05-17-2017, 08:15 AM
(05-16-2017, 05:08 PM)David Horn Wrote:(05-16-2017, 02:40 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(05-16-2017, 09:35 AM)David Horn Wrote:(05-15-2017, 02:07 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: And that's the situation of all 4Ts. One side represents the future, the other the past, and one side wins. A 4T is a battle, not a compromise. Only one side's resolution will be adopted. Only one's side's approach will address the problems, and it alone will work.
The artist archetype is the compromiser. They are virtually absent. Nope. Neither side will compromise now. That's the way it is, and that's the way it should be.
I agree that anything like a compromise is unlikely. It's far more likely that battle continues until the contending factions are simply exhausted. Let's be honest about the current state of our society. We have Some much division that no single faction has the ability to lead in the true sense. If that continues, and it may, then a stalemate is certainly possible.
It's possible. But based on the record of 4Ts, highly unlikely. 4Ts have been battles to the end, and the end comes with the defeat of the faction that permanently loses out in the progression of history.
On the other hand, the 1T witnesses some retrenchment from the values of the winning faction. In that way, in a climate of "exhaustion," the other side sometimes gets some renewal of its status and power (as in the Jim Crow era after Reconstruction, or McCarthyism, or the Alien/Sedition Acts). But this turns out to be temporary, and partial. But it's the 1T where the stalemate comes. As the authors state, the time to make further changes has passed when the 1T starts, although some further consolidation can certainly occur.
My argument for stalemate has to do with the sides in contention. There are at least 3 variants on the right: the typical GOP conservative types, the Tea Party and the Alt Right. On the left, you have the neoliberals that still favor a strong business alignment, the populists and the SJWs. The factions on both sides can't seem to coalesce around a common strategy, or even cooperate with each other. It's hard to win when you spend all your energy fighting internal battles. Even a coalition of the center seems out of the question since the level of party animosity is so high.
If that changes, a resolution is in the works. If not, this petty fighting will just exhaust the contenders.
1. Is there a 'clean government' faction on the Right? It is possible that the Establishment Left (exemplified by Obama) has done nothing to make such a faction necessary. The Establishment Left has relied little on patronage to win support; patronage fuels inefficiency and corruption. It has insisted that what it wants is good for its own sake or for pragmatic reasons (like investing in human capital, especially in children and youth).
It looks as if Donald Trump campaigned on a promise of bringing jobs back -- most likely (as it proves) through crony capitalists who get more of a share of profit than workers get as pay. Just imagine what would happen if President Trump got his way. Conservatives who might have supported Trump for nationalistic reasons might decide that corruption and cronyism are anathemas and try to find the only people who might want the crony capitalism wiped out are those who have nothing to gain from crony capitalism -- like those on the Establishment Left who would rather have social justice, responsibility of government to the People, and the statist neoliberals.
I can imagine the small-government part of the Right deciding that if Big Government is necessary or inevitable, then at least let the government have benign intentions and get desired (if at times controversial) results. A coalition of the small-government Right (libertarians or near-libertarians) with the neoliberals, populist Left, and Social Justice Warriors will be enough to form a viable coalition for a Regeneracy. But such a coalition will be slow and difficult to form, and will not be easy to hold. Mass rejection of the current President and the inequity and corruption for which he stands might be enough to forge such a coalition; firm, humane, and understanding leadership will be necessary for keeping it together.
Three parts of the Left and one of the Right. That's enough for about 55% of the vote -- and even some modicum of political cooperation on some issues. The problem with the Obama coalition was not that it was so far to the Left as its detractors say; indeed, the nastiest part of the Right typically thinks genuine conservatives too compromised with the Extreme Left to have any right to survive. (Never mind that a sober conservative is the diametric opposite of a Marxist-Leninist!)
2. I'm thinking of a group of people to whom Obama started some outreach and never quite got -- farm and ranch interests. In 2008 I saw materials addressing rural issues (like the meth epidemic) that hurt farmers: meth makers were stealing anhydrous ammonia from farmers but leaving the spigots open. Livestock might go for pasture where ammonia vapor was concentrating -- and get killed by the ammonia. I remember also seeing evidence that such states as Montana and the Dakotas were possible wins for him. True, that's only nine electoral votes -- but just imagine rural interests turning on the Right. It happened in the formation of the New Deal coalition, when western agrarians formed part of the reliable support for FDR. Democrats gave up on it. They may need the Senate seats by the mid-2020s.
I thought that at the time that Obama could work farm interests well. He won landslides in Illinois, something impossible if one relies entirely upon Greater Chicago for a winning coalition. He paid attention to rural issues while a Senator. Maybe he couldn't as President.
3. I am seeing signs that the Mountain South is beginning to recognize that the Right has served it badly. Sure, poor white folks might resent images of middle class people who look little like them (black, Hispanic, or Asian)... but there are practical start-up community colleges popping up in communities along Interstate 75 in Kentucky. I also see active efforts to suppress the opiate and meth epidemics. When the white people (and the area is lily-white) start recognizing that they too are oppressed, then they can turn on the Right. Meld the Carter coalition of 1976 (Carter won all states of the Mountain South except Oklahoma) and the Obama coalition (which won the one former-Confederate state that neither Carter nor Bill Clinton could ever win -- Virginia) and one has a blowout landslide for a Democrat. Indeed one has an Eisenhower-scale blowout.
4. For a real 1T one needs a nearly-complete rejection of 3T 'values'. I am old enough to remember people old enough to have nostalgia for the Roaring Twenties; but as a rule they held the time in contempt. So it was in the early 1960s, when I lived in a world in which many people often had museum-like relics of the pre-WWII past. I remember some Lost elders who somehow latched onto the Victorian Era despite having seen only the end of its final stage. Such demonstrated their contempt for the Roaring Twenties. I remember seeing hot rods fashioned out of old Ford, Chevrolet, Willys, and Plymouth vehicles -- utter disrespect for the old cars. There was little nostalgia for such plebeian vehicles. Art Deco? To the trash heap, or to be consigned to poor people (especially blacks) from the South. Silent movies? We are lucky that many were preserved. Almost nobody wanted anything to do with the 1920s.
Maybe in the 2030s we will see the equivalent of hot rods being made out of old subcompact cars of the 1990s and Double-Zero decade. We might see the cultural ferment of the 1960s and 1970s sanitized into quaintness much as I remember seeing references to the Gay Nineties (when 'gay' had nothing to do with homosexuality, and the years began with the number '18', as few people had any idea of what the 1990s would be like. Jetsons? Very silly now, as it reflects a suggestion of a high-technology world with 1960s characteristics. But it might not seem so silly in the 2030s.
5. The endorsement of 3T values with 4T ferocity is not how to get through a 4T successfully. That is Donald Trump, and he would be problematic even without his blatant incompetence, his inadequate preparation for the Presidency, and vile personality.
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.