Has nothing to do with TL, imo. Happens with any kind of person who really think otherwise, and that's why, ultimately, debates in general are very often completely vain.
Two observations:
One: the internet is the mother of terrible simplifiers. The easy and lazy supply of "information" has so decoupled the contemplative unity between knowledge and analysis that argument and thought become weighed down by their own heavy sloth. The ability to copy and paste links and "sources" is another of these detrimental inflations of information. The thing debased is knowledge. Our ability to connect, contextualize and infer are all unconsciously destroyed by this quick and convenient manner of behaviour.
Unlike many libertarians I am not very optimistic about the internet as a vehicle for truth and inquiry.
The second thing relates to Tocqueville's observation about the peculiar taste Americans had for general ideas. Read "Americans" as a cypher for democratic societies in general, and we come to the bottom of our declining ability to speak the same language. We cast our nets too wide. We love grandiloquent doctrines and have little attention for detail. Terrible simplicity demands a Manichean theology.
It's not so terrible that people should be prejudiced, but that people should say this very damaging thing: this is how I am, this is how you are. We are separated by an unbreakable void of class, nationality, gender, life experience, genetic endowments and sexual proclivities. In my experience people who resort to such arguments are either too weak to prevail, or too abstract to be convincing. In either case, the initial fault was overreaching ambition.
the question right in the beginnign was how do europeans see american politics. Well we gave our opinion how we see it. And then the flaming started because some americans couldnt handle that a lot of people here dont see them as heros :/
I think most Americans among us are quite aware of the general cadence of the European chorus. However like any people they will be instinctively inclined to dispute foreign criticism of their nation as a whole. This is no different whether discussing American, German, or British politics.
Neither is such an instinct unnatural. Most foreign criticisms are superficial. They are built on idle speculations and lack contextual knowledge. They rarely take into consideration the national character and chemistry which are often decisive. They evaluate national idiosyncrasies on its intellectual merit, whereas all idiosyncrasies are organic qualities. A giraffe may accept complaints from other giraffes about the length of his neck, but he will rarely accept it from an elephant.
P.S. You will note that I say this after mentioning Tocqueville, a man who understood America better than any American. Foreign observations can be most valuable, but are two potential blindspots: blindness towards his subject, and blindness towards himself. What is needed in criticizing foreign nations is a lot of insight on every level.
Take Napoleon's adage that the English were a nation of shopkeepers. Now this tells us more about Napoleon (and about the French, for that matter!) than it does about the English.
I don't mean TL specifically, just that TL is a place with a lack of moderation (in threads about politics) and people from diverse ideological backgrounds. In that case you can't escape the perpetual debates about libertarianism vs liberalism that seem to pop up every thread, like groundhog day. The same would go for any random forum.
Like I said, I don't think "ideological background" is a real thing. Social background I admit can contribute to a person's thoughts, but to call something an "ideological" background just begs the question: how did the background get there in the first place?
That we should be thinking about phrases like "ideological background" makes me very pessimistic. As Simone Weil said, we are no longer employing words as signs of things. We are employing them as signs of signs. We thereby reduce the person to the status of an unthinking thing, while it is the thing itself that thinks.
There is one attitude I'd like to see purged: the accusation of someone who is limited to his background. The accusation that one is a slave of Fox news, or of the NYT. Like I said, such accusations merely begs the question. People are not computers; to know anything is an exertion of the will.
You can't fight this though, since those opinions seem deeply ingrained by US culture, and a forum post on a message board isn't going to change their mind. Especially since the ones that argue the most will never change their mind anyway.
Well, not unless you are a Great Man. For all of us who are not Jesus or Mohammad, you can limit your ambition. What you can do is influence your family, friends, associates. TL.net is crippled in this regard by its size. It is not quite a country, but it's not quite a neighbourhood either. The same thing will be said in a week which was said last week.
Now that's a quality post.
To answer your question, I think a good definition of ideology in this context would be the classic Marxist one: ideology is the ensemble of social, political, religious and philosophical deceptive ideas and practices that hide the mechanism by which the dominant class exploits the whole society.
Obviously, we can then refer to Althusser who stated ironically that it is always the other one who is in the ideology. That's why it is always simpler to take an other society to observe the mechanism of ideology: for example, I find it incredibly obvious if I look at USSR under Staline. It doesn't mean however that the same doesn't apply to our societies, even though it is for us much more difficult to realize. The conclusion would be the opposite than yours: you can judge a society and its political praxis only from the outside.
I don't think we can do the economy of the concept of ideology in a political discussion today, since ideology in the most strict marxist defintion is basically omnipresent: one couldn't explain otherwise why whole people vote for governments and policies which are deigned to favour a little fraction of the richest part of the population (France and Sarkozy are a good example).
On November 08 2010 12:32 c0rn1 wrote: We here in germany experience as we speak the difference between those things run from publically to private. The energy production and distribution for
example: We had a stable and affordable system beforehand which was replaced by opening the market to private corporations under the promise of lower energy costs at the same quality of service. Changes since this was privatized:
-> Lower Standards in security - The fault liability of nuclear power plants increased tenfold, - No ultimate disposal place for the nuclear waste in sight - The insurance coverage for a maximum credible accident are comical at best in the end the population HAS to bear the consequences in ALL ways
-> Lower Prices? - Prices are raising continously with raising profits for the corporations as well. - a newly made "secret" contract between the government and the 4 major players prolonged the operating time of our nuclear plants by several years. Which adds an additional 100 bn € to their profit in that time because all plants are amortized by now.
Hi, resident libertarian here.
I don't know what your definition of privatization is, but companies given monopoly grants and leases isn't what I would call privatization. Privatization would entail the government completely leaving the industry. It seems to me they are still managing it ("operating time" gives it away), and disallowing free entry.
It is very common for the state to call such "free market" practices "privatization" when it's more like fascism. Peace!
Here's a foolish and futile attempt to get this thread back on track:
Germans, how do you feel about the American tendency to equate everything bad with Hitler? Bush is Hitler, Obama is Hitler, I'm sure you've all seen the "HEIL" protest rally signs. There's only about a quadrillion American video games where you shoot up Nazis. I'm guilty of this myself, after all I am an indoctrinated American.
Does it bother you? Annoy you? Are you concerned by the flippancy? Are you so used to it you don't really feel any one way or the other about it anymore? Is there like an East German/West German divide of public opinions about this?
On November 09 2010 01:31 Krigwin wrote: Here's a foolish and futile attempt to get this thread back on track:
Germans, how do you feel about the American tendency to equate everything bad with Hitler? Bush is Hitler, Obama is Hitler, I'm sure you've all seen the "HEIL" protest rally signs. There's only about a quadrillion American video games where you shoot up Nazis. I'm guilty of this myself, after all I am an indoctrinated American.
Does it bother you? Annoy you? Are you concerned by the flippancy? Are you so used to it you don't really feel any one way or the other about it anymore? Is there like an East German/West German divide of public opinions about this?
Good point.. been wondering about this alot as well actually.. must be somewhat of an uneasy feeling playing ww2 games. Very little concerning the whole war and genocide thing actually had to do with the German people, but in all honesty I doubt alot of them know about that.. It's kind of tabu, atleast for the Germans I've met.. which by the way make the fawlty towers episode on the subject very funny ^^
Sorry if people think I'm trolling.. I'm a bit sleep deprived, so might have written something awfully offensive.
On November 04 2010 06:27 Mothxal wrote: I think there are polls where they let European citizens choose between Obama and McCain for president, and Obama gets like 80% of the vote. Dutch media also view and often show the Democrats as reasonable and the Republicans as insane.
Yeah, which is kind of messed up. Personally, I don't really like the socialized medicine, or the Democrats at all . In its pure form and if it worked great then yeah, socialized medicine is awesome. But, with our economy and how many people are aleady mooching what they can off the system, we would fail hard. Like 45% of the people in the southern states are already on welfare, so ridiculous.
I also agree with the guy who made a comment about the elections being more for show to make us Americans feel free...when we really aren't.
And just a random tangent, how the FUCK did Bush get elected president when he obviously cheated in Florida and had dead people voting for him. I really don't get how the American people can let a man who would so blatantly try and rig an election and get caught and still become president...twice...
I myself actually could not care less about the Hitler equations. And I doubt any sane German does either. Fact is he was an insane(ly) evil man, and thus it makes sense to use him as a metaphor for evil. Since Germans don't like Hitler either (and probably also wish they could erase the memory of his part in german history altogether) I don't see how there could be any hurt feelings.
The only bothersome part about foreigners and Hitler is that whenever a foreigner tries to flame a German, he will automatically resort to Nazi/Hitler/Sieg Heil flames. Probably the only thing they know about germany, but often times Germans will actually be offended, sadly.
On November 09 2010 08:28 Monsen wrote: I myself actually could not care less about the Hitler equations. And I doubt any sane German does either. Fact is he was an insane(ly) evil man, and thus it makes sense to use him as a metaphor for evil. Since Germans don't like Hitler either (and probably also wish they could erase the memory of his part in german history altogether) I don't see how there could be any hurt feelings.
The only bothersome part about foreigners and Hitler is that whenever a foreigner tries to flame a German, he will automatically resort to Nazi/Hitler/Sieg Heil flames. Probably the only thing they know about germany, but often times Germans will actually be offended, sadly.
Pretty much. Hitler is synonym for absolute evil today. That's stupid, since "absolute evil" doesn't mean anything at all, but that's the way it is.
99% of the time someone uses Hitler in a sentence, you can be sure it is total bullshit and bad argumentation.
On November 09 2010 01:31 Krigwin wrote: Here's a foolish and futile attempt to get this thread back on track:
Germans, how do you feel about the American tendency to equate everything bad with Hitler? Bush is Hitler, Obama is Hitler, I'm sure you've all seen the "HEIL" protest rally signs. There's only about a quadrillion American video games where you shoot up Nazis. I'm guilty of this myself, after all I am an indoctrinated American.
Does it bother you? Annoy you? Are you concerned by the flippancy? Are you so used to it you don't really feel any one way or the other about it anymore? Is there like an East German/West German divide of public opinions about this?
you can expect most germans to react annoyed. Because our schoolsystem is build in a way that you when you get out of elementary school you will have some sort of WW2 and Nazi related stuff in at least one schoolsubject once a year. Most likely were you will find this is German and History.
It gets really tiresome after a while and at my highschool people were just annoyed when we had to hear again and again the same stuff or had to read the same crappy poems. Noone here really feels uneasy about those shooters, I love Call of Duty , but most germans will label you as a dumb foreigner when you bring up hitler in any way not clearly related to WW2
Just a sidenote: How many americans know that Hitler actually was born in austria? And that after he got rejected twice by a school of arts in Vienna he then came across 2 people "guido von list" and "Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels" where he was learning the fundaments of his further "development" (I'd rather call it intellectual regression than development though). It's amazing that in 99% of all cases THIS very fact is always falling under the table and most of the times so called "history lessons" will purely start at his outcoming in Munich in 1919.
But back to the former question: I mostly do not mind americans using those terms to express something radical. There are a few reasons to it: 1st: Americans tend alot to go to superlatives whatever they are doing, saying or expressing. And as infuriating as it is for a citizen of germany but Hitler and his companions set new standards in terms of "evil" in correlation with society and war. 2nd: It reminds us of a very cruel part in history over and over which we should never forget so it can't repeat itself.
The only thing that makes me worried is that the term is used very inflational lately which does not cover the right perception of what it actually means.
But to go back to the topic of the OP: When I read today about the release of George W. Bush's book and the confessions he makes within the book I became angry, very angry. If any other politician in this world would've allowed himself to expressly approve "waterboarding" (I thought we had the medieval tactics and punishments behind us in the western part of the world) or a war based on false facts (WMD anyone?) he would've been standing in Den Haag before the U.N. tribunal now being accused of infringement of human rights with the american representatives sitting in the first row demanding justice.
Using Hitler as an adjective is becoming increasingly popular, especially on the internet. "X ist schlimmer als Hitler" (meaning: X is worse than Hitler). So basically the word has lost a lot of it's power (it used to be the german N-Word which you couldn't use at all).
So you kinda don't mind or care when americans use it to describe babies or whatever. Shooting nazis in Videogames isn't really a problem either. It is just a game.
A complete circus with more of an emphasis on appeals to authority, popularity and ignorance than rational discourse based on empirical evidence.
But the same is true of most democracies and political entities, what really sets the US apart (at least in my eyes a secular European) is the extent to which relgion factors into your party politics. Your president must be seen to be 'pious', pray and adhere to bastardized Judeo-Christian values. You have politicians pushing through legislation based on religious morality (and with absolutely no shame admitting as such) that directly infringes on the rights and liberties of citizens.
I have family in the states who feel similarly, but I'm almost certain that the majority is pleased with the status quo - else there would be reform and progress.
On November 09 2010 22:12 c0rn1 wrote: Just a sidenote: How many americans know that Hitler actually was born in austria? And that after he got rejected twice by a school of arts in Vienna he then came across 2 people "guido von list" and "Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels" where he was learning the fundaments of his further "development" (I'd rather call it intellectual regression than development though). It's amazing that in 99% of all cases THIS very fact is always falling under the table and most of the times so called "history lessons" will purely start at his outcoming in Munich in 1919.
There are very plausible reasons to believe that Hitler's self-realization began in Munich, and that the Munich era of his life was more decisive than the Viennese period. There were emergent signs of anti-semitism in Vienna, but there is also considerable evidence against their being decisive. For one thing, Hitler had Jewish patrons and acquaintances in Vienna whose society he did not spurn. For another, the Viennese phase of his life was oddly apolitical. There is no evidence that Hitler had strong political passions prior to his move to Munich.
Pretty good for a country of 300 million people. Beating most of Europe. When will your countries catch up to America's quality of life?
Since over-simplifications seem to be your thing, let's review that data and compare it with my country - Germany. So we're pretty even regarding life expectancy and schooling, and the GNI in the US is higher than in Germany.
But what's that? In gender inequality has Germany a way better spot (especially your rates for teen pregnancy and mortality when giving birth). Same for sustainability (carbon dioxide emissions, protected area, adjusted net savings). Add the robbery rate, which is more than twice as high as in Germany.
In total, I'd say that rank is unjustified - and I'm pretty happy I'm on this side of the great pond.
But then again, the best thing would be to stop said simplifications and to stop bickering and going "nananana, my country is better than yours".
Well I have been beat over the head with the HDI by europhiles for years, so I consider turnabout fair play. Of course, now that America is kicking ass, the europhiles will probably switch to some other metric to feel superior.
In a perfect world we would acknowledge that the quality of life in the Western world is pretty similar between countries with only small variation in some areas. In the United States some things are worse and a lot of things are better than Europe, even after sacrificing a large part of our wealth to maintain an insanely huge military.
But then again, a perfect world wouldn't have so many self-righteous leftists. It seems like the young passionate left can't imagine that anyone would ever have a good reason for disagreeing with them.
You were pretty much winning the thread,until i read * the europhiles will probably switch to some other metric to feel superior*,at which point,i knew you were losing the internet.
Obamas a lacky, Bush was naive gun-toting warmongerer.
The world is in Americas hand, yet the ideas of fairness and equality seem to be trampled on when it seems appropriate. Check the denial of statehood to Palestinians, supporting Israel regardless despite the clear unfairness.
USA seems to support a number of countries which are run by dictators because it is convinient. Check how the Saudi Royal family oppress their country with extremist islam. Women aint allowed out of their homes unless accompanied by a male relative. I am a muslim and this aint islam, this is oppression of the people.
The denunciation of Iran has little to do with freedom of speech or fairness, but is because of the supposed threat they could to Israel hegemony in the MIddle East. Israel has nuclear weapons yet there aint no sanctions or shit. USA politics is hypocritical
I spend a lot of time talking (arguing) with americans over the internet, and these are my (negative) impressions (since those are more fun to point out :D):
1. Your politics are insanely polarized. You spend a lot more time demonizing, politically. We've had a few smear campaign ads in the past decade starting to creep into canadian politics, and the first thing I think of is "oh god, we're becoming america". 2. Patriotism is a rather different phenomenon there (narcissistic, sensationalist, tool for propaganda, my-dad-can-beat-up-your-dad pissing contest) 3. You feverishly bandwagon (blindly, ignoring faults) to get someone elected, but then constantly degrade the people you put in charge when they don't live up to your expectations. 4. Your irrational fear of communism/socialism is really good for a laugh. I can seriously say I've heard more convincing conspiracies and/or fearmongering about tap water. 5. You have an inflated sense of national self-worth. None of the industrialized countries of the world are jealous. Really. We're not. I don't know if it's just you're bombarded with news about how america is #1 according to some arbitrary list daily, but something is seriously off with how you think you're perceived and how you are actually perceived. 6. There's a characteristic tendency to be more entitled, philosophically. I'd say canadians are no more noble in practice, but few canadians would give you a lecture about what they "deserve" or "earned". Not so with americans. 7. Preoccupation with wealth. To the point of denying that anything else matters. Another philosophical difference. 8. Debt. Canada is no better, but i get the feeling like the US took out a big student loan and just got drunk instead of going to class and has to pay the piper soon, and things won't end well.
I don't claim to be correct, even generally, about these points, but those are perceptions my personal interactions have created...
Alot has been said in this thread, so i just wanna mention one thing that always disturbs me when I see it. Its the american patriotism. Maybe its because I am from germany, where patriotism or nationalism isnt that strong anymore, since germany history showed where it can lead. But every time I hear an american say "we are the greates country" or "we are the greatest nation under god" it scares me. I always have the feeling american politicians say this cause they wanna blind themselves and the ppl from problems they have or they want to justify horrible actions. So my question to the americans here: How do you feel about your patriotism? Do you need a strong national identity to feel responsible for your country and the ppl around you?
I sometimes wonder if 200 years from now, school kids read in their history books about this century and wester politics and one kid is asking his teacher. "How could these western countrys kill millions of ppl in wars so easily and hold up a capitalistic system that repressed over 70% of the worlds polupation and still think that they were the good ones?"
EPT
. In its pure form and if it worked great then yeah, socialized medicine is awesome. But, with our economy and how many people are aleady mooching what they can off the system, we would fail hard. Like 45% of the people in the southern states are already on welfare, so ridiculous. 
