Justice as fairness: we can do better than we are

[Apocalipstic]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

So if Brazilians get to be Brazilian, and Canadians get to be Canadian, and the English get to be the English what word would you suggest we use for ourselves? Are you suggesting that, in the interest of respect for people in South America, we should perhaps change the name of the country from the United States of America? If so, what would you suggest the name of the country be? Or should we be Unionists or Statists? Or USians? If Americans is *not* the right short-name for citizens of the United States, what is? It's one thing to say "you shouldn't do that" it is quite another thing to say "and here is what you should do". I'm serious, Apoc, what would you prefer citizens of the United States call themselves? Citizen of the USA? Citizen of the United States? Citizen of the US? What have we done that of ALL the people in the world now, in the past or indefinitely into the future can call themselves Germans if they are from Germany or French if they are from France or Mexican if they are from Mexico but we, only we, cannot have a short name for ourselves as citizens of our nation? Why is it only us who must go through lengthy circumlocutions when the English can call themselves English even though they had an empire that lasted quite some time?

Cheers
Aj

I'm serious here too, while admitting we will probably continue to disagree on this subject...and thats OK

Let's say France had decided to name itself the United States of Europe and expected everyone to call them and only them "Europeans"?

It would be obnoxious? Yes?

To me, its the same situation, the continent was named America and the US decided to go with naming itself the United States of America and to expect everyone to call US citizens and only US citizens "American"...and for the excuse to be that it would be awkward not to.

To me? Obnoxious.

[Cin]

Originally Posted by SecretAgentMa'am

I'm endlessly amazed whenever a person who is any sort of minority is in favor of this sort of system.

That's what people say about being conservative or republican.

Not that I think anarchy is the way to go. Just noticed the similar argument.

[Apocalipstic]

It allllll sounds good on paper.

The answer is somewhere in the middle.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Apocalipstic

I'm serious here too, while admitting we will probably continue to disagree on this subject...and thats OK

Let's say France had decided to name itself the United States of Europe and expected everyone to call them and only them "Europeans"?

It would be obnoxious? Yes?

To me, its the same situation, the continent was named America and the US decided to go with naming itself the United States of America and to expect everyone to call US citizens and only US citizens "American"...and for the excuse to be that it would be awkward not to.

To me? Obnoxious.

Okay, so what would you suggest that the United States of America change it's name to? You've done the easy part, saying "this is wrong and should not be done" now, what about the hard part of "and this is how you make it right". I'll accept, for the moment, your argument and stipulate that the United States should change its name from the United States of America to something else. So what *should* that name be? And how do you propose we go about convincing large numbers of citizens that we *should* change the name of our country? How would you make that case?

Cheers
Aj

[Apocalipstic]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

Okay, so what would you suggest that the United States of America change it's name to? You've done the easy part, saying "this is wrong and should not be done" now, what about the hard part of "and this is how you make it right". I'll accept, for the moment, your argument and stipulate that the United States should change its name from the United States of America to something else. So what *should* that name be?

Cheers
Aj

I am not saying we change it, it seems way too late for that (and everyone already hates us)...I am saying we take a couple more seconds to say "US Citizens".

I am from the USA or US.

That is what I try to say

It would go a long way to mend fences.

[SoNotHer]

I appreciate your comments and your perspective. And I think many would cheer the "glass half full" pov. I do not have time today to respond again. Unfortunately, I have something rather unpleasant and unavoidable to deal with right now. But suffice to say, counter claims can be made.

One specific point of order - yes, life expectancy is decreasing in the United States (where I live), but it has long been decreasing in other countries like Russia. And after the Fukushima Daiichi explosion, I would withhold any proclamation about life expectancy in Japan. The short and long-term effects of that melt-through are far greater than we know.


"But that is not witch burning. It isn't. That isn't any of a number of tortures used by, just to pick an example, the Inquisition in Western Europe. It also isn't widespread. It is vanishingly improbable that anyone reading these words lives in fear that the church will burst through their door and drag them kicking and screaming to their doom with no due process of law just because someone said "my dog died, she's a witch!"

Please, please, please understand that violence or other social unpleasantness isn't a binary switch. The logic you appear to be using above is that if there is ANY violence or torture then violence and torture have not been reduced. But that doesn't work. Let's say that there were 15K homicides in the US last year and 10,000 this year. Would that not be an improvement? Or should we say that 10,000 murders is the same as 15,000 and so nothing has improved? I would argue that the fact that witch burning is *unknown* in the West and hasn't happened either in Western Europe or North American in about 200 years! This can be true even IF water boarding is still going on. What's more, look at the difference of reaction--in the West--to water boarding now and witch burning (or lynching) in the past. I'll take lynching first. Within the lifetime of my parents (born in 1922) lynching went from a Saturday or Sunday afternoon diversion for the whole family (presuming the family was white) to a *crime*. People used to send *postcards* of lynchings and now anyone even suggesting doing so would regret it immediately. Consider that the men who killed James Byrd in Texas were convicted of murder while their grandfathers would have walked for the same crime (probably their fathers as well). That is vast improvement. Isn't one lynching in 1997 an *improvement* over 10 lynchings in 1907? I would say that is a fantastic improvement.



Much the same applies here. Again, I am not saying that violence or cruelty has disappeared. I AM saying that it has *drastically* been reduced and become far *less* socially acceptable. Michael Vick went to jail for dog fighting. In 1940 he would never have even had a run-in with the law over dog fighting. Does dog fighting still go on? Regrettably, yes. Is it legal in the United States or Western Europe? No. Is it socially acceptable? In most communities, no. Does that mean that dog fighting never occurs anywhere on the planet? No. Does that mean that dog fighting is socially unacceptable *everywhere* on the planet? No. It doesn't have to be either there's no murders or there's a bloodbath, there's either no animal cruelty or it is rampant, there's either no witch burning or torture is ubiquitous and socially acceptable.



Wait, are you putting the potential economic collapse on the same category as war? Sure, this long peace *may* end in 5 minutes but every minute that it continues is *still* the longest contiguous peace that Western Europe has seen since the height of the Roman Empire. I'm not talking about internal harmony nor am I talking about economic prosperity, I'm talking about war. Could an economic collapse bring war to Western Europe again? Yes, but I doubt it will happen. No one has anything to gain from a great power shooting war in Europe that can't more easily be gained through trade.



Okay but that doesn't change the fact that Western Europe, to a country, has abandoned the death penalty. Nor does it change the fact that number of crimes for which one could get the death penalty has gone from multiple to a very few.



Yes, I'm aware of it but it is no longer socially acceptable. The point isn't that marital rape *never* happens or that spousal abuse *never* happens. It is that it is no longer socially acceptable in the English speaking world or Western Europe *at all*.



Okay, here's an example of what I'm talking about. Your student is struggling with this, my mother didn't struggle with it. She made me walk into a hospital on a broken leg because I had a hairline fracture and I could not tell her what I had done. If she had pulled that kind of stunt just 10 years later (this was 1981), chances are the doctor would have reported her to CPS.



I didn't say that people weren't getting vicarious thrills from violent movies, I said that, for instance, Western Europe, Canada, Japan and Australia no longer consider war part and parcel of their national pride. At the start of WW I, young men poured out to fight seeking glory they were *eager* to sign up and go fight. That doesn't happen as often any more. All of this can be true even IF the top grossing movies are all violent. Would you rather have people watching violent movies or playing violent video games or engaging in actual trench warfare? Another item. Consider the body counts of wars. While American presidents are too eager to send kids into combat, they are also VERY sensitive to the body counts in ways they weren't before. We are also far more restrained in warfare than we were.

Consider that no President could survive an American casualty total like WW II (407K), the Civil War (650K) and Vietnam (58K). An American president who sent kids into combat and broke the 10K casualty mark would probably be in for a very tough election cycle unless the US had been attacked. Also consider that nothing like the firebombing of Dresden or Tokyo could happen again. Yes, I know, lots of people were killed in both the Second Gulf and Afghanistan wars but no Iraqi or Afghani city was bombed anywhere *near* what Dresden or Tokyo endured in WW II. Nothing even close. Dresden was reduced to rubble. Then there's this number--zero. That is the number of times a nuclear weapon has been used in anger since the August of 1945. We *could* have used them in Korea but we didn't. We *could* have used them in Vietnam--and even considered it--but we didn't. We *could* have used it in Afghanistan-and yet again we didn't. Neither has anyone else. Israel could solve its Iranian problem with a nuclear bomb but it has restrained from doing so. India and Pakistan have fought three wars in just over 60 years and have managed not to go nuclear. Then there's the war that *didn't* happen--the Soviet Union never crossed into West Germany which almost *certainly* would have resulted in a nuclear exchange. Have there been wars between 1945 and 2011? yes. None of them have involved nuclear weapons even though the United States has lots of them.



I think that if you want a dystopia, work for a utopia. It's not that dystopias scare me less, it's that dystopias *terrify* me because my reading of history is that if you really, really want to get people to do absolutely horrific things to other people all you need do is convince your people that there's a plan that will make it all right, that the land of milk and honey is just over the hill and as soon as the people standing in the way or resisting the glorious plan to take us to utopia are removed from the scene, then paradise will be here on Earth.

Alexander Solzhentisyn, who knew a thing or two about what happens when nations become gripped by ideological fanatics said it best:

To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions.

Macbeth’s self-justifications were feeble—and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare’s evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology.


This is not a dystopia, not even by half. How do I know? George Bush was a warmonger who approved the torture of people in contravention of international law. Barack Obama, for all his virtues, is a little too conciliatory to deal with the madness that is the Republican Congressional majority. John Boehner is a little tin-post oompa-loompa. Eric Cantor is a smarmy little twit.

Now, one of two things is going to happen. Either I'm going to be arrested and put in prison for those statements or I'm not. In a dystopia, I would NEVER write those things about the national leadership because I know what would happen to me. People in North Korea, if they *had* Internet access, would never dare to say something like that about either Kim the Elder or Kim the Younger. America is far from a perfect society but I'll take the US over North Korea, Iran or Saudi Arabia.

As far as your paradise or purgatory question, I think neither. But I do think that now is a better time to be alive, for larger numbers of humanity, ever. Even in poor nations the average life expectancy has crossed over the 40 year mark and in rich nations it is pushing up toward 90. At the end of the 18th century the average lifespan was ~37 years. At the end of the 19th it was about 45. At the end of the twentieth it was about 75. We have almost *doubled* the number of years people live on average in about a century and almost trebled it in about two centuries.



Actually that trend is reversing in the United States. The trend continues in Japan, Canada, Germany, England, France, Spain, and Belgium. It is reversing in the United States and it is doing so for reasons that are both predictable *and* fixable.



Again, happening for very predictable reasons and of the major industrialized nations ONLY in the United States. We are the outliers in the overall trend.



I do not think we can, nor do I think we should try. I think we reform what we can and ameliorate that which cannot be reformed for whatever systemic reason.

Cheers
Aj

[Cin]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

Two words, British Empire.

Cheers
Aj

Sorry I don't see the connection. I don't see any continent named
Britain. Besides in my experience one just can't talk people out of their feelings. They are allowed to not like something. And some people from other parts of America don't like it that the people of the United States call themselves Americans and say they live in America and that people always want to come to America as though they had a monopoly on America and could just disregard the millions of people who live outside of the U.S. but also live in America.

Oh, I forgot this one. America love it or leave it.

[Apocalipstic]

Any thoughts on whyyy the rate of violence is going down in the US? I think it because abortion is legal. If the Repugs get their way and it becomes OK to deny people bortions and birth control, will violence return in pre 80's numbers per capita?

[Cin]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

Okay, so what would you suggest that the United States of America change it's name to? You've done the easy part, saying "this is wrong and should not be done" now, what about the hard part of "and this is how you make it right". I'll accept, for the moment, your argument and stipulate that the United States should change its name from the United States of America to something else. So what *should* that name be? And how do you propose we go about convincing large numbers of citizens that we *should* change the name of our country? How would you make that case?

Cheers
Aj

Maybe we could just keep our name and just stop being so myopically obnoxious.

[Apocalipstic]

Originally Posted by Miss Tick

Maybe we could just keep our name and just stop being so myopically obnoxious.

Ohhhh, if only!

[Cin]

Originally Posted by Apocalipstic

I don't know that it would benefit to have a united Latin America, it might divide the US even more on issues like language, immigration and geopolitical borders. Would Brazil be considered Latin? I mean yes, linguistically it should be, but in the US we seem to use Latin and Latino/a for people who speak Spanish and do not live in Spain, not people who speak languages bases on Latin.....which BTW I find confusing a bit. What of other (yes small) countries who don't speak Spanish in South America?

LOL. Everything IS about the U.S isn't it? Even though last I looked, despite their behavior, the United States doesn't actually own Latin America.

Strangely enough though when I mentioned it I was thinking about how it might actually effect Latin America itself. But I suppose when you live so close to a country that reminds one of a gigantically powerful 5 year old you do not want to do anything to piss them off too much. Still do you not think it would benefit Latin America to unite?

[Apocalipstic]

Originally Posted by Miss Tick

LOL. Everything IS about the U.S isn't it? Even though last I looked, despite their behavior, the United States doesn't actually own Latin America.

Strangely enough though when I mentioned it I was thinking about how it might actually effect Latin America itself. But I suppose when you live so close to a country that reminds one of a gigantically powerful 5 year old you do not want to do anything to piss them off too much. Still do you not think it would benefit Latin America to unite?

I was thinking about Undocumented Workers and the wall and how the US acts already about its newest immigrants.

If the US had a united, organized force to the South, I doubt the US would behave well about it..which might not be in the interest of anyone...except maybe China and OPEC.

[Cin]

Originally Posted by Apocalipstic

I was thinking about Undocumented Workers and the wall and how the US acts already about its newest immigrants.

If the US had a united, organized force to the South, I doubt the US would behave well about it..which might not be in the interest of anyone...except maybe China and OPEC.

Yes. I'm sure you are right.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Apocalipstic

Any thoughts on whyyy the rate of violence is going down in the US? I think it because abortion is legal. If the Repugs get their way and it becomes OK to deny people bortions and birth control, will violence return in pre 80's numbers per capita?

Actually, the reason is that the United States is simply following the trend, albeit slower, that has been going on in Western Europe since the Enlightenment. For certain cultural reasons (some of it having to do with the Westward expansion) the United States has held on to its reluctance to surrender the legitimate use of force to the government longer than other nations. The United States is the only major industrialized nation that seems to still believe in 'frontier' (read ad hoc) justice. In Canada and Western Europe people have accepted that if someone breaks in your house, you call the cops. You don't go hunting for them and you don't pull out your hand cannon and start blasting away. In the United States, non-trivial numbers of people still live 'as if' they are on the frontier where there might not *be* a sheriff. They believe this even *if* they live in a major metropolitan area.

While the overall trend is downward in the nation whose geographical center is 38 00 N, 97 00 W, we will still lag behind Western Europe probably for the rest of my life.

Cheers
Aj

[Apocalipstic]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

Actually, the reason is that the United States is simply following the trend, albeit slower, that has been going on in Western Europe since the Enlightenment. For certain cultural reasons (some of it having to do with the Westward expansion) the United States has held on to its reluctance to surrender the legitimate use of force to the government longer than other nations. The United States is the only major industrialized nation that seems to still believe in 'frontier' (read ad hoc) justice. In Canada and Western Europe people have accepted that if someone breaks in your house, you call the cops. You don't go hunting for them and you don't pull out your hand cannon and start blasting away. In the United States, non-trivial numbers of people still live 'as if' they are on the frontier where there might not *be* a sheriff. They believe this even *if* they live in a major metropolitan area.

While the overall trend is downward in the nation whose geographical center is 38 00 N, 97 00 W, we will still lag behind Western Europe probably for the rest of my life.

Cheers
Aj

I wonder of that has anything to do with who settled this country and the mentality passed down.

Very interesting! TU for the thread!

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Apocalipstic

I was thinking about Undocumented Workers and the wall and how the US acts already about its newest immigrants.

If the US had a united, organized force to the South, I doubt the US would behave well about it..which might not be in the interest of anyone...except maybe China and OPEC.

Actually, if I were the Chinese I would positively *encourage* the Latin American nations to unite. I would recognize them the minute they declared themselves a nation and I would be a gigantic, geopolitical Santa Claus, just *giving* this new Latin American nation all the military hardware they could ever possibly want in exchange for, say, some air bases in the northern most part of the newly created nations and perhaps docking rights for my navy. I would then spend the next decade or more, training the military of this new Latin American nation so that the Chinese and Latin American navies would be better integrated than NATO (which actually is pretty integrated).

The only fly in the ointment for that plan would probably be Russia because if I was Russia I would *absolutely* do that since that was, in fact, part of why Russia got involved in the region in the first place. As a strategic point it is just too, too, juicy a piece of low-hanging fruit for a world power interested in being able to block the United States from owning either the Pacific or Atlantic oceans or, for that matter, being able to even secure anything outside of its territorial waters. (If I were in a generous mood, I might let the United States navigate between the Pacific coast and Hawaii.) Then, when all my pieces were on the chessboard, I would make my move.
I would invade Taiwan and then *dare* the Americans to do something about it.

This isn't going to be a popular opinion here, but I think that the historical record bears it out. Nations will still continue to do 'Great Game' geopolitics, trying to set themselves up in the strategic catbird seat. Even IF the United States pulled within the *continental* borders (quitting both Hawaii and Alaska) Russia--which still has dreams of imperial greatness and China--which is playing a very long, subtle game that I doubt most Americans even realize the outer dimensions would continue to do geopolitics. They would continue to make strategic alliances that would benefit them militarily. The dream of the two major Asian powers (China and Japan) is to own the Western Pacific ocean. The dream of Russia is to own the North Atlantic. I'm not saying that the United States *should* do anything about it, it would be nice, however, if the people of the United States understood, however, that nations have strategic, geopolitical interests which they *will* pursue. Right now, we don't on either side. The Left seems to believe that nations simply don't *think* that way with the exception of the United States and the Right seems to think that the United States is the only nation that actually has any business *having* strategic interests.

Cheers
Aj

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Apocalipstic

I was thinking about Undocumented Workers and the wall and how the US acts already about its newest immigrants.

If the US had a united, organized force to the South, I doubt the US would behave well about it..which might not be in the interest of anyone...except maybe China and OPEC.

We probably wouldn't. It would likely be suicidal if we sat on our hands because, as I say in my prior post, if I were China nothing would make me happier than for Latin America to unite, invite a superpower in as protection against the United States and then give me a naval and air foothold right in the US backyard. That way, with joint forces, I could, at will, have a shot at completely isolating the United States.

Cheers
Aj

[Apocalipstic]

On that note, we agree.

I get stuck on my moral issues with geopolitical borders and warmongering. Too much of an idealist, but agree....

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Apocalipstic

I am not saying we change it, it seems way too late for that (and everyone already hates us)...I am saying we take a couple more seconds to say "US Citizens".

I am from the USA or US.

That is what I try to say

It would go a long way to mend fences.

Dare I ask how? I can understand "please, don't overthrow our governments, if you don't mind" or "if it's not too much trouble, you can give the mining of our harbors a miss" or "that's okay, you can keep your foreign aid" (although I bet people would be very upset if we cut the Latin American nations off) or even "look, he may be a kleptocratic son-of-a-bitch but he's *our* kleptocratic son-of-a-bitch, thank you very much". I can see how taking those sentiments into account would mend fences but not calling ourselves Americans? Are you saying that, for instance, a trade deal that might have led to more economic and cultural exchange between the US and Brazil would fail because the US delegates call themselves Americans but if they, again unlike every other people on the face of the Earth, made the extra linguistic effort to say, 'citizens of the United States' then the deal would go through? Are you going to suggest that citizens of 38 00 N, 97 00 W doing business in Brazil or Costa Rica would have an easier time of it if, instead of calling themselves Americans, they used, so that it is impossible to insult anyone, the circumlocution "I'm a 38Norther by 97 Wester"

Please help me understand precisely *how* not calling ourselves Americans would mend fences? "We can let the mining of the harbors go buy, since you call yourself a 38 Norther by 97 Wester." I mean, it would take some time to get used to the idea but calling ourselves by our longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates has the virtue of it being *impossible* to insult someone because there really is only *one* nation whose geographic center is 38 00 N, 97 00 W.

Cheers
Aj

[SecretAgentMa'am]

Here's my issue:

People who are from the Democratic Republic of Congo are called Congolese, not Democratic Republicans or anything else.

People who are from the United Republic of Tanzania are called Tanzanian, not URians or Citizens of the United Republic.

People from the Central African Republic are called Central Africans, and no one seems to complain that they are claiming to be the only Africans or the only people from the central area of the continent.

People from the Federated States of Micronesia are Micronesian, not Federated Staters or Citizens of the Federated States.

So why is it that people who are from a country called the United States of America are obnoxious for calling ourselves Americans? People of every single country on the planet call themselves by a name that comes from the name of the country and differentiates them from citizens of other countries. Why are we different? Why are Americans not allowed to call ourselves Americans without being accused of being obnoxious? Why are we obnoxious and no one else is? It seems to me very much like blaming a child because you don't like the name their parents chose for them, and demanding that they call themselves something else to suit you.