05-17-2016, 08:42 PM
(05-06-2016, 02:56 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Not that there is anything wrong with the above discussion, but where is the turning theory? Do we want to keep political stuff built around the red-blue memes separate from stuff built around turning theory?
If it changes the nature of one of the major Parties by knocking out its "Establishment" figures permanently, then it reshapes American political life for a couple of decades. It could be that Donald Trump reflects the bankruptcy of the "Establishment" Republicans who offered the lure of social reaction in return for severe inequality.
We need remember that Donald Trump as President is a huge change in direction for America, one that will shake much of our common knowledge about American politics, perhaps permanently. That is one way a 4T works. A huge part of the political life of America can be rendered irrelevant for a very long time -- or can be limited to a few 'safe' zones with the new paradigm established everywhere else, like some machine-boss cities and the Deep South for most of the sixty years between Reconstruction and the rise of FDR. No prior President can serve as a model for Trump. It is also possible that he would be an absolute disaster as President. Stories in the media already have Donald Trump connected to a mobster who operated a pump-and-dump stock fraud.
Good people steer clear of criminals. Criminals to them are like devils -- entities that can do only harm.
On the other side, should Hillary Clinton be a one-term President and "Establishment" Republicans return to power in 2020, then nothing has truly changed since 2008, ad we are back in the 3T until the economy collapses or we have a military or diplomatic debacle. Imagine an Establishment Republican being in place when a 4T is resolved, and America has a new covenant in which Big Business has rights but few responsibilities and workers have responsibilities but few rights in the name of progress. Profit is the sole measure of progress, is it not, in such an order?
This 4T is far from resolved. Whoever is in charge at the end of the Crisis is likely to be seen as extremely pivotal in American history -- like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, or Franklin Roosevelt. Know well -- if we really mess up the pivotal figure could be some senior military officer, not an American, dictating terms in the White House.
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.