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Comment by mbostleman | Hacker News Reader

>>We’re one country but we don’t share a single set of values.>>

This is a popular sentiment, but I don't think it's true - I think it's manufactured (I assume due to all mass communication being a large ad server that requires a quick and easy way to stimulate engagement - but that could be wrong too, I don't know). I believe, admittedly from anectodical experience, that we are remarkably together on values. Where we're apart is a) facts, and b) the tactical approach to getting our society as a whole to express those values (eg. trusting that if left alone the society will be "good" vs. trusting that codifying the "good" in law will genuinely reach the same end).

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>>We’re one country but we don’t share a single set of values.

> This is a popular sentiment, but I don't think it's true

My personal experience is of a diverse USA. In the late 90s I toured the states, a gig in a different city each night then back to the tour bus and off to the next one by daybreak. Okay, not a great sampling of ordinary life because on the road you mostly meet audiences, people in bars, diner waitresses etc. But while I recall how the USA looks superficially similar (giant cars on giant roads and the same brand logos in every city) it's not. I saw quite a range of poverty and wealth, segregation and integration, friendliness and aloofness, dense cities and wide open country. Much like travelling around Europe.

Maybe we're working off of different overloads for the word "values". While there is no doubt a great diversity of experience per all the things you mentioned, to me "values" is a very small set of first principles that maps closely (or is identical) to ethics. I believe there is little to no diversity in that regard.

That's an easy thing to say if you reduce "values" to lowest common denominator ethical abstractions that are pretty much shared among all human beings.

If you include e.g. "not wearing shoes in the house", "treating animals well", "Buddhist supremacy", or "proper lawn care" as values, however, things diverge quickly.

Half of your examples pertain to habits rather than values.

Whether something is a value or not is itself subjective. It might be a habit to you while also being a value to some community.

Habits and values go hand in hand. You make habit, what you value. If not, then you didn't value it much...

I think the recent SCOTUS changes are all about core values, whether it's bodily autonomy, separation of church and state, indigenous rights, right of a suspect to know their rights, or the double-speak of states' rights when it comes to states limiting violent crime.

At least some of that probably touches on your core values, however you state them.

The partisan court has shown us how clearly the country is split along partisan lines. We are not the same.

And I am neither of those two partisan factions.

Unfortunately, one side wants to destroy our democracy while the other is completely feeble and inept at even pushing back against them. You still need to pick a side in our first past the post elections. Sitting independently in the middle is to sit and watch the world burn.

  > Unfortunately, one side wants to destroy our democracy while the other is completely feeble and inept at even pushing back against them

you know whats interesting (and im not an advocate of this view point at all but) thats exactly what i hear from people who watch fox/tucker/daily wire/oan all day...

i hear alot of things like: we are being oppressed, they (leftists) control all the media, the dems took our election (democracy) away,big-tech are communists that want to destroy america...

they are very motivated because of those points...

Exactly. The objection to and the definition of unfairness is the same. What differs is the facts which allow us to agree on who is being unfair to who. To me, the former is values, the latter is not.

yep, facts that are different on different sides, and this makes it extremely hard to find what is really going on for a lot of people...

its why these media machines are so damaging; people cant/dont talk to each other and discern what is real and what isnt... they just get it stovepiped to them in one direction.

I need to think about that. Maybe you're right. Not wishing to insult Americans with generalisations I'll just say I didn't get to know their values at a deep level.

> I believe, admittedly from anectodical experience, that we are remarkably together on values.

I don’t think that’s true any more. Major schisms have been opening up over the past couple of decades. For example, a significant portion of the elite is now opposed to color blindness. That’s a fundamental thing to disagree about in an increasingly multi-ethnic society. The same people also oppose the “melting pot” ideal of American immigration. The Democratic Party’s “safe, legal, and rare” has turned , in NYC at least, into “abortion until the moment of birth,” at least in NYC. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2022/05/23/....

When my family came to this country in 1989, Carter Democrats and Reagan Republicans didn’t disagree on the fundamental notions of a good life. You got educated, got married, had 2.5 kids and a white picket fence, etc. They both venerated the founders and the history of America, and agreed on what qualities of that historical America led to the prosperity that Americans enjoy today. They disagreed on the role of government in achieving that ideal, on economics, on a few social issues at the edges.

Why link to an opinion piece by an author with a known right-wing bias? The article was paywalled but the fact that it is an opinion peace and the biased reputation of the author makes it suspect.

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