10-07-2024, 08:08 PM
Okay well two points: first, I want to be clear that I'm in no way addressing this to you personally, or even to any specific American. I apologize if my tone seemed like a "shot across the bow", but as you know this is an issue that, really, we should get worked up about. Personally, I've found to you be unusually levelheaded reasonable and presumably moral and it's in fact thanks to you and the other staff here that this is a place where we can express ourselves to extremes and still maintain a mutual respect. Thank you.
Second, although I am a British citizen, I live here in the USA and consider myself just as much an American as you. This country has shaped me. I'm not excluding myself from my own criticism, and I'm not claiming immunity from hypocrisy. If I sound like I'm on a high-horse, rest assured that it is only because I've spent so damn long kneeling in the mud watching and participating in this shitshow that I really feel I have nothing to lose by taking an opinionated stand. I've been part of the problem.
America is such a strange country. What is a society? Is it merely the sum of the individuals that compose it? If so, consider American popular culture and society. It's crass, vulgar, violent, amnesic, inconsiderate and uncompromising. If that's the average, then 95% of the Americans I've met are, as individuals, above average. Kind, considerate, friendly, with a strong sense of right and wrong. How strange!
And I think it's facile to say there's a shadowy cabal somehow making us want the poison. Sure, I do think there are very evil people who set us up for the fall. But they don't force the poison down our throats. We take it voluntarily, somehow, with some degree of informed consent. The truth is there if we want to see it.
But most don't. It's just so easy to blame others. And being American means being given no end of choices about who to blame, who to hate, who to think "it's their fault!" rather than looking within ourselves and admitting the truth: in some way, this is what we wanted. We want these scapegoats. We want the spectacle. We want the sense of righteousness that a good old-fashioned forum rant can give.
And maybe that's not great, but it's okay. It really is. We're only human. And, I am somehow still an optimist. I believe we can have a better future. But I think it requires looking, really looking, at the society and world we live in, and the society of culture and psychology that lives within us, and being willing and brave enough to be as honest as possible. Owning our shit. That's always the first step.
Second, although I am a British citizen, I live here in the USA and consider myself just as much an American as you. This country has shaped me. I'm not excluding myself from my own criticism, and I'm not claiming immunity from hypocrisy. If I sound like I'm on a high-horse, rest assured that it is only because I've spent so damn long kneeling in the mud watching and participating in this shitshow that I really feel I have nothing to lose by taking an opinionated stand. I've been part of the problem.
America is such a strange country. What is a society? Is it merely the sum of the individuals that compose it? If so, consider American popular culture and society. It's crass, vulgar, violent, amnesic, inconsiderate and uncompromising. If that's the average, then 95% of the Americans I've met are, as individuals, above average. Kind, considerate, friendly, with a strong sense of right and wrong. How strange!
And I think it's facile to say there's a shadowy cabal somehow making us want the poison. Sure, I do think there are very evil people who set us up for the fall. But they don't force the poison down our throats. We take it voluntarily, somehow, with some degree of informed consent. The truth is there if we want to see it.
But most don't. It's just so easy to blame others. And being American means being given no end of choices about who to blame, who to hate, who to think "it's their fault!" rather than looking within ourselves and admitting the truth: in some way, this is what we wanted. We want these scapegoats. We want the spectacle. We want the sense of righteousness that a good old-fashioned forum rant can give.
And maybe that's not great, but it's okay. It really is. We're only human. And, I am somehow still an optimist. I believe we can have a better future. But I think it requires looking, really looking, at the society and world we live in, and the society of culture and psychology that lives within us, and being willing and brave enough to be as honest as possible. Owning our shit. That's always the first step.
