05-14-2022, 12:03 AM
(This post was last modified: 05-14-2022, 12:19 AM by JasonBlack.)
I'll respond a bit more later, but briefly
1) At the risk of coming across like "millennials should just copy GIs" (I know I often appear that way), we should remember that America mostly stayed out of WWII. It wasn't until the Japanese bombed OUR people at Pearl Harbor that the GIs entered the war.
2) Nationalism may be a relic when the world manages to cooperate to do more than like 12 tasks in world history, and when nations run their own country well enough to export their policies to other nations. As it stands, we're trying to pluck the dust from our neighbor's eyes before trying to remove the log from our own.
3) Most people want "freedom" in some abstract capacity in that they want to do what they want and desire more power for whoever they consider their in-group to be. Trouble is, different nations (and even groups within the same nation), often have a radically different idea of what "freedom" really is (ex: the ensuing drama over the SCOTUS abortion case)
4) I have no problem selling (not giving, selling) arms to revolutionaries fighting just wars against oppressive states...but only insofar that said oppressive regime is too militarily insignificant to potentially threaten us back. Russia, and more specifically the growing Russia/China coalition, do not fit that last criteria.
5) What I see in red states is people actually making an attempt to look out for their own. Granted, I don't think we're doing a very good job (I will spare several points of contention I have with them on policy, as I'm sure you would agree), but socially....people in the South and the Midwest (I have lived in both) treat each other with respect in a way that northerners usually don't. Race relations in the south are a more mixed back than people realize. Yes, there are still enough crazy racists around to be concerned, and the police here are fucking Nazis, but for the other 90% of the population, I see a lot more...normal ass conversations between black and white people than I did in either the midwest or the North (I have lived for a time in Kansas, Chicago and South Carolina, so I've seen a fair amount of all three). There are reasons so many people want to move here. One of the reasons I moved specifically to upstate South Carolina is that they a good mix of being Deep South enough to care about manners and respect, but redneck enough to care about bluntness and honesty (both deep south and redneck cultures are ones I dislike in excess, but at times, they kinda cancel out the worst of each other when mixed together).
6) "But Democrats have cut down markedly in policies of invasions and bombing compared to Republicans." they really haven't. Maybe if you're comparing, say, Jimmy Carter to Bush Jr. but not if you compare Barack Obama to Donald Trump (whose foreign policy was...weirdly competent) or even Bush Sr. (also somewhat hawkish, but with about 100x more efficiency than anyone else. Overall, we've been about equal from the time of Reagan down to Biden.
7) Even if the world is gradually moving toward some liberal utopia (of which I am not optimistic), that is a process that has to evolve over generations upon generations, not one we can just push for and hope for the best.
8) Getting rid of nationalism will just create a void, not a solution. Just because we trade openly with many neighbors (which I think is a good thing. As a capitalist, I'm well aware of how much nicer different parties are when they trade with each other and conduct voluntary business), does not mean we have the means of organization to replace the structure of the state, the culture of nationalism or, most fundamentally at all, the human propensity for in-group bias. We have succeeded in the past in changing the expression of that in-group bias to directions that made a little more sense (ie, people with similar political and religious views rather than people with similar melanin in the skin), but we haven't succeeded in making it go away, any more than we can succeed in making hunger, thirst, drowsiness or horniness go away.
9) Educated intellectuals have always had greater group solidarity among each other than with their respective countries. Hell, this is even true of me, but while national origin is not the primary determinant of whom I bond with, values are, and they vary tremendously across cultures. Imo, what you're going to see more of is not people homogenizing around a kumbaya-style campfire, but people dividing along the lines of values, interests and IQ (if you don't like IQ, you may substitute whatever measure of general intelligence you prefer, but it's extremely important either way).
1) At the risk of coming across like "millennials should just copy GIs" (I know I often appear that way), we should remember that America mostly stayed out of WWII. It wasn't until the Japanese bombed OUR people at Pearl Harbor that the GIs entered the war.
2) Nationalism may be a relic when the world manages to cooperate to do more than like 12 tasks in world history, and when nations run their own country well enough to export their policies to other nations. As it stands, we're trying to pluck the dust from our neighbor's eyes before trying to remove the log from our own.
3) Most people want "freedom" in some abstract capacity in that they want to do what they want and desire more power for whoever they consider their in-group to be. Trouble is, different nations (and even groups within the same nation), often have a radically different idea of what "freedom" really is (ex: the ensuing drama over the SCOTUS abortion case)
4) I have no problem selling (not giving, selling) arms to revolutionaries fighting just wars against oppressive states...but only insofar that said oppressive regime is too militarily insignificant to potentially threaten us back. Russia, and more specifically the growing Russia/China coalition, do not fit that last criteria.
5) What I see in red states is people actually making an attempt to look out for their own. Granted, I don't think we're doing a very good job (I will spare several points of contention I have with them on policy, as I'm sure you would agree), but socially....people in the South and the Midwest (I have lived in both) treat each other with respect in a way that northerners usually don't. Race relations in the south are a more mixed back than people realize. Yes, there are still enough crazy racists around to be concerned, and the police here are fucking Nazis, but for the other 90% of the population, I see a lot more...normal ass conversations between black and white people than I did in either the midwest or the North (I have lived for a time in Kansas, Chicago and South Carolina, so I've seen a fair amount of all three). There are reasons so many people want to move here. One of the reasons I moved specifically to upstate South Carolina is that they a good mix of being Deep South enough to care about manners and respect, but redneck enough to care about bluntness and honesty (both deep south and redneck cultures are ones I dislike in excess, but at times, they kinda cancel out the worst of each other when mixed together).
6) "But Democrats have cut down markedly in policies of invasions and bombing compared to Republicans." they really haven't. Maybe if you're comparing, say, Jimmy Carter to Bush Jr. but not if you compare Barack Obama to Donald Trump (whose foreign policy was...weirdly competent) or even Bush Sr. (also somewhat hawkish, but with about 100x more efficiency than anyone else. Overall, we've been about equal from the time of Reagan down to Biden.
7) Even if the world is gradually moving toward some liberal utopia (of which I am not optimistic), that is a process that has to evolve over generations upon generations, not one we can just push for and hope for the best.
8) Getting rid of nationalism will just create a void, not a solution. Just because we trade openly with many neighbors (which I think is a good thing. As a capitalist, I'm well aware of how much nicer different parties are when they trade with each other and conduct voluntary business), does not mean we have the means of organization to replace the structure of the state, the culture of nationalism or, most fundamentally at all, the human propensity for in-group bias. We have succeeded in the past in changing the expression of that in-group bias to directions that made a little more sense (ie, people with similar political and religious views rather than people with similar melanin in the skin), but we haven't succeeded in making it go away, any more than we can succeed in making hunger, thirst, drowsiness or horniness go away.
9) Educated intellectuals have always had greater group solidarity among each other than with their respective countries. Hell, this is even true of me, but while national origin is not the primary determinant of whom I bond with, values are, and they vary tremendously across cultures. Imo, what you're going to see more of is not people homogenizing around a kumbaya-style campfire, but people dividing along the lines of values, interests and IQ (if you don't like IQ, you may substitute whatever measure of general intelligence you prefer, but it's extremely important either way).
ammosexual
reluctant millennial
reluctant millennial