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> I don’t care about out there. I care about in here There's your misunderstanding. Our enviable lifestyles in here are largely supported by our foreign relati

• rayiner 2y ago
  > Our enviable lifestyles in here are largely supported by our foreign relations out there - in this context, that exporting of culture such that elites from other cultures still strive to send their kids to college in the United States! Seems unlikely, given that the U.S. has been among the per-capita richest countries in the world for almost its entire existence, including when we almost shut down immigration completely for almost half the 20th century. But I know we don’t see eye to eye about “soft power.” > As far as the specifics of culture, the example of the overemphasis on book learning is a bit rich in the context of our homegrown MBAs pathological love for living out Goodhart's law. I've certainly encountered my share of foreigners over reliant on rote memorization. The thing is as long as they stay that way, they don't get far in America - and this is obvious to their fellow students. They're not becoming members of the "elite professional class", and nobody is following their tack thinking it's a good way to learn. I’m talking about something more fundamental than that, which is a fundamental deference to the wisdom of the common man. To use an example, Anglo-American tradition not only gave us jury trials, but the general attitude that ordinary people are capable of understanding and resolving sophisticated disputes. The vast majority of Asians I’ve encountered in America, by contrast, have traditional asian deference for academic knowledge and academic credentials. To use another example, consider Nixon’s Checkers speech: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-senator-nixon-the-american-people-the-checkers-speech https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-senator-ni.... I was thinking about this today and realized that my parents wouldn’t really get the speech. They’d understand the gist, but they wouldn’t really understand it the way it was meant to be understood, because it invoked various WASP norms that are alien to them. - He mentions growing up in modest circumstances, which is valued in WASP culture but looked down upon in desi culture. - He mentions military service, which is distinctly valued in WASP culture and not valued in desi culture. - He says his wife “doesn’t have a mink coat,” but “she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat.” My parents would understand this to mean he’s saying he didn’t accept illicit money to buy a mink coat. Which isn’t really what he meant—he was a private practice lawyer he could’ve afforded to legitimately buy his wife a mink coat. He was conveying that they’re not *the kind of people who wear mink coats—an appeal to WASP austerity that is alien to desi culture. The Checkers speech was, of course, meant to be understood in substance as well as subtext by the American public at large. It’s not clear to me that would be true today.
  • mindslight 2y ago
    > unlikely, given that the U.S. has been among the per-capita richest countries in the world for almost its entire existence Sure, but currently the wealth of the US depends on maintaining the world's reserve currency. As I said, the reliance on international interdependence could be untangled, but it would require a team of surgeons rather than a gang of butchers. The gang of butchers will merely destroy what we do have, leaving us with a broken society. As far as the general argument about culture, I was using an example somewhere in the realm of what you were talking about to demonstrate how foreign cultures don't automatically inject themselves into US culture. You're straight up ignoring the many hurdles between being a college student and becoming a member of the "US elite". I will also point out (and I generally hate arguments that start this way, but you dredged up the context), that WASP culture was most certainly not the only culture in the US at the time. So the appeal wasn't to the "American public at large" but rather to the subset that "mattered" to swing votes - the idea of some singular overarching culture was an illusion promulgated by broadcast mass media, and that illusion has now been shattered. That sea change has certainly upset a lot of people, but you can't claim it resulted from something as simple as student visas.
    • hollerith 2y ago
      >Sure, but currently the wealth of the US depends on maintaining the world's reserve currency. Where does this bizarre belief come from? I'm not saying that the US does not benefit from the fact that business all over the world is denominated in US dollars, but that is a far cry from the assertion that US wealth depends on that fact: the US is wealthy for many reasons in addition to that fact. It seems more likely to me that the fact that the US was so rich and continues to be so rich caused businesspeople all over the world to choose to do their transaction in US dollars. In general, among the countries of the world, the US is among the least dependent on other countries for its continued economic prosperity. (Other relatively independent countries are Argentina, France and most of SE Asia. Countries highly dependent on other countries for their continued economic prosperity include China, Germany and most of the third world.)
      • 2y ago
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