11-21-2018, 01:18 AM
(11-20-2018, 02:32 PM)Bill the Piper Wrote:(11-20-2018, 10:00 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: It may be globalism, and it may have republican forms, but it is anything but democratic.
To make a distinction between a democracy and a republic is an idea which might come from Newspeak.
Republican forms but some serious lack (lack of competition, free choice, or universal franchise... or preset results) indicate the absence of democracy.
Quote:Quote:The neo-liberal globalism had as its basis the idea that the economy was best run by and that politics were appropriately run by experts -- people of economic success, and not 'losers' like the rest of Humanity.
If these experts and people of economic success are elected in free elections, it is democracy.
But will it stay a democracy?
Quote:Quote:Late-3T leadership is typically weak and permissive, and tells people to go ahead and initiate a new era of unprecedented and eternal prosperity based upon low taxes, easy money, and cheap labor. The last 3T leadership can no longer patch things together. As the bubble bursts, institutions, including government, are discredited. Then comes the 4T.
IMO it was the hedonism promoted by pop culture that encouraged people to run up a debt.
But buying houses for insane prices also bloats the private debt.
Sackcloth and ashes do not sell except in classical music, the blues, and country. In classical music the sackcloth and ashes is catharsis. In the blues, it is the reality of oppression. In country it is usually a depiction of self-inflicted harm to one's life.
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.