The U.S. Culture(s) thread

American Car Culture In High Gear: US Has A Record Four Cars For Every Five People

All I can say to that is that I don't own a vehicle myself, (because I'd probably crash and burn in five seconds flat, FYI,) so at least I'm not contributing to a possibly flawed capitalist system?

Eh, i used to like Kissinger and his policies until i learned about Operation Condor and the American-backed coups across South America (knew they had happened before, didn't know how nasty they were or how complicit we were).

He was a canny man for his time, though if you listen to his opinions on current events, they're much more out of step.

Considering how terrible public transit across much of the US is, that doesn't surprise me. Especially since anyone who lives in the suburbs is basically screwed when it comes to public transit.

Depends on how you define the suburbs. The near-urb periphery around here has a light-rail that runs about 10 miles out, and then the smaller surrounding counties do have commuter buses (though they can have bad schedules).

Dart where I live has been aggressively expanding, but in a lot of places you're still kind of screwed if you don't have a car. DART has both buses and a light rail, and they've expanded way the heck up to Denton, and joined with another (and I think it's an older one) rail to go out to the Arlington Ball Park.

Amusingly enough the county I live right next to voted not to allow the rail because it would mean like ten cents more for taxes, and now DART just flat out doesn't need that country to operate.

In contrast, the public transport in Houston kind of sucks and the money for renovating the rail system was basically stolen by Rick Perry for some of his big oil friends.

Considering the distances between some cities in this state the whole thing could benefit from less cars and more trains/buses. A bullet train could reduce the travel from Dallas to Houston drastically!

I don't see why Americans owning a lot of cars is a bad thing. In fact, I would even say owning your own car is a symbol of the American dream alongside suburbs and cherry pie and whatnot.

edited 31st Jul '15 7:03:43 PM by Protagonist506

Traffic problems, mostly, and parking issues in the city like all hell.

Pollution, congested roads, accidents, high costs, mental and physical health issues, space issues. Those are a few of the reasons why too many cars are a bad thing. I don't buy the "American Dream" argument since the concept, for all it's good and bad qualities, long proceeds the advent of cars. In fact, looking back through history, trains linking the continent together and the good old fashion legwork of explorers and pioneers have a better claim to the American Dream than cars ever did. Heck, the most influential car driven mass migration was probably the Oakies packing up everything they own and abandoning their farms and little houses during the Dust Bowl.

Apple pie. Apple pie is pure and holy. Cherry is forever a distant second and I will go Aaron Burr on anyone who says otherwise.

edited 31st Jul '15 7:13:02 PM by Parable

Cars are very very expensive to buy and then own, and it'd be nice in general if we had more in the way of energy efficient and not polluting public transport.

Just because it's "part of the dream" doesn't mean it has to be, especially when for so many it's actually financially disastrous. Plus, having more public transport means more jobs in that sector. So.... lots of reasons to do a thing I guess. We're already sort of crawling in that direction, but given that it's not a federal effort it's very spotty.

Heck I think a lot of people use the Amtrak up in New England and would have to officially find new jobs in the public transit stopped being a thing and they all had to drive to work. There's certain things that have been made possible or rendered much easier to do with the existence of public transit. Why not make that a bigger thing?

Actually, you know, I don't actually recall any of us saying that owning a car was a bad thing, Protagonist. You put that word in our mouths. We just commented on the existence/suckiness of America's PUBLIC transit which is way behind a bunch of other countries.

edited 31st Jul '15 8:06:46 PM by AceofSpades

Who are the Oakies?

I only know that most dust bowl migrations were made on foot, by train or by stagecoach. Then again, I only know that stuff happened due to Woody Guthrie songs and the Steinbeck novels.

A nickname for the people who abandoned their farms due to the Dust Bowl. (The term originated from Oklahoma, which a lot of those farmers came from.)

The "Oakies" were originally the migrants that fled from the most devastated region of the Dust Bowl, which was the panhandle region of Oklahoma. They consisted of such a large part of the migration into California and the West Coast that the people there began to use the slang term as a catch-all for any Dust Bowl migrant as a whole.

edited 31st Jul '15 8:19:18 PM by FluffyMcChicken

Ah, ok, so that's the origin of the term. Thank you both.

Yeah, Grapes of Wrath, Oakies was the derogatory name for the Oklahomans who re-settled.

Whoa,

edited 31st Jul '15 8:26:01 PM by Ogodei

Indeed, I'm very much in favor of increased public transport because it would make it easier for people who really do need cars. For some people's daily life trains and buses are impracticable, they need the independency of a person vehicle at all times. So if the people who don't need it at all times are on trains or buses or riding bikes instead, it frees up traffic, allowing for faster commutes and reducing the traffic related stress levels urban dwellers are so familair with.

I live in a bike-friendly area, so I've been able to completely cut the car out of the daily commute and errands, with the exception of blizzards and near-freezing rain. It's done wonders for my mood, as city driving sucks, whatever version of the American dream involves it be damned. Just wish we had more light-rail lines.

...Might be a way to spin it. "Being American is about being self-reliant, right? So why are you using a car when you could be using your own body?"

I once read this article on Cracked on how the car industry used some very underhanded tricks to get an effective monopoly on personal transportation in the USA. Like buying out and dismantling light rail systems. Or "lobbying" city planners for more car-friendly (and alternative-unfriendly) cities.

Whether or not you should use cars ultimately depends on the area you live in. I still think it's nice to own one if possible even if you live in a more urban area. Buses can be inconvenient at times and planes are absurdly expensive.

edited 2nd Aug '15 7:50:53 AM by Kostya

Is this too political for this thread?

Should be okay as long as we focus on the conservative beliefs of the people and where they came from, and not the Republican Party itself.

It's an interesting theory, but there are a few holes. Specifically, individualism wasn't that strong an influence as people think, at least in its popularly expressed form. The Founding Fathers did draw on Locke for influence (it helped that they were wealthy and well-to-do, which Locke kind of was biased towards), but that faded fast from popular culture. Either it got twisted (see the Horatio Algor novels I pointed out before), or abandoned (the frontier was actually well known for collaboration above individual work, and historians enjoy debunking a lot of those concepts).

In conclusion, historically, the U.S. has mostly paid lip service to individualism while leaning slightly towards collectivism. While there were elements that rejected this, the country as a whole slowly moved in that direction...at least, until the Cold War.

When many people are racing around trying to define the country as the anti-Soviet Union, and the Soviets (in theory) favored collectivism...you can see how this kick-started a new wave of "individualism". Which is now beginning to burn out, and that brings us to today.

I don't think so, the thread was designed to move away from topical discussion of American politics and talk about the deeper cultural issues that underscore all of our political theater. I think you might have just answered all of our questions, though, since most of the questions tend to amount to "what's wrong with the Right and how did it get that way?"

And presumably, the other stuff that doesn't quite fit the US Politics Thread?

I've assembled a bit of a series on discussion spreading out from that article, including this article, this article, and this article, all from the month of October 2013. It is very political, but I think the more important takeaway is that there are actual pressures from an actual culture acting on actual people, and it's not good enough to dismiss a fourth of the country as a lost cause - leaving them to do so empowered a parasitic political overclass and left many regions of the U.S. impoverished and underdeveloped. Something has to be done, and that includes things that have to be done for them, not just turning up our noses at the hicks.

The truth about Asian Americans' success (it's not what you think)

You know the stereotype that Asians are typically the best performing immigrants because of their parents being pressuring them into studying and hard work ethics? Turns out, it might occur because American perceptions and immigration policies encourages that behavior.

Whenever somebody from Asia usually migrates to the States, even if they're poor and have little in the way of English language or even advanced career skills, they make a point to connect and associate with groups that have already successfully integrated. Furthermore, their communities tend to focus more upon encouraging academic successes than others - you'll often find many have afterschool study programs to help students ace academic tests and get into prestigious institutions. And once those kids succeed, word spreads, they help others, and the success continues.

It doesn't affect every minority though. The Hmong, Laotians, and Cambodians don't seem to have this success streak, yet they fit the Asian stereotype enough that the average American might mistake them for being Chinese. The article speculates that the cause is a lack of internal community cohesion; while neighborhoods do exist for those minorities, they never did develop a large enough population or develop enough knowledgeable members of the community to help train future generations.