Four more years!

JimHacker, I agree with you and also your shifting to this topic. Public national personas are interesting even when the reality is somewhat different. My country Australia believes it is populated by ruggedly independent sons of the outback who distrust being told what to do by the government. Yet we were either the first or among the first to make compulsory push bike helmets, car seatbelts, and voting among other things. Plus we are among the most urbanized people in the world, lots of pristine countryside but it's too far from KFC and Maccas.
I note you are from the UK and I often visit there finding the people generally have similar values to me. American friends are generally different again though. It just occurred to me that I actually do fit the Aussie stereotype having grown up on a sheep and cattle station in the bush, so I'm between the UK and US model but closer to the UK. On the topic of guns I have a gun collection which is legal and very safely stored, but am glad that every pimply faced 18 year old can't readily get guns without much training and vetting.

I would tend to disagree. It is more in the fact that Americans by and large are optimists--to my way of looking at things--a person does make a difference. Mythical view expressed best by Heinlein in the Glory Road.

It has very little to do with the political issues. Other countries from views expressed here all make people a cog in the human machine. Americans not so much.

My simplistic, opinionated, view.

Happy New Year,
T2M

JimHacker wrote:The following is in a different thread but i thought it was more suitable here:

...snip...

The USA has its own things whih shape it. As an outsider familiar with many americans I'd list them in descending order of importance as 1)40 years of anti-communist, pro-capitalist, pro-american propaganda 2)the civil war 3)its current status as the only super-power 4)the pioneering spirit 5)the revolution against the british empire

Attempting to understand american politics and culture without a reasonable knowldge and understanding of these things is impossible. The USA has generally been slightly to the right of the rest of the world since its founding (although it was probably ever-so-slightly to the left in between 1900 and the late 1930s/early 1940s). Partly out of reaction to the USSR the USA shifted to the right in the 1940s. And then it shifted hard-right with Reagan in the late 1970s/early 80s - the time an entire generation had grown up with capitalist propaganda and has remained there ever since.

The other thing you need to keep in mind is that the US culturally split away from the UK over 150 years before Australia.

When the US broke away from the UK there was a lot of resentment of the UK (which had been building for many years before the US declared independence). That resentment continued to build for a very long time (due to both internal politics and British policies). Because of that resentment there was a tendency to reject almost anything that seemed British (eg that's part of why tea is a distant second to coffee in the US).

So many of the differences you're seeing are because US deliberately distanced itself from the UK and its culture while the Australia did not (at least that's the impression I got reading about Australian history on Wikipedia).

Daryl wrote:JimHacker, I agree with you and also your shifting to this topic. Public national personas are interesting even when the reality is somewhat different. My country Australia believes it is populated by ruggedly independent sons of the outback who distrust being told what to do by the government. Yet we were either the first or among the first to make compulsory push bike helmets, car seatbelts, and voting among other things. Plus we are among the most urbanized people in the world, lots of pristine countryside but it's too far from KFC and Maccas.
I note you are from the UK and I often visit there finding the people generally have similar values to me. American friends are generally different again though. It just occurred to me that I actually do fit the Aussie stereotype having grown up on a sheep and cattle station in the bush, so I'm between the UK and US model but closer to the UK. On the topic of guns I have a gun collection which is legal and very safely stored, but am glad that every pimply faced 18 year old can't readily get guns without much training and vetting.

It has very little to do with the political issues. Other countries from views expressed here all make people a cog in the human machine. Americans not so much.

Americans like to think that yeah. Correlation with reality tends to be worse than minimal.

A good example is how USA tends to have far more hierarchial and rigid organisation in workplaces than here. Swedish companies actually uses it as an incentive when recruiting from USA, that they´re allowed far more control over their work.

US schools are considered to be far heavier on discipline and rules and regulations than here. Indoctrinating kids to be good little citizens, neat little cogs in the machinery.

And of course social stratification is massive compared to here. That´s both good and bad certainly, but even more certainly it pushes people towards being "cogs".

Tenshinai wrote:

It has very little to do with the political issues. Other countries from views expressed here all make people a cog in the human machine. Americans not so much.

Americans like to think that yeah. Correlation with reality tends to be worse than minimal.

A good example is how USA tends to have far more hierarchial and rigid organisation in workplaces than here. Swedish companies actually uses it as an incentive when recruiting from USA, that they´re allowed far more control over their work.

US schools are considered to be far heavier on discipline and rules and regulations than here. Indoctrinating kids to be good little citizens, neat little cogs in the machinery.

And of course social stratification is massive compared to here. That´s both good and bad certainly, but even more certainly it pushes people towards being "cogs".

Not to mention the fact we all think the way we do it at home is the right way, and the best, Right?

Mange, <I agree two-legs are weird >
"For the British good is ."

Poker & Mange

TV shows from the UK showing building of homes or other structures amuse me because the head builder usually dresses in a jacket and tie. In Australia he would be wearing the same shorts and T shirts as his workers and if he tried to dress differently to them they would "take the mickey" or tease him. There was a furore recently when a new Government Department head instructed his staff not to call him by his first name, but Mr **. Funny that some of his indiscretions were leaked to the press soon after and Mr ** is currently suspended from his lofty job.

Daryl wrote:TV shows from the UK showing building of homes or other structures amuse me because the head builder usually dresses in a jacket and tie. In Australia he would be wearing the same shorts and T shirts as his workers and if he tried to dress differently to them they would "take the mickey" or tease him. There was a furore recently when a new Government Department head instructed his staff not to call him by his first name, but Mr **. Funny that some of his indiscretions were leaked to the press soon after and Mr ** is currently suspended from his lofty job.

You realise that's just for the camera right? Unless its a massive construction company, in which case,yes, the guys at the top will be in suits.

@Tenshinai

Amerians are optimists? You think practically worshipping an economic system which deliberately appeals to humanity's most basic (and generally bad) instincts is optimistic? Surely it's the socialists (who for some reason think people would work for the good of society even if they didn't have to fear poverty and could have no aspirations to wealth) who are the optimists? I'm not really arguing this btw. I'm just pointing out that designating some cultures as optimists and the others as pessimists and saying 'that's it' is incredibly closed-minded. We all have different cultures and these cultures are drawn from our history.

To borrow from the famous democracy phrase.

Capitalism is the worst economic system except for all of the others.

JimHacker wrote:@Tenshinai

Amerians are optimists? You think practically worshipping an economic system which deliberately appeals to humanity's most basic (and generally bad) instincts is optimistic? Surely it's the socialists (who for some reason think people would work for the good of society even if they didn't have to fear poverty and could have no aspirations to wealth) who are the optimists? I'm not really arguing this btw. I'm just pointing out that designating some cultures as optimists and the others as pessimists and saying 'that's it' is incredibly closed-minded. We all have different cultures and these cultures are drawn from our history.

Lol, nice to see someone not just jumping out with the usual automatic reactions.

First of all, i cant recall having even said they were optimists, that seems to be TTM, not me at least a few pages back that i checked to make sure. But what the heck, you did a good job writing up the above so i´ll give some sort of answer anyway.

Americans ARE (over-)optimistic in that they generally really do believe the myth of "land of the free" and "land of opportunity" and selfmade success. Even if they have obvious evidence of the opposite.

Research have shown that if you take a random, average European, s/he has twice or better chance of improving their socioeconomic status compared to their parents, over their lifetime, than an average random american. My own country rated as 4 times better chance in a 2001 study.
This kind of studies are seriously hated by neocons and some others from the rightwing area of politics, because even if you play the "lies, damn lies and statistics" game with those studies, you still cant end up with better than that USA has slightly worse opportunities than an average European nation, and if you "fix" the numbers the other direction, you get silly high numbers in advantage of the latter.


Personally i would much prefer a system where i´m free to do what i´m good at or want to do and if good enough can get appreciation for that, but where not being the "1 in a million" that has great success does not mean a "troubled" life. Or even just death.

And why is it automatically assumed that socialism must equal "can have no aspirations to wealth"? What it generally means and desires is to achieve "they didn't have to fear poverty".

And of course, before socialism in various forms, few nations could be called democratic. And it was quite normal to have a 60 hours working week... And so on.

To borrow from the famous democracy phrase.

Capitalism is the worst economic system except for all of the others.

That´s actually not at all either true nor realistic. There isn´t even any nation on earth running actual capitalism. And Russia in the 90s is probably one of the better perfect examples of exactly why unrestricted capitalism is a very VERY bad thing.
And also for showing that capitalism does not equal a reduction in corruption.
Of course, i could use my own country under current govt, or Canada under current govt as excellent examples of that as well.

pokermind wrote:
Not to mention the fact we all think the way we do it at home is the right way, and the best, Right?

Mange, <I agree two-legs are weird >
"For the British good is ."

Poker & Mange

Actually, i rarely agree with ruling politicians or leaders anywhere. But i can say this, current govt here seems to have a strange case of rosecoloured glasses in regards to USA, and the changes in that direction since 2006 have NOT been an improvement. Quite drastically the opposite. And in comparison, i used to call the leader of the previous govt "the plastic dictator" because he was such an insufferable bastard.

I much prefer Norway at the moment. Although in some ways, Italy has some very good points as well. Uhhm, and Japan... And... Well essentially it depends on what you´re looking at.