ACA Repeal/Replace: Progressives Face Moral Dilemma

[Bob Butler 54]

(03-19-2017, 04:37 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(03-19-2017, 06:58 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(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.

And they were wrong because the 4T hadn't even started yet.  The living generations were not in their proper places for there to even be a 4T start let alone a regeneracy.

It was early.  That might have contributed to the failure.  However, invading the Middle East was apt to fail even if it had occurred a few years later.  The mood swing was that of a Pearl Harbor style trigger event, though.  Perhaps if Bush 43 had really mobilized into a true Crisis War style army, he could have won.  However, he was still doing the 'read my lips, no new taxes' thing.  He asked people to contribute to the war effort by going shopping to improve the economy.

I'm still thinking that president using those tactics and economics would have failed even with a good generation alignment. If one is going to transform a culture, you have to have a new culture worth transforming into. The public has to perceive the new culture as worth shifting to. I don't think he could have got there combining trickle down borrow and spend with serial preemptive unilateral nation building.

(03-19-2017, 04:37 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(03-19-2017, 06:58 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:  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.

The only thing new about that is the target.

For a long while our military values were dominated by the Domino Theory, by containment.  One couldn't let an autocratic militaristic power start expanding cause if it started it would continue.  Nip it in the bud early and it takes less effort.  That 'lesson' was from Hitler and was at the core of the Cold War.  Domino Theory was moderated by Vietnam.  Perhaps one shouldn't defend tyrants?  Perhaps one shouldn't get involved in a land war in Asia?  Later, the Powell Doctrine laid down a number of questions on when force should be used.

But the Domino Theory and containment were essentially defensive strategies.  Going on offense then building giant bases and embassies so one could launch the next offensive was a large large doctrine change.  I might be more into military history than most on this forum.  I see the shift from Domino Theory to preemptive unilateral serial nation building to be a really big deal.  I see the 'stay the course' against 'cut and run' debate that dominated the Bush 43 years as a crisis level values shift debate.  Very few others see it that way, apparently including yourself.

The question of when we fight wars is to me a values question.  When the possibility of a change in values is very real, we're apt to be in a crisis.  To me, the possibility of values change is a more important marker than generation alignment.  That might be just me, though.

Anyway, we spent a lot of gold, iron and blood learning that returning to a variation of colonial imperialism wasn't a good idea.  I'm hoping we don't forget that lesson, that we don't have to learn it again.

(03-19-2017, 04:37 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(03-19-2017, 06:58 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I have called this a false regeneracy.

Possible--but only if one can agree that 43's era was even 4T, an argument that can only be made of the last 2 years.  If you want a false regeneracy it was the hope and change of 09 under Obama.

Let me suggest that a true regeneracy is one where new values / doctrines / policies are seen to succeed, are accepted by the population as a whole, and become set in stone as the rigid status quo of the 1T.

I might propose that every time the White House has changed hands lately might be called a false regeneracy.  The new president tries to impose his values on the entire country, without understanding or perhaps caring how upset the other half of the country is going to get.  Four or eight years later, the other party gets the White House, the ideas that were tried are rejected, and the new president sets out to get the other half of the country angry.

Presidents might start their first term with control of Congress, but when they try to act like they have a mandate they become unpopular and often lose control of Congress two years after getting elected.  It's early days yet, but Trump might be setting himself up to continue the pattern.  If he wants to get reelected and have a well considered legacy, he's got to keep promises he made to his base.  If he follows those promises, he is going to make a lot of people mad.

It might make sense to say that every time the White House changes hands, we have been starting another false regeneracy.  This will continue happening until the new ideas start working, and that a clear majority of the people perceive them as working.

(03-19-2017, 04:37 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(03-19-2017, 06:58 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:  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.

I would argue that what we had was the micro-crisis of the late 3T.  Naturally the policies flopped they were based on the idea that we can make the population of a country love us by bombing the shit out of them.  Anyone with any sense already knew it was going to fail, as I said at the time to my own parents--this isn't going to work.  It didn't work in vietnam either.

I too thought it was going to fail.  We can quibble about whether to call it a micro crisis or a false regeneracy.  That's just word preference.  I think we see the reality in a similar way.

(03-19-2017, 04:37 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(03-19-2017, 06:58 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: So.  Is Trump triggering a regeneracy?  Have we a united people trying out new values, ideas, concepts that will transform the country?

I think the idea that a regeneracy is united is misplaced.  For that I blame S&H themselves on poor language choice.  If we go back and look at news accounts of the Depression people were clearly not united and during the Civil War we had a civil war going on....the most not united it is possible for a single people to be.

In the Civil War, both haves of the country were united and had governments each pursing their aims.  There was certainly differences in opinion and constant quibbling over strategy, but both factions knew where they wanted to get and strove earnestly to get there.  The 100 days at least had everybody united.  Later, FDR made some mistakes.  Things got harder for him.  Still, he kept getting re-elected by ever larger margins.

The Crisis is a time when the problem is clearly identified and lots of trial and error is going on to figure out how to best solve things.  The Unravelling is a time when the basic approach is still up in the air, and there is a struggle to do anything.  That's how I see it at least.  In recent decades, while a newly elected president might be able to push a few initiatives through, they have not been successful enough to become popular enough to build momentum and use it on other issues.  They'll spend their political capitol, feel a backlash, lose control of Congress, and we're back in a muddle of 3T going nowhere.

Too early to be sure Trump will go the same way, but he hasn't had clean sailing so far.  He hasn't got a lot done yet, but his popularity has gone wookie.  We'll have to see.

(03-19-2017, 04:37 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(03-19-2017, 06:58 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: 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.

I'm not discounting that possibility--it just seems to me that the time for that is past.  If the 4T began in 08 like Howe claims then we're already half way to a third done with the turning.  If it started in 06 like I say, we're already half way through.  If he proves to be a Buchanan figure or a Hoover figure I expect the left to be dancing in the street.  If instead he is FDR or Lincoln the right should be.

Over all though I think we've already had our Hoover in the person of Obama.

Or perhaps we've had multiple Hoovers, multiple presidents who were unable to lay down a solid enough legacy for a successor to continue the legacy.  We have two sets of values.  It seems like having a president advocate his values has recently resulted in the opposing values growing stronger.

(03-19-2017, 04:37 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(03-19-2017, 06:58 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: 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.

The problem you seem to be having here is that the previous 4T sets up the next 4T.  (I'll also throw in my Mega-Saeculum too.)  In the last 4T the problem was economic depression and foreign war.  The time before that was civil war.  Wars are almost always run by governments.

Now let us suppose we can have a 4T without a major war.  It is possible that if the solutions implemented during the last 4T would be reversed so a new 1T can start.  If those solutions are essentially free market then that means governmental intervention (see New Deal), but if those solutions are government regulation then the solution is free market.

As I see it, the Agricultural Age had lots of problems.  Early crises like the English Civil War, American Revolution and American Civil War attacked one set of problems...  the land owning and militaristic noble ruling class was too powerful.  Suppress that one, and you have a capitalist class that was (and still is) too powerful.  The old Agricultural Age military pattern was that whenever the economic cycles had the economy in decent shape, someone would start a war.  The world wars convinced a lot of people that this was no longer a good idea.  Problems with inequality by race, gender and culture were in their as well.  The environment is a problem that once wasn't considered important, but has been consider more problematic in time.

Yes, you can generally find the seeds of the next crisis in the prior crisis.  One can also generalize that crises solve various types of problems.  The dominant elite ruling class is always to powerful.  The dominant cultural class is always oppressing other cultures, races, genders, etc.  New technology is always shaking up the society.  Those profiting from the new technology firmly believe they need more political clout to see the technology used and integrated properly, while the establishment elites will cling to power.

Which gives a Whig like me an arrow of progress.  Push for equality.  Try to cut back on the power and wealth of the elite ruling class.  Try to oppose those attempting to maintaining the influence and privilege of a given race, gender, religion, or culture.  Human rights and democracy are useful tools, best aimed at elite ruling classes.