Has the regeneracy arrived?

[TeacherinExile]

(01-07-2017, 11:32 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-06-2017, 04:25 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Again, reread the book!  A regeneracy does not imply that all problems are solved, only that a consensus has been reached about how society is going to try to solve them, and that the populace is willing to allow them to play it out for the remainder of the 4T.

Considering the intense anger on the Left, and the total determination to slash-and-burn on the Right, when and how do you see us arriving at a consensus?  If you are assuming the force of external events, what are they?  Because, frankly, the political standoff between urban and rural, religious and secular, open and closed is getting more intense every day.  These differences involve world views that are deep and baked in.  They don't just change on a whim.
The rule for changing entrenched beliefs is life-changing trauma.  Is that your assumption?   Geography and demographics make a parting of the ways out of the question, That doesn't leave many options.

You are both right, each in your own way.  Some problems are held over for later resolution, often in a subsequent administration, and not necessarily by the same political party even.  FDR's New Deal was not enacted in its entirety in his "first 100 days."  Much of it was passed in his second term.

My only quibble with SomeGuy is the word "consensus."  No American president has ever garnered much more than 60% of the vote, even in landslides.  That means, of course, that a significant minority of voters opposed the winner.  I would call 60% a "critical mass" sufficient for an incoming president to implement new policy, especially if backed by a Congressional super-majority--and a compliant Supreme Court, which even FDR attempted to stack when the highest court overturned some of his key legislation.  When I hear the word "consensus," I think of the 90+ percent of climate scientists who conclude that global warming is real and man-made.  Again, a niggling objection to certain nomenclature...  

I tend to agree with you too, David, your contention that the body politic has reached such an impasse in America, that I am hard pressed to see anything on the horizon that remedies the polarization especially.  As a nation, we are split right down the middle in so many ways, as you mention.  Trump may succeed in the short run in "ramming down our throats," as Obama's strident critics accused him of doing with Obamacare and a host of executive orders.  But if that further inflames the passions of the Left, and generates a backlash in turn, how does that really change the status quo?  If the Crash of 2008 didn't do the trick, what will it take exactly?  (I have my own oft-repeated prediction.)

That's a fair question for you, SomeGuy.  What national trauma do we have to suffer, one that lays the country so low that a president is granted permission--if only grudgingly so even by the opposition--to lead the country in a whole new direction.  Or maybe you think we're already there...with Trump.