11-07-2016, 02:29 PM
(11-06-2016, 10:46 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(11-06-2016, 08:52 PM)playwrite Wrote: But they are hurting others, 10s of millions of others, and they will continue to do so. The fact that the majority of them are also hurting themselves doesn't make it okay.
Anyone still wasting their time and energy trying to convince them or compromise with them is living in an alternative universe. They cannot be helped until they are completely and unequivocally defeated. It's no different than 1860.
By 1860, the country was pretty much on the path to all out Civil War. To me, it is not at all clear this is the case now.
There are disconnects of alternate realities. Abe Lincon said he did not want to see slavery expand would allow it to continue where it exists, but the southern politicians said he was out to destroy slavery. Hillary is saying she is in favor of closing gun show loopholes, but Trump says she is out to destroy the 2nd Amendment. These are just blatant examples of the common practice of totally distorting the other side's position and misleading one's base. As long as this continues, we're going to be divided and dysfunctional.
If Trump wins, trickle down borrow and spend is going to destroy the economy again, resulting in the Democrats taking over in 4 to 8 years to put the nation back on its feet again. Eventually, will the middle of the country figure it out?
If Hillary wins, I don't know what becomes of the Republicans. I can see Faux News and Trump TV selling different sets of excuses, playing the blame game to the hilt, and fighting a battle to establish what the primary conservative platform will be. Did they lose because of tepid backing of Trump by the Republican establishment, because the system is rigged, or because Trump is a flawed candidate? Other? All of the above? What is the vision going forward? Does the party need to move beyond trickle down borrow and spend? Should the southern strategy be played subtly, blatantly or abandoned?
Supposing Trump wins and is as bad at running the country as he is at running businesses, are there enough relatively sane Republicans in Congress to join the Democrats to institute a system of damage control? How many congressional Republicans will put the good of the country ahead of the success of a Trump presidency that will redefine the meaning of what it is to be conservative and Republican?
However the election turns out, at least one month following the election will involve radical transformation of one or both parties. I'm not at all sure how it will settle out.
As I said in another recent post, I don't see Trump as a transforming Grey Champion sort who will lead our culture into a new age. Trump is pushing trickle down borrow and spend plus the southern strategy. That won't transform anything. That's the unravelling continued.
Should Hillary get in, I don't know how far she can get if the Republicans have enough people in Congress to filibuster. I know she is persistent and able to propose solid policy, but she has been so poisoned by decades of vile propaganda that I anticipate as stubborn an obstruction of the first female president as we had with the first minority president. The deplorable aspect of the Republican base won't reelect anyone who doesn't go all out obstructionist, and the deplorable wing seems to control the primaries.
The cleanest path to a true transformation might be a damage control alliance of most congressional Democrats and any hypothetical Republicans that care more for their country than they care for Trump. Whomever makes that alliance work might write the transforming policies and be nominated for president and Grey Champion.
Or if there are not enough sane Republicans, the Democrats have been taught over the last eight years how to filibuster and frustrate a president. If the Republicans can filibuster and frustrate Hillary, could and would the Democrats filibuster and frustrate The Donald?
Or none of the above. I don't pretend to be dead sure of what comes next. I just don't see 1860 as the only possible template.
I thinking more that history rhythms rather than repeats.
The rhyming is the steadfastness of what you call the "values lock." Today's Trumpster, whether the money grubber elite or their Philistine xenophobic sheeple are no more likely to change their views than the plantation elites or their poor Southern Whites sheeple did in 1860, if ever.
Hopefully, outside of arresting a few outside of bird sanctuaries, I hope and expect that it will not turn to some mass violence (the vast majority of them are just blowhards). But their political defeat has to be as resounding as that of 1865. It is also my hope that it doesn't take 60-something years to provide them a new New Deal that will actually help the current Right wingnut sheeple.