08-05-2020, 01:34 PM
(08-04-2020, 07:20 PM)David Horn Wrote:(08-04-2020, 12:34 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I have been debating with folks like Classic, and taking seriously the warnings Dave gives about how dedicated the folks in his area are to the old values. People tend to form a world view, and not shift it at all lightly. It takes a really big deal to change it. A crisis in the 4T is one time when a whole bunch of people do change. This is because the old values, the old way of thinking, is demonstrated to be no longer viable. It usually takes a really bad leader dedicated to the old values wildily out of season to cause such a change. One could look at leaders such as George III, Buchanan, Hoover, Bush 43 and now Trump as playing an important role in turning theory. (This does not really do enough honor to George III, Buchanan and Hoover.) In many ways their role is as important as that of grey champion. One demonstrates how the old values don’t work anymore, and the other demonstrates how the new values do.
If you do not see how Trump is one of the bad leaders, if you can’t recognize how the old values have become untenable, if you cannot even tell the difference between a catalyst and a trigger, you are for some reason keeping your eyes shut, are not looking at reality honestly...
All true but how valid? This is the first time we've had a President who has no compunction using foreign assets and all the propaganda he can get. And it's happening at the very time that the ability to lie with impunity seems virtually unlimited. Those are pretty tall obstacles to overcome. Add in the natural propensity of the Trumpist alliance to believe Trump and his propaganda team above all, and they're armed to the teeth. It's best to assume nothing is set in stone ... not anymore.
Nothing forces change as does failure. To most people, success confirms that what one does is the right course. It is rare that a creative master makes one masterpiece and does nothing like it again (in music I think of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps). For something else to be like it it will need another composer who shamelessly rips it off, as did John Williams in a film score for a Star Wars movie. Ordinarily, if one succeeds one keeps doing the same thing until it fails. I am tempted to think of Napoleon Bonaparte as the most successful military leader of all time, and he succeeded as such for about ten years. Eventually others catch up.
OK, Trump is in no way an innovator or creator. His political success is a fluke, the result of an odd distribution of votes in a highly-polarized country, in which he could get away with offending people heavily concentrated in a few states, exploiting mass Schadenfreude, trivializing his severe faults while magnifying those of his opponent, latching onto a celebrity circus that lasted far longer than was appropriate, cultivating bigotry just under the surface, and rhetorical fraud such as Newspeak. Maybe the Presidency is incompatible with a tycoon as an outsider (Perot might have been a disaster for reasons other than radicalism).
Donald Trump is Ronald Reagan without the humanizing touches... and, yes, the time for Reaganism even with the humanizing touches is past. We have gone as far as we can with the idea that enriching those already rich creates more prosperity even if most people have no chance of enjoying any of the added prosperity. If you want to see the economic symbol of Reaganomics, then just look at the shopping mall... many of which are dying or have died. OK, they are white elephants tailor-made for a reality in which
(1) there was an over-supply of college graduates who took jobs there just to survive while looking for a career
(2) land was still cheap in many suburban areas
(3) the middle class was still largely lily-white
(4) businesses could get away with authoritarian management and abysmal pay
(5) the people still with money were in a buying mood
The shopping malls eventually became white elephants, places too expensive for ordinary shopping (box stores like Home Depot, Target, and Wal*Mart were more efficient), and they eventually became desirable sites to put to new purposes such as office buildings. Of course, there is a discussion of "dead malls" among our threads in which the economic realities of those dying institutions.
That's over. Few people have much disposable income anymore. If you are in some areas you may be spending 70% of your income renting a dreary flat. Taxes rise as the cost of government increase just to meet higher costs of everything. Medical costs soar due to monopolization that Reagan and later 'conservatives' have seen as prosperity on the assumption that people paying more for what they get is genuine prosperity. As becomes the norm when things get tight people learn to make it do or do without, whether for some heroic purpose (defeating the evil trinity of Hitler, Tojo, and Mussolini) or because the economic order has become as vile and seedy as it has become. What people dislike or find exorbitant they evade or replace.
Donald Trump is about as awful as Lincoln and FDR were wonderful. The economic leadership of America has taken on the usual vices of an aristocratic elite... and although I am tempted to say without the virtues, I ask what the virtues of aristocratic rule is, and it seems that they are able to spend wildly on what becomes exclusively theirs. Castles and palaces? Art? Think of the great composer Haydn as a retainer of the Esterhazy family in Vienna, whose music became their property. (The late musicologist H. Robbins Landon said that under Commies in Czechoslovakia, the musical scores that had been properties of aristocratic families were often discovered in store-rooms after being lost, never copied for general publication for a century or more). You know Haydn, the man who makes a neat divide in music between what precedes, what is he (except for Mozart, some very late Handel and Telemann, and some very early Beethoven and Rossini) and everything before and everything after? Aristocratic castles and palaces may awe us, but we don't really get to enjoy them until public tours are possible after the aristocrats are overthrown.
Trump is failure. It is impossible to make success out of contradictory promises, to get a community of good will out of mean-spirited rhetoric, and to get noble achievements out of a very bad leader. People associated with him find themselves in deep legal trouble because the law does not allow one to shade illicit behavior into lawful behavior because of one's quack interpretation of the law to make such an interpretation fit one's convenience. Americans don't like being stepped on (which explains the original meaning of the Gadsden flag (a rattlesnake under which are the words "DON'T TREAD ON ME") which the Hard Right adapted but has been turned to other uses (like a variant with rainbow colors of the LGBT flag). Oh, it is not about keeping taxes low so that we don't have to do anything fo black or brown people?
Trump is a fascist, and our institutions are intended to swat down any would-be despot. Those institutions will swat down Donald Trump, who has been effective only at imposing offense and pain. People who do foolish things often find themselves in the equivalent of being slammed to the mat by Andre the Giant (OK, there is a spring under the mat that absorbs most of the force, so pro wrestlers don't get hurt. But pro wrestling is theater, and economic losses and the harm from medical quackery can hurt one badly.
If anything is set in stone... it is checks and balances, separation of powers, and rule of law in the American political heritage, certain rules of ethical behavior, and the old rules of logic and mathematical and scientific law. Attempt to violate those and you will be hurt. There is no spring under those to absorb the impact.
...as for Classic X'er -- his values are newer than most of us think. Shallow as someone like "Rash Libel" or "Glenn Dreck" is, these people exploit recent innovations in 'conservative' thought. Such innovations serve economic elites by allowing them to rationalize their own cruelty in economics and politics. I am surprised that the word "sadonomics" (sadism + economics) has come onto the scene.
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.