017, just after the first Women's March, the New York Times found that the Internet Research Agency began a coordinated attack on the movement. Per the Times:

More than 4,000 miles away, organizations linked to the Russian government had assigned teams to the Women’s March. At desks in bland offices in St. Petersburg, using models derived from advertising and public relations, copywriters were testing out social media messages critical of the Women’s March movement, adopting the personas of fictional Americans.

They posted as Black women critical of white feminism, conservative women who felt excluded, and men who mocked participants as hairy-legged whiners.

But the Russian PR teams realized that one attack worked better than the rest: They accused its co-founder, Arab American Linda Sarsour, of being an antisemite. Over the next 18 months, at least 152 Russian accounts regularly attacked Sarsour. That may not seem like many accounts, but it worked: They drove the Women's March movement into disarray and eventually crippled the organization.

Russia doesn't need a million accounts, or even that many likes or upvotes. It just needs to get enough attention that actual Western users begin amplifying its content.

A former federal prosecutor who investigated the Russian disinformation effort summarized it like this:

It wasn’t exclusively about Trump and Clinton anymore. It was deeper and more sinister and more diffuse in its focus on exploiting divisions within society on any number of different levels.

As the New York Times reported in 2022,

There was a routine: Arriving for a shift, [Russian disinformation] workers would scan news outlets on the ideological fringes, far left and far right, mining for extreme content that they could publish and amplify on the platforms, feeding extreme views into mainstream conversations.

China is joining in with AI

[A couple months ago], the New York Times reported on a new disinformation campaign. "Spamouflage" is an effort by China to divide Americans by combining AI with real images of the United States to exacerbate political and social tensions in the U.S. The goal appears to be to cause Americans to lose hope, by promoting exaggerated stories with fabricated photos about homeless violence and the risk of civil war.

As Ladislav Bittman, a former Czechoslovakian secret police operative, explained about Soviet disinformation, the strategy is not to invent something totally fake. Rather, it is to act like an evil doctor who expertly diagnoses the patient’s vulnerabilities and exploits them, “prolongs his illness and speeds him to an early grave instead of curing him.”

The influence networks are vastly more effective than platforms admit

Russia now runs its most sophisticated online influence efforts through a network called Fabrika. Fabrika's operators have bragged that social media platforms catch only 1% of their fake accounts across YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, and Telegram, and other platforms.

But how effective are these efforts? By 2020, Facebook's most popular pages for Christian and Black American content were run by Eastern European troll farms tied to the Kremlin. And Russia doesn't just target angry Boomers on Facebook. Russian trolls are enormously active on Twitter. And, even, on Reddit.

It's not just false facts

The term "disinformation" undersells the problem. Because much of Russia's social media activity is not trying to spread fake news. Instead, the goal is to divide and conquer by making Western audiences depressed and extreme.

Sometimes, through brigading and trolling. Other times, by posting hyper-negative or extremist posts or opinions about the U.S. the West over and over, until readers assume that's how most people feel. And sometimes, by using trolls to disrupt threads that advance Western unity.

As the RAND think tank explained, the Russian strategy is volume and repetition, from numerous accounts, to overwhelm real social media users and create the appearance that everyone disagrees with, or even hates, them. And it's not just low-quality bots. Per RAND,

Russian propaganda is produced in incredibly large volumes and is broadcast or otherwise distributed via a large number of channels. ... According to a former paid Russian Internet troll, the trolls are on duty 24 hours a day, in 12-hour shifts, and each has a daily quota of 135 posted comments of at least 200 characters.

What this means for you

You are being targeted by a sophisticated PR campaign meant to make you more resentful, bitter, and depressed. It's not just disinformation; it's also real-life human writers and advanced bot networks working hard to shift the conversation to the most negative and divisive topics and opinions.

It's why some topics seem to go from non-issues to constant controversy and discussion, with no clear reason, across social media platforms. And a lot of those trolls are actual, "professional" writers whose job is to sound real.

So what can you do? To quote WarGames: The only winning move is not to play. The reality is that you cannot distinguish disinformation accounts from real social media users. Unless you know whom you're talking to, there is a genuine chance that the post, tweet, or comment you are reading is an attempt to manipulate you -- politically or emotionally.

Here are some thoughts:

Don't accept facts from social media accounts you don't know. Russian, Chinese, and other manipulation efforts are not uniform. Some will make deranged claims, but others will tell half-truths. Or they'll spin facts about a complicated subject, be it the war in Ukraine or loneliness in young men, to give you a warped view of reality and spread division in the West.

Resist groupthink. A key element of manipulate networks is volume. People are naturally inclined to believe statements that have broad support. When a post gets 5,000 upvotes, it's easy to think the crowd is right. But "the crowd" could be fake accounts, and even if they're not, the brilliance of government manipulation campaigns is that they say things people are already predisposed to think. They'll tell conservative audiences something misleading about a Democrat, or make up a lie about Republicans that catches fire on a liberal server or subreddit.

Don't let social media warp your view of society. This is harder than it seems, but you need to accept that the facts -- and the opinions -- you see across social media are not reliable. If you want the news, do what everyone online says not to: look at serious, mainstream media. It is not always right. Sometimes, it screws up. But social media narratives are heavily manipulated by networks whose job is to ensure you are deceived, angry, and divided.

Edited for typos and clarity. (Tumblr-edited for formatting and to note a sourced article is now older than mentioned in the original post. -LV)

P.S. Apparently, this post was removed several hours ago due to a flood of reports. Thank you to the r/GenZ moderators for re-approving it.

Second edit:

This post is not meant to suggest that r/GenZ is uniquely or especially vulnerable, or to suggest that a lot of challenges people discuss here are not real. It's entirely the opposite: Growing loneliness, political polarization, and increasing social division along gender lines is real. The problem is that disinformation and influence networks expertly, and effectively, hijack those conversations and use those real, serious issues to poison the conversation. This post is not about left or right: Everyone is targeted.

(Further Tumblr notes: since this was posted, there have been several more articles detailing recent discoveries of active disinformation/influence and hacking campaigns by Russia and their allies against several countries and their respective elections, and barely touches on the numerous Tumblr blogs discovered to be troll farms/bad faith actors from pre-2016 through today. This is an ongoing and very real problem, and it's nowhere near over.

A quote from NPR article linked above from 2018 that you might find familiar today: "[A] particular hype and hatred for Trump is misleading the people and forcing Blacks to vote Killary. We cannot resort to the lesser of two devils. Then we'd surely be better off without voting AT ALL," a post from the account said.")

[mightyflamethrower]

In the last 20 years, the Left has boasted that it has gained control of most of America institutions of power and influence—the corporate boardroom, media, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, the administrative state, academia, foundations, social media, entertainment, professional sports, and Hollywood.

With such support, between 2009-17, Barack Obama was empowered to transform the Democratic Party from its middle-class roots and class concerns into the party of the bicoastal rich and subsidized poor—obsessions with big money, race, a new intolerant green religion, and dividing the country into a binary of oppressors and oppressed.

The Obamas entered the presidency spouting the usual leftwing boilerplate (“spread the wealth,” “just downright mean country,” “get in their face,” “first time I’ve been proud of my country”) as upper-middle-class, former community activists, hurt that their genius and talents had not yet been sufficiently monetized.

After getting elected through temporarily pivoting to racial ecumenicalism and pseudo-calls for unity, they reverted to form and governed by dividing the country. And then the two left the White House as soon-to-be mansion living, mega-rich elites, cashing in on the fears they had inculcated over the prior eight years.

To push through the accompanying unpopular agendas of an open border, mandatory wind and solar energy, racial essentialism, and the weaponization of the state, Obama had begun demonizing his opponents and the country in general: America was an unexceptional place. Cops were racist. “Clingers” of the Midwest were hopelessly ignorant and prejudiced. Only fundamental socialist transformation could salvage a historically oppressive, immoral, and racist nation.

The people finally rebelled at such preposterousness. Obama lost his party some 1,400 local and state offices during his tenure, along with both houses of Congress. His presidency was characterized by his own polarizing mediocrity. His one legacy was Obamacare, the veritable destruction of the entire system of a once workable health insurance, of the hallowed doctor-patient relationship, and of former easy access to competent specialists.

Yet Obama’s unfufilled ambitions set the stage for the Biden administration—staffed heavily with Obama veterans—to complete the revolutionary transformation of the Democratic Party and country.

It was ironic that while Obama was acknowledged as young and charismatic, nonetheless a cognitively challenged, past plagiarist, fabulist, and utterly corrupt Joe Biden was far more effective in ramming through a socialist woke agenda and altering the very way Americans vote and conduct their legal system.

Stranger still, Biden accomplished this subversion of traditional America while debilitated and often mentally inert—along with being mired in a bribery and influence-peddling scandal that may ultimately confirm that he easily was the most corrupt president to hold office in U.S. history.

How was all this possible?

Covid had allowed the unwell Biden to run a surrogate campaign from his basement as he outsourced his politicking to a corrupt media.

Senility proved a godsend for Biden. His cognitive disabilities masked his newfound radicalism and long-accustomed incompetence. Unlike his past failed campaigns, the lockdowns allowed Biden to be rarely seen or heard—and thus as much liked in the abstract as he had previously been disliked in the concrete.

His handlers, the Obamas, and the Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren radical Democrats, saw Biden’s half-century pretense as a gladhander—good ole Joe Biden from Scranton—as the perfect delivery system to funnel their own otherwise-unpopular leftwing agendas. In sum, via the listless Biden, they sought to change the very way America used to work.

And what a revolution Biden’s puppeteers have unleashed in less than three years.

They launched a base attack on the American legal system. Supreme Court judges are libeled, their houses swarmed, and their lives threatened with impunity. The Left promised to pack the court or to ignore any decision it resents. The media runs hit pieces on any conservative justice deemed too influential. The prior Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer whipped up a mob outside the court’s doors, and threatened two justices by name. As Schumer presciently put it, they would soon “reap the whirlwind” of what they supposedly had sowed and thus would have no idea what was about to “hit” them.

Under the pretense of Covid fears, balloting went from 70 percent participation on election day in most states to a mere 30 percent. Yet the rates of properly rejected illegal or improper ballots often dived by a magnitude of ten.

Assaults now followed on hallowed processes, laws, customs, and institutions—the Senate filibuster, the 50-state union, the Electoral College, the nine-justice Supreme Court, Election Day, and voter IDs.

Under Biden, the revolution had institutionalized first-term impeachment, the trial of an ex-president while a private citizen, and the indictment of a chief political rival and ex-president on trumped up charges by local and federal prosecutors—all to destroy a political rival and alter the 2024 election cycle.

Biden destroyed the southern border—literally. Eight million entered illegally—no background checks, no green cards, no proof of vaccinations. America will be dealing with the consequences for decades. Mexico was delighted, receiving some $60 million in annual remittances, while the cartels were empowered to ship enough fentanyl to kill 100,000 Americans a year.

“Modern monetary theory,” the Leftist absurdity that printing money ensures prosperity, followed. It has nearly bankrupted the country, unleashed wild inflation, and resulted in the highest interest rates in a quarter-century. Middle-class wages fell further behind as a doddering Biden praised his disastrous “Bidenomics.”

Biden warred on fossil fuels, cancelling federal leases and pipelines, jawboning lending agencies to defund fracking, demonizing state-of-the-art, clean-burning cars, and putting vast areas of oil- and gas-rich federals lands off-limits to drilling.

When gas prices predictably doubled under Biden and the 2022 midterms approached, he tried temporarily to lease out a few new fields, to drain the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and to beg the Saudis, and our enemies, the Iranians, the Venezuelans, and the Russians, to pump more oil and gas that Biden himself would not. All this was a pathetic ruse to temporarily lower gas prices before the mid-term elections.

Biden abandoned Afghanistan, leaving the largest trove of military equipment behind in U.S. military history, along with thousands of loyal Afghans and pro-American contractors.

Biden insulted the parents of the 13 Marines blown up in this worst U.S. military debacle since Pearl Harbor. He lied to the parents of the dead that he too lost a son in the Iraq war, and when among them later impatiently checked his watch as he seemed bored with the commemoration of the fallen—and made no effort to hide his sense that the ceremony was tedious to him.

Vladimir Putin summed up the Afghan debacle—and Biden’s nonchalant remark that he wouldn’t react strongly to a “minor” invasion of Ukraine if it were minor—as a green light to invade Ukraine.

When Biden did awaken, his first reaction was an offer to fly the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy out of the country as soon as possible. What has followed proved the greatest European killing ground since the 1944-45 Battle of the Bulge, albeit one that has now fossilized into a Verdun-like quagmire that is draining American military supply stocks and killing a half-million Ukrainians and Russians.

Suddenly, there are three genders, not two. Women’s sports have been wrecked by biological men competing as women, destroying a half-century of female athletic achievement. Young girls in locker rooms, co-eds in sororities, and women in prison must dress and shower with biological men transitioning to women by assertion.

There is no longer a commitment to free speech. The American Civil Liberties Union is a woke, intolerant group trying to ban free expression under the pretense of fighting “hate” speech and “disinformation.”

The Left has revived McCarthyite loyal oaths straight out of the 1950s, forcing professors, job applicants, and students applying for college to pledge their commitment to “diversity” as a requisite for hiring, admittance, or promotion. Diversity is our era’s version of the Jacobins’ “Cult of Reason.”

Race relations hit a 50-year nadir. Joe Biden has a long history of racist insults and putdowns. And now as apparent penance, he has reinvented himself as a reverse racial provocateur, spouting nonsense about white supremacy, exploiting shootings or hyping racial tensions to ensure that an increasingly disgusted black electorate does not leave the new Democratic Party.

The military has adopted wokeism, oblivious that it has eroded meritocracy in the ranks and slashed military recruitment. It is underfunded, wracked by internal suspicion, loss of morale and ginned up racial and gender animosity. Its supply stocks are drained. Arms productions is snail-like, and generalship is seen as a revolving door to corporate defense contractor board riches.

Big-city Democratic district attorneys subverted the criminal justice system, destroyed law enforcement deterrence, and unleashed a record crime wave. Did they wish to create anarchy as protest against the normal, or were they Jokerist nihilists who delighted in sowing ruin for ruin’s sake?

Radical racial activists, with Democrat endorsement, demand polarizing racial reparations. The louder the demands, the quieter they remain about smash-and-grab looting, carjacking, and the swarming of malls by disproportionally black teens—even as black-on-black urban murders reach record proportions.

In response, Biden tried to exploit the growing tensions by spouting lies that “white supremacy” and “white privilege” fuel such racial unrest—even as his ill-gotten gains, past record of racist demagoguery and resulting lucre and mansions appear the epitome of his own so-called white privilege.

This litany of disasters could be vastly expanded, but more interesting is the why of it all?

What we are witnessing seems to be utter nihilism. The border is not porous but nonexistent. Mass looting and carjackings are not poorly punished, but simply exempt from all and any consequences. Our downtowns are reduced to a Hobbesian “war of all against all,” where the strong dictate to the weak and the latter adjust as they must. The streets of our major cities in just a few years have become precivilizational—there are more human feces on the sidewalks of San Francisco than were in the gutters of Medieval London.

The FBI and DOJ are not simply wayward and weaponized, but corrupt and renegade. Apparently the perquisite now for an FBI director is the ability either to lie while under oath or better to mask such lying by claiming amnesia or ignorance.

Immigration is akin to the vast unchecked influxes of the late Roman Empire across the Danube and Rhine that helped to finish off a millennium-old civilization that had lost all confidence in its culture and thus had no need for borders.

In other words, the revolution is not so much political as anarchist. Nothing escapes it—not ceiling fans, not natural gas cooktops, not parents at school board meetings, not Christian bakeries, not champion female swimmers, not dutiful policemen, not hard-working oil drillers, not privates and corporals in the armed forces, not teens applying on their merits to college, not anyone, anywhere, anytime.

The operating principle is either to allow or to engineer things to become so atrocious in everyday American life—the inability to afford food and fuel, the inability to walk safely in daylight in our major cities, the inability to afford to drive as one pleases, the inability to obtain or pay back a high interest loan—that the government can absorb the private sector and begin regimenting the masses along elite dictates. The more the people tire of the leftist agenda, the more its architects furiously seek to implement it, hoping that their institutional and cultural control can do what  ballots cannot.

We could variously characterize their efforts as destroying the nation to save it, or burning it down to start over, or fundamentally transforming America into something never envisioned by the Founders.

Will their upheaval  succeed? All the levers of the power and money are on the side of the revolutionaries. The people are not. And they are starting to wake to the notion if they do not stop the madness in their midst they very soon won’t have a country.

A perfect metaphor for what the progressives have done to America.

[justforbooks]

Paul Frederic Simon (born October 13, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter known for his solo work and his collaborations with Art Garfunkel. He and his school friend Garfunkel, whom he met in 1953, came to prominence in the 1960s as Simon & Garfunkel. Their blend of folk and rock, including hits such as "The Sound of Silence", "Mrs. Robinson", "America" and "The Boxer", served as a soundtrack to the counterculture movement. Their final album, Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970), is among the bestselling of all time.

As a solo artist, Simon has explored genres including gospel, reggae and soul. His albums Paul Simon (1972), There Goes Rhymin' Simon (1973), and Still Crazy After All These Years (1975) kept him in the public eye and drew acclaim, producing the hits "Mother and Child Reunion", "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard", and "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover". Simon reunited with Garfunkel for several tours and the 1981 Concert in Central Park.

In 1986, Simon released his most successful and acclaimed album, Graceland, incorporating South African influences. "You Can Call Me Al" became one of Simon's most successful singles. Graceland was followed by The Rhythm of the Saints (1990), and a second Concert in the Park in 1991, without Garfunkel, which was attended by half a million people. In 1998, Simon wrote a Broadway musical, The Capeman, which was poorly received. In the 21st century, Simon continued to record and tour. His later albums, such as You're the One (2000), So Beautiful or So What (2011) and Stranger to Stranger (2016), introduced him to new generations. Simon retired from touring in 2018, but continued to record music. An album, Seven Psalms, was released in May 2023.

Simon is among the world's best-selling music artists. He has twice been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and has been the recipient of sixteen Grammy Awards, including three for Album of the Year. Two of his works, Sounds of Silence and Graceland, were inducted into the National Recording Registry for their cultural significance, and in 2007, the Library of Congress voted him the inaugural winner of the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. He is a co-founder of the Children's Health Fund, a nonprofit organization that provides medical care to children.

In 2012, in an interview reprinted in American Songwriter, Simon discussed the craft of songwriting with music journalist Tom Moon and talked about the basic themes in his songwriting: love, family and social commentary, as well as messages of religion, spirituality and God. Simon explained how he wrote his songs. "The music always precedes the words. The words often come from the sound of the music and eventually evolve into coherent thoughts. Or incoherent thoughts. Rhythm plays a crucial part in the lyric-making as well. It's like a puzzle to find the right words to express what the music is saying."

When Simon moved to England in 1964, he met Kathleen Mary "Kathy" Chitty at the first English folk club he played, the Railway Inn Folk Club in Brentwood, Essex, where Chitty worked part-time selling tickets. She was 16 and he was 22 when they began a relationship. Later that year they visited the U.S. together, mainly touring by bus. Kathy returned to England and Simon followed some weeks later. When he returned to the U.S. with the growing success of "The Sounds of Silence", Kathy, who was quite shy, wanted no part in success and fame and they ended their relationship. She is mentioned by name in at least two of Simon's songs: "Kathy's Song" and "America". She is also referred to in "Homeward Bound" and "The Late Great Johnny Ace". There is a photo of Simon and Kathy together on the cover of Simon's 1965 album The Paul Simon Songbook.

Simon has been married three times, first to Peggy Harper in 1969. They had a son, Harper Simon, in 1972, and divorced in 1975, inspiring the song "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover". Simon wrote about this relationship in the song "Train in the Distance" from his 1983 album Hearts and Bones. In the late 1970s, Simon lived in New York City next door to Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels, who has been described as Simon's "best friend" during the period.

He and Shelley Duvall lived together as a couple for two years until she introduced him to her friend Carrie Fisher. Simon and Fisher became a couple, and his second marriage, from 1983 to 1984, was to Fisher. He proposed to her after a New York Yankees game. The song "Hearts and Bones" was written about their time together, and the song "Graceland" is believed to be about seeking solace from the ending of the relationship by taking a road trip. A year after they divorced, Simon and Fisher resumed their relationship, which lasted for several years.

Simon married singer Edie Brickell on May 30, 1992. Brickell and Simon have three children, Adrian, Lulu, and Gabriel. On April 26, 2014, Simon and Brickell were involved in a domestic dispute. Each was issued a summons to appear in court on disorderly conduct charges.

All four of his children are now adults and are musicians.

Simon and his younger brother, Eddie Simon, founded the Guitar Study Center sometime before 1973. The Guitar Study Center became part of The New School in New York City, sometime before 2002.

Simon is an avid fan of the New York Rangers ice hockey team, the New York Knicks basketball team and the New York Yankees baseball team.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[mariacallous]

Editor's note: This is an adapted excerpt from “The Contemporary Black Church: The New Dynamics of African American Religion,” which will be published by New York University Press in August 2024. Data cited in this article is from the cumulative file of the 1972-2022 General Social Survey.

In recent decades, we have witnessed major structural transformations and cultural developments that have profoundly impacted the Black Church, and these changes have strongly influenced political attitudes and political affiliations among African Americans. Today’s Black Church is primarily comprised of four traditions: Baptists, Methodists, Holiness/Pentecostals, and non-denominational Protestants. Some quick religious history and demographic information sets the tone for understanding changing politics among African Americans; the former traditions were established more than a century ago, while non-denominationals (i.e., nondenoms) were nearly nonexistent but have multiplied their flock several times over since the late 1980s.

Data from the 1972-2022 General Social Survey (GSS) indicates that Baptists comprise the largest Christian tradition in Black America by far at 43%, and they along with Methodists (five percent) help to comprise the “mainline” branch of the Black Church’s denominational family tree. Conversely, Holiness/Pentecostals (six percent) and nondenoms (12%) comprise the “evangelical” branch of the tree. It’s also worth mentioning that the percentage of religious nonaffiliates (or African Americans who do not claim to follow any particular faith) has sharply risen to 20%. In today’s world, religious “nones” are now the second largest religious classification of Black America, and it continues to grow as mainliners (in particular) lose members.

African American political alignments have changed along with their religious affiliations, and this helps to explain a burgeoning diversity within Black America. Black America is not the political monolith that many people inaccurately believe that it is. For example, recent GSS data shows that there has been a double-digit decline—by as much as 43%—in the percentage of self-described political “liberals” among Baptists, Holiness/Pentecostals, nondenoms, and religious nonaffiliates. Most of these ideological switchers now describe themselves as political “moderates.” Furthermore, there has been a double-digit increase in the percentage of African Americans who claim to be political “conservatives” among nondenoms, Black followers of historically white evangelical traditions, Catholics, and religious “nones.” Indeed, only 13% of Black nondenoms claimed to be politically “conservative” in the early 1980s. However, at least 25% do so today, and there is no reason to believe that this slow but steady trend will reverse course any time soon due to changing ideological alignments among African Americans overall.

A driving assumption in the study of U.S. politics is that African Americans overwhelmingly identify as Democrats and consistently vote for Democratic candidates when exercising their right to vote. However, these expectations—like those for Blacks’ political ideologies—can no longer be accepted at face value. It is true that nearly 70% of African Americans across most religious classifications align themselves with the Democratic Party. However, there are some notable exceptions. No less than 77% of Methodists and 74% of Baptists think of themselves as “Democrats,” while only 60% of nondenominational Protestants do so. Moreover, one-third of nondenoms view themselves as “independents,” while more than half of religious nonaffiliates do so. These latter findings are especially important considering that nondenoms and “nones” are the two fastest-growing religious categories among African Americans in the post-Civil Rights era.

To be sure, the strength of African Americans’ affiliation with the Democratic Party has substantially weakened over the decades. In the early 1970s, 78% of Baptists viewed themselves as Democrats. However, only 68% do so now. Nondenoms and Catholics also experienced double-digit declines in alignments with the Democratic Party, while Holiness/Pentecostals, Baptists, and “nones” experienced double-digit increases among members who view themselves as independents. Although a whopping 90% of Methodists affiliate with the Democratic Party today, only 43% of religious nonaffiliates do so. This is by far the lowest percentage for any religious classification in Black America.

It is important to note that while many African Americans are moving away from the Democratic Party, they are not moving towards the Republican Party in any meaningful way. The percentage of Black Catholics who view themselves as Republicans increased by nine percent, while nondenoms and “nones” respectively increased by four percent and three percent. A multifaceted explanation for this boils down to the fact that many African Americans still don’t “trust” the Republican Party to address persistent racial discrimination and inequality. Nevertheless, Blacks’ commitment to social conservativism on various issues (such as homosexuality, for example) remains resolute, and affluent African Americans increasingly believe that they personally stand to benefit from conservative Republicans’ attention to lower taxes and other financial incentives that enhance their earning power. Thus, there is strong reason to believe that Black support for the Republican Party could expand with the passage of time.

What does all of this mean for the upcoming 2024 presidential election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump? In short, we cannot presume that the Black vote will automatically go to President Biden. In an election that will likely be decided at the margins, Biden will have to work to garner segments of the Black vote—particularly nondenominational Protestants and religious nonaffiliates. For instance, (1) Baptists and Methodists are statistically more likely to vote in presidential elections, and when they do vote, they do so overwhelmingly for Democrats. This is primarily because clergy within these mainline denominations led the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s (remember, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was Baptist). However, (2) nondenominational Protestants are significantly less likely to vote for Democratic candidates than Baptists and Methodists and are twice as likely to vote for Republicans. And finally, (3) while religious “nones” tend to vote for Democrats, they don’t turn out to vote nearly as consistently as Baptists and Methodists. Thus, if the Democratic Party wants to garner the support of these different blocs in Black America, it must figure out a way to bridge a gap between believers who comprise the backbone of the Black vote and nonaffiliates who require an additional layer of motivation to cast their vote since they consider themselves to be “independents.”

So, while President Biden has some work to do, there is room for former President Trump to make gains among the fastest-growing Christian tradition within the contemporary Black Church—those nondenominational Protestant voters who identify as “conservative” and/or might vote for Republicans on the basis of their privileged pocketbook rather than what could seemingly be beneficial for Blacks in general. Trump must also hope that the “nones” sit out this election cycle.

[there-goes-trouble]

FACT CHECK

I hate it when someone posts a link and makes a claim that the LINK TO A SOURCE ACTUALLY REFUTES IN THE PAGE LINK:

Just in case we wanted to address the gender/politics lean using Pew again. This does not address the religious points made but the gender and voting divide.

This goes to the Second Commenter's point; men DO vote more conservatively more often. Especially if theyre religious. This is TRUE.

In this case, I have to count the Last Commenter's claim that 'men are less religious' as FALSE. Its even across the 12 categories listed, men lead in 6 categories as do women.

Across religious and racial (but not gender/sex) lines: the Second Commenter is CORRECT that its majority white men that vote GOP.

The closest that I could find for the 'atheist men don't believe so differently from religious ones that theyll vote differently' claim the Second Commenter made, i could find this:

Surveys have consistently shown that many Americans view religion’s declining influence in society as a bad thing. “Nones” tend to vote less often, do less volunteer work in their communities and follow public affairs at lower rates than religiously affiliated people do. But the latest data shows that on a variety of measures, lower rates of civic engagement are concentrated among “nones” whose religion is “nothing in particular.” Atheists and agnostics tend to participate in civic life at rates matching or exceeding religiously affiliated people.

For the Second Commenter's point regarding the non religious not generally voting differently to conservative religious folks enough:

Majorities of atheists (65%) and agnostics (56%) are ideologically liberal. Among those who say their religion is “nothing in particular,” the largest share identify as moderate (46%).

Overall, 62% of “nones” identify as Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party. Atheists (78%) and agnostics (71%) are more likely to be Democrats or lean Democratic than are U.S. adults who identify religiously as “nothing in particular” (54%).

And since most athiests n agnostics are men:

I have to count that involement claim as statistically FALSE based on THIS DATA, BUT NOT the stuff the Last Commenter provided. If i were trying to disprove the 2nd commentor THIS is the data I'd use to do it.

However;

The link these graphs are from regarding the "nones" show that engagement among nones vs athiests is very different.

If we go based off of solely not being religious, men (51% of nones, 44% of 'nothing in particulars') who arent strictly atheists overwhelmingly tend to be less engaged on the whole:

Among ‘nones,’ those describing their religion as ‘nothing in particular’ (not atheists and agnostics) often tend to be the least civically engaged.

I believe this is what the Second Commenter means (if you dont mind my taking liberties); 'being non-religious does not adequately correlate with progressive community involvement, or doing something about the parts of a majority-religious society enough to act like it'. If this was the second commentor's meaning, i consider that to be SUPPORTED. In addition; a non-insignificant amount of 'nones' are moderate, which politically has not helped minorities like women.

Piggybacking off this, to the Second Commenter's point about misogyny and atheism; this is a well-documented problem, and is TRUE:

This is an article from 2016, but bears historical relevance and a throughline that is here today. Not only have women faced persecution for atheism, but since its a white boys club as the article mentioned, that persecution typically came from men even within atheism.

[unitedventurez]

Latino Support for Trump Surges, Shifting Election Dynamics

In a surprising twist in the recent election, support for Donald Trump among Latino voters has seen a notable increase. According to Edison Research, 54% of Latino male voters backed Trump this year, up from 36% in 2020. This trend is part of a larger shift that has been growing since 2016, signaling changing political affiliations within the Latino community.

In Phoenix, Arizona, car mechanic Jimmy Archuleta is among the Latino voters supporting Trump, seeing him as a strong advocate for economic improvement and stricter immigration policies. "I don’t think he’s racist. He's just frustrated with illegal immigration," Archuleta told AFP, echoing the sentiments of many Latinos who are distinguishing between long-standing residents and recent arrivals.

For Democrats, this shift signals a critical loss of a key voting demographic. According to exit polls, while 53% of Latino voters supported Kamala Harris, Trump’s share reached 45%, a substantial increase from his previous election results. Experts, like Roberto Suro of the University of Southern California, suggest this trend reflects deeper sentiments among working-class Latino voters, particularly men, who are concerned with issues like border security and the economy.

Economic concerns are especially resonant for Latino voters in border states like Arizona, where inflation and job stability remain pressing issues. Archuleta, whose family has deep roots in the U.S., is optimistic about Trump’s potential to address these issues, saying, “He’s a business genius, and I hope he’ll help lower prices.”

The evolving stance of Latino voters, influenced by factors like religion, class, and geographic location, suggests that the Latino electorate is far from monolithic and may continue to play a decisive role in future elections.

[rauthschild]

It's true.  We probably don't hate Biden and Harris enough, but getting involved in the whole political sideshow and voting for Trump is not the answer, either.  Not voting and not caring is the answer.   

Both Trump and Biden supported and participated in the Pandemic.    Both pursued anti-American policies in the Mideast.  Neither one of these men have been honest about the history of this Mess, or even the facts about the phony political-party elections. 

We know that the Presidents of these corporations are actually elected by the unaccountable Electoral College.  We know that our votes don't count.  We know that "registering to vote" makes us presumed shareholders liable for the expenses of these bankrupt and corrupt foreign corporations that have been masquerading as our government.  

We know that no matter what flavor of crap we choose, it's still crap. 

We know.  So it's ridiculous for "Law Enforcement" or anyone else to think that our members are acting as "Sovereign Citizens" or that we give a rat's rump enough about these private corporation elections to bother to take a pot shot at any of the Talking Heads.   

Our Assembly members and everyone associated with the American State Assemblies knows that we are not allowed to vote in these elections, if we wish to maintain our separate identity and political status.  We shouldn't even send donations to favored candidates, because that muddies the water, and makes it look like we are illegally influencing a foreign election.  

Which goes back to the fact that we know the straight up skinny and we act accordingly. 

We know that Joe Biden isn't "our" President.  And we know that Donald Trump isn't "our" President, either.  We know that both these men have been working as the "Presidents" of two different for-profit foreign privately owned corporations in the business of providing essential government services.  

So what?  

We don't get bent out of shape or keep track of who is "President" of Walmart, do we?  

And Walmart means more to most of us than anything coming out of Washington, DC. 

Walmart provides us with more benefit than any part of the Federal Government, with the single possible exception of the Post Office. 

We can tell the Democrats and the Republicans ---- don't bother spending billions trying to get the Silent Majority roped up and entrapped and "registered" to pay debts owed by British Territorial U.S. Citizens or the Municipal citizens of the United States or both. 

That's not us.  We're not them.  Never were and still aren't. 

And the police can breathe easy and stand down, too.  All the Agencies can take a well-earned permanent vacation.  

Nobody here is subject to any of you, so we don't have any motive to spend our time or energy plotting any insurrections or violent attacks.  All we have to do is know the truth and keep on trekking. 

There is some evidence that Media Mumblefocks have tried to suggest that one of our American State Nationals was engaged in some kind of a planned attack and was going to shoot Trump or Harris, one of them.  

If so, it couldn't have been for any political reason.  We don't vote in those elections, because we know they are private elections pertaining to foreign corporations. And we aren't shareholders. 

Simple enough. 

If, now or ever, one of our people comes unglued as an individual and shoots at any foreign DC politician, you can be sure it's an individual meltdown, probably caused by the sheer irritation of having to listen to their campaign ads all day long for four months prior to private corporation elections that don't, actually, have anything direct to do with us. 

So, Talking Heads -- and everyone "managing" them, please take your own Tin Hats and Conspiracy Theories and Oxymorons (Sovereign Citizens, Secular Religions, and Military Intelligence, etc.) right on down the road.  Don't bother thinking we are "Left" or "Right".  

We don't have to take up arms, use bombs, or stage bought-and-paid for riots like some parties.  We don't do Good Cop - Bad Cop, use Buzz Aldrin Decoder Rings, or get all wound up anymore.

We are no longer living our lives in fear of our own employees.  

To paraphrase Elvis Costello, "We used to be disgusted, but now we try to be amused...."

We have our own peaceful and effective means to deal with run amok public employees.  We don't have to shoot DC politicians. We can fire them. Ask Joe Biden.  We don't have to foment any insurrection against foreign corporations.  We can bankrupt them all and do it all day long.  And if anyone thinks that we can't enforce our contracts, it's time for Bonzo to get a new pair of shoes and take a hike. 

We know. 

[audreyyp]

While creating this still life I decided to curate the theme around my sample ballot because early voting is coming up and I am also a political science major interested in this sort of topic. After that initial finding I added scissors up against the ballot as a sort of symbolism for being able to cut out unwanted policy by voting or simply a symbolism towards putting up posters/ election material. In the foreground I thought to add objects that symbolize issues people may be voting for this election cycle. Rose quartz is commonly associated with love, which can be translated to interest in LGBTQ rights or issues each voter is passionate about. The rubber duck is meant to symbolize wildlife as well as the endangerment of animals due to climate change and aggressive policies. The tacks are used as a sort of symbolism to the different factors that may be negatively affecting the climate. I draped a cross necklace over the candle as a way to symbolize religion and how it factors into people's voting choices. Finally, the candle could represent global warming, but also the energy this election is bringing to the U.S, whether it is aggressive candidates/citizens or the turbulent emotions seen in this election cycle. With placement I decided to display the ballot in the background as it was the sort of focal piece in order for everything else to sit in front, but eventually lead back to the ballot. The display of the other objects was focused on how they would interact with each other and be seamlessly presented. After curating this still life I began to edit the image in photoshop taking inspiration from Lucas Blalock as well as altering the image in a surreal way. One of the aspects of Lucas art that I find interesting is that he sometimes copies part of a still life by redrawing it, which is what I decided to do with the rose quartz. Also, I used a brush tool to add to the sample ballot, as well as a sort of oil spill equivalent in the foreground, and make the candle burn. These were chosen in order to make parts of the image pop as well as have fun/ alter the image to make it look more alive. One of my favorite aspects was the manipulation of the duck; I not only duplicated the duck, but also copied the lips and added an eye to ensure the image looks surreal. The final aspect that I altered was copying the cross and adding it to the corner of the ballet. I decided to add this in order to symbolize how important religious affiliation tends to be when voting and its influence on potential policy. Overall, the still life curation was themed around the upcoming election and was altered with inspiration for Lucas Blalock to create a surreal/fun photoshopped image.