Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can!

[Bob Butler 54]

(08-02-2016, 12:09 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Dialogue is not a prominent feature of fourth turnings. There is some kind of war, and one side wins. Then consensus develops around the winning side. As you say, what you call the "secular side" or the liberal side will win, and a consensus will develop around it. During the consensus time, some dialogue is possible, but it does not go deep. In the second turning, and to some extent in the late first turning, deeper experiences and conversations occur, and new visions for our future are developed. On the other hand, a new polarization also begins.

Yes and no.  Prior to the regeneracy it is much as you say.  Extreme folk are trying to make the conflict start, to trigger the regeneracy.  You get people like Sam Adams, Thomas Paine and William Lloyd Garrison speaking extreme values with intensity, trying to get things going.

But the crisis is also a time to build a new society, to get things right.  It is a time of trial and error.  You have to do some experiments before you have a new pattern that can be set in cement come the 1T.  Crisis leaders like Lincoln and FDR have to be coalition builders, have to be inclusive, have to bring in as many factions into the consensus as possible.  While they can't forget or relax in their vision of new ideals, they aren't as narrow and extreme as the Sam Adams type of voice crying in the wilderness.

In FDRs Hundred Days, there was dialogue.  Everybody knew they had a disaster, Democrat, Republican, labor leader, robber baron, farmer...  everybody.  The transforming legislation of the Hundred Days didn't pop out of FDR's head whole.  He had many diverse enemies and rivals in and out of the White House trying to find something everyone could respect that would work.  Lincoln's cabinet was famously a team of rivals, with people holding diverse views, pulling in different directions, with Lincoln pulling it all together and making it work somehow.  If the stories of Hillary pushed at the Democratic Convention are true, she might well be good at that sort of thing...  listening to folks with different viewpoints and putting together a workable solution that takes all views into account.  While she doesn't have the presence and charisma one might want in a transforming politician, she just might have other tools just as important in getting things done.

Now, you are correct that we still have to calf the iceberg.  Right now we're still stuck to the glacier.  We're not moving anywhere.  We need to crack the ice and get floating.  We need Sam Adams types, Thomas Paines, and William Lloyd Garrisons.  While none of us are going to be that famous, a lot of us are partisan propagandists in a similar mode.

Trump might provide a wonderful opportunity to calf the iceberg.  We might end up with a bunch of diverse people sitting at the table because they could not stomach Trump.  To take a regeneracy and turn it into a transforming culture you'll have to still listen to and acknowledge valid points from as many people around the table as possible.

We, of course, are a bunch of nobodies, far from the White House, not at all comparable to the Lincoln cabinet or the ad-hoc committees of the Hundred Days.  It might not matter if we are listening to each other or not.

But I for one am more interested in exchanging posts with people who are actually listening and responding civilly with cogent points.  Yes, there are sometimes extreme partisans repeating flawed positions that disregard conflicting viewpoints and reality.  If an obstinate partisan is being particularly blind and stubborn, I'lll rebut.  That's not overly satisfying though.  There is more to be done than that.