01-16-2017, 05:59 PM
Quote:* Pro-gun rights.
* Marijuana becomes legalized.
* Equal rights for gays, but not so much for the transgendered.
* Abortion remains legal, but heavily restricted.
* Gambling and pornography mainstreamed. And tattoos.
* Entertainment, in the form of music, TV and movies - gets darker for awhile as all those mid-life Xers brood.
* We remain essentially a multi-cultural society with religious freedom.
Am with ya there. I largely agree with those, and I don't feel especially outside the mainstream for doing so.
Quote: * Are we abandoning the old welfare nation-state model and settling on a corporatist oligarchy, with little to no protections for the lower economic classes - the 99 per cent left to fend for themselves?
* Are we willing to sacrifice the environment to keep the fossil-fuel industry strong, in the name of jobs for some of those 99 per cent?
* Will we reform our justice system, or continue to have a huge prison population and intractable tension between law enforcement and racial minorities?
Am not seeing environmental action this turning, though it will continue to be a greater and greater issue going forward. It is worthwhile to point out that if it doesn't happen this turning, it doesn't have to wait till the second. Most of Britain's modern social-insurance got rammed through under Attlee after the 4T was over.
The minorities/justice issue looks like it will come to some sort of head in the not-too-distant future. God knows how that pans out.
I think the whole corporatist oligarchy thing gets bandied about a little too freely by people left of center, but we'll see.
Quote:New Deal order - which has lately earned the derisive moniker of the 'Deep State'
?
That's not what that means. At least, I have never seen it used in that fashion before. Which amounts to the same thing.
"Deep State" is borrowed from the (past?) experiences of places like Turkey, where the security agencies retain(ed) power above and beyond that allotted to them formally, and/or reserved broad extra-judicial and extra-democratic powers for themselves in the constitutions they put forward. The American "Deep State" would be the national-security sector/military-industrial complex, not Social Security or Medicare.