Signs of a Dying Empire

[pbrower2a]

(05-09-2022, 11:12 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(05-09-2022, 02:06 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(05-07-2022, 08:04 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Let me express what a Hard Right America would look like.....

I don't disagree. But what people seem to gloss over today is the gravity of the current 4T. We are living under rulers who deny climate change and delay the needed action on it. If this continues, not only will our republic be forever and irretrievably ruined by the hard Right, but our world as a place that can sustain our lives and civilization will be damaged beyond repair. Although the destruction will happen over a number of the following decades, it will be of such an accelerating nature that no second turning or Awakening will be able to take hold or stem the destruction. The tipping points will have been tipped. What will follow our current 4T, which will last through the 2020s, will merely be continuous decline and worsening crisis; a never-ending 4T.

Don't even contemplate what the next 2T will look like, until we know whether the Republicans have been defeated and a reform decade has taken hold in the 2020s. To hold any other idea than this is to put your head in the sand. Right now, just one senator has blocked the start of this reform decade. What a ridiculous tragedy this is. Write to Manchin and read him the riot act now.

Sadly, it's less about the politicians and more about the electorate.  Politicians tend to "lead from the rear".  They get elected by being less scary or by playing to prejudice.  In neither case are they leaders, in the true sense of the term. 

Elections are the only check that the People have against wayward politicians and the interest groups that back those pols. Should democracy die in America, than all sorts of weird and inexplicable stuff can happen -- even genocide.  It is often assumed that despots and oligarchs can come to their senses when they recognize that their policies are immoral or even suicidal. Despots and oligarchs typically prefer yes-men who soothe their personal insecurities to advisers who offer the honest truth with which to make wise decisions. Outsiders often assume that tradition will refute some insane policy. Much of what Hitler did was insane, so several centuries of German history were no guide to what Hitler would do. Can you imagine Frederick the Great or Otto von Bismarck invading Russia or initiating the Holocaust? Hitler was neither Frederick the Great nor Otto von Bismarck. 

Should democracy die in America, then America will not become a 'mild' dictatorship like those of Schuschnigg in Austria or Metaxas in Greece. It will instead be the most ominous political entity that the world has ever known. The geography of the USA would make the country one big Gulag. Any alliance such as NATO that has generally kept the peace will be irrelevant. There might be in-house squabbles over power, and the most ruthless squabbler will prevail. We all know where that leads. Congress will become much like the Iraqi parliament under Saddam Hussein, the Supreme Soviet, or the Reichstag under Hitler -- more a personal honor to toadies and "heroes" than any center of power. There will be no meaningful opposition within formal politics. Just imagine what will happen to any dissident. The Dakotas would be a 'nice' Siberia due to temperature extremes. 

Considering the debasement of mass culture, we might even end up with updated versions of Roman spectacles that literally destroy people as entertainment. Lions and tigers and bears as in Roman circuses to devour the equivalent of early Christians?  It would be more diverse -- perhaps with crocodiles and sharks in aquaria deputized to such a purpose.   

Should that happen, then I could only hope for America to lose the second Mexican-American war, the third German-American war, the second Japanese-American war, and perhaps some others simultaneously with the dissolution of one of the vilest Evil Empires to have existed. 

Quote:There has been a 50-year concerted effort to savage policies that hurt the wealthy, and here we are.  There are only two ways to exit this mess: convince the PTB that they are killing the goose that lays their golden eggs, and a quick reversal is needed (this may work or not), or fight fire with fire, and go for the throats of the very people responsible for the mess (also not guaranteed to work, btw). The option no one wants to consider is letting it all fall apart, until the rot is undeniable.  That's a long way in the wrong direction.  Let's avoid that!

The wealthy are often incredibly stupid about the harm that they do to the workers and in turn the nation that proves to be more than the few who own the assets. They were the last to realize that FDR saved their skins, if at great financial cost in high taxes. Paying high taxes to give the common man a stake in the system is a bargain in contrast to being the first in front of the wall as the firing squads form in the event of a revolution.  Aristocrats and bureaucrats often have inherited their opportunity, and with parents knowing what to expect for their children from childhood, the elites at some point are completely cut off from any knowledge of the nasty reality of non-elite life. 

The kids attend schools that exist largely to separate kids from riff-raff such as workers, farmers, salesmen, petty clergy, soldiers, and even shopkeepers, so they have no idea of the real world in which most people live. The sons are groomed for easy work and taught to ask no questions about social reality; eventually the Good Lord ordains it all. Maybe the boys get a little military training to instil some discipline that will suit them well should they dabble in war -- as officers in veritable sinecures. They see their class privilege as a quality to which they are born instead of as a bug that suppresses innovation and reform that might bring technical and social progress. Such workers as they meet are obsequious in their relations. Ownership and bureaucratic power become the basis of power. The daughters are of course coached into 'advantageous', if often loveless marriages.

America is not there yet, but it is making rapid and decisive 'progress' in that direction. I use the word progress in the context of a metastasizing cancer. 

If the struggles are not in sequence, I see parallels in Roman history. World War II is our equivalent of the Second Punic War. Yes, America defeated Germany, Italy, and Japan and destroyed  the political orders that created trouble. We did more nobly -- not salting the fields of conquered lands (although the vindictive Morgenthau plan to de-industrialize Germany would have been an analogy) and ensuring that the defeated had no cause to strike back. Short of extermination, that is the most complete sort of victory possible. We had our equivalent of the Servile War in the American Civil War, except that we freed the slaves instead of crucifying the participants in Spartacus' slave revolt. FDR? Lincoln? There have been few greater wartime leaders at the top of the political system. Rome became a veritable police state after the Servile War, and the USA went about as libertarian in its political and economic order (except for Jim Crow) as any society. 

I heard General Esper relate that President Donald Trump (who is about as far from Lincoln or FDR as one can be as President) suggest shooting protesters in the legs. Esper did not need say that once people are felled with shots to their legs, then shooting at others' legs puts those once fallen at risk of fatal gunshots to their heads, throats, and chest cavities.     

A political system that can elevate someone like Trump to the Presidency has spiders in its collective soul. Someone that vindictive, deceitful, and callow shouldn't lead so much as a marching band. Someone like Trump who appeals to the basest aspects of human nature suggests the possibility of someone doing much the same when the institutions already weakened (including schools for imparting wisdom and civic virtue, churches for sponsoring conscience and charity, mass media to offer objective truth instead of propaganda as news and culture that uplifts the human spirit instead of debasing it). 

Trump is the sort of person who flourishes in a rotten order. He is not yet the norm, but the norm for our economic and administrative elites is headed that way. We can all say that we need another Lincoln or FDR. Well, we got Barack Obama, who did much right. I invite conservatives to recognize that except for a liberal agenda, Obama represents far more virtues once associated with conservatives of an earlier time than our 'conservatives' offer.  We need as a nation to resist the siren song of the demagogue, to let bygones be bygones, and try to slough off hurt feelings. We need to learn the art of political compromise which requires the ability to have empathy for people unlike us in critical ways. We need an economic system that offers opportunity as well as responsibility to all -- one that fosters small businesses instead of bloated, corrupt, rigid behemoths.