08-22-2018, 04:15 PM
(08-22-2018, 08:22 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(08-22-2018, 07:32 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Life is more about survival, as this is a Crisis Era.
And yet, we have not yet seen a regeneracy. We have not seen one set of values take over and mow down everything in the path. We have not seen the trial and error of a crisis, we have only seen the trial and failure of a false regeneracy, ideas which just do not work so the movement fails. We do have two sets of values taking turns.
...and the Regeneracy could go either way. Remember: the current elite has the wealth and institutional power behind it, and people with wealth and institutional power almost never yield. History shows that they would rather do genocide than yield. That explains to no small extent Nazi Germany, which had its own sort of Regeneracy -- a Regeneracy that led to the most murderous war and the most reviled genocide in inhuman history. The Nazis certainly mowed down everything in their path... until the British kept them across the channel and the Soviet Union started winning the big battles.
American tyranny or despotism would never get that bad, but it would have more resources than the Devil's Reich, Thug Japan, and Fascist Italy combined.
Two sets of values taking turns? Little could be more unstable. That's how Spain was before its Civil War, with the Left and Right alternating power until Franco came up with an order with medieval ideology and modern technology -- all the better to squelch any dissidence foolish enough to remain in Spain.
Quote:We are due for a Crisis by the calendar. We would be crisis bound if the Industrial Age pattern were holding. I am dubious. Add 1964 as the height of the awakening to half of four score and seven and we are well overdue.
We are entering a post-industrial era, and our economic, political, and cultural leadership have no idea of how to deal with it. Some, like Trump, would return to the social norms of the early-industrial world even if the technologies to which American are addicted run counter to it.
Quote:We are seeing a faux rejection of the establishment by Trump. We have a movement to reject Washington DC which could have been a regeneracy if real, and some will say it is a regeneracy. I do not see it as sincere, as it incorporates The Swamp, so it is failing spectacularly as a false regeneracy. Bush 43's invasion of Iraq also failed. The Democrats similarly failed to capture enough ongoing votes to create anything like the New Deal.
Donald Trump is as Establishment as anyone can be. His fake populism is about as genuine as a cat promising to become a vegetarian. Donald Trump is corruption and cruelty in American life, and wherever one sees corruption and cruelty operating openly it has the support of those with economic and institutional power who profit from the corruption and cruelty. Remember: slavery existed as long as it did because it was profitable.
Quote:Maybe in the near future...
Maybe we solve the problem ourselves. Maybe we find things out the hard way. Just think of how hard it was for the Germans to find out the hard way -- their economy shattered and their buildings in rubble, people who once had automobiles then moving about with hand-drawn carts -- that they had the wrong Regeneracy in 1933, only twelve years too late.
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.