fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3002 ]

[ SECRET POST #3002 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3002 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Transformers: More than Meets the Eye/Transformers: Robots in Disguise]

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[Gary Barlow, Take That]

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[Sherlock Holmes]

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[Criminal Minds/Law and Order: SVU]

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[Gekkan shoujo Nozaki-kun]

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[Buffy the Vampire Slayer (episode: Prom Night)]

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[Breaking Bad]

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[Night Shift]

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[Neil Patrick Harris, Stephen Fry, Neil Gaiman, Stephen Colbert]

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[clockwise from bottom left: Dinosaur Comics, Romantically Apocalyptic, Homestuck, Nedroid, Sfeer Theory, Bite Me!]

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21.

[Dragon Age]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 066 secrets from Secret Submission Post #429.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Americans, how the hell did you shake off the shackles of being a colony, and then manage to reinvent your own class system, reduce social mobility to practically nothing AND reinvent the slave trade in the form of prisons within centuries of declaring yourself 'the land of the free'? I mean COME ON. You weren't even trying FFS.

Because it's only like 400 years old? You're doing the historic equivalent of yelling at a toddler.

If you go through European history, you can find multiple instances where p much every country there did the same things within a ~400 year span. It just isn't recently, so people forget, or dismiss it as 'history we're like, so over that now, guys'.

Smallpox. We did it with smallpox.

And baseball.

Hey quirky! Long time no see.

& baseball is amazing and in no way harmful

CAPITALISM.

Seriously. Spend a century teaching people that it's better for most to be peons than for everyone to be "slaves" of socialism, keep power (economic and political) in the hands of the same sort of elites who rigged the revolution (FOR PROFIT), and power never really has much risk of leaving the hands of the elite class.

We never had Jacobins.

Because we're just that badass

*flips down shades, skateboards off*

Well, first, this is clearly in no way unique to America. So I'm not sure how much there is to actually explain. Fast-paced changes in the fabric of society just aren't that rare. So I'm not sure if we really need to appeal to anything specific to America. And tbh if I were more of a leftist I'd be arguing that it was never that much of a change in the first place - the economy was plenty stratified in the late 19th century.

But second, if we do want to appeal to anything specifically American, I would point to the size of the country and it's lack of population density, the fundamental concept of federalism and the relative emphasis placed on local governance, and the frequency and significance of internal migration.

If you have any suggestions on prison system reforms, we're all ears, by the way.

End privately-run prisons, make the state have to build, run and maintain them.

While I agree that would be... extremely good, it wouldn't solve some of the more basic problems of the prison system, IE overcrowding.

(you could argue that requiring enough prisons to be built to fit the population would solve that, but it wouldn't solve the deeper problem, IE we arrest and imprison an insane percentage of our population) (you could also argue that if the state had to bear the expense of imprisonment it would be less eager to imprison so many, but that presumes that privately run prisons save the state money, which seems doubtful to me)

Actually, one very big reason why we have so many people in prison is precisely because of private prisons. I guarantee you that forcing the state to restructure its corrections system in the absence of privately run prisons will result in less people going to prison as opposed to other forms of punishment -- partly because the state doesn't want to pay for it, and partly because private prisons are run on the cheap which cuts down on opportunities for prisoners to actually reform and change their behaviour.

partly because the state doesn't want to pay for it

As I said before, I don't have much regard for this as a reason, because I don't think the private prison system actually saves the state money. So I don't think the costs to the state per prisoner would increase substantially, so at least on that side, the financial motive wouldn't be affected.

But on thinking about it, you could argue there'd be less incentive to actually imprison people (or more broadly, less incentive to have draconian and intense laws, mandatory minimums, etc), and that's probably true.

partly because private prisons are run on the cheap which cuts down on opportunities for prisoners to actually reform and change their behaviour.

That's a good point.

Although America building prisons that are actually suited to reforming prisoners is probably just as unlikely as them ending the private prison system in the first place. And I just made myself sad.

it wouldn't solve some of the more basic problems of the prison system, IE overcrowding.

legalize. pot.

Shorter terms are not an unworkable idea.

Because a significant percentage of Americans actually long, to this day, for a feudal system. They came here in the first place because they wanted a feudal system, and immediately did their best to build one. Every time we tell them to quit it, they look innocent for like ten minutes and then just start right back in.

This led to the American system of chattel slavery, which required instilling in much of the populace deep feelings of contempt and hatred toward black people, a legacy we still bear today, and which can easily be exploited by power-hungry neo-feudalists.

TL;DR: Fuckin' Reagan.

They came here in the first place because they wanted a feudal system, and immediately did their best to build one.

You what

Virginians. That whole "gentleman farmer" fantasy? Plantation culture? Straight-up feudalists fleeing English reforms.

More info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion%27s_Seed

I would probably agree with the idea that the culture of Virginia was shaped by the groups that are being talked about there, but glossing that as "straight-up feudalists fleeing English reforms" strikes me as being deeply wrong in several different but fundamental ways. I mean, I haven't read the book (although I'd like to; thank you for bringing it to my attention) but I kind of doubt Fischer talks about it in those terms.

I would also point out that there's a pretty substantial difference between "agrarian republicanism" and "feudalism". I mean, you know. Miles and miles of difference. You can certainly talk about elitism and that kind of thing, but that's not the same as feudalism by any means.

I feel like if there's a tiny elite class that owns >80% of all the land and production apparatus, and a servile class that has no rights except those granted them by the owner class, with a smallish middle class in between selling crap to their betters and their lessers, that's basically feudalism. You can put a democratic hat on it if you want, but if the vote is being denied to that servile class, it's still just feudalism in a hat.

i don't think that's in any way a useful or accurate definition of feudalism.

i also think, if that's the definition of feudalism you're going to use, it becomes much harder to trace the connection culturally speaking between the culture of the rural gentry in the south of england with american conservatism. because the connection becomes so broad that it makes it a lot harder to point to specific features of either that link them, if you follow me.

wat

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #3002 ]

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