12-07-2020, 02:18 AM
(12-02-2020, 04:32 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: As I have indicated in the past, I think that-this time around-a weak 1T is the best case scenario.
I wouldn't necessarily refer to a 1T as a "High". Consider countries for which the 4T had gone badly.
Those "Highs" would seem to have repression and conformity to an inordinate degree (I think of Franco's Spain and all countries that came under Soviet domination as the result of the Second World War). The difference between the Bundesrepublik and the DDR fit that description.
Quote:If the next 1T should reach the height of a weak 1T, I suspect that it will seem a blank period for those of us acquainted with generational theory. Definitely not one of the great barbecues of history.
I am tempted to believe that instead of a shooting war we have COVID-19. Even if comparatively few Americans send up in uniform and with military discipline, most of us who will survive will have taken due precautions to avoid the Plague of Donald Trump.
This Crisis could have ended badly had Donald Trump gotten his way. We all heard the angry, vile rhetoric. We saw the President egg on racists and religious bigots. We saw a personality cult. We even saw the first stages of a politicized secret police, the sorts of people who appear in Chevy Suburbans or similar vehicles with a US flag on one side and a Trump banner on the other. We heard the President attack alleged backsliders on his Side.
(The unwritten Dictator's Playbook states -- first persecute and even liquidate those who were on the wrong side of the "revolution". Trump missed that. If this 4T should culminate in an American dictatorship, then one can expect the torture chambers, labor camps, and shooting pits first fill with ideological enemies because the person and Party that puts an end to American democracy will have learned some lessons from Trump through his failures.
Quote:But even a weak 1T would likely be welcomed by many, as relief from turmoil.
I predict that we will see changes in the way that we pay people and treat people at work. Crowding people at workplaces is one way to get cheap poultry, but it costs lives in the time of a plague. Much that seems old and stale will vanish, but paradoxically that will be to a large extent the accretions of bad habits from the 3T. Business will be more tightly regulated to prevent scams like Enrob in the late 1990's and the pervasive fraud in the lending and real estate businesses in the Double-Zero Decade. Availability of such things as real estate will matter more than (often artificial and shaky) appreciation.
Also -- America's model minorities could be the heroes of the preservation of American democracy. They all collectively picked liberty over economic gain and getting treated less badly than others. Model minorities are the people most vulnerable when democracy dies (German Jews are the prime example, and think of what the fascistic 1915 Klan would have done to American Jews had it had the chance). See also kulaks in Russia.
Quote:Of course, eventually people will tire of the 1T, and welcome the start of a new Awakening. (Which gives me something to look forward to in my old age).
Something is changing. We now typically have four active adult generations at one time. This may mute the worst features of any era. Maybe this 4T lacks the ferocity of the last one because the Silent are still around in their eighties and late seventies. Maybe President Joe Biden will not quite fit the model of a Lincoln/FDR/Churchill sort of leader any more than President Barack Obama did. This said, Boomers had their chance, and the Boom achievements through the President range from mediocre (Clinton) to poor (Dubya) to horrid (Trump).
People are living longer because they are staying physically and mentally active longer if they have a chance. People have more likely quit smoking; they are controlling their weight; they even drink less. They may be drinking less alcohol, but they might excuse that by saying that they are drinking better alcohol. The elderly are finding ways to use computers. People who can keep working do so.
Fads and crazes from the 3T are particularly likely to die. People tire of them because they are empty from the start, even if superficially attractive at first. Recall that there has been a strong nostalgia market for every decade from the 1930's to ... well, at least the 1970's. I am old enough (I reach the Big Bad Six-Five one week from today --- and it will be the weirdest birthday in my life because my sole companion will be a cat. My brother will be about fifty miles north of New York City, so guess where I expect him to be between weeks on the job. Damn, I can't think of a better place to be for a Big Six-Five than the Big Apple... and I have never been there. Oh, do I know where to go. Museums, museums, and museums).
Maybe I will go to Chicago instead, which is within a day trip for me.
Going into the 1940's, there were relatively few people (from the Progressive Generation) in their eighties. Professor John Dewey was one of comparatively few. Some Missionary adults like Helen Keller did put off going into "That Good Night", but note well that the Lost (who I guess were the heaviest smokers in American history) either did not reach advanced age or got incarcerated in some "Home for the Golden Years" (talk about commercial Newspeak) out of some convenience for their kids (America on the move, making cross-country moves for an employer or seeking to 'find themselves'; old people could make that tricky. Some of the Lost were prosperous enough to buy reruns the cultural detritus of the 1920's... but they didn't. Did you notice that I said "detritus"? Aside from the last silent movies and some interesting music and literature, maybe a little art... the pop culture was awful. The 1920's really were a slum of a decade with their speculative bubble, amoral hedonism, "scientific" racism (the term was eugenics), corporate-welfare-state politics, and the monstrous KKK. The Harlem Renaissance? Fine. The Tulsa riot (by white people against successful blacks in 1921?) Damn! Does anyone want to question whether Kowards, Kooks, and Killers weren't behind it? (Note how I spelled the word "cowards").
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.