The Next 10 Years: A Deep Sense of Foreboding

[pbrower2a]

(12-01-2016, 11:35 PM)_4AD_84 Wrote: Sometimes, the simplest model is the best.

We tend to get wrapped around the axle here trying to discern the crisis.

In a normally-operating animal-powered wagon, the axle keeps the wheels going in the same direction. In an engine-powered vehicle the axle transmits the motive force to the wheels. If the wheel goes off, then the vehicle breaks down whether it is an ox-cart or a Ferrari.

Quote:Was the Great Recession and its jobless recovery aftermath the Crisis, or the beginning of it? Perhaps. But I think we all sense that the real worst of it has yet to arrive. I think we now have the parameters for a perfect storm.

It was an immediate solution to prevent a Great Depression. It also allowed the most reactionary elements in America to recover before anyone else did and then use their economic power to stall any possibility of reforms not sought by those reactionary elements (especially the economic elitists). We need remember that the Great Depression, harsh as it was, took down the economic royalists and their political power. This recovery has enshrined the economic royalists on economic, if not cultural. matters.

If Boomer non-elites aren't so objectionable, the Boomer elites exemplify arrogance, selfishness, and ruthlessness to the extreme. Extreme narcissists (and narcissism looks like a 'moderate' form of sociopathy or psychopathy, both sharing a lack of empathy and extreme selfishness) and the evil personalities will always hurt the common man if given the chance.

This Crisis Era will end when the worst actors in American life either achieve crushing power (think of Franco's Spain, only with racism) or are dully removed from power. The next four years will decide this.

Quote:Firstly, unless one is blinded by political partisanship, it is apparent that come 2017 we will enter into a leadership crisis the likes of which we have not seen in the US at least since Nixon's fall, and I will state, even much longer than that.

Trump has spent 50 years in a business space where bullshit is king, bluster the norm, and sleaziness accepted. It is a space where true leadership, process expertise, attention to detail, and good management skills, are not expected. Meanwhile he has zero experience with public leadership. Beyond all this, it's quite apparent that he has one or more personality disorders. A man like this is destined to collapse like a wet paper bag, during the inevitable "3AM call" situations that will haunt him.

Nixon at the least had some tendencies as a reformer; the partisan divisions within American life then might have allowed Nixon to get much of his political agenda but not have allowed him to use his power to turn against his ideological brethren in the Democratic Party in the South. Senator Sam Ervin was about as conservative as Nixon -- he just would not let Nixon go after Democrats with dirty tricks. Donald Trump is not a politician. If you recall the late General Norman Schwartzkopf fielding a question on his assessment of Saddam Hussein after the First Gulf War (I do not have an exact quote):

Except for not being a good soldier, strategist, tactician, general, politician, diplomat, or statesman, he did okay...

with some laughter from the audience. That audience of journalists got it.

...even in a business setting, Donald Trump has been 'above' it all. He inherited his wealth and became basically a rentier, failing at everything except reality television (a questionable area of creativity that appears only because of plenty of network and programming time to fill cheaply). "True leadership" means giving subordinates cause to trust one. Eisenhower and Carter, both graduates of Service academies proved trustworthy, if at different levels of competence. "True leadership" means finding ways in which to avoid doing nasty things to innocent people for a quick buck for superiors. Process expertise is learned at the lower levels of politics in city councils, the legal apparatus, and such offices as 'city clerk' before one runs for 'higher office'. Attention to detail is for clerks and to new employees who get to do low-level administration (like senior NCO's and junior officers in the military). Management skills? He collects the rent through a post office at a bank. That's how he gets his funds.

There have been plenty of politicians who have had experience in small business and in lower levels of corporate bureaucracies. If you are thinking of the other tycoon who ran for the Presidency -- Ross Perot at least had to succeed at every level as a businessman, including accountability to customers for details. He may have eventually left the details to subordinates... but at the least he couldn't bluster his way through everything. He needed to get concrete results  in the then-complex world of data processing and systems analysis. Property leasing and management looks in places of intractable scarcity looks like one of the easiest businesses that there is.

Quote:Meanwhile, a cult like sea of followers and fellow travelers are geared up to "tear down the Establishment." What will they do when his naked highness falls apart? There is nothing worse than an angry leaderless mob that has authoritarian impulses.

Eric Hoffer gives a scary explanation: they go from one authoritarian ideology to another. It might seem shocking to find that a former Klansman could become an 'Islamofascist' -- but pay attention to the word 'fascist' and recognize that one replaces fundamentalist Christianity with fundamentalist Islam and nothing changes but the robe. The contempt for outsiders remain. Many German Nazis and Italian fascists, and their collaborators throughout occupied Europe had gone from Bolshevism to Fascism. On the other side, Communists who had practically no local support before the Soviet conquest of central and southeastern Europe found that the rank-and-file enforcer of the Hlinka Guard in Slovakia, the Ustase in Croatia, the Arrow Cross in Hungary, or the Iron Guard in Romania became the perfect servant of Josef Stalin or Josip Broz Tito once the fascist idols were discredited and executed. The Commies offered meaning to angry people and plenty of victims -- the same liberals that the fascist butchers for Tiso, Szalasi, Pavelic, and Antonescu harassed. One of the nastiest villains in literature is Viktor Ippolitovich* Komarovsky (Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak) , who had connections to the Tsarist order in Russia and to the Bolsheviks. Whoever won he was going to be a brutal enforcer, betraying either Insiders of the Tsarist order if the Reds won or betraying the Bolsheviks to which he had feelers if the Whites won.

Even a relatively tolerant tradition like Buddhism could support the kamikaze culture within the Japanese Armed Forces.  Black Power movements in America are practically Ku Kluxism in blackface, much in contrast to groups like the NAACP or the Urban League willing to deal with the (white) Establishment.  

The True Believer is always angry and never reflective. But back to Hoffer: The opposite of a raging fascist is not a raging Communist. The opposite of a raging fascist is a sober liberal. If one believes that politics is at best a give-and-take, respect for legal precedent and the legitimate concerns of the other side, and a wariness of the hazards of destroying tradition, then one can do the compromise necessary for democracy.

Quote:However, this is just an overture. The real storm will be a combined global financial crisis and geopolitical crisis. While I don't agree with all the details he has laid out, John Xenakis' analysis of emerging threat vectors world wide on both the financial and geopolitical fronts are here for all to see. Flammable materials are everywhere and ignition is sure to happen.

With a reasonably competent, honest, and decent leader like Barack Obama one at worst gets a calming mood with no abrupt change. With Donald Trump we are fracking in dangerous fault zones. This is just the person to magnify any cultural divides in America to bait people to overreact and riot so that he can have the police department bring out the attack dogs and water cannons.

Quote:This coming storm will be the Climax of the Crisis. The leadership void in the US and a number of other NATO countries will invite geopolitical adventurism by the enemies of the West. Millions upon millions will be harmed initially by financial pain and later by war. We are going to witness phenomena which have thus far been unknown in human history. The forces of a world unraveling meeting high tech and mass destruction weapons will be a cataclysm. A few decades from now there will be no doubt that a crisis - in fact, the mother of all crises, has occurred.

Donald Trump may in his bloated ego see himself as the 'new Lincoln'. I see him more likely as the Milosevic of America.

*I wonder if Pasternak wanted to give him a patronymic closest to the word hypocrite, something that I almost read in his name. Does anyone know what the Russian word for hypocrite is? I think the Italian word is ipocrito or ipocrita depending on gender.