Well, I think the point that redwallyzl wanted to make has been successfully made.
Although it is at times like this that one misses mainiac. Imagine him, here, angrily typing away at how you are all a bunch of filthy commies. I'm kidding of course, but it was useful for the forum to have another voice. Pity his voice was too angry, too bitter. St. Mainiac, gone to a better(?) place.
When I say that nationalism is like a mental illness, I mean it in the prism of "WE IS THE BESTEST COUNTRY!!", a-la North Korea. (Though they are a radical extreme-- "Best Korea" and all that.)
The radical nationalist population in the US would dearly *LOVE* to have that kind of dangerous nationalism HERE as well.
These types of views favor a dogmatic position (WE ARE THE BEST! NO QUESTION!!), that is contrary to objective reality (Hey, our prison system is out of fucking control, we have a dysfunctional education system, we imprison people for petty crimes for purely political reasons, and we shit on the rest of the world both politically and economically. We have severe problems with social equality, we have an ever increasing wealth gap that is threatening everything about american culture-- and really, you think this is somehow THE BEST? WTF!!!!)
In addition, it also leads to things that are dangerous to mankind in general, especially in the modern world. Things like my own country denouncing global climate change, and pointing the finger at China, going "But they are so much dirtier than us!!! Nevermind that we are financially capable, just unwilling, to fix our shit!"-- or NK's nuclear dildo testing.
It has so many terrible things going for it, I just can't help but decry it.
Have you ever considered maybe you feel like this because you just don't love America enough? Think about it.
On the topic of walking cities, as the only person in this forum who lives in something approaching one, I feel the right to talk about it as if I was an expert, since living in one and knowing everything about it are essentially the same thing (as everyone who discusses politics no doubt is aware).
On the topic of cities, a lot of that is shaped by how and for whom cities are created -- most of which I'm not sure needs to be the way you describe them, LW. Not knowing neighbors, for example, is probably less a result of numbers, and more a result of churn, range, and lack of public spaces. Some things are the result of late capitalism, which demands people move frequently or end up significantly worse off, and which seems to devour every inch of public space for private use. Some is the result of the US's car culture, which both destroys hyper-local block scale relationships and increases the range of people you meet; mcmansion suburb hell is a good example of this, where everyone you know is a 15 minute drive away, and you let down the drawbridge only long enough for your car to enter or exit. Car infrastructure also cuts down the middle of areas, slicing them up into disparate parts almost inaccessible by anything but cars. Commutes by car have also been found to be essentially the worst part of peoples' day; with some study I recall suggesting that removing a 1 hour commute from your day was the happiness equivalent of falling in love.
Well I have a lot of strong opinions about all of this, but instead of beating you into the ground with them I'll instead ask: how does New York City play into this? Since we are, after all, the beating heart of capitalism; location of the chief temple to Mammon, and we have a unique approach to both cars, roads, public spaces, and soul-rending commutes.
On the other hand, we don't contribute nearly as much carbon, as it's very important to us that our descendants toil in the same endless, tourist-hating drudgery that we do.
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Topic: AmeriPol thread (Read 4149949 times)