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If you are a fan of Alexis DeTocqueville's "Democracy in America" you probably realize that he left off the very ending of that book title, "Democracy in the Am

If you are a fan of Alexis DeTocqueville's "Democracy in America" you probably realize that he left off the very ending of that book title, "Democracy in the American Midwest" !! A lot of the really positive things he saw were seen among hardworking people of the MidWestern USA. It's ironic that Ohio was so advanced because it used to be the USA's Silicon Valley (birthplace of American Aviation and many other inventions) but now has fallen economically the most among Midwestern states ... It's become the most Republican state now ... Coincidence? I think not! I've noticed an alarming number of torturing crimes come from Ohio lately, too, thankfully it has displaced California which had a terrifying reputation after the Manson murders of the late 1960s!

jpadkins 4y ago
> ... It's become the most Republican state now This is easily verifiable as false, so it makes the rest of your comment suspect. https://wisevoter.com/state-rankings/most-republican-states/ https://wisevoter.com/state-rankings/most-republican-states/
- fortissimohn 4y ago
  Based on the rest of that sentence you quoted, it is the most among midwestern states.
  - jpadkins 4y ago
    thanks, that wasn't clear at all. But even among Midwest states, that is not true. (KS, MO, SD, ND, NE are all more republican) https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/midwest.htm https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/midwest.htm
rayiner 4y ago
I’m a huge fan of "Democracy in America. But you’re missing a critical point. By 1830 when de Tocqueville was writing, the seeds of the Republican Party were already sown in the Midwest. Ohio was (essentially) Republican then for the same reason it’s Republican now: it’s a culturally and religiously homogenous place. And it’s also the same reason it was an egalitarian democracy—high social trust and social consensus. The Midwest is the closest America has ever come to the egalitarian socialism of Northern Europe, which is similarly homogeneous. By contrast, we have never seen that model of Midwestern democracy replicated in a multicultural society. When you have these different groups, you lose the social trust, you lose the consensus. You end up needing elites and top-down hierarchy to mediate those disparate groups. Contrast say Minnesota with New York. Or consider the history of machine and ethnic politics in Chicago, all the way up to the recent election.
- chambers 4y ago
  You may find this diagram on Page 2 of this paper interesting: https://dial.uclouvain.be/pr/boreal/object/boreal%3A211443/datastream/PDF_01/view https://dial.uclouvain.be/pr/boreal/object/boreal%3A211443/d... It theorizes how to build social trust, without top-down hierarchy / constant mediation, through the cultivation of strong institutions and a common identity. It's an interesting premise that opposes progressive ideology. However, I have yet to read the books it references, nor have I examined the history behind its findings: https://www.amazon.com/Strains-Commitment-Political-Solidarity-Societies/dp/0198795459 https://www.amazon.com/Strains-Commitment-Political-Solidari...
  - Slava_Propanei 4y ago
    [dead]
- throwawaylinux 4y ago
  A simple and obvious fact that has an incredible explanatory power in understanding the motivations and actions of the ruling class.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  Massachusetts was remarkably homogeneous for the first 100yr and they ran the kind of authoritarian theocracy that the Taliban would be proud of. I guess they voted for it in the same way that there are plenty of dictators that always win an overwhelming vote but it kind of begs the question what is democracy? Is it possible to consider a society in which the elites (clergy rather than landowners in this case) tell the peasants how to think and what to think and the peasants then turn around and vote for "yes we'd like more please" a democracy? Can it really be a democracy if the system all but precludes bottom up grassroots change? I think such a society is not a democracy. It's just a well run theocracy. It only "works" so long as the elite don't become out of touch and do things to run it all into the ground.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    I agree with your first point, but I think the Massachusetts Bay colony is actually a model of democracy. It was an authoritarian theocracy, but not a top-down one. It was built on distributed social consensus between autonomous congregations, a structure that survives to some extent to this day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congregationalist_polity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congregationalist_polity And it was a vehicle for “grassroots change.” They came over here and built exactly the kind of society the people wanted. Maybe it’s not the kind of society you’d want, but it’s the kind they wanted. The Taliban analogy is interesting. I think democratic theocracy would have been a much better model for our nation building efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan than the secular liberal democracy we tried to impose on those countries.
JKCalhoun 4y ago
Agriculture in general was Big Tech at the opening of the 20th Century.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  I think manufacturing is more similar to big tech (it WAS tech) in both type and impact.
  - jcoder 4y ago
    > it WAS tech That’s a pretty small view of “tech”. Development of repeatable agricultural practices for predictable yield is absolutely a technological accomplishment (and not just because there were machines involved)
nonethewiser 4y ago
By what measure has Ohio fallen more than other midwestern states? I suspect it ranks better than average compared to most midwestern states in terms of health, income, education, etc.
- iaseiadit 4y ago
  I was curious and checked. Looks like it consistently ranks in the bottom half of the twelve midwestern states: Life expectancy: #10 of 12 GDP per capita: #8 Median household income: #10 Literacy rate: #9 High school graduation rate: #9 Minnesota, North Dakota, and Nebraska rank highest by most measures.

jpadkins 4y ago

> ... It's become the most Republican state now This is easily verifiable as false, so it makes the rest of your comment suspect. https://wisevoter.com/state-rankings/most-republican-states/ https://wisevoter.com/state-rankings/most-republican-states/

fortissimohn 4y ago
Based on the rest of that sentence you quoted, it is the most among midwestern states.
- jpadkins 4y ago
  thanks, that wasn't clear at all. But even among Midwest states, that is not true. (KS, MO, SD, ND, NE are all more republican) https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/midwest.htm https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/midwest.htm

rayiner 4y ago

I’m a huge fan of "Democracy in America. But you’re missing a critical point. By 1830 when de Tocqueville was writing, the seeds of the Republican Party were already sown in the Midwest. Ohio was (essentially) Republican then for the same reason it’s Republican now: it’s a culturally and religiously homogenous place. And it’s also the same reason it was an egalitarian democracy—high social trust and social consensus. The Midwest is the closest America has ever come to the egalitarian socialism of Northern Europe, which is similarly homogeneous. By contrast, we have never seen that model of Midwestern democracy replicated in a multicultural society. When you have these different groups, you lose the social trust, you lose the consensus. You end up needing elites and top-down hierarchy to mediate those disparate groups. Contrast say Minnesota with New York. Or consider the history of machine and ethnic politics in Chicago, all the way up to the recent election.

chambers 4y ago
You may find this diagram on Page 2 of this paper interesting: https://dial.uclouvain.be/pr/boreal/object/boreal%3A211443/datastream/PDF_01/view https://dial.uclouvain.be/pr/boreal/object/boreal%3A211443/d... It theorizes how to build social trust, without top-down hierarchy / constant mediation, through the cultivation of strong institutions and a common identity. It's an interesting premise that opposes progressive ideology. However, I have yet to read the books it references, nor have I examined the history behind its findings: https://www.amazon.com/Strains-Commitment-Political-Solidarity-Societies/dp/0198795459 https://www.amazon.com/Strains-Commitment-Political-Solidari...
- Slava_Propanei 4y ago
  [dead]
throwawaylinux 4y ago
A simple and obvious fact that has an incredible explanatory power in understanding the motivations and actions of the ruling class.
dsfyu404ed 4y ago
Massachusetts was remarkably homogeneous for the first 100yr and they ran the kind of authoritarian theocracy that the Taliban would be proud of. I guess they voted for it in the same way that there are plenty of dictators that always win an overwhelming vote but it kind of begs the question what is democracy? Is it possible to consider a society in which the elites (clergy rather than landowners in this case) tell the peasants how to think and what to think and the peasants then turn around and vote for "yes we'd like more please" a democracy? Can it really be a democracy if the system all but precludes bottom up grassroots change? I think such a society is not a democracy. It's just a well run theocracy. It only "works" so long as the elite don't become out of touch and do things to run it all into the ground.
- rayiner 4y ago
  I agree with your first point, but I think the Massachusetts Bay colony is actually a model of democracy. It was an authoritarian theocracy, but not a top-down one. It was built on distributed social consensus between autonomous congregations, a structure that survives to some extent to this day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congregationalist_polity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congregationalist_polity And it was a vehicle for “grassroots change.” They came over here and built exactly the kind of society the people wanted. Maybe it’s not the kind of society you’d want, but it’s the kind they wanted. The Taliban analogy is interesting. I think democratic theocracy would have been a much better model for our nation building efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan than the secular liberal democracy we tried to impose on those countries.

JKCalhoun 4y ago

Agriculture in general was Big Tech at the opening of the 20th Century.

nonethewiser 4y ago
I think manufacturing is more similar to big tech (it WAS tech) in both type and impact.
- jcoder 4y ago
  > it WAS tech That’s a pretty small view of “tech”. Development of repeatable agricultural practices for predictable yield is absolutely a technological accomplishment (and not just because there were machines involved)

nonethewiser 4y ago

By what measure has Ohio fallen more than other midwestern states? I suspect it ranks better than average compared to most midwestern states in terms of health, income, education, etc.

iaseiadit 4y ago
I was curious and checked. Looks like it consistently ranks in the bottom half of the twelve midwestern states: Life expectancy: #10 of 12 GDP per capita: #8 Median household income: #10 Literacy rate: #9 High school graduation rate: #9 Minnesota, North Dakota, and Nebraska rank highest by most measures.