01-27-2017, 09:11 PM
Some not ours:
1. The French Revolution: a Civic generation pushes aside older generations in a display of exaggerated (but harshly amoral) rationality. The revolutionaries reject tradition as superstition, but the pure reason that the revolutionaries support proves inadequate.
2. Tai-ping Rebellion in China (1861, major civil war) in China.
3. Europe c. 1870. Italian and German unification, including the wars between Prussia and both Austria and France; Paris Commune. Connected -- Franco-Mexican war (Juarez vs. Maximilian). Related: Meiji Restoration in Japan
4. Russian Revolutions of 1917 followed by the horrible civil war between Reds and Whites. After a short respite, Stalin's collectivization of Soviet agriculture.
5. Spanish Civil War -- a nation that has alternated between Left and Right polarizes into modernist and traditionalist camps that decide that each other are demonically evil (does this sound familiar, America?), and the winners subject the losers to pariah roles should the losers be granted the privilege of survival. China has something similar, only with an international war to do great carnage and destruction of such little economic stability as there had been.
6. Evil (Fascist) Empire. The most ruthless, amoral figures take over, turn their countries to armed camps with military regimentation and brutality toward dissidents and pariahs, and then go on murderous campaigns of empire-building that go badly wrong. Obviously we Americans are too sophisticated and moral for such -- right? So thought the Germans in 1932 and 1933.
1. The French Revolution: a Civic generation pushes aside older generations in a display of exaggerated (but harshly amoral) rationality. The revolutionaries reject tradition as superstition, but the pure reason that the revolutionaries support proves inadequate.
2. Tai-ping Rebellion in China (1861, major civil war) in China.
3. Europe c. 1870. Italian and German unification, including the wars between Prussia and both Austria and France; Paris Commune. Connected -- Franco-Mexican war (Juarez vs. Maximilian). Related: Meiji Restoration in Japan
4. Russian Revolutions of 1917 followed by the horrible civil war between Reds and Whites. After a short respite, Stalin's collectivization of Soviet agriculture.
5. Spanish Civil War -- a nation that has alternated between Left and Right polarizes into modernist and traditionalist camps that decide that each other are demonically evil (does this sound familiar, America?), and the winners subject the losers to pariah roles should the losers be granted the privilege of survival. China has something similar, only with an international war to do great carnage and destruction of such little economic stability as there had been.
6. Evil (Fascist) Empire. The most ruthless, amoral figures take over, turn their countries to armed camps with military regimentation and brutality toward dissidents and pariahs, and then go on murderous campaigns of empire-building that go badly wrong. Obviously we Americans are too sophisticated and moral for such -- right? So thought the Germans in 1932 and 1933.
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.