March 15 will be an important day.

[Bob Butler 54]

(04-25-2017, 10:46 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(04-24-2017, 07:03 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: CNN is now talking of a stopgap bill that will give another few weeks to hammer out budget details.  They aren't pushing a panic button yet. They again report the notion that the Republican Establishment is working more with Democrats than the Tea Party.

CNN Wrote:Congressional Republicans recognize that conservatives are unlikely to back any measure so they are working across the aisle to get support on a bill that will pass with votes from both parties.

Still think it might be time to start thinking of things as three parties, with the two Establishment parties the most compatible.  As three parties tend to be unstable, to revert to two parities after a while, with the notion that the Tea Party extreme conservatives might be one of the two survivors, this shouldn't be a total shock.  Part of the country has been well and truly sold on the Reagan borrow and spend - trickle down - the government is the problem - build up the military memes.  These might not go away, but they are failing badly enough that a need for change is definitely there.

Not absolutely clear what has to come, but I'm not alone in thinking the Reagan unraveling values are what has to go.  It's looking more and more like the red protest vote to get rid of the status quo went after the wrong status quo.  It's the coming of the red unraveling values that pushed the country into an unraveling.

I know a lot of folk dislike the blue leaning main stream reporting.  What's being said about the potential shutdown out on the fringes?

I think you may be on the right track here, but that will not make for a successful 4T.  The libertarian memes are becoming less viable by the year, and the emerging labor-free economic model can only be held up as a harbinger of a beautiful future until it's obvious that it isn't.  I see that being a 2T issue, frankly.  There is too much vested intellectual spirit to push it aside any time soon.  Fortunately, the Millennials are seeing the failure for what it is, but they don't seem ready or willing to take it on as a cause, nor do they seem to have an alternative in mind.  To be honest, I don't see a good solution either, so who am I to talk?

I'm also thinking on a four party way of looking at things.  From left to right, the Warren - Sanders progressives, the Democratic establishment, the Republican establishment, and finally the Tea Party.  There are not a few who would have favored Sanders over Hillary, but otherwise the Warren - Sanders attitude hasn't near the weight yet to dominate.  The Unraveling memes (borrow and spend - trickle down - the government is the problem - spend more on the military) do have a lot of weight in parts of the country.  I've vague daydreams that the Warren - Sanders anti establishment faction and the Tea Party anti establishment faction could unite against the establishment, but the specifics of what is wrong with Washington are driving the two anti-establishment factions apart more than the agreement that Washington is well and truly messed up might pull them together.

I'm still thinking Trump hasn't got the people skills to form any sort of effective governing coalition.  He is trying to ride the Unraveling memes after their time with a dysfunctional bunch of inexperienced staffers.  This could discredit the Unraveling memes.  This could duplicate the Buchanan - Hoover situations, where attempts to extend old political patterns past their time discredited the old patterns.  That's as close as I can get to a path to a 4T mood.  I don't see where doubling down on the Unraveling memes will go anywhere but worse.

But it's not clear we're in an unrecoverable flat spin yet.  The Unraveling memes are still mighty in some parts of the country.