[quote pid='79409' dateline='1635164176']
David Horn
[quote pid='79403' dateline='1635152840']
Eric the GreenI can almost guarantee that 2026-2027 will be the peak of the Crisis. The best we can hope for then is that, amidst the continuing turmoil, probably both domestic and foreign, is that a consensus is building underneath it as the better side wins.
[/quote]
The problem here is the Boomer generation. We are almost evenly split leftish (not all being really left of center, but not right of center either) and right -- more far right than not. That's a hard model for generating concensus.
[/quote]
The split is largely regional, between the more cosmopolitan areas of America (other than perhaps southern Florida. ]Just look at the new thread that I created on the media manipulation of the Cuban-American community in South Florida. The grandparents (largely Boomer now) experience propaganda from the Right just as virulent and refractory as media in Cuba. The best way to deal with a bogeyman is only rarely to imitate the destructive and dehumanizing aspects of the bogeyman. The cult of personality around Donald Trump may not be a duplication of that around Fidel Castro, but it has dangerous parallels.
What can become consistent from the Other Side is failure... failure at educational achievement, failure in the response to COVID-19, and failure to win support from others for the political agenda. OK, Cuban-Americans in South Florida. Maybe promising a large number of people that they can return to a Cuba that they have never known except as some paradise for their ancestors in which those ancestors lived like aristocrats. Well, there are just too many wannabe aristocrats in South Florida to make such work. Too many aristocrats extracting everything possible out of a peasantry is one way to make a Castro-style insurgency possible.
In the ACW, the North won the war but the South won the peace -- and for many of the same reasons the left is having trouble getting traction today. For all their talk about individual freedom, folks on the right are completely intolerant of viewpoints other than the default viewpoint de jure -- and they enforce those positions using fear and hate. It's hard to beat that with moral purity and sunshine. A bad outcome is highly likely, but fear-based unanimity does have one weakness: it's brittle. If it cracks at all, it will shatter.[/quote]
In the last Crisis, the Americans and British made sure that the Germans lost the war and could not define what "the Peace" was. The Nazis would be excoriated for their monstrous crimes, and the social order would be changed so that much that made Nazism possible would be gone forever. As an example, Nazi flags, slogans, symbols, and songs are gone. Germany became more focused on the welfare of the working class that created the wealth; even the conservative figures recognized that in the absence of the Jews, the industrial workers of Germany (whom the Nazis treated badly in contrast to everyone else) would get a fair break. Germany would be open to international trade that would crack the power of the robber-barons who imposed poverty on the proletariat and promoted wars for profit as in 1914 and 1939. The Army of the German Federal Republic would adopt a style of the US Army (paradoxically the Soviets tolerated a Nationalevolksarmee in the East to imitate Prussian style, perhaps to mollify Germans with conservative attitudes).
Hermann Goering said while awaiting execution as a major war criminal that in fifty years that Germany would be full of statues to Nazis. Such is not happening, and it won't. The official position is that the figures of the July 20 plot are the heroes and that the Nazis were by then damned villains. (By the way -- anyone involved in the Capitol Putsch of January 6 who tries to make a comparison to the attempt to overthrow Hitler is terribly wrong. The July 20 plotters wanted to re-establish German democracy, and the January 6 plotters sought to destroy democracy in America).
Raise your arm in a Nazi-style "erection" (the fascist salute-- the KKK does the same with the left arm) or display Nazi symbols in Germany and you will go to prison. The American alt-right has adopted much from the Nazis and the KKK (and the two are remarkably similar in ideology). Considering the violence that the alt-right has done, it must die.
David Horn
[quote pid='79403' dateline='1635152840']
Eric the GreenI can almost guarantee that 2026-2027 will be the peak of the Crisis. The best we can hope for then is that, amidst the continuing turmoil, probably both domestic and foreign, is that a consensus is building underneath it as the better side wins.
[/quote]
The problem here is the Boomer generation. We are almost evenly split leftish (not all being really left of center, but not right of center either) and right -- more far right than not. That's a hard model for generating concensus.
[/quote]
The split is largely regional, between the more cosmopolitan areas of America (other than perhaps southern Florida. ]Just look at the new thread that I created on the media manipulation of the Cuban-American community in South Florida. The grandparents (largely Boomer now) experience propaganda from the Right just as virulent and refractory as media in Cuba. The best way to deal with a bogeyman is only rarely to imitate the destructive and dehumanizing aspects of the bogeyman. The cult of personality around Donald Trump may not be a duplication of that around Fidel Castro, but it has dangerous parallels.
Quote:[/quote]Eric Wrote:Victory by the blue side will start a successful first turning in circa 2028-29. That will not be a "shock," any more than adopting the Constitution was, or adopting the 13th and 14th amendment was, or founding the UN was. But when we see a similar kind of foundation for a more-inclusive, more-generous, more lawful and ethical society and world being laid down, we will know we have entered a first turning.
For that to happen, there has to be some consistency to the Blue position, and that simply doesn't exist today. It's even hard to imagine in the near term -- 5 years or so. The death of the Fairness Doctrine under Reagan made outright lying fully credible for those interested in winning at all costs, and the right has take that to new extremes, at least here in the US. Worse, the Left is fragmeneted into social and political camps that aren't fully aligned. It's hard to be strong externally if you're weak internally.
What can become consistent from the Other Side is failure... failure at educational achievement, failure in the response to COVID-19, and failure to win support from others for the political agenda. OK, Cuban-Americans in South Florida. Maybe promising a large number of people that they can return to a Cuba that they have never known except as some paradise for their ancestors in which those ancestors lived like aristocrats. Well, there are just too many wannabe aristocrats in South Florida to make such work. Too many aristocrats extracting everything possible out of a peasantry is one way to make a Castro-style insurgency possible.
Eric Wrote:If the red side wins, then we will have become a nation like the enemies we fought in these other saecula. Will that be a first turning? I doubt it would deserve that title. The USA was there to rescue Dixie in 1865 and Japan and Germany in 1945, and so some kind of first turning could begin at least in Germany and Europe in 1945 thanks to the UN and the Marshall Plan. Maybe the nearest analogy of what a failed/red victory 4T and the next next saeculum would look like for the USA is Dixie after Reconstruction in 1877 up until the 1960s. But even there, the winning side in the civil war came back then to make Dixie a part of America again, even if that was still not enough of a victory to possibly avoid yet another breakaway or victory by the wrong side this time.
In the ACW, the North won the war but the South won the peace -- and for many of the same reasons the left is having trouble getting traction today. For all their talk about individual freedom, folks on the right are completely intolerant of viewpoints other than the default viewpoint de jure -- and they enforce those positions using fear and hate. It's hard to beat that with moral purity and sunshine. A bad outcome is highly likely, but fear-based unanimity does have one weakness: it's brittle. If it cracks at all, it will shatter.[/quote]
In the last Crisis, the Americans and British made sure that the Germans lost the war and could not define what "the Peace" was. The Nazis would be excoriated for their monstrous crimes, and the social order would be changed so that much that made Nazism possible would be gone forever. As an example, Nazi flags, slogans, symbols, and songs are gone. Germany became more focused on the welfare of the working class that created the wealth; even the conservative figures recognized that in the absence of the Jews, the industrial workers of Germany (whom the Nazis treated badly in contrast to everyone else) would get a fair break. Germany would be open to international trade that would crack the power of the robber-barons who imposed poverty on the proletariat and promoted wars for profit as in 1914 and 1939. The Army of the German Federal Republic would adopt a style of the US Army (paradoxically the Soviets tolerated a Nationalevolksarmee in the East to imitate Prussian style, perhaps to mollify Germans with conservative attitudes).
Hermann Goering said while awaiting execution as a major war criminal that in fifty years that Germany would be full of statues to Nazis. Such is not happening, and it won't. The official position is that the figures of the July 20 plot are the heroes and that the Nazis were by then damned villains. (By the way -- anyone involved in the Capitol Putsch of January 6 who tries to make a comparison to the attempt to overthrow Hitler is terribly wrong. The July 20 plotters wanted to re-establish German democracy, and the January 6 plotters sought to destroy democracy in America).
Raise your arm in a Nazi-style "erection" (the fascist salute-- the KKK does the same with the left arm) or display Nazi symbols in Germany and you will go to prison. The American alt-right has adopted much from the Nazis and the KKK (and the two are remarkably similar in ideology). Considering the violence that the alt-right has done, it must die.
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.