Is The Current American Border Dispute A Catalyst Event?

[pbrower2a]

(06-22-2018, 01:45 PM)TheNomad Wrote:

(06-22-2018, 09:04 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(06-21-2018, 12:09 PM)TheNomad Wrote:

(06-21-2018, 11:52 AM)tg63 Wrote: I'm skeptical of it being a catalyst. To this point it has triggered widespread condemnation, but I don't see signs of it spiraling into something bigger. Of course that could change ... it certainly warrants monitoring (aside from the obvious reasons that it bears monitoring).

My post was based on the idea I get the feeling this issue is being bloated to the point of it no longer being about the actual subject matter but a belated explosion toward a regime and ALL its stances - that have been an accursed thing since the last election by many.  If I am correct, things similar to that happened to/around Lincoln and also FDR.  Both caused high fear and anxiety by a large portion of the populace until things came to a head soon after.  And, as you probably know, both of those presidents presided over the last 2 Crisis events in prior saeculums.

We may only know in hindsight, I am simply monitoring the situation... the "spark" is rarely the fire itself.  But let's keep an eye on this one .  And of course, it is never so clean cut.  The "catalyst" events are rarely themselves the thing of sea change but ramp up to it.  Thus, general mood shifts and movement within the Turning itself.  That's how we can gauge the "clock" so-to-speak.

Let's say you are right, and this is a response to Trumpism in general. So what?  Perhaps you are trying to define a symptom as the problem, and are making the opposite mistake yourself?  From my POV, that's exactly the case.  

Maybe I did not communicate properly?  What you say above about "symptom as problem".  I never meant to say the OP issue is - itself - the very thing exactly that is changing national mood.  Actually I did say just exactly the opposite I think.

I said flare events like this can be the little ice cube at the top of the water and then the big iceberg starts to emerge.  It may have nothing to do with this current event.  The events of catalyst simply occur and becomes a springboard for some of explosion or implosion with greater implications.

Unless the ice cube is an outlier of the much larger iceberg -- icebergs do not grow from ice cubes. Icebergs head toward the equator and slowly shrink as they enter increasingly-warm waters at lower latitudes. The iceberg that sank the Titanic was already shrinking rapidly as the Titanic was making its catastrophic approach. Icebergs typically calve off ice-sheets; they were originally snow or other frozen precipitation such as sleet, freezing rain, or (much less likely) hail.  

Quote:In this thread, I was asking others to predict or foresee what could come from this or after this (because of this or not) but it being just a symptom when the larger "fever" emerges afterward.

It's not until the Crisis approaches its end that we perceive some sort of inevitability that somehow escaped us for so long. I can see many possible results from a Trump Presidency, and they range from nuclear war to a mass rejection by Americans of a President that the come to dislike in a free election or two. I can also imagine Donald Trump having a role like Lenin in the founding of a "Union of Christian and Corporate States", with even nastier people as successors. I can even imagine something that has never happened in American history but has happened in many countries in which democratic processes are severely compromised: a military coup.

Americans might end up repudiating Donald Trump for his despotic and dictatorial tendencies, his cruelty, and his corruption. Americans might also be obliged to accept these as the only possible ways of maintaining life, property, and the sort of freedom that simply means avoiding imprisonment or execution.

I do not see Donald Trump changing his ways unless he is put under some sort of force that renders him  helpless while in nominal control of the Presidency. That would suggest a military coup in which generals or admirals tell him what he will do as President so that he can avoid being killed or forced to resign. He is too old to make major changes in his personality by choice -- and of course this does not rule out senile dementia.

Quote:I think this could be something.  I can see this becoming a mega issue later on and being heaped in front of the door of anyone that supported it, was involved with the implementation, did not stand against it, etc.  It could be a "enough is enough" moment that devolves into frustration toward Federalism in general. 

...or one that forces us to redefine federalism. A Crisis could result in a peaceful change of the American political system into a parliamentary system as Canada has (Canada became independent of the UK after the British parliament had become a democratic institution, and had no problems with a Westminster-style parliament as our Founding Fathers had with a Parliament replete with puppets of the hated King George III) or a semi-parliamentary system. Perhaps after losing our complacency about the seams in our system, we will sew those tightly shut with Constitutional restraints upon those political actors as invariably appear. This said, government by lobbyist absolutely must go if we are to have a democracy. Transparency, or the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) principle is essential to a working democracy.

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Quote: I am trying my absolute best in this forum to stay away from any political sides or citing color issues or aisle sides.  It is difficult but I believe is not impossible.

At this point I would accept a conservative President who operates with the integrity, decency, erudition, respect for legal and diplomatic tradition, and freedom from demagoguery of Barack Obama even if that means the elimination of the welfare state, the privatization of the public sector (to the highest bidder) simply to pay off the public debt, the subordination of workers to owners and managers -- basically a society in which the highest purpose of anyone is to create wealth for the enrichment and pampering of the economic elites of ownership and management. If such is what it takes to stop catastrophic wars, to prevent the appearance of torture chambers and brutalization camps, a legal and penal system that enforces mass suffering in the name of the leader, and create economic progress, then so be it. Democracy does not mean that one gets one's way. Elections have consequences. If Americans want to believe that they are Christians even if the Gospel that they believe was really written by Ayn Rand, then so be it. 

Democracy is no guarantee of the wisdom of the masses.