12-21-2020, 01:21 PM
(12-21-2020, 12:00 PM)David Horn Wrote: Don't assume a huge difference between the tribal factions, regardless of where they are. Tribe is the second circle in the security zone we built over millennia as hunter-gatherers -- even predating agriculture -- so it's pretty primal. It takes desire to set that aside, but it's still there, lurking beneath the surface in all of us. Autocrats tend to stoke that innate trigger, probably without a lot of thought on their part. That's the primitive leadership style coming to the fore. You're right that the enlightenment ideas are hardening into a new paradigm (WEIRD seems as good an acronym for it as any), but it will take a long time for that to become engrained in the culture. For now, it's an ongoing struggle of two models of communal life, and both will continue a lot longer than we will.
I think you are underestimating how much the roundhead / Enlightenment / blue / WEIRD patten has already been set it some parts of the world, and the direction mankind has been moving since around the English Civil War. Still, the old pattern has its grip, true enough.
But it is almost gratifying that the most potent man in the culture doesn't dare declare martial law, and if he did dare the response most likely would be patience.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.