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(04-30-2019, 01:22 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: I think we will have a two term liberal President. His name is Donald J. Trump. He will be followed by an Xer who in a different era would be a Big City Business Democrat but by then Nationalism-Populism will have swept the neo-cons out of the GOP and they will go back to the Democrats from whence they came in the 1960s if they are even still around.
There is a far greater chance of the Democrats splitting in 2020 and the Greens absorbing them in 2024.
Donald Trump is not a liberal. I see people getting a hard lesson in civics from President Trump -- warnings to never vote again for a demagogue, that truth is not so much a convenience as it is something to discern in a test that a smart high-school kid can do (truth is internally consistent, and anything not internally consistent is either a lie or foolishness), that the Rule of Law is essential to, if not sufficient for, a workable democracy, that religious and ethnic bigotry are dangerous as well as counterproductive, and that words have meaning in political discourse. Oh, yes -- elections matter. Choose integrity over ideology.
If you saw the last Quinnipiac poll (out today), it showed Joe Biden with 38% of the support among Democrats. The quarterback controversy may be disappearing before the primary season is really underway. It's down to four people with 8% or higher support, and Joe Biden is the decisive leader.
70% of Americans would vote for a gay male, only although 36% think that most Americans are ready. (Better a gay man than someone who brags about grabbing women by their "kitty-cats"!)
The Millennial Generation is decidedly liberal on economics, at least in the FDR-Truman-JFK-LBJ sense. This generation is just starting to vote in large numbers, as shown in the 2018 midterm election.
52% of voters say that they will definitely not vote to re-elect Donald Trump. 33% say that they will, and 13% will consider voting for him.
https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-det...aseID=2617
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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PBR...I don't care about single polls. Honestly I don't care about polls at all. As it stands it is a decision between him and 20+ Democrats all of whom except for Biden and Sanders no one really knows much about--and those two are the only ones really viable anyway.
Right now the aggregate shows the President's approval in the low 40s. Against Sanders Trump will have no problem...he's a communist Jew. He is unpalatable to the country. Worse he is a Yankee and will lose VA, and NC which the Dims absolutely must take to get the White House.
Biden has run four times for President, he hasn't made it so far. Typically when one loses the primary of their own party once to someone who isn't a sitting President they don't become President themselves. That is the historical pattern and it hasn't changed and it won't change.
As for betting the farm on Millies. I hope that's a joke because I think you'll find they aren't as left wing as you have been told they are by the news media.
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05-01-2019, 12:29 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-01-2019, 12:30 PM by pbrower2a.)
(04-30-2019, 05:29 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: PBR...I don't care about single polls. Honestly I don't care about polls at all. As it stands it is a decision between him and 20+ Democrats all of whom except for Biden and Sanders no one really knows much about--and those two are the only ones really viable anyway.
I select from many polls based upon a point made in that poll. I look forward to seeing polls that ask about the Mueller report, as I have yet to see one. What happens over time is the narrative, and the narrative about the Trump Presidency does not end until his term is through.
I have seen the statement many times: the only poll that matters is the popular vote as applicable to the election of people. It is typically the electoral losers who see the approval of an incumbent above 50% and think that they can still win, or the struggling incumbent who has support well under 50% who says such things. Trump was on the margin, and even if he was a long-shot, he still won.
200-1 long-shots occasionally win horse races. I can look at polling in recent years and I can handicap many elections as I did (if informally) in 2016 and say that Donald Trump had about 8-1 odds against him. He still won.
Quote:Right now the aggregate shows the President's approval in the low 40s. Against Sanders Trump will have no problem...he's a communist Jew. He is unpalatable to the country. Worse he is a Yankee and will lose VA, and NC which the Dims absolutely must take to get the White House.
The last two Presidents seem like unlikely winners. Barack Obama will stick out in any collection of images of American Presidents for obvious reasons. Could Americans vote for the son of an African immigrant and a nearly-white American woman? (Stanley Ann Obama, nee Dunham, was 1/16 black, and the one-drop rule is still a legal definition). Yes. Everything else was right, and Obama turned out to be an above-average President by most historical assessments. Sure, Obama might not have won without the underworld-style hit on Osama bin Laden, but that would have been impossible had he not been able to get along with the military and the intelligence agencies. Obama may have not seemed the likely President to arrange the death of the worst terrorist in history, but he was the one to do so.
Trump has a stormy relationship with the military, law enforcement, and the intelligence agencies, which is not what I expect of a right-winger. Character is destiny .
Donald Trump is the first President since Gerald Ford to have never have been elected to any statewide office or the Vice-Presidency, and to have never been a cabinet secretary since Eisenhower, who at least had been a highly-successful general. He is a disaster. Ford failed to get re-elected because he had no idea of how to run a Presidential campaign (because most Presidents have been Governors or Senators), and Presidential elections are basically fifty gubernatorial races with eight electoral votes decided as if House races or a race for mayor of one city (Dee Cee, and we all know how predictable that one is) until too late. The elder Bush proved a reasonably competent VP, but he had run only once for a Congressional seat -- and lost.
Trump got elected, perhaps with a little help from his friends. That may not be good enough in 2020. The negative ads practically write themselves. All Presidents who got re-elected had approval numbers in excess of 50% at this stage. Some won by landslides and some collapsed. Trump has had his collapsed.
Quote:Biden has run four times for President, he hasn't made it so far. Typically when one loses the primary of their own party once to someone who isn't a sitting President they don't become President themselves. That is the historical pattern and it hasn't changed and it won't change.
He faces the worst incumbent in American history since -- OK, Carter was a decent person, Hoover was fine except for bungling an economic meltdown, and Taft lost due to a split within his Party. Trump violated so many norms before becoming President and still got elected... and he is even more objectionable now than in November 2016. The rules of who can be President are shattered.
Quote:As for betting the farm on Millies. I hope that's a joke because I think you'll find they aren't as left wing as you have been told they are by the news media.
The Millennial generation is not going conservative until its Idealist children not yet born start rebelling against Millennial-created and Millennial-enforced norms. It has little stake in the economic status quo that includes a pay-for-play system in every aspect of economic and vocational life. It is getting a raw deal from America's economic elites who have done little good for any but themselves. It rejects fundamentalist Protestantism that is the cornerstone of Movement Conservatism.
The only questions that I have about Trump losing are
(1) actuarial -- and in view of his obesity, bad eating habits, and early signs of dementia, I would nit be surprised if the Grim Reaper removes him from political relevance or that he becomes debilitated by a stroke or heart attack
(2) whether he can undo the mass contempt that he faces
(3) whether he can pull off electoral fraud that gets him re-elected. For this he has the character
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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05-01-2019, 02:42 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-01-2019, 04:37 PM by Eric the Green.)
(04-30-2019, 03:59 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Donald Trump is not a liberal. I see people getting a hard lesson in civics from President Trump -- warnings to never vote again for a demagogue, that truth is not so much a convenience as it is something to discern in a test that a smart high-school kid can do (truth is internally consistent, and anything not internally consistent is either a lie or foolishness), that the Rule of Law is essential to, if not sufficient for, a workable democracy, that religious and ethnic bigotry are dangerous as well as counterproductive, and that words have meaning in political discourse. Oh, yes -- elections matter. Choose integrity over ideology.
If you saw the last Quinnipiac poll (out today), it showed Joe Biden with 38% of the support among Democrats. The quarterback controversy may be disappearing before the primary season is really underway. It's down to four people with 8% or higher support, and Joe Biden is the decisive leader.
70% of Americans would vote for a gay male, only although 36% think that most Americans are ready. (Better a gay man than someone who brags about grabbing women by their "kitty-cats"!)
The Millennial Generation is decidedly liberal on economics, at least in the FDR-Truman-JFK-LBJ sense. This generation is just starting to vote in large numbers, as shown in the 2018 midterm election.
52% of voters say that they will definitely not vote to re-elect Donald Trump. 33% say that they will, and 13% will consider voting for him.
https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-det...aseID=2617
I know this is not a thread about who the president will be, but the quinniac poll is interesting, and elicits some observations from me.
It was to be expected the Biden would surge after announcing. Before now, people weren't sure he was even going to run. The question is whether can he sustain his position over the next year. His campaigning abilities are good, but inconsistent. Sanders will probably recover. It's interesting that Warren has pulled ahead of Sanders. She has been putting out a lot of policy proposals, and the poll confirms that liberals like this. But Biden scores much higher when asked who is a real leader and can beat Trump than Warren scores, while Warren almost catches Biden on issues, thanks to liberal support for her. But Sanders beats Warren on who is the better leader.
Many liberals vote on issues, and so do some conservatives, but overall, the general election voting public votes on who they perceive to be a leader that they like. Biden's lead is based on this, as is to be expected. Warren will not win if nominated, because she is not perceived as a good enough leader. But she could do better in the Democratic primary than most others, because liberals vote in that primary, and they vote more often on issues. I saw a video showing how Biden expressed support for the ideals and protesters from the boomer generation. Will this translate into support for what millennials want, despite his intervening moderate record, and now that the party is swerving left?
Seth Moulton just announced his candidacy, so another nobody who has no chance has joined the vast field of nobodies with no chance. He joins two senators who get support mainly because they are people of color (Harris, Booker) and two senators who get support mainly because they are women (Klobuchar and Gillibrand) and a bunch of representatives (one of whom got publicity by running for senate) who therefore are perceived as not qualified, and others who are also not perceived as qualified because they hold or have held no federal or statewide office. All of these are also perceived as poor candidates, as their low horoscope scores indicate they would be. I scored Rep. Moulton of MA before, but didn't post him on my website; his newly-corrected horoscope score (without known birth time) is 9-10. Gov. Larry Hogan of MD is a ruthless "crusader rabbit" with a score of 7-16.
Note that Warren has the "crusader rabbit" aspects (Mars trine/sextile to Neptune and Pluto), which help a candidate win the Democratic nomination, but have a miserable record when it comes to the general election.
Warren even sounds and looks like Crusader Rabbit. And her sidekick is named "Rags"!
Note that Crusader Rabbit doesn't have any actual heroic abilities, just determination, big ideas, and a desire to help in causes. And a striking ability to "run!"
Another current candidate with the crusader rabbit aspects is Beto O'Rourke, and another is Tulsi Gabbard.
One astrologer's interpretation of Mars trine Neptune
https://astrologyking.com/mars-trine-neptune/
Mars sextile Neptune (which I have too)
https://astrologyking.com/mars-sextile-neptune/
Neptune, note, has a connection to the Democratic Party, with its connection to workers' movements, compassion for the poor, socialism, and so on. Crusader Rabbit even wanted to make every day Christmas, and run Santa Claus for president! That's even what the Republicans CALL us liberals, so generous as we are with "other peoples' money!" But not all our generous Neptunian plans and ideals fly with the pragmatic, conservative American voters like Classic Xer!
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(04-24-2019, 03:22 PM)AspieMillennial Wrote: Let me remind you that the grey champion isn't always the good guy. In Germany the grey champion was Hitler; keep that in mind. In the Soviet Union, the grey champion was Stalin. Sometimes the grey champion turns out to be evil.
Hitler wasn't old enough to be a GC.
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(05-14-2019, 08:49 PM)Hintergrund Wrote: (04-24-2019, 03:22 PM)AspieMillennial Wrote: Let me remind you that the grey champion isn't always the good guy. In Germany the grey champion was Hitler; keep that in mind. In the Soviet Union, the grey champion was Stalin. Sometimes the grey champion turns out to be evil.
Hitler wasn't old enough to be a GC.
I would argue that Hitler was a bit of an anomaly due to the fact that the majority of the Missionary leadership in Germany was swept away after WW1. They were too tied up into the Kaiser and later the communist uprisings that the German Losts put down.
Stalin likely wasn't a GC either because the Russian Revolution 4T ended sometime around 1922, 1923. If anyone was their GC it would have been Lenin the rest of the Bolsheviks were too young. Also the GC if he is a leader (they usually are but not always) rarely survives into the 1T and as bad as the purges were and as brutal as soviet industrialization was that was a full on Advancement 1T.
As I've said elsewhere Russia is on a completely different cycle.
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(05-15-2019, 01:43 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: (05-14-2019, 08:49 PM)Hintergrund Wrote: (04-24-2019, 03:22 PM)AspieMillennial Wrote: Let me remind you that the grey champion isn't always the good guy. In Germany the grey champion was Hitler; keep that in mind. In the Soviet Union, the grey champion was Stalin. Sometimes the grey champion turns out to be evil.
Hitler wasn't old enough to be a GC.
I would argue that Hitler was a bit of an anomaly due to the fact that the majority of the Missionary leadership in Germany was swept away after WW1. They were too tied up into the Kaiser and later the communist uprisings that the German Losts put down.
Stalin likely wasn't a GC either because the Russian Revolution 4T ended sometime around 1922, 1923. If anyone was their GC it would have been Lenin the rest of the Bolsheviks were too young. Also the GC if he is a leader (they usually are but not always) rarely survives into the 1T and as bad as the purges were and as brutal as soviet industrialization was that was a full on Advancement 1T.
As I've said elsewhere Russia is on a completely different cycle.
Agreed on Germany. It is easy to see that the German contemporaries of the Missionary Generation included more people of principle. That generation found itself terribly weakened in the wake of WWI, for which it was held largely at fault.
So just imagine a society in which the Adaptive types are completely gone from public life, the Idealist types are largely discredited, and what remains are Reactive types with hurt feelings and a lust of revenge -- and a Civic generation that will obey any orders so long as nobody says no to those orders. German leadership was as unethical as it could be, and it had grand designs of conquest and subjection of foreign peoples, enslaving or robbing them if not murdering them. The absence of either morality or caution bodes ill for any society.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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(05-15-2019, 01:43 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: (05-14-2019, 08:49 PM)Hintergrund Wrote: (04-24-2019, 03:22 PM)AspieMillennial Wrote: Let me remind you that the grey champion isn't always the good guy. In Germany the grey champion was Hitler; keep that in mind. In the Soviet Union, the grey champion was Stalin. Sometimes the grey champion turns out to be evil.
Hitler wasn't old enough to be a GC.
I would argue that Hitler was a bit of an anomaly due to the fact that the majority of the Missionary leadership in Germany was swept away after WW1. They were too tied up into the Kaiser and later the communist uprisings that the German Losts put down.
The Lost started in 1883, Hitler was born 1889 - but even today, trends from the US usually take five years to arrive in Europe. And Hitler was born in a backwater if there was one. Maybe he was a late Missionary, so to speak?
He was an oddball anyway: While his comrades in the army drank and smoked and cursed and probably went to brothels, as you'd expect from Lost, he... didn't.
His narcissism and fanaticism definitely fit a "Prophet" better than a Nomad.
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05-19-2019, 04:08 AM
(This post was last modified: 05-19-2019, 04:08 AM by Eric the Green.)
(05-18-2019, 07:28 PM)Hintergrund Wrote: (05-15-2019, 01:43 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: (05-14-2019, 08:49 PM)Hintergrund Wrote: (04-24-2019, 03:22 PM)AspieMillennial Wrote: Let me remind you that the grey champion isn't always the good guy. In Germany the grey champion was Hitler; keep that in mind. In the Soviet Union, the grey champion was Stalin. Sometimes the grey champion turns out to be evil.
Hitler wasn't old enough to be a GC.
I would argue that Hitler was a bit of an anomaly due to the fact that the majority of the Missionary leadership in Germany was swept away after WW1. They were too tied up into the Kaiser and later the communist uprisings that the German Losts put down.
The Lost started in 1883, Hitler was born 1889 - but even today, trends from the US usually take five years to arrive in Europe. And Hitler was born in a backwater if there was one. Maybe he was a late Missionary, so to speak?
He was an oddball anyway: While his comrades in the army drank and smoked and cursed and probably went to brothels, as you'd expect from Lost, he... didn't.
His narcissism and fanaticism definitely fit a "Prophet" better than a Nomad.
He was definitely nomad; he was not a prophet of anything and did not stand for anything. He was just a huge gangster. As I see it shown again and again on this forum, the Xers are the ones today with the extreme opinions and cynical attitudes.
And Europe is not so far behind the US.
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The Lost in America are contemporaries of some of the most evil people who ever lived -- Nazis and perpetrators of Stalinist horror. Of the ten executed (and one who committed suicide rather than face a hanging and another sentenced to death in absentia) after being convicted in the main Nuremberg trials, eight were born between 1883 and 1945, inclusive -- as were such abominable Nazis as Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, and the infamous 'hanging judge' Roland Freisler. Also born between 1883 and 1900, inclusive were such quislings as Laval, Doriot, Deat, and Pellepoix of Vichy France, Szalasi in Hungary, Pavelic in Croatia, Rupnik in Slovenia, Tiso in Slovakia, Mussert in the Netherlands -- and Quisling himself. Most of the leading generals of Japan associated with horrific crimes, including Tojo, were of this age group.
Of Stalin's 'ablest students' -- Bierut in Poland, Ulbricht in East Germany, Gottwald in Czechoslovakia, Rakosi and Gero in Hungary, Gheorghiu-Dej in Romania, and Dimitroff in Bulgaria -- only Dimitroff was bourn outside that age span. Need I mention Vishinsky, Zhdanov, Beria, and Kaganovich? Then there are Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh...
...and many of the worst mobsters in American history. That was a troubled generation. Yes, it had its heroes and creative people, and legions of honest entrepreneurs and toilers. But if you are looking for evil, much of it was born between 1883 and 1900.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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(05-19-2019, 09:34 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: The Lost in America are contemporaries of some of the most evil people who ever lived -- Nazis and perpetrators of Stalinist horror. Of the ten executed (and one who committed suicide rather than face a hanging and another sentenced to death in absentia) after being convicted in the main Nuremberg trials, eight were born between 1883 and 1945, inclusive -- as were such abominable Nazis as Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, and the infamous 'hanging judge' Roland Freisler. Also born between 1883 and 1900, inclusive were such quislings as Laval, Doriot, Deat, and Pellepoix of Vichy France, Szalasi in Hungary, Pavelic in Croatia, Rupnik in Slovenia, Tiso in Slovakia, Mussert in the Netherlands -- and Quisling himself. Most of the leading generals of Japan associated with horrific crimes, including Tojo, were of this age group.
Of Stalin's 'ablest students' -- Bierut in Poland, Ulbricht in East Germany, Gottwald in Czechoslovakia, Rakosi and Gero in Hungary, Gheorghiu-Dej in Romania, and Dimitroff in Bulgaria -- only Dimitroff was bourn outside that age span. Need I mention Vishinsky, Zhdanov, Beria, and Kaganovich? Then there are Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh...
...and many of the worst mobsters in American history. That was a troubled generation. Yes, it had its heroes and creative people, and legions of honest entrepreneurs and toilers. But if you are looking for evil, much of it was born between 1883 and 1900.
Seeing all this evil of the 1930s and 1940s I don't see how you could keep a positive view of humanity. When I see 4T behavior all I think is that humans are evil scum.
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Hitler might have stayed an eccentric, extremist but powerless and hence not very dangerous painter if WW1 had not happened. But Wilson's idiotic politics messed up Europe, discredited the European Missionaries (and Progressives) too obviously, and created a vacuum Hitler etc. filled.
It's the same today with the Middle East: Dubya and Obama destroyed the old regimes and prepared the soil for ISIS and AQ. Osama is dead, but there are enough younger Islamists waiting to take over. If you want to know who'll be responsible for WW3, look among their younger generations.
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Also, if you read about WW1, you'll understand why the Lost were so messed up. Ever heard the term "Spandau ballet"? (I'll spoiler this because it's truly horrific.) This is how the soldiers called it if one of them ran into barbed wire, but didn't die, and then was hit by bullets - and would twitch. But this is something the civilians didn't understand. And neither did their officers. As many said, the British soldiers were "lions lead by donkeys". And other armies weren't much better.
It's no surprise that many of the Lost became alcoholics, other addicts or plain mad. Or political fanatics who wanted a scapegoat.
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05-19-2019, 06:13 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-19-2019, 06:15 PM by Eric the Green.)
(05-19-2019, 02:22 PM)Hintergrund Wrote: Hitler might have stayed an eccentric, extremist but powerless and hence not very dangerous painter if WW1 had not happened. But Wilson's idiotic politics messed up Europe, discredited the European Missionaries (and Progressives) too obviously, and created a vacuum Hitler etc. filled.
It's the same today with the Middle East: Dubya and Obama destroyed the old regimes and prepared the soil for ISIS and AQ. Osama is dead, but there are enough younger Islamists waiting to take over. If you want to know who'll be responsible for WW3, look among their younger generations.
I don't know if you will be open to what I say, if you believe the troll's incessant lies and self-justifying arguments about me, or given what you said, but being a fairly well-informed student of history and the news, as I see it there are corrections to be made in your statement, as well as some things correct. Of course Mr. Brower made a very astute list of names in his post above, so kudoes to him for that.
Your first sentence is good; no Hitler without WWI. That is very widely-held consensus. But Wilson's idiotic policies? I don't share that interpretation. I don't think Germany could have been allowed to win WWI; that would have militarized and regressed Europe, perhaps not as drastically as the Nazis tried to do. The defeated powers would not have been reconciled to a Germany-dominated Europe either. I could be wrong on all that, but assuming I'm not, then Wilson did the right thing by envisioning and acting on what needed to replace the defeated empires. It was time for democracy to advance, and for the world to develop a world-governing body. The soldiers who died in the trenches, died as sacrifices for the new world civilization still being born. We can't and should not have continued a world of nationalist empires battling for world conquest. Those fallen Central Powers, plus the fallen Russian one, were already long outdated relics of a failed age.
Hitler rallied his nation to oppose the Versailles Treaty. Its retaliatory and punishing provisions were opposed by Wilson, and imposed by Clemenceau and David Lloyd George. Italy came away mad too that it didn't get what it fought for. Wilson was not at fault for any of that.
Maybe there are parallels with WWI today in the Middle East. The whole Middle East turmoil emerged from the fall of the Ottoman Empire in WWI too. Dubya certainly prepared the soil for ISIS by overthrowing Saddam and invading his country. But Al Qaeda already existed in 2003. Dubya and Obama did not pave the way for them. It's very possible that another war is going to break out in the middle east region at the end of 2020, but the US may not be involved in that or any other foreign war until 2025. These will not be nuclear wars though. We will come out of the 4T climax in better shape than we went into it. I am wearing my prophet hat now when I point those things out, so if I'm wrong, we'll all know it together.
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05-19-2019, 06:29 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-19-2019, 10:56 PM by pbrower2a.)
(05-19-2019, 11:49 AM)AspieMillennial Wrote: (05-19-2019, 09:34 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: The Lost in America are contemporaries of some of the most evil people who ever lived -- Nazis and perpetrators of Stalinist horror. Of the ten executed (and one who committed suicide rather than face a hanging and another sentenced to death in absentia) after being convicted in the main Nuremberg trials, eight were born between 1883 and 1945, inclusive -- as were such abominable Nazis as Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, and the infamous 'hanging judge' Roland Freisler. Also born between 1883 and 1900, inclusive were such quislings as Laval, Doriot, Deat, and Pellepoix of Vichy France, Szalasi in Hungary, Pavelic in Croatia, Rupnik in Slovenia, Tiso in Slovakia, Mussert in the Netherlands -- and Quisling himself. Most of the leading generals of Japan associated with horrific crimes, including Tojo, were of this age group.
Of Stalin's 'ablest students' -- Bierut in Poland, Ulbricht in East Germany, Gottwald in Czechoslovakia, Rakosi and Gero in Hungary, Gheorghiu-Dej in Romania, and Dimitroff in Bulgaria -- only Dimitroff was bourn outside that age span. Need I mention Vishinsky, Zhdanov, Beria, and Kaganovich? Then there are Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh...
...and many of the worst mobsters in American history. That was a troubled generation. Yes, it had its heroes and creative people, and legions of honest entrepreneurs and toilers. But if you are looking for evil, much of it was born between 1883 and 1900.
Seeing all this evil of the 1930s and 1940s I don't see how you could keep a positive view of humanity. When I see 4T behavior all I think is that humans are evil scum.
I do not consider myself an optimist. I recognize how scummy people can be. People must choose between Good and Evil. When too many choose Evil, Humanity is in a bad scrape. If we must choose between sophisticated technology and culture on the one side and goodness toward humanity, we choose goodness even if such consigns us to be serfs lest we become monsters. Some mobster who can order a gangland hit during an intermission of Turandot is no better for his musical taste. If I had to choose between being Old-Order Amish (which would imply extreme losses of much of what I consider essential to my happiness) or program a computer to keep tabs on people scheduled for extermination, then I would choose to be a very Plain Person.
Don't get me wrong; I love Puccini, and I love the capacity that the Internet gives me for communicating ideas that I can develop after discovering something. The problem with Nazis was not in their musical taste, and the problem with the Japanese of WWII was not bonsai trees or kabuki theater.
On the other side I recognize heroic resistance to Nazi evil even in Germany itself, even if it resulted in those who were caught being beheaded or strung by piano wire to meat-hooks to die in maximal agony. I recognize people who sacrificed their lives in camps so that their children could survive or at least have a chance. I recognize heroic behavior of soldiers who threw themselves onto live grenades so that that hero would be the only one to die in that foxhole that day. Let us also remember that the British, many of them veterans of WWI and WWII, acceded to the dissolution of their colonial empire -- and that American GI vets turned against the racist order of "Kukluxistan".
Maybe people who see evil and recognize what it can do seek ways to prevent its re-emergence. Sure, we have some horrible people who admire Hitler, and I have had some unpleasant encounters with them. In several of them I have said "I would rather be a Jew than you!" followed by an explanation that I would sacrifice neither my culture nor my ethical values. (I had long overestimated the proportion of German ancestry that I have -- much of it is English. Knowing that I speak in pride of being connected to the European nation that did best at protecting its Jews by keeping the Wehrmacht, Gestapo, and SS out of their country).
A 4T can be unspeakably bleak and ominous, and many people devoid of culpability in the bleakness and horror become victims of the worst that people can do to fellow Humanity. But even if the 4T is analogous to a forest fire, plants can germinate in the ashes. (OK, I also use a building fire as an analogy. In a 3T people can get out of a building by finding a door or even put out the fire easily -- or remove the collection of oily rags that can spontaneously combust. In a 4T, people must force an escape route as the fire makes the building structure unsafe or blocks exits).
It is just as heroic, and more practical, to inculcate humane decency as it is to encourage sacrificial behavior on behalf of the Nation, "race", or sect. It is best that people not die for murky ideas.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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(05-18-2019, 07:28 PM)Hintergrund Wrote: (05-15-2019, 01:43 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: (05-14-2019, 08:49 PM)Hintergrund Wrote: (04-24-2019, 03:22 PM)AspieMillennial Wrote: Let me remind you that the grey champion isn't always the good guy. In Germany the grey champion was Hitler; keep that in mind. In the Soviet Union, the grey champion was Stalin. Sometimes the grey champion turns out to be evil.
Hitler wasn't old enough to be a GC.
I would argue that Hitler was a bit of an anomaly due to the fact that the majority of the Missionary leadership in Germany was swept away after WW1. They were too tied up into the Kaiser and later the communist uprisings that the German Losts put down.
The Lost started in 1883, Hitler was born 1889 - but even today, trends from the US usually take five years to arrive in Europe. And Hitler was born in a backwater if there was one. Maybe he was a late Missionary, so to speak?
He was an oddball anyway: While his comrades in the army drank and smoked and cursed and probably went to brothels, as you'd expect from Lost, he... didn't.
His narcissism and fanaticism definitely fit a "Prophet" better than a Nomad.
One could argue that Hitler was a cusper. Having read Mein Kampf I would say he likely was, but his primary drives were Lost in nature.
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(05-20-2019, 09:26 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: (05-18-2019, 07:28 PM)Hintergrund Wrote: (05-15-2019, 01:43 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: (05-14-2019, 08:49 PM)Hintergrund Wrote: (04-24-2019, 03:22 PM)AspieMillennial Wrote: Let me remind you that the grey champion isn't always the good guy. In Germany the grey champion was Hitler; keep that in mind. In the Soviet Union, the grey champion was Stalin. Sometimes the grey champion turns out to be evil.
Hitler wasn't old enough to be a GC.
I would argue that Hitler was a bit of an anomaly due to the fact that the majority of the Missionary leadership in Germany was swept away after WW1. They were too tied up into the Kaiser and later the communist uprisings that the German Losts put down.
The Lost started in 1883, Hitler was born 1889 - but even today, trends from the US usually take five years to arrive in Europe. And Hitler was born in a backwater if there was one. Maybe he was a late Missionary, so to speak?
He was an oddball anyway: While his comrades in the army drank and smoked and cursed and probably went to brothels, as you'd expect from Lost, he... didn't.
His narcissism and fanaticism definitely fit a "Prophet" better than a Nomad.
One could argue that Hitler was a cusper. Having read Mein Kampf I would say he likely was, but his primary drives were Lost in nature.
Howe and Strauss have 1882 as the last year of the Missionary Generation and 1883 as the first year of the Lost. They used historical figures to divide eras of the births of generations, and 1882 includes FDR, who has some Reactive characteristics (somewhat devious and pragmatic) to separate him from such people as Pierre Laval and Benito Mussolini. They could have conceivably drawn the line between FDR and others at or near FDR's birthday, as 1882 had some nasty people -- Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, who Nazified the Wehrmacht and made it culpable in the Holocaust and other horrific war crimes, piece-of-work Brazilian dictator Getulio Vargas, and Ion Antonescu, Romanian dictator ( Conducator, practically a translation of Fuehrer) culpable in horrific crimes under his rule in western Ukraine (including of course the Holocaust). Such fascists as Quisling, Tiso, Pavelic, Szalasi, Mussert, Doriot, Deat, and Franco follow. So does the would-be British quisling Sir Oswald Moseley, and the horrid American David Curtis Stephenson, the Indiana Grand Dragon who has much in common with Hitler. America's Chinese wartime ally Chiang Kai-Shek was utterly amoral... and Stalin's vilest henchmen both in the Soviet Union (Beria, Vishinsky, and Kaganovich) and in the bolshevization of eastern Europe are also from this generation. The hideous lot continues to about 1900, including Josef Goebbels, Hans Frank, and above all Heinrich Himmler.
Sure, there were heroes, especially the military ones -- Eisenhower, Bradley, Clark, Patton, Montgomery, Wingate, DeGaulle, Zhukov... Rommel was at fault only for serving the wrong country. Truman may have been decent enough, but he knew how flawed Humanity could be and did not pretend to righteousness as a political tool. Literary figures of this generation often had big problems (F. Scott Fitzgerald, E. Hemingway, D. Parker, E. Pound)
I knew the Lost mostly as pensioners -- harmless people, largely -- who harbored no pretensions to greatness. But I look at the history book and I see the Lost who got major political leadership as a troubled lot.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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S&H dates are mostly relevant to the US, Canada and UK. When discussing Germany (never mind Russia) we have to look at the history of those countries. That said Germany is typically on the same cycle with the rest of Western Europe while Russia is not.
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Australia, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Greece, and Japan would seem to be on roughly the same timelines. Arguably India. Countries that went Commie between 1946 and 1949 would seem to be a bit delayed, as might South Korea (Korean War). The former Yugoslavia and current Rwanda have obviously gone through Crisis eras -- if I were looking to be in a post-Crisis world, I would go with Croatia or Slovenia now.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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(05-20-2019, 11:40 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Australia, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Greece, and Japan would seem to be on roughly the same timelines. Arguably India. Countries that went Commie between 1946 and 1949 would seem to be a bit delayed, as might South Korea (Korean War). The former Yugoslavia and current Rwanda have obviously gone through Crisis eras -- if I were looking to be in a post-Crisis world, I would go with Croatia or Slovenia now.
Australia (and by extension New Zealand) are anglophone Western countries and fall more in line with the Big Three Anglophone countries. US, Canada, UK.
France, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, Spain are all Western European. Greece should be on a separate time line but I think perhaps they were jerked into a more Western mold by WW2 than the rest of Eastern Europe being that they were more exposed to the West after kicking out the Ottomans than otherwise.
Japan is on a similar timeline but only coincidentally--the Japanese are western only in that they like business suits and cell phones, they are still thoroughly Japanese. South Korea is on the Japanese line, though delayed about five or six years. Like the Japanese the South Koreans are thoroughly Korean.
Yugoslavia went through a 4T in the 1990s as did all of Eastern Europe including Russia. As I said in previous posts the Slavic and Slavic-Orthodox countries in particular are a different civilization from the West and thus on a different timeline.
Rwanda has had a 4T and the rest of Central Africa is still in it, but it is fading. East Africa's 4T is over or nearly so as there is talk of forming an East African Federation. Rwanda intends to join, and they are actively seeking Chinese investment to rapidly industrialize as Ethiopia and Kenya are doing. The next Sweatshop of the World will not be in Asia unless India decides it doesn't want to be the world's call center, the rest of Asia simply isn't populous enough but Africa is untapped cheap labor.
India seems poised to leapfrog industrial development because their lingua franca is English. This means that where cheap labor is required for white collar work, it can be outsourced to India.
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