when someone says "hating immigrants is un-american" or "hating fascists is as american as apple pie" they are not just making a statement about norms, /they are making a normative statement/ they are calling us to our highest aspirations as a nation, not calmly reporting some date-and-place fact - ThreadSky

sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com • 32 days ago

when someone says "hating immigrants is un-american" or "hating fascists is as american as apple pie" they are not just making a statement about norms, /they are making a normative statement/

they are calling us to our highest aspirations as a nation, not calmly reporting some date-and-place fact

Comments

hurtingmyhead.bsky.social•32 days ago

Thank you! Something I think about sometimes is how “rhetoric” has often become synonymous with “dishonesty,” or just how people refuse a kind of situational and contextual analysis of statements

jwolf.bsky.social•32 days ago

chbarts.bsky.social•32 days ago

And when someone says "No it isn't" they're also making a normative statement. They're telling you what kind of America they'll accept, and they're trying to stop you from reaching for better.

dconrad.bsky.social•31 days ago

Crab pulling crab back down into bucket shit

progressiveknife.bsky.social•32 days ago

if you ask the Republicans FDR was the real fascist

jeninmotion.bsky.social•32 days ago

My friends and I really want to do pro-Union Army agitprop. My heritage is lighting up ppl who do treason in defense of slavery and fascism, damn it

neotiamat99.bsky.social•32 days ago

The Battle Hymn of the Republic goes *incredibly* hard is all I'm saying.

"As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free!"

cheyinka.bsky.social•32 days ago

I think a few more Christians could stand to worry about the Lord sifting out the souls of men before His judgement seat...

neotiamat99.bsky.social•32 days ago

It would probably be healthy for them and for society as a whole, certainly.

jeninmotion.bsky.social•32 days ago

John Brown is a hero!

elviereads.bsky.social•32 days ago

have you heard the wasteland 3 rendition

neotiamat99.bsky.social•32 days ago

I have and it is badass.

odeecs.bsky.social•32 days ago

Accurate.

sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com•32 days ago

and if you don't think this is effective i think you are legitimately a fool

thoreauaway.bsky.social•32 days ago

They want America to be hated, because they think they can destroy the nation state and implement world socialism in one fell swoop. To butcher Leonard Cohen, if you don’t like America wait till you see the next act

cheyinka.bsky.social•32 days ago

"First we take Manhattan, then everything goes well for us despite our lack of planning"?

dushyant.bsky.social•31 days ago

Yup, Martha Nussbaum argues as much.

ravenonthill.bsky.social•32 days ago

I would link this to the anti-slavery activism—abolitionism—of the previous century. European observers were often surprised by the moral position of the northern troops.

sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com•32 days ago

i know this makes a terrible lib but i think we can recognize our nation's historical sins while at the same time refusing to be defined by them--at the same time, aspiring to *actually be* all those things we said we were--

free.

lawnerd.bsky.social•32 days ago

https://bsky.app/profile/lawnerd.bsky.social/post/3lgeffnmlbs27

toledo.bsky.social•32 days ago

THANK YOU.

These people don't just need a hard lesson in rhetoric, but also one in good faith.

leonenglish.bsky.social•32 days ago

It's about living up to the idea that we've always at least told ourselves we aspire to, while acknowledging we still have a lot of work to do to get there.

nutedawn.bsky.social•32 days ago

This is what I think of as the core of Obama liberalism and it is by *far* the most politically successful and effective vision of liberalism since the racial realignment

mordecaimartin.net•32 days ago

In honest inquiry, why? Why uphold the nation and its self mythology? Why continue in a project that has caused so much pain and cruelty? Why uphold the ideals of people who have proven to be malicious actors, and those ideals either failures or malicious themselves? Why not something new?

thetoughestbean.bsky.social•32 days ago

Any new endeavor will also be born in compromise and harm, made by flawed architects and chained by the weight of the past.

There is no true clean slate

thetoughestbean.bsky.social•32 days ago

It is so, so much easier to try to wrangle the culture and institutions we have into a positive force than building new ones and hoping they turn out okay

metabluesky.bsky.social•32 days ago

Because the alternative to abandoning belief in a national myth is making us more competent Russians and I'd sooner see the world burn than become like the Russians.

kenanperry.bsky.social•31 days ago

This question assumes there's a possible alternative, but there isn't. America is going to continue to exist and people are going to continue to believe and be invested in it. Do with that what you will but that's the reality

mordecaimartin.net•32 days ago

If my definition of liberty is so radically different from the founding fathers definitions of liberty, why should I be so hung up on using the systems and methodologies that they used to enshrine their -flawed, hypocritical, racist- definition? Why not in fact, toss the word liberty itself?

mordecaimartin.net•32 days ago

And to address your point, it’s not that I think an appeal to liberal patriotism is ineffective (though it is less and less effective every day, as liberalism fails to offer a coherent analysis of our conditions and reality) but that I think it is a lie. And truth will out.

mordecaimartin.net•32 days ago

Why not talk instead of a republic of care? Or not a republic at all, a syndicate of care, a community of love, a society of mutual responsibility to each other? Or anything else? Why call it the United States? Why use anything of the old world? Why not be free?

vjpsyverson.bsky.social•32 days ago

I think the real answer is because not everyone /wants/ to throw out everything they've known and build a new world in the vacuum. That kind of vision works for some people, but most people would rather begin with what they already know and refine it; start with existing structures and improve them.

agattegno.bsky.social•32 days ago

Because we do in fact still live in the United States of America, and to break cleanly from that is, if not impossible, at least going to place you in the position of having to articulate why you are willing to toss out all of the great works of this country to a bunch of people who see them +

mordecaimartin.net•32 days ago

Well I got a lot of responses from a variety of people who I suppose identify as liberals, an ideology I still don’t agree with. Think I’ll mute for now and think over some of what’s been said.

cyanescens.bsky.social•32 days ago

A large portion of the population will hear your talk about a community of love and think you’re a silly but harmless hippie or you’re trying to convert them to your cult. Either way, you’re not going to be persuading many people to join you

twiceborn.bsky.social•32 days ago

As a purely practical matter, referring to an element that tons of americans know (our national collective myths) emotionally resonates with people who aren't necessarily 100% with us, and we need people who aren't necessarily 100% with us to get stuff done

twiceborn.bsky.social•32 days ago

Your republic of care resonates with *me*, but what about other people? Meanwhile, show Average Joe or Jane a picture of George Washington and you'll likely stir something in them

denam.bsky.social•32 days ago

The Shining City on the Hill is worth fighting for and I haven't seen a single replacement worth the fart it was huffed from

davidjorgonson.bsky.social•32 days ago

Because I want liberals to lead this nation. Hating a nation is the opposite of an effective pitch to lead it. A gift to conservatives.

redoubters.bsky.social•32 days ago

Because the people and the nation are not going anywhere, revolution is A) highly unlikely in the first place and B) extremely unlikely to wind up with something better if it does happen, so...

cyanescens.bsky.social•32 days ago

People want to feel pride in their country, just like they want to feel pride in the local sports franchise, their kids, themselves. Offering a narrative/myth they can feel good about is a very effective political organizing tool. Don’t offer that myth & people will get it elsewhere

cyanescens.bsky.social•32 days ago

Fascism is far more about offering an emotionally resonant myth than it is an ideology or policy platform, and it clearly has appeal! When all the left offers is a guilt-trip litany of past crimes or bland technocracy, people will choose fascism instead

realturkana.bsky.social•32 days ago

The arc of American history had been to move slowly and intermittently in the direction of living up to our creation myth ideals, which of course also necessarily meant recognizing the many ways in which from the start we fell far short.

zugernat.bsky.social•32 days ago

Thank you. And followed.

I posted my own thoughts this morning.

svrdm.bsky.social•31 days ago

My main contribution to this discourse is: if you believe "America bad" (I don't necessarily but I'm sympathetic to it)...

Fucking lie. Lie your ass off.

lexaproluthor.bsky.social•31 days ago

It's not lying, it's ✨️manifesting✨️

eli403.bsky.social•31 days ago

After the most recent election my confidence in American exceptionalism is at a historic low. I used to call anti-immigration peoplr un-American but there is something fundamentally wrong with the american populace and we deserve some collective pain

walmsley.bsky.social•32 days ago

if you insist on responding to every aspirational statement of values with uncomfortable realities you aren't being a bold truth teller who's fixing the world, you're demanding we all get down in the pit and talk about how bad the pit is

dhpljm266.bsky.social•32 days ago

There’s clearly a type of guy who gets motivated by being reminded everything sucks and he should be mad as hell - but that kind of guy is rare and often *bad* because they are mad too much.

Most people need to know that we beat the bastards in the past and we’ll do it again.

dhpljm266.bsky.social•32 days ago

As an aside, the mad miserable guy is overrepresented in radical activist spaces and it’s a reason why they often are miserable and ineffectual - he has the right aesthetic and is good at convincing people that being mad like him is the only way to demonstrate commitment.

jwolf.bsky.social•31 days ago

@whstancil.bsky.social FYI

walmsley.bsky.social•32 days ago

azninho25.bsky.social•32 days ago

Facts

We don't need endless doom and gloom bullcrap from miserable doomer fucks.

We need INSPIRATION and MOTIVATION to be better and to make the world a place we want to live in.

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