What is America?

[rareboy]

Or this?

 

[NotHardUp1]

Anyone who has taught high school in the public school system saw the weeds sprouting, since the 1960's.

The increasing size of the population that had no thought of citizenship, charity, comity, or community grew until it is what it is today.

When the incorrigible were teens and it was just their economic future being pissed away by them, society shrugged.

Now, they are adults and ungovernable. Our society has reaped the bitter harvest of what it has sown.

The problem is not going to simply melt away. We have one, maybe two more national elections, and then it's over. At one time, I would have made caveat that a national tragedy like an attack, like a supervolcano, like a meteor strike, could refocus us. But there is too much evidence now to the contrary. We have no reason to believe factions won't exploit a crisis, and use it to hasten the disintegration of these United States.

 

[rareboy]

Today's perspective.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

Or this?

THIS IS THE ONE

 

[johaninsc]

 

[belamyi]

You 'Ricans are definitely screwed for good when you find yourselves having to ask such a question... "[Oh] What is America?".

Spain started to make a meme of that sort of question when it started losing (to or, rather, against the US precisely) the first of its very last and most profitable overseas colonies, in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines (the very-very last ones were richer Equatorial Guinea and, in its times, the worthless Sahara... right before the phosphate industry started skyrocketing).

 

[belamyi]

If you don't get that living in society basically means living with people who actually do not understand, do not accept, do disrespect and even hate each other, you never get what "agree to disagree" actually ever meant.

 

[cityboy-stl]

If you don't get that living in society basically means living with people who actually do not understand, do not accept, do disrespect and even hate each other, you never get what "agree to disagree" actually ever meant.

If you don't get that "agree to disagree" requires a minimum of two agreeable people, and that intolerant people never "agree to disagree", you never get what "agree to disagree" actually ever meant. Taken to its extreme, intolerant people and groups want to seize power and destroy you, and tolerance along with you. You can only allow intolerance until that intolerance becomes a clear and present danger to others and threatens the survival of civil society itself. We have achieved that level of intolerance, in my view.

Google The Paradox of Tolerance:

"The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. The seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance."

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

If you don't get that "agree to disagree" requires a minimum of two agreeable people, and that intolerant people never "agree to disagree", you never get what "agree to disagree" actually ever meant. Taken to its extreme, intolerant people and groups want to seize power and destroy you, and tolerance along with you. You can only allow intolerance until that intolerance becomes a clear and present danger to others and threatens the survival of civil society itself. We have achieved that level of intolerance, in my view.

Google The Paradox of Tolerance:

"The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. The seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance."

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."

Otherwise known as, "Let's hear what the racists and neo nazis have to say." As if we didn't already?

 

[belamyi]

If you don't get that "agree to disagree" requires a minimum of two agreeable people, and that intolerant people never "agree to disagree", you never get what "agree to disagree" actually ever meant. Taken to its extreme, intolerant people and groups want to seize power and destroy you, and tolerance along with you. You can only allow intolerance until that intolerance becomes a clear and present danger to others and threatens the survival of civil society itself. We have achieved that level of intolerance, in my view.

Google The Paradox of Tolerance:

"The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. The seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance."

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."

The true paradox is that there must be both a tacit discussion, understanding and tolerance because, from the moment it becomes open, obvious and engaging, division will go beyond bipartisanship. That is, the key is never to tell anyone that they represent a danger even to themselves, and that the problem lies not in some separate evil group that must be isolated and neutralized, but in tendencies lying, not necessarily in every sigle individual, at least not in a socially dangerous degree, but truly in every single possible class, faction and subdivision of every possibe group in every possible society.

I remember growing up hearing several maximes that were put forth as very innocent and undisputable, for example, one of them being that democracy involves accepting even those who are against it or, another one, that people would ever only vote for whomever promises the moon to them or, even further, that the media are there to be leaders (Fourth Estate and Fifth Column) and shape people's opinion, everyone being entitled to their own (notice the "paradox" or, rather, mess it all involves?) "in a truly democratic society".

Well, all that would be said when nobody was, and even less was willing to be aware of the logical consequences and the extension and revelation of them in the future that we are now living. I bet if someone had published a description of the world in 2020 back in 1990, today half the "intellectual" and its "digest" version, the media world, would be blaming that author for the creation of trumpism, neofascism and what not, that is, they would be blaming the messenger.

I was merely pointing that, not matter the intentions and beliefs (obvious to "us" enlightened ones) of the comic geek world, the comic magazine issues we old-farters grew up with allowed fascists to feel reflected or represented by them, starting with the steroid-fed and hyper-feminized WASPy mimbos and dolls of their core hero cast.

 

[belamyi]

Otherwise known as, "Let's hear what the racists and neo nazis have to say." As if we didn't already?

To wipe our asses with their entitled opinion, as with any other opinion being inconvenient to 'us'.

 

[cityboy-stl]

Unlimited tolerance granted to the intolerant, destroys tolerance as well as society in general. When the goal of the intolerant is to abuse the right of free speech to destroy free speech; when their goal is to abuse democracy to destroy democracy; when the goal of the intolerant is to abuse tolerance to seize power, to tear apart the rule of law, and to impose their intolerance upon society as a whole, there comes a time when society has to step up and say no. You cannot have any kind of tolerant discussion with people whose intent is to destroy you. At that level, tolerance just becomes appeasement, which gives the intolerant opportunity to subjugate you. The intolerant never operate with you in good faith, no matter how much the tolerant try. Rational discussion rarely works when the end game is conquest and victory over you. When a specific person or group becomes a clear and present danger to personal and national survival, you have to do something. We have reached that point. It's time to stop being Chamberlain with these people, and start being Churchill.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

 

[belamyi]

^ We are just repeating the same, because we are not discussing anything, just "agreeing" : tolerance is actually the lack of awareness of the perpetual presence and threat of intolerance inside a society. Once the fiction is over, unleash the bulldog.

 

[rareboy]

 

[Araucaria]

^Utah is surprising.

 

[Harke the Boeotarch]

They were some Western European colonies doing well, not great, until the slave-owners started to get uppity somewhere in the eighteenth century.

Can´t remember what happened to them after that... we had so many more colonies... Australia... South Africa... Papua... Peru.

 

[voltronforce]

Your reminder that America includes all of North, Central, and South America. Only citizens of the US think America is just them.

 

[Harke the Boeotarch]

^ Jasun/Soilwork didn´t.

 

[belamyi]

Your reminder that America includes all of North, Central, and South America. Only citizens of the US think America is just them.
View attachment 1665528

I was lectured about that by a jubbite years... decades ago

It seems there is a distinction between "America" as short for "United States of America" (just like they say "The Emirates" for "United Arab Emirates", while Qatar or Kuwait are independent emirates too), and Americas is used for the rest... South of Rio Grande, it seems, because America's hat seems to be likewise singled out and styled as "[that rebel] Canada".

 

[belamyi]

^ and "Americas as used for the rest"...

I had to leave all of a sudden for a while for over ten minutes, and couldn't edit on time