The Panic of 1857/The Panic of 2022

[pbrower2a]

(06-30-2022, 11:59 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(06-28-2022, 09:38 PM)nguyenivy Wrote:

(06-28-2022, 05:04 PM)David Horn Wrote: If this 4T dies on the vine, and that's looking more and more likely at this point, then the 2T will be the crisis response we're lacking now.  I fear it may be a kinda-war of autocrats and anarchists -- not quite real-world dungeons and dragons, but close.

Would that mean the 1T in between will be more like a 2nd 3T and not a real 1T? What if we're in another saeculum anomaly again, like S&H claimed about the 1800s missing a turning? I can't imagine yet another 20+ years of trickle-down economics (!) with no changes.

We haven't been in this position as a nation before -- not even as a cluster of colonies.  This 4T is both obvious and not compelling.  Why?  Because we're being lead by the geriatric remains of both parties -- especially the Democrats.  It's nigh unto impossible to progress if the people making the decisions of how to go about it have little future themselves.  If that changes, my opinion may also.

For a quick overview of 1Ts and 2Ts following failed 4Ts, look to the nations that lost WW-II.  The Finns did very well, but they were mainly enemies of the USSR, not allies of the Nazis.  The Italians flailed around looking for the next thing to do, and are finally back on track.  Both the Germans and Japanese went hyper pacifist, and the Japanese are just now emerging from that.  Those are guideposts with little guidance.  How would we handle it?  Good question.

Mussolini, a young demagogue with few set ideas in 1922 but a bloated ego, castigated the "senile" Italian politicians of his day who seemed to not fit the temper of his time and of recent WWI vets who were even younger than he. "Young" for the American presidency typically means in one's mid-40's (Obama, Kennedy, TR, Grant as Presidents: Dewey as a candidate. 

The fault with Mussolini wasn't that he was a fogy as a young leader; the problem was with the ideas that he had. Mussolini was an Idealist-reactive cusp, and he reflected Idealist vices (selfishness, ruthlessness, and arrogance) with little pragmatism -- unlike FDR or Obama who were born in the last year of an Idealist generation or the first year of a reactive generation.   

We get old nominees because people at least among the vocational elites are living into advanced age  (thank the GI's for setting a pattern of remaining active intellectually and physically into advanced age, a pattern that elite Silent and Boomers have followed, and as first-wave X approach elderhood (Obama turns 61 in August) they seem likely to follow that pattern. If something remains in practice over four successive generations, then it has become part of the national character. A hint about Obama in his sixties: Abraham Lincoln was considered an old man when president, and Obama is five years older than Lincoln ever got, and only two years younger than FDR was when FDR died.

The benefit of the elderly as politicians is that they have Seen It All. If they are really wise they remember and apply lessons that they learned from elderly people while children. I am satisfied that there never really were any unqualified Good Old Days. Maybe real estate was cheaper, so people who worked at the waterfront could live nearby in apartments with waterfront views. Other than that, there were more diseases to kill people because there were then no antibiotics. Horse-droppings are just as much pollution as are vehicle exhausts today (especially since leaded fuels are no longer available). people do not smoke as much as they used to (that habit likely peaked among the Lost and has since been sliding until there are now old people like me who have never smoked a cigarette in their lives. No, I am not a Mormon, but I am glad to have "Mormon lungs". Alcohol consumption has also taken a slide (more "quality and not quantity"), especially for those like me who can no longer hold their liquor.  People are no longer working to exhaustion on substandard food as they used to. Maybe the entertainment is broader than it used to be, but one must look deeper and be more selective.

(Cheap swipe: if you are tempted to see Jurassic World: Dominion... don't.  The special effects are stale, the writing is rich in tired cliché, and the story ends with a sappy ending in which dinosaurs coexist with giants of our time such as horses, whales, and elephants. The human behavior is simply beastly (face it: much of the animal world would be perfectly happy if we humans were to go extinct and take our brutal dogs and monstrous cats with us) as it involves a sleazy high-tech corporation and the horrific world of animal trafficking. This flick probably kills the franchise. The story lines have likely been worked out like a mine whose profitable seams are no more). I do not make a point of watching bad movies because such is a waste of time and money. 

People can learn throughout their lives until they go senile; the relevant question is whether they get the right lessons and draw the right conclusions. Not only are the wise living longer; so are the scatterbrains who see an attractive slogan such as "Make America Great Again" and ask too few questions. people who can connect to someone simultaneously immature, intellectually rigid and lazy, and senile can vote for someone as hideous as Donald Trump.