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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

#371

Post by meatsauce »

engineeringwoke wrote: post #344
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,…

It's absurd how the author (and presumably their editorial board) are so willing to paint a picture that absolves them of guilt for the inequality in their country. News flash. If you say that you are wealthy/powerful and "politically liberal", but don't support policies that would give away that wealth or power to those with less of it in society, then you are not "politically liberal", you are conservative. I don't…

Give away?

Use the right word: steal.

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

#372

Post by maxfurman »

bko wrote: post #343
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,…

Occupy failed because it didn't have any clear asks or metrics to track. They were against the bailouts. Did they vote anyone out of office? Did the re-election rate of 90% budge? Are there "Occupy Democrats" like there were "Tea Party Republicans"? But most importantly, did they stop future bailouts? The original uproar about the 2008 bailouts (TARP) was originally authorized to spend $700 billion, of which they spe…

Occupy failed because the organizers were systematically jailed on the eve of the major protests, preventing them from coordinating and establishing goals like the ones you are looking for.

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

#373

Post by blindmute »

Overall, red side wants things to stay the same or go back, and blue side wants things to change. If the gap between them is widening, it's because blue side is trying to change things too rapidly. Red side seems to want to go back to 1950 at the earliest; it doesn't seem to me like they're increasingly backing up into 1800s or earlier. But the blue side is increasingly pushing for things that many are not ready to even consider: children transitioning into other genders, reparation-like policies, socially enforced changes to fundamentals of language. Many reds are still getting used to the last changes, like gay marriage. Society is just not set up to handle constant massive change to traditional mores. You can have one or two things change in a decade and people will adapt, but the current velocity is not sustainable.

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

#374

Post by ameister14 »

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…

Here's the funny thing about abortion laws. The Democrats have had a majority multiple times since Roe v Wade or even Casey and they have consistently failed to codify Roe into law. Why? Because they really like the money they get for threatening a woman's right to choose, too.

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

#375

Post by luciusdomitius »

emkemp wrote: post #370
luciusdomitius wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look. It is a very simple question. The township has a 1 promile property tax. I never pay it and refuse to leave my property. What happens next? You guys wrote 5 walls of text just dodging the easiest question on Earth.

Well, for starters, you may lose important local services. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna39516346

This is perfectly alright and waaaaaay more libertarian than collectivist.

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

#376

Post by wittycardio »

floren wrote: post #87
qball wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Canada hasn't fallen into the same sort of divisiveness the US has Canada is, politically, even more harshly-divided than the US is. We even have specific political parties for it: the Quebec Party, the Western Party, and the Largest Cities Party (the latter two will deny this, but that's the truth). Quebec has tried to separate from Canada twice in the last 50 years, and was within a Brexit's margin of their latest…

> NYC and DC picked every single representative, senator, and the President. This is essentially the goal of those who complain about the electoral college and the Senate.

Damn you must be terrible at math

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

#377

Post by RajT88 »

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…

In Illinois there's a pretty major divide between Northern and Southern IL. A lot of people draw that line well north of Springfield.

I would say it broadly follows what some are calling the "Rural-Urban divide" - certainly the suburban areas are included. With some wrinkles of course. DeKalb is definitely "northern", but Mendota is definitely more "southern".

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

#378

Post by luciusdomitius »

pmyteh wrote: post #362
luciusdomitius wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look. It is a very simple question. The township has a 1 promile property tax. I never pay it and refuse to leave my property. What happens next? You guys wrote 5 walls of text just dodging the easiest question on Earth.

I gave you an answer. You can suck it up, complain, or leave. And yes, those choices are unpleasant. If this was supposed to be a 'actually it all comes down to the threat of violence' gotcha then, sure - if you insist on your property rights, don't pay your taxes and then decide to fight the bailiffs you're going to have a bad time. Sorry.

You did not answer - you listed my options and I was asking for the reaction of the collective. Because I know that functional illiteracy is becoming a serious problem, I'll do my best to help you: "How exactly are they going to limit my options to those, what are they going to do specifically?"

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

#379

Post by _fat_santa »

grapeskin wrote: post #162
rossdavidh wrote: post #97

While I am a big fan of Jonathan Haidt, and have read several of his books, I can't help but feel that this is written from a point of view that is entirely too impressed with (if also afraid of) technology. Peter Turchin predicted escalating levels of polarization in the US, reaching a peak around 2020, without any need to look at social media. The level of political polarization now, while high, is less than the la…

> The level of political polarization now, while high, is less than the late 1850's. I know this is in the context of the build up to the civil war, but how much were neighbors at each other’s necks? I don’t know much about that period aside from the obvious events that followed (slavery being the huge and obvious motivator for the war), so I’m not sure how divided everybody was. But it seems like in the US today, th…

> But it seems like in the US today, the divide is spread across the entire country.

Personally I don't think the divide is as large as we think it is, I think it's just a result of social media skewing what is "popular".

If you have 100 people, 80 are moderates, 10 have stronger political views, and the other 10 have extreme political views. Social media algorithms will almost always promote the content from those 10 because it gets the most shares and the world will seem like it's filled with those 10 folks.

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

#380

Post by bko »

Tenoke wrote: post #368
bko wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Occupy failed because it didn't have any clear asks or metrics to track. They were against the bailouts. Did they vote anyone out of office? Did the re-election rate of 90% budge? Are there "Occupy Democrats" like there were "Tea Party Republicans"? But most importantly, did they stop future bailouts? The original uproar about the 2008 bailouts (TARP) was originally authorized to spend $700 billion, of which they spe…

>Occupy just taught the politicians how to do things under the radar. Was it under the radar though? It seems like as many people know about it, but that this time the target and reasoning for the loans was just more liked by the general public.

There will always be reasoning for the bailouts. "We can't let the banks fail because that means they'll stop giving out loans to small businesses and homeowners." There was reasoning in 2008. The difference is now there's no expectation of them paying it back. It's not a loan, its just sitting on the balance sheet of the Fed. Banks may buy them back later, but its always at an advantage since its completely voluntary.

There were additional measures for direct payments and loans for small businesses. This was very targeted to prop up the balance sheet of large banks.

You see shady stuff like this all the time. Is there a reason mortgage rates are pushing 5% but savings accounts at places like Bank of America are paying literally 0.01%?

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