vorpa-glavo
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User ID: 674
When talking about large groups of people over time, the only constant is change.
Dante might have been a Christian, but he also saw himself as an inheritor of Roman culture, and so his Divine Comedy ends up with a strange mix of references to Classical Mythology and the Aeneid, in a book about the Christian Afterlife. And before Rome "Hellenized" and adopted Greek philosophy and Homeric myth as its own, it saw the Greeks as foreign and other. We know that Cato the Elder considered Greek philosophy "un-Roman" and he probably would have hated to learn that his great grandson, Cato the Younger would be remembered as a sort of Stoic martyr and sage. It only took four generations for a resistant Rome to Hellenize in this way.
Just as there is no "truer" Rome, there is no "truer" West. All of those version of Rome are the real Rome, whether pro-Hellenistic or anti-Hellenistic, whether Pagan or Christian, all of them were Roman. So too, the West has been a lot of different things. The West is Greece and Rome, and Geneva, and London and Paris. It encompasses secular enlightenment ideals from the Encyclopedists of France, to the Marxists of Russia, and the Christians of the Crusades, and the Pagan Romans.
CertainlyWorse was expressing concern for the fate of "the West", and I was addressing him in those terms. But the simple fact is that the only thing we can say for sure is that "the West" is going to change in ways we can hardly predict, and would have no matter what happened. That's the weird thing about concerning yourself about a civilization instead of a nation or an ethnos or a tribe. Civilizations contain multitudes and are ever-changing. At least if you zoom in to the tribe level, you can say that there is a continuity of genetics, even if there is cultural drift and change over time.
vorpa-glavo
1mo ago
What level of intellect is required to see the violence and murder difference between races?
Irish Americans had high rates of criminality until the around the 20th century. And the Irish in Ireland had low IQ's until their country became a banking hub. Lovecraft wasn't wrong to hate and fear the Irish in one sense, but after they were anglicized, the Irish Americans are just another "spicy white" ethnic group.
Certainly, I don't assume unkind things about someone when I hear they have some Irish heritage today.
I think the basic intuition is, sure, there might be genuine cultural or genetic differences that are leading some races to have higher rates of criminality in the United States today, but we don't actually know whether those groups are more like the Irish (where under the right set of societal conditions they might be made to assimilate) or whether it would literally take gene therapy to fix it. Also, the genetic factors for say, criminality, might not be precisely what we think. Just as the Native Americans seem to genuinely have higher genetic risk for alcoholism, I could easily imagine that ADOS black people might be more susceptible to certain kinds of drug addiction and that might end up explaining a large part of the difference in criminality between them and other ethnic groups.
It’s not dead - but it COULD have been the capital of the free world.
Sure, instead it got the consolation prize of being the wealthiest city in the world, and one of two megacities that makes a major imprint on all of American culture and entertainment.
It's this broader desire for suppression to allow narrative control that worries me about the West right now. Its happening along other fronts such as Multiculturalism which also seems to now require suppression of speech to get incompatible cultures to coexist.
That politician from Australia notwithstanding, I don't actually think that Multiculturalism requires suppression of speech to function, it just requires some amount of cultural assimilation and little-L liberalization. It's really easy to go back and read something like H.P. Lovecraft's He, where he wrote:
So instead of the poems I had hoped for, there came only a shuddering blankness and ineffable loneliness; and I saw at last a fearful truth which no one had ever dared to breathe before—the unwhisperable secret of secrets—the fact that this city [New York] of stone and stridor is not a sentient perpetuation of Old New York as London is of Old London and Paris of Old Paris, but that it is in fact quite dead, its sprawling body imperfectly embalmed and infested with queer animate things which have nothing to do with it as it was in life. Upon making this discovery I ceased to sleep comfortably; though something of resigned tranquillity came back as I gradually formed the habit of keeping off the streets by day and venturing abroad only at night, when darkness calls forth what little of the past still hovers wraith-like about, and old white doorways remember the stalwart forms that once passed through them. With this mode of relief I even wrote a few poems, and still refrained from going home to my people lest I seem to crawl back ignobly in defeat.
And see it as a bit silly and overblown. New York city isn't dead just because it isn't Dutch or Anglo American. (Also, surely London has had some shift in ethnicity from its Roman founding to the time of Lovecraft? Like, what about the anglo-saxons and the vikings?) And it just seems obvious that many of the ethnic groups that H.P. Lovecraft was worried about, like Southern and Eastern Europeans, the Irish, and Asians just aren't that scary in the modern day. Surely, even critics of multiculturalism would find a passage about the scary Asians like this one:
And swarming loathsomely on aërial galleries I saw the yellow, squint-eyed people of that city, robed horribly in orange and red, and dancing insanely to the pounding of fevered kettle-drums, the clatter of obscene crotala, and the maniacal moaning of muted horns whose ceaseless dirges rose and fell undulantly like the waves of an unhallowed ocean of bitumen.
To be utterly laughable. Seriously, I've been to Chinese New Year celebrations within my city, and it is a fun time. They do have drum performances, and dress in strange clothes, but I don't feel like a group celebrating their heritage once or twice a year is some death knell for Western civilization and culture.
The good, still mostly functional Western countries that matter like the United States, still remember what it means to be an empire (even if they don't call it that), and we've successfully anglified basically every white ethnic group that has come here, we anglified the Native Americans, and sufficiently assimilated Asians and Hispanics so that they're no great threat to our society. People look at the statistics of Europe's failed immigration policies, and assume that they also apply to the US, but they just don't. Regardless of whatever foolish policies Europe and the wider anglosphere adopt, the United States is doing fine and will continue to be a torchbearer for Western values even after those cultures have become just like the New York of Lovecraft's imagination.
I kind of don't understand people who look at the facts of succesful past assimilation, and who just assume that there is no soft or hard pressure to assimilate anymore in spite of political correctness and what the progressive left say. People who come here learn English. People who come here, learn a baseline of American culture and values. Just as the Chinese Empire of old hanified many of the disparate ethnic groups within its borders and failed to hanify others, so too America has and will succesfully anglify (or if you prefer, americanize) many ethnic groups and will fail to anglify others. But as long as we have the state capacity to stop the non-anglified groups from being too much of a problem (and we definitely do), it is a total non-issue for our civilization and way of life.
We’ve completely given up putting people in prison in this country.
Isn't some of that downstream from a limited supply of prison housing? I remember when Covid happened, and because prisoners are the one group in the United States whose health is the responsibility of the US government, a lot of non-violent prisoners were temporarily being released to house arrest in order to aid in social distancing, because otherwise the prisons would just be petri dishes of disease.
So, isn't the problem in many cases (varies by region I'm sure), that there just aren't enough prisons to hold all the people we might want to imprison? In which case the answer is "easy", just make more prisons. Except that because of NIMBYism, everyone tries to make sure that the prison doesn't get built near their neighborhood and hardly anything gets built half the time.
vorpa-glavo
1mo ago
Yeah, it's basically the roots eu- (good), angelion (message.) Shares a root with angels, who are the messengers of God.
vorpa-glavo
1mo ago
But even when the US didn't formally declare war, Congress has generally implicitly consented to military actions by the president by agreeing to fund them.
Congress didn't do that here.
vorpa-glavo
1mo ago
Ok, with that in mind, and assuming that there were a brutal 10/7 style terrorist attack planned for Canada, what percentage of Americans would lift a finger to stop it?
Elsewhere in this thread, I already conceded I may be wrong on the Americans-saving-Canadians question, depending on the level of inconvenience involved.
But we shouldn't just judge ourselves or others purely on on how we treat our friends or allies.
I'm willing to grant for the sake of argument that Iranians wouldn't make a phone call to prevent American deaths in a terrorist attack. But I would again ask how many Americans would make such a call for terrorist attacks against Russian or Chinese citizens? I don't believe that the general sentiment here in the US is "Death to China" or "Death to Russia", and yet I think even our more tempered animosity towards these geopolitical rivals is enough that I have serious doubts about how many Americans would make a phone call to try and save Russian and Chinese lives.
Don't get me wrong. I actually think the bigger the consequences, the more do-gooder Americans would try to stick their necks out for Russian and Chinese civilian lives. That is, if it were 30 lives at stake, I think there's a reasonable chance a majority of Americans wouldn't make the call. But if it were 3000 lives or 30,000 lives of innocent Russian or Chinese civilians, I think Americans would be more likely to make the call despite our animosity.
But I actually would guess that that is also the case for Iranians to some degree. Don't get me wrong, I am far from believing I have a good read on their general mindset, but I suspect that as the potential death toll in a terrorist attack rises, so too would the odds of an Iranian citizen making the call to try and save American civilian lives rise. Though I have no idea if it would be anywhere close to the rate of American do-gooders in similar circumstances. We could be talking moving from a lizardman's constant of 7% of Iranians for 30 American civilian deaths, to 8% of Iranians for 3000 American deaths.
vorpa-glavo
1mo ago
I think by changing it to a 911 call you warp the question being asked.
I doubt that most Iranians are ever in a position that a 1 hour phone call could guarantee the safety of Americans from a would-be terrorist attack. My personal guess is that if an Iranian became aware of a terrorist attack against Americans, and wanted to prevent it, it would take a lot more personal effort and research than a mere hour-long phone call, and they might not even succeed at preventing it.
Just turning the question around. If the information about a terrorist attack in Russia next week fell into your lap, how much time would you estimate it would take you to ensure that the right people got that that information, and how sure are you that your effort would actually prevent the terrorist attack? Do you think the vast majority of Americans would be willing to expend that effort for the citizenry of our geopolitical rivals?
vorpa-glavo
1mo ago
I guess some of the question is: is 10% of your savings enough to materially impact your standard of living much? If you scaled your income to "average American" levels, is that a candy bar or a car for you?
Do you think the 30% of Americans who have their health care costs paid for by Medicaid would be willing to give 10% of their savings to prevent a 30+ person terrorist attack in Canada?
If I'm wrong on the Americans-saving-Canadian point specifically, then fair enough. But I still maintain that regardless of the Canada angle, the vast majority of Americans wouldn't even slightly inconvenience themselves to save Russians or Chinese people from terrorist attacks. Am I supposed to think worse of Iranians when they have the same hang up about saving Americans?
Agreed, and I would also ask the following: Of the people who say "death to America," but really only mean "down with America," what percentage would inconvenience themselves to prevent a terrorist attack on Americans?
That actually seems like a surprisingly high standard. What percentage of Americans do you think would inconvenience themselves to prevent a terrorist attack on Canadians? We mostly don't even hate Canada, and I don't think you'd get more than, say, 30% of Americans actually willing to materially inconvenience themselves to prevent a terrorist attack on Canadians.
I guess it matters how much of an inconvenience we're talking about here, though. If it was something like, "would you be willing to spend $1 more in taxes to prevent terrorist attacks on Canadians", I suppose I could believe that possibly a majority of Americans would be willing to make that sacrifice. But if you turn it around and ask about a rival nation like Russia and China, I'm not sure how many Americans you could get to voluntarily pay $1 more in taxes to prevent a terrorist attack against Russian or Chinese citizens, and I don't think the prevailing sentiment is exactly "Death to Russia" or "Death to China."
vorpa-glavo
1mo ago
I am once again reminded that right-wing political violence is completely invisible to many. Either it's excused because it's carried out under a veneer or law enforcement or the perpetrator is written off as a crazy person who in no way reflects on the right more generally. Or the perp gets a pardon. The history of political violence in America did not begin on 9/10/25.
I think more generally it's that you remember and internalize what offended and outraged you, and not what didn't. I'm sure there's a certain kind of trans skeptical person that can cite chapter and verse of every bad thing a trans person has done in the United States over the last 10 years, while your average trans-friendly progressive either didn't hear about such incidents or even if they did hear about them, they weren't horribly offended by them or were happy to say something like, "Yeah, trans people are human, they do bad things just like everyone else," and moved on with their lives.
In a way, it is a form of political myopia that basically everyone who sees themselves as part of a larger political coalition ends up experiencing. The only way to avoid it is to feel in your bones that neither the Right nor the Left are "us", and to instead center your "us" in some completely orthogonal grouping. Otherwise, it will take constant effort to correct for this "myopia" due to then nature of human psychology. And most people don't want to correct the myopia because righteous fury feels good.
I mean, the whole point of our mixed constitution is to get all of the benefits of the good aspects of rule by the one, few and many, with as few of their downsides (tyranny, corrupt oligarchy, and mobocracy) as possible. Whether the United States actually accomplished that goal is a separate question, but a major idea of our system is that for a small handful of protected rights we don't just let the mob do whatever they want, but force them to achieve a broader societal consensus before we change anything major.
For less important issues, we allow a simple majority (or really, their elected representatives) to determine government policy. Maybe that could be called tyranny, since we'll always be forcing 49% of the population to listen to whatever 50%+1 of the population has decided, but I'm not sure I buy that argument.
vorpa-glavo
1mo ago
But I also only see push-back on this one from the conservative side of aisle: the Roberts court has a continuing theme in its jurisprudence of telling Congress that it actually has to govern (overturning Chevron, the Major Questions Doctrine), and some of its most prominent members were nominated by Trump himself and confirmed by a right-leaning Senate.
I think there's a real sense in which conservatism in the United States is just right liberalism dressed up as conservatism. Classical liberalism was once (and arguably still is) one of the most radical ideologies in the history of politics, and it is the Foundation of the United States and how we think about ourselves.
While we do have a mythical past conservatives can pine for, I think one of the basic issues is that the freedom afforded by liberalism is what got us here to the present moment step by step. Unless you are some form of reactionary who thinks we need to forcefully return to some past social arrangement, it will be very hard to "hold on" to any particular era of US politics. (I once knew an older gentleman who pined for the left liberalism of the 1960's and JFK, and I had to point out to him that all of the contradictions and craziness of that era are what eventually led to to the "bridge too far" of today that he considered absurd from trans kids to social media.)
Even in glorious past eras, a lot of the problems were caused by groups people today want to idolize. Like, when people bring up something like the 13/50 statistic around black people, I feel like they forget that if that is a real concern, it can be laid entirely at the feet of the ruling elites at the Founding (and reaffirmed on down through time by the post-Civil War amendments, and the reactions of "heritage American" elites and their successors at every step of the process.) I suppose an actually fascist president could just "deport" all of the black people in the United States to Liberia or something at this point, but Trump certainly has no appetite for that sort of thing.
What I'm confused by is MSM who prefer "feminine" men. Naively, you'd expect that they'd want the most masculine gay men they could find. If you like femininity that much, why not just sleep with women? Why seem out "passing" transwomen or ladyboys or twinks or...
I feel like the butch and femme dynamic among lesbians is similar. While I get the feeling it is a lot less prevalent as a dynamic in modern lesbian spaces in the West, I have seen plenty of Tumblr posts where lesbian women fawn over tall, muscular women presenting in a mannish style, so there must be something to it.
My best guess is that the human brain generally tries to detect two things in mates: man/woman and masculine/feminine (or perhaps dominant/submissive.) In most people they are attracted to a congruent set (man+masculine/dominant or woman+feminine/submissive), but a minority of the population end up attracted to an incongruent set (man+feminine or woman+masculine.) This is why a small percentage of men love the idea of Amazon warrior women, or orcish women. And why you get some gay men attracted to femboys, and some lesbian women attracted to butch lumberjack women.
vorpa-glavo
2mo ago
Recently I've had a related observation while browsing a different website, which has an amount of bots and shills. But interestingly people seem to really despise it if you call a bot a bot, or a shill a shill. They might defend some obvious AI slop by saying "it's not a crime to write well" or "many people use em-dashes legitimately" or even just call you an idiot with no further explanation. All humanly written posts, all defending an obvious bot with vigor. I saw a similar thing on a local Facebook group, where an obvious paid shill posted a wall of text clearly written by ChatGPT, yet everybody just ate it up. It seems like when you bring up concerns, you end up as the bad guy for disturbing the peace, while the bot is the good guy because it's following the right conventions.
To be fair, I don't think most people's AI-dar is well-calibrated in either direction.
I recently had the frustrating experience of being accused of using AI to write some posts on Reddit, even though I did not use AI. The OP blocked me, and I learned first-hand how annoying Reddit's implementation of block is, because I kept getting notifications when people replied to my posts in the OP's thread, but when I clicked the notifications Reddit pretended the thread didn't exist. I had to log out to see that the thread wasn't, in fact, broken.
I didn't even get the chance to defend myself regarding the supposed AI usage. The OP just decided I was using AI after a few posts (their evidence was that I supposedly wrote in "ridiculously long paragraphs" and had posted in AI subs in the past), and then blocked me, effectively ceding the whole discussion to the other side of the argument in that thread.
Obviously, a false positive like this isn't the end of the world, but it will be annoying going forward if everyone's good faith efforts to argue an unpopular opinion on Reddit somewhere gets them accused of AI usage and blocked.
vorpa-glavo
3mo ago
I wasn't nerd sniped by the Renee Good case the way those here on the Motte were - it just didn't interest me that much, which is why I only had a few marginal comments in that thread despite reading much of it. I will say that it seemed like partisans on both sides saw what they wanted to see in the Good video, which is why I have enough intellectual humility to admit that I could literally not be seeing what I think I am seeing.
I'm even trying to come up with ways DHS might not be lying. Maybe the 200 people were a few blocks away, also protesting/observing/disrupting ICE activities, and they heard the gunshots or where contacted by observers and descended on the scene shortly afterwards? I don't know. I would very much like to hear more details about this supposed riot, especially if there is any video evidence of it to be had.
And there's a little weirdness in the phrasing of this tweet, like "The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted." (emphasis mine) It seemed to me like the suspect was successfully disarmed, moments before they shot him. But maybe there's a second weapon they haven't told us about yet, and didn't think was worth including in their tweet?
I'll be honest, if the "sig misfire" or "reaching for the gun" thing don't pan out, this shoot seems a lot less justified to me. But maybe my brain has just been poisoned by partisanship, despite my best efforts.
vorpa-glavo
3mo ago
Admittedly, I could have phrased it better, but "the gun" in my sentence is meant to be "[the suspect's own, possibly concealed, second] gun [that the officer couldn't rule out that the suspect had until it was too late]", not the officer's gun. I don't think anyone is claiming the suspect reached for the officer's gun.
vorpa-glavo
3mo ago
Here is what the Department of Homeland Security had to say on X/Twitter. (Alternative link for those without accounts.) Copying the text here:
At 9:05 AM CT, as DHS law enforcement officers were conducting a targeted operation in Minneapolis against an illegal alien wanted for violent assault, an individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun, seen here.
The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted. More details on the armed struggle are forthcoming.
Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, an agent fired defensive shots. Medics on scene immediately delivered medical aid to the subject but was pronounced dead at the scene.
The suspect also had 2 magazines and no ID—this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.
About 200 rioters arrived at the scene and began to obstruct and assault law enforcement on the scene, crowd control measures were deployed for the safety of the public and law enforcement.
This situation is evolving, and more information is forthcoming.
I'm, uh, not sure I believe them. Like, I saw the videos and maybe he was technically resisting arrest, but I didn't really see "an individual [who] wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement." And I suppose it is possible 200 rioters arrived after the videos we have, but it doesn't really look like 200 people are even in the vicinity in the shots we have.
Should I believe my lying eyes here, or is this another case of Point Deer, Make Horse in action?
I'm even open to the "Sig misfire" and "reached for the gun" narratives (though on the latter point, it really doesn't look to me like he is reaching for the gun, but I'm open to the idea that the officer saw a hand twitch that was less obvious to me in the video I've seen and thought he might be reaching for a second concealed firearm), but when their initial attempt to control the narrative is so absurd, I honestly have to question why I'm bending over backwards to be reasonable and give them the benefit of the doubt?
At some point am I just saying, "Well, I don't know. The animal doesn't really look like a horse to me, but I can't definitively rule out that it's a horse I guess..." Feels like a good way to fail the loyalty test in both directions. Maybe I should just say it's a horse, and keep my head down.
vorpa-glavo
3mo ago
He wouldn't have gotten immigration enforcement nationwide; he would have only gotten immigration enforcement in red areas.
I disagree.
If all Trump wanted to do was enforce immigration nationwide, having hundreds of small operations in the interior that were not announced ahead of time would be a better way to do it. Surely, the element of surprise is important, and is not something you obtain by making a big announcement that you're about to send 2000 guys into a city. That, to me, seems like a way to guarantee two results: 1) some illegal immigrants are going to flee to other places and lie low while the enforcement is in place, and 2) locals are going to try and find and confront ICE agents.
Maybe Trump just is so much of a showman that he can't help but step on his own feet when it comes to immigration enforcement, but I find it more plausible that the current outcome was expected and part of the point.
What you are asking is for the right to only govern their own when they are in charge, while the left gets to govern everyone.
I'm not asking for anything. I basically agree with the idea that Trump ran on immigration and so should have some latitude to enforce the laws, regardless of how much of an immigration hawk I am. I am saying that a Trump that wanted to actually enforce immigration laws would not be doing what he is doing now.
vorpa-glavo
3mo ago
Didn't both sides kind of want this?
Trump could have gone full throttle enforcement of immigration laws within 100 miles of the Canadian and Mexican borders, and then done a bunch of small, targeted operations within the country's interior, publicizing the expelling of big criminals from the interior every time he did it, and he would have gotten most of the benefits of his current immigration policy, with fewer opportunities for leftists to get in his way.
While the current operation sending 2000 ICE agents to a Blue city 250 miles from the Canadian border is completely legitimate as a matter of law, I think it is a tactical mistake unless we assume this fanfare is exactly what Trump wanted.
And the Blue tribe are eager to make martyrs of their own. It fires up their base, and lets them cathartically live out their fantasies of being rebels and revolutionaries while changing very little.
vorpa-glavo
3mo ago
This is all coming down to a simple question: does the state have a legitimate right to a monopoly on violence?
Setting aside the object level question of the incident here, the state having a monopoly on the legitimate use of force does not mean that all use of force by the state is legitimate.
Part of what legitimizes the state monopoly on violence is the assurance that if agents of the state step out of line, they will theoretically be punished. For example, police enforcing drug laws is a legitimate use of the state monopoly on violence, regardless of how any given individual feels about drug laws. But police planting drugs on someone to justify an arrest, is not a legitimate use of the state monopoly on violence, and should be punished by a state that is interested in maintaining a veneer of legitimacy.
Also, from a realpolitik perspective, you can't easily enforce a law the people (or some concentrated geographic subset of people) legitimately won't tolerate. Until we have a literally omnipotent government with infinite state capacity, the vast majority of a law's power comes from voluntary compliance. People see that the posted speed limit is 50, use some heuristics to see how likely enforcement is, and compromise by driving 55 miles an hour. Speed cameras and automated enforcement could change things, but there is some level of enforcement short of the most severe draconian enforcement that gets the most voluntary and happily willing compliance from the vast majority of the population.
vorpa-glavo
3mo ago
But ICE is going to different neighborhoods. While I would expect repeat harassers/protestors for a given geographic region, I would also expect a lot of churn from people only sticking their necks our for their own neighborhood and local community. I find it extremely plausible that you will get multiple true positives here as a result.
vorpa-glavo
3mo ago
Do you believe "warning a felon of police presence" is the best analogy for the average case of people warning illegal immigrants about ICE? Isn't unlawful presence a civil offense, and a first offense illegal entry into the US a federal misdemeanor, so nowhere near as bad as a felony from a legal standpoint?
If you compared it to another non-felony, like having the fines from an overdue library book going to collections, do you believe that warning your buddy that a debt collector is going to their house should not be allowed under the First Amendment? Even if you think such a warning is anti-social and breaks the social contract of paying fines or debts that you accrue, surely you can see that the choice of analogy biases the analysis here?
vorpa-glavo
3mo ago
Are you accounting for repeated encounters? A person is presumably removed by ICE only once, while protesters repeatedly interact with ICE agents, allowing for multiple accusations of being a part of ICE.
In a certain sense, I don't think we can be 100 percent sure until we have computers that can simulate the physics of our biological processes to a high degree of accuracy, because until that point all we will be able to do is genome-wide association studies and find genetic correlations with life outcomes but not explanations for why those correlations exist or whether they are causal. (Though I grant that we could in principle get a physical explanation earlier than that, the same way we figured out that the genetic disorder Phenylketonuria leads to low IQ if one eats a high protein diet due to their body not producing phenylalanine hydroxylase, and thus discovering that with a strict diet people with PKU can have normal IQ's. Genetics is weird sometimes, and interacts with the environment in odd ways.)
I'm perfectly open to the idea that black people might genetically be predisposed to low IQ and personality traits that lead to higher criminality, but I think this is far from proven. It would actually be great news if it was all genetic, because that means we could probably do voluntary eugenics or gene therapies with the right framing and marketing, and be rid of the problem without much issue. If it's cultural, that's much harder to deal with.
I think we're highly biased by our novelty-focused culture, but I would wager that America is producing excellent cultural and entertainment products at least as consistently as Ancient Greece or Rome did.
How often did the ancient world produce a Virgil or a Homer? How often did they coast for a few centuries on the insights of a Galen or an Aristotle?
If you want to enjoy human artistic excellence in the United States, you can find it in virtually every large American city. You like opera? We've got opera. Ballet? Classical music? You could disengage from American pop culture, and probably fly to a different city every week and enjoy great Western art and performances that are probably at least as good as the average of what you could have experienced 500 years ago, or 1000 years ago, or 2000 years ago. Maybe we can't compare to the Gaussian tail artists of those eras, the virtuosos like Beethoven or Chopin, but you probably wouldn't have to look hard to find artists and performers in the top 20% of all of human history all over the United States today, which I think is nothing to sneeze at.
And if you're not rich, there's always the wealth of recordings we have, which give even the common man access to the great performances of the past. For a mere pittance, you could buy the Harvard Classics and immerse yourself in the greatest thoughts of Western thinkers of the last 2500 years.
Maybe it is true that many Americans choose to engage with the new and the now, and ignore the mountain of gold they're born into. But I'm grateful that I've had access to the public domain books on Project Gutenburg since I was in middle school, and got to enjoy works from 1001 Arabian Nights to Plato's Republic for free. I think it is possible, even with brain rot and the nightmare of the algorithm that more people today are engaging with the thought stream of Western civilization than ever before. And let's be honest, most of the servants of Ancient Greece and Rome probably weren't deeply immersing themselves in the art and literature of the era (even if there are notable exceptions like Epictetus and Cleanthes.)
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