Bipartisan Senate group proposes ‘no fly, no buy’ gun measure

[Bob Butler 54]

(10-25-2018, 02:50 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I think in comparison to people in more-advanced countries, my views would be considered center-left. To have the views that I have, you need to be morally-concerned and informed. If that's extremism, so be it.

The people must rise up, as I said. A 4T means a conflict. So far, it has not been a violent conflict, and I hope it won't be. But if the right-wing extremists who now control our government continue to cut off all means of peaceful opposition, by appointing right-wing hacks like Kavanaugh and suppressing voters and fair elections, then there's no doubt people will feel their only way to oppose them is with violence, or civil disobedience.

I hope that won't be the way, because the left would probably lose any attempt of violent revolution in the USA. Pretty much that would also be true of the right. Only foreign intervention would make a revolution successful in the USA; that's just the nature of our "beast."

Your belief that today's crisis has to end by "the two sides listening to each other," however, is not only a forlorn hope, but historically has never happened. It is a matter of facts, not just extremism, in what I'm saying. Political contests or wars decide what happens, not attempts to compromise and find something tolerable by all. The defeated faction just has to accept the outcome. As MacArthur said, there's no substitute for victory, and Reagan echoed that in his 1976 convention speech. Americans respect politicians who take a stand, and they vote for them. It's not a matter of extremism and rejecting simple answers. It's just historical fact. You claim to be fact-based, but I don't see when any 4T or 2T has been resolved in the USA by two sides listening to each other.

What we can hope for, perhaps, is that enough younger and independent minds are persuaded to support the blue side in elections so that a blue victory is obtained. It's possible, but the blue side needs to vote and get active. The alternatives to a blue victory in elections are:

1) a red victory, in which case our country declines and becomes a banana republic tyranny like Honduras, or 
2) that the country goes into a violent (or non-violent) civil war and splits apart (and I think a split-up country is not as difficult as you say), or perhaps 
3) some combination of a blue victory after some futile red violent rebellions. If I have to predict, this being a 4T, I have always predicted the latter #3 scenario as the most likely. 

Again, there is no 4T yet in history from which we escaped without violence, and also none so far from which we emerged without a progressive victory. And also, this 4T cannot be understood without understanding that started in 2008 and will last until at least 2028, and that the previous internal-conflict centered 4T began in about 1850.

If you are saying that the cycle is over, or never happened, so that we are not in a typical 4T, then that is a challenge for you to argue and demonstrate.

A typical 4T in the Industrial Age had with it a glorification of violence and a conviction that violence was the correct or necessary action to resolve the 4T.  I view the Great Depression and the US government's belief in the domino theory, and the Civil Rights movement as solved by political protest and votes by congress rather than crisis level violence.  So, yes, I believe there have been crisis level incidents not resolved by all out wars, and that crisis level changes in values can occur during the new age outside of 4Ts, are just as likely or more likely to occur in a 2T.

It may be that democracy was new enough to be thought impotent, that Industrial Age problems required violence, and this is no longer the case.  It may be that the see saw giving power to one party then the other gives more hope of lesser periods of domination by anybody.  It may be that values have shifted, that Americans believe with emphasis that domestic problems should not be resolved through violence, as ever so clearly declared after OKC and September 11th.  It may be that the existence of WMDs, computers and renewable energy caused a new age, much as the printing press, chemical weapons and steam power caused a shift to the Industrial Age, and that the pattens of the past age tell us nothing about the new.

At any rate, the spiral of violence is not advancing beyond the lone nut phase.  You have a blind faith that it will, based on Industrial Age patterns, while I suspect things have changed, and it won't.  You are just irrationally committed to Industrial Age values which the bulk of Americans seem to not share any more.

But then again, that is the nature of values.  One gets committed to them beyond their time.  Reality does not touch them until they can be clearly demonstrated wrong beyond doubt.  You are no more likely to shift beyond Industrial Age violent values than a red is likely to shift beyond the Second Amendment.

Isn't that the usual conservative error?  Clinging to old obsolete values that cannot solve current problems?  Eric the conservative?

So, yes, I believe that the crisis level issues of this period - including prejudice, protection of the environment, and global warming - can and will be solved by votes of congress rather than a war.  I see crises in the new age as much different than they were in the Industrial Age.  If you try to apply the lessons learned of the Industrial Age - which were valid at the time - you may be vastly incorrect today.  If you see the turnings as clockwork, as following some Industrial Age pattern, you may blind yourself to what is actually happening.

For example, you do not assume the spiral of violence will escalate out of control every four score and seven years, rather one monitors carefully the spiral of violence with an uncertain hypothesis that it might.

But I am repeating myself, typical of a values locked conversation.  You are not apt to comprehend a shift.  Extremists don't do shifts of this nature.