I hope it was clear that I wasn’t saying they need to be melted in, but only saying that that’s what the melting pot image was saying?
And yours is what? To say, ‘we lost, there’s no chance’ and go hide under the bed – or join the oppressors?
That is a very good way to put it.
There used to be a bumper sticker, “My Country: Right the Wrongs.”
@Exapno_Mapcase and @PhillyGuy I’m thinking particularly of those currently stuck at the Texas-Mexico border. Or those who were separated from their children early in the so-called trump administration and will never see them again. Lately we’ve been treating immigrants like crap. And we’ve done so in the past, too, just maybe not so loudly and blatantly.
Thanks for pointing this out. This is all opinion. It’s a discussion, not Gospel handed from the mountaintop. (Pardon my mixing Old* and New Testament references.)
* More correctly referred to as the Hebrew Scriptures.
Very, I was riffing on your point.
Well, we sure look good to folk in shittier places. But saying the US is better than Guatemala or El Salvador ain’t really setting that high of a bar. I don’t see a bunch of folk swimming over from Scandinavia, say.
The US is fine. Pretty good, in fact, for many. But all the proclaimed high ideals just seem hypocritical and empty.
As was mentioned, the OP did not define what they wished debated. By the definition recently provided, yeah, we are nowhere near that. Nor do I think those in power ever really aspired to that. That was just the PR image.
I think things are gradually improving in many respects. Sorta a gradual but uneven staircase, with many plateaus and occasional steps backwards. But some monster issues, such as racism, wealth disparity, climate and energy recklessness, and hundreds of millions of guns keep me far from sanguine about our future.
I certainly hope it is the last gasp of white privilege. mrAru can remember seeing “No Sailors” signs in Norfolk as late as 1984, and one set of just off base housing is where the notorious “Sailors and Dogs Stay Off The Grass” sign was. My dad can remember British protesting American troops by chanting ‘over paid, over sexed and over here’ at them.
And I can’t wait. I love the whole multicultural thing, the different foods, the different music, the people. I would like to see some constitutional amendments to make this attempted fascist takeover impossible in the future. We can’t depend on the old boy handshake agreement to ‘play nice’, we need solid laws preventing it. We need the whole financial shenanegans ended, politicians need to stop mooching from potential constituants, Trump should NOT be able to get donations to pay for his legal issues. That money is supposed to pay for advertising, office space and staff pay.
I have always paid my taxes, it is part of the social contract [taxes go in, and roads, schools, social networks come out in a manner of speaking] I would love to see the rich paying their fair share - they get too many loopholes and exemptions - rolling the taxes back to the old pre-Regan tax level would be a great start. Unfortunately, the rich will move away and give up their citizenships if it comes down to that [us poor don’t have the financial nous to be able to up stakes and move anywhere we want. If one can ‘buy in’ to becoming a citizen of Elbonia [hey, I like The Chieftain and Gun Jesus] and ditch ones US citizenship and taxes]] Could the US pull a Cuba and nationalize all the profitable companies in the country? Certainly - I bet that would really get the rich running for [tax] shelter.
There are some Armenians and Turks in Fresno that would like a word with you. It isn’t the ones that escaped the Armenian Genocide currently, it is their grandchildren, still shooting and fighting each other. I was headed home and stopped in Rome NY for lunch and there were 2 groups of [really dark complected immigrants - Somali, Ethiopian or something subSaharan African, didn’t recognize the language but the fisticuffs were notable] facing off in the parking lot of the cheap fast food place I opted to eat at. No white privilege going on there. There will always be an ‘us vs them’ going on, be it Russians vs Ukrainians, 2 different tribes of Ugandans, Catholic vs Protestant Irish …
Well, if we can see the taint, perhaps we can eliminate it with work. Speed bump, yes - but not a total road block. If we can get enough of us working we may be able to help.
We don’t keep slaves, and women can actually vote, have credit cards and bank accounts without some man having to sign for them.
Withdrawn
So you’re predicting another round of this:
I read that book, but I hadn’t forgotten the criminal political violence of that time.
Going after the billionaires has been tried in Putin’s Russia. While it resulted in changes, they haven’t been ones liberals like. (I’m not labeling you as a liberal — although I do label myself as a liberal.)
Regardless of whether America is a failure, we won’t fail when it comes to suppressing the kind of violence you seem to be advocating.
Yep.
OP, please tell me you haven’t forgotten actual slavery and Jim Crow. WWII. 'Bout the way I always feel about these threads. No perspective.
Do you know? Are you informed on the topic, or is it just your opinion that things are worse now than you imagine them to be in the past?
I don’t think the American Experiment is a failure. Some of it has been very successful. Some of it was unsuccessful but has been improved. Some of it is unsuccessful but is still a work in progress.
I think you’re quite wrong about this. I’m not sure that I have a great deal to contribute to this thread but I do want to give folks a perspective on this particular issue from another country, a perspective that many may not be aware of.
The US is a melting pot, if an imperfect one. A melting pot doesn’t imply cultural diversity; it is indeed the opposite. It implies placing value in the integration of multiple cultures into a unified American one. Looking in from across the Canadian border, I see a distinct sense of an American culture, of what it means to “be American”, of a historical desire to create a unified culture, one in which a word like “un-American” can be meaningful and disparaging. The story of the immigrant who made good, who melded with the American culture and rose to great success, is still the quintessential American success story.
I sometimes cite examples of various cultural phenomena from old Father Knows Best episodes, a series that considered itself not just a sitcom but often a purveyor of parables that offered “teaching moments”, often hilariously misguided or simplistic ones, but all the more memorable because of that. There was one that comes to mind now, where the Andersons employed a Mexican gardener. This fellow made a big deal out of refusing to be called by his Mexican first name, which he had proudly “Americanized”, because he was a proud American now and wanted to be recognized as such. It was considered virtuous to regard one’s original heritage with something close to contempt. This kind of cultural assimilation may not seem as strong now as it was in the 50s, but I think it’s very much still there and just not as blatant, because assimilation has always been part of the historical American zeitgeist.
For better or worse, Canada has gone in a different direction, which I’m not here to promote or defend and which I think has its own issues, but it’s a direction that prides itself on “cultural diversity” rather than a melting pot, on the belief that different cultures can and should retain the own identities. The idea is that unity consists of a broad set of values common to all people, like freedom and justice, and not cultural ones.
The only reason I bring this up is to suggest that if your theory is true, then Canada should be having a lot more issues of divisiveness than the US, and it isn’t. In fact it’s the opposite.
So then what is the problem with the Great American Experiment? Well, danged if I know, but there’s no shortage of books by people who claim that they know. Personally I’ve long thought that one of the contributing factors has been the generally poor quality of commercial media, especially the broadcast media that became ever more important in the last 60 years or so, which perhaps not coincidentally is around the time that American politics started going down the shitter. Just as one indicator, compared to other countries the US spends essentially nothing on public broadcasting – so little that it barely registers on comparative charts. Then you had the rise of Fox News and its ilk, and then finally the rise of social media where the built-up groundswell of far-right paranoia and ignorance had its very own platform, where every determined loudmouth with an axe to grind against science, against liberalism, and against truth itself could reach large audiences. And then you get Trumpism, which is like a cancer that forms a symbiosis with paranoia and ignorance, each feeding the other in an ever-worsening spiral.
I’m by no means saying that this is the entirely of the problem, but it’s a serious contributing factor because you can’t have a functional democracy when a high proportion of voters inhabit a completely counterfactual fantasy world simmering with paranoia and conspiracy theories. In the words of the motto of the Washington Post, democracy dies in darkness.
Completely unresponsive. With a few insults thrown in gratuitously–“delusions” and “clumsy”–for flavor, I suppose, but so unresponsive as to confirm what I’m claiming: my paraphrase hit too close to the bone for your comfort.
Now, I suspect the part you found uncomfortable, and I’m left to guess and suspect here because of your lack of responsiveness to my request that you specify your objection, was:
(because the part about moving forwards, or backwards, or standing still was barely a paraphrase)
I drew this conclusion from the fact that you gave no reason for your choice to prefer “we’re moving forward” to the other options. And since you gave no reason, nor could you give one, I assume “choosi[ing] to remain optimistic” remains as your choice because it feels better to you to remain an optimist than a pessimist or to hold a neutral position.
Is this an accurate guess? Were you offended by my assumption that choosing to remain an optimist feels good to you? Or perhaps it was my assumption that, since you chose “optimism” for no stated reason, your choice is irrevocable even when shown reasons to be pessimistic or neutral?
I suspect the underlying problem here is that this isn’t much of a debate: the OP’s question is ultimately a matter of opinion, and is irresolvable by such weak evidence as any of us can offer. Its terms are undefined: what is a failure? How can we tell when we’ve reached that point? Etc.
Since you asked, my plan is to accept that we’ve failed, and to make radical, fundamental, meaningful changes NOW to our implementation of the American Experiment, instead of applying more and more bandaids to the broken bones as we have been doing with terrible ineffectiveness for the past 247 years.
Yes, there are other forms of strife. But anyone who looks at the totality of American history and doesn’t see that the vast, vast majority of ethnic, religious, and cultural strife is driven by white supremacists and their allies is blind or deluding themselves.
Looking at all of American history, it’s just so obvious. The problem is white supremacy. It’s always been white supremacy. Without white supremacy, there’s no slavery, no civil war, no native genocides, no Jim Crow, no KKK, no segregation, no redlining, no anti Chinese laws and sentiment, no anti immigrant laws and sentiment, no neo confederacy movement, no Donald Trump, etc. Look at all the bad things in American history - almost all of them were driven by white supremacy.
I don’t understand how this isn’t obvious to anyone who understands the history. These are facts. It’s not everything, but it’s almost everything.
Yes, so what this question boils down to is:
Given a quarter millennium to eradicate white supremacy and making little headway, how much more time would you like before calling it a failure ¿?
Well, now you have further narrowed what is supposed to be the “experiment” discussed. And it’s by no means clear to me there was any general consensus in seriously trying to conduct that experiment (the overcoming of white supremacy) for most of this time. At least not in such terms. Not in the USA, not in most of the West.
Oh, sure, there were abolitionists, suffragists, etc. but they were always opposition movements pushing things, and often under the premise of supporting a purported “national” ideal of general justice and liberty, and gradualists and compromisers would be celebrated while those who said the establishment had to be brought down would be condemned as radicals
We’ve only been making serious efforts to eradicate it for a few decades, at most. I think we should keep trying.
I thought I knew what The American Experiment meant, but on Googling, it seems somewhat up for grabs.
If we’re saying that a country can be founded on a set of democratic principles, and be a melting pot of cultures then, sure, that experiment has succeeded in numerous countries around the world. To some extent we can claim that other countries have incorporated parts of the US model and showed it was a good one.
In terms of the US itself though, I’m surprised that the US status on the democracy index has not been downgraded further than “flawed democracy” – I think that’s quite flattering at this point.
And hate against blacks and other minorities (currently trans) is still endemic. It’s not as bad as it was – a mere century ago lynchings were still celebrated in popular media – but the US was a laggard compared to the rest of the developed world then, and still is now.
Can it be considered a failure? I think the beauty of it is that you can always claim that Ameri-topia is coming, these are just ugly parts of the American story.
And, for the most part, I don’t have a problem with that. I have a problem with claims of America being the “best” country and/or a beacon of democracy now.
Want to specify what changes you want made?
Partly because I’m curious; and partly because as it stands, that statement doesn’t read to me like admitting failure at all; but as saying, as most of us in this thread seem to be doing, that more work needs to be done.