and trump has no idea that they might be (by his party's standards) socialists.

and reassure the American people that they don’t dig up dirt on our politicians.

more if it would exclude minorities.

it's always been about race and other social factors. p

the most extensive social safety net in the world - if it were 100% white.

I have heard conservatives say that social programs work on the Scandinavian countries because they are culturally monolithic. We have diversity, so it does not work here. Now what difference could that make? Conservatives don't realize what they are revealing about themselves with that argument.

And my experience has been that, the more socialist the economy, the happier the people. Just my opinion.

Norway has a very robust social safety net, which certainly makes most of its' citizens' lives easier. The point I've been trying to make, apparently without much success, is that the mere existence of generous government benefits is not the same as socialism. Which brand of brunost do you think the Norwegian government does a better job producing?

Americans, by and large supported social safety net programs back when they automatically associated the recipients as being folks like themselves. Conservatives understood this and undertook a pointed and specific campaign to paint social safety net as "entitlements" and its beneficiaries as "other," as non-white despite the statistical evidence to the contrary. Reagan's "welfare queen" and "strapping buck" were textbook examples of the tactics.

Once their propaganda campaign wormed into its way into the public subconscious, support among white, middle class Americans began to ebb. People forgot about all the older, blue collar Americans who starved in their later years before Social Security and who grew sick and died before Medicare.

American society has been founded on racism since its inception. It was used to rationalize the genocide of indigenous people. White supremacy buoyed slavery, Jim Crow and red lining. It fed the grievances against every new generation of immigrants.

Racism is innate to America.

It is a constitutional monarchy with a democratically-elected parliament; it provides generous benefits to its citizens through high taxes and investments derived from profits from the sale of North Sea oil to other European countries. Apart from the oil exploration company, Equinor, whose stock is partly government-owned and partly publicly-traded, Norway's business and corporations are privately owned, as in the US (the guy who owns Viking Cruise lines is very, very rich). Its economic system is regulated capitalism. It's the regulated part that many people mistake for socialism. I think the reason Trump mentions Norway is that it has a lot of white people - who, by the way, do not like Trump at all.

Gun control?
Healthcare?

He’s a “very fine person.”

Companies there are not owned by the government. They are private. They can afford their relatively high standard of living and a good social net because of privately drilled oil. Something many on this site hate. Also almost no defense spending.

But the rest of Equinor is publicly traded, like any other stock - with the exception of a small percentage whose profits finance the government pension fund, which has become the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. All other businesses are privately owned. The guy who owns Viking Cruise Lines is crazy rich.

would come from Norway instead of the countries they're coming from. Like they'd want to give up their free healthcare and other "socialist" benefits to come here.

It's beautiful.

But, I swear that whoever wrote the Gilligan's Island theme based it on The Song of Roland.