Why we are nowhere near the end of the fourth turning

[Bob Butler 54]

(06-08-2020, 08:05 PM)Mickey123 Wrote: The police are not going to ever be any better than they are today.  Police officers are what they are, you can go anywhere across the world across time and you'll see the same thing.  They are rough, aggressive, and authoritarian, as this is the sort of person who wants to be a police officer, and they deal with criminals all day, which increases their already existing tendencies.  The way that police officers are will be accepted in the next High.

People in general will never be less racist than they are today, as the tendency to stick with one's own group and be mistrustful of outsiders is built into us.  Human beings were never designed to live in large societies of millions of people, and are doing their best to deal with it as well as they do today.

I see the opposite.

The Enlightenment might have first suggested the three ideas which I call the arrow of progress:  equality, human rights, and democracy.  In each crisis since at least one of these ideas is pushed by the progressive faction and resisted by those who wish things to remain as they are.  You see in the last three American crises kings reduced in power, America freed from colonial imperialism, slaves freed and fascists defeated.

This ls all done over the dead bodies of people who want things to stay forever the same.  Kings are appointed by God.  Every major civilization if based on the cornerstone of slavery.  Wars are started whenever a nation can afford it and sees itself at an advantage.  Always there is a master race, and others to be subjugated.  Etc…

Racism is a non trivial problem.  It is very difficult to change a culture.  Still, every once in a while the people rise against it.  The American Civil War was one example.  The Civil Rights Movement is another.  The last few weeks seems mark another such time.  It is possible to say enough once in a while.  It is on rare occasion possible to take a few steps forward.  You can’t do it every day.  You may never be able to solve the problem completely.  But you can change the culture.

In the Civil Rights Movement, MLK had to march for years to finally get Congress to consider action.  The Black Lives Matter uprising seems to have taken less time to get serious attention.  We will see how hard the conservatives try to fight the people.  Some are very used to superiority.  Trump has pretty much been in their corner as much as he can without openly proclaiming himself a racist.  But I expect he is fighting history on this one.