This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Apologetics for America
I'm a big fan of the United States. It's a big country. It's a safe country. The people are wealthy, kind, industrious, and have done more than their fair share of upholding the Pax Americana under which the majority of the world prospers, including those who would tear it down.
I would go so far as to say that I'd be significantly happier if I had been so lucky as to have been born in a counterfactual universe where my parents had emigrated there, even keeping all my myriad flaws like ADHD and depression.
It's a country that holds multitudes, and has had such a good track record of making good on its promise of embodying:
And then achieving the minor miracle of making the vast majority of them upstanding proud Americans regardless of caste and creed.
(To such an extent that it has lost the memetic immune system needed to assimilate some of the people who meet that criteria but are resilient to anything but force)
It is gorgeous. Even after the visiting the UK, a nation that even in its sclerosed and ailing state is significantly better than India, I found myself grossly disappointed at how small and dull the place was, compared to what I've seen of the States.
I count myself lucky to still have the memories of when I visited as a toddler, some of my earliest, a period I enjoyed so much that I came back home speaking English with an American accent when I hadn't even been conversant in the language when I left.
I stare at the reels and pictures posted on Insta by my friends studying there with ill-concealed envy. It looks so huge, so clean, so vibrant, so picturesque and unspoiled. Still a land where someone with innate talent, having landed with but a penny to his name, can ennoble himself through hard work, or at the very least his descendants.
If it were not for the fact that I'm currently ineligible to give the USMLE today, for no fault of my own, I'd bid adieu to my current aspirations for practising and settling in the UK. The latter is still better than India, but do you really need me to tell you how low a bar that is to beat?
I'm about as pro-American as it gets without driving a pickup truck with the stars-and-stripes hanging off it!
The people eat great food. They live in huge houses that appear outright intimidating to the rest of us. They can afford to waste gigaliters of water on a modestly appealing perennial grass and mostly not begrudge the expense.
They can travel visa free to most of the world, and act the fool there (can, not necessarily do, the worst I can say about most American tourists I've met is that they were rather underinformed about where they'd ended up), content in the knowledge that none but utter pariah states would dare raise a hand at them out of fear of Uncle Sam.
They earn salaries that make us all look like paupers. The median wage for a doctor in the US is $250k, fresh out of residency, whereas a senior consultant in the UK might be content to make half that. Indian doctors can only weep, especially lowly ones like me. Even my father, so talented in his surgical field that he'd be nationally famous if he was more fluent in English (instead just being regionally famous), makes only $50k PA at the very peak of his career, after a life of suffering and hustling so his sons would have to suffer and hustle just a bit less.
Even that seemingly colossal sum of money does not achieve the QOL a naive purchasing power calculation would suggest. Even billionaires here must be content to have their money only buy quick trips with their windows rolled up from only upper class enclave to the next.
The world, somewhat more multipolar than it once was, still wobbles unsteadily if you try and make it rotate around an axis not centered on America.
I'd give a lot to be there. I really would.
That is why it so severely vexes me that my girlfriend, a smart, intelligent and hard working woman who makes for an enviable partner to have at my side, holds a view of it so jaundiced you don't know whether to cry or laugh.
Like many Americans, she has had her perception of the States clouded by sheer propaganda that is more interested in cherrypicking out all of America's real problems, and when even all the real ones no longer suffice, concoct ones out of half-truths and whole-cloth to terrorize a broken primate brain that only notices the bad and becomes inured to the good, such that it no longer bears a resemblance to how fucking good they have it.
She stares at me like I'm mad when I tell her I've always wanted to live there, and the few warts on the face of the nation can't hide its timeless beauty.
She believes that abortion has been banned. When I protest otherwise and say that it's only a few states putting restrictions on it, and even then, just a few, she shakes in existential terror at the idea that there's a seething crowd coming for the rights of women, eager to snatch them all away. She thinks racism is a serious concern for hardworking and talented immigrants who speak fluent English, whereas you could put me in a room with a Confederate flag and I'd find a way to end up drinking beers and shooting AR-15s before dawn.
Did I mention she's terrified of gun violence, even if she could live a dozen lives in parallel and not get shot?
She categorically refuses to follow me if I wistfully make plans to find some route to make it there, be it fighting tooth and nail with my med school and the ECFMG to give me the right to at least try my luck, so that I can show them I meet even their high standards.
I'm at the point that I am seriously debating abandoning clinical medicine as a career, to upskill myself in medical ML, so that I have an easier route to the States that isn't gated behind a professional licensing exam I'm not allowed to give. I am still young. I am allowed to dream.
She's rather be middle class in the UK, unable to afford air-conditioning, living in a tiny house, watching our salaries erode into nothingness, and then, if Sunak successfully makes doctors into a thin wrapper for GPT-5, potentially resign ourselves to a life of mediocrity, or worse, come back to India with our tails between our legs where we'd have to settle for working shit jobs with longer hours and worse pay.
She's scared of paying the medical bills, when the kind of comprehensive coverage that two professionals making 500k together buys care beyond the dreams of the NHS. Perhaps not value for money, but value.
I criticize America all the time, but only because I love it. I want to gorge myself on cheeseburgers with ridiculous portion sizes, because even if I die fat, I die happy.
I cherish what the Founding Fathers built, a shining city built on a hill of negentropy and abundance, rising out of a swamp wherein dwell the majority of us, only a generation or two removed from near-Malthusian conditions. I would die to keep the barbarians away from the gates, if only because I want to cross them myself, as an esteemed guest if nothing else, hopefully to be one of their own.
I set out to write a post somewhat glorifying (fairly) America, and to invite others to submit arguments that would let my girlfriend see reason. It would seem I've inadvertently done all the heavy lifting, if not for the fact that I've marshaled all these arguments before her and still found them wanting.
I don't want to jump to the conclusion that the two of us are moral mutants who can never reconcile our preferences. I prefer to think that she's wrong about her fears, or weighs the wrong facts too heavily and the right ones not at all.
Help me convince her. I will find it hard to live with myself if I fail.
Oh, and Happy Fourth of July to you all, ye sons and daughters living several decades in the future, hailing from the nation from whose physical and mental toil most of the good things in the world come.
Wait, is it a bit late for that? Um, I blame timezones, pernicious and insidious things that they are.
Don't think I don't see the cracks in the pristine facade, the erosion of the meritocracy that made your country glorious. I simply think that if America wakes up and patches a few holes, it can earn the right to slumber again in peace for centuries hence.
A fellow, non-American mega Patriot like me. Love to see it. There are dozens of us! Your post is written much better than mine, but I feel the same.
Logistics
Your girlfriend is.. American. You realize how massive of a jackpot this is for an aspiring immigrant. You literally got the easiest path to immigration handed to you on a silver platter.
I propose a change in strategy. Don't convince her to live in America.
Put a ring on it. (Worst comes to worst you secured something valuable)
Convince her that getting US experience will be paramount to your career in "medical ML".
Leave her wherever she is "temporarily" and start your career in the US. This will be hard, but your eyes are on the prize. Keep in mind, you are extremely passionate about "medical ML" and your state of being and happiness depends on it.
"Dear girlfriend, I am making far too much money in the US now, we would have to be idiots to not settle here." She might become a "Dear ex" in this process, I wouldn't put that past the realm of impossibility.
Alternatively, do realize that you are already one of the lucky ones. The UK is still a gazillion times better than India. It's no America, but a large part of that is in your head. You don't really need air conditioning in the UK, You don't NEED a 7 bedroom McMansion, and it's still a million times closer to America along the reasons you like America and dislike India. The UK is not a bad place to live, all things considered, in many cases, it's actually better than the US. You get walkable cities, proximity to Europe, and potentially better social life (just go to your local pub, man (you won't find those is Suburban New Jersey, lol). Also in my experience, brits are a lot easier to get along with because they actually understand sarcasm and banter, and Americans can be sincere to a fault, don't underestimate the importance of this as an immigrant, trust me on this, no amount of freedom of speech might be worth having no friends), travel visa-free to most places, etc. Don't ruin this one.
Additionally, As someone who has many relatives who are US citizens. You need to think long-term. And by that, I mean on the span of decades. If you didn't catch my drift yet... I'm talking about Canada. It's not America. You still probably won't be able to practice medicine. But it's quite similar culturally, and it's similar enough to the UK in ways that you might be able to sell this idea to your loved one. If you live in Toronto, NYC is just a 10-hour road trip away. And if you bootstrap that "medical ML" thing hard enough, you can work for a US firm and make it there significantly easier (TN VISA) than anywhere else, it won't be easy, but easier. Worst comes to worst, you'll at least have the land of the free in your backyard, and you'll be closer to it.
Why I'm a Patriot
I was fortunate enough to visit the US as an adult just a few years ago, my experience is still fresh in my mind and I haven't gone through any ideological shifts.
I'm a libertarian and I already went to the US primed with the notion that, "This is THE place in the world that aligns closest to my values, or at the very least, I am to find people who are, more than anywhere else". I don't mean this lightly, I think the First Amendment is one of the all-time greatest ideas ever. If I ever came across the reincarnations of the founding fathers, I would bow down and touch their feet.
Being there in the flesh only reignited my love/admiration for the place.
Everywhere I went, I saw "For Hire" signs, I don't think Americans realize how much of an aberration those stupid lazily printed-out A4 papers hung hastily to the windows with an unevenly cut piece of cello tape are to the eyes of a foreigner. What do you mean I can just get a job?? All I have to do to.. not starve is just walk in here and show up? I found myself asking over and over again, how can people live in "poverty" is this country, it makes no sense! Not minding that "minimum wage" workers here were making more real money than entry-level engineers make in my country.
http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html
I just felt that if one truly wanted it, they could make something of themselves there. The infrastructure and network to make that happen were in place (relative lack of nepotism, relative lack of credentialism, ability to change fields, general abundance that allows employers "to take a chance" on risky candidates, relative presence of meritocracy). You would just have to.. work hard. But people work hard everywhere for nothing at all! Working hard is far from the worst thing one can do in life. And I work in tech. I make decent money. More than a significant portion of people my age. But still, it's nothing compared to my fellow US tech workers. I weep when I see the salaries they make out of college! I work 12 hours a day and on weekends. Just let me into the US, and I will take yer jobs!
There were the people. People would just strike up conversations in the grocery store line commenting on my choice of energy drink, etc. While I walked past them in the suburbs they would yell "Hello!". While I was checking out computer parts at micro-centre, Other random shoppers would come and talk to me about what I was buying and why, what games I play, etc. And those "racist" people in the south, those ladies still called me "sweetie" and asked how I was doing, a brown guy. This was a very different America than the one I read about on Reddit.
The sheer abundance doesn't even need to be talked about. For all the "trashy" people that frequent Walmart, they still have access to a helluva lot more things than most "Elite" people anywhere else for that matter.
But all those things are just icing on the cake. The cake is that you can really make something of yourself there. This is 100x worth its weight in gold more than anything else. All my relatives who went there really did go there with pennies to their names. They bootstrapped themselves into 6 figure salaries living in McMansions from flipping burgers and having to eat leftover scraps at their fast-food jobs. The point isn't that there is an easy path, the point is that there is a path at all to begin with.
great post. But just a quick correction. In the US, it is letter sized paper, not A4.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link