09-09-2018, 09:42 PM
(09-09-2018, 05:50 PM)David Horn Wrote:(09-09-2018, 04:17 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: The Millennial Generation is far from significant leadership in American politics. Of course I expect a large influx of elected public officials from the Millennial Generation, as the oldest are now in their mid-thirties just in time for one of the tweo main parties to takes some huge losses in Congress and state legislatures.
Millennial adults will not set the Boom agenda that prevails at the end of the Crisis Era, but they certainly will be in a position to decide which Bo0omer agenda prevails. I doubt that it will be the Boomers who believe that the only purpose of the common man is to suffer for the rich and powerful who ravage everything for their gain and indulgence.
We can only hope. Of course, the 4T has to conclude with a new paradigm, and that's still an open question.
Trump offered us a new paradigm, one in which we get 'greatness' in return for debased lives. That is little more than what the Right offered us throughout the 3T.
One thing that I have noticed is that the 1T is nearly a complete repudiation of the preceding 3T. Even in mass culture -- I am well aware of nostalgia for the 1940s and even the 1930s... but not the 1930s or 1910's. Sirius satellite radio has channels '4' for Big band music (which does go back into the 1930s). '5' for the 1950s, '6' for the 1960s's -- but nothing for the '20s (unless you are looking for classical music).
The shopping-mall culture is practically dead. Reaganomics won't be revived. I doubt that there will be much 'retro' interest in pop culture of the 1980s and 1990s. Reaganomics will be shown for the sham that it is, and it won't be revived in any form until at least the 2060s.
We will use less energy, and most people will live in gigantic apartment complexes whose windows will be giant telescreens filling some concrete wall. People might spend their entire lives in such caverns from birth to the nursing home. That's how you get a view of Maui, Pebble Beach, Tahquamenon Falls (they really are better than Niagara!), the Matterhorn, a telescopic view of space,among others. Life will be heavily artificial... but who wants to endure the fire-and-ice climate of some place like Kansas City if that is all one can afford? (I don't know Kansas City that well -- maybe it is nicer than I suggest. But the climate is horrible -- infernal in the summer and frigid in the winter). You might always be inside unless in transit to see or do something in some other gigantic apartment complex, and the thermal range is more like that of San Diego than like... well, Kansas City. Much of life is either artifice or 'virtual'.
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.
