06-08-2021, 04:51 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-08-2021, 05:03 PM by Eric the Green.)
(06-08-2021, 01:18 PM)galaxy Wrote:(06-08-2021, 10:15 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:(06-07-2021, 07:20 PM)galaxy Wrote: revolution: country united against external enemy
depression/wwii: country united against internal enemy who is not a person or group of people/country united against external enemy
civil war: country divided against itself, intense identity politics/"culture war," people from the two sides feel like they no longer have anything in common
2008-202?: country divided against itself, intense identity politics/"culture war," people from the two sides feel like they no longer have anything in common
Again and again, race proves to be this nation's Achilles heel. Add a racial dimension to the crisis (such as...a black president and a resulting huge increase in political polarization in 2010, for example) and it's all over.
This Cold Civil War will end with resignation, not glory. We should all pray that 1/6/21 was the climax.
If this Crisis ends with COVID-19, then it ends with a whimper. Which side in the cultural Cold War prevails will depend upon who is in charge at the end. One side will be far more successful in economics, especially in meeting basic human needs that go beyond an animal level of survival.
My own political views (ideologically centrist but voting strongly Democratic, because I view the Republicans as rapidly becoming terrifyingly authoritarian) are probably biasing me here, but I have begun to wonder if Donald Trump's death (likely during the next decade because of the state of his health) might mark the end of the 4T. It's clear that the end of the pandemic won't do it - that would be a 12-year turning, which is far too short - and it looks like the Republican Party is trapped in some kind of Trumpist holding pattern until he dies. Surely even his supporters here recognize how unusual this is. Usually when a party loses an election, it changes. After losing 2008, the Republicans couldn't get away from Bush fast enough, and after losing 2016, Democrats started trying to be simultaneously populist and technocratic to appeal to their rapidly shifting coalition.
But the Republicans after losing 2020? They're doubling down on what they were doing before, desperate for the critical Trump endorsement in the primaries, and there's no sign that this will stop anytime soon. Perhaps when he's gone we can finally get some depolarization going, which might be the end of the crisis, but if it is, the nation will feel relief, not victory. It will be a Crisis that was survived, not defeated.
Thanks for your input. You could be right. I think a relief may be enough, but more than how we feel about it, what steps were taken to meet actual challenges that we face will determine if there was "victory" or even "relief" or not. Have we turned the corner on replacing fossil fuels? Have we learned not to pollute and encroach so much on Nature, thus causing so many pandemics and disasters? Have racism, inequality/poverty and neo-liberal ideology been sent on a decline? Are we ready to relinquish our go-it-alone imperialism? Are we ready to finally do something about our gun obsession and the resulting numbing beat of ongoing massacres? Have we rescued democracy from the many old and new threats to it? Have we been able to somehow help any of the peoples now rising up for democracy around the world? Have we learned to distinguish between truth and lies again as the age of Trump, QAnon, 9-11 "truth", Agenda 21, anti-vaxxers and chemtrails recedes, and have we mastered social media and cyber warfare? Has the Republican Party, and not just Trump, been put into a tailspin of defeat so it can no longer block all action? How well we meet these concerns will tell us if we achieved a victory, or we just go on like we are now. If we do that, then no matter how we might feel about Trump being here or not, we will have lost, and lost badly. And the USA as we know it will not long survive. Nor will world civilization as we know it. We can't solve all these problems in the next 10 years, but we must reverse the current trends and return to progress. 4Ts are times to choose. Go into Drive, or into Reverse. Blue or red. The choice is on the ballot, and depends further on full participation by our new civic generation, and all of us. And on the defeat of any armed resistance by the right-wing.
