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Culture Wars Era - is it moving into its final phase?
(03-02-2019, 09:41 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote:
(02-28-2019, 04:02 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: As for the current clash of ideologies, although the immigration bashing during Trump's era does arouse tribalism and a cosmopolitan counter-movement, and globalization has been an issue because of free trade causing industrial decline and drug use, the key divide in this country remains the neo-liberal economics vs. neo or watered-down socialism, and racism (which also stokes anti-immigration) plays its role in this issue between the red and blue states. 

It seems there are THREE camps all over the Western world, and the division combines economical and tribalism/cosmopolitanism polarisation:
-market liberals ("neoliberals") - they are waning but still exist and can sometimes strike back, as they did in France in 2017
-socialists or SJWs
-nationalist-populists, who want to restrict the market to protect national interests

1. Libertarianism becomes a political fad in a 3T, but the best that they can do to achieve thir ends is to privatize a few things. The ideology fails because libertarianism is essentially utopian. Big Business as a rule does not want competition.

2. The Millennial  Generation is much more collectivist than Boomers and X. The plutocratic agenda of most of the 3T and 4T (so far) has been effective at ensuring that life is pay-to-play... fiendishly costly for participation and low in rewards.  Millennial adults may have had the worst introduction to capitalism except for the GI cohorts that entered middle childhood in the Great Depression.

3. Nationalist populists offer a vision of a country that serves too few of its people. It's obvious enough that Make America Great Again does not apply to anyone that the political leadership can deem a pariah. In view of the contradictions within national populism, it becomes a vehicle for demagogic liars who have no problems with the contradictions. Trump has already sold out much of America to the Master Class.


Quote:When the 1T begins, I expect the market liberals to be gone, and moderate socialists to win, but before this happen the socialists will integrate some aspects of populism, like Corbyn does. Corbyn could be the British PM in 2022, and I think LePen will win in France.

The market liberals become crony capitalists in practice with thei public-private partnerships that foist entrepreneurial risk upon taxpayers while assuring profits to people who get sweetheart deals.


Quote:Racism is IMO a subtype of tribalism, although it's possible to be tribalist without being racist. Judaism is a good example, there are Slavic-looking Jews and Hamitic-looking Jews, but they all regard themselves as descendants of Abraham despite having other, non-Semitic ancestors as well.

..and it is ugly. If tribalism is a necessity for preserving a way of life, so be it.

Judaism is a religion, and not a race. It may be ironic, but it may be the gentiles most like the Ashkenazim by culture -- Germans and Austrians -- imposed the Holocaust. I saw the argument that the Germans hated Jews to the extent that they saw in Jews what they disliked about themselves. Czech, Hungarian, Slovak and to some extent Polish Jews often got the rap for being too... German.


Quote:
Quote:...As for porn, we have  a big disparity between comparatively gentle erotica and the brutal and dehumanizing sexuality in some pornography. People can do sex with dignity, and some people might be able to describe such. Much of the pornography out there has a man humiliating a woman or perhaps a man humiliating a man by making a cuckold of her husband. I am not going to delve into the variations. Sex at its best uplifts both participants, and if it devolves into the abuse and humiliation of one one participant for the gratification of the other it is wrong. And, yes, the unclothed female body at its best is a marvel to behold -- if one is a straight male or a lesbian. I can't speak for straight women or gay men. I never thought my genitals in any way beautiful.

Absolutely, I love to admire the female body, but I'm angry at the acquisitors for trivialising this marvel. If you see a bare belly 15 times a day in a stupid advert, it loses some of its appeal. I'm totally with you that sex should uplift both partners. Too many millennial men had their sexuality warped by brutal internet porn and developed a masturbation addiction, so I wouldn't be surprised to see puritanical attitudes among the neo-Missionaries. Imagine a daughter discovering her Millennial dad jacks off to scenes of gang rape! The original missionaries also brought things like "social purity movement", which was (possibly) a reaction to brutal masculinity of the Gilded.  Sex-positive movement will come back eventually, possibly during the next Dionysian saeculum scheduled to start about 2100,  encouraged by medicine having eliminated all STD. Your dream of a bigger better summer of love may be the reality of 2130 rather than 2050.

... In the television business, T&A, abbreviations for anatomical parts known more prudishly as breasts and derrieres. TV programmers can't get enough of programming set in tropical or subtropical locations  in which there are plenty of excuses to show attractive females in bathing suits.

What singles do is their own business, but once there is a spouse, porn is a form of adultery and even idolatry. If there are children around? Disgusting.

I see a big problem in serial marriages in which well-off men with huge amounts of money divorce their wives after they no longer resemble a Playboy centerfold. But this in part reflects economic inequality in which an executive makes 10 times as much as a clerk-typist.  But he who has the gold makes the rules.

Quote:In an even more remote future, genetic engineering could make woman's ovulation voluntary (as described in IM Banks' culture novels) and change human psychology eliminating possessive romantic love, at least among some sub-groups of future humans. Their sexual ethics might approach the model of "friends with benefits", while other sub-groups might remake themselves to become strict monogamists like many bird species.

I see all sorts of potential mischief for genetic engineering. To be sure, I would not have problems with genetic engineering that ensures that children do not grow up with such horrible diseases as chorea, Tay-Sachs, etc. I can imagine racist abuses.

This said, one easy way to ensure a great retirement is to have a son who is the New Ted Williams.
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.


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RE: Culture Wars Era - is it moving into its final phase? - by pbrower2a - 03-02-2019, 02:15 PM

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