Presidential election, 2016

[Bob Butler 54]

(11-12-2016, 11:17 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(11-12-2016, 08:38 PM)Odin Wrote: The lunatics (Boomers and Xers) are running the asylum...

Do you think when millennials and homelanders "take over" things will be better? I have my doubts. Boomers' own hopes for this in the sixties have been dashed, by the Boomers themselves and the Xers. Things never seem to change in this country; the process of change stopped in 1980 and has not resumed. The USA is sclerotic and shows no sign of changing. I have predicted that this would finally change in the 2020s. Now, it would be a mammoth, wholesale and 180-degree change, as of Tuesday. So, good luck to the USA.

I'd disagree.  If one believes in cyclical history, that certain values tend to fade then return, change is always there.  We've had a long ugly unravelling, a time when selfishness and indulgence trump work, growth and the common good.  It is lingering longer than I ever thought it would.  If Trump goes with another round of borrow and spend trickle down, the unravelling will continue.

But to get a Lincoln or FDR, you might have to endure a Buchanan or Hoover.  Values aren't abandoned until they obviously and spectacularly fail.  This isn't to say that being caught in the middle of an explosion is entirely a good thing.  So, yes, historically, a mammoth wholesale 180 degree change is still possible.  It might be that either the red or blue values must utterly fail before we get a healthy transformation.

There are gentle fourth turnings.  Queen Victoria and Bismarck, conservative leaders who knew they had to give ground to the progressives to avoid an explosion, are the classic examples.  The conservative faction attempting to maintain the old values are not always stubborn and strident enough for a full scale explosion and transformation.  Obama then Hillary might have achieved something similar to a Victoria / Bismarck transformation.  I'm now less inclined to think that likely.  It might have been Bush 43 who got pegged in the Buchanan / Hoover slot.  It seems now that the fourth turning has been pushed back 16 years, that we reset the clock with Trump provisionally in the Buchanan / Hoover slot. 

Or, perhaps, possibly, the Grey Champion slot.  If he really acts like a Washington outsider, if one of his primary goals is to break up the filibuster obstruction mentality and get things done, perhaps he might not be the disaster that his campaign leads many folk to anticipate.  I'm seeing mixed signals on this.  I think we'll have to wait and see.  Talk to me after his 100 days.