05-15-2017, 12:37 AM
(05-14-2017, 11:47 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(05-13-2017, 09:49 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:(05-13-2017, 01:14 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(05-13-2017, 10:06 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: I expect a decline in living standards for most Americans under Trump, whether through an economic meltdown or through policies that enrich elites at the expense of everyone else. Ronald Reagan did get away with cutting expectations (which put an end to Nixon-Ford-Carter inflation); he isn't as good a communicator as Reagan.
While Trump has been telling extreme red partisans what they want to hear very well, I'd nominate "he isn't as good a communicator as Reagan" as quite an understatement. It's still early to dismiss his hold on the red extreme base, though. The unraveling memes are set hard in parts of the population.
Ronald Reagan is the minimum standard for a successful 4T President. ...
Part of what is needed for a great 4T leader is a great 4T problem situation. Generally, by the time the country is about to enter full fledged crisis, many people have a good idea as to what has to be done. The storm can be seen rolling over the horizon well in advance. The potential grey champion has to be able to articulate the problem and the answers very well, formulate them in terms of both deep seated values and practical actionable plans, build a coalition, jump off a cliff and get the country to follow one over the cliff.
I am tempted to believe that the neglectful depravity so characteristic of the latter part of a 3T itself magnifies the danger of a 4T. I thought that Dubya was the expression of a phase of the generational cycle, a phase that I termed a Degeneracy (in opposition to the Regeneracy). Obama seemed to be doing a few things right before the most selfish, ruthless, and corrupt figures in American life put a stop to it. But if Dubya was incompetent with generally good intentions, Donald Trump adds some malign intent.
Quote:It is hard to do all that if there isn't a very real and visible need. It is too tempting for the typical individual to keep riding the old values of the last crisis. Thus, the Democrats might still be thinking somewhat from an FDR New Deal perspective, while the Republicans are trying to take Reagan's unraveling ideals to new extremes. What sort of politician can build a new economy while taking climate change seriously? Bernie and Elizabeth are laying the groundwork, but might be too old to do the implementation. Meanwhile, while the people don't see the need for a different future, no new future will come, no matter how brilliant the politician. Folks like Lincoln and Churchill made some grand speeches that caught oh so well the issues of their time, but could those speeches be written and truly heard before their time had come?
Just because a city has a good fire department does not mean that there will be fires to put out. If anything, a really good fire department will be adept at fire prevention. The fire chief may be appearing at garden parties and telling people not to store oily rags and may be working with insurance companies to thwart fires set for insurance fraud. For the fire brigade to be effective, it had better do some training and it had better keep its equipment well maintained.
Quote:Reagan had a feel for where the country was at. He could deliver a speech. He packaged together a world view and value set that took deep hold on a significant part of the country. As much as I believe his message has lived beyond its time, he found and/or built a wave that is only now hitting the beach and starting to roll back out to sea. No small player he.
He set much of the tone of the 3T. But only the first ten years or so. Others went further in pushing an every-man-for-himself ethos and putting venom into the 'conservative' message to the extent that it calls for a sharp division between winners for whom unlimited indulgence is the purpose of the lives of everyone else who, of course, are to suffer for the 'winners'. That is no way in which to create the solidarity necessary for meeting the evident dangers of a Crisis Era; that is instead one way to damn ourselves to catastrophic failure.
Quote:But how much was he tied to the unraveling values he is identified with? If a young Reagan clone were moving into politics today, what set of ideas would he try to run with? As a youngster, he was a Democrat, a new dealer, one who tried to make America great. He changed, becoming a champion of unraveling. What would he see today? I truly don't know.
If Reagan is an example of anything, it is of an ideological chameleon, someone whose rhetoric fits whatever time in which he lives. Such may be the leadership that we get in a Crisis. I can easily imagine worse. More precisely, with Donald Trump as President, we need imagine little worse.
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.