07-22-2020, 07:41 PM
(07-22-2020, 05:47 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(07-21-2020, 09:31 PM)Marc Lamb Wrote: Frankly I think the big elephant in this "Generational Theory" room is a flawed consensus among you all is that a 4T somehow represents a "regeneration" of sorts, where a solid majority gets on the same page and attacks troubling issues in a singular mind.
Through the impeachment I was working a conjecture on what happens if a generational crisis prophet-nomad-civic configuration of generations passes without a real trigger or regeneracy. The impeachment was certainly not it. The two sides disagreed, if anything more than ever, but there was no real abandonment of either extreme.
COVUS and Black Lives Matter? These seem real. The incubation time on the virus is short enough that the problem couldn’t be ignored. You couldn’t ignore the problem and selfishly pass it onto future generations. There was consensus enough that the violent racist policing policy had to be moderated. While it is too bad that it has to wait until the Democrats have the senate and White House, the voice of the people can no longer be ignored.
Or maybe not. You seem capable of ignoring a dead elephant in the room.
Trump has shown how to do everything wrong... and as a consequence Americans of most parts of the political spectrum will reject his methods and his agenda.
He got away with an impeachable offense because of a partisan divide in which his side turned to lockstep to protect him. That happens when people come to the belief that ruthlessness in the service of partisan ends is a great virtue. He can't get away with his catastrophic failure with COVID-19.
His abuse of police powers is sure to create controversy... he has shown the willingness to form a federal police force to quash dissent. That is one of the hallmarks of a dictatorship. He is going after one city at a time...
He breaks the rules. But consider that breaking the rules makes sense only if one gets away with it because one proves oneself right after the fact. If one breaks the rules in certain ways one is a fool, a criminal, a bad gambler, or a madman... and one shows oneself as such. Some highly-successful people, like Franz Josef Haydn in music, John D. Rockefeller II in business, Albert Einstein in physics, or Pablo Picasso in art proved themselves geniuses. Your friendly neighborhood drug pusher is simply riding luck, making for a short time more than the kid who follows the rules and works diligently at a fast-food place while not expecting too much. But the kid who works diligently at a fast-food place for five years may be a manager at such a place -- or even before then may have gone on to something better. The dope pusher is killed by a rival pusher or is busted... and if busted he goes to prison... and "Chez Mac" wants nothing to do with him except to sell him some fast food.
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.