Rich wrote:And my point is the BJP do not strike me as a Party that is particularly organised around socioeconomic class. The BJP don't appear to me to be particularly focused on the rich and the elite as the number enemy or antagonist. And when I look at Saudi Arabia, maybe I betray my ignorance, but I'm certainly not aware of a vibrant working class / lower socioeconomic class / labour movement politics in Saudi Arabia. And then even Mexico while I would accept there is higher level of low socioecomic class based identity than in the United States, it is still a matter of degree. So I would suggest that "only in America" is misleading even when expressed with caveats.
I would also suggest that it is helpful to examine the historical conditions that gave rise of the United States relative particularities.
1 The very low population density at its inception, and its current relatively low population density.
2 The abundance of other primary resources.
3 The peculiar geography of the United States so favorable to development in the eastern half of the country.
4 Its extreme multi-cultural divides that are inimical, for good or for bad, to socioeconomic class based solidarity. European and Amerindian, European and imported slave Black African. Later the divide between Protestant and Catholic, and the more recent immigration caused diversity.
It is late here in Mexico Rich. I got tons of things to do on Monday. So forgive me if I cut to the chase here.
In the final analysis, all of the ecosystems on Earth are interdependent and need to be in relatively stable and good condition for there not to be serious challenges to a very interdependent global-based economy. Capitalism expanded like a Kraken with too many tentacles. Once you cut off many nations and try to localize when the entire system is built and predicated on exploitation there will be a very strong implosion. That is just science Rich.
The USA has all kinds of resources for many years that were pristine and virgin and the land was plentiful. But if you analyze what has been done to the food systems, the water ways, the air, and the resource management in favor of what Hedges calls collective insanity....it is not going to isolate the USA from any of the realities that are unleashed. Again, all of us are interconnected.
The good, the bad, the innocent, the guilty and the riff raff, the wealthy, the black and the white, the up and down are all going to have to realize that we are all connected. By the realities of dependency of our relationship to this planet.
Do you know Rich that astronauts noticed that their DNA started breaking down strangely while outside the gravitational pull of the planet we have evolved in? It means that what keeps our cells functional on every level depend on our ability to be present in our planet's magnetic and gravity based physical movements. We are literally connected to it. So, thinking that some tiny shit like color pigments like melanin content in human skin to protect you from solar rays depending on where your ancestors developed in the land base for thousands of years, and color of eyes adapted to night vision or not, and some cultural adaptation norms that are malleable and superficial are insurmountable barriers to being able to see humanity in some other culture that is not your native one? When men and women have been having sex and producing fertile offspring from different cultures from the beginning of human life is foolish to even suggest Rich.
It is really not valid an argument for thinking that the reason the US society might be in trouble is because there is too much diversity? Is not going to hold water Rich. It is really about bad values. Greed and exploitation. The USA was a nation of immigration from its inception. Exploitation is not a new thing but it is something people if given a choice choose to avoid. If someone is paying a few bucks more down the street they will choose to go there if their work is not respected and it is purely about making a better wage. No genius there it takes to know that. Something humans naturally avoid because exploitation is not really a value most humans think is a great thing to experience. During human history, humans are always finding ways of fleeing exploitation. Greed is looked down upon in general. In Christianity being a greedy person was not a virtue. It is not a virtue in general in any culture known in human history. But it is something peddled as inevitable and innate to being human in a capitalist system.
It used to be controlled well. Not really so in your face as with modern society in many nations. It is going to have to be examined for real longevity. Can naked greed by a tiny elite fool the vast millions and billions to believe that the only way to live is to accept unbridled greed to the point of mass destruction of human civilization. Do you accept it? If the answer is no we do not, then that system that has lasted a few hundred years is going to be changed. Its time of usefulness is past. That is science too.
Our essential essence as homo sapiens is our inclination to seek freedom of movement, freedom of being able to find sustenance and our need for moving freely to be able to get to survive and thrive. Being told to not seek life and not seek a way of living that is enough to bring some security to our families, is never a popular idea that lasts for all time. In other words, Rich my main man in England, human beings will always find a way of adapting in order to transcend some kind of negation of their own personal freedom and their own personal survival either as individuals or as groups. Go tell someone to follow a law that spells certain death and no progeny in the future, or break the law and survive and have a future. They will go for the latter always and not the former.
To think otherwise is to negate what humanity has accomplished for the last 100,000 years. Rules that do not deal with living life will never be obeyed Rich.
People are going to think to themselves? I will keep believing the lies I am told and that we are superior to these other humans who are poor, dark and inferior. Then they wind up dying from the same contaminated air and water as the rest of the dark inferior people. All of us connected. Facing the same problems and the only way out is to dump the idea of the kraken of capital.
It is either face that reality or go extinct. The racism and the uber nationalism and the exploitation that is non stop and the lack of logical self preservation for all is going to force the issue of how superificial values are not going to be useful in that world. Only, that if you want to survive into the future you need to realize that the jungles occupied by the Africans and the Latin Americans and the Asians and so on are necessary for the lands of Europe and etc to survive. Keep them healthy? We are healthy too.
If you can not take that? And the answer to that is nuking each other and sterilizing the earth for all time? We have no business on this planet. At all. A failed species indeed. Unworthy of any future. But I am confident we are going to get the message in time.
And all that fascistic drivel about being superior and better and the cultures you think are not human when they are? Is going to be flushed down the toilet Rich.