09-08-2021, 04:10 AM
(09-07-2021, 08:12 PM)sbarrera Wrote:(09-07-2021, 02:37 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: At the county fair, their booth was opposite the Republican booth. The Republicans know who I am, and were polite enough. It was all about electing a slate of pols. The people were all adults. The "Patriot Party" had children at its booth, which is inappropriate. It was all about Donald Trump.
The Patriot Party was easy to bait. I went by with a pulled-pork sandwich and the supposed adult there got to hear my insult.
"Gee, it's really easy to eat pork after you think of Animal Farm... and this pork sandwich reminds me of the fascist pig (Orwell's Animal Farm is an allegory of the Soviet Union, but the Soviet Union had much in common with fascism, as is well known) we just had as President".
The supposed adult was steamed. How could anyone deny the reality behind the personality cult around the Great and Infallible One!
great story!
What would you say are the chances of this new party making any headway in an election?
This may not be representative. I have seen only the local group, and it is heavily into an abortion ban and "gun rights".
Its heritage goes only so far back as Donald Trump. The Republican party still makes much of Lincoln. (Never mind that Franklin Roosevelt co-opted Lincoln at every possible turn as a model of wartime leadership and for a better world after the Great Struggle. But, yes, Lincoln was a Republican; Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican; Dwight Eisenhower was a Republican... and I see Trump's good predecessor Obama having much more in common with Lincoln, TR, and Ike than Trump does.
I have no idea of what the objectives of the Patriot Party are. I see it at worst as a Mordred-like or Hagen-like splinter from the GOP that can ensure a defeat of the GOP by splitting the votes of the Right. After some crippling defeats the Republican Party will beg for a merger with the Patriot Party at the expense of any independence from it. It may want the focus on "cultural" issues such as "gun rights", abortion, homosexuality, creationism, anti-vaccination ideology, and school prayer instead of on "Profits First, Profits Only" neoliberalism. This is an anti-intellectual cult.
Maybe it believes that it can merge with the GOP and take it over only to make it stronger. It believes that it alone represents the "Real America".
Well, what is the "Real America"? I see multiple, equally-valid traditions that may agree on pragmatic matters. "Little Italy" and "Chinatown" may have little in common except to say that Italian cuisine is really Chinese cuisine with dairy and much more meat... and that the people of both communities may be similar in social-economic status. (Marco Polo introduced spaghetti from China to Italy). If it is politics, then much of America believes in gender equity, environmental improvement, law and order, sobriety of bloodstream and conduct, religious toleration, and the value of formal education.
Is the world of the yeshiva as valid as that of the barrio? Of course.
.... The generational theory implies that the Crisis Eras are the end of many antiquated practices no longer tenable (let us say Jew-hating in Europe in the last Crisis, slavery in America in the one before that, and the concept of the Divine Right of Kings in the American and French revolutions). Much that dies off is not-so-new. Fascism, for all its pretensions to be the inevitable fate of Humanity, literally died as Italian partisans executed Mussolini and as Hitler and Goebbels offed themselves in a bunker. Japan would make a sudden and complete turn to liberal democracy. Oddly, much of what seems the old practice of colonialism weakened critically during the Second World War because colonies proved indefensible. The weakness of the American defensive hold of the Philippines ensured the demise of Dutch rule in Indonesia and the swift collapse of British colonial power in Malaya. British India was in a stronger position in which to demand independence after the war than before. Many of the decisions to establish colonial powers had been made in the late 19th century, which was not that far in the past in 1945.
"Scientific" racism, a/k/a eugenics, could be faulted as contributing to Nazi war crimes.
Much of what will die at the end of this Crisis Era will be novelties that faced the challenge of a Crisis and proved gross failure. The anti-vax stuff (and to call it $#!+ is to insult $#!+) has literally killed many of its believers who will be unable to pass down any tradition. Will their loved ones turn away from that? It will be difficult, but necessary. Neoliberalism seems to have been good at keeping price levels stable, which is easy to do if one isn't really paying the bulk of people necessary to do the work. Working people will want some dignity on the job. Much of contemporary mass culture will lose its appeal.
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.