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when did you realize America started going down and got pissed off?
I do not believe America is in decline. I do believe that some Americans are experiencing hardship and that it colors their opinions of the national state of affairs, but that's not the same thing.
I have been vaguely dissatisfied with the US for my entire life, for different reasons at different times. I think that's mostly because I know its ins and outs better than any other country, so I can spot the warts.
That said in the past decade or so I was finally able to realize why America is flawed. It's flawed because classical liberalism is flawed. And classical liberalism was the framework for American culture.
There are two major thrusts in classical liberalism.
1) Equality. All men are created equal. The left likes this.
2) Liberty. Give me liberty or give me death. The right likes this.
Both are fallacious concepts.
All people aren't created equal. People are born with differing abilities and proclivities. True enough, the liberal would say, but we mean equality before the law. First off, that's kind of a cop out. Way to move the goalposts. Secondly, if people are indeed born with differing abilities, how could we treat them equally before the law? I mean, most judges are fairly intelligent people. You can't become a judge if you have a 90 IQ. So right off the bat, the legal system is biased towards intelligent people. A lot of criminals have mental issues. The laws as they are basically outlaw a certain type of personality which some fraction of every generation is born with. How does that square with equality before the law? Then there is the larger problem of when liberals read "all men are created equal" and take the words at face value. That leads to demands for equality of outcome and lots of craziness ensues.
Why can't we accept that human societies are hierarchical?
Moving on...
There's very little liberty in life. Most people are fated to live the way they do. You don't choose your parents, you don't choose your sex, you don't choose where or when you are born. You are born a certain way and the genetics of your parents have a huge impact on your life. Not to mention various non-genetic inheritances like class and wealth. Probably the biggest lie the liberty-lovers tell is when they misclassify needs as choices. For example, everyone needs to eat. They will die if they don't. There are other needs, but eating is the most basic. That means until very recently, and even now it's spotty, working was not a choice because you needed to work to pay for food. Every employer knows their workers need to work, and they avail themselves fully of that knowledge. A startling number of economists, however, classify working as a choice. The next biggest lie is when they tell someone to do something impossible for that person and confuse inability with refusal. Say you are in a wheelchair. It's impossible for you to do a lot of jobs. Combined with other factors that might make employment impossible to procure. Now let's go with a less visible and therefore less sympathetic hindrance - low intelligence. It will be impossible for you to do most jobs. That's just how you were born. For this, you are berated as lazy when in fact you never had a shot.
Why can't we accept that most people are born behind the 8 ball and scramble for a lifetime to keep their heads above water, rather than insulting them by telling them they are free?
At best the American Creed is a noble lie. That still means it's a lie.
As you correctly point out there is a TON of luck in life. There are a lot of things wrong with this country but no matter how you slice it I was lucky to be born here over most other counties, lucky to be born now than even 150 years ago,lucky to be healthy etc. With that said a lot of the entitled cry babies in this country still have it better than 99 percent of the people who have ever walked the face of the earth, do nothing to better themselves and then complain about those who have done better than them.
I agree all men are not created equally. However there is nothing wrong with striving for equal opportunities for people whenever possible. I don't mean hiring less qualified people or anything of that nature but we should for example try and have good schools for all children. We will never get equal results and that's fine but there are definitely things we can do better. Unfortunately if someone has crap parents and are raised with zero discipline they likely won't be very successful in life and there isn't too much we can do to change that.
We should be treated equally before the law. That is a very worthy goal to have. But that means equal treatment based on the crime you committed. It doesn't mean the guy who steals 20 bucks from the church till gets the same punishment as a murderer.
Of course in reality those with better lawyers get treated better. You're correct that judges on average are smarter than most people- but that's not why smarter people get in less trouble with the law. They get in less trouble with the law because on average 1) they make more money and can afford better lawyers. 2)they commit less crimes on average and the crimes they do commit have a much better risk to reward ratio. For example a braindead criminal shoots someone for his wallet and throws his life away for maybe a few hundred dollars and some credit cards he could use for a day or two (which often help get him caught in the murder to begin with.) A smart criminal embezzles millions of dollars and if he gets caught only does a few years in jail. Much better risk reward ratio. The law isn't treating the smarter person better because they're smart- they're treating them better because they have better lawyers and committed a different crime. Different crimes should be treated differently.
As you correctly point out there is a TON of luck in life. There are a lot of things wrong with this country but no matter how you slice it I was lucky to be born here over most other counties, lucky to be born now than even 150 years ago,lucky to be healthy etc. With that said a lot of the entitled cry babies in this country still have it better than 99 percent of the people who have ever walked the face of the earth, do nothing to better themselves and then complain about those who have done better than them.
I agree all men are not created equally. However there is nothing wrong with striving for equal opportunities for people whenever possible. I don't mean hiring less qualified people or anything of that nature but we should for example try and have good schools for all children. We will never get equal results and that's fine but there are definitely things we can do better. Unfortunately if someone has crap parents and are raised with zero discipline they likely won't be very successful in life and there isn't too much we can do to change that.
We should be treated equally before the law. That is a very worthy goal to have. But that means equal treatment based on the crime you committed. It doesn't mean the guy who steals 20 bucks from the church till gets the same punishment as a murderer.
Of course in reality those with better lawyers get treated better. You're correct that judges on average are smarter than most people- but that's not why smarter people get in less trouble with the law. They get in less trouble with the law because on average 1) they make more money and can afford better lawyers. 2)they commit less crimes on average and the crimes they do commit have a much better risk to reward ratio. For example a braindead criminal shoots someone for his wallet and throws his life away for maybe a few hundred dollars and some credit cards he could use for a day or two (which often help get him caught in the murder to begin with.) A smart criminal embezzles millions of dollars and if he gets caught only does a few years in jail. Much better risk reward ratio. The law isn't treating the smarter person better because they're smart- they're treating them better because they have better lawyers and committed a different crime. Different crimes should be treated differently.
I don't think we've found a better system than classical liberalism. It seems to work better than others, and yes I think it is worth striving for.
So as a lie, to me it's noble. It's a lie with positive side effects.
What sticks in my craw about living in the US is that American culture is so immersed in classical liberalism, people don't even conceive of alternatives or see the flaws. In the old world, modernity is layered on top of traditional societies, which IMO are much more realistic about the human condition. This traditional substrate pokes through every now and then in the old world and grounds those societies.
In the US we have all these modern shibboleths which are sacrosanct. You're not allowed to question them. It's much more pervasive than elsewhere, and being forced to mouth the shibboleths when you would rather not it is the root of what I don't like about America.
I'm curious- at the time did you think it was your duty to go to war or anything of that nature? Why didn't you go to college for find some other way to avoid that disgrace of a war?
I'm not judging btw, it's entirely possible you felt different about it back then than you do now.
I was married and had a child on the way. I could not afford college. College was not that "keep out of the army" card that some people think it was anyway. I knew some college students that had to go.
We the people, are pissed. Put me in for 13 or 14 years. When Bush tried to hide the mortgage crisis before Obama was the chosen one, that’s when I was done.
Reagan. The country was turned over to the investment class who have been fleecing working people and average Americans ever since while accumulating over 99% of the nation's wealth and counting.
Politicians from both sides are in bed with the MIC, big pharma, big oil, the 0.1%,the banks, and the MSM, They take our tax money and divide it up amongst themselves enriching themselves at our expense.
They keep us divided through the MSM over issues that they don’t care about. All they care about is cash.
The only time in my life I recall really wanting to move away from the U.S. was in the Reagan years. I was very involved in the solidarity movement at the time and the summer during the Iran Contra hearings I was doing volunteer work in Nicaragua. I met Brian Wilson (the protester who lost his legs, not the Beach Boy) and members of Benjamin Linder's family during this time period and was really incensed at the interference of the U.S. in Latin American countries. I still don't like the country's legacy in that regard in particular but since then I have grown older, wiser and gained some perspective and no recognize more of the good we have here than the bad. And that's been pretty consistent for me throughout over the last decades. I still have faith in the great experiment that is the U.S.
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