Thanks for this Patrick. I agree wholeheartedly with the need for humility, compromise, respect and good faith attempts to understand other people's positions. I don't want to live through a violent separation, not do I want my offspring to, and I'm intrigued by the concept of letting states have greater autonomy, but not sure how much that would really prevent us from becoming farther and farther apart culturally. In any case, great food for thought and I'll give you an amen!
America never did have any unifying common ground other than diversity, statue of liberty don't tread on me exiles, wild frontier entrepreneurism, covered wagon manifest destiny - freedom and democracy.
The US is held together by congress, and congress is held together by lobbyists. The US is virtually over already as it once had been, and remains together now because it serves international commerce, just as the USSR has ideologically been over for some time and is held together by an industrial mafia. It's just not as blatant in our case because the congealing ideology was more nebulous.
I somewhat shudder to imagine any whole-hearted efforts to restore it at this point, given the current context of extremely disparate values by which one might attempt to declare common ground, or even embracing the truth, that we are essentially nothing more than a global corporate conglomerate at this point, as if that were something worth preserving.
Kristal McKinstry Good question, Krystal. What really holds us together? As the lead quote in my piece says, what is pushing us apart is greater than what is pulling us together. Are we just a big continental money machine, a marketplace for global capital? A United States of Avarice? As I often write in my blog, we will not stay together short of profound changes, ditching our slaveholder’s Constitution to start with. Ultimately, a confederation of bioregional commonwealths is my dream. In the interim, if we ever get to anything like that, one can envision a radical balkanization or an outright fascist police state, or some mix of the two. I do not see things going on as they have been.
Agreed. And the big changes will be happening sooner than later, I suspect.
I have said -- and I still believe -- that the outcome we end up with will depend to the greatest extent on how well we can create local community (sharing, cooperating, relating, participating...) in our neighborhoods (literally, as in walking distance) in this time of major transition. Whatever we can accomplish at the bioregional scale (utterly crucial) will depend upon what we can achieve at the neighborhood scale. It has been said by experts in systems science that a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world could initiate a complex set of complexly entwined events which could become a hurricane in another part of the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
Imagine if millions of us were to take steps to create genuine community (cooperation, collaboration, sharing, giving, nurturing...) in our neighborhoods. Imagine a million butterflies flapping their wings all at once? Our power is so much greater than we know.
Neighborhood-level connections could get down to sheer survival. If we go into the breakdowns that are easily envisionable, it would be highly desirable to have people in the vicinity on whom we can count. I can’t say I’m the best practitioner, living in a typical U.S. neighborhood where you barely know your neighbors, if at all. There has been some work on earthquake preparedness by the local neighborhood council. When we get our big Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake and power, water and sewer go down for weeks, damned well going to want come community connections.
Yeah, there are a thousand excellent reasons for we Americans to begin to practice the fine art of becoming neighbors with our neighbors, and one of these is that a day may come when we will truly need those connections just in order to survive major challenges.
Wow. That's a pretty solid bit of reasoning. And so was an earlier piece from Patrick Mazza on why we ought to try and hold it together as a nation. So if we're to find some sort of synthesis in this dialectic it would probably be astounding and inspiring.
My motto has been Small Is Beautiful since E. F. Shumacher published a book by that title--, or nearly as long ago as that, since I read it as a 12-13 year old kid about a hundred years ago. (I'm aged 57. So I exaggerate.)
Leopold Kohr’s work such as “The Breakdown of Nations” that inspired Schumacher is also valuable. He makes a sold case for the opposite proposition, that bigness is badness. Once something gains disproportional power, they almost inevitably will use it. The U.S. will bully nations around the world. Amazon will bully vendors who sell through it or companies it wants to acquire. Microsoft will drive competitors from business with its operating system monopoly. Police departments that act as independent political fiefdoms will kill Blacks with impunity. All the same phenomenon. Even it up, as Heart sang years ago. https://youtu.be/XLhxF-Un39k
Such a clear and simple song lyric from Heart, a band with plenty of long hair (men and women) and men and women dressing so much alike.
I no longer ask for evening it up when it comes to friends. I choose friends who do this naturally. Time is short..., and the 'evening" really comes down to caring and giving. And some don't. They just don't. They don't get it. And time is short.
My beef with this piece, and many others like it, is the claim that "both sides keep getting more extreme." This is just not true. If you look at the stance of the Republican Party, Christian conservatives, the Tea Party etc, yes it's true in their case. But has the Democratic Party/liberals/the left gotten more extreme? No, they have moved steadily rightward. Well, not the LEFT, which scarcely exists, but the Dems and liberals. Yes, there are two sides to the culture war and both sides are being stoked by extremists and by those looking for ratings, likes and clicks--and I suspect, by the real enemy of the 99% of both Red and Blue, the 1% who run everything for the singular goal of getting ever richer. They need us divided, and they're succeeding handily in keeping us divided. On the liberal side, it's not by pushing us to some kind of Marxist extreme--it's by carrying on endlessly about Trump and his latest tweet, or DeSantis, keeping us stoked by emotionally arousing but insignificant developments.
I agree the right has gotten way rightier than the left has gotten leftier. I am reflecting in this review the author’s views, and perhaps I should have been more challenging about his assertions. I do think left-liberals have grown much firmer on issues such as same sex marriage and marijuana legalization, personal rights issues. But you are right about the deliberate divide and conquer strategies employed to keep us apart, when convergence on economic issues would threaten their interests.
Also, how is French's religious liberty curtailed by someone else's decision to have an abortion? If his religious freedom requires that he dictate his religious views of what a fetus is to women who disagree, must he also prevent their using birth control, or dictate which sexual partners of practices that engage in. Must he specify the prayers used, in order to be free? Seems like he specifically said no to this last--but why is the abortion issue different?
The religious liberty aspect is about LGBTQ rights and his position they are being imposed on religious institutions and people. As for abortion, there are religious people including French who see it as taking a life. Having grown up in a Catholic family, I have been exposed to that thinking. I don’t agree with it, but I understand where it’s coming from.
I understand that Right-to_life people see abortion as killing a "baby." I still don't see how THEIR religious liberty is threatened if they can't impose their views on others.
I'm internally conflicted around the use of A.I. chatbots. I see them as often making severe errors, and also as dangerous in other ways. Nevertheless, they sometimes help me get a sense of certain topics without spending a great deal of time doing research.
This article got me to thinking about the distinction between a nation and a state.
So I asked ChatGPT for help.
Me:
"Some people believe that there is an important distinction between the words "nation" and "state" Yet nation states are somehow both. I'm a bit confused on this. What's going on with this distinction?
The terms "nation" and "state" are often used interchangeably, but they have different meanings and implications."
ChatBot:
"A nation refers to a group of people who share a common language, culture, history, and/or ethnicity. A nation can exist without a state, as is the case with the Kurdish people, who have their own distinct language and culture but do not have their own independent state.
A state, on the other hand, refers to a political entity with a defined territory, government, and population. A state may or may not have a shared national identity among its citizens. For example, the United States is a state with citizens who come from a variety of different nations.
A nation-state is a political entity that is made up of a single nation that shares a common language, culture, history, and ethnicity, and is governed by a single government. Examples of nation-states include Japan and Iceland.
However, not all states are nation-states, and not all nations have their own independent state. For example, Canada is a state made up of two distinct nations, English and French, while the Kurds are a nation without their own independent state.
In conclusion, while the terms "nation" and "state" are often used interchangeably, they have distinct meanings and implications. A nation can exist without a state, and a state may or may not have a shared national identity among its citizens. A nation-state is a political entity that is made up of a single nation and is governed by a single government."
>>>
By this definition from ChatGPT, the USA is a state ... but not also a nation state.
As a state, the USA was established as a secular state -- by which I mean it has no state religion. There is a very basic division between the "nations" of those who would prefer a religious state to a secular state -- and in this way I believe we have more than one nation in the USA. We're not all committed to religious pluralism. Not by a long shot. And many of the features of the "culture war" seem to me to be these two tectonic plates (cultural metaphor) moving in opposing directions, resulting in frequent cultural earthquakes.
Many deeply religious people are contemptuous of religious pluralism generally, and are especially contemptuous of the notion that it is valid to eschew all religion. Their political views are their religious views -- on abortion, LGBTQ matters, etc., etc.
I believe that if America (USA) splits up it will be on this fault line, most basically -- though it may be said to be about "reproductive rights" or matters of sex and gender.... The great divide in America is between those who regard secularism--which is necessary to religious freedom--as a fundamental right and those who find secularism unacceptably repugnant.
Religious freedom requires the right not to follow any religion. It includes both freedom of religion and freedom from religion.
So far I am refusing to use AI chatboxes. Kind of like John Henry using his own muscle to outdo the new steam machines driving spikes in the rails. Even if it kills me. Johnny Cash version. https://youtu.be/Ppa__7ZLAU8 But I do see the ambiguity in state and nation.
I believe there are two likely preconditions for the USA to survive as an intact ... um... state.
1. Culturally, we will have to forge a profound commitment to secularism, in the sense of being a secular state -- but also a secular culture (nation?).
2. Culturally, we will have to fully acknowledge that the USA was founded as an oligarchy by founders who explicitly meant to create not a democracy but an oligarchy. The founders explicitly feared and loathed democracy. They were very clear in their fear and loathing of democracy. The US constitution was drawn up exclusively by self-appointed property owning white males, who drew up a white supremacist, sexist and classist constitution. Not one woman, native person, or person of African descent was invited to the constitutional convention. America was explicitly meant to be ruled by property owning white males, and these drew up the constitution to the exclusion of all other participants.
2.a.
We will have to reckon our state's (as it is not a 'nation') origin / founding myth with the facts of our origin, then enact a collective ritual of making amends for the long history of abuse by oligarchs. Only then would we have the opportunity for a nation to be born within the state. And we do require unity within our pluralistic society for it to hold together as a unified people.
To comprehend my claims about our origin story / myth, see ...
I think French is asserting that secularism in calling for pluralism. Yes, the intent of the Constitution was clearly oligarchic, and we need to recognize it. Does the U.S. have a common national culture, shaped by its history? I would assert it does, that the people of many nations who emigrated here were imbued with its culture rooted in original settlement by forms of Protestantism, notably salvation by individual effort, through the work ethic, influenced by a rich natural environment that made us, as Potter wrote, a “People of Plenty” where those who don’t pursue the path of material acquisition are regarded as fools in one way or another. The “Legacy of Conquest” called out by Nelson-Limerick, spreading over a continent by conquering the indigenous and nature, and enslaving people, explains our tendency toward “Regeneration By Violence,” as Slotkin called it. Note none of these aspects are particularly positive, but they are widespread and transcend most regional differences. Yes, we need to make amends, and grow beyond our juvenile nature into a more cooperative, less self-consumed people, because in a paradoxical way it is in these aspects of our national culture from which our divisions grow. The original seeds from which grow our destruction. The seeds of a more cooperative society will have to grow from particular places, as you and I agree, beginning from the local and moving to the regional. In the interim, I do see a time of tumult and breakdown coming that will force these changes.
I'm still reading, but pausing for a moment to comment on one passage.
"He notes that the left sees similar threats in legal attacks by the Trump Administration on California sanctuary cities protecting immigrants, and understands there are sharply different views on gun rights and sexual preference."
It's not a huge big deal, but the phrase "sexual preference" has been replaced by "sexual orientation" in recent decades, at least by those who support lesbians, gays and bisexuals in being true to their own nature. The word "preference" suggests one chooses one's orientation as a matter of "taste". The word "orientation" does not suggest this. Many gay, bi and lesbian people experience the phrase "sexual preference" as a signal the writer or speaker is heterosexist and/or homophobic.
Thanks for this Patrick. I agree wholeheartedly with the need for humility, compromise, respect and good faith attempts to understand other people's positions. I don't want to live through a violent separation, not do I want my offspring to, and I'm intrigued by the concept of letting states have greater autonomy, but not sure how much that would really prevent us from becoming farther and farther apart culturally. In any case, great food for thought and I'll give you an amen!
America never did have any unifying common ground other than diversity, statue of liberty don't tread on me exiles, wild frontier entrepreneurism, covered wagon manifest destiny - freedom and democracy.
The US is held together by congress, and congress is held together by lobbyists. The US is virtually over already as it once had been, and remains together now because it serves international commerce, just as the USSR has ideologically been over for some time and is held together by an industrial mafia. It's just not as blatant in our case because the congealing ideology was more nebulous.
I somewhat shudder to imagine any whole-hearted efforts to restore it at this point, given the current context of extremely disparate values by which one might attempt to declare common ground, or even embracing the truth, that we are essentially nothing more than a global corporate conglomerate at this point, as if that were something worth preserving.
Kristal McKinstry Good question, Krystal. What really holds us together? As the lead quote in my piece says, what is pushing us apart is greater than what is pulling us together. Are we just a big continental money machine, a marketplace for global capital? A United States of Avarice? As I often write in my blog, we will not stay together short of profound changes, ditching our slaveholder’s Constitution to start with. Ultimately, a confederation of bioregional commonwealths is my dream. In the interim, if we ever get to anything like that, one can envision a radical balkanization or an outright fascist police state, or some mix of the two. I do not see things going on as they have been.
"I do not see things going on as they have been."
Agreed. And the big changes will be happening sooner than later, I suspect.
I have said -- and I still believe -- that the outcome we end up with will depend to the greatest extent on how well we can create local community (sharing, cooperating, relating, participating...) in our neighborhoods (literally, as in walking distance) in this time of major transition. Whatever we can accomplish at the bioregional scale (utterly crucial) will depend upon what we can achieve at the neighborhood scale. It has been said by experts in systems science that a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world could initiate a complex set of complexly entwined events which could become a hurricane in another part of the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
Imagine if millions of us were to take steps to create genuine community (cooperation, collaboration, sharing, giving, nurturing...) in our neighborhoods. Imagine a million butterflies flapping their wings all at once? Our power is so much greater than we know.
Neighborhood-level connections could get down to sheer survival. If we go into the breakdowns that are easily envisionable, it would be highly desirable to have people in the vicinity on whom we can count. I can’t say I’m the best practitioner, living in a typical U.S. neighborhood where you barely know your neighbors, if at all. There has been some work on earthquake preparedness by the local neighborhood council. When we get our big Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake and power, water and sewer go down for weeks, damned well going to want come community connections.
Yeah, there are a thousand excellent reasons for we Americans to begin to practice the fine art of becoming neighbors with our neighbors, and one of these is that a day may come when we will truly need those connections just in order to survive major challenges.
Wow. That's a pretty solid bit of reasoning. And so was an earlier piece from Patrick Mazza on why we ought to try and hold it together as a nation. So if we're to find some sort of synthesis in this dialectic it would probably be astounding and inspiring.
My motto has been Small Is Beautiful since E. F. Shumacher published a book by that title--, or nearly as long ago as that, since I read it as a 12-13 year old kid about a hundred years ago. (I'm aged 57. So I exaggerate.)
Leopold Kohr’s work such as “The Breakdown of Nations” that inspired Schumacher is also valuable. He makes a sold case for the opposite proposition, that bigness is badness. Once something gains disproportional power, they almost inevitably will use it. The U.S. will bully nations around the world. Amazon will bully vendors who sell through it or companies it wants to acquire. Microsoft will drive competitors from business with its operating system monopoly. Police departments that act as independent political fiefdoms will kill Blacks with impunity. All the same phenomenon. Even it up, as Heart sang years ago. https://youtu.be/XLhxF-Un39k
Such a clear and simple song lyric from Heart, a band with plenty of long hair (men and women) and men and women dressing so much alike.
I no longer ask for evening it up when it comes to friends. I choose friends who do this naturally. Time is short..., and the 'evening" really comes down to caring and giving. And some don't. They just don't. They don't get it. And time is short.
My beef with this piece, and many others like it, is the claim that "both sides keep getting more extreme." This is just not true. If you look at the stance of the Republican Party, Christian conservatives, the Tea Party etc, yes it's true in their case. But has the Democratic Party/liberals/the left gotten more extreme? No, they have moved steadily rightward. Well, not the LEFT, which scarcely exists, but the Dems and liberals. Yes, there are two sides to the culture war and both sides are being stoked by extremists and by those looking for ratings, likes and clicks--and I suspect, by the real enemy of the 99% of both Red and Blue, the 1% who run everything for the singular goal of getting ever richer. They need us divided, and they're succeeding handily in keeping us divided. On the liberal side, it's not by pushing us to some kind of Marxist extreme--it's by carrying on endlessly about Trump and his latest tweet, or DeSantis, keeping us stoked by emotionally arousing but insignificant developments.
I agree the right has gotten way rightier than the left has gotten leftier. I am reflecting in this review the author’s views, and perhaps I should have been more challenging about his assertions. I do think left-liberals have grown much firmer on issues such as same sex marriage and marijuana legalization, personal rights issues. But you are right about the deliberate divide and conquer strategies employed to keep us apart, when convergence on economic issues would threaten their interests.
Also, how is French's religious liberty curtailed by someone else's decision to have an abortion? If his religious freedom requires that he dictate his religious views of what a fetus is to women who disagree, must he also prevent their using birth control, or dictate which sexual partners of practices that engage in. Must he specify the prayers used, in order to be free? Seems like he specifically said no to this last--but why is the abortion issue different?
The religious liberty aspect is about LGBTQ rights and his position they are being imposed on religious institutions and people. As for abortion, there are religious people including French who see it as taking a life. Having grown up in a Catholic family, I have been exposed to that thinking. I don’t agree with it, but I understand where it’s coming from.
I understand that Right-to_life people see abortion as killing a "baby." I still don't see how THEIR religious liberty is threatened if they can't impose their views on others.
Indeed, one person’s freedom is another’s oppression.
After reading this article from Charles Eisenstein I had the insight that readers of this article might find this of interest.
https://charleseisenstein.substack.com/p/a-major-life-change
I'm internally conflicted around the use of A.I. chatbots. I see them as often making severe errors, and also as dangerous in other ways. Nevertheless, they sometimes help me get a sense of certain topics without spending a great deal of time doing research.
This article got me to thinking about the distinction between a nation and a state.
So I asked ChatGPT for help.
Me:
"Some people believe that there is an important distinction between the words "nation" and "state" Yet nation states are somehow both. I'm a bit confused on this. What's going on with this distinction?
The terms "nation" and "state" are often used interchangeably, but they have different meanings and implications."
ChatBot:
"A nation refers to a group of people who share a common language, culture, history, and/or ethnicity. A nation can exist without a state, as is the case with the Kurdish people, who have their own distinct language and culture but do not have their own independent state.
A state, on the other hand, refers to a political entity with a defined territory, government, and population. A state may or may not have a shared national identity among its citizens. For example, the United States is a state with citizens who come from a variety of different nations.
A nation-state is a political entity that is made up of a single nation that shares a common language, culture, history, and ethnicity, and is governed by a single government. Examples of nation-states include Japan and Iceland.
However, not all states are nation-states, and not all nations have their own independent state. For example, Canada is a state made up of two distinct nations, English and French, while the Kurds are a nation without their own independent state.
In conclusion, while the terms "nation" and "state" are often used interchangeably, they have distinct meanings and implications. A nation can exist without a state, and a state may or may not have a shared national identity among its citizens. A nation-state is a political entity that is made up of a single nation and is governed by a single government."
>>>
By this definition from ChatGPT, the USA is a state ... but not also a nation state.
As a state, the USA was established as a secular state -- by which I mean it has no state religion. There is a very basic division between the "nations" of those who would prefer a religious state to a secular state -- and in this way I believe we have more than one nation in the USA. We're not all committed to religious pluralism. Not by a long shot. And many of the features of the "culture war" seem to me to be these two tectonic plates (cultural metaphor) moving in opposing directions, resulting in frequent cultural earthquakes.
Many deeply religious people are contemptuous of religious pluralism generally, and are especially contemptuous of the notion that it is valid to eschew all religion. Their political views are their religious views -- on abortion, LGBTQ matters, etc., etc.
I believe that if America (USA) splits up it will be on this fault line, most basically -- though it may be said to be about "reproductive rights" or matters of sex and gender.... The great divide in America is between those who regard secularism--which is necessary to religious freedom--as a fundamental right and those who find secularism unacceptably repugnant.
Religious freedom requires the right not to follow any religion. It includes both freedom of religion and freedom from religion.
So far I am refusing to use AI chatboxes. Kind of like John Henry using his own muscle to outdo the new steam machines driving spikes in the rails. Even if it kills me. Johnny Cash version. https://youtu.be/Ppa__7ZLAU8 But I do see the ambiguity in state and nation.
I believe there are two likely preconditions for the USA to survive as an intact ... um... state.
1. Culturally, we will have to forge a profound commitment to secularism, in the sense of being a secular state -- but also a secular culture (nation?).
2. Culturally, we will have to fully acknowledge that the USA was founded as an oligarchy by founders who explicitly meant to create not a democracy but an oligarchy. The founders explicitly feared and loathed democracy. They were very clear in their fear and loathing of democracy. The US constitution was drawn up exclusively by self-appointed property owning white males, who drew up a white supremacist, sexist and classist constitution. Not one woman, native person, or person of African descent was invited to the constitutional convention. America was explicitly meant to be ruled by property owning white males, and these drew up the constitution to the exclusion of all other participants.
2.a.
We will have to reckon our state's (as it is not a 'nation') origin / founding myth with the facts of our origin, then enact a collective ritual of making amends for the long history of abuse by oligarchs. Only then would we have the opportunity for a nation to be born within the state. And we do require unity within our pluralistic society for it to hold together as a unified people.
To comprehend my claims about our origin story / myth, see ...
The U.S. is Not a Democracy, It Never Was
BY GABRIEL ROCKHILL
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/12/13/the-u-s-is-not-a-democracy-it-never-was/
I think French is asserting that secularism in calling for pluralism. Yes, the intent of the Constitution was clearly oligarchic, and we need to recognize it. Does the U.S. have a common national culture, shaped by its history? I would assert it does, that the people of many nations who emigrated here were imbued with its culture rooted in original settlement by forms of Protestantism, notably salvation by individual effort, through the work ethic, influenced by a rich natural environment that made us, as Potter wrote, a “People of Plenty” where those who don’t pursue the path of material acquisition are regarded as fools in one way or another. The “Legacy of Conquest” called out by Nelson-Limerick, spreading over a continent by conquering the indigenous and nature, and enslaving people, explains our tendency toward “Regeneration By Violence,” as Slotkin called it. Note none of these aspects are particularly positive, but they are widespread and transcend most regional differences. Yes, we need to make amends, and grow beyond our juvenile nature into a more cooperative, less self-consumed people, because in a paradoxical way it is in these aspects of our national culture from which our divisions grow. The original seeds from which grow our destruction. The seeds of a more cooperative society will have to grow from particular places, as you and I agree, beginning from the local and moving to the regional. In the interim, I do see a time of tumult and breakdown coming that will force these changes.
I'm still reading, but pausing for a moment to comment on one passage.
"He notes that the left sees similar threats in legal attacks by the Trump Administration on California sanctuary cities protecting immigrants, and understands there are sharply different views on gun rights and sexual preference."
It's not a huge big deal, but the phrase "sexual preference" has been replaced by "sexual orientation" in recent decades, at least by those who support lesbians, gays and bisexuals in being true to their own nature. The word "preference" suggests one chooses one's orientation as a matter of "taste". The word "orientation" does not suggest this. Many gay, bi and lesbian people experience the phrase "sexual preference" as a signal the writer or speaker is heterosexist and/or homophobic.
I will change the wording.