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Thoughts On Where We Are, and Where We're Going
#6
(08-19-2018, 03:31 AM)Galen Wrote:
(08-19-2018, 12:12 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:
(08-18-2018, 08:01 PM)justpassingthrough Wrote: Donald Trump defies categorization in various ways, but in the broadest sense, I think Obama is analogous to FDR, and Trump is analogous to Truman and/or Eisenhower. 

Obama, clearly not a Boomer (his temperament shows such) acts much like the best of the Lost (like Truman and Eisenhower) dd when they were in their 60s -- no free-flowing anger, emotional maturity, and little desire for new big programs. In the scope of things he is pre-seasonal, which creates problems that Howe and Strauss failed to recognize. Trump may have the vulgarity of Truman, but not the maturity or humility. Trump is about as undisciplined, incautious, abrasive, irrational, pecuniary, and flamboyant as Eisenhower wasn't But I see far more in common between Eisenhower and Obama in style of leadership and political result than I see between Eisenhower and  Mr. Bone Spurs.

(Obama) is nothing like the Lost

The Howe and Strauss description of "Reactive" very well. He is in no way rooted in Boomer culture, and he has certainly shown no indication of being involved in the cultural debates of Boomers; he was 'below' that as a child and he is now 'above' it. Unlike his narcissistic predecessors (I suggest that you read the book A$$holes) in the generational cycle  He is more careful about how others decide what he is instead of thinking himself special before achieving anything big or noteworthy. He is far more humane in his treatment of people not in the elite (in fact the author notes that Barack Obama hardly fits the title of his book, but Dubya does to an inordinate degree, and Donald Trump is practically the one to fit the word whenever he is even barely awake). His parents were not rooted in any place and neither was he as a child (of course, some Boomers were like that -- the so-called 'military brats' who saw location as interchangeable).

Is it possible to be a Boomer and not be an a$$hole? Sure -- if one is not in the Boomer elite. To be in the Boomer elite one must have been in it all one's life, and not simply have held promise for such. Boomer elites consistently broke all others not in the elite and who did not already have a network of support, including any Boomer not among them. So the Boomer elite has created plenty of cast-offs, people who fell short of elite status at some point in their lives and that that elite sees as dirt.

Maybe the next Boomer leader arises from among the cast-offs somehow.  Americans of all generations are getting sick of the a$$holes reminding them that their sole reason for existence is to make them even more filthy-rich, indulge the primitive and destructive desires for indulgence at the cost of whatever self-esteem those peons have, and serve as vicious enforcers of the most imperious demands of the 'betters' as the elite sees itself. People getting whatever they want because society deems them special for being what they are and not for their legitimate achievements? That is how the elites of classical civilizations, feudal nightmares, and early-modern aristocrats saw themselves -- know your place, o peon -- suffering for me because I am wonderful and you are dirt!

I have a suspicion that when things get really bad, elite indulgence will be a necessary sacrifice for those elites, and that the loss of that burden will be a great boon to the rest of us -- including the Boomers that our generational elite has hurt badly.

Quote:were because they would have never passed something as insane as (ObamaCare).

Obamacare might have worked better had it come with some cost controls and some taxes to fund it. So -- do tort reform as a part of any welfare-based medical care. Raise the payroll taxes to pay for it. Use sin taxes on cancerweed products, sugar, and alcohol content to defray the costs that certain bad habits have upon medical cost. It was up to Republicans to press for improvements, and they chose to resist everything. 

Quote:If anything they would have looked at the price tag and the debt the US already had and decided it was a bad idea.  One thing the Lost understood was how debt can snowball into an insurmountable problem which is something that Boomers have never managed.  In fact responsibility is something that Boomers in general seem to have trouble with.

If one needs something, whether housing or automobiles, one looks at the ways in which to get it. Yes, debt is trouble, but it is also profitable to creditors. The Right now finds Big Government a wonderful means of getting contracts and enforcing its ways in business and industry. It loves to burden the common man with personal debt because that makes them more willing to suffer for the elites. Debt is not bad if there is some asset that either generates income or reduces costs. Remember: every big corporation is loaded with debt just to permit expansion of the business. Anyone who can borrow at 4% and get a rate of return of 7% will float as many bonds or bank loans as possible to get the 4% that makes the 7% possible. If you need an auto loan to have a car that gets you to work -- then by all means buy the car on credit (unless at loan-shark terms). Note also that the currency in your wallet, the account in your bank balance, and any life insurance policy that you pay into is debt that someone else owes you -- perhaps in a contingency, but it is still something owed to you). Your pension is debt.

Debt can be troublesome. Should the government of the United States be overthrown by a foreign power as was Nazi Germany in 1945 or the Confederacy, then its debts typically become worthless. Or should government repudiate debt, such is effectively an expropriation.  That's what Commies did with currency 'reforms' in central and Balkan Europe in the late 1940s to destroy the wealth of the middle-class and the bourgeoisie.
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.


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RE: Thoughts On Where We Are, and Where We're Going - by pbrower2a - 08-19-2018, 09:24 AM

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