Winners and Losers of this 4T

[sbarrera]

(09-04-2020, 02:50 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(09-04-2020, 08:38 AM)sbarrera Wrote: With the race to the White House coming down to a contest between the Mafia state run by the Trump organization, and the remnants of neoliberalism as embodied by O'Biden, I would say the Progressive dream has come to an end. The blue wave will at best be a bluish-purple wave if it successfully washes the GOP out of power. However, certain Progressive agenda items have successfully taken root and won't be going away even if the GOP maintains control of the government. Either way, the pandemic continues to have its effect on society and the economy, which will be more consolidation of the digital economy and a more precarious life for those outside of it.

Here is my list of winners and losers.

Winner: Big Business, Loser: Small Business
Winner: Capital, Loser: Labor
Winner: Digital workers, Loser: Essential workers
Winner: Gays, Loser: Transgenders
Winner: Marijuana users, Loser: Opioid users
Winner: AR-15 collectors, Loser: Gun control advocates
Winner: Whites, Loser: non-Whites
and because I can't resist...
Winner: Coronavirus, Loser: Humanity

The Crisis is not yet over. Winners and losers are yet to be determined. So far any American must recognize that the economic elites have completely humiliated everyone else, coming close to establishing a New Peonage, if not slavery. Landlords are kings, and renters are losers so far -- big. Gays won, it is still ambiguous about transgender people, but child-molesting perverts have definitely lost. We have yet to see how the gun issue resolves itself. Sporting weapons only, and if you need defense, then call on "R. Ottweiler" or "D. O. Berman", either of which is a very good reason for people to behave themselves.  

The typical Crisis has had the Grim Reaper as the winner and Humanity as the loser. At one stage of the last Crisis one could have had:

Winner: Nazis, Loser: Jews
Winner: Nazis. Loser: liberal democracy

but in the end, the surviving Jews at lest got Israel or at least easy immigration to America, and leading Nazis got Hell. (This may be heretical by any religious standard, but if there is a just God who stands in judgment of us, then He can choose which theological Truth that He represents. I can only imagine the sickening feeling that a Nazi felt when discovering that Almighty God is Jewish. I can only imagine what Osama bin Laden felt when discovering that God is an American, or that bombers or the 16th Street Baptist Church in "Bombingham, Alabama"found out at death that God is a black American Christian. And, yes, Slobodan Milosevich was likely shocked to discover that God is Allah and Muhammad is his chief Prophet. If one is just, then one has little to fear in the Manifestation of God's Choosing). Child molesters, beware: you are going to be f---ed in ways you never thought possible, and those ways will be unpleasant..  

Donald Trump has achieved something I never thought possible after the 1970's: mass dissent against him, complete with peaceful protests and outrageous  violence.  This is rare in American history, and this signals the end of an era in American history. A Crisis is the end of one era and the beginning of another, typically the second Skowronek cycle of political life in one Saeculum and the first in another.

pbrower you have a great point about the Crisis not being over and how bad it might looked for the Allies in '41-'42. Is that where we are now? It is possible. So you could call the winners v. losers scorecard current state only. More to come.