Presidential election, 2016

[David Horn]

(11-27-2016, 07:15 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I just don't believe enough in The Theory to assume a successful likely progressive crisis transformation is inevitable.  Yes, in the United States we saw three of them appear at regular intervals, and you can trace that further back on the other side of the pond.  However, while this pattern works well enough for the Industrial Age and Anglo-American civilization, you have to squint and go cockeyed to apply it elsewhere.  With the Agricultural Age elites and patterns that drove most of the early crises long gone, have we any reason to be dead set sure another crisis transformation is inevitable?

I would like to see a political party trying to make the whole country happy, striving keep the bulk of their current base happy without going out of the way to tick off the other half.  I don't see the Republicans abandoning borrow and spend trickle down or climate science denial.  One might hope, but one certainly should not hold one's breath.  Thus, this hypothetical party for all of the United States seems more likely to grow out of the Democrats.

But whichever side abandons a crisis transformation that bashes the other half of the country into submission would have to stop demonizing the other half of the country and attempting to beat them into submission.  The problem might be less about economics, climate, guns or cultural arm twisting, more about a country paralyzed by extreme partisanship.

Good thoughts, but missing one point, I think.  Crises are, by definition, critical.  We simply lack a critical challenge today.  Climate change will go critical in a few decades (perhaps too late to avoid catastrophe), but that's then and not now.  The economy is poor, but not devastating, so that won't do.  All the social issues combined are a big hohum in crisisworld.

I disagree that a kumbaya moment has to be achieved, since it never has in the past.  What's needed is the victory of one idea or vision over another, where the advocates of the alternate idea see theirs go down in flames.  That isn't happening right now.  Perhaps, Trump will show \us the way ... or not.  If not, then the climate will ring all our chimes if an economic collapse doesn't intervene first.  Neither is likely in the near term, so this may be a bland crisis -- and unraveling crisis, if that theory holds.