(10-14-2019, 01:14 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:(07-15-2019, 10:45 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote: It's time to toss another log into this fire. One never knows where the Epstein rabbit hole will go.
https://www.ecosophia.net/the-long-view/
How about a long, stair step bounce down ?
Interesting Article Rags. It also isn't the first time I've seen Trump compared to either Julius or Augustus Caesar. Personally I think he is Julius; the Democrats are making moves to assassinate him politically if not physically, just like the Roman Senators assassinated Julius Caeser.
Donald Trump can be assassinated metaphorically without being stabbed, shot, beaten, or whatever the method in vogue is at this time. The American to whom I compare Julius Caesar is George Washington for making a very different world and defining a new title for ruler -- as Julius Caesar defined the word Imperator. Washington chose to limit his Presidency to two terms, recognizing that others were wholly competent to do his job. He had defined the Presidency for Presidents up to at least Obama. I am tempted to compare Trump to either Nero, Caligula, or Commodus for erratic behavior, amorality, and for offending the sensibilities of the Establishment while doing little for the common man other than fooling people for a time. Unlike the unholy trinity of bad Roman Emperors, Trump is much too old to establish the prospect of a long reign despite its offense to multitudes . Julius Caesar never got the opportunity to decide that the time was up for his rule.
I am convinced at this point that Donald Trump will be impeached and not removed due to some ruse of the Senate majority in the Republican Party. It is not that Trump is useful to them; it is instead that the elected politicians typically reflect the political realities of their last election and do not adapt fast enough when things make rapid changes. Trump will be impeached; he will be shown grossly inadequate; a significant number of Republican Senators will go down to defeat with him in 2020 after standing with him.
Quote:As for having a "dominant minority", to use Toynbee's phraseology, we've had that since at least the 1960s. And the Neo-Liberal (Clinton-ian/Obama-ite faction of one party and Nixon-ian/Bush-ite faction of the other) has been shown to be defeat-able; this was primarily Trump's job (if he actually gets the ball rolling in some direction apart from that is icing on the cake in my book). So if Trump is Julius as I think, then regardless of the outcome of 2020 (which is likely a Trump Victory incidentally the Dims simply aren't running anyone who can win except perhaps Buttigieg [who is too too young right now, he's under 40 but he might turn up again in the 1T if his political career doesn't end up being a smoking crater after the current 4T ends]) an Augustus must follow.
We are all capable of reading whatever we want to into Toynbee. We do not have a century of domination by one faction, the sort of situation that looks good to some dominant and uncreative minority better at indulging and pampering itself while treating all others badly. A system such as Russia under the Romanov dynasty around 1900 may have been superficially impressive, but under the rigid edifice was great rot. Russian creativity in science, literature, music, and even art was impressive on the brink of the First World War, but the system had severe faults. Despite the impressive work of scientists, the People were heavily involved in mysticism that corrupted even the Imperial court. If you think our televangelists are a collection of sickos, then just think of Grigory Rasputin, who infected the upper echelons of power. The economic order lacked the redundancy of capitalist systems that rely upon competition to keep trade honest and keeping profit margins down. Antisemitism effectively threw away what might have been a creative minority as is shown by American Jews, many descended from Jews who left Russia when the going was good. Above all, economic inequality was severe, dehumanizing, and destructive -- and the leadership had the folly of locating almost all the industry (and thus a disgruntled proletariat that could easily contrast its misery to the indulgence of the nobility and the plutocrats). When the First World War came around the economic order showed its shakiness.
I have read one version of Toynbee's A Study of History, and such reading caused me to see how the USA fits among the leading Empires. The most ominous time for a civilization is the era of the Universal State in which one political entity has taken over the entire civilization and establishes a rigid order over it all. The system might be superficially impressive for its monuments, but under the grandeur is pervasive rot. Imaginative solutions that might save the system are seen as dangerous heresies because they challenge the incompetence and selfishness of the ruling elite. Western Christian Civilization has had the dubious opportunity to come under the rule of one or another empires in its midst -- Hapsburg Spain, Napoleon's France, the German Empire under Wilhelm II, the Third Reich, and the Soviet Union. Two countries have had the power to impose themselves as the Universal State, including the British Empire (which ruled countries mostly outside of Western Christian Civilization) and the United States (which last annexed territory that it now holds by buying the Danish Virgin Islands in 1917.
If you are to compare the United States to other empires, then it has some impressive comparisons. But note well: it has never defined any single culture as mandatory. It is mere accident that most Americans speak English. America could as easily have been splintered linguistically with Dutch-speaking (Hudson Valley, including New York City), German-speaking (southeastern Pennsylvania and much of the Shenandoah Valley), and French-speaking (Louisiana) before America took over a part of America which shows such city names as San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego, El Paso, Santa Fe, Laredo, San Antonio, and some other megalopolis. Cities such as Dallas and Houston that did not exist in Mexican times and Denver, never a part of Mexico, has much Mexican cultural influence. There has never been an official artistic style for America at any time. Americans are free to choose some other country or to manufacture one (as most slave-descended Americans did; 'black' cultures in America are made in America with practically no cultural influence from Africa). America offers the most and demands the least of all the great political entities that have come and gone.
I see Donald Trump as a severe aberration that will be shoved aside with America going back to its old patterns rather quickly.Our political system has typically been rigid where rigidity is desirable and flexible where flexibility is desirable.
Quote:As for the long running debates on red v. blue I don't have much time for them anymore. The older I get the more convinced I am that history is written by the victors and the victors always cast themselves as being "on the right side of history". Truthfully one of the reasons this forum has lost much of its appeal is that the major posters seem more interested in a red/blue horse race than they are in conducting actual political/economic/historical analysis.
You are catching on. Even if one of the two Parties goes into oblivion, the remaining one will splinter within a few years because a Big Tent party is unwieldy in our political system. The Whigs are not quite the successor of the Federalists, and the Republicans are not quite the successor of the Whigs. The Parties are coalitions that themselves change over time. What conclusion could you draw from this overlay map of two pairs of Presidential elections?
gray -- did not vote in 1952 or 1956
white -- Eisenhower twice, Obama twice
deep blue -- Republican all four elections
light blue -- Republican all but 2012 (I assume that greater Omaha went for Ike twice)
light green -- Eisenhower once, Stevenson once, Obama never
dark green -- Stevenson twice, Obama never
pink -- Stevenson twice, Obama once
No state voted Democratic all four times, so no state is in deep red.
(This map uses the convention of red for Democrats and blue for Republicans used until about 1980)
OK, Eisenhower and Obama were similar in temperament and political skill... but the Obama and Eisenhower coalitions had mostly the same constituencies. The Eisenhower-Obama overlay is more impressive than overlawy between Obama's wins and those of FDR in 1936 (FDR did not get Vermont or Maine), Nixon in 1972 (Nixon lost Massachusetts) and Reagan in 1984 (Reagan lost Minnesota). Eisenhower won all of those states twice.
Of course political constituencies change. State cultures do not change unless those states have demographic shifts that change the population. Even such a word as "conservative" can change its meaning. In foreign policy, Obama is clearly the conservative and Trump is the radical. Any Republican would have been delighted to grease the skids for Moammar Qaddafi... but Obama got to preside over the collapse of that radical dictator. In contrast to the erratic Donald Trump on foreign policy, Obama is the arch-conservative. Personal behavior? Obama is about as conventional as one can get.
I will not be around to see this, but fifty years from now Donald Trump will be used as an example of how not to be President.
Quote:ETA:
If one reads the article that Rags shared to the end it continues on with the theory of the the "Long Descent" and how things, no matter who is in charge and with what ideology, things will get progressively worse. This sounds clearly to me like my predicted Mega-Crisis that I described in the first few posts of this thread.
As John Maynard Keynes put it, in the long run we will all be dead. Toynbee offers no timetable of the path to ruin for any civilization (his unit). If I speak of modernity (we are all amateur historians, are we not?) I start with the Italian Renaissance, as we can easily relate to anything in the Renaissance but little before it in the West. Note well that there never was a break between the Renaissance and modernity; patterns of the Renaissance that allow creativity, intellectual curiosity, and technological innovation remain with us. The most powerful political entity within Western Christian Civilization never really defined itself as Christian... but it has also shown a flexibility that defies any attempt to define it. Nobody would confuse the America of 2019 with the America of 1869, let alone the America of 1789.
Should the United States go down (barring such a calamity as the eruption of the Yellowstone caldera or the strike of a foreign body such as the rock that put an end to the Age of Dinosaurs... if Humanity had been around at the time it would have been rendered extinct, too. Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is obvious enough for all but complete blockheads to recognize. Unfortunately, Donald Trump is as much a blockhead on that as on many other things.
Donald Trump is the political equivalent of a bad case of influenza. If one is otherwise in good health with a good immune system and a good cardio-vascular system one gets through the malady with no lasting effects. Someone with a weakened immune system and poor cardio-vascular health is at risk of the influenza morphing into terminal pneumonia that finishes off some very old person or person riddled with AIDS or cancer.
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.