What Does America Stand For?

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Some Schmo
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What Does America Stand For?

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We recently got HBOmax and I started re-watching The Larry Sanders Show (still awesome).

There's a scene where Hank is coaching Larry on how to sell something you don't believe in, saying he had to substitute the product with something he did believe in. Larry asks what Hank thinks of, and he says, "America, and everything she stands for."

It got me thinking, what does America stand for? If you asked several Americans that question, the answers would all be different. Kind of like asking someone to describe their god: you'll get a list of things representing what that person values.

I can think of lots of things America stands for:

- Embracing BS (religion/conspiracy theories/right wing culture... sorry for being redundant there)
- Ignorance; suspicion of education and expertise
- Hypersensitivity
- Hyper-sensitivity
- Mass shootings
- Racism/xenophobia
- Poverty
- Income inequality
- Climate Change
- Inadequate, expensive health care coverage

Perhaps it would be slightly more accurate to say that America stands by for these things, but it seems to me that for all the positive things America stands for (which are many), there is at least as much crap America tolerates. I suspect that all the flag waving many Americans do serves to inoculate them from the reality of their country.
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MeDotOrg
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Re: What Does America Stand For?

Post by MeDotOrg »

After some of the reporting about Guatemala in the last few days, you find a story repeated: People are sending their children north, because they don't think their country will be able to provide for them. How do you send your child a thousand miles across a foreign country with only hope to get across the border?

You have lost hope for where you are, but you have not lost the primal human urge to do something.

What would it take for you to send your 12 year old child on a similar journey? How would you feel about the President of your country, if you lived in a country where you had lost all hope? How does President Giammattei respond to his country's cruel exodus of children?

Watching Harris try to word-salad dance around our relationship with a corrupt country was hard to watch. At the same time, what is anybody else doing? Given the political corruption in the country, it would be great to bypass government channels and use NGO's as much as practicable.

You're probably asking yourself what this has to do with the OP. Despite all of its flaws, some of them seemingly congenital, America still embodies the possibility of hope.

When Barack Obama was elected in 2008, I thought America had reached a milestone. What has happened since then has been a slow-moving counter-revolution, culminating in January 6th. The rejection of facts, the acceptance of myth and narrative instead of history, the proliferation of channels for this type of misinformation (including most of the Republican Party) represent a serious threat to functioning democracy in this country.

One of the things we're seeing in the country right now is the schism between democracy and American Mythos, the schism between 'all men are created equal' and '3/5ths of a human being, which has morphed into voting rights vs. Jim Crow 2.0.`

The fault lines of that battleground have left the country have left the country intractably divided over solutions to many of the problems you enumerate. The center is not holding. What is happening is a civil war of values. Mark Twain said history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. Think of Lincoln's observations before the Civil War:
A Lincoln wrote:A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall - but I do expect it will cease to be divided.

It will become all one thing, or all the other.
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Re: What Does America Stand For?

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Your point is well taken, and I should be clear that I still think America, for all its flaws, is one of the better countries around.

I suppose the main point of my OP is that things will never change if we sit in denial of our problems, and given Americans' propensity for rabid, blind patriotism, I don't see that denial lifting any time soon.
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Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: What Does America Stand For?

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Well. America has always been an idea, and that idea has always reflected the mores and values of its sub-groups that percolate to the totality. The problem with any sort of assertive statement over the nature of something, especially a nation-state like the US, is the inherent contradictions baked into its it. This is a result of the inherent problems associated with human nature. We're not, on a fundamental level, any different than any other natural organism that creeps and crawls on this earth. So, whatever ideals that have been crafted into our Constitution, amendments, code, policies, laws, and cultural norms are reflective of our human nature while simultaneously acknowledging it - mainly our shortcomings, whatever we think they are.

So, what does America stand for? It's complicated. It's complicated because that's like asking what you stand for. When you start taking the you, and scaling it up to a block, neighborhood, municipality, city, county, state, and then the nation it seems more and more absurd to demand that the greater political body 'stand for something'. How in the world can we expect idealism for a nation when we can barely tolerate one another on an individual?

Bringing it back to the meta question I guess I'd have to answer that America stands for your right to pursue 1) life, 2) liberty, and 3) happiness. America, as a nation-state, tries to find the balance between those three things, which is an impossible task at the individual level since your notions of those three ideals will naturally be in conflict with mine. But, I think politicos of good conscience and with a grasp of what the framers had in mind, try to find the middle way that best serves the majority's interests, whether they understand it or not.

If I were put to the screws, I suppose I'd say that America stands for compromise. There's something interesting about the American mind and American diplomacy where we've found that compromise is the imperfect and unsatisfactory way forward that keeps everything and everyone unhappy, but just accepting enough, because you got a little something out of it, to keep us from killing each other in endless cycles of mass violence. We learned what happens when groups of people are too rigid and too uncompromising, and we've shed enough blood to keep us from defaulting to war and scaled-up violence to accept that as a status quo. So, we even compromise with violence accepting a low-level bleed here and abroad, at great cost, to keep the whole moving forward, whatever that means.

America is compromise.

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Re: What Does America Stand For?

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

I should add, because I just came across this for the first time, is America is like Gresham's Law.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/greshams-law.asp
Gresham's law is a monetary principle stating that "bad money drives out good." It is primarily used for consideration and application in currency markets. Gresham’s law was originally based on the composition of minted coins and the value of the precious metals used in them. However, since the abandonment of metallic currency standards, the theory has been applied to the relative stability of different currencies' value in global markets.
So, what I mean by that is that America has a sort of "gold standard" when it comes to its own idealism, and was initially framed to benefit men who were land holders, the monied, whatever. As the country became more inclusive of social classes, the politics reflected a broader net of legal standards that grew out of political necessity, and the people began to operate within this system that opened 1, 2, and 3 to most people to varying degrees. We began to deal in a social currency that was for everyone, despite out entire system being based on the prior gold standard. The people preferred the 'cheaper currency' because it was expeditious to their own aims (while the elites went ahead and held onto their gold coins because that's what people do). And America has been trending toward this sort of ubiquitous 'opportunity for all' which is essentially casting aside the need for the old ways, the old money, the old restrictions - which leads, naturally, to conflict. The "natural order" of trickle down BS is giving way to people creating their own 'currency' and using it for transactions. This leads to a shift in political power, and will have a sort of reverse power structure effect in that historically disadvantaged people will find their way into the system and do what they do.

So, tl;dr - America is transactional, too.

- Doc
Hugh Nibley claimed he bumped into Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Gertrude Stein, and the Grand Duke Vladimir Romanoff. Dishonesty is baked into Mormonism.
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Re: What Does America Stand For?

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Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Wed Jun 09, 2021 1:45 pm
So, what does America stand for? It's complicated. It's complicated because that's like asking what you stand for. When you start taking the you, and scaling it up to a block, neighborhood, municipality, city, county, state, and then the nation it seems more and more absurd to demand that the greater political body 'stand for something'. How in the world can we expect idealism for a nation when we can barely tolerate one another on an individual?
No doubt. As I mentioned in the OP, everyone will have a different take on the question. To even answer the question requires a little hubris, unless it's proceeded with the phrase, "What America stands for as far as I'm concerned..."
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Wed Jun 09, 2021 1:45 pm
America is compromise.
That's a pretty good distillation of it, I think. It allows for all the good and bad we see around us.

Compromise leads to vanilla, because vanilla is safe. Sure, I could go for something bolder, but I could also end up with crap-flavored ice cream.
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Re: What Does America Stand For?

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

Some Schmo wrote:
Wed Jun 09, 2021 3:02 pm
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Wed Jun 09, 2021 1:45 pm
So, what does America stand for? It's complicated. It's complicated because that's like asking what you stand for. When you start taking the you, and scaling it up to a block, neighborhood, municipality, city, county, state, and then the nation it seems more and more absurd to demand that the greater political body 'stand for something'. How in the world can we expect idealism for a nation when we can barely tolerate one another on an individual?
No doubt. As I mentioned in the OP, everyone will have a different take on the question. To even answer the question requires a little hubris, unless it's proceeded with the phrase, "What America stands for as far as I'm concerned..."
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Wed Jun 09, 2021 1:45 pm
America is compromise.
That's a pretty good distillation of it, I think. It allows for all the good and bad we see around us.

Compromise leads to vanilla, because vanilla is safe. Sure, I could go for something bolder, but I could also end up with crap-flavored ice cream.
Ha. Maybe America is like the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream Moose Tracks, but you get, uh, bits of poo in it. I suppose it’s better than a carton of frozen crap you have to eat, though. I dunno. I’m terrible at analogies.

- Doc
Hugh Nibley claimed he bumped into Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Gertrude Stein, and the Grand Duke Vladimir Romanoff. Dishonesty is baked into Mormonism.
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Re: What Does America Stand For?

Post by honorentheos »

America has stood for opportunity. It's on its heels because people question if it's true anymore. People on the right and left sense that this defining quality is slipping away and, like a couple in a bad marriage, can't help but focus on what the other is doing that is so wrong and have lost sight that they share this common desire.

America stands for opportunity. All the other crap? That's not America, that's politics. When opportunity is gone, so is the essence of America.
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Re: What Does America Stand For?

Post by Some Schmo »

honorentheos wrote:
Thu Jun 10, 2021 4:51 am
America has stood for opportunity.
Well... if you're in the correct demographic; otherwise, it's like an opportunity zoo with most people watching others have opportunity.
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Re: What Does America Stand For?

Post by honorentheos »

Some Schmo wrote:
Thu Jun 10, 2021 1:27 pm
honorentheos wrote:
Thu Jun 10, 2021 4:51 am
America has stood for opportunity.
Well... if you're in the correct demographic; otherwise, it's like an opportunity zoo with most people watching others have opportunity.
Opportunity is what it stands for. It's what's brought people here for centuries, and what has driven the so-called American dream. That there is a post-modern disillusionment in this symbology due to any number of factors doesn't change that.

Truth is, I think we choose to believe in and pursue that ideal or not. In a sense one can look at the BLM protests this last year as belief in the ideal and hope things can change to better realize it. There's probably an interpretation of Trump support that is grounded in the ideal if misguided. There are also those who see the gap between reality and the ideal and decide, “F” it there's nothing to be done, let's burn the world down. Those people are damned assholes.
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