(10-26-2022, 04:45 PM)David Horn Wrote:(10-25-2022, 10:41 PM)nguyenivy Wrote:(10-21-2022, 12:42 PM)David Horn Wrote:(10-21-2022, 11:58 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Trump may not go on trial, but at the moment I think it's possible that if he doesn't go on trial and get convicted in these various Courts, he will run for president and defeat Joe Biden. Once again, Biden's disapproval rating is now worse than Trump's. The people of the USA are THAT crazy these days.
It now looks quite possible, even probable, that our current generations will blow our current 4T for the first time in Anglo-American history. If this happens, there will be no "forthcoming 1T". There won't even be a recovery. We will continue in a permanent 4T and the saeculum will end.
This will be kind of like Russia's and the Soviet Union's from 1894 to 1953, except that at least the Soviet Union had a quieter time following their long 4T, which itself lasted quite a while, although I would not call it a 1T, just stagnation. Gorbachev could be said to have ended this, but for Russians it just felt like the start of another 4T (or resumption of its un-ending 4T), which is still current, even though to us the Gorbachev era looked like a 2T.
I've peddled the hyper-2T theory before. The neo-Prophets may not understand how they got scewed, but they'll know they did. Unless the security apparatus is all-encompassing, look for that to be the 4T replacement -- possilbly resetting the saecular clock.
What is this 'hyper-2T theory'? What do you expect to happen during the hyper-2T? Regarding next Prophets, aren't they being born as we speak? I have cousins with kids just born since COVID-19 began and so I would expect them to not be aware at all of this 4T unless it's very long & extends well into the 2030s. They would be coming up in the new 1T and will be of voting age near the end of the 1T/beginning of the 2T.
Essentially, the 4T fails (still TBD, but very possible at this point), and whatever we call the 1T is more like the post-WWII in Europe than here. We know that the MAGA folks have no interest in promoting solutions to AGW, firearms or any of a market basket of social issues not specific to whites being on top. This is, frankly, untenable. By the time that the next 2T begins, Boomers will be leaving in droves, Xers will be entering their dotage and Millenials will still be navel gazing (my guess, but it seems likley). Artists are unlikley to lead, except as motivators. So what will the neo-Prophets do? They have to see their world going down the tubes, so radical action won't seem outrageous. Will it be violent? Maybe. Will it be a successful realignment? The Magic 8 Ball says: Hazy.
Such a result as the Hard Right winning the Culture Wars and establishing a racist, superstitious, plutocratic, demagogic, anti-intellectual, anti-scientific, anti-feminist, bigoted, provincial, homophobic norm is sure to result in a sharp rejection in the next 2T. It could be extremely violent. Leaders in such a regime are likely to be consummately corrupt, arrogant, and incompetent (except at wielding the tools of terror). Think of the mullahs of Iran and replace Shiite Islam with "Christian" Protestant fundamentalism. That is what America would be like except for the absence of hijabs. There might be other markers of female subordination.
I can see these people establish a nasty order and demanding that people express undying love and complete praise for its faults. People will be obliged to see their repressors and exploiters as the best of all possible worlds when something else will be easy to find with the normal processes of a rational and imaginative mind. Consider well that even so flawed a revolutionary appeal as Marxism depends upon a mere negation of a plutocratic ideal. Yes, Marxism needs some intellectuals to adapt Marxist ideology to the distress of the people enduring that distress in one nation, but that appeal is far from erudite. In places like Russia reeling from World War Ii or China in the apocalyptic catastrophe of the war with Japan, Marxist appeals are just smart enough to appeal to the unlettered masses.
American liberals have largely stripped the political radicalism of the 2T only to revive the virtues of the Boom Awakening. Someone like Donald Trump exemplifies the worst -- basically "Do What Thou Wilt". (Sure, that is a 19th-century British mystic Aleister Crowley who gets a bad rap among anyone expressing an expectation of self-control whether liberal and rational or fundamentalist-evangelical; but "Do What Thou Wilt" expresses Donald Trump well). Only a few could ever get away with that questionable maxim as a guide to life. For far more it is something like "Suffer for shareholders, executives, bosses, and customers, and always remember to smile in gratitude to those who make your survival possible!"
Due to low glass ceilings for advancement and few opportunities to do anything else as class privilege becomes the dominant reality in American life, there will be smart people who see something very wrong with this. Shareholders and executives will enjoy sybaritic excess that degrades everyone else and seems unnecessary to the creation of prosperity. Bosses who crack the whip (figuratively or even literally) will be seen as cheap sell-outs to elite greed. Workers will wind down in front of the idiot screen, and the objective will be advertising. The ads will be for schlock merchandise, dubious entertainments, and questionable services. This will be fine for morons, but someone with an above-average level of intelligence denied the opportunity to use one's mind on the job. The orthodox economy will seem madness as well as moral affront.
If the Bible is treated as Holy Scripture, then people will read it and contrast the economic and political leadership to Biblical teachings.
Thou shalt not kill, yet the rulers kill cheaply for dissent, minor crime, and even slacking.
Thou shalt not steal, yet corruption is the economic norm. Economic exploitation is itself theft.
Thou shalt not commit adultery, yet the elites fornicate without shame.
Thou shalt honor they father and mother, yet poor people lack the means to support them when they wear down from overwork and the absence of a social-welfare system.
Thou shalt have no God before me, yet Mammon is the real God of the elites in contrast to the one that the proles are to obey.
Thou shalt not bear false witness, but the worst sort of lie -- Orwellian Newspeak -- is the official norm.
Thou shalt not make false oaths, yet all anodyne promises by the elites are meaningless.
Thou shalt not make graven images, yet pornography is rampant -- and particularly degrading and exploitative.
Thou shalt not covet, yet the proles are compelled to compete for everything, including the means of sustenance.
(Thou shalt not covet is often split in practice between material goods and "servants and maidservants, wives, and daughters").
It might be nominally and officially Christian, but it is a sick parody at best. Then think of the hideousness of the mass culture. The GI taste for the banal and anesthetic would have been enough to trigger a Boom Awakening. Combine an empty culture, a repressive and inequitable regime, and one has the potential for a political, religious, and cultural Awakening for which the extant elites have no response except brute force. The world would be set up for revolutions like those of 1848, revolutions that few of living people understand.
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.