That's actually pretty ignorant and judgemental. That statement sounds so MAGA.
Setting aside the U.S.'s current political disposition for the moment.
The U.S. has always been a huge melting pot of different peoples of the world. A lot of those people would stay together, creating little islands of culture all over.
They would celebrate their culture and often celebrate other people's culture along with them. (I have been told that the U.S. celebrates Cinco De Mayo way more than Mexico ever did.)
A lot of it comes from asserting your own culture identity against this broad mixing pot. Or even asserting it against active suppression. Some of it is evolved tradition over the generations.
Many people value their ancestral roots and like to celebrate it.
Saying America has no history is so ethnocentric.
The U.S. is made up of immigrants from the entire globe. The U.S.'s history shares its history with every other nation of the world.
I love that there are so many different festivals, from different cultures, all the time. Houston is in Texas, but it is a massively diverse city. We named a highway after a Sikh policeman who had been murdered in the line of duty. The city (county maybe) even lets us sell fireworks for Diwali. There are Greek festivals all over. (Yes it has a terribly racist past, and it is considered the human trafficking capital of the U.S., fuck you big oil.)
I have never had someone introduce themselves to me as a
<culture>
-American. But plenty of people will talk about their ancestral culture if you ask.
I guess if you live in a monoculture, then you may not value that culture identity as strongly as you might when your ancestral culture is just one of a thousand.
Diversity is king. If someone wants to let their cultural freak flag fly, who the hell are you to judge?
Reconstruction was a failure because the south was too ignorant and stuck in their ways, while the north was tired of their bullshit and just didn't want to deal with it anymore. So in the long run, culturally, the racism and ignorance never changed in the south.
"...polarization, institutional decay, media fragmentation, algorithmic brain rot, primary-election extremism, and post–Citizens United v. FEC campaign finance insanity..."
These are all the result of two main things; the massive amount of data now available that can be mined and used to predict behaviors and sociological outcomes. The incredible amounts of capital that has been created by those able to take advantage of that data. They literally know how to get people to react like monkeys pushing a button to get a treat. Every web page you visit, post you share..., every click you make is another data point that can be used to model your reactions and combined into a larger aggregate.
You can point that data weaponization at two things, money and politics. With money, you now have people who just stare at spreadsheets all day and make financial decisions based off models and data mining. They have already stripped all the easy wealth that can be stripped. For example, you can't find a good deal on a used car, in an auto trader anymore. Things are priced not what they cost to make, plus a profit, but what people are willing to pay for them. That's where the marketing comes in. They know what gets almost anyone to respond, so they tailor their marketing based off all this data they gather. And it works.
Shrinkflation, enshjitification, moving industry overseas to cheap labor, robotics, etc... None of these things have made products cheaper so much as they just made more profit for the shareholders. But now, its not even the people who own the shares but private equity. Blackrock, Bezos, Musk, Ellison, etc... they have so much wealth that it is a tiny fraction for them to pay someone else to figure out how to extract more. It's not enough to own 65% (arbitrary number) of an industry, they have to constantly fight for each additional %. But they do, because they are no longer the ones doing it. They pay someone else to simp for their hoarding. They are not geniuses. (Clearly the opposite for some of them.) Some of them do have great success stories, but all of them came from wealth and without it they would be another Joe Schmoe.
Now you have these rich white men with massive amounts of wealth who think they are god's gift to the human race. So they also grab for power, and in today's world of data, money is quite literally turned directly into power.
You have a system that can convince people that a $1300 smart phone, that will last for 12-18 months before you start jonesing for an upgrade, is a smart purchase. That data is also used to convince people to vote a certain way, to believe a certain way.
Now that brings us back to the south.
People are already instinctively tribal. It is in our DNA. We are hard wired to be "us vs. them". Racism is the underdeveloped two year old of tribalization. "You look different, so you must be different, and different is bad." It is the one of the most basic institutions of ignorance. It doesn't take a whole lot to think your way past it, but when you already believe, it is much easier to continue that belief than to challenge it.
That is a perfect recipe for manipulation and control. We now have true oligarchs supporting a madman because he was an easy sell to the largest group of voters.
The left will fracture itself, fighting over whats a better system of government, how to fight climate change, genocide, abortion, it goes on. The right just has to say, "We're better than those people, vote for me and we'll rise together." They validate those ignorant tribal instincts.
Look at Cowbee. Dude (could be several people, who knows) is an arm of that. Shitty propaganda put forth in an environment they control, so there is no real dialogue or real ability to challenge. They are tribal and use it to try and sell a dumbass ideolgy and undermine others. Now imagine they had a billion dollars. They could pay an army of people like them to make a thousand soap boxes to drown out dissent or contrary thought. They play on your ignorance. They know you are not an expert, so they can make whatever wild claims they want, backed with premade arguments.
Or Charlie Kirk. That fucking douchebag. He made a career out of debating children. He had to learn what, 10 different arguments? His only real talent was to have zero shame. He was valuable to the people with the money. He would go out there and say the things they knew were lies because they profited from it and he didn't care. And the morons would eat it up.
Lets take that back to Cowbee (sorry not sorry to pick on you). I have no idea who Cowbee is and they may be a sincere person who legitimately believes in what they say. Except their behavior has every ear mark of a Charlie Kirk style propagandist and so I immediately don't trust anything they say. It is polished enough too, that part of me thinks they are actually a professional at it. Or they could really just believe that bullshit and spend 16 hours a day online.
Politicians have been playing that game for millennia at this point, but they never had the kind of tools that they do today.
And the lack of racial equity in this country, going way beyond even reconstruction, has prevented any real mobility for a non-white. It is just reconstruction on, when it is so much more obvious to see.
So by not stamping out the ignorance and hate, it was allowed to grow and become a ridiculously easy tool to abuse by those with the money to take advantage of it.
After race it is religion. Then sex. Then ideology, social standing, what football club you like...
If you look at my post you can see why I am terrible at this. I'm all over the place, thoughts aren't fully justified, points aren't very well made, I need to let it go about Cowbee...
But there are people that are good at this. Their technique is thoughtful, refined, and well funded. And they are so good at selling hate.
The same mentality that didn't stomp out the south is the same mentality that lets MAGA get away with their bullshit.
U.S. collapses under a revolution, Israel, losing its support gets buttfucked by Iran.
Then a few weeks after Israel is toppled, the Iranian people overthrow their government too, ending hostilities.
U.S. becomes a non-warhawk, nature version of a Theodore Roosevelt paradise. Iran is opened up to the rest of the world, and everyone loves to visit the beautiful resort country, Palestine, every summer.
You can argue that EVERY fucking thing in the world is in the beginning , mid, or late stages of enshittification.
But calling Ars an internet rot site, at this stage, is just fucking stupid.
Are they as good as they were a few years ago? I honestly can't say. I do know that there was better news a few years ago.
The people at Ars have a tough job trying to navigate this modern world of oligarchs and autocracy, keeping their identity, while being owned by a corporation whose only job is to make money.
They've done a pretty good fucking job, all things considered, of staying their course.
A much better job than internet assholes who want to act elitist and whine when the world falls apart around them while they blame their fellow class instead of the controlling class.
No, the issue we are talking about today and calling Ars an "internet rot site" is a huge leap. Yeah, they post shit articles from Wired and such, (they are owned by Conde Nast), but their core writers are still great and have plenty of good articles.
You want credit for what? Over exaggerating an issue then whining about it?
You are throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and then spitting on the baby. It makes no sense.
I agree, Ben probably would have indulged and not cared about using it to his advantage.
Hamilton and Jefferson were absolutely cold blooded in their political pursuits and use of published letters. They would have used any opportunity to cut the other down. Maybe mutually assured destruction would have stayed their hands on that particular indulgence, though Hamilton did famously out his own affair to clear himself of the embezzlement allegation.
Exactly.
It's always an unknown factor at other places. Some of them you feel like you are taking your life in your own hands.
But Buc-ees is always a guaranteed a clean experience.