Following COVID-19

[David Horn]

(02-07-2021, 11:31 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(02-05-2021, 11:00 AM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(02-05-2021, 08:43 AM)David Horn Wrote: We all need a Satan to hate and fear.  Trump will do ... for now.

One time I tried to analyze a scapegoat for each decade beginning with the 1950s and I believe this is what I came up with:

1910s (late): the Kaiser and liquor[color=#000000][font=Helvetica]1950s:  Communists
1920s: anarchists and radicals, especially the IWW
1930s: economic royalists, then gangsters
1940s: fascists
1960s:  Entrenched Establishment
1970s:  Oil Shieks
1980s:  Labor Unions
1990s:  Smokers and Drunk Drivers
2000s:  Al Qaddafi (Architects of the 9/11 attacks)
2010s:  Trump and associates.

That seems a decent list.  I might question the 1960s entry, going against the entrenched establishment.  The civil rights movement and tendency to go with hot wars with your containment might be mentioned explicitly.

The other thing of note is that I would gleefully go back to labor unions, smokers, drunk drivers as being the greatest problem we’re facing.

You can see the cycles and the crises in there.

It is said that in the crisis we face down the worst problem that a culture faces.  This list seems to say that the problem’s nature and severity changes.

I could focus in on the latest crisis.  I have the crisis issues as being COVID, the economy, racism, red violence and global warming.  In a list with one or two issues per decade, a list that long would stand out.  It is true that Trump stands out in his refusal to address these issues, to change the culture.  Still, the problems would have existed without him.  Well, maybe not the red violence.  By reacting to the first black president, by giving the nod to the KKK and Neo Nazi, he brought a long simmering issue to a head again.  That issue might well be laid entirely at Trump’s feet, or did he just accelerate it coming to a head?.

You only missed the huge and growing inequality in society and the mass hysteria that's overcome thinking people -- mostly on the Right. In short, we're eyeball deep in crises, and nearly half of us are working overtime to make them worse.