10-29-2020, 07:09 AM
(10-29-2020, 12:21 AM)jleagans Wrote: Texas is going blue and is the future of the Democratic party. When it goes blue its an earthquake, Democrat party officially becomes the "keep Texas blue party" and will move heaven and earth to do it.
And when Texas goes blue, the Republican party will IMMEDIATELY become the party of Electoral College abolition.
If you doubt me, pull up the Texas election results in 2012 and 2016 and take a good long look.
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To the topic, the degree of overlap between this era and the gilded age I just cant get out of my head. There are 1896 comparisons, Roosevelt bull moose comparisons, pandemic comparisons, yellow journalism comparisons....in the end I think this is the 1896 election. Not an often thought of election (though KARL ROVE wrote an amazing book on it explaining why history is remembering its importance wrong), but politics post-Lincoln was totally frozen and Mckinley in 1896 broke the frozen/polarized nature and basically "won" American politics until FDR.
We are in a Crisis Era. 1896 was in the opposite of a Crisis Era, an Awakening era. We have a pandemic, but that would in itself describe 1920.
We have a pandemic being handled horrendously and without an excuse. The best analogue for this pandemic is AIDS, which people could stop with wiser behavior and competent medicine. Of course, AIDS made its ugly appearance in an Awakening Era. Cultural life in America is as low as it could be in intellectual content -- if one looks at recorded music. Looking for some sound equipment? I miss the stereo boutiques in which one could listen to whatever music was one's passion. The retailer now chooses what music you will use for testing the equipment that you buy... and that music will be country music (which sounds alike on everything) or rap (which isn't music). What did I use as a test? Classical music for string quartet -- two violins, a viola, and a cello. That is the acid test for music even if it doesn't allow one to crank up the volume. Two violins, a viola, and a cello are a fair proportion of most of the performers of a symphony orchestra (yes, I always brought a piece of loud orchestral music, often a symphony or a piano concerto) to judge how good the equipment sound at high volume -- but only after I had given the equipment (especially the critical speakers) the acid test of a string quartet. If a string quartet sounds bad on speakers, then buying those speakers will be a mistake. But here I have digressed too far.
Deaths from COVID-19 are in the numbers that most of us associate with the casualties of a war going badly, most obviously a costly stalemate that will eventually exhaust the nation. We have already surpassed in about eight months the combat deaths of the Union side in the Civil War, and we are rapidly approaching those of the USA against Hitler and Tojo. At the least, America was freeing slaves of the Confederacy, the Third Reich, and Thug Japan before we approached even 100,000 deaths in combat. Under Trump, America is achieving no high purpose. No slaves are being freed.
The economy is getting sketchy, and much of the economic relief is intended to keep share values at high levels. We already had an economic meltdown due to the collapse of the real estate market, and we are on the brink of another. I would not be surprised if Trump and his Senate allies tank the economy to stick it to the Biden Administration as well as an electorate that both believe 'betrayed' them.
... The point is that the Republican Party as we now know it has no future. Such could be said as well in 1932. But eventually the GOP got a few things together and started looking to local races in which they could contest an incompetent or corrupt Democrat who got swept in with one of the waves from 1930 to 1934. It took until the 1940's for the Republicans to get control of the House again, and until 1952 to win the Presidency. I expect the Republican Party to return to pre-Reagan ways for lack of alternatives, or for the Democratic to become the place where conservatives have a chance based on local issues before an unwieldy Big Tent party splits. But I am getting ahead of myself.
Trump and his enablers must go.
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.