MrCrisp said:
Why are we still listening to the opinions of a bunch of dead, white slave owners?
Because even "dead, white slave owners" could have been correct, had a good idea, and acted correctly.
Yeah, that was a little unnecessary on my part. They were smart enough to include an amendment process and a legislative branch in our government, as well. I just get a little pissy when I see people quoting the founders as American gospel, but only when it's convenient for them.
MrCrisp said:
Why are we still listening to the opinions of a bunch of dead, white slave owners?
Because even "dead, white slave owners" could have been correct, had a good idea, and acted correctly.
Yeah, that was a little unnecessary on my part. They were smart enough to include an amendment process and a legislative branch in our government, as well. I just get a little pissy when I see people quoting the founders as American gospel, but only when it's convenient for them.
This is how I feel. When people take any text as a gospel for how things should be done, it annoys me because it's oversimplifying the complexity of human societies, behaviors, etc.
hawkorhandsaw said:
I think the rugged individualism aspect of america is an overblown stereotype that's not nearly as prevalent in the cities (and 81% of the US pop. lives in either a city or a suburb and is more prevalent in older populations). it also is more expressed in the south (especially texas) and the mountain states (with clusters around the canadian border).
Let me clarify what I refer to. I can't quantify this, but in most other cultures I've observed, there is at least somewhat of an understanding that we humans (or any subset such as "Americans," "Texans," "Chicagoans," etc) are in this together and that no one of us is an island--that even if you can afford private schools for your own kids, we all benefit from a well-educated populace, and conversely, if there's a bunch of illiterate morans roaming the street, it's not good for anybody (except people looking for cheap labor, but I digress); that if workers don't get paid enough (Wal-Mart!), they'll seek government assistance and you'll end up paying them through subsidies and they won't have as much money to spend in the economy, either.
To make it more topical for the story of the week, think about health care. The "debate" is dominated by people who already have insurance (for now, until they actually get sick) and what they keep screaming is "I AM FINE SO JUST FUCK OFF AND LEAVE ME ALONE AND DON'T MAKE ME PAY FOR ALL THOSE LAZY WRETCHES!" They don't even see the uninsured, much less think that we can actually save money (and do the right thing?) by increasing coverage and preventive care.
As a culture, we don't have much respect for any idea of a "commons" or our common fate, dig?
the pro-business tilt is no surprise
No, it's not, especially when you consider that most of the production and distribution of culture is controlled by six corporations. But there was also a time when the likes of Charlie Chaplin, John Steinbeck, Upton Sinclair, and Woody Guthrie (to name a few, and I'm sorry to be ignorant of any women to put on that list) were making popular, powerful critiques of the big, dehumanizing, bureaucratic monopolies, and hopefully we'll see more of that. Maybe it really is just cyclical, like everybody keeps saying.
Again, for a health care tie-in, I would point to the fact that not one advocate for single-payer healthcare has ever been included in the healthcare "debate." We are told that single-payer will screw over the health insurance industry, and we don't even question the wisdom of preserving an industry that doesn't work unless you define it's work as screwing over the American people, which it's been doing for decades.
And then there's the way we allow big Pharma to use taxpayer subsidies to develop drugs and then patent them, and then we fight for their right to hold on to those patents (disallowing cheaper generics) so they can charge whatever they want for them, with the money going to marketing departments and executives who add nothing to public health and whose only purpose is to figure out more ways to get us to buy their products rather than make healthier choices.
the companies' only interests, generally, are to make money. they don't care if a book or tv show or film espouses a philosophical belief they disagree with as long as it turns a healthy profit.
All the major networks routinely deny anti-consumerist "commercials" produced by AdBusters. The commercials are funny, well-made, and AdBusters offers to pay the market rate for the time.
Sure, we had the fluff that is Fight Club but that does not really threaten the system. (I was pleasantly surprised to see some acknowledgment and dignity granted to CIA victims from South America in a Steven Segal flick recently, of all places...but still, it was 10 years after the fact, long after the few US officials who had even been charged with crimes had long-since been exonerated.) Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of stuff coming out for a general, mass audience is thinly veiled product placement like The Devil Wears Prada. (I'm not talking about your circle of friends now--I'm talking about, maybe, your family--if it's anything like my family.)
to be perfectly honest, very few corporations have the man-hours to put into some sort of conspiracy or the energy to indoctrinate each new employee.
I'm not suggesting a deliberate conspiracy of that sort--it's much bigger than that--it's the zeitgeist, mang. It's in the very structures and hierarchies of the institutions--everything from standardized testing in schools to useless HR departments and temp agencies that shape and weed people out.
herbancowboy said:
The middle classes and even working classes seem to advocate policies which favor the class they ASPIRE TO rather than the one they actually belong to.
this, once again, tends to be less of a city problem
One of the best contemporary US class analyses I've read is by none other than that dweeb David Brooks--Bobos in Paradise. One example I recall from it compared the administrative assistant in a publishing company to the editors and publishers s/he might report to. Because s/he buys the same Banana Republic gear, reads the same books, and watches the same movies, s/he is going to act like s/he is in the same social class as those who make much higher salaries--but end up spending a bigger chunk of his/her income and daydream about the Hamptons from Coney Island. That example is drawn from NYC, not some small town in a desolate county somewheres in Nebraska. I think rural America might actually have a much better grip on who has and who has not, especially in their immediate surroundings--everybody in a small town knows who the banker is and who the big landowner is and who the sheriff really works for--it's in cities that we're more confused, and the biggest chunk of our population is in cities.
i also don't think any of this is anything new.
Well, the OP compares the US to Western Europe, Canada, and Australia--it's not about US now vs. US then. You're taking his Anglo- / Eurocentricism and turning it into Americocentricism. Typical.
a culture has to hold someone up as the example of success. in the western world, it's wealth.
My point, exactly.
and, honestly, its not much better or worse than any other cultural aspiration.
That is debatable. I place a premium on kindness, generosity, egalitarianism, service, long-term-thinking, forgiveness, fairness, and acknowledgment of our interdependence.
And I pretty much agree with the rest of your comment:
there's a lot of problems with class in the US. it gets exacerbated when times are tough and jobs are scarce. however, the mixing of race in class is a long discussion that we're unwilling to have as of yet in this country. the fact that, essentially, both women and minorities are in their first generation of access to full education (let's say the real access started in around 1980 or so) means we're in the first generation where access will create real opportunity (if the economy doesn't REALLY tank). talking about the crossing of race and class prior to educational access changes everything.
class movement is easier with more education, the educational system systematic denying that to a majority of the population meant that movement was really restricted. HOWEVER, compared to other countries, poor white men had a better chance to move up a step or two on the class ladder especially since the end of world war 2 and the GI bill.
MrCrisp
I'm lost
August 2004
AUG 13, 2009 01:57 PM