08-16-2017, 05:16 PM
(08-14-2017, 02:22 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(08-14-2017, 01:33 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:(08-13-2017, 05:51 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: As to PBR's cringe worthy propaganda--I expect that from the likes of him.
Like most conservatives I well know how scummy human behavior can be. I know how liars can use words -- even, as the unseen villains in 1984 do, turning words into lies. "Final solution of the Jewish Question"... "Ten years imprisonment without the right of correspondence"?
With Trump as president, Orwell and Solzhenitsyn become much more relevant.
Quote:Perhaps Boomers are in an industrial age time warp. The left-right axis dominated the industrial age.
As a Boomer I can attest to our own worst tendencies: we want the best of both worlds and end up giving the world the worst of both -- if we are the ones who get the best of both worlds for ourselves alone. I have a conscience, which may have kept me from joining the elite party of unconstrained indulgence.
The left-right axis is alive and well, and stronger than ever, and although Millennials and Xers may complain about it, I don't see them offering any viable alternatives. As long as powerful, wealthy people hog all the benefits of automation and globalization, to the detriment of the people and their environment, the left-right axis continues beyond the industrial age. As long as they are able to rig the political system, and arouse the prejudices of their non-wealthy but regressive followers to their favor, then those who oppose them and stand for greater equality and ecology are "the left" and must be supported. That's what's happening, and those who don't see it are truly blind.
...and the Left-Right divide is so severe that people on the Left and the Right have nothing in common.
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.