11-22-2020, 05:16 PM
(11-22-2020, 12:24 AM)Mickey123 Wrote:(11-19-2020, 03:33 PM)LTsmith Wrote: I'm curious to hear anyone else's thoughts on acting pre-seasonally or preparing for the end of a Crisis and beginning of a High. Thanks!
The difficulty in preparing at this point is that we don't know where this Crisis is going, we don't know what the final conflict is going to be and how it's going to turn out.
By late next year, the covid-19 pandemic will be mostly over in 1st world countries. We will have vaccinated enough of our population to have herd immunity, and social distancing will end and people will try to go back to normal. But the crisis will be nowhere close to over, and there is no predicting exactly what will come next. Some massive global war involving China and Russia is possible. A U.S. civil war is possible, some attempted fascist takeover or socialist revolution is possible.
Because people do not have the dubious privilege of watching loved ones die of COVID-19 as they do of seeing people die of Parkinsonism, cancer, congestive heart failure, lupus, and cirrhosis (OK, that uncle by marriage was a buffoon who who talked about where he went and "oh, did I get drunk there"... if I went to an interesting place, then the last thing I would want to do is get drunk), the full horror of the Trump plague has yet to sink in. It will as people who worked in the slaughterhouses that COVID-19 made out of hospitals start telling stories of people dying alone and helpless. The death toll is already similar to that of a Crisis-era war, and nobody is going to get any purple hearts for dying of COVID-19.
Russia, India, Iran, the United States, and Brazil are among the countries most ravaged by COVID-19. Plagues are excellent defenses against invasions. One of the more memorable lines from the original Star Trek series had a Klingon saying
"Only fools fight in a burning house"
I see Joe Biden less likely to bungle his way into a war, let alone start one, than Donald Trump. We all have the responsibility to do the best that we can with what we have in a Crisis Era. In politics, anyone completely happy with the leadership is in the cult.
Quote:Afterwards, it may turn out to be a really bad idea to have been vocally on the wrong side. Socialist revolutions in particular generally result in massive purges with millions killed, including anyone who opposed socialism, who might have opposed socialism, or who supported the wrong kind of socialism. A fascist takeover could result in the expulsion of large numbers of minorities of various sorts. War against China could mean it might be a bad time to be racially Chinese in the west.
I hope that we have learned a lesson from our taste of "fascism light". Nixon may have been as competent a political leader and administrator in our history, but his morals took him down. Trump is much less competent and much more immoral than Nixon. Nixon won re-election in a 49-state landslide, and Trump went down in electoral defeat in a bid for a second term. We should have taken that "grab 'em by the (pussycat)" quote seriously. If I am on a criminal trial as a juror, and some man grabbed a woman by her crotch without her consent solely for his gratification I would expect to convict the fellow of "criminal sexual conduct". That is good for a few years in a Michigan state prison.
Morality matters greatly in leadership. Leaders need to be in the Adult role most of the time, the Parent role when consolation and compassion are necessary... and the Child role rarely. Leaders must understand what can hurt feelings but must brush such off often. Servants and laborers have more freedom to be themselves. Leadership comes with certain privileges, but those have responsibilities attached. Privilege without responsibility implies that others have responsibilities without privileges. Who wants to be a serf of a rapacious, self-indulgent feudal lord?
... Part of the art of using the generational theory is to recognize what part of reality is the generational theory and what isn't. Some realities remain true irrespective of the time. Elites all decay in competence and bloat in demands as time passes. The capitalist on the make may be far better than his rapacious, irresponsible, self-indulgent heirs who, unlike the founder, have little connection to the reality of toil and hardship. At some point all elites lose whatever credibility they once had. For good reason the Medici and Borgia families have practically disappeared from leadership roles anywhere in Italy.
Quote:Highs are culturally conservative and conformist. But we don't know what values the High will be conforming to, so it would be difficult to predict how to position yourself.
Precisely. We do not know who will set the tone for the upcoming 1T. It's clear that America's Model Minorities have far more of a chance than America's white losers -- meth fiends, opiate addicts, and violent racists. Donald Trump went far in appealing to white Americans in economic distress and cultural marginalization. He also failed as President. I'm not saying that poor white people in unfortunate areas deserve to be smacked down; they have had plenty of that already. They have their work cut out for them, and the questionable achievements of Donald Trump on their behalf have done them no good. They will likely have to take care of themselves; they have no real friends in our political system -- not fellow poor non-white people, and certainly not middle-class or upper-class white people.
Model minorities are the most vulnerable people in a Crisis Era, especially when a dictatorial regime has populist flavoring. Was there ever a better example of a model minority than German Jews? How often need I say that there was nothing wrong with the German people between 1933 and 1945 that Judaism would not have solved. But if the society remains sane, model minorities are people to imitate -- at least for habits of education, career choices, and business formation. It would be far easier for white Anglo people to imitate the culture of the "Talented Tenth" of African-Americans or successful Latin-American populations who aren't particularly exotic except perhaps in appearance than East Asians or South Asians.
Quote:I suggest strongly protecting your anonymity online. This way any statements you're making today which might turn out to be "wrong" 10 years from now won't be traced back to you.
Most of us can count on being wrong about some of our predictions. I thought that Obama was going to be the New FDR.
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.