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Jonathan Haidt is not a random guy. I don't think you're being fair to the article or to this forum.
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Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid
121–130 of 504 posts
Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In the US the division is arguably worse and the masks are coming off. You sure about that? As recently as 1995, Canada was with 0.4% of a vote to split the country in two. In the 1970's the deputy Premier of Quebec was kidnaped and murdered by Quebec separatists. In 1990 the Canadian and Quebec governments used the military and authorized lethal force to put down an armed rebellion by the Mohawk tribe, after a Can…
Interesting that you mention the Mohawk tribe and their protest, I just learned about it earlier today from watching the film Beans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oka_Crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beans_(2020_film)
Yeah and even when there was literally hundreds of armed men and a confrontation against the Canadian army... the Canadian government still did not invoke the emergency measure act. They were also blocking crucial bridges into montreal for weeks, killed a police officer and set up a no man's land... yet after multiple weeks they still negotiated a peaceful settlement and kept talking to Mohawk Leaders.
Just goes to show how insanely irresponsible the current federal governement's handling of the trucker rally has been in comparison.
(That doesn't mean I'm not sympathetic to the Mohawk cause, or that I think the federal government should have used force against them.)
Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
The EU seems to be fining big tech quite a bit. Do you think individual US states wouldn't be able to organize like that?
> Do you think individual US states wouldn't be able to organize like that? Isn't that what a federal government is?
a federal government is a single body of policy which states opt into (more or less permanently). one read on GP is that we don’t need something this rigid for every coordination problem. time-limited and domain-limited agreements to which only some (large) subset of states agree could, possibly, accomplish the same things — perhaps with less political backlash in the process.
for example, state AGs band together in such a process pretty frequently.
Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid
#124This is the dumbest thing I have seen come from Jonathan Haidt. If social media is this powerful a destabilizer of societies, I wonder how Haidt explains first world countries like Germany, Canada, and most of the rest of the planet that have social media but haven't fallen into the same sort of divisiveness the US has.
Meanwhile in France…
Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Canada literally had to suspend the charter and due process by enacting the emergency measures act, which is unprecedented amongst western countries This is not totally true. [1] https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-pr... And of course there are others. The US has quiet a bit of history around suspending rights. This is the issue I have with these kinds of statements of, the sky is falling, thi…
> > Canada literally had to suspend the charter and due process by enacting the emergency measures act, which is unprecedented amongst western countries > This is not totally true. > [1] https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-pr ... > And of course there are others. The US has quiet a bit of history around suspending rights. > This is the issue I have with these kinds of statements of, the sky is f…
You generalized to "western countries." I don't think Canada is the only "western country." That is the main issue.
It could be this was a first for Canada (not Canadian so I am not aware of a lot of it's history), but definitely not for western countries in general.
Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid
#126Somewhat amusing that the article starts off using a parable from the bible. Maybe it's more amusing to someone outside the the US.
If it was a parable from Greek mythology, would it be less amusing? I don't think you need to be Christian (I am not) to find it an apt metaphor.
But it's not from Greek mythology is it? It's always Christian mythology that is used in these sort of openers. It's almost always the default goto here. What lessons can we draw from the good book today?
Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
To add to this.. Us Americans I don't think understand how many other parts of the world don't like us. If you want evidence of this go travel, and see how people treat you, then watch their eyes light up if you tell them you are a Canadian and not American. If it wasn't Putin it would be someone else eventually. You can't win the whack-a-mole game forever. Let's say we could repeat things without Putin. Facebook and…
> watch their eyes light up if you tell them you are a Canadian and not American. This is such a cliche. I just deleted a long wordy message as to why, but I've lived abroad, speak Spanish, traveled all over and have tons of extended Canadian family, including my maternal grandmother. This sentiment is 100% not true. I could be in the middle of Tehran or Cairo and tell someone I'm from California and will inevitably…
Lol I literally just did it. I have friends from around the world that talk shit about Americans constantly. They love Canadians.
America and loud obnoxiousness are synonyms in lots of the world. People laugh at loud people and say oh they're probably american.
When I was in Holland this is exactly what my dutch friends said everytime they saw loud people. In Mexico there are lots of resorts where people literally try to get away from Americans. There are places where Canadians are welcome and everyone there tries to shield out Americans from buying property.
It's 100% true. I totally understand why us Americans would have our blinders on about this however.
Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
> No state government can take on Walmart or Amazon. An alternative theory posits that these massive corporations in fact depend upon the centralization of governmental regulatory and fiscal powers for their very existence. Regulatory capture is much easier to pull off when there’s only one central authority that needs to be captured.
Regulatory capture doesn't seem like it applies to Walmart... How regulated is discount retail?
wages, social security, labor laws ... it's a bit harder to pin down, maybe this is all "just" lobbying?
Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid
#129This article is 100% wrong. Russia's misinformation campaign against the U.S. is 100% the cause of our current national discord. Our entire culture has been maliciously and actively poisoned by a proven state sponsored attack on the U.S. and Western Europe. Everything in the past decade needs to be re-evaluated and filtered through the lens of Russian disinformation. Day in and day out, for over 10 years, the Russian…
You are giving too much credit to Putin. All he did was identify already-existing issues and fuel them further. Saying this: "The reactions to what I'm saying will be predictable" is a good attempt but doesn't really work I've found. Of course it's predictable, that doesn't make it incorrect. Yes you guys have been played, but if you didn't see huge growing divisions within the united States well before Putin started…
> huge growing divisions within the united States well before Putin
Of course I'm not saying Russia created our national schizophrenia, which stems literally from the birth of the nation, but they sure as hell helped exacerbate the condition. Russia deliberately amplified and inflamed the culture wars so that they could corrupt and weaken the US from within without being noticed. From fake online accounts, to financing fringe candidates and media personalities to hacking and interfering with the 2016 election.
And it worked.
I respect your cynicism and opinion but maybe part of your feelings are a cause of Russia disinformation as well. Are our institutions really that awful? Or do you think so little of them because of relentless negative propaganda?
Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid
#130Haidt makes an excellent observation about the mid-20th century unity being an aberration due to the technology of the time: > Gurri is no fan of elites or of centralized authority, but he notes a constructive feature of the pre-digital era: a single “mass audience,” all consuming the same content, as if they were all looking into the same gigantic mirror at the reflection of their own society. Something I think we o…
And population. In 1900 California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Utah had like 2.5 mil people combined. 20 years earlier it was half that.