09-09-2020, 11:29 PM
(09-09-2020, 02:34 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote:(09-09-2020, 12:51 PM)David Horn Wrote: Bang-on in my opinion. The only issues are when and how. The time may still be in the future, though not the distant future, and how is up to the rest of us. Political means beat the hell out of violence and mayhem, but either is possible.
The one encouraging note from the MarketWatch article appears in the last paragraph:
There have been 16 occasions over the last 500 years, when a rising power has challenged the ruling one, and on 12 occasions it ended with war. One piece of solace is the report notes that military conflict is unlikely.
The last sentence accords with my own benign view (and Bob Butler’s?) that a total war between superpowers is probably out of the question, as long as rational heads of state prevail. Can’t rule out asymmetric acts of warfare on a smaller scale, though. And as for internal conflict in the U.S., anarchic violence is certainly a possibility, though I would not characterize that as “war,” per se. But if the armed street violence that we have witnessed in Kenosha and Portland escalates, that could usher in a reactionary regime, akin to what followed after the German elite tired of the running gun battles between the Communists and fascists that plagued the streets of the Weimar Republic. Not saying we’re there yet, but we’re inching toward a “spiral of violence” that makes a reactionary regime more likely than a left-wing revolution. BLM and antifa protestors must take the high road, and forswear arming themselves when confronted with right-wing militias. Take a page out of Gandhi’s and MLK’s book on nonviolence, and eject anyone from their ranks who are armed with weapons of any kind. The vigilante violence that occurred in Portland is a dangerous development that must not be repeated.
The contemporary USA is more analogous to the Weimar Republic than to Imperial Russia, with formal democracy but entrenched inequality Imperial Russia had almost no democratic heritage with some transition from a feudal agrarianism to early-industrial capitalism. In neoliberal America the economic elites (big landowners, urban landlords, tycoons, financiers, bureaucratic elites, the Religious Right, and even organized crime) seem to share the same ideology. Those economic elites endorse an ethos that states that no human suffering can ever be in excess so long as the elites get everything possible, and their pet politicians share that ideology. I look at some American politicians and I can imagine the Tsar's flunkies in the Duma around 1910 or the DNVP (German National People's Party) in Germany in the 1920's.
The Hard Left may eventually have the despair of the exploited masses (basically anyone not in those elites) on their side, but the Hard Right (Distinguished so far from the neo-fascist Right that includes KKK and neo-Nazi types who would put minorities in concentration camps if not shooting pits and gas chambers. There is now no meaningful difference between the KKK and the neo-Nazis. They are too discreditable to be called upon to defend the elites and their class privilege yet... but if those elites ever feel themselves under threat they can lavish funds upon such people to smash strikers, dissidents, and people of suspect loyalty to America for their origin or beliefs. The German elites clung closely to the DNVP until there were pitched battles in the street, and then the elites started backing the Nazis just to be safe from the Commies who seemed intend on doing to those elites what they did after the Bolshevik Revolution. Mass suffering gains no sympathy from people willing to mow them down as "losers".
The Hard Right is more bloodthirsty and larger than the Far Left... but we know well who would get lavish funding from the economic elites that we already have. Let those elites become the spearhead of reaction as American democracy vanishes, and this country could be a nightmare as brutal as the Third Reich, only with a greater scale of killing of people who now consider themselves Americans.
I have occasionally heard of people describing themselves as "Tenth Amendment" citizens. Considering that that somehow ignores subsequent Amendments, especially the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth. it would seem that "Tenth Amendment citizen" means "white". Now you know.
Yes, it is better that the Left keep their guns at home or avoid having them altogether. They don't have enough, and they are not ruthless enough to use them in a successful revolution.
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.