12 ms·

The Collapse of American Identity

45 points by mitchbob 5y ago

taurath 5y ago
Post Vietnam, has there ever really an American identity? It seems like there’s a sort of “politicians compromised so there must have been more shared culture” assumption.
ElViajero 5y ago
The USA was defined by how superior it was to the rest of the world, how their companies were the best and standard of living the highest. I still remember an episode of the Simpsons laughing at how few dollars you get in exchange of a bunch of foreign coins and bills. That reality does not exist anymore. Reaganomics, discussed in the book, and low taxes in the USA created a lack of investment for the past three decades. Meanwhile Europe has become the place in the world with the higher standards of living, and China the fastest-growing economy. Both thanks to investing in infrastructure, education and health care. How to solve it? It is hard. I am from Spain, a former empire, and there is still people that does not want to accept that Spain relevancy in the world is pretty low (even that it lost its colonies more than 100 years ago). Can the USA catch up with the new reality fast and recover? Or does it needs to sink lower before taking action?
- doggodaddo78 5y ago
  American Exceptionalism After about 1970, cognitive dissonance carried it further than could be delivered as excellence in all things declined. Self-deception is about all that remains when many things are honestly comparable to a third-world country. The only way to "solve" it is if the "patient" wants to admit to it and then wants to solve it. There's too much false pride (future hubris) preventing self-reflection.
  - ElViajero 5y ago
    > if the "patient" wants to admit You are being down-voted. So, I guess that the answer is "no, we do not want to admin any problem" , at this moment, here in Hacker News.
    - rob_c 5y ago
      I've been noticing similar downvoting recently for calling out too America-centric topics recently so I'm inclined to agree
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      I downvoted. I did so because of this line: > many things are honestly comparable to a third-world country. I do not believe that to be an accurate assessment of the situation. It feels accurate, to some people, but it's a distorted view of reality. Which lets you classify me as "no we don't want to admit any problem", and write me off. I'd encourage you not to do that, for two reasons. First, I've been seeing a pattern here on HN rather frequently lately: Someone states fringe view X as being obviously correct, and states that everyone is willfully blind to not acknowledge it. This gets downvoted. The author then points to the downvotes as proof that people are willfully blind (and therefore that X is in fact correct). But this ignores that X can be downvoted because it is obviously incorrect, or just because the author is being a jerk. You cannot use downvotes to confirm anything other than the fact that you were downvoted. Second, assuming that everyone who disagrees is a fool or acting in bad faith is how you trap yourself in a filter bubble. But the question remains: Are you actually right, or actually wrong? Trapping yourself in a filter bubble means that, if you're ever wrong, you'll never find out.
  - akie 5y ago
    I've seen that referred to as "Post-imperial delusion", and I believe it explains Brexit as well as Russia's belligerent behavior. Britain lost its super power status less than a century ago, Russia only in the 1990s. There are apparently quite a few people in these countries that have yet to accept that they are not as relevant as they once were, and who long for any kind of action to restore their country's status to what they think it should be. Very dangerous.
  - JKCalhoun 5y ago
    > After about 1970 Yes, the moon landings were peak-USA. Never mind that we were mired in "world-building" in Southeast Asia as well.
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  > Both thanks to investing in infrastructure, education and health care. Reality about China: - does not have health care unless you're CCP or you can pay cash - residential infrastructure (7% of economy) is "tofu buildings" that won't last 5 years - 340,000 Chinese university students are in US. Not a good look to me.
- jl2718 5y ago
  > lack of investment What? You’re grasping. If you want to see the problem, compare government budgets and look where all the money goes.
  - tr_user 5y ago
    They probably mean non-military investment?
    - asah 5y ago
      IMHO it's complicated: US military spend includes tons of R&D, including stuff far from direct weaponry. Sure, it's a small % of the budget, but still vastly more R&D spending than most countries.
    - CyberRabbi 5y ago
      >55% of the federal budget goes toward social services and welfare. <11% goes to military spending. There is no lack of investment, just obscene mismanagement, at best. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2020_US_Federal_Budget_Infographic.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2020_US_Federal_Budget_In...
      - mountainb 5y ago
        Entitlements are an 'investment' into loyalty to the federal government and the system it presides over. The military is cheap by historic standards. The entitlement system is so expensive that it stymies any significant federal policy ambition that requires resources. Our political leaders generally gave up on trying to reform entitlements in the 2000s (when it was last a TV dinner issue), so instead most just try to distract from the issue with trivia. Thinkers these days tend to be frightened about trying to come up with alternative, more cost-effective ways to secure the loyalty of the population. The default position is to just not bother shifting away from the inevitable path to failure, because letting it fail might be an easier way towards creating consensus for a solution than trying to avert the failure. If the system fails because of collective inaction, no faction can be directly blamed for the failure (so the thinking goes).
- bontaq 5y ago
  I think the split happened before Reagan. About the closest we got to raising the standard of US society even higher was Roosevelt's second bill of rights speech in 1944: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Bill_of_Rights#Roosevelt's_speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Bill_of_Rights#Roosevel... Now we fight over some fraction of a part of one of his ideas, like lowering medicare eligibility to 60. It's mildly depressing to consider where we could be.
  - taurath 5y ago
    The great society programs by LBJ should not be ignored. It created Medicare and Medicaid. They declared a war on poverty. They stopped people from littering literally everywhere.
- nivenkos 5y ago
  > Meanwhile Europe has become the place in the world with the higher standards of living Umm what? Have you seen the salaries and house prices in the EU. Their average salary is about $150k for software engineers, in the EU it's about 50k. None of the taxes or any other differences make up for that. Americans have got it easy.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    You do realize there are other people than software engineers?
  - deregulateMed 5y ago
    Yeah OP is just factually incorrect here. On paper many countries are poorer, and on the ground you can see standard of living is either worse or slightly worse. Sure there is less corruption in EU healthcare, but outside of that sector Americans get better homes, cars, and disposable income.
    - mebassett 5y ago
      OP is correct, actually. I am not sure how you define or measure "standard of living" but common measurements include human development index [1] and quality of life index [2]. by both measurements the US lags behind many european countries. life expectancy in the US has been declining [3]. and the corruption in US healthcare is massive [4], especially considering that it can be three times more expensive for worse outcomes, and because it takes up such a large portion of the economy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev... [2] https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.jsp https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.j... [3] https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l6753 https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l6753 [4] https://mebassett.info/healthcare-ppp.html https://mebassett.info/healthcare-ppp.html PS Am a US citizen who lives in the UK and travels (or did precovid) to the east coast and west coast of the US and to EU capitals regularly.
    - smhost 5y ago
      > besides for healthcare Ignoring people's actual health in exchange for more expensive things seems like a backwards metric.
- AlgorithmicTime 5y ago
  LOL. Lower class Americans have as much disposable income as middle class Europeans. Our poorest states are as rich as or richer than your average European nation.
- amadeuspagel 5y ago
  > Reaganomics, discussed in the book, and low taxes in the USA created a lack of investment for the past three decades. In the last three decades, three trillion dollar companies - Amazon, Google and Facebook - were founded in the US. > and China the fastest-growing economy. It's a lot easier to grow fast if you just have to catch up.
doggodaddo78 5y ago
I want to live in a Smart Real Just Free America that has common-sense and isn't divided-and-conquered with intentionally-manufactured consent and ignorance. Fuck hate, fuck PC, fuck classism/snobbery, solve most inequality, fuck for-profit essential human rights strip mining like US healthcare and PPP's, and fuck tribal factions.
jl2718 5y ago
The American identity never had anything to do with economic greatness, military power, equality of outcomes or opportunity, nor even many ‘positive’ rights levied upon others. Put simply, it was supposed to be the one place where you could speak your beliefs freely, and, barring specific harm done to others, nobody could force you to do anything. If that’s not good enough for you, if you need to force other people to do something for you to be satisfied, then don’t be surprised what comes of it.
- smhost 5y ago
  That's a recent myth about America and doesn't have much to do with actual American history.
  - MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
    If the US is not a project of European enlightenment values, what else is it, in your opinion?
    - hef19898 5y ago
      Given that the first North American settlers were basically fugitives from Great Britain, and all other colonies were there to exploit local resources and people, the US was first and foremost a money thing. Also for the Boston tea party, which was as much about independence as it was about taxes. And how enlightened can a nation be that is among the last to abolish slavery, and that had to fight a civil war about that very question.
      - zozbot234 5y ago
        North American settlers were far from uniform historically. Some were first and foremost after money and power (e.g. the first Southern plantation owners were quite unapologetically so). Other "fugitives" were rather more concerned about pursuing various combinations of public-mindedness, radical autonomy and broad-based opportunity. North American settlement was a rather complex story.
dexen 5y ago
Of the four factions identified, only one - Just America - cannot stand having any opposing factions in the same body politic. And now that very faction prescribes its overriding value of equality as way of proselytizing, rather than coexisting with, the other three factions. Not going to happen - the other factions have grown distrustful[1]. [1] https://www.axios.com/media-trust-crisis-2bf0ec1c-00c0-4901-9069-e26b21c283a9.html https://www.axios.com/media-trust-crisis-2bf0ec1c-00c0-4901-...
- newacct583 5y ago
  Really? I mean, you don't think Real America also has a problem with coexistence? It's all the fault of the hippies? I mean, just trivially: to a Real American, Smart Americans are The Globalist Elites controlling their lives and Just Americans are the domestic terrorists who burned down the country last summer. This kind of rhetoric is everywhere among the Trumpist right, not just among shitposters on the internet but coming out of the mouths of media figures, elected officials and thought leaders.
bobthechef 5y ago
The problem with naivete and idealism is that they actually rob you of agency and the ability to engage reality on reality's terms. The most dangerous thing you can do is to try to immanentize the eschaton. Every time someone tries to straighten humanity by force, the crooked timber snaps, heads roll, and our understanding darkens. So you have to be prudent about the changes you make. Idealists will always be disappointed by anyone who tells them that their vision, even if ostensibly good, is unachievable and its pursuit harmful.
- jtms 5y ago
  i had never heard the term "immanentize the eschaton" - i looked it up and learned something new - thank you!
- aidenn0 5y ago
  While I agree that trying to immanetize the eschaton can cause harm, politically the phrase is often used to attack reasonable, incremental improvements.
- camgunz 5y ago
  I guess I don't super understand this. Is this an argument against coercive policies? Are seatbelt laws bad?
datancoffee 5y ago
I think Russians have the common problem with identity.
ftyers 5y ago
Dunbar-Ortiz has a good take on this, for her the US American identity is basically a European settler/covenant identity, much like the whites in other settler colonies: Australia and South Africa or Rhodesia (as they were). Unlike in Mexico, where the native history and identity formed part of the identity of the identity of the new country "everyone's an Aztec", the real history of the US prior to European invasion and colonisation was marginalised. Even today US American schoolchildren know more about European history than the history of America. Is that settler/covenant identity collapsing? Great, hopefully it will mean that treaties are more likely to be kept and that stolen land can be restored to its original owners.
- MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
  It is well known that only the US society originated in settlers, and that everywhere else, the local people simply sprung from the bedrock.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  "hopefully it will mean that treaties are more likely to be kept and that stolen land can be restored to its original owners" I do not find it particularly likely, especially in case of land that is actually in use. Are Hispanic or Asian landlords more friendly towards Native compensation/restoration claims than whites? Or do they mostly care about their own interests first, just like most landlords do? As far as historical grievances go, slavery is on the top of all conversations, because 40 million Americans actually are descendants of former slaves and are identifiable as such. Natives have either died out, or mixed with the rest of the population so thoroughly that their heritage can no longer be easily discerned. Tribes numbering more than 1000 people are rare, and this corresponds to their relative weight in public discourse.
- ameister14 5y ago
  >hopefully it will mean that treaties are more likely to be kept I hope that too, Gorsuch started to get the ball rolling there in the Supreme Court I think >stolen land can be restored to its original owners. I don't think that's possible for most stolen land at this point.
- 5y ago
dkarl 5y ago
I am glad that the author calls out Smart America, or what others call the professional/managerial class, for having the same fundamental ideology as Free America. Smart America is the subset of Free America that is smart enough to recognize that persistent inequality reveals flaws in liberal meritocracy, and they are working to fix it because they love meritocracy. However, I think creating a category of Just America is a cop-out, because virtually all of Smart America thinks of themselves that way. They recognize that judging people around them in meritocratic terms is unjust, and they're working on fixing that. The overlap is huge, as the interviewer pointed out. I don't think it's a useful distinction. I think it would be more useful to draw an ideological line between Smart America, aka liberals who aren't idiots, and people who think liberalism is the problem and can't be saved, who are keen to disprove the end of history.
- brighton36 5y ago
  They're working on fixing that in a way that explicitly excludes white people, and ignores 'real' properties of IQ.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
helen___keller 5y ago
> The book opens with an essay on the state of the U.S. during the pandemic, and then offers sketches of four different visions of the country: Free America, of Reaganism; Smart America, of Silicon Valley and other professional élites; Real America, of Trumpist reaction; and Just America, of a new generation of leftists. Forgive me for being glib, but all I see is an enlightened centrist decrying the evils of lib left, lib right, auth left, and auth right.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  One person's "enlightened centrist" is another's "bluepilled normie".
jfengel 5y ago
The United States has been fractious since the beginning. It degenerated into a Civil War that had been brewing since its inception. The Constitution was full of rules designed to grant extra power to those who went on to secede anyway. Nor did the end of the war settle anything. The reconciliation project was quickly put down, and the losers of the war set about memorializing and lionizing their heroes. The violence continued, but quietly. The next century is what we think of as that "American identity", where we were too busy making money and becoming the international superpower to wage large-scale violence on each other. That fractured after World War II, when the people who weren't benefitting from that demanded an end to discrimination. That's been the story for the last half century, as the gradual success of marginalized groups gives that original urge to fracture America a new urge to express their grievance. And that grudge is so old that it's practically impossible to talk about. You can see it in this thread already. They see it as a personal and modern imposition, talking about great old days that simply did not exist -- not for everybody.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  > ... Nor did the end of the war settle anything. ... You can try to tell that story and it's not without merit, but the logical consequence of it is that reconciliation hadn't even been tried in a meaningful way until the 1980s, when Southern elites finally internalized the outcomes of the 1960s Civil Rights era and set out trying to build a new foundation for economic freedom and development, that could ultimately benefit the winners and losers of that conflict alike. We're still very early in that project, just like we're early in the project of reducing and ultimately ending discrimination of marginalized groups. These endeavors should ultimately be seen as complementary, not oppositional. But the divisive politics we're all too familiar with seems to have very little room for such a nuanced POV.
  - jfengel 5y ago
    It's getting off to a bumpy start. It corresponds to the start of the Southern Strategy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy Despite the consistency I was describing, the political map changed radically during that time. The electoral map today looks awfully reminiscent of 1860, but between then and now it was completely different. The Civil Rights era prompted a return to Civil War geographic lines, albeit with the parties flipped. Most prominently, a lot of Southern Democrats switched parties at exactly the time frame you mention, precisely to avoid being part of that reconciliation. There may ultimately be a reconciliation and a win-win scenario, but it's not going quietly. There's a lot of benefit to stoking those very old grievances.
samuelizdat 5y ago
This article is funny because the author comes from a place that has no problem with identity when it comes to Palestinians. Curious!

45 points by mitchbob 5y ago

Post Vietnam, has there ever really an American identity? It seems like there’s a sort of “politicians compromised so there must have been more shared culture” assumption.

ElViajero 5y ago

The USA was defined by how superior it was to the rest of the world, how their companies were the best and standard of living the highest. I still remember an episode of the Simpsons laughing at how few dollars you get in exchange of a bunch of foreign coins and bills. That reality does not exist anymore. Reaganomics, discussed in the book, and low taxes in the USA created a lack of investment for the past three decades. Meanwhile Europe has become the place in the world with the higher standards of living, and China the fastest-growing economy. Both thanks to investing in infrastructure, education and health care. How to solve it? It is hard. I am from Spain, a former empire, and there is still people that does not want to accept that Spain relevancy in the world is pretty low (even that it lost its colonies more than 100 years ago). Can the USA catch up with the new reality fast and recover? Or does it needs to sink lower before taking action?

doggodaddo78 5y ago
American Exceptionalism After about 1970, cognitive dissonance carried it further than could be delivered as excellence in all things declined. Self-deception is about all that remains when many things are honestly comparable to a third-world country. The only way to "solve" it is if the "patient" wants to admit to it and then wants to solve it. There's too much false pride (future hubris) preventing self-reflection.
- ElViajero 5y ago
  > if the "patient" wants to admit You are being down-voted. So, I guess that the answer is "no, we do not want to admin any problem" , at this moment, here in Hacker News.
  - rob_c 5y ago
    I've been noticing similar downvoting recently for calling out too America-centric topics recently so I'm inclined to agree
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    I downvoted. I did so because of this line: > many things are honestly comparable to a third-world country. I do not believe that to be an accurate assessment of the situation. It feels accurate, to some people, but it's a distorted view of reality. Which lets you classify me as "no we don't want to admit any problem", and write me off. I'd encourage you not to do that, for two reasons. First, I've been seeing a pattern here on HN rather frequently lately: Someone states fringe view X as being obviously correct, and states that everyone is willfully blind to not acknowledge it. This gets downvoted. The author then points to the downvotes as proof that people are willfully blind (and therefore that X is in fact correct). But this ignores that X can be downvoted because it is obviously incorrect, or just because the author is being a jerk. You cannot use downvotes to confirm anything other than the fact that you were downvoted. Second, assuming that everyone who disagrees is a fool or acting in bad faith is how you trap yourself in a filter bubble. But the question remains: Are you actually right, or actually wrong? Trapping yourself in a filter bubble means that, if you're ever wrong, you'll never find out.
- akie 5y ago
  I've seen that referred to as "Post-imperial delusion", and I believe it explains Brexit as well as Russia's belligerent behavior. Britain lost its super power status less than a century ago, Russia only in the 1990s. There are apparently quite a few people in these countries that have yet to accept that they are not as relevant as they once were, and who long for any kind of action to restore their country's status to what they think it should be. Very dangerous.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  > After about 1970 Yes, the moon landings were peak-USA. Never mind that we were mired in "world-building" in Southeast Asia as well.
redis_mlc 5y ago
> Both thanks to investing in infrastructure, education and health care. Reality about China: - does not have health care unless you're CCP or you can pay cash - residential infrastructure (7% of economy) is "tofu buildings" that won't last 5 years - 340,000 Chinese university students are in US. Not a good look to me.
jl2718 5y ago
> lack of investment What? You’re grasping. If you want to see the problem, compare government budgets and look where all the money goes.
- tr_user 5y ago
  They probably mean non-military investment?
  - asah 5y ago
    IMHO it's complicated: US military spend includes tons of R&D, including stuff far from direct weaponry. Sure, it's a small % of the budget, but still vastly more R&D spending than most countries.
  - CyberRabbi 5y ago
    >55% of the federal budget goes toward social services and welfare. <11% goes to military spending. There is no lack of investment, just obscene mismanagement, at best. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2020_US_Federal_Budget_Infographic.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2020_US_Federal_Budget_In...
    - mountainb 5y ago
      Entitlements are an 'investment' into loyalty to the federal government and the system it presides over. The military is cheap by historic standards. The entitlement system is so expensive that it stymies any significant federal policy ambition that requires resources. Our political leaders generally gave up on trying to reform entitlements in the 2000s (when it was last a TV dinner issue), so instead most just try to distract from the issue with trivia. Thinkers these days tend to be frightened about trying to come up with alternative, more cost-effective ways to secure the loyalty of the population. The default position is to just not bother shifting away from the inevitable path to failure, because letting it fail might be an easier way towards creating consensus for a solution than trying to avert the failure. If the system fails because of collective inaction, no faction can be directly blamed for the failure (so the thinking goes).
bontaq 5y ago
I think the split happened before Reagan. About the closest we got to raising the standard of US society even higher was Roosevelt's second bill of rights speech in 1944: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Bill_of_Rights#Roosevelt's_speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Bill_of_Rights#Roosevel... Now we fight over some fraction of a part of one of his ideas, like lowering medicare eligibility to 60. It's mildly depressing to consider where we could be.
- taurath 5y ago
  The great society programs by LBJ should not be ignored. It created Medicare and Medicaid. They declared a war on poverty. They stopped people from littering literally everywhere.
nivenkos 5y ago
> Meanwhile Europe has become the place in the world with the higher standards of living Umm what? Have you seen the salaries and house prices in the EU. Their average salary is about $150k for software engineers, in the EU it's about 50k. None of the taxes or any other differences make up for that. Americans have got it easy.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  You do realize there are other people than software engineers?
- deregulateMed 5y ago
  Yeah OP is just factually incorrect here. On paper many countries are poorer, and on the ground you can see standard of living is either worse or slightly worse. Sure there is less corruption in EU healthcare, but outside of that sector Americans get better homes, cars, and disposable income.
  - mebassett 5y ago
    OP is correct, actually. I am not sure how you define or measure "standard of living" but common measurements include human development index [1] and quality of life index [2]. by both measurements the US lags behind many european countries. life expectancy in the US has been declining [3]. and the corruption in US healthcare is massive [4], especially considering that it can be three times more expensive for worse outcomes, and because it takes up such a large portion of the economy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev... [2] https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.jsp https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.j... [3] https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l6753 https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l6753 [4] https://mebassett.info/healthcare-ppp.html https://mebassett.info/healthcare-ppp.html PS Am a US citizen who lives in the UK and travels (or did precovid) to the east coast and west coast of the US and to EU capitals regularly.
  - smhost 5y ago
    > besides for healthcare Ignoring people's actual health in exchange for more expensive things seems like a backwards metric.
AlgorithmicTime 5y ago
LOL. Lower class Americans have as much disposable income as middle class Europeans. Our poorest states are as rich as or richer than your average European nation.
amadeuspagel 5y ago
> Reaganomics, discussed in the book, and low taxes in the USA created a lack of investment for the past three decades. In the last three decades, three trillion dollar companies - Amazon, Google and Facebook - were founded in the US. > and China the fastest-growing economy. It's a lot easier to grow fast if you just have to catch up.

doggodaddo78 5y ago

I want to live in a Smart Real Just Free America that has common-sense and isn't divided-and-conquered with intentionally-manufactured consent and ignorance. Fuck hate, fuck PC, fuck classism/snobbery, solve most inequality, fuck for-profit essential human rights strip mining like US healthcare and PPP's, and fuck tribal factions.

jl2718 5y ago

The American identity never had anything to do with economic greatness, military power, equality of outcomes or opportunity, nor even many ‘positive’ rights levied upon others. Put simply, it was supposed to be the one place where you could speak your beliefs freely, and, barring specific harm done to others, nobody could force you to do anything. If that’s not good enough for you, if you need to force other people to do something for you to be satisfied, then don’t be surprised what comes of it.

smhost 5y ago
That's a recent myth about America and doesn't have much to do with actual American history.
- MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
  If the US is not a project of European enlightenment values, what else is it, in your opinion?
  - hef19898 5y ago
    Given that the first North American settlers were basically fugitives from Great Britain, and all other colonies were there to exploit local resources and people, the US was first and foremost a money thing. Also for the Boston tea party, which was as much about independence as it was about taxes. And how enlightened can a nation be that is among the last to abolish slavery, and that had to fight a civil war about that very question.
    - zozbot234 5y ago
      North American settlers were far from uniform historically. Some were first and foremost after money and power (e.g. the first Southern plantation owners were quite unapologetically so). Other "fugitives" were rather more concerned about pursuing various combinations of public-mindedness, radical autonomy and broad-based opportunity. North American settlement was a rather complex story.

dexen 5y ago

Of the four factions identified, only one - Just America - cannot stand having any opposing factions in the same body politic. And now that very faction prescribes its overriding value of equality as way of proselytizing, rather than coexisting with, the other three factions. Not going to happen - the other factions have grown distrustful[1]. [1] https://www.axios.com/media-trust-crisis-2bf0ec1c-00c0-4901-9069-e26b21c283a9.html https://www.axios.com/media-trust-crisis-2bf0ec1c-00c0-4901-...

newacct583 5y ago
Really? I mean, you don't think Real America also has a problem with coexistence? It's all the fault of the hippies? I mean, just trivially: to a Real American, Smart Americans are The Globalist Elites controlling their lives and Just Americans are the domestic terrorists who burned down the country last summer. This kind of rhetoric is everywhere among the Trumpist right, not just among shitposters on the internet but coming out of the mouths of media figures, elected officials and thought leaders.

bobthechef 5y ago

The problem with naivete and idealism is that they actually rob you of agency and the ability to engage reality on reality's terms. The most dangerous thing you can do is to try to immanentize the eschaton. Every time someone tries to straighten humanity by force, the crooked timber snaps, heads roll, and our understanding darkens. So you have to be prudent about the changes you make. Idealists will always be disappointed by anyone who tells them that their vision, even if ostensibly good, is unachievable and its pursuit harmful.

jtms 5y ago
i had never heard the term "immanentize the eschaton" - i looked it up and learned something new - thank you!
aidenn0 5y ago
While I agree that trying to immanetize the eschaton can cause harm, politically the phrase is often used to attack reasonable, incremental improvements.
camgunz 5y ago
I guess I don't super understand this. Is this an argument against coercive policies? Are seatbelt laws bad?

datancoffee 5y ago

I think Russians have the common problem with identity.

ftyers 5y ago

Dunbar-Ortiz has a good take on this, for her the US American identity is basically a European settler/covenant identity, much like the whites in other settler colonies: Australia and South Africa or Rhodesia (as they were). Unlike in Mexico, where the native history and identity formed part of the identity of the identity of the new country "everyone's an Aztec", the real history of the US prior to European invasion and colonisation was marginalised. Even today US American schoolchildren know more about European history than the history of America. Is that settler/covenant identity collapsing? Great, hopefully it will mean that treaties are more likely to be kept and that stolen land can be restored to its original owners.

MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
It is well known that only the US society originated in settlers, and that everywhere else, the local people simply sprung from the bedrock.
inglor_cz 5y ago
"hopefully it will mean that treaties are more likely to be kept and that stolen land can be restored to its original owners" I do not find it particularly likely, especially in case of land that is actually in use. Are Hispanic or Asian landlords more friendly towards Native compensation/restoration claims than whites? Or do they mostly care about their own interests first, just like most landlords do? As far as historical grievances go, slavery is on the top of all conversations, because 40 million Americans actually are descendants of former slaves and are identifiable as such. Natives have either died out, or mixed with the rest of the population so thoroughly that their heritage can no longer be easily discerned. Tribes numbering more than 1000 people are rare, and this corresponds to their relative weight in public discourse.
ameister14 5y ago
>hopefully it will mean that treaties are more likely to be kept I hope that too, Gorsuch started to get the ball rolling there in the Supreme Court I think >stolen land can be restored to its original owners. I don't think that's possible for most stolen land at this point.
5y ago

dkarl 5y ago

I am glad that the author calls out Smart America, or what others call the professional/managerial class, for having the same fundamental ideology as Free America. Smart America is the subset of Free America that is smart enough to recognize that persistent inequality reveals flaws in liberal meritocracy, and they are working to fix it because they love meritocracy. However, I think creating a category of Just America is a cop-out, because virtually all of Smart America thinks of themselves that way. They recognize that judging people around them in meritocratic terms is unjust, and they're working on fixing that. The overlap is huge, as the interviewer pointed out. I don't think it's a useful distinction. I think it would be more useful to draw an ideological line between Smart America, aka liberals who aren't idiots, and people who think liberalism is the problem and can't be saved, who are keen to disprove the end of history.

brighton36 5y ago
They're working on fixing that in a way that explicitly excludes white people, and ignores 'real' properties of IQ.

deleted 5y ago

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helen___keller 5y ago

> The book opens with an essay on the state of the U.S. during the pandemic, and then offers sketches of four different visions of the country: Free America, of Reaganism; Smart America, of Silicon Valley and other professional élites; Real America, of Trumpist reaction; and Just America, of a new generation of leftists. Forgive me for being glib, but all I see is an enlightened centrist decrying the evils of lib left, lib right, auth left, and auth right.

zozbot234 5y ago
One person's "enlightened centrist" is another's "bluepilled normie".

jfengel 5y ago

The United States has been fractious since the beginning. It degenerated into a Civil War that had been brewing since its inception. The Constitution was full of rules designed to grant extra power to those who went on to secede anyway. Nor did the end of the war settle anything. The reconciliation project was quickly put down, and the losers of the war set about memorializing and lionizing their heroes. The violence continued, but quietly. The next century is what we think of as that "American identity", where we were too busy making money and becoming the international superpower to wage large-scale violence on each other. That fractured after World War II, when the people who weren't benefitting from that demanded an end to discrimination. That's been the story for the last half century, as the gradual success of marginalized groups gives that original urge to fracture America a new urge to express their grievance. And that grudge is so old that it's practically impossible to talk about. You can see it in this thread already. They see it as a personal and modern imposition, talking about great old days that simply did not exist -- not for everybody.

zozbot234 5y ago
> ... Nor did the end of the war settle anything. ... You can try to tell that story and it's not without merit, but the logical consequence of it is that reconciliation hadn't even been tried in a meaningful way until the 1980s, when Southern elites finally internalized the outcomes of the 1960s Civil Rights era and set out trying to build a new foundation for economic freedom and development, that could ultimately benefit the winners and losers of that conflict alike. We're still very early in that project, just like we're early in the project of reducing and ultimately ending discrimination of marginalized groups. These endeavors should ultimately be seen as complementary, not oppositional. But the divisive politics we're all too familiar with seems to have very little room for such a nuanced POV.
- jfengel 5y ago
  It's getting off to a bumpy start. It corresponds to the start of the Southern Strategy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy Despite the consistency I was describing, the political map changed radically during that time. The electoral map today looks awfully reminiscent of 1860, but between then and now it was completely different. The Civil Rights era prompted a return to Civil War geographic lines, albeit with the parties flipped. Most prominently, a lot of Southern Democrats switched parties at exactly the time frame you mention, precisely to avoid being part of that reconciliation. There may ultimately be a reconciliation and a win-win scenario, but it's not going quietly. There's a lot of benefit to stoking those very old grievances.

samuelizdat 5y ago

This article is funny because the author comes from a place that has no problem with identity when it comes to Palestinians. Curious!