Joe Biden: polls of approval and favorability

[pbrower2a]

(10-09-2021, 06:06 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(10-09-2021, 03:19 PM)nguyenivy Wrote: I'm wondering if we really were in a 4T at all before 2020...

The heart of the crisis has always been shorter than a generation.  The peak is generally a crisis war, which takes about 5 years.  You commonly are in a crisis generation configuration for much longer than that.

At the same time, the crises do become less severe.  In the two race related crises, the Civil War was much more violent than the Floyd demonstrations or January 6.  If a crisis solves the worst problem facing a culture, as time goes on have the worst problems in the culture been solved already?  Is slavery worse than today's structural racism?  Is solving a problem with Industrial Age violence and war always going to be a bigger deal than the Information Age approach of nonviolent protest and legislation?

This time around we do seem to have multiple crises.  I view the Iraq war as an attempt to change values by the conservatives, and they failed to do so.  The economic collapse of 2008 was there, but not nearly as serious as 1929.  I felt no desire to call a trigger around 2008.  Obama was more concerned that the first black president be seen as acceptable than to see a particular agenda succeed.  He did well in putting the economy back together and passing Obamacare, but did not push once he did not have Congress behind him.  Covid and George Floyd’s death do seem more like triggers, causing values change and signaling a major change in dominant parties.  For the first time it feels like the real crisis.

I would say 2001 and 2008 did not resolve the small government vs solve the problem question as debated through the unravelling.  2020 might.  We will know better after the 2022 midterms.  The Republicans are pushing a 'do not solve problems' obstructionism.  We will see if the American people want the problems solved.

To solve real problems, Crisis Eras need to last long enough to address root causes but not long enough to create catastrophic damage to Humanity. Howe and Strauss suggest what a Crisis Era excessively bloody but ultimately indecisive about the rights of Freedmen could be like. I am tempted to believe that Russia endured a succession of Crises beginning in the First World War and ending only with the demise of Josef Stalin.

The Crisis that we now know began much like those of 1860 and 1940, with a great financial panic that began when a speculative boom imploded. 1857...1929...2008. 72 and 79 years apart, basically long life-spans. Once that happens the money-grubbing that can cover many problems, a scab that covers a festering wound, is torn off. If we are fortunate we deal with the festering to mitigate and cure it. If we aren't so fortunate, then the would gets worse.

People start pointing fingers at anyone who can seem a culprit. In the Crisis of 1940 the Germans let a demagogue cast all fault upon The Jews. We all know how that ended.

I see the Republicans wielding a solution -- absolute plutocracy that a dictatorial or despotic order enforces. Such will maximize inequality and obliterate anyone who gets in the way. Slack off or gripe? Then off to a 'corrective labor plant' where you will be expected to learn how wonderful things are as you work 70 hours a day at dangerous, exhausting toil for starvation rations until you reform into a perfect serf or die.




Different personality, different ideology, different geography, and differing language... but we all get the message. One Great Leader can solve everything, as he alone can fix it. Trump fell short, but someone more resolute, decisive, and ruthless can exploit the need that many Americans seem to have for the man who promises them certainty, meaning, community, and prosperity in exchange for their freedom... and anyone who gets in the way will be a traitor.

Bolshevism, fascism, and Ba'athism have much in common, and if we Americans go into that cesspool of despotism, repression, and cruelty then many of us will deserve to go to concentration camps to die. The only problem is that the first to go will be the most innocent.

Does anyone expect the Trump Cult to recognize how wrong it is? Not I! It will seek a new idol to replace the one that become unpresentable or deceased.