04-28-2022, 12:42 PM
(04-28-2022, 11:46 AM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: The double rhythm suggests that the New Idealists will be more akin to the Missionaries than the Boomers.
That makes sense. The conditions that made the Boomers possible -- lots of square-footage per kid (at least for white kids in the suburbs far beyond the red-lined areas relegated to blacks and Hispanics), huge numbers of well-paying jobs in manufacturing for parents, huge investment in educational infrastructure and teachers being recruited from among the best and brightest) do not exist this time. There's no great ideological menace from overseas as was Communism, and the struggle against COVID-19 hasn't been the sort to give medals to heroes. (Getting killed while shot down in a military aircraft, firing anti-aircraft guns until one is finally hit fatally, or by throwing oneself onto a live grenade was heroic in World War II. Dying of COVID-19 isn't good for any Purple Heart, let alone Medal of Honor).
Civil strife is still possible, and it could be lethal. That could still lead to recognition of heroism in the struggle to preserve liberty. Are we in the worst of the whirlwind or is that whirlwind beginning to abate?
Over one million Americans have died of a respiratory plague that many of us thought could never strike an advanced industrial country like ours. That is roughly twice American combat losses in WWII
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.