12-17-2016, 11:55 AM
(12-17-2016, 07:45 AM)David Horn Wrote:(12-16-2016, 06:53 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(12-15-2016, 05:59 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: We've evolved beyond things from the last Millennium like Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, Fascism, etc. However, neither our institutions nor the societal hive mind are facing this reality. It will probably take a near-death experience of humanity to make people hit rock bottom and accept this reality. Only then is it likely that the lizard brain remnant that hamstrings the masses will allow the hive mind to accept a more evolved format.
We have indeed evolved. A century plus back, after the lynching, entire towns would line up to have group photos taken centered around the still dangling corpse. Today, the murderers for the most part act alone, get captured, tried and convicted. As I understand it, 'To Kill a Mockingbird' reflected accurately how biased things used to be.
Today, Capitalism and Fascism are very rare in their full fledge forms, and a good number of European nations are quite content with socialist governments using tax money to enhance their people's life styles. The United States public doesn't seem ready for that.
And I don't think I'm outlandish or radical when I suggest that capitalist elites are wielding too much influence for the country's good. The Blue and Red bases are both upset at the establishment. It's just that the electoral process isn't generating good alternatives.
And, yes, it takes a rock bottom experience to make people change their values in mass, for an entire culture to transform. How large a bottom is bottom? I generally use Atlanta 1864 and Berlin 1945 as good illustrations. People are stubborn in clinging to values. Their old values have to fail big time.
I'm would not be surprised by a Trump disaster, but I'm not sure he will get us to rock bottom with a great enough impact velocity.
Trump isn't planning on victory; he gains more from low level chaos. Does anyone honestly believe he's in this for any other reason than personal aggrandizement? His model is Putin, and Putin is likely the wealthiest man on earth. Trump is impressed.
He's a kleptocrat at heart -- if you want to call it a heart. He wants what goes with kleptocracy -- seeing his name everywhere, like the "Trump Turnpike System" which used to be freeways but from which he gets a cut of the tolls as a benefit from owning the naming right.
I remember seeing a description of Benito Mussolini as a pure expression of selfishness with delusions of grandeur... does this sound familiar? Anyone who gets in his way can expect to pay a price.
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.