"Who Do We Think We Are?"

Over 18 ONLY! For grown-ups. . .

Moderators: Sluggo, Amskeptic

Post Reply
User avatar
Amskeptic
IAC "Help Desk"
IAC "Help Desk"
Status: Offline

"Who Do We Think We Are?"

Post by Amskeptic » Sun Jul 06, 2014 12:06 pm

. . . on the occasion of our Nation's 238th birthday, Maureen Dowd posits some good questions and observations.

The New York Times
July 4, 2014
Maureen Dowd
WASHINGTON — AMERICA’S infatuation with the World Cup came at the perfect moment, illuminating the principle that you can lose and still advance.

Once our nation saw itself as the undefeatable cowboy John Wayne. Now we bask in the prowess of the unstoppable goalie Tim Howard, a biracial kid from New Jersey with Tourette’s syndrome.

With our swaggering and sanguine image deflated by epic unforced errors, Americans are playing defense, struggling to come to grips with a world where we can no longer dictate all the terms, win all the wars and lead all the charges.

“The Fourth of July was always a celebration of American exceptionalism,” said G.O.P. pollster Frank Luntz. “Now it’s a commiseration of American disappointment.”

From Katrina to Fallujah, we’re less the Shining City Upon a Hill than the House of Broken Toys.

For the first time perhaps, hope is not as much a characteristic of American feelings.

Are we winners who have been through a rough patch? Or losers who have soured our sturdy and spiritual DNA with too much food, too much greed, too much narcissism, too many lies, too many spies, too many fat-cat bonuses, too many cat videos on the evening news, too many Buzzfeed listicles like “33 Photos Of Corgi Butts,” and too much mindless and malevolent online chatter?

Are we still the biggest and baddest? Or are we forever smaller, stingier, dumber, less ambitious and more cynical? Have we lost control of our not-so-manifest destiny?

Once we had Howard Baker, who went against self-interest for the common good. Now we have Ted Cruz. Once we had Louis Zamperini, an Olympic runner whose fortitude in a Japanese P.O.W. camp was chronicled in Laura Hillenbrand’s book “Unbroken.” Now we’ve broken Iraq, liberating it to be a draconian state run on Sharia law, full of America-hating jihadists who were too brutal even for Al Qaeda.

We’re a little bit scared of our own shadow. And, sadly, we see ourselves as a people who can never understand one another. We’ve given up on the notion that we can cohere, even though the founders forged America by holding together people with deep differences.

A nation of immigrants watched over by the Statue of Liberty — with a government unable to pass immigration reform despite majority support — sees protesters take to the streets to keep Hispanic children trying to cross the border from being housed in their communities.

Andrew Kohut, who has polled for Gallup and the Pew Research Center for over four decades, calls the mood “chronic disillusionment.” He said that in this century we have had only three brief moments when a majority of Americans said they were satisfied with the way things were going: the month W. took office, right after the 9/11 attacks and the month we invaded Iraq.

The old verities seem quaint. If you work hard and play by the rules, you’ll lose out to those guys who can wire computers to make bets on Wall Street faster than the next guy to become instant multimillionaires. Our quiet traditional virtues bow to our noisy visceral divisions, while churning technology is swiftly remolding the national character in ways that are still a blur. Boldness is often chased away by distraction, confusion, hesitation and fragmentation.

Barack Obama vowed to make government cool again, but young people, put off by the dysfunction in our political, financial, military and social institutions, are eschewing government jobs. Idealism is swamped by special interests. The middle class is learning to do more with less. The president, sort of the opposite.

“The world sees us as having gone from a president who did too much to a president who does too little,” said Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

David Axelrod, the president’s Pygmalion, mused: “Reagan significantly changed the trajectory of the country for better and worse. But he restored a sense of clarity. Bush and Cheney were black and white, and after them, Americans wanted someone smart enough to get the nuances and deal with complexities. Now I think people are tired of complexity and they’re hungering for clarity, a simpler time. But that’s going to be hard to restore in the world today.”

Young people are more optimistic than their rueful elders, especially those in the technology world. They are the anti-Cheneys, competitive but not triumphalist. They think of themselves as global citizens, not interested in exalting America above all other countries.

“The 23-year-olds I work with are a little over the conversation about how we were the superpower brought low,” said Ben Smith, the editor in chief of Buzzfeed. “They think that’s an ‘older person conversation.’ They’re more interested in this moment of crazy opportunity, with the massive economic and cultural transformation driven by Silicon Valley. And kids feel capable of seizing it. Technology isn’t a section in the newspaper any more. It’s the culture.”

Ben Domenech, the 32-year-old libertarian who writes The Transom newsletter, thinks many millennials are paralyzed by all their choices. He quoted Walker Percy’s “The Last Gentleman”: “Lucky is the man who does not secretly believe that every possibility is open to him.” He also noted that, given their image-conscious online life in the public eye, millennials worry about attaching themselves with a click to the wrong clique or hashtag: “It heightens the level of uncertainty, anxiety and risk aversion, to know that you’re only a bad day and half a dozen tweets from being fired.”

Jaron Lanier, the Microsoft Research scientist and best-selling author, thinks the biggest change in America is that “technology’s never had to shoulder the burden of optimism all by itself.”

And that creates what Haass calls a tension between “dysfunctional America vs. innovative America.”

Walter Isaacson, head of the Aspen Institute and author of the best-selling “Steve Jobs,” agreed that “there’s a striking disconnect between the optimism and swagger of people in the innovative economy — from craft-beer makers to educational reformers to the Uber creators — and the impotence and shrunken stature of our governing institutions.”

Nathaniel Philbrick, the author of “Bunker Hill: A City, a Siege, a Revolution,” which depicts the Patriots, warts and all, warns against gilding the past. “They weren’t better than us back then; they were trying to figure things out and justify their behavior, kind of like we are now,” he said. “From the beginning to the end, the Revolution was a messy work in progress. The people we hold up as paragons did not always act nobly but would then later be portrayed as always acting nobly. It reminds you of the dysfunction we’re in the middle of now.

“The more we can realize that we’re all making it up as we go along and somehow muddling through making ugly mistakes, the better. We’re not destined for greatness. We have to earn that greatness. What George Washington did right was to realize how much of what he thought was right was wrong.”
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles

Jivermo
IAC Addict!
Status: Offline

Re: "Who Do We Think We Are?"

Post by Jivermo » Sun Jul 06, 2014 1:22 pm

Walter Isaacson, head of the Aspen Institute and author of the best-selling “Steve Jobs,” agreed that “there’s a striking disconnect between the optimism and swagger of people in the innovative economy — from craft-beer makers to educational reformers to the Uber creators to Itinerant Air Cooled Mechanics — and the impotence and shrunken stature of our governing institutions.”
Thank you, Maureen.

User avatar
Bleyseng
IAC Addict!
Location: Seattle again
Contact:
Status: Offline

Re: "Who Do We Think We Are?"

Post by Bleyseng » Sun Jul 06, 2014 8:54 pm

I think the pundits talk to the wrong people as in people who have a landline, a flip phone, use XP and have no idea what Facebook is. All the young people I know are excited about life and what is in their future. I know one young man who got a job in our senator's office and is moving upwards. He loves the life and excitement in DC even though it's a struggle to survive due to the low wages.
Geoff
77 Sage Green Westy- CS 2.0L-160,000 miles
70 Ghia vert, black, stock 1600SP,- 139,000 miles,
76 914 2.1L-Nepal Orange- 160,000+ miles
http://bleysengaway.blogspot.com/

pj
Addicted!
Status: Offline

Re: "Who Do We Think We Are?"

Post by pj » Tue Jul 08, 2014 4:34 pm

I would have thought that one go around in the hotel room with the dope cookies would have been enough? Looks like she took another round, I'm sure she did it just for the research.

User avatar
Amskeptic
IAC "Help Desk"
IAC "Help Desk"
Status: Offline

Re: "Who Do We Think We Are?"

Post by Amskeptic » Fri Jul 11, 2014 10:38 am

pj wrote:I would have thought that one go around in the hotel room with the dope cookies would have been enough? Looks like she took another round, I'm sure she did it just for the research.
"Mis-underestimating" Maureen Dowd is a common error . . . :flower:
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles

pj
Addicted!
Status: Offline

Re: "Who Do We Think We Are?"

Post by pj » Fri Jul 11, 2014 1:49 pm

No big guy, I didn't misunderstand, I am fully aware of Ms. Dowd.

User avatar
Amskeptic
IAC "Help Desk"
IAC "Help Desk"
Status: Offline

Re: "Who Do We Think We Are?"

Post by Amskeptic » Tue Jul 22, 2014 9:39 pm

pj wrote:No big guy, I didn't misunderstand, I am fully aware of Ms. Dowd.
Let's put it this way.
When a respondent attacks the writer without addressing the content of the piece, it looks like a personal issue, like watching a married couple argue at a christening, just a wince-worthy embarrassment.
Colin
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles

Spezialist
Status: Offline

Re: "Who Do We Think We Are?"

Post by Spezialist » Fri Aug 15, 2014 10:47 pm

Amskeptic wrote:
pj wrote:No big guy, I didn't misunderstand, I am fully aware of Ms. Dowd.
Let's put it this way.
When a respondent attacks the writer without addressing the content of the piece, it looks like a personal issue, like watching a married couple argue at a christening, just a wince-worthy embarrassment.
Colin
I have been studying Linguistic Realitivity and it seems to me a good place to start if you want to bridge communication
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6Si1LiJKts0

Post Reply