Maybe you’re right. Maybe group autonomy and independence must be sacrificed for economic and material stability. Maybe strong, centralized technocratic states are better for the broad base of people than allowing each group to have their own autonomy and self governance. If that’s true, then I guess the US needs to become more like China. How do we go about doing that?

Well, I’m not a bolshevik, or Marxist-Leninist/Maoist, whatever, so that’s not what I want. I realize that MLs don’t really give a shit what people want, though. Still, I think the US getting taken over by MLs is pretty unlikely.

Isn’t more division inevitable, though? I know a lot of people want to believe that Americans are more unified than not, and that we only disagree on some details, but agree on the core principles, but is that actually true? I think most Americans generally believe in broadly liberal ideals, like individual rights and freedoms, but disagree pretty strongly on which rights and freedoms should be prioritized (or recognized/enforced at all), and for whom. And that makes a pretty big difference. Those differences are more fundamental than a lot of people would like to acknowledge. Plus, there are, I think, a not insignificant number of Americans who aren’t guided by liberal principles at all. I’m one of those people, and, look, I understand that people like me are a small minority, but we exist. And I’m kind of sick of not having any representation at all.

The Soviet Union failed, though.

What is the solution?

People have been doing this?

I have this fantasy that I and everyone in the US who shares my ideology could all move to the same state, take over the state legislature and just build our own semi autonomous micro nation. But then I realize that 12 people moving to the same state probably isn’t going to make any difference.

Ok, but even if the person living in Seattle and the person living in Lafayette are (at this moment in time) not as different as a person living in Zurich is to a person living in Lisbon, they might be different enough in their conception of what America is, or should be, that is ridiculous to act like they are each a part of a singular American consensus. The folly is not on all of us, because there is no “us.”

It’s more complex than that. For one, there were many nations of people on the North American continent before European contact, each with distinct languages, cultures, traditions, etc. Then, people from many different nations immigrated to the United States, again, each bringing with them their own language, culture, traditions, etc. And then of course there were the African slaves, brought here against their will, once again, bringing with them their own cultures, etc, etc. Over time, each district culture, language, and tradition was eliminated and replaced by a singular, dominant cultural hegemony, that of English speaking protestants of almost exclusively northern European ancestry. That hegemonic order was maintained through force, repression, violence, and in some cases literal genocide.

That hegemony had been maintained for several generations, but it has been weakening over recent decades, as groups seek emancipation and autonomy. African Americans, indigenous Americans, Spanish speaking Americans who are recent immigrants or descendents of recent immigrants, all these groups (and more) are slowly eroding the dominant hegemony of English speaking people of European ancestry. As the hegemony erodes, distinct cultures will be able to emerge/reemerge, and/or many distinct groups of people will organically evolve along different paths, due to different geography and climate, economic conditions, history, etc.

It’s true that the differences between us aren’t nearly as significant as the differences between the various nations of Europe - YET - but that is because of the hegemony that has been in place, that had made the United States relatively culturally homogeneous. That will change. It already is changing. The hegemony is slowly (or maybe not so slowly) breaking down, and that will lead to ever increasing cultural and ethnic diversity. New, distinct nations of people will emerge, existing nations that had been violently repressed and forced to assimilate will reassert their autonomy, and this fiction about the United States being one nation of people will be exposed. It’s already happening.

You’re so close to getting it.

Americans have got to be the dumbest bunch out there.

Of the countries that score above a 0.9 on the human development index, the US is definitely among the stupidest, if not the stupidest. But, that’s kind of misleading. The US shouldn’t be compared to places like Switzerland or Norway, nations that have populations of less than 10 million. The US is more comparable to the EU as a whole. We should be seen as a union of nations rather than a single nation, and like the EU we have some states that are much more developed than others.

So, we’re not one “bunch” of people, anymore than Europe is one “bunch” of people.

Studies suggest political divisions are increasingly seen as moral judgments, fostering a “mega-identity” where political views signify personal decency.

I think this is important information that doesn’t get enough attention. The divisions that exist in the US today are often portrayed in the media as mostly superficial, as though we only disagree on the minor details of public policy choices, but generally agree on the core principles. I don’t think that’s true. I think there are significant ideological, philosophical, and moral disagreements among Americans. We have fundamentally different ideals, and we have differing visions of how America should be, and for how people should act and behave.

There are not only two different visions. I don’t think it is a strict dichotomy. I think there are several different, visions for the US. Some left, some right; some that want to focus on religious, social, cultural, or ethnic issues, some that want to focus on economic or material issues. There are multiple different ideals competing for supremacy, since the US is a de facto two party system, the winners are which ever groups can form the largest coalition of voters.

53% of white women just voted for Trump.

Well, I’m not distinguishing between myself and the liberals based on skin color, but ideology. Liberalism is not an ideology that is exclusive to people with light skin. There are plenty of liberals who have darker skin. There are also many people who are left of liberals who have lighter skin, myself included.

I do think a lot of liberals are spending far too much time trying to score cheap political points…That criticism actually extends to one of Ocasio-Cortez’s top allies in the Senate — Bernie Sanders — as well.

America is silly. Because of our first-past-the-post electoral system, we are a de facto two party state. As a result, Americans have come to believe that there are only two political or ideological possibilities: liberalism and conservativism. Therefore, everyone is either a liberal or a conservative, and everyone who isn’t a conservative must necessarily be a liberal, and vice versa.

I am not a conservative, but I am also not a liberal. I don’t agree with either ideology. Yes, generally, I might agree more with the liberals than the conservatives, but that doesn’t make me a liberal. It doesn’t even necessarily make me a liberal ally. Stop calling us liberals. We are not liberals, stop trying to make us part of your group. Stop with the, “hey, we’re all liberals, guys,” no, we’re not.

Bernie Sanders is not a liberal. If he were a liberal, he would be a part of the liberal, Democrat party. He is not, he’s an independent. He often joins with the liberals, because, again, the liberals are nearer to him than the only other party, the conservative Republicans, but he nonetheless remains an independent. Stop calling us liberals.

You’re confused. It’s my fault. I said:

Maybe the problem isn’t so much liberalism specifically

And you took that to mean I was defending liberalism. I’m not. I was positing that maybe the problem was deeper than liberalism. I never said that liberalism was a “necessary evil,” but I get why you thought that. In the US, liberalism is the status quo, and American experts will tell you that facts and evidence support liberalism. But, contrary to what liberals think, they don’t have a monopoly on facts and evidence. Some economic experts who have analyzed the facts and evidence and have to come to different conclusions than the liberal experts would be the economists Ha-Joon Chang and Yanis Varoufakis. Even here in the US there are experts who are critical liberalism, like the economist Richard Wolff. Wolff is a democratic socialist economist. Even the economist Joseph E. Stiglitz, while not a socialist, is critical of neoliberalism.

Yeah, you’re right. It’s just ideology so often becomes like a religion, and adherents become similarly incapable of absorbing new information or data, adapting to changes, or analyzing their system critically or objectively.

The one that actually benefits the people who are supposed to be represented by the system instead of the wealthy elite at the top.

What would that be? The liberals at least have specifics, they have a system. You have some vague goals. It’s not enough to tell people you’re going to make their lives better, you have to tell them how you’re going to do it.

Campaign on popular policies that the working and average person will actually want and benefit from.

What would those be?

Y’all keep thinking liberalism will work

I don’t.

so why are you so sure liberalism is better than any other ideology

I don’t.

Your ideology lost,

Yes, it did. It lost conclusively. But it’s not liberalism. My ideology is democratic socialism, and, yeah, it lost. It was a massacre.

Sure seems like the data and the people are repudiating liberalism, so… Sure sounds like liberalism is the wrong one here

I don’t necessarily disagree, but if the problem isn’t ideology itself but just that we have the wrong ideology in place, well, what do we replace it with? What’s the “right” ideology? I’m not opposed to getting rid of liberalism, but I don’t want to see it replaced with something that will be no better, or even worse, for the average person. Like I said, I don’t think all ideologies are equal, and I DO think there are ideologies that are worse than liberalism. I don’t want a worse ideology to replace liberalism, just because some people believed it was better. By all means, let’s replace liberalism, I don’t think it’s working well enough, but let’s use facts, data, and evidence to determine what that better ideology would be.

No, not really. I’m not saying all ideologies are equally valid, nor am I saying that we should all be nihilists. I’m talking about belief being replaced by data, facts, and evidence. It’s about making a distinction between subjective ideals and morals, and objective truths.

Every society is going to have their morals and ideals. That’s a good thing, and a necessary thing, but not all systems are equally effective at turning an ideal into a reality. It’s not enough to believe that a system will achieve the ideal, you have to rely on science and facts to construct the system that will achieve the ideal.

Maybe the problem isn’t so much liberalism specifically, but ideology generally. Ideology can become like a religion, adherents come to believe that their ideology is the only correct one and all the other ideologies are heresy. Liberalism is the current orthodoxy and anyone who questions or criticizes it is a heretic.