The character of America and economic crashes

She is a little Pollyannaish about America in the way that converts are the most zealous, but I agree with her more than a little. [Link]

But as I read his book and nod sagely along with things like “buy used jewelry now, because that’s easiest to trade with.  Gold coins advertise you have a hoard” and as I remember the massive flea markets of the late seventies in Portugal, and how my brother and his generation ransacked attics for things to sell because no one their generation had a job, I keep getting a feeling that things are also not right, things are… slightly askew.

Look, Ferfal is an educated man, and clearly he’s been on line and knows Americans.  BUT he’s not an American, and we are different.  We are the Aspergers kid of the international community.  Every country has a constitution, for instance, but we’re the only one who takes it seriously.  Every country has an history, but Americans, by and large (and yes, I know whence I speak) know more about their history and are more exact about it than anywhere else.

The first thing that impressed me about Americans was how seriously we took things – no, you took things.  I was not one of you yet, at least officially.  There were clubs for HOBBIES like sewing and hosting foreign students.  They were run according to Robert’s rules.  I couldn’t imagine that anywhere else.

Again, if you visualize the international community as a bunch of people, America is the Aspergers kid in the corner saying “You can’t do that, because the charter says—”

I don’t mean this as a criticism.  I am one of us, after all.  And by choice.  This taking things too seriously and too literally and not doing the wink and nod thing other nations do is both the cause of our glory and a lot of our problems.

It is the cause of our glory because we believe in the Pax Americana, and we view it as our duty, and like no other country since the history of ever, we do not take over and create an empire, while dressing it up in charity and civic duty.  We really do keep the peace of the seas and international commerce and we really do believe countries shouldn’t invade our allies out of what the heck, and…

The downside of it is that we often fail to understand – even our politicians – how other countries act.  We don’t get that no, throughout history, England felt no guilt at all for doing down France, just to keep France from getting too uppity and vice versa.  We fail to understand the basic chauvinism of other countries, even when being a patriot is a “bad” thing in most of them.  If you listen to conversations in the pub or in the home, they’re still sure their “race” (by which they mean nationality) is way better than all others, and they wouldn’t even consider this might be a stupid thing to think.

Americans don’t get those mechanisms.  We’re genuinely not that way.

At the same time, the fact that we don’t get other countries means we don’t get history, either.  The only place in the world who could come up with “Americans are guilty of everything bad” is right here. We take an ideal constitution seriously, and the principals of individual freedom, worldwide, so of course, we’re going to feel guilty when Real Politick causes us to support dictators or arm less than sane/pure insurgents.  And this, internalized through our academics, pollutes the mind of our young with self hatred.  Then the other countries go along with it, because, h*ll yeah, it gives them an excuse for why they fail.

All of which comes back to the crash.  I agree with Ferfal that the Argentine type crash is probably the closest to what America will be but… um… there are different factors.

There is the crazy American character which might make things much better – and in some places possibly much much better.  Remember the power outage on the Eastern seaboard? Remember hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people quietly walking miles and miles back home?  With no crime, no looting, no vandalism?

I can’t imagine that happening in any other country at any other time, unless in very small towns in mono-cultural countries like Sweden or Finland.

THAT is the measure of how perfectly weird we are.  Yes, not all locations could do that.  There’s New Orleans.  And Detroit.  But those stick out in the American landscape.

So – what if they gave an economic crash and no one noticed?

In many locations I bet you that’s just what will happen.

In others… Mad Max might be a best case scenario.

That’s one of the ways we’re different.  Yes, Ferfal talks about disparities of that kind, but no one who hasn’t lived in America can understand or see the sheer difference in culture even between adjacent cities.