Are you really that far outside? — Joshs

I live in New Zealand. Which is pretty far outside. As an agricultural nation, almost every city is in recent memory a rural service hub. And yet also, the nation was founded on having to be smart to make up for being so isolated and small.

It is perfectly true that the mood of the US is changing our own politics. Just the other week our farmer favouring conservative coalition did the unthinkable of abandoning key climate change commitments. And doing so as an undebated press release that went out to a few selected media outlets. An abuse of process even more unthinkable. About the level of a Trump tweet. And met with the same public apathy so far.

So there is no real risk of a rural-urban soft civil war in NZ. Nor much of a migrant crisis even though we are at 28% for population born elsewhere compared to the US’s 16%.

But Trumpism is definitely empowering those who now want licence to run roughshod over political process and consensus-building. Sneaky stuff has started to happen.

The states are powerful centers of legal resistance against the national government. I don’t think it’s a matter of lacking the ability to evolve so much as never having needed to use that ability till now. In the past it was enough to rely on states’ rights to balance an overreaching federal government. But it may be necessary to begin thinking in terms of inter-urban alliances to fill in funding gaps and replace national institutions. The same may be said for cities like London, Paris, Berlin and Vienna. — Joshs

You are right. And I’ve seen all these waves of reform. The push for localism to combat centralisation. The rise of an international alliance of city mayors. Now you have hope of federal courts to band against the Supreme Court.

We try to engineer society as a system with a built in complementary dynamic so that it can adapt to the moment while maintaining a long term structure of habit.

But where is America now that it isn’t even a two party duopoly of the elites? How to understand a political structure based on rabid MAGAism and elite apathy? A most curious kind of rupture or civil war.

Make it make sense as a step to somewhere. Make it make sense even as a civil war if it seems more like two sides locked into their own states of learned helplessness. One side can’t throw a punch and the other side can’t land one.

Well, something like that. The consequences of creating a nation run on WWE level posturing and make believe, :grin:

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What interests of its own does the state have?
— Ludwig V
This is either naive idealism or a provocation — Astorre

I guess you won't be answering the question then.

I think you're arguing that slave mentality is not a thing. That's cool. Maybe that would make another thread: Is slave mentality a thing? — frank

Well, "slave mentality" seems to be a "thing" in that it's one of the ways that some people characterize other people in order to justify not treating them with the respect that they deserve. Two other popular "things" of this kind are infants and sheep. I can see only propaganda in these memes and am interested in discovering whether there is any serious intellectual thought to be found here. So far, I've had no luck.


Not much enlightenment so far. I'm looking forward to the next instalment.
I'm sure you know about Heidegger's (private) offer of "stupidity" as an explanation. I'm hoping to learn how that cashes out at the level of philosophy. The following, which I found by following your link, does identify one comprehensible and all-too-human mistake:-

In short, in rather transparent fashion Heidegger here substitutes his own philosophical concerns for the existential concerns created by the world economic collapse and the decline of the Weimar Republic.

From the outside, it does seem the US wants to tear itself culturally in two. And is frustrated by the fact it couldn’t be more integrated in being a geographical mix of the urban and the rural over all its scales. — apokrisis

Yes. And rural vs urban is one of the divisions. But it's not obvious to me that this is the whole, or even the heart, of the division. There's all sorts of other frontier battlegrounds around. I haven't noticed a coherent overall story yet. For me, the most likely driver is the economic issue. There's a group of people who have benefited enormously from the information revolution and some of them seem to have decided that they are entitled to formal political and social power as well. Not surprising, really.

It seems to me the urban-nonurban polarization threatening to tear the U.S. apart is at also work in Europe, the UK., Israel, and many other parts of the world. — Joshs

There does seem to be a world-wide malaise and many people think that it is coming to a head. But I can't see what it is really all about. Most of the issues look like excuses to me, but my instinct is that the economy may be the most important. Those who have missed out want a piece of the action and those who have benefited want to hang on to what they have.

Democracy might begin as a defensible procedural mechanism for limiting government power, but it quickly and inexorably develops into something quite different: a culture of systematic thievery.
— N Land, page 58
"Thievery" implies property laws. Who makes those? Sadly, most regimes represent only some of the interests in their society and tend to prioritize their supporters in making the law. I can think of ways that might change, but they all turn on being able to recognize and allow for all the interests in society - especially those that are out of power. The problem is, everyone seems to think that everyone should be like themselves — Ludwig V

In regard to the "nanny state" discussion (that has suddenly disappeared from this thread), N Land shows himself to not be similar to the people who 'want what they do not deserve.' Contempt inures him to the outcomes of inequality. A condition more easily borne when one is confident of not getting the short end of the stick.