08-06-2016, 01:24 PM
(08-06-2016, 11:16 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(08-02-2016, 02:00 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: And Lincoln still had to press hard to get slavery outlawed. The battle is joined till the end.
Back in Britain prior to immigration to the New World and in America with the Revolution and Civil War, the battle was indeed joined. In the old times, crisis spirals of violence generally escalated into all out military conflict. As democracy became more established, more crises were handled short of violence. The Great Depression and Martin Luther King's non-4T push didn't go full military.
True. Hereditary leaders often proved incredibly inept, cruel, and destructive. Caligula was a descendant of Augustus Caesar; Nero was a sun of Tiberius; Commodus was the son of the esteemed Marcus Aurelius. If one is stuck with the worst Chinese, Russian, or Ottoman emperors one has little choice but to put up with whatever comes. Democracy has generally proved to have better leaders because of the usually non-violent competition for votes. The Darwinian struggle for nation states has worked well for the USA for an unusually-long time for a political entity on an imperial scale.
Quote:Today, I've been mentioning three issues, but would be open to considering more... We have economic inequality, racial inequality in the justice system and global warming. Of the three, only racial inequality's spiral of rhetoric and violence seems to be escalating into violence thus far, and it is no where near the military conflict level.
I see racial inequality in economics likely to fizzle once poor white people start to recognize that they too are oppressed and exploited, too. Anti-elite populism has typically had its upswings and downswings in the Mountain and Deep South. It is now at its saecular nadir. Black Lives Matter can pressure police departments to reform their methods of policing. Of course what we really need may be reform of the prison system. Thought reform? Just look at the low rate of recidivism in Japan.
Quote:In Europe, Queen Victoria and Bismarck were also able to defuse incipient economic crises well short of crisis scale violence. I'd note that neither Queen Victoria and Bismarck are generally thought of as progressive advocates for the common man, but they could see a potential threat to the ruling class and give enough ground to avert it.
Victoria recognized, like Bismarck, that if workers were not to fall for socialist revolution they would need a stake in the system. But let us remember that Victoria found that parliaments and ministers worked well -- as did several successive Prussian and German Kaisers. Wilhelm II broke that trend, becoming as despotic as he could get away with being... and he practically destroyed his world. See also Nicholas II, too despotic to tolerate anything that challenged his authority but too weak to rule effectively. Maybe a nice little war might promote some patriotism and divert people from their economic woes?
Quote:As Kinser seems fixed to the idea that crises involve destroying the privileged elite class, (Eric seems) attached to the notion of all out confrontation to the point of destruction. In some crises, yes, both things can happen. The further back in time you go, the more likely you are to see them. As democracy takes better hold, it is less certain they will happen, more possible that the problems will be solved without taking things over the edge.
I'm not Victoria, Bismarck or FDR, but I like the way they got things done. If an economic and class problem can be solved as they did, let's do it. The French and Russian revolutions got things done too, but things got ugly. The sort of folks that are good at organizing mob violence don't necessarily have the right skill set for running a government that is beneficial to the People. They are more obsessed with protecting themselves from mob violence than helping the People they are ruling. The People are in their eyes potential enemies, a risk to their hold on power, not the ones they are there to serve.
Recognizing that one needs to get one's potential opponents to have a stake in the system is one way to thwart revolution; it is more effective than even a strong police or military. It may not be proved, but I believe that Lenin won the revolution when he started paying the cops and the soldiers. Even at a low intellectual level, I have found that Dale Carnegie's How to Make Friends and Influence People can be touted as a means of avoiding needless trouble. (Kinser could definitely use it).
Quote:I'd prefer to go the Victoria / Bismarck / FDR route, though, yes, FDR went full military with Hitler. Don't see that there was a choice with Hitler.
Attacking a Great Power that has solved most of its internal problems near the end of a 4T is a great blunder. FDR may not have liked war, but that does not mean that he couldn't be the worst possible enemy of aggressors.
Quote:Thus, I'd as son invite lots of people to the table and listen. I know this is hard on you, but we need John Adams types too. I'll tell you what. I'll put some really tough glass in the windows of my table room. You can stand outside the room and throw rocks if you like. Might provide some possible incentive.[/quote]
Ironically, John Adams may have easily become a Tory, having defended the soldiers in the Boston Massacre. Only when the Crown rewarded him for his scrupulous process by requisitioning his house did they lose him as a possible ally as an honest broker in a political dispute. Maybe the concept of independence might have failed had George III taken a wiser course of action. Tightening the grip on colonial politicians who were doing a reasonably-good job on their own was a very bad idea. The American colonies were just too big and potentially powerful to hold.
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.