American culture

[UnknownPerson]

Why does the vast majority of Americans start spouting 'freedom' and 'democracy' whenever they're told that high government intervention into economy is a good idea, or whenever they hear of socialism? A large portion of them seems to say that ensuring the survival of our species isn't really important/unimportant, and that their economic freedoms are far more important than our species. What's the funniest is that a lot of them keep saying 'freedom' all the time they hear about socialism and/or high government interventionism, and yet, they don't seem to know what they're talking about.

What's the reason for all this? Were they taught all this bullshit at school?

[Jimmie Higgins]

Why does the vast majority of Americans start spouting 'freedom' and 'democracy' whenever they're told that high government intervention into economy is a good idea, or whenever they hear of socialism? A large portion of them seems to say that ensuring the survival of our species isn't really important/unimportant, and that their economic freedoms are far more important than our species. What's the funniest is that a lot of them keep saying 'freedom' all the time they hear about socialism and/or high government interventionism, and yet, they don't seem to know what they're talking about.

What's the reason for all this? Were they taught all this bullshit at school?

School, television, newspapers, politicians, conservative churches, take your pick.

But since the 1970s there has been a concerted and conscious effort on the part of the US ruling class to tie pro-business politics to some kind of social base. After the civil rights and anti-Vietnam movements a lot of the post-war institutions lacked credibility and there was much more of an anti-capitalist sentiment than people now admit. Just watch US documentaries from the early 70s and people say things that if they were written on this website would be laughed at for being too ultra-left.

So through organizations like the chamber of commerce, there was an effort by the ruling class to organize a new base from which to promote their interests. They set up and funded think-tanks like the Cato institute and various other things, they knitted together various right-wing tendencies by uniting pro-business policies with evangelical christian conservative moral issues and so on.

Also the weakness of the Left after the late 1970s and the retreat of progressives and soft-leftists into the Democratic party meant that there was little ideological opposition to neo-liberal arguments after the late 1980s. So lack of organization on the part of progressives and the left on the one hand and massive organization and funding for pro-business policies and the political justifications for them means that you hardly hear any mainstream criticism of neoliberalsim.

[RED DAVE]

All of what JH said, plus all of this was part of a global onslaught by capital against labor. See Michael Moore's movie Roger and Me. It will give you a good take on this.

RED DAVE

[Jimmie Higgins]

Why does the vast majorityAlso I think looking from outside the US, you might think this is deeply ingrained and common but really I think these sentiments in all but a tiny minority of right libertarians and people like that. Outside of this hard-core, these sentiments are a mile wide and an inch thick. The hard core is vocal organized and gets support from all of AM radio and FOX as well as legitimacy from the rest of the media, so it's not an insignificant obstacle, but it's not something "inherent" to the "American character" as both liberals and conservatives argue.

Sometimes media pundits will admit that some progressive reform has popular support but then they will dismiss it as only popular in urban areas but not in the heartland with "real Americans". Well considering that 80% of the US population is urban...

[Belleraphone]

Vast majority? I'd say the vast majority is apathetic. Just look at the voter turnout. I also don't think most Americans are like that, and I live in Texas. Most Americans are okay with some government intervention. Still very conservative compared to Europe though.

[UnknownPerson]

Vast majority? I'd say the vast majority is apathetic. Just look at the voter turnout. I also don't think most Americans are like that, and I live in Texas. Most Americans are okay with some government intervention. Still very conservative compared to Europe though.

It might just be the forums which I argue on, and it may just be a coincidence that about 95% of those who argue against more-than-small state intervention are Americans.

[Jimmie Higgins]

It might just be the forums which I argue on, and it may just be a coincidence that about 95% of those who argue against more-than-small state intervention are Americans.They live on the internet and many of these arguments are exculsive to US politics because they are ubiquitous on AM radio. There's a whole slew of arguments that have become legitmate because the media repeats them and treats them with the same weight as they do with statements that can be backed up by facts.

For example, a FOX news pundit might say, "Obama is a well known vegitarian and so was Hitler so they are the same person". But then NBC news will make a story about it and say, "Does Obama eat meat? Some are saying he doesn't, what's the real story?". It's the same with the whole anti-evolution argument - the conservatives don't have to PROVE that creationism is real and they never try, their goal is just to make creationism and evolution seem like equally viable theories.

This is why we need a strong and organized Left, we don't have billionaire Koch brothers founding and funding our organizations, setting up think tanks, all with the support of the politicians and mainstream. It's much easier for the ruling class to make arguments than it is for us to counter them. Until we are bigger and more organized, the only thing we have going for us is reality that routinely disabuses people of these ubiquitous ruling class myths. The recession has done a good job for the whole of the population - I think support for capitalism among people making less than 20K a year went from 75% approval (gak) to less than half (40%) in the first year after the recession. 40% is high, but the rapid decline of such a "common sense" idea that's supposedly "inherent" in the American psyche is telling.

Just numerically, despite ridiculously low unionization rates in the US, union members could overwhelm all the Ron Paul and Libertatians in the US - but because union leadership is tied to the Democrats (a party who need those deficit nuts out there in order to justify why they are also supporting austerity "we have no choice, we don't want to alienate 'real Americans'") they are not going to be mobilized from above to fight for a working class alternative to austerity (let alone the system).

But the labor protests in Wisconsin, though they lost, are very informative to the real "real America". Protesters pushed past the democrats and even the union leadership and both had to scramble and were only able to regain control towards the end. FOX and Koch and the rest of the right tried to hastily mobilize a tea-party protest to counter the unionists, but the pro-unionists easily outnumbered and overwhelmed them.