The Partisan Divide on Issues

[Eric the Green]

(01-17-2022, 09:46 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-16-2022, 01:33 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The demographics look good for the Democrats in the future, but this advantage is becoming more doubtful. The white rural areas that have so much disproportionate power are usually able to brainwash their young to their extremism. Most of the immigrants are hispanics, and they are only marginally more Democratic or liberal. The right-wing is solidifying its power with extreme gerrymandering and takeover of election officials. I'm not sure there's anything that can be done to stop this voter subversion at this point. The Democrats do not have the Senate majority that we thought they might have. The Courts in red states will support whatever the tyrant Republicans do. The Supreme Court will not stop gerrymandering. The House is likely to revert to Republican control, ending all reform proposals. How much more damage will the white power faction do to our climate and our inequality while they can still block all progress? How much can strong campaigns for congress do to offset the gerrymandering in 2022, and can Democrats retake the Senate too, now that Biden is unpopular?

According to my astrological reading, progress was indicated to restart this year after the long period of reaction. But the Lord of Spirit in the Cosmos cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. The USA may simply too backward and ignorant ever to make any progress ever again. If it doesn't restart in the 2020s, we are toast, and we can have no hope for any future turning.

I still see this as a next-2T issue.  The GOP is selling the easy short term by creating the terrible long term.  The voters giving them that power are aging, but the problems are only growing.  How will this resolve?  Good question.  It may turn violent.  There may be a Great Schism.  Society may collapse entirely (a really bad idea for a country armed with nuclear weapons).  I just don't see it getting resolved before the next 1T, but I see it getting resolved. 

It will be the Millennials and the following 2 gens carrying the load, because it has to be them.  The Millies have worked overtime to avoid real issues in favor of more artificial touchy-feely culture issues.  That will also collapse.  Eventually, navel gazing creates its own probems.

How can there be a 1T or a 2T without a proper 4T preceding it? That's not how the cycle works. If nothing is done in this 4T, climate change and inequality with all the social and health problems that go along with these will be so engrained and democracy so destroyed that no-one in the 2040s and 50s will have any means or any hope of correcting these problems. 1Ts are stand pat eras; 2Ts are about cultural change; 4Ts are supposed to be the time when we fight it out on so-called "real issues" and make the institutional changes. This is the job of the prophet, nomad and civic generational combo. Others cannot do it. Two senators are blocking us right now. We have to find a way to break through this in this decade, or we die. We are toast and we are through.

Biden is right; we are at a deciding point. He may have to find a way to work with some Republicans and get half a loaf for now. 4Ts don't have to solve all the problems; just enough so we can continue to function and resolve the conflicts so that our republic survives and progresses. If we can do something, then the people of the next 2T (especially early in the 2T) will have a chance to make further reforms along with opening up the culture to real spirit and real free and embodied experience again, and to propose ideals and values to be acted on in the following 4T and beyond.

Another point is that neoliberalism and other reactionary ideologies have been so dominant for so long, that if not overturned in this 4T after such a long 40+ year conservative period, the USA will have (and already is to a large extent) become so used to the Reagan model that it will just become the norm forever. The pendulum is supposed to swing. If it no longer swings, our politics and our civics is dead and the turning pendulum is broken too.

This is now longer than the period in the romantic age of 1815 to 1850 when all change was prohibited and all ideals were frustrated by restored monarchs after the French Revolution and Napoleon. The only way it was broken was by opening a period of realpolitik industrial nationalism with some reforms thrown in, leading to the eventual death of the old European civilization in a 30-year holocaust in the 20th century.