06-02-2020, 08:39 PM
(06-02-2020, 01:44 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(06-02-2020, 12:10 PM)Isoko Wrote: The crisis though is not over...it is only just beginning...
The boomers are aging out. People keep trying to extend the crisis beyond the time when boomers are in the prophet-nomad-civic configuration, but I am willing to bet that when the bug is beat, people will be ready to lock down the solution, shut down the old values, and get materialistic again. In other words, they will switch to the high attitude.
In terms of the boomers being in the leadership position, we are towards the end.
The Boomers are not so old that they have become irrelevant. Boomers are now old -- and 60 is still 60 even if one tries to act 40. OK, I am one of those people who has acted middle-aged since a teenager.
It is not a comfortable role for me to be thrust into that of the sage. I have my own problems not of my own making, problems that I could not address effectively when such would have made my life very different and more productive and credible. Asperger's, dammit! I am far better at putting my statements into writing than vocally because my expressions contradict what I say. That makes me look like a liar. It is my facial expressions that lie -- not my words. I am smart enough to know enough to not tell whoppers, and to correct myself when I am proved wrong. I would have been better off going into a skilled trade than attending college even if I have a near-genius IQ. Rigid thought that goes with Asperger's syndrome makes me a not-very-original thinker. Quirky, maybe, but I would have to be entertaining to pull it off. I can write a joke, but I am not the one to tell it.
I expect people to be just as materialistic in a 1T as in a 3T; I expect people to have the same lusts in a 1T as in a 3T. That does not change from turning to turning; it is nearly universal across time and tribe. Materialism in a 1T will be very different in a 1T than in a 3T; a 1T will have little use for the predatory selfishness that brought economic ruin of the type that manifested itself in the Panic of 2008. (See also the Panics of 1929 and 1857).
People will not get the sick privilege of gambling on others' money. America will again be a nation more of savers than of speculators. Securities will have rather low rewards. Government will probably have to depend upon high incomes that allow people to make deposits that go into low-yield investments such as housing was in the 1950's -- at least for the thrift institutions that largely offered the loans. Or banks who were lending to Big Business for job-creating plant and equipment. In a 1T we see a nexus between investors, bosses, workers, and consumers that erodes in a 2T and becomes a travesty in a 3T.
Boomers are not over -- but the extreme egoists are likely through. They have destroyed whatever credibility that they have, and the loss of credibility of Donald Trump illustrates such. To be sure, a Reactive generation such as the Gilded or the Lost -- or X -- can also get full of itself... but I somehow recognize Obama to be more likely an object of imitation in style if not ideology. Reactive generations cannot get away with flamboyant exercise of power in a 1T. In a 3T ? Sure -- if they are Hitler or Mussolini before everything collapses. People like Hitler and Mussolini who lack the virtues of kindness, caution, and conscience ultimately ruin their grand schemes.
I am tempted to believe that the response to the 2009-2009 when America rescued business entities "too big to fail" may decide that entities that fail this time will be instead "too Big to save". American political institutions were built for yeoman farmers and small business -- and not for giant, monopolized corporations. Economic competition keeps people honest and prevents the bureaucratic bloat common in giant firms. Maybe this time the auto makers, Big Oil, Big Pharma, the chemical industry, metal processing, power generation, and defense contractors will be bailed out because small-business alternatives are absurd... but America will be better off if small business again becomes the norm in banking, restaurants, retail trade, real estate, and manufacturing in general. Small business is not prone to the bureaucratic bloat of giant industries with their executive nomenklatura more adept at kissing up to politicians than to creating anything. Big Government will survive, but because giant corporations and the tycoons will no longer be able to buy the political process as they have done recently, America will be more pure as a democracy and no longer so blatant a plutocracy.
The upcoming 1T will seem a Golden Age in contrast to the dangerous 4T and the absurd 3T Degeneracy. If the political style of a conservative pol seems familiar... a 1T usually has the Mature Reactive in charge. Such may not be the ideal leaders for a Crisis even if they do mostly the right things. Obama was ahead of his time... but an Obama-like pol in respect for protocol, precedent, and tradition who doesn't shake too much up but eschews corruption and grandiose schemes of bringing some glory supposedly lost may be just the thing -- even if politically conservative. That's Eisenhower. Obama may have dreamed of being an FDR, but his closest analogue is Eisenhower. Not bad, I'd say!
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.