Looking at the generations from the Fourth Turning perspective

[David Horn]

(06-12-2018, 07:09 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: … Political leaders, not only Donald Trump, are rending our political institutions in ways inconceivable at any time since the Civil War. (American political life during the Second World War was quite placid by the standards of most times, as the focus of American life was on more pressing matters). The next few years will determine whether we have fascism or freedom. Remember: fascism and freedom are incompatible in ways in which certain forms of socialism (social democracy or a social-market society) endorse liberal democracy. Fascist politics is the denunciation of democracy; fascist economics implies a feudal organization with high technology (all the better for bamboozling the gullible masses, cowing the cowards, and eliminating dissidents).

The one thing that we Americans thought happens only to other countries -- a military coup -- seems far more possible now than at any time in American history. Our President better resembles either Benito Mussolini for arrogance or Juan Peron for demagoguery than any prior American President.

We will have either a New Birth of Freedom (Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address)  or an Orwellian nightmare.

I heard an interview with a long-serving Republican Congressman whose name escapes me.  He was being interviewed by his local media about the town hall meetings he was attending.   He made a chilling comment.  He was making roughly the same stump speech he's made for decades, which, until this year, had been well received by voters in his heavily GOP district.  This year, he got non-stop blowback.  What changed?  This year his traditional conservative positions (pro-NATO, trade and balanced budgets among others) were roundly criticized as "not adequately supportive of the President".  Needless to say, he has a primary challenger.  

If the Blue Wave election fails to emerge, start looking for the Brown Shirts.