The U.S. Culture(s) thread

I doubt there could ever be a monarchy in the United States — unless we became a Commonwealth realm, the sociopolitical development of the nation kinds of precludes it.

Firstly, we have, in actuality, the opposite problem, where long-serving bureaucrats and life-serving Supreme Court justices allow antiquated notions, and social and economic conservatism to become ingrained in our society, and acclaiming a person king won't get rid of that. We already have a president, so having an "elected king," is basically the same thing, except they're serving for life, and having a hereditary monarch means we run the risk of raising up an embarrassment (though, this does seem hypocritical in our present circumstances ;)).

Secondly, land ownership in America was, and is, very different than in, say, England, where the monarch is one of the largest landowners and in the past, owned all land, period. We never had a formalized aristocracy, and what's more, as a creation of the Enlightenment, pre-modern feudalism was already centuries gone when America emerged. The king would either be a plutocrat, basically Trump with crown, scepter, and orb, dressed in ermine, or just a schlub, like Trump with no money and a puppet of plutocrats. In the first case, we already elected people like that, and thank god we're not stuck with them until they die; they're out in four to eight years, and I'd hate to see people refer to vile pieces of shit like that as "His Majesty." In the second case, why would we bow down to someone who's no better or worse than us? What gives him the right to rule, let alone reign?

Thirdly, it's actually pretty racist. America is a diverse society, built by many different cultures, races, religions, by both men and women, and by gay and straight people. The "King of America" would probably start off as a white man, pass the throne to other white people. No one person is a symbol of national unity. Trump doesn't represent my values or my beliefs or my race, education, and culture and h's going to be my president for the next four years. He certainly wouldn't if he were my king.

"Monarchy no, Strongman fascism like Trump ran on maybe."

Basically this, but fascism and Nazism are blue-collar political philosophies that actually drew a significant amount of antipathy from the German aristocracy. They absolutely could exist in a republican political mindspace because it originates in the commons, even if the figurehead is a billionaire.

edited 5th Dec '16 8:35:15 AM by CrimsonZephyr

Just to point out you don't have to accept the Queen as your head of state to be part of the commonwealth anymore, you just have to accept her as head of the Commonwealth.

I don't know that we could do even that much at this point.

Casual observation:

Doing a little bit of reading, I find the american right's fixation and admiration for Ayn Rand profoundly ironic. Why?

Because a big part of their propaganda machine is promoting the idea of "liberal elitism", that there is a group of evil, out-of-touch coastal elites who have no understanding of "real americans", and look down on them and their noble lifestyle and values.

And yet everything I read about Ayn Rand paints her as infinitely more elitist and snobby than any liberal I've ever met. She considered herself "the most creative thinker alive" and thought she was the height of rationality and truth, despite fostering a cult of personality and operating almost entirely on dogma. Even when she was young she thought that she was better than everyone else and that people shunned her because she was intellectually superior, the exact attitude of a self-absorbed teenager.

Many of her advocates seem to be possessed of the exact same egotism, thinking that they came into their riches by their own superiority and view themselves as the ultimate special elite who deserve everything while everyone else rightfully deserves nothing, ignoring any element of luck or favorable circumstances on their part. Ludwig Von Mises' letter to Rand betrays this exact elitism, by explicitly saying that "the masses" are inferior to the "great men" to whom they own their entire lives. So if the "latte sipping liberals on their ipads" look down on them, what about these people who are part of the conservative establishment who clearly think that they're better than anyone with less money than them, including the poor rural whites and blue collar workers who vote for the same party they do?

And the conservative politicians who lionize her work? They routinely placate their base's ignorance by refusing to accept evolution and climate change, even if they don't necessarily believe those things. This ignorance operates on the basis that, somehow, despite never doing any serious work or putting any effort to understand biology, history, or meteorology, they are more qualified to talk about it than the thousands of people who've made entire careers studying those fields. Which is one of the most arrogant things I've ever seen.

Sorry, just had to get that off my chest.

edited 6th Dec '16 3:43:34 PM by Draghinazzo

Doublethink is very real and very widespread among a lot of the Right. It'd be interesting to study from a sociological point of view if it wasn't actively destroying the country.

It bears mentioning that she made friends with an academecian (whose name I cannot recall at the moment and I'll have to look that up) who told her what was necessary to becoming part of the circle of published philosophers in official academic circles, and she apparently decided it wasn't worth it because they might actually argue back with her in a way she wouldn't like. She didn't even want to risk anyone in academic circles telling her she was wrong. Not exactly the most self honest person, Rand.

so Andrew Ryan was very accurate to Rand, hypocrisy and all.

That was the point, yes.

Her hipocrisy was another thing I forgot to include.

"Nobody helped me and they weren't obligated to"

Says the woman who relied on money from relatives and friends, including one who owned a theater where she watched several movies for free.

Gets into affair with man 25 years her junior and says their spouses have no real reason to object, gets mad when he proposes that an affair with another woman would be good for him, gets butthurt when he doesn't want to be in it anymore and throws a temper tantrum accusing him of fraud excommunicating him from the cult.

It's pretty transparent that her entire philosophy was based on a traumatic childhood and her desire to see herself as someone important and special, and all the actions she took from that point onwards only reinforce that. It's pretty much the exact opposite of reason. She was very good at creating logical traps and convincing people to join her cult, according to what I'm reading, but you don't need exactly need a sophisticated understanding of politics and sociology to see that it's all bullshit, whether it's from a moral or a factual standpoint.

But you need to at least resist the temptation for moral and intellectual shortcuts.

I'm not done reading up yet.

Since the rise of Trump I'm making an effort to become more educated, and the American Right's Rand fascination has been one of my subjects of reading as you can see.

For me (an American conservative) what makes Rand's ideology redeemable is the idea of self-interest and ambition as virtue. I do disagree with much of the rest of her ideology though-I'm more socially conservative than anything and not particularly afraid of "big government".

She's also good at arguing against ideologies I like even less than hers (such as Marxism).

You just described every single Randian Libertarian in a nutshell.

edited 6th Dec '16 6:41:45 PM by AngelusNox

It's not so great when Paul Ryan holds up a copy of Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead to justify privatizing Medicare and slashing Social Security.

edited 6th Dec '16 6:45:14 PM by M84

Considering her form of self interest most often seemed expressed as "fuck you, got mine" and a lack of understanding the many things a craftsman must do in order to advance their careers (such as holding up a man who refused to do any buildings but those he was absolutely interested in as an example of virtue in his field of architecture) in order to achieve their ambitions, this "redemption" is at best dubious. Like, seriously, anyone with ambition has to do grunt work or take on jobs they're less than enthused about because that's part and parcel of getting to a point where you can achieve your ambitions. And in Atlas Shrugged their self interest went to the point where the heroes literally did not care what happened to the rest of the world; they had their utopia and the rest could die for all they cared.

Edited for clarification.

edited 6th Dec '16 9:58:01 PM by AceofSpades

Objectivism: Because people apparently needed another excuse to act like selfish assholes.

Side topic: The Atlantic put out a piece on the early college movement, which is a think I'm a product of only now it's actually catching on in a mainstream way. I mention it here mostly because in the Politics thread it's come up a few times that that bechelors degree is likely to become the new minimum education level but on the other end of it, courses up to the associates level are increasingly becoming a feature of high school.

Americans Actually Do Trust The Media (If You Ask Them About Specific News Outlets)

They hate the faceless concept of the news media, but trust specific channels / avenues of information. The highest ranked New Sources are ABC, NBC and CBS for TV News, with the New York Times and Wall Street Journal being trusted to give it to them straight for Newspaper News.

After this year, I'm not surprised that CNN isn't one of the top rated ones.

The In-Group Bias is very strong in these kinds of cases. People trust and believe in points of view that seem to promote their self-interest, while allowing them to think that they are being objective and fair. That applies pretty equally to Atlas Shrugged and Fox News (or Marxism, for that matter).

Honestly, I'd be happy with a network that doesn't pay much attention to Trump's damn tweets while focusing on his actual policies and actions in office.

edited 8th Dec '16 6:49:18 PM by M84

The news media is trustworthy to a point because they live in fact-based reality, where their bias comes in is usually *what* they report on and how they frame it, not that they are spreading lies, like how it took forever to get Standing Rock in the national conversation.

There is a tiny monarchist movement in the US, centered around "The Dark Enlightenment," namely a group of philosophers (mostly tied to silicon valley and ethics-in-game-journalism folks) who feel like the point where the wheels started to fall off in western society was in the 17th and 18th centuries with the Enlightenment, that the very concept of democracy and of human rights are where we went wrong.

Funnily, i remember one Dark Enlightenment type had a website that ran with a positive analysis of My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, because it posited a Fascist utopia of sorts, because cutie marks mean that everybody has a defined role and knows their place, including who should lead and who should follow.

So the reason that site supports fascism is due to something that's literally pulled from one's ass?

There were other things too. Sure it was all psuedo-intellectual hooey, but it wasn't complete garbage. You could argue that Fi M makes an argument for Fascism as a critique of the show because of the emphasis the show puts on Cutie Marks, and especially early season emphasis on how the ponies control the natural world: everything is ordered to the good of the nation, and the only things that are aberrant are treated as evil that must be stamped out through the power of enforced Harmony. The only thing anti-Fascist about it is that the show's also pretty stern about the idea that individuality is a good thing, which Fascism takes a dim view of. Also that the show's economics are borderline communist given how many ponies seem to work in the public sector.

That's like saying Ducktales is an argument for unrestrained, Randian capitalism....