Fighting The Fourth Reich

[pbrower2a]

(08-27-2017, 06:21 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: Doublespeak requires doublethink (more commonly called cognitive dissonance).  Since I as a materialist allow for reality to inform my ideas I do not require doublespeak.  What you call "alternate history" is actually seeing history from a different perspective.  One would think that those of prophet generations would be able to grasp this concept, but I find that the traits of a prophet make them uniquely incapable of grasping it.  In general prophets make up their mind first, and then attempt to make reality reflect their ideology.  They are also given over to all manner of idealistic philosophies as well.  It is those who have an idealistic viewpoint to start with who require doublespeak and doublethink to address their cognitive dissonance that arises when reality does not reflect their ideology as is often the case.

As the philosopher C. S. Peirce put it, 

Quote:If Materialism without Idealism is blind,

Idealism without Materialism is void.

http://www.informationphilosopher.com/so.../dualisms/

Identifying oneself as a pure idealist or as a pure materialist is similarly  absurd.

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Quote:(Butler) As for the future, I see crises as addressing the most serious problems a culture is facing.  You can clear up a number of items, but you can never get everything, and if you do changing technology will create new problems.  Whig tendencies will not manifest and triumph until these new problems are clear and unavoidable.  Until they do become critical, the elites and status quo will dominate.  Part of the reason we have had no triumphant regeneracy is the lack of such problems.  Bush 43 had a new foreign policy that failed.  Obama was at best a decent caretaker, up to undoing the damage Bush 43 did to the economy, but he did not champion new values to the extent that justifies a high and awakening.  Neither sorta almost crisis succeeded in creating the need and the mood for a high.  Thus, we're still in see saw mode.

(insult redacted)

Bush II did have a new foreign policy that failed (NeoConservatism).  The very essence of that foreign policy was first hashed out in the 1930s in Trotskite circles and eventually migrated into the GOP in the late 1960s.  It was capable of doing so only because unlike European Parties the American Parties are not ideologically driven but rather are nothing more than loosely held together coalitions of persons attempting to be elected

OK, so Trotskyites are opportunists, and opportunists sell out such principles as they claim to have when the opportunity arises. Trotsky himself was as brutal and fanatical a b@stard as anyone ever was, which probably explains why Gorbachev never got around to rehabilitating him even if he rehabilitated most victims of Stalin's purges... and even Alexander Kerensky.

Quote:As to the Economy, I find that by and large Presidents aren't very effective at either addressing economic downturns nor promoting economic booms.  Why is that?  I would argue because they are by and large individuals and the economy itself is an amalgamation of a collective mass of some 300 Million individuals.  At most I can say about Obama is that he didn't stand in the way of the oil booms in the Dakotas and didn't try to meddle with fracking.  Otherwise like Bush II he was an economic disaster.

The Federal Reserve Bank has more power than Congress or the President in setting economic policy, which explains what i call the Central Bankers' Coup in 2008 when the Secretary of the Treasury, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve bank, and the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission told Dubya and Congress how the economy was going to do things. For all I know those three might have seen the Joint Chiefs of Staff before issuing their findings.

Quote:The whole point of electing (Obama)  was to excise the NeoConservatives from government, but in turn he was just as bad as they were.  And for the record this is from someone who voted for him twice.  2008 I was hoping for something different, in 2012 it was "better the devil you know than the devil you don't".

Contrary to the opinion of President Donald Trump, most historians recognize Barack Obama as an above-average President. I would give him high marks for economic stewardship, undoing the damage of Dubya, avoiding scandal, whacking Osama bin Laden, and demonstrating rigid adherence to Constitutional principle. He may not have been innovative in foreign policy, but going back to the foreign policy of the elder Bush was the wisest course available.

Neoconservatism is effectively dead. For its faults, neoconservatism at least rejects teh demagoguery that President Trump exudes.

Quote:As to the regeneracy, you're (Butler) not seeing it because your Whig ideology is in the way.  You expect this big huge unifying thing to happen.  But regeneracies never happen like that all.  If anything they should be expected to be messy and come late.  In S&H's books they have pointed out previous regeneracies--I'll focus on the two most recent ones (not including the MAGA Regeneracy).

I have great doubt that any "MAGA" regeneracy is a genuine regeneracy. False regeneracies, most infamously the fraud of the Nazi Regeneracy in Germany, have huge flaws with the seeds of their own destruction. Because so ambiguous an expression as "Make America Great Again" is easy to interpret in any way one wishes many interpret it as they wish. Considering what so narcissistic and cruel a b@stard Donald Trump is, I assume the worst. It may be projection because the worst plutocrats are so bad that they make a Marxist analysis of their behavior the best -- but for whom and at what time do I see America better for people like Donald Trump?

When but in the 1920s, the last hurrah of the Gilded Age... and for whom? the monopolistic profiteers who got away with sweating the proletariat. I may not be a Marxist, but there are situations in which Marx offers an accurate description, and effective condemnation, of the capitalist order in certain times and places.

Was America better without qualification that it was at any point before 2016 for people other than economic elites? Maybe life was easier in some respects, especially in real estate costs and commute times. Of course there were far fewer people to bid up real estate costs and values... or bid down pay and working conditions. There was less suburban sprawl to accommodate about twice as many people as there were in the 1950s (325M estimated in 2017 as opposed to 175M in 1960). Much of America was more attractive sixty years ago than it is today, but I can see no humane or effective way to go back to the population levels of the late 1950s. Besides, population decline even without mass murder is ugly in its own right. Detroit and St. Louis are very distressing places.  

Was America better for non-white minorities before 1965? Certainly not in "Kukluxistan" (the segregated South). Homosexuals? Certainly not. The roads? I think little of taking a certain Interstate highway 65 miles in one direction or 75 in another. I doubt that I would take the Blood Alley surface road that that Interstate supplanted so often.

OK, I will concede that small-town life was much more vibrant when people were less mobile because the roads were worse.  Except for cheap real estate, there's not much reason for living in a hick town anymore. Towns of less than 5000 are losing their supermarkets and pharmacies to box stores like Wal*Mart and (in the Midwest) Meijer in towns of 10K or so. 

Medicine? It's much better than it used to be -- if you aren't priced out of it.

There may be more sophisticated technology of entertainment and more 'entertainment'... but those are terribly over-rated. If I had to choose between listening to Bruckner's Eighth Symphony on a scratchy LP over a stereo with only 20 watts per channel or the latest pop hit on the finest sound system... you know my choice. I'll take the cinematic masterpieces of the late 1930s over shallow blockbusters any day.  The real value of the more sophisticated technology of entertainment in our time is that it is higher in precision of audio and visual playback and more access to the gems of pre-modern times.

Quote:S&H pointed out that the Emancipation in the ACW saeculum was the regeneracy.  I've posted numerous times that they got their 4T timing wrong.  If we stop to consider that the 4T started sometime around 1855 (give or take) 1863 was a full 8 years after the start of the crisis.

S&H also point to the New Deal being the regeneracy in the GP Saeculum.  I disagree with them there.  I'll explain why.  The New Deal itself was highly contentious and was only implemented from 1933-1937, specifically 73rd and 74th Congresses.  By 1937 there as already push back on the deficit spending front and the New Dealers if they weren't replaced with Republicans were replaced with more conservative Democrats.  Not to mention the fact that it is STILL living memory of people referring to FDR himself as "That Man".

Many still consider Howe and Strauss' theory fringe (I don't). I doubt we have a solid explanation of the mechanism of any era of the Saeculum, but I would guess that this order of events happens:

Late in the 3T is a Degeneracy (my term, something that I discussed in a thread on a now-defunct predecessor Forum) in which just about everything goes bad (bad politics, bad business practice, bad mass culture, bad public policy) because loosey-goosey attitudes bring out the worst in people. The 3T/4T cusp indicates the beginning of the Crisis, when about everything goes bad (elected officials lose their popularity, and a really nasty panic as in 1857, 1929, or 2008 takes place). People insist on change and get it as leadership going into the Crisis is discredited. George III... Buchanan... Hoover.... Dubya... people get structural changes that start some recovery. That is an early Regeneracy. There might or might not be another Regeneracy due to a second wave of Crisis... But there is typically some point after which everything is anticlimax. It could be Gettysburg -- or D-Day.

Just as there can be false prophets there can be false Regeneracies, like Bloody Kansas, the accession of Hitler in Germany, or the rise of the Tea Party (the dissimilarity of the three should be obvious enough). A False Regeneracy leads to big trouble, just as does a false prophet.

Quote:So if we're expecting for a universal acceptance of whatever happens to be the status quo as a regeneracy then you won't get one until after a 1T has already started.  If we are expecting universal acceptance of a particular plan to address a 4T then the whole concept of a regeneracy must be thrown out.

However, if we accept a regeneracy is merely the near universal acceptance that something must be done to address the 4T issues then quibbling over X, Y, and Z in the political arena becomes nothing more than background noise.  So considering that Bush II was an almost completely 3T president his views can be discarded, and considering that Obama brought no new views to the table (in your words at best a caretaker) then that means there is only one possible regeneracy in the current 4T.  That is the MAGA Regeneracy as I've termed it which prominently features Donald Trump and his supporters at the helm.

...and I consider the resistance to Donald Trump for his incompetence a Regeneracy in its own right.

A President who has 60% disapproval for most of a week seven months after his inauguration is doing much wrong even without a foreign debacle, mass unrest, or an economic meltdown. I can see easily how this President gets an approval rating in the 20s/ That happened with Truman as his second term was ending, Nixon as he was about to resign, and Dubya in the summer and early autumn of 2008 -- again as his Presidency was approaching its end. America could simply wait out the end of what seemed troublesome Presidencies at the time. If Donald Trump should vacate the presidency we get no real change in politics. Mike Pence is as pure a reactionary as America has ever known to get as high in the political system as he is, perhaps one stroke or coronary away.  

Quote:For some reason I suspect that you're (Butler) displeased about this truth and thus must use doublethink to completely reject the notion that we've had a regeneracy.  And that's okay, you share that not only with whatever remnants of the Whigs that remain as well as the lunatic leftists that are out rioting.

Quote:(Butler) iS&H saw a valid pattern, but they misunderstood what caused the pattern and the forces that shape it.

I would say then what are you doing on a board specializing in their historical theories.  I mean don't get me wrong, there are some issues S&H are dead wrong on.  The idea that prophets lead the awakening for example.  They are at most foot soldiers.  But their pattern holds.

This time Donald Trump is a member of a Prophet generation, and he exemplifies the worst traits of a Prophet generation (arrogance, ruthlessness, and selfishness) and none of the best (no honorable principle, no scruples, and no visionary quality). I see him as the worst sort of Idealist, an exploiter and abuser who demands to be seen as a benefactor. We may have to stumble through this Crisis at its worth with a Reactive leader on the brink of elderhood, like a sixty-something Washington, J. Adams,  Truman, Eisenhower, or (Obama played the role well) Obama. Such will be awkward.

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Quote:(Butler) Technology is destroying good jobs.

Technology destroys and creates jobs all the time.  If your goal is to have full employment I have a means that can facilitate that at the stroke of a pen.  Ban all farm equipment.  Everyone will have to farm to raise the food needed to live, thus everyone will have a job.  Economic ignorance is not a solid foundation for your argument.

Butler is right. Your straw-man solution is wrong.

We are at the end of the stage of economic development in which the exploitation of scarcities in material goods is an easy way in which to get rich. Many people dreamed of such a time, but it could easily be as rough as any of the classic transitions that Marx saw in the past and predicted in the future. The easiest ways in which to get rich are now rent-grabbing, cronyism, and corruption. Software engineers may be creating the prosperity of Silicon Valley, but real-estate tycoons are grabbing most of the wealth so created there.

We no longer need to keep up with the latest technology to be satisfied with it. Those who go through hard times do not upgrade; they use what they already have. I can imagine a scenario when most households sho0w when the family was last doing well, because such will show what technology was then in place. That is not to say that hunger and homeless are not real problems; they can easily be such, especially if the Master Class wants them to serve as spurs to working longer and harder under worse conditions for less so that the Master Class can indulge itself more fully. Again, economic elites that behave as Marxist theory predicts that they behave are big trouble in any social order -- the ones who at the worst make a violent revolution possible.

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Quote:(Burler) Energy and global warming together look to create a significant problem.

Energy is only a problem when one doesn't have it.  Energy is the ablity to do work, economically speaking, thus, it seems prudent to expand energy production.  At current technology the best way to do this is through nuclear fission, but the so-called greens have no interest in using this clean burning energy production method which is far safer than fossil fuels let alone their wind and solar pipe dreams.

Just as a surfeit of food can lead to medical problems that eventually kill one, an excess of solar radiation or an excessive retention of solar radiation can kill any potential for life on a planet. Venus is extreme. Excess exposure to sunlight can give a light-skinned person a nasty sunburn. But even at this, I have a severe doubt that more consumption of energy in the First World per capita implies better lives. Waste of energy is not a good thing. Energy consumption fell drastically in the former Soviet bloc in the 1990s as free enterprise began to recognize that energy is not a free good.

If we do more telecommuting we will drastically cut down the use of motor fuels.

Quote:As to global warming.  It is fearmongering.  Is the climate changing?  Yes.  It is always changing.  In the time hominids have been on this planet there have been at least 5 different ice ages followed by warmer inter-glacial periods.  But unlike the doomsayers around here, warmer global temperatures are always associated with greater prosperity, and larger populations.  Medieval Warm Period was better than the Little Ice Age, which was better than the Late Roman Little Ice Age, which wasn't as good as the Classical Warm period and on and on.

Global warming implies that places already on the margin of human survival due to heat and humidity (the infamous heat index) will become increasingly stressful. That means the Persian Gulf region and much of Pakistan and India. Sure, those places have desert climates, but the absolute humidity is deadly.

Fear-mongering? Sure. One of my favorite scenic trips is to Tahquamenon Falls in the UP of Michigan. There are plenty of warnings to not go past a fence to get the photograph of a lifetime. Try getting that photo and you may have an end-of-life experience. A few years ago some fools taunted lions and tigers in a zoo and even threw things at the overgrown house-cats. A tiger scaled the fence and went after its tormenters, killing two and mauling another. But I wouldn't taunt dogs, either.

That's not to say that if we had global cooling we wouldn't be in worse trouble. With global warming, farmland gets inundated and food production collapses. With global cooling, food yields shrink far below the carrying capacity of the planet as we now have.




 

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Quote:(Butler) This could create a post scarcity economy with a new awareness of ecology and sustainability.  There are elites who profit from the status quo.  I expect that they drag their feet, try to extend their profitable old pattern, but will they drag their feet enough for a true regeneracy and crisis pattern?

A post scarcity economy is possible if we rapidly develop and deploy thorium fission based on the Liquid Floride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) model.  This can be scaled up and down as necessary.  For example Chicago may require sever really big reactor plants but East Tumbleweed Village in Sierra Leone might only need one small one.  What is more is that Thorium is quite common, and doesn't lend itself well to nuclear weapons proliferation.

If it is practical it goes into use. Only one thorium reactor is currently in use.

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Quote:(Butler) For decades I've suggested that the next generation of prophets will be called the Green Generation, that the issues suggested above will be at the core of the next awakening or crisis.  So far, no.  Nothing has happened cycle wise.  We're in the see saw.  As badly as I want to break the see saw pattern, reality speaks.  The see saw is still there.

Then you've only managed to be wrong for decades. I forsee the next prophets rebelling against social media and the policing of it far more readily than being influenced by eco-fearmongering.

As for the see-saw perhaps you're not seeing the regeneracy and the progress of the cycle because you're simply not looking for the right things, or you're values locked in that it must have A, B, and C when there is no evidence that A, B, or C are even issues.  The back and forth in the White House however is far older than the 4T, its been happening the entire saeculum and I don't expect it to stop until after the saeculum ends.

We are going to see less of a commodity fetish. Status symbols of the crasser sort will lose their relevance. Beyond basic needs, experiences will matter more than will things.

Quote:Realistically I see a Trumpian GOP emerging, and the Democrats if they manage to survive will be composed of SJWs, Neo-Cons, NeoLiberals and all the others who are rejected out of the regeneracy.

This is as relevant as the talk of a New Era of politics in the late 1920s. Reality discredited it. hoover did not become the wave of the future.

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Quote:(Butler) Oddly, I have always seen you siding with factions I perceive as the dominant elites, what Marx would call the owners of the means of production.  You started with the Marxist ruling class, and shifted to Trump.  In many ways it is a good bet to ally with the elites for three turnings out of four.  You'll do well for a while with the attitudes you displayed above.

You must have a very different definition of what a dominant elite is.  As a Marxist I sided with the proletariat, which is not now nor ever has been a ruling elite.  As to Trump, is he a really rich person?  Yes, Yes he is--he can afford to be a dollar a year president.  But is he part of the Established GOP elite?  No.  Even if you only listened to the Lugenpresse, Legacy Media, etc it would be evident that the high mandarins in the GOP cannot stand him.  That his nomination, and subsequent election was a hostile take over by popular forces of the Republican Party.

Donald Trump is  a sick joke in much of America.  The old-school Republicans are beginning to recognize what a monster he is. They dread the loss of their political and economic freedom.They are still a minority within their own Party. But when things get bad enough they will make an alliance with Democrats to ditch President Trump.

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Quote:(Butler) We'll just see if said elites will see enough of the potential coming storm to manage a soft landing.  I'm a bit dubious.  They generally don't.  If the brick and mortar stores collapse, if the restaurant industry follows, if the climate change deniers lose their propaganda war with reality...  We may yet see a true crisis.  That's a lot of ifs.  When you go to the future, there is no choice but guess at alternate history.  Sill, should problems come to a head, bet with the Whigs.  Until then, ride with the elites if you must.

Well there are some issues here to address, too bad it is between so much fluff and nonsense.

1.  Brick and mortar stores will never truly go away.  I cannot imagine buying shoes online.  Even though I know my size and have been wearing that size for years, I still need to try the shoes on.  A size 12 Nike sneaker is vastly different from a size 12 Dr. Martin's boot.  The same can be said of clothing, foodstuffs, and other sundry goods.  Where B&M stores are having trouble is hardware, entertainment, tools, general consumer goods and the like.  And even then often one orders online and then picks up these items at a store.  As is the case with Wal-Mart.  I often make an order and pay for it and go and pick up the items at the local store (because it saves me tremendously on shipping).  So stores are going nowhere.

One source of merchandise will be used stuff. If I had to furnish a new living place I might have to resort to Goodwill or Salvation Army. There's much stuff that people have tired of, stuff that old people had that their kids don't want... the supply of old books and video is just simply incredible.

Quote:2.  Restaurant dining is an experience.  So unless you're talking about virtual reality which is in its infancy, and this assumes it isn't a dead end technology, dining out is going no where unless you are proposing mass extinction of the human species.  Prostitute may be the oldest profession but Chef is the second oldest.

As I went through some rough times, I found that dining out was one of the easiest habits on which to cut back.  Grocery stores have plenty of prepared meals suitable for cooking in a microwave. Cooking from scratch is pointless for one person, but going out to eat? I do so when traveling. Maybe I go to a fish fry on occasion.

OK, I am not eating as much, and I have lost 33 pounds over about a year. Ice cream, cake, and pie have disappeare4d from my eating habits.

Quote:3.  Anyone who denies that the climate changes over time is a fool.  Likewise anyone who claims that there will be no snow on Mount Kilimanjaro in 10 years in 2005 is also a fool.  The claims of anthroprogenic global warming are wildly overblown just as was the immanent threat of a new ice age in the 1970s.  What is true though is that the sun drives climate most strongly of all factors, and it is headed for a solar minimum in the next few years.

Check the recent climate records, Kinser.

Quote:4.  As for who to bet on, I am betting on those who will likely be the victors.  In the end whatever side is victorious will after the fact write up history to make it seem that their victory was inevitable and part of the unending arrow of progress.  That is to say, they will be added to the long list of others that make up the Great Ones of Whig History.

Many people thought that the wave of the future was fascism. Then it was communism.