07-11-2022, 08:55 PM
(07-11-2022, 04:09 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:(07-09-2022, 11:26 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: The United States of America is not a nation-state. It is a nationality of convenience. This is an empire, even if it is (long may it so stay) the Empire of Liberty. We have great diversity in what it means to be an American. Very old Hispanic communities in New Mexico and Florida are just as American as descendants of residents of what were the original thirteen colonies and states. If having been stripped of any cultural connection to a foreign country except genes that place one's ancestors (or enough of them) in sub-Saharan Africa so that they could do back-breaking toil under brutal management and having to create a culture in America that belongs only in America, then what is?
One thing we can all agree on: America is an experimental mass of cognitive dissonance and ideological contradictions, where revolution often coincides with convention and tradition. Imo, it's a miracle we have lasted this long, but at the same time...it's clear something worked.
Liberty. Early promotion of mass education that people cherished back then. Zero tolerance for mass violence. The ability to cope, most of the time, with multicultural and multi-ethnic reality. A free market except for the welfare state. Being on the winning side in most major wars. The United States has typically shown more flexibility than systems like Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and Thug Japan that sought to destroy a decadent society that lacked a martial spirit. We improvised the last legions to march through Rome. The USA has been around for a long time as empires go. Do you not believe me? At 247 years, we are only 57 years away from having a longer lifespan than Russia under the Romanov dynasty, an impressive entity if one terribly flawed.
The cognitive dissonance is comparatively new, much of it the result of people confusing their resentments with truth, the rise of fundamentalist Christianity, and extreme narcissism arising among the economic and administrative elites.
Except in the run-up to the American Civil War, America has been typically good at self-correction. We are in the early stages of our response to an effort to nullify a free and fair election. Look at the system failures of other countries from antiquity to modern times, and you will usually notice that something spiraled out of control until the system was formally destroyed. They thought that they could solve their problems with wars, and they ended up with an enemy too big for them to stave off; they repressed independent thought and thus ensured that all that could grow was internal rot; they had no coherent finance; they ended up with an elite that became increasingly incompetent.
We will soon discover that we have too much to lose to avoid doing what it takes to undo some of the rottenness that many of us see. Maybe we need to change patterns of child-rearing, to decentralize the economy so that there is opportunity for a good life in more places (the Rust Bowl used to be a place of opportunity; I have every cause to believe that it can again), and in general to have a culture that honors the blessings that many of us used to take for granted at the expense of tawdry titillation, the celebration of the overweening Self, crony capitalism, and intellectual laziness. We grow plenty of food for the population that we have, which means that we are in less danger of global warming than countries that live on the edge of mass starvation.
History shows that those who bet against the USA typically lose badly.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.