(06-04-2022, 03:37 PM)nguyenivy Wrote: Is there a non-zero possibility that we get neither a good or bad ending to this 4T and just end up sliding into the next 1T with nothing resolved? Have a look at the lie-flat / other similar movements going on now. People are just losing hope and giving up. Prior 4Ts had clear wartime periods where society was upended and life afterwards was different to before. Climate change is a big threat but has already been ongoing since long before this present 4T. Not much is being done about it as of yet. The pandemic's early waves sure felt 4T but now nobody really cares about COVID anymore. Are our Millennial & Z generations just losing faith in the system or are we being actively blocked from pushing for change by say big oil/corporate America? Is it's the former, do we have prior examples of societies where the populace lost faith in their system but didn't care enough to push for change? Where did those societies end up? If we are indeed being blocked by big oil it looks like the problem should resolve itself but not until around the 2040s when society flips to having the majority having experienced the negatives of fossil fuel reliance & the car-centric US.
Some people are going to get a good ending and some will get a bad ending. For the slave-holders of the Confederacy, the good ending would have been that their "peculiar institution" (slavery) remained intact, Lincoln and all abolitionists were disgraced, and the Fugitive Slave Law was more rigidly enforced throughout the United States with the aid of some new secret police. Perhaps in the anarchy some states (Michigan? Wisconsin? Minnesota? Iowa? Oregon? California? Nevada?) secede to become part of the newly-independent Canada.
This scenario has influence into the next Saeculum. Such a subtlety as the failure of the United States to purchase Alaska allows Alaska to become part of an expanded Soviet Union after 1917. Slavery intensifies racist beliefs even more firmly. Maybe Brazil does not outlaw slavery in 1875 or so... Slave-holding societies become an anathema in politically-civilized countries like France, Britain, and Germany. Should Hitler become a menace, Hitler has a scarier Canada to face at the outset. Maybe there is a Canadian Expeditionary Force able to make the difference in whether the German thrust to the English Channel succeeds.
Of course what would be ideal for the slave-owning interests -- the enshrinement of slavery for at least another hundred years -- would be a nightmare for many others, beginning with the slaves. Slave-holding societies are slow to innovate, and a secret police delegated to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law would expand as all bureaucracies do, to repress political dissent of all kinds. Slavery would retard the discovery of such entertainment devices as the phonograph and radio and the telephone as a mode of communication. Slaves would be excellent messengers, and with messengers that cheap, who would need a telephone? The motor vehicle doesn't take on as fast -- and a slavery-tolerating USA would probably be slow to develop the mobile weaponry such as tanks necessary in the following war. Slavery would also make labor so cheap that some other countries would be more attractive to eastern Europeans, especially Yiddish-speaking Jews. A hint: Germany actually had much immigration of Yiddish-speaking Jews from the Russian Empire. Germany becomes the leading country in cinema, as it might have been had it not been for Hitler... and figuring that immigrant Jews in Germany would act much like those in reality in the United States and be present in larger numbers, I can easily see Germany having a much-stronger Social-Democratic Party at the critical moment. Maybe World War I never happens, and neither does the Bolshevik Revolution.
Sure, I am contradicting myself in many ways, but consider what history is most of the time. As Shakespeare puts it in Macbeth:
“Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, / And then is heard no more. It is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.”
Isn't that the truth about most of us? Isn't much of of life as we know it what history allows? Maybe "history" make more sense, but life rarely does. Trying to explain what happens if something goes very differently if something else happens is nearly madness. Just look at all those alternative history novels that have the Axis Powers winning the Second World War. I see the Axis Powers doomed by their inability to win the peace.
The Congressional investigation into the Capitol Putsch begins tonight, and the results could be interesting. We could see all sorts of exposures of misconduct of the Trump Administration and establish what went catastrophically wrong. For my view, the worst that can happen is that Congress ultimately whitewashes President Trump.
The Capitol Putsch may have been the pivotal event of American political life since the Civil War. Sure, there have been some major political reforms and court decisions. The Great Depression did not lead to violent revolution, and American political life was unusually placid while America was at war with the demonic Axis Powers.
We had a forceful attempt to nullify a free, competitive, and fair election on behalf of a President who was becoming increasingly despotic in his behavior. We could have easily ended up with a second term of Donald Trump. Trump did lasting damage in putting three Justices on the US Supreme Court who seem chosen more for ideological rigidity than legal dexterity or respect for legal precedent. All sorts of mischief are possible with a Court in which three Justices get their opinions on critical issues pre-digested for them by some shadowy organization with a far-right agenda. I have no idea of what this group believes about the civilian-military relationship, "gun rights", LGBT rights, the environment, labor-management relations, welfare, and even voting rights of people not owners of "adequate" property. So far as I can tell that group holds firmly upon the conception that he who owns the gold makes the rules is the proper way in which to operate politics. If that holds true then we might as well accept a fascistic organization of everything, and it will be up to us all to teach children not born to great advantage that the sole purpose of their lives is to make people already filthy=rich even more filthy-rich, enforce their will with ruthlessness and brutality, or to indulge the vilest whims of irresponsible people who can buy anything while everyone else is damned to destitution. The American Hard Right differs from Commies only in endorsing the rot that Commies associate as inevitable and indelible vices in capitalism.
Obviously capitalism survived because the capitalists chose to let workers have a stake in the system. Workers were going to be sullen goldbricks until some political cataclysm at which time a socialist revolution would break forth. Progress, whether intellectual, technological, social, or moral is neither inevitable nor irreversible. The reality of the failure of Reconstruction and the even greater tragedy of fascism must press this upon our knowledge and concern.
By the way: Shakespeare had an agenda in Macbeth: to show that political thuggery even in the name of some good cause (or at least what the leaders and followers consider a good cause) leads to ruin. I am completely satisfied in believing that those culpable in the Capitol Putsch thought themselves profoundly correct in their cause.
Shakespeare is very much a part of the American cultural heritage. We ignore his wisdom at great risk.
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.