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Comment by Roritharr | Hacker News Reader

The craziest part of this american culture war, to me, is that it seems to spill over to the rest of the world.

My sister and I, living in Germany, have a very loving relationship, but we absolutely disagree on almost everything political and basically are stuck in our seperate bubbles.

This gave us an interesting observation: 5 years ago it took us about two to three months, to have a fight over something that started to become a hot-topic in the US.

Over time, this has shrunken to about 48 hours. This is not because our bubbles are particularly US centric, more that it has become envogue to simply discuss whatever gets "the other side" going.

In particularly, it is very interesting that "the other side" is aligning ever more so with the US political spectrum, where in the past such a thing was unheard of, atleast here in Germany. I've heard similar stories from Friends in other Non-US Nations, be it in Asia, Africa, aswell as other european nations. Does anyone else have similar stories?

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One thing I've noticed is the whole sale importation of the BLM movement to the UK. I'm not overly aware of the issue facing ethnic minorities in the UK (I live in Scotland where it's almost entirely white with some small asian communities, which isn't to say there isn't racism just few people to discuss it with personally) but from reading around racism in the UK is very different to the US. Despite this we've adopted BLM views wholesale, including call to defund the police.

I fully support discussing racism in the UK and what we can do to counter it but I don't get why we're discussing it as if it's the exact same situation over here with the same solutions. This might to a symptom of London centric-ness where there is far more ethnic diversity and therefore racism.

I agree the UK is not the US and we have different issues in the UK that we are dealing with.

Living and working near London I always assumed the increased ethnic diversity and global outlook in the capital led to less racism. I assumed it was the rural homogenous countryside that had more endemic racism. I guess we all misunderstand each other all the time.

>Living and working near London I always assumed the increased ethnic diversity and global outlook in the capital led to less racism.

From https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9477....

>In the short run, however, immigration and ethnic diversity tend to reduce social solidarity and social capital. New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down’. Trust (even of one's own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer.

There's plenty of secondary sources reporting on this study if you want to have a look for the varying opinions on it but I thought I'd link the source of it itself.

Whether less trust, less cohesion etc. == more racism is something I'm not in a position to draw a conclusion over, but it's interesting nonetheless.

If trust of one's own race is lower also, this seems unlikely to be a consequence of ethnic diversity per se. Rather, I would speculate that, due to the tendency of people to group with their own race, more diverse neighborhoods simply tend to be more transient neighborhoods - places where people are "just passing through" and not really there by choice. There is no point attempting to build community bonds in an area with high churn, and that you yourself plan to move out of at the soonest opportunity.

Unfortunately the BLM rhetoric I the UK is largely pushed by a bunch of (usually white) middle class students with a hard on for Kimberlie Crenshaw and an utter ignorance of the work done over the last seventy years by black and ethnic minority British anti racists to tackle the racism in British society that arises from our history as a colonising nation. Ironically by privileging black American narratives over those of BAME Britons BLM campaigners in the UK engage in a form of cultural colonialism that silences the voices of the very people they claim "matter." Arseholes.

The average American doesn't even know who Kimberle Crenshaw is. For most of us BLM just means waiting for the next police shooting to show up in the news and on social media (because someone captured a video recording) and hoping our own nearby community isn't involved. Law enforcement in America is a web of federal, state, and local (city or county) laws and no one knows how any individual police officer is trained or what kind of accountability process is in place. The fact that it's different every single time is a huge part of the problem and a source of most of the frustration.

In my opinion American BLM is racist in of itself. There needs to be changes but popularizing the polarities of the topic only serves the ad driven model of media which supports it.

Your opinion is wrong. Full stop. Stating that Black lives matter, and orienting a movement around that statement as an organizing principle, is not polarizing: it’s a recognition and rejection of extant polarization. Polarization which claims lives, specifically Black lives, disproportionately and institutionally. There is nothing racist about naming the phenomenon and challenging it directly. But demanding that the people who have so identified and challenged it find mask the underlying racism in the name of more inclusive language is essentially an argument to recognize and protect racism itself as part of the culture. No thank you.

Thank you for taking the time to reply and state why vs just disliking me.

Of course! I don’t even have enough information to dislike you. Honestly when I see comments like yours I assume the experience is one of cultural exposure and subconscious bias unless I see otherwise. I grew up in a place (Virginia) where (for instance) racism was so much a part of the fabric of everyday life that I didn’t recognize a lot of my own biases. I just thought they were common sense. I didn’t have a framework for thinking of systematic bias, so I started from the assumption that equality is the default absent obvious inequality. And “obvious” was of course experiential and educational, so I didn’t see what my (for instance) Black neighbors considered normal and I didn’t understand how their experience informed their reactions to (for instance) police.

Moving to another place (Seattle) where (for instance) racism is still a part of the fabric of everyday life but a part of the social discussion was challenging as I was introduced to ideas that felt unintuitive. But empathy helped me grow and understand more than I did, and helped me value and pursue that growth.

It also helped me recognize (for other instances) I had unconsciously internalized other biases. I had rejected my own sexuality (I identify queer, demisexual) and my gender identity (I accept he/him/they/them pronouns equally).

I hope a little empathy goes far for you. It’s not often in a followup like this I see someone willing to reciprocate the empathetic spirit and acknowledge a contrary view kindly. Who knows where it’ll take you, but I hope you’ll consider that your experience may be coloring your ideas and that you may have room for other ideas in that consideration.

I don't think anyone is "popularizing the polarities of the topic" when they draw attention to those video recordings and the way they shock the conscience of people.

And I don't like to pick apart semantics, but the way you use the term "American BLM" is a Straw Man and an Ad Hominem deployed in tandem. It's difficult to have a constructive debate when it's posed in those terms.

What about having a conversation in good faith vs nitpicking my choice of language?

When I point out the fallacy, it's because I am trying to have a conversation in good faith.

When you say "American BLM" as if it were a monolithic entity and attach negative attributes to it, that goes to the heart of the matter.

I don't know how to have a conversation with you from across that chasm.

> might to a symptom of London centric-ness where there is far more ethnic diversity and therefore racism

More flareups, perhaps, especially riots against the Metropolitan police, but more diversity tends to make people less racist as they actually meet people of other ethnicities rather than just repeat what they've heard about people they've never met or seen.

Was the Bristol statue teardown an import? The tactic of just dumping it in the sea was, and the "triggering event" of solidarity protests was, but the underlying question of why Bristol has a statue of a man who committed crimes against humanity had been rumbling on for years and the council had voted down even a recontextualisation plaque.

Scotland has some similar "historical benefits of slavery" questions to look at; Edinburgh's own pro-slavery politician statue (Henry Dundas) is somewhat protected by being at the top of a 150-foot column.

It has been profoundly odd watching UK BLM protesters (almost all of them white and middle class, of course) chanting "hands up, don't shoot"-type slogans recently.

British police officers don't routinely carry guns and therefore couldn't possibly shoot you even if they wanted to. In fact, there is an almost zero probability of anyone in the UK getting shot by the police unless they happen to be committing an act of terrorism or murder at the time.

Incidents are rare .. but on the other hand, police shootings have sparked riots: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadwater_Farm_riot / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Mark_Duggan

And of course https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Jean_Charles_de_Me...

Duggan was nearly a decade ago though, and he pulled a gun on police when they tried to arrest him. Involved in gangland activities. It shows how messed up some of these sorts of riots are: they invariably seem to be about people who were in the process of attacking the police when they were shot. de Menezes of course is a terrible exception.

> he pulled a gun on police when they tried to arrest him

This is the disputed evidence at the center of the question; the gun was found several meters away from the scene, on the other side of a fence, "wrapped in a sock". There is a protracted argument about how plausible it is that he threw it there after being shot in the arm.

> they invariably seem to be about people who were in the process of attacking the police when they were shot.

If the police shoot someone, then of course all the official reports will say that they were attacking the police. There have been a number of mass casualty incidents in the UK (Hillsborough, Bloody Sunday) where the police or army reports turned out to be lies.

When we were middle school kids in Slovenia we used to have huge fights and “gang” beef over east side vs west side. We had no idea they were geographical, we just picked a side based on which rapper you liked.

American culture is weird like that. We all consume it via mass media.

I think it’s just an empire thing. During Victorian times everyone was trying to be a little British, or a little French, maybe a little German. Depends who’s closest to you. A long time ago, everyone tried to be a little Roman.

Another way of putting it: News doesn’t tell you what to think, it tells you what to think about.

> We had no idea they were geographical, we just picked a side based on which rapper you liked.

No offense, I just find this hilarious for some reason. Kids can be so impressionable.

It’s even funnier when you realize that this was some 4 years into English classes for most of us and we could barely understand the lyrics.

I'm at risk of sounding like I'm nitpicking, but I'm not following the popular narrative that it's a problem with America that spilled over into the rest of the world that's at the center of your story.

Many people seem to agree that the rise of social media and its correlated loneliness have pushed people down their rabbithole/echo chamber/whatever people want to call it nowadays. Opposed to the popular narrative, the apparent view from people into the social sciences seem to believe it's a problem with social technologies, rather than it being the inferior North American cultures bleeding out and corrupting our pure untouched global cultures.

I have to agree with the other view that all of us on this planet we are barely evolved hairless tribal monkeys using technology that makes us more anxious instead of secure - and all of these problems are actually pretty predictable from this perspective. It's not Americanification, we just naturally start acting like this when we start using things that make us anxious for clicks.

I think what we’re seeing has more to do with unaccountable invisible architectures (law/governance systems, IP and money) that obscure production processes, than that it’s anything to do with human nature or social media, or us being ‘hairless monkeys’.

America is colonizing the rest of the developed world. There are probably at least a billion people worldwide (mostly in Europe, but also among Third-World elites) who act American and are invested in America's issues despite never having set foot in the country. The internet has exacerbated this greatly. Just look at the BLM protests in Poland and Japan... or the Amerikaner "digital nomads" who are able to live in foreign countries thanks to the Anglo Internet's worldwide penetration.

https://paulskallas.substack.com/p/basic-concepts-1kyae

Somewhat true. I have friends and relatives in Eastern Europe heavily rooting for the Biden or Trump (usually the less educated or even uneducated) and yet they have no real stake in it but it’s as if they’re voting themselves. And I think they realized that America sets the tone so whoever gets the power will influence them too eventually.

> yet they have no real stake in it

Diplomatic relations with the US matter a lot for the economy and trade - as you've seen in many countries over the last four years.

If you support an authoritarian/populist/homophobic ruler at home (in Poland or Hungary or Brazil or wherever), you also support Trump because he will support your country where a Biden administration will be far less likely to boost Hungary if it costs relationship points with Germany or France...

I don't understand the reference to digital nomads. How is it related? There are nomads from everywhere as well.

> Just look at the BLM protests in Poland and Japan...

What BLM protests in Poland? I live there and it's first time I'm hearing of them.

>The craziest part of this american culture war, to me, is that it seems to spill over to the rest of the world.

It does not seem so crazy to me, after decades of cultural imperialism from America, that we are mirroring the same patterns of behaviour and fighting the same battles. (Just to be clear, I'm not against imperialism)

If American politics are straining your relationship with your sister and you are not even American, sorry to put it like this but only you two have yourselves to blame. Next time your sister brings the topic up say "yeah right" and move on.

>If American politics are straining your relationship with your sister and you are not even American, sorry to put it like this but only you two have yourselves to blame. Next time your sister brings the topic up say "yeah right" and move on.

Don't worry, that's why I emphasised the loving relationship part, we really don't take our political opinions into this and wouldn't have emotional fights about them. Family comes before all that.

For what it’s worth, I’m an American & American politics strains my American relationship with my American friends & family. Fuck this red/blue shit.

I don’t understand “red/blue” shit. For me, it’s “improving quality of life for wage earners and affirming civil liberties / vs not doing the aforementioned” shit.

A cousin in my family has a very valid grievance against business owner uncles that support politicians who don’t want to provide meal breaks or bathroom breaks. This cousin has to work 12 to 14 hour shifts, and eat standing up while working and sneak in bathroom breaks.

That’s not “red/blue” shit.

Thank you for demonstrating the phenomenon so well.

If that's your stance then evidently you don't understand why the other "side" even exists.

We can disagree without sworn enemies.

It exists mostly because of massive propaganda financed by very wealthy people for whom it is essential to indoctrinate masses to be even more wealthy and powerful.

I don’t understand how it’s propaganda when one can analyze labors laws in various jurisdictions and see that all the areas with labor laws better for workers and poorer people are mostly in areas governed by Democrats.

Thats the whole point, the propaganda is also disinformation and making other issues seem a lot more decisive and important than what really affects the people. The propaganda makes them vote against their interests

I obviously didn't mean the side that supports labor laws better for workers.

Not clear why you are being downvoted. Oligarch Rebekah Mercer has funded/sponsored Breitbart, Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, Parler and more. When their sock puppets get out of line--they lose their funding. See Steve Bannon, who now is in the pocket of a rogue Chinese Billionaire. There are many more like her and her father.

This viewpoint (where the unstated understanding is 'the group that is good is Democrats, and the group that is evil is Republicans') is part of the problem.

The world is more complicated than that.

The viewpoint that both groups are just as bad or just as good for wage earners is a problem.

It’s easily verifiable that Democratic states have better laws for wage earners, and have pushed for policies that benefit wage earners. They’re nowhere near perfect, but there’s no reason to pretend Dems and Repubs are the same.

But it’s also easily verifiable that there are many wage earners in both parties, meaning many who don’t agree with your standards for which policies are better.

That's not necessarily true, because for many people there are issues more important to them than where a candidate stands on issues related to wage earning.

For example, there are many people who in a race where one candidate favors restricting or ending abortion and the other favors reducing restrictions on abortion will choose whichever of the two agrees with their position on abortion, regardless of where the two candidates stand on anything else such as economic issues or foreign policy issues.

both sides push for higher immigration and a globalized market, which have more effect on wage-earners in the US than any policy in "Democratic states". Imo you are missing the forest thru the trees, at scale they really are the same.

The evidence is that immigrants generate positive net tax benefits. The amount of immigrants who are founders of successful business would reflect that the impact is net positive.

AFAIK the idea of immigrants impact being a net negative isn't supported by the studies I have read.

I understand this isn't necessarily in line with the rhetoric du jour.

> The evidence is that immigrants generate positive net tax benefits.

Immigrants as a whole being a net positive might be clear, but the demographics most commonly under debate are things like "refugees" or "illegal immigrants" or "people seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border". Now, it's possible that those groups are still a (financial) net positive, but I'd be a lot less confident in that than "doctors" or "people with a degree".

This also doesn't really address the issue of "what impact does immigration have on US wage earners". An immigrant doctor or programmer might be clearly beneficial financially and to the country as a whole, but the doctors and programmers they're competing with might not be quite so happy. And while those demographics can "take it" so to speak, unskilled laborers facing the same competition are in a bit tougher of a spot.

I never said or implied a NET negative. My comment was specifically talking about effects on wage earners in the US.

Even if people agree with you on that, people care about more things than benefiting wage earners. Gun rights are a big deal for a large number of people. Abortion is a big issue for many people, as is immigration policy. Saying that, "One side is better on the things I value!" is startlingly blind to the fact that a whole lot of people don't value what you do, or value things in the same order.

I could just as easily turn it around and say, "It's easily verifiable that Republican states have better laws for gun owners." Now do you see the issue? Your above statement matters only if your primary goal is benefiting wage earners. It would be like me saying that Republicans are better at building a border wall. Maybe so, but that's not top priority for Democrats.

I agree with you. That was my whole purpose of replying to the person that said they are tired of “red/blue” shit. The political situation is not just colors, it has real life consequences on the allocation of society’s resources. If I want my daughter to be able to take maternity leave to properly breastfeed her children, it would behoove me to support a specific party. And the other party wants to spend resources on other things.

There are a lot of single issue voters out there who will happily vote for someone who promises to screw them over financially as long as they are for their pet issue.

More recently, we are seeing the rise of the Zero Issue Voters who don’t care about any particular issue at all. It’s purely a team sport. They love their team, love their candidates and they just want to “own the other side”.

I have no idea if this actually means anything, but I did a couple amusing calculations. If the number of Electoral College votes each state got were proportional to that state's cumulative per capita COVID infection rates, the result would have been 329 Trump, 209 Biden.

However, if we go by cumulative per capita COVID deaths, then the result would have been 228 Trump, 310 Biden.

Why the big swing? I think it is because the big early outbreaks that swept through retirement and nursing homes before we got better at treating it were in big urban areas. By the time it got big in rural areas, we'd gotten a lot better at dealing with it.

It would be interesting to do a similar calculation, but using say the rates over say the last three months instead of cumulative from the start. If someone wants to do that one, a good place to get the COVID data is here [1]. They have links to download the data for all the graphs as CSV files.

[1] http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/

> By the time it got big in rural areas, we'd gotten a lot better at dealing with it.

Or by the time it hit rural areas, we'd also gotten better at testing for it. Perhaps the IFR is the same across both demographics, but better testing means a higher proportion of cases were detected later in the pandemic.

I grabbed the data again, and this time used the changes in cumulative cases and deaths over the last 60 days, per capita, in each state for doing the EV reallocation.

Using cases, it comes out 344 Trump, 194 Biden. Using deaths, it comes out 354 Trump, 184 Biden.

The big difference this time is largely rural states that are getting hit much harder than the rest of the states. North Dakota in this allocation gets 35 cases EV and 46 deaths EV, and South Dakota gets 30 and 36. Montana get 21 and 23.

For comparison to some high population states, California is 4 and 4, New York 4 and 3, Texas 8 and 10, Florida 6 and 10.

Now I'd be curious to see something that looks at various sliding windows on the data and sees how to allocations change, but that would be a bit more elaborate than I want to do.

> It’s easily verifiable that Democratic states have better laws for wage earners, and have pushed for policies that benefit wage earners.

The most solidly blue state, California, just enshrined a law to screw over gig workers and has among the worst housing crises in the country for average (and below) wage earners. Both parties are not equally bad, but the idea that the Democrats support working people is pretty laughable at this point. Yes, they’re not as awful as Republicans on these issues, but that’s a pretty low bar and still so far below the wage and labor protections in places like Europe as to be laughable.

I also support ranked choice voting to break the duopolies between Democrat and Republican, but as you said, there is a difference between the two, which is what we have to deal with while we have first past the post voting.

The Democratic Party was against Propositions 22 and 13. You can blame both on underinformed voters.

The Democratic Party in California is quite cozy and takes a lot of money from the people who wrote it, so I find this claim of opposition unconvincing.

They wrote and passed the law that Proposition 22 modified.

And did nothing meaningful to oppose it being modified, beside saying they opposed it.

This has been Democrats tactics with this stuff for decades, “we tried to do something good, but then something happened that we couldn’t do anything about it. Sorry.” It’s intentional fecklessness, while posturing at progress, so they can keep getting checks from the tech industry.

They were outspent by almost $200 million. What exactly were you hoping they would do? Why did they go out of their way to write a law when the courts had already reclassified workers? Your conspiracy theory does not make any sense.

https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_22,_App-Based...

Uber and several other gig companies have been operating in violation of California law for about a decade. The state could have shut them down at any time for any myriad number of reasons, but instead got friendly with them and took piles upon piles of their money. This isn't about spending money on any given proposition, but about systemic corruption in the Democratic party, where they'll sell out working people for campaign donations and c-suite positions when they leave office.

> Uber and several other gig companies have been operating in violation of California law for about a decade.

No, they were operating in violation of California law for less than a year.

> instead got friendly with them and took piles upon piles of their money.

If that's the case, why didn't they get a carve out in AB5?

> systemic corruption in the Democratic party,

Which overwhelmingly voted for AB5 and was in opposition to Proposition 22. You are alleging corruption without any evidence.

Perhaps then they ought to be alleged for incompetence; that we could all agree with.

How? I keep asking what they should have done, and I keep getting no answer.

Not take money from companies that were in violation of California law from their outset (running illegal taxi services), not take jobs with the companies when they left office (several former, high-level Obama people work at Uber, Kamala Harris’ brother-in-law is behind Prop 22’s legal team), pursued anti-monopoly action against Uber for engaging in market dumping. The list goes on and on.

I fail to understand why you see this whole situation as what happened with one law and one proposition and not the culmination of a bunch of corrupt people who have been in bed with each other for some time.

> Not take money from companies that were in violation of California law from their outset (running illegal taxi services)

What state law were they violating? None. What difference would not taking money from them have done? None.

> not take jobs with the companies when they left office (several former, high-level Obama people work at Uber, Kamala Harris’ brother-in-law is behind Prop 22’s legal team),

What does that have to do with the state legislators, who created AB5?

> pursued anti-monopoly action against Uber for engaging in market dumping.

Uber was not a monopoly and still isn't a monopoly, as a court already confirmed. https://lawstreetmedia.com/tech/court-rules-that-uber-must-f...

> The list goes on and on.

No item in that list makes any sense. Why did they go through all the trouble to pass AB5 to begin with?

Republican states tend to emphasize having a good labor market, and prioritize whatever gets employers to offer more jobs. This is a positive good for wage-earners. Democratic states tend to emphasize using government laws to require employers to do things like pay a higher wage. This is also a positive good for wage-earners. They both get lots of votes from wage-earners, and the ones voting for Republicans are not ignorant or blind. They are suspicious (rightly or wrongly) of the effectiveness of government regulations to help them, and know from experience that a tight labor market makes their boss suddenly see the importance of treating their workers better compared to when there was a line of people waiting to take their job if they didn't like it.

The difference between the two is mostly how they think it best to go about improving things for wage earners, who are the vast majority of their voters in both states. Not saying this makes them equal, but the difference is not what you assert.

join https://classunity.org

The guy above you edited his comment.

No offense, but neither the 2 major parties in the US are left/workers rights. I don't see any candidate running on the "improve quality of life for wage earners" platform. for example Joe "nothing with fundamentally change" Biden...and well the last 4 years.

See the list of states with parental leave:

https://www.patriotsoftware.com/blog/payroll/states-with-pai...

Similarly, see the list of states (and cities) with half decent unemployment benefits, minimum wage laws, non tipped wages, sick leave, required meal breaks, non compete bans, Medicaid, marijuana legalization, etc.

You will see a trend in which parties’ governance wage earners have these benefits (which are a pittance compared to civilized countries in the first place) and which don’t.

While being a very Republican state, Oklahoma has a pretty long history of some very progressive programs. For example, Oklahoma funds pre-K programs for children:

https://hechingerreport.org/why-oklahomas-public-preschools-...

That’s great, but unfortunately, it’s an exception. Again, my comment wasn’t to imply that one party is perfect, but to show that the policies they push make a real difference in people’s lives, especially lower income earners.

That's what people missed about Trump's supporters in 2016. People genuinely believed he was going to work for the common man. He talked about workers rights (in a xenophobic sort of way, but still) he talked about increasing pay for blue collar workers, and about restoring the lost legacy to places that have been abandoned by globalization.

That never got talked about by Trump detractors. Union working class Joe-Schmoe's used to vote democrat, and now solidly do not. There's a reason for that.

Edit: Please note that I never said he did those things, just that they were what he promised. He is completely full of crap on almost everything he says, those promises at the top of the pile. But that is the reason working class Joe love him. He says the things they want to hear.

Talk is cheap. For whatever reason, the increased pay and benefits for blue collar workers exists, by far, in Democrat areas, and is implemented by Democrat politicians.

Talk is cheap, voting is not. How do you explain blue collar workers voting red?

Some combination of temporarily embarrassed millionaires and tribalism. They may think of themselves as future rich people who can benefit from cheaper labor, and they may be step above the lowest on the socioeconomic ladder, and so want to maintain that hierarchy. As President Lyndon Johnson said:

"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

You're perfectly demonstrating what's being discussed in this article.

Talk is cheap, but lies win elections, especially when supported by a massive media machine designed to mislead voters.

The output of Fox is bad enough, but the QAnon nonsense isn't some weird aberration that appeared out of nothing. It's the logical conclusion of a huge social experiment to see how much political benefit you can wring from an industrial lie machine.

And it's working far better than anyone on the left was expecting it to.

The downside is that the US now has a huge voter demographic that is literally disconnected from reality. These are the people who scream that Covid isn't real - because something something George Soros and Bill Gates - while they're in hospital dying of it.

This doesn't end well. You can't push a large percentage of your population into delusion without some very destructive consequences. Even if it does mean you keep your Senate seat.

>This doesn't end well. You can't push a large percentage of your population into delusion without some very destructive consequences. Even if it does mean you keep your Senate seat.

I would argue that, for the individuals in question, the long-term consequences literally have no meaning, do not matter, and absolutely are not part of the calculus.

If I get power during my life, and secure my legacy as an important, and very wealthy person, my children can buy away any problem that may pop up for them.

Therefore, my actions of destruction today do not matter, as long as I am the one in power.

This is why I believe it is only going to keep getting worse; if the incentive is to stay in power, at all costs, we're in for a wild ride.

Not sure why you're downvoted, because that sort of populism is exactly what Trump said and ran on. Like most things he said, it's also still 2 weeks away.

I think the saddest part about Trump's presidency is that he ran as an economic populist, but governed as a supply-sider Republican.

I don’t see why anyone who is familiar with Trump’s history would expect anything different.

> Union working class Joe-Schmoe's used to vote democrat, and now solidly do not.

I don't think that matches exit polls—lower wage workers still voted primarily democrat, and higher wage workers voted primarily republican: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/...

Well of course. A man who lives in a literal gold covered Condo, with a history of not paying his subcontractors, vendors and who hired undocumented workers, was certainly going to stick up for the working man.

He said the needed lines, gave them a villain in immigrants (stealing yur jerbs) and then did nothing of the sort for WORKERS. He certainly did go all in on cracking down on immigration, of non-white people, as that matched the narratives of Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller.

Meanwhile, Oligarchs here are richer than ever, and workers are holding on for dear life. And 72 million plus, voted to keep him in office.

Can't believe you're being downvoted for this, it appears to be an objective truth. Both major American parties would be considered (at the very least) conservative in most other countries. Instead, we're guaranteed, year after year, to be one of the handful of countries without single-payer healthcare, a living minimum wage, mandatory vacation... you get the point. That's without considering that certain American policies affect non-Americans (ie record numbers of drone bombings and caged children will continue regardless of whose smiling face is on television). There are workers' parties in the United States, but they are conveniently relegated to minor/rump status.

So you picked your political allegiance based on the party that most aligns to the criteria that are important to you. That's far from universal and other people have different criteria that are important to them.

Yea, but the point is it’s not color A versus color B. It’s “I pick my political allegiance based on the party that will most likely help those at the bottom of the totem pole” versus “not doing that”.

All of my fellow republican business owners were bristling at the idea of Obama’s executive order increasing the minimum salary for exempt workers. This is because they would have had to pay their immigrant workers $44k per year for 60+ hour work weeks who they designated as “managers”, rather than $30k per year under current rules.

Again, I’m not saying Democrats are perfect, and they are far from it. But at least some Democrat states, and politicians are making an effort, whereas I can’t say the same about Repubs. Hence, it’s not just color A vs color B.

That's a class thing, not a culture war thing, and I bet you'll find many the stereotypical redneck that would also be in support of better working laws, because the stereotypical redneck is also poor and working shit jobs. The thing is they also have strong opinions on guns or abortion or whatever else social issues and this all-or-nothing attitude in politics means they have to align themselves with whatever group they perceive will abuse them less

Consider that your political opponents may also want to achieve the same goals but may have a radically different and less direct method of doing it. Then you might understand that you have something in common with them, and find a way to have civil disagreement instead of othering them.

See, you are part of the problem.

You could also ask why California has the worst-maintained roads in the United States, has mountains of trash littering the center divide and shoulders of its freeways, has huge numbers of homeless people living in slums just blocks away from some of the highest wage earners (and ostensibly highest tax payers) in the country. How does California vote? That’s not “red/blue” shit.

See, I can play this game too.

I agree. Maybe it’s because of various SC rulings making involuntary committal to mental health institutions impossible, and the temperate weather that allows people to exist without homes more comfortably than other places. Maybe it’s other policies, or economic forces. But as you point out, there are real world affects of supporting different political parties.

Do you both know of the concept of out-group homogeneity?

I wonder if that would help. I experience a lot that people expect me to have all kind of weird opinions because they think I'm part of a group which they think holds these opinions. They think I'm part of that group because some of my opinions match with the group.

> If American politics are straining your relationship with your sister and you are not even American, sorry to put it like this but only you two have yourselves to blame. Next time your sister brings the topic up say "yeah right" and move on.

This is good advice for Americans too. The privacy of the ballot box is a cornerstone of America for a good goddamned reason.

I would equally blame the stagnant and supine institutions on the other side of the Atlantic that obsess over preserving the status quo while providing no meaningful alternative to American leadership. Whether it's culture, innovation, finance, it's all the same. Europe has become reliant on America and will accept anything in the name of Diplomacy through Trade.

Excuse me? Germany tries buying gas from Russia and the USA sanctions the fuck out of companies that are even just marginally involved in it.

As for innovation, that's relative. Europe, for centuries, was the undisputed worldwide leader in innovation, now that has shifted a bit to the USA and seems to be on its way to shift to China or maybe India in the next few decades.

There's also the problem that Europe can't really focus on organizing itself in a self-sufficient manner because there's still separatists bitching about everything and always screaming for separation instead of forcing governments to address issues, and the impending rise of fascism in east-europe that may or may not become a huge deal for the rest of the 2020es. The USA has this problem as well, but to a far lesser degree.

> Germany tries buying gas from Russia and the USA sanctions the fuck out of companies that are even just marginally involved in it.

Good! Russia is an enemy.

Why?

Why? The Cold War is over.

Russia still wants to dominate Eastern Europe and must be opposed. The US is an excellent partner in that, much better than Western EU.

Exactly; when there was a clash of civilizations between a free west and a repressive soviet union; it made sense that Russia was the enemy.

Now it is just a conflict between different European powers with varying levels of dysfunctional democracy and corrupt elites.

So what is the basis for hating the Russians now; racism?

Yeah I’m fine with framing it like this. It’s just run of the mill geopolitical conflict. Calling Russians “the enemy” today is just shallow and lazy.

Russians are not the enemy, Russia is the enemy.

And this is based on Putin's foreign policy towards smaller neighbors that it historically controlled.

Putin and his policy of destabilization of the West, from financing Brexit supporters, to poisoning his political opponents.

Russia's whole political culture is the one of conquest. Their ambition was pretty much always to conquer as much of Europe and Asia as possible, and the mindset haven't changed in XXI century - neither among elites nor among common folk. They're still pretty much a typical XIX century empire, they didn't yet go the shift to focusing on economic domination that UK, Germany, US, Japan went through since.

> The Cold War is over.

I would have agreed literally with that statement fifteen years ago. Since then, however, the trends in Russia towards state control over independent press, the politicisation of sports and culture, the blurring of lines not to be crossed (e.g. the annexation of Crimea) and overall clinching of Kremlin power at all costs have made lots of people in Europe worried.

I also wouldn't say "Russia is the enemy", for a number of reasons: first of all, it's not true; secondly, it's not helpful; and thirdly, it obviously breeds distrust and antagonism not only between states but between individual people.

But tensions have obviously been rising, and we are not in the pleasant situation we saw 20 years ago when Russia seemed to be heading towards democracy and increased international cooperation. The current regime in Russia, with its increasingly authoritarian and nationalistic pursuits and somewhat erratic foreign politics, has certainly been feeding those tensions. It would be disingenuous to claim it hasn't.

The whole gas thing is classic Diplomacy through Trade. Similarly for continuing to abide by the treaty with Iran to the degree possible while avoiding sanctions across the whole financial system.

Concrete example of European reliance on the US.

  1. NATO
  2. The US Fed for liquidity in the EU banking system
  3. Acquisition market for companies
  4. AWS, Azure, GCE, DO
  5. Netflix

My take is that cultural boundaries will erode once it becomes clear the prevailing cultural identity throughout Europe is not French, German, West or East, but unemployed millennial onward. As you say, it will be interesting to see how this turns out.

I partly agree with those points.

1. There's still a narrative here in Germany that the big bad USA / trump is wrong for demanding we spend money on our military when we literally signed a contract agreeing to do just that. At the same time, we're in a bit of a unique position where our defence is also in the best interest of the USA.

4. Yes, technological reliance on the USA when it comes to the internet is amazing and terrifying at the same time. Mind you, there is no lack of European alternatives, but somehow these big companies injected a brand-oriented culture into the web-development world on a scale I'd usually expect to see in regards to clothing, not software.

I'll risk sounding ellitist, but I do believe this only works because of the recent influx of newcomers to the world of web and their mentality of doing only what gets them employed. This is a way bigger problem that I could write many pages about, but in this context the important detail is that these people often choose to learn products rather than methodologies, buzzwords and brands rather than theory and logical principles.

> If American politics are straining your relationship with your sister and you are not even American, sorry to put it like this but only you two have yourselves to blame. Next time your sister brings the topic up say "yeah right" and move on.

This. America is not actively shoving its politics into our conversations, we're doing that ourselves (I'm from Germany as well, btw.).

Yes, talking about whatever social shenanigans are currently relevant in the USA is fun, but applying those weird ideas to ones own society is a completely different thing.

America is funding European academics to spread its toxic ideology. It's also shoving its culture in our news, movies, music, etc. Overstating personal responsibility in this matter is naive and very American.

"Shoving"? Are you saying European news organizations don't have the freedom to cover what news they want?

They choose to cover it.

> Overstating personal responsibility in this matter is naive and very American.

Not at all. You could say it's a "western" thing, but definitely not an USA thing (although they do tend to claim it for themselves like they invented it).

What's unique to the USA is the weird idea that personal responsibility is somehow a counter-argument to regulation. "Guns don't kill people, so everybody should be free to own them". At the same time, it's mostly the american left that argues against personal responsibility just because it's considered a right-wing belief.

To come to a conclusion: As so often, the USA is wrong, on both sides. The only "right" mentality, in my opinion, is one that acknowledges both personal responsibility and the option for society to step in.

There's obviously cultural differences, but the political priorities and overall dialogue are just completely different too. Like in Canada, we already have gun registration and background checks (the "common sense" laws that Biden wants but that the NRA says are radical) and the fight is about banning specific classes of assault rifles. In Canada, we already have state health insurance, and the fight is about whether it should cover things like pharmacare, dental treatments, and counseling sessions for mental health. In Canada, the debates about abortion and gay marriage are long settled (1988 and 2003 respectively)— even discussing them is considered political suicide, and the Conservative party has at various points banned back-benchers from attempting to start the debate (for example, by putting forth weaselly, redundant laws about fetal personhood).

You could easily argue that the "Conservative" party in Canada is equivalent or possibly even to the left of the mainstream Democratic party in the US. So yeah, it gets a bit weird when right-leaning people in Canada then also support Trumpian politics— sometimes it's hard to know if they're there after a considered review of the positions, or if it's just a knee jerk "pick the guy on the right" response.

>Like in Canada, we already have gun registration and background checks (the "common sense" laws that Biden wants but that the NRA says are radical) and the fight is about banning specific classes of assault rifles.

The 2nd Amendment issue in the United States is something I don't expect a non-American to understand. The rest of the world tends to take the process of enumerating freedoms positively. The law says you have it or don't.

In the U.S. the culture was framed around the preservation of liberty and the enumeration of the boundaries, and limitations on the ability of government and regulation to encroach. The problem with that is it opens a can of worms constitutionally that increasingly have led to the torture of common language in order to attempt to change the meaning of already passed laws instead of passing new ones which seem to be growing increasingly difficult to do.

Further, you have an entire caste of people specifically trained to use language in unintuitive ways.

As far as "Assault rifles" go, most people can't even define what one is. The fact is, an AR-15 that has the "look-and-feel" of a military patterned rifle is functionally equivalent to more "traditional looking" stock rifles like a Mini-14.

They are the same fundamental device. Neither one is more or less capable of killing someone. To anyone with experience with firearms, the "common sense" espoused by gun control people amounts to hysterics. All it is is a bunch of people tryimg to legislate everyone else's rights without demonstrating any understanding of the subject matter at hand other than being a special interest mouthpiece.

Fair, but my point is that the gun debate in Canada has long ago moved on from where it is in the US. Even the most vocal gun advocates in Canada have come to agree that the exact reforms currently on the table in US are reasonable; they’re good for responsible gun owners, good for reducing gun violence, and have not in fact turned out to be a slippery slope to totalitarian gun-grabbing.

But it's because of this misalignment across a variety of issues that it’s difficult to have a straight discussion of cross-border political alignments— you need to have at least some semblance of a picture of how the Canadian left and right differs from the US left and right. (Another key one, for example, is that the Liberals in Canada officially strive to be a centrist party; the "real" Canadian left is the NDP and Green party, neither of which have ever held power at the federal level, though the NDP have come close a few times.)

> America is not actively shoving its politics into our conversations, we're doing that ourselves (I'm from Germany as well, btw.).

I read a book a few years ago that made an interesting point about cultural exports like TV shows (the book was written pre-youtube and pre-netflix).

If you're a small country (with your own language, culture and traditions) and America has 30x the population of your country, films and TV shows made for the American market will have 30x the budget.

And yet, when that American show is selling broadcast rights in your country, no matter how far they have to drop the price, making a sale makes more money than not making the sale. So the price of the American show will never be out of reach of your broadcasters.

So when a broadcaster imports an American show instead of producing locally, they get a much flashier, more polished product - and it actually costs them less!

And so, for example, Belgian TV shows more scenes in American courtrooms than Belgian courtrooms. And if American TV shows include American politics, they can't help but shove it onto Belgian TV screens.

There's not a moustache-twirling Uncle Sam deliberately orchestrating this, of course. It's just a natural consequence of copyright, deregulation and free trade.

Maybe Netflix is in part compensating for this by giving American-style budgets to productions elsewhere? It seems they have a goal of making a good show or movie from anywhere a source of global revenue.

It suggests a lack of conscious effort to conduct and observe thoughts and actions in a constructive way. To fall into observed patterns of behaviour without intention is no one’s fault but the one behaving, I would think.

That’s not to say there’s no such thing as influence or persuasion. And those can be powerful. Ultimately we can all decide how we engage with our family, person to person, regardless of how the USA or anyone in the USA indicates.

It’s incredibly important to be aware of that and act accordingly. If mainstream media from another country can change your relationship with your sister, it seems to me that something is wrong. Negative external influences aren’t about to go away, so it’s on the individual to be cognizant and vigilant about responding appropriately.

> Just to be clear, I'm not against imperialism

As an aside - why? Imperialism seems like something one should obviously oppose. Who wants their lives governed by these forces?

Might is right.

As a Canadian, I'm shocked at the attention the minutia of US politics gets in Canada. I was visiting family and watching the 6pm news and I'd say US politics dominates Canadian national news. It's not unusual for the first 20 min of a 30 min program to be nothing but US politics. Plenty of people say "well, what happens in the US is important to Canada", but what's covered is just stupid political bickering. And it's not even coverage from a Canadian perspective, just regurgitation of what's covered in the US.

Sure, when Trump says something about renegotiating NAFTA, yeah, cover that. When Trump says something stupid about the Democrats, no, that doesn't deserved prime time coverage in Canada. There are too many important things happening in Canada and the rest of the world for that to be front and center.

But I understand why they do it...ratings. Covering outrageous stories gets ratings. Generating outrage gets people to tune in tomorrow to see what happens next.

> When Trump says something stupid about the Democrats, no, that doesn't deserved prime time coverage in Canada.

Frankly it doesn't deserve coverage here in America, either. If he hadn't been gifted billions of dollars in free advertising from all of these networks that hate watch his Twitter feed I don't think we would even have Trump as POTUS. And now he's never going to go away. And they're going to be hate watching his every step to keep "reporting the news." For the life of me I do not understand why people watch the news in this era.

Ratings and possibly a good distraction from how things are at home as well. As an American, I could not believe how many people, also Americans, that I knew that were distraught over Brexit.

> but only you two have yourselves to blame

This is a very dismissive argument to make. It's just like saying Americans have just themselves to blame for this culture ware and should just stop arguing and move on.

Everyone watches US TV shows and movies. Many media outlets all over the world give way too much attention to US news topics, for reasons that are not really clear to me.

This kind of cultural affiliation is not a personal choice, but brought on by news media and the dominance of US entertainment.

And consuming those things, then accepting their premise and message wholesale, is a personal choice.

> I'm not against imperialism

> you two have yourselves to blame

That's not how imperialism works.

I think what we see here is the result of social media A/B testing on how to get votes, and this playbook is now followed by the rest of the world.

In a democratic society, you have to influence the public opinion to stay/get in power. Propaganda is free, information costs money.

If the majority of voters are not willing to pay for quality journalism, you have to get them engaged by fueling outrage and projecting fear. It doesn't matter what side, as long as there are sides you can join and identify with.

Combined with the fact that American politics do have an effect on the quality of life in other parts of the world (trade wars and refugee crisis for example) and the working (aka non-capital) class suffers in most western societies, it is very easy to project similar fears and foster divisiveness.

Who says that paying for journalism would fix this problem? Both CNN and FOX are cable news, not broadcast for free.

Go back to the start of the Second Gulf war and you had the NYT and other media outlets complicit in the WMD lies.

It seems to work in other countries.

Neither CNN nor Fox is quality journalism, "quality" being the adjective you left out.

The NYT also issued an apology for their coverage about WMD which was not rigorously fact checked. One of the reporters, Judith Miller, later joined Fox News.

Quality doesn't mean 100% correct all the time, it means significantly better than the alternative.

Comparing the coverage of different sources is part of how you can reach your own conclusions, instead of blindly adopting whatever opinion is broadcasted to you.

Well, you definitely don't live in Leipzig. I can tell you that not everywhere in Germany is like that. In some cities, specially in the East, depending of the soccer team, profession or political views, you are simply not allowed to frequent some places.

I'm American and Hispanic and been to leipzig and the surrounding areas quite often since my best friend lives there. I've partied and bbq'd in the various Dorfs surrounding as well and have never remotely encountered such a thing.

I'm German and been to US many times. Some of my best friends lives there. I've partied and bbq'd in the various cities there and have never remotely encountered such thing like the one cited in the linked article. Do they exist? Definitely. What is your point?

This tracks for me, having lots of friends and connections outside of America. Personally I think it’s yet more evidence that what we can often dismissively refer to as a “culture war.” Is a disagreement over fundamental moral issues that we just refuse to talk about directly or really act on.

An example of how the US argues over the death penalty in a way which doesn't happen elsewhere, but perhaps should:

>In fact, opinion polls show that Europeans and Canadians crave executions almost as much as their American counterparts do. It's just that their politicians don't listen to them. In other words, if these countries' political cultures are morally superior to America's, it's because they're less democratic.

"Death in Venice" (http://wayback.archive.org/web/20091009111114/http://tpmlive...), Joshua Micah Marshall, The New Republic, 31 July 2000

Wisconsin outlawed the death penalty in 1853, so that’s hardly a new issue. What’s changed is how much such things are emphasized. Rather than the 2020 presidential candidates talking about meaningful policy differences it was mostly about token issues and identity politics. Occasionally, they would signal which groups they where supporting, but as quietly as possible.

That’s how unpopular choices can become policy. It breaks down to people with strong preferences deciding issues rather than the majority deciding issues. Farmers care a lot more about subsidies than most people making farm subsidies an easy choice.

> Does anyone else have similar stories?

I'm seeing it, too, and it's annoying. I'm American, but a while back I stopped consuming anything but local news in English for the sake of my sanity. Doesn't work anymore. I keep wondering if maybe I just need to learn a new language? Maybe the mind virus hasn't yet spread to the Swahili coast. . .

America's biggest export is culture

Yes, similar to Schelling points, I call these Schelling fulcra. Not "what do people focus on?" but specifically "what issue illustrates our tribal divisions?"

It's also possible that the US political system is aligning with the rest of the world. The American Republicans now seem a lot more authoritarian and the American Democrats more socialist than they were 10 years ago.

I can't say if it aligns more with the divide in the rest of the world, but saying US politics "spills over" into the rest of the world makes it sound like the US is static. The parties are evolving though: maybe the US is just shifting to toward a more internationally palatable ideological divide.

I can't speak of the political climates of the majority of the world, but at least in Europe multi-party systems aren't that uncommon, and those tend towards less of an ideological divide between the parties than the American bipartisan system, from what I've gathered.

So I'm not sure I entirely understand what you mean with the divide being more internationally palatable. "Spilling over" also doesn't imply the source is static.

> The craziest part of this american culture war, to me, is that it seems to spill over to the rest of the world.

It's more of a bidirectional soup, I think. A lot of the tumult in the US is due to the breakdown of historic norms and views. That has been sped up by social media, but the actual ideas taking hold on one side are largely Marxist, by way of the Frankfurt school, in nature. Those both originate within your own boarders. What you're experiencing is more an echo bouncing back than a spillover, in my opinion.

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