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Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

theatlantic.com

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Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#331

Post by rayiner »

michaelmrose wrote: post #325
rayiner wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If these “wedge issues” are manufactured and inconsequential, I’m sure democrats would be happy to go along with the republican positions on abortion, etc., these issues so we can focus on the important economic issues, right? > Case in point- gun laws, abortions, gay marriage are simply not a focus of right wing parties in India. I said social and cultural issues are important to people—the specific social and cultu…

Issues trivial enough for your opponent to disarm by ceding them without society harming consequences make poor wedges. A maximally appropriate wedge is one in which you take a harmful extremist view and present it as righteous without dealing with the results of actually fully getting your way. Abortion has been a great example for decades. Taking away millions of woman's right to choose what to do with their own bo…

> Abortion has been a great example for decades. Taking away millions of woman's right to choose what to do with their own bodies in order to save what are almost entirely insensate lumps of cells

I used to believe this too because of America’s awful science education. It wasn’t until I went to the ultrasound appointments for my first kid that I realized how incorrect that was.

A 13 week fetus, which under Roe can be killed for another couple of months still, has a face, hands and feet, finger prints, etc. They can suck their thumb and have other human baby reflexes.

> which some folks believe have been animated by ghosts bestowed upon them by folks imaginary friends isn't a tenable position.

Sure, if you wave your hands and say that your side is obviously right about the issues at the heart of a political dispute, you can make any issue seem manufactured. You should go to India and tell the Hindus and the Muslims that they’re both wrong about their “imaginary friends” and that their dispute is a manufactured triviality.

Also, I hate to break it to you, but the whole fixation with personal conscience, individual self determination, and the equal dignity of every individual—ideas that animate American social liberalism— also come from Protestant Christianity. Nobody is making amoral utilitarian arguments for or against same-sex marriage.

> It would be politically impossible for the liberals to give them any closer to absolute victory without mutiny of the electorate.

Incorrect. Over 65% of Americans would support making abortions illegal in all or most cases after the first trimester: https://apnews.com/article/only-on-ap-us-supreme-court-abort.... The public opinion is basically closest to the Mississippi law that’s up before the Supreme Court: 15 weeks with exceptions for health of mother and baby. Incidentally, highly secular countries like France, Denmark, and Finland have settled on 13-14 weeks as well.

But more to the point: if abortion is a manufactured wedge issue, why do people in California care so much about what laws people in Mississippi choose to govern themselves?

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#332

Post by avidphantasm »

“He described the nihilism of the many protest movements of 2011 that organized mostly online and that, like Occupy Wall Street, demanded the destruction of existing institutions without offering an alternative vision of the future or an organization that could bring it about.“

Calling Occupy nihilistic is strikes me as blinkered, and shows the neoliberal bias of the author. Occupy is where the 99% vs. 1% lens arose, which is a reasonable description of concentration of wealth and power across Western countries and especially the US. Occupy attempted to employ more empowering and less alienating peer-to-peer governance.

Occupy didn’t “succeed”, probably due to both internal and external forces, but it wasn’t nihilistic.

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#333

Post by luciusdomitius »

TuringNYC wrote: post #319
luciusdomitius wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what do you do if someone disagrees with the crowd? How do you force him without coercieon? (hint those two words are synonyms).

>> And what do you do if someone disagrees with the crowd? How do you force him without coercieon? (hint those two words are synonyms). I think as the parent poster was saying, this is possible with smaller groups. I think the best example would be townships in the US. Different townships decide on the level of tax and investing (especially into school systems.) Then, individuals self-select themselves into groups by…

Alright. It is a township then. I refuse to go by the collective will. What happens next if violence is not an option and private property is respected?

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#334

Post by luciusdomitius »

iostream24 wrote: post #308
luciusdomitius wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what do you do if someone disagrees with the crowd? How do you force him without coercieon? (hint those two words are synonyms).

While the “ism” suggests an ideology rather than an attribute of a real world society, what you describe is the essential balance every society needs to strike between the group and the individuals, and so you find jail and fines as coercion across a wide variety of countries and systems. As a native English speaker myself, I urge you to get into etymology and understand socius and collective and community and thereb…

Please, answer the simple question. I refuse to go by the collective will and there could be no violence involved. What happens next?

I cannot believe that you went on insulting large groups of people while being unable to answer a simple 6 words question.

P.S. I speak relatively fluent Latin, so the etymology play made me chuckle a bit.

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#335

Post by spaetzleesser »

avidphantasm wrote: post #332

“He described the nihilism of the many protest movements of 2011 that organized mostly online and that, like Occupy Wall Street, demanded the destruction of existing institutions without offering an alternative vision of the future or an organization that could bring it about.“ Calling Occupy nihilistic is strikes me as blinkered, and shows the neoliberal bias of the author. Occupy is where the 99% vs. 1% lens arose,…

I also don’t like the disrespect Occupy often gets. Yes they didn’t have ready made solution but neither does Wall Street. The bailouts in 2008 and generally the rising inequality show that Wall Street is perfectly fine with making the lives of a lot of people worse as long as they can make money for themselves. To me the nihilists are the ruling class that only cares about them self and nothing else.

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#336

Post by giantg2 »

"But when citizens lose trust in elected leaders, health authorities, the courts, the police, universities, and the integrity of elections, then every decision becomes contested; every election becomes a life-and-death struggle to save the country from the other side."

Perhaps the root cause of this is not misinformation but rather the increase in awareness of how corrupt and incompetent some of these systems are.

I've witnessed these things myself related to political figures, police, prosecutors, the judiciary, and the organizations that are supposed to oversee them (the Bar, judicial board, internal affairs, the FBI, attorney general, etc). Rights violations are so common that nobody cares unless they resulted in bodily injury or substantial monetary loss. If nobody is standing up for or enforcing those rights, then do we actually even have them, or are they a fiction?

If the oversight of the people comprising the system is ineffective, then that is what will lead to abuses and this idea that each election is a battle. It seems nobody can enforce the rulers to follow their own rules. And these rulers have consistently granted themselves more power and autonomy throughout history (really surprised they didn't bring this up).

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#337

Post by parenthesis »

rayiner wrote: post #11

Haidt 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…

> Something I think we overlook is that America was more fractious prior to the mid-20th century, but the stakes were lower because our institutions were more distributed and more local.

Donald Trump always struck me as a character out of a western. Only in 'western' times he would have just 'owned' one town.

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#338

Post by game_the0ry »

avidphantasm wrote: post #332

“He described the nihilism of the many protest movements of 2011 that organized mostly online and that, like Occupy Wall Street, demanded the destruction of existing institutions without offering an alternative vision of the future or an organization that could bring it about.“ Calling Occupy nihilistic is strikes me as blinkered, and shows the neoliberal bias of the author. Occupy is where the 99% vs. 1% lens arose,…

Agreed - media portrays OWS as broken movement with no goals and no hope of changing anything. That's neo-lib PR - corp media does not want you take OWS issues (pro-union, anti-corporate, Medicare for all, etc) seriously.

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#339

Post by pmyteh »

luciusdomitius wrote: post #333
TuringNYC wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> And what do you do if someone disagrees with the crowd? How do you force him without coercieon? (hint those two words are synonyms). I think as the parent poster was saying, this is possible with smaller groups. I think the best example would be townships in the US. Different townships decide on the level of tax and investing (especially into school systems.) Then, individuals self-select themselves into groups by…

Alright. It is a township then. I refuse to go by the collective will. What happens next if violence is not an option and private property is respected?

In general, you have the same three choices you have in any other situation where you don't like what's going on: loyalty, voice, or exit.

In the first, you decide to accept the general will in order to maintain your individual credit, hoping that by cooperating on this occasion you encourage people to encourage with you later. Alternatively, you can protest the decision, hoping in doing so to encourage your fellow townspeople to change their mind, or to raise the reputation cost to them of proceeding down that route. And if you don't like that either, you can leave (highly visibly or otherwise).

Not all collective decision-making processes are coercive, either, FWIW. There are systems built on unanimity where your issue doesn't even arise: if you dislike the decision of the other group members enough then you can veto the decision. This creates other issues (and doesn't scale very well) but it does happen.

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#340

Post by giantg2 »

rayiner wrote: post #11

Haidt 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…

States can be very heterogeneous and divided. It largely depends on the topic. There is a lot of resentment towards the populated areas by those in the rural areas when it come to things like gun laws. Right now, they have a republican govenor who they might feel they can trust to veto certain things, but in general the rural areas feel their voice isn't heard on that subject and are instead subjected to the will of the urban area.

I would like to see the source where the MD governor has a 70% approval rating in urban areas. My guess is that many of those areas are ones that voted for him, not against him.

In rural PA, it's been a running a joke that the state should just have NJ annex Philly since it exhibits large political influence on the rest of the state and their wishes tend to align with the policies of NJ.

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