Are Americans a Broken People?

POSTED BY: SignyM
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 18, 2026 03:15
VIEWED: 19858
PAGE 9 of 29

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Originally posted by SignyM:
So do I. But they're not going to be solved unless people recognize there are problems and do something about them.

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People do recognize them, but continuing to beat folk over the head with them reaches a point of diminishing returns, except for those already in the choir. Being too out there isn't gonna fly in the country at large either. Trying to sell doing away with Capitalism, for example, will not get you any support with small business owners, and probably most of their employees, and will cause them to look at other valid points, which they might otherwise support, with suspicion.

I suspect that too much change too fast makes most folk uncomfortable, and they'd prefer to take more time, rather than do it all in a lump. If you try to push them more than they'll stand, you'll get pushback.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Originally posted by Geezer:

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Originally posted by SignyM:
So do I. But they're not going to be solved unless people recognize there are problems and do something about them.

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People do recognize them, but continuing to beat folk over the head with them reaches a point of diminishing returns, except for those already in the choir. Being too out there isn't gonna fly in the country at large either. Trying to sell doing away with Capitalism, for example, will not get you any support with small business owners, and probably most of their employees, and will cause them to look at other valid points, which they might otherwise support, with suspicion.

I suspect that too much change too fast makes most folk uncomfortable, and they'd prefer to take more time, rather than do it all in a lump. If you try to push them more than they'll stand, you'll get pushback.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Geezer's Standard Response #1.

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Originally posted by SignyM:

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Can people become so broken that truths of how they are being screwed do not "set them free" but instead further demoralize them? Has such a demoralization happened in the United States?...

When people become broken, they cannot act on truths of injustice. Furthermore, when people have become broken, more truths about how they have been victimized can lead to shame about how they have allowed it. And shame, like fear, is one more way we become even more psychologically broken.

U.S. citizens do not actively protest obvious injustices for the same reasons that people cannot leave their abusive spouses: They feel helpless to effect change. The more we don't act, the weaker we get. And ultimately to deal with the painful humiliation over inaction in the face of an oppressor, we move to shut-down mode and use escape strategies such as depression, substance abuse, and other diversions, which further keep us from acting. This is the vicious cycle of all abuse syndromes.
Perhaps the "political genius" of the Bush-Cheney regime was in their full realization that Americans were so broken that the regime could get away with damn near anything. And the more people did nothing about the boot slamming on their faces, the weaker people became....

The U.S. government-corporate partnership has used its share of guns and terror to break Native Americans, labor union organizers, and other dissidents and activists. But today, most U.S. citizens are broken by financial fears. There is potential legal debt if we speak out against a powerful authority, and all kinds of other debt if we do not comply on the job. Young people are broken by college-loan debts and fear of having no health insurance.

The U.S. population is increasingly broken by the social isolation created by corporate-governmental policies. A 2006 American Sociological Review study ("Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks over Two Decades") reported that, in 2004, 25 percent of Americans did not have a single confidant. (In 1985, 10 percent of Americans reported not having a single confidant.)...

We are also broken by a corporate-government partnership that has rendered most of us out of control when it comes to the basic necessities of life, including our food supply. And we, like many other people in the world, are broken by socializing institutions that alienate us from our basic humanitA long list of school critics from Henry David Thoreau to John Dewey, John Holt, Paul Goodman, Jonathan Kozol, Alfie Kohn, Ivan Illich, and John Taylor Gatto have pointed out that a school is nothing less than a miniature society: what young people experience in schools is the chief means of creating our future society. Schools are routinely places where kids -- through fear -- learn to comply to authorities for whom they often have no respect, and to regurgitate material they often find meaningless. These are great ways of breaking someone.

Today, U.S. colleges and universities have increasingly become places where young people are merely acquiring degree credentials -- badges of compliance for corporate employers -- in exchange for learning to accept bureaucratic domination and enslaving debt.

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www.alternet.org/politics/144529/are_americans_a_broken_people_why_we%
27ve_stopped_fighting_back_against_the_forces_of_oppression?page=entire

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All sounds a bit histrionic to me. The citizens of the US do not appear (from the outside anyway) to be a broken people in any shape, way or form. Regardless of the problems that exist in your society...which by and large exist in mine and most western democracies of the world, the USA is still the leading world power. Perhaps your in for a bit of competition in the next decade or so, but meh...perhaps the world would be a better place with more than one dominant power.

In fact what is odd about this article is that it lumps all Americans together. It appears to me that there are many sorts of Americans with many view

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
Not to say that there are not admirable things about your society, but the idea that you are somehow special, more privileged, righteous seems to be running its course with a dose of reality.

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But then whenever an empires self belief of innate superiority wanes it tends to be all downhill from there.

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People do recognize them

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No, they don't. No more than previously they recognized that the earth revolved around the sun, or that the earth was round, or that natural selection created a diversity of life.

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but continuing to beat folk over the head with them reaches a point of diminishing returns, except for those already in the choir.

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The propaganda for the current system is relentless and unending. I don't hear you complaining about that, tho.

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Being too out there isn't gonna fly in the country at large either. Trying to sell doing away with Capitalism, for example, will not get you any support with small business owners, and probably most of their employees, and will cause them to look at other valid points, which they might otherwise support, with suspicion.

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That's because they don't know what capitalism is. And all they have in their heads (planted there by unending propaganda) is a boogeyman-vision of any alternatives. Even EU-style "socialism" (mis-named) is a boogyeman. Just look at the current debate over health-care reform. "Why, that's SOCIALISM!" seems to stop all thought.

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I suspect that too much change too fast makes most folk uncomfortable, and they'd prefer to take more time, rather than do it all in a lump. If you try to push them more than they'll stand, you'll get pushback.

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No, it makes YOU uncomfortable.

First, let me say that you're acting like the Church did with Galileo. Or religious leaders (in general) did with evolution. "Don't tell them the truth, it might make them uncomfortable and besides, it makes accepted wisdom- and the authorities behind it- look foolish."

So, now let me tell you how you're wrong- aside from the fact that you're fundamentally in error by supporting capitalism.

ANY movement has to have it's "out there" proponents and no movement succeeds without them. Those "out there" proponents do exactly what I'm doing... they make less "out there" proposals look acceptable by comparison.

That happens because repetition produces results. If you've heard my arguments often enough (and you have) to the point where you can predict what I'm going to say ... You have learned it. You know the words, the categories, the "things" in my philosophy. (ontology) Not too long ago, people were afraid to use the word "capitalism". Identification of the thing was verboten. TBTB substituted more benign-sounding phrases like "free market", "open market", or even "freedom" and "democracy" to obscure the actuality of the economic structure. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the word "capitalism" has entered into the official lexicon, and is entering into the common lexicon. That's important. You cannot understand a thing unless you first recognize its existence.

Not only that but you know which contexts will evoke which responses, so you have already absorbed the logic which ties those "things" together. "Doing away with capitalism" is a phrase that, in former times, you might not have even thought, much less "voiced".

You may not accept it, but you KNOW it. it's one more tool in your mental armamentarium with which to parse the world.

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Yes, Frem, I know about Ghandi, and not just the rosy picture painted of him. But what I said was that nonviolent ACTION could bring about change, and whatever he believed, that’s what he practiced and encouraged others to practice as well. And it worked. Yes, there was all that happened and violence was part of it, but he went on a hunger strike to try to end it, and the people believed in him enough that it DID have an effect.

Gino, while I don’t think the stolen election was the beginning of it, it certainly increased the American people’s distrust in our system. And I agree that Ford’s pardon did the same, but I think it started before even that. I’d look back to Kennedy’s assassination, as many do. We were pretty naïve and felt we were invulnerable before that, as a young person does, and that kind of shocked us out of that.

Frem,

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According to Justin it's because imma meddling old busybody worse than ten old ladies knitting circles and can't leave a single thing well enough alone if I feel my efforts can nudge it in the slightest

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Maybe so, but we need MORE people willing to get out there and take action, not fewer!

The mere thought of baconaise ruins my breakfast, which I haven’t had yet! Some of the things people dream up aren’t just “innovative”, they’re downright…well,

I disagree Sig, and agree with Geezer, about pushing too hard. History is full of examples. And what you said about

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I suspect that too much change too fast makes most folk uncomfortable, and they'd prefer to take more time, rather than do it all in a lump. If you try to push them more than they'll stand, you'll get pushback.

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is, in my opinion, right on. It speaks to Afghanistan, too, where, beginning even before I lived there, the shahs were trying to bring them forward from the time of Christ to the twentieth century in a hurry. It just doesn’t work; people aren’t made that way. You can present new ideas, push them to a degree, and things will change. But when you try to FORCE a major change in belief, it just doesn’t work. History shows it over and over; new ideas come, and in time they’re accepted…but it does take TIME, none of the radical ones caught on immediately or even quickly. And I think the “out there” people do the cause more harm than good, rather than making the cause look better; PETA is a good example for me; they make the cause of animal rights look bad, and turn people off from listening.

Magon:

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In fact what is odd about this article is that it lumps all Americans together. It appears to me that there are many sorts of Americans with many views and lifestyles, from different socio-economic, religious and political backgrounds.

What you may be coming to terms with as a 'people' if that is possible, that some of your myths about yourselves are not quite representative of the truth, that there is and always has been injustices in your society, that people have been oppressed, that freedom may not be within everyone's grasp.

Not to say that there are not admirable things about your society, but the idea that you are somehow special, more privileged, righteous seems to be running its course with a dose of reality.

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EXCELLENTLY said…with the current example of the right-wingers being so upset at Obama admitting we did wrong during Dumbya, and them taking it as his refusal to admit America is “special”! It’s a pretty hard-wired belief that we’re special, especially in rural areas where there’s less exposure to other cultures, and I, too, think we’d be a healthier culture if we abandoned it.

I saw it in Aghanistan and it sickened me, the sense of superiority of the Americans. Interestingly, many of the other foreigners there didn’t feel that way…and if we harken back to how the British Empire thought of the East Indians and Afghans, etc., it’s exactly the same thing. Empires tend to always get too full of themselves and believe they’re better than everyone else, until their empire fades and they’re fac

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