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> A nation has to work out its own problems for itself. This point being raised, it is time for the US to spend money on education to support its own democracy

> A nation has to work out its own problems for itself. This point being raised, it is time for the US to spend money on education to support its own democracy.

rjzzleep 5y ago
One could argue that the seeds of destruction are so far entrenched, that there might only be 1-3 cycles left before the destruction of its own democracy is ensured. The Iranian clerical leadership was rejoicing on twitter about Trumps election claims and January 6th. This has also been cannonfodder for the Chinese leadership and countless other countries. I'd say the US elites are still somewhat in denial of what actually happened and that it didn't happen in a vacuum, but was years if not decades in the making. Remember that Bill Barr had the unitary executive theory in mind long before Trump came into power, but previous Republican leadership considered it too radical for the American public to accept. Those times have changed...
- markus_zhang 5y ago
  US elites mostly only care about the trough. They know it but apres moi le deluge is the silent motto of many. The Democratic is no radical different from he Republicans, they simply have a nicer face.
- rayiner 5y ago
  > Remember that Bill Barr had the unitary executive theory in mind long before Trump came into power, but previous Republican leadership considered it too radical for the American public to accept. The unitary executive dates back to the Federalists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory#Adoption_of_constitutional_provisions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory#Adopt.... You're invoking an anachronism--it wasn't until the 20th century that we even got the idea of "independent" bureaucrats insulated from accountability to the elected President. George Washington's original cabinet consisted of just four members: Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of War Henry Knox, and Attorney General Edmund Randolph. All of those were plainly intended to be subordinate to Washington as the President.
  - mc32 5y ago
    As recently as JFK we had Bobby Kennedy as AG (as competent as he was). Imagine the heart attacks people would have today if Biden tried putting a relative in as AG, or if Trump had tried the same.
    - rgbrenner 5y ago
      What JFK (and others) did is why Congress passed an anti-nepotism law ( 5 U.S.C. § 3110) in 1967.
markus_zhang 5y ago
Nowadays it's already difficult if not impossible. In the age of big data and open manipulation, there is zero incentive for the politicians, corporations and media to promote independent thought for ordinary people, or to put more precisely only independent thoughts that benefit their agendas. The same goes to millions of middle class employees of those entities. They might want to teach independent thoughts to their own kids but other than that they have zero incentive to promote independent thoughts to their customers because it's profit and power that feeds their family. I really don't see an easy way out of this downward spiral.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
  "They might want to teach independent thoughts to their own kids but other than that they have zero incentive to promote independent thoughts to their customers because it's profit and power that feeds their family." This point is about the only bright spot in an otherwise grim perspective. Just about everyone, and that appears to include Putin, wants to do well by their kids education-wise. The rest can fuck off and die, but the self-preservation in the sense of preserving genes by teaching the ability to think critically is important enough that at least there is a chance that spiral will hit a bump here and there.
  - fighterpilot 5y ago
    That's right. I don't have existential dread about Putin or Xi. They want total power, wealth and stability. They're corrupt pragmatists, not zealots who are going to die in a nuclear Armageddon. I fear the ideologically committed madman much more.
    - Yoric 5y ago
      You have a point. However, they are also empire builders whose agenda requires weakening the power, wealth and stability of every entity that they consider targets and/or competitor. As someone who lives in one such entity, I consider this threatening. Not glorious-nuclear-self-destruction dreadful, but still potentially life-threatening.
rayiner 5y ago
The U.S. spends among the most on education of any developed country, both in absolute terms and a percentage of GDP. Our education spending is over 6% of GDP: https://waterpedia.wiki/image/education-spending-share-gdp-selected-countries-2015.aGqj https://waterpedia.wiki/image/education-spending-share-gdp-s.... All of the people involved in these foreign war debacles were highly pedigreed. (Fun fact: the President of Afghanistan, who fled Kabul yesterday, is an Ivy League-educated professor who "literally wrote the book on fixing failed states.") The education, in fact, the problem. Universities is where people learn hare-brained ideas like Wilsonianism. It's where people learn to view government as a set of laws and policies and boxes on org charts, rather than the manifestation of the culture and political tradition of people. Coming from a traditional Muslim country ourselves, my family knew in 2001 that nation building in Afghanistan was an absurd idea. Our own country has a thousand-year head start on Afghanistan in terms of civilization, and has still struggled with democracy. It's not in the people. But Americans are so far separated from their culture--that is to say, their village won't die of starvation if they indulge in cultural experimentation--they can't even locate the wellspring of democracy in culture and traditions.
- mc32 5y ago
  The cultural aspect is critical and people have overlooked in many places. The Optimism for Russia after the fall of the USSR, Ukraine and Afghanistan, Libya, etc. Places with no democratic foundation or tradition but plagued by corruption. It needs to grow over decades organically for the people to get used to the idea and the institutions, for example, like in Hong-Kong. Singapore is another example and they yet don't have completely open democracy. The ground must be fertile, as they say in allegorical terms, for democracy to take root. You can't impose it and then wish it to work and have it work. You can't throw money at it (as AF has shown us). It's a messy process. Sometimes, like Panama, you have the right accidents happen and it works --but at least then they could rely on the legacy of Marti (as they were part of Columbia during independence from Spain) and they had the US administer the Canal Zone till '00, I believe.
  - rayiner 5y ago
    In Bangladesh, we have had real elections, leaving aside the the assassinations and that one military dictatorship. But we're back to one-party rule as the leader of the opposition party has been jailed. And that's after having 800+ years of civilization under the Sultanates and 200 years under Britain. It's not economics--our PPP GDP per capita is about what the U.S. was at in the late 19th century (at which point it had been a successful multi-party democracy for 70-80 years).

> A nation has to work out its own problems for itself. This point being raised, it is time for the US to spend money on education to support its own democracy.

rjzzleep 5y ago

One could argue that the seeds of destruction are so far entrenched, that there might only be 1-3 cycles left before the destruction of its own democracy is ensured. The Iranian clerical leadership was rejoicing on twitter about Trumps election claims and January 6th. This has also been cannonfodder for the Chinese leadership and countless other countries. I'd say the US elites are still somewhat in denial of what actually happened and that it didn't happen in a vacuum, but was years if not decades in the making. Remember that Bill Barr had the unitary executive theory in mind long before Trump came into power, but previous Republican leadership considered it too radical for the American public to accept. Those times have changed...

markus_zhang 5y ago
US elites mostly only care about the trough. They know it but apres moi le deluge is the silent motto of many. The Democratic is no radical different from he Republicans, they simply have a nicer face.
rayiner 5y ago
> Remember that Bill Barr had the unitary executive theory in mind long before Trump came into power, but previous Republican leadership considered it too radical for the American public to accept. The unitary executive dates back to the Federalists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory#Adoption_of_constitutional_provisions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory#Adopt.... You're invoking an anachronism--it wasn't until the 20th century that we even got the idea of "independent" bureaucrats insulated from accountability to the elected President. George Washington's original cabinet consisted of just four members: Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of War Henry Knox, and Attorney General Edmund Randolph. All of those were plainly intended to be subordinate to Washington as the President.
- mc32 5y ago
  As recently as JFK we had Bobby Kennedy as AG (as competent as he was). Imagine the heart attacks people would have today if Biden tried putting a relative in as AG, or if Trump had tried the same.
  - rgbrenner 5y ago
    What JFK (and others) did is why Congress passed an anti-nepotism law ( 5 U.S.C. § 3110) in 1967.

markus_zhang 5y ago

Nowadays it's already difficult if not impossible. In the age of big data and open manipulation, there is zero incentive for the politicians, corporations and media to promote independent thought for ordinary people, or to put more precisely only independent thoughts that benefit their agendas. The same goes to millions of middle class employees of those entities. They might want to teach independent thoughts to their own kids but other than that they have zero incentive to promote independent thoughts to their customers because it's profit and power that feeds their family. I really don't see an easy way out of this downward spiral.

A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
"They might want to teach independent thoughts to their own kids but other than that they have zero incentive to promote independent thoughts to their customers because it's profit and power that feeds their family." This point is about the only bright spot in an otherwise grim perspective. Just about everyone, and that appears to include Putin, wants to do well by their kids education-wise. The rest can fuck off and die, but the self-preservation in the sense of preserving genes by teaching the ability to think critically is important enough that at least there is a chance that spiral will hit a bump here and there.
- fighterpilot 5y ago
  That's right. I don't have existential dread about Putin or Xi. They want total power, wealth and stability. They're corrupt pragmatists, not zealots who are going to die in a nuclear Armageddon. I fear the ideologically committed madman much more.
  - Yoric 5y ago
    You have a point. However, they are also empire builders whose agenda requires weakening the power, wealth and stability of every entity that they consider targets and/or competitor. As someone who lives in one such entity, I consider this threatening. Not glorious-nuclear-self-destruction dreadful, but still potentially life-threatening.

rayiner 5y ago

The U.S. spends among the most on education of any developed country, both in absolute terms and a percentage of GDP. Our education spending is over 6% of GDP: https://waterpedia.wiki/image/education-spending-share-gdp-selected-countries-2015.aGqj https://waterpedia.wiki/image/education-spending-share-gdp-s.... All of the people involved in these foreign war debacles were highly pedigreed. (Fun fact: the President of Afghanistan, who fled Kabul yesterday, is an Ivy League-educated professor who "literally wrote the book on fixing failed states.") The education, in fact, the problem. Universities is where people learn hare-brained ideas like Wilsonianism. It's where people learn to view government as a set of laws and policies and boxes on org charts, rather than the manifestation of the culture and political tradition of people. Coming from a traditional Muslim country ourselves, my family knew in 2001 that nation building in Afghanistan was an absurd idea. Our own country has a thousand-year head start on Afghanistan in terms of civilization, and has still struggled with democracy. It's not in the people. But Americans are so far separated from their culture--that is to say, their village won't die of starvation if they indulge in cultural experimentation--they can't even locate the wellspring of democracy in culture and traditions.

mc32 5y ago
The cultural aspect is critical and people have overlooked in many places. The Optimism for Russia after the fall of the USSR, Ukraine and Afghanistan, Libya, etc. Places with no democratic foundation or tradition but plagued by corruption. It needs to grow over decades organically for the people to get used to the idea and the institutions, for example, like in Hong-Kong. Singapore is another example and they yet don't have completely open democracy. The ground must be fertile, as they say in allegorical terms, for democracy to take root. You can't impose it and then wish it to work and have it work. You can't throw money at it (as AF has shown us). It's a messy process. Sometimes, like Panama, you have the right accidents happen and it works --but at least then they could rely on the legacy of Marti (as they were part of Columbia during independence from Spain) and they had the US administer the Canal Zone till '00, I believe.
- rayiner 5y ago
  In Bangladesh, we have had real elections, leaving aside the the assassinations and that one military dictatorship. But we're back to one-party rule as the leader of the opposition party has been jailed. And that's after having 800+ years of civilization under the Sultanates and 200 years under Britain. It's not economics--our PPP GDP per capita is about what the U.S. was at in the late 19th century (at which point it had been a successful multi-party democracy for 70-80 years).