9/11 memorials this past weekend kept mentioning how united America was after the terrorist attacks.


But, if things continue as they are, I do not see a future for a united United States of America.


Today, we are now at an impasse. Two thirds of the population looks towards the future while the remaining third defiantly wants to remain in the past.


The primary reasons for this are religion and America's twin original sins of slavery and racism.


Mormonism, as the first religion deliberately manufactured in the historical era by immigrants to the New World, is a perfect example of this. Mormonism encapsulates not only what is commonly thought of as "traditional" American values, but also the American concepts of racism, racial hierarchy, and social exclusion. Mormonism's creators tried to address all of the popular political and social questions of the early nineteenth century, but never foresaw a time when the majority of the American population would reject the concepts of white supremacy. Most of the American protestant denominations, like the Baptists and Methodists for example, had to create theological "workarounds" to justify these concepts and split into factions because of them.


People born in the post WW2 era grew up in an America that was approximately ninety percent "white." I put white in inverted commas because by the 1950s, that arbitrary social classification had expanded to cover the children and grandchildren of the great wave of eastern and southern European immigrants of the late nineteenth century. By the 1970s and 1980s, race was something that had been engineered out of most "white" Americans' lives. It was something that you didn't have to think about because it was something you didn't have to really deal with. Your family, friends, neighbours, church, school, and workplace were all "white." You didn't notice it anymore than fish noticing the water of the ocean. You knew non-"white" people existed, but you didn't see them for the most part except possibly as menials, but not social equals. Everyone that you knew and socially interacted with was in the same "club." Social exclusion was thought of as natural and preferable.


But things soon began to change. By the 1990s, more affluent black and Hispanic people began to move out of inner cities and poor rural areas into suburbs. Joining them were more recent immigrants from Hindu, Muslim, and Asian countries. Now there was no escaping race and exclusion. They were things you had to deal with. You worked with them. Your children went to school and university with them. They were your friends and neighbors and soon to be family. In years past, the only "non-traditional" holidays that you might have been involved with were Catholic or Jewish, but now there was Ramadan, Diwali, Juneteenth, and maybe Kwanzaa. There was a new mosque down the street. Buddhism wasn't just a new age fad anymore. Annual Christmas decorations and festivals had to be secular and not religious. Cinco de Mayo was commercialised like St. Patrick's Day and Oktoberfest. Golden brown and tan children began to show up at your home for familiy visits, Halloween, and Thanksgiving. People adapted. Things changed, but people were still people.


But not everyone accepted this social change. The world of the 21st Century was totally different from the world they grew up in. Their idea of "self "was based on uniqueness — of being created in God's "white" image — and were thus set apart from "other" humans on Earth. You couldn’t be "special" if you evolved or your ancestors grew lighter because they moved to northern Europe after the end of the Ice Age. Ideas and concepts of safety and security became intertwined with racial and social exclusion as in eighteenth century colonial America. I thought of this when I first saw the infamous "Man's Search For Happiness" (1964) film on YouTube from the 1964 World's Fair in New York. On the surface, it's just a religious film from an offshoot Christian sect. Beneath the surface, it's a sales pitch selling safety and security in a turbulent era to people who are afraid of living around other people who do not look like them. Today, far right and Evangelical media are doing the same thing — and making a good bit of money from it. Have you ever wondered why far right extremist cults or fundamentalist religious groups are heavily involved with selling commercial products? Once you are trapped in that world, you are also trapped into buying from a closed universe. Religion and profit become intertwined, and vested interests want to ensure that you remain in that closed universe for their own ends. These interests will keep stoking up religious and social turmoil and fear because it's financially good for them. That might be good for them, but it's not good for America.


Today, things have become so bad that people are willing to die from disease to prove their loyalty a racist religious cult — and have no qualms about forcing others to do the same. Blood has been spilled. Religious fundamentalist rule is no longer the stuff of dystopian fiction. It is a present-day reality. Politics and politicians are frozen in endless ideological debate over never-ending social controversies. As soon as one controversy ends, another is suddenly "manufactured" or "discovered" to take its place. There are now two Americas that can no longer live together under the same roof or exist in the same reality. A breakup or divorce is most likely in the future.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/14/2021 07:11AM by anybody.

I have been thinking the same thing of late. The analysis you provide mirrors my own. Will the ongoing tensions eventually lead to aggressive conflict between citizens? There have been skirmishes already, but will these factions further solidify?
The media are playing both sides for economic benefit and gain, as I see it. There needs to be a point at which we all understand that a functioning society is like a functioning marriage. We may fall in and out of love throughout our relationship, but COMPROMISE and understanding must always be practiced for the collaboration to endure. It seems that are some Americans who are done compromising and understanding.

Worrisome times indeed. An expatriate life is looking more and more appealing every day. I am not willing to have my family hurt by others of the left or the right in any country. Pluralism is a value, not a deficit. To many of our fellow citizens have adopted a intolerant monism that, combined with an ardent anti-intellectualism put the rest of us at risk.

HH =)

Because I'm lazy, I'm going to repost something I posted in answer to Cold Dodger's thread (with a simlar conclusion) here: https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,2393710

The last 5 years in the US (and the UK) have frequently and increasingly brought to mind those frightening words by William Butler Yeats in his poem The Second Coming, written in 1919 and published in 1921:

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."

The worst are currently "full of unvaccinated intensity".

Those words carry so much more weight than I wish they did. Too much. Considering everything . . . ominous.

I agree, D&D, but if it's any consolation, I think they are so brilliantly written that they are DESIGNED to elicit such a response - whatever the date ;-) - and they were taken as such immediately when published.

As evidence, I offer the fact that they seemed wonderfully apt and portentous when I first read them in 1976, aged 16. I then studied the poem at university in 1982/3 and, once again, it seemed wonderfully apt and portentous... I won't give you an exhaustive list, but there does seem to be a pattern here ;-)

Nevertheless, I do feel that they are particularly applicable to the current malaise in the US (from what I understand).

Welcome to the roaring 20s again.

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."

War, existential anxiety, greed, apathy, war...repeat.

Boy oh Boy. If we could ever use one, it's now.

and very appropriate for the current situation.

The UK is facing possible breakup in the the not too distant future and the US is facing the very real possibility of mass unrest, possible extremist white nationalist or Trumpist terrorist attacks, sedition and insurrection. It's not a question of "if" but "when."

If it were twenty years ago, the chances would be one in a thousand. Ten years ago it would be one in a hundred. Now there's probably a one in ten or one in five chance. It's not longer a possibility that can be dismissed or ignored.

The next ten years will be a very, very rough ride indeed.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/13/2021 11:11PM by anybody.

The sickening lyrics to the syrupy Disney song have come true. It's a small world after all. Dang it.

No where to run. No where to hide. Like the whole world is trapped in the same elevator and we're running out of air. Survival of the fittest is now the name of the game, only, "fittest" now means the one with the least to lose, including the least amount of intelligence, empathy, and integrity.

We leveled the playing field with our "brilliant" technology and bit ourselves on the ass.

So for me, like HH, the expatriate life is looking better everyday except it seems the only option at this point is the South Pole.

No South Pole D&D. I think you should buy us a lovely little place where tiny dogs can frolic and there is a true sense of community. I even have an in with the beloved town donkeys. We can help with the wombats too. I can get you a great table at the coffee house :) START SHOPPING! https://bundanoon.com.au/

Wow. You've really done your homework, Susan! Sounds good.

You can have the Big House and I will have a cottage in the back. We can grow lots of roses. Wombat poop is great fertilizer and I can get it for free. Cute little poop cubes :)

"Like the whole world is trapped in the same elevator and we're running out of air."

The old ways are dying, but wasn't it the same when our shelves broke? Exmos are ahead of the game. Their shelf already broke once.

These are the birthing pains of a beautiful future. A world that is truly free is finally a possibility.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/14/2021 12:06AM by Tevai.

Always been a possibility. Always. But there's this thing called "probability" that keeps getting in the way.

Unbridled optimism is one thing. I'm not sure what, but is a thing. However . . . Some birthing pains result in a still born. And some take the mother with it.

Exactly right. Anytime someone tells you things can't get any worse, just laugh.

In the year 1969 while in Buenos Aires on a not so secret mission, I heard for the first time, "In the Year 2525" and found it infectious. It was not yet even the fabled 1984 and the year 2000 lurked even between those two, so 2525 sounded impossiblY far away making the prophetic lyrics eerie and threateningly prophetic.

Seems like they sort of were. I keep hearing the song now and then on the 60's station on Sirius and hits close to home. Nothing like hurtling toward advanced technology mixed with a side of selfishness. Yay us!

"In The Year 2525" -- with film scenes from Fritz Lang's "Metropolis"
https://youtu.be/zKQfxi8V5FA

2525

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR5J3WbWRvc

I have been thinking of this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZYpzXjdtwg

Of course, I was still in nappies when they came out. Hub says to tell you your generation had the best music :) It's his generation too.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/13/2021 12:15PM by Susan I/S.

Given how the United States started I would suggest it would take much more to break it.

Look at the politics of our founding fathers, very brutal. For those that remember 1968, people were saying the same thing.

Her last words to the doctor were that he was lying and there is no covid and it was all fake.
The dumbing of America is in full view.
We need laws that prevent people who have a platform to suffer criminal consequences for spreading false narratives!!!

More stimulus payments! Politicians and Oprah.

And eviction moratoriums. I want the people with all the guns to be playing X-box and eating pizza.

    It's possible that the United States of America remains Retrievably Broken, which has been its condition, its status, since its founding.

What do you think of prophesies of the return of the Aztec empire? Any relation to the current border situation?

    The Royal Order of the Knights of Moctezuma remains committed to the restoration of all that is pure, and holy, and brown.

    ¡Arriba los de abajo!

I see a lot of similar trends as op has stated in the opening essay. But there is another angle or view point that may be worth exploring.... The working classes disproportionately are the ones affected by and who have to assimilate all these new problems and people. We are the ones that had our jobs sent to China, we are the ones who had to go to work to supply the supply chain when everyone else could work at home on a computer and not get sick, we are the ones that get extra crime and crowded scenes to have to deal with. We are the ones with the failing schools (the diverse schools with greater conflicts).

Now there is another America, the America of Merit, of the Intellectuals, the bureaucrats. These special ones get to make the decisions that disproportionately don't affect their lives. They continue to live in the nice suburbs, they work in offices filled with white people, neighbors all the same, schools the same again. Liberal states like California are filled with these sorts of people, folks from two worlds existing at the same time, yet never quite coming together. Californians have some of the whitest schools there are, followed up by some of the brownest all within the same LA county.

There is certainly a hollowing out of the middle class, I read recently that 45% of American families have less than $10,000. We are becoming a nation of renters. America use to be more affordable, homogeneous, more simple, then Kennedy and the rest of them came a long and it was all down hill from there.

A lot of this is accurate. But it raises the question why someone in the working class would vote for political leaders who want to shift wealth from the poor and the middle class to the rich.

What else is so important that you were, and probably are, willing to vote against your own material interests? That's something you seriously need to think about.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-human-beast/201903/why-do-some-poor-people-vote-against-their-interests

The Psychology of Living in a Dangerous World

When young mammals mature in a place with high exposure to predators, they adjust their behavior. They spend more time in safe places, such as burrows, and less time wandering about above ground. With less time exploring their environment they have fewer opportunities for brain-enriching experiences. As a result, they are less good at adapting to change (1).

Lab researchers found that these effects were mediated by stress hormones associated with frightening experiences such as the approach of a predator.

Most children do not have to worry about predators but they vary greatly both in the objective realities of their lives, such as the use of corporal punishment by parents, and their subjective responses to frightening experiences. They are also influenced by adult perceptions of danger in their local community.

Conservatism and Fearfulness

Political conservatives (defined as high scorers on a right-wing authoritarianism scale) experience fear more intensely. This propensity is related to brain anatomy and physiology. Sensitivity to fear probably reflects a combination of influences from genetics and childhood experiences.

Whatever the causes, signs of conservative leanings are present early in childhood before children are engaged in political issues. Children who are sticklers for the rules in games with other children likely go on to vote for conservative leaders (2,3). In other respects, they tend to be rather rigid in their behavior and find it difficult to make new friends.

Such fear of the unpredictable reflects a sensitivity to danger mediated by limbic-system activation. This profile probably reflects mammalian adaptations to actual risks in the environment (4).

Children growing up in extreme poverty, or exposed to abusive parents also grow up believing, for very good reason, that their lives are risky and that caution is warranted.

Poverty and Insecurity

If conservatives generally believe that the world is a dangerous place regardless of their individual experiences, those raised in poverty have a very good reason for the same belief rooted in their own lives.

Poverty often implies greater health problems, violence, the early death of a close relative, high crime risk, food insecurity, drug addiction, or lack of adequate health care.

Belief in a dangerous world is connected to various conservative policies. A strong military is supported so as to counter international threats. Because there are very bad criminals out there, there is a need for severe penalties, up to a death sentence, to keep them out of circulation.

Similarly, corporal punishment is needed to socialize children in obedience to authority. Just as other nations harbor a great deal of ill will, immigrants must be treated with suspicion and held at arm's length as potential sources of crime and disease. It is important to amass as much wealth as possible because the future is uncertain and you cannot rely on the government to solve your economic problems in a dog-eat-dog world.

To the extent that the fear-based sensibility of poor people overlaps with that of conservatives, we can expect their political views to coincide also. This means that playing on popular fears and ethnic tensions is good for conservatives in elections.

According to a conservative sensibility, the only source of reliable aid and support in difficult times is our own family. So we must respect our elders and do everything we can to honor them and preserve their traditions, including their religious beliefs.

The Religious Nexus

Just as there is a marked intersection between the emotive aspects of conservatism and those of being raised under stressful conditions, there is also an overlap between both and religion.

One way of describing this connection is to think about religion as a mechanism for coping with fear and uncertainty about what the future holds — as developed in my earlier widely read post, “Why Atheism Will Replace Religion.”

The central idea is that as countries develop, residents enjoy a better quality of life with improved health and life expectancy and are more secure about what the future holds for them (i.e., have existential security), In societies like our own, that are bedeviled by sharp income inequality, there is less existential security and religion has a stronger hold.

Along with love of family and tradition, and relative lack of openness to new people and ideas, conservatives focus on religion as a means of preserving their way of life and resisting change.

It is also a way of drawing in poor people and thereby inducing them to vote for policies that go against their economic interests or otherwise reduce their quality of life. For example, many poorer Americans voted for a party that promised to take away their health care.

How does one get people to vote against themselves? The answer is mostly by an appeal to various kinds of fear, including the fear of God.

Economic Self-Interest

Conservative leaders must convince followers of two things. First, the world we live in is full of threats. Second, supporting that leader is the only way of protecting themselves from the threats.

If the first goal is achieved, the second is relatively simple. After all, if some politician is the only one who emphasized a specific threat, then it makes sense that they would be the only one with an answer.

The list of potential threats is long, ranging from foreign military threats to domestic terrorism, exaggerated fears of minorities and immigrants, pluralism, disease, violent crime, or government overreach.

Conservatives also play on fears that their religion is under threat and this ploy succeeded in cases as different as the US South and Putin's Russia. If religion is a bastion against many dangers, then anything that weakens it is threatening to the poor.

Conservative politicians who are otherwise highly secular in their behavior and sensibility fake piety in order to get elected and promote the causes of right-wing religious extremists to maintain support.

Such tactics are highly effective and may induce poor people to vote against their economic self-interest and in favor of a wealthy elite that becomes wealthier by exploiting them.

References

1 Rosenzweig, M. R. (1996). Aspects of the search for neural mechanisms of memory. Annual Review of Psychology, 47, 1-33.

2 Tuschman, A. (2013). Our political nature: The evolutionary origins of what divides us. Amherst, NY: Prometheus.

3 Garcia, H. A. (2019). Sex, power, and partisanship: How evolutionary science makes sense of our political divide. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

4 Kalinichev, M., Easterling, K. W., Plotsky, P. M., and Holtzgman, S. G. (2002). Long-lasting changes in stress-induced corticosterone response and anxiety-like behaviors as a consequence of neonatal maternal separation in Long-Evans rats. Pharmacology, Biochemistry, and Behavior, 73, 131-140.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/14/2021 06:51AM by anybody.

Yes, I was saying that *Mac* needed to think about why he votes for people who are causing the problems he identifies. Like you, I've been thinking about that human tendency for decades.

https://missoulacurrent.com/opinion/2018/01/montana-viewpoint-democrats/?print=print

Democrats constantly wonder why so many working people vote “against their own economic self-interests.” Their current head-scratcher is the recent tax bill, which hands out billions of dollars to the wealthy and big business and peanuts to middle-class working people.

And not just peanuts but, according to independent analysts, eventual tax increases and higher health insurance costs.

The Democrats’ error is that they believe most people make rational decisions about their lives, when the Republicans know that most important decisions are driven by emotion. Politics is more often driven by the powerful uniting people against a manufactured enemy than by uniting all people in a common cause. What follows in largely based on an excellent article by Joshua Zeitz in the December 31, 2017 issue of Politico.

The ability of powerful interests to recruit those they have exploited to do battle on behalf of the powerful is nothing new. The Politico article uses the period of Reconstruction in the South after the Civil War as illustration. There the alliance between plantation owners and white sharecroppers and laborers was created to prevent the rise of black Americans to citizenship and power. It continued through the Jim Crow period well into the 1960s.

Southern poor whites—and there were plenty of them—were continually and casually subject to economic abuse by the ruling gentry. They owned nothing of value and farmed the land of wealthy people on shares—a percentage of the proceeds from the crop. In what was then by far the poorest part of America, the only thing poor whites had going for them was that they were not black. They were constantly reminded by the gentry that they—gentry and poor white alike—had a common enemy in the black people.

On this basis the plantation owners built a political coalition with the very people that they were exploiting economically—a coalition that lasted 100 years. It did not advance the cause of poor whites, it did nothing to better their economic condition, it did nothing for them other than allow them to be treated as somewhat respectable citizens able to go where they pleased. In contrast, the blacks were treated as second class citizens, forbidden entry to white establishments and white schools and were often in fear of their lives for simply not being white.

Together the landed gentry and the poor white passed laws that benefited the wealthy at the expense of the poor white laborers by keeping wages low. In 1935 the historian W.E. B. Du Bois wrote about the method “…[W]hich drove such a wedge between white and black workers that there probably are not today in the world two groups of workers with practically identical interests who hate and fear each other so deeply and persistently and who are kept so far apart that neither sees anything of common interest.”

Laws passed in the Jim Crow era by the rich-poor coalition further advantaged the wealthy at the expense of working white people. In an early form of voter suppression poll taxes were instituted to keep blacks from voting, but they kept poor whites from voting as well. Basically, a person had to pay to exercise their right to vote. This resulted in such low voter turnout in the South that in 1936 a congressman from Georgia was elected with a total of 5,137 votes in a district with a population of 263,606. At that time, in the South 25% of eligible voters went to the polls, outside of the South it was 75%.

The use of surrogates to fight an enemy is nothing new, and inventing an enemy for them to fight is nothing new. What we are seeing in America today — pitting Americans against each other for political gain — is just another iteration of a cynical age old con game. It was wrong in the past, it is wrong now.

Jim Elliott served sixteen years in the Montana Legislature as a state representative and state senator and four years as chairman of the Montana Democratic Party. He lives on his ranch in Trout Creek.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/14/2021 07:04AM by anybody.

Hey Mac
"America use to be more affordable, homogeneous"

What planet was this on? We used to be less homogenous. I don't remember life being more affordable, same issues as of today. My first home was 29K but I was only making 12K a year and my wife also worked.

I really don't understand the rant about CA, I lived and retired from CA. My children went to a public high school that was 1/3 Asian, 1/3 Indian/Pakistan and 1/3 white.

I worked just as hard or harder than you and probably more hours. Was it easy, no. And based on your twisted definitions, I'm liberal (whatever that means),

Mac, your ignorance is astounding. Make some time to get out of your white grievance bubble. My husband put himself through school. All our kids went to integrated schools with many ethnicities as did both of us. He has spent the last 40 years spending 75%-80% of his time out of town working long hours often in bad conditions. How many hours have YOU logged in sub zero freezers? He would still be doing it right now but he is in his 70s and is more valuable working at home on a computer. Others in the company are still doing it because they are essential workers. They all worked hard for their degrees too except one who took the initiative and learned on the job. He is a HS graduate and well respected in the company and the profession. See how that works? Initiative + hard work = success. Hub still goes in at least once a week doing things that others have not learned to do yet.

We rented for years. Made saving a priority. We have not bought a new car in our entire marriage. We have not taken a vacation for 23 years and that was to his parents 50th anniversary. We are now able to afford a house. We never expected anyone to GIVE us anything.

Quit your whining, get up off your ass and make changes in your life if you don't like the way it is going. This is America. It's what we do.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/15/2021 11:53AM by Susan I/S.

Would you guys be willing to bring Mac on for some on the job experience and training?

That would have nothing to do with me or my husband. They advertise jobs just like everyone else.

The US has survived worse things than what’s going on now. Unless you served in a war zone most our population has had it pretty good. I suggest reading about the American civil war. We lost 650,000 Americans in it and it resulted in much division and hate. The nation didn’t split up and rolled on. People still want to come here. It’s not smooth sailing all the time. Sometimes you’ve got to pay your dues and clean your house.

What I’m seeing is the classic use of what’s termed agitation propaganda in the intelligence world. Much of this so called division is contrived. It’s not organic. It’s very much like how color revolutions are set off.

What if we just gave the agitators everything they wanted?

Would life be much different?

What would the agitators do then?

Jay, if that was the case we would have a King not a Democratic Republic.

I’m just wondering if they’re really fighting for much. Or are they just enjoying being different and claiming to be better? What would the agitators do without endless hours of cable TV and Facebook? How would they spend their time? What kind of life would be left in the rubble?

Would their day-to-day lives really change if they got everything they’re asking for? Because I’m really not even sure what they want



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/15/2021 05:05PM by jay.

Agree Rubicon. There was an insightful 60 minutes about this and where it is really coming from. As to what they want, Trump is just a figurehead. What they really want is to divide the country and have a White Nation.

Trump just stumbled onto the stage when a large proportion of the US wanted to vote their rage and were inclined to look for colorful scapegoats. He rode the wave.

There are a few perspectives from which this phenomenon gains more clarity. First, Trumpism is not limited to the United States--it is a global phenomenon, particularly in the rich world. The international nature of the demotic fury means it is not driven by US political personalities but by more fundamental worldwide dynamics.

Second, the former guy is losing control of his movement. He was booed when, after a year of denial, he finally called on his supporters to get vaccinated. BoJ perceptively quipped that Trump had become a Sorcerer's Apprentice, unable to control the forces he'd unleashed.

Note, third, that the race is already on to succeed FG as leader of the populist horde. Among the most prominent contenders is Ron DeSantis, whose successes have aroused Trump's indignant jealousy. The latter may manage to vanquish his rivals but the odds of such an outcome are decreasing.

I disagree with a few points.

First point, I see people justifying rebellion against a prophet so that they didn't have to get vaccinated. Everyone in my family is unvaccinated, and Nelson's words did nothing to sway them. At no point did he say, "thus saith the Lord" or say it was a commandment explicitly. He said pray about it and see if it's right for you, which I'm sure no one did before they already decided they weren't taking the deep state's vaccine.

Second point, just because some white people and whiteness as an abstract concept were oppressive to nonwhite peoples, does not mean the majority of white people or people who passed as white with an asterisk had anything to do with most of those crimes. Europeans are not the only people who have ever been ethnocentric and xenophobic. That's more like standard humanity. It's even usual to be distrustful of people of people who look like you but don't speak your language and believe a different faith. Sometimes it's possible to hate each other in the same tongue under the same faith over political differences. European history is full of blood as groups of barely indistinguishable humans killed others. Europeans were just like everyone else in that regard until suddenly the discovery of the New World changed everything. But to wrap up my argument here, the majority of white people from the last ice age up until thirty years ago only knew other white people well, even if they emigrated here. If you lived in major trade hubs and cities, or you were a pioneer on the frontier, that was different. That's no one's fault, and it's not a crime either. No other ethnic group on earth is policed for diverse acquaintances from other ethnic groups, and as you said, this is very recent.

Rural whites are only just now having their come-to-cosmopolitanism moment, and they're responding to it about as well as can be expected given their cultural isolation in fly-over country. Do not forget that the inclusion of Italian and Celtic Catholics was about as tough for the American people as the "Browning" is turning out to be. Some dude even wrote a book about "The Passing of the Great Race" that was not supported by any actual science where he tried to divide the "white" race into three sub-races and argue the highest and most accomplished one was being bred out by the other two. I understand this book influenced Hitler directly, which is strange because this book was an anglo-saxon American bitching about about Irish and Italian Americans. They were at the time he wrote that book approaching an "inversion" moment where ASs would no longer be the majority of "Americans". This is why the red-headed catholic JFK was such a scandal. This inversion didn't happen that long ago, and it's interesting how we forgot all about it and just let it go once it was done, even though the racist literature written from that time literally influenced the most infamous ethnic cleansing of modern history. It's not exactly the same thing, because we had a Catholic redhead president before we had a half black one, but it is informative about what to expect next. All we have to do is keep violence from breaking out, and to do that we have to calm people way the fuck down, and to do that we gotta influence them away from the crackpots they're listening to. I don't think we'll succeed, but the problem will solve itself with time. Societies change one gravestone at a time. Their kids are practically an entirely different nation waiting to take over as soon as their elders are out of the way. I have never seen or heard of a nation smearing its own youth for political purposes like this one has in the last decade.

Furthermore, these are problems afflicting the entire "white" world at the current moment, not just America. Canada has its discontent rural whites, as does the UK, as does France, as does Germany. Even Sweden and Norway are having issues with their populations swallowing Diversity, and many are questioning why we're even doing this. We didn't have to do it, but we did because America is the global hegemon and its chief export is its culture through its unprecedentedly influential media. Diversity is our strength, our politicians sometimes say unconvincingly. This is not going over well in Europe where the growing Muslim population threatens to swallow up the main land mass which of historic precolumbian Christendom by the end of the 21st century. The European Union is threatening to come unglued because of these issues if you've been watching Euro headlines for the last six years. If they lose France of Germany besides the UK, the experiment is over and it's back to the fractious politics of the last thousand years for the continent, only with jets, drones, and nukes this time. Mind you that this new White solidarity is not even 100 years old, and it's only because we had the communists as an enemy followed up almost immediately by an unprecedented migration wave. If things had continued as they were, other countries would continue to Americanize and more people would keep learning English to be part of American-driven culture on the internet, but idk what's going to happen if we can't get our shit together and especially as China surpasses us as a political and economic influence in the world.

I don't know enough about European politics to comment on their particular diversity problems with African and middle-eastern refugees and itinerant workers, only that nations do have a right to regulate who comes in at the gates because if you don't do that you don't have a country. It's a matter of good administration. You can't have good administration, which you need to administer a welfare state, if your borders are virtually nonexistent. Other people are just xenophobic, but they're right in the sense that if immigration occurs too quickly, you may ask rightly if your culture is growing or if you're being colonized by a foreign culture. Perhaps the skepticism of immigration in the nineteenth century drove the newcomers to assimilate as well as they did so that today, no one even sees differences between ASs and celts and Italianos and even Jews -- we're all just "white" now. I never thought I'd see a politician diss English Common law as a sexist construction, which Biden did as he was running for president. English Common Law is the basis of the American legal system, and I wonder how many people knew that and I wonder how fewer people are gonna know that as everything "white" is dissed and discarded moving forward. We don't know that the melting pot works across the whole globe and not just historically Christian European peoples. We hope it does, but we don't know that.

Culture is experiencing titanic shifts, and a sudden explosion for the need to be cosmopolitan thinking is not just due to immigration, it's also because the internet has changed everything for the rising generations. The old fogies don't experience what we experience growing up all-digital and all-connected and yet somehow more isolated than any generation before, and as a consequence our brains are wired differently probably. I can't say how exactly, but it makes sense given how incomprehensible the elders and the youngsters are to each other right now. I wonder if the internet existed back when people started to realize that Catholics would rival and then outnumber protestants in America if it wouldn't have felt very familiar to the present. You cannot fault people for reacting to great change according to the only mental tools they have. All of this is so much more than anyone was designed by God or evolution, whatever you believe in, to handle. Our species experienced sudden changes in their mode of life before, and it tends to produce huge cultural shakeups as people are suddenly confronted with more people who don't look like them than they've seen before and all of their foreign religious and political ideas. I'm thinking of the Axial Age when most of the religious ideas that have dominated us since were born. I need to get a good book on the axial age, but that's when Buddhism was born and spread to the East, and it's also when Judaism in its present form was born and began to incorporate Babylonian and Persian religious ideas into itself. This could be the most creative time for us in our history as a species...

Or we could descend into some form of fascism. It's our choice. Right now, we're not being given great options by this antiquated and corrupt political system. To understand Trump, maybe think back to the state of Rome before its republic crumbled to dictatorial Ceaserism. Rome used to much more equal in terms of wealth. It was not a socialist utopia, but there were not such violent class divisions as there were later after the patricians became richer than gods. There was a time when a good man whom the Roman people trusted could be given emergency executive powers to fight the Carthaginians and when he was done, he gave it back. This did not happen after centuries of political dysfunction and classist spite between the patricians and the plebians. Towards the end of the Republic, the patricians were eating up all the wealth and had so much power, they simply ignored the unwashed masses. It was into this arena which Julias Ceaser made a failed power play for ultimate power and which his nephew-turned-adopted-son, Gaius Octavius renamed Ceaser Augustus, successfully accomplished and became the first emperor. That was how the Republic ended, although it wasn't all bad from the point of view of the majority of the population. Augustus expanded the empire beyond what anyone had done before and brought two centuries of unprecedented peace within its core territories called the Pax Romana. Perhaps that's what will happen to America, but it can't be an incompetent boob or America will simply collapse into violence as the union tears asunder.

The American republic is robust, even if it barely works most of the time, like an old car that wants to die but keeps going somehow, but it suffers corruption and classism too. We are not like exactly like Rome. Our culture is different. Out technology is different. But we are scarily similar to the last days of the Roman republic. We got our eyes so fixed on the orange buffoon, no one noticed that we tried to elect the power-hungry wife of the man who did NAFTA, deregulated the telecom industry, and deregulated the New Deal banking regulations (which crashed the stock market within a decade). She was actively pushing another trade deal too, which pushed the Rust Belt directly into Trump's arms. They've experienced enough of their towns being hollowed out by outsourcing, why would they vote for her? Enough of them didn't, and that's what caused the political upset heard 'round the world. Do you realize it was just 79,000 disgruntled Americans in three states who did that? It didn't matter that Clinton had his ass whooped by 3 million or so votes, because that's not how this republic functions. That windfall felt like the Hand of God to tens of millions of Americans, and a lot of them interpret it that way literally. Round 2 in 2020, the best we could come up with was the author of the Crime Bill of '94 that turned America into the largest penal colony in the world with a fifth the entire world's prison population living in American prisons. But we were so tired of the Orange Man's impulsivity and ego and ignorance and all the chaos that we imagined Biden to be the sweet Joe we knew in the romanticized memes of the Obama administration to subconsciously hide our heads in the sand from what we all sensed was coming but hoped diversity would kick in more quickly than the all the white Christian capitalist rage could gather its coalition. We would have avoided it if the blue candidate had been anyone else; in fact, in the 2007 DNC primaries, Obama turned to that woman's face and told her that the Republicans probably wanted to run against her because they think they can beat her, which was probably why enough big donors chose him over her that he beat her. That man's victory unleashed something we've never seen in American politics before, though, which is probably the racism, if you wanna put it simply. He came to represent so much more than he actually was to the right-leaning mind. They called him out for everything he did and many things he did not do, because by that point Republican media had been a propaganda machine of pure affect and spectacle for fifteen years at least. This was their big shot to get the commie muslim anti-american man, and they blew their load pretty quickly but didn't stop humping no matter how stupidly inflamed their viewers got.

This is where the story gets personal for me. I was born into conservatism through right-leaning Mormonism, and I hated Obama for all the stupid reason. I think there are plenty of evidence-based reason to dislike the man from his monument to himself gentrifying an old neighborhood in Chicago to his hundreds of millions of dollars in book and documentary deals that is probably just some quid pro quo to thank him for not prosecuting anyone who crashed the economy. I think they prosecuted one low-level guy? Anyway, he took that money and fucked off. I got over myself through an education at BYUI, and I liberalized as I became an atheist and for a brief duration I had fond feelings for that guy, but I couldn't forgive him for taking all that money and hang-gliding in the bahamas while the rest of us were living through what we anticipated to be fascism coming at us fast because he didn't stand up to the Republicans with more manliness when he had the chance. There were people who voted for Obama twice who voted for Trump because at the end of 8 years, nothing had fundamentally changed. Man was elected to be FDR 2.0, and what did he accomplish? They had an all Democratic Congress, and they decided to continue the same sorts of shitty giveaway-to-wall-street/nothing-for-main-street policies that had been in place since Reagan. CNN had a special after Trump's victory when our half of the country was still reeling from the shock of it, and they walked into a random barbershop in the Cleveland 'hood, and they asked the black barber why he didn't vote, and he said Obama was president for 8 years and nothing changed. Voter enthusiasm was at an all-time low. Part of that was what they did to Bernie, which is what was in the emails, by the way. We talked more about who hacked the emails and not enough about what they actually said.

I think diagnosing this moment purely in terms of race and bigotry and ignorance are counter-productive. It's partly true, but it's also obnoxiously reductionist and offensive to the people we need to reach if the culture tides unleashed are going to be turned back. Did you know that almost a third of the French countryside thinks their government is trying to genocide them? Who do you think was pushing Mary LaPenne's national front to global news headlines? That's France. Britain has its version, so does Germany -- Angela Merkel even famously said "multiculturalism has failed." Classicly Christian European societies are all facing a demographic inversion within the next century as their native white populations stop reproducing as quickly as the immigrants coming in do. America is a nation of immigrants, but these other places are where the white "race" comes from, and yet the same sorts of rhetoric are being used. I heard a British MP say, "our diversity is our strength," and I just froze. Their politics are exactly like ours is right now? How can that be? I'm not the only one who has noticed these things: the "alt-right" was born from all these little things, but no one wants to talk about them because nothing the Nazis be saying can be true, except that's not very logical. Hitler mixed truth in with his lies to great effect. He was speaking to German national military and economic insecurities, which was true, but he blamed the Jews who had nothing to do with that shit. German was the language of science before the Nazis took it over. Not all Germans were in on Hitler's crap, but it's hard to live in a fascist regime and dissent. Hitler speculated that the liberal jewish conspiracy was going to destroy Germany through mass immigration, if that sounds familiar. In his day white Germans were not actually in danger of being outbred or bred out by nonwhite Germans, but these days it's actually not such a strange question anymore, even though the answer cannot be ethnic cleansing, it can't be a crime simply to notice these things and comment on them. My position on these trends is that citizenship is citizenship and if it can be taken away than it never meant anything, but if the path to peace is to close the borders and let the melting pot cool off and let Western natives and immigrants get to know each other and meld into one culture, why not just do it for a while?

Who pledged allegiance to immigration anyway? It's on the statue of liberty, but that's not law. There seems to be a secret guilty hope that the minority of whiteness would come soon enough to keep their backlash muted, but it didn't. Here we are. We were talking about them like they were virtually extinct already as Donald Trump was snaking his way up the RNC hierarchy, and after Trump's victory, the rhetoric got even nastier. GO figure they would assume their worst predictions had been true and go full cult for Trump. The German people never had this much evidence to back the actual Hitler and yet they did, are you surprised that Trump got this popular? I believe that this could have been prevented by abolishing neoliberalism and overthrowing the politicians who have benefited so handsomely from it, but we're not doing that, so I'm quaking at what's coming. I am about the best case scenario of conservative-to-liberal that we are going to find. I've spent most of the last seven years as an auto-didact in binge mode trying to understand what the fuck is going on around me. I thought my way out of Rightland only to land in leftland, and there's a lot I like about leftland but I notice a lot of people are incapable of understanding the other side culturally, but this board has no excuse. The people in Rightland don't even understand what is happening, and they are letting their intuitive right-brained mindsets lead the way forward. That's the part that gives into cults and authoritative personalities more quickly than a left-brained mindset will. I think it's fascinating how those of a more logical and educated bent ended up aligning mostly with the left and the intuitive and less educated minds ended up aligning mostly with the right.

I know what the Human Genome Project spokesman said about there being no genetic basis for race, but remember as recently as 2014, I was in denial about evolution and trying to believe in Genesis. Some people don't care what the Human Genome Project said, and a lot of those people are leftists surprisingly. Everything is race-based now. It's not the liberalism I learned to love; it's something else now. Just be mindful that not everyone is operating on that mainstream reason-based, well-informed left-brained bandwidth that some of us have discovered. I think we discovered these things and just expected that others like us from our native tribe and especially from our families would follow in our footsteps, but that didn't happen. I kept waiting for it to happen, but it never did. I was delusional. I was waiting on something to happen that wasn't gonna happen because I thought maybe I didn't have to wrestle with the full social implications of what I had chosen for myself if I was radically honest and patient. I believe the main division in this society to be a generational, religious one. The next divide is class. The ones after that are race and sex. The race and sex divides will never heal if we don't fix wealth and income inequality and make the rich pay more taxes and use that wealth to fix this crumbling country up. We have to end neoliberalism. We just have to. It's not worth this shit. But the class issues can never be addressed while our anti-communist elders who still hear the duck and cover reels from their childhood classrooms in their ears. A couple of atheist commie traitors sold our nuclear secrets to the Soviets and let that become our reality. We tried to elect an irreligious socialist Jew in recent years while an actual dissolution of our society as we have known it looms over us and the kids are getting Woke and nonreligious. HOW THE HELL did we expect those people to take all this, exactly, if not exactly like this? That's not Nazism; that's what being a good American was all about just fifty years ago. That the mindset that beat the Nazis and resisted the Soviets. They can be forgiven for being overly obsessed with commies. All the white race has done to the globe notwithstanding.

There is a lane for healing and reconciliation, but it's narrow and narrowing. It would involve a lot of compromise that neither polarized side is willing to consider. Six or seven dozen million American voters never got the memo that the ride was over, and they don't believe that Biden is even the legitimately elected president right now. The people who invaded the capital thought they were patriots, but they didn't anticipate Trump turning on them under pressure. They'll probably forgive him as he inevitably runs again for 2024. He's a dumpster fire, but he's all they got. Look at how the other side talks about them: of course they're going to vote for him again. He keeps them safe. He keeps things familiar in a way. He makes them feel special too, victorious even. There is hope for America, but not in demonizing almost half the population. I said half, not a third. Trump voters were far more shameless and enthusiastic in 2020, and if you discard mail-in ballots, which they do, that makes Trump the most popular president in American history in terms of quantity of voters, ever. We're in for a fucking ride in just a couple years -- buckle up.

I don't know your background and I like a lot of what you post on life and religion, but on political topics you slide into some pretty transparent arguments. I'll point out a few.

1) If racism or nationalism or xenophobia is a general phenomenon, it requires a general explanation--and that explanation is not immigration because the movement to the right has occurred in countries with high and low immigration. That fact alone indicates you are looking at "browning" erroneously.

2) ". . . nations do have a right to regulate who comes in at the gates because if you don't do that you don't have a country. Yes, countries (not nations) have a right to regulate their borders. But is it coincidence that your formulation echoes right-wing talk radio?

3) Did you read what Biden said or are you just repeating what the right-wing pundits are saying? Because what he stated was that slavery and men's ownership of women were enshrined in English common law--and he added that that was bad. Do you dispute that he was right on both scores? Is criticism of profound flaws in a system that has overall served society's interests well illegitimate?

4) When people start reaching for Roman history, it's time to reach for the Colt 45. In particular, your notion that Republican Rome was egalitarian is wildly incorrect. The enfranchised populace was minuscule, as was the percentage who had access to the courts. Rome's middle class was tiny, its working class enormous, and slavery was legal and common. Rome was about as far from "socialist" as one could get.

5) That half of Americans don't accept the duly elected president as duly elected tells us more about their grip on reality than it does about reality itself. Likewise, why does it matter if Trump voters want to discard mail-in votes? That system has been used for many years--Trump votes by mail--and is an established part of national elections. Sure, the Kool-Aid Crowd would like retrospectively to ban mail-in voting by Democrats and Independents, but their wishes are no more valid than if I were to suggest prohibiting ballots cast by redheads.

What has happened in recent years to the United States is not that hard to understand. It seems to me that you are muddying the waters unnecessarily.

People are reducing current events to ridiculous levels full of contradictions. They’re also missing some obvious and big things because they’re polarized into a partisan paradigm and afraid to consider all sides.

1) everyone is plugged into the internet and seeing similar headlines and seeing images of refugees wanting into their countries, even if they have next to nothing for immigration. In the European Union, once you’re passed the borders of the border states, there are no more borders. Everyone is being scared by very similar rightwing rhetoric because of social media. Poland just passed some legislation called Stop Soros, for example. There’s a unified rhetoric among the Right across the West right now, because it’s all on YouTube despite censorship worship efforts.

2. Countries/nation states — I’m not following your distinction. I didn’t say that I didn’t get it from rightwing outlets. That is a point they make constantly, and yes I’ve been listening to them, but they’re not wrong. Any one of these nations experiencing an inversion of their demographics in the next century had/still have the right to stop the flow of migrants if they want. It’s absolute insanity to insist that any nation full of white people has to accept so much immigration that they stop being a majority in their country just to prove they aren’t racist. If they choose to let it happen democratically, that’s just informed consent then fine, go ahead, but when we have huge segments of our countries threatening civil war over it: uh, you think about stopping it, at least for a while. Why would you barrel ahead anyway unless you hate your own countrymen?

3. The quote was, “In the 1900s, so many women were dying at the hands of their husbands because they were chattel, just like the cattle or the sheep, that the court of Common Law decided they had to do something about the extent of the deaths. You know what they said? No man has a right to chastise his woman with a rod thicker than the circumference of his thumb. This is English jurisprudential culture, a white man’s culture. It’s got to change. It’s got to change.” There’s a lot wrong with that. One, it isn’t true… at all. Two, it discredits America’s jurisprudence as both an inherently “white” thing and a sexist thing, and it was very difficult to defend to conservative friends. I didn’t bother. Fuck that quote and dumbass who said it.

4. Rome is very interesting to me right now. It was never equal, but there was less inequality when it started compared to when the republic ended and there was a marked patriotism for Rome and concern for the working class in earlier times that was absent in later times. I find that relevant and instructive.

5. I didn’t say their views were valid in a factual sense; I only pointed out that they hold them and there’s dick all you or I can do about that, so I’m speculating on some of the reasons why besides the bland low-hanging fruit of saying that they’re so racist they can’t even cope with reality right now and that’s why they’re falling for so much misinformation. I don’t see that. Maybe at one point I thought I did, but I think these divisions are primarily coming from elsewhere.

I’m a tea-party-conservative-turned-liberal-turned-Democratic-socialist if you wanna know. I’ve been around the spectrum, and I’m not afraid to mix and match axioms from all three according to whatever makes sense to me.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/15/2021 05:35AM by Cold-Dodger.

Cold-Dodger Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 1) everyone is plugged into the internet and
> seeing similar headlines and seeing images of
> refugees wanting into their countries, even if
> they have next to nothing for immigration. In the
> European Union, once you’re passed the borders
> of the border states, there are no more borders.
> Everyone is being scared by very similar rightwing
> rhetoric because of social media. Poland just
> passed some legislation called Stop Soros, for
> example. There’s a unified rhetoric among the
> Right across the West right now, because it’s
> all on YouTube despite censorship worship efforts.

True, but irrelevant. The sources and intensity of misinformation do not change the fact that it is false.


-------------------
> 2. Countries/nation states — I’m not following
> your distinction.

Countries, nations, states, and nation-states are four different things. It's worth figuring out what those terms mean.


-----------------------
> I didn’t say that I didn’t
> get it from rightwing outlets. That is a point
> they make constantly, and yes I’ve been
> listening to them, but they’re not wrong. Any
> one of these nations experiencing an inversion of
> their demographics in the next century had/still
> have the right to stop the flow of migrants if
> they want. It’s absolute insanity to insist that
> any nation full of white people has to accept so
> much immigration that they stop being a majority
> in their country just to prove they aren’t
> racist.

Yes, but what you call "absolute insanity" is right-wing propaganda. No country is forced to open its borders to people due to the "insistence" of other countries.

So relax.


-----------------
> If they choose to let it happen
> democratically, that’s just informed consent
> then fine, go ahead, but when we have huge
> segments of our countries threatening civil war
> over it: uh, you think about stopping it, at least
> for a while.

Here it is again. The fervency with which a subset of people hold false beliefs means that the majority must respect those false beliefs. Nonsense. That is the opposite of the democracy whose virtues you just extolled.


-------------------
> 3. The quote was, “In the 1900s, so many women
> were dying at the hands of their husbands because
> they were chattel, just like the cattle or the
> sheep, that the court of Common Law decided they
> had to do something about the extent of the
> deaths. You know what they said? No man has a
> right to chastise his woman with a rod thicker
> than the circumference of his thumb. This is
> English jurisprudential culture, a white man’s
> culture. It’s got to change. It’s got to
> change.” There’s a lot wrong with that. One,
> it isn’t true… at all. Two, it discredits
> America’s jurisprudence as both an inherently
> “white” thing and a sexist thing, and it was
> very difficult to defend to conservative friends.
> I didn’t bother. Fuck that quote and dumbass who
> said it.

I'm not sure you know what "common law" is. Are there minor factual errors in what Biden said? Yes. But common law is the law that arises from court decisions made when legislatures are silent; it decided the status of women for many centuries and is evident even today, and not infrequently to men's detriment, in divorce law. Common law also determined the rights and privileges, or lack thereof, of slaves as property. There is no question that for many centuries the common law advantaged white people and men at the expense of others.


---------------
> 4. Rome is very interesting to me right now. It
> was never equal, but there was less inequality
> when it started compared to when the republic
> ended and there was a marked patriotism for Rome
> and concern for the working class in earlier times
> that was absent in later times. I find that

Yeah, I suspect your sources here again. "Working class?" You're imposing a 19th century Marxian concept, probably derived today from right-wing caricatures of Marxism, on a time and society that had no sense of such a thing. And of course the ranks of the poor swelled as Rome expanded its power over countries that were poorer. That's axiomatic, is it not?

As for patriotism, you are mistaking the Roman nation for the Roman state. Roman loyalty to the former diminished as the empire grew geographically and nationally but loyalty to the state did not wane significantly, for it was the glue that held the system together for many centuries.


------------------
> 5. I didn’t say their views were valid in a
> factual sense; I only pointed out that they hold
> them and there’s dick all you or I can do about
> that. . .

Not true. We can denounce lies as lies rather than giving those falsehoods the disproportionate influence you advocated above. We can, and must, insist that truth and constitutional norms be honored rather than being swept aside by the fickle forces of populism.


-----------------
> so I’m speculating on some of the reasons
> why besides the bland low-hanging fruit of saying
> that they’re so racist they can’t even cope
> with reality right now and that’s why they’re
> falling for so much misinformation. I don’t see
> that. Maybe at one point I thought I did, but I
> think these divisions are primarily coming from
> elsewhere.

You are buying into right-wing propaganda, which creates a caricature of the reasoning of people on the left and in the center. Then when you reject that simplistic portrayal of racism's role, you throw out the baby with the bathwater. That is a mistake. Look at the rhetoric of the right--"Jews will not replace us"--and the demographic makeup of the traitors on January 6th. There is no question that racism and xenophobia played a large role in what has happened. Other factors are important, too, but don't discount what is one of the primary motivations behind the anti-democratic movement.


---------------
> I’m a
> tea-party-conservative-turned-liberal-turned-Democ
> ratic-socialist if you wanna know. I’ve been
> around the spectrum, and I’m not afraid to mix
> and match axioms from all three according to
> whatever makes sense to me.

I appreciate the latter sentiment, but I do question your political status. Put simply, I seriously doubt you are a democratic socialist. Most people don't even know what that means. A democratic socialist is one who thinks the state should own all private business and make business decisions through the democratic process: you elect representatives who decide how to run everything from the military to convenience stores. Bernie Sanders is not a democratic socialist: he is a Kennedy Democrat.

Short of that extreme, your notion that the enthusiasm with which people hold misguided beliefs should determine how willing we are to embrace, or at least respect, those beliefs, is disturbingly anti-liberal, anti-constitutional, and anti-democratic. What the world needs now is more people who will stand up and say "the emperor has no clothes," who fight for the rule of law and democratic institutions.

You asked what the common events were for rightwing moments to happen in many countries simultaneously across the world. It doesn’t matter that the information is usually false, it is a common reason that so many are having a reaction. There are others.

Those terms are interchangeable. A nation is a country is a state is a nation state. Each word has other definitions, but they each have one that means all the others. American states are what other countries call provinces or territories, the original idea being that the original colonies retained their sovereignty even though they were federated. Whatever. It doesn’t matter.

Not sure Biden knew what he was talking about, but he was clearly pandering to the metoo extremists with false nonsense, and that disconcerts me. I do not accept that our the nature of our mode of legalism is in and of itself sexist and racist or problematic or any of these stupid words we’ve invented in the last half century that have so many variant definitions they mean nothing. I acknowledge that once Anglophones had contact with nonwhite people many screwy laws and systems were made favoring white people or enslaving or harming people of color, but there was a fundamental ideal of equal treatment before the law being denied to those people of color that is not being denied now, which was an injustice according to that ideal. English jurisprudence developed for many hundreds of years before the English had contact with anyone but other whites, and the “rule of thumb” as described was never part of it, ever.

I’m going off of my understanding of a class I took on Roman society at Ricks. There was a time when the Romans had a lot more solidarity or patriotism between the classes, but when they started to get rich and the wealth of the aristocracy exploded, that eroded, which contributed to the transition of the republic into the empire methinks. It’s just an interesting parallel. No, the Romana were not socialists or Marxists or anything. Just if you ignore the unwashed masses long enough, they stop caring when some general or some egomaniac celebrity makes your life miserable for and in their behalf.

How is that going? Trump had 10 million more votes this time than last time. They have a word for what you’re describing — virtue signaling. They don’t care what you’re trying to prove when you get preachy on them. If anything, that kind of snappy debunking of anything they say has only made them more Trumpy. There’s no immigration quota in the constitution, and although I’ve made peace with the “Browning,” I’m concerned that others clearly haven’t and giving up on those people and just hoping that demographics change and they become is irrelevant as their votes are diluted is actually the point they’re trying to make. You can’t be pro-illegal immigration and say you care about working Americans who are not legally allowed to be paid wages so low that they would be competitive with that underground labor market. Concern for the border is not just about race, there’s a labor element to it too.

The technical term is social democrat, I think. But Bernie uses them interchangeably and now so do millions of others, so whatever. It doesn’t matter.

“Those people” did win an election legitimately in 2016, and their guy was undermined and caricatured every step of the way, slandered even. I think he deserved it, but I get where they’re coming from. We talk about them like fascists, but they did have every right to vote for Donald John Trump. Almost none of the woke social rules we’ve been trying to enforce on them are in the constitution, but he was a dingus and a danger to humanity, I think. I hate how they had reason to see his personality disorders and elected him anyway and then took the rest of our natural reactions to him personally and used it as fuel to go further in to their delusions. I thought reasonable people were supposed to recognize that that guy is not fit for that power, but we suffered him anyway. This is the world we live in now. In fact, the left did plenty of things during all that drama that made them look crazy too. No one has clean hands.

Cold-Dodger Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You asked what the common events were for
> rightwing moments to happen in many countries
> simultaneously across the world. It doesn’t
> matter that the information is usually false, it
> is a common reason that so many are having a
> reaction. There are others.

You are missing the point by misidentifying the cause. There are countries like Japan with minimal change in immigration laws and demographic composition over the last decade that are going through the same nationalistic adjustment. Why is that? By assuming, as the right-wingers would like, that the driving force behind labor problems is immigration you reach the conclusions they want you to reach. You are smart enough to look past the propaganda and come to conclusions about the real forces at work, forces that are experienced equally by countries with very different ethnic profiles.


-------------
> Those terms are interchangeable. A nation is a
> country is a state is a nation state.

You are way off the mark. A country is a territory with established borders. A nation is a group of people who think they belong together due to common history, common language, common religion, or other factors. A state is a political entity with a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. A nation-state is a state that happens to line up with a nation. There are nation-states (Japan, Iran, France); there are multi-state nations (Korea, Germany before the fall of the wall, Germany (Austria and Germany); there are multi-state countries (Ukraine); and there are many other constellations. When you confuse those separate concepts, you reach false conclusions.


-------------
> I do
> not accept that our the nature of our mode of
> legalism is in and of itself sexist and racist or
> problematic or any of these stupid words we’ve
> invented in the last half century that have so
> many variant definitions they mean nothing. I
> acknowledge that once Anglophones had contact with
> nonwhite people many screwy laws and systems were
> made favoring white people or enslaving or harming
> people of color,

Those two sentences contradict one another.


---------------
> but there was a fundamental ideal
> of equal treatment before the law being denied to
> those people of color that is not being denied
> now, which was an injustice according to that
> ideal.

Yeah, that's right-wing tripe. Where was the "fundamental ideal of equal treatment" in the 3/5 provision of the US constitution? How about in the Dred Scott decision? Where was the ideal of equal treatment when women were denied the right to vote until a century ago? As for the notion that ethnic minorities and women (and in some cases men) are now treated equally, that too is evidence that you are blinded by right-wing rhetoric.


--------------
> English jurisprudence developed for many
> hundreds of years before the English had contact
> with anyone but other whites, and the “rule of
> thumb” as described was never part of it, ever.

What on earth are you talking about? What matters is that when the British (not English) expanded their empire globally, they stuck the new peoples they encountered into their established law as subhumans without equal rights. Did English and then British law permit women to vote? Did the UK let Indians vote on their governments? Were blacks given equal rights in court either in GB or in their own countries? No. In all these cases white male Britons were given priority and everyone else was assigned lesser status and, in the case of British slavery, treated as chattel property.

You may find that unsettling, but it is true. Biden was right and your discomfort with the facts is irrelevant. The common law in GB and in the US was, and in many cases remains, racist and misogynistic.


-----------------------
> I’m going off of my understanding of a class I
> took on Roman society at Ricks. There was a time
> when the Romans had a lot more solidarity or
> patriotism between the classes, but when they
> started to get rich and the wealth of the
> aristocracy exploded, that eroded, which
> contributed to the transition of the republic into
> the empire methinks. It’s just an interesting
> parallel. No, the Romana were not socialists or
> Marxists or anything. Just if you ignore the
> unwashed masses long enough, they stop caring when
> some general or some egomaniac celebrity makes
> your life miserable for and in their behalf.

Your assumption is that angry poor people rather than the impoverishment of the Italian grain basket, the spread of pandemics ensuing from the expansion of the geographical ecumene, and the displacement of steppe peoples and then the Germanic nations explains the fall of Rome? If so, you're falling into the hackneyed right-wing explanation that it was bread and circuses that destroyed the empire.


--------------
> How is that going? Trump had 10 million more votes
> this time than last time.

Irrelevant. He lost the election by 5 million votes. That he earned more than in the last election does not matter in any way in a democracy. I'm frankly surprised that you think a man whose margin of victory decreased deserves better treatment than that of any other loser.


-------------
> They have a word for
> what you’re describing — virtue signaling.

What? Treating an election result as valid is "virtue signaling?" You're using right-wing rhetoric to criticize what is not virtue signaling but virtue itself.


----------------
> They don’t care what you’re trying to prove
> when you get preachy on them. If anything, that
> kind of snappy debunking of anything they say has
> only made them more Trumpy.

That Trumpians feel fervently about an electoral loser doesn't concern me in the least. Fact is fact. Saying that because a minority feels strongly about something we must respect them and give them more power than that which they earned at the polls is not only stupid, it is dangerous. It is how Mussolini and Hitler managed to barter their way into power with the support of the wealthy and misguided centrist pols who were too foolish to realize that if you don't defend a democracy, you lose it.


--------------------
> There’s no
> immigration quota in the constitution, and
> although I’ve made peace with the
> “Browning,” I’m concerned that others
> clearly haven’t and giving up on those people
> and just hoping that demographics change and they
> become is irrelevant as their votes are diluted is
> actually the point they’re trying to make.

Here it is again. The reactionaries feel strongly, so we must appease them by agreeing to disregard the constitution and the rights it grants to non-citizens, the treaties and statutes that establish immigration procedures, etc. What you don't seem to realize is that if you let popular emotions tear asunder constitutional and statutory institutions, the odds that you will lose your own rights go up dramatically.


------------------
> You
> can’t be pro-illegal immigration and say you
> care about working Americans who are not legally
> allowed to be paid wages so low that they would be
> competitive with that underground labor market.
> Concern for the border is not just about race,
> there’s a labor element to it too.

Do you see what you just did? We have been discussion immigration and now you insert the adjective "illegal" as if that were the topic. Who said anything about being "pro-illegal immigration?" As for your economic analysis, let me ask you this: what is the difference in terms of US wages if, for example, you outsource jobs to Indian call centers as opposed to hiring immigrants, legal or illegal, in the US itself? There is none. Putting up barriers to the entry of non-Americans won't have much effect in a global economy in which jobs are transferred abroad by the stroke of a computer key.

Hence the major difference between outsourced jobs and those taken by Central American immigrants is that in the latter instance you are staring at a dark face behind the counter. Think about that.


-------------------
> The technical term is social democrat, I think.
> But Bernie uses them interchangeably and now so do
> millions of others, so whatever. It doesn’t
> matter.

You are correct. Sanders is not a social democrat or a democratic socialist.


--------------
> “Those people” did win an election
> legitimately in 2016, and their guy was undermined
> and caricatured every step of the way, slandered
> even.

As opposed to Hillary Clinton and the sexual molestation of children? Biden and his "conspiracy" with anti-Russian Ukrainians? Marco Rubio's father being a traitor in the Bay of Pigs incident? Ted Cruz and his ugly wife? You must live in quite a bubble to think that Trump was treated worse than he treated others. More generally, however, here again we arrive at the fact that Trump supporters are snowflakes. As we have seen on these pages frequently, they want not only to get their way but to have others respect them for it. But that's not how it works. They don't get to cancel everyone else's culture and then insist that we pat them on the head for sincerely believing that Muslim rapists and Mexican "bad hombres" are ruining the country.

In a democracy you are free to vote your wishes but not, upon losing, to demand that you be given more power than you earned. Everything else is just a form of solid precipitation complaining about the sunshine.


-----------------
> I think he deserved it, but I get where
> they’re coming from. We talk about them like
> fascists, but they did have every right to vote
> for Donald John Trump.

Two points. There are academic definitions of the word "fascist," and several of them definitely include Trump and large parts of his audience. Secondly, in a democracy fascists get to vote. No one is taking that away from them or any of the less nasty cohorts within the movement.


-------------
> Almost none of the woke
> social rules we’ve been trying to enforce on
> them are in the constitution, but he was a dingus
> and a danger to humanity, I think.

There it is again: "woke." You realize that is an undefined term of opprobrium wielded thoughtlessly by the right? As for the rules "we've been trying to force on them" and the constitution, do you care to offer any specific examples? Because I don't think you can back up your claim.

At all.


----------------
> I hate how they
> had reason to see his personality disorders and
> elected him anyway and then took the rest of our
> natural reactions to him personally and used it as
> fuel to go further in to their delusions.

But that's what extremist movements do. Why would you expect anything else? The only thing that defeats extremism is rigorous defense of the rules of the polity and its constitution.


-----------------
> In fact, the left did plenty of
> things during all that drama that made them look
> crazy too. No one has clean hands.

You see? This is what worries me about your way of thinking, your equivocation between different phenomena. Dems may have done things "that made them look crazy," but there is no "too" about it; for they did not attempt to overthrow the constitution. To act as if their actions and those of today's GOP are in any way comparable is intellectually delusional and politically parlous, for it implies the need to negotiate and compromise that is what totalitarian movements use to gain power.

Not all disagreements are between people with equally valid perspectives. "What you are seeing and what you are reading is [contrary to Trumpian relativism] what is happening."

Sometimes one has to stand up for reality.

"Some" say, this is nothing new. Crisis come and go. The country is not broken. The country has been through this before. Me? I say, sort of--but not exactly like this.

The country nor the world has never been through anything like this with Facebook and Twitter as major factors, critical players. Rotary phones were no match. Social media changed the game and in doing that, they became the very famous, fabled "They", as in "They say", who know everything.

I was perusing a book called "Virtue" which sends up virtue signaling which I find rampant in this country at this time both individually and corporately. I myself do not get upset much at whatever the "Cause DuJour" is at the moment like I used to because the next one is just around the corner will take care of it. Anyone remember the pussy hats?


An excerpt from the novel which hits home from what I have observed personally:

"With a touch as light as a single match, Hoby (the author) scorches the earth beneath hollow social activism and performative outrage among young coastal liberals. 'That was just what you did on weekends--brunch and protest--then you'd put it all on Facebook and Twitter or Instagram or all of the above to prove you were doing your part . . ."


Social Media fuels shallowness and selfishness as it professes to fuel important change and champion righteous causes. "Do the details matter as long as there is a picture of you on line with your fist in the air?" is another phrase from the book.

Shallowness and selfish interests are nothing new, but, they have become a source of power. The power to dilute. America is not so much broken perhaps, as, diluted?

You can counter that was just quoting a "novel" so why take it seriously. A lot of truth comes out of what some posit to be fiction. Seems to me the flag is not being used to unite anymore.

"America is not so much broken perhaps, as, diluted?"

Or deluded? Normative truth is what we all agree on, which is a cultural thing. Culture is basically a sophisticated delusion. In the case of Mormon culture, maybe not so sophisticated. This culture clash is a clash of delusions. Most people want to live and let live, but nowadays every pipsqueak has a voice. It's like giving every 5-year-old a megaphone.

As for Mormon culture, the leaders are kind of right. Some truths are not useful. Are some delusions better than others? The proof is in the pudding. If your Mormon self is a passive aggressive dickhead, how is your religion serving you?

Smiling and nodding head. (up and down btw)

I really hope Texas finally makes good on their promise to secede from the Union and takes the rest of the Red States with them, and leaves the Blue states to join up with Canada to make the United States of Canada.
We'd have the world's 2nd largest economy, 2nd only to China. And Jesusland would be #3.
Let China stop all the other countries from committing genocide, for once.
If not, oh well.
Not our job. Better call the UN!
We'd be like Switzerland, or Australia, or Canada.

LOL, not going to happen. They couldn't support themselves.

Oh the stars are bright but my head ain't right
Deep in the heart of Texas (clap clap clap clap)

Sorry, couldn't resist.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/16/2021 02:07AM by bradley.

I'm trying to think of a reason why you should be sorry. Will get back to you later.

Yeah, the politicos on both sides won't let that happen. Ted Cruz doesn't want to be President of Texas only. He'd have to carpetbag around to find another state to take him.

Idaho hospitals are now rationing health care because of the pandemic. More States to follow.

Less emphasis on country, more on helping the people in my daily life—that’s a formula that works for me. I love it, and life is beautiful.

Interesting write up and excellent points.

Up until about 18 months ago, I was generally speaking optimistic about progress, be it social, scientific, technological, etc. We have come so far, in such a short amount of time, the future looked bright.

Now, I'm a hell of a lot less so. There is, quite literally, a pandemic wiping out huge numbers of people, and yet the anti-science religious nutters still, to this day, are living in a wacked world of denialism. Though I am not defending ignorance, something as complex as climate change is ripe for the charlatans to fool people. But this? There are more American's dead from COVID than both world wars combined. In the deadliest month (January 2021) of the pandemic, the average was more than 3,100 daily, with day six topping 4,000. That's more than 9/11, everyday, for a stretch. And yet, there are still those trafficking in it is a "hoax", "plandemic", or otherwise a giant conspiracy.

I really hope we as a society take a good, hard look at the idiot crew and repudiate their destructive nonsense. There was, sadly, a time when being a member of the Klan was not only acceptable, it opened doors. Now, with very few exception, we all agree that their hateful bile is not acceptable. Maybe the same can happen to those hell bent to do us all harm by their unbelievable degree of ignorance, hubris, and self-absorption. Yah, I'm not holding my breath. :\

Are you sure we ever overcame the jubilant racism of the past rather than just saw it metastasize into new forms, some of which also embody a politically inspired medical obscurantism?

Put differently, have humans ever evinced clear moral, as opposed to material, progress?