Trump as 4T Leader

[pbrower2a]

(08-28-2019, 08:02 AM)Anthony Wrote: Trump is a 3T leader from the word "Go."

His economics are classic 3T (despite the pack of lies he told to get elected), and the "scorched-earth Culture Wars" (S&H's own words) he wages are also classic 3T.

3T ways and ideas create the ills and dangers of the Crisis. The faster and more completely nations repudiate 3T ways of economics, politics, culture, and intellectual life during a 4T, the better they get through the Crisis. The divide-and-culture ethos of the 3T creates a mess.

It takes nearly all capable adults to pull off a 4T well, and that requires social unification that does not split society into masters exempt from responsibility and pariahs who become the scapegoats. A well-run society in a 4T is capable of getting all to make reasonable sacrifices without determining that whole classes of people based on origins are vermin. It also takes a sacrifice of class privilege instead of elevating it as the social objective. 

I look at the scenarios in science fiction of Axis victories, some of them quite convincing because absolute evil is absolutely fascinating --- yet I also recognize a great unreality. The Axis Powers had great economic resources at their disposal at their peaks of expansion, had superb generals, and had brave soldiers, too. They had the advantage, at least early, of more complete preparation, surprise, and willingness to break the conventions of waiting for valid excuses for moving troops where those troops were unwelcome. The problem with something like The Man in the High Castle (I have read the book but have never seen the TV series) is the ultimate reasons of the Allied victory: that the British and Americans (to a much lesser extent the Soviet order) more completely turned their economies from consumer societies to war machines, that they better used their scientific talent, that their intelligence services were more effective, that they did not waste people through persecutions and mass murder -- and most obviously, that once they won a swath of land they left people no cause for striking back. A German soldier had to watch his back the whole long distance from Poznan or Krakow to the eastern front from partisan attacks  alone before facing the obvious dangers of hand-to-hand combat with the Red Army; the  American or British soldier had no such problem after D-Day even in Germany and Italy. With the British and Americans, conquest  implied that the war was over for the liberated or conquered peoples, and human dignity was enough to take the sting out of defeat. With the Third Reich or Thug Japan, conquest by brutal overlords began a horror that made resistance necessary for recovering some basic dignity, however temporary.

The Nazis, fascist Italy, and imperialist Japan lost the war due to thuggery. It is telling that as the Italian people switched sides their country became a more formidable belligerent on the side of the Allies than under the leadership of the Sawdust Caesar with all his pretension to restoring the glory of the Roman Empire. Turn the good and evil of the Axis and the Anglo-American alliance around, and one has even more potential for an Axis victory. Germany lost the war in part by casting off people (Jews) who could have been extremely useful to Germany as they were to the British, Americans, and Soviets. I have contemplated such a scenario, and I have thought of who the villains would be in America. The Klan presents itself, for obvious reasons, for sharing much the same bigotry as the Nazis and imposing some sick version of Manifest Destiny in America with a nightmare of genocide and slavery that must die; I have rogue elements in France rather easy to establish (the Vichy characters are in place in 1939). Britain is a bit trickier... but I can easily see a fascistic Britain collapsing in a scenario in which the roles of Churchill and Adenauer are inverted. (The two are quite similar). OK, the Spanish Republic survives without intervention of the fascist powers...

Dekluxification = denazification. Rommel Plan = Marshall Plan in the eastern former USA, Yamamoto Plan in the western former USA. The infamously-divided city is Chicago. Klan leaders are tried, convicted, and executed as war criminals for atrocities that include genocide. A large swath of the Southwest, including Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Albuquerque, El Paso, the Permian Basin, San Antonio, Austin, and Houston reverts to Mexico because the Klan regime violated the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in treating Mexican-Americans as lesser than white people. California, Oregon, and Washington get settled in great numbers by peoples from the Far East who fill an economic vacuum as Americans from elsewhere found their way to the Pacific Coast. The Diary of a Young Girl is by Lorraine Hansberry instead of by Anne Frank, the latter ending up as one of the leading journalists in postwar Germany. Other details: the Germans compel the integration of professional sports, dictate a law similar to the 1964 Civil Rights Act in the name of the Emancipation Proclamation, and initiate the building of such projects as the Autobahns linking Montreal to Miami, Halifax to Chicago, Washington to Memphis, and Chicago to Mobile. The center for film-making in America can no longer be in Hollywood, so it relocates to the sunniest part of the eastern United States -- the Shenandoah Valley.

[beechnut79]

The current oligarchs plan: These people who are already oligarchs or wannabes are no doubt the same ones that tell us individually that it's time to go for the gold, think outside the box and have the drive and desire to go after your dreams, hone your creative juices, your perseverance and your courage to follow your heart. And have also been brainwashed into believing that the only sure-fire way to do this is to continue your education up until, say, at least age 28, and what is sown is reaped by many, many years of outstanding student loan debt which can't be wiped away in bankruptcy. On that one Obama tried to get it changed while he was President but was unsuccessful.

[Eric the Green]

(08-28-2019, 08:02 AM)Anthony Wrote: Trump is a 3T leader from the word "Go."

His economics are classic 3T (despite the pack of lies he told to get elected), and the "scorched-earth Culture Wars" (S&H's own words) he wages are also classic 3T.

Good show; you got that one right.

[Eric the Green]

(08-24-2019, 03:21 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(08-24-2019, 01:46 PM)sbarrera Wrote: The point is Trump is leading in a manner consistent with what turnings theory predicts for his generation in this turning.

Absolutely.  In fact, Trump's victory in the 2016 election was a major victory for generational theory.

The major questions at this point are how the crisis war will start, and whether we'll be on the winning side or the losing side.

Hillary's victory would have been far better as such a victory for generation theory. She represented the better side of boomers, and is also very typical for better or worse.

[Eric the Green]

(08-27-2019, 10:12 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-27-2019, 09:28 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote:

(08-24-2019, 03:21 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(08-24-2019, 01:46 PM)sbarrera Wrote: The point is Trump is leading in a manner consistent with what turnings theory predicts for his generation in this turning.

Absolutely.  In fact, Trump's victory in the 2016 election was a major victory for generational theory.

The major questions at this point are how the crisis war will start, and whether we'll be on the winning side or the losing side.

You can look it from another angle. Whether Clinton or Trump, the election of 2016 was destined to be a major victory for 90s nostalgia and going back to 3T values. Bernie would have been different, but he is a Silent. Ideally, Silents should have presided over 3T and Boomers over 4T, but in fact Boomers dominate both.

Whether Trump wins a second term or not, we are officially a different country than we were in 2015.  If he loses in a major way, we'll almost certainly move in a progressive path.  If he wins, it will be the start of something authoritarian -- moreso than he's managed to date.  In either case, the election of 2016 was a watershed; we just aren't certain what kind.

I think we an discount both Biden and Bernie, so the next leg of the journey will be lead by a Boomer or an Xer.  Which will determine the tenor of the next few years, but it won't be path back to what was no matter who wins.  The American Century is done.

If we discount Bernie or Biden, then Trump very likely wins. That does not mean we are starting a new authoritarian country, but it will mean that the USA has little time left to turn back, and it will have to be through congress. The Senate may go democratic in 2020 even if Trump wins, and certainly will by 2022 if Trump wins. The House, even though still gerrymandered in many states, is unlikely to go back into Tea Party/Trumpist hands. The demographics and partial removal of gerrymandering probably has made that less likely, and statehouses are unlikely to go Republican in the 2020 general election like they did in the 2010 midterm, which was the election that put the House in Republican hands for 8 years. 

If Trump wins in 2020, then the 2022 midterm will be a tsunami of Democratic votes, and he could be reduced to a figurehead. Congress will then make policy in 2023, and the president (maybe Pence by then) won't be able to block it, though his Courts might still be able to, to some extent (depending on how Democratic, and how effectively so, the Senate is in 2021-22). From there, a 2024 Democratic White House would be assured for the next 8 years. 

It might even be better politically for the Democrats if Trump wins in 2020, but of course these days, any Republican victory anywhere is a disaster for the country, so it would be better overall if Sanders or Biden wins in 2020. And if either of them do, they will probably have to be succeeded by McAuliffe or Landrieu in 2024 to keep the White House in the hands of the better party. Or there may be a powerful third party by then. We can't tell for sure how far change can go in a 4T.

[Warren Dew]

(08-29-2019, 02:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-24-2019, 03:21 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(08-24-2019, 01:46 PM)sbarrera Wrote: The point is Trump is leading in a manner consistent with what turnings theory predicts for his generation in this turning.

Absolutely.  In fact, Trump's victory in the 2016 election was a major victory for generational theory.

The major questions at this point are how the crisis war will start, and whether we'll be on the winning side or the losing side.

Hillary's victory would have been far better as such a victory for generation theory. She represented the better side of boomers, and is also very typical for better or worse.

Hillary's platform was similar to her husband's in the 1990s, with perhaps the exception of a little more warmongering.  Third turning platforms like that winning in 2016 would have been inconsistent generational theory predicts for fourth turnings, providing strong evidence against the theory.

Like it or not, Trump got elected due to a populist campaign, exactly as predicted by generational theory.

[David Horn]

(08-29-2019, 02:37 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-27-2019, 10:12 AM)David Horn Wrote: I think we an discount both Biden and Bernie, so the next leg of the journey will be lead by a Boomer or an Xer.  Which will determine the tenor of the next few years, but it won't be path back to what was no matter who wins.  The American Century is done.

If we discount Bernie or Biden, then Trump very likely wins. That does not mean we are starting a new authoritarian country, but it will mean that the USA has little time left to turn back, and it will have to be through congress. The Senate may go democratic in 2020 even if Trump wins, and certainly will by 2022 if Trump wins. The House, even though still gerrymandered in many states, is unlikely to go back into Tea Party/Trumpist hands. The demographics and partial removal of gerrymandering probably has made that less likely, and statehouses are unlikely to go Republican in the 2020 general election like they did in the 2010 midterm, which was the election that put the House in Republican hands for 8 years. 

There is a sea change in the works. Neither of these war horses will be able to lead in that changing environment -- not even Bernie, with his army of Millennials. So, in a tug-of-war between either Biden or Bernie and Trump, Trump might win by default … or the winning Dem will be emasculated by party infighting and GOP opposition.

Eric the Green Wrote:If Trump wins in 2020, then the 2022 midterm will be a tsunami of Democratic votes, and he could be reduced to a figurehead. Congress will then make policy in 2023, and the president (maybe Pence by then) won't be able to block it, though his Courts might still be able to, to some extent (depending on how Democratic, and how effectively so, the Senate is in 2021-22). From there, a 2024 Democratic White House would be assured for the next 8 years. 

… except that, by then, the census and the gerrymandering of the nation will have been completed. Waiting for 2030 is not an option.

Eric the Green Wrote:It might even be better politically for the Democrats if Trump wins in 2020, but of course these days, any Republican victory anywhere is a disaster for the country, so it would be better overall if Sanders or Biden wins in 2020. And if either of them do, they will probably have to be succeeded by McAuliffe or Landrieu in 2024 to keep the White House in the hands of the better party. Or there may be a powerful third party by then. We can't tell for sure how far change can go in a 4T.

We're fossils, and so are your candidate choices. We need to hand-off to younger people, because the future is theirs, not ours.

[pbrower2a]

(08-29-2019, 09:22 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(08-29-2019, 02:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-24-2019, 03:21 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(08-24-2019, 01:46 PM)sbarrera Wrote: The point is Trump is leading in a manner consistent with what turnings theory predicts for his generation in this turning.

Absolutely.  In fact, Trump's victory in the 2016 election was a major victory for generational theory.

The major questions at this point are how the crisis war will start, and whether we'll be on the winning side or the losing side.

Hillary's victory would have been far better as such a victory for generation theory. She represented the better side of boomers, and is also very typical for better or worse.

Hillary's platform was similar to her husband's in the 1990s, with perhaps the exception of a little more warmongering.  Third turning platforms like that winning in 2016 would have been inconsistent generational theory predicts for fourth turnings, providing strong evidence against the theory.

Like it or not, Trump got elected due to a populist campaign, exactly as predicted by generational theory.

Trump appealed to racist and anti-intellectual sentiments and has since governed as a true believer in a pure plutocracy. If he has a vision, it is one of 95% of the people enduring a far nastier world on behalf of a small sliver of the population who have no responsibilities except to themselves. He is firmly for the sorts of trusts that populists of the late nineteenth century railed against. If anything he has become a fascist except for establishing the torture chambers and killing sites for opponents. He is more for economic fascism, basically government by the owners and administrators of the greatest assets with others left out if they pose any challenge. People who live solely for achieving eternal bliss by suffering as completely as possible for their economic masters are no threats to his agenda, but people who believe that the mind is something to cherish and develop get pariah treatment from the Trump regime. 

Trump has not betrayed racism, anti-intellectualism, and religious bigotry that are parts of his agenda. He wants people other than the elites to subordinate all to those elites. Note well: every totalitarian movement has eventually proved anti-intellectual. Totalitarian ideologies work well with people who believe that life is little more than toil to create wealth not theirs in the supposed good of Humanity as a whole while being denied more than bare survival so that economic progress can accelerate. Such requires people who think at an elementary level, people incapable of reading between the lines, judging promises against their achievement and validity. The ideal subject of a totalitarian regime is either marginally literate, intellectually lazy, or co-opted. Totalitarian regimes such as Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China, Thug Japan, and the Ba'athist nightmares of Hafez Assad and Saddam Hussein pushed elementary education as a public achievement so that people could understand the orders that they got, read basic technical manuals, and absorb the content of ideological hectoring. Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and Vichy France debased the educational standards that already existed so that people could not think for themselves. Apartheid-era South Africa and "Ku Kluxistan" made sure that education was solely for technical purposes and military training for a white elite (all whites in South Africa, but a minority of whites in the pre-1965 South) so that the subordinates could be farm laborers and domestic servants. It is telling that German universities were well respected before 1933 and after 1945... but not in between, when German universities became diploma mills for the Nazi Party.

What fails in a totalitarian society? The technical complexity necessary for manufacturing tractors in wholly inadequate for making the favorite toys of the leaders -- the weapons systems. That complexity requires some intellectual sophistication, and that requires a willingness to learn foreign technologies. But with the learning of foreign technologies comes the dangerous siren of liberal learning and practice. Thus jazz, about as anti-totalitarian as an expression of music as there could be. Thus modern art (as opposed to neo-classical schlock of Socialist Realism or propagandistic $#!+ such as this:



requires a sharp mind to appreciate. A propaganda piece that juxtaposes Saddam Hussein  with Nebuchadnezzar and Salah ud-Din "liberating" Jerusalem (Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem, but the Bible sees him as anything but a liberator, Salah ud-Din would have liberated Jerusalem from Crusaders* and not from the Jews... and AK-47 rifles do not belong with Nebuchadnezzar's chariots) well serves leaders who demand that people not think and a populace that does not think.

Latin intelligens  literally means "reading between the lines" (inter-, "between", and legens, "reading"). . Any blockhead can learn how to connect letters to sounds and the patterns of local speech, but the capacity to judge the content that one absorbs requires more complicated thought. Even the medieval Catholic Church needed priests able to recognize the flaws in heresies so that it could oppose those in sermons by the parish priest. The fascist, Nazi, Ba'athist, or Bolshevik could only shut such thinking down.

Trump will fail because the economy that creates the prosperity that we have needs sophisticated people just to create the bilge of mass entertainment that constitutes the opiate of the masses -- and to create the weapons systems. The intelligence necessary for something as apolitical and culture-free as engineering can turn to culture and morality. Trump can deny something like global warming only by shutting off the thought about it.   

Trump is hostile to American democracy, and American democracy is hostile to him. A sophisticated economy and a moral community are both inconsistent with a poltroon like him as Leader.  Trump cannot win a free election in 2020. To keep himself and his political progeny in power in view of the demographic trends in politics he will need to destroy American democracy. Donald Trump may be the focus of the Crisis this time.

*By any standard, the Crusaders were far worse to people of the Levant, irrespective of religion, than any Arab or Muslim sources can say of the "Zionists".

[David Horn]

(08-29-2019, 09:22 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(08-29-2019, 02:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-24-2019, 03:21 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(08-24-2019, 01:46 PM)sbarrera Wrote: The point is Trump is leading in a manner consistent with what turnings theory predicts for his generation in this turning.

Absolutely.  In fact, Trump's victory in the 2016 election was a major victory for generational theory.

The major questions at this point are how the crisis war will start, and whether we'll be on the winning side or the losing side.

Hillary's victory would have been far better as such a victory for generation theory. She represented the better side of boomers, and is also very typical for better or worse.

Hillary's platform was similar to her husband's in the 1990s, with perhaps the exception of a little more warmongering.  Third turning platforms like that winning in 2016 would have been inconsistent generational theory predicts for fourth turnings, providing strong evidence against the theory.

Like it or not, Trump got elected due to a populist campaign, exactly as predicted by generational theory.

Trump is the worst scumbag to ever run for, to say nothing about win, the Presidency, but he was and is a candidate-of-the-times.  So was Hitler. We should be fearful about what comes next.

[Warren Dew]

FDR was a scumbag, and also a candidate of the times. Winning a crisis war washes away all sins.

[Eric the Green]

(08-29-2019, 09:22 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(08-29-2019, 02:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-24-2019, 03:21 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(08-24-2019, 01:46 PM)sbarrera Wrote: The point is Trump is leading in a manner consistent with what turnings theory predicts for his generation in this turning.

Absolutely.  In fact, Trump's victory in the 2016 election was a major victory for generational theory.

The major questions at this point are how the crisis war will start, and whether we'll be on the winning side or the losing side.

Hillary's victory would have been far better as such a victory for generation theory. She represented the better side of boomers, and is also very typical for better or worse.

Hillary's platform was similar to her husband's in the 1990s, with perhaps the exception of a little more warmongering.  Third turning platforms like that winning in 2016 would have been inconsistent generational theory predicts for fourth turnings, providing strong evidence against the theory.

Like it or not, Trump got elected due to a populist campaign, exactly as predicted by generational theory.

Conservatives such as yourself see things from a harkening back to the old days point of view. You guys are just not likely to see things correctly. Hillary was going to continue Obama's policies and add to them. That was not a radical 4T style, that's true. But Obama was answering the needs of this 4T, as best as can be done in a backward, center-right country like the USA is today. So it was not her husband's party that she was offering, but her boss's.

Trump is and was as far from being a populist as any candidate could ever be. He takes away the means people have to empower themselves against the bosses of the world: their vote and their voice in politics and government. He is following Bannon's program of dismantling the administrative state. That state is the best organ the people have to rein in the robber barons who run this country into the ground and deprive the people of their rights and their prosperity just so a few fat cats can profit. That is the only thing Republicans are interested in: protecting their class. And Trump is head of the rabble in doing that. This is 3T, not 4T. 

And stop misusing the word populist. I think it is, to use another oft-misused term by the Republican bosses, "elitist." Right wing "populism" merely appeals to peoples' fears and prejudices, and the term assumes that the common people are more susceptible to such fear-mongering. Perhaps in fact, it may be true sometimes, but it doesn't have to be. The common people have the ability to see the truth and reject fear-mongering, just as fully as the intellectual "elite" do. Sometimes more so.

Populism was first promoted by James B. Weaver in his Populist Party campaign in 1892. Then William J. Bryan took Weaver's populist program and took over the Democratic Party with it, and Weaver supported him. Wilson and FDR continued his tradition and made the party what it is today. Democrats are the populists. Republicans are and always will be anti-populists, and can never be populists again; period. They are not the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt anymore. They take power away from the people and give it to the bosses; the very bosses who claim "free enterprise" is freedom, when that is the most blatant bullshit that has ever been perpetrated on the people.

[Eric the Green]

(08-30-2019, 10:13 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: FDR was a scumbag, and also a candidate of the times.  Winning a crisis war washes away all sins.

Winning the war was the least of his virtues. His greatest virtue was to make the upper economic class of society to hate him, and to welcome that hatred.

[Eric the Green]

(08-30-2019, 08:07 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-29-2019, 02:37 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-27-2019, 10:12 AM)David Horn Wrote: I think we an discount both Biden and Bernie, so the next leg of the journey will be lead by a Boomer or an Xer.  Which will determine the tenor of the next few years, but it won't be path back to what was no matter who wins.  The American Century is done.

If we discount Bernie or Biden, then Trump very likely wins. That does not mean we are starting a new authoritarian country, but it will mean that the USA has little time left to turn back, and it will have to be through congress. The Senate may go democratic in 2020 even if Trump wins, and certainly will by 2022 if Trump wins. The House, even though still gerrymandered in many states, is unlikely to go back into Tea Party/Trumpist hands. The demographics and partial removal of gerrymandering probably has made that less likely, and statehouses are unlikely to go Republican in the 2020 general election like they did in the 2010 midterm, which was the election that put the House in Republican hands for 8 years. 

There is a sea change in the works.  Neither of these war horses will be able to lead in that changing environment -- not even Bernie, with his army of Millennials.  So, in a tug-of-war between either Biden or Bernie and Trump, Trump might win by default … or the winning Dem will be emasculated by party infighting and GOP opposition.

Eric the Green Wrote:If Trump wins in 2020, then the 2022 midterm will be a tsunami of Democratic votes, and he could be reduced to a figurehead. Congress will then make policy in 2023, and the president (maybe Pence by then) won't be able to block it, though his Courts might still be able to, to some extent (depending on how Democratic, and how effectively so, the Senate is in 2021-22). From there, a 2024 Democratic White House would be assured for the next 8 years. 

… except that, by then, the census and the gerrymandering of the nation will have been completed.  Waiting for 2030 is not an option.

Eric the Green Wrote:It might even be better politically for the Democrats if Trump wins in 2020, but of course these days, any Republican victory anywhere is a disaster for the country, so it would be better overall if Sanders or Biden wins in 2020. And if either of them do, they will probably have to be succeeded by McAuliffe or Landrieu in 2024 to keep the White House in the hands of the better party. Or there may be a powerful third party by then. We can't tell for sure how far change can go in a 4T.

We're fossils, and so are your candidate choices.  We need to hand-off to younger people, because the future is theirs, not ours.

It would be nice if we could hand over leadership to someone besides the geezers. I call them that rather than fossils; at least geezers are still alive. But that's the ONLY choice we have in this election. There just is no-one else to turn to now; period! That's the luck of the draw. Democrats are stuck with who steps up. To call Sanders or Biden "my choice" is not exactly correct. They are whom the Democrats among themselves have chosen to run.

There is indeed a sea change in the works, which I have predicted for the 2020s for something like 50 years now. That time is indeed almost upon us, as hard as it is to believe. Our current complacent ideas of what is normal may be totally upended within the next 5 or 10 years.

But saying that, is not to say that the particular candidates who have stepped up for the 2020 campaign are the ones who will lead us forward into the change through the rest of the decade. The best candidates, according to my very reliable system, were Mitch Landrieu and Terry McAuliffe. 

As you say, McAuliffe is a salesman and not so much a visionary, but a salesman is exactly what we need. The ideas are already there, and have been for decades; we needed a candidate who was good at selling them. That's what wins elections. Warren I don't think is up to the task, and the others are not even in Trump's or even in Warren's league. I'm afraid we are stuck with Biden or Sanders as the only ones with the talent to beat the Drump. Their age may not matter at all; only the inherent talent of the candidate, as indicated by their horoscopes! 

And they may only serve for 4 years if they win, which will open the door to the best 2 candidates to step forward; otherwise we would have to wait until 2032. But I don't think that will happen, because as you said, the world can't wait for 12 more years of nothing.

So nowhere did I say we have to wait until 2030 for things to get going. One way or another they will get going after 2020. It just will probably happen with a geezer at the helm for the first few years. If it's Trump again, as it might very well be, then I am saying he will have a very rough time of it, and congress will take the lead, if not in 2021, then certainly after a 6th-year midterm.

If by some miracle Warren wins, then I will have to eat my words about her. So be it. But she is my age and probably just another "fossil" too. Anyone who thinks Pete can win and lead the country is out of his or her mind. Younger candidates who can win may very well appear through the 2020s, but they did not line up at the starting gate in 2020. And thank goodness they are starting to pull out now.

[pbrower2a]

(08-30-2019, 10:13 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: FDR was a scumbag, and also a candidate of the times.  Winning a crisis war washes away all sins.

I saw a rating of the Presidents, and FDR was high on most measures, but only 15th in personal morality. Of course almost all Presidents except Harding and Trump are above the national personal average i moral values. Even Nixon simply handled power badly, and it is hard looking at him and seeing that most people would not have made much the same mistakes if they had a little Dark Side in their character. (Nixon did not get corrupt fain from his activities at any time in his life and did not accumulate grifters around him. 

FDR gets knocked down largely for the incarceration of Japanese-Americans on the West Coast and for not  facilitating the escape of Jews from Hitler's clutches. But he is not the first President to support a great constriction of immigration. 

This said, I see Trump as the worst President that we have ever had for winning a Crisis War. He is in no way a moral leader. He has a stormy relationship with the intelligence services and with the Armed Services. His foreign policy is battier than Dracula's laid. He cannot appeal to traditions that could be relevant to a Crisis War. He puts his self-esteem above the public welfare. 

One need not be a chest-pounding nationalist to be a good top leader. Seeking peace but getting war anyway does not mean that one has lost the war. Lincoln and FDR did not want war and got it anyway. Blunders happen, and both great Presidents demonstrated that war against the United States was a catastrophic error.  

For a precedent of the leader of a Great Power bungling a war badly, think of the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939-1940. Stalin had purged the Red Army of competent senior officers, and what was left bungled the war against a country under the leadership of a nearly-ideal Crisis Leader: Karl Mannerheim, a principled, visionary, astute leader capable of uniting a country once severely divided in its politics. Stalin expected a quick campaign that would result in establishing a "Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic" as a constituent republic of the USSR. The Finns were able to exploit a topography that shows that anyone can draw arrows on a map showing a projected advance of one's troops, but that pinch points can make such arrows sheer fantasy. 

Then there is Vietnam  for the USA -- and Afghanistan as a tomb of imperial designs of Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States. Figure that President Trump is the sort who puts personal loyalty and ideological agreement over competence and how that limits the quality of senior leadership in a major war. American failures in Vietnam and Afghanistan have plenty of blame to pass around, but with Trump as President during some war for his glory and the profit of war contractors, I can see a similar disaster to the first Soviet-Finnish War looming.

[David Horn]

(08-30-2019, 03:40 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: It would be nice if we could hand over leadership to someone besides the geezers. I call them that rather than fossils; at least geezers are still alive. But that's the ONLY choice we have in this election. There just is no-one else to turn to now; period! That's the luck of the draw. Democrats are stuck with who steps up. To call Sanders or Biden "my choice" is not exactly correct. They are whom the Democrats among themselves have chosen to run.

There is indeed a sea change in the works, which I have predicted for the 2020s for something like 50 years now. That time is indeed almost upon us, as hard as it is to believe. Our current complacent ideas of what is normal may be totally upended within the next 5 or 10 years.

But saying that, is not to say that the particular candidates who have stepped up for the 2020 campaign are the ones who will lead us forward into the change through the rest of the decade. The best candidates, according to my very reliable system, were Mitch Landrieu and Terry McAuliffe. 

As you say, McAuliffe is a salesman and not so much a visionary, but a salesman is exactly what we need. The ideas are already there, and have been for decades; we needed a candidate who was good at selling them. That's what wins elections. Warren I don't think is up to the task, and the others are not even in Trump's or even in Warren's league. I'm afraid we are stuck with Biden or Sanders as the only ones with the talent to beat the Drump. Their age may not matter at all; only the inherent talent of the candidate, as indicated by their horoscopes! 

And they may only serve for 4 years if they win, which will open the door to the best 2 candidates to step forward; otherwise we would have to wait until 2032. But I don't think that will happen, because as you said, the world can't wait for 12 more years of nothing.

So nowhere did I say we have to wait until 2030 for things to get going. One way or another they will get going after 2020. It just will probably happen with a geezer at the helm for the first few years. If it's Trump again, as it might very well be, then I am saying he will have a very rough time of it, and congress will take the lead, if not in 2021, then certainly after a 6th-year midterm.

If by some miracle Warren wins, then I will have to eat my words about her. So be it. But she is my age and probably just another "fossil" too. Anyone who thinks Pete can win and lead the country is out of his or her mind. Younger candidates who can win may very well appear through the 2020s, but they did not line up at the starting gate in 2020. And thank goodness they are starting to pull out now.

This is the election where the Millennials either show up or they don't. If the latter, then we get four more years of Mafia Don, and nothing you, I or anyone with our philosophical bent will be able to change that. The hate is too great. Only the young have avoided the hate (mostly, though there are pockets in that demographic too). The GOP is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Trump Inc, and they'll go to the mat rather than admit error. The Dems are their typical selves: more cats than dogs, which is the reason for the huge number of candidates with 0% chance of actually winning at the POTUS level.

Even more important than the top job, how does the power get ripped from Mitch McConnell's hand? Trump has already "appointed" far too many judges and might be able to tilt the SCOTUS to the far right for decades, yet extremely strong candidates from hard-to-win states stay in the POTUS race. It's disgraceful.

The one bright light: serious and strong candidates of the future, like Pete Buttigieg and AOC, are already out there, preparing for the mess they will be handed. Shame on us for making that necessary.