04-09-2022, 03:01 PM
(04-07-2022, 01:11 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: The 4T is here, but we are still in the "whirlwind" phase. It is still possible that things could so go that the the dominant politics of 2030 could make heroes out of the January 6 rioters because Donald Trump is the portent of some new America in which he who owns the gold makes the rules, and that is that anyone else defers or faces harsh sanctions. Of course there will be pie in the sky when you die 00 but only if you comply.
For those not born into the right family. life could easily be unrelieved suffering as sacrifices on behalf of rapacious elites who act with unbridled lust for sybaritic indulgence but complete irresponsibility. Imagine Trump as a portent of the forthcoming 1T, and it is clear that how the "whirlwind" phase of this 4T ends.
So far the current 4T has been one of comparatively few reforms, all of which are easy to reverse. Several states have challenged Roe v. Wade without any ruling by the US Supreme Court. Trump's stooges could in theory scrap the venerable principle of stare decisis on behalf of a special-interest agenda that seems to want a population explosion which will give them cheap labor, high rents, accelerating consumption of resources including fossil fuels, and of course plenty of cannon fodder for wars of aggression. If you think Vladimir Putin evil, then just imagine US Armed Forces better equipped and organized, but no less brutal, seeking to impose some perverse version of the American Way of (miserable) Life into places in which such is unwelcome.
We are definitely not there yet.
I'd love to believe that the American people will come to its senses and fend off the fascistic perversions of America that we now see as offerings from the Hard Right. If we be fortunate, then we will political leaders looking out to see what they can do for constituents even if such means working across partisan lines instead of doing unto the Other Side. We could seek to end poverty instead of intensifying it as a threat. We could find that extremist views of any kind are socially unacceptable. We could decide that rational thought is the proper approach to practically all things. We can endorse science and ridicule superstition.
On the Other Side, I can imagine a pure plutocracy in which the well-connected ruin any potential competition and make veritable serfs of most of us with the tools of surveillance, judicial malpractice, and torture. I can imagine something similar to FoX news as the dominant source of information, with Americans having to turn to the shortwave (Radio Free America from Berlin, Rome, or Tokyo -- rather ironic, huh?) and the only newspaper worth reading is the one that brings the commercial circulars (enticements to visit the successors of A&P, K-Mart, Radio Shack, and Perkins'). I can imagine women driven out of the professions so that they can bear children, cook, and attend (mindless) fundamentalist churches.
Maybe we will be fortunate and look back upon the likes of the current GOP and see such as a trend that collapsed. Many will look at the Trump Presidency and wonder how such could happen. Well, start with Reagan's neoliberalism that turned into a Frankenstein monster.
Where progressive reforms are concerned, two Democratic Presidents, Clinton and Obama, really talked the talk during their campaigns but neither could walk the walk once they assumed office. Now do we need to be careful of Biden completing the trifecta?