The Maelstrom of Violence

[Kinser79]

(08-14-2017, 02:31 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(08-14-2017, 01:05 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: The problem is that we're clearly in a 4T and in a 4T the center never holds.  I would say that like summoning a demon by saying its name, the left is busy doing that now with fascism.  Fascism can only arise if there is a credible threat of communism.

I'm dubious that we're in a true 4T.

You can be dubious all you want. We're still in a true 4T and have been since 2008 at least (though I date it at 2005).

Quote: We haven't had a regeneracy, a clear decisive shift into new values and trial and error mode.

Actually we have. It just didn't take the form you expected so you're denying it. For someone who accuses others of values lock frequently you have more than touch of it yourself. What is Trump himself if not the hostile take over of one of the major parties.

Quote:  We're in see saw mode.  That puts as more in 3T stagnation and disagreement than in a 4T decisive culture shift.

I imgine you'd have said the same in 1937 or 1858 too. I would argue that we are in the micro-3T of the 4T. Since we are going to have an internal crisis in a Mega-Unraveling we are of course going to have two camps emerge from the micro-2T which passed away around the close of 2015ish. That is of course the Regressive Leftists of the Antifa/Occupy/BLM stripe vs the Tea Party/"alt" right.

Quote:  Of course, there is a partisan tendency to see any brief moment on the top of the see saw ride as some sort of permanent thing.  Hillary will win.  Trump will suddenly develop people skills.  At this point, I'm not holding my breath.

Hillary had no chance of winning. As I've pointed out previously unless a candidate is running against an incumbent president of their own party one does not lose the primary and then later get elected president. Indeed losing the primary to an incumbent president and later becoming president itself is rare happening only with Reagan so far as I'm aware. History was against her so it didn't matter how many were "with her".

Trump has always had people skills. He's just a true born New Yorker. Having lived for an extended period in NYC/NJ I get him, but people from outside that area don't seem to get him.

Quote:I have a feeling that some of the Alt Right people wearing Nazi or Klan regalia and praising Hitler are doing so because it makes people jump and go all irrational.  This doesn't imply that the violent folks don't often take it more seriously.  I remember my old high school American History class, where we had an extended discussion of an awakening race riot held in a nearby town.  We actually had eyewitnesses, participants, two close friends, ladies, both ever so ready to say how much fun they had throwing punches and scratching at folks with opposite pigmentation.  In the end, they got in the car together and drove home.

Here's the thing. You may be right or wrong, I'm unsure because I'm not part of the alt-right. I'm currently on the right (right now) but only because the left is so far left as to be essentially Trotskites (most of them are too irrational to be Marxist-Leninists). I will say this though, the alt-right does have intellectual content. Content that isn't readily apparent if your only information on them is whatever the lie du jour is on on CNN about them. The ideological component of the alt-right is identitarian in nature, it is the white response to racial and sexual identity politics that has been the play thing of the left since the 1960s.

Let me be clear, we can either have identity politics for everyone (which includes cis gender, straight white men--with bonus points for being southern and Christian) or we have identity politics for no one. If the choice is everyone, then the likes of Richard Spencer and Jared Taylor have to have a seat at the table. If you were to ask me there should be identity politics for no one. But of course that would mean a more or less permanent domination by the right for at least two turnings. Because lacking ideas the left turned to identity.

Quote:While there is admittedly a strong streak of anti communism in classic mid 20th century fascism, there are many forms of autocratic racist dictatorship.  Saddam might stand as an example of one who took the authoritarian way of thought and applied it to totally non-European cultures.

Fascism is not a synonym for authoritarian, much less "things I don't like". It is a political ideology that only raises its head in the presence of a credible threat by communism which is why fascism arose in the 1920s.

Saddam's Ba'athist Party was mostly an Arab Nationalist Party, its ideology was largely that Iraq is an arab nation and is friends with other arab nations and hates all non arabs particularly a certain tribe closely related to the arabs. Apart from Jew Hate and silly looking mustaches Saddam had little in common with Hitler.

Quote: I see Hitler, Stalin and Mao as creating authoritarian structures, alike in too many ways, the left right distinction lost behind a commitment to Agricultural Age hierarchy, authority and intimidation.  I could see the current owners of the means of production using fascist ideas and values without communists hiding under every bed.

The reason for that is because Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia and Maoist China were all authoritarian regimes with more or less centrally planned economies. (Remember Nazi is a German Language abbreviation for the words National Socialist. All three were socialist so their differences were more a matter of what spices the baker favored rather than if yeast and flour were used.)

I don't see the use of fascist or fascist like tendencies without a credible threat of communism, or some other leftist absurdity. The class interests of those who own capital is to see that capital make them huge profits. Fascists eventually end up with a centrally planned economy, something not in the interests of the owners of capital unless those owners happen to be the largest and most well established firms. That said in the West such blue chip corporations have far too many shareholders to please.