Winners and Losers of this 4T

[pbrower2a]

(09-05-2020, 05:32 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(09-05-2020, 01:16 PM)sbarrera Wrote: 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.

It is not quite the same.  In the Industrial Age the crisis was a crisis war.  It generally took four or so years for the US to mobilize, learn the weapons of the time, and push your way to the enemy capitol.  So, it took four years to solve the crisis heart.  This time around the problems are different.  It doesn’t take as long to get a vaccine.  It doesn’t take as long, if you can win the senate and White House, to change the laws ruling violent racist policing.  As a result, I have been seeing a shorter crisis.  Once the obvious problems have been solved, there will be attempts to make sure it doesn’t happen again then we go on to building fusion plants and stomping on the old values that got us into the whole mess.

I see it much more possible now that American leadership of the time could decide to outlaw the fascistic ideologies of Ku Kluxism, neo-Nazism, and the Alt Right, if for no other reason than to protect children from exposure to ideologies that can do them no good. I can imagine legislation even to the extent of a Constitutional amendment that greatly reduces the right to bear arms. It is clear that we have no right to own tanks, hand grenades, Stinger missiles, Katyusha rockets, or submarines. (Submarines have been used for smuggling cocaine). If Germany can outlaw Nazi flags, organizations, and symbols, maybe we can ban KKK $#!+ as Germany does with Nazis without losing much freedom. 

You don't want your kids involved with drugs, child molesters, or neo-Nazis. There isn't much different between the Nazis and the Klan these days anyway.  

Quote:Is it like 1941 and 1942?  In so far as no one was ready to confront the twin problems of COVID and racism, sure.  As 2020 rolled in, we did have the old values in charge.  It is obvious that they are not working just now.  In 1941 and 1942, the militaristic powers still had their head start.  We had not fully mobilized yet, though the regeneracy and selection of political leaders had already occurred by that point.  Finding the right generals was still a work in progress.  Not quite a perfect match, but close enough.

American politics were about as placid as they could be in 1942; the analogy to our time is more like the late 1850's. No two Crisis Eras are quite alike in the sequence and emphasis of events, let alone enemies in the event of a war. COVID-19 kills like a war, so that may be the Crisis. By 1940 most Americans already saw the Devil's Reich and Thug Japan as likely enemies if America were to end up at war, and it was only a matter of time. We have an enemy, and instead of being a foreign leader it is a virus. Nobody can feel guilty about seeking the extermination of the virus.

We will need better leadership at the least on COVID-19 than what we have. With a halfway-competent President we would have more a more competent response than what we had. We would have had a standardized response that shut down all fifty states instead of mostly states with Democratic Governors or majorities in both State houses.   

Quote:It could be that we could get another trigger to prolong the crisis heart, but triggers these days are fairly rare.

COVID-19 is the war. Plagues are the wrong times in which to conduct military campaigns because plagues add new, pointless danger in a war. Invading in the aftermath of a plague that depopulates an area or decimates the defenders might be tempting for survivors. 

Quote:I think the values shift is well underway.  Incorporating science into policy and rejecting racism is a given.  We just have to wait on the election and inauguration for the values change to be given teeth.

Those in rearguard defense of discredited ideas will discover that when they have no reserves that they are doomed. 

Quote:The winners?  The greatest problems facing the culture are addressed.  Democracy, human rights, equality and justice are apt to be the winners.  Political fantasies that ignore the science and justify ignoring problems will be a losers.  Racism will be a looser.  But you have to be a little more patient.

The economic elites promised some super-prosperity that would supposedly solve all shortages so that inequality would be no harm. They sold us garbage -- heavy personal debt, limited opportunity, high rents, overpriced education necessary as a gamble in a scramble for jobs as glorified clerks, and the world's most expensive medical system. Figure that two of the sources of low-paying jobs (retail stores and low-end "casual dining" restaurants have been dying.

Mass poverty is misery and no key to creating some incredible prosperity from which all will benefit. That, to put it as crudely as I can put it, is how slavery worked. 

In any event, manufacturing prowess is so strong that our economic system can meet all human needs so easily that poverty is no longer a necessary or desirable means of controlling workers. We can work fewer hours to get what we need. The status symbols have become empty. Rituals of self-abasement on behalf of elites have become pointless. That is the end of any need for egregious inequality. 

Much will change in all economic assumptions. In the rest of life... we need to learn how to live and not how to toady to horrid bosses. We will need to accept reduced hours of work, but we will need to learn what to do with the time. We will need to appreciate anew what takes time to fully enjoy. Ephemeral delights pass and leave life empty. Ideally we would do what the elites don't want us to do -- reading, listening to extended works of music, and watching great cinema. 

I outgrew Top 40 music as a teenager... OK, that was when disco entered the pop scene.