04-29-2020, 12:54 AM
It all depends upon the institutional change that ensues. Will we Americans have basic reforms that contradict the neoliberal economics and the tendency toward monopoly? Will we see giant firms cut down to size, perhaps through tax changes that favor smaller entities that in fact compete? Will we have labor-management policies that reverse the trend to a lord-and-serf model? Will we separate economic and political power as is necessary to keep capitalism from becoming economic fascism?
Will we make fit adjustments to the end of scarcity? Will we reduce working hours and foster liberal education that allows most people to find more meaning in life than "commute to work, do work, return from work, and plop down before mass low entertainment?"
Or will we get an order that intensifies poverty as a means of getting people more compliant due to fear? How long did an Axis victory seem the wave of the future? It was but eleven months from D-Day to the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. History moves fast at the end of a Crisis.
Donald Trump is an abject failure as a person, and it is hard to imagine him being an effective politician. Too much was wrong -- the lack of prior experience in political life, his vindictiveness, his cruelty, his bigotry, his recklessness, his dishonesty, his narcissism, his contempt for expertise, and his unwillingness to compromise. Put that all together and I see most traits of despots.
Will we make fit adjustments to the end of scarcity? Will we reduce working hours and foster liberal education that allows most people to find more meaning in life than "commute to work, do work, return from work, and plop down before mass low entertainment?"
Or will we get an order that intensifies poverty as a means of getting people more compliant due to fear? How long did an Axis victory seem the wave of the future? It was but eleven months from D-Day to the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. History moves fast at the end of a Crisis.
Donald Trump is an abject failure as a person, and it is hard to imagine him being an effective politician. Too much was wrong -- the lack of prior experience in political life, his vindictiveness, his cruelty, his bigotry, his recklessness, his dishonesty, his narcissism, his contempt for expertise, and his unwillingness to compromise. Put that all together and I see most traits of despots.
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.
