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Can’t say I’m surprised to see this happening. Seems to be a big thing now.
One could argue that either way you look at it you’re living a fantasy. Antimagnet has it figured out. It’s a shallow way of feeling part of something greater. As shallow as sci-fi conventions or sending toys to Iraq. A ‘embarrassing political or social sentiment’ as they call it. So right they are.
Even if you were to support US troops wholeheartedly and wished their wellbeing (which I don’t) this is really stupid. Whoever came up with the idea is indeed cunning at profiteering himself off of public opinion and fear. The fear of the death of a friend or the fear of not being jingoistic enough. I see this as a very dangerous development. Not only because it constitutes a particularly twisted case of ‘Giddensesque‘ disembedding and time-space distanciation which plays right into the hands of certain people but also since it undermines any real effort to help (by making war ’safer’, pulling out the troops, working to avoid war altogether) and as already pointed out it fuels nationalism. It’s a serious immaterial delusion as such, which is a symbol so detached from time and space and all reason that it can be bent to any degree.
Ironically, by your support you also pledge your allegiance to the system and what it stands for. You effectively support war and imperialism whether you want to or not. That is the sheer brilliance of the concept, having people caught in the trap of fear, compassion and setting up a convenient way of flag-waving so that they don’t inadvertently be labelled traitors. It all comes down to what role you want to have in war. Although this it but a crude way to manufacture public consent, it seems more fair somehow that one should do something more concrete for ‘the troops’. Like enlisting in the army and taking their place for six months. Think about it, if you’re not ready to get shot at or blown up, maybe war isn’t for you. Nor for anyone else that you really care about. There is always a better way. Not that warmonger media, right wing nutjobs or ‘the system’ would ever concede to that but then again they are the only people that can rake a 100% risk-free profit in all of this. For one they probably sell these damn ribbons with a neat profit. So stop bleeding for a system that doesn’t care for your wellbeing. If you really want to help that is. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, but that is life and it shouldn’t stop anyone from doing the right thing.
Pretty questionable stuff when you examine it more closely. And not confined to the US alone. But at a time when they have committed a reasonable portion of their armed forced to various field campaigns, it begs scrutiny. There are probably countries out there that are just as jingoistic or more so than the US, but no other is continuing in the imperialistic tradition. No one else is in a position where they have already taken the plunge. The rest are just small schemes and small potatoes. They can’t touch me.
"disembedding and time-space distanciation"
What a faker!
http://www.abcsmallbiz.com/...
Yeah, not exactly plain, Giddens is professionally incomprehensible on purpose it seems, BUT the ideas behind the theory are sound. Dismissing the concept so easily would be a big mistake as it can be used to explain many of the things that we witness nowadays, in social life.
Besides, I’ve seen much worse wordplay in various other sociological literature. And yes, I kind of feel it is a little pompous, but it’s hard not to get pulled in. In much the same way that I would assume many americans are empathizeing and empowered by displays of military might. Hell, even I am thrilled by that from time to time.
I’m just trying to point out that for reasons that are not so strikingly obvious that I would presume that every citizen is aware of them, things are far more sinister than one might have guessed. Complexity, fear and ignorance is the best defence any government has.
I doubt that even Giddens knows what he’s talking about.
It seems to me that both sides of any argument can be ‘explained’ by reading him.
Just because you don’t agree with something DOES NOT mean that you’re right (or wrong).
Maybe so, but I have seen too much in the recent years, learned too much to remain silent.
There is a definitive rift among scientists, especially in the social fields, about whether to intervene ‘politically’ or not. I am conflicted on this matter since it is my firm belief that any such intervention will corrupt and possess you to such a degree that your academic role is nearly invalidated. So, in a way I believe science should be progressed without any kind of interference or interfering with great integrity.
But on the other hand social scientists have a great responsibility to society and a calling that they rarely rise to, except in some small and rather insignificant cases. Put simply, it’s our job to complain, rock the boat and try to put things back on track when we believe things have gone out of hand.
This is a conservative’s (and my) worst nightmare. The world population is as small as it is because some "social scientist’s" wet dream was followed slavishly. Consider Marx, Mao, Ho and Hussein etc.
Its my firm belief that society works best if there’s very little intervention in people’s life by a political entity. Little intervention means that we automatically get our most important freedom.
The most important freedom we can have is the freedom to fail. Social schemes by social scientists restrict that freedom. They are always some way of trying to get those who don’t have - something. If a person has the freedom to fail each individual would learn instantly what works and what doesn’t and take action based on those findings. I think that that’s the way things work anyway.
I think people who enter the social sciences should study. And stay out of positions that might tempt them to intervene.
As small as it is, in numbers? In my reality the world is overcrowded and resources stretched thin, except for a few places, Antarctica, Siberia, Sweden perhaps.
Also, I find it amusing that people constantly infer things about Karl Marx that simply aren’t true or rather are the handiwork of his latter-day ‘fans’. He would surely turn in his grave if he could see what Mao, Stalin or Lenin did to his life’s work. That is the more likely fate of someone in social science, to be abused by the elite when it suits their purpose and be dismissed as a crackpot the rest of the time.
As for Hussein, don’t compare apples and oranges. It’s not good for academic discourse. Don’t be so ‘we and the rest of the world’ and generalize in terms of ingroup / outgroup. Sure, Saddam was rumoured to have some communist artifacts and I guess Stalin would have been a great role model for dictatorship but beyond that he hardly xeroxed the communist manifest. But in the minds of some, it is possible that the american-communist doctrine of the cold war is still so rooted that it unconsciously pops up as the last line of defense after ‘threat to the world’, ‘WMD’ and so on. For all the learning from mistakes that you go on and on about the US seems to have learned nothing as a nation. Or maybe it’s just the elite and some conservative lackeys who never learn their lesson. Or don’t care because they stand to gain.
But if you’re so concerned with freedom why don’t you let Osama and others do as they please? That is the ultimate symbol of ‘freedom’ that we have. Someone who does not abide by any rules of any society.
What I mean to say is that you and most people live by double standards when it comes to the notion of freedom.
Citizens should have as much freedom as can be afforded, but that still means more intervention than you’d like, and not because YOU CAN DO IT but because it is THE RIGHT THING TO DO. People wont care as long as you don’t oppress them, send them to war or meddle in their private lives. But just the same as governments should stay out of clearly personal matters, people can not expect to turn personal matters into state politics.
What you’re saying is the old republican rag. Citizens have unlimited freedom (so that they can take it out on each other, shoot your neighbor or sue him) but very little saying against a government which owns your ass and oftens sends you to war, when it suits their fancy, and recites how much freedom you have to protect. It’s some sort of chimera that has burrowed so deep into the american ’soul’ that it is hard to make heads or tails or it. If I could spell it out more clearly I would.
Learning: Why invent the wheel all over again? Some things one has to learn, but I guess most parents teach their kids not to stand in the middle of the road or they will be run over. We don’t have the luxury of experiencing everything first hand. What we rather have to learn is to trust others but also form our own opinion from the bulk of available evidence. It’s on a case to case basis.
Yeah, in an ideal world everyone would have a role and stick to that. Like the shoemaker I’m always speaking of. But it seems to me that somewhere along the line, someone cheated in a big way. Politics became a profession, a class, an elite. One that has an agenda to serve themselves (which is perfectly human) and will never give up power. Every year it’s allowed to go on we are a little worse off and after decades of status quo we are approaching a critical mass. Politics is the one exception area where one shouldn’t stick to one’s last. For all the measures that we have taken to prevent hogging, with 2-terms presidencies, it fails to take into account that any such person eligible for office will already have spent their entire lives accepting indoctrinating and cultivating.
You have to ask yourself WHAT we are tempted to intervene in? The ‘natural’ course of things? The political elite class rampaging through history? The ‘will’ of the people as it were? Or just your ideals which seem to be at odds with contemporary social science which is usually more liberal or anti-conservative?
I remember reading somewhere that the leaders of the world, now and throughout history, are statistically economists and lawyers. Just to mention a few economists out of many I’d say Mao Zedong, George Bush (Master of Business Administration, Harvard Business School). A typical lawyer would be Bill Clinton.
I could turn it all around and say that ‘people who enter the economic sciences or law should study’ and stay the hell away from politics. It also says a lot about what politics is really all about and where the limits lie. I for one am one that don’t think it could get any worse with some behavioral leadership. And not just leadership, I’m sure the same bias exists in the entire elite.
Followers of Marx killed at least 10 million people. What do you think should be done about world overcrowding?
The thing that connects Stalin, Mao, Hussein, etc is their belief that they knew best. That they only paid ‘lip service’ to Marx’s or Mohammed’s ideas is irrelevant. They still cited them. I have no doubt that Hitler and Mussolini cited their own ’social scientists’. They tried what they thought were the social scientist’s ideas and that resulted in positive things for them. That positive reinforcement kept them doing the same thing even if it meant that ‘outgroup’ people were hurt.
Collectively Americans have learned that people want to kill us for some reason. Oil? Religion? Skin Color? Jealousy? Not only that, we don’t seem to be able to predict who is going to mount the next attack. Iran? North Korea, Sweden? France? So we have to prepare as if any or all of them will be the next one to attack us.
I’m willing to let anyone have as much freedom as I have until he attacks me. Then, all of a sudden, he turns from a partner in freedom to an enemy. Enemies need to be defeated.
People can also be oppressed by governments. Republican rags point that out all the time.
You seem to be advocating not learning. Just trust in you. You’ll assign me to a role that you think is good for me. If you think I’ll be a good cobbler, I’ll be stuck a cobbler all my life. That was the way in Russia, Nazi Germany, etc. Its the way now in China.
No thanks.
My grandaughter can grow up to be President. You could not grow up to be King no matter how much you try.
I think you need to come live in a red state for a good while. You’d learn alot. But don’t take someone’s job. Get paid for what you do.
Don’t have an answer to world overcrowding as a whole. It’s up to individual governments to decide what is best and how natural resources can be used. I don’t have one solution to solve all problems. In the long run the problem will solve itself as overcrowded countries are often mostly pre-industrial and once then cross into the industrial or late-industrial age they will most likely stop expanding. As have USA, Japan, Sweden, etc. Growth thru immigration has become a more important factor. Which is something that should be embraced in solidarity. Organized correctly Sweden could accept a lot more people each year, but as it stands with bad planning we can hardly care for and integrate the people we do take in which is ironic. But you even raising the question in this context indicates that you feel that social scientists are somehow resonsible for holding people back, killing them because they have become too numerous. Not only is it false and and insult it also show an inability to understand how much of a problem overcrowding is in some parts of the world. Surely neither of us is suffering from overcrowding. We’re sitting comfortably in post/late-industrial nations and often look down upon people of poorer countries, irrationally enough and if nothing else for being poor, crowded, underdeveloped (from our point of view) and for sometimes taking drastic and crude action to increase their prosperity.
The debate about Marx being in some small way responsible for so and so many deaths and how that coincides with him holding ideals that must seem alien to contemporary America, is quite frankly very transparent. Cheap shots. I counter with another cheap shot in that Americans have easily killed more than 10 million people themselves in their ongoing crusade over the last 100 years. Many directly and many more indirectly, in the same way that you attribute to Marx. In trying to mold the world in it’s image. Maybe even believing in creating a better world. Not that intent is relevant here.
If you’d take one step back you’d see that no one is out to get you for any of those reasons. Though I cannot deny that such a thing as religion will increase the chasm between us. But oil? You don’t have any oil to speak of? Your national reserve of oil is insignificant compared to that of the middle east.
Anyway, it is not the way it started. Take a good hard look at american history and events such as these (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...) …
###[ see list in the next comment, then continue reading ]###
I cannot speak for how other people perceive America or why they may or may not hate you. But I have more than ample reason. And while hate is a strong word that I use far too lightly, lets just say that I would be more than hesitant to buy a used car from you guys.
Of course I cannot argue that Americans are significantly different than other people of other nations but that is not to say national ideals, (mis)conceptions and fear can go a long way. I remember you complaining when I once pointed to an article that revealed that a majority of the neo-cons in advisory positions were ‘jewish’. And I conceded that it was just as strange that they were ‘male’ and ‘caucasian’. It’s not alright and it will never be alright until we fix these ideological and ethnic biases. In the case of ‘Americans’ I don’t trust you in part JUST BECAUSE what you have been thru (compare it to how you yourselves treat war veterans) and in part what history tells me you have perpetrated. And although you claim to be victimized (which is pitiful to come from such an omnipotent nation) by the world, you are always in part guilty of whatever happens to you. As are we all. The thing is just that I’ve never seen such a bully plead for sympathy and acceptance. It’s very dualistic, very confusing and very smart I suppose. If you’d only played the other side, ‘we’ would have attacked you a long time ago to put an end to this. But then again wars are never fought out of compassion or even principle but rather more irrational emotions and sheer economic and geographical gain. It is not until any of those variables are fully met that we can expect to see action.
This is what you’d expect to see in any democracy. Something gotta be sold to the masses in return for allegiance. I’d quote Noam Chomsky but this is already far too lengthy. Suffice it to say it is unfortunate that your leader not only started out in an isolationist role but also continues to play that same card. And that you can’t just be isolationists but that real life also adds xenophobia and jingoism to that deal.
And it is in fact YOU who are advocating not learning in that you effectively set aside the superior knowledge that I am other social scientists possess. All for your political beliefs and the glory of your masters and the empire. Why do people study anything at all if not to practise that knowledge and progress themselves and their society.
As for the rest of your conjecture I don’t know where to begin. For starters I can only point out that it would be rather pointless to become King of Sweden (which I could technically be through marriage) since the royal family has even less power than the average person in one important respect, they are not even allowed to express their political views in public. They are apolitical and a rather quaint and archaic institution which I couldn’t care less about. They aren’t even worth the effort to abolish. Believe it or not but I am a practical man that rarely acts JUST out of principle. In this case I’d rather turn my attention to the USA because ironically you affect me more and have the potential to continue to do so.
Fragmented American history with regard to this discourse:
16xx: British settlers, some leaving Europe for fear of persecution, and of notorious religious convictions, form the core to what much later becomes the USA. While not an injustice as such, I always have this in the back of my mind. Later "American statesmen, when they began to form new governments at the state and national levels, shared the convictions of most of their constituents that religion was, to quote Alexis de Tocqueville’s observation, "indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions"." I.e. any state has it’s controlling mechanisms. There is propaganda, religious beliefs, laws, history, rites of passage, threats of and use of violence etc.
1775-1890: ‘Indian Wars’. 45,000 dead. Further displacement of the indigenous population.
17xx-1865: Slavery. Need I say more? And after that a civil rights movement that took a hundred years to even approach a sense of equality.
1854: U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry forced the opening of Japan to the West. While not a massacre or war as such it represented a grave intrusion into sovereignty. Later caused Japan to westernize. I can give countless examples of how this affected people since it is a special field of interest but we’ll leave it at that.
Circa 1898: Adopted protectionism, seized a colonial empire of its own. Became official policy, just like colonialism turned to imperialism here and for other nations as well. The difference is that the US was new at this and didn’t weaken as did the UK, France, Spain, Germany. And even though WWI ended many things the US never received the deathblow that European imperialism did. In many ways it waned but never ended.
1898: "Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!". Based on a lie and a false premise, the Spanish-American War ignites and since Spain is no longer a force to be reckoned with, most Spanish colonies fall to the US. Death toll unknown.
1900-1903: The conquest of the Philippines (more than 1 million people died)
1901: Republican president William McKinley assassinated. Suspicion towards outlanders on the rise.
1915: WWI, which the US avoids brilliantly until the Lusitania when, though insignificant, the US has a half-baked reason to enter. (compare this to Pearl Harbor, 9/11)
While the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy) is defeated with american help, the Treaty of Versailles becomes legendary not only for its cruelty but later facilitating the rise of the German Nazi party and Adolf Hitler.
1919: The League of Nations is formed, as a direct act of US president Woodrow Wilson (D). Ironically however, "the United States neither ratified the Charter nor joined the League due to opposition by isolationists in the U.S. Senate, especially from influential Republican leader Henry Cabot Lodge." And furthermore, as the entire affair seemed like, or was made to seem like, a failure … "Disillusioned by the failure of the war to achieve the high ideals promised by President Woodrow Wilson, the American people chose isolationism: they turned their attention inward, away from international relations and solely toward domestic affairs."
1941: Pearl Harbor. Though not dismissive, the US missed no less than three times to realize that the attack was imminent. Some even argue that the attack was allowed to happen (and that the size of the Japanese carrier group was underestimated). Even so, only five actual ships were lost and only 2500 men or so.
The result was no only american entry into the war but also the little debated Japanese internment that took place on american soil.
1943-45: Excessive firebombing of German and Japanese cities. In the words of Robert McNamara who was then a young man in service, evaluating the american war effort of the air force, the bombing campaigns had lost effectiveness due to imprecision of high altitude approach. Firebombing became more effective, mostly against the civilian population, and the death toll became catastrophic.
1945: Without any valid reasoning, nuclear weapons were deployed for the first and only time against a populated area. Despite the fact that Japan was about to surrender, this was allowed to happen not only once but twice. Again a display of excessiveness and highhandedness.
Post WW2: The whole Cold War deal with increased feared of outsiders. Nicely played on by the government. Trials and hearings. I am sure you remember these days … and the side effects like …
1950-1953: Korean War, proxy war between the United States and the communist powers of the PRC and the Soviet Union. Escalated beyond necessity. About three million or more dead.
1950-1975: Vietnam. American presence since 1950. A warzone since circa 1964. Never recognized as a war by the US. The details are familiar enough. Spread into neighboring countries, enabling the rise of the Khmer Rouge. Total number of casualties .. well .. one dare not even venture a guess. In the millions certainly.
Other ‘minor’ incidents post-WW2: The support of Afghanistan against the USSR. Support of Iran and Iraq against each other. Pinochet. Supporting the Indonesian invasion of East Timor. Various coups d’etat, assassination. The apparent support for the UN and counteracting its mandate in reality. I could go on forever but I’m having a really bad headache now.