Note that I voted for “independent country” on the grounds that Oz has not been one for the last two hundred years.
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I voted for Canada to be part of Canada.
It’ll be an adjustment, but I think it will be worth it.
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I’m sorry if this is impolite, but may I ask you to elucidate on that? (Feel free to say no if you don’t want to - that’s an acceptable answer.) I don’t know how pesticides affect neurology. But maybe I should.
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What about an Eric Flint 1632-style scenario? Is the Thuringian Wald an option? I’d trade a lot of my surroundings for some healthy primeval forest.
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Careful not to die of smallpox or kill with flu…
There are a lot of subplots on medicine after the Ring of Fire but I haven’t seen any addressing that.
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There are two sides to that.
Democratic officials tend to see autism as a bad thing, and conversion therapy/applied behavioral analysis as a good thing, deserving support at every level. (Which has created a situation where there’s a lot of funding for abuse, and therapists who don’t want to abuse children have to say they do abuse children.)
Democratic-leaning groups often push the idea that chlorpyrifos causes autism. (It causes a lot of problems, and autism is not one.)
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I want to live in a better United States. One where a misogynistic white supremacist mobster reality show host would get laughed off any primary ticket. One where the debates are about how to fix climate change, income inequality, and racial and gender injustices, not whether those things are real.
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I’m not trying to be snarky here (okay, maybe a little), but: in what sense would that still be the United States, other than geographically?
What exactly is it about the US, as it currently exists as a country, that you’d want to keep?
From an outsider’s view, it looks like much of the stuff that defines the US as being “exceptional” is the problematic stuff.
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It would be the US where Jed Bartlett was president, as opposed to the US where Donald Trump is president.
It’s the US we long for, and claim we have, and even sometimes honestly believe we have, even though our system is set up to give us the polar opposite of that.
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As someone who never (or maybe “very rarely;” it was a long time ago) watched The West Wing, could you please provide more detail?
How would Bartlett, and America-under-Bartlett, have been different from Obama, and America-under-Obama?
That’s just as vague, and presupposes the idea of a single national vision of what the United States of America should be. I’ve heard a lot of American viewpoints, and I haven’t seen much evidence of such a unified “we” that shares a conception of what the U.S. is, or should be.
So, there are certain aspects of the country that aren’t living up to your vision of what it should be. Fine. So, what is that vision? What do you long for the US to be? What is this nation that you feel the US claims to be, that you’d like to see it actually become?
And how much of that country is present in the United States as it exists today; is it enough that it would be accurate to call it by the same name if such a country sprung to existence in the same geographical boundaries?
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Exactly. There are some aspects of the US I’m fond of, probably for nostalgic reasons.
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The geographic aspect is important. I expect that the government and culture of Finland would suit me pretty well, but moving 4600 miles away from every place and everyone you have ever known, and switching languages and cultures entirely, is kind of a big deal. We have family, we have dogs and a cat and multiple aquariums, we have a house we like, favorite restaurants and venues and events, and so on.
Secondly, this is my home as much as it is Trump’s. I’m not going to become an actual refugee because this one scumbag whose days are numbered – in terms of time in office and time on Earth.
Third, there are some things about our culture and even our history that don’t completely suck.
Fourth, neoliberalism and the populist fascist resurgence seem to be a global thing now; fleeing from Trumpland isn’t going to fix that.
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I was interpreting smulder’s question as "You live in the State of West Dakota1. Without having to move from where you currently live, you’re given the choice of staying the “U.S. State of West Dakota,” becoming “the Canadian Province of West Dakota,” or becoming “The Independent American Republic of West Dakota.” Which would you prefer?
That’s why I was asking about “apart from the geography.” What is it, not about the place, but about the institution (government, culture, traditions, etc.) of the United States of America that you would like to retain into the future?
So far, I’ve just been getting answers like:
…which, I suppose, technically answer my question, but doesn’t give me any more information beyond, “Yes, there are things unique to the United States that I’d want to retain as part of a hypothetical future ideal country.”
What is it, specifically, that makes you want to retain your identity as a US American, rather than becoming part of a new and different territory, assuming you could keep your house, job, friends, social life, etc. if you chose the latter?
1Yes, I know. I used a non-existent State for a reason.
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In that case, im good with my state being annexed by Canada. I’d be good with Mexican culture and language but Canadian politics is more up my alley.
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As someone with an engineering background, I like the fact that the US has had a tradition of government generously supporting medical research (not to mention general science and technology), at least during my lifetime. I know some of this was done rather hypocritically because the military demanded it (e.g., the 1960s space program), but a lot has not. A lot of good has come out of it, to individuals and to support a thriving industry. The FDA (caveat: where I worked for a long while) I think is another US tradition that we can be proud of; health workers at least around the world look to the agency as a leader, because it has had some of the strictest regulation in the world.
Of course in the last decade I was there, the FDA was stripped of some of its power,1 and certainly I suppose science isn’t supported the way it was in the past. Corporations have stopped doing their own research, while benefiting from taxpayers’ money.
We are losing out to other countries, however; China in particular, which is saddening.
1For example, in my area, the ability of the lowly bureaucrat (i.e., engineer or scientist expert in a particular device) to make technical decisions was weakened. Congress passes laws at a high level, the agency formulates regulations at a middle level, while the scientific staff interprets the rules according to current technology. We used to be able to issue an ad-hoc guidance, which was a summary of lab tests, animal studies, and clinical studies required of manufacturers based on current knowledge. Needless to say, this changed faster than either laws or regulations at higher levels. However, the agency was successfully sued for “making regulations without industry input,” which was bull because we worked with scientists and engineers in industry to develop the damn things. We were forced to run a guidance through the regulation-making process, a year long procedure requiring input from the entire universe. Fortunately I retired.
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Obama and Bartlett were not that much alike. Bartlett was more like Kennedy without the scandals, but set in the 1990s (based on the other references in the show and the political climate). There was a nostalgic quality about Bartlett, like he was a holdover from a simpler time.
That’s largely what I’m referring to. A nostalgia for an exaggerated if not fictional past.
Good point. If I had to pick one, I’d say it was nostalgia for the stereotypical WASPy 1950s culture that never actually existed. However, I think it’s more complicated than that. I think we’ve all been told that life was better in the old days, we’ve accepted it without questioning it, and then just mentally filled in the gaps as to what that means.
I would personally be nostalgic for a time when socialism was more accepted. When Norman Thomas was considered a legitimate presidential candidate. However, I realize that there was socialism for a reason, such as rampant income inequality and horrific working conditions. I would prefer to live in this time, because even though we still have many of the same problems, we have made progress, especially with regard to civil rights.
I also realize that Norman Thomas was never a legitimate political candidate, no matter what the socialists say.
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Well, yeah, many people find it was.
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Thinking more about this, I would prefer it if we could have an identity of being a human on Earth, with diversity accepted and cherished just because differences are interesting. This would require humane governance everywhere and universal freedom and basic human rights with security for people across the globe.
Excuse me, I’m just ranting foolish things.
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That’s the thing that’s scary. If it was just one country (even my own), falling into a bad regime, well I could go elsewhere and historically the regime changes usually work themselves out in a couple generations (not always, but usually). But as a global trend, it’s concerning. Nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide.
I agree with that and I’m also trying to mentally process it. Because it’s in me too, but I don’t understand it enough, couldn’t answer the question to actually explain it. That sense is just there. I guess I’ve never really examined it before.
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