It’s our national Mythology, we’re a land of migrants and refugees. People have been coming to this land for 500 years, yeah that’s a long time compared to our perspective, but there are traditions and cultures in Europe that predate even knowing about the existence of other land in another hemisphere by an additional 1000 years.
And the culture you describe as dominant over the world while yes is predominantly white, is just unchecked capitalism and neoliberalism and a product of whoever controls the largest military and acts as the economic measuring stick to the rest of the world and that if any other nation were to unseat the US as the dominant economic and militant force, then their oligarch’s culture would dominate the planet.
Yeah, that’s your culture. I mean, time to own it.
For one thing, the rest of us out here don’t make that much of a distinction between different US subcultures. Trump is American culture, Oprah is American culture. They’re all pretty much the same thing.
For another, have some accountability. You guys did this, and yet you all insist it was not you you and you all feel so much more connected to wherever else. No. Stop it. Own it or change it.
Also, as a side point, man, do Americans love to exoticize how old everywhere else is. Yeah, sure, there are a bunch of medieval castles around and a few cultural remnants in traditions, but by and large most European folklore is rooted in some 18th/19th century crap, just like in the US. Europeans aren’t out there having Saturnalia parties.
Ahh yes I completely forgot that the monarchies of European nations only existed for the last 300 years and are in no way historically backed by a religion that’s existed for almost 2000 years which was has a holy book very significanly based on another religion dating back 5000 years. And I totally forgot that Christmas was a totally unique winter holiday that definitely didn’t borrow any traditions from Yule and the Norse or Saturnalia and the Romans which as we all know is not where Vatican City is located nor did the Roman Empire make Catholicism the official state religion in the 300s AD. And wow I totally forgot the english language was completely perfectly formed as it is today less than 300 years ago and isn’t the result of milennia of linguistic adaption of half a dozen different languages.
And I completely forgot to worship my culturally mandated Trump and Oprah statue this year and instead celebrated the Feast of the Seven Fishes and served a big pasta dinner on Christmas Eve and Day that has historically nothing to do Italy or the Italian migration to the United States. Ahh how could I be so careless and thoughtless and wow my memory is so bad.
No, wait, yeah, all those things are true of European nations.
And by the wonders of colonialism, also of American nations.
To everybody’s chagrin yeah, the stupid bible is a fact of life people have to deal with and has been so for a couple millenia, but that’s not some ancient European thing that makes Europeans so much more connected to their cultural heritage or whatever. Americans are very much on that boat. At the helm of that boat, actually, in some form of malformed Dutchglish protestant thing.
The argument you were making is that white Americans have no cultural heritage to speak of when compared to “traditions and cultures in Europe”. US Christmas borrowed as much Yule and Saturnalia as French Christmas, if not more so. Cultural heritage unlocked, European exoticization still unnecessary.
My point is that beyond capitalist oligarch pushing the illusion of culture on everyone globally, independent of national origin, most of the cultures within the US have some sort of trace back to European traditions. I’m not exoticising Europe as some “haaaah European traditions are so great and incredible and ancient and mystical” I’m saying that Eurpoean traditions, which have very long histories compared traditions born in the US, heavily influence many of the cultural touchpoints of citizens of the US, especially white citizens. There is no uniquely, independently cultivated non-eurpoean culture held by white people in the US. Ok there’s one uniquely white american culture and we literally fought a civil war over it.
Being “culturally white” in America is pretty synonymous with people trying to make the Confederacy again. Meanwhile the rest of us are over here celebrating the traditions our grandparents or great grandparents brought with them to the US from Europe.
You are absolutely exoticising European traditions as having ancient histories compared to American ones. You’re just not doing it consciously, or on purpose. Ironically, you seem to be doing it because… well, that’s an American cultural tradition inherited from colonialism.
Okay, let me get specific, because otherwise we’re not gonna get anywhere. Since we started with Christmas. Hey, did you ever hear about that Dutch controversy about that traditional black slave-like figure portrayed by some dude in blackface that is now deemed racist and sometimes defended by Dutch racists as being traditional and innocent? Yeah, that’s 19th century stuff. The taboo of blackface is purely an American thing that is getting exported now, which is part of the controversy.
The Dutch also generate the idea of St Nicholas as “Sinterklaas”, which is recognizable worldwide in its American form. The Dutch guy comes from Spain in early December to leave gifts instead. In Spain, curiously, they didn’t use to have a Santa equivalent, but they did do the “arriving in a parade” bit about the Three Wise Men in January. That tradition? 19th century as well, even if the story itself is in the bible. And then that got semi-replaced by good old Santa. But not the one coming from the Netherlands, just US Santa, largely imported to Spain via Coca-Cola ads and American movies in the late 20th century.
Meanwhile, in Germany and Italy they didn’t have any medieval Christmas traditions at all because “Germany” and “Italy” didn’t actually exist as a country until the 19th century. Most of what you think about “traditions” from those places are local stuff that then got repackaged and branded at the national level after that point.
The reason you don’t think about it that way is probably that the US is a colony and I supposed US racists liked bragging about their ancient European heritage and American exceptionalists liked bragging about how new and modern American ideals are. But obviously a lot of the perception of that heritage, from the US version of national stereotypes to the uniquely American versions of imported celebrations is itself purely American culture.
And then the rest of the world learns about it through cultural imperialism. I’m not American, and I know about Thanksgiving, and Paul Revere, and western mythos and St Paddy’s day (but the American one, not the Irish one) and Cinco de Mayo and Juneteenth and Black Friday is a thing here now even if we don’t have a Thanksgiving day to go with it. There are local rappers here and the country went through a rockabilly phase in music at one point. Obviously most of the cinema in theatres is American and has been for the better part of a century.
Culture isn’t culture because it’s old. Culture is of the moment, it refers to the assumptions and habits and traditions the people who are alive today have. It takes one generation to create a cultural tradition, or to lose it. The US has had an iron grip on a significant portion of all the media and messaging that gets distributed worldwide for far longer than that. The mythos of ancient culture and its amputation from colonial territories is, itself, American cultural heritage, developed during the beginnings of nationalism along with nation-states and weaponized in revolutionary times across the world.
Man, we’ve gotten so far away from topic, but I do find this very interesting so I’m not mad about it.
It’s our national Mythology, we’re a land of migrants and refugees. People have been coming to this land for 500 years, yeah that’s a long time compared to our perspective, but there are traditions and cultures in Europe that predate even knowing about the existence of other land in another hemisphere by an additional 1000 years.
And the culture you describe as dominant over the world while yes is predominantly white, is just unchecked capitalism and neoliberalism and a product of whoever controls the largest military and acts as the economic measuring stick to the rest of the world and that if any other nation were to unseat the US as the dominant economic and militant force, then their oligarch’s culture would dominate the planet.
Yeah, that’s your culture. I mean, time to own it.
For one thing, the rest of us out here don’t make that much of a distinction between different US subcultures. Trump is American culture, Oprah is American culture. They’re all pretty much the same thing.
For another, have some accountability. You guys did this, and yet you all insist it was not you you and you all feel so much more connected to wherever else. No. Stop it. Own it or change it.
Also, as a side point, man, do Americans love to exoticize how old everywhere else is. Yeah, sure, there are a bunch of medieval castles around and a few cultural remnants in traditions, but by and large most European folklore is rooted in some 18th/19th century crap, just like in the US. Europeans aren’t out there having Saturnalia parties.
Ahh yes I completely forgot that the monarchies of European nations only existed for the last 300 years and are in no way historically backed by a religion that’s existed for almost 2000 years which was has a holy book very significanly based on another religion dating back 5000 years. And I totally forgot that Christmas was a totally unique winter holiday that definitely didn’t borrow any traditions from Yule and the Norse or Saturnalia and the Romans which as we all know is not where Vatican City is located nor did the Roman Empire make Catholicism the official state religion in the 300s AD. And wow I totally forgot the english language was completely perfectly formed as it is today less than 300 years ago and isn’t the result of milennia of linguistic adaption of half a dozen different languages.
And I completely forgot to worship my culturally mandated Trump and Oprah statue this year and instead celebrated the Feast of the Seven Fishes and served a big pasta dinner on Christmas Eve and Day that has historically nothing to do Italy or the Italian migration to the United States. Ahh how could I be so careless and thoughtless and wow my memory is so bad.
No, wait, yeah, all those things are true of European nations.
And by the wonders of colonialism, also of American nations.
To everybody’s chagrin yeah, the stupid bible is a fact of life people have to deal with and has been so for a couple millenia, but that’s not some ancient European thing that makes Europeans so much more connected to their cultural heritage or whatever. Americans are very much on that boat. At the helm of that boat, actually, in some form of malformed Dutchglish protestant thing.
The argument you were making is that white Americans have no cultural heritage to speak of when compared to “traditions and cultures in Europe”. US Christmas borrowed as much Yule and Saturnalia as French Christmas, if not more so. Cultural heritage unlocked, European exoticization still unnecessary.
My point is that beyond capitalist oligarch pushing the illusion of culture on everyone globally, independent of national origin, most of the cultures within the US have some sort of trace back to European traditions. I’m not exoticising Europe as some “haaaah European traditions are so great and incredible and ancient and mystical” I’m saying that Eurpoean traditions, which have very long histories compared traditions born in the US, heavily influence many of the cultural touchpoints of citizens of the US, especially white citizens. There is no uniquely, independently cultivated non-eurpoean culture held by white people in the US. Ok there’s one uniquely white american culture and we literally fought a civil war over it.
Being “culturally white” in America is pretty synonymous with people trying to make the Confederacy again. Meanwhile the rest of us are over here celebrating the traditions our grandparents or great grandparents brought with them to the US from Europe.
You are absolutely exoticising European traditions as having ancient histories compared to American ones. You’re just not doing it consciously, or on purpose. Ironically, you seem to be doing it because… well, that’s an American cultural tradition inherited from colonialism.
Okay, let me get specific, because otherwise we’re not gonna get anywhere. Since we started with Christmas. Hey, did you ever hear about that Dutch controversy about that traditional black slave-like figure portrayed by some dude in blackface that is now deemed racist and sometimes defended by Dutch racists as being traditional and innocent? Yeah, that’s 19th century stuff. The taboo of blackface is purely an American thing that is getting exported now, which is part of the controversy.
The Dutch also generate the idea of St Nicholas as “Sinterklaas”, which is recognizable worldwide in its American form. The Dutch guy comes from Spain in early December to leave gifts instead. In Spain, curiously, they didn’t use to have a Santa equivalent, but they did do the “arriving in a parade” bit about the Three Wise Men in January. That tradition? 19th century as well, even if the story itself is in the bible. And then that got semi-replaced by good old Santa. But not the one coming from the Netherlands, just US Santa, largely imported to Spain via Coca-Cola ads and American movies in the late 20th century.
Meanwhile, in Germany and Italy they didn’t have any medieval Christmas traditions at all because “Germany” and “Italy” didn’t actually exist as a country until the 19th century. Most of what you think about “traditions” from those places are local stuff that then got repackaged and branded at the national level after that point.
The reason you don’t think about it that way is probably that the US is a colony and I supposed US racists liked bragging about their ancient European heritage and American exceptionalists liked bragging about how new and modern American ideals are. But obviously a lot of the perception of that heritage, from the US version of national stereotypes to the uniquely American versions of imported celebrations is itself purely American culture.
And then the rest of the world learns about it through cultural imperialism. I’m not American, and I know about Thanksgiving, and Paul Revere, and western mythos and St Paddy’s day (but the American one, not the Irish one) and Cinco de Mayo and Juneteenth and Black Friday is a thing here now even if we don’t have a Thanksgiving day to go with it. There are local rappers here and the country went through a rockabilly phase in music at one point. Obviously most of the cinema in theatres is American and has been for the better part of a century.
Culture isn’t culture because it’s old. Culture is of the moment, it refers to the assumptions and habits and traditions the people who are alive today have. It takes one generation to create a cultural tradition, or to lose it. The US has had an iron grip on a significant portion of all the media and messaging that gets distributed worldwide for far longer than that. The mythos of ancient culture and its amputation from colonial territories is, itself, American cultural heritage, developed during the beginnings of nationalism along with nation-states and weaponized in revolutionary times across the world.
Man, we’ve gotten so far away from topic, but I do find this very interesting so I’m not mad about it.