The Next Warrior Age - Right Under Our Noses?

[TnT]

(06-19-2020, 11:56 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Sarkar suggested that most of the West was approaching the end of the Age of Acquisitors as economic inequality intensifies, culture becomes depraved, the system turns out horrible leaders who fit the worst deeds of rapacious plutocrats (what could better fit that than Donald Trump?), "society" unravels in economic and social atomization, and everyone seems to run away from any sense of responsibility. People look for easy money...but few people are creating wealth unless they are under abject fear of rapacious plutocrats and their agents. Rationality recedes into the background as many believe that they can choose their own reality.

Chaos erupts... and the only people who still have any knack for organization, the enforcers of the Acquisitive Age, the soldiers and police, are in the best position in which to establish any semblance of political or administrative structure.  Society begins to resemble a barracks in which people have less freedom but far more security. Consider of course that hunger is not freedom, an open window upon opulent splendor that most people can only find offensive is not a scene of beauty.  This is not to say that we are in for a series of coups or revolutions; it is possible that the post-Crisis era is one in which leaders find ways in which to keep people from needing a revolt just to gain or recover some sense of dignity.

The Age of the Soldier is one with simple rules and much more conformity -- but also a time of less economic disparity. Even if leaders are elected democratically they will fit the pattern. Incomes will show a reversal of the trend of intensifying inequality. Regional and ethnic differences in result will become less blatant.

Something that interests me ... in the U.S. most of the higher ranks in the military get sent to the "War Colleges" where they receive what can only be said to be an extensive "liberal education."  They study a lot of subjects besides military science.  The result of this is that many come out as legitimate thinkers who can analyze, dissect and make sense of complex circumstances facing our society.  I once subscribed to Parameters, the research journal of the war college at Fort Leavenworth.  A very interesting publication.  The papers could be coming out of any state university.

The foot soldiers, on the other hand, it is said that they are the Donald Trump fans.  One wonders what might happen if a military coup became the only option for civil order in the U.S.  How would that play out?  Who would shoot at whom?  Do they line up the nanny-state bureaucrats, the "liberal" college professors, and the registered Democratic Party members and shoot them?  

Or do the well-educated officers bring order to the country by some more civilized means?  And can they count on their troops?