News:

PD.com - you don't even believe in nihilism anymore

Main Menu

The New America (x-posted from my blag)

Started by tyrannosaurus vex, March 14, 2017, 04:16:20 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

tyrannosaurus vex

Over the past few years it has become apparent that between 30% and 40% of Americans no longer subscribe to this nation's founding principles. While they attend Fourth of July parades and political rallies religiously, all the while waving their little flags and buying up Save the Constitution tee shirts, their fervent lip service to "freedom," "justice", and "equality" belies their growing spite toward those very ideas in the real world.

In truth, many Americans now have very different definitions for these words than what you might find in a dictionary. "Freedom", it seems, no longer means the right to enjoy a life without interference from abusive government power. It now means the right to trample the lives and livelihoods of others without interference from a disapproving society, and indeed the unchecked power to use the power of government to secure that right.

"Justice" no longer refers to securing the expectation of a government reluctant to arrest and imprison citizens, or the right to a fair trial if you ultimately face prosecution for any crime. In today's America, "justice" represents little more than immediate, state-sponsored retribution for victimless crimes and violent policing of thought and association.

Likewise, when millions of Americans refer to "equality", they do not mean absolutely equal protection for every individual under the law and in pursuit of the necessities of life like housing, employment, and education. Their version of "equality" expects and enforces strict homogeneity in appearance, speech, and behavior. They actively reject interest in sharing their world with anyone who stands out or speaks out. To them, "equal" means "unanimous".

As we ride this wave of backlash against the strides in social justice and governmental transparency and accountability that many people fought hard for over the past century, we find the basic character of our country transforming. The very definition of "America" has changed from a place where people from all different backgrounds could cooperate and succeed -- not despite, but because of our differences, to a place where different personalities, backgrounds, orientations, beliefs, and ethnicities must undergo repression in favor of presenting a facade of patriotic sameness.

These new attitudes toward society and life in present such an incompatibility with the ideals put forward in the Declaration of Independence that it insults America to go on calling these people "Americans". So, we will refer to this swell of hateful anti-everything sentiment as "New America" from now on. If you want to succeed in New America, what qualities must you have? By examining this question, you can understand who this backward cultural revolution targets.

First, you must have plenty of financial security. New America values material wealth above almost anything else: the well-to-do absolved of nearly any other shortcoming by the virtue imparted by their riches. New America believes that monetary unfailingly indicates upright morals, a strong work ethic, and high intelligence. After all, how could a person possibly have enormous wealth if they did not possess enough righteousness to avoid wasting their money, put in enough honest labor to earn it in the first place, and have enough smarts to grow it? New America knows for sure that no rich person has ever become rich through lying, cheating, stealing, or mere inheritance.

Conversely, failure to achieve financial bliss surely shows a lack of basic decency, as New America has realized with absolute certainty convinced that poverty arises only from moral faults, despicable laziness, and stupid decisions. No one in New America has ever found themselves in the poor house through bad luck or generations of inescapable, institutional poverty. Importantly, poor people always seem to need help, and New Americans do not "help" people. Helping people requires the usurpation of wealth, which belongs only to the person who earned it -- no matter how badly someone else might need it, or how painlessly the rich might part with it. New America treasures personal responsibility: no one bears any responsibility whatsoever for what happens to someone else. Ever.

Not all good people have unlimited wealth, but if they don't, then they must have a lot of these other qualities to make up for it. And not all rich people possess unshakable morals; but you can always identify those who don't by their reckless donations to Progressive causes.

Next, you must profess Christianity. All of our elected officials share a solid Christian faith, with occasional exceptions finding their way to election in heathen and apostate regions, and even these exceptions must confess their strong motivation by some other faith and defer on all questions of religious importance to the nearest Christian. New America will not compromise on this point: without fail, every single good and righteous person in the history of our nation has publicly professed a Christian faith. They specifically, without question, founded America as a Christian nation. Outside Christendom you will find nothing but perverts, devil worshipers, liars, cheaters, and all manner of hedonists and reprobates. If you cannot openly endorse Christianity, then you must at least allow others to assume you follow Christ. If you don't, then suspicion and distrust will follow wherever you go.

Moving on, it helps immensely if your birth certificate says "Male" on it. Of course, New America would never dream of enforcing such a rule outright, at least not yet. But they recognize that, when it comes to the natural qualities desired for leadership and success, the masculine gender just has certain innate advantages. Men naturally possess greater strength -- both physically and emotionally. They suffer less from bouts of uncontrollable hysterics. They project a more dominant appearance, with a comparatively larger stature and more angular features. New America would by no means categorize men as "superior", but it generally accepts that masculine characteristics seem more compatible with political and economic power than feminine characteristics. Women have their own arenas in which they excel over men: the home, mostly, raising children and cleaning, but also in professions requiring gentleness and beauty while always considering their natural delicateness and fragility.

Unavoidably attached to this point about gender, you must also respect the traditional roles of both the male and female sex. This, above all, means accepting the fact that only two genders can possibly exist, that everyone has one or the other, and that biology solely determines the gender of each person. No editing, changing, or masking your biological gender will ever enjoy legitimacy in New America. Beyond this, your sexual orientation must match your physical gender. If it doesn't, then you'll have to make up for this severe deficiency by greatly overcompensating in one of these other areas.

And finally, if you really New America to truly accept or admire you, then you really do need to have a Northern European racial background. Remember: to insist otherwise, or to insist that such an expectation contains "racism", gravely violates New America's central thesis: that we systematically eradicate "Political Correctness".. New America has no interest in entertaining the childish fantasies of multiculturalism. Every worthwhile work of art from music to architecture sprung solely from a White person's imagination. White people envisioned and built every great facility and institution in New America, and they did it specifically to preserve White heritage. This nation has had a century and a half of experimenting with forced racial equality, and we have, apparently, decided that those experiments have failed. Now, of course, New America does not (yet) propose wholesale extermination of non-white people. But if you do not have white skin, then you must at least talk, dress, and behave as if you do. You must not have pride in your own heritage. Meanwhile, we will send the police to the places where you live to harass you and kill you; we will refuse to hire you for good jobs, or promote you if you get hired. And we will very diligently work to identify ways in which you do not belong here, and seek to forcibly remove you where possible.

Now that you understand what New America expects from you in terms of your characteristics at birth, a few more beneficial qualities exist that will help you to succeed even more:

You must have a job. Unemployment, like poverty, arises only from moral degeneration.
You must support our military and every single expedition it makes, no matter the rationale behind it.
You must despise foreigners, even while you travel as a tourist in their countries.
You must believe what the Party tells you, no matter how unlikely its veracity. In fact, if you suspect the Party of lying to you, then you must believe it twice as much.
You may have noticed that most of New America's expectations for its citizens revolve around being born just the right way. New Americans strongly distrust anyone who differs from them -- and since these qualities describe New Americans, they form the fundamental rules of their club. If you cannot join this club on your own merits, then they have no need for you.

These points may seem exaggerated, but if you study the ideas behind them you will see how well they explain every single piece of legislation being proposed by the American "Conservatives". These people may use softer language to communicate their goals, but that language merely cushions these harsh beliefs. Millions -- nearly half -- of Americans now believe this so strongly that they will gladly sign away the very Constitution underpinning our civilization in order to see these ideas enshrined in eternal law. They will sacrifice every last one of the demands laid out in the Declaration of Independence just to establish a racist, theocratic order; even if that means losing their own rights as a consequence.

The challenge we face as a nation lies not in how to argue in favor of universal health care or the humane treatment of migrants and minorities. Our challenge lies in how to confront and defeat this hateful ideology without legitimizing its ignorant precepts, and without destroying our civilization in the process. We cannot yet know whether we can actually meet this challenge; but certainly we will never meet it as long as we continue to misunderstand the reality of it.

We do not fight for our comfort, our privilege, or our pride. We fight for our right to exist and our right to transmit the ideals of the Enlightenment to our descendants. The menace that threatens our existence and our nation will not hesitate to lie, cheat, or use violence if it finds itself pinned down; so we must prepare for anything.
Evil and Unfeeling Arse-Flenser From The City of the Damned.

P3nT4gR4m

Ideological scenarios like this invariably end up messy. Real messy. Like mountains of rotting meat-messy. You can either be the one making the mess or you are the mess. Pick a side.

I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
Not actually a meat product.
Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK
Awful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.
High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.
Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart Contagion
Octomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairman
walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark

Cramulus

It's good writing. I am having trouble coming up with a response to it. You've highlighted some shitty currents. You've contrasted your values with their values and explained why theirs suck. Where do we go from there?

Your premise is that freedom, justice, and equality are founding principles, and that the current right wing America doesn't really believe in them. It's interesting, you kinda position marriage equality and trans acceptance as being part of the "founding principles".

I'm not sure that's true, but regardless... the essay maybe doesn't land a hit for me because - you say it right in the first line - "30% and 40% of Americans no longer subscribe to this nation's founding principles"... me personally, I don't really care about the founding principles. I think we need 2017 principles. If some of the values I care about were in the bill of rights as intended by the founding fathers, that's cool, but incidental.

Q. G. Pennyworth

"New America believes that monetary unfailingly indicates upright morals"

The "sexual orientation must match your gender" line needs tweaking, too, since you're explicitly stating all the cis-normative stuff earlier and here you're just implying hetero-normativity, maybe something along the lines of "your sexual orientation must be exclusively towards the other gender (since there are only two this should be easy for you) and if not..."

tyrannosaurus vex

Quote from: Q. G. Pennyworth on March 14, 2017, 02:52:46 PM
"New America believes that monetary unfailingly indicates upright morals"

The "sexual orientation must match your gender" line needs tweaking, too, since you're explicitly stating all the cis-normative stuff earlier and here you're just implying hetero-normativity, maybe something along the lines of "your sexual orientation must be exclusively towards the other gender (since there are only two this should be easy for you) and if not..."
thanks, i'll edit.
Evil and Unfeeling Arse-Flenser From The City of the Damned.

tyrannosaurus vex

Quote from: Cramulus on March 14, 2017, 02:24:16 PM
It's good writing. I am having trouble coming up with a response to it. You've highlighted some shitty currents. You've contrasted your values with their values and explained why theirs suck. Where do we go from there?

Your premise is that freedom, justice, and equality are founding principles, and that the current right wing America doesn't really believe in them. It's interesting, you kinda position marriage equality and trans acceptance as being part of the "founding principles".

I'm not sure that's true, but regardless... the essay maybe doesn't land a hit for me because - you say it right in the first line - "30% and 40% of Americans no longer subscribe to this nation's founding principles"... me personally, I don't really care about the founding principles. I think we need 2017 principles. If some of the values I care about were in the bill of rights as intended by the founding fathers, that's cool, but incidental.

Yeah, this (obviously) doesn't represent my final-draft "eureka here it is" moment. Specifically regarding the founding principles, obviously the founders were largely in favor of horrible shit that even today's GOP would (probably) not endorse publicly. Slavery, etc. So I don't mean to imply that we have somehow fallen from a state of transcendental bliss. Clearly that isn't the case.

What I am trying to portray here is that the fundamental ideas specifically put forward in the Declaration of Independence -- even if penned by people with serious flaws and moral shortcomings -- allude to an attitude that humanity should be moving from wherever it is to a better place, whereas a prevailing philosophy among modern "Conservatives" is that we should be moving from where we are back to where we used to be. It's about the direction we're travelling more than about the specific place we're at right now.

So while of course there was no inclusion of sexual freedom, or gender or racial or even economic equality assumed (or even imagined, really) at the signing of any of those documents, the spirit of getting to that point was alive. At least in the sense of that spirit being the basis of feel-good American rhetoric often used today. I may do it clumsily here but what I'm really trying to capture is that distinction between what we think America was about in 1776 vs what we think America is about now.

I agree that we need a "2017" philosophy, not a 1776 one. But that "2017 philosophy", if it is to be communicated to Americans in general, needs to have continuity with earlier ideas and be shown to be a natural evolution of those ideals.
Evil and Unfeeling Arse-Flenser From The City of the Damned.

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

This thread looks MEATY.

I am going to try to remember to come back to it when I actually have time to give it the attention it  deserves. Maybe some kind soul will bump it like it's hot.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."