I spent yesterday in computer hell. At 6:30 AM I tried to
check in on a live cam and other streaming sites that I enjoy and discover that
I was getting nothing but the sound and a green screen. Somehow I found my way
to a company promising to help me whose tech experts are apparently located in
Manila. Four hours and too much money later the problem was solved. The techie
who helped me kindly showed me how it was to be fixed. It turned out that it
required four clicks and about 20 seconds to do the job. Now, along the way he
cleaned up my computer, deleted lots of temporary files, and even got rid of a
Trojan file that promised real trouble, but still – – –
Wrung through and beaten down, I went on Google Chrome to
check several of my favorite sites. No problem. Then I switched to Microsoft Edge
and the problem reappeared, but this time I was ready for it and with four
clicks I fixed it! I am now prepared to rent out my new gained expertise at
reasonable rates. :-)
As for the rest of the world, there is a silver lining in the electoral hell we are now going through. Seemingly forever, Americans have told themselves a fable about how exceptional a country we are. We annually put out lists of countries that have failed to live up to our standard of democratic politics, we recruit young people to go around the world showing the benighted peoples of Third World countries how to be democracies. It is no good for left-wing scholars, among whom I am one, to publish books showing that this fable of exceptionalism conceals an ugly truth (see chapters two and three of my book Autobiography of an Ex-White Man.) But a wannabe autocrat, a cooperative Republican Party, and a royally screwed up election have together done the job quite nicely. It will be a while before Americans have the chutzpah to claim that they are a city upon a hill, the only nation created on the idea of freedom, a beacon to the world, etc. etc. etc. Perhaps the Congress could establish an annual prize for the country whose politics most closely resemble our own – they could call it the Donald J Trump Prize.
11 comments:
Sounds like you may have been the victim of a scam. I would check your payment method if any that you gave those people, make sure you have not been overcharged. Change any passwords that you may have given them. If you installed anything new on your machine it may be that your system is compromised and might need to be reinstalled.
A line from Wittgenstein at times like this comes to mind: the world is everything that is the case. The world is merely a bunch of facts, some harsher and more unfortunate than others. In fact even absurd facts are facts, and all political action assumes an acceptance of these facts in the world as being the case. Wittgesnstein's admonition is as helpful as any
I hope that a consequence of the 4 years of Trump's presence in the White House (and in Mara Lago) will be that we recognize a little better that the project of enlightenment is not over. I've been thinking wrong for a long time. I thought that there are already stages in a development that you can't fall behind. Trump and the right-wing nationalists in Europe show that there are unfortunately no securities and guarantees. Trump has made the abyss clearly visible. "Man's exit from his self-inflicted immaturity," (Der Ausgang des Menschen aus seiner selbst verschuldeten Unmündigkeit) as Kant explains in his essay "What is Enlightenment" (Was ist Aufklärung), is not a door that can be closed behind you. The task is to keep this door open at all times. 'Sapere aude!' it works if you give the next generation, regardless of what social class they come from, the best education from elementary school to university. Needless to say, this education has to be free in every relationship. Less money for guns, more money for math.
It appears to have become my fate as a commenter on this blog to play the perennial adversarial advocate. If “exceptionalism” means the best, the most advanced, the most compassionate, the most liberating, then the United States is not exceptional. But this is not what “exceptional” means. Rather,
Exceptionalism is the perception or belief that a species, country, society, institution, movement, individual, or time period is "exceptional" (i.e., unusual or extraordinary)
There are presently 195 nations on Earth. Among those countries there are surely a score load in which the readers of this blog would not prefer to live over living in the U.S.. among them, I suspect, are Russia, China, Somalia, Iraq (even before the U.S. invasion), Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Colombia, Brazil, Chile (I will defer to s. wallerstein on this issue), Thailand, Indonesia, ….
Many would, perhaps, prefer to live in Canada, Great Britain, Australis, New Zealand, France, Italy (?), Estonia, Costa Rica, …. Personally, although I love visiting Canada, I do not like the cold. And Costa Rica? The humidity and large insects would get to me.
The United States has just escaped the horrifying possibility of having to live another four years with an amoral, fascistic demagogue at its helm. The very fact that this demonic human being came to power in this country is demoralizing, and something many of us believed would not have been possible. But we can be thankful this Thanksgiving that he will be gone by January 20, 2021. Will he be gone for good? Who knows? Will his deranged followers disappear? No. But still, we should be thankful that on November 26 we can take comfort that he will not be occupying the White House for another four years.
The following essay discusses how can we measure what makes a country great. And while the U.S. does not come out at the very top, it is far from the bottom – significantly far.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180111-how-can-you-measure-what-makes-a-country-great
On the Social Progress Index, Norway ranks 8th with an overall score of 96.85.
https://www.socialprogress.org/?tab=2&code=NOR
The U.S. ranks 28th with an overall score of 85.71
https://www.socialprogress.org/?tab=2&code=USA
That puts the U.S. in the top 14.3% of the 195 nations on the planet. Not the best, but certainly far from the worst. And there is something else that we should bear in mind when evaluating whether the U.S. is sufficiently unusual or extraordinary to warrant being considered exceptional. There are more people of different ethnicities, races, religions, and cultures living in the United States than in any other country on Earth. With this much diversity – with its potential of creating hostility and disagreement – I think that we rank 28th on the Social Progress Index is pretty good. Is there room for improvement? Of course. But as Garrison Keillor’s mother used to tell him and his sister, “Life is what you make of it. Make the best of it.”
Happy Thanksgiving to Prof. Wolff and to all of my fellow readers and commenters (including those who do not celebrate Thanksgiving and including all those who have found me annoying).
MS - yes, you are annoying and that post could have been reduced from its current sheet of text to one short paragraph. But happy thanksgiving to you too.
MS’s response is internal and comparative—roughly, where else would one choose to live and here are some data comparing the US with other countries. But there is surely another dimension to the issue rpw’s post poses, namely, an international perspective.
O, wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion
PS. For the pedants among us, that is, of course, a quotation from a Robert Burns poem
Dueling Scottish Poems:
Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said:
“This is my own, my native land?”
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned
As home his footsteps he hath turned,
From wandering on a foreign strand?
Sir Walter Scott
I don't see them duelling so much as complementing, MS. But it is actually a bit dangerous to quote that paean to nationalism—to Scottish nationalism of the sort I was taught in primary school—without acknowledging its very dark side. For the The Lay of the Last Minstrel is about as bloody a poem as the Iliad. It’s full of murder, feuding, violence, battle, and witchcraft. So even if the passage you quoted complements mine, I think I’ll still stick with Burns. (Scott, by the way, was my favourite author when I was growing up.)
I agree with the first poster. This sounds exactly like a scam and I would get your computer checked out by someone trusted.
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