05-20-2020, 02:38 AM
(05-19-2020, 08:47 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:(05-19-2020, 07:49 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Last four Crisis eras:
2020 -- this one. American behavior has changed even before the election and has demonstrated (largely) that Americans are able of changing their ways and taking an economic hit just for survival. There will be a return to normality, but it will be a very different idea of "normal" in political reality and economic relationships. Trump is defeated or else he consolidates dictatorial power.
Good thing Trump as God-Emperor has been a meme since 2016 then.
Let's put it this way: the American Revolution and the Constitutional struggle (Crisis of 1780) decided whether the colonies from Maine to Georgia would be free and that there would be a meaningful United States of America.
The Civil War (Crisis of 1860) decided whether slavery would thrive or perish.
The Great Depression and World War II (Crisis of 1940) decided whether the US would be a Great Power or a shattered wreck under a totalitarian nightmare (fascist or Stalinist).
This Crisis (Crisis of 2020) will decide whether America can thwart an authoritarian trend toward a plutocratic society with a thin and hypocritical veneer of Christian piety (think of a Christian version of Iran or of the People's Republic of China, but in our case the Founding Fathers, Lincoln, and FDR either gutted or co-opted. We have a cultural struggle this time, and we had better solve this one the right way.
A hint: Karl Rogue has just come to the aid of Donald Judas Iscariot Trump.
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.