America has always rejected fanaticism, especially since WWII. We are supposed to be E pluribus unum – out of many, ONE. Now, the right wants America to be E unum pluribus – out of ONE, many.
Congress adopted In God We Trust over E Pluribus Unum and added Under God to the Pledge of Allegiance in the 50’s in response to the Red Scare and America has been pretty fanatical about it since then.
Why don’t you ask a conservative or a republican?
Because they’ve also got the lie-a-beetus.
So your philosophy has the effect of cutting communication between you and about 50% of your countrymen? Doesn’t that make you feel like you’re being used?
Fanaticism is overcompensation for doubt. They’re afraid.
Yep this. They are afraid that their way of life is being threatened… Just like the other fanatics There are religious fanatics, sporta fanatics, Independent fanatics prepping for the aliens to come and kill them, etc. Mobs are dangerous no matter the flag they wave.
We have never rejected fanaticism.
The revolution was built on fanatical ideas and ideals of American exceptionalism and where was propaganda to support that.
The civil was started primarily because the wealthy didn’t want to give up free labor (slaves) but a lot of individuals supported it because they felt the big scary northern government was attacking their homes and they had to defend them and their way of life (still, slavery,).
Pretty much every war is sold based on fanaticism. The Spanish American war was wholesale created by yellow journalism. The world wars were a bit different because America was very isolationist then and it needed a push.
Overall America isn’t an exception here. Most humans need to be fanatical to really do big things like war or revolution.
It’s helps them ignore actually doing good things for their constituents. Identity politics is what fascists use to work voters into a frenzy to manipulate them into voting for them in order to sneak extreme corporatism into office.
America has always rejected fanaticism
The John Birch Society says hi.
Climate change is real. We either do nothing and everything changes, or we change our way of living to save humanity. Either way, change is coming.
There’s nothing to conserve. Conservatism doesn’t have a ground in facts & reality, if it ever had. Hence conservatism now fights fanatically for its own survival, and capitalism survival, at the behest of all us, the progress that humanity has achieved so far, and the planet that we all share.
FYI, I’m pretty sure “at the behest of” means “as requested by”, but it looks like you meant something more like “to the detriment of” or “at the cost of”
You are right, thanks! Edited
During WWII the United States government rounded up tens of thousands of people, including many US citizens, and put them in detainment camps because they looked sort of similar to the people who bombed pearl harbor. Why? Because fear is a powerful drug and when people are afraid, logic tends to go out the window, if there was any logic to begin with. If you pay attention to conservative rhetoric, you’ll notice that much of it is intended to stoke fear, while inserting themselves as the solution. They do it because it works.
Way out in the Arkansas Delta, in a soybean field 50 miles from anywhere, there is a memorial where one of these detainment camps stood. If you aren’t looking for it, you’d probably drive right by it unnoticed. All around the camp there are these little voice boxes that you push a button on and it explains what you’re looking at. The voice providing the narration is none other than George Takei who was held there with his family as a child. Spend a little time at a place like this and it will quickly disabuse you of the notion that America has always rejected fanaticism.
There was also the very real fear of spies during WWII. Not that at all excuses interment camps.
It’s kinda funny how fanatically people point out that it’s the other side that’s the problem.
Get out of here with your “both sides” garbage.
I’ve never had someone left of center tell me a whole group of people deserve to be locked up or killed. I had a right wing nut tell me just yesterday that all lgbtq folk are complicit in rape and pedophilia and deserve to be hanged. Sadly, that’s not even close to the only time someone has said that to me.
Both sides might be part of the problem here, but only one side is off their fucking rockers.
Nah. Both sides are off their rockers. Absolute fucking nutters. One’s just more violent. But neither can be trusted with any kind of control over others.
🙄 “Both sides”
Vote 3rd party and shut up then. I’m tired of hearing about how both parties are “equally bad”
The fact is that things tend to change for the better under democrats, albeit slowly. Republican judges just today gutted a long standing regulatory precedent that’s going to pave the way for capitalists to bleed Americans dry.
One party is luke warm. The other one is actively and progressively destroying our nation. I won’t entertain the idea that they are even close to the same.
The debt is going to come calling, and I’m sure you’ll blame Republicans, and I’m sure they’ll blame you.
Perhaps I’ll have my place self-sustaining by then, perhaps not. But I’ll be sure to keep plenty of popcorn stocked.
The debt will never come calling if calling on the debt means destabilizing the world economy. I’m sure you’d like to see that, but virtually every single player in that debt doesn’t.
So take your cryptic misinformation and go hide in a cabin in the woods. Meanwhile, the adults who understand that shit doesn’t get done by itself will be picking up the mess that political pacifists like you leave when you cower behind the notion that both sides are the same.
Telling me I’d like to watch it all burn, and then calling me a political pacifist in the next breath? Come on, now, you can do better.
The debt isn’t an abstract thing that can be unilaterally printed away. It has real-world consequences, real-world resources that can’t be ignored, and that the US isn’t even in a position to come out on top of once it comes calling.
I’m glad you’re fighting that political fight. It keeps you occupied, and keeps them occupied. Like a pair of dysfunctional lovers, you deserve each other. I’m watching, and I’m learning. I know how to take advantage of the mistakes you make, and ones they make, and use them to my own personal advantage, as well as to the advantage of other moderate folks that I’m perfectly willing to give business preference to, and reach out for, and go the extra mile for.
…just… …keep fighting, bud. It’ll end soon enough. …and certainly, you will win. Perhaps not like you think, though.
Wow, I don’t think I’ve seen an edgier comment on the whole of lemmy.
You sound like you’ve got a lot to lose.
Telling me I’d like to watch it all burn, and then calling me a political pacifist in the next breath?
Yeah. You’re actively expressing both of those views at the same time by thinking yourself higher than the society you live in.
Anyway, the debt isn’t a tangible thing like you seem to think. And you clearly have no idea what you’re talking about, and I won’t take on the responsibility of teaching you how to use a search engine, so I guess this is where the edgy comment chain ends.
Have fun in your cabin in the woods, brother. The rest of us understand what it means to live in a functional society. It’s not worth engaging any further with someone as far gone as you are ✌️
Immigration. In 20 years Texas has changed from 70% white Americans to 50%. In 30 years all of America has changed from 80% to 60%.
Is that just down to immigration though? To me it seems that it is in part also because of the common understanding of what “being white” means: racial descriptions often still come down to a sort of visual one-drop-rule. If somebody looks even a bit off-white, they are seen as black. Common example here would be Obama, who is mixed race, but universally seen as a black man, even though thats just half the truth. With such an understanding of what it means to be black or white, a lowering percentage of white people is inevitable, even without immigration.
That’s honestly a good point. Anti immigration rhetoric is wildy different across the US in part from this. Where some Hispanics are extremely raciest reasons for being anti immigration with the belief that they are “white” but the Midwest or southern definitions of whiteness excludes them.
The rejection of fanaticism went out the door along with E Pluribus Unum in the 50’s when the Christian nationalists forced their religion on the national motto. Then over the next decade black people were lynched and attacked with fire hoses when they were asking for basic rights.
They also started conversion camps where they emotionally and sometimes physically and secually abuse minors in conversion camps to attempt to change sexual orientation.
I believe it was Nixon who helped foem fox News to pull the Republicans further right and we’ve been seeing the consequences of that.
Basically the fanaticism has always been there, but with the internet and social media, it’s easier for them to make their voice heard.
I think it’s important to question the idea that the US has “always rejected fanaticism”. Sure, our state doesn’t want to be viewed that way. I just think that looking at our history shows a lot of fanatic shit, from the way settlers treated the native population, to all of our conflicts in the 1900’s to now.
Mention the concept of a daily stand-up pledge of allegiance in schools in any other democracy and get laughed at.
Hell, in the inter-war period, mainstream America was even generally pretty comfortable with…uh…if not actual fascism, at least things that looked and sounded a lot like fascism.
Fash gonna fash, that’s why we gotta always be ready to bash bash bash.
Work towards peace. Prepare for the inevitable.
They figured out that egalitarian secular Democracy wasn’t meeting their racist ends, and couldn’t ever be forced to through the power of argument, so instead of changing what they want, they’re out to destroy the entire construct
They really started going insane in the 90s with the whole “Hillary Clinton murdered Vince Foster” thing, and it accelerated with the completely ignorant “Tea Party” movement in the 2010s.
What we’re seeing now is just the logical conclusion of that insanity.
