aban57 wrote:

Animavore wrote:

The Year of the Old Boys
It’s hard to overstate the extent to which childish masculinity revealed itself in 2018 as the engine of power in America.

Many of us have spent 2018 trying to wrap our heads around how, exactly, the country whose slightly priggish brand was once meritocracy, competence, and moral authority has turned out to have instead nourished and enriched an elaborate network of overripe, decadent, and not particularly clever criminals. What’s confusing about that isn’t that the myth of our virtue was greatly exaggerated—that much was clear to anyone with a passing knowledge of American history. No, what’s confusing is the extent to which the fiction of decency (whether political, financial, or sexual) seems to have been unnecessary all along.

If Donald Trump has served a salutary function, it’s that he has stripped those fictions bare. 2018 has ended euphemisms and pretenses and politesse, and however much some claim to miss the country’s more decorous days, there’s something to be said for having the outsides match the insides. The myth of the great male American leader has been as robust as it’s been ruinously incomplete. It needed to be exposed, and Trump did so with a beautiful absence of care. He’s not going to behave at a funeral. He won’t sing the opening hymn or the national anthem or participate in a communal gesture unless it centers him. He’ll wander off the stage he’s sharing with the Argentine president, insult a dying senator, forget to sign things once he’s gotten his applause, publicly praise men for not snitching on him. He’ll use his Twitter account as a burn book, and what he’s most grateful for at Thanksgiving is himself. The definition of American “greatness” he has embodied is as precise as any we’ve had.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/1 ... NART5oqkKw

Hum when was that exactly ???

aban57 wrote:

Animavore wrote:

The Year of the Old Boys
It’s hard to overstate the extent to which childish masculinity revealed itself in 2018 as the engine of power in America.

Many of us have spent 2018 trying to wrap our heads around how, exactly, the country whose slightly priggish brand was once meritocracy, competence, and moral authority has turned out to have instead nourished and enriched an elaborate network of overripe, decadent, and not particularly clever criminals. What’s confusing about that isn’t that the myth of our virtue was greatly exaggerated—that much was clear to anyone with a passing knowledge of American history. No, what’s confusing is the extent to which the fiction of decency (whether political, financial, or sexual) seems to have been unnecessary all along.

If Donald Trump has served a salutary function, it’s that he has stripped those fictions bare. 2018 has ended euphemisms and pretenses and politesse, and however much some claim to miss the country’s more decorous days, there’s something to be said for having the outsides match the insides. The myth of the great male American leader has been as robust as it’s been ruinously incomplete. It needed to be exposed, and Trump did so with a beautiful absence of care. He’s not going to behave at a funeral. He won’t sing the opening hymn or the national anthem or participate in a communal gesture unless it centers him. He’ll wander off the stage he’s sharing with the Argentine president, insult a dying senator, forget to sign things once he’s gotten his applause, publicly praise men for not snitching on him. He’ll use his Twitter account as a burn book, and what he’s most grateful for at Thanksgiving is himself. The definition of American “greatness” he has embodied is as precise as any we’ve had.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/1 ... NART5oqkKw

Hum when was that exactly ???

Hermit wrote:

aban57 wrote:

Animavore wrote:

The Year of the Old Boys
It’s hard to overstate the extent to which childish masculinity revealed itself in 2018 as the engine of power in America.

Many of us have spent 2018 trying to wrap our heads around how, exactly, the country whose slightly priggish brand was once meritocracy, competence, and moral authority has turned out to have instead nourished and enriched an elaborate network of overripe, decadent, and not particularly clever criminals. What’s confusing about that isn’t that the myth of our virtue was greatly exaggerated—that much was clear to anyone with a passing knowledge of American history. No, what’s confusing is the extent to which the fiction of decency (whether political, financial, or sexual) seems to have been unnecessary all along.

If Donald Trump has served a salutary function, it’s that he has stripped those fictions bare. 2018 has ended euphemisms and pretenses and politesse, and however much some claim to miss the country’s more decorous days, there’s something to be said for having the outsides match the insides. The myth of the great male American leader has been as robust as it’s been ruinously incomplete. It needed to be exposed, and Trump did so with a beautiful absence of care. He’s not going to behave at a funeral. He won’t sing the opening hymn or the national anthem or participate in a communal gesture unless it centers him. He’ll wander off the stage he’s sharing with the Argentine president, insult a dying senator, forget to sign things once he’s gotten his applause, publicly praise men for not snitching on him. He’ll use his Twitter account as a burn book, and what he’s most grateful for at Thanksgiving is himself. The definition of American “greatness” he has embodied is as precise as any we’ve had.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/1 ... NART5oqkKw

Hum when was that exactly ???

When was what?

aban57 wrote:

Hermit wrote:

aban57 wrote:

Animavore wrote:
https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/1 ... NART5oqkKw

Hum when was that exactly ???

When was what?

The bolded part. But I guess I should have read more

Hermit wrote:

aban57 wrote:

Hermit wrote:

aban57 wrote:
Hum when was that exactly ???

When was what?

The bolded part. But I guess I should have read more

Or you could have taken note of what you apparently skated straight past. Your inattention to the bits I bolded caused you to read a meaning into the the initial three paragraphs that simply is not there. At all. Taking "was once meritocracy, competence, and moral authority" out of context amounts to a spectacular quote mine, albeit not an intentional one in your case.

aban57 wrote:

Hermit wrote:

aban57 wrote:

Hermit wrote:
When was what?

The bolded part. But I guess I should have read more

Or you could have taken note of what you apparently skated straight past. Your inattention to the bits I bolded caused you to read a meaning into the the initial three paragraphs that simply is not there. At all. Taking "was once meritocracy, competence, and moral authority" out of context amounts to a spectacular quote mine, albeit not an intentional one in your case.

I didn't skate past anything. Just read until the part that I bolded, where I clearly over-reacted.

OlivierK wrote:I think aban has a point. Saying that the US's brand "was once meritocracy, competence, and moral authority" is only true from an internal perspective. The US hasn't successfully projected that brand to me as a 50+ year old Australian in my lifetime.

Yes, even the quoted parts of the article recognise that that was a myth, but it was a myth only within the US - from the outside it was simply a lie we knew the US told about itself.

Animavore wrote:Everyone should read it. It's the best article on Trump I've read all year.

aban57 wrote:We often speak about religious endocrination in the States, but we rarely mention this other one, directed at all the population.

Calilasseia wrote:

aban57 wrote:We often speak about religious endocrination in the States, but we rarely mention this other one, directed at all the population.

Ah, the toxic exceptionalism. Sadly we have more than our fair share of it here in the UK as well, though it's also wedded to an even more toxic class system.

aban57 wrote:

OlivierK wrote:I think aban has a point. Saying that the US's brand "was once meritocracy, competence, and moral authority" is only true from an internal perspective. The US hasn't successfully projected that brand to me as a 50+ year old Australian in my lifetime.

Yes, even the quoted parts of the article recognise that that was a myth, but it was a myth only within the US - from the outside it was simply a lie we knew the US told about itself.

I'm currently living near SHAPE, NATO's military headquarters in Mons, Belgium. The compound I live in contains about 70% "shapians" as we call them (I used to be one of them), mostly american and british.
In fact, my neighboor on the right and the one on the left are both american. They are both very nice ladies, and one of them is married to a US soldier. And you should hear her (or read her FB messages) of how the US is a great country, the greatest on Earth. Even for her, who spent most of her life outside the US.
We often speak about religious endocrination in the States, but we rarely mention this other one, directed at all the population.

purplerat wrote:

aban57 wrote:

OlivierK wrote:I think aban has a point. Saying that the US's brand "was once meritocracy, competence, and moral authority" is only true from an internal perspective. The US hasn't successfully projected that brand to me as a 50+ year old Australian in my lifetime.

Yes, even the quoted parts of the article recognise that that was a myth, but it was a myth only within the US - from the outside it was simply a lie we knew the US told about itself.

I'm currently living near SHAPE, NATO's military headquarters in Mons, Belgium. The compound I live in contains about 70% "shapians" as we call them (I used to be one of them), mostly american and british.
In fact, my neighboor on the right and the one on the left are both american. They are both very nice ladies, and one of them is married to a US soldier. And you should hear her (or read her FB messages) of how the US is a great country, the greatest on Earth. Even for her, who spent most of her life outside the US.
We often speak about religious endocrination in the States, but we rarely mention this other one, directed at all the population.

This is sort of a weird phenomenon I've noticed amongst Americans living abroad who tend to be even more jingoistic than what you'd normally find in the states. Maybe it's because they are more likely to be connected to the military or are on a religious mission but my ex-mother-in-law is very much that way. There's also a weird dualism to this mentality where people like that simultaneously believe America is without a doubt the greatest country in every possible way but also that they themselves are superior to all other Americans because they live abroad.

Animavore wrote:
In fact I'd always guessed the more ignorant ones would be the ones without even a passport.

Agi Hammerthief wrote:

Animavore wrote:
In fact I'd always guessed the more ignorant ones would be the ones without even a passport.

if they enter a NATO country with a marching order, do they need a passport?

OlivierK wrote:Yes, even the quoted parts of the article recognise that that was a myth, but it was a myth only within the US - from the outside it was simply a lie we knew the US told about itself.