Whereas it seems to me that actually it might be possible to trace the historical forces that contributed towards this, and the social principles that maintain it, and so on, to develop a fairly principled understanding of the situation.
As an example, I think the influence of the Soviet Union is underrated on the loss of American confidence / positive-self-conception. (Like I think it’s obvious to Europeans that WWI / WWII did a lot to destroy European confidence / positive-self-conception, but I really don’t think it had the same impact on the US, and our psychic collapse came much later and for different reasons.) This itself is hard to talk about because it’s deliberate enemy action, which includes it attempting to disguise itself / prevent consensus-creation on its existence (and source). And, like, the USSR collapsed, so how much value is there in litigating the historical source rather than the current facts?
[IMO a nontrivial amount; I think there’s a correlated updates thing where it’s worth invalidating the cache and recalculating a lot of things. But that recalculation is probably better done from the standpoint of a positive vision rather than a negative one, and that’s it’s own project...]
As an example, I think the influence of the Soviet Union is underrated on the loss of American confidence / positive-self-conception. (Like I think it’s obvious to Europeans that WWI / WWII did a lot to destroy European confidence / positive-self-conception, but I really don’t think it had the same impact on the US, and our psychic collapse came much later and for different reasons.) This itself is hard to talk about because it’s deliberate enemy action, which includes it attempting to disguise itself / prevent consensus-creation on its existence (and source). And, like, the USSR collapsed, so how much value is there in litigating the historical source rather than the current facts?
[IMO a nontrivial amount; I think there’s a correlated updates thing where it’s worth invalidating the cache and recalculating a lot of things. But that recalculation is probably better done from the standpoint of a positive vision rather than a negative one, and that’s it’s own project...]