Thoughts On Where We Are, and Where We're Going

[Bob Butler 54]

(08-18-2018, 08:01 PM)justpassingthrough Wrote: I haven't thought about S&H much for a while, but had a few random thoughts after some time away from it. I've had doubts about various aspects of their theories, especially the more specific details, but I think the more you zoom out, the more credibility it has. It doesn't fit exactly under any category, so I chose General. With that in mind, this is how I see things right now:

1. The Boomer Left, which had been on a relentless 50 year march, reached its apotheosis from 2008-2016. It reached its phase of maximum influence, and maximum decadent excess. In 2016, the dam broke. The Left's shock and incredible hysteria at Trump becoming president was based on their cult-like dogma about the inevitability, and linear "progress", of their idiosyncratic obsessions. Their faith was shattered. Cyclical pendulums swung and smacked them for a loop like an anvil landing on Wile E. Coyote.

2. It's unclear exactly where we sit in the cycle, and there are echoes of many past cycles. There is division in the US like the Civil War, with the extremes embracing the discredited and cataclysmic ideologies of WWII. Totalitarianism is back in fashion, especially on the Far Left, which increasingly calls openly for socialism, and has taken up a cause of Nazi-like systematization of "identity" groups, and a Maoist Cultural Revolutionary determination to completely erase and remake society, culture and history by any means necessary. The fact that freedom of speech and other First Amendment protections are now openly opposed by the radical left, not merely a few cranks, but systematically in major institutions (academic, media, internet behemoths) is a relatively new feature of truly dangerous militant extremism. Orwell is rolling in his grave about the ideas increasingly dominating Silicon Valley, which makes them look like they're following 1984 as if it's a textbook..  (Snip)

This post has been much longer than expected - the ideas started flowing - so I'll stop it there. Helped me flesh out my own thoughts. I've convinced myself again that 9/11 was the Catalyst, and we are now approaching the 1T boundary, but probably not quite there yet. Trump/Pence looks like some analogy of Truman/Eisenhower.

I see the height of the left being from the New Deal through the Great Society.  As noted, that period ended probably some with the Southern Strategy, but definitely with Reagan's unraveling, taken to an extreme by Trump.  I see the extended unraveling, a alternation of power by the two parties, as the classic 3T compromise approach, but this time the people believe in a divided government while the parties are growing ever more extreme.  Neither set of values are acceptable to the country as a whole.  The best one can do is to flip the see saw regularly, to limit the amount of 'damage' that the extreme in power would cause.

I am starting to see the see saw as an extended unraveling, that the crisis is being blocked by the threat of nuclear weapons internationally and the promise of an inevitable change of power domestically.  The spiral of violence is very limited.  The see saw and the unravelling split in the country will continue until an awakening like movement shifts values to clear blue going on green.  This won't happen until the red see global warming hurting in their lifetimes, and it is not at that level yet.  Cultures are extremely stubborn.  Even then, it might be possible for the red to alter their stance on ecological issues, but drag their heels on economic issues.  A true awakening, with the emotion of the religious awakenings or the 1960s awakening, might be avoided.

But I doubt it.  The currently active generations have sold the planet.  I anticipate the immediate future generations are going to be very angry as the bill comes due.  It will be an angry time, unlike the love and rock n roll 1960s awakening of the blue boomers youth.  At least, I would be angry.  I am already angry.

Values?  Ideally they would be more ecological, less economic.  In the Industrial Age, much of the discussion was division of wealth.  Some people wanted to maximize competition, few if any rules, to maximize the division of wealth.  Others wanted heavier regulation, to cap the division.  Either way, the point of view was that God had given Man dominion of the Earth, that wealth came with exploiting resources, which man did fairly freely.

Ecological values would put the limited number of resources first.  There is only so much.  You only exploit them in a given way.  You worry about division of wealth after.  You look at things in a top down manner.

Marx and Malthus are currently unpopular.  Their worst case predictions never came true.  This is in part because their warnings were taken seriously enough by the elites that their predictions were never allowed to come true.  But, they have not gone away.  At bottom, give or take the Marxist habit of creating a new elite ruling class, Marx and Malthus got the basics right.  Resources will be limited, and the poor will create violence if the limited resources are not distributed reasonably.  You might wish it different, but at bottom the limits are there.  I see things made more clear at the next awakening.