(06-29-2020, 10:14 AM)David Horn Wrote: Your points are all well taken, but this era is also different in both the tools to affect change and the tools to resist it. There is a field know as perception management that exists solely to manipulate the thinking of people susceptible to being manipulated -- frankly, most of us.
Manipulation works when politics remains about the abstract, as it usually is. But what makes a crisis a crisis is politics ceases to be abstract. This pandemic is a real thing. In the last month some elites have tried to make it political, that is abstract--you don't have to wear a mask, you can go to crowded indoor venues and nothing bad will happen to you. Cases are now rising rapidly, while deaths are flat. Will that remain the case? If it doesn't, the rising cases will become a real thing.
Right now people who lost their jobs are getting generous unemployment. That ends in a month. I doubt everyone will be back at work, so people will no longer have income. They will not be able to pay rent. They will either be evicted or the landlord will suffer a loss in income and will be unable to service the mortgage. Either they go bankrupt or the banks will have large numbers of non-performing loans. The banks will become insolvent or the Fed will bail them out with created money. But if this happens, why should ANYONE pay their rent, or their debts? Just renege, and the Fed will put up the cash. You cannot run a society, much less an economy if nobody has to be responsible anymore.
The government could decide to have the common people bear the entire burden--let millions lose their homes and have to move in with their relatives, who will resent it. Perception management will not make that reality go away. People know they have been getting checks. When that stops they will notice it.
Quote:If we look back at how the previous triggers were defused and responses arrayed against each other, it's not surprising that it took something straight forward and devastating as watching a man die in front of us to overcome the ability of the manipulators to manipulate, though the RW talking heads are still giving it their best. I think 2008 was the real trigger, and the replay we're in now is making that clear. That said, I still have a hard time knowing where this goes beyond the 2020 election. Dems are notorious for dropping the ball.
If Dems drop the ball then 2020 will just be another potential trigger that didn't trigger anything. The shit will keep hitting the fan and there will be more potential triggers. In some ways one might say were entered a crisis era in 1860 and did not leave it until 1942.