06-20-2016, 09:29 AM
(06-19-2016, 02:42 AM)kclaytor Wrote: Every bit of analysis in this whole thread seems to be missing a big war or revolution. While it is maybe possible to transition without war, it is not likely when we look at how it happened in the past.
Who would have guessed that Trump would have gotten so much support from the Republicans? and Bernie would have come so far? It has been far more anti-establishment than anyone predicted. It is that anti-establishment sentiment that leads me to now think revolution is more likely than an external war. I have been a supporter of the Occupy Movement since before it's inception. Bernie is the Occupy candidate. But, he has pulled in many more devoted supporters now. Anyway, my connections with this have shown me a fuming that the election is being stolen by the DNC and Hillary, with 4 different graduate students around the world writing papers about how exit polls and election results deviated in statistically impossible ways in voting regions without paper trails. Also Trump and Hillary both have historically high unfavorability ratings so if either of them win, there will be many disgruntled people. The congress is also toying with the idea of drafting women now, right at a time that the young people are decidedly anti-war. I think things could fall apart in a big way within the next year or so.
These young people have been raised on fairness much more than we older people. They are going all in behind Bernie in their quest to make society more fair, and if they feel they are thwarted unfairly, I believe that could be the shot heard round the world.
To me the young people seem to have an unreasonable attitude, unwilling to compromise, and this is also how I have seen the people of Boston described before the revolution.
Anyway, it's just a prediction. I could be wrong. Last year I thought WW III more likely since the US is shrinking the army and growing the Navy. And because the press was demonizing Russia and Putin so much even before the Ukrainian mess.
Welcome to the Forum!
Can Crisis Eras go well? If they are solely changes of culture and some non-violent reforms, they yes. That is how the Great Depression would have turned out in America had it not been for the Second World War. But because America was on a collision course with Nazi Germany and Thug Japan just by staying put, a peaceful Crisis Era was impossible.
America is too obviously powerful to be a target for invasion as it seemed for some gangsters in Berlin and Tokyo in 1940. But we have plenty of rot, including some reactionary ideologues who believe that the definitive Good is that they get whatever they want -- basically, everything.
That "Establishment" Republicans did so badly in the Republican primaries for President suggests that the right-wing part of the Establishment has proved intellectually and morally bankrupt. Democrats must avoid their own complacency, for the Establishment on the Left itself has serious rifts.
We have been collecting oily rags, so to speak, on the assumption that those are precious. They already smolder.
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.