America hasn't had a decent president in nearly a century. They've all been anti-American, and pro collectivism.

Why is the current one surprising anyone?

55 minutes ago, BuFFo said:

America hasn't had a decent president in nearly a century. They've all been anti-American, and pro collectivism.

Can you explain the relationship between being American and being against the common good? Is 'E pluribus unum' really a despised concept to most Americans? I'm not American, have never lived in America, and have not studied American history, so please explain it like I'm a 5-year-old.

Well, shit.... I guess I have to define my terms... I'm just a lazy typist. These topics are something I do better in person, lol.

I'm not going to write a novel, so I will try to keep my side of this conversation succinct if at all possible.

"Can you explain the relationship between being American and being against the common good?"

America was founded on Greek, or specifically, Aristotelian ideas of individuality. Locke, the gent who cam up with "natural" rights, was also a major influence on America's founding, and Locke got his philosophy ( at least the good parts ) from Aristotle.

Here is where I'm going to stop myself from rambling on.

America was and IS the only country in human history to be founded on a philosophy of the individual.

America was doing extremely well until around 1913. At that time, the notion of altruism and collectivism ( from german and french philosophers ) took hold in American academia, and the growth of the state and demolishing of the individual began full force.

What America is today is a shell, or skeleton ( pick one I guess ) of what it was for it's first 150 years. It went from individual success to collectivist self destruction.

" Is 'E pluribus unum' really a despised concept to most Americans? "

Being that most Americans have joined the rest of the world and have become altruists and collectivists, I would say most Americans do not despise that collectivist notion. It's been downhill, and most Americans, easily 95%+, believe in the greater good over the individual.

To keep in context of American Presidents, we have not had one that followed the America ideal for nearly a hundred years. Every single one for the past hundred years has demolished the individual and grew the state.

To answer the OP, 2 years minimum, 6 years maximum.

If you have any questions, please ask. I'd rather answer direct questions than write a novel and shot gun ideas.

8 hours ago, BuFFo said:

America hasn't had a decent president in nearly a century. They've all been anti-American, and pro collectivism.

Why is the current one surprising anyone?

Well, I mean, you can set up any rhetorical question by first making a baseless non-objective statement that you project as fact.  They factually literally verifiably have not all been anti-American over the vast majority of the past century, so, where am I supposed to go with this?  I can't address your question because it is invalid (in your context, anyway), and I can't offer you validation for trying to put forth your own personal views as objective fact just so that you can try to get a tight grip on the conversation within your own personal comfort zone so that you can swat away confused replies made by people who didn't notice the type of hijacking you just attempted and are trying to make valid points that they are more likely to muddy when trying to frame them in your own personal context, which doesn't seem to make sense to anyone else.

The farthest America has come from its roots on a purely social level is in regards to religion.  Technology and other forms of advancements have pushed nearly all countries away from their roots, speaking very strictly, but adapting to those changes is part of the natural growth of every country, so what's the point in saying, "Because we have changed, all together, as a nation, as a necessary means of survival, we are no longer America"?

The founding fathers had no concept of machine guns and rocket launchers, and change is absolutely 100% necessary in order to survive, so what is the point in masking your pejorative spin on it behind a misplaced and unnaturally strict focus on what essentially amounts to "reasonable guesses" as to what it was and should be?

I'm pretty sure that the absolute biggest point on their minds was simply that we survive, first, and if that means rewriting the 2nd Amendment then that makes us more American, not less.

I don't personally care if the situations in my life force me to live differently compared to what they may have desired.  That has literally no bearing on how American I am, and fools who blindly follow old ways will rightfully be removed from the gene pool.  It is absolutely the least-compelling argument in the history of arguments that we are not American because we live today and not back then (and similar about our presidents).

@Bregma

How do Americans view individuality and collectivism?  Both are completely present in virtually all Americans, and virtually all of us switch in and out of these modes at different times.  This is why you may be confused and it is why it is easy for people to answer both ways and for you to be unable to get a clear answer.

I am extremely individual on my personal projects and identity.  I care not to conform to any social standards unless they specifically serve me (no one consulted me when deciding on beauty standards, nuanced social constructs, etc.), or if I have any other reason of my own.  I stand out on this site for being very direct, but in fact in order to achieve this I am only ignoring a single point relating to social etiquette, and it is extremely easy for me to put that point front-and-center in my head and start to completely change my tone (more closely matching my very jolly and respectful real-life persona).  Most likely all of you are able to do this, so you know what it means to switch modes (I think a lot of us switch modes when going online vs. out in real life).

When at work or on any non-personal project, I prefer being a part of the collective.  Working together achieves greater things.  I make music and art, but I would rather hire others who would do better jobs.  I have no difficulty in trusting others with their skills and I view the project as a product of all of us.  Without context, I have no particular preferences towards individualism or collectivism, and I suspect that is true for the vast majority of humans.

All humans are like this.  Each serves itself at times and can switch towards working for the greater good when necessary.

Countries and cultures are unable to completely remove these traits from humans, but Japan does its best to suppress individualism while America used to try to bring it out more, until corporations took over the country and are trying to make people into profit drones.  As an average, Americans have never stood out as being overly individual at any point in time except within appropriate contexts.  There has always (and I am speaking very strictly literally here) been a roughly equal number of people who focus just as much on collectivism and America has never ever had a problem rallying people to a cause (especially when 90% of its population can focus on collectivism if the cause speaks to them).

Strictly speaking, Americans don't exist.  America is the 3rd largest country and population in the solar system, and at these scales all conversations about what it means to be American break down (except when taken to legal definitions etc.)  There are always the same number of people ready to fight and not to fight.  For every individual there is a collective member.  For every gun nut there is a tree hugger.  For every Trump supporter there is a normal person.

So, if there has been confusion regarding American individuality vs. collectivism, that's because it's an invalid question.  Either-or doesn't exist.  It's always been both and there has never been a particular lean either way until you start to look at smaller more manageable data points that isolate smaller regions of the country.


L. Spiro

On 7/29/2018 at 4:56 AM, BuFFo said:

America was doing extremely well until around 1913. At that time, the notion of altruism and collectivism ( from german and french philosophers ) took hold in American academia, and the growth of the state and demolishing of the individual began full force.

So... slavery, Native American genocide and civil war good,

but infrastructure, defeating nazis, landing on the moon and civil rights bad?

Let me guess: there's a signed copy of Atlas Shrugged on your bookshelf, and you think Bioshock would have been a much better game if you got to play as Andrew Ryan.

On 7/28/2018 at 9:56 AM, BuFFo said:

I'm not going to write a novel, so I will try to keep my side of this conversation succinct if at all possible.

"Can you explain the relationship between being American and being against the common good?"

America was founded on Greek, or specifically, Aristotelian ideas of individuality. Locke, the gent who cam up with "natural" rights, was also a major influence on America's founding, and Locke got his philosophy ( at least the good parts ) from Aristotle.

Well, that sure is a perspective. I, for one, think a lot of people would probably read a novel dedicated to why you think that. I can't promise I'd find it very convincing, but I'm sure it would be more entertaining than Atlas Shrugged, so, you know, you'll have a built-in audience made up of people who think Atlas Shrugged is the last novel that's been worth reading.

In fact, there's probably a lot of overlap between those people and people who believe that western political philosophy hasn't advanced. (I was going to say "advanced since..." but you can't really go much farther back than Aristotle, so I guess I'll need to end on this particular anticlimax).

2 hours ago, cowsarenotevil said:

@BuFFo

I, for one, think a lot of people would probably read a novel dedicated to why you think that.

I remember hearing something similar to what BuFFo is saying in some sort of philosophy-something-or-other.  It definitely does create a different perspective from which to view things.  I suppose there are many limits to what one single perspective can illuminate.

16 hours ago, ChaosEngine said:

So... slavery, Native American genocide and civil war good,

but infrastructure, defeating nazis, landing on the moon and civil rights bad?

Let me guess: there's a signed copy of Atlas Shrugged on your bookshelf, and you think Bioshock would have been a much better game if you got to play as Andrew Ryan.

>>" Is 'E pluribus unum' really a despised concept to most Americans? 

I haven't been to the US of A, but judging from what I hear and see from afar, and my various chats with Americans, not really, no. Most Americans of course are supporters of capitalism as they have always been, and rarely care about the plights of the rest of the world, as they always have not cared. Even the self-professed "democratic socialists" a-la Sanders that have become popular lately don't really care if their "universal healthcare" is paid by imperialist super-profits. It's just that, during the course of the 20th century, they have been forced, as the rest of the world, to establish *some* kind of welfare state for their population and regulations in order not to have a freaking revolution in their hands by a completely destitute segment of the working class whose life would become insufferable under the increasingly intense contradictions of capitalism. New Deal was probably the classic example of that.

What Buffo calls "collectivism" is simply welfare capitalism. He of course predictably mentions 1913 as the year "America died" or whatever - you know, the year when the awfully evil 16th amendment about federal income tax was ratified, and shifted some of the burden from the poor to the rich. Welfare capitalism is in reality a magnificent achieventment of capitalism - by giving some crumbs and safety nets to the working people, especially to be used in times of the "slump" that inevitably follows the "boom" periods, it managed to remain on top, by lessening the contradictions that, if left unchecked, would lead it to collapse. Capitalism did what Marx never predicted it could do: it reformed itself in order to survive the new conditions, and it has. It's very simple really : if you want to remain in power, you have to change and reform when you need to, not pretend you can play the game with the same rules it was played 150 years ago.

Other than that, USA is, by any sane standard, an extremely individualistic society. Curiously, there is a movement that believes that they should not have done even the minimum reforms that they did, and they should not even have established the minimum welfare state or anti-trust laws that they have, because, idk, it removes the incentives for hard work or innovation or some such - basically rabid ideologues that profess they believe in capitalism, yet leave it in their hands and they would cause USA to implode within 10 years, precisely because they are ideologues that have no concept of "you have to change when needed in order to remain the same". As a socialist, sometimes I wonder if I should support them for that reason, but then I remember accelerationism rarely works. And also, you know, we have that little pesky problem of climate change to deal with, which libertarians don't like thinking about, since externalities is something their ideology isn't really equipped to deal with, so let's just ignore it and/or wait for John Galt to invent a Total Recall-like atmosphere machine or something.

Anyway, Hitchens put it best IMO

"I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough."




 

On 7/28/2018 at 9:56 AM, BuFFo said:

America was doing extremely well until around 1913. At that time, the notion of altruism and collectivism ( from german and french philosophers ) took hold in American academia, and the growth of the state and demolishing of the individual began full force.

What America is today is a shell, or skeleton ( pick one I guess ) of what it was for it's first 150 years. It went from individual success to collectivist self destruction.

@ChaosEngine put it really well in his quote:

18 hours ago, ChaosEngine said:

So... slavery, Native American genocide and civil war good,

but infrastructure, defeating nazis, landing on the moon and civil rights bad?

Let me guess: there's a signed copy of Atlas Shrugged on your bookshelf, and you think Bioshock would have been a much better game if you got to play as Andrew Ryan.

But let me add some more to this.

Genocide, Civil War, slavery, unequal rights in general, are included in the period before 1913. America was amazing then though? 

But for a moment, let's say you don't mean that dark part of American history (feel free to clarify). America was not the most powerful nation in the world before 1913. Arguably it wasn't the most powerful nation in the world until some decades later. In fact, in that era, the British Empire dominated world affairs and controlled a good 25% of the world at that time. The French and Germans were also a force to be reckoned with. The US wasn't necessarily considered a pushover, but was a far cry from what it would become. For quite some time, people had actually expected Argentina to become the 'superpower' (I remember reading this somewhere). After World War 2 was when the US really took off. Not only did America shape the world in its image, it went on to by and large surpass the powers of old, becoming a major powerhouse in the 60s and 70s while the old European empires decayed and fell apart. It wasn't great for everyone mind you (that part comes later, arguably), since equality/civil rights were only just starting to become issues that people wanted to solve, but certainly the rise of the US didn't happen until right after World War 2. 

Really America's economic and global power have existed from now to after World War 2. The statement that the last time America was doing well until 1913 is preposterous on so many levels that it cannot be taken seriously by any standard. Even if we somehow ignore the plethora of issues like slavery, Jim Crow, Native American genocide, and examine only the economics, global influence, etc., America was nowhere near what it is today. 

We don't even need to look at what is or isn't collectivism, what is or isn't capitalism, and all the wrongs committed at that time, but even by the standard 'criteria' for examining a nation don't support this claim. 

As a whole though, I agree with @mikeman: America is still a very individualistic society. Good or bad I leave that to others to decide but to claim we are all suddenly a 'collectivist' society is rather weird. I'm an American myself, though my parents are immigrants, and come from a country that is arguably very not individualistic and see a stark contrast between this society and the society my parents were born and raised in.

Interestingly enough though, more to the topic, Trump doesn't really follow traditional norms of Republicanism which champions notions of pure capitalism, less government (the whole individualist notions with regards to the Market), when you consider things like tariffs, the deficit spending, etc. 

But is blocking the 'establishment' so important that we should accept disastrous policies? Continuously claiming that the media has been caught 'red handed' just seems like an easy way to deflect criticism. It creates a 'No True Scottsman' type fallacy, where one basically states that 'all true stories about Trump are positive' and we come out and state that 'here's a negative story' and you simply reply with 'fake news'. 

7 hours ago, deltaKshatriya said:

After World War 2 was when the US really took off. Not only did America shape the world in its image, it went on to by and large surpass the powers of old, becoming a major powerhouse in the 60s and 70s while the old European empires decayed and fell apart. It wasn't great for everyone mind you (that part comes later, arguably), since equality/civil rights were only just starting to become issues that people wanted to solve, but certainly the rise of the US didn't happen until right after World War 2. 

Really America's economic and global power have existed from now to after World War 2.

Yep, and even that was at least partially down to a happy accident of geography. Of all the major belligerents in WW2, only the USA was not subjected to large-scale destruction at home (the UK was spared a land war, but still had to contend with the blitz).

Because of this, the USA was able to maintain it's economy when Europe and Japan were in ruins.