2017/12/05

Cooperation & solidarity vs. politics of aversions

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Back in the 80's there was much talk about the competition between capitalism/democracy and planning economy/single party dictatorship. During the 90's many people believed the thesis that Western liberalism had won for good.

I suppose this idea of Western liberalism is largely misunderstood. Its divisions are so extremely divergent since the 80's and have so very hostile partisanship divide between their followers that by now we could proclaim a new system competition within the Western world, in addition to the harassment by the relatively unimaginative authoritarian oligarchy with great power mindset in Russia.

The divide in the West isn't really about progressives and conservatives; few people truly deserve either label all-round anyway. The divide is different.

Germany's current society was built on a foundation of "us". "We" act together to solve our problems and challenges. Cooperation/togetherness and solidarity are the basic building blocks for this. Not everyone adheres to this foundation, but I suppose about 60-80% of Germans do.

The competing concept was revived in the 80's by Reaganism/Thatcherism, and became ever more extreme and rabid, but also ever more dishonest in the U.S. during the 90's and especially the Obama years:

It's a world view of "me, me, me!", in which one doesn't want a dime of one's taxes spent on helping 'brown people'. The central motivation in such politics is not to solve problems together, but to marginalize if not outright subjugate and hurt 'others' - brown people mostly, but also political enemies.

One group after another was declared to be 'takers', 'enemies', 'them', 'foreign'. Over time, this affected African-Americans, Hispanics (the supportive Cubans mostly excluded), Asians, Europeans, 'Leftists', more or less all government agencies, lesbians, gays, transgender, unemployed people, single mothers, women who had an abortion, medical personnel and consultants associated with abortions, journalists (up to the few actual news people on Fox News), Jews (though they are usually not targeted by those in high positions), Puerto Ricans and even Hawaiians.
The opposing political forces became more adversarial and hateful as well as the political culture deteriorated badly since the mid-90's with politicians obviously putting party before country most of the time.

This adversarial concept for politics solved few problems (though it did sometimes cut back errors made by the political opponent). Today, the U.S. has an unsustainable fiscal situation, unsustainably low savings rate, unsustainably low investment rate including public infrastructure investments, excessive spending on healthcare and 'security'/'defense', cannot solve pressing problems such as obesity rates/environmental issues/drugs/gun crimes/minority poverty rates and is rapidly losing most long-time friends in the world.
Still, there are plenty people who think that Germany needs exactly that kind of thinking.

It's obvious to me that switching to such an altogether different perspective on how to run a society would cause great transition harm to Germany even if the perspective as such was leading to superior policies.

For this reason there's a system competition between the U.S., Hungary, Poland and to a lesser extent the UK* (as well as minority political parties) on the one side and the cooperation- and solidarity-minded Germany, Netherlands and Scandinavian countries (as well as no doubt a couple other countries) on the other side.

Sure, the more mainstream interpretation views Hungary, Poland, Trumpism and Russia in one block that's threatening the Western liberal system. But I think this misses the point; Putin is merely amplifying the strength of antisocial ideas. The real competition if not conflict was there by the 80's already, then covered-up by the dominant Cold War that made Westerners close the ranks.


I fully expect comments calling me 'interesting in military affairs, naive in politics' and similar. There's nothing in here that would convert followers of the politics of aversion into cooperation- and solidarity-minded people, after all. This was just a diagnosis of how I see the fundamental problem of our time.

S O

P.S.: Years ago I wrote about current challenges to Germany. I did not think of this one yet. It's become much more obvious now. Three years ago the popular majorites of Germany and the United States still felt like real allies. That was before adversarial politics triumphed in the U.S. in 2016 and Germany had an political party that directed aversion against minorities (and the established order) and still mattered.

*: They're having particularly interesting politics now, with the left wing of the supposedly left party having become powerful and opposing a poorly-led right wing.
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31 comments:

  1. I have held similar views for some time and I've sought, without success, to start changing the us vs. them dynamic in the US.

    The problem is that the US is a really a huge but socially isolated island that can't hear solutions outside of its increasingly narrow points of view. We are currently facing the beginning of an Iraqi-style "social cleansing" civil war where neighbors, pumped up on internet memes, are increasingly likely to think that it is okay to start shooting each other over issues that don't directly affect them and that they would easily solve if they just talked to each other.

    The US could stop drifting in that direction if somebody of sufficient political and economic stature would start relentlessly pushing us in a different direction. I had hopes that Bernie Sanders might be the person but he is too pugnacious and his other ideas are too foreign for the US to clearly hear him. Perhaps Bill Gates or Warren Buffet will do the job, they are less messed up than the rest of the 0.001% and are not viewed as having inherent political ambitions.

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  2. Though the competing concept revived in the 80's was more about economics not society/politics. For example the UK ecomony was desperate by this time for reform and more competition to break up monopolies power that was causing great harm to growth, investment and productivity.
    From a UK persepctive there was a fall in the traditional trust of institutions and parties by the populace though at the same time education of politics, economics and critical thinking did not improve to compensate leaving more people vunerable to being manipulated.
    However I dont believe that is what is driving people into the arms of those who revell in politics of aversion, though it doesnt help. The main parties are not addressing issues that people are raising and therefore at some point they will be driven to the extremes.
    How do you have a welfare state, a meritoracy, a reasonable amount, i.e accepted by the vast majority, of income and wealth inequality and large influxes of people? I would disagree about your point about "helping brown people" do you truly believe the reaction would have been any different if it had been 1m Greeks?
    I would argue that the reason the Scandinavian countries have managed to be so co-operative though is their lack of diversity (class, education, wealth/income, race, religion, societal norms) which lends itself to much reduced differences of opinion and therefore makes finding the commond ground far simplier.

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    1. Well, the 'brown people' thin refere3nces the U.S. more than situation in Germany. I think it's OK to define an "us" or "we" that excludes immigrants, but personally I think those immigrants who already received permission to stay for a while or indefinitely have become part of the society. At that point politics of aversion against such (wanted or not) guests as as harmful as among the old 'us'.
      And yeah, one million Greeks would have been a totally different thing. When have you ever heard about conflicts about Greeks or Spanish people or Hungarians or Czechs in Germany?

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    2. I believe that there has historically been several times of conlict/ tension between Germans and others in wider germany. When you say it would be totally different, do you mean you dont think there would be a significant movement towards hostility/ backing of a party that wants them excluded/ not invited in the first place? I would argue the same for the U.S if it was millions of illegal white Europeans i still think the reaction would be the same just look at what happened in the 1900's.

      I agree with your point about those who have permission to stay should then be fully included as part of society and anything to exlcude them should not be tolerated. I think the problem that you miss is that the decission for that to take place is not being done after conesus has been reached by society but unilaterally by smaller entities, It is this lack of cooperation and solidarity to come up with an agreeded position which is driving the politics of aversion.

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    3. You don't see the greater point; even with the tensions that existed, the mainstream concept in West Germany and reunited Germany was to solve problems together and to have national solidarity.
      Something like the transfers to East Germany during the 90's would be unimaginable in the U.S. today. The whole political climate is different; when we have a challenge, mainstream approach is to address it together. We're not waging culture wars or begrudge some group something as a mainstream thing. It's a right wing fringe thing.
      There's no campaigning against government services because some disliked group is disproportionately making use of them.
      Blöd Zeitung tries to rile up people like that, but it's badly losing circulation. The one other noticeable publication that does so (Compact) is not even sold in most press stores that I've seen - or at least not presented.

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    4. Though in Germany cultural unity came before national solidarity. I think its disingenuous to compare Germany to the U.S like you have done. Germany has never had to face the challenge of assimilating millions of people from different cultures and countries into a unified society. Could it be there is no culture war in Germany because apart from a small Turkish contingent (that has intergrated well) there is no other cultures to compete with German culture. Not to mention the East Germans were subjagated and improverished by the Soviet Union. If say part of the US spent 50 years of misrule under a foreign power who is to say that there wouldnt be widespread unity over offering support.

      I would compare large transfer of money in the US more akin to large transfers of money in the E.U. There seems as much appetite in Germany to transfer money to Greece than in the US to Puerto Rico.

      But what is it in Germany that you think brought about the national solidarity? And why do you think that is absent in the US? Do you not think forging a singular culture is key to having national solidarity?

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    5. Germany absorbed substantial French Huguenot refugees in the 17th and 18th centuries.
      It also had lots of Poles and Frenchmen within its borders before 1919, even regional majorities.

      Integration of foreigners was always very mixed - it depends on whether the foreigners have the critical mass and motivation to establish a parallel society. Lebanese and Indians are non-integrated in African countries because they form multinational import/export trading networks using their language as lingua franca. They still are extremely small minorities in some African countries, despite dominating wholesale trading there. (Lebanese in Atlantic Africa, Indians in Indian Ocean Africa).
      Integration or not doesn't seem to depend all that much on the host nation.

      All that said, the point is that Germans don't pursue 'me, me, me!' ideology for solving problems at the society level. The so-called liberals trend towards it, but in a very gentle form - they would be considered solidly left-wing in the U.S..
      Very few political parties focus their election campaigning on aversions. The AfD does, and at the other end of the spectrum Die Linke aims at taxing the rich more - that's it.

      Maybe the loss of the Eastern territories and millions of Germans resettling as refugees in the west kickstarted the national solidarity. This and the national-level television programs washed away many regional cultural differences. But we tended to organise 'together' solutions like social insurances back in the late 19th century already.

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  3. I really don´t think this kind of absolutization/dichotomisation can be useful in any way. - There is still Habermas living, who says that "old" EU institutions were able to integrate but also to tolerate different "life forms" in the same time. But the "new" EU largely couldn´t. - You can easily recognize that the Greeks were cheating the system etc., but the "Troika" political line to them surely wasn´t cooperative or even constructive. - I´m largely glad that Czech republic borders Germany and not Russia or Trumps U.S., of course.

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  4. We are close to being marginalized by the rise of China and India. I would at least take the Chinese one-party states and its meritocratic claims as a third competitor into account that is going to shape future debates.

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    1. I honestly don't care about such things. Luxembourg gets "marginalized" by just about every country, and Luxembourgians live a fine life.

      Nor do I see what the Chinese do as an in any way a compelling model for Europeans.

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    2. Each and every dominant global power creates a clout of imitation. This situation is not going to be any different. As the "me"-faction you mention is often not comfortable with the existing political system, there is leeway for changes, even if they are only attempted or short lived experiments. Your believe in the institutional inertia of debate within the confines of the existing streams of thought in Western society creates too narrow an approach for expectations. Unlike Luxembourg's purported marginalization within Europe, this marginalization poses a systemic influence due to considerable political and cultural differences.

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    3. "Many European officials suspect that Chinese infrastructure projects in Central and Eastern Europe might come with a political price attached. Some countries, seeking not only investments but also alternative political affiliations, are more than willing to play ball.

      Beijing’s financial firepower, including tens of billions of dollars in credit lines and the full engagement of mammoth state-owned enterprises, is unprecedented in its scale." https://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/four-faces-china-central-and-eastern-europe

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  5. The target of capitalistic liberalism is to destroy the cohesion of the people in every aspect. Simple because a bunch of solitary individuals cannot defend himself, cannot change the system and therefore cannot endanger the capitalistic liberal elites. So in truth the "brown" and "white" people have a common enemy which uses them both. To mix people of very different cultural backgrounds leads automatically to a politic of aversion and weakens solidarity and cooperation. This is a natural human reaction with the target to restore cohesion. The capitalistic liberal elites capitalize then on this very reaction and pervert it to even more easily prey on the people. So parties like the AfD are not true right wing, but a perversion of right wing reactions to mass migration, which is a dialectic one. They are therefore only utilized to further improve the profits of the "elites".

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    1. There's no need to explain things with conspiracy theories if they can be explained with crowd behaviour based on common preferences and perspectives.

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    2. How does crowd behaviour explane the illegale and outright wrong politic of the merkel regierung which was also against the will of the majority of the people in germany (already in germany living refugees and other immigrants included / moreover especially in this group of people there are more against this mass migration than in ethnic germans).

      The legal basis of the mass immigration since 2015 is still not clear according to the wissenschaftliche dienst des Bundestages (scientific service of the german parliament) which is a gouverment agency.

      How could it be crowd behaviour that some very few persons decided on ones own and against the german law, against the german constitution and against the will of 51% or more of the people today that hundreds of thousands of immigrants can enter germany and stay there?

      The own-name transaction in law does need a specific procedere which was never done by this gouverment. Therefore the mass-migration was illegal according to german law and illegal according to the german constitution.

      To act against the law and the constitution in this way is to act against democracy, the constitutional state and against freedom.

      So what was the reason for this? Shoud i realy believe that only crowd behaviour based on common preferences was enough to break the constitional state and to ignore law? Should one realy believe this to be sufficient to explane this extreme breach of law by this gouverment? Such few deicion makers at the top of the state break the german constitiuton only because of crowd behaviour?

      This as an explanation would be even more frightining ! Because then our leaders are extremly incompetent and moreover complete morons.

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    3. "The target of capitalistic liberalism is to destroy the cohesion of the people in every aspect." sounded conspiracy theory-ish, but there is no such conspiracy.

      You make a lot of assertions about illegal government behaviour that are unproved to say the least.
      The thing about Merkel's policy in 2015 is that she didn#t really do much if anything. She's 99% of the time a mere administrator and moderator. She didn't open the borders - she let them stay open, as they were since the Schengen accords. To do so was legal. besides, teh federal police simply doesn't have the numbers and equipment to really seal off Germany's southern borders, and the military is prohibited by the constitution to assist within Germany on the necessary scale. Moreover, if the borders were guarded the migrants would merely have to say "Asyl" to trigger a due diligence legal process during which they can stay.

      So essentially, you don't have German constitution and laws on your side - instead you displayed your ignorance about them. Your case goes *poof* once someone who superficially knows the legal situation checks it.


      The thing about the Schengen accords is that they were emant to giver member country natioanls free travel, and the member countries were supposed to guard the outeer borders. Italy and Greece violated their obligations under these accords, in part because the human traffickers found loopholes.

      Merkel could have done a lot towards disincentivizing migration and she could have exerted a lot of pressure on the fiscally struggling Greece and she could have pushed for EU-funded border guards - but instead she chose to have give a decisive battle against xenophobes a try, and then failed to win it because she's not that convincing at speeches.

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    4. I did not wrote that the german gouverment opened borders, but that the mass-migration to germany was illegal which is something completly different. The illegal immigrants had to be arrested and brought back from where they come, to the other eu countries.

      Before 2015 the bavarian police for example arrested every illegal immigrant and brought him to jail and from there then into the asylum legal process. Everyone had to give fingerprints and so on and was identified. This system was according to german law and german constitution and the schengen and dublin rules.

      Then in 2015 it crashed because of numbers. And the gouverment decided activly to give asylum to nearly every seeker and give benefits to them. That is not doing nothing, but an acitve act which needs a legal foundation otherwise it is illegal.

      Now show me the legal foundation of this policy?

      There is none without asking the german parliament which did not happen. The gouverment had no right to give all this people asylum because the german constitution Artikel 16 / II say it absolutly clear: the have no right for it. I can be given to them of cause by a legal own name transaction, but this did not happen and this needs the allowance of the parliament.

      Neither the constituion nor the asylum law give all this people a right for asylum. And therefore no right for benefits as asylum seekers.

      And for the practical problems: if a person is completly illegal it could simply receive nothing, not moeny, no quarter and so on because such a person would not have any right to get this things. And if the person will go to the authorities it would be arrested and brought back.

      >>if the borders were guarded the migrants >>would merely have to say "Asyl" to trigger a >>due diligence legal process during which >>they can stay.

      And that is exaclty the point in which the policy of the gouverment has become illegal:

      The German constutution states clearly:

      (2) Auf Absatz 1 kann sich nicht berufen, wer aus einem Mitgliedstaat der Europäischen Gemeinschaften oder aus einem anderen Drittstaat einreist, in dem die Anwendung des Abkommens über die Rechtsstellung der Flüchtlinge und der Konvention zum Schutze der Menschenrechte und Grundfreiheiten sichergestellt ist.

      https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_16a.html

      The same with the german asylum laws:

      https://www.bundestag.de/blob/514854/0bdb98e0e61680672e965faad3498e93/wd-3-109-17-pdf-data.pdf

      There is simple no right for even a legal process if thousands of illegal immigrants come from austria to bavaria. They are therefore to be expelled at the border and if this is not possible to be arrested and transported back and the numbers that hide etc receive no benefits and can therefore not stay.

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    5. >>Your case goes *poof* once someone who >>superficially knows the legal situation >>checks it.

      The federal constitutional court said:

      „Wer aus einem sicheren Drittstaat im Sinne des Art. 16a Abs. 2 Satz 1 GG anreist, bedarf des Schutzes der grundrechtlichen Gewährleistung des Absatzes 1 in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland nicht, weil er in dem Drittstaat Schutz vor politischer Verfolgung hätte finden können. Der Ausschluss vom Asylgrundrecht ist nicht davon abhängig, ob der Ausländer in den Drittstaat zurückgeführt werden kann oder soll. Ein Asylverfahren findet nicht statt. Es entfällt auch das als Vorwirkung eines grundrechtlichen Schutzes gewährleistete vorläufige Bleiberecht.“

      – BVerfGE 94, 49 – Sichere Drittstaaten

      http://www.servat.unibe.ch/dfr/bv094049.html#

      The main sentence here is, that illegal immigrants have NO right for an legal process, they have NO right for an asylum process and this regardless if the could be brought back to the country from which they came from or not.

      Ein Asylverfahren findet nicht statt.

      Which means: A asylum legal process does not happen.

      According to the german constitution, according to german asylum law and according to the federal constitutional court there should be no legal proces only because someone says asyl.

      And in 2015 Merkel had not done nothing, she did something: on 13 september merkel activly hindered the german federal police to close the borders. She has no right to do this. It was against any german law.

      http://dipbt.bundestag.de/doc/btd/18/073/1807311.pdf

      And moreover merkel and the austrian president decided without any right on the 4 september to 5 september that all illegal immigrants can come from hungary and austria to germany and that germany will take them all without any control or registration and give asylum to them. This was an active decision and active act of merkel and not doing nothing.

      And it was again against the german law, against the german constitution and against the rights of the parliament and against our freedom and against democracy.

      I wonder very strongly that someone like you, who always defended the constitution and the democracy and freedom now declares this illegal policy as something that was legal.

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    6. "I did not wrote that the german gouverment opened borders, but that the mass-migration to germany was illegal which is something completly different."

      I call you out as the liar you are. You claimed that the government's policy was illegal.

      "And the gouverment decided activly to give asylum to nearly every seeker"

      ...which confirms my point that you are a liar. Those people entered the process in which it will be determined whether they get asylum. Very few of them got it so far.
      BTW, you're blocked for serial lying from now on.

      "Neither the constituion nor the asylum law give all this people a right for asylum. And therefore no right for benefits as asylum seekers. "

      Wrong - whether or not the people have the right to asylum has to be determined. Even in case the answer is "no" article 1 of the constitution says the government needs to keep them alive, housed, fed until they leave the country. That part is where the state governments are largely responsible, not the federal (Merkel) government.
      You seem to be ignorant about that, or simply lying again.

      Seriously, you sound like a German with your spelling errors, and AfD support by your content, but you don't understand article one? That first line is one of the most famous and important sentences of the German language by now!

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  6. What I have observed is that the "Me vs them" mentality has arisen in opposition to extremist post-modernist politics. Things are turning sour here in Norway too, and we are lucky we are blessed with just bad politicians, and not completely brain dead politicians like in Sweden which is a having a complete societal meltdown because of the ludicrous amount of immigration.

    People react the government prioritizing immigrant cultures over the native cultures and norms. People feel it is wrong that we should adapt to the immigrants, instead of the immigrants assimilating. People feel attacked. The huge amount of immigrants also scare people. To put it into context for you, Norway takes in 40 000 immigrants yearly legally, if Germany took in a equal amount in proportion it would have to take in over 660 000 a year, over 4 times as much. And if we take Sweden amount which is 3 times that, we get 1,8 million a year.

    Combined with the horrendously low birthrates of ethnic Scandinavians, people are very afraid of being replaced within a century.

    Another huge factor is that a large amount of the immigrants come from countries with completely incompatible cultures. This causes big crashes, which causes a lot of misunderstandings on the immigrant side. The system simply can't effectively educate them, which leaves to population to do this. In a perfect system this would have worked, but spreading out the immigrants over the country so that they socialize with the ethnic population. But this does not happen, immigrants cluster in cities, and the effect gets worse and worse the more immigrants you introduce to the system. This makes it much easier for the immigrants to just talk in between themselves, which causes them to fail to assimilate. I have talked with a lot of immigrants who complained about this issue, some living here for many years still only can talk basic Norwegian.

    This causes a lot of "in-group outgroup" mentality. Since the groups don't communicate very well, we get echo chambers. These produce nazies and racial supremacists on both sides. I have heard some awful things on both sides, like how all immigrants are rapist and and parasites of society. And on the other side I have heard white woman being looked upon as whores to use until you get married and marry a real woman.

    This is made even worse by post-modernist extremists that exaggerates the worst of the ethnic side, while trying to hide and cover up the worst of the immigrant side. And when this gets uncovered by the extreme on the ethnic side it enrages them and causes a even more sever reaction.

    We are seeing a rise of reactionaries, not nazies in the west. This is what happens when you force ideologies people, they react, often by aligning with the anti.

    Combined with a large amount of corruption and instability, it is easy to see how people like trump could ride the wave and look like a "hero".

    And it does not really help that we are seeing a rise of authoritative left-wing extremism either.


    I don't align with any of this, call me gray, but I only care about results in the long term.

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    1. xoon ZG: Your explanation may be correct in case of Sweden and maybe Norway. But the most anti-immigrant countries in Europe these days are the post-communist states - where hardly any immigrants are present. German also "Ossies" react angrily and vote for AfD, even if number of immigrants there is much smaller than in western Bundeslandern. - One of the bad things here is "identitarian politics". The second one "identification by difference" instead of "identification by communication". And in this context, Sven is right. If you need schmittian Enemy to constitute political community, everything is on the wrong path. - By the way, Germany/Scandinavia block still scores very well in surveys measuring generalized trust (trust to strangers). But concerning generalized trust, for example Czech Republic is more comparable to Russia or Brazil than to Germany. And we have only several thousand well integrated Muslims, there is no indication of any radicalisation.

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  7. I think it's worthwhile to note that the Unites States has a deep vein of selfish "me me me" in both the politics and the society that has for the most part been the mainstream since before independence.

    The words of one of the fundamental texts describes the aspirations of the framers of American government as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Note that those are, or can be, construed as individual aspirations. There's no "we" there and, at best, the U.S. system seems expressly designed to benefit individuals rather than the "greatest good for the greatest number".

    I won't argue that the prion disease that has eaten the brain of the American Right hasn't amped this up past the bounds of reason. But the original "I've-got-mine-so-#$#!-you" is kinda baked into the American Dream.

    So that means that the "other" can be, as you point out, pretty much anyone you want it to be. Obviously given the also-kinda-baked-in-racism here in the U.S. black and brown are first-order degres of "otherness". But it's a terrific gimmick if what you want to do is ensure that the proles, whose only real political strength is en masse, are divided amongst themselves. Anybody can be an "other"! Poor! Woman! Gay! Muslim! Liberal!

    I wish I thought that there was a way back from this abyss, but I don't see it. The 20-40% of the American public that self-identifies as "conservative" have, so far as I can tell, passed the tipping point. They will gleefully dynamite the entire social and political system rather than accept anything but their maximal objectives...

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    1. So the US's only obvious chance out of the abyss is losing a civil war or a foreign occupation. Like German chemical weapons in WWII and the pre-WWII nerve-gas-bomber-fright, I doubt the nukes are a foolproof deterrence against occupation. War is a continuation of politics and there will be always secret and less secret aides of the enemy on both sides that see it as an opportunity for their own objectives, influencing policy and warfighting in that regard.

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  8. I think it is wrong to put the named politics in direct opposition, to the contrary: a politic of aversion is the result of social-culture changes which endanger cohesion and therefore cooperation and solidarity.

    The reason why germans are more cooperative and solidary is simple because they are much more homogeneous.

    Any politic of aversion results in the end from and attempt to restore cooperation and solidarity which are endangered by to much diversity of cultures and people in the same country.

    One can claim this stupid human behaviour but humans are the way they are. The are more cooperative and more solidary with people who are more like themselves and it is more difficult for humans to do the same for strangers. More strangers, more diversity, that leads directly to more aversion.

    It is a dialectic developement. Now much more foreigner from other countries come to germany and expectedly aversion rises in germany.

    So this politics are not different ones but two sides of the same coin. Averson tries to restore cohesion with exactly the target to improve cooperatoin and solidarity. The US today tend to more aversion than germany simple because they are much more heterogeneous and this still increases. That was the reason since the beginning of the us that the us people tend to more individualism, more aversion and more invididual indipendence. But because people even in the us has to act together and need therefore at least some cohesion, more aversion is the normal human reaction to achieve this.

    The more diverse and the more heterogeneous the german society will become, the more the coopration and solidartiy will erode and that is exactly what one can see now in germany. For example fewer and fewer people work on honory posts and that will go on and increase even more and more as long as germany will become more heterogeneous.

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    1. "a politic of aversion is the result of social-culture changes which endanger cohesion and therefore cooperation and solidarity."

      That's not really what it looks like in the U.S. - there it's rather rooted in an effort to defend white primacy.

      "The reason why germans are more cooperative and solidary is simple because they are much more homogeneous."

      Prussians and Bavarians were anything but homogeneous back when social insurances were invented in Germany and introduced at the national level.

      "Any politic of aversion results in the end from and attempt to restore cooperation and solidarity which are endangered by to much diversity of cultures and people in the same country."

      Again, this is totally not how it worked in the U.S.. Cooking up aversions was the means to destroy cohesion, not a means to restore cohesion. Besides, most of the politics of aversion there were directed against U.S. citizens, and government is meant to represent all citizens, not but a white male rural minority and the super-rich.

      "The are more cooperative and more solidary with people who are more like themselves"

      ... and the politics of aversion create an artificial 'otherness' so suddenly people perceive others as different who weren't perceived as such before.

      "The US today tend to more aversion than germany simple because they are much more heterogeneous and this still increases"

      It's not heterogeneity that increases - it's the share of non-white male rural people that grows.

      "For example fewer and fewer people work on honory posts"
      Actually, the opposite is reality; the quantity of people who do so grows RAPIDLY.

      https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/173632/umfrage/verbreitung-ehrenamtlicher-arbeit/

      Certain political colours appear to have a subsription on alternative facts that go 180° against reality.

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    2. It's an interesting question how well immigrants and which groups of these are represented among those doing honorary posts.

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    3. The Turks have many men in honorary posts, mostly in their parallel cultural clubs and networks.
      Other than that I know that some true political refugees help Amnesty International and similar organisations.

      I suppose they're underrepresented in sports clubs, shooter's clubs, voluntary firefighters and the like.

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    4. If you look only on the last 4 years this is not realy sufficient to see changes in social culture. I work in this sector (honor posts) since nearly 20 years and there is much change. The increase in the last 4 years is a result of the refugee crisis. Many germans tied to help the illegal immigrants and without their work the crisis would not get managed at all.

      By the way and more near to the topic (US vs Gemany): how do you explain that in the us much more people have honor posts than in germany according to your statista?

      https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/35759/umfrage/laendervergleich-anteil-bevoelkerung-der-ehrenamtliche-arbeit-geleistet-hat/

      According to this more us have honor posts than in any other country of the world, much more than in germany.

      >>That's not really what it looks like in the >>U.S. - there it's rather rooted in an effort >>to defend white primacy.

      Why should whites be cooperative and solidary with "browns" if this is against the very nature of humans and against there interests? Because primacy is an advantage. Why should people sacrifice an advantage for nothing?

      Moreover: This was not the case in germany in the 19 century, this was not the case in the us in the 19 century, this was never the case. And on the opposite site the "browns" also do not want to be cooperative and solidary with the whites in the same proportion. There is also widespread racism from brown people against white people and between brown and brown people and so on.

      Because this is natural human behaviour to my knowledge it is therefore not clever to mix to much cultural different kind of people together. History has prove time over time that this will increase the propability of violence.

      >U.S.government is meant to represent all >citizens, not but a white male rural minority >and the super-rich.

      The exact opposite is the case. Any gouverment need some kind of political myth, need some cohesion and a group on which it can built its power and for the us it is exactly this people: white rural people and super rich. This was and is the core of the us from the begining. Any gouverment that tries to represent also other culturaly very different groups lead directly to a division of the society and therefore to more aversion.

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    5. Your anecdotal evidence is worth nothing compared to even mere nongovernmental statistics.

      "Why should whites be cooperative and solidary with "browns" if this is against the very nature of humans and against there interests?"

      It's not, you primitive racist asshole.
      So glad you're already blocked.

      Yeah, well, won't comment on the rest of that bullshit.
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      Everyone else rest assured; there are only 5-15% dangerous idiots like that in every country in my opinion. Well, the downside is that it's in every country. So all nations got to be alert and keep the dangerous idiots from positions of power. The Russians, Turks, Hungarians, Poles and Americans fucked that part up big time in our age.
      Couple generations ago Germany did - well, now they get a taste of how not specifically German that fuck-up episode was.

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  9. I don't think you have correctly identified the real fault line in the modern West.
    The motor that powers Trump, Brexit, Orban, etc., is tribal nationalism. To the alt right, the group (in the form of the nation or the race) always takes precedence over the individual. Otherwise we would not see them tearing up trade deals, demonising immigrants, blathering on about national greatness, trying to silence the media, etc. None of these things benefits or is meant to benefit the citizen on an individual basis.
    These people might be of the same party, but they are not really the heirs of Thatcher and Reagan.
    What really seems to set them apart from places like Germany and Netherlands (and correct me if I am wrong, since I am not so familiar with your country) is their disdain for procedure, rule of law, neutral institutions, etc. The very things put in place to protect "me" from "us".

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    1. That's the authoritarian ingredient of the toxic mix and the use of bogeymen.

      Authoritarianism is one framework to that can be used to recognise these things. Many symptoms fit to well-known authoritarian patterns, but those people don't think of themselves as authoritarians. They live in a newspeak world, and I doubt that they or those on their periphery would recognise the politics of aversion as run-of-the-mill authoritarian world view politics.
      They don't even notice how their political stars cuddle with dictators while clashing unproductively with democratically legitimated governments. They have all such symptoms explained away already.

      So yea, one could write pages and pages about how everything fits once seen as plain authoritarianism. The diagnosis would just be terribly worthless.

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