Tyreek Hill is an 90IQ member of a demographic well known for their lack of impulse control. He makes a ridiculous amount of fiat currency displaying his aggressiveness and physical power.
That pile of currency shields him from consequences of all but the most heinous behaviors. He can pay that fine, or pay a lawyer to deal with problems without a second thought.
His demographic, right or wrong, believes themselves perpetually and unfairly aggrieved, and deserving of special treatment to atone for their grievances. Finally, in the current year 1/2 of the country endorses and encourages his perception.
How can anyone expect a guy like that to conduct himself civilly?
All that said, it's clear the cop made snap conclusions about the situation and was prepared to use his authority to it's full extent from the start.
IMO, if there hadn't been a cadre of cops there right away to control the situation, someone would have left in an ambulance.
Police encounters should be predictable when involving law-abiding, reasonable individuals. As you pointed out, if not for a cadre of officers on-scene, this could've gotten really ugly.
Anyone who thinks the cop was wrong should be able to articulate, step-by-step not only how to de-escalate Tyreek Hill, but why it would've worked.
Don’t EVER let them search your car, or you without a warrant.
And remember, you don’t plead your case to the cops (see rule #1). Their job is to collect evidence to put you in jail. Anything you say will be used against you and no fucking thing you say will be used to help you.
If Tyreek had kept his stupid mouth shut, put his license and registration out of the window before he ran it back up, he’d have walked.
I can’t recall the exact stats, but if you take out the gun crime stats from something like the 6 or 7 largest American cities, the per capita gun crime rate for the rest of the nation ends up among the safest nations on earth. If you like violence and chaos, you well know for which party to vote…and where to go.
It was a very simple traffic stop, Mr. Remington, and all that was needed was to show ID and sign the ticket.
To your point; there are incidents like the killing of Daniel Shaver that are unacceptable by any measure, but this was not one of them. During a routine traffic stop, Behave according to the agreement made when you chose to apply for a drivers license, and everyone goes home at the end of the day, unless stopped for a crime instead of an infraction.
Racial? If so, it was not on the part of the arresting officer. The only thing racial is the rhetoric. We even see bystanders attempting to interfere. Was that a racial matter? The officer demonstrated a great deal of restraint in the face of defiance of his lawful instructions.
Yes, there are dirty cops, but the bodycam video does not portray one.
Welcome back to the crumbling USA, where it's always been chaotic on the tightrope between being the obedient subject of tyrants and a free citizen with rights under a constitution that deliberately accepted a degree of chaos in preference to totalitarian order.
We're falling off the tightrope an awful lot, of late.
I love the perspective of those outside of America on America. Foreigners that are visiting, I will ofen ask what one thing most surprised them about America. When I'm travelling internationally (far less than I used to now) I will often ask coworkers or B&B owners to give me their quick, stereotype perception of America.
the best answer I ever got was from a B&B owner in NZ: "We think you shoot each other and sue each other. You walk around with your gun in 1 pocket and your lawyer's business card in the other." I loved that one. And I could totally see it from looking outside.
The perception of Americans shooting each other really bothers me. I'm the first to admit America is the most dangerous among developed countries, but we're also not a shooting gallery, either. Most of the violence is driven by a minority, but this is a fact even most Americans refuse to admit, for obvious reasons. So instead all of the country is blamed for the failure of what's effectively an autonomous nation within a nation.
That said, Americans are still the most generous, most helpful people in the world. I'm not saying that because I'm American, it's because my experiences with people around the world have convinced me of such. It's also our downfall, but Americans aren't a bad people. We're misunderstood, if anything, and some people just love to hate us.
I suspect that some people are also envious of the general standard of living that regular Americans experience, and viewing America as a wild west shooting gallery is form of cope. Most of my extended family is located outside of North America in countries where personal car ownership was a prestige symbol within living memory, and economic emigration is still a force within society. Every time I hear something about the violence of my country from those relatives I wonder how much of it is a way of justifying remaining in places with a markedly lower level of opportunity.
Obviously this isn't true in all cases and I suspect the extremely high level of news coverage of violent crime creates a false impression of the level of risk of being a normal person in America. But if you're not a young black male in a large city, or operating in a neighborhood controlled by those people then you're going to be fine.
I recently visited the US for the first time in a number of years. Staying in a prosperous suburb outside of a notorious urban centre, the landscaping and air of prosperity outclassed any comparable suburb in Canada. I was also struck by the number of patrol cars and obtrusive traffic cameras, as if these politically liberal suburbs were determined to hold back the deluge from the city. Of course they aren’t bothered by their hypocrisy.
Similarly a relative of mine stayed in the suburbs of Philadelphia a few years ago. Seemed like an odd choice to me but it did seem like a really lovely place from the photos.
At the very least, the US is able to invest in its nicest spots and public spaces. Canada has simply acquired an air of dinginess and failure by comparison.
The economic statistics show that the US is outclassing the rest of the western world. I wonder how long it can last and whether these prosperous suburbs will stay immune to chaos.
Economic prosperity covers up a lot of deficiencies. In the U.S., the fact that not everything revolves around the central state also allows for the creation of veritable oases in the desert. Unfortunately, it's also a glimpse of the future: an increasingly subscription-based, Costco-like society where if you want nice things, you have to pay for it and I'm not talking about taxes. Your taxes are just the price you pay to not go to jail or be killed by the government. It provides nothing beyond that.
I'm reminded of Robert Heinlein's great novel "Starship Troopers" (1959) in which he has the History and Moral Philosophy teacher in Chapter 8 explain how society broke down in the XXth century of the North American republic (https://a.co/d/fYyPUPW). He laments how wild youths were not taught quickly the consequences of their actions and how society became captive to the worst elements running over everyone. I see the trend continue today where students are not corrected at school, given endless second chances, fight teachers/campus aides/anyone, and then later end up killing someone once they're an adult. Then they're on death row or costing the taxpayer tens of thousands of dollars to lock them up for the rest of their lives. This line captures it well: "Suppose you merely scolded your puppy, never punished him, let him go on making messes in the house... and occasionally locked him up in an outbuilding but soon let him back into the house with a warning not to do it again. Then one day you notice that he is now a grown dog and still not housebroken — whereupon you whip out a gun and shoot him dead" (122).
In the novel, the teacher blames the social workers and the so-called "empathetic" engineers of social programs who did not believe in firm punishment. "It was too simple for them, apparently, since anybody could do it, using only the patience and firmness needed in training a puppy. I have sometimes wondered if they cherished a vested interest in disorder — but that is unlikely; adults almost always act from conscious ‘highest motives’ no matter what their behavior.'" It sure seems like many of these types love disorder and profit directly from it (see Springfield, OH).
A lot of it is rooted in America's libertarian impulse, unfortunately. We don't believe it to be the state's place to "discipline" anyone. However, the presumption is that culture and society will do the disciplining instead.
In 2024, nothing - not culture, not society, not state - can discipline anyone. Especially racial minorities. We can only ask nicely. The parents and families are the last line of social defense and we all know the state of those.
I just finished that book on the recommendation of someone here (maybe you, Belte?) It's amazing! The actual story matches the movie and is only decent, but the surrounding backstory about the world absolutely makes it worth reading.
"Starship Troopers" is all about the backstory and the universe it exists in. How the Terran Federation came to be is more interesting than the contemporary events of the story. The parallels with the current moment are uncanny.
That’s great! Yes, it could have been I who posted it earlier as I love the book and think it matches what we need in terms of a unifying moral code. Heinlein succeeds in building a compelling world in which honor and duty are actually reinforced and rewarded in an authentic way. While I love the movie adaptation, I think the novel brings the characters to life (even with the officers at the boot camp lamenting how hard they have to be on the recruits but how necessary it is for their training). If you’re into that sci fi vein, I think you’d like “Armor” (1984) by John Steakley that offers the most compelling battle scenes in literature I have read, which is a difficult feat in that medium. It too is about mech space marines battling against bug creatures but at a scale that is incredible. There’s a random sex scene at the beginning but then it goes straight into the action (the acts that are about the space pirate didn’t do it for me but the beginning is amazing).
The police are the “hard enforcement arm” of the elite class. There are five social classes - the truly elite and influential, who can command resources, government functions, truly hold power. One percenters, banksters, top-tier officials, people that live with a different set of rules.
Then there is law enforcement, the military, mercenaries, etc, who are the physical vehicle of social control.
The third class is the intellectual class, the media, clergy, professors, writers, etc. They are the mental vehicle of social control.
Both the second and third classes are tools of the first class. Either persuade or coerce. They do not serve the people, beyond what it takes to maintain control. This is why universities spend more and more time teaching ideology and far less time teaching academics. This is also why the police, in spite of the “protect and serve” mantra often act in ways we perceive as cowardly or irrational. Some cops still haven’t gotten the message and do serve the public in very heroic ways, but they are increasingly rare, just like professors who didn’t get the message that DEI trumps everything else.
Then there is the fourth class, the vast majority of people who believe that the system is fair, get up and go to work with the expectation of being able to take care of their families, believing in the “American dream” and all that other crap. It’s the same pie in the sky peddled to people back in the day, but it works less and less these days because people have gotten so stupid and lazy that you can’t get much out of most of them. Competency is on the decline in a big way, I guess you could call it some cycle or another, something. Long and short is that most people have not been tested in their lives and have no idea how to act under adversity.
The fourth class also includes professionals and small business owners who think they have influence or wealth, but don’t get that it is dependent on how effectively and faithfully they serve the first class. Anyone who steps out of line finds their career at an end, regardless of where they thought they were. I’ve seen plenty of small business owners who “stepped up” and got smacked down. Don’t get out of line.
Then there is the fifth class, the outlaw class. This is a real hodgepodge of people, from pure criminals and outlaws, to religious and political dissidents, people who have been forced out of the other classes, and so on. Some people also live there by choice, even being people of the other classes who don’t like the restraints or coercion they have to deal with. Free spirits, whatever. Anyone reading this probably at least is spiritually part of this class.
Looking at most things through that framework helps to make sense of a lot of what is happening these days.
I am German and I lived in the US, in Ireland, in China, in Russia and seven years in Central Asia. My experience is that the more ehnically cohesive a society is the more unwritten laws apply. There´s a common understanding of good and bad and a certain trust. The US has had to rely on the LAW as it is written down much more than any other country I´ve been in. People also have to follow the WRITTEN law more than anywhere else I´ve been to. It is (or was) a common understanding of at least the major part of society. My mother - who went thru total chaos at the end of WWII and was stateless for a few years found that aspect of the US unsufferable. I remember when time was up in the strawberry canyon swimming pool in Berkeley and everybody left on the spot. My mother of course didn´t and in Germany she would have been admonished but in Berkeley the reaction was much more severe.
The law not as a common understanding but as a glue that binds society is at the heart of the US. If you lose that all hell will break loose.
By the other society that I was in that was as diverse as the US was Russia. There the solution for the same problem was a common "religion" aka communism. Without it the USSR broke apart. Russia has returned to Orthodox religion and "traditional values" for the non christian minorities. I hope the US can return to the rule of the written law as the glue that binds her very disperse populations together. I am not hopeful though. But how knows. When I listen to Robert F. Kennedy and his to my jaded European ears hopelessly idealistic talks still I wonder: maybe the US can pull it off. There will be a terrible crisis but there´s also uniquely american idealism and who knows...
This is a great insight. Thank you for sharing. Our historical reverence for the “law of the land” is probably what made the US a relatively high trust society despite the diversity. Before the internet age, the elites and oligarchs could get away with murder (JFK). Now that their crimes are so easily exposed (Epstein), and the two-tiered justice system and it’s abuse so obvious (Biden v Trump), the US has become a very low trust society, with all the chaos and turmoil that entails. The only people that benefit from it are the lawyers. We have a long way to fall. Under our current educational regime, I don’t really see how this is reversed. It won’t be overnight.
The U.S. has always been a low-trust society for most of it's history. The high-trust period was during the "High" following the end of World War II. A generation later, we were trending back towards being low-trust once more.
Following the current Fourth Turning, the next High will probably see the U.S. become a high-trust society again. This is because we'll become community-oriented once more and high-trust societies tend to be more collectivist in its orientation.
Then a generation later, we'll probably revert to our low-trust roots.
Agreed. I meant that but maybe didn’t write it clearly. That is to say, because we are a diverse, low trust society, the only thing that bound us in any kind of social cohesion was a reasonable expectation that we would all agree to follow the same laws and they would be enforced fairly. That’s not happening anymore. Lawyers have explicitly and unashamed weaponized the legal system for political gain so nobody trusts it anymore. This, I would argue is the main reason the nation is falling apart. But at a deeper level it is spiritual crisis: an abandonment of truth. From a certain perspective, the Marxists have accomplished their goal. We are just living it out. Can it be reversed? Seems doubtful in the short run.
Following the rules has become optional now. More accurately, some people have to follow the rules, others don't need to. The state can only tolerate so much rule-breaking, since the whole system falls apart otherwise, so some people, the most productive members of society, need to be forced to follow the rules, while others are given license to flout them.
Thanks for your observations. It's absolutely true. Most of the world throughout history has lived off unwritten rules more than the written rule. "Rule of law" is itself a product of modernity, even if the Ancient Greeks and Romans had a form of it way back when. Even America, back during its better days, operated off a combination of written and unwritten rules. The two sort of balanced one another out. The U.S. today is unique in that it can only operate off the written rule; it's impossible to operate off unwritten rules because of the diversity and complete lack of any unifying identity. We'd be a society of millions of unwritten rules clashing with each other. You can already see it today.
The rule of law aspect of America is also interesting in that Americans have always had a perception of being a badlands and disorderly, yet I also feel Americans are more rule-abiding than most people of the world. I remember listening to an interview with I believe it was a British fighter pilot who was talking about multinational military exercises, and how it was the Americans who were always sticklers for procedure. This contrasts with the perception of Americans as freewheeling cowboys, the mavericks who break the rules to get the job done at all costs.
All people, all societies are a study in contrasts, it seems. Maybe Americans are big on rules because American life can be so chaotic. Meanwhile, the more orderly societies are comfortable winging it, because everything ultimately reverts back to the "mean," so to speak.
Tyreek Hill is an 90IQ member of a demographic well known for their lack of impulse control. He makes a ridiculous amount of fiat currency displaying his aggressiveness and physical power.
That pile of currency shields him from consequences of all but the most heinous behaviors. He can pay that fine, or pay a lawyer to deal with problems without a second thought.
His demographic, right or wrong, believes themselves perpetually and unfairly aggrieved, and deserving of special treatment to atone for their grievances. Finally, in the current year 1/2 of the country endorses and encourages his perception.
How can anyone expect a guy like that to conduct himself civilly?
All that said, it's clear the cop made snap conclusions about the situation and was prepared to use his authority to it's full extent from the start.
IMO, if there hadn't been a cadre of cops there right away to control the situation, someone would have left in an ambulance.
We shouldn't have to live like this.
Police encounters should be predictable when involving law-abiding, reasonable individuals. As you pointed out, if not for a cadre of officers on-scene, this could've gotten really ugly.
Anyone who thinks the cop was wrong should be able to articulate, step-by-step not only how to de-escalate Tyreek Hill, but why it would've worked.
Oh, easy peasy, I can do that in six words:
Do Not Talk To The Police.
An expanded version goes:
Give them what they ask for.
Don’t give them side eye.
Don’t EVER let them search your car, or you without a warrant.
And remember, you don’t plead your case to the cops (see rule #1). Their job is to collect evidence to put you in jail. Anything you say will be used against you and no fucking thing you say will be used to help you.
If Tyreek had kept his stupid mouth shut, put his license and registration out of the window before he ran it back up, he’d have walked.
I can’t recall the exact stats, but if you take out the gun crime stats from something like the 6 or 7 largest American cities, the per capita gun crime rate for the rest of the nation ends up among the safest nations on earth. If you like violence and chaos, you well know for which party to vote…and where to go.
It was a very simple traffic stop, Mr. Remington, and all that was needed was to show ID and sign the ticket.
To your point; there are incidents like the killing of Daniel Shaver that are unacceptable by any measure, but this was not one of them. During a routine traffic stop, Behave according to the agreement made when you chose to apply for a drivers license, and everyone goes home at the end of the day, unless stopped for a crime instead of an infraction.
Racial? If so, it was not on the part of the arresting officer. The only thing racial is the rhetoric. We even see bystanders attempting to interfere. Was that a racial matter? The officer demonstrated a great deal of restraint in the face of defiance of his lawful instructions.
Yes, there are dirty cops, but the bodycam video does not portray one.
Welcome back to the crumbling USA, where it's always been chaotic on the tightrope between being the obedient subject of tyrants and a free citizen with rights under a constitution that deliberately accepted a degree of chaos in preference to totalitarian order.
We're falling off the tightrope an awful lot, of late.
Welcome back to Los Estados Unidos, Max!
I love the perspective of those outside of America on America. Foreigners that are visiting, I will ofen ask what one thing most surprised them about America. When I'm travelling internationally (far less than I used to now) I will often ask coworkers or B&B owners to give me their quick, stereotype perception of America.
the best answer I ever got was from a B&B owner in NZ: "We think you shoot each other and sue each other. You walk around with your gun in 1 pocket and your lawyer's business card in the other." I loved that one. And I could totally see it from looking outside.
The perception of Americans shooting each other really bothers me. I'm the first to admit America is the most dangerous among developed countries, but we're also not a shooting gallery, either. Most of the violence is driven by a minority, but this is a fact even most Americans refuse to admit, for obvious reasons. So instead all of the country is blamed for the failure of what's effectively an autonomous nation within a nation.
That said, Americans are still the most generous, most helpful people in the world. I'm not saying that because I'm American, it's because my experiences with people around the world have convinced me of such. It's also our downfall, but Americans aren't a bad people. We're misunderstood, if anything, and some people just love to hate us.
I suspect that some people are also envious of the general standard of living that regular Americans experience, and viewing America as a wild west shooting gallery is form of cope. Most of my extended family is located outside of North America in countries where personal car ownership was a prestige symbol within living memory, and economic emigration is still a force within society. Every time I hear something about the violence of my country from those relatives I wonder how much of it is a way of justifying remaining in places with a markedly lower level of opportunity.
Obviously this isn't true in all cases and I suspect the extremely high level of news coverage of violent crime creates a false impression of the level of risk of being a normal person in America. But if you're not a young black male in a large city, or operating in a neighborhood controlled by those people then you're going to be fine.
It's OK, you're allowed to say it out loud: young, black, urban men cause a wildly disproportionate amount of the violent crime in America.
I recently visited the US for the first time in a number of years. Staying in a prosperous suburb outside of a notorious urban centre, the landscaping and air of prosperity outclassed any comparable suburb in Canada. I was also struck by the number of patrol cars and obtrusive traffic cameras, as if these politically liberal suburbs were determined to hold back the deluge from the city. Of course they aren’t bothered by their hypocrisy.
Similarly a relative of mine stayed in the suburbs of Philadelphia a few years ago. Seemed like an odd choice to me but it did seem like a really lovely place from the photos.
At the very least, the US is able to invest in its nicest spots and public spaces. Canada has simply acquired an air of dinginess and failure by comparison.
The economic statistics show that the US is outclassing the rest of the western world. I wonder how long it can last and whether these prosperous suburbs will stay immune to chaos.
Economic prosperity covers up a lot of deficiencies. In the U.S., the fact that not everything revolves around the central state also allows for the creation of veritable oases in the desert. Unfortunately, it's also a glimpse of the future: an increasingly subscription-based, Costco-like society where if you want nice things, you have to pay for it and I'm not talking about taxes. Your taxes are just the price you pay to not go to jail or be killed by the government. It provides nothing beyond that.
I'm reminded of Robert Heinlein's great novel "Starship Troopers" (1959) in which he has the History and Moral Philosophy teacher in Chapter 8 explain how society broke down in the XXth century of the North American republic (https://a.co/d/fYyPUPW). He laments how wild youths were not taught quickly the consequences of their actions and how society became captive to the worst elements running over everyone. I see the trend continue today where students are not corrected at school, given endless second chances, fight teachers/campus aides/anyone, and then later end up killing someone once they're an adult. Then they're on death row or costing the taxpayer tens of thousands of dollars to lock them up for the rest of their lives. This line captures it well: "Suppose you merely scolded your puppy, never punished him, let him go on making messes in the house... and occasionally locked him up in an outbuilding but soon let him back into the house with a warning not to do it again. Then one day you notice that he is now a grown dog and still not housebroken — whereupon you whip out a gun and shoot him dead" (122).
In the novel, the teacher blames the social workers and the so-called "empathetic" engineers of social programs who did not believe in firm punishment. "It was too simple for them, apparently, since anybody could do it, using only the patience and firmness needed in training a puppy. I have sometimes wondered if they cherished a vested interest in disorder — but that is unlikely; adults almost always act from conscious ‘highest motives’ no matter what their behavior.'" It sure seems like many of these types love disorder and profit directly from it (see Springfield, OH).
A lot of it is rooted in America's libertarian impulse, unfortunately. We don't believe it to be the state's place to "discipline" anyone. However, the presumption is that culture and society will do the disciplining instead.
In 2024, nothing - not culture, not society, not state - can discipline anyone. Especially racial minorities. We can only ask nicely. The parents and families are the last line of social defense and we all know the state of those.
I just finished that book on the recommendation of someone here (maybe you, Belte?) It's amazing! The actual story matches the movie and is only decent, but the surrounding backstory about the world absolutely makes it worth reading.
"Starship Troopers" is all about the backstory and the universe it exists in. How the Terran Federation came to be is more interesting than the contemporary events of the story. The parallels with the current moment are uncanny.
That’s great! Yes, it could have been I who posted it earlier as I love the book and think it matches what we need in terms of a unifying moral code. Heinlein succeeds in building a compelling world in which honor and duty are actually reinforced and rewarded in an authentic way. While I love the movie adaptation, I think the novel brings the characters to life (even with the officers at the boot camp lamenting how hard they have to be on the recruits but how necessary it is for their training). If you’re into that sci fi vein, I think you’d like “Armor” (1984) by John Steakley that offers the most compelling battle scenes in literature I have read, which is a difficult feat in that medium. It too is about mech space marines battling against bug creatures but at a scale that is incredible. There’s a random sex scene at the beginning but then it goes straight into the action (the acts that are about the space pirate didn’t do it for me but the beginning is amazing).
The police are the “hard enforcement arm” of the elite class. There are five social classes - the truly elite and influential, who can command resources, government functions, truly hold power. One percenters, banksters, top-tier officials, people that live with a different set of rules.
Then there is law enforcement, the military, mercenaries, etc, who are the physical vehicle of social control.
The third class is the intellectual class, the media, clergy, professors, writers, etc. They are the mental vehicle of social control.
Both the second and third classes are tools of the first class. Either persuade or coerce. They do not serve the people, beyond what it takes to maintain control. This is why universities spend more and more time teaching ideology and far less time teaching academics. This is also why the police, in spite of the “protect and serve” mantra often act in ways we perceive as cowardly or irrational. Some cops still haven’t gotten the message and do serve the public in very heroic ways, but they are increasingly rare, just like professors who didn’t get the message that DEI trumps everything else.
Then there is the fourth class, the vast majority of people who believe that the system is fair, get up and go to work with the expectation of being able to take care of their families, believing in the “American dream” and all that other crap. It’s the same pie in the sky peddled to people back in the day, but it works less and less these days because people have gotten so stupid and lazy that you can’t get much out of most of them. Competency is on the decline in a big way, I guess you could call it some cycle or another, something. Long and short is that most people have not been tested in their lives and have no idea how to act under adversity.
The fourth class also includes professionals and small business owners who think they have influence or wealth, but don’t get that it is dependent on how effectively and faithfully they serve the first class. Anyone who steps out of line finds their career at an end, regardless of where they thought they were. I’ve seen plenty of small business owners who “stepped up” and got smacked down. Don’t get out of line.
Then there is the fifth class, the outlaw class. This is a real hodgepodge of people, from pure criminals and outlaws, to religious and political dissidents, people who have been forced out of the other classes, and so on. Some people also live there by choice, even being people of the other classes who don’t like the restraints or coercion they have to deal with. Free spirits, whatever. Anyone reading this probably at least is spiritually part of this class.
Looking at most things through that framework helps to make sense of a lot of what is happening these days.
Europeans watch Hollywood films and TV news, and they convince themselves they have a deep understanding of US culture. But mostly they do not.
I am German and I lived in the US, in Ireland, in China, in Russia and seven years in Central Asia. My experience is that the more ehnically cohesive a society is the more unwritten laws apply. There´s a common understanding of good and bad and a certain trust. The US has had to rely on the LAW as it is written down much more than any other country I´ve been in. People also have to follow the WRITTEN law more than anywhere else I´ve been to. It is (or was) a common understanding of at least the major part of society. My mother - who went thru total chaos at the end of WWII and was stateless for a few years found that aspect of the US unsufferable. I remember when time was up in the strawberry canyon swimming pool in Berkeley and everybody left on the spot. My mother of course didn´t and in Germany she would have been admonished but in Berkeley the reaction was much more severe.
The law not as a common understanding but as a glue that binds society is at the heart of the US. If you lose that all hell will break loose.
By the other society that I was in that was as diverse as the US was Russia. There the solution for the same problem was a common "religion" aka communism. Without it the USSR broke apart. Russia has returned to Orthodox religion and "traditional values" for the non christian minorities. I hope the US can return to the rule of the written law as the glue that binds her very disperse populations together. I am not hopeful though. But how knows. When I listen to Robert F. Kennedy and his to my jaded European ears hopelessly idealistic talks still I wonder: maybe the US can pull it off. There will be a terrible crisis but there´s also uniquely american idealism and who knows...
This is a great insight. Thank you for sharing. Our historical reverence for the “law of the land” is probably what made the US a relatively high trust society despite the diversity. Before the internet age, the elites and oligarchs could get away with murder (JFK). Now that their crimes are so easily exposed (Epstein), and the two-tiered justice system and it’s abuse so obvious (Biden v Trump), the US has become a very low trust society, with all the chaos and turmoil that entails. The only people that benefit from it are the lawyers. We have a long way to fall. Under our current educational regime, I don’t really see how this is reversed. It won’t be overnight.
The U.S. has always been a low-trust society for most of it's history. The high-trust period was during the "High" following the end of World War II. A generation later, we were trending back towards being low-trust once more.
Following the current Fourth Turning, the next High will probably see the U.S. become a high-trust society again. This is because we'll become community-oriented once more and high-trust societies tend to be more collectivist in its orientation.
Then a generation later, we'll probably revert to our low-trust roots.
Agreed. I meant that but maybe didn’t write it clearly. That is to say, because we are a diverse, low trust society, the only thing that bound us in any kind of social cohesion was a reasonable expectation that we would all agree to follow the same laws and they would be enforced fairly. That’s not happening anymore. Lawyers have explicitly and unashamed weaponized the legal system for political gain so nobody trusts it anymore. This, I would argue is the main reason the nation is falling apart. But at a deeper level it is spiritual crisis: an abandonment of truth. From a certain perspective, the Marxists have accomplished their goal. We are just living it out. Can it be reversed? Seems doubtful in the short run.
Following the rules has become optional now. More accurately, some people have to follow the rules, others don't need to. The state can only tolerate so much rule-breaking, since the whole system falls apart otherwise, so some people, the most productive members of society, need to be forced to follow the rules, while others are given license to flout them.
Thanks for your observations. It's absolutely true. Most of the world throughout history has lived off unwritten rules more than the written rule. "Rule of law" is itself a product of modernity, even if the Ancient Greeks and Romans had a form of it way back when. Even America, back during its better days, operated off a combination of written and unwritten rules. The two sort of balanced one another out. The U.S. today is unique in that it can only operate off the written rule; it's impossible to operate off unwritten rules because of the diversity and complete lack of any unifying identity. We'd be a society of millions of unwritten rules clashing with each other. You can already see it today.
The rule of law aspect of America is also interesting in that Americans have always had a perception of being a badlands and disorderly, yet I also feel Americans are more rule-abiding than most people of the world. I remember listening to an interview with I believe it was a British fighter pilot who was talking about multinational military exercises, and how it was the Americans who were always sticklers for procedure. This contrasts with the perception of Americans as freewheeling cowboys, the mavericks who break the rules to get the job done at all costs.
All people, all societies are a study in contrasts, it seems. Maybe Americans are big on rules because American life can be so chaotic. Meanwhile, the more orderly societies are comfortable winging it, because everything ultimately reverts back to the "mean," so to speak.