How this Crisis will be resolved (for the U.S.)

[pbrower2a]

(12-30-2019, 06:35 PM)Mickey123 Wrote: Reading through these forums, it seems a number of people here believe that this will somehow turn out to be a mild crisis where not much happens.  But if the Fourth Turning theories are correct, this cannot be the case.  As fractured and fragmented as the U.S. is culturally, nothing less than a major crisis could put it back together again.  This leaves a few likely possibilities for the Crisis, which I'll discuss briefly here.

I could name some countries that went through the Crisis of 1940 without any semblance of apocalypse: Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, and Turkey did not participate in war  (OK, Turkey was marginally involved).  Then there are several Central and South American republics  that formally declared war on the Devil's Reich and Thug Japan, but sent only token forces.

World War II was so widespread as it was because it was in part a war between colonial powers that had spread their dominions far away from their metropoles. Except for the horrible Sino-Japanese war the war in the Pacific was fought entirely over colonial empires until the very end, when the United States  started closing in on the Home Islands. A critical, but decisive theater of the war with Nazi Germany was in the French and italian colonial empire and in barely-independent Egypt see also 'minor wars' over Syria (a protectorate of Vichy France) and the British overthrow of the fascistic Golden Square regime that had the crazy idea that it could get more independence for Iraq by aligning itself with Hitlerland. 

Crisis eras can end in whimpers, as did the establishment of Constitutional government in the United States as a strong federation replacing a weak confederation. The best that anyone can hope for for America in the Crisis of 2020 is reforms that close the seams of our system so that ruthless, unprincipled people such as Karl Rove can no longer gut American democracy. We can also render impotent the feudal mentality of some of our elites.

We still have enough time for less benign results. Those at first seem to better fit some sensibilities especially in requiring fewer sacrifices. See below:
  

Quote:First, it could resolve itself in an enormous war.  The only powers in the world which could realistically take on the U.S., and which there's any reasonable chance of the U.S. fighting, would be China and Russia.  As Crises are an opportunity to resolve issues, it may be that the U.S., and some of its allies, go to war against both China and Russia, under the idea that all nations must be democratic.  This could result in a vastly strengthened United Nations which has real power, an actual global government.

What would be the motivation of a war with Russia? A revival of Manifest Destiny in which America sees eastern Siberia as a frontier to settle as it did the West? The Civil War seems to have put an end to that. Much of the drive to expand the United States before the Civil War came from slave-owning interests who sought to annex more land in which to establish the slave system. 

China seems intent on expanding its naval power to defend its "interests overseas" (as in America parlance, investments overseas). Its only potential territorial demands are on lands that have been Chinese, like Taiwan. Obviously it would be a catastrophic mistake of any country to mistreat overseas Chinese, and such would be a pretext for some wars that few countries could win. Leaders of Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Australia know this well. 

If the United States cannot defend its democratic institutions here -- with those eroding by the design of some of The most RUthless, Most cynical People in America. Cheap stuff imported from China depresses wages in America and eviscerates industrial unions in a manufacturing sector that used to offer middle-class incomes. America is not going to get its manufacturing base back until Americans  accept sweat-shop conditions with real pay lower than the norm in the 1920's.  

Quote:Failing that, the U.S. is left with a civil or revolutionary war.

I long thought that  America was prone to an ideological polarization with a close connection to cultural identity as was the case in Spain in the 1930's, such manifesting itself in a split between secular modernists and people with medieval attitudes except for modernity in technology. The winner in such a war, should it suppress the other side as Franco did with the secular modernists, can solve its contradictions with brutality and terror. 

Quote:One possibility is portions of the U.S. attempting to break off and form their own country.  While this is certainly possible, I don't see this as being the core of the crisis or the resolution of it, as that's not where the fault lines are in the country today.  The political divide in the U.S. of left versus right wing is not geographic; rural areas are conservative while cities are liberal.  There's no way to string together all the cities to make a separate nation, nor can the south reasonably rise again when the 30% of its people who are black will have no interest in forming a separate new confederacy.

Such is most likely if one side tries to suppress the other, making a mockery of the federal system. Secession is a desperate measure, one possible if one side faces the prospect of its way of life vanishing by force. A usurpation of power by a would-be dictator would make such practically automatic as a counter-coup.  

Quote:This leaves us with a revolutionary war of one sort or another.

From the right, you could have a military coup, as some president, with the help of the military, suspends the congress and simply takes over.  From the left, you have the possibility of a socialist revolution.  In either case, they couldn't happen until the climate allowing them was in place.  A socialist revolution can't happen in a wealthy prosperous society, people have to be poor and hungry before they're ready to overthrow the system in such a way.  Similarly, things would have to be really bad before the military would be willing to set aside the constitution and put a dictator in place.

The military would not stand for that. A coup would be more likely against a President going full-bore dictatorial. America has never had anything like fascistic rule except in the Jim Crow South, and the formality of such will not return even in the South. Such would take massacres -- and the Armed Forces will not participate in those on behalf of a dictatorial regime. 

On the other hand, nobody says that a society in which 2% get nearly everything, 3% (professionals including law enforcement, senior military officers, and such professionals as physicians and engineers who would do well anywhere do sort-of-OK, and the rest live in hunger and cold because the elites enforce extreme poverty can make the overall prosperity is irrelevant in determining whether a proletarian revolution is possible. 

Quote:There is, of course, the possibility that parts of all of this happen.  The U.S. goes to war against Russia or China, both sides pledge not to use nuclear weapons unless necessary, the west coast of the U.S. tries to break off and form its own country, Texas announces it's going its own way as well, all hell is breaking loose and the economy has gone to hell, and now some attempt at a government takeover, left or right, takes place.

The opportunity for such vanishes a little every month as the Crisis ages. 

Quote:It's difficult to say which would end up worse.  An all out nuclear war would of course be the worst possible option.  Every socialist revolution has ended in utter disaster.  A right wing government takeover could result in massive amounts of ethnic cleansing, if the U.S. decided to send all members of various races or religions back to their countries of origin.

One way or another, I think this is going to be far, far worse than many of you here are imagining.

Every prior Crisis in American history has ended in an overall consensus that certain old ways that failed are no longer possible. I tend to believe that the increasing concentration of power, wealth, and income in an  ever-narrowing elite will prove unsustainable. people are becoming more sophisticated about propaganda as older cohorts die off and younger adults who have no stake in such nastiness  replace them in the electorate.