05-26-2017, 12:33 PM
(05-25-2017, 04:59 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: I think we are seeing the hard hats starting to turn against him.
Hard hats may hate what they term "n___rs, sp__s, ch__ks, f_gs" etc, but they really hate a bullshitter.
We are seeing multitudes turn against the President. He betrayed his promises. Hoover was OK until the economy melted down, and Carter was OK until events in Iran went out of hand very fast. But events betrayed the Hoover and Carter presidencies.
I'm not so sure that the 'hard-hats' are as bigoted as the stereotypes of the 1970s had them. Co-workers might be "n___rs, sp__s, ch__ks, f_gs" etc. Then there might be a 'Puerto Rican' son-in-law or 'Mexican-American' daughter-in-law that they try to convince you is 'really Italian'. "Archie Bunker" is dead.
I have had my unfortunate encounters with 'bullshitters' -- and I know enough to listen only for dollops of entertaining fiction.
I'm beginning to wonder about rural America. Donald Trump is the definitive city slicker at the stereotypical worst. I have seen no polls so far about the Plains states except for Oklahoma.
...The most likely time for a Regeneracy will be the evening of November 3, 2020. When states that 'never, ever, ever! vote for a Democratic Presidential nominee' are shown voting against Trump or Pence, we will know that the Power of Mammon is broken. I can easily imagine the Republicans warning about how employers will shutter their doors, Satanism will supplant Christianity, the sun will stop shining, and dogs will turn on their owners if people don't vote right. Or is it 'Right'?
We are entering the post-scarcity era, and that transition may not be so bright and benign as many expected. Because there will be far fewer easy ways to make an above-average income other than being born rich or being part of a bureaucratic elite. people will find some of their expectations unmet. The insecurities that people had will not be solved with status symbols that buy a simulacrum of self-esteem for a moment. Creativity and imagination are far less commonplace at the level of commercial marketability than people think.
But a post-scarcity society means that need is no longer a conscionable means of controlling people. But plutocrats and bureaucratic elites control through fear.
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.