06-08-2021, 11:30 PM
(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.
The weakening, if not the complete fade-out, of the Republican Party would decide much for a very long time. Donald Trump is of course an ethical calamity with a huge following. I see him having been one of the least effective Presidents except for 'coloring' a time with his extreme ideology. Foreign policy? The rest of the world largely chose the safer course of waiting him out rather than confronting him. Major legislation? He may have had an agenda that would have had to wait until the second term until perfect circumstances of big R majorities in both Houses of Congress would have the ability to steamroller everything, including perhaps some Constitutional Amendments.
In 2008 Dubya took a complete exit from political influence. Donald Trump has done nothing of the sort. He has sought to commit America to his contention that he was cheated of a 'rightful' victory in 2020. He still has his fanatical loyalists in power in the GOP hierarchy and many of the political figures personally loyal to him. This is a high-stakes gamble, one with huge potential of rewards and with the possibility for ruin for which others will pay. That sort of gamble can be supremely lucrative, but it is horrible business. Whether one admires the banking and insurance industries or loathes them, one must recognize their essential purpose of ensuring that those who make the bets put as much of their wealth at risk as is possible. Basically -- show the collateral and protect those who stand to lose.
Ignoring the "vigorish", someone can in theory put $200 on a 200-1 horse race and end up with $40,000. For many people, 40 grand can solve lots of problems. At the least the bettor risks only his own money. Donald Trump has been more a gambler than an investor, and he has ordinarily had others assuming much of the risk on his behalf.
But -- someone like Trump goes into politics only with the intention of paying off others with some economic agenda that burns others not in a position in which to make gains. That is one-sided politics that offers hardships to everyone not an Insider while offering huge rewards for Insiders.
Quote: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.
They are doubling down, enhancing the rewards but ensuring that the people who pay in the event of a failure are not stakeholders in a victory. This will fail badly to get the desired ends for the Insiders. Perhaps in the forthcoming 1T people will follow what I consider the basic rule of a sound capitalist order: in a well-working capitalist system, only capitalists as investors can get rich. The second is that only the capitalists take risks, and then with their own assets with borrowings to get them over the top. Good capitalism isn't gambling or corrupt dealings.
Maybe there will be more capitalists. A strong economy characteristic of a 1T will create openings for small-scale investors whose rewards are modest. That's how small business has made America great (note well: Trump's idea of how to Make America Great Again has himself as the focus). I look at the failures in retailing and I see potential openings for small-scale retailers and restaurateurs who see the interstices that bureaucratic behemoths left behind to fill the gaps. Remember well that bureaucratic bloat typically arrives toward the end of the lifecycle of a corporation. (I have a thread on the cycle of birth to death, and the venerable Sears represents what corporate death looks like. Bureaucracy is cost without gains of profit. This follows the tendency for top management of an organization to believe that it can grow its way out of a problem (well, the problems grow faster, and the potential gain from consolidating a market is far slighter than it looks), then establishing controls to keep things from falling apart.
Toward the end of the run, even marketing and engineering become bureaucratic; those activities are ill-suited to bureaucracy.
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.
