06-26-2018, 07:33 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-26-2018, 07:34 PM by Eric the Green.)
(06-26-2018, 01:43 PM)beechnut79 Wrote:(06-26-2018, 01:05 PM)David Horn Wrote:(06-26-2018, 11:49 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: But the Watergate offenses happened more than 45 years ago, and one has to be at least 50 years old for them to have affected one;s political values. Donald Trump is doing far worse than Nixon ever did, which may be the difference between an Awakening Era (when rewards and harm are both slighter) and a Crisis, when rewards and harm are more severe). The next eighty months might be at stake in an Awakening, but the next eighty years might be at stake in a Crisis.
It's freedom or fascism today. I can easily imagine America as aright-wing mirror-image of the Soviet Union, with Ayn Rand as the prophet instead of Karl Marx, with all people responsible to some Master Class enriching itself as its alleged right, with a similar absence of a Welfare State, and similar repression, brutality, and militarism. Is that enticing? Step right up for your MAGA hat!
Yes, Watergate and the Pentagon Papers are only directly relevant to an ever decreasing percentage of the population, but when you lower the bar, it tends to stay down barring a major effort to raise it back to its former place. We've had two generations raised entirely in the wake of those events, with nothing having been done to offset the negative effects. Cynicism should be expected, don't you think? Worse, most of the more powerful events that have occurred since then have only reinforced the negativity. Stagflation, the Iran Crisis, Reagan declaring the government as the problem, recessions, wars … the list is endless, and none of the entries is fully positive.
This is the reason I believe the 4T will fail to resolve anything -- even with the worst possible example of mediocrity sitting in the Oval Office. Its just what we expect, so no big deal. Sad.
Unless he commits some crime much, much worse than Watergate, Trump will not be impeached. Too many are afraid that a Pence presidency might be even worse.
It is far more likely that impeachment (and don't forget conviction in the Senate must happen before a president is removed from office) will be stopped by Trump-loyal Republicans than by any Democrats afraid of Pence. Trump has already demonstrated he is the worst, and Pence will seem stable and rational by comparison.
I wonder if the cynicism leading up to today is worse than the attitudes leading up to the civil war, which is the nearest example of a 4T to today's.
The idea that the US-Vietnam War, the Pentagon Papers about it, or Watergate as its domestic reflection, have left no impact on younger people, is saying that younger people do not know any history today. That's possible, but it's also true that "when you lower the bar, it tends to stay down barring a major effort to raise it back to its former place" "with nothing having been done to offset the negative effects". Many young people also have parents were were involved or injured by the war in some way or involved in the protests against it, so this is one reason it may still be an influential source of today's attitudes.
The best logical conclusion of such a level of distrust in the government, is that the government is substantially changed or overthrown. That is what the sixties radicals proposed all along. The younger generations will now be the power behind this possible logical outcome. This 4T, to be fulfilled, must be a revolution.
Symbolically, this is echoed in the cycles of our planets in 2022 by the first-ever Pluto Return to its place in 1776 since King George was taken down as ruler of America.
But a violent revolution by the left against the state is a likely fail. A movement that results in dynamic and substantial change through revitalized elections is more likely, and demographic shifts seem to support it despite the efforts of the current so-called president and the Supreme Court to stem the tide. The violence then would come from the right, as it did in the civil war. And it should be more-easily suppressed this time.
The cyclic symbol of this recurrence is Neptune's Return in 2025-Jan.2026 to its place in 1861 when the civil war broke out.