Wellsy wrote:One sympathetic take I do find appealing is that America is huge. States are the size of nations and it takes hours to travel across a lot of them. A person in the South West has little understanding of life on the North East and they can't pop over easily unless they are of a few who can afford to travel and access time off to do so.
So I think with the poor working conditions along with a nation so huge it's harder to know itself than it might be to go up and down a small island like England make it very insular.
I do think its military does give it the tendency to use military force as an answer to problems that often require or could use greater finesse. One thing the British had even while they did use military might was a lot of tricky diplomatic maneuvers, hence the name the perfidious Albion.
The bad school education is a complex problem in itself based in funding streams that reinforce a status quo of economic disparities with a fixation on local property taxes meaning wealthy families fund and go to wealthy schools and keep the poors away from them. There is also the conservative attack on education Arizona stands as a prime example of the pursuit of federal dollars funnelled through charter schools under the guise of parental choice but strangling public education of it's funding. Basically sidestepping all sorts of requirements for federal money and even a breakdown of the whole separation of state and church in some cases that is so valorized by some.
I do think there is something to be said of becoming a super power and empire that makes one a fool because in valorizing their own sense of greatness they do tend to see themselves above others and not show curiosity, they aren't compelled to really consider others in detail other than from their perceived desires and fears. Of course, many who have to actually deal carefully with other nations professionally aren't so insular, but many do adopt arrogance from ignorance.
But this goes back to why are they ignorant? Because they are insulated themselves from their own nation. I live in a small middle of nowhere town and the poverty is so intense that I know there are kids here who never left the small town to go 2 hours to the closest largest city. That itself doesn't give you much cultural exchange.
Travel undoes a lot but the preconditions for it need to be there not only structurally in employment and the sort but culturally.
I find a compelling answer for why Australians travel so much is in part our history of always feeling that we are culturally insignificant. We don't imagine ourselves great and our leaders themselves over bend over backwards to follow whatever naval empire there is. I say that they truly are lap dogs in that they don't have a spine to assert things of their own interest but just follow the line overseas whether that is England or now America. People in Australia are still attached to the commonwealth and the monarch even while England barely gives Australia a passing thought.
Even the US barely has a concept of Australia beyond some of our actors for the most part.
Wellsy, one learns a lot from many nations. Both small nations and big ones. The issue with Empires is the silencing of voices that are a deliberate action because whoever controls communications and mass media often sees that voice as irrelevant or insignificant.
I am very surprised that many Americans had no idea which Indigenous tribe occupied the land of their state
before the English arrived in the 17th century. I am reading a book on the History of Mexico. It is fascinating. They start with the Ice Age...the Bering strait or land bridge and take it from there. For Mexico the first Mexicans were here for a hundred thousand years...occupying the land and creating a culture. It does not start in 1521 when Hernán Cortés first arrives in Tenotchitlán (Mexico City or the Valley of Mexico). It discusses the many Indian civvies that were there before the Aztec. Many people do not know that the Aztecs were newcomers to the Valley of Mexico and not well established there. Many did not know that Mexico City had 250,000 or more people occupying that valley and lake when many European capital cities were much smaller in population.
It was a North American Indian Civilization. Not found in the USA and only found again in the Southern American continent with the Incan Empire. The Peruvians, Bolivians, etc.
I wish there were more education regarding diversity.
Wellsy, colonial mentality holds on to the mentality of the people who were colonized. Australia was a penal colony for the English crown and many Irish, Scottish, English and Welsh were sent there to work or be punished to live and work in Australia.
Many people think they have a special relationship with the Mother Country. They do in terms of language and use of language. But once they politically are separated and become independent? They should explore that freedom and give work and time to their own endemically important unique characteristics.
The USA I find really gives history short shrift. And unfortunately, you can't do that and think you will make decent political or culturally relevant decisions in the present and in the future.
What the USA is good at is innovation. Not being restricted by old traditional ways of doing things. They always innovate or try to improve what already existed.
But, they should realize that the strength of the USA for me? Is having people from every culture and nationality in the world present in the USA, and that diversity of thought can be a fantastic asset. Only if it is valued properly. You got to allow the voices of people who are not the supposed English rooted to have power and a voice. Bring them in and give them power. Make them a part of it all.
Too many worry about newcomers and how they might shape American society negatively. That only happens to people trapped in class consciousness and or racism. And that is fear. It is all fear based Wellsy.
And being trapped by fear is never a good thing. Ever.
For someone criticising ignorance, I was rather surprised that he seemed to be confusing, "being convicted" with "having conviction".
- By Rancid
- By Robert Urbanek
- By litwin