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When "silence is violence" and "the personal is political", what can you expect? Everything is polarized and people want it to stay that way.

by daenz 5y ago

ben_w 5y ago
As a non-American who has visited for a total of four months, east and west coast, the political differences between America and other countries are way broader and deeper than just a few superficial memes. Especially those from young activist personalities, personalities which are present and busy in many other countries, each of which has its own zeitgeist. Your roads are scarily broad while your sidewalks are narrow and sometimes just stop suddenly; everyone seems to have a car even if they shouldn’t; the rules of the road seem to be treated as suggestions (at least for cars — jaywalking is verboten), while also being a source of arbitrary revenue precisely because everyone treats them as suggestions; “family” is a much stronger trope in America than in the U.K. or Germany, yet “I love you daddy” is a real Valentines’ day card I’ve actually seen, in a supermarket with many others like it in different variations of phrase and relative; guns feel like a trivial hobby or possession barely worth mentioning, and suggesting even the slightest of limits to the right to bear arms is one of the quickest ways to be compared to a 20th century dictator and some of the critics insisting “a well armed society is a polite society”; your billboards are covered in adverts for loans to cover bail costs, yet sex is hidden away; you’re as loud about Christianity as a minaret is about Islam, far more so than the churches and cathedrals I’ve seen around Europe; there is a constant bombardment of adverts for insurance and health products I don’t see elsewhere (everything from magic drugs to teeth so straight and white they could be a metaphor); there are regional things like the Californian everything-causes-cancer warnings matched only by one British tabloid newspaper; and yes, race related issues are so much louder and in-your-face that even I couldn’t miss them. (I know the U.K. seems weird to visiting Americans, because they’ve explicitly told me. But the U.K.’s weirdness is different to yours, just as the cultural pain-points are).
- ethbr0 5y ago
  Thorough and accurate! I'd hazard the sharper edges of American culture stem from less constrained (and better funded) capitalism than other parts of the world. If someone can make a buck on it, it exists.
zozbot234 5y ago
"Silence is violence" is such BS, the right to stay silent is literally enshrined in the Constitution. Let's not fall for that kind of extremist rhetoric. OTOH, I very much agree that the personal is political. Indeed, in an increasingly divisive and politicized society, simply tending to one's garden can be a powerful political statement.

When "silence is violence" and "the personal is political", what can you expect? Everything is polarized and people want it to stay that way.

by daenz 5y ago

When "silence is violence" and "the personal is political", what can you expect? Everything is polarized and people want it to stay that way.

ben_w 5y ago

As a non-American who has visited for a total of four months, east and west coast, the political differences between America and other countries are way broader and deeper than just a few superficial memes. Especially those from young activist personalities, personalities which are present and busy in many other countries, each of which has its own zeitgeist. Your roads are scarily broad while your sidewalks are narrow and sometimes just stop suddenly; everyone seems to have a car even if they shouldn’t; the rules of the road seem to be treated as suggestions (at least for cars — jaywalking is verboten), while also being a source of arbitrary revenue precisely because everyone treats them as suggestions; “family” is a much stronger trope in America than in the U.K. or Germany, yet “I love you daddy” is a real Valentines’ day card I’ve actually seen, in a supermarket with many others like it in different variations of phrase and relative; guns feel like a trivial hobby or possession barely worth mentioning, and suggesting even the slightest of limits to the right to bear arms is one of the quickest ways to be compared to a 20th century dictator and some of the critics insisting “a well armed society is a polite society”; your billboards are covered in adverts for loans to cover bail costs, yet sex is hidden away; you’re as loud about Christianity as a minaret is about Islam, far more so than the churches and cathedrals I’ve seen around Europe; there is a constant bombardment of adverts for insurance and health products I don’t see elsewhere (everything from magic drugs to teeth so straight and white they could be a metaphor); there are regional things like the Californian everything-causes-cancer warnings matched only by one British tabloid newspaper; and yes, race related issues are so much louder and in-your-face that even I couldn’t miss them. (I know the U.K. seems weird to visiting Americans, because they’ve explicitly told me. But the U.K.’s weirdness is different to yours, just as the cultural pain-points are).

ethbr0 5y ago
Thorough and accurate! I'd hazard the sharper edges of American culture stem from less constrained (and better funded) capitalism than other parts of the world. If someone can make a buck on it, it exists.

zozbot234 5y ago

"Silence is violence" is such BS, the right to stay silent is literally enshrined in the Constitution. Let's not fall for that kind of extremist rhetoric. OTOH, I very much agree that the personal is political. Indeed, in an increasingly divisive and politicized society, simply tending to one's garden can be a powerful political statement.