Understanding America I

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thibodeaux
Posts: 8055
Joined: Thu May 20, 2004 7:32 pm

Post by thibodeaux »

Whenever I get a lot of different---but clearly related---ideas going on in my head, and I always try to fit them all together into a Big Picture. Example:

As an electrical engineering undergrad, we had to take circuits, systems/signals analysis, and physics. It turns out, these are all the same thing: just a bunch of linear differential equations (something else we had to take, of course).

One of the things that's fascinating to me is the interplay between culture, geography, genetics, and politics. Let me explain. A few years ago, I read a book called Albion's Seed. The premise of this book is that the US was originally settled by 4 large waves of immigration from Britain: the Puritans from East England to New England, the Cavaliers from South England to the Chesapeake Bay, the Quakers from the Midlands to the Delaware valley, and the Scots-Irish from the Scottish border and Northern Ireland to Appalachia. These groups and their distinctive folkways etc are still discernable today.

I'm currently reading another book called "Cousins' Wars," which is about the English Civil War, the American Revolution, and the US Civil War. Turns out, these are all the same war, and they were all won by the Puritans. These people keep coming up.

So, it's clear we have always been and still are ruled by the Puritans; today we call them "Liberals." Their religion is more secular now (see "Unitarian Universalism"). Their seminaries are still the Ivy League, which is of course where our rulers are educated.

Another interesting thread is Communism. Several blogs I read (particularly this one point out that in many ways the Communist nations were "clients" of the State department, and were State's proxies in State's war against the REAL enemy: The Pentagon. This ties in with the perennial Civil War theme of the Puritans (in this case, State, and probably CIA) against the Cavaliers and their cracker allies.

This is an interesting lens through which to view US politics: a war of Puritans against the Wrong Kind of White People, and the Puritans have mostly been winning. That's about as succinct as I can put it. It is certainly parsimonious, which is a good thing in a hypothesis, but we must test it. Does it explain the world as we perceive it? Does it have predictive power? What and who are these Puritans? Why are they always winning? Are they really winning, since the Wrong Kind of White People somehow seem to stick around?

Anyway, comments welcome.
thibodeaux
Posts: 8055
Joined: Thu May 20, 2004 7:32 pm

Post by thibodeaux »

Some more randoms that tie in:
- Where are the most stereotypically "progressive" countries? Why, Scandinavia, right? And the most progressive states in the US? New England, the upper Midwest (MN, WI, etc), and the Left Coast (WA, OR, CA), right? Something I never thought about was that Eastern Englad was once called the "Danelaw" because it was conquered by Vikings (i.e., Scandinavians). Later, these people in England became Puritans and moved to New England. From their, they spread out through the northern US, joined especially in the upper Midwest by...Vikings. Whoa. Is there something in Viking DNA that causes Progressivism?
- WWI, WWII, and the Cold War: how do they fit into this model? I've already mentioned that the Cold War was a proxy fight between State and Defense. What about the World Wars, though? I don't know; it did take a heap of doing to get us into WWI...I've not studied it deeply, but I have the impression that the British worked the propaganda BIG TIME to get us in. I do know that FDR had us fighting almost an undeclared war against Germany (not to mention Lend-Lease and other aid to Britain and Russia) before Pearl Harbor. So...why? Was this all a Puritan plot?
Malcolm
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Joined: Fri May 21, 2004 1:04 pm
Location: Minneapolis

Post by Malcolm »

Goddamnit. Now you're making me think about this.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
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