ACA Repeal/Replace: Progressives Face Moral Dilemma

[Bob Butler 54]

(03-18-2017, 02:02 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: So voting for the moat status quo/business as usual presidential candidate in the last 50 years is now "anti-authority".

The TDS is strong with Eric.  So strong I may need a booster shot.  But it does prove one thing conclusively, he has no idea who is and who is not the the Establishment. 

In the days and years following the September 11th attacks, conservatives on the old forum were pushing Bush 43 as the Grey Champion and suggesting that the regeneracy was well underway.  He was pushing different values and foreign policy...  Invading the Middle East was considered a good idea.  I called it preemptive, unilateral, serial nation building.  We built huge military and embassy complexes in our new puppet state of Iraq.  There was a question of whether Syria or Iran was our next target.  We used every boot on the ground we had, turning around National Guard forces as fast as we could refurbish and retrain.

I have called this a false regeneracy.  Since the Bush 43 era, we have come to see meddling in the Middle East as expensive and not constructive.  We had a Pearl Harbor sort of trigger event that put the country in a militant mood.  The government shifted policies to go with the shifted values.  What they tried didn't work.  We had for a time a united people willing to try new ideas, but the new ideas didn't work.  From my perspective, we had a sorta half hearted crisis period, but the new values and policies flopped.  We ended up stepping back into a 3T mood of stagnation and stalemate.

So.  Is Trump triggering a regeneracy?  Have we a united people trying out new values, ideas, concepts that will transform the country?

1. It is not clear he has united the country.  He has made a big splash for sure, but we seem to be as divided as ever.
   
2. The ideas are not new.  He is for the most part pushing the unravelling memes of cut taxes, cut services, and assume the government is the problem not the solution.  If 'establishment' means doing the same thing as has we have been all along, it is possible to say Trump is establishment.  (This isn't to say Hillary wasn't also establishment.  I don't think she would have made a Grey Campion pushing a strong values shifting regeneracy either.  Bernie, maybe.)
   
3. It's not clear that his 'new' values and ideas will work.  If borrow and spend trickle down does what it usually does, we will at best have another false regeneracy.  It's hard to transform the country when what you're trying to transform it into doesn't work.
   

It's still early days, but your father seems to be walking the country into a tangled mess.  There is no lack of energy.  Things are going to get shaken up.  I'm not expecting business as usual.  Still, he looks more to me like a Buchanan or Hoover than a Lincoln or FDR.  He seems more likely to prove that the unravelling values must go that set up a new transforming set of values.

A central abstract problem is that the unravelling values are unravelling values.  Come a crisis, one is supposed to solve the most drastic problems facing the country.  If one of the central memes of the unraveling values is that governments shouldn't solve problems, that one should cut taxes and cripple domestic problem solving efforts, you can't make the unraveling values stronger and end up with crisis values.  Trump is pushing hard, but in a direction that simply can't result in a successful crisis resolution.