05-18-2023, 08:27 AM
Thank you, Tim, for your effort to restart this site. I had abandoned it
We need remember that all Turnings are themselves transitions. Had it not been for the American involvement in World War II, America was already taking on 1T characteristics and abandoning 3T ways. The generational cycle so works even without apocalypse.
This time we have been slower to abandon 3T ways, perhaps because those ways well fit the desires of economic elites. 3T ways failed catastrophically during the horrid years from 1929 to 1933 with the loss of 85% of the valuation of corporate stock in America and the rise of Satan Incarnate in Germany. In the 1930's the old moneyed elites were hit so hard that they were more concerned with survival than with buying the political process and establishing an aristocratic order. Eighty years later the economic elites did what they could to buy the political process and harden an aristocratic subjection in a time in the only way in which to succeed was to be born into the economic elite. The elite dream was a mirror image not so much of Marxism (unless in repression) as of Georgism; theirs is the idea that asset ownership is everything, toil whether in productivity or services is super-cheap, modernization stalls, and most people are obliged to suffer with a smile on behalf of elite profit, indulgence, and gain as was so in the Middle Ages. Economic rents become the definition of prosperity instead of quality-for-quality dealing essential to industrial-era capitalism.
A new aristocratic order is not a welcome way for most of us. It will take enforcement, and that will require the modern equivalent of the torture-chambers and witch-burning. We must demand better. Such is not only of our leaders, economic and political, but also of ourselves. Should we become swine, then so shall our rulers. Animal Farm is a worthy fairy tale; elites who have just found themselves taking over the power of an aristocratic elite take over the aristocratic ways and become just as exploitative.
We need remember that all Turnings are themselves transitions. Had it not been for the American involvement in World War II, America was already taking on 1T characteristics and abandoning 3T ways. The generational cycle so works even without apocalypse.
This time we have been slower to abandon 3T ways, perhaps because those ways well fit the desires of economic elites. 3T ways failed catastrophically during the horrid years from 1929 to 1933 with the loss of 85% of the valuation of corporate stock in America and the rise of Satan Incarnate in Germany. In the 1930's the old moneyed elites were hit so hard that they were more concerned with survival than with buying the political process and establishing an aristocratic order. Eighty years later the economic elites did what they could to buy the political process and harden an aristocratic subjection in a time in the only way in which to succeed was to be born into the economic elite. The elite dream was a mirror image not so much of Marxism (unless in repression) as of Georgism; theirs is the idea that asset ownership is everything, toil whether in productivity or services is super-cheap, modernization stalls, and most people are obliged to suffer with a smile on behalf of elite profit, indulgence, and gain as was so in the Middle Ages. Economic rents become the definition of prosperity instead of quality-for-quality dealing essential to industrial-era capitalism.
A new aristocratic order is not a welcome way for most of us. It will take enforcement, and that will require the modern equivalent of the torture-chambers and witch-burning. We must demand better. Such is not only of our leaders, economic and political, but also of ourselves. Should we become swine, then so shall our rulers. Animal Farm is a worthy fairy tale; elites who have just found themselves taking over the power of an aristocratic elite take over the aristocratic ways and become just as exploitative.
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.
