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Quote of the Day: How America Differs From Other Countries
My wife recently read Proof of Life: Twenty Days on the Hunt for a Missing Person in the Middle East, by Daniel Levin. Here’s a quote from a man known as the Sheikh:
You see, my friend, most societies and countries are like ours here [in Lebanon]. They are dysfunctional because they are tribal at their core. But America is different. The reason America is exceptional has nothing to do with its power. No, my friend, the reason for America’s exceptionalism is that it is not tribal. It is a melting pot of many cultures, many ethnicities and religions. And if this American experiment succeeds, then all of us who thrive in tribal conflict in this part of the world, all of us who cannot get out of our way, all of us who cannot evolve, then all of us are lost. That is why I am rooting for America to fail. And that, my friend, is hatred.
The Left hates the concept of the melting pot. The West is despised since it’s largely the culture of America. All cultures are equal except for ours which is to be destroyed. My local bookstore has a number of books which specifically attack whites and the West. Here’s just one example.
Bad Eagle’s Question
Was. And it wasn’t a melting pot of “cultures,” it was a melting pot of foreigners, individuals, becoming Americans. America is about individualism.
People of all cultures would come to America and become Americans. America has (had) Her Own culture.
Now, all cultures must be celebrated and practiced creating balkanization.
When every $hithole and also ran culture is celebrated and is considered equal regardless, then We’ve lost.
President Trump tried to combat this anti-American perspective. Of course, he was brutalized over his attempt.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-referred-haiti-african-countries-[REDACTED]-nations-n836946
e pluribus unum People seem to forget. Maybe because we don’t use coins so much anymore.
This is mainly a European White Christian perspective. As European White Christians withdraw from the field the balkanization of the country will continue to get worse until the American culture no longer exists. Eventually civil strife will bring the country down as the various “tribes” ally with other world powers to subjugate their opponents as they strive to be the top power and ruler of hell.
From what the Sheikh is saying, all of those cultures are going to fail anyway. It’s not America’s fault or anything. They just don’t want the example showing How Not To Live.
Jim Webb provided insight into this in his book Born Fighting through the eyes of a people derived from Scotland and Ireland and labeled the Ulster-Scots, sometimes called Scots-Irish. Of all the identified groups of settlers in colonial America and including all those groups since, Scots-Irish was the only one with no inclination to bring a culture with them. (they did bring the inclination and ability to build corn whiskey stills). They fought hard before, during, and after the War for Independence and individual liberty leaving a mark of their presence as American Patriots and embodied in that presence exactly the individualism and lack of tribalism that is the mark of American exceptionalism that many of today’s Americans do not understand.
Yes! Please tell that to Obama. (Even thought it’s a few years late.)
Note the current use of the word ‘communities’ (as opposed to ‘people’) in so much present-day political and business communication. As in…
–‘This bill is good for our Black Communities’.
or
–‘We need to improve job training in minority communities’
‘Communities’ are always defined demographically, almost always in terms of ethnicity…(I don’t think I’ve yet seen a reference to ‘our female communities’, though I wouldn’t be surprised at this point)…except when talking about ‘the Gay community’ or perhaps ‘the Trans community.’
re Balkanization, see An American Version of the Habsburg Empire?, also American Weimar or American Habsburg?
“As the Habsburg military used to say, ‘The situation is catastrophic, but not serious.'”
Theodore Dalrymple
A quote from Mediocre:
Is.
Victor Davis Hanson talks about the people around him.
There is lots of melting at the bottom. It is the upper and upper middle classes playing segregation games. The people who have it best.
I believe America still can meet that quote. I see it with the community I live in. I see it my my daughter’s school.
And this is Bryan saying this.
We are not Lebanon. Not remotely close. We have some problem cities. The nation as a whole is not that way.
As mental as so many of its institutions seem to be these days (and I’m never shy about calling them out), I think you’ll have to go far to find a better example of the “melting pot” working than present-day England. I summarized the contenders for leadership of the Conservative party in a recent post as follows: “Four of the ten are women. One is Iraqi born, and an immigrant himself. Three are first-generation Brits, the children of immigrants. One is the grandson of immigrants.”
And somehow, this happened without recourse to diversity, equity, inclusion, or the preening announcements that only a person of a certain color or sex would be considered eligible for a given position.
Of course, the professional race-baiters and pot-stirrers are rampant in wider British society, particularly amongst the academics, the police (unfortunately), the Church, and the culture vultures all of whom are heavily invested in maintaining the symbols of oppression, and a permanent and resentful underclass.
But a surprising number in British politics–many of them women, or immigrants, or people from less-than-wealthy or privileged backgrounds–are dismissing the woke concerns of their “betters” and championing a much more rational point of view. I’m hopeful, although not sure, that the tide is beginning to turn. Fingers crossed for the next two years, which I think will tell the tale.
That quote pretty well encapsulates why I’d never waste my money or time reading this book. A mental midget.
Thanks for the quote, @zafar.
I haven’t read this book (I’ve seen it go by at the library, and rolled my eyes), and I will stipulate that this email campaign (if it in fact happened as she describes) was in very poor taste. But I interpret the emails as a ham-handed reductio ad absurdam rather than an admission of misery and loserhood.
I don’t think the quote is true about Lebanon. I know too many Lebanese families that are mixed, Christian-Sunni, Sunni-Shia.
The reason Lebanon is a failed state is that the tribalism is enshrined in the Lebanese constitution with the political leaders from each of those tribes being greedy and corrupt.
Why America is failing is that our leaders are greedy and corrupt, leaching resources from the entire country and being in league with greedy, corrupt corporate interests against the interests of the vast majority of Americans. What happened with the Wuhan flu is only one example.
I think America is equally this way. In fact, part of the reason is our inherent British-ness. :-) One of my daughter’s roommates in college was from India, and she described the Brits as the “world’s travelers.” They simply enjoy other countries. As do Americans.
What you’ve written would exactly describe all of the places Americans have gone or settled as well.
Both countries’ societies have evolved similarly. The blending of cultures would describe Hawaii, Florida, NYC, Alaska, Boston, the entire Southwest . . .
In part due to the waves of global mass migration that have occurred due to war or famine or poverty over the last three centuries, the histories of the two countries are the same.
In fact, immigration is a factor in almost all prosperous nations. People grow intellectually from getting to know people of different cultures. That’s why we’ve been sending our U.S. college kids on expeditions throughout our history.
The only places where immigration ever became a problem in an otherwise prosperous nation is when jobs became an issue. I was shocked a few years ago to learn that the KKK had a chapter in western Massachusetts, but it formed because of immigration and jobs and fear. It fell apart quickly, but when employers import cheap labor that displaces an existing labor force, all kinds of ugliness will come out.
In other words, the entire “America is racist” is a lie being told by Democrats who are trying to fatten their political checkbook.
We’re just a normal country that sometimes experiences growing pains due to massive uncontrolled influxes of people from other countries when we don’t have the housing, health care, police and fire protection, and most importantly jobs to accommodate those people.
Yes. Not all Americans pay (I mean pay taxes with money) but those who do are not getting what they allegedly are paying for. There is a great pretense ongoing and it has been amazing how the UniParty has been able to sustain and grow the government culture of greed and corruption. What we are experiencing in our government is not the exceptional culture based on individual freedom that our founders bequeathed us.
Here is a comment from an entry on Zerohedge with the same title as the first line of the comment “Trump Derangement Syndrome Is Going To Get Worse”. I really like the commenter’s characterization of the last 100 years as the (((tribal))) century.
We really need to hang on to our Constitution and Bill of Rights while we undo the turmoil that has been created.
Trump Derangement Syndrome Is Going To Get Worse
The author misses the central rationale behind why Trump is both loved and loathed (and contrary to the author’s contention, I believe that he is more loved than loathed). The reason Trump can draw massive crowds at the drop of a hat, while in comparison his opponents (aka Biden) only draw flies by comparison is not the Man himself (although he is charismatic) but the movement he represents – which is so divisive in a constructive way.
Multiple generations of brainwashed liberals are being dragged kicking and screaming back into reality. Those that long for this reality revere him as a symbol of a long overdue return to fundamental truths that have been lost – those that hate him are having their false delusions, groomed by essentially 100 years of indoctrination (aka the (((tribal))) century) of bankrupt and false ideologies shattered before their very eyes.
The rate of collapse of these liberal falsehoods (diversity is a strength, Marxism, feminism, socialism, globalism, post-modernism, etal); and the rate of ascendancy (or to be frank the threat of their ascendancy represented by the Trump movement, we are not there yet) of their alternatives (pride in one’s ethnicity and race, nationalism, Christian family values, normal sexuality, work ethic, meritocracy vs. affirmative action, smaller more locally focused government, etal ) is too great for them to bear.
All these liberal illusions, fostered by a century of intellectual “pampering” through lack of challenge, are collapsing at once. It is not Trump, but the glaring reality of the coming success of the movement he represents that is impossible for them to bear.
teutonicate
And if the author didn’t understand that, she’s not smart enough to write a book about it.
But it really is Trump. Who else is carrying the message and running for office with it? Who else cares? Who else actually articulates what Trump articulates and actually believes in them? Maaaaybe DeSantis will. Maaybe Sen. John Kennedy from
KY[Louisiana].Trump surprised a lot of people by showing that he stood behind the things that he was promoting and that he believed and was committed. So yes it is the man and the movement. That does not make a cult, though.
John Kennedy of La?
Wise choice. I got the free sample from Amazon but couldn’t make it through to the end.
Yabut a variation on “fine, I’ll just kill myself then since that’s the only thing that will satisfy you” is a bizarre way for an adult to respond.
Those aren’t grown up responses, completely separate from whether the author gets anything right or not.
And their currency was a ponzi scheme – now collapsed.
I agree that they’re not “grown up” responses.
I reserve judgment on whether they’re actually “real” responses, of if they’re examples of “bot” or “troll” responses.
As the author himself explains it, it was “a few weeks” between the first and the second message.
And “a few days” between the second and the third.
And so on. (That’s how automation works, BTW.)
By her own telling, the phraseology from message to message was largely the same. Was that because the messages were recognized as something that might get a reaction? Or were they genuine outbursts of distress from diverse white men?
I dunno. And neither do you.
But I’m not going to the bank on the idea that it’s some sort of indicator of a “white men” problem. And I’d suggest (as I always do) that the author in this case try to make a positive case for her point, rather than resorting to suspect innuendo in terms of what she’d like us to believe others might think.
Well they’re almost certainly troll responses. (Who would bother setting some bot thing going for this woman?) But the question remains: why would they bother unless they were bothered?
In which case, what bothered them and why?
Is the author really advocating for white men to kill themselves? I really doubt it.
So what was it?
I also don’t take the author’s assessment of white men too seriously. (How would she know?) But I’m interested in why she was trolled and why this kind of response.
Yeah, sorry.
That’s the thing about trolls. They’re not always representative of the population you think they are. More often than not, they are just stirring up trouble. And that’s why it’s wisest to ignore them.
Trolls. Just a taste starting with Science Direct:
Computers in Human Behavior
Volume 77, December 2017, Pages 69-76
Who do you troll and Why: An investigation into the relationship between the Dark Triad Personalities and online trolling behaviours towards popular and less popular Facebook profiles
*****
Abstract
This experiment examined the influence of Dark Personalities in trolling behaviour towards popular and less popular Facebook profiles. One-hundred and thirty-five participants were recruited to view two fake Facebook profiles and rate how much they would agree with some trolling comments to each profile, as well as how they perceived themselves in comparison to each profile in terms of social acceptance and rank. In addition, participants completed the Short Dark Personality Questionnaire. Results suggested Psychopathy was positively associated with trolling behaviours while Narcissism was associated with a tendency to see oneself superior to others. Moreover, the higher the Psychopathy score the more likely the participants would troll the popular profile. On the other hand, the higher the Narcissism score the more likely participants were to perceive themselves as superior to the popular profile. These analyses revealed the different influence Dark Personality traits play on different behavioural tendencies. Dynamics among the Dark Personalities in relationship with online behaviours and the implications of the study are discussed.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563217305034
******
Traits of a Troll: Research Reveals Motives of Internet Trolling
June 28, 2021
Summary: Individuals with dark triad personality traits, including narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy, combined with feeling schadenfreude, taking pleasure from the misfortune of others, are more likely to indulge in internet trolling.
https://neurosciencenews.com/drk-triad-trolling-18825/
[Note: I have edited the sourcing in this comment and added content.]