(09-18-2021, 12:11 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:(09-17-2021, 06:00 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(09-17-2021, 02:06 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I predict you will be partly wrong on that, using my cosmic crystal ball method which has a lot of success. Of course, tempered by my obsession with following and understanding the news and history.
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We don't get through fourth turnings without having to meet an existential crisis or two. The pandemic is one. I mentioned at the start of these forums that climate change was the main thing, besides the nation's division caused by its reactionary Party itself. This is showing itself to be true ever more clearly, day by day. The IPCC says it's now code red. If we don't handle climate change now and reverse the trend, most-assuredly the next 2T will be too late. Second turnings may bring some social and cultural changes, and we can look for deeper change when it comes in the late 2040s, but big institutional changes are the province of 4Ts. And it never looks bright until near the end of the Crisis. We are in for some rough sailing yet in this 4T, which is still ramping up and is far from over. But the end looks positive according to the signs I read. Look to 2029 for some decisive battles that bring it to a conclusion.
The 4T has never ended without a liberal or progressive victory. If we fail this time, it will be the first time. Do we want that on our conscience? I say no. We boomers still have a lot of work to do, and we dare not pass leadership on entirely to Generation X, which came of age under Reagan. The world needs our idealism and wisdom now. Writing on internet forums will not be enough. We boomers must participate in the body politic however we can during this 4T and beyond.
I don't know what you see in your cosmic crystal ball. I assume that you see what you want to see in your cosmic crystal ball. It's not a good sign if you're down to your cosmic crystal ball. Me, I'd see what any non partisan/objective minded person would see and use it as a guide what's to come. A while back, you said something about the group that has the better apparatus winning the civil war to come. Guess what, I agree with you one hundred percent and that's what I've been going by all along. So, how good of an apparatus does the Democratic party /Acirema have in place compared to the American apparatus that's in place these days. I don't think you or Nancy P, Chuck and Gumby or whoever is making the rules and decisions for Gumby understand who or understand what all you're up against or the amount of losses that you're all going to take at this point. I could toss in McConnell, Graham, Romney and Cheney with the Leftist's too just to show you that I'm not all that particular when it comes to getting rid of corrupt/self serving politicians who are getting in the way of American progress.
I don't think your regressive, reactionary militias are a match for the US army and national guard and police forces. Gen Milley made sure that you guys understand what's what. Even a Trumpist president will not be able to command the US army to go against the Constitution or attack the Capitol.
Nobody needs any crystal ball to recognize that the Armed Forces have no use for a reckless, amoral Commander-in-Chief who would order the Armed Forces to do unilateral aggression on his behalf or to put an end to the Rule of law. The people who did the Michigan plot were apparently militia-related; I can't say definitively that they challenged the Law and the Law won until any guilty verdicts come in (that will be at least a month, as I understand the court docket). That plot includes violations of federal laws such as a plot for interstate kidnapping and violations of federal civil rights (as I understand the indictments). One participant buckled already, and I can only imagine what he will say against his co-conspirators.
Trump egged that on just as he later egged on the "Stop the Steal" farce.
We have the rule of law and we have law and order lest our civil liberties and human rights prove farcical.
The Service Academies teach well about the fundamentals behind the American political system -- enough that their last two graduates to become President (Eisenhower and Carter) had no proclivity to do anything screwy. Donald Trump, who was sent to a civilian military-style academy (which is where middle-class and upper-class parents often send wayward male teenagers!) would have never gotten through a Service academy. In view of his son's intellectual hollowness, Trump's father Fred practically bought a degree for him. High-quality colleges insist upon the intellectual equivalent of a work ethic these days, and they would rather have some sharp kid who uses his spare time when not working in the family restaurant (you know, the buffet that some Vietnamese-American family operates as a "Chinese" buffet... or its "Mexican" variant) hits the books instead of playing video games or watching the Idiot Screen. A great school like Harvard wants its influence to appear in places like San Jose and San Antonio, too.
Really to Classic X'er: the John Lewis bill has passed the House, and many of the efforts to squelch votes that reactionaries like you think unrepresentative of your conception of some mythical "real America" will fail should the bill pass the Senate. If the 50 Democrats can get any Republican to go along with stopping a filibuster, this bill passes, and conservatives like you will need to find ways to appeal to people not already in your Trump cult. There are plenty of Republican conservatives who recognize that they have little to lose if that bill passes. The Trump cult is old, white, and ill-educated, and it is shrinking every year. It had only one win (2016) and that was something of a freak. Trump's jungle-fighting style of politics is terribly obsolete, and it will become even more so as time passes. If Classic X'er wants a more conservative pattern, then he will need to stand for family farms and small business, and tax and spending policies that favor such people even at the expense of Corporate America.
We need more capitalism -- not less -- if we are to have the basis of a solid welfare state (really a social-market system). Trump is simply for crony capitalism that serves a few inordinately well and $crews the rest of us.
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.