4 ms·

Be careful about assuming too much consistency in the US populace. I'm born-and-raised US, and our attitudes can be very hard to describe. We'll hate "Obamaca

Be careful about assuming too much consistency in the US populace. I'm born-and-raised US, and our attitudes can be very hard to describe. We'll hate "Obamacare" but actually support all the individual parts. We'll complain about govt spending then complain when the govt doesn't function. We'll complain that people don't trust science about global warming but avoid vaccines and expect GMOs to actually mutate us. We'll complain about "participation trophies" but want benefits for seniority without regard to performance. We'll celebrate a rancher facing off against the govt and then rail against someone else "taking the law into their own hands". Then we'll reverse any of these positions at the drop of a hat. I'm not saying we're RANDOM, I'm saying it can look so. There might be dozens of upcoming responses to this comment, each suggesting a different "simple" solution ("It's about self-interest" "It's about freedom" "it's about personal responsibility") but they will all either fail to reconcile, or give you a simple explanation that is nonetheless hard to extrapolate how the public will respond to a given topic. My personal opinion is that neither the EU nor the US has an optimal economic outlook, but it may not be possible to have one - it's hard to combine the benefits of rugged individualism with the benefits of communal cohesion. Hard to mix diversity with unity.

AnthonyMouse 8y ago
> Hard to mix diversity with unity. It's actually not that hard. You can have a mexican restaurant, hibachi restaurant, cajun restaurant and winery all in the same city and patronize a different one each day. That's the benefit of diversity. What doing it wrong looks like is accusing the mexican restaurant of a moral failing because their staff is mostly latino, or the winery because their staff is mostly English or French. You don't maintain diverse cultures by requiring every place to be formed of exact proportions of statistically precise homogenized diversity paste, you get them by having clumps of different cultures near each other that trade and learn with each other while continuing to possess their own discrete cultural identities. All unity requires is coexisting without fighting each other. The fact that some people do it wrong doesn't mean there isn't a way to do it right. And that's also why you see people on both sides of any given issue. A diverse country does not have a homogeneous people.
- ergothus 8y ago
  Please don't think I'm dissing diversity - I'm all for it. > And that's also why you see people on both sides of any given issue Often that's a great thing. Sometimes it's not. That was the point I was making.

AnthonyMouse 8y ago

> Hard to mix diversity with unity. It's actually not that hard. You can have a mexican restaurant, hibachi restaurant, cajun restaurant and winery all in the same city and patronize a different one each day. That's the benefit of diversity. What doing it wrong looks like is accusing the mexican restaurant of a moral failing because their staff is mostly latino, or the winery because their staff is mostly English or French. You don't maintain diverse cultures by requiring every place to be formed of exact proportions of statistically precise homogenized diversity paste, you get them by having clumps of different cultures near each other that trade and learn with each other while continuing to possess their own discrete cultural identities. All unity requires is coexisting without fighting each other. The fact that some people do it wrong doesn't mean there isn't a way to do it right. And that's also why you see people on both sides of any given issue. A diverse country does not have a homogeneous people.

ergothus 8y ago
Please don't think I'm dissing diversity - I'm all for it. > And that's also why you see people on both sides of any given issue Often that's a great thing. Sometimes it's not. That was the point I was making.