The New Crisis War Unfolding Now?

[David Horn]

(08-20-2018, 11:38 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-20-2018, 12:01 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-17-2018, 09:03 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: It could be comparatively mild because everyone is scared of nukes.

I think the primary reason this 4T is mild, at least on the surface, is due to a lack of coherent sides.  Dems are split into neo-liberals and emerging Social Democrats.  The GOP is 80+% Trump, with all the puzzlement inherent I that, and 20% old-school and vapid.  Add-in the mostly unaffiliated SJWs and the ever more libertarian business community, and the reason is pretty clear: too many teams and philosophies at play to make a true us-versus-them struggle.

All true, but for whatever reason, what results in political power is greater polarization than any time since the civil war, and the teams are clearly red vs. blue. And this is what is determining events. The splits within teams are not as great as they appear, compared to the split between teams. 

I agree that the Blue team has more in common internally than it ever will to the Red team, but it still has internal fractures that make it far less cohesive than a true revolutionary movement requires. The Red team is more coherent on the surface, but less so underneath, where Trumpists are often less Trumpist than their rhetoric implies.

Eric the Green Wrote:Libertarian economics is the main bone of contention, and the other bones fit neatly into it into two well-defined sides.

All that fits into the double rhythm which accents the domestic this time around, but foreign challenges remain as well. The world is more dangerous now than any time since the height of the Cold War.

Added clarification would make this clearer, if accepted. The term "neo-liberal" applies properly only to libertarian economics, and that is the Republican agenda. "Libertarian businessmen" of course are the leading exponents of this agenda. "neo-liberal" or former "New Democrats" or "establishment Democrats" today are not neo-liberals, because they believe in regulation and taxes and social programs, but they tend to be over awed by and bow down to the Republican neo-liberals at times, and are too connected to big business at times, so they are neo-liberal by comparison to "Social Democrats."

Here we disagree. The neo-liberal movement within the Democratic Party was 100% the doing of Bill Clinton, trying to be a less dogmatic conservative in a conservative era. It left us with the economy being supported as a pro-business ideology by both parties, with the cultural component the only piece in play. Don't forget: Bill killed Glass-Steagall and cued-up the disaster in the finance arena just a few years later.

Eric the Green Wrote:But they are definitely both on the blue team, along with the "SJWs," and the heat of the rhetoric doesn't change this. There is a mixture of ethnic identity politics and social democracy on the blue team, with no clear boundaries between those two factions. White identity politics is well served by libertarian economics too, even though there is not a complete overlap of opinion between these factions. But a conservative libertarian like Jeff Flake may speak out against Trumpism, and the debt it causes too, and yet he votes for all of Trump's pro-business schemes no matter how dangerous to the national debt they may be. The anti-welfare dog whistle provided by libertarian economics since Nixon and Reagan has increasingly become a TRUMPet call.

Sorry to disagree again, but this is an area where clarity of mission is essential. If the GOP remains pro-business and anti-diversity, they will have a relatively united faction to drive to the polls. If the Dems spend their energy fighting an infinite range of culture wars, they lose. Sorry, but Dems can't stand for every culture meme and deliver a message that transcends their base. That may work in 2018, where anger may be enough, but it will fail miserably in 2020 when losing will not be an option.