07-12-2020, 09:32 PM
(07-11-2020, 03:36 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(07-10-2020, 10:20 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: The game is already up. Our political system clicks its heels and follows a really good President; it basically ignores that President when he goes bad. As a basic reality the President has few real powers that he cannot get without support of Congress.
Not confident that the click heels and follow part is true anymore. The Republicans went pretty much into full obstruction mode with Obama. These days there is not nearly enough heel clicking going on. Too much partisanship.
Third-turning behavior characteristic of the Degeneracy. Republicans and their constituencies were still trying to live in the Third Turning and came close to succeeding in sticking us with a permanent 3T. The Right has been for little more than class privilege irrespective of the human cost for about forty years. Whether Donald Trump is grossly unfit for the task (in which case he would have a successor in the Hard Right who better knows and uses the Dictator Playbook... the first page of which says "co-opt, marginalize, or outlaw the opposition"... which Trump did not do). In that scenario we have one ineffective term of Joe Biden followed by someone with the Trump ideology but not the erratic behavior.
Here's a hope for the best -- that Donald Trump is the last stage of an era of exaggerated individualism on economics and mindlessness in public culture.
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.