08-21-2018, 08:23 AM
(08-21-2018, 05:33 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(08-21-2018, 03:40 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: Remember also Bob suffers from the condition of subscribing to Whig History. Which is why his presence on a forum discussing cyclical generational driven history is somewhat puzzling. I would consider subscribing to even the barest bones of S&H theory to require the rejection of the notion of liner 'progress'. I have long maintained that history only has the appearance of 'progressive movement' (not to be confused with the Progressive Movement--which is just an American branding of Neo-Marxist socialism). In short since history is written by the victors, the victors always proclaim themselves to be the bearers of progress.
Hmm. I consider the Industrial Age (chemical weapons, printed information, democracy) to be quite distinct from the Agricultural (muscle powered weapons, written information, hereditary to militaristic kings). The S&H crises of Western Civilization where primarily to implement the Industrial Age. As such there is a clear (Yes Whiggish) arrow of progress favoring democracy and human right over kings and military values. If anything, the Industrial Age proved economic values able to defeat military values on the killing fields.
Yes. Infantry may be good for mobility, but artillery does the killing, and air power can disrupt supply chains and destroy the economic ability of a belligerent power. The very survival of a belligerent may depend upon the ultimate machinery of warfare and supply -- naval ships and the merchant marine.
Quote:Thus, S&H is basically about the implementation of Enlightenment values. New values defeat old.
New, good values beat both bad, old values (slavery in the American Civil War) and bad new ones (fascism in World War II). A Crisis War can demonstrate how flimsy the moral and technological base of a belligerent is. On paper, the Tsar's army was quite impressive; the Japanese had a fearsome war machine by any standard. The Russian Empire failed due to its obsolete transportation network and its lack of incentives for the common man to put his life on the line for a grossly-unjust order. Make Japan a democracy with decent values and put the fascistic KKK in charge of America, and Japan wins dominance of the northern Pacific -- basically the official name for Alaska has an "R" in it instead of an "L", and Americans need passports to go to Hawaii.
Quote:Whether the Industrial Age pattern continues into whatever comes next (nuclear weapons, computerized information, direct vote democracy?) is open. Right now, the capitalist elite and post Communist tyrants are having their innings. The arrow of progress in favor of human rights and democracy is very hard to find, not at all obvious. The idea of all men being created equal is being quashed by selfish tribalism and greed. This is generally the case, with conservatives resisting change well for three of the four turnings.
What Milovan Djilas said of "Socialist": Yugoslavia applies also to the United States; bureaucratic elites can become no less exploitative than nobility and rapacious capitalists. Thus the Communist nomenklatura that took on an aristocratic character as it gained power without accountability. America's executive elite is doing almost the same thing -- except that it must account for itself to the elites of ownership. But with an aristocracy comes horrible treatment of the people subordinate to it.
Quote:I am assuming global warming, limited resources and taking care of an ever increasing population are problems that will eventually have to be solved. The existing elites with existing ways of profiting seem to be putting off acknowledging these problems. They wish to continue the gravy train, the old pattern which they profit from. I don't think this will go on forever. It can, however, last the lifetimes of the elites that currently hold power. When this is no longer the case, the new values might triumph.
Donald Trump suggests that even greater use of fossil fuels is a good idea -- but use of fossil fuels is the cause of the increased volume of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Higher temperatures also imply more water vapor in the air, and water vapor is an even more powerful greenhouse gas than is carbon dioxide.
Few political leaders have so disparaged objective science as has Donald Trump. He do9es so on behalf of powerful special interests who do not have the common good at heart.
Quote:I am dubious that the Industrial Age pattern will hold in the age that comes next. The lack of a domestic spiral of violence, the reluctance in the face of nuclear weapons for anyone to wage a crisis war, speak against the Industrial Age pattern holding. The last awakening suggests the second turning will become the decisive time, not the fourth. Things change.
The Fourth Turning determines what sort of political and institutional leadership is possible, and we have yet to see this one resolve. We can have Lincoln's "new Birth of Freedom" or we can have the "boot stamping on a human face forever" of Orwell's nightmarish Nineteen Eighty-Four. I see no workable compromise between the two. We can have an economic order that gives opportunity and makes equity easy to achieve or we can have a new feudalism complete with a repression that makes slavery on a Southern plantation look permissive by contrast.
We will need to make adjustments. We are at the end of the time in which more stuff brings more happiness, at least in the First World. The crass materialism that one associates with peasants in Fiddler on the Roof was necessary in a society still clearly mired in the agricultural age yet breaking down. During the Great Depression, Americans fount that the 40-hour workweek was more than adequate for meeting all basic needs, and that anything else went either to elite indulgence or pure waste. We will probably also get abundant power from solar energy and have self-driving vehicles. I predict that we will shorten the workweek. We will have to make adjustments, and this will make some commercial institutions obsolete. 24-hour-a-day shopping? Mediocre restaurants, when people with any competence as cooks can do better than 'casual dining' restaurants? The physical book or recorded media?
Quote:I would just as soon see democracy and human rights prevail, that autocratic elitist governments continue to fade, that there be less kings, slaves and dictators.
Who doesn't? But autocratic regimes have a tendency to implode. Such regimes might try to associate themselves with economic and social progress -- and invariably law-and-order -- proclaiming themselves as the bars to poverty and chaos. If democracy can work in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, then why can it not work in China?
Quote:Kinser seems to prefer otherwise, claiming the crumbs from the elite autocrats and tyrants. As such, he has to remain blind to the side he is really on. He hasn't really switched sides since his communist days.
He has gone from admiring Stalin to admiring Trump, going from someone who made a nasty dictatorship even worse to someone who brings a dictatorial or despotic style to America. He cannot accept how unpopular this President is.
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.