Following COVID-19

[Eric the Green]

(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
1920s: anarchists and radicals, especially the IWW
1930s: economic royalists, then gangsters
1940s: fascists
1950s:  Communists
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?.

Scapegoat means blaming targets who are not to blame, but divert attention from the real culprits. A lot of those on this list are real culprits. For the 1980s I would put welfare recipients at the top of the list. I would replace Trump and Associates for the 2010s as a scapegoat (he is a real cause of crisis) with the conspiracy theories and whom they blame. And of course Trump has made black lives matter and antifa into scapegoats. For the 2000s I presume you mean Al Qaeda. A real culprit as well; so with most of the others.