(02-08-2022, 02:46 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(02-08-2022, 01:44 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Remember: fascism is an ideology tailor-made for sociopaths and rapacious elites who have no qualms about inflicting suffering on others. Yes, this is a 4T, but even I can see signs of its end. Two participants in the Michigan plot have chosen to plea bargain to do lesser time in prison than they might if they were to face criminal trials. The investigation of the Capitol Putsch has so far gotten lots of small fry -- but some of those small fry have been singing like canaries. The investigation is going after the bigger fish who risk longer terms of imprisonment and economic ruin. Some may even be in Congress as we speak.
The difference between a 4T and a 1T is that in a 1T, new rules are set rigidly and everyone knows them. People may have some choice on how they comply, but the rules are there. Political violence is out of the question in a 1T. Fair play is one reliable way to avoid trouble. There is far less privacy for deviant behavior that stick out for violating key rules (such as making and keeping notes of meetings that discuss substantive matters. Economic inequality becomes much less severe (that has yet to happen), so anyone who acts as a Big Shot, High Roller, or Big Spender who has less-than-impressive means becomes suspect. Maybe if one is simply wasting an inheritance one can get away with buying a car beyond your obvious means. Community revives where it was recently weak. People in some dreary Podunk learn to make the best of Podunk (yes, one can attend ice-cream socials, watch high-school sports, participate in civic and service groups, and of course attend religious services and prayer meetings. That's how small-town life was in the 1950's and 1960's before people got high-fallutin' ideas that they could make the world a better place by taking some Voyage to the Interior.
The world will be better when kids are involved in Scouting, Boys' and Girls' Clubs, 4-H, FFA, Job's Daughters or the Order of De Molay. and church-related youth groups instead of simply hanging out in meaningless activities. We have plenty of Elk's Clubs, Moose Lodges, Y's, American Legions, Masonic Lodges, and VFW halls. One thing that I have noticed over sixty years is that people who have the narrowest range of geographic activities find the greatest depth in human interactions. Maybe making the best out of Podunk is better for us all than going to the Big City to go 'where the action is'. Add to this -- maybe people can invest time and effort into making gardens grow instead of wasting time at the shopping mall and becoming addled on video games and banal interactions on computers.
Dreary as things are due to an economic system that enriches elites while keeping most people broke, a recent ramping-up of political extremism and violence, decay of adult manners (especially among middle-aged and older people), international stresses, and a plague known as COVID-19 stalking us all, I can see a better world. It won't quite be like the 1950's; Jim Crow is gone once and for all, LGBT rights are well entrenched, and the technological progress and infrastructure built in the 1950's and later is either intact or heavily improved. We are entering an age in which rational thought is expected even among dullards and conspiracy theories have lost their sting.
The rules will be in place, and one of them will be that extremism of any kind will be in deep contempt.
I've learned just about everything I know about the Left from those on the Left over the years. What did I tell you about going along with Left Wing stereotypes the other day? What have I told will happen to you if you continue going along with them and continue to traffic them? How many Nazi believers/supporters died during World War II? How many Bolshevik believers/supporters died during World War II? Millions of them on both sides? How many ordinary people (mainly peasants) were either killed by the Bolsheviks or killed by the Bolsheviks polices after World War II? Millions more of them? How many Americans cared as it was all going on?
Is Jim Crow gone forever? How many black/minority groups on the Democratic side openly support segregationist policies and how many are openly engaged in acts associated with segregation today?
Have you considered that we liberals also read history? I can read Howe and Strauss theory and glean a general outline of how life will be after the Crisis is over. If as usually happens
Quote:The wrong shall fail, the Right prevail
as in the bleakest of all Christmas carols (it fit the American Civil War, and Tennyson got it right), then the bad stuff will be gone.
So consider how Germans might have often predicted, based on events of 1940 and early 1941, how things would go. Germany would reshape the world from North Cape to Crete. The Jews would be recognized forever as the evil-doers that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion depicts them and would be rendered harmless. Warmongers like Sir Winston Churchill and Charles DeGaulle would die dangling from piano wires to extend their agonies. Germans would shout "Sieg heil!" and "Heil Hitler!" and sing the Horst-Wessel-Lied with pride. The Nazi flag would fly in glory in much of the world and would scare a Jew like FDR even in America. (FDR was not Jewish, but the Nazis typically accused him of being a Jew) before Americans, especially those of German stock, would delight in liberation from the machinations of Jewish world conspiracy. The Soviet monstrosity of Stalin and his Jewish henchmen? Also to be obliterated. Germans would get to live as settlers in the vast plains of Russia (with some Dutch, Scandinavians, and even English invited) as the original inhabitants would be removed.
A few years later... we know the real story. I need not go into the details of damage and judgment. Nazism is dead in Germany; the Nazi Party, Nazi flags, Nazi slogans, Nazi symbols, and Nazi songs are all illegal and remain so nearly 77 years after the end of the war. On the very day that Hitler offed himself in the fetid bunker, this happened in Munich:
The SS and Gestapo would no longer terrorize these people.
I don't see America going as you predict. I have a longer view of history, and you are not the first person to have attitudes like yours. 4T's almost invariably show your kind terribly wrong, and that your kind is the last to get the message.
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.