(07-05-2022, 11:07 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: To be perfectly honest, more authoritarian regimes tend to have the best tastes in music, architecture, military uniforms and public works. That doesn't mean I agree with their other policies, but American liberals in particular seem allergic to anything opulent or glorious. Taking a deeper look, the psychology behind aversion seems to be rooted in a sense of "We've had our time in the sun. It's time to step down, reduce our consumption and go off quietly to think over the crimes we have committed".
I'm not convinced. I'm not convinced that Franz Schubert woud have composed any differently in new England than in repressive-post-Napoleonic Vienna. Italian opera fossilized under Benito Mussolini and lost its creative spark, which may or may not simply be the lack of a successor to Giaccomo Puccini without a successor. I'm not going to say that Bela Bartok's glorious third piano concerto, the work of a man dying of leukemia and knowing that well, would have been written better under Hitlerite stooge Ferenc Szalasi than in FDR's America. FDR's America had what may be the most polished pop music, that of the Big Band Era, that fit multiple levels of aesthetic delight as do the masterpieces of Haydn and Mozart, It is arguable that the finest collection of music from the twentieth century comprises the fifteen string quartets of Dmitri Shostakovich, works seemingly devoid of any political significance. The slickest, most polished pop group of all times, the Beatles, could flourish only in societies free enough to tolerate their eccentricities, like Britain and America at the time.
I am satisfied that excess and delusions of grandeur that require people to set aside their qualms about content are sordid in themselves. Yes, natural grandeur such as the Grand Canyon or a mountain such as Fuji is legitimately awesome. I recognize the need for giant bridges to connect opposite peninsulas as the Mackinac or Golden Gate Bridge (I have seen both and have gone across both; they never fail to impress me)... nut there is no excess, as every piece of metal seems to be placed correctly. Maybe engineers love symmetry just as most of the rest of us do. Symmetry is usually good design, whether the Lincoln Memorial or Mount Shasta.
This said, this suggests that to well fit into Stalin's order it is best to think at the level of a child -- to not be capable of reading between the lines, to accept propaganda at face value, and be unable to judge anything. The ideal mental state for believing in a totalitarian regime is, if one is not a fanatic, to have a level of thought characteristic of those people barely able to read. Then, and only then, is one unable to contrast the promises with their failures, the harm done to people who believe a bit differently, and of course the inability to read between the lines.
If we are to be competent at the things that make life truly good, we must mature into competent adults. Democracy works best if people are able to read between the lines, to recognize the logical contradictions in demagoguery, to own and operate businesses, and to make moral decisions. The totalitarian leader can quench a conscience as easily as I can quench a candle. All it takes to squelch a conscience is to end the life of the person who wields that conscience. The tyrants and gangsters that I needled, except for Trump, were all killers.
I have heard or read of the Congressional hearings, and I am satisfied that had Trump gotten away with negating the 2020 election we would have a full-blown dictatorship. It would have been embarrassing for any Presidential nominee from one of the two main Parties or anyone with a significant independent or third-Party campaign to admit that he loved "low-information voters". In view of what I have put on the Web that would require a miracle to allow me to emigrate, as there are people who could better put valid use political asylum to use than I could, I could be dead or in prison by now. I am not kidding. All tyranny is amoral or immoral as the current necessity requires. I have never been good at suffering with a smile, something necessary for the common man under a tyranny able to do anything to anyone at any time.
Back to aesthetics: in visual design, symmetry works best with artistic austerity. Excess (notice how I needled Imelda Marcos for clutter) can get very ugly very fast. In music some of the greatest compositions depend upon folk-like tunes or even bird song (bird-song is typically simple and tonal). I will be satisfied that Humanity is ready for twelve-tone music when I start hearing it in folk-song. Add to that, all democracies have concerns for budgets, as pie-in-the-sky projects rarely work out as intended, and most people like taxes to connect to genuine service and not to the sick dreams of personal grandeur of political bosses.
OK, in what ways was America truly better in the past for the vast majority of the people? Cheap labor isn't so great a practice if you are the cheap labor. Slavery and the Trail of Tears were certainly national disgraces, as were the KKK and Jim Crow. (Indeed I have an idea for a science-fiction novel involving alternative history, and this one involves a Klan-dominated America while the Weimar Republic pulls through and Japan gets a "new Birth of Freedom". A hint on how that novel works out: The "Rommel Plan" is essential to restoring a more prosperous and equitable society in America, and a bunch of Grand Dragons are beheaded for horrific crimes in the categories "Crimes against Peace", "Conventional War Crimes", "Crimes Against Humanity". and
General Conspiracy". The Nazis learned much from the Second Klan, which had many of the characteristics that Italian fascists and the Nazis would adopt. The Klan in our reality never got the opportunity to establish any "Kloncentration Kamps" or do large-scale genocide. Nazi quack philosopher (and major war criminal) Alfred Rosenberg even adopted in calque the racist smear Untermensch as formed by KKK fascist Lothrop Stoddard -- from Stoddard himself.
The point of this exercise is that the British and Americans won the war because they were more decent; after they took over some large chunk of terrain they left even the Germans and Japanese* nothing for which to fight. Unlike Japanese troops on occupation duty or German soldiers between Krakow and Stalingrad, British and American troops didn't need to watch their backs as they approached the front lines. Winning the peace is the definitive victory.
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Dictatorial regimes can do performance well, especially in music. The Czech Philharmonic was an excellent orchestra under Commie rule, and it is so now. The Berlin Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic lost little other than their Jewish musicians and could still give soaring performances. It's hard to say whether Jascha Heifetz or David Oistrakh was the better violinist or whether Emil Gilels or Alfred Brendel 'got' Beethoven's piano sonatas better. Remember well that Leonard Bernstein and Kiril Kondrashin were conducting the same notes. It is impossible to create a 'Marxist',
capitalist', or 'fascist' Mozart any more than one could have a 'Jewish'. 'Christian', 'Islamic', or 'Buddhist' Mozart. (Maybe someone could replace the German text of Schiller's Ode with a Yiddish translation and introduce klezmer instruments into the finale, but I doubt that would work even in Israel or certain neighborhoods in New York City. (NYC is more Catholic and Latino than Jewish, contrary to myth).
Quote:"Make America Great Again" used to be a cliche. In 2022, it's isn't, because we live in a time where it is controversial whether or not America ever really was great, and, even worse, if we actually do want to make it great. You are more than welcome to criticize Trump's behavior (I personally think he's very unstatesmanlike sometimes), or his policies, but we want a leader who is confident. Someone who inspires with grandeur and isn't afraid to think big. Trump's penchant for the dramatic and awe-inspiring is a plus in my book, not a negative.
There's much that I would not miss. Twelve-hour shifts for industrial workers, many of them child laborers having to work because their parents have been worn out and near death from exhaustion. Children dying or being crippled of preventable childhood diseases such as measles, diphtheria, whooping cough, and polio. Children being killed by horse-drawn vehicles and trolleys in the late nineteenth century., or the lethal combination of bad cars and Blood-Alley roads normal until the 1950's. Concoctions of opiates and bad liquor that masked the pain of diseases amenable in early stages to surgery and other medical treatments until it was too late because people no longer feeling the pain still had an aggressive disease killing them. Education that often went only as far as early elementary school because a child's toil might be necessary in mines, factories, farms, or stores. Then there are the race relations in which a black man who looked too long at a white girl might be lynched for "rape".
The modern technologies of entertainment are what most people think of, but those are trivial in contrast to the real horrors of the time.
There never was a Golden Age, and people do not long for those alleged halcyon times until most things have gone rotten. Maybe people in fifth-century Rome longed for the (then) much longed-for era of the Antonine Emperors, but one must recognize that the irreversible rot of the classical world had already set in deeply even before Augustus became Emperor. Life is like riding a bicycle up a hill: if you stop you will almost certainly fall. So it is with technological, social, economic, and cultural progress, none of which is ever easy.
Quote: Imo, if you don't want your country to be the best and want people to be proud of your country, you...shouldn't run for office. The reason why the Democrats have lost so much favor from people whose interests they claim to support is that they can sense the bad faith in their statements. Their contempt for rugged individualism (you don't have to be rich to be rugged individualist. out here in the country, it's the norm), their contempt for pretty much every classically American pastime. Hell, there are even a group of liberal celebrities now....boycotting the 4th of July? Are you serious? Do you trust people like that to be leaders?
Sorry man, not a fan of this take.
The style of all the dictators and gangsters all suggest personal rottenness that permeates the society on the whole. Yes, I can say the same of Donald Trump, a man of intellectual laziness and no principle other than self-indulgence. We may have some rot insinuating itself into America as many of the just-short-of-best-and-brightest among us seek soft jobs in some corporate or government bureaucracy instead of starting a business or doing industrial work. We have rot when much of the pop music promotes either violence or a pimp's fantasy. We have rot when cronyism and corruption become surer ways to profit than is service. When restraint of trade is more attractive than meeting human needs, as in housing, we have serious rot. Political demagoguery by someone who ridicules anyone down on his luck. promotes medical quackery, and claims to have been cheated out of an election that he clearly lost, then we have rot.
Progress of all kinds depends upon virtues, and virtues do not arise unless they have their own rewards. As we all know, inflation kills thrift. The absence of profits kills the initiative necessary for work without the lash or the threat of execution. When people realize that they are fighting for nothing, all that keeps them from retreating is machine guns pointed at those soldiers who retreat. Democracy depends upon people expecting in general to lose about half the elections in which they participate -- and that the consequences for losing not be stark bliss and pain. (If you really want something, then do it yourself and don't depend upon the government, or at least adapt to what the government provides).
OK, so in what ways was life better back in the Good Old Days? Because there were fewer people, real estate, gemstones, precious metals, Impressionist art, furs, abalone, and caviar were all less costly. Life was great for economic elites who could easily find good (domestic) help on the cheap. Since being among the elite was still largely a near-lottery of birth, you must ask of those Golden Days whether you would be part of the tiny elite or even of the minuscule middle class of the time or the one who is the toiler or servant. I prefer that those who do the real work get real pay. Don't you?
*The Italian partisan movement continued to fight Nazis until the end of the war, and they won the peace in most of northern Italy. Of course that would be a peace with Mussolini's bullet-riddled cadaver dangling face-down in an allusion to a scene from Dante's Inferno as a fitting end to a treasonous tyrant.
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.