United States Politics Thread 46

[zompist]

Nort, believe me, you chose the wrong place to parade your bigotry today.

You have a week off. Try this shit again and you're gone for good.

[zompist]

If it's not clear, Nort is banned for a week. What he's peddling is replacement theory, a staple of white supremacy. We're not having that shit here. And don't feed the troll.

[bradrn]

If it's not clear, Nort is banned for a week. What he's peddling is replacement theory, a staple of white supremacy. We're not having that shit here. And don't feed the troll.

Thank you.

(Is it possible to ban people from one subforum only? After all, he does know a lot about phonetics.)

[zompist]

Folks, don't reply to Nort's post. One, he can't reply. Two, I've already made it clear that we're not doing "replacement theory" here. So don't tempt him to talk about it.

[Vardelm]

(Is it possible to ban people from one subforum only? After all, he does know a lot about phonetics.)

Not worth it IMO. Replacement theory, etc. isn't something to treat with kid gloves.

Folks, don't reply to Nort's post. One, he can't reply. Two, I've already made it clear that we're not doing "replacement theory" here. So don't tempt him to talk about it.

I'd suggest just deleting it.

[Karch]

Unrelated, but I'm sick and tired of the culture war. Sometimes it feels like people have stopped caring about problems in their own country/region in the last 2 years, instead focusing only on the US.

[Nachtswalbe]

Here is some east African politics for a change:
https://twitter.com/jumaf3/status/1389981309477527554

[bradrn]

(Is it possible to ban people from one subforum only? After all, he does know a lot about phonetics.)

Not worth it IMO. Replacement theory, etc. isn't something to treat with kid gloves.

As a Jew I agree. But in the time I’ve been here he’s only ever mentioned these topics on this one thread — otherwise he’s been helpful in answering our questions on linguistics. And this is a linguistics forum after all, let’s not forget that.

Unrelated, but I'm sick and tired of the culture war. Sometimes it feels like people have stopped caring about problems in their own country/region in the last 2 years, instead focusing only on the US.

Oh, I care about my own country all right. But how much does anyone else know about Australian politics? Whereas we all know (and have an opinion on) American politics. Besides, I think this thread often ends up about general political ideas as much as American politics — what starts in America often spreads to other countries.

[Ares Land]

Unrelated, but I'm sick and tired of the culture war. Sometimes it feels like people have stopped caring about problems in their own country/region in the last 2 years, instead focusing only on the US.

The culture war is tedious, repetitive and generally sickening. But US politics has been unusually interesting these past few years, because some Americans are really considering novel ideas. You get people like Bernie Sanders, a lot of interest in UBI. That's pretty interesting.

(Actually I care a lot more about French politics. But you don't want me to bring it up: it's horribly depressing!)

[bradrn]

(Actually I care a lot more about French politics. But you don't want me to bring it up: it's horribly depressing!)

It can’t possibly be worse than Australian politics. We have a PM who has done quite literally nothing for three years straight… except for a bit of blatant corruption and some vague encouragement of antivaxxers. Though at least our far-right is less prominent than yours.

[Arkasas]

(Actually I care a lot more about French politics. But you don't want me to bring it up: it's horribly depressing!)

It can’t possibly be worse than Australian politics. We have a PM who has done quite literally nothing for three years straight… except for a bit of blatant corruption and some vague encouragement of antivaxxers. Though at least our far-right is less prominent than yours.

I mean, he's managed (at least so far - I suppose there's still time, though I've heard no rumblings up here) to avoid the triennial pre-election leadership coup, so at least he has that going for him.

[Ares Land]

(Actually I care a lot more about French politics. But you don't want me to bring it up: it's horribly depressing!)

It can’t possibly be worse than Australian politics. We have a PM who has done quite literally nothing for three years straight… except for a bit of blatant corruption and some vague encouragement of antivaxxers. Though at least our far-right is less prominent than yours.

Oh, I wouldn't know which country has it worse. Our problem this year is that the election is all about identity politics and the culture wars.

[Raphael]

General question about US politics and, more generally, culture and society:

Where did the extreme reverence for businesspeople - historically mainly businessmen - in the USA's society and culture originally come from? As zompist once put it, societies often have an archetypical group of people who are so strongly associated with all of society that it is generally assumed that if they're doing well, society in general is doing well - for medieval Europe, it was the noble; for much of India during much of its history, it was the brahmin; and for the USA, it's the businessman.

Why?

OK, there's a tendency along these lines in many other countries as well these days, but it's usually limited to specific political camps or parties.

Right-wingers and libertarians reading this might respond with something like "Well, businesspeople really are super awesome, so the USA has just recognized that fact more and earlier than other countries, because the USA is such a great country!" But even if one accepts that as true, which I don't, that would still leave the question of why this "truth" was historically "recognized" in the US so much more than elsewhere.

On the other hand, left-wingers reading this might respond with something like "Because they're ruled by white males", or "because they're a colonial settler society", or "because they're an imperialist power". But other countries traditionally dominated by white men, other colonial settler societies, and even other imperialist powers don't seem to have the same phenomenon to the same extent. For instance, the British Empire, at the height of its power, was apparently governed by a ruling class that saw government service as equal to business work in terms of "worthiness".

I mean, I myself am from a metropolitan region centered on a city that, in pre-modern times, spent several centuries as one of those city-states ruled by rich merchants that you might have read about in fantasy novels, and even we don't have that kind of hero-worship of businesspeople, except perhaps within the business class itself.

So where did all this historically come from?

[Man in Space]

Wow, that nearly-useless American history course I went through in college finally pays off!

As I understand it, it has a lot to do with the fact that the New World was kind of a blank slate where any of society's rejects could ply their trade and make a name for themselves. Couldn't hack it in the Old World? No problem; as long as you were able to get passage on a boat somehow, you could wind up in America and work for someone there. Land ownage was less of a barrier because nobody (well, nobody the Europeans recognized as having a claim) owned any of it, so any dude could get a plot somewhere and work it, work on it, or (if you were particularly well-off) get people to work it for you, either as a salaryman, an indentured servant, or a slave. What it meant to be a "gentleman" was in flux at the time; instead of collecting rent (as zompist once mentioned in one of his books), you started to get this trope of the self-made American working man or businessman.

[Moose-tache]

There is a real danger here of the tail wagging the dog, of projecting into the deep, cultural past what is a shallow political-economic phenomenon.

Keep in mind two things. One, both major political parties are beholden to business interests. Two, entrepreneurs are right up there with "the troops" as a class of people that are easy to lionize. Actual small business owners frequently do not find that their interests are served by politicians, despite the rhetoric, where their interests conflict with those of larger businesses. So there is a possibility that we are weaving elaborate myths about the national character of the country when all we're seeing is a political reality. Mercantile hero-worship was pretty common in Britain before cicrumstance forced them to adopt policies that were less geared toward the well being of the capitalist class in the mid-twentieth century. This was an aspect of British culture salient enough to be visible overseas. Napolean famously called it an island of shopkeepers, and not because he had any employment data in front of him to support that empirically, but because that was a crucial part of the identity of the bourgeois elements then ascendant in British society and politics. If America ever had a socialist revolution, you can be sure that within a generation people would be asking "why does America have such a long history of loving socialism? It seems like everyone in my history textbook was some variation on Eugene Debbs or John Steinbeck."

[zompist]

General question about US politics and, more generally, culture and society:

Where did the extreme reverence for businesspeople - historically mainly businessmen - in the USA's society and culture originally come from? As zompist once put it, societies often have an archetypical group of people who are so strongly associated with all of society that it is generally assumed that if they're doing well, society in general is doing well - for medieval Europe, it was the noble; for much of India during much of its history, it was the brahmin; and for the USA, it's the businessman.

Why?

In brief, because we're a bourgeois nation. We never had a real aristocracy, and for most of our history had almost no standing army.

One important nuance: before the Civil War, this was the northern standard class. The southern ideal was to be a landed gentleman (with slaves). Tocqueville noted this in the 1830s: northerners admired work, while southerners despised it.

I'd also say that before the Civil War, the northern ideal wasn't so necessarily a merchant, but a farmer, craftsman, or other independent worker. Or maybe just a pioneer, the sort of person who can start with nothing and end up with a thriving homestead and maybe a political career.

Moose is right that this sort of thing is tied up with politics. I'm not thinking of current politics, but that of the post-Civil-War period. For about 70 years the US was dominated by the GOP: the party that had won the war for the North, and (not coincidentally) the party of Northern businessmen. In this period 14 of 18 presidential elections went to the GOP. The country's self-image was a place where anyone could get ahead.

[Torco]

Unrelated, but I'm sick and tired of the culture war. Sometimes it feels like people have stopped caring about problems in their own country/region in the last 2 years, instead focusing only on the US.

i feel you. the yankee culture war stuff even permeates the politics of my small backwater country.

[Raphael]

Thank you, everyone, very informative!

[MacAnDàil]

Unrelated, but I'm sick and tired of the culture war. Sometimes it feels like people have stopped caring about problems in their own country/region in the last 2 years, instead focusing only on the US.

i feel you. the yankee culture war stuff even permeates the politics of my small backwater country.

So what's your take on the Chilean election more specifically? Perhaps in another thread?

[Travis B.]

I'm pissed off that the right wing is using the Waukesha Christmas parade massacre as an excuse to attack Black Live Matter and the left in general while downplaying that the person who committed it is a serial domestic abuser, which ought to be far more relevant than that he posted some Black Lives Matter-type content in the past, which ought to be irrelevant.