Reddit mentions: The best books on immigrants

Edit: Here, let me grab your attention with some "bunk psychology" from le rebel media

Many of the links I'm posting are business-centric, which is supposedly cold and callous to common social issues. That's my point; even the beloved profit motive wants diversity. What you want to say is that it's all propaganda.

>Read Freud, Jung, Lacan, maybe even Zizek since you're a commie.

Yes, and what exactly, from their works, indicates an inclusive and skin-colour neutral approach to who you meet in society is regressive? Carl Jung? The guy who proposed that similar thoughts, images, mythologems, ideas and feelings are arisen from archetypes regardless of class, race, time period or location?

but yeah the psychology I mentioned sure is bunk

and yup, the openness to other cultures sure isn't a part of western success at all

Skeptics like you probably say diversity is only an artifact of success rather than a contributor, arguing that diverse populations flock to these places because they are rich or are becoming rich, but yea, nah. Not the case.

Look, it's perfectly fine to feel a sense of unity with those who share a similar background with you. But you're not for something, you're against something, and that is all non-white immigrants, and you play down the role they have had in Western society, the larger world, and in any individual's life, because of your trust in in-group bias.

You also hate integrated immigrants, that is, second-generation non-white, simply because they probably hail from a different culture. Lmao at "Whiteness/white purity/nationalism is responsible for the current western 'stable' society". The conservative backlash against immigration is nothing new. Before the 1920s in the US, it was Eastern and Southern Europe.

https://www.amazon.com/Strangers-Land-Patterns-American-1860-1925/dp/0813531233

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3856769/

People who believe fundamentally in social divisions like you lose track of what is actually real, and people like you who pretend non-white people aren't as valid as white people in the functioning of our current society, its past, its improvement, and in any person's social, cultural lives are wrong.

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/collaborating-across-cultures

http://www.npr.org/2014/03/21/292225798/does-diversity-on-research-team-improve-quality-of-science

obviously there can be conflict

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/cultural-disharmony-undermines-workplace-creativity

Honestly, so many of these ideas about "inter-cultural communication" is just common courtesy, openness, respect, and common ground.

>The best subjective understandings you'll ever have in life are not "facts", or even concepts that should be put into words.

Yes, and when my subjective understanding cannot be put into words, what can I do? How would I convey any of that to you? The facts and results give you a sense of how that understanding is applying through the broader public, as those are not subjective. What else can I show you? I've already talked about in general accessible terms what inclusivity and diversity is about, so I don't know what else you want from my comments.

You're asking for some "novel" wisdom from me, as if I need to build up on top of the inclusivity hegemony, its motivations and past analysis. You call yourself an intellectual yet you want me to explicate all of this to its bone? No thanks. To any layman, their "subjective understanding" is indeed good enough to understand what I've posted so far, so that is good enough for me. I'm not going to start going into post-structuralist theory just for you.

>I'm obviously not reading any of your articles

yea.

>I'm done with you now, it's sad to watch someone clutch onto Google as an argument.

The point isn't to teach you the philosophy behind this through these articles. I want to see how'd you debunk this general consensus people have come to regarding inclusion and diversity. Which so far is just "all of it is modern-age psychology, which is a joke". Our 1000s of year of wisdom have indeed lead us up to one of the most peaceful, advanced and productive times in history.

> I'm not going to bother addressing with a 10-foot pole

ahhhhh, of course, now I recognize who I'm talking to, lmao

>I am le post human, you are so primitive

I assure you what I've been saying is, distinctly, human.

The same Eisenhower who extremely critical of wealthy industrialist taking control of the national and attempting to exploit the poor to their benefit? I'm not saying everything he did was good, but he was aware that a certain, powerful segment of the population was more interested in ranking up a high score in their bank accounts than helping people.

> Neoliberalism, love it or hate it, saved the economy in the 80s and 90s.

That's a massive over-simplification, and mostly inaccurate. While several important metrics from measuring the economy did improve during that period, "real wages" (wages adjusted for inflation) didn't grow significantly between 1981 and 2011. A lot of the economy growth came from women entering the work force in larger numbers & obtaining wages comparable to men, from computers & automation massive boosting the productive per worker, and a massive increase in the access to credit (debt). Of the three, Neoliberalism/Laissez-Faire economy only really affected the third, with probably overall negative consequences. At the heart of the Great Recession was the house market collapse: Because of the lack of real wage growth, people couldn't afford to buy houses except through increasing ridiculous mortgages, which they were able to obtain since the investment class demands growth. This debt bubble was leveraged to create even more (imaginary) wealth, which showed up in most of the economy metrics (especially the stock market). It just disappeared when reality set in and real wages couldn't support incurred debt, crashing the economy.

> Nixon brought in the Environmental protection agency.

I put Nixon on the list for breaking the law to maintain political power. Without Watergate, he would not have made the list.

> Political parties respond to the needs and wants of the electorate.

The reason I mentioned think tanks is that they are one of the tools used by conservative to re-frame and shape the wants of the electorate. Most traditional think tanks collect facts and do analysis to build policy recommendations, but many conservative ones (especially ones funded by the Kochs) begin with the ideology and cherry-pick the data to support the policies they have already written. It's both intellectual dishonest and much easier to build a convincing narrative with. I suggest reading Dark Money and Democracy in Chains if you want to examine the interplay between conservative think tanks, public opinion and money.

> People are the ones who vote after all.

Which is why voter suppression and gerrymandering play such an important role is US elections. Given the ugly history of disenfranchisement in that country, it's much easier to build support for preventing "the wrong people" from voting that it is to actually convince other people to support your policies. It's disguising and disgraceful. Thankfully, the Supreme Court up here has been consistent on supporting everyone's right to vote.

Great questions. I don't think there's an easy or foolproof answer to them.

>should lay people who have zero expertise in a field trust such general academic consensuses as being broadly correct?

Broadly correct? I would think that's a solid way to look at things. I'm in agreement with you.

>Are there good reasons for non-experts to be skeptical about the scientific consensus on vaccines, climate change or evolution?

"Good" reasons? Eh........I'll give a few scattered thoughts here:

• Some people are just going to be contrarians. I don't have any sources to link at the moment, but I think we've all encountered this at some point.
  
• Other people, often those who feel they have been marginalized by society (ex. white people who watched their friends go to college but couldn't go themselves—I'm referring to my own mother in this case), have a deep longing for "secret knowledge" and the sense of power it brings. Michael Barkun's A Culture of Conspiracy gives one of the breakdowns of this phenomenon while Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American History (1966) shows that none of this is new. For people who usually possess traits we associate with intelligence (they are intensely curious and often willing to reading extensively) but who feel like they have been unfairly excluded from the centers of intellectual life, the idea that that everyone but them has it wrong is a bit intoxicating. Especially when a small groups of other marginalized people begin listening to them. I am not justifying this phenomenon—it probably shares some of the same social DNA as the incel movement—but I am trying to humanize it.
  
• In addition to these two groups (contrarians and the intellectually marginalized), we might also add those people who have been turned off by the fervency and (please, don't throw anything at me) fundamentalist fanaticism of some popular science devotees. While 99% of modern people simply go about their days with a fairly healthy view of science and knowledge, we are all aware of the loud fringe who wants to paint anyone who disagrees with them as a "science denier" and launch social media crusades against them. Again, I'm trying to use a scalpel here and not a broad brush—it's the militant defenders of Scientism who have (like their religious counterparts) managed to turn some people off.
  
• Then there are what I like to "gut thinkers." These often genuinely good and kind-hearted people often make decisions (like whether to vaccinated their kids or not) based on emotion rather than strict reason. For them, there is nothing in the world more important than their child and the idea of their child being harmed by something they chose to do terrifies them. While they might not ever realize it, they operate in a similar fashion to those people in the "Trolley Problem" who refuse to pull the lever and save some lives because then someone would be dying as a direct result of their action. These people often hear conflicting stories (vaccines are safe vs vaccines cause illnesses) and it troubles their gut to the point where, rather than sitting down to rationalize a solution, they avoid the issue or default to whatever option requires the least amount of direct action.
  
• Lastly we might add those people who would otherwise accept scientific findings but who have one or two core beliefs or predispositions that can complicate things. For example, while we commonly label American fundamentalists as "anti-science," anyone working in that field knows from the work of the eminent George Marsden that they are rather ardently pro-Baconian science—meaning that they absolutely love empirical, directly observable science based on inductive reasoning. What they reject is deductive science and its long-range projections both forwards and backwards in time. I can say from experience that understanding this and acknowledging it in discussions with these people does wonders for the conversation and really disarms a lot of suspicion.
  
• I don't know that there is a perfect solution here, but one possible approach would be to start affirming "folk culture" within modern society. I'm literally just tossing this one out here and I expected it to be a bit controversial, but maybe it will stimulate some discussion. In essence, we (as modern, scientific Westerners) usually don't find it problematic to acknowledge, accommodate, and affirm indigenous forms of knowledge. In fact, we often condemn those who try to "Westernize" others for being colonial or destroying culture. For those who belong to tribes or ethnic enclaves, practicing non-scientific forms of knowledge is seen as a good thing by most of the intellectual elites in the West. But for those born into Western society, there is little socially-acceptable opportunity to seek out and develop alternative forms of knowledge. Perhaps creating a safe social arena for such a "folk culture" to re-emerge could give these above groups a healthy and socially legitimate avenue for exploring and fulfilling some of their deep unmet needs without the subversiveness that presently undermines a lot of the good work that science is doing.

While researching for my novel this morning I came across a book that seems spot-on relevant to the conversation we had yesterday. It's about why America's politics are so far to the right. Here's the link and description in case you're curious:

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0307947904

> Why is America living in an age of profound economic inequality? Why, despite the desperate need to address climate change, have even modest environmental efforts been defeated again and again? Why have protections for employees been decimated? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers?
The conventional answer is that a popular uprising against “big government” led to the ascendancy of a broad-based conservative movement. But as Jane Mayer shows in this powerful, meticulously reported history, a network of exceedingly wealthy people with extreme libertarian views bankrolled a systematic, step-by-step plan to fundamentally alter the American political system.
The network has brought together some of the richest people on the planet. Their core beliefs—that taxes are a form of tyranny; that government oversight of business is an assault on freedom—are sincerely held. But these beliefs also advance their personal and corporate interests: Many of their companies have run afoul of federal pollution, worker safety, securities, and tax laws.
The chief figures in the network are Charles and David Koch, whose father made his fortune in part by building oil refineries in Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany. The patriarch later was a founding member of the John Birch Society, whose politics were so radical it believed Dwight Eisenhower was a communist. The brothers were schooled in a political philosophy that asserted the only role of government is to provide security and to enforce property rights.
When libertarian ideas proved decidedly unpopular with voters, the Koch brothers and their allies chose another path. If they pooled their vast resources, they could fund an interlocking array of organizations that could work in tandem to influence and ultimately control academic institutions, think tanks, the courts, statehouses, Congress, and, they hoped, the presidency. Richard Mellon Scaife, the mercurial heir to banking and oil fortunes, had the brilliant insight that most of their political activities could be written off as tax-deductible “philanthropy.”
These organizations were given innocuous names such as Americans for Prosperity. Funding sources were hidden whenever possible. This process reached its apotheosis with the allegedly populist Tea Party movement, abetted mightily by the Citizens United decision—a case conceived of by legal advocates funded by the network.
The political operatives the network employs are disciplined, smart, and at times ruthless. Mayer documents instances in which people affiliated with these groups hired private detectives to impugn whistle-blowers, journalists, and even government investigators. And their efforts have been remarkably successful. Libertarian views on taxes and regulation, once far outside the mainstream and still rejected by most Americans, are ascendant in the majority of state governments, the Supreme Court, and Congress. Meaningful environmental, labor, finance, and tax reforms have been stymied.
Jane Mayer spent five years conducting hundreds of interviews-including with several sources within the network-and scoured public records, private papers, and court proceedings in reporting this book. In a taut and utterly convincing narrative, she traces the byzantine trail of the billions of dollars spent by the network and provides vivid portraits of the colorful figures behind the new American oligarchy.
Dark Money is a book that must be read by anyone who cares about the future of American democracy.

I've actually been really disappointed to read into the history and current usage of most modern non-profits (charities) and realized that they are basically a tax dodge for the super-rich. For instance, think of the tax breaks for donating to various non-profits. They don't disappear if you own the charity, allowing you to create charities, place your own money in them to reduce your tax burden, and spend it how you like.

And almost none has to be directed towards your stated goal, similar to how non-profits like The Wounded Warriors Project use less than 10% of the donated money to actually help veterans.

Even worse, depending on the type of 501 non-profit it is, you can usually use that money politically. Recent-ish court cases have determined that, even ones that were originally designed to not permit political spending, the word "primarily" allows for up to 49% of money to be spend on political issues directly. And obfuscation can allow for plenty more to indirectly support political issues.

A final piece of the puzzle is how you can set up tax-free trusts for your kids to avoid estate taxes. They sound good: the rich get no taxes to transfer money to their kids because the interest that accrues on the trust for a decade or two goes to charities. But when own the charity you are giving the interest to, it's just a tax dodge.

If you are interested in reading more, the book Dark Money is a fascinating read. It is a bit left of center, though. Provides a lot of background on non-profits and their inception though... they used to be illegal and thought of as thoroughly un-American. And now, they are used to take billions of dollars from the wealthy, while reducing their tax burden, to fund their political causes with no limits, thanks to cases like Citizen's United.

Sorry if this was all a little off topic.

Classical liberalism isn't the only ism concerned with evidence and reasoning, but since it's apparently one of the reference points you happen to be familiar with you're just assuming that must be what I mean. Instead, I'm talking about the kind of modern liberalism described books such as Fear Itself by Ira Katznelson. You seem to be talking about the caricature of modern liberalism typically advanced by the likes of Jonah Goldberg which tends to be laughed out of the room by serious historians.

Modern liberalism is what we got with Roosevelt's reimagining of the role and purpose of government in managing civil society as he dealt with the after effects of the Great Depression and a World War, and the post Roosevelt task of establishing the post-world War II order. In Roosevelt's time liberal democracies were in competition with ascendant autocratic and authoritarian regimes around the world, and there was very much a sentiment among public intellectuals that democracy might not be able to compete with these other forms of governance. This liberalism uses institutions to effectively deal with large-scale demographic and economic trends, effectively support integrate technology into the modern world, and carefully manage international norms.

All of which requires careful, nuanced engagement with empirical realities and academic research, and requires fostering an environment respectful of the rule of law. And you can see expressions of this liberalism in the post-world War II order we helped establish in democracies in Western Europe, often cited as ideals by liberals that we should move toward. In short, it's a bit more nuanced than regulation loving terrorist sympathizers.

Meanwhile, during the same time conservative Democrats in the South were happy to make common cause with Roosevelt because New Deal programs meant the transfer of resources from wealthy Northeastern states to the South, which is fine with them so long as it could be executed in a way that didn't interfere with the prevailing racial order, which is why states rights was such a point of emphasis. Any federal administration of programs brought with it the possibility of sharing economic opportunities not just with poor white people but also poor black people. Once it became clear that the Democratic party was aligning itself with the civil rights movement, conservatives rebelled and embraced the Republican Party and gradually rolled back the New Deal and crushed the labor movement, allowing a constantly evolving structure of business and industry groups to become the animating forces of politics, especially on the Republican side.

The various forces of racial identity politics and business interests consolidated over a gradual process that spanned decades and culminated in the election of Reagan and the emergence of anti-intellectualism. The business-friendly nature of the party has made conservatives disdainful of research showing the hazards of smoking, and later dismissive of empirical research about the dangers of climate change or the truth of evolution.

And conservative leaders whipped up the passions of their base by stirring up animosity toward immigrants, foreigners, poor people who aren't white (eg welfare queens), and playing up fears for political advantage during the Cold War and War on Terror. The obsession with security, fear of some sort of apocalypse or world war or terrorist attack always on the verge of happening has indicated a desire for strong leaders, a strong sense of tribal patriotism, and a worship of strength and especially military leaders. Or authoritarian tough guy leaders in general such as Trump.

In a superficial sense it's true that anyone of any ideology could hypothetically be sympathetic toward authoritarianism. But it also ignores the facts on the ground about the dominant political passions that animate the two ideologies in the United States at the moment, which clearly indicate a strong desire for authoritarianism on the side of conservatives which simply isn't matched even remotely on the liberal side.

Further reading:

• Fear Itself
  
• Anything by John Dean on Authoritarianism
  
• The Republican Brain
  
• Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
  
  

Maybe this?

From: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/kochland-examines-how-the-koch-brothers-made-their-fortune-and-the-influence-it-bought

>If there is any lingering uncertainty that the Koch brothers are the primary sponsors of climate-change doubt in the United States, it ought to be put to rest by the publication of “Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America,” by the business reporter Christopher Leonard. This seven-hundred-and-four-page tome doesn’t break much new political ground, but it shows the extraordinary behind-the-scenes influence that Charles and David Koch have exerted to cripple government action on climate change.
>
>Leonard, who has written for Bloomberg Businessweek and the Wall Street Journal, devotes most of the book to an even-handed telling of how the two brothers from Wichita, Kansas, built up Koch Industries, a privately owned business so profitable that together they have amassed some hundred and twenty billion dollars, a fortune larger than that of Amazon’s C.E.O., Jeff Bezos, or the Microsoft founder Bill Gates. The project took Leonard more than six years to finish and it draws on hundreds of hours of interviews, including with Charles Koch, the C.E.O. and force without equal atop the sprawling corporate enterprise. (David Koch retired from the firm last year.)
>
>While “Kochland” is more focused on business than on politics, in line with Leonard’s “The Meat Racket: The Secret Takeover of America’s Food Business,” from 2014, it nonetheless adds new details about the ways in which the brothers have leveraged their fortune to capture American politics. Leonard shows that the Kochs’ political motives are both ideological, as hardcore free-market libertarians, and self-interested, serving their fossil-fuel-enriched bottom line. The Kochs’ secret sauce, as Leonard describes it, has been a penchant for long-term planning, patience, and flexibility; a relentless pursuit of profit; and the control that comes from owning some eighty per cent of their business empire themselves, without interference from stockholders or virtually anyone else.
>
>Saying anything new about the Kochs isn’t easy. The two brothers have been extensively covered: they are the subject of Daniel Schulman’s excellent biography “Sons of Wichita,” from 2014, and the focus of much in-depth investigative reporting, including a piece I wrote for The New Yorker, from 2010, and my book “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right,” from 2016.
>
>Leonard, nonetheless, manages to dig up valuable new material, including evidence of the Kochs’ role in perhaps the earliest known organized conference of climate-change deniers, which gathered just as the scientific consensus on the issue was beginning to gel. The meeting, in 1991, was sponsored by the Cato Institute, a Washington-based libertarian think tank, which the Kochs founded and heavily funded for years. As Leonard describes it, Charles Koch and other fossil-fuel magnates sprang into action that year, after President George H. W. Bush announced that he would support a treaty limiting carbon emissions, a move that posed a potentially devastating threat to the profits of Koch Industries. At the time, Bush was not an outlier in the Republican Party. Like the Democrats, the Republicans largely accepted the scientific consensus on climate change, reflected in the findings of expert groups such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which had formed in 1988, under the auspices of the United Nations.

Since they were English, consider that they may actually have emigrated to Canada first. The fare from Liverpool was subsidized by the British government to encourage Protestant English population growth in Canada. A significant percentage of new arrivals then went on to the U.S. by crossing into Vermont or New Hampshire -- but those tended to stay in New England or Pennsylvania/New York. By the 1850s, others were crossing the Great Lakes from Ontario, landing mostly at Buffalo or Chicago. And Chicago isn't that far from Miami County.

Having said that, there are also various gaps in the passenger lists for New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, which would be the obvious points of debarkation for a direct crossing from Liverpool or Plymouth. I have a couple of Irish families that I'm pretty certain landed at Boston in the 1840s, but I've never been able to locate them in the ship lists.

On the whole puzzle of trans-Atlantic immigration, by the way, the very best source of genealogical information and methodology is They Came in Ships by John Philip Colletta. Phil is the recognized expert in this area. If you ever go to the NGS or FGS conferences, he's also an excellent speaker, and he teaches in the IGHR at Samford every year.

> I would argue that the most successful cultures that we have currently are powered by a blend of capitalism and socialism,

OK, you're welcome to have such an opinion.

>and they consistently provide high quality of life, education and freedom to their citizens.

You are right that their citizens enjoy many benefits and privileges. But those benefits and privileges are created at the expense of people elsewhere, specifically what's referred to as the "Global South". That's how imperialism works.

It's not equitable for everybody because capitalism requires inequality to function. The very essence of capitalism, profit, is dependent on inequality between the workers (who are dispossessed) and the capitalists (who possess the means of production). With imperialism, you see this balance shifting more from the intranational scale to the international scale -- there are countries where vast swaths of people are exploited for the benefit of other countries.

Look at countries like Liberia, Zimbabwe, Cote d'Ivoire, Thailand, Bangladesh, Honduras, etc. The exploitation is blindingly obvious, especially when you consider the colonial history of these places.

>Bad mouthing capitalism because corporate controlled US capitalism is doing horrible things currently does not make any sense.

It's not just the USA. It's all capitalism, everywhere.

Check out "Divided World Divided Class" by Zak Cope and Sakai's "Settlers".

It's How the Scots Invented the Modern World. Similar titles include How the Irish Saved Civilization, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, and Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America. None of them are by the same author, but they're all interesting historical books with similar titles (How some great culture did great things that built what we have now), none the less.

I would love to find similar titles about other countries, cultures, and civilizations. They're always so interesting!

This is a great question that I have thought about a million times. I have actually spent a lot of time trying to find a book on it, but I have not come across one that is specifically about Sociology or Psychology.

I first started to think about this when I was getting my masters degree (in Sociology). Often times I was super excited to share the things I would learn with my family and friends, and how the things I was (and still am) learning are often in contradiction to the things I was told/learned growing up. For context, I'm a white girl who grew up in an upper-middle class politically conservative suburb in a large city with successful parents, and I was always given everything I wanted/needed. I considered myself a Christian and I told people that I was a republican (although I knew nothing about politics and was just identifying with my parents).

Then I started studying Soci and my entire perspective on the world changed. It opened my eyes and forced me to look beyond my tunnel vision of society. It was really hard at times to come to terms with things that I thought I already understood, especially social issues that I had never thought about before or issues that had always been presented to me in a one-sided, biased manner.

A good example of this is the trope of the Welfare Queen. I was told that poor people, esp. poor black people, were moochers and only wanted handouts because they were lazy and didn't want to get a job. Of course, I learned that the Welfare Queen (and welfare "fraud") is a myth that was promulgated by Ronald Regan in order to stigmatize people in poverty so that he could convince Americans that rolling back the social safety net was justified because it was only being used by poor black (read: undeserving) citizens. The truth is that most people on welfare do have jobs (i.e. the 'working poor'). Also, the welfare reforms of 1996 created a 5-year maximum lifetime cap on benefits so that welfare "cheaters" (which did not exist anywhere near the level that we're often told) were literally unable to collect benefits for life (also, contrary to popular opinion, women do not have more babies to get more benefits. In fact, if a woman has a child while receiving benefits, she and her family will be removed from the rolls). Welfare is probably one of the least understood/mischaracterized social issue in American society.

Science in general is often met with the sting of anti-intellectualism, which is part of the answer to your question. However, I think social science in particular gets it worse than the 'natural' sciences like Biology and Chemistry. I used to say that it was because people were generally more suspect of social sciences, but I think it's more than that. People like to dismiss facts about social issues that they don't agree with or have a different view on because it's much easier to disagree that we live in a post-racial society (we don't) than it is to disagree on the functions of bodily organs. People also tend to conflate their individual life experiences with overall reality (i.e. "well, i've never experienced [blank] so it must not be true or its exaggerated" or "well, I know someone who is [blank] but [blank] doesn't happen to them"). You get what I am saying here? Most people don't question or critically think about social norms or commonsense 'truths' because these 'truths' are so embedded in our milieu that its hard to imagine otherwise. So instead of thinking critically, people dismiss sociological knowledge as either "elitist" or "not real science" so that they can remain undisturbed in their own little worlds.

Once I saw a question on r/askreddit that asked what the slogan of your college major or job would be. I would say, "Sociology: reminding people of uncomfortable truths since 1838" or "Sociology: everything you were taught about society was a big lie" lol.

I'm sorry I can't find any literature for you, but I can recommend these instead:

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life

The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters.

Race is a social construct. Biologically and genetically all humans belong to the Human Race, but race in the black/white sense is a product of culture and society.

In the US, race has often been defined along the lines of 'ability to be a good citizen'. There were a select few (i.e. whites) who were deemed smart and good enough to grasp the reigns of citizenship. There were others (i.e. different over time... Blacks, Irish, Germans, Mexicans, etc. etc...) who were deemed unfit for citizenship. Its not necessarily that these types of people were sorted by skin color and country of origin; moreover it was that these types of people were deemed unfit, and sorted into the appropriate category (i.e. throughout much of the south 1890's-1920's, Italian immigrants were considered black).

This book is one of the best on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/Whiteness-Different-Color-European-Immigrants/dp/0674951913

Yes these are hopeful signals. I would add:

• The emergence of tech as the locus of economic growth in the U.S. Asians are underrepresented in leadership in general, but if there's one industry that has more Asian leaders than others, it's tech. Tech is also based in San Francisco, the first city of Asian America.
  
  \> we've seen a massive arrival of smart and hardworking educated mainlanders arrive to western nations such as Canada
  
  Not only smart and hardworking, but more importantly, assertive and unafraid to claim their rights. Those mainlanders don't feel any need to act like guests in America, unlike the generations of Asian Americans that came before them.
  
  All this is great, but remember, it could change in a flash.
  
  https://www.amazon.com/American-Exodus-Second-Generation-Americans-1901-1949-ebook/dp/B07V2BXLJZ
  
  In the first decades of the 20th century, almost half of the Chinese Americans born in the United States moved to China—a relocation they assumed would be permanent. At a time when people from around the world flocked to the United States, this little-noticed emigration belied America’s image as a magnet for immigrants and a land of upward mobility for all. Fleeing racism, Chinese Americans who sought greater opportunities saw China, a tottering empire and then a struggling republic, as their promised land.

Haha - my girlfriend keeps telling me to start a YouTube channel. Personally, I think she just wants me to rant around the house less lol. But I've been thinking about putting something together - the lovely response from Redditors when I post comments like this make me think it might have a chance to be a successful way of getting the message out.

But if you're interested in reading about this stuff here are a few books by the people with real talent who did all the investigative legwork that I'm just repeating:

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307947904/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_V2.xDbT0G7T9Q

Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America https://www.amazon.com/dp/1101980966/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_23.xDbQ9EHJR5

Unfortunately, I don't think it can be said with full context. But I'll try. You can get what the book is about here:
https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0307947904/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1506716249&sr=8-1&keywords=dark+money

Basically, the trust fund kids (koch brothers and other billionaires) are creating/funding think tanks that focuses on whatever means to add to their bottom line. They are willing to skewer education in the way that teaches limited government is good for business. However, when the bailout idea came, they gladly took it. So they're not really taking on any ideological side, but whatever is easy for them to gain more money.

The reason for this is because the Koch brothers were brought up in a very militaristic style parenting by their father.. who teaches you must do whatever means to win. They were pitted against each other in fights, games, etc. so they carry that determination in business as well, and it's causing harm in our political system and society because they have so much control of wealth and thus influence.


There's a lot more to this obviously, the book is really a must read.

Richard Hofstadter won the Pulitzer Prize in the 1950s for writing the definitive book on this subject:
http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Intellectualism-American-Life-Richard-Hofstadter/dp/0394703170/

De Tocqueville is also nice, but Hofstadter has 100 years more of history to work with. He does a nice job tracing the history of American anti-intellectualism, its genesis in a mix of faith and egalitarianism, and its long evolution over the course of American history. But this shit is old as the country - he starts off talking about how Thomas Jefferson got flack during his Presidential campaign for being a snooty intellectual.

If you want to hear more about this I recommend "Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right". Unfortunately - seminars like this are only the tip of the ice-berg. There are huge ideological enterprises set up with goal of establishing "beach-heads" at prestigious universities by setting up private organizations that are attached to the university but paid to publish certain results. Their role is usually to promote free markets and encourage the inclusion of economic costs in law (not just public good). The Mercatus Institute is another example of one of these privately-funded-but-publicly-housed organizations. They're the guys who made news a few months ago when they published a study on Bernie Sander's medicare-for-all plan that showed that even though it was expensive - it was still cheaper than what we're spending now.

It's interesting how exposure influences perception of language. I found that word as a young child because I read books for teenagers, I think it was in a British novel from a few decades ago. Maybe CS Lewis, Narnia and such. It would've been from that generation and it had to be fiction.

On the one hand you've got someone that thinks it sounds derogatory and the other hand I think that sounds a bit silly. But it's down to experience and familiarity. Relative stuff. It doesn't make them dumb, it merely displays their thought process.

Yesterday I found someone that thought something was being falsely wordy and just throwing a thesaurus at a paragraph. It was actually a very specific and efficient description of a programming library and the environment/data it was designed for. It made sense to me apart from some terms relating to neural networks, it didn't even use many complex words, but he just thought it was someone being disingenuous.

That perception issue is a large driving force behind anti-intellectualism. Perceiving intelligent or complicated things as negative, bad, or of ill intent/purpose. Through the right light even this comment could find issue with someone due to the verbosity in the midst of the thread. But it's just late and I blab when I'm tired!

If you find perception at all interesting in this context I highly recommend the classic 'Anti-intellectualism in American Life' (wikipedia, Amazon) for an observation of political and social thought up to the 1950s. A really novel bit of nonfiction. Today the idea is still alive and well, but you may know of it now from mainstream media as a "Cult of Ignorance".

I'd like to also CYA because /u/CAPS_IS_LOCKED is definitely not related to that. It was just tangentially related to the initial view of something. I don't want people thinking I think this is actually about them!

Country club does reference federal minimum security prisons -- however the "ultimate" ones tend to be like, in Connecticut-type WASPy places. (My dad enjoyed one.)
California has significant mestizo and even some Scots-Irish, that place is huuuuuuge and diverse.

New York has significant Scots-Irish, Russian, Irish and Italian populations, and I bet the max security in Russia is less nice than "Little Siberia" in NY.

This tracks the true scope of the Scots-Irish diaspora (many who just put down 'American' or 'English' on the Census: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/10/the-scots-irish-vote/27853/

Here is a book on the feisty feists: https://www.amazon.com/Born-Fighting-Scots-Irish-Shaped-America/dp/0767916891

Here is your Russian mafia Attica story: https://books.google.com/books?id=GhnYAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA169&lpg=PA169&dq=russian+mafia+attica&source=bl&ots=ROfpQg_2Ua&sig=-V0P0gcKPdNpCEsjetXpf7OTc-k&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjAkLG8gOHQAhUFfiYKHYEnAF8Q6AEIIDAB#v=onepage&q=russian%20mafia%20attica&f=false

Yeah, I was genuinely confused. Apparently the problem is that because developers are motivated by profit, they will only ever construct “luxury” units for the wealthy. There was no consideration that allowing more development would incentivIze developers to target other market segments by making those projects more profitable and by saturating the high end of the market.

They also apparently were convinced that the real estate market was unique because it has been so dramatically screwed by high end investment wealth sucking up properties and leaving them vacant. The problem was that real estate has been “commodified.”

There was also a lot of blurring between developers making money by building and selling properties, landlords making money through rent, and owners making money through appreciation.

Edit: On reflection, though, the parking guy was more frustrating. The “profit is bad” guy or gal was at least thoughtful, coherent, and recommended a book that I’m not going to agree with but looks like an interesting articulation of the other side’s POV. Parking dude was just a hypocritical Silicon Valley tech type who seems to think libertarianism is great as long as it applies to other people.

I'll attempt to tackle this question:

First, most historians would disagree with Chomsky in regards to the 20th century being the only time that African Americans had a chance of "entering" American society (despite the fact that they already inhabit American society, though we will give Chomsky a pass and assume he meant equitable access to meritocracy and large scale integration). For instance, many scholars, such as David Roediger, have written about the period of Reconstruction as one in which a multi-racial and inclusive society was possible, and the failure of this possibility is reflective of the prevailing influence of race, class, and the importance of the "wages of whiteness" in perpetuating racism and racial divide. If you are interested in this topic, I would recommend two of Roediger's influential works; The Wages of Whiteness and How Race Survived U.S History

In regards to Chomsky's statements on the Drug War, largely, I would agree. However, I would push them and state that the Drug War is part of a longer history dating back to Reconstruction in which the criminalization and institutionalization of African Americans was a means to control and subvert their population. Some historians have gone as far as to say that mass incarceration of African Americans has come to replace slave labor in the United States, as these prisoners (then and now) were forced to work for little to no wages for certain industries (picking cotton in the South for example). There are many scholarly articles and monographs on the subject, however, if you are interested in the post Civil Rights era I would recommend The New Jim Crowe as an a starting point.

In regards to the last fact, I suppose the claim is subjective to what one defines as "freedom". However, many historians have demonstrated that whatever "freedom" blacks have gained throughout their history, it has always been subjected and juxtaposed with the unequal access to particular rights, liberties, and resources available to whites. George Lipsitz has written that public policy and private prejudice has been intertwined throughout American history, leading to tangible benefits for whites in terms of education and employment and an "investment" in whiteness against Blackness. Moreover, Du Bois wrote in Black Reconstruction that whiteness provided particular "psychological and public wages" that promoted racial prejudice and racial stratification. It is through this paradigm in which Chomsky's statements must be viewed. Largely I agree with his statements, though I wish he would preface them with the scholarly and theoretical underpinnings in which I have attempted to provide you. If you are interested in the subject, I would highly recommend reading Lipsitz's work that I have linked and Roediger's How Race Survived U.S history as an entry point.

They epitomize libertarianism. They're largely (almost solely) responsible for the rise of right wing and libertarian think tanks and ideals in the United states over the last several decades. If you ever want to be disgusted by the efforts and successes of the Koch brothers and their oligarch friends, I suggest this book: https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0307947904/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1550262479&sr=8-1&keywords=dark+money. It outlines how they've infiltrated the government, academic institutions, and general society with evil intentions and great success.

This is frustrating. I agree with Maher on his point, but he really should have prepared himself to explain it. He just made a statement and didn't really bother to discuss it further... and in my opinion, that's probably part of the problem of American stupidity. Nobody has the patience to listen to further explanations or intellectual discussions.

I suggest to anyone interested in this topic to read Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. It was written in 1964, and won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction that year... but it is still extremely relevant today.

Well yeah because they ruin the experience, for the most part they are new to all of this. It's like a frat party with kegs and people just going to get fucked up and get laid. I've been guilty of being a snob too, I just want to see things progress. I think music has an effect on society as well. It's complicated but I think if we can get a good combination of fun and deep music it will have a profound effect. I saw what happened when hip hop became all about vip and same thing is happening with dance music.

I think the problem with music in general is that commercial side becomes anti-intellectual and the underground get's marginalized, and can then become elitist, which sometimes leads to the death of both and that's why we have cycles in music. It's so much more complicated, but you can blame big business like live nation and clear channel for that, the agencies, the artists..greed in general.

Check this stuff out, want to see more of this

http://www.businessinsider.com/bottle-service-is-over-at-nyc-clubs-2013-3

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/arts/music/pacha-in-ibiza-feels-dance-clubs-center-of-gravity-shift.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

Less of this.

http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Intellectualism-American-Life-Richard-Hofstadter/dp/0394703170/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370284623&sr=8-1&keywords=hofstadter+anti-intellectualism

Basically it all needs to come together, and I'd like to think we are headed in that direction. Thanks to the Interwebs.

I think these would help you understand the key arguments and points made about whiteness:

• Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940
  
  
• Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race
  
  
• How the Irish Became White
  
  Political Sociology articles that might interest you:
  
  
• Pettigrew, Thomas (1998). Reactions Toward the New Minorities of Western Europe. Annual Review of Sociology. 24(1) : 77-103.
  
  
• Banks, Antoine J, and Nicholas A Valentino. 2012. “Emotional Substrates of White Racial Attitudes.” American Journal of Political Science 56(2): 286–297
  
  
• Hutchings, L. Vincent and Valentino, Nicholas, A. (2004). The centrality of race in American politics. Annual Review of Political Science. 7(1): 383-408.
  
  
  I'm not expecting you to go away and read all this, but the books and articles can be found online (look up libgen and scihub if you need free access), so there's nothing to stop you skimming them or reading scholarly reviews. There's more where that came from so let me know if you have anything in particular you'd like to read about.
  

There's an awful lot at that link, and I don't have time to go through all of it. But I hope a few suggestions for sources will be helpful to you anyway.

David Roediger's How Race Survived US History is readable and (like the article you linked) aims at a sweeping history of race and whiteness in the US.

Cheryl Harris' article "Whiteness as Property" is also a broadly-focused piece, and one that's inspired a lot of conversation. You'd need to have access to the Harvard Law Review and a willingness to push through some technical language, but it's worth it.

Harris, Cheryl I. “Whiteness as Property.” Harvard Law Review 106, no. 8 (1993).

I hope that helps.

PBS just had a great documentary on the Panthers called Black Panthers, Vanguard of the Revolution which does a good job of giving a broad and balanced overview of the Panthers. If you want more specific information you can read stuff like [this] (https://www.amazon.com/Taste-Power-Black-Womans-Story/dp/0385471076) or [this] (https://www.amazon.com/Hillbilly-Nationalists-Urban-Rebels-Black/dp/1935554662).

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0307947904

Your arguments are so rampant with slippery slopes its effectively pointless to talk to you. Read the book above, how fucking naive do you have to be to consider things like Super PACs, Citizens United, lobbyists, etc. to consider it a "theory". You are clearly beside yourself, and I'm sorry you can't have a level headed discussion without hitting every emotional branch on the way down.

The best part is is that I've never advocated for not voting, an implication you are desperately clinging to.

Buddy, flyover country views anyone that isn't borderline illiterate as out of touch.

Every demographic out there is just detached from reality, democrats will literally never take them back, ever, they're a lost cause.

https://www.amazon.com/Anti-Intellectualism-American-Life-Richard-Hofstadter/dp/0394703170

These people run attack ads on people for having a college degree.

The only way you will take flyover country is if you start speaking at a 3rd grade level and pretending to be dumb.

The problem isn't so much the DNC being out of touch as the DNC having fact base policies that appeal to the educated. This shit has been going on for a long time.


>> Edmund Morgan, on the basis of his careful study of slavery in Virginia, sees racism not as "natural" to black-white difference, but something coming out of class scorn, a realistic device for control. "If freemen with disappointed hopes should make common cause with slaves of desperate hope, the results might be worse than anything Bacon had done. The answer to the problem, obvious if unspoken and only gradually recognized, was racism, to separate dangerous free whites from dangerous black slaves by a screen of racial contempt."

>> There was still another control which became handy as the colonies grew, and which had crucial consequences for the continued rule of the elite throughout American history. Along with the very rich and the very poor, there developed a white middle class of small planters, independent farmers, city artisans, who, given small rewards for joining forces with merchants and planters, would be a solid buffer against black slaves, frontier Indians, and very poor whites. The growing cities generated more skilled workers, and the governments cultivated the support of white mechanics by protecting them from the competition of both slaves and free Negroes.

>> As early as 1686, the council in New York ordered that "noe Negro or Slave be suffered to work on the bridge as a Porter about any goods either imported or Exported from or into this City." In the southern towns too, white craftsmen and traders were protected from Negro competition. In 1764 the South Carolina legislature prohibited Charleston masters from employing Negroes or other slaves as mechanics or in handicraft trades. Middle-class Americans might be invited to join a new elite by attacks against the corruption of the established rich. The New Yorker Cadwallader Golden, in his Address to the Freeholders in 1747, attacked the wealthy as tax dodgers unconcerned with the welfare of others (although he himself was wealthy) and spoke for the honesty and dependability of "the midling rank of mankind" in whom citizens could best trust "our liberty & Property."

>> This was to become a critically important rhetorical device for the rule of the few, who would speak to the many of "our" liberty, "our" property, "our" country.

Great read for those interested in a more historical look at the subject. Very well argued and interesting book, very eye opening in terms of the many different aspects of American society and how they developed over the last few hundred years.

http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Intellectualism-American-Life-Richard-Hofstadter/dp/0394703170

"Surprising Op-ed"??


"Singing a new tune"?!?!


Charles and David Koch are the unrivaled kings of gaslighting and manipulation.

They have spent literally hundreds millions of dollars, over decades, on a concentrated effort to influence academia, the media, and public policy towards their pro-corporate (profits) and anti-goverment (public accountability) ends.

"Dark Money" should be required reading for everyone.

Buy it, trust me: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0307947904

Or listen to the audiobook free here:

Part 1: https://youtu.be/3uoaTlB5oPA

Part 2: https://youtu.be/gcQQKalLbZs

He just described America in general. Intellectualism is frowned upon in every facet of life save for other intellectuals.

https://smile.amazon.com/Anti-Intellectualism-American-Life-Richard-Hofstadter/dp/0394703170?sa-no-redirect=1

For anyone interested in a historical study of this, frankly, uniquely American problem I highly recommend Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter. It pretty dated now (1968 I believe) but he does a remarkable job going through American history and examining the relationship between the experts (not merely academics) and the "common people."

Anything by David Emmons and his study of the Butte Irish will be useful. I also really like After the Gold Rush (http://www.amazon.com/After-Gold-Rush-California-1849-1870/dp/0804711364) by Ralph Mann. Ronald M. James, The Roar and the Silence may also be of use. These are all from the mining West and deal with industry and opportunity for immigrants. I can provide more. Do you have specific questions? Without focus, the bibliography is unending.

People were incredibly mobile in the early modern period, despite the many obstacles which made travel difficult. Hundreds of thousands of people emigrated to the new world in the 16th century, and there was plenty of movement within Europe itself (and not just by the wealthy).

For a study of the movement of ordinary people across the Atlantic in the 16th century, see I. Altman, Emigrants and Society: Extremadura and Spanish America in the Sixteenth Century ( http://www.amazon.com/Emigrants-Society-Extremadura-Spanish-Sixteenth/dp/0520064941 ).

For a very interesting microhistorical study of how much one peasant could move around in southern France and norther Spain in the 16th century, see N. Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre ( http://books.google.com/books?id=5f46_hWsJAkC ). This book is a really fun read - it's about a peasant who leaves his wife, travels away from his village, joins the army, and then comes back many years later - only people are pretty sure the guy who comes back isn't the same person as the man who left (but his wife backs him up, and no one can prove he's an impostor). Peasants could get around.

FYI the Mercer Famiky was/is a major player in the Koch network that brought us the radical right and who now own the Republican Party.

Read Dark Money, buy a copy for a friend.

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0307947904

I honestly don't think college is necessary. You could actually learn about this history on your own. This sub is a good place to start. There are also books like Ronald Takaki's Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans.

Richard Holfstradter has a good collection of the Lincoln Douglas debates.

Another great work published in 1963 that still applies today.

Yes I agree. People interested in this topic might want to read this book. It was written in 1966, but many of the things it says are still true today.

Because American culture rewards confidence.

Slightly off topic: If anyone is interested in learning about some of the history of the American psyche, I highly highly recommend the book "Born Fightin'" by Jim Webb. He traces the immigration and influence of the Ulster-Scots (known here as Scots-Irish) in the US, and the ways that they have influenced, and continue to influence America, from militarism to suspicion of outsiders and government to country-western music to feuds in Appalacia.

>Seeing as how a bunch of people are putting forth the effort to COMMENT on the (ir)relevance of your links,

You mean like 3?

>I kinda think they're willing to make the effort to also downvote you.

Alright, 3 downvotes explained. Would you like to conjecture on the remainder?

I mean, it's not complex. Reddit is basically just a small sampling of America at this point, and America has a long, proud tradition of being staunchly anti-intellectual (fun book on the subject, if you're curious). Combine that with a thread title that is likely to invite viewing by the precise people I am disparaging, and bingo-dingo we have an explanation. It's nothing to sweat over.

I'm afraid it's nothing new, though I'd agree it's getting worse over time. I recently read this book, "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life", which won a Pulitzer in 1964. Worth a read if you're interested in the subject.

TL;DR?

One of the most appealing books I read similar to this, which was written in 1980.

A couple notable things I remember from it is that around the 1910s, blacks had a better literacy rate than many of the new European immigrant groups.

The author's main conclusions were:

1. Blacks faced intensely more discrimination than European immigrants and their children did
   
   
2. Most new Euro immigrants settled in northern cities, which offered better job opportunities and had better schools compared to the South, where a majority of blacks lived. Blacks who moved north did better; but see #1

I recommend this book. I read it a couple of years ago, it is a great account of just what you describe that happened in the 60's. It is a real eye opener.

Keep digging:

Look up Jane Mayer and Nancy MacLean.

Look into the Koch, Scaife, Olin, De Vos, Bradley, and Coors families, as well as Sheldon Adelson.

Look into the economics departments at the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech and George Mason University since the 1950s.

Follow the money.

And look at the use of neurolinguistic programming in the higher levels of the fundraising, voter registration and get-out-the-vote schemes in both of our major political parties.

And once you've done all that, go volunteer to work for your county or state party political organization to see how the pyramid works and whether or not I'm talking out the side of my neck.

cc: u/Lamont-Cranston, u/troublesomefaux

Upvote, upvote, upvote.

What you are talking about is people asserting an Anglo cultural norm as the Norm and then faulting black people or whomever for "falling short".

"This is part of their culture."

Interestingly this is a feature of the specific cultures in West Africa that are ancestral to African Americans, specifically in the Yoruba language area. Hausa and other northerners remark on this and it is something of a stereotype. As it happens it's also a stereotype of Germans in Europe, one that Germans are aware of and are a little sensitive about.

Class and ethnicity are linked in America - obviously WRT to African Americans but it also true for Scotch Irish and others. James Webb has a really good discussion of how Scotch Irish culture has become emblematic of blue collar people in general: http://www.amazon.com/Born-Fighting-Scots-Irish-Shaped-America/dp/0767916891

Well, you are kinda right.

Large portions of the South, the Appalachians and the Midwest were populated heavily by Scots-Irish settlers... And this heavily overlaps with those working class rural white populations in the US that are typically called Rednecks.

Former Senator Jim Webb wrote a great book about it.

http://www.amazon.com/Born-Fighting-Scots-Irish-Shaped-America/dp/0767916891

It's a side-topic, but I'm reading this this book about how MLK and Rosa Parks were essentially hijacked and weaponized by Conservatives to become these Civil Rights fables. Really fascinating.

Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America

I've become a fan of Webb since I moved to Virginia, so I decided to read his book. Really enjoyed it too.

Also liked Just a Geek by wil, even though I'm not a Trek fan at all.

Chile, the right libertarian puppet dictatorship for example, economy didnt grow or improve until they got rid of the free market dogma. While it was in place they brutally suppressed and murdered people for dissent.

Venezuela is another good example of neoliberalism causing chaos and violence, they were shooting starving protestors until chavez was elected. Neoliberals are still causing chaos there today.

https://www.telesurtv.net/english/analysis/Venezuelas-Caracazo-State-Repression-and-Neoliberal-Misrule-20150226-0028.html


The IMF have been dictating neoliberal dogma for decades, now they know it doesn't work.

>Rising inequality and slow economic growth in many countries have focused attention on policies to support inclusive growth. While some inequality is inevitable in a market-based economic system, excessive inequality can erode social cohesion, lead to political polarization, and ultimately lower economic growth. This Fiscal Monitor discusses how fiscal policies can help achieve redistributive objectives. It focuses on three salient policy debates: tax rates at the top of the income distribution, the introduction of a universal basic income, and the role of public spending on education and health.

http://www.imf.org/en/publications/fm/issues/2017/10/05/fiscal-monitor-october-2017


Now that socialist lybia is destroyed, Rwanda is the best economy in Africa - asian style capitalism, high investment in education, infrastructure, welfare, job creation ...


Put a right libertarian in charge of an economy and they will for example want cut backs in vaxinations, and other government programs, recommend allowing billonaires to take private ownership of the countries resources and extract it while putting as little as possible back.


It was populaized among americans through well funded propaganda and manipulation.

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0307947904


The right libertarian movement introduced the racism to what we call the "alt right " to help the movement along.

>Rothbard was one of the foremost proponents of the pseudo-psychology known as praxeology. Rothbard viewed property rights as paramount to freedom and so went even beyond von Mises, who was a minarchist, in advocating anarcho-capitalism. He was also known as a big critic of fractional reserve banking and the Federal Reserve. Because of his philosophy, he held many views that would be seen as progressive as well as ones that were batshit crazy. For example, he voiced support for the civil rights movement[1] as well as opposition to the Vietnam War and the draft, but also defended the practice of child labor, "racialist science,"[2] and that "cops must be unleashed, and allowed to administer instant punishment."[3] Also, despite his initial vocal support for revolutionary black power politics, he later worked with Lew Rockwell, founder and then president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, to run a campaign strategy to exploit racism in order to build a libertarian/paleoconservative coalition[4] and praised the notorious work by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve.[5] He was known as the first "Anarcho"-Capitalist

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Murray_Rothbard


This is why jordan peterson and you guys get called alt right.



Id guess pinker is on the pay role of a right libertarian think tank, like those that JP retweets.

For $17 bucks yep. Or free on Kindle.

https://www.amazon.com/Settlers-Mythology-Proletariat-Mayflower-Kersplebedeb/dp/1629630373

Most excellent book too!

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0307947904

I'm going to modify your goals if you don't mind:

Goals:

0) Get this before all Occupy location General Assemblies and [hopefully] agree this is the demand we put before government.

1. to get electoral reform discussed at every occupy, every bar, every sermon, etc.
   
   
2. to put every Senator and every Representative (national and state) on notice that their jobs are on the line on this single demand
   
   
3. to proliferate GO TEAM white markers writing "Electoral Reform Act of 2012" on both sides of the car.
   
   ___
   
   Here's link to the book in case anyone is interested:
   
   Howard Zinn: A Power Government Cannot Suppress
   
   Vaclav Havel: The Power of the Powerless
   
   Jonathan Schell: Unconquerable World

Speaking of the Koch Brothers, eeryone should read Jane Mayer's Dark Money.

It is absolutely essential reading for understanding what has happened to the Republican party and our greater political zeitgeist.

The best book on this subject is by Richard Hofstadter. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006LSVB1M

All y'all Scots Irish ain't neither. You're probably border English that Cromwell sent over to displace the true Irish.

This might be me though, we'll see what my 23 and Me says

Edit: But if you are, embrace your heritage. Jim Webb wrote a tremendous book on the Scots Irish

Its been mentioned before, but strangers from a different shore by Ronald Takaki does a good job in his book for what you're looking for.

http://www.amazon.com/Strangers-Different-Shore-History-Americans/dp/0316831301

Its ok if the Koch Bros do it though!

Dark Money

Dark Money

Dark Money

Regardless of leanings, these are things to consider while willingly accepting status quo and ignoring agendas of cold corporate America. Is that “box store” vase Really necessary?? Shoppers’ therapy is the cure for the apathetical comfortably numb American populace that seemingly believe Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell are on opposing sides while the Prez garners too much press. The local politicians are wussies, and if they weren’t, there’d money for education and Veterans, tax reform, and campaign overhauls. Jus keep voting incumbents in because nothing changes if nothing changes.

And FahQ Heartland Bank too!!

America's been importing our talent for the past few hundred years. There's a reason one of our presidents literally wrote a book describing us as A Nation of Immigrants

Hiring only Americans on purpose, is the least American thing you can do ;)

This book is an excellent take on the subject:
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
by Richard Hofstadter

This.
Here's an excellent read on anti-intellectualism in America.

http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Intellectualism-American-Life-Richard-Hofstadter/dp/0394703170

Read Dark Money, strongly recommend reading that along with Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century.

Gun, Germs and Steel. That is what Jared Diamond says, that is why they won.

But then there is also the James Webb thesis: Born Fighting. While Webb is writing about the Scots-Irish in America I think some of his conclusions can be extended to all of Europe. North Europe held one of the last people to have a warrior culture, one of the last places to be civilized. Perhaps they (and we) carry the seeds of that in their genes, making them more willing to fight than most other cultures that have a longer history of civilization.

This is a good question.

I would like to echo that sentiment.

While the Koch brothers have had an aggressive political agenda for some time, applying their billions of dollars to influence a radical agenda onto US politics Dark Money, by Jane Mayer ...

The bigger issue here is:

• Do you trust the site?
  
• Do you trust the author?
  
• Do you trust the content?
  
• Do you trust the OP? reddit-user-analyser
  
  Be skeptical.
  
  Some of us are misanthropes, some of us are a bit kooky, some of us might actually be reasonable normal human beings; but some among us are bad actors which have commercial, corporate or political agendas. some of us are bots, trolls, manipulators.
  
  Again, this is a good question.

I'm seriously in love with her now.

Black or white, the distain for education, learning, and "professionalism" is deep seated in our country. This.

https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recips.php?id=d000000186 Just last year.

And that doesn't count all the Super-PACs that they operated to hide their donations.

David and Charles Koch are the poster-children of crony-capitalism...

...which also makes them the perfect personification of American/Right Libertarianism in practice.

^(Edit: Link formatting not working)

“This is not because they misapprehend the facts, but because they are taking their cues from conservative elites, many of whom have close ties to the fossil fuel industry.”


I would legitimately like to know the funding connection between the fossil fuel industry and conservative elites.

And I can find it here:

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0307947904

No, it isn't necessarily reliant upon color of skin. Although Irish Catholics, Poles, and Italians weren't "white" until surprisingly recently. There are actually a couple of good books on the subject if you're interested in reading. A place to start might be Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race

Sinclair's The Jungle and Riis's How the Other Half Lives. Matthew Frye Jacobson's Whiteness of a Different Color is a good book on how "whiteness" was understood and redefined, namely in relation to the various waves of European immigration.

The solution which might satisfy you depends on what exactly you believe the problem is.

I believe that Australia's treatment of, lets call them "unauthorized migrants" is a national shame, and a bigger problem than anything that might happen if you accept these migrants and try and integrate them into the society. In fact, I would like Australia to welcome migrants, and be seen as a symbol of hope by people who got a real bad deal in the birth lottery.

I know a lot of people think that allowing migrants into Australia is bad for this reason and that. Every wave of migrants have faced this to a certain degree. I came to Australia about 40 years ago - in high school one of the texts we studied was about the struggles of Italian migrants ("The Knife" by Judah Waten). Since then I have seen waves of Vietnamese, Yugoslav, Indian, Middle Eastern and most recently African migrants go through various stages that start with distrust (and hopefully end with full integration, though this might take a generation or so). Do you think letting Italians migrate here was a good idea?

Eh, I doubt I can convince anybody to change their mind. Better people than me have tried. Here is what John F.Kennedy had to say on the subject, maybe this will sway someone:

https://www.amazon.com/Nation-Immigrants-John-F-Kennedy/dp/0061447544/ref=sr_1_1?

Read Dark Money. Billionaire “donations” are powerful tools.


https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0307947904

You should educate yourself more about the Kochs.

Jane Mayer's seminal book Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right is a meaty place to get started.

Here's a good recent article that includes information about them: What Is the Far Right’s Endgame? A Society That Suppresses the Majority.

But they are not good people, no matter how much they spend on smokescreen initiatives and "charity" to maintain their mask of civility.

Jane Mayer, Dark Money

Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains

This is well-documented and reported. Please do some reading, specifically on John Olin and the Koch Brothers and James Buchanan and the neoliberal Mont Pelerin Society hostile takeover of higher education and public discourse in general. Even the Tea Party was astroturfed.

Jim Webb's Born Fighting is a great read on this

http://www.amazon.com/Born-Fighting-Scots-Irish-Shaped-America/dp/0767916891

Your question is very complex and has filled the contents of numerous books.

The distinguished founder of the subreddit, /u/Artrw, has expertise in this topic and wrote about the Act and the Open Door Policy and the Act's religious justification, as well as How did the first Chinese immigrants get to North America? broadly

These answers have further reading if you're interested. See also, for example, Strangers in The Land: Patterns of American Nativism by John Higham, which is on the subredddit's booklist.

​

/u/keylian previously answered Why were the majority of immigrants to the new world in the late 1800s and the early 1900s primarily from Europe, and not places like China...?

​

/u/Verbenablu discussed the legal justification for the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Great book on the matter (focused on Republicans)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307947904/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_ia.PCbKZE976G

It made me appreciate how fucked we are

Please, read the book Dark Money.

Anti-intellectualism has been a part of American culture from its foundation. Our culture has always prided itself on its practicality and industry, and derided intellect, basic research, and arts as irrelevant. Smart people are viewed as untrustworthy and arrogant, their expertise fundamentally anti-democratic. Or, as Asimov put it, in American culture "democracy means 'my ignorance is as good as your knowledge.'"

The other works suggested here are very good, but the only real answer to this question is Settlers. It completely changed the way I viewed the world.

How did we get here? Worth checking out if your library has a copy:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0394703170

Added this to my Amazon reading list.

Maybe, but it's not only outsiders who say these things. I've read a number of books written by Scotch-Irish authors from Appalachia said the same thing. This was one of them, written by Jim Webb, the former Senator who ran against Hillary last year. https://www.amazon.com/Born-Fighting-Scots-Irish-Shaped-America/dp/0767916891

All of this is well documented.

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0307947904

Of course I might be going out on a limb thinking you'd ever even try to read a fucking book for once.

No

WastedWhales: ^^original ^^reddit ^^link

http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Intellectualism-American-Life-Richard-Hofstadter/dp/0394703170

Strangers From a Different Shore by Ronald Takaki

Asian American Dreams by Helen Zia

Check out some of Howard Zinn's writings http://www.amazon.com/A-Power-Governments-Cannot-Suppress/dp/0872864758

also www.icivics.org teaches about what the branches of government are and how they work.

Anti-intellectualism in American Life

here

​

also if you got the time

Read Dark Money

here's your answer:

http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Intellectualism-American-Life-Richard-Hofstadter/dp/0394703170

https://www.amazon.com/Born-Fighting-Scots-Irish-Shaped-America/dp/0767916891

Here's a big list.

https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-researcher-dupont-helped-nazi-germany-out-of-ideology-1.7186636

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ibm-holocaust_b_1301691

https://www.amazon.com/IBM-Holocaust-Strategic-Alliance-Corporation/dp/0914153277

https://www.amazon.com/War-Against-Weak-Eugenics-Americas/dp/0914153293/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=PD3S20TYT0CRAFMCV31W

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1796

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/books/review/the-brothers-by-stephen-kinzer.html

https://www.amazon.com/Brothers-Foster-Dulles-Allen-Secret/dp/0805094970

https://www.democracynow.org/2016/1/20/the_kochs_the_nazis_book_reveals

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0307947904/ref=asc_df_0307947904/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312669563714&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=5810486821632951259&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9021356&hvtargid=pla-432540147973&psc=1

https://www.thenation.com/article/hitlers-willing-executioners/

https://www.thenation.com/article/kodaks-nazi-connections/

https://www.academia.edu/21745112/The_Myth_of_the_Good_War_America_in_the_Second_World_War

https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Good-War-USA-World/dp/1550287710

https://libcom.org/files/How%20the%20Allied%20multinationals%20supplied%20Nazi%20Germany%20throughout%20World%20War%20II.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaWz42tmxug

https://www.amazon.com/Trading-Enemy-Charles-Higham/dp/044019055X

For the US case, at least, this is hardly a new phenomenon: see

Here's a good place to start. Dark Money goes into the history of these shadowy megadonors and surprise! They're racist!
[Here's a link]
(https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0307947904)

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0307947904


https://www.darkmoneyfilm.com/

As long as we are suggesting things, People should read Dark Money by Jane Meyer

Relevant.

https://www.amazon.com/American-Fascists-Christian-Right-America/dp/0743284461

https://www.amazon.com/Republican-Brain-Science-Science-Reality/dp/1118094514

https://www.amazon.com/Insane-Clown-President-Dispatches-Circus/dp/0399592466

https://www.amazon.com/Idiot-America-Stupidity-Became-Virtue/dp/0767926153

https://www.amazon.com/Republican-War-Science-Chris-Mooney/dp/0465046762

https://www.amazon.com/Anti-Intellectualism-American-Life-Richard-Hofstadter/dp/0394703170

https://www.amazon.com/Better-Off-Without-Manifesto-Secession/dp/145161666X/

https://www.amazon.com/How-Fight-Conservative-Daniel-Kurtzman/dp/140226576X

It took me less than 2 minutes to find all of these

Everyone should read New Yorker writer Jane Mayer's book about the Kochs and (to a lesser extent) other far-right billionaires, Dark Money.

Appropriately titled: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life

Here are a couple of books that will get you on the right track:

The Reactionary Mind and Anti-Intellectualism in American Life.

I don't think this is exclusively an American phenomenon. However you may be onto something given how anti-intellectual American discourse can be and how averse Americans seem to be towards disciplines that they don't see as practical. A whole conversation on American anti-intellectualism seems to be what you're looking for. http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Intellectualism-American-Life-Richard-Hofstadter/dp/0394703170

See Jane Meyers "Dark Money"

Here's a review.

it's been going on for a while now:

http://www.amazon.ca/Anti-Intellectualism-American-Life-Richard-Hofstadter/dp/0394703170

Check out the following book written in 1962: http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Intellectualism-American-Life-Richard-Hofstadter/dp/0394703170#_

That's not really new.

Here is another source:

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer

This comment is also available in convenient book form.

http://amzn.com/0394703170

While I rarely shill, I recommend to all the people of /r/EnoughTrumpSpam to read Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by renowned historian Richard Hofstadter. It reminds you that this is not a new line of thought in America, but rather one that predates the establishment of the country.

This is a consequence of many strands of American life dating back to the 1960s, but it has recently been embraced and furthered by the conservative backlash against public schools, environmentalism, 'liberal elites,' etc. It's so frustrating because in every other facet of life, you want someone who knows more than you to help you learn what they know; but somehow in politics those who know more than you are wrong and can't tell you want to do. It's insane-making

> the alarming rise of Anti-Intellectualism

We've been dealing with it for a while in the US

For those too lazy to check themselves, here are some of the best books on the subject that this thread deals with:

This guy saw it starting long ago...
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life - Richard Hofstadter:
http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Intellectualism-American-Life-Richard-Hofstadter/dp/0394703170/ref=pd_sim_b_27

another (old) book by the same guy, equally prophetic:
The Paranoid Style in American Politics:
http://www.amazon.com/Paranoid-Style-American-Politics-Vintage/dp/0307388441/ref=pd_sim_b_40

The Age of American Unreason - Susan Jacoby:
http://www.amazon.com/Age-American-Unreason-Vintage/dp/1400096383/ref=pd_sim_b_30

Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and The Triumph of Ignorance - Alexander Zaitchik:
http://www.amazon.com/Common-Nonsense-Glenn-Triumph-Ignorance/dp/0470557397/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278099576&sr=1-8

Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free - Charles P. Pierce:
http://www.amazon.com/Idiot-America-Stupidity-Became-Virtue/dp/0767926153/ref=pd_sim_b_3

Exactly. You should revisit this classic:

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadtler

Written in 1964, around the rise of McCarthyism confronting New Era Progressives and FDR. It's extremely relevant today.

it's not 'taking over'

anti-intellectualism has been a 'thing' in mrrka for many years

hell, this pulitzer-prize winning book dealt with this very issue in the 1960s

A rumored "deep state" boogeyman isn't the problem, it's the dark money network that actually exists that we need to worry about.

If anyone hasn't read/listened to Dark Money by Jane Mayer you definitely should!

It traces the history of influence by conservative billionaire donors, and it's disgusting and infuriating -- but also incredibly informative.

This has been written about, even as far back as 1966. I imagine it has only gotten worse.

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life https://www.amazon.com/dp/0394703170/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_ohxSAbKCQ8Q1J

I don't think he/she's speaking in social terms (or I hope not).

The classic treatment of this issue is Hofstadter, but it badly needs an update.

Mercers and The Kochs. Read or listen to Dark Money. It's scary.

With "anti-intellectualism" I'm referring specifically to the work of R. Hofstadter. See ("Anti-Intellectualism in American Life)[Anti-Intellectualism in American Life https://www.amazon.com/dp/0394703170/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_11pfvb1X6T0V3
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0394703170/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_11pfvb1X6T0V3]. He argues this is a widespread, particularly American approach to knowledge. In that sense, he'd probably agree wth your assessment of leadership but suggest that you've over-read the power of leaders to convince their followers of their beliefs. That's why charismatic cult leaders are notable, right? Not just anyone can pull it off, and not just anyone is susceptible. But the mindset of Americans has been, for a long time, not really been seriously on the issue of thinking for thinking's sake. If Hofstadter is to be believed, it's downright discouraged. The question as an American is not "what do you think" but "what do you believe?" Different stuff right?

I'm not pulling this out of my ass, this has been a researched topic.

sure!

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America
The Working Poor: Invisible in America
Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives
Clothing Poverty: The Hidden World of Fast Fashion and Second-hand Clothes

the root cause is billonaire dirty energy magnates spreading their anti-science agenda through their donation networks. check out dark money, chapter eight. i'm not sure how basic science literacy will help a sprawling, well-funded anti-science propaganda campaign.

the kochs, scaifes, and their ilk are enemies of mankind and should be treated as such.

If you have an interest in the topic there's no reason you shouldn't I guess... The books are often read together since the first one tries to describe the way people viewed race in America and how whites tried to differentiate themselves from blacks. The second talks about competition and struggle of groups we today consider Caucasian into entering the public perception of whiteness- and in turn the resistance they faced from the already established white category.

The Wages of Whiteness "in broadest strokes argues that whiteness was a way in which white workers responded to fear of dependency on wage labor and to the necessities of capitalist work discipline."

Whiteness of a Different Color really goes into detail describing each nationalities' assent into whiteness. The way race was spoken of, and how it changed meanings over time both in a scientific terms as well as public perception.

That's not entirely true. The Italians didn't liked the Irish, the Poles were stereotyped as being associated with organised crime, anti-semitism and heavy drinking, as were the Russians, Eastern Europeans were somehow less "white" than anglo-saxons and so on. Being white alone cannot be a binding factor when the immigrants have vastly different cultural backgrounds and religions (in this case catholic, protestant and orthodox). For more on the subject, I'd recommend this book by Matthew Jacobson.

. . . . says the author of Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America.

>Their cultural identity reflected acute individualism, dislike of aristocracy and a military tradition, and, over time, the Scots-Irish defined the attitudes and values of the military, of working class America, and even of the peculiarly populist form of American democracy itself.

In conclusion, eat shit Jim.

Fuck it. Finally ordering it now.

Really stoked to get fucking depressed about the CU decision again.

Edit: can I post a link to Amazon? I'm gonna post the link to Amazon. And here's the Smile.Amazon link.

Edit: Also, if you don't like reading and want a primer on this stuff... good documentary from HBO here.

A few thoughts.

1. It is time to begin the impeachment process.
   
2. I believe those wheels are already quietly in motion. There are good reasons to do this carefully (read this by rusticgorilla to understand the issues), but I think it's happening.
   
3. Team Trump has been deliberately blurring the lines between it being a political process and being a legal process. They are forcing the Dems to explain, and the Dems have naively been taking the bait.
   
4. Ronald Reagan said, “If you're explaining, you're losing.” Trump instinctively knows this: "NO COLLUSION! WITCH HUNT!" is easy to understand and makes no attempt to explain. This is a winning strategy. Explaining procedures etc is a losing strategy.
   
5. The messaging by the Dems has to be clear, consistent, and it has to resonate emotionally. They should go hire Frank Luntz tomorow, and fix this. (Yes, he is the Devil. Yes, now is the time to fight fire with fire.)
   
6. We should stop pretending this is not a partisan issue. It is a partisan issue because the GOP has made it one. Every hearing about Trump goes back to Hillary and Obama. IMO this should be a talking point.
   
7. We need to remember Trump is a symptom, and not the disease.
   
8. The GOP Senate is a major factor that enables all of this to continue. Partisan gerrymandering is a significant problem on the left and right. This can be a genuinely centrist issue to combat.
   
9. The problem of Dark Money in politics is real, and can also be a centrist issue.
   
10. Don't succumb to Oh Dearism. Remember there are things you can and should do. Don't just complain – take some action, however small, and encourage others to do the same.

In simplest terms, the Koch Foundation has put a poop ton of money into George Mason University and other colleges across the US. I highly recommend you read the book but GMU has been in the news this year because of the connections to the Kochs.

The book also goes into the Bush family and a lot of the Republican guard, shit I had no idea about. The Kochs made a shit load of money selling to the Nazis and USSR.

> Mainstream liberals and Democrats have largely been unable to...understand the behavior of the Republican Party over the last few decades

Just finished Jane Mayer's Dark Money. It's very enlightening in this regard. It's a hard read in the sense that is perpetually depressing, terrifying, and enraging, but it clearly explicates the unseen forces at work, including how the Koch network pours money into cut outs that are made to look and sound non-partisan and legitimate (which also aids in their mission to cheat campaign financing and tax laws) and pairs the cut outs' "research" with the worst elements of society (e.g., racism, poverty) to frame their messaging in an eerily similar way as Russian propaganda. That's in addition to all the shell non profits they use to skirt campaign finance laws and funnel ungodly amounts of money to politicians.

Even if I had at some point in the past said "both sides are the same" with respect to donors, I will never fucking say it again after reading this book.

http://www.kulturemedia.org/

I want to give you this example and you can see the parallels today.

 

1. China was rich around the 1800's. They wanted nothing from the West. The West waged two wars and forced them to become drug addicts. They were stereotyped as godless heathens, savages, etc. Today, the West's wars were framed as fighting to "defend free trade" against greedy and unfair Chinese.
   
   
2. Chinese, who fled semi colonized China become coolies who built up businesses in America were plundered of everything and many were killed off because the Chinese were "vicious, greedy and exploiting poor honest white people" https://i.imgur.com/tyFQ5oY.jpg.
   
   
3. China is rich again. America and the West claims China isn't playing fair and stealing and in Trump's words, "raping America".
   
    
   
   So, yes, propaganda is real and it is effective. It's not conspiracy. When I say whites cannot be trusted people think I'm nuts too, but I just gave you three examples of things that happened to just one nation.
   
    
   
   It is pervasive. They do control a lot of the media and they fill it with lies
   
    
   
   Also, whites are even more full of shit than most ever imagined. Look at all that fair trade in the "rules based order".
   
   http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-Decorated/dp/0922915865/
   
   http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins/dp/0452287081/
   
   http://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Americas-Century-Regime-Change/dp/0805082409/
   
   https://i.imgur.com/OMawpLS.jpg
   
   https://www.amazon.com/Settlers-Mythology-Proletariat-Mayflower-Kersplebedeb/dp/1629630373/
   
   https://www.amazon.com/Half-Has-Never-Been-Told/dp/046500296X

Edit: I found the original article that this map comes from, and it explains everything I was trying to say below much better than I ever could. It's well worth a read!

> But the closer to the equator you get, the more religious people are and that consequently probably affects politics.

What? My 'oversimplification' meter just broke. The Puritans and their like in New England were far more religious than the wild Scots-Irish and English aristocracy in the South. That situation has kinda reversed in modern times, but what in the heck does that have to do with the equator?? (Edit: I retract this statement. I accused u/3ii3 of oversimplifying and then I oversimplified in the next sentence. Doh. See u/Ruire's far more informed view on the matter below.) You can't really divide America (or the world) into cultural regions based on temperature.

I think you are correct that geography has a greater influence on modern American regionalism than do the British roots of Americans. I mean, how many Americans can actually name a specific region in Britain that they can trace their ancestry back to? However, it's not entirely accurate to say that 'most Americans are of German descent.' British-Americans still represent the largest group of white Americans, they've just been here so long that they no longer identify as British. From Wikipedia:

> In the 2000 census, self-identified German Americans made up 17.1% of the U.S. population, followed by Irish Americans at 12%, as reported in the 2000 U.S. Census. This makes German and Irish the largest and second-largest self-reported ancestry groups in the United States. Both groups had high rates of immigration to the U.S. beginning in the mid-19th century, triggered by the Great Famine in Ireland and the failed 1848 Revolution in Germany. However, English-Americans and British-Americans are still considered the largest ethnic group due to a serious under count following the 2000 census whereby many English and British Americans self-identified under the new category entry 'American' considering themselves 'indigenous' because their families had resided in the US for so long or, if of mixed European ancestry, identified with a more recent and differentiated ethnic group.

Going back to the relevance of British roots in early America, I'm currently reading Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America by Jim Webb, and it's really fascinating how a lot of animosity toward the English carried over to America when the Scots-Irish were banished to the mountains and to poverty by the English planter aristocracy. He makes a really fascinating-to-think-about point that the American Revolution and Civil War were kind of an echo of the Wars of Scottish Independence and the English Civil War, with wild, Celtic mountain-men going to war against a more settled Anglo-Saxon civilization trying to drag them kicking and screaming into the global order.

So next time you see a Southerner (who is likely of Scots-Irish descent) waving a rebel flag (which is not coincidentally based on the Scottish St. Andrew's Cross flag) and cursing damn Yankees (of English and continental European descent), even though they are probably not aware of it, they are resurrecting old animosities that date back to the medieval British Isles.