(08-04-2016, 12:26 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: As much as I'm loath to agree with CH here (mostly because I think he is possibly psychologically unstable and have no evidence he's started on some meds or something--I have noticed he hasn't posted about his nebulous "restorationism" lately though) the fact is that whatever is the status quo at the end of the 3T (Neo-Liberal economics, Neo-Con foreign policy, globalism, multiculturalism, and open borders) becomes the "Establishment" of the 4T.
To the extent that the Establishment show itself corrupt, cruel, rapacious, reckless, and selfish, it loses its credibility while bungling the Crisis. At the extreme it may face overthrow, dispossession, outlawry, and even extermination. It's far easier to win a 4T war as a major power if one does a good job of meeting human needs, fostering innovation and imagination, building and restoring infrastructure, and promoting human brotherhood beforehand. The Establishment can save itself by appealing to the best in human nature -- courage, conscience, rationality, kindness, and some appropriate caution.
I saw much of the Republican and Democratic national conventions. Political conventions do not ordinarily shape politics, but I can say without hesitation that the Democrats solved more problems than did the Republicans. The Democrats co-opted Reagan without the social Darwinism and low-grade bigotry, transforming the 3T agenda into something suitable for the late stages of a Crisis Era. Donald Trump failed to unify a Republican Party that had seemed in political lockstep for about thirty-five years but had started to show some minor rifts. Republicans ended up finding scapegoats instead of solutions.
I saw a citation of John Podhoretz, a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan. In essence, "You could take five paragraphs out of Obama's speech and you would have a typical Reagan speech. I should know."
Reality will destroy the worst tendencies in American life while bringing out the best, if the leadership is competent enough to recognize the wisdom of riding the only safe tide in a 4T.
Quote:As such to solve the 4T whatever that establishment is must be completely smashed before the 4T is resolved. This is true whether the 4T ends well or ends badly.
Not quite. The bad behavior, the bad business practices, the lunatic practices in institutions, and the depraved culture, most of which appear in a 3T die in a 4T, whether fairly early in a largely-wholesome society (America in the early '30s) or late (in a fetid bunker in Berlin) in a sick society.
Quote:Now before someone accuses me of siding with the only person who is likely to be a fascist on this board, the fact is that this comes straight out of S&H's very own theories. No matter what happens in the 1T, no matter how the 1T feels, or is like it is fundamentally different from what was before the 4T. That happens, and can only happen with whatever the establishment was being completely destroyed.
American leadership during the Crisis appealed to the best in American history. America brought liberal ideas to or back to countries that it conquered. It is arguable that FDR emancipated even more slaves than did Lincoln. The pseudoscience of eugenics (very much a 3T innovation and perversion, and which well served the racism of the Axis Powers) got discredited as it was linked to consummate cruelty. The dominance of WASP elites shattered as non-WASPs who had largely been consigned to poverty (like Polish-Americans, Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, and Mexican-Americans) found themselves in military service that tested the mettle of people of whom little was expected before the war. Jim Crow practices might have survived, but many returning black veterans and others of the GI Generation learned how to evade it (Go North or West, young and talented black man!) or developed the means to challenge it (Thurgood Marshall, Ed Brooke, Rosa Parks). Say what you want about Dr. Martin Luther King and other Silent figures who appealed successfully to the conscience of white people -- GI blacks did their share in the struggle for the rights of fellow blacks.
Don't forget that one small religious minority in America whose brethren were the scapegoats and sacrificial host to the Moloch of gas chambers in one of America's enemies became an essential part of the American Establishment. We Americans found how useful the smart and canny Jewish scientists and entrepreneurs could be. Just imagine Good and Evil being twisted around in World War II, with Germany rejecting the Nazis, Japan going democratic, and America coming under the Invisible Empire. Germany gets the smart Jewish scientists and canny Jewish entrepreneurs on its side and defeats in turn the Soviet Union and a Klan-dominated America with miracle weapons like jet fighters and bombers, Klan-dominated America having wasted many talented people in its own Moloch. It is far easier to win with human decency than with bestial cruelty. One wins most effectively by ensuring that the Other Side has nothing for which to fight. (SF novel under imagination, something that makes more sense than The Man in the High Castle).
GIs set a tough example for the Millennial Generation to follow. I am satisfied that the Millennial Generation will meet the current Crisis as well as the Crisis demands. We may see the redemption of America by the end of this decade.
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.