[Cid_Yama]

You would not believe the dicussion at a diplomatic dinner I attended tonight was.

The point was made, I will not give names or nations for diplomatic reasons, that the United States had the best kept peasantry in the history of the world.

Viewpoints ranged from:

Americans should be thankful that their masters should have such a sumptuous table that the scraps should be so fine.

Americans are the greatest nation blah, blah, blah (you know the argument. (but talking about America's elite. No one argued the point that the masses weren't peasants. Mearly, that great care was taken that they not percieve themselves that way.)

Throughout the argument, the images in my mind were of David Copperfield(no, not the magician) saying "can I have some more" to the Shirley Temple movie where she is turned into a six year old servant girl because her father is injured and missing in the war.

Have we really fallen to this level, that foreign governments see our people this way?

What are your thoughts?

[Ayoob]

Yes, we are peasants. What wealth do Americans own? Their postage stamp of land and their TV, and probably a car and some clothes, and some pixels on a screen.

Other than that... peasants.

[Wren]

I would have to say the comment about "...being thankful our scrapes are so fine" is close to true. I don't know where these people are from, or what they might consider "peasantry", but I would say from blue to whhite collar, we are all indoctrinated to be slaves to our jobs/pay check and I would say few amoung us Americans have any real "choice" in that (go to college, get a better job, ect= the vaneer of choice only). We buy into advertising to buy stuff we don't need... ect. You know the arguments. So, yeah, we are peasents, weather we admit it or not.

[heroineworshipper]

What's the point in living if you can't be a part of a spectacular corporate earnings story? Individual wealth means nothing. Only the feeling of wealth by buying something from a high & mighty CEO matters.

[americandream]

Wow Cid. You move in influential circles! (it would appear).

[Cid_Yama]

Not as influencial as you might think. The higher up the ladder, the more pig-headed they become. Frankly, I'm disgusted nearly all the time. Keep smiling, keep smiling. *nods head* (thinks about how nice it would be to kick the crap out of them.) *smile broadens*

[americandream]

Whats your overall impression of these people. Manipulative, predatory, dismissive, arrogant?

[Jack]

Of course Americans are peasants.

Our educations are largely vocational training of one sort or another. That includes professionals such as lawyers and dentists.

As was pointed out by Wren, most Americans are tied to their jobs as surely as any peasant was tied to the land.

Ayoob suggested that Americans had "a postage stamp of land"; that is overly optimistic. Actually, they don't own the land or anything else; they merely owe debt on it. Hence the current mortgage crises.

Finally, Americans are deeply ignorant. We get our news from television, sometimes. We are unaware of Peak Oil. We cannot find Saudi Arabia on the map. We struggle with the most trivial of mathematical concepts while proclaiming our national supremacy in technology. Most could not grasp the implications of an "IF" statement, much less octal arithmetic.

An agriculture secretary once described American blacks as being satisfied if they could have three things - loose shoes, good sex, and a warm place to defecate. I regret to say the same could now be applied to many (most?) Americans without regard to ethnicity.

Oil wealth has permitted even the lowliest peasant to live well. Now what will happen when that oil wealth is constricted?

[skeptik]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jack', 'O')f course Americans are peasants.

[steam_cannon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cid_Yama', 'N')ot as influential as you might think. The higher up the ladder, the
more pig-headed they become. Frankly, I'm disgusted nearly all the time.

[jlw61]

I had a great reply, but I've trashed it.

Your self-important aristocratic guests deserve no warning and everything that will happen to them and their families, in the years that follow.

[Fishman]

Silly post Cid, the upper class/ leaders/ etc will always look down on those who have less. Its been this way in every government/style through history. Whether it monarch, communist leaders, or capitalism. Those who have less will always be argued to be peasants. If a country has the "best kept " peasants thats quite a compliment. Would that any other country could make such a statement.

[mark]

peasants + ignorant = fodder

[Plantagenet]

This statement can be disproved by the reductio ad absurdum argument.

If Americans are peasants, then so is everyone else in every country around the world.

But its absurd to argue that everyone in the world is a peasant, so the original statement is disproved.

[Heineken]

Americans are the ultimate peasants because they are so astonishingly subservient.

The rich can get away with almost anything in this country, and do.

The myth is that anyone poor can become rich if he or she just follows certain time-worn principles and that the system is therefore "fair."

The poor lap up that myth like it was fine wine.

In other countries, like France, the peasantry riots when it doesn't get its bread.

Not here. The US middle class is rapidly losing its "way of life" and you hear nary a peep out of it.

[dhfenton]

I have to agree with those who say this is an absurd argument. Last time I checked my household income was among the top 3% in the world, and my wife and I don't have any killer jobs. We're pretty much the slightly above average American household, and we make good money for the U.S.; but not an amount to be considered upper income Americans. I'd have to say these well to do folks from other nations are probably more out of touch with their own citizenry than the U.S. government is. They apparently don't know how folks in most of the world live.

Another possibility is that they're viewing the ignorance of G.W. Bush and transferring it to the population as a whole (after all, who elected this idiot?). The collective stupidity of the last two elections would cause someone from outside the U.S. to pause and say "what to hell!!!", these people have got to be uneducated morons. Which may be marginally true at times; but peasants? Not yet.

[Cid_Yama]

<i>Whats your overall impression of these people. Manipulative, predatory, dismissive, arrogant?</i>

I thought a whole day about how to respond to this question. I decided to answer this by telling you about myself.

At 13 I got my first boat. I grew up on the river. At 15 I learned to drive and to fly, just like all my friends. We got our first car at 16 and our first plane when we got out pilot's license.

All your friends are the same as you, the same as everyone as far as you know, except those poor kids, but they are an exception as far as you know. I know it sounds stupid but the way you see the normal world as you grow up is everyone is like you, except for the exceptions.

You grow up within an extended family. You know all your aunts and uncles, great aunts and great uncles, great grandparents, and grandparents. You are part of this extended family and it defines who you are and encompass what is possible for you in your life. (I'm not real sure how to express this concept well as it is just the way it is, a shell that few ever break out of.)

Inheritance, and money have a hold on you although is is unspoken. That's really a bad way to express that. It would be very embarassing to be looked down on by the extended family and one's means is curtailed if you stray. I don't know how better to express that.

Not that we don't stray. Sowing your wild oats, so to speak, but it is expected to be a temporary aberation.

If not you are a black sheep.

There is truth that there is little strength where there is no struggle, and those that never stray are limited in their perspective, hell, let's say it for what it is, delusional.

Unfortunately one of those is President of the United States.

So, yes there is arrogance and dismissiveness, from ignorance.

Lot's of manipulation and predation, as delusions lead to vunerability.

But power resides with the extended family. So, though individuals may fall by the wayside, the family survives, and takes vengence.

[seldom_seen]

Anyone who lives under the tentacles of the industrial megamachine are serfs, indentured servants. That applies to the US and the rest of the industrialized world. Or just about everybody. Some are a little higher up the pyramid than others so their chains are not as apparent.

As for Americans, Ed Abbey wrote "Never before in history have slaves been so well fed, thoroughly medicated, lavishly entertained—but we are slaves nonetheless."

There are a few hold outs. Some tribes in the remotest corners of Borneo, the Andaman and Nicobar islands, the deepest corners of the Amazon Jungle. A few other scattered and forgotten places here and there. The only people who haven't been usurped in to the machine. Free people.

These people are the best equipped to survive the collapse of industrial civilization because they are not members of it. If we get by without completely destroying the biosphere. These people may be the seeds for whatever comes next for the human species.