That IS the American experiment, as far as I’m concerned, to create a new fair meritocracy that advances the human condition.
And we suck at it.
I suppose, then that the answer also depends in part on who we’re making the comparison to. Are we comparing the US to the European monarchies and their colonies of the 18th century at the time of the American Revolution (obviously we’re doing better)? To other democracies of the present day (a little worse in some ways, a little better than others, depending on which aspects of society you’re considering)? To all the countries of the world in the present day, democracies or otherwise (clearly better than the dictatorships)? To a hypothetical more utopian civilization like the Federation from Star Trek TNG (obviously worse)?
Donald Trump at about 26 years old in a successful American experiment:
“Well, let’s see, my dad’s been in jail most of my life for trying to cheat people, and every time I try to con someone out of something, I lose money or get arrested myself, girls all run away from me because I creep them out or something, I’ve lost every penny my dad gave me, and I’m stuck running these rentals in Brooklyn that I can’t ever hope to make real money at because the government’s always up my ass about following their stupid regulations –why don’t I move to someplace easier to cheat people? Maybe a nice corrupt country like Slovenia or Syria or someplace shady where conning people for a living is easier to do. I sure can’t cut it here—every time I try to con someone, I end up losing money myself. This place sucks.”
Below is a picture of a Nazi rally in madison square garden, 1934.
There were a lot of Nazi sympathizers in the US, it wasn’t just a Walt Disney thing. Furthermore, Hitler is on record as being inspired by much of the racism and segregation still prominent in the US at the time.
I do not say this to take away from the sacrifices that Americans ultimately made in halting fascism.
But you brought up Nazism and I have to wonder: how much of a missed opportunity was this to confront the racist ideologies that have underpinned the American experiment from day one?
Just as eugenics essentially died in the war, white supremacy could have too. We’d be in such a better place now. Instead it was swept under the carpet (again).
There were certainly gains made in USA after WWII, Jackie Robinson and all that. I’m not going to recount all of that.
USA was limited by simply too many people being involved with some of the racism. That’s what stalled Reconstruction and made for Jim Crow. There were simply too many people, seven full states and sympathizers elsewhere. I do not think the federal government honesty had the resources to pull it off. The Civil War they could win. That’s unfortunate for history, no question. Progress was eventually made.
Whether people want to judge the USA a failure for that history, that’s up to them. At some point every country is a failure. There need to be some objective, realistic criteria.
Exactly. So one of two things needs to happen with this thread, IMO.
Either a clear laying out of what would constitute a failure.
Or an acceptance that when we talk about things like “the american experiment” it’s just one of those patriotic things that many countries have that can never fail. That, no matter what happens, we can say it’s another chapter in the story, a story that will have a perfect ending just you wait and see.
But it looks to many of us that it never was about creating a place where cheaters, grifters and assholes could not bear to live. But rathet a place where these types would not assemble private armies to duke it out, or wait for revolutions to change directions, and rather play by rules and deal with the result of playing by the rules.
“To create a new fair meritocracy that would advance the human condition” was propaganda to gain popular support. “Fair” and “merit” was what the people in the condition of the Founders defined as such, and they believed they fairly merited their status.
Indeed. It is non-falsifiable, at any given time whatever is the prize each of us has our eyes on at that time , or whatever is the standard each of us expects to be met, then achieving that becomes “the experiment”.
No? The whole “all men are created equal” and “no man is above the law” bit kinda screams that theme out loud to me.
Yup, all of these kind of things are aspirational. They can never be fully achieved . . . but they can be failed by the standard of what is actually possible to accomplish at the time.
Rule of Law does nothing to prevent jerks from rising to wealth and power as long as they can play around the rules. At best it provides a way of containing them before they go too far, and we can concede we are not doing our best.
Just seems like a euphemism for “we suck at it,” which is my line.
And indeed by that standard those engaged in the “experiment” have been failing to live up to it, I would say from Day One – at times it has seemed part of the “experiment” is “how many times and ways can we “compromise” and still claim we are standing for what we are supposed to”.
Interesting and provocative question. Applicable in many situations. 
There is no perfect ending. It’s a continual battle.
Still needs fighting, though. And as long as a significant portion of the population is fighting it, in one fashion or another, it ain’t over.
thorny – objecting to either-or statements ever since she figured out what they are – locust
My brother was a raging communist in his 30s. He eventually gave up in disgust, concluding:
What America needs is better Americans
I told him he was wrong. What humanity needs is better humans.
The sheer cussedness of human nature places a low, a very low, speed limit on the rate of improvement in society. So slow that anyone except the most cussed struggles to see material evidence of progress over the course of their own lifetime. And meanwhile that same cussedness permits us to fall off the tightrope of enlightened progress back into the abyss of venality, know-nothingness, and hate very, very easily.
Progress is cumulative (net of steps backwards). Our science is better than 16th century science. But it’s nowhere near what 21st century science could have been if only we’d been smarter all along. Social progress is similar; there’s just a very different metric of what constitutes talent for social improvement.
My personal nirvana world is one where we have an effective mechanism of detecting psychopathy / sociopathy and we simply kill retroactively abort those people as soon as we detect them. Even if our tech can’t be sure until they’re age 20. A few milennia of selectively killing every example of those genes and thereby breeding those genes out of the pool and all of that behavior out of our adult societies and we might have a hope of solving my brother’s lament.
Until then, the tectonically slow progress we are making is all we can expect given the craptacular raw material we’re stuck working with.
Now this is a sage comment. He speaks exactly to what the AE is. Can we stop hereditary rulers and occasional revolutions? Nothing more and nothing less.
Since then, folks have retconned other ideas onto the AE. Including building an non-human Star Trek-esque egalitarian socio-politicao-economic paradise on Earth. Those are great aspirational goals. They’re not what the FF set out to do, and they’re not something the first half of the 21st century that I hope to live to see is going to deliver.
In fact the FF’s lousy v0.5 beta test attempt at constitutional democracy probably prevents the AE from succeeding. Doesn’t mean some other smarter v2.0 or v3.0 democracy can’t take the torch from our faltering hands. Australia? Germany? Who knows.
Here’s another patented LSLSguy pithy political aphorism:
American Reactionaries are overjoyed we’re at least a bit better than present-day Russia.
American Progressives are appalled we’re not yet Heaven.
They’re both using the wrong metric, but at least the Progressives are aiming for something worthwhile.
Is wanting equal rights for all Americans–all colors, races, sexes, national origins, religious beliefs–really all that lofty and unreachable a goal? I think it’s practical right here on this earth, right now, It is disgusting that people respond to so simple a goal as “pie-in-the-sky.”
It runs afoul of one of the single most fundamental guiding principles of uneducated human nature: Us vs. Them.
Fix education, prevent parents from avoiding education, and maybe, in 3 or 12 generations you’ll have gotten to zero Us/Them. We are moving forward very rapidly amongst the enlightened. And going nowhere but backwards amongst the anti-enlightened.
You can either slaughter half the populace, or move at the speed they can accept. Take your pick. Pick carefully, lest the Dark Side exert itself upon your soul.
Yes. It has never occurred anywhere in the world at any time. Laws may create many or even all of the rights - as indeed they do today in the U.S. - but a percentage of people themselves will always act as people, now as in the past. That percentage in the U.S. has decreased steadily since America’s creation, an obvious good, but presentism always gets in the way of seeing change.
Practical? No. If it were it would exist.
There is no utopia on earth. That’s why mankind created god in its own image, to reach that goal in an unprovable but highly desirable afterlife. After creating god, they were then forced to create satan, to explain why people never lived up to the ideals set for them, an outside force debasing peoples’ natural goodness. But natural goodness is imaginary, which is exactly why laws exist.
In my lifetime homosexuality went from being an unspeakable crime against nature to an omnipresent part of society accepted by over 80% of adults. That simple fact would break brains in the 1950s. Laws followed society rather than leading it.
Will all of the remaining 20% also change? That’s pie-in-the-sky.
This is true. Someone described the internet to me in 1978 as a practical concept, but I squelched the idiot perfectly by pointing out that if the internet were practical it would exist. Ha ha–what a jerk!!
Yes. There is a basic conflict between “I am special! I am unique!” and “I am no better than anyone else”.
Can you resolve this conflict?