Democracy in America

[Anonymous No.20064091]

I still think this is the funniest image on the internet.

Has anyone here read it? Is it worth reading?

[Anonymous No.20064111]

I own a copy, haven't read it yet. I do think it's worth reading. Out of date but good for understanding the period when the Union was just getting started. Also that's not even close to the funniest image on the internet, this is.

[Anonymous No.20064118]

>>20064111
haha strawberry elephant

[Anonymous No.20064125]

>>20064111
How would you know any of that, you haven't read it, you piece of shit afraid of being called not well read on an anonymous website. Fix yourself.

[Anonymous No.20064133]

>>20064125
It's clear he just was using that as an excuse to make a post that included the strawberry elephant, simmer down.

[Anonymous No.20064151]

>>20064125
Hey I admitted I haven't read it yet, but I learned about it in high school history class. I AM going to read it eventually.

[Anonymous No.20064161]

>>20064118
I wanted to post a picture of an actual strawberry that was shaped like an elephant, but I found this instead.

[Anonymous No.20064186]

>>20064111
fpbp

[Anonymous No.20064202]

is this a strawberry elephant thread

[Anonymous No.20064209]

ha these are funny, better than books anyway.

[Anonymous No.20064212]

>>20064133
>>20064151
get off the internet retards

[Anonymous No.20064214]

>>20064212
mmmm, no, I don't think I will.

[Anonymous No.20064215]

[Anonymous No.20064231]

That would be a pretty fair assumption if they taught Tocqueville in schools, but they don't and never have

[Anonymous No.20064236]

>>20064212
No, I'm here to talk about Democracy in America and funny images. Feel free to post one any time.

[Anonymous No.20064243]

>>20064236

[Anonymous No.20064305]

>>20064231
Yeah, I think most Americans aren't interested in what foreign intellectuals had to say about the country and its people in the past. It's not the kind of work we would go over in a literature (whether the subject is American or international literature) nor history class.

[Anonymous No.20064327]

>>20064091
>Reading good even though you could be jacking off instead

[Anonymous No.20064333]

>>20064305
You're giving us way too much credit. Americans just can't be expected to read AT ALL. I don't think even half of my class would actually read any paperback novel we were assigned for a unit, easy stuff like The Red Badge of Courage filtered so many of them.

[Anonymous No.20064337]

>>20064327
based

[Anonymous No.20064406]

>>20064333
According to surveys Americans do read, they just don't read the classics. Much of it is romance and thriller novels.

[Anonymous No.20064415]

>>20064333
Maybe, most people in my classes read (or at least skimmed) the books they were assigned. Even if that is the case, there's still no way the Tocqueville would be relevant to them. Unlike someone like Emerson, Thoreau, William James, or Dubois, he never be discussed in any American class before the university level.
The irony here is that in trying to "own" Americans for their ignorance, Rouhani is actually showing himself to be completely ignorant of American culture and society.

[Anonymous No.20064432]

>>20064406
that's statistic that they spout, also doesn't account for nonfiction

[Anonymous No.20064442]

>>20064333
This is kinda true, but most half-intelligent students give each book a chance. They just happened to hate most of them, probably since people don't like reading in general

[Anonymous No.20064554]

>>20064091
I read it many years ago, it provides a pretty interesting account of how he saw democracy functioning in the different regions of the United States. I was especially interested in the bit on how New England's town meetings achieved one of the more pure forms of democracy that actually functioned. There is the bits everyone talks about like his analysis of the slavery question and its potential to blow up in the unions face. There is most definitely better scholarship using modern methods to look at this period but I thought it was worthwhile read if you are interested in America prior to the civil war and later stages of the industrial revolution.

[Anonymous No.20064893]

>>20064415
>Unlike someone like Emerson, Thoreau, William James, or Dubois,
These were only ever name-dropped. I graduated college and never had to open a single one of their books.

[Anonymous No.20064897]

>>20064432
Solid cope. I don't know why you'd try to deny this, maybe you're too sensitive about us getting bullied on /int/.

[Anonymous No.20064957]

>>20064893
We had to read a few of Emerson and Thoreau's essays (I think it was Nature, Self-Reliance, and Civil Disobedience) and some excerpts from Walden in my high school American literature class. We never read Dubois and James, but we did discuss them briefly in other classes I took. That's far more attention than Tocqueville ever received.
My point is that there are a number of non-fiction authors that are relevant to the ways Americans think about themselves and their nation's history and identity, but Tocqueville isn't one of them, so acting like you've one-upped Americans for being familiar with an author who is irrelevant to them is rather silly and betrays a very deep ignorance on Rouhani's part. It's kind of embarrassing to for people to post this like it's some sort of meaningful criticism of American society. There's quite a bit to say about American ignorance, but to pretend that not reading an author who we have no reason to read and would get little out of that it's not worth the time is somehow indicative of that is just silly.

[Anonymous No.20064991]

>>20064957
>so acting like you've one-upped Americans for being familiar with an author who is irrelevant to them is rather silly and betrays a very deep ignorance on Rouhani's part.
Obviously the joke is stemming from the fact that he legitimately overestimated us, despite the fact that he has a flaming lack of respect for America. He just is from a culture where almost everyone reads the 'intellectual pillars' of their country, and assumed that other cultures would be the same way about theirs.

I don't know why you're being such a sensitive faggot about this, it's fun and healthy to laugh about our country's non-intellectual population. If you don't, you'll have a hard time adjusting to reality and remain a whiny bitch about it.

[Anonymous No.20065012]

>>20064991
>nt to them is rather silly and betrays a very deep ignorance on Rouhani's part.
>Obviously the joke is stemming from the fact that he legitimately overestimated us, despite the fact that he has a flaming lack of respect for America. He just is from a culture where almost everyone reads the 'intellectual pillars' of their country, and assumed that other cultures would be the same way about theirs.
My actual argument is that Tocqueville isn't an intellectual pillar of America, and in thinking he is Rouhani is actually showing a very deep ignorance of American culture and it's intellectual/literary tradition.
I'm not particularly sensitive about this, but if you're going to make this ind of point, at least do it correctly.

[Anonymous No.20065029]

I'm more anti-Western than the mullahs and more influenced by Ted Kaczynski. Thanks for cursing the entire world with industrialization and the gradual stripping away of our autonomy, you Jew worshiping oversocialized pieces of shit.

[Anonymous No.20065036]

>>20065012
It shows a minor misunderstanding in that he probably thinks Democracy in America would be a major pillar rather than maybe top 30 or something (though it may well be that most adults in Iran have read any given 'important' Iranian book), but the major understanding is expecting that even if it was number one that we'd still read it. Americans simply do not read real books, that's the humor.

[Anonymous No.20065074]

>>20065036
>It shows a minor misunderstanding in that he probably thinks Democracy in America would be a major pillar rather than maybe top 30 or something (
Even that's stretching it. It's hard to exaggerate the almost total irrelevance of this book to Americans. Putting in the top 100 for non-fiction alone would be a stretch.What's curious about this to me is that he thinks a book trying to describe American society to foreigners would be at all interesting to Americans. Given that I'm sure he thinks Americans are insular and uninterested in the rest of the world, I'm left to wonder why he thinks we would have any interest in it.

[Anonymous No.20065087]

>>20065074
Because trashy representative democracy was a creation of Europeans, you garbage pedantic thinker.

[Anonymous No.20065111]

>>20065074
>Given that I'm sure he thinks Americans are insular and uninterested in the rest of the world, I'm left to wonder why he thinks we would have any interest in it.
I'm trying to find the actual clip and it's proving fruitless but from the superficial details, I really think he's sincerely trying to have a good discourse with America and doesn't outright hate us like some Iranian leaders. I think he's approaching as non-retards, and any non-retard should be very interested in the idea of hearing a learned foreigner give their view on their country's system, as you can't really get perspective on something if you don't have something to contrast it against. The reason normal people don't read it is not that it's a low on their reading list, it's that they'd never bother reading it or anything like it in 1000 years.
> Putting in the top 100 for non-fiction alone would be a stretch
I think it's way up there as far as 'political philosophy' (or whathaveyou) but it wouldn't matter if it was #1 in non-fiction, people still wouldn't read it. I'm curious what you'd even try to claim as a counter example, what non-fiction book could you count on the average American adult to have read?

[Anonymous No.20065131]

>>20065111
>I'm curious what you'd even try to claim as a counter example, what non-fiction book could you count on the average American adult to have read?
Yeah, I guess I have to concede.

[Anonymous No.20065138]

>>20065131
I appreciate the honesty lol

[Anonymous No.20065151]

>>20065111
Not him but I see modern American average readers as incredibly faddish, both for fiction and non-fiction. Harry Potter is extremely widely read by fiction readers, as was Twilight. On the non-fiction side, I'd say things like An Inconvenient Truth and White Fragility were widely read while they were being advertised heavily. Issues of the day, basically. Maybe I'm wrong and I'm judging what's read by what's advertised heavily. Nobody in the last... several years has approached me and told me what they'd read except one young woman who was reading a book specifically about hormone disorders because she had recently been diagnosed with something. I think it was called "Aroused" or something.

Certainly nobody is reading Tocqueville or The Federalist Papers or anything like that.

[Anonymous No.20065170]

>>20065138
Yeah, I tried to come up with something, but I's be surprised if the Average American has read any of the titles that first came to mind. Part of the problem is that many Americans just don't read much if at all, and part of it is that I couldn't expect the average American reader to have read any given nonfiction book because of just how splintered tastes are among different groups of readers here.

[Anonymous No.20065191]

>>20065151
You are absolutely right. I think today in a group of 40 year old college graduates, you might end up with half of them having read Sapiens or something but you'd almost never find a shared non-fiction classic. (I was going to add "unless they all had the same major" but then I remembered that I went to college and they never once had us read a non-fiction book cover to cover, apart from this one time a professor forced his own shitty paperback on us).

[Anonymous No.20065205]

>>20065170
> but I'd be surprised if the Average American has read any of the titles that first came to mind
What came to mind though? I'm curious since it's hard enough to even come up with a good short list of what they "should" be expected to read, most of these books are relatively niche (we're not talking about Greek philosophy).

[Anonymous No.20066043]

>>20064091
I've read it. To be honest its only worth reading from a strictly academic perspective. The view of a frenchman into early American society and politics is interesting, but don't expect a whole lot of relevance to modern America.

It's basically just a firsthand historical text.

[Anonymous No.20066202]

>>20066043
Thank you, I will consider this.