Europeans don't, maybe sometimes can't, understand the absolute crushing pressure and gaslighting that most Americans are put through to make us the way we are.
It's a decades long effort to turn most of the population into a money and power pump for a tiny elite class, all while grinding us into dust.
We're crazy and scared all the time, and have no idea what's going on in the rest of the world.
There's a reason dying of opiates seemed like a rational choice to a lot of people.
@quinn @floe Great points on this thread, but I think there sort of was such a moment. In the 70s you get a lof of thinktanks worried about the "democratic surge" and "democratic distemper". For example:
Al Smith once remarked that "the only cure for the evils
of democracy is more democracy." Our analysis suggests that
applying that cure at the present time could well be adding
fuel to the flames. Instead, some of the problems of
governance in the United States today stem from an excess of
democracy— an "excess of democracy" in much the same
sense in which David Donald used the term to refer to the
consequences of the Jacksonian revolution which helped to
precipitate the Civil War. Needed, instead, is a greater degree
of moderation in democracy.
In practice, this moderation has two major areas of
application. First, democracy is only one way of constituting
authority, and it is not necessarily a universally applicable
one. In many situations the claims of expertise, seniority,
experience, and special talents may override the claims of
democracy as a way of constituting authority. During the
surge of the 1960s, however, the democratic principle was
extended to many institutions where it can, in the long run,
only frustrate the purposes of those institutions. A university
where teaching appointments are subject to approval by
students may be a more democratic university but it is not
likely to be a better university. In similar fashion, armies in
which the commands of officers have been subject to veto by
the collective wisdom of their subordinates have almost invariably
come to disaster on the battlefield. The arenas where
democratic procedures are appropriate are, in short, limited.
Second, the effective operation of a democratic political
system usually requires some measure of apathy and
noninvolvement on the part of some individuals and groups.
In the past, every democratic society has had a marginal
population, of greater or lesser size, which has not actively
participated in politics. In itself, this marginality on the part
of some groups is inherently undemocratic, but it has also
been one of the factors which has enabled democracy to
function effectively. Marginal social groups, as in the case of
the blacks, are now becoming full participants in the political
system. Yet the danger of overloading the political system
with demands which extend its functions and undermine its
authority still remains. Less marginality on the part of some
groups thus needs to be replaced by more self-restraint on the
part of all groups.
Quinn Norton
Florian 'floe' Echtler
modulux