08-22-2019, 06:24 AM
(08-21-2019, 09:49 AM)beechnut79 Wrote:(08-21-2019, 07:22 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: The cycle isn't broken; politics is. American politics has had aligning the money with politicians and policies that the donors want since the Reagan Revolution. The economic elites have their agenda, which includes having the general society rewarding them for doing what they want to do: market consolidation, corner-cutting at the expense of the environment and consumer safety, evisceration of organized labor, and elite indulgence. 3T memes of plutocracy still dominate public life and come to the fore with a President who fits a Marxist stereotype as a political leader in an ultra-capitalist society.
At the least the Loyalists were not strung up from makeshift gallows from Calais, Massachusetts (Maine was then part of Massachusetts) to Brunswick, Georgia. At least the Union did not encourage slave revolts in which slaves took over the plantations, killed the male members of the planter families, and raped the white women. America and Britain chose to treat the defeated Germans and Japanese (except for war criminals) with much more kindness than the leaders of the Axis Powers.
As for the Bolshevik Revolution -- that was a real horror in the result, far worse in effects than one could have expected. Obviously Lenin had a huge body count, but after him came Stalin who did even worse. The association of much of the core of Bolshevik fanatics as leaders with apostate Jews fed the antisemitism that became a cornerstone of Nazi and other fascist ideologies (including the Hlinka Guard in Slovakia, the Ustase in Croatia, the Arrow Cross in Hungary, the Iron Guard in Romania, and eventually people who would become Nazi collaborators in occupied countries -- and the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists, and the 1915 KKK in America, which did not. Antisemitism would become a part of Italian fascism as Nazi influence became powerful in Italy.
No Bolshevik Revolution means that Hitler never achieves power. The optimum would have been that Kerensky stayed in charge and an elected parliament guides Russia through some rough times... but that of course did not happen. No Bolshevik Revolution also means no brutal White movement in Russia which itself flooded Europe with refugees from White terror -- including many Jews.
Who knows? Maybe the cycle will force politics to fit their normal course again and discredit 3T ways in which American politics are stuck. Maybe it will take a damaging recession to compel the breakup of cartels and trusts and encourage small-scale economics again. Small-scale entrepreneurs who must defer to the harsh reality of competition have less capacity to exploit workers and consumers than do monopolistic behemoths with bureaucratic management out for itself at the expense of everyone else.
Paragraph 1: It is very obvious that the nation finds itself involved in a power struggle from which there so far seems to be no relief. But aren't we far enough into the 4T that the behavior you describe is seriously post-seasonal? In the book the authors describe in pretty good detail the adverse consequences of post-seasonal behavior. I also find it quite interesting that it seems more and more obvious that we can and in fact need to be quite discriminating about who you're in relationships with. Possibly a subject for a different thread, but more and more being in the wrong relationships can get you in pretty deep trouble.
Post-seasonal behavior most likely intensifies the nastiness of the Crisis. The sexual mores of the next 1T are set -- gay and lesbian are OK, so long as they involve consenting adults, but sexual exploitation of children of any kind is always unacceptable. Mainstream gays and lesbians threw the pedophiles to the crocodiles in concert with mainstream straight people in return for getting same-sex adult relationships accepted. Thus Pete Buttegieg is acceptable and Jeffrey Epstein is not. Also, crank pseudoscience such as eugenics intended to create an economic and administrative elite (a fad of the 1920's in much of the world that morphed into "racial hygiene" in Germany and is part of the Epstein plot) and crank distortions of history for political ends would reasonably give way in a more collegial, equitable, and rational society.
(So what is the problem with trying to breed a race of leaders? History has shown that highly-competent, imaginative people often come from unlikely families. It is better to find such people even if they come from nasty places, cultivate their rare talents, and adapt to their valid concerns for loved ones who might be left behind in some perverse idea of progress. Adults whose parents picked crops, did domestic work, or worked in sweatshops are more likely to do good for people of their origins than are people raised in the clinical nicety of having had all the advantages and seeing people not so raised as lesser parts of Humanity. The GI boss who knew what life is like on the shop floor might well be a far better executive than some Boom executive who knew enough to never do hard, dirty work. I am old enough to know the difference between GI and Boom bosses... and I generally preferred the GI bosses who may have known hardscrabble poverty by contemporary standards).
Quote:Paragraph 2: Not much response needed here except to point out that some of these global relationships had opposite results of what was originally intended, Castro no doubt being a prime example as we helped him gain power not knowing how much it would backfire.
Fulgencio Batista was easy to hate. This man embezzled American aid instead of spending it to crush the Castro revolution. He turned Havana into a pleasure dome for Americans who could get away with things there that they could not do in America, except perhaps in Vegas. Castro knew how to exploit memes of the American Revolution and even Abraham Lincoln with such rhetoric as
Quote:"Workers and farmers, this is the socialist and democratic revolution of the humble, with the humble and for the humble." — April 16, 1961 -- Fidel Castro
Quote:that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.[/url]
—Abraham Lincoln
Castro plagiarized Lincoln's words, adapting them to Marxism-Leninism.
Quote:Paragraph 3: Same as P2 except to possibly analyze whether a type of Boshevik or Bastille Redux might be looming on the horizon.
I have often felt that we are past due for a modern-day equivalent of the Bastille, Boston Tea Party, Harper's Ferry of the next Rosa Parks, this time who won't go to the back of the bus for the corporate establishment.
Most Americans would be perfectly happy enough with "capitalism with a human face", adopting language of Alexander Dubcek. The fault with capitalism is not with the profit motive; the faults with contemporary capitalism in America are:
its rejection of competition as a control of gouging
the merger of Big Government and Big Business (economic fascism)
disdain for the people left behind due to technological and social change
emergence of a bureaucratic elite responsible to none but its bosses
support of politicians of one political stripe -- extreme reactionaries
Quote:Paragraph 4: There can be endless speculation as to alternative histories, such as if the Confederacy had won the Civil War or even if losing candidates became President. Would Al Gore, a staunch environmentalist, have done more to challenge the naysayers on the global warming issue. Just one example.
American history shows a tendency for weak leaders in the latter part of the 3T.
Quote:Paragraph 5: Again the detritus and stalemate caused by the current power struggle is very much in play here. Maybe more mindfulness is needed here, and a recipe for such is enclosed in the link to an article I found. Would even staunch progressives such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, if elected to office, have the balls to break up the corporate trusts of our second gilded age in the manner that Teddy Roosevelt (a Republican BTW) did during Gilded Age I at the turn of the last century? Apparently the damage recession of the last decade was not enough to do the trick. Might it take a depression even worse than the one following the 1929 crash to get the job done? And do you really think there is any way we can return to the days of, say, mom and pop shops on Main Street?
[url=https://www.adoptionstogether.org/blog/2013/01/14/avoiding-power-struggles-by-practicing-mindfulness/]https://www.adoptionstogether.org/blog/2013/01/14/avoiding-power-struggles-by-practicing-mindfulness/
It took the Great Depression to humanize the American economy because everyone had a stake in its humanization. The economic elites of the Gilded Age and especially their successors of the Roaring Twenties saw the rest of Humanity existing solely for the gain, power, and indulgence of those elites. It may also be a catastrophic leader like Trump who forces us to divest ourselves of much of pur collective nastiness.
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.