If The Russians Engineered a Trump Victory

[Bob Butler 54]

(11-15-2016, 05:16 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Remember, folks -- this is a Crisis Era, and so far we have had it relatively tame. The Tea Parties and Black Lives  matter are tame in contrast to what private, politicized militias or some new secret police can do on behalf of an unpopular government. President trump will be very unpopular very fast as he decides which promises to break first. He will hurt the working class first because it has no organization in politics...  (Snip)

We are in a Crisis Era, and we have had it very soft for now. The $#!+ has just started hitting the fan. But that $#!+ is infected with the political equivalent of HIV.

By the calendar, assuming S&H's theory works in a mechanistic clockwork way, we ought to be in a crisis era.  Yet, I don't think we have had a regeneracy.  A successful regeneracy that leads to a successful crisis would require an idealist president with a vision of change that will solve the primary problems the culture is facing.  Said president would have to have the people skills to build a coalition, to keep enough people aboard that his changes are given a chance to stick.  He must also have a united Congress that is willing to accept the transformation.

To get these things there must be a traumatic failure of the old values.  A 'relatively tame' failure will not cut it.  The  anemic economy created by borrow and spend trickle down is not the collapsed economy of FDR's time.  The modern culture wars issues are significant and divisive, but not on the scale of slavery.  There is no existential external threat to the nation comparable to Hitler and the fascists.

We have had some almost regeneracies.  September 11th had us invading the Middle East.  Bush 43 laid out a path where after we stabilized Iraq we could use our newly built massive bases to invade the next country on our list.  Proxy insurgent warfare made this major shift obviously implausible.  I label this a false regeneracy.  We had a near economic collapse at the end of Bush 43's time.  This was a near collapse, not a collapse.  With a full collapse we would have needed to do some grand transformations, we might have gotten a true regeneracy.  However, eight years later the Republicans are back in power and are promising more borrow and spend trickle down.  I'm not even sure the Great Recession counts as a false regeneracy.  There was nothing really transforming proposed or executed.

I'm trying not to pre judge Trump too much.  His election is an indication that a lot of people are very disappointed in the status quo.  This is a sign that perhaps a regeneracy isn't impossible in the near future.  However, Trump is promising more borrow and spend trickle down.  All of that anger directed at the establishment does absolutely no good if the transforming vision of the future doesn't solve the problems confronting us.

I don't know that the unraveling / crisis cusp has been sufficiently defined.  S&H's examples of such borders give conflicting styles of events.  Do you place the border at a military event like Fort Sumter, Pearl Harbor or September 11th?  Is it the election of a president with the right ideals to solve the problem plus coalition building skills?  Do document proclaiming the new values count, such as the Declaration of Independence?  Does a major economic collapse count?  Do you have to wait until well after the crisis is over to decide which catalyst should be considered the trigger?

This has been unsettled for decades and I doubt we'll resolve it now.

So I'd say we have seen a lot of catalyst events in the last decade plus, but no clear trigger event.  We've seen major policy changes, but none of them have really stuck or are major enough to say the culture has changed.  We still have the stagnant divided nation that says 'unraveling' clearly and without doubt.  We are still stuck in that awful no man's land between a clear need to change and a firm decision on how to change.

I still haven't got a firm notion on what Trump is going to do.  I have a feeling that Trump still hasn't got a firm notion on what Trump is going to do.  He's saying a few things that make me almost hope, then follows it with stuff that makes me cringe.  I'm not inclined to propose that his election was the trigger event.  Way too soon to make that call.

But I'm not going to jump on the anti-Trump bandwagon yet either.  Lots of other folks are working that.  I don't see that another voice is needed.