It hasn’t gone unnoticed that Americans believe this to be the case. At the most they will acknowledge the existence of GB (but likely don’t know where it is).
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I’m glad we agree that it’s the best, and I also agree it would be better if everyone agreed on that. But I would argue that movement towards that ideal is independently beneficial: even if it won’t be achieved in the foreseeable future, even if it won’t ever be achieved, we should support movement towards it now.
Do you mean there won’t be a world government, or just that it won’t be benevolent?
I’d argue there is already a global government, it’s just weak and corrupt. International law exists, it’s anarchic and inconsistent, but states generally comply with it (granted that this was more true a decade ago).
I don’t know that we’ll ever have a strong international government, but it also isn’t a given that we’ll need one. Coordination benefits everyone, so it’s not impossible to have a stable global governing body with little hard power but significant influence.
It’s a quote from an Englishman (though he did help create America).
That’s what quotation marks are for.
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That’s where we disagree, imo while we obviously should always support movement towards it and hope that it will become reality, today we also need to draw the line and remain nationalist first. On one hand that can mean strong cooperation with other like-minded nations, while also retaining national identity, like how the EU is supposed to work ideally. On the other hand it may mean rejecting certain groups like Muslims and Gypsies. Realistically, all that goodwill and optimism of viewing the world as our country, and expecting the rest of the world to do the same, may just destroy the Western world, and not achieve the global country.
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And the irony starts to slam once you realize that Adolf Hitler had similar aspirations.
The Pièce de résistance, the magnum opus, the Summum bonum of all red flags is when someone wants to do “good” to everyone.
And then it turns out that the definition of “good” differs from person to person, and that its gonna happen to you whether or not you want it.
Black humor is truly an art in a league of it’s own
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Expecting everyone to know Thomas Paine is definitely my American arrogance showing.
But seeing all of humanity as my kin is not, that’s an Enlightenment value with roots in Christian ecumenicism.
What does “rejecting” Gypsies look like in practice?
That’s been said for a long time and it has not proven true. What’s destroying the Western world is the turn away from Enlightenment liberalism and the return to pre-modern selfish tribalism.
It’s not the Muslims in the US that are stripping women of their rights, censoring the press, and undermining democracy. It’s the nationalists.
Be real, do you even dislike Hitler? You’re advocating for something pretty close to ethnic cleansing, based on racist beliefs and concerns about purity. That seems more Hitler-shaped than my advocacy for universal human rights.
What my beliefs and Hitler’s beliefs have in common is that they concern the entire world. But Hitler’s beliefs were just your beliefs applied to the entire world.
Who could have foreseen that there are different conceptions of the good!?
Pluralism has a long history, and it applies to differing conceptions of the ‘good’ within nations/ethnicities/religions just as well as it does across them.
For example, the US has no official religion because white European Christians have a long history of killing each other over small differences in how they follow the same Good Book, and founders came from different Christian sects (and many were atheist, agnostic, or deist). That’s pluralism.
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Ah yes. Enforcing the laws and having border control is “ethnic cleansing” based on “racist beliefs and concerns about purity”.
So going back to the door on your house, care to let the rest of the class know why you are not exercising what you are preaching?
Here is the thing Carleas, you have the power to change anything involving YOUR OWN life.
That is something people like you categorically refuse to do.
You wont lift half a fuck of a finger to practice the values you are preaching, but you’d demand it from everybody else.
THAT is more Hitler shaped than anything else my dude.
Border control and deportations got nothing on this brand of sociopathy where you think you gonna live your life as you please but force the rest of humanity to adhere to your ideas, because its very easy to be a charity when you are forcing others to pay the cost of your bullshit.
The archetypical fucking Martha’s Vineyard progressive that made sure to instantly remove the poor little immigrants when they were dropped on their doorstep.
“My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.” You forgot to add “as long as the consequences are not appearing in my backyard”.
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No, it’s wanting stricter laws, wanting to exclude and expel more people that don’t look like you, referring to everyone who wants to move to a different country as a “criminal” or a “rapist”, your mention of “60 IQ africans”.
Personal ownership is different in kind from ethnic ownership.
But if I selectively prohibited people from from entering my home based on their ethnicity, I think that would also be bad.
Literally ad hominem, but also wrong. In fact I live in Washington, DC, a majority-minority and plurality black city with a significant immigrant population.
More generally, your stereotype is just wrong. Support for immigration and ethnic diversity are much higher in areas with high racial and ethnic diversity and large immigrant populations.
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Very curious since i have not said a single thing about writing stricter laws, nor was anything i said based on looks.
On the other hand i do not know how many times i have said and iterated that i simply want, regular, normal, enforced border controls, the way they fucking have been for thousands of years.
But i guess you hear what you want to hear.
Just because i am against letting anyone into my house, i am adolf hitler and i want ethnic cleansings.
No its not. Is upheld under the EXACT SAME social contract all and any of your rights and laws are, including your right to ownership.
And the duty of your government and representatives is to put the citizen’s interests, safety and well being ahead of everyone else’s. Thats why they elect, thats why they pay taxes, thats why they can be called in by the military and sent to fucking die for the country.
So please, just roll with it?
Take down your doors and practice what you preach.
Let the world become your country and house as well so you can truly embrace your religion of doing good.
Or is it that you suddenly see the downsides when it comes to that?
Its no ad-hominem, its an observation.
But if you disagree with me, im fully open to being disproved and debunked.
List me all the advocates of open borders and immigration, especial those of your politicians and millionaires who preach this shit, and tell me how many of them are living with their doors open to illegal bordercrossers.
How many of them think that their house should also be the world.
Please.
By all means.
Disprove me with all those thousands of names.
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Of course it’s proving true in Europe as we speak. There are few Muslims in the US and hardly any Gypsies, so of course it’s not happening in the US, like I said apples and oranges.
Return to pre-modern selfish tribalism isn’t nationalism, it’s return to pre-modern selfish tribalism. Aren’t you just talking about those fake-nationalist MAGA cultists? Those aren’t nationalists just like Trump isn’t one.
Unless you meant 'the selfish tribe of corporations & wealthy elites’, I think you’re missing that there might be just a teensy dash of economic issues involved in the threats to Western society. The price of food and the way the corporations used Covid to get extra profits. POLITICO Pro
The financialization of corporate strategies - wealth gets more concentrated and less products and services are made per ton of money made by the rich. One of capitalism’s core defenses is that wealth rewards people who produce goods and services. Increasingly, the wealthy get richer by owning and trading assets rather than by making things people need. And they’ve created the games to be able to do this. The concentration of the major media which hides and distracts from major economic shifts - and is also part of the concentration of wealth, power and influence. Even more, it allows a very well organized triggering of tribalism - to stoke the ‘cultural war’. Get people at each other’s throats while we slowly suck the country dry. Wall St. control of the supposedly representative politicians - which supports the economic shifts. The wealthy and corporate take-over of real estate at bulk levels and also land grabs of large areas by the wealthy. The incredible shifts of money from average citizens to corporations through executive declarations of war - now Iran. The radical bipartisan increases in incarceration, along with privitization of prisons, leading to more money siphoned from regular old citizens to the rich and corporations.
The whole extraction economy, that is - run by the transnational financial oligarchy and some individual billionaires.
The corporations and the wealthy needed a fairly stable West out of which they could organize their misuse of nations outside the West. They don’t need the West so much anymore - and they’re also kinda nuts. Why not come close to triggering WW3 now and then if 1) it makes them money and 2) keeps people from noticing what’s happening to their economies, personal and national. It’s the imperial boomerang—the process where tactics, extractive models, and financial mechanisms tested on less developed nations eventually return home to be used on the domestic population. But it’s not just obvious examples like austerity imposed on Greece. It’s happening in all Western countries. These massive corporations and private equity funds don’t belong to any one country anymore - they are making the rules they have to follow rather than nations making them - heck, investor-state arbitration clauses in trade deals let companies sue governments. So, they don’t give a damn about keeping the Western middle and working classes healthy or prosperous like they used to. Capital moves freely, production can be offshored, supply chains can more easily be international, money can sit in tax havens and the companies are so large they can stare down counties with much more ease. They can also influence whatever entities they need to with their massive wealth and power.
The whole game flipped. It’s no longer about actually creating useful products or services for people; it’s just about squeezing every last drop of cash out of systems we can’t escape. (Economic insecurity makes people more receptive to tribal appeals, and social media profits from supplying them. It is a direct revenue model) That’s why basic necessities like housing, healthcare - private equity buying clinics and hospitals to give an example from this list - college, infrastructure are all being turned into financial milking machines, using the exact same austerity and debt-trap playbook they used to pull on the Global South. The chickens have come home to roost. And this was not permitted and encouraged by just one of the ‘two parties’. They’ve both been playing good cop bad cop (with the roles perceived differently by different tribes, so to speak) for a long time and setting this up together, not necessarily consciously.
I agree with a good number of your responses in the thread, but at the same time, you are making minor players (who don’t have much power) the core enemy. And they do the same to you - you being another minor player. These corporations and the wealthy elites are not Enlightenment entities. They are regions of fascism with abilites the Stasi would have chopped off their arms for. Further, in reality, the legal frameworks of Enlightenment liberalism (property rights, freedom of contract, corporate personhood) were explicitly used by financial elites to buy the political system. Through SuperPACs, deregulation, and regulatory capture, the liberal republic was legally converted into an auction house. It didn’t decay because of tribalism; it was bought out.
When you see anti-immigrant hatred or resistance to more immigration as the problem, you are participating in precisely the tribal battles they want you to participate in. You see the anti-immigrant crowd as the problem, a group you see attacking innocent, not powerful people. Well, you are doing the same kind of thing, even if it seems like a moral response. Because you are seeing the core problem as a group of relatively powerless people who have often been put into incredible stress by the elites and their financial games. Great… perfect. You see them as the problem. They see you and immigrants as the problem. And the problem-makers happily go on triggering both of you to make sure your focus is on other relatively powerless people, who now live, like you do, in countries that pretend to be Republics or Democracies (and while that pretending does allow some citizen influence, it’s much less than most realize and these countries areno longer Republics or Democracies). The most isolationist presidential candidate (in many decades) went into a war when he was told to.
And they’re sure as shit making money over the results of that war already. Because if they know, it doesn’t matter what the effects are, in our new financialized rather than production-focused world, knowledge matters above all else.
But some can go on demonizing the Liberals or on the other side demonizing the ‘tribalists’ if this would seem to get anywhere, while a certain tribe not generally categorized as a tribe, keeps on keeping on its parasitic takeover. - and no, duh, I am not referring to Jewish people, who are regularly referred to as a tribe, including by themselves. But to offset facile dismissals (not really thinking of you Carleas) I’ll overexplain.
They truly want both those sides of relatively powerless people to think they are fighting the good fight, nobly and morally, and they will keep triggering both sides through social media and traditional media…because it works.
We could also talk about the dollar and how this lead to the deindustrialization of the West, but that’s a big topic and actually a bit over my head.
But tribalism, as the term is usually used and as the targets of the term are usually batched, is a minor cause in the destruction of the West. And the new lamprey in the economy is AI. The financial elites can really start cutting back on the West. The great streamlining is coming.
To sum up my position, I’d like to see a shift from idealist culture-war finger-pointing to concrete political economy critiques, with specific focus on how the elites are using new technologies to disempower, distract and finally replace people they consider a lesser, unimportant species. You’re calling out tribalism? These guys see us as house lice or numbers.
I’d throw a thought out that is tangential to what I wrote above: If we protect Native cultures partly because cultural distinctness is worth preserving, why is the same instinct elsewhere dismissed as pre-modern tribalism? In the US native cultures are often granted the ability to restrict who gets to live in their culture. These are monocultures. Yes, we do this in part because of the history of oppression and genocide. But I think if we look deeply, we (at least many of we) do this because we recognize a greatness and value in that tribal culture. One could say: we interfered enough with these people. We must allow them self-regulation. But introducing outsiders might have the same benefits for reservations as you think they have for the US. But on some level, when it comes to certain monocultures at least we sense something of value. And these are to a great extent genetically related people. Most so even than to members of other tribes. Why is it a value we recognize there but not elsewhere? Can we not sit with a little cognitive dissonance? And yes, I realize that the US even European portions of the US are already mixed in ways that even the already genetically mixed reservations not. The latter are still closer to monocultures, and tighter genetically. But can one have concerns about other cultures entering and have it not be racism? Let’s remember that what seems like a binary set of positions: the anti-immigration and the pro-immigration - it’s not. There’s a number where the pro immigration will say stop now. At least the vast majority. So, in the end, in terms of behavior, it’s a quantitative disagreement. Obama and Clinton were very much for the Wall.
In Europe the people coming in are tribal, often, with anti-Enlightenment belief systems, in fact extremely tribal belief systems, with severe (if also partly contradicted in the same scriptures) judgments of other tribes, perhaps especially the Enlightenment tribe. The very odd thing there is the use of the term Islamophobia - a fear of a belief system. What group is it that does not have a fear of belief systems? Can we at least sit with the cognitive dissonance? People should not see their fears or even verbally expressed hostility as threats to the Western world. Such a view is anti-liberal, anti-Enlightened. "Those tribal attitudes you have are leading to the end of Western Civilization.’ That’s an anti-liberal anti-Enlightenment postion - which, yes, should also be allowed to be expressed. Actions are where the problem comes in. Mobs beating people as so on. Discrimination around housing or right to worship, etc.
For me some of the irony is that I do not feel like I can safely express my own spiritual beliefs here in Europe or in much of the US either for that matter. I won’t get stoned, but given the extreme minority of my position, I won’t be protected either. Judgments will not be seen as anti-Enlightenment if aimed at me. You gotta have a big group, which is also not particularly liberal. Conservative anti-immigrant political groups regularly face hostility and fear. But you won’t hear terms made up with the party name and phobia on the end of the term. Yes, yes, they are not in the same vulnerable position. But that’s not the basis of liberal ideas and Enlightenment values around expression and political expression. We don’t have Christianityphobia as a term, or pick a smaller religion if it’s size in the new country that matters. We defend the right of galleries to display Piss Christ and rightly so - it’s oddly beautiful, actually.
I’ve wandered all over the place and it may seem like one can dismiss my latter tangents as not taking into account power. Well, Muslims may not have much power in the West compared to other groups, but Islam has tremendous power. Might one not be phobic of the power of the belief system and how it treats its own members.
I don’t see much sitting with cognitive dissonance and ironies on either ‘team’. Let’s blame the other for destroying Western Civilization and not see if the situation is more complex that we’d like to admit. Let’s think of it as binary. I am pro, they are con. Sorry, no. In the country I’m in, after a certain number every single party wanted to close the gates and did. Despite there being millions upon millions of people suffering out there.
Ending the problem side of tribalism is not going to going to happen by blaming people without much power for the end of Western Civilization. And how about everyone goes into those uncomfortable places where we find our own, individual contradictions.
“White people and white European cultural identity are social constructs.”
Okay, everything is a social construct, now what? Your entire life and existence is filled with social constructs.
Why are some social constructs better than others? Sounds like you’re just picking and choosing.
MrAuthoritariana;
Okay, everything is a social construct, now what? Your entire life and existence is filled with social constructs.
Why are some social constructs better than others? Sounds like you’re just picking and choosing.
K: and what is more human than ''picking and choosing?" the
very nature of being human is ‘‘picking and choosing’’ our identities…
and some of those identities are outside of our choice… I am white,
it isn’t a question for me to choose the color of my skin, that has
already been determined for me, and I can’t pick and choose
the various ailments I suffer from, hearing loss for example,
but there are choices to be made… I can choose my sex today,
I can choose to be kind to others, even to being able to choose
my nationality… these things are part of the social construct
of human existence… and should I choose differently, I can
make the choice of identifying as a woman, I can dress and
be the best woman I can be… but I don’t identify that way…
but sexual identity is one area we can make choices because
it is a social construct… but Kropotkin, how can you say that?
the very fact that over time, our own history has shown us
that at different times, men and women have played vastly
different roles and behaved very differently…
that shows us that even ‘‘set’’ roles are not acted upon the
same way… and that is kinda the point of our having
a social construct, we can change, adapt, remove or include
aspects of who we are… thus picking and choosing is
an inherent and very valuable part of being human…
Choice is what separates us from being animals…
to say, men can only be men and women can only be women,
that removes, eliminates choices… removes what makes us human…
Much of 20th century philosophy revolved around our choices,
Sartre said that ‘‘Man is condemned to be free’’…
and before that, Keirkegaard said that ‘‘we must make a leap
of faith’’ that leap, that is a choice… the idea of
having a ‘‘social construct’’ is really one of, what choices
are we going to make… collectively and individually…
and the idea of a ‘‘social construct’’ allows us to make these
choices… so, yes, picking and choosing is an integral aspect
of being human… and that is only possible within a social
construct idea of being human…
Kropotkin
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So, which social constructs are better than others? How do you reach your decisions?
Race is a biological construct like most other things are, including societies themselves. This is why different races make different societies.
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Whichever ones CNN tells him are the best 
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MrAuthoritarian:
‘‘So, which social constructs are better than others?
How do you reach your decisions?’’
K: let us take this example: I have, on many occasions,
promoted the idea of being ‘‘WOKE’’… those who are anti-‘‘WOKE’’
have never actually given me a course of action available to those who
are Anti-‘‘WOKE’’… in other words, OK, not ''WOKE"" So, what
are our choices? and they never answer that… for me anyway,
the idea of being ‘‘WOKE’’ is a moral choice, how do treat people
with dignity and respect… by why those choices?
Because I have a positive vision of what it means to be human…
being ‘‘WOKE’’ is a reflection of how I see people… and it has
some bearing on what we think might be the goal or purpose of
being human… for example, Christians accept the idea that all,
ALL human beings are by definition, guilty, full of sin, and that
is not a positive view of being human… that is a very negative
viewpoint of being human… and I reject the idea that to be
human, is to be guilty, full of sin… that is a social construct I
reject because I have lived for a while and I have seen
far more good done, then flat out evil… people given a choice,
will choose to be good rather than to choose to be evil…
a lifetime of watching people has taught me that… my understanding
of the social construct, has shown me that people are even
willing to forgo social benefits if they can see how, it might
benefit the overall good of the state/society… but in the end,
it still becomes an individual choice, I choose the ideal of
being ‘‘WOKE’’ because I believe it benefits the state/society…
but that is, again simply a choice I make… and with all
choices/decisions, it comes down to a personal choice…
for me, the standard of being human lies within our ability
to make choices and I can choose to hold up one standard
or even change my standards depending on the situation…
there is no set, fixed standard we can choose from and from
where I sit, that is a good thing… because it allows
us choices… But Kropotkin, you said nothing…
I said everything, but are you wise enough to see my point?
Kropotkin
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Wokeness I have always thought is whatever is pro homosexuality, radical feminism, and racial ethnic cultural assimilation.
All three is the cultural progressivism icons of political liberalism.
As a political liberal yourself you tell me if my definition hits the mark of explanation.
MrAuthoritarian:
Wokeness I have always thought is whatever is pro homosexuality, radical feminism, and racial ethnic cultural assimilation.
All three is the cultural progressivism icons of political liberalism.
K: as you are a troll and not a thinker, I am not surprised you
are confused about liberals… I am pro-choice, not in terms
of abortions, (although I am pro-choice) but that is what I am
talking about, choices… you and others like yourself, want
to take away choices, no homosexuality, no feminism, no
‘‘racial, ethnic, cultural assimilation’’ (whatever the hell that means)
If the choice of people being trans or being gay, is denied,
that is when I speak up… for me, it is about keeping
and preserving choices… denying one from being gay or
trans, is preventing choices… the arguments against this
ideal, is actually pretty weak… for example, banning homosexuals
because it is ‘‘bad’’ for a state/society, is a unprovable and even
a dangerous attitude to have…it is assuming what is best
for the state and the society without ever giving some thought
as to what is best for the state and the society…
is it best for America to live under ‘‘Christian ideals’’…
no, because that removes choices… should we hold to
Muslim ideals, no, because it removes choices… should
America even be religious? no, because that removes choices…
I support feminism because it doesn’t remove or change our
choices, in fact, it creates greater choices…
or we can say this in another way, conservativism is about
removing choices, liberalism is about having or renewing our choices…
it is really that simple for me…
what is conservatism today? Well, let’s see, conservatives
have tried to end abortions, is in favor of a very limited voting…
basically, return voting exclusively to white people, to limiting
travel… ICE for instance, to forcing people to suffer by
limiting/removing lifesaving policies like Head start, WIC,
reducing Social Security and Medicare, all negatives things
conservatives are doing today… to be a conservative, the
word one uses is NO… no, you can’t be gay, no you can’t
be trans, no you can’t have abortions, no, you can’t vote,
and along with many other examples of the right loudly and clearly saying
no…
I stand for choices… remove those choices and I will be heard…
Kropotkin
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The levels of deliberate denialism and ignorance are simply astounding.
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