I'm a member of the Homeland Generation (2005). Ask me anything.

[pbrower2a]

(08-24-2020, 02:11 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(08-24-2020, 01:25 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I interpret this as powerful evidence that the Millennial and post-Millennial generations are anti-Trump... and that the politics of late-wave Millennial and early-wave post-Millennial youth will be hostile to the GOP as it now exists. (Of course, the GOP could change its ways -- but cultural patterns and political attitudes rarely change over people's lives.

I would put in the caveat, except in a 4T.  We will see the Republicans change, but they will likely go on with their old values a bit longer.

Part of the cause of progress is that old fuddy-duddies, let alone the nasty old bast@rds committed to bad old ideas die off. Segregationism was strong in "Kukluxistan" when the Southern leaders were mostly raised in the presence of Confederate veterans who lamented the defeat in the "War of Northern Aggression" and the 'loss' of a glorious way of life. Such is the message of someone like Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone with the Wind . Say what you want about some of the ugly stereotypes and now politically-objectionable stuff (yes, that 'political meeting' was a Klan rally)... there is a big difference between the silver-tongued orators like Thomas Bilbo who could express racial hatred coherently and someone like George Wallace, who could offer it only as a muddle. 

I am reminded of what is said of the Académie Française, the institution that officially guides the definition of what is acceptable in the French language. It prefers fin de la semaine to the Anglo-American "weekend". (OK, anyone who has learned French and recognizes the need to discipline one's mouth to make le français that one speaks sound elegant, "weekend" just does not fit. I can understand why the French would prefer  [i]baladeur[/i], [i]ordinateur[/i], [i]logiciel[/i], and [i]courriel[/i]  to walkman, computer, software and e-mail, none of which well fit French vocal patterns. (OK, I would transform "weekend" into "vicande" and computer into "computeur" , but I may know a bit too much about French for my own good. Maybe the French will at some time use something like "vicande" to distinguish Anglo-American ideas of what would be a literal fin de semaine, but the  Académie will be slow to do so.  Members of the Académie die off, and linguistic progress becomes possible. 

The changes most likely to vanish during a 4T are (ironic for their novelty, but not for the depravity of much of it) those that arise in the 3T. 3T fads and frenzies are usually superficial enough that the people who practice them quickly find them irrelevant. Mindless ways of spending time and money  have a tendency to die off as resources vanish and realities more pressing appear. To be sure, if it is good it tends to stick, whatever the temporal provenance. 

At this point I cannot say that the GOP will die. If people see it as a menace to what they cherish and find necessary, then it can die. Americans may start to consider the GOP an authoritarian Party inimical to democracy and find it largely irrelevant much as happened to the SED in East Germany or the PZPR in Poland. It is also possible that this Crisis Era ends as an equivalent of an Era of Good Feeling begins at the start of the High, with conservatives finding their way into the Democratic Party but Trump-era semi-fascists find no home in the Democratic Party. Of course, as in the 1820's and 1850's, the Whigs and the Republicans formed as part of a near-duopoly. I can see the expanded big-tent Democratic Party splitting along Social Democratic and Christian Democratic lines as in Germany. 

A solid democracy needs an effective conservative party to keep radical reforms from the Left careening into unchecked extremism. The Weimar Republic failed in part because it had no responsible or effective conservative party (the Nationalist Party was good at carping but bad at checking) and the Center Party was ineffective because it had a narrow religious base.