06-20-2021, 05:49 PM
4T's last as long as is necessary for resolving the Big Mess. They can take anywhere from eight years (Panic of 1857 to the first Juneteenth) to thirty (for Russia and the Soviet Union, the first serious reverses of the Imperial Russian Army to V-E Day. The Crisis of 1780 seems protracted (Boston Tea Party to the inauguration of George Washington), but even that lasted sixteen years. For the USA, the Crisis of 1860 (Civil War, including Bleeding Kansas) was short because it was mostly the Crisis War that lasted roughly four years. The economic distress leading to the military phase of the Crisis of 1940 allowed the rise of the two enemies that America absolutely, positively had to defeat... but four years after Pearl Harbor the USA was in occupation of Japan and much of Germany... and occupation duty was comparatively soft.
We are nearly thirteen years into the Crisis of 2020. Crisis eras can end with amazing suddenness. But where is the war? COVID-19 is killing on the scale of a war. The ugly incidents of January 6 scare the Hell out of wise people who wish to fortify American constitutional democracy against the next would-be despot who arrives on the scene in a mean-spirited populism.
The rest of this Crisis Era ideally involves the death of COVID-19 as a menace, a political realignment in which Americans make clear that the essence of democracy is the willingness to recognize a fair loss, and the economic paradigm of one great sweatshop of an economy in which people are obliged to show consent with economic subjection and real poverty as terms of employment is no more.
We are nearly thirteen years into the Crisis of 2020. Crisis eras can end with amazing suddenness. But where is the war? COVID-19 is killing on the scale of a war. The ugly incidents of January 6 scare the Hell out of wise people who wish to fortify American constitutional democracy against the next would-be despot who arrives on the scene in a mean-spirited populism.
The rest of this Crisis Era ideally involves the death of COVID-19 as a menace, a political realignment in which Americans make clear that the essence of democracy is the willingness to recognize a fair loss, and the economic paradigm of one great sweatshop of an economy in which people are obliged to show consent with economic subjection and real poverty as terms of employment is no more.
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.