11-14-2021, 06:06 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-14-2021, 06:07 PM by Eric the Green.)
The enemy in our entire fourth turning, and which grew our of the 2T Counter-Awakening, took power late in the 2T and established itself in the 3T, is neoliberalism. Not just covid, which is just one expression of it. And the 4T definitely started in 2008 when the results of neoliberalism came home to roost. Neoliberalism is the Republican Party, under Reagan and Bush, but also took hold within the Democratic Party to an extent, with the "New Democrats" who, although they raised wages and earned income credits, also permitted more freedom for financial companies to make riskier investments.
Neoliberalism says let business do whatever the hell they want, with fewer or no regulations and taxes, and cut back on social programs and wealth distribution to reduce dependency on government, because government is the problem and enterprise of the "free market" is "freedom" and prosperity, for it all trickles down from the job creaters.
The philosophy is false. It is a scam. Wealth does not trickle down from the rich and the big corporations. The owners and CEOs use their breaks and their extra money to send jobs overseas and replace workers with robots, speculate in risky investments to ruin the economy (as in 2007-2008), buy out other companies and create monopolies and oligarchy, buy back stock or luxuries for themselves, pay themselves 300 times more than their workers who get starvation wages, keep people poor by cutting all social programs that keep wealth and power from concentrating and accumulating for the rich and thus keep the poor poor, and buy politicians to keep the big breaks and the big bucks coming. They pollute the environment and the climate and give the rest of us the cost, especially the poor here in the USA and abroad. They exploit their workers, provide lousy products, provide unsafe services, etc.
The results of neoliberalism have been seen since 2008, in one continuous 4T. There was no phony 4T, we've been in it all along. Big time. First the great recession, which hung around longer because the Tea Party arose to challenge and restrict the remedies. In 2011 the results of the Great Recession abroad helped lead to a massive revolution centered in the Arab world but exploding all over the world, which was followed by war and ruthless repression (especially in Syria and also Egypt, Yemen, and elsewhere), leading to an immigration crisis that lit up Europe with resurgent nationalism and racism. Meanwhile, the climate crisis exploded much bigger than before as the 4T opened with the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, worsening fires and floods, and massive droughts like the one in Syria which led to its civil war, mass murder and torture and exile of most of its people that fueled the immigration crisis. And the same climate change and tyranny also affected Central and Latin America, leading to mass immigration to the USA as well, readily exploited by our own Nazi demagogue who himself personified the 4T crisis with his attacks on democracy, his flagrant corruption, and his environmental destruction justified by even more neoliberal trickle-down slogans. And this attack continues by him and his Republican Party, which has put our nation in an existential crisis that could destroy our 250-year old republic.
And our massive encroachment on Nature all around the world resulted in a series of worsening pandemics, from SARS to Zika and Ebola and climaxing with the covid-19 disease, which spread much more massively precisely because that neoliberal demagogue shut down the response team to pandemics that had been built, and spent his administration mostly denying the problem and saying it would just go away with less government, and always opening the economy too soon-- hoping that this would help him get re-elected; and his henchmen Republican governors and other neoliberal leaders in the UK, Brazil and India helped this denial and thus this disease along too.
But the resistance to the neoliberal nazi demagogue grew from his first day in January 2017 in the most massive demonstration ever, and his premature openings of the economy in 2020 made covid worse, and so he was NOT re-elected, and Biden was elected instead, and a new split congress; so now we are in a potential regeneracy, which has never been clear-cut once and for all, even under FDR, but a fight has ensued which got violent just before the Nazi left office and beforehand, and could again, as well as political fights to save democracy, start fighting climate change, overthrow neoliberalism to rebuild a socially-responsible economy, and deal with covid and the resisters to needed vaccines and mandates.
Being the new "cold civil war" fourth turning, our 4T is not any more "unified and obedient" than the one in the 1860s, so it has seemed we have not arrived in a 4T like the previous one, but we have indeed arrived in a 4T like the next-previous one in circa 1850-1865. And we are barely half way through; don't think this is over. The biggest conflicts, dangers and changes may be yet to come, but also the biggest expressions and activities of regeneracy are yet to come as well. As always, we don't know if the progressive side will win and thus keep the country moving together, or if the reactionary side will win instead and our republic fails. It is up to us to defeat the Classic Xers and the other retrograde folks. The progressive side has always defeated those folks before; can our generations do any less? NO, we can't.
Neoliberalism says let business do whatever the hell they want, with fewer or no regulations and taxes, and cut back on social programs and wealth distribution to reduce dependency on government, because government is the problem and enterprise of the "free market" is "freedom" and prosperity, for it all trickles down from the job creaters.
The philosophy is false. It is a scam. Wealth does not trickle down from the rich and the big corporations. The owners and CEOs use their breaks and their extra money to send jobs overseas and replace workers with robots, speculate in risky investments to ruin the economy (as in 2007-2008), buy out other companies and create monopolies and oligarchy, buy back stock or luxuries for themselves, pay themselves 300 times more than their workers who get starvation wages, keep people poor by cutting all social programs that keep wealth and power from concentrating and accumulating for the rich and thus keep the poor poor, and buy politicians to keep the big breaks and the big bucks coming. They pollute the environment and the climate and give the rest of us the cost, especially the poor here in the USA and abroad. They exploit their workers, provide lousy products, provide unsafe services, etc.
The results of neoliberalism have been seen since 2008, in one continuous 4T. There was no phony 4T, we've been in it all along. Big time. First the great recession, which hung around longer because the Tea Party arose to challenge and restrict the remedies. In 2011 the results of the Great Recession abroad helped lead to a massive revolution centered in the Arab world but exploding all over the world, which was followed by war and ruthless repression (especially in Syria and also Egypt, Yemen, and elsewhere), leading to an immigration crisis that lit up Europe with resurgent nationalism and racism. Meanwhile, the climate crisis exploded much bigger than before as the 4T opened with the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, worsening fires and floods, and massive droughts like the one in Syria which led to its civil war, mass murder and torture and exile of most of its people that fueled the immigration crisis. And the same climate change and tyranny also affected Central and Latin America, leading to mass immigration to the USA as well, readily exploited by our own Nazi demagogue who himself personified the 4T crisis with his attacks on democracy, his flagrant corruption, and his environmental destruction justified by even more neoliberal trickle-down slogans. And this attack continues by him and his Republican Party, which has put our nation in an existential crisis that could destroy our 250-year old republic.
And our massive encroachment on Nature all around the world resulted in a series of worsening pandemics, from SARS to Zika and Ebola and climaxing with the covid-19 disease, which spread much more massively precisely because that neoliberal demagogue shut down the response team to pandemics that had been built, and spent his administration mostly denying the problem and saying it would just go away with less government, and always opening the economy too soon-- hoping that this would help him get re-elected; and his henchmen Republican governors and other neoliberal leaders in the UK, Brazil and India helped this denial and thus this disease along too.
But the resistance to the neoliberal nazi demagogue grew from his first day in January 2017 in the most massive demonstration ever, and his premature openings of the economy in 2020 made covid worse, and so he was NOT re-elected, and Biden was elected instead, and a new split congress; so now we are in a potential regeneracy, which has never been clear-cut once and for all, even under FDR, but a fight has ensued which got violent just before the Nazi left office and beforehand, and could again, as well as political fights to save democracy, start fighting climate change, overthrow neoliberalism to rebuild a socially-responsible economy, and deal with covid and the resisters to needed vaccines and mandates.
Being the new "cold civil war" fourth turning, our 4T is not any more "unified and obedient" than the one in the 1860s, so it has seemed we have not arrived in a 4T like the previous one, but we have indeed arrived in a 4T like the next-previous one in circa 1850-1865. And we are barely half way through; don't think this is over. The biggest conflicts, dangers and changes may be yet to come, but also the biggest expressions and activities of regeneracy are yet to come as well. As always, we don't know if the progressive side will win and thus keep the country moving together, or if the reactionary side will win instead and our republic fails. It is up to us to defeat the Classic Xers and the other retrograde folks. The progressive side has always defeated those folks before; can our generations do any less? NO, we can't.