I’d rather talk about your answer. You said we have “too many” ethnic identities. What would be the proper number of ethnicities for a country to have? How many religions should a country allow? And, of course, most significantly, what does a country do once is has too many of either?
Apparently we melt them in a pot until they’re no longer recognizable.
Sorry for the pile-on, but I also think this is very false. The problem is the white supremacists. It’s always been the white supremacists (and their bigoted allies). It doesn’t matter if we have two groups or two hundred. If we got rid of white supremacism, we’d be getting rid of the vast majority of the real strife and hatred in America.
Your question is absurd in the context of my premise. I won’t be baited.
My point, in case you’ve missed it, is
IMHO there is no way to get diverse groups from widely diverse backgrounds to put their own self-interest aside enough to get along-- the number of groups is not relevant, and that’s why your provocative question is meaningless in this discussion– unless (1) the governing entity has complete control over them OR (2) the groups are cooperative and committed to getting along at a level that any examination of human nature and history will have shown to be impossible.
Not at all! “Pile-on” = “discussion”
That’s what I asked for.
Your comment is interesting, but incredibly naive. Ethnic/non-white racial groups fight between, among, and within each other, too.
I guess I too, am interested in to which ethnic groups and which diverse viewpoints are the incorrect ones.
In American history, ~99% of the ethnic/religious/cultural violence and strife has been white supremacists (or their bigoted allies) against other groups (mostly Native Americans and Black people, but also other groups). Take that away and we have orders of magnitude fewer instances of ethnic/religious/cultural strife.
Not only didn’t we get rid of them, we’ve pandered to them, let them rewrite history, put up statues, and let them codify their white supremacy into law.
Very true.
Wow, and I thought I was pessimistic. I think this thread is ridiculous.
Just because Trump got elected once and then he and his ilk lost 3 straight elections does not mean America is over. It just seems that way because the massive amounts of propaganda we get from all the media. We have had demagogues before and populist propaganda. I think Father Coughlin at his peak could claim that over a quarter of Americans listened to his radio show.
While I agree that it is possible America could end, I think it is highly unlikely. Even if Trump (or someone like Desantis) wins the presidency again, I believe the majority of Americans are figuring out what these people represent in spite of all the right wing propaganda supporting them. While the trope is seriously tired, I think it is true that Americans will do the right thing after they have tried everything else. The worm will turn.
Nobody who is a student of history can believe that democracy was better, fuller, more equitable, or more completely supported by laws in the past.
We are at a crisis point today without question. We have been at crisis points numerous times before. In each, a smaller percentage of the population was battling on the pro-American experience side simply because they did not enjoy the same benefits as the majority do today.
I am very far from being an optimist or a Pollyanna. Instead, I’m a historian. Societies can fail. Often do fail. America is not immune. Yet there is nothing in today’s America that is exceptional. The vast majority of “out” groups have been legally and societally invited “in”, something that was never at any time true in the past. How can anyone deny this high point?
Me too. In unrelated news, I’m no longer allowed near the bandsaw.
And my point, if you really require aid in understanding, is that pithy little comments like that simply don’t add anything of value to the discourse. It just looks like drive-by trolling.
That’s it in a nutshell. I’m certainly worried, worried enough that I broke from my tradition of voting Republican in 2016 and swore off the GOP in its entirety in 2020 because they decided they were okay with a sitting president attempting to overthrow the peaceful transition of power. But pointing to Trump as proof that the experiment has failed is a bit myopic considering the much more serious peril the national has been through.
For things getting better. I mean, say, in the past twenty years. I mean, I can see a few advances, which have prompted an enormous wave of hatred, rage, violence. How is that ‘better’?
I think the advances outweigh the wave, and you apparently think the wave outweighs the advances? I’m not sure how amenable either side of that would be to, uh, cites.
Did you really define “The American Experiment” in a manner such that it can be debated?
I’m not sure what it means to say “the American Experiment is over.” I think it more accurate to say that the myths of American exceptionalism and American democracy has been exposed.
I did quite a bit of reading about our earliest settlers, and the more I read, the less impressed I became. A lot of folk who escaped oppression to practice their own versions of oppression.
Is there any protracted period in America’s past during which the American Experiment succeeded FOR EVERYONE? Women? Blacks? The latest immigrants? The poor?
I’m not going to say we’re a lot worse than most developed nations - but I just don’t see much reason to say we are any better.
We are very fortunate that we are quite wealthy in many respects, and protected by 2 oceans with relatively benign neighbors. IMO, we’ve been somewhat wasteful of our wealth, mortgaging the futures of our heirs, setting bad examples WRT consumption, and trying to force our self interest across the globe.
In several respects, I’d say the overall arc of justice is inclining upwards, in that in general terms over the course of centuries there is more equality for minorities. But it sure isn’t a constant upward arc. And there definitely are troublesome factors which will affect how American culture devlops over upcoming generations.
Trump is a symptom, not the cause. The fact that a fascist game show host not only got elected, but launched a failed coup and is still the front runner of the GOP is beyond ridiculous. The GOP controls the House, think about that: the party that tried to overthrow our democracy has enough support among a segment of America that they control the House. Two Supreme Court justices are openly corrupt and the wife of one of them was an enthusiastic supporter of the coup.
Meanwhile there is a class of complacent white boomers saying everything is fine, which is utter nonsense.
Yes. The fact that Trump got out of the low single digits in 2015, much less enjoyed the popular success he has since then, is a humiliating but undeniable concession that the answer to the “Discussion question” is a resounding “YES!!!”
We have had nearly a quarter-millennium to undo the lasting shame of slavery (and the intolerance and intellectual vapidity and rank corruption that accompanied it) and have scarcely made a dent of progress, yet there are those who will point to this Act, or this speech, or that token of progress, and say “See what we have accomplished?”
I say, “Hardly anything. Human beings in this country are still mistreated routinely, and those who want to ramp up the mistreatment are still in leadership positions. Progress is always in the future, but a look at the past 248 years tells you all you need to know. You want more time? How much more time? Another century? Three centuries? Two millennia? Face it, you’ve fucked up.”

IMHO there is no way to get diverse groups from widely diverse backgrounds to put their own self-interest aside enough to get along-- the number of groups is not relevant, and that’s why your provocative question is meaningless in this discussion– unless (1) the governing entity has complete control over them OR (2) the groups are cooperative and committed to getting along at a level that any examination of human nature and history will have shown to be impossible.
So, the number is zero? The only stable democracy is an ethnostate?

Meanwhile there is a class of complacent white boomers saying everything is fine, which is utter nonsense.
Maybe some, but I sure don’t hear very many people claiming that everything is fine.
What I do hear is people vehemently disagreeing about why America is in such a mess.

If we got rid of white supremacism, we’d be getting rid of the vast majority of the real strife and hatred in America.
This seems a bit over-optimistic to me.