08-17-2016, 08:03 AM
(08-17-2016, 02:35 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:(08-16-2016, 10:27 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Would a guy who is 20 years behind the times be directly communicating with you here on the internet? Think about it. I may be 20 years behind the times as far as my writing and typing skills and musical preference . Other wise, I'm pretty much up with the times. I do not know why liberals are so foolish/clueless and continue to attack the views of a fellow taxpayer. A taxpayer who has been around and contributing to roads and schools for years.
I'm fine with you contributing your views. But it's not your skills or music that's behind the times, it IS your views. And they are actually quite a bit further behind than 20 years; more like about 5 turnings at least.
We all pay taxes for schools and roads, and we believe in this, but you don't seem to believe that contributing to your nation and your world is important too.
You said that you could accept a Democrats from decades ago, but not a Democrat of today. I saw the rebroadcast of "Reagan" on PBS's American Experience tonight (part 2 is tomorrow night). He asserted in 1964 in his famous speech that he had been a Democrat. Maybe that's what you mean; you see a "real" Democrat as a "Reagan Democrat," like Reagan himself had been. He had been a labor leader, that's true, negotiating contracts for actors; and labor leaders are Democrats. But he fought bitterly with a faction of his union that he accused of communism and fomenting violence back in 1946. He supported blacklisting and the McCarthy committee, which is why his first wife left him; the PBS doc pointed out. Then in about the late 1950s he started hosting the GE Hour on TV, and also became a national spokesman for General Electric and its corporate views on government interference and high taxes. So he was a corporate stooge going back to the late 50s and early 60s. It was a natural progression from his skill as a corporate speaker to his Pro-Goldwater speech in 1964, and the rest is history. Bottom line: Reagan was never much of a Democrat.
Democrats are concerned about helping the disadvantaged, the underdog, the poor, the discriminated against; those going through hard times; those who need a hand up, not just a handout. Which could be you or me. Republicans represent those like Donald Trump or the Koch Brothers who kick people out on the street, who exploit people with low wages and bad working conditions, and who destroy the environment and speculate with the economy. They support gutting social programs for the poor, on the theory that if you then give tax breaks to the rich, business will improve and the benefits will trickle-down, and the poor will either learn self-reliance, or suffer due to their own failure, or their membership in some inferior group. That's what Reagan thought, and that's what he did. But those policies have "died of a theory," just like racism before the Confederacy. They don't work, because if you give the breaks to the already wealthy and powerful, they say thank you very very much, and then pocket the money. There is no trickle; it's a tinkle.
Beautifully said. If anyone is behind the times with computers technologically it is I; the technology of chat lines and web searches to which I can relate has apparently advanced little from the mid-1990s. If it is culture... then I am just out of phase. I recognize the emptiness of much of the mass culture, and I suggest a return to classical norms in literary and musical taste. Or is that my Asperger's syndrome talking? If being behind the times on economics and social matters is the topic, then one has a description of Classic X'er. He may be missing the point of the theory of Howe and Strauss -- that history is cyclical. The movement of history is better described with the concept of angular momentum and not straight-line, inertial movement. Of course if the circle or cycle is large enough, circular motion and straight-line motion can seem practically identical. Over time the result of the circular motion deviates from the expected experience of straight-line motion. This says, we are generally hard-wired to fit inertial, straight-line motion.
Of course, if the cyclical or circular motion is tight enough and swift enough, we can be terribly confused. Such confusion can deliver a thrill, as with some amusement park rides that spin us or take us in circles. Such is the effect of taking sharp turns at high speeds in a car, let alone making a sharp turn in a jet aircraft. The tighter the curve and higher the speed the stronger is the effect that we experience.
History does not move like an amusement ride, a fighter jet taking turns, or a race-car driver taking a curve on a track -- except in a Crisis Era. If something so predictable as elections dictate political life, then we see such a phenomenon as a Presidential administration as much the same over eight years. If one is old enough, then one can recall a swift transition from Carter to Reagan, a slight one from Reagan to the elder Bush, a swift and decisive one from the elder Bush to Bill Clinton, another swift and decisive one from Bill Clinton to the younger Bush, and then a very sharp transition from the younger Bush to that of Barack Obama. Like him or despise him, Barack Obama has set a rigid style in place in early 2009 that has not really changed. We will have a transition in January.
Of course if one does not adapt to the changing times one can be the cultural or political equivalent of a beached whale. That was the humor in All in the Family -- Carroll O'Connor (as Archie Bunker) was doing drama out of sync with the time while everyone else was in the 1970s. But that was laughable because "Archie Bunker" was largely an under-educated fool having to deal with a reality that he could never understand. With his "solid grade-school education" he could never keep up with the times.
So how do people get out of sync with the times? They are stuck, or struggle to remain in an earlier time, especially
in an earlier Turning. Some people are comfortable in a Third Turning -- especially people who love the material excess, the political reaction, and the class divide. The strongest supporters of a Third Turning way of life are economic elites making easy money as people who made the right investments going into the 3T or who latched onto corporate management (getting well paid for treating others badly, well fitting the ethos of a scoundrel) or prostituted themselves as political hacks. For them, labor became cheap, pliant, and disposable with little loss in quality except that it was often being used at a low level of productivity, as in retailing, fast food, and domestic service.
A paradise for economic elites is typically a Hell, or at least Purgatory, for those who do the real work. The hypocrisy of a culture that sponsors extreme indulgence for economic elites while imposing poverty and gross uncertainty on everyone else becomes a harsh reality for most. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are for elites and contingent for everyone else. The common man matters only as a revenue stream; his life becomes a contingency; his liberty is to be destroyed; he is to become a compliant machine because he is competing with robots.
The longer that the economic elites try to maintain their plutocratic dream and workers' Hell, the nastier and perhaps more destructive that this Crisis Era will be. Even if the economic elites prevail they will destroy any bond with the common man except for fear, a fear characteristic of the victim of a loan shark today or a serf in medieval times.
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.