I had typed a large post, and then my comp ate it. It took a couple of days till I had the motivation to re-type everything. Anyway:
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Originally Posted by Alan
I didn't mention genocide until you mentioned that America is pretty stable. Then I explained what this stability historically implied outside America itself.
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Even IF you could prove that American expansionism prevented more civil war/ a crumbling infrastructure/ the rise of despotism, this is a red-herring.
While it's true that the American government did some horrible things to the Native Americans, guess what? That has NOTHING to do with America's governmental system. It would've happened if America at the time was socialist, it would've happened if America was communist, and it would've happened if America was still a monarchy.
The problem was that the culture at the time held the native people's lives and interests infinitely
lower on the totem pole. That's what conquering nations DO. Every major nation in history, has at some point, utterly destroyed/absorbed another culture. The Mayan's did it to other tribes in the Area, the Spanish did it to the Aztecs, the Romans did it to pretty much all of Europe, and Europe did it to...the rest of the world.
It is the NATURE of Organic life to subvert and consume other organic life. The only thing that stops this tendency, is the idea that one does not eat/steal from their own kind, and guess what? The culture at the time dictated that the dirt-worshipping heathens
were not equal to white americans, and moreover had what was rightfully American land and resources.
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I thought you specifically said we're going back to the original issue, and now you're trying to mix up both arguments. Are we talking about making a specific American Socialism, or not? Note that every time you try to make a move in that direction you can't posit something that would be gained from the American specificity.
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I had actually kind of shied away from that. I was more or less talking about how one needs to speak to people, with the special emphasis on Americans, if one wants to get one's point across.
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As for your jadedness on the American public: how many Tea Partiers do you know?
How many people are really conservative?
You do realize they're the minority, right? I'm not even talking only about Tea Baggers. Republicans and conservatives are still a quantitative minority. Why should I waste my time convincing them when there's a larger demographic closer to my ideas?
Why are you so adamant in making me convince them and not you and your like?
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Wait...what are you trying to convince me and my lot of? I already support making America's economy more socialistic. I'm not the one you have to convince.
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There are two reasons for this unfounded fear on the ubiquitous nature of these types of Americans:
1) Currently they are the most vociferous. Even without Tea Baggers and Ron Paul fetishists, Conservatism is always in a place of power that allows it to posit the parameters of political discussion.
2) You externalize what is wrong with America. I can't claim to know how you think, but this is still the general implicit mind of the jaded, leftist, cynical liberal: "They are in the wrong and they have to see the light before anything can start being corrected first. Until then, there's nothing I can do"
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You have a point with number 1. I'm a little confused at what exactly you're saying with number 2.
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This is both a scold and a plea. Seriously, I pressure you to reconsider your assumption that the average American is a conservative willful ignorant that bases political attitudes on emotional appeal. You're the one living in a blue state and I live in a red state and I still can't see how that's true.
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It's not just the average America dude (except for the conservative part) it's the average
person. You even admit it below:
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The bulk of America are the center-of-center cynics (and legitimate in their cynicism) who think of their government only in terms of "well it's the least worst". The middle ground of American politics aren't the Independents i.e. Libertarians or hipsters. They're the Undecided. Those who sway from Republican to Democrat from one election to the next according to the one mantra that can claim ideological purity in the States - "which party seems like they will fuck me less this decade?"
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This is correct. sort of. While it's true most people in the country are "undecided" it's not because they're consciously not Republican or Democrat, they identify as apolitical because they're too busy to give a shit, and thus they make their decisions as quickly and emotionally as anyone else.
As to your earlier question: I've met quite a few Tea-Partiers. My own father is one. They're just disenfranchised conservatives who have been tricked into voting republican again by Fox New's marketing.
But that's the thing: those "undecided" voters, while not as fervent as Tea Baggers, respond to the same marketing and media that the Tea Partiers do. Right now Fox is simply talking a better game, and as the election showed, overall, they won the undecided vote.
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All in all, the fervor of the right wing isn't that numerically strong, so it shouldn't be surprised I prefer to make an appeal to the cynics.
Just think of yourself, and how many times your politics can be summarized into "how can we ameliorate?" instead of "how can we create?"
Most people in America don't think of politics as much as you do, but their feelings still stem from that same form of cynicism. They want a better world, but they take what they can; they make to pretensions of how the world can be better so they'll just make peace with it as it is, but we must ask ourselves when that 'realism' is just realistic because it fulfills itself (out of the blue, a big Take That to Political Realism!).
To use one of Zizek's examples, after a person dies, it's a very common practice for people to resort to fetishization. The widow does not repress the death; they rationally accept the death but still cling to a fetish (in the real sense of the word, a material object to which is assigned too much value) that represents all the love and relations one had to the deceased. These fetishists are not dreamers nor lunatics. They're perfectly "realistic" and reasonable. They understand the ridiculousness of their own fetish in rational terms, but still cling to it because even though it makes sense that they ought to be fine without the fetish, they can't imagine how they would work out without it.
Today's culture on the left side of the spectrum falls into this fetishistic approach. Yes, I am condemning the soft left for not being leftist enough. Realize that most of America is like you - maybe not like me, I go too far, but it's definitely like us.
The farce is believing that we are the only sane people, or that we're somehow the minority. It should be obvious that we could not even have civilization if people were really the dreaded blind followers we make them out to be.
For those few, the absurdly little few that really have crossed the Rubicon to the right side, I'm not going to care about them. They're lost. Doesn't matter how much you show a neo-nazi about politics, they will find a way to bring the issue back to one of jewish conspiracy. This is true for any conspiracy theorist as well. It is a symptomatic mentality; it has nothing to do with the political spectrum, it's just a psychological abyss from which external circumstances can't take a person out.
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You do have a point here, and perhaps I am being a bit too jaded in my outlook. (or maybe I've overstated my case)
However, I think you're still giving people WAY too much credit. Remember: I work in fundraising and marketing. I deal with making people do things they want to do, and support organizations they believe in
for a living. Kontan does too, and he'll back me up on this: It is positively
horrifying how little reason plays in to why people do what they do.
To end on a bit of a tangent: I think the major foible of many socialists, communists, and other utopian's, is that they look to politics as a source of socio-cultural change. You yourself have said that it's the capitalist system that encourages exploitation and unfair play, and this is partly true. However, it is a
dangerous proposition to suppose that one should change the rules of society when the culture is not one that will accept them.
A communist society will help to curb certain anti-social tendencies which are encouraged and even lauded in a capitalistic culture, but it is not going to fix the mindset of "I look after me and mine", (and it will probably encourage it's own brand of anti-social vices as well) and until you can give me a government structured with an understanding of these tendencies and systems designed to effectively curb them, I and the rest of the world are going to continue to view American Democracy as the working governmental model, flawed though it may be.
