This has been a clear disappointment of an election for the GOP. It had great optimism of exploiting the usual realities of a midterm election with a wave that could gut all effectiveness of President Biden and presage a smashing victory that might knock out the Democratic party as a national force until some national calamity that might even put the USA in risk of dissolution. Republicans could establish their Bircher dream of a "republic not a democracy" -- one in which economic power dictates all except perhaps (for a while) some localities.
Most Americans would come to the conclusion that life in America is nothing more than suffering for people of untrammeled power. We would live in the Orwellian future of a boot stamping on someone's face or a back full of welts from whippings -- and we would be obliged to praise the brutes in power for their generosity in inflicting the "corrective" pain. (I'd rather be six feet under if immigration were not a possibility).
We may have now just passed the most dangerous part of the Crisis of 2020. People are catching on in enough places to the shabbiness of the Hard Right offering. I expect to see more prosecutions of those involved in the Capitol Putsch and other crimes of Donald Quisling Trump. We are far from the time of milk and honey that a 1T not following a destructive apocalypse offers. We still have our work cut out for us. It may not be enough to convince 55% of the people.
President Biden is more effective than expected. Democrats are taking over many of the virtues that conservatism saw itself in the role of providers or guarantors. Of course that could push the Democrats into some new form of conservatism, but ideally one that has less emphasis on personal greed and more on sustainability. Conservative conduct is fine with me. Barack Obama makes a far better model for imitation by young people than does Donald Trump for almost any path in life except criminality (not that I endorse criminality. I would be satisfied with more effective suppression of crime of all kinds from sex offenses to spouse abuse to commercial fraud).
So we endorse LGBT rights at the expense of sexual abuse of children and marital violence. That is a good trade because homosexuality is not a choice. Child porn, sex with children, and marital violence are choices in the sense that armed robberies are choices.
I cannot speak for any large segment of the American populace on the political trend. It is best that we sicken of Trump's vile antics. Maybe some people are trying to find ways in which to avoid raising Trump-like children... almost in time for the next wave of Idealist children (Generation AA?) to be born. Yes, it is about time for that if the time has not already started.
I hope that we are sickening of political arrogance and that strange conjunction of the debasement of those who think on behalf of those who own. There used to be no conflict between ownership and thought except among pretentious Marxists who thought themselves intellectuals. In the 1950's the Party more consistently supportive of free enterprise got 80% of the college-educated vote and a majority of the vote from high-school graduates; even the latter was still above average in education in the time. Trump's plutocratic, superstition-mongering party does badly among people with college degrees. Except in the South, the Democratic Party was not sympathetic to blatant superstition and ignorance.
ignorance is not innocence in our complex time. It only creates personal pain these days and the potential for disgrace. It's up to us to decide that culture is more precious and satisfying than is mind-numbing entertainment. It is up to us to decide that the seduction of conspiracy theories is no more worthy of giving in than is the seduction of whores full of STD's. Our world is more complex than it used to be even if for most of us the complexity comes from the difficulty of making wise choices in our lives.
We need a tax system that favors small business over behemoths that in some crisis will prove too inflexible to adapt and too corrupt to save. We need to expand education so that people can make competent choices in life. I expect the workweek to shrink, and that what we do off the job will do more to define us than will our jobs. I can think of many things that we can do to fulfill ourselves, from gardening to writing. This said, the era of conspicuous consumption is over if we want to have a planet on which we can live.
...........................
Humanity tends to spend much of its effort in one Turning rejecting with great vehemence what it loathed in the previous Turning or two. I can see plenty to reject, including Q-Anon style conspiracy theories. .
Most Americans would come to the conclusion that life in America is nothing more than suffering for people of untrammeled power. We would live in the Orwellian future of a boot stamping on someone's face or a back full of welts from whippings -- and we would be obliged to praise the brutes in power for their generosity in inflicting the "corrective" pain. (I'd rather be six feet under if immigration were not a possibility).
We may have now just passed the most dangerous part of the Crisis of 2020. People are catching on in enough places to the shabbiness of the Hard Right offering. I expect to see more prosecutions of those involved in the Capitol Putsch and other crimes of Donald Quisling Trump. We are far from the time of milk and honey that a 1T not following a destructive apocalypse offers. We still have our work cut out for us. It may not be enough to convince 55% of the people.
President Biden is more effective than expected. Democrats are taking over many of the virtues that conservatism saw itself in the role of providers or guarantors. Of course that could push the Democrats into some new form of conservatism, but ideally one that has less emphasis on personal greed and more on sustainability. Conservative conduct is fine with me. Barack Obama makes a far better model for imitation by young people than does Donald Trump for almost any path in life except criminality (not that I endorse criminality. I would be satisfied with more effective suppression of crime of all kinds from sex offenses to spouse abuse to commercial fraud).
So we endorse LGBT rights at the expense of sexual abuse of children and marital violence. That is a good trade because homosexuality is not a choice. Child porn, sex with children, and marital violence are choices in the sense that armed robberies are choices.
I cannot speak for any large segment of the American populace on the political trend. It is best that we sicken of Trump's vile antics. Maybe some people are trying to find ways in which to avoid raising Trump-like children... almost in time for the next wave of Idealist children (Generation AA?) to be born. Yes, it is about time for that if the time has not already started.
I hope that we are sickening of political arrogance and that strange conjunction of the debasement of those who think on behalf of those who own. There used to be no conflict between ownership and thought except among pretentious Marxists who thought themselves intellectuals. In the 1950's the Party more consistently supportive of free enterprise got 80% of the college-educated vote and a majority of the vote from high-school graduates; even the latter was still above average in education in the time. Trump's plutocratic, superstition-mongering party does badly among people with college degrees. Except in the South, the Democratic Party was not sympathetic to blatant superstition and ignorance.
ignorance is not innocence in our complex time. It only creates personal pain these days and the potential for disgrace. It's up to us to decide that culture is more precious and satisfying than is mind-numbing entertainment. It is up to us to decide that the seduction of conspiracy theories is no more worthy of giving in than is the seduction of whores full of STD's. Our world is more complex than it used to be even if for most of us the complexity comes from the difficulty of making wise choices in our lives.
We need a tax system that favors small business over behemoths that in some crisis will prove too inflexible to adapt and too corrupt to save. We need to expand education so that people can make competent choices in life. I expect the workweek to shrink, and that what we do off the job will do more to define us than will our jobs. I can think of many things that we can do to fulfill ourselves, from gardening to writing. This said, the era of conspicuous consumption is over if we want to have a planet on which we can live.
...........................
Humanity tends to spend much of its effort in one Turning rejecting with great vehemence what it loathed in the previous Turning or two. I can see plenty to reject, including Q-Anon style conspiracy theories. .
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.