Yeah religion provides people with a shocking amount of value when you zoom out. The community aspect alone is pretty significant. Add in the private welfare (this is extra true for the LDS church, the main reason they’re opposed to the government doing stuff like feeding the poor and helping people make rent is that the church uses that to harden church membership and attract new members. It’s pretty obvious they see the government as trespassing on church property doing these things.) and somewhat unproductive therapy and in terms of what the customer gets for what they give the value can start to look pretty good.
I think community organizations that function a bit like churches have a future as well. Think a bunch of large group activities (games, music, etc), followed by a huge community meal.
Not sure they’ll do it with the Unitarianism, but it’s pretty clear there’s a big hole in society where the churches are supposed to be. Not the religion, that’s what’s preventing people from entering the actual churches. The church building and the enclosed community itself.
Yeah that’s the rank and file separating from the church, aka the very thing that has the church leadership so very unhappy. This is definitely the first time in American history that the LDS church has had their members thinking of themselves as something other than Mormon first. That distinction is very damaging to the church’s real agency / political power and they are not stupid people. There’s 0.0 chance that they’re going to lift a finger to help a Republican, and they’re very likely going to carve out as much safe space for not Republicans inside their churches as possible.
I’m not at all saying that the Democrats are going to win Utah. But I won’t be at all surprised if they lose it by less than usual, and if the Democrats are going to keep doing this competent at politics shit they should be talking to the Mormon leadership about a plan to move their people from the GOP to the Democratic party over the next decade or two.
I really cannot stress how existential this has gotten over in religious world. They are losing the majority of their young people and they aren’t returning. The internet is a mass extinction event for religions and they are all either frog boiling or fighting for their lives. The LDS church is not one of the religions that is going to go gently into the soft good night comfortable with the idea that this is the last generation of their kind.
EDIT: I want to be clear the LDS church not being able to control both the nomination of and the general election landslide for the candidate of their choosing, and that candidate not being able to ably represent them the church leadership in the Senate… in UT, ID, or WY is going to be seen by the senior people at the LDS as totally unacceptable. The fact that they couldn’t stand up to Donald Trump and keep their guy in the Senate is a massive five alarm fire from their perspective. I really cannot overstate the fact that the LDS church has no chill behind closed doors lol. These people are the biggest try hards I have ever seen from a religion. And this is just what I’ve picked up being in business with some very Mormony Mormons for a long time.
The most interesting thing about them is how incredibly American all of their processes are. You can really tell that the whole thing was started by a guy named Joe Smith in the 19th century who was trying to start the most successful well run cult he possibly could… and given where they ended up materially was pretty successful at that. The decision to let leaders continually get new revelations was pretty fucking brilliant as it’s let them be extremely nimble about changing to reflect the market. They can stop and turn on a dime it’s insane.
Dude my dad was a pastor/scammer with NPD who made my life until I was 25 a living hell. My religious trauma was so severe it left physical scars on my body lol. I don’t think I could agree with any sentiment more.
At the same time I recognize that for most people feeling like they belong to a larger group is absolutely mandatory to feeling any sense of wellbeing. I’m missing that piece, probably thanks to my borderline unbelievably shitty childhood, but I recognize the need others have for it.
This is something I worry about because it’s extremely exploitable. We need some more extremely benevolent groups for people to join because the people in the community space right now are very problematic.
I think so, just seem to remember 538 had said a specific date after the DNC back when it looked things could be contested so guessing they too lazy to change plans
Nate Silver opined that it was probably because their model showed Harris with worse or too similar odds to Biden. Their model was heavily reliant on incumbent and economic priors, both of which have swung towards Trump.
They are waiting until their model weighs more heavily on polls, to save face. Sounds reasonable.
doesn’t sound like they are shoving made up numbers into it to get the result they want, it sounds like they’re just not publishing numbers they know are bad because they understand the flaws in the model
Designing a model that leans heavily on an incumbency advantage when both candidates are effectively incumbents is pretty fucking stupid, but yeah, I agree with you.
That’s manipulation though… it’s the equivalent of not reporting a negative result.
And also what Nate has done his entire career, going back to PECOTA. His models have always been a way for him to lend credence to his opinion of reality.
