"A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon."
-Napoleon Bonaparte
"You tell me that class distinctions are baubles used by monarchs, I defy you to show me a republic, ancient or modern, in which distinctions have not existed. You call these medals and ribbons baubles; well, it is with such baubles that men are led.
I would not say this in public, but in a assembly of wise statesmen it should be said. I don't think that the French love liberty and equality: the French are not changed by ten years of revolution: they are what the Gauls were, fierce and fickle. They have one feeling: honour. We must nourish that feeling. The people clamour for distinction. See how the crowd is awed by the medals and orders worn by foreign diplomats. We must recreate these distinctions. There has been too much tearing down; we must rebuild. A government exists, yes and power, but the nation itself - what is it? Scattered grains of sand."
He went on that in order to ameliorate that sand, "We must plant a few masses of granite as anchors in the soil of France."
His phrase "it is with such baubles that men are led" (and your paraphrase) are often quoted out of context as something cynical, but Napoleon was actually commending these things as the physical manifestations of honor. If he's cynical about something, it's the liberty and equality bits.
https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_Rfl9mwoQBzkC/page/n93/mod...
The line after "We must plant a few masses of granite as anchors in the soil of France" ("Nous sommes maîtres de la faire , mais nous ne l’avons pas, et nous ne l’aurons pas, si nous ne jetons pas, sur le sol de la France, quelques masses de granit.") is perhaps an even more cynical take in light of the French Revolution that directly preceded Napoleon's rise.
> Croyez-vous qu’il faille compter sur le peuple? Il crie indifféremment Vive le roi, vive la ligue! Il faut donc lui donner une direction, et avoir pour cela des instruments.
And not even from a financial standpoint -- there simply wasn't enough excess goods or food to have them out of the workforce.
You can see that in Afghanistan: the Dutch embassy staff waved goodbye to the plebeians down on the Kabul airport when their military flight took off. Being a citizen of a country matters and it is worth fighting for.
Still at play in most hierarchical structures imo
I think a similar story (this is in Ken Burn's doc, told by Shelby Foote) is when the Union forces at Fredericksburg took the city and then sent wave after wave of soldiers at the Confederate held hills with a wall at the base of them. I don't recall how many waves it was (10+), but it's difficult to imagine being in the sixth or seventh wave, watch man after man before you walk into a "wall of lead" and decide to do it anyway.
How many people today have that kind of conviction? We can't get people to wear masks.
If you look at American politics over the past 5 years, trump has almost become another napoleon in how fervent the support he has, and how the idea of 'freedom' has held.
if you believe wearing a mask benefits you then there is no need for "conviction", it is just a belief and the person is trying to maximize their own benefit
It's because we have weak, ineffective, self serving leadership, and have since probably LBJ.
People fight and die for a cause, what in the US is worth fighting and dying for for the average Joe? Constant surveillance, harassment by the state police, corrupt politicians, corrupt justice system, income inequality, shit healthcare, shit schools, shit housing, shit food, shit safety net, regressive taxes, massive debt given to the rich, bailouts for banks, foreclosures for the people, eroded civil rights, eroded constitutional rights? You have the American dream, then you have the American reality. I mean we reap what we've sewn for the last 40+ years. If we really had a serious existential military threat, where we had to reinstate the draft, I'm not sure how strong our response would be because of all this. Who wants to die for Amazon.com or Walmart or AT&T's profit? I mean the American way of life, as it stands today, how would you feel if you had to send your conscripted sons and daughters to die to protect it?
Who the hell wants to kill and die for "still better than many countries?" If you think your country is worth keeping, you need a positive vision for that country.
Here's the top 10 countries of origin for immigration to the US in 2018 (before COVID). We can assume people who immigrate to the US do it for a better life than the country they came from. Notice there aren't any "developed" countries in this list. Care to guess what that says about the US?
Mexico - 161,858, Cuba - 76,486, China - 65,214, India - 59,821, Dominican Republic - 57,413, Philippines - 47,238, Vietnam - 33,834, El Salvador - 28,326, Haiti - 21,360, Jamaica - 20,347
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/us-immigr...
https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/...
Well, it says that there aren’t many “developed” countries where emigrants can walk to the US.
You're getting your nomenclature discombobulated. During the Cold War, first world was US and her allies. Second world was the USSR and her allies. Third world was all the others. Third world got branded as "shitholes," because they didn't have support from the superpowers and the superpowers tended to intervene in their local politics, or steal resources, etc.
>There are certain cities in a "shithole" country that are far richer and better in certain neighborhoods in a "first-world" country around the world.
Yes, most of the US by land mass would be considered a "shithole," by many people including myself, that was my original point. People in non "shithole" countries come here far less than countries who are worse off than us. That puts us in a pretty low point on the "great countries to live" scale. Somewhere slightly above Cuba and China. In most of the US, the economic prospects are grim and the federal support is near non-existent. The US is ok if you are the top 20-30% of earners, otherwise, it's pretty crappy. It wasn't always like this.
https://www.google.com/search?q=boarded+up+small+town+usa&tb...
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/immigration/sd-me-...
https://www.dw.com/en/entering-us-via-mexico-why-are-so-many...
Civil rights in the US have been massively improved since the 1960s and 1970s. Even the prison population has been declining, finally, for about 12 years now. The war on drugs is ending.
You actually think eg black people or gay people are worse off in the US today than they were 30, 50, 70 years ago? It's an absurd premise. Just 30 years ago you couldn't even be publicly gay in Hollywood (left leaning Hollywood) or your career was toast. Gay people were widely culturally oppressed as recently as the 1980s and 1990s. Today Ellen is just about the biggest TV host in the country. Black people in the 1960s had something closer to no civil rights at all. Today the US has widespread protected class status for minorities, which wasn't the case as recently as the 1980s. In 1970 you could fire someone specifically for being a woman, or black, or gay, or just about anything else. You were largely free to mistreat today's protected classes to almost any degree you saw fit. Sexism in the workplace wasn't frowned upon as recently as the 1980s, there was no serious legal recourse, it was the status quo and almost universally tolerated. Try operating an office or business that way today, see what happens.
Or if you want to test things out culturally (litmus test it), go on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and go on a bunch of racist tirades. Use your real name and professional networks. See what happens to you professionally over time. You'll become an instant pariah.
Nearly across the board things are far better from a civil rights standpoint than in decades past. Both culturally and in terms of government. The primary exception remaining is minimum mandatory sentencing laws, which have been around for decades now.
> income inequality
There's absolutely nothing new about that. Go back to 1890 or 1920, income inequality was higher then than it is now. The US had a very brief period of time, lasting roughly only 20 years, where income inequality dropped lower.
> foreclosures for the people
There's absolutely nothing new about that. If you don't pay your mortgage, you get foreclosed on. That was true in 1960. It's true now. It should be true. The opposite is insanity.
> corrupt justice system
Whatever that means.
> harassment by the state police
The police were even worse 50 years ago than they are today. They were more violent, far more oppressive to minorities, and 100% got away with it. Their margin for getting away with abuse has declined considerably, despite propaganda to the contrary.
> corrupt politicians
True in most any nation that has ever existed or will ever exist.
> shit healthcare
US healthcare quality is closer to the OECD median. It's in fact not shit. It is exceptionally expensive for being at the median however. In the US it's the value proposition due to cost that is shit, not the actual quality of the healthcare.
> shit food
A bizarre, empty claim. The US is one of the most diverse nations in world history with one of the most elaborate consumer markets. You can eat whatever food you like.
> shit safety net
The US spends more of its economy on its social safety net than Canada or Australia. It has a lower homelessness rate than many of its prominent peers, precisely because its safety net is not shit (even if it's also not in the top tier).
> regressive taxes
The US has one of the most progressive tax systems in the developed world. It's far more progressive than Scandinavia by comparison. The US middle class pays exceptionally low taxes, which is one of the reasons the US middle class also has among the world's highest disposable income figures - comparable only to nations like Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland and Norway.
> massive debt given to the rich
No idea what that's supposed to mean. US households are in good financial condition compared to most of their affluent peers around the world.
> shit schools
Obviously far too comprehensive of a claim. The US has 17 of the top 20 universities in the world, give or take a position. Its top 100 universities are collectively unrivaled by the rest of the world. There is nobody close. The rest of the world has spent the entire post WW2 era trying to catch up to and mimic the US university outcome.
> shit housing
Plain false. US housing remains more affordable than housing in peer nations. Americans are able to buy larger, cheaper housing than their peers can. When it comes to having a ridiculous amount of space at a decent price, only a few developed nations compare to the US.
I mean we don't lynch black people anymore, so hu-rah USA? We don't use child labor anymore (at least in country) so hu-rah USA? Instead of brutalizing black protestors, the police brutalize protestors in an equal opportunity fashion. Hu-rah USA. We're only as economically inequitable as the 1920's robber baron era, hu-rah USA. I suggest you try to expand your view a little and see what the WHOLE country really is like.