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There are a ton of issues with your thesis. - The US is a impregnable continent with oceans on both sides. Poland is a flat plain surrounded by historical enem

There are a ton of issues with your thesis. - The US is a impregnable continent with oceans on both sides. Poland is a flat plain surrounded by historical enemies. Congress isn't the Sejm and a single veto doesn't halt legislation. No one is going to invade the US and significant legislation still gets passed regularly. Poland also didn't have the entire apolitical infrastructure of the CIA, FBI, NSA, state governments, etc. - Misinformation has always existed. The idea that somehow everything was true and honest back when we only had 3 TV stations is naive at best. The media has lost control of the narrative and they no longer have the power they once did to control information. It's as simple as that. - You are assuming that the problem here is government and not culture.

paulmd 5y ago
- The physical isolation of the US is one of the reasons it's endured as long as it has, yes. We would be in a lot more trouble if we were physically accessible to enemies, of course. However, not all problems are man-made, climate change is an example of a problem that the US cannot dodge simply because it's geographically isolated. The healthcare crisis, COVID, worsening inequality, etc are all internal problems that the US is unable to address because of its ossified political system. We're not going to be able to ignore those problems forever just because we live on our own continent, we need a functioning government regardless. Moreover, it is of course trivially true that no two historical circumstances are ever exactly the same. That doesn't mean we discard all historical parallels and lessons from history. That's a very trivial and shortsighted view to the lessons of history. Obviously the US is not Poland circa 1500. But it demonstrates the problems that can be created from systems with extreme amounts of checks-and-balances. From there we can ask the question "are the US's systems of checks and balances extreme enough that they're causing problems?" and I think the answer is clearly "yes". - Misinformation has always existed, just like bombs existed before the atom bomb. That doesn't mean the battlefield hasn't significantly changed from 30 years ago. Thanks to the work of Facebook, Google, and others, it is now possible to directly target individuals with the forms of misinformation they are most susceptible to. Just as that has revolutionized advertising, it has revolutionized information warfare, and the regulatory framework has not adapted to deal with that (partially because of liberal absolutism, and partially because of the generally ossified nature of the political system which prevents anything from getting done). Moreover, back when the government was more functional, misinformation was recognized as a problem and addressed. Truth in broadcasting laws being an example. And as those regulations have been eroded (both legally and structurally with the transition to unregulated forms of broadcast over privately owned carriers) the problems have gotten worse. So yes, it's always been a problem, to the extent that we recognized that and deployed solutions to fix it, and as those solutions have been eroded the problem has come back and gotten worse. - "Culture" is another trite excuse for systemic problems. It is not the overall cause of the problems. If your system of government and rights framework requires humans to be angels then it is not a good one - this is the same argument as "communism would work if we only found perfect humans". Well, humans aren't perfect, if the US government can't function with imperfect humans then that's a design problem. But yes, generally the US does have a cultural problem with selfishness and lack of community outlook that doesn't help any of this. People refusing to get the COVID shot while they go around society and (stochastically) kill others and breed new mutations of the virus is just the most recent example, generally you have things like the "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" and the focus on employers being able to use their religion to impinge on their employees' lives that are fairly uniquely american. We would be much better off with some community-oriented ideals to balance out that individualism. The overall problem is structural, but the cultural problems certainly don't help.
vkou 5y ago
> The US is a impregnable continent with oceans on both sides This must be news to it, because it constantly acts as if it is existentially threatened by one foreign adversary or other, from Grenada to Venezuela to Iran/q to Mexico, and so on and so forth. > Congress isn't the Sejm and a single veto doesn't halt legislation. I believe the parent poster used that as an example of the absurdity of a checks-and-balances system, taken to the extreme. In the current state of the US, the checks-and-balances system results in pretty extreme outcomes. > significant legislation still gets passed regularly. Got to have to disagree there. The sole lasting legacy of a presidency, a supreme court, a senate, and a congress owned by the Trump party between 2016 and 2018 was... A lot of judicial appointments. [1] Its legislative efforts were not very successful - neither were Obama's[2] between 2008 and 2010, and I expect the same for Biden 2020-2022. > Misinformation has always existed. The idea that somehow everything was true and honest back when we only had 3 TV stations is naive at best. The media has lost control of the narrative and they no longer have the power they once did to control information. It's as simple as that. Now, I wasn't alive back in the sixties, and I am well aware of how media propaganda works... But you should spend some time interacting with true believers of QAnon, and you'll observe that something has fundamentally changed about how information spreads. It feels like a qualitative change to me, you may argue that it's merely a quantitative change. Even if you are right, the point is not that the media 'simply' lost control of the narrative. Someone else has gained control of the narrative, at its expense, and the outcome is not pretty. People were optimistic that the internet, and social media would let a thousand flowers of culture bloom. This... Did not happen. What we got instead, was an open-air cesspit, with a hydra's heads peering at us from the surface. [1] It developed a bit of a legacy in the tail end of 2020 as well, but it's not exactly a legislative one, and there's still a slim hope that it won't be a lasting one, and that we won't have to go through it again every time a president loses an election. [2] Whose sole lasting legacy is passing a Republican healthcare reform, which the Republicans have been gleefully attacking for the past decade. But at least it's got his name on it, so that counts for something.

paulmd 5y ago

- The physical isolation of the US is one of the reasons it's endured as long as it has, yes. We would be in a lot more trouble if we were physically accessible to enemies, of course. However, not all problems are man-made, climate change is an example of a problem that the US cannot dodge simply because it's geographically isolated. The healthcare crisis, COVID, worsening inequality, etc are all internal problems that the US is unable to address because of its ossified political system. We're not going to be able to ignore those problems forever just because we live on our own continent, we need a functioning government regardless. Moreover, it is of course trivially true that no two historical circumstances are ever exactly the same. That doesn't mean we discard all historical parallels and lessons from history. That's a very trivial and shortsighted view to the lessons of history. Obviously the US is not Poland circa 1500. But it demonstrates the problems that can be created from systems with extreme amounts of checks-and-balances. From there we can ask the question "are the US's systems of checks and balances extreme enough that they're causing problems?" and I think the answer is clearly "yes". - Misinformation has always existed, just like bombs existed before the atom bomb. That doesn't mean the battlefield hasn't significantly changed from 30 years ago. Thanks to the work of Facebook, Google, and others, it is now possible to directly target individuals with the forms of misinformation they are most susceptible to. Just as that has revolutionized advertising, it has revolutionized information warfare, and the regulatory framework has not adapted to deal with that (partially because of liberal absolutism, and partially because of the generally ossified nature of the political system which prevents anything from getting done). Moreover, back when the government was more functional, misinformation was recognized as a problem and addressed. Truth in broadcasting laws being an example. And as those regulations have been eroded (both legally and structurally with the transition to unregulated forms of broadcast over privately owned carriers) the problems have gotten worse. So yes, it's always been a problem, to the extent that we recognized that and deployed solutions to fix it, and as those solutions have been eroded the problem has come back and gotten worse. - "Culture" is another trite excuse for systemic problems. It is not the overall cause of the problems. If your system of government and rights framework requires humans to be angels then it is not a good one - this is the same argument as "communism would work if we only found perfect humans". Well, humans aren't perfect, if the US government can't function with imperfect humans then that's a design problem. But yes, generally the US does have a cultural problem with selfishness and lack of community outlook that doesn't help any of this. People refusing to get the COVID shot while they go around society and (stochastically) kill others and breed new mutations of the virus is just the most recent example, generally you have things like the "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" and the focus on employers being able to use their religion to impinge on their employees' lives that are fairly uniquely american. We would be much better off with some community-oriented ideals to balance out that individualism. The overall problem is structural, but the cultural problems certainly don't help.

vkou 5y ago

> The US is a impregnable continent with oceans on both sides This must be news to it, because it constantly acts as if it is existentially threatened by one foreign adversary or other, from Grenada to Venezuela to Iran/q to Mexico, and so on and so forth. > Congress isn't the Sejm and a single veto doesn't halt legislation. I believe the parent poster used that as an example of the absurdity of a checks-and-balances system, taken to the extreme. In the current state of the US, the checks-and-balances system results in pretty extreme outcomes. > significant legislation still gets passed regularly. Got to have to disagree there. The sole lasting legacy of a presidency, a supreme court, a senate, and a congress owned by the Trump party between 2016 and 2018 was... A lot of judicial appointments. [1] Its legislative efforts were not very successful - neither were Obama's[2] between 2008 and 2010, and I expect the same for Biden 2020-2022. > Misinformation has always existed. The idea that somehow everything was true and honest back when we only had 3 TV stations is naive at best. The media has lost control of the narrative and they no longer have the power they once did to control information. It's as simple as that. Now, I wasn't alive back in the sixties, and I am well aware of how media propaganda works... But you should spend some time interacting with true believers of QAnon, and you'll observe that something has fundamentally changed about how information spreads. It feels like a qualitative change to me, you may argue that it's merely a quantitative change. Even if you are right, the point is not that the media 'simply' lost control of the narrative. Someone else has gained control of the narrative, at its expense, and the outcome is not pretty. People were optimistic that the internet, and social media would let a thousand flowers of culture bloom. This... Did not happen. What we got instead, was an open-air cesspit, with a hydra's heads peering at us from the surface. [1] It developed a bit of a legacy in the tail end of 2020 as well, but it's not exactly a legislative one, and there's still a slim hope that it won't be a lasting one, and that we won't have to go through it again every time a president loses an election. [2] Whose sole lasting legacy is passing a Republican healthcare reform, which the Republicans have been gleefully attacking for the past decade. But at least it's got his name on it, so that counts for something.