Unresolved end to saeculum possibility?

[Eric the Green]

(06-08-2022, 10:06 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(06-06-2022, 07:00 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(06-06-2022, 04:33 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: This Crisis Era can end without a shooting war. It can end with some radically-new arrangement that is likely to be either center-left or Hard Right. Whoever wins, there will be rearguard violence. This one will decide among other things whether property determines power or one-man, one-vote does. One side has reason and science on its side, but is unable so far to enforce its vision; it expects the culture to drive the reality. The other has a firm set of values that it has determined is the ultimate reality., and that brute force in the service of those values will establish what is right.

If the Hard Right prevails, then we will have a hierarchical, anti-egalitarian, and repressive society in which any individual thought, let alone any show of dissent, becomes a grave peril. That sort of America will have a brain drain much as have many societies similarly hierarchical, anti-egalitarian, and repressive.  It could also have torture chambers and shooting pits. There might be small rewards for compliance -- maybe occasional trips to an amusement park or a cruise on a riverboat casino -- in the equivalent of the Nazi Kraft durch Freude. Religion will play a role in offering a wondrous Afterlife in return for acquiescence with the hell that America will have become.

It still needs to be remembered that not only is all that true, but our very existence as a civilization is at stake. The climate crisis won't wait. Tipping points are starting now, and more will tip. Without a change of course this decade, we will not be able to reverse the crisis. It is not only the USA but all nations must act. No more should it ever be said that the next 4T will see the climate crisis come upon us. It is upon us now. Never should it be omitted from the list of events and trends within our failed society, such as the above list.

If this 4T fails and the hard right wins, fear will be a constant and ever-increasing pall. No street, no type of facility will be safe from guns. Violence will be oft-erupting, and epic disasters of every kind routine. Ignorance and superstition will rule the day, and that means fear over nothing multiplies as well. We will be in a new dark age that will never lift. Every group will be suspicious and afraid of every other; every group will try to rule over every other. And only some, the most privileged, will win. Exactly how long it will be until our republic and our civilization ends entirely is not clear, but certainly this will happen in no fewer than 2 centuries.

Today, people often still talk as if we have a future. They talk about what we leave for our children. People don't realize that we may have no future. The future is on the ballot, and it is partisan, and we don't realize that.

We will also end up with wars for profit that go badly, and wars going badly have toppled nasty regimes. We can also have a Depression that makes the Great Depression of the 1930's look mild by comparison because a right-wing regime will push faith in the regime, the economic elites that failed and will continue to fail, and a sadistic concept of God instead of any solutions that even mitigate the hardships. 

I recall a political science textbook on comparative political systems that showed what led to proletarian revolutions:

1. absence of democracy. Where there is democracy in which workers have the vote, people are able to vote for political leaders attentive to their needs. Laborers in the factories and fields need some recourse against ruthless aristocrats and plutocrats. Where democracy exists, reform movements are possible. Where democracy does not exist, the regime is able to suppress any dissidents who act civilized, and such opposition as exists narrows into secretive, radicalized, well-disciplined, terroristic cells like the Bolsheviks.

2. early stages of industrialization. This may seem irrelevant, but the Hard Right wants to return to the conditions in which slumlords and loan-sharks fleece workers compelled to toil for  precarious survival. As the safety net disappears, any personal calamity can doom one to death by starvation. Proletarian revolutions do not succeed once there is a well-defined consumer society. 

3. irresponsible, corrupt leadership. The political leaders are themselves crooks bleeding the country for their sybaritic indulgence. They may export food during a famine. That leadership is often an interlocking directorate of the state bureaucracy, the military, the aristocracy, the tycoons, and the clergy who take everything that they can get away with. Just read 19th-century Russian literature and you will see exactly that. 

4. excessive centralization of economic activity. It's mostly in one or two giant cities, which well fits just-in-time productivity. Contrast Russia to Britain. The industrial revolution in Britain was based on cottage industries at the start. British workers were still close to the farm, and industry had to fit the seasons with industrial workers doing farm labor in planting and harvest seasons so that there could be food for them. In Russia the workers were concentrated in gigantic slums in which epidemics and fires raged. There were plenty of angry people, and if the food crop failed to reach the urban populace the civil strife would begin. One can contrast China and India, both of which were similarly poor after WWII. India pushed village-based cottage industries while the Republic of China had entrenched its little industry in a few giant cities. Gandhi was eccentric, but he wasn't crazy. 

5. Emphasis on luxury exports, armaments, and heavy industry. It is best that workers can imagine themselves using the sorts of things that they make. Shoes that they can wear, crockery, winter coats (in cold climates), and eventually electronic goodies are more likely to create good feelingsd among workers. Capitalism saved itself by turning the proletariat into a class of consumers as well as toilers. 

Does anyone want an economic order in which a few wallow in sybaritic indulgence while the rest starve? To be sure, nothing more effectively fosters narcissistic behavior than a quasi-aristocratic order in which a few command and the rest suffer. The elites must offer something better than "pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die" in return for suffering in This World.     

It's well worth posting this vital, landmark video again. What you wrote here reminds me of what Nick Hanauer says toward the end of this video that "after everything burns down, they'll say we should do something about this"

Quote:.........................

It may be difficult to see how this Crisis (era) will end, but it is easy to see that when the generational alignment is again much the same eighty years from now . I saw projections of climate in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Ukraine... these countries are major producers of wheat, a crop that grows best near the borderline between humid and arid climates. The lowlands of these countries trend strongly to cross into the arid zone more because of higher temperatures than because of reduced rainfall. Wheat is the crop closest to fitting a dry climate, and any place too dry for wheat is too dry for any food crop. 


If you think that the Russian invasion is trouble in Ukraine now, then wait until you see what climate change can do:

https://www.climatelinks.org/sites/defau...kraine.pdf

Ukraine relies heavily upon agricultural exports -- and many people depend upon imports of Ukrainian wheat. Agriculture may lack the glamor of high tech or Hollywood movies... but it is still the most basic of industries. There is no technological fix for a food shortage and especially not for hunger. .  

Add to this, much of the world's rich agricultural lowland will be inundated. Where do all the peasant farmers of Bangladesh go? Australia? It is getting hotter and drier. Before you say "Australia"... Australia is getting hotter and drier. Melbourne is an a region that could be going from being like central Texas in its agricultural productivity to like western Texas. Australia is going to need huge amounts of rain to create the sort of terrain that can suit over 100 million peasant farmers.

We face all this now; thanks for mentioning this. And it is this current generational constellation that must deal with this crisis. It will be too late for future 4Ts to change it.