01-19-2021, 10:20 AM
(01-18-2021, 11:31 AM)David Horn Wrote:(01-17-2021, 08:40 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: It will not be as inequitable. A new consensus will be that if the economic order and political stability are to be maintained, then people other than owners and executives must have a stake in the system.
The last 1T equalized the economic lives of white Americans, and did next to nothing for anyone not in that class. This time it has to be broad-based, or our grandchildren and their children will be back staring at this same state of affairs. If this 1T fails in that regard, the next 2T will be explosive.
But that is significant. One of the big social divides in economic results was between Protestants and Catholics. Polish-Americans, Italian-Americans, and most Irish-Americans (of the latter, the ones not connected to corrupt urban machines) were poor before World War II. Let's put it this way: when little Stanley (short for Stanislaw) Kowalczyk was bagging groceries, he heard plenty of Polish jokes. Once a Colonel in the US Army, he didn't. There were successful American Jews before World War II, but far more after the war.
Let's not forget that blacks of the GI Generation had their role in the Civil Rights struggle. Blacks who fought an enemy with much the same bigotry and viciousness of the KKK came back often with the discipline necessary for resisting the KKK. GI Blacks knew enough to play by the rules, but they won enough times and their wins stuck.
Had this 4T consolidated a Trump-like agenda, then we would have a 1T that few people (aside from the Mater Class and some hangers-on) would have liked. The following 2T would have a repudiation of its inequity, oppression, and regimentation as its focus. Economic elites are rarely gentle in responding to criticism elsewhere, and they would take delight in shedding the blood of any moral or political challengers. If such bloody repression of dissent prevailed, then the following 3T would be more depraved than any 3T in prior American history, and the best thing that could happen to America in the 4T would be its defeat. Think of Germany, Italy, and Japan in the last 4T. "Evil Empires" do great harm to Humanity as a whole -- including to their subjects who are supposedly privileged to live under their rule.
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.