10-23-2019, 07:38 PM
(10-23-2019, 01:19 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(10-23-2019, 01:35 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: The impeachment of Donald Trump may be as significant as the establishment of the Constitution. With Trump going down, many Republicans (mostly of the Tea Party waves) go down, too. We will probably be better off when politics start showing more concern for constituents instead for the hidden money that dictates how politicians vote in Congress and in state legislatures.
2020 is the big election. If it goes bad, then we will have a very nasty Saeculum as a sequel. We could have a society under the tight control of what Toynbee calls a dominant elite, the sort that determines that all economic activity, all culture, and political life exist to ensure that the Right People get everything and that life becomes a burdensome privilege for people not in that elite. Most immigrants to America came to escape inequitable, repressive, hierarchical societies in which few people had a chance at satisfying lives.
We are getting the sort of civics lesson that George III gave the Colonies just before the American Revolution.
Don't give up if 2020 goes bad. It will be a very bad situation, and it could mean a nasty and final saeculum for the USA as we know it. On the other hand, remember that 6th year midterms are historically bad for the Party holding the White House. And if Trump wins, his ego will be so big that his misbehavior will know no bounds, and he could be convicted by the Senate before he can become dictator. Pence would at least lose his reputation too. From Jan. 2023, the congress could rule the nation. Demographics are shifting, and the white rural Republicans can't hold this change off forever. The 2022 midterm could be a opposition party tsunami the likes of which this nation has never seen. We could see rule by the congress similar to what happened in the later 1860s. No such idea that the 4T will end in 2025 should be entertained. This crisis era has just begun.
The best result of the current mess is that we find that the Constitution means exactly what it says about checks and balances and the separation of powers. The Founding Fathers designed the President to have great powers but none dictatorial or despotic.
That 2016 could have been a partial reverse-wave against the GOP in the Senate and was not, 2022 could be. But more important will be that the Republicans will have done even more to consolidate power, and that economic power will meld more completely with political power. They will likely have even more control of state legislatures, and will have likely gained control of the House if Trump wins in 2020. The personality cult will be even more entrenched. Loyalty to Donald Trump will be treated as a patriotic virtue, and dissent will be treated as near-treason.
Most significantly, the checks and balances and separation of powers will be no more. Rigged elections could become the norm, and the dominant class could establish an Apartheid system in politics.
Entrenchment of a political order is the hallmark of the transition from 1T to the 2T. Vile dictatorships can thrive in a 1T with social conformity establishing complacency among the in-groups and fear in the out-groups.
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.
