• aesthelete@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Those kinds of difference goes all the way back to rugged individualism and whatnot. Or, less detailed but not less accurate: Because the US is the US.

    “I heard a phrase once about Americans, so that must be why they’re sliding towards fascism. It definitely can’t be for the same reasons people have pointed to for a hundred years.”

    The fuck would race have to do with anything you really are American.

    Right, right, it’s not that Somalia is Somalia, it’s something in their “culture”? Right?

    • barsoap@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      It definitely can’t be for the same reasons people have pointed to for a hundred years.”

      What are the reasons those pointed-at reasons persist? Why does is that persistence more pronounced is some places, but not others? Can there be a symptom without underlying causes?

      How come e.g. the death penalty is still accepted as a topic of polite conversation in America? I maybe shouldn’t have led with rugged individualism, e.g. Australians have a similar streak in that regard, the real core of the issue is that the Enlightenment never truly arrived in the US. Jingoism, understood as the general notion of “we’re already the best it’s impossible for us to get better by learning from others” also plays a large role, I guess it’s half your isolationist streak, and half strategy by the powers that be to avoid questioning of the status quo. There’s definitely policy in place to reinforce it through the education system – from limited and navel-gazing curriculum to the pledge of allegiance which btw is fascist AF.

      Right, right, it’s not that Somalia is Somalia, it’s something in their “culture”? Right?

      I specifically mentioned Xeer, no need on your part to speculate, or pretend I wasn’t being clear.

      • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        What are the reasons those pointed-at reasons persist? Why does is that persistence more pronounced is some places, but not others? Can there be a symptom without underlying causes?

        Read theory if you’re actually curious and not just posting to post. Personally, I’ve come to think of inequality as being at the center of it all.

        But the reason is certainly not “because <<country>> is <<country>>”.

        • barsoap@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          Read theory if you’re actually curious and not just posting to post. Personally, I’ve come to think of inequality as being at the center of it all.

          Inequality doesn’t just turn up out of nowhere.

          But the reason is certainly not “because <<country>> is <<country>>”.

          I never claimed “because country is country” is a deep and meaningful analysis of the material factors in a given country and its history. What it is, and what I expect people with a modicum of knowledge of the English language to understand it as, is vaguely gesturing at the overall situation and saying “this thing here that be the way it do”. You know, pizza is tasty because it’s pizza does one always have to be more specific than that.

          • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Inequality doesn’t just turn up out of nowhere.

            Why would anyone post this? Of course it didn’t just turn up out of nowhere.

            What it is, and what I expect people with a modicum of knowledge of the English language to understand it as, is vaguely gesturing at the overall situation and saying “this thing here that be the way it do”.

            That quoted phrase you have there is pure hot nonsense.

            • barsoap@lemm.ee
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              3 months ago

              Why would anyone post this? Of course it didn’t just turn up out of nowhere.

              Good. Then you agree that it’s valuable to look at the reasons for inequality, I presume, and not stop at “inequality is the centre of it all”. Both material and immaterial ones. Or to put in classic Marxist terms (a bit reductive but it’s close enough): What’s the economic and cultural obstacles to class consciousness.

              That quoted phrase you have there is pure hot nonsense.

              It’s using habitual/continuative aspect. “This thing here that is habitually that way because it habitually is that way”.