07-01-2018, 10:57 PM
1. Acceptance of same-sex marriage. Obergfell v. Hedges establishes the practical equality of homosexuality and heterosexuality in marriage and effectively sexuality. LGBT rights have become mainstream, and with amazing speed -- and apparently finality.
2. The Tea Party movement. Like it or loathe it, it has been the spearhead of economic reaction that has culminated in the Trump ideology. It is possible to see this as the Wave of the Future, a Gilded ethos with teeth. We get feudal inequity with teeth -- plutocracy or death, basically.
3. Decline of a big chunk of traditional retailing, probably never to return or to be consigned to a fringe. Department stores once dominant in non-food retailing may be dying. Montgomery-Ward is no more. Sears is dying. JC Penney is on life support. The shopping mall, the expression of post-WWII consumerism based upon the tastes of the white suburban middle class, has failed to accommodate a changing America. High-cost, immobile, inflexible, and unimaginative, it has become an anachronism. What survives is Big Box retailing (as with groceries and hardware).
4. The decline of humanism and liberal education. Economic pressures have mandated that education become little more than training of people for fixed (but expendable) roles in a plutocratic society devoid of any humane virtue.
5. Internet retailing. Instead of bringing the merchandise to the shopper, the shopper brings his requests to a website such as Amazon.com, E-bay, Overstock, etc. There will be more. The idea of a giant retailer imposing its tasters upon customers (think of the now-defunct record club Columbia House) is no more.
6. the demise of regional banking. The bank tied to one metro area is no more. Although small-town banks seem to be holding on, banks tied to even small metro areas have been gobbled up by entities such as PNC, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Regions Bank, SunTrust, etc. This may mark a trend toward monopolization.
7. The public-private partnership, an arrangement in which the government (meaning taxpayers) assume the entrepreneurial risk and well-connected entities privatize a built-in profit.
8. Political polarization a level unknown in American public life since the time just before the American Civil War. I can easily imagine one side prevailing and dictating that the rest of America, and possibly the world, exists solely for the indulgence of that elite and is expendable if it fails to serve that elite with adequate competence and cheer. (That is a nightmare, and if it ever prevails in America, then the best thing that could happen to the world would be the defeat of an America that sold its soul for vague promises of prosperity, even if such forces Americans to start off with new political institutions and with a level of economic development characteristic of the mid-19th century. If Benjamin Franklin could say that people who would give up their basic freedom for a little temporary safety lose their freedom and get no safety, then people giving up their basic freedom for vague promises of prosperity will lose their freedom and get no safety. This polarization will either implode or lead to some political nightmare as vile as fascism, Bolshevism, Apartheid, or Ba'athism complete with torture chambers and killing centers.
2. The Tea Party movement. Like it or loathe it, it has been the spearhead of economic reaction that has culminated in the Trump ideology. It is possible to see this as the Wave of the Future, a Gilded ethos with teeth. We get feudal inequity with teeth -- plutocracy or death, basically.
3. Decline of a big chunk of traditional retailing, probably never to return or to be consigned to a fringe. Department stores once dominant in non-food retailing may be dying. Montgomery-Ward is no more. Sears is dying. JC Penney is on life support. The shopping mall, the expression of post-WWII consumerism based upon the tastes of the white suburban middle class, has failed to accommodate a changing America. High-cost, immobile, inflexible, and unimaginative, it has become an anachronism. What survives is Big Box retailing (as with groceries and hardware).
4. The decline of humanism and liberal education. Economic pressures have mandated that education become little more than training of people for fixed (but expendable) roles in a plutocratic society devoid of any humane virtue.
5. Internet retailing. Instead of bringing the merchandise to the shopper, the shopper brings his requests to a website such as Amazon.com, E-bay, Overstock, etc. There will be more. The idea of a giant retailer imposing its tasters upon customers (think of the now-defunct record club Columbia House) is no more.
6. the demise of regional banking. The bank tied to one metro area is no more. Although small-town banks seem to be holding on, banks tied to even small metro areas have been gobbled up by entities such as PNC, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Regions Bank, SunTrust, etc. This may mark a trend toward monopolization.
7. The public-private partnership, an arrangement in which the government (meaning taxpayers) assume the entrepreneurial risk and well-connected entities privatize a built-in profit.
8. Political polarization a level unknown in American public life since the time just before the American Civil War. I can easily imagine one side prevailing and dictating that the rest of America, and possibly the world, exists solely for the indulgence of that elite and is expendable if it fails to serve that elite with adequate competence and cheer. (That is a nightmare, and if it ever prevails in America, then the best thing that could happen to the world would be the defeat of an America that sold its soul for vague promises of prosperity, even if such forces Americans to start off with new political institutions and with a level of economic development characteristic of the mid-19th century. If Benjamin Franklin could say that people who would give up their basic freedom for a little temporary safety lose their freedom and get no safety, then people giving up their basic freedom for vague promises of prosperity will lose their freedom and get no safety. This polarization will either implode or lead to some political nightmare as vile as fascism, Bolshevism, Apartheid, or Ba'athism complete with torture chambers and killing centers.
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.