06-22-2018, 05:09 PM
(06-22-2018, 03:13 PM)JDG 66 Wrote: FWIW, an unfavorable critique of 4TF theory, tied in to an attack on the Trump administration:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/...ory-215053
It's more critical of Steve Bannon and his interpretation of history through the Howe-and-Strauss lens than of the theory itself. The theory can be interpreted many different ways, often reflecting the biases of the 'user'. I read into it what I want to, of course -- and I know that.
History may be largely linear, especially with technological progress. Because my attempt to understand history requires a Hegelian dialectic to make sense (lest history be nothing more than a memorization of disconnected names, dates, and places), I force the Hegelian dialectic upon Howe and Strauss in my understanding. Yes, I recognize the faults of Toynbee, especially in his dismissal of all contributions of people of sub-Saharan African origin to cultural and political life -- only to ignore that black Ethiopia had an impressive civilization and that at his time, Americans of African origin were creating some remarkable culture in the Harlem Renaissance. But the Civilization as a unit of humanity makes some sense, and he saw patterns of birth, growth, high achievement, complacency, decadence, ruin, and death in them all. Western Christian Civilization, which encompasses the world from Finnmark to Tierra del Fuego and from about Sandomierz to San Francisco would have been in deep trouble (and decadence) had Inquisition-era Spain, Napoleonic France, Wilhelmine or Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union come to dominate things as the Universal State enforces rigid conformity and obedience and crushes creativity. Imagine America with Trump-like Presidents serving rapacious rentiers in America and dictating how people will be rewarded and starved based upon obedience or disobedience to the crony capitalists, and you will recognize that the Roman Empire was a rotten order from its inception.
Most of us want to make sense of history without having to remember the succession of British or Spanish monarchs. Howe and Strauss see mass culture perhaps not so much as causes as consequences of history, and because they offer their books to mass audiences, John Phillip Sousa matters more than does Clausewitz. But this said, the biological reality of few people being able to contribute much to society after about 80 also shapes history.
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.