Generational Theory Forum: The Fourth Turning Forum: A message board discussing generations and the Strauss Howe generational theory

Immigrants are coming to Sweden to steal our meatballs!
Watch out bin Laden, I'm gonna rake your floor!

When I think about all the institutions I know and have been a part of, both small and larger, who have reduced their underlings to applaud and honor them as they make lousy decisions and exile me and others who ask questions and question authority, I do not wonder about authoritarians rising around the world and in the United States. There is certainly much ground for pessimism about the human future, and for wondering if the Nazis might win world war two after all.

We've got a new bamboo curtain behind which are authoritarian regimes in South-East Asia. We've got a big woven curtain around the regimes of the former Soviet Union. We've got India under a nationalist right-wing regime that was voted in. We've got Orban and others in Eastern Europe like Poland falling behind a new fascist iron curtain. That Polish official in the Oliver video who said judges "could enter the building and be there as guests but cannot work there" was just like what the little phony church leader said to me when she didn't want any more discussions with me. We all live with horrible little bully bosses all over the place. We've got Putin, Xi Jinping, Duterte, Erdogen, General Sisi, Assad (the worst), Saudi Crown Prince MBS, The Ayatollah, Maduro, Bolsonaro, Kim Jung Un, and even the new PM of Australia, and other far right leaders getting lots of votes elsewhere, and then there's Donald Mussolini. Are we moving into a new information age of peace and democracy? Well, not so far. Bosses still rule, and we like that.

https://youtu.be/ximgPmJ9A5s?t=9m24s




"A Star is Born???" I thought we just had that movie with Kris Kristoffersen and Barbra Streisand! What is the world coming to?

Based on what my toxic ex-GF actually called my dog It suits Trump well, doesn't it?

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump




Without the phony Russia Witch Hunt, and with all that we have accomplished in the last almost two years (Tax & Regulation Cuts, Judge’s, Military, Vets, etc.) my approval rating would be at 75% rather than the 50% just reported by Rasmussen. It’s called Presidential Harassment!

7:17 AM - 6 Dec 2018

...a tweet.

Faults of grammar, style, capitalization, and formal logic are his. Pedantic as I am, this horrible prose grates on me. I concede that he rarely makes a spelling error, perhaps because he has learned to use spell-check.

Barack Obama either rarely made such an errant communication or had people making sure that such errant communications went to the shredder. Good writers rely upon other writers to check what they write for blatant errors that could be embarrassing in print. As someone who makes typos because he is not a particularly good typist I need spell-check. Obama apparently had everything that he was going to read on his Teleprompter go through someone with the authority to correct an error. I can say the same of every President who lived into my lifetime, which goes back to Herbert Hoover with FDR skipped.

Dubya had logical gaps when ideology got in the way of common sense, as when he gave us such a stock (or schlock, depending on your taste) phrase that is itself an Orwellian lie -- as in the infamous "Healthy Forests Initiative", another way of saying "no tree left behind (after clear-cutting)". Clear-cutting, I learned in middle school, was appropriate only when land was to be permanently cleared for farmland or such a public-works project as a highway or dam.  Other than that, communications from the Bush 43 White House obviously went through someone who would get the capitalization right, excise words that give the impression of slovenly writing, and completely remove something so vulgar as the "grocer's apostrophe"

The grocer's apostrophe? It is right in "grocer's apostrophe" because in that sense the origin is a grocer who uses it as a marker for a plural (which is wrong in English) instead of a possessive in a noun.

Thus

Cigar's 5¢

is the grammatically-hideous grocer's apostrophe, but

Goldwater's Department Store

(yes, the family of Barry Goldwater owned the now-defunct retail business, before the family sold it )

brewer's yeast (yeast used by brewers and bakers) and

----'s Cough Drops (offered for sale, having been originally made by ----- ... I do not give free advertising to anyone, because I expect to be handily paid for any advertising copy should I create it... The plural possessive is typically s', as in ----- Brothers' Cough Drops, which probably are now made by people no longer using the surname -----.


So let me try to edit the tweet:

Quote:Without the phony Russia Witch Hunt, and with all that we have accomplished in the last almost two years (Tax & Regulation Cuts, Judge’s, Military, Vets, etc.) my approval rating would be at 75% rather than the 50% just reported by Rasmussen. It’s called Presidential Harassment!

Were it not for the unfounded attempt to connect this administration to non-existent Russian meddling, what we accomplished in just short of two years (tax cuts, regulatory relief, appointment of conservative judges, and support of both our active military and our veterans), I should have an approval rating of 75% instead of the 50% reported by Rasmussen or the ridiculously-low approval ratings by practically everyone else. Some people fail to appreciate the change that my administration has brought to America.

(I still disbelieve this, as the approval for a successful President who generally evades controversy well when political life is not at all polarized, as with Eisenhower in the 1950s, gets 'only' into the mid-60s. Donald Trump is, to use politically-correct claptrap that I love to mock, "logically challenged". I am an arch-conservative on linguistic conventions who also has no use for statistical folly or any attempt to deceive through rhetorical legerdemain. Truth, unless highly technical, is usually far simpler than obfuscation).

(11-24-2018, 08:10 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]When I think about all the institutions I know and have been a part of, both small and larger, who have reduced their underlings to applaud and honor them as they make lousy decisions and exile me and others who ask questions and question authority, I do not wonder about authoritarians rising around the world and in the United States. There is certainly much ground for pessimism about the human future, and for wondering if the Nazis might win world war two after all.

We've got a new bamboo curtain behind which are authoritarian regimes in South-East Asia. We've got a big woven curtain around the regimes of the former Soviet Union. We've got India under a nationalist right-wing regime that was voted in. We've got Orban and others in Eastern Europe like Poland falling behind a new fascist iron curtain. That Polish official in the Oliver video who said judges "could enter the building and be there as guests but cannot work there" was just like what the little phony church leader said to me when she didn't want any more discussions with me. We all live with horrible little bully bosses all over the place. We've got Putin, Xi Jinping, Duterte, Erdogen, General Sisi, Assad (the worst), Saudi Crown Prince MBS, The Ayatollah, Maduro, Bolsonaro, Kim Jung Un, and even the new PM of Australia, and other far right leaders getting lots of votes elsewhere, and then there's Donald Mussolini. Are we moving into a new information age of peace and democracy? Well, not so far. Bosses still rule, and we like that.

https://youtu.be/ximgPmJ9A5s?t=9m24s




"A Star is Born???" I thought we just had that movie with Kris Kristoffersen and Barbra Streisand! What is the world coming to?

Come on Eric, Assad especially is a good person, he is really the rock keeping Syria from going under. Erdogan, the Saudi Prince, Putin and Xi Jinping and even maduro are good people. They are making hard choices that have to be made whereas over here, because of globalist bankster control; western governments have been prevented from making those necessary decisions.

We know where you stand. Killing the people is the only business of the regimes you favor.

(12-07-2018, 10:37 AM)Cynic Hero Wrote: [ -> ]Come on Eric, Assad especially is a good person, he is really the rock keeping Syria from going under. Erdogan, the Saudi Prince, Putin and Xi Jinping and even maduro are good people. They are making hard choices that have to be made whereas over here, because of globalist bankster control; western governments have been prevented from making those necessary decisions.

There is a difference between the autocratic Agricultural Age pattern and the democratic Industrial Age pattern.  Not all parts of the world switched over.  The objective of the colonial powers in the 20th Century was cheap oil, not to do well by the locals.  Both the democracies and communists set really bad examples of how to do it, so those who are looking to reform are looking to the Agricultural Age Muslim pattern rather than the West for an example to follow, most of them.  

This will get them precisely nowhere.

But I would not label Assad as someone looking to reform.  He cares about power for himself and his cronies more.  As such he is not much better or worse than other autocrats, but he does not care in the least for the people he 'rules'.

Alas he and Putin (who is of similar mind) hold enough cards to block movement in any direction, though many want to rejoin the regional powers that held sway before the colonial powers seized control.  Syria is a mess.  But, every region has to endure a century or two of chaos.  Some never learn.

I just can't understand how anyone can excuse a murderous tyrant like Assad except "he may be a brute, but he is our brute". Even that excuse usually implodes at some time.

Come on PBrower, Assad is a good person. You statement illustrates the problem boomers have: they are collectively incapable of grasping that a person getting their hands dirty does not preclude them from being in or doesn't automatically exclude them from being within the category of "good person". Same with the Burmese government; boomers refuse to accept the very possibility that some of the Burmese officers commanding the expulsions are good people.

Assad is worse than ALL other autocrats today, because of the needless, gratuitous death toll and destruction he delivered to his own country in order to suppress protesters who merely wanted his help. Mr. Cynic thinks that merely-self-serving, evil acts of the worst possible kind does not preclude the person committing them of being "good." I suppose judging and labeling someone is itself not a good thing, but extreme evil is evil, and it is a moral choice. Boomers are prophets who are concerned about morals, according to Strauss and Howe. That's fine with me.

My point is the rather-surprising rise of authoritarianism in our time. It seems to be happening all over the world. Mr. Cynic approves, but I do not. The Arab Spring era movements were risings for freedom, and at first it looked like more freedom would result. I predicted this rising, of course. But, of course, Uranus-Pluto squares rarely work out as hoped. Some other Uranus-Pluto aspects (like the famous conjunction in the mid-1960s, and the famous opposition in the early 1790s) work out somewhat better, although "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" is usually the way Uranus-Pluto revolutions turn out. Uranus-Neptune conjunctions work out well. Witness the movements of 1989-91, which I did expect would happen when they did, and which I predicted would work out well; as they did. I have theorized that the Uranus-Pluto events are the start of movements, and the Uranus-Neptune events finish them, as well as reshape world order (as they have done for millennia).

Right now, the authoritarian sign Capricorn is emphasized. So we have the old bosses back, or still in power, and other old bosses have arisen, often in the very places where the movements of the 2011-14 period happened to one degree or another. In the 2020s, we have a double sextile-trine between all three of these outer planets of modern revolution. These aspects are more harmonious, which is why I have predicted a more-positive outcome. The United States itself will be the major scene where this set of cycles plays out, accented by the fact that this is a modern-saeculum cyclic return, which is what these 3 planets also indicate, and correspond to as well.

How many other nations will be involved in this mid-2020s event, I'm not sure. Something I may have already written about, but need to look at further.

(12-07-2018, 06:10 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]I just can't understand how anyone can excuse a murderous tyrant like Assad except "he may be a brute, but he is our brute". Even that excuse usually implodes at some time.

It is just tribal thinking.  Assad would only be brutal towards people who he does not consider to be part of his tribe.  He would not consider people who oppose him to count, that morality does not apply to them.

The Enlightenment virtues of equality and human rights do not apply to an autocratic leader.  He might be perfectly a nice guy to members of his tribe, and a brutal autocrat at the same time.

(12-07-2018, 10:37 AM)Cynic Hero Wrote: [ -> ]Come on Eric, Assad especially is a good person, he is really the rock keeping Syria from going under. Erdogan, the Saudi Prince, Putin and Xi Jinping and even maduro are good people. They are making hard choices that have to be made whereas over here, because of globalist bankster control; western governments have been prevented from making those necessary decisions.

I rarely respond to your provocative drivel, but this time you've hit on a small piece of truth. No, the scumbags you listed are not "good people", but the finance and corporate interests are not either -- as you noted. So we have a case where two sets of scumbags are contending for power, but that only makes matters critically worse. Those "leaders" who actually want a better alternative reality are being overshadowed by the autocrats and kleptocrats, and no solution to that appears, even on the distant horizon. Meanwhile, the degradation continues unabated.

(12-08-2018, 04:10 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]

(12-07-2018, 06:10 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]I just can't understand how anyone can excuse a murderous tyrant like Assad except "he may be a brute, but he is our brute". Even that excuse usually implodes at some time.

It is just tribal thinking.  Assad would only be brutal towards people who he does not consider to be part of his tribe.  He would not consider people who oppose him to count, that morality does not apply to them.

The Enlightenment virtues of equality and human rights do not apply to an autocratic leader.  He might be perfectly a nice guy to members of his tribe, and a brutal autocrat at the same time.

You know, I've heard Trump described in similar fashion: a really nice guy, on-on-one.  Maybe that's a character trait shared by the scumbags of the world.  It's certainly self-serving, which is a universal character trait in this class of sub-humans.

(12-08-2018, 10:40 AM)David Horn Wrote: [ -> ]

(12-08-2018, 04:10 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]

(12-07-2018, 06:10 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]I just can't understand how anyone can excuse a murderous tyrant like Assad except "he may be a brute, but he is our brute". Even that excuse usually implodes at some time.

It is just tribal thinking.  Assad would only be brutal towards people who he does not consider to be part of his tribe.  He would not consider people who oppose him to count, that morality does not apply to them.

The Enlightenment virtues of equality and human rights do not apply to an autocratic leader.  He might be perfectly a nice guy to members of his tribe, and a brutal autocrat at the same time.

You know, I've heard Trump described in similar fashion: a really nice guy, on-on-one.  Maybe that's a character trait shared by the scumbags of the world.  It's certainly self-serving, which is a universal character trait in this class of sub-humans.

Not just the guys at the top.  I lean blue and am dubious about the people of the middle of the country.  I am ready to believe a lot of them, though, are good people who treat each other and folks they consider like them decently.  If you lean towards extremism, and you judge by attitudes towards blues or minorities, all bets are off.  Suddenly one is in another tribe.  Decency does not apply.  The mythical deplorable has optional morality.  Deplorables are used to being in the majority, and if you are in the minority you are (expletive deleted) out of luck.

I would like to say there are not blue extremists who would apply a flip flop to that sort of...  logic?  I fear there is no lack of the same sort of stereotyping.

In the findings in the sentencing memo on shyster lawyer Michael Cohen, Donald Trump is undeniably "individual #1":

(12-08-2018, 11:11 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]

(12-08-2018, 10:40 AM)David Horn Wrote: [ -> ]

(12-08-2018, 04:10 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]

(12-07-2018, 06:10 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]I just can't understand how anyone can excuse a murderous tyrant like Assad except "he may be a brute, but he is our brute". Even that excuse usually implodes at some time.

It is just tribal thinking.  Assad would only be brutal towards people who he does not consider to be part of his tribe.  He would not consider people who oppose him to count, that morality does not apply to them.

The Enlightenment virtues of equality and human rights do not apply to an autocratic leader.  He might be perfectly a nice guy to members of his tribe, and a brutal autocrat at the same time.

You know, I've heard Trump described in similar fashion: a really nice guy, on-on-one.  Maybe that's a character trait shared by the scumbags of the world.  It's certainly self-serving, which is a universal character trait in this class of sub-humans.

Not just the guys at the top.  I lean blue and am dubious about the people of the middle of the country.  I am ready to believe a lot of them, though, are good people who treat each other and folks they consider like them decently.  If you lean towards extremism, and you judge by attitudes towards blues or minorities, all bets are off.  Suddenly one is in another tribe.  Decency does not apply.  The mythical deplorable has optional morality.  Deplorables are used to being in the majority, and if you are in the minority you are (expletive deleted) out of luck.

I would like to say there are not blue extremists who would apply a flip flop to that sort of...  logic?  I fear there is no lack of the same sort of stereotyping.

I'm guessing that many Germans and Japanese in during World War II were salt-of-the-Earth people who cared about each other and would have never hurt anyone else, but were brainwashed into believing that Churchill and FDR were literal demons who absolutely had to be defeated. There were just enough horrible people who could be gulled into acquiescence into murder. In Germany many of those salt-of-the-Earth people could not imagine that Hitler could be doing anything wrong in Poland, especially the slaughter of the Polish intelligentsia and the bulk of the industrial-scale murder of the Jews -- let alone that their precious offspring could be doing anything other than patriotic duty in the SS. Nazi propaganda had people believing that everything Germans did officially was a great service to Humanity.

I am tempted to believe that much of the problem in 'Red' America is that people see much less diversity than they would in a large urban area. Detroit may be a cesspool of a city, but it has some good people. Work there, and if you are white you will recognize that there are plenty of good black people who differ from you in only the most superficial of ways. So what if you dislike their music? I know plenty of people who hate the music that I love, and the creative people who composed that music are almost as a rule very white, if not American. Live just about anywhere in California, and even if you find Los Angeles a cesspool of a city (Detroit without a real winter) you will find plenty of likable Asians and Hispanics.

'Red' America is often lily-white -- and this applies to some rural parts of "Blue" states, at least as understood as such from 1992 to November 6, 2016. It is because of the "Red" parts of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, where multitudes saw Donald Trump as their Deliverance, that America has a President acting like a despot.

Educated people in Germany had the delusion that their nation was so sophisticated that it could never fall for someone so crass as Adolf Hitler. It did despite Goethe and J S Bach. Educated people in America had the delusion that their nation was so sophisticated that it could never fall for someone so crass as Donald Trump. Look for the intellectual gutter and you will find the unbalanced, stressed-out people who in a time of despair will find themselves an unbalanced leader. (apologies to Albert Einstein on that allusion; I stretched it).

So what is wrong in America? Most of what one sees at the end of a 3T -- a splintered culture, an economic order that well serves elites and pretends that the hardships that those elites impose upon the masses are charitable, corrupt political bosses who serve those elites, and of course a speculative boom that goes bust prevail. The elites have their solution: more of the same. Those elites can always find someone that they can trust, someone who tells people that they need suffer for those elites and punish anyone who fails to get the message.

We got Obama when we needed another FDR -- but is it the timing that makes the difference? America got FDR after the plutocracy of the 1920s had lost all attractiveness for creating such pervasive misery and had imploded completely. FDR backed the banks after the bank runs had ravaged the economy in 1931 and 1932. Obama backed the banks before such runs were possible. Maybe that is the difference. In 1932 even those already rich were concerned with survival more than with power. In 2008 they wanted someone to save them from what they recognized as their destructive recklessness in the economy -- and by 2010 they wanted a return to their economic hegemony and got it. Now we have Donald Trump, the purest expression since the 1920s of the conception that no human suffering can ever be in excess so long as it fosters elite indulgence. That is how I interpret "Make America Great Again" when Trump uses the slogan.

I have a different idea of American greatness, the antithesis of every man for himself. 


.

Stephen Colbert outdid himself about how Trump outdid himself with his over-the-top tantrums. Colbert speaks truth to power, and reminds us just how ridiculous he is. We need to be reminded of this every day! And Stephen has been blest with the material he has been given. All he has to do is recount what Trump does and add fun and brilliant connections to it.

Heads up! Oh Trumpie, he has erectile dysfunction now!

(12-12-2018, 02:32 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]Stephen Colbert outdid himself about how Trump outdid himself with his over-the-top tantrums. Colbert speaks truth to power, and reminds us just how ridiculous he is. We need to be reminded of this every day! And Stephen has been blest with the material he has been given. All he has to do is recount what Trump does and add fun and brilliant connections to it.

Heads up! Oh Trumpie, he has erectile dysfunction now!

Well, I'm not sure if Colbert has erectile dysfunction or not but he sure seems to enjoy strumming himself and seems to be aroused/pumped up by the response of his young and lively blue audience. Yeah, you kind of got to laugh at these serious issues that blue comedians fail to view as serious issue or aren't able to look at seriously or are to busy entertaining to actually pay attention to what was going on, what was being said and what all was being communicated (the body language and the points being expressed and so forth) during the exchanges. He was telling them that he was politically immune to the negative impacts associated with a government shutdown and he's right. We don't care if the government shuts down and a bunch of blue voters (public sector employees go without paychecks for a few weeks/several weeks) are financially forced to sacrifice for a bunch of people who don't matter as much as the people their government wages and federal revenues are being used to support. I think it would be a great way to test how strong blue values actually are in this country and within the Democratic party.

(12-12-2018, 06:47 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: [ -> ]

(12-12-2018, 02:32 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]Stephen Colbert outdid himself about how Trump outdid himself with his over-the-top tantrums. Colbert speaks truth to power, and reminds us just how ridiculous he is. We need to be reminded of this every day! And Stephen has been blest with the material he has been given. All he has to do is recount what Trump does and add fun and brilliant connections to it.

Heads up! Oh Trumpie, he has erectile dysfunction now!

Quote:(language unsuited for a family audience redacted) Yeah, you kind of got to laugh at these serious issues that blue comedians fail to view as serious issue or aren't able to look at seriously or are to busy entertaining to actually pay attention to  what was going on, what was being said and what all was being communicated (the body language and the points being expressed and so forth) during the exchanges. He was telling them that he was politically  immune to the negative impacts associated with a government shutdown and he's right. We don't care if the government shuts down and a bunch of  blue voters (public sector employees go without paychecks for a few weeks/several weeks) are financially forced to sacrifice for a bunch of people who don't matter as much as the people their government wages and federal revenues are being used to support. I think it would be a great way to test how strong blue values actually are in this country and within the Democratic party.

Trump tries to do Machiavellian politics to the extent possible in America (reward allies, but punish the rest), but he just does not do it well.  He may also be going too far in accordance with the checks and balances.

Remember: the House controls the budget, and on that Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump will be equals on January 3. Democrats have priorities other than an environmentally-blighting, budget-busting wall on the border. He can get a smarter border, one with better electronic detection, the sort that can detect a jackrabbit making an illegal crossing of the border and can give the Border Patrol more lead time on catching a border-crosser. But that is as far as things can reasonably go.