[HN Gopher] American Culture Ate the World
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American Culture Ate the World
Author : bryanrasmussen
Score : 17 points
Date : 2022-03-26 19:34 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newrepublic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newrepublic.com)
| just_steve_h wrote:
| This article includes some essential details that are largely
| unknown to most readers: the US government not only severely
| restricted the ability of foreigners to even enter the United
| States based on ideology and national origin; they also severely
| restricted the ability of Americans to LEAVE THEIR OWN COUNTRY,
| again based upon ideology and "race" (see the case of the Black
| American journalist whose passport was revoked because he dared
| to report from Cuba!)
|
| The greatest triumph of the American system of doctrinal
| management has been the inculcation of the bedrock belief that
| "we live in a free society." We do not, and we never have. It
| remains a worthy goal; many of those fighting to realize it
| remain criminalized, ostracized, and imprisoned.
|
| Would a "free" country jail its citizens at a rate FIVE TIMES
| HIGHER than the other countries of the world?
|
| Would a "free" country maintain police forces in every major city
| that are larger and more well-equipped than most national armies
| worldwide?
|
| If one were so inclined, one might wonder how these tendencies
| manifest in one's professional, social, and personal spheres.
|
| Or one might argued about the advantages of higher-bandwidth
| system RAM vs faster SSD's... or vi vs emacs...
| rhexs wrote:
| Americans aren't free because we enforce borders? What?
| gruez wrote:
| >This article includes some essential details that are largely
| unknown to most readers: the US government not only severely
| restricted the ability of foreigners to even enter the United
| States based on ideology and national origin
|
| Is there a country in the world that _doesn 't_ do this? I
| understand that some people want some sort of borderless
| society, but support for this is basically a fringe belief in
| every country.
|
| >they also severely restricted the ability of Americans to
| LEAVE THEIR OWN COUNTRY, again based upon ideology and "race"
| (see the case of the Black American journalist whose passport
| was revoked because he dared to report from Cuba!)
|
| It's worth noting that the courts have ruled that such
| restrictions were unlawful. Given that, it seems like the
| system was working as expected?
|
| >The greatest triumph of the American system of doctrinal
| management has been the inculcation of the bedrock belief that
| "we live in a free society." We do not, and we never have.
|
| The problem with this argument is that it hinges on the
| definition of "free society", and therefore any discussion over
| it is inevitably going to end up arguing over what "free
| society" means. It's trivial to make the same statement about
| other country that's allegedly a "free society". eg.
|
| "Sweden is a free society."
|
| "Actually no, how can you even claim that? They have hate
| speech laws which severely limit your ability to make
| unorthodox views on race/gender. Only the US (which has no hate
| speech laws) is a free society!"
|
| >Would a "free" country jail its citizens at a rate FIVE TIMES
| HIGHER than the other countries of the world?
|
| Perhaps, depending on how strongly it feels about crime. For
| instance, Taiwan has incarceration rate that's roughly twice of
| China. Does that mean it's not a free country? Or is a 2x
| factor small enough to let slide?
|
| >Would a "free" country maintain police forces in every major
| city that are larger and more well-equipped than most national
| armies worldwide?
|
| That sounds surprising until you realize that:
|
| 1. many metrics relating to size follow a pareto distribution,
| so not surprising at all that "major cities" in the US exceed
| the median country in some metric. For instance, if we look at
| GDP, we see that the median "country/territory"[1] has a gdp of
| 26.461 billion. If we compare that to data from the BEA[2], we
| see that there's a whopping 113 metropolitan statistical areas
| that exceed the median "country/territory" GDP.
|
| 2. "national armies" tend to be smaller than "police officers"
| in most countries, which make the criteria even easier to
| fulfill.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
|
| [2] https://www.bea.gov/data/gdp/gdp-county-metro-and-other-
| area...
|
| [3]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
|
| [4]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...
| badrabbit wrote:
| You have good points but what is freedom and who is free? Most
| minorities don't think "we live in a free society" in this same
| sense.
|
| Relatively speaking, there maybe other countries with better
| freedom to specific groups but America is still the best place
| to be if the freedom you want is freedom to make a lot of
| money.
|
| You are confusing the animosity between social groups with lack
| of freedom. The incarceration rate, much like the gun ownership
| rate is a direct result of americans using their freedom to
| have their elected officials pass specific laws. Being tough on
| crime is still one of the best policies a politician can
| advertise in a campaign because that's what people want to
| hear. The free people use their free ballots to make sure
| miniroities are kept in check by an army of cops enganged in a
| "war on drugs".
|
| This is freedom. It includes freedom of the majority to
| restrict the freedom of the minority. All of the problems you
| mentioned are caused by freedom, not by oppressive forces that
| disregard freedom.
|
| Freedom in america means political participation. No one has
| protests as much as americans or vote at the scale of america
| (except maybe india). You can free all the prisoners and
| disband all the cops if enough americans agree.
|
| It's not lack of freedom but quite the opposite, the people,
| your neighbors excercising their freedoms to an unfortunate
| end.
|
| Lack of freedom would be wanting to enact changes with popular
| support but being unable to.
| throwaway684936 wrote:
| > Lack of freedom would be wanting to enact changes with
| popular support but being unable to.
|
| You mean like how the correlation between public support for
| a policy and the probability of that policy becoming law is
| [?]0?[1][2]
|
| [1]: https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilen
| s/fi...
|
| [2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-
| cage/wp/2014/04/0...
| Gunax wrote:
| Yes to both. If I cannot walk down my street in the evening, I
| am not free. We are lacking in prisons.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Is there any evidence that Americans are particularly ignorant of
| the world relative to other nationalities?
| Gunax wrote:
| I suspect so, but these questions are often defined more by the
| type of knowledge they would ask.
|
| Canadians tease Americans for not knowing Canada, but that's an
| unequal comparison. Of course Canadians know more about America
| than Americans do about Canada. They hear about American news
| and elections and watch American movies. Ask canadians and
| americans about Uruguay or Mali and they probably know about
| the same.
|
| It's not that Americans are dumb or don't care--they are just
| at the center of the world.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| in my opinion the evidence is anecdotal from mainly Europeans,
| the problem there is that Europeans are perhaps more aware of
| other parts of at least Europe than most nationalities are of
| their local environment. So the ignorance of Americans is a
| source of humor.
|
| This however is just a surmise, based on some observation.
|
| The other evidence is that Americans generally know very little
| of geography, it's a big thing in countries I've visited to
| laugh about, although given that when I say I lived in Utah in
| the U.S a lot of years and the geographically cognizant Dane
| will sagely say "oh, the middle of the country" I'm not sure
| how much to value that opinion either.
|
| At any rate I don't much value the fact that people can tell
| you what the capital of Ethiopia is or where Andorra is because
| these bits of trivia don't actually tell you anything
| significant about the countries under discussion. It's true,
| not knowing these things you are extremely unlikely to know
| anything worth knowing about the region under discussion, but
| on the other hand it's been my experience that knowing them you
| somehow think you do know significantly more about the region
| than someone who does not know whatever trivia is the subject.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| Europeans tend to be fairy elitist about their own history
| and culture.
|
| Specific to the example that you brought up, why is knowledge
| of Andorra or any of the other European micro states any more
| geographically important than knowledge of US States?
| Anecdotally, Europeans will respond that those are
| _countries_, yet those realistically only exist due to the
| quirks of European political history, one can hardly hold up
| Lichtenstein as the geopolitical equal to California, yet in
| discussions with Europeans it seems that knowledge of its
| existence is somehow superior.
| readonthegoapp wrote:
| A _free_ world... dedicated to free information flows.
|
| Meanwhile, you can't even get AJE on cable in the US
| gruez wrote:
| I'm presuming that by "AJE", you're talking about Al Jazeera
| English.
|
| 1. but you can get it over internet? I don't see why it not
| being available on cable is indicative of "freedom" (ie.
| government oppression)
|
| 2. according to wikipedia the only countries that have it "on
| cable" are: UK, New Zealand, Afghanistan, Sub-Saharan Africa,
| and Sweden. I guess every other country not on that list are
| not "dedicated to free information flows" by your criteria?
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| When I go to the gym I pass a McDonald's drive in. Feel a bit
| annoyed we are letting our minds and bodies be poisoned by
| American culture but they are all doing it voluntarily. It is
| like a junkie blaming his drug dealer for the addiction.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Does his drug dealer bear some responsibility? Courts would
| charge him with committing crimes causing harm to the people
| they sell to.
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(page generated 2022-03-26 23:02 UTC)