4 ms·

Collapsing Levels of Trust Are Devastating America

redis_mlc 6y ago
The article itself is a too-long opinion piece. The problems facing the US are mostly related to -isms - Marxism and Academic (Radical) Feminism. The city riots are organized by CCP-funded marxist groups. Academic (Radical) Feminism has copied Marxism as a blueprint for labelling themselves victims and usurping power from men. The casualty is the nuclear family, which is the basis for Western, or any, culture. (Black leaders have recently said that white families are on the same trajectory towards destruction, with up to 70% of black families headed by a single parent.) Ironically, women have a biological clock that men don't, making most of their "freedoms" hollow when they end up childless and alone at 40. Tinder and other dating apps are resulting in 2 "lost decades" for them, when they really need to start a family before 25 or so. What American leftists admire about Sweden is what Swedens say is leading to a bankrupt state with (already) no freedom of speech. See the Youtube Rubin Report channel on Sweden topics.
rangoon626 6y ago
Many are out for themselves, specifically white collar crimes generally are not being prosecuted and punished. Our elite class is apparently untouchable and will do whatever they feel like to get ahead. The public gets to view a slap on the wrist of a sole fall guy, if they’re lucky. Is this a surprise to anyone that the country feels this way?
- squarefoot 6y ago
  White collar crimes are often mildly/un punished in other countries too, but when cops can murder in cold blood a passer by, or a girl sleeping in her house, and get away with it with essentially a slap on their wrist, that can't but send the message that institutions aren't there to protect and serve common people, but rather to exploit them to benefit the lucky 1% in power. The loss of trust in institutions is a clear sign that somewhere there is still people with a functioning brain. The problem is in the institutions, not in the people who don't trust them.
legerdemain 6y ago
> In 1981, Huntington predicted that the next moral > convulsion would hit America around the second or > third decade of the 21st century—that is, right > about now. And, of course, he was correct. That "of course"! Huntington, of course, is widely known for his Clash of Civilizations, one of several highly publicized attempts in the early 90s to explain post-Cold War geopolitics with a single thesis. Francis Fukuyama (The End of History) and, less notorious in the popular press, John Mearsheimer, are some of the other authors of grand geopolitical theories of the early post-Soviet period. They are grand and sweeping theories that seem to have as much empirical support as the concept of "a generation" does in sociology. Depending on how you hard squint, you can find lots of facts that both support and refute these grand theories, at any level of abstraction. Edward Said, in particular, wrote passionately about Huntington's thesis at the time of 9/11. As predictive tools, these theories aren't terribly useful. The appeal to Huntington is pretty tangential to the bulk of the essay at hand, but it did leave me with a suspicious taste in my mouth.
gamblor956 6y ago
There's a dead comment on this thread that encapsulates the problem in a nutshell, though probably not the way he intended. One side of the debate refuses to accept the other side's right to have different beliefs, and accuses them of treason, being puppets of a foreign state, or various other crimes and immoralities. Trust requires that parties either respect each other, or at least not disrespect each other, and that both parties be willing to communicate. You can't have trust when your counterparts just spends all day slandering you.
- troughway 6y ago
  And downvoting comments to be dead and flagging them just reinforces their message further. Keep it up HN. Maybe someday your moral superiority will finally shine through.
  - dang 6y ago
    I just asked you to stop posting crap comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24735720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24735720. Perhaps you didn't see that before posting this one. This sort of dross is not what this site is for, and if you can't or won't use HN as intended, we're going to have to ban you.
- topkai22 6y ago
  A major shift in American social order I’ve seen in my life time is the move from the centrality of “tolerance” to the centrality of “acceptance.” While there are many good reasons for this, it is also a recipe for conflict and distrust. When a person is presented with another person with views or behaviors very different from their own, asking them to simply tolerate the other and not interfere with their life or treat them differently is almost always manageable within a belief system. However, acceptance, not just agreeing to not interfere but embrace many of all aspects of the other is sometimes impossible. A dedicated pro-choice activist who believes reproductive choice is central to women’s rights cannot fully accept a religious believer who is certain abortions are morally reprehensible. A person that believes that traditional American Protestant values are central to the success of the nation cannot accept a textbook claiming that many of those values are flawed and lead to white supremacy without giving up some of their core beliefs.
buffaloo 6y ago
This is utter garbage. This rag fired their journalists and has been muckraking their way to the election in hopes moral panic will support their numbers. Our institutions and our leaders are representative of our people - and we are a fundamentally good people.
happynacho 6y ago
Stopped reading after just the 4rd paragraph. If they believe this bullshit, then the rest of the article is trash: >. Our moment of moral convulsion began somewhere around the mid-2010s, with the rise of a range of outsider groups: the white nationalists who helped bring Donald Trump to power;

The article itself is a too-long opinion piece. The problems facing the US are mostly related to -isms - Marxism and Academic (Radical) Feminism. The city riots are organized by CCP-funded marxist groups. Academic (Radical) Feminism has copied Marxism as a blueprint for labelling themselves victims and usurping power from men. The casualty is the nuclear family, which is the basis for Western, or any, culture. (Black leaders have recently said that white families are on the same trajectory towards destruction, with up to 70% of black families headed by a single parent.) Ironically, women have a biological clock that men don't, making most of their "freedoms" hollow when they end up childless and alone at 40. Tinder and other dating apps are resulting in 2 "lost decades" for them, when they really need to start a family before 25 or so. What American leftists admire about Sweden is what Swedens say is leading to a bankrupt state with (already) no freedom of speech. See the Youtube Rubin Report channel on Sweden topics.

rangoon626 6y ago

Many are out for themselves, specifically white collar crimes generally are not being prosecuted and punished. Our elite class is apparently untouchable and will do whatever they feel like to get ahead. The public gets to view a slap on the wrist of a sole fall guy, if they’re lucky. Is this a surprise to anyone that the country feels this way?

squarefoot 6y ago
White collar crimes are often mildly/un punished in other countries too, but when cops can murder in cold blood a passer by, or a girl sleeping in her house, and get away with it with essentially a slap on their wrist, that can't but send the message that institutions aren't there to protect and serve common people, but rather to exploit them to benefit the lucky 1% in power. The loss of trust in institutions is a clear sign that somewhere there is still people with a functioning brain. The problem is in the institutions, not in the people who don't trust them.

legerdemain 6y ago

> In 1981, Huntington predicted that the next moral > convulsion would hit America around the second or > third decade of the 21st century—that is, right > about now. And, of course, he was correct. That "of course"! Huntington, of course, is widely known for his Clash of Civilizations, one of several highly publicized attempts in the early 90s to explain post-Cold War geopolitics with a single thesis. Francis Fukuyama (The End of History) and, less notorious in the popular press, John Mearsheimer, are some of the other authors of grand geopolitical theories of the early post-Soviet period. They are grand and sweeping theories that seem to have as much empirical support as the concept of "a generation" does in sociology. Depending on how you hard squint, you can find lots of facts that both support and refute these grand theories, at any level of abstraction. Edward Said, in particular, wrote passionately about Huntington's thesis at the time of 9/11. As predictive tools, these theories aren't terribly useful. The appeal to Huntington is pretty tangential to the bulk of the essay at hand, but it did leave me with a suspicious taste in my mouth.

gamblor956 6y ago

There's a dead comment on this thread that encapsulates the problem in a nutshell, though probably not the way he intended. One side of the debate refuses to accept the other side's right to have different beliefs, and accuses them of treason, being puppets of a foreign state, or various other crimes and immoralities. Trust requires that parties either respect each other, or at least not disrespect each other, and that both parties be willing to communicate. You can't have trust when your counterparts just spends all day slandering you.

troughway 6y ago
And downvoting comments to be dead and flagging them just reinforces their message further. Keep it up HN. Maybe someday your moral superiority will finally shine through.
- dang 6y ago
  I just asked you to stop posting crap comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24735720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24735720. Perhaps you didn't see that before posting this one. This sort of dross is not what this site is for, and if you can't or won't use HN as intended, we're going to have to ban you.
topkai22 6y ago
A major shift in American social order I’ve seen in my life time is the move from the centrality of “tolerance” to the centrality of “acceptance.” While there are many good reasons for this, it is also a recipe for conflict and distrust. When a person is presented with another person with views or behaviors very different from their own, asking them to simply tolerate the other and not interfere with their life or treat them differently is almost always manageable within a belief system. However, acceptance, not just agreeing to not interfere but embrace many of all aspects of the other is sometimes impossible. A dedicated pro-choice activist who believes reproductive choice is central to women’s rights cannot fully accept a religious believer who is certain abortions are morally reprehensible. A person that believes that traditional American Protestant values are central to the success of the nation cannot accept a textbook claiming that many of those values are flawed and lead to white supremacy without giving up some of their core beliefs.

buffaloo 6y ago

This is utter garbage. This rag fired their journalists and has been muckraking their way to the election in hopes moral panic will support their numbers. Our institutions and our leaders are representative of our people - and we are a fundamentally good people.

happynacho 6y ago

Stopped reading after just the 4rd paragraph. If they believe this bullshit, then the rest of the article is trash: >. Our moment of moral convulsion began somewhere around the mid-2010s, with the rise of a range of outsider groups: the white nationalists who helped bring Donald Trump to power;