It's all good. I actually oddly think that the US has changed less than other countries... like Indonesia, the only country I know... have, and I think that may be because Indonesia's such a young country in comparison - we really did only start being a unified nation in 1945. So maybe some things in the US have settled and it's much harder to change them now. I do think that things are better for women now in the U.S., but not for minorities, not unless they're rich. But I'm not a women's studies person, so...
it's true what you're saying about the overall structure being the same despite a "change". But the argument in norm theory, in poli sci, is that even if people feel the need to lie to cover up the same shit that before they were doing out in the open, that's still a change. Like, yes, you have a constitution, but you don't really follow it - but at least you show that having a constitution is the norm/ideal/standard, and the hope is that from there people will try to hold you accountable to the promises you made, even if they were just cover-ups you never intended to follow through on. The hope is also that the people of the country will start to believe the norm and it will become engrained in society, and then you won't have the whole doublespeak thing going on.
However, an important corollary: some norms are deeper than others, and thus some changes are harder than others. Particularly if they involve things like breaking cultural and/or religious tradition in order to adhere to universal liberal principles. And I think some norms might just not change. Like this woman Charli Carpenter wrote about the norm of saving "women and children first" and thus leaving the men to die, in the Balkans, even though men are more likely to be killed than women (but women are of course more likely to be raped). And I wrote in my memo that she writes about this norm as if it is very deeply engrained at all levels of the hierarchy, and I think it's very old too, and so you have to wonder if it's something that came inherent with a patriarchal civilization and that probably won't change unless the entire civilization gets blown to bits and you start from scratch. OR if it's something biological, though I tend to blame civilization before biology.
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it's true what you're saying about the overall structure being the same despite a "change". But the argument in norm theory, in poli sci, is that even if people feel the need to lie to cover up the same shit that before they were doing out in the open, that's still a change. Like, yes, you have a constitution, but you don't really follow it - but at least you show that having a constitution is the norm/ideal/standard, and the hope is that from there people will try to hold you accountable to the promises you made, even if they were just cover-ups you never intended to follow through on. The hope is also that the people of the country will start to believe the norm and it will become engrained in society, and then you won't have the whole doublespeak thing going on.
However, an important corollary: some norms are deeper than others, and thus some changes are harder than others. Particularly if they involve things like breaking cultural and/or religious tradition in order to adhere to universal liberal principles. And I think some norms might just not change. Like this woman Charli Carpenter wrote about the norm of saving "women and children first" and thus leaving the men to die, in the Balkans, even though men are more likely to be killed than women (but women are of course more likely to be raped). And I wrote in my memo that she writes about this norm as if it is very deeply engrained at all levels of the hierarchy, and I think it's very old too, and so you have to wonder if it's something that came inherent with a patriarchal civilization and that probably won't change unless the entire civilization gets blown to bits and you start from scratch. OR if it's something biological, though I tend to blame civilization before biology.