De Facto Civil War Between Police and the Public?

[Bob Butler 54]

(07-31-2016, 08:36 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(07-30-2016, 02:22 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(07-30-2016, 02:10 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(07-21-2016, 07:27 AM)Anthony Wrote: No one wants to see that happen - but the destigmatization of treason that the Boom Awakening played host to makes it exponentially more likely to happen.

I admit, you do have a point there. Rhetoric of revolution escalated during the 2T. Fanaticism on the right followed suit during the 3T. Nowadays there is less respect for our American laws and institutions.

The intensity of the spirals of rhetoric and violence is high, but not building to a violent internal 4T high, at least not yet.  The Revolutionary and Civil War spirals went all the way, over the top, into all out military violence.  While people don't like to take the threat of a 1930s era American Communist Revolution seriously, Senator McCarthy in the 1950s found an awful lot of intelligent well intended folks that thought democracy and capitalism had failed America in the 1930s.  That spiral fell short, however, quashed by the perceived success of the New Deal.

Yes, there were riots in the recent 2T and incidents like Waco and OKC in the 3T.  We've got Black Lives Matter and the police with their traditional abuse of the justice system glaring each other down today.  Still, the 2T and 3T spirals are long dormant, not escalating, and the racial justice confrontation is drawing far more 'this has got to stop' rhetoric than 'they got one of ours, let's take out two of theirs.'  While spirals of rhetoric and violence should always be watched, read your history and try for some objectivity when judging just how far a spiral has advanced.

It's quite possible we will muddle through, and there's enough sense so that enough good decisions are made that we'll pull through the crisis era. Sometimes, I must admit, I am over-the-top in proclaiming the demise of civilization and American society if Republicans aren't defeated soon, etc. There will always be some people around who hold up what I consider progress.

No doubt that today's Republicans are beyond the pale in that regard. But life moves on, and we can't permanently wipe out conservatives. I do hold that progress exists, and has been made; that the arc of history bends toward justice. But ways of war and violence, while they may be necessary at times, do not bring us permanent peace. It does take, I think, broader views of ourselves and what we are capable of, that go beyond conventional viewpoints; that we need to raise our consciousness in all senses of the term. As humanity does this, peace and progress will get easier.

I guess there are some questions that I'd like to see answered somewhat objectively.  How much are the progressives willing to fight to change society?  How hard will the conservatives wish to cling to established culture? 

We can begin to answer as individuals.  Individuals will have quite different answers.  The people we tend to draw here seem to have more extreme answers than most.  On many an issue you'll be pushing for an obvious need for big time change while Classic Xer will be pushing just as hard the other way.  You're both passionate from different perspectives.  Yet, an exchange of ideas and emotion between the two of you seems inadequate to measure the state of the nation.  A lot of folk, to say the least, aren't as intense and extreme as some of the folk we have around here.  The extremes alone do not begin to represent the whole.

There have been a bunch of crisis era issues that got pretty darn intense, and I'll throw in the Civil Rights confrontation of the 1950s and 1960s as an out of 4T issue with a similar intensity.  The Revolution, Civil War, and World War II went full military.  There aren't that many who will say they shouldn't have gone full military.  The issues being fought over -- taxation without representation, slavery and fascism -- had to be resolved in favor of human rights, equality and democracy.  (It says so right in the history books written by the victors.)  The former two crises had internal spirals of rhetoric and violence that included violent catalysts that might today be called terrorist.  

Today we have several conflicts that might be deemed very very important, but are they important enough to kill for, to die for?  Do both the conservatives and progressives think the problem is serious enough that violence is preferable to yielding?  If one looses at the ballot box, is it worth picking up a gun?  I'll throw up three issues, and be open to others:  economic inequality, a racist justice system and global warming.

Ideally, a charismatic president with firm control of Congress could resolve all three without full scale violence.  Naturally, I'd prefer it be a progressive president with a progressive Congress.  The firm control of Congress has been elusive and might remain elusive so long as the current filibuster rules continue to be abused to a far greater extent than they were in prior crises.  Ideally, the conservatives don't get so gung ho to resist change that they would go full military to prevent change in those three areas.

But those are my hopes.  I try to distinguish between hopes that my personal values might be implemented and where the nation really is politically.  Of the three issues, only racial inequality has the start of a spiral of violence underway.  As I judge it, even that spiral has more 'this is horrible and must stop' feeling associated with it than 'they got one of ours, let's get two of theirs'.  Thus, I'm not seeing any of my three current issues spiraling up...  as of this moment.

This doesn't mean that I can't see how people strongly effected by said issues could see them as vital enough to be worthy of violence.  Currently not spiraling up does not mean unworthy of spiraling up or can't ever spiral up.  For example, if the effects global warming become yet more obvious but big corporations backing continued fossil fuel use maintain firm control over the political system, well, things could get violent.  Is it out of hand yet?  Obviously not.  Might it become so someday?  That depends on how stubborn and committed both sides get.  If an issue can be solved at the ballot box, there is no need to reach for the gun.

And looking at past crises, winning progress has required strident propagandists and terrorists proclaiming new values with full out partisan fervor.  I'll throw up as examples Thomas Paine, Samuel Adams, William Lloyd Garrison, John Brown and Martin Luther King.  Thus there is something to be said for proclaiming, living and dying for new values early and often, not that I'm advocating that last just yet.

Flipping through the net, I stumbled into a Sam Adams quote.  "It does not take a majority to prevail... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men."

Anyway, perhaps a few brushfires are called for.  I'd just strive not confuse the ideals and reality.  

There is also that idea from the novel Shogun.  There is only one thing that justifies rising up against one's overlord, one's government....   

You have to win.