If The Russians Engineered a Trump Victory

[pbrower2a]

(11-15-2016, 08:16 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(11-15-2016, 05:16 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Remember, folks -- this is a Crisis Era, and so far we have had it relatively tame. The Tea Parties and Black Lives  matter are tame in contrast to what private, politicized militias or some new secret police can do on behalf of an unpopular government. President trump will be very unpopular very fast as he decides which promises to break first. He will hurt the working class first because it has no organization in politics...  (Snip)

We are in a Crisis Era, and we have had it very soft for now. The $#!+ has just started hitting the fan. But that $#!+ is infected with the political equivalent of HIV.

By the calendar, assuming S&H's theory works in a mechanistic clockwork way, we ought to be in a crisis era.  Yet, I don't think we have had a regeneracy.  A successful regeneracy that leads to a successful crisis would require an idealist president with a vision of change that will solve the primary problems the culture is facing.  Said president would have to have the people skills to build a coalition, to keep enough people aboard that his changes are given a chance to stick.  He must also have a united Congress that is willing to accept the transformation.

It's the late-3T Degeneracy that leads to the Crisis.

I associate the road to Crisis with weak or incompetent leaders unable to stave off dangers in the 3T who let things fester or provoke calamity.  I think of the shabby leadership of George III trying to squeeze the colonists despite the lack of wisdom in so doing. I think of such awful Presidents as Pierce, Fillmore, and Buchanan just before the Civil War, and the dreadful trio of weak Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. Dubya was a very poor President and gave us the sort of leadership characteristic of a pre-Crisis Degeneracy... but Barack Obama may have stopped the Degeneracy. Stopped it -- but did not undo or reverse it. He was not going to precipitate a Crisis; he is just too good a person and leader to do that even if the other Party decided to thwart just about every reform he wanted after two years. Even so his foreign policy and economic practice were too cautious and rational to allow a Crisis to happen. So maybe he successfully deferred the Crisis.  But that may be all that he could do. We may get the full Crisis mode on January 21, 2017 when a sociopathic demagogue takes over the Presidency and pushes what looks (in view of his choices in the transition) like an agenda for the '20s. 1920s, that is, an extension of the Gilded Age that ended catastrophically in the Great Depression and the rise of Satan Incarnate in Germany.

With a compliant Congress that also believes that no human suffering is in excess so long as it indulges economic elites and enforces their will, I can imagine Republicans saying collectively "We won and you're done -- comply or die!"

Now THAT is a Crisis. The majority is very shaky should there be a free election in 2020. Who says that there will be a free election in 2020? I expect the absolute worst from the people in power, and I expect horrible results. If the Republicans see themselves losing as Hoover did in 1932, do not expect them to allow a loss. EWconomic elites that see their own indulgence as the only objective permissible in society do not yield power willingly. But they can start wars to spread their putrid ideology into places in which it is unwelcome. I do not expect any such war to go well for America.

Quote: To get these things there must be a traumatic failure of the old values.  A 'relatively tame' failure will not cut it.  The  anemic economy created by borrow and spend trickle down is not the collapsed economy of FDR's time.  The modern culture wars issues are significant and divisive, but not on the scale of slavery.  There is no existential external threat to the nation comparable to Hitler and the fascists.

But what of an internal threat? I expect a people accustomed to freedom to not accept some harsh, authoritarian regime. Such a regime often relies upon an external war to stir up patriotism to divert people from the nastiness in their lives. Such was the choice of Nicholas II of Russia a little over a hundred years ago. Three months short of a century ago The Tsar of All the Russias abdicated under pressure in the February Revolution. Eleven months short of a century ago, the whole Russian political system fell to the Bolsheviks.

Just a warning. No, I do not expect to celebrate the Bolshevik Revolution and its odious consequences next year.

Quote:We have had some almost regeneracies.  September 11th had us invading the Middle East.  Bush 43 laid out a path where after we stabilized Iraq we could use our newly built massive bases to invade the next country on our list.  Proxy insurgent warfare made this major shift obviously implausible.  I label this a false regeneracy.  We had a near economic collapse at the end of Bush 43's time.  This was a near collapse, not a collapse.  With a full collapse we would have needed to do some grand transformations, we might have gotten a true regeneracy.  However, eight years later the Republicans are back in power and are promising more borrow and spend trickle down.  I'm not even sure the Great Recession counts as a false regeneracy.  There was nothing really transforming proposed or executed.

We might get a false Regeneracy in that it falls short of adequacy because it has too many elements of evil. Destruction of the democratic heritage of America is one of the worst things that could ever happen, and not only to Americans. Such gives the rest of the world a focus of fear that it has never had before. 

Quote:I'm trying not to pre judge Trump too much.  His election is an indication that a lot of people are very disappointed in the status quo.  This is a sign that perhaps a regeneracy isn't impossible in the near future.  However, Trump is promising more borrow and spend trickle down.  All of that anger directed at the establishment does absolutely no good if the transforming vision of the future doesn't solve the problems confronting us.

Yes, people were unhappy with the status quo. Transformation of the United States of America into a pure plutocracy in which economic elites dictate all policy creates unspeakable instability for the entire world. America has huge economic assets all over the world, and as America becomes a monster, those become targets for terrorism. Let America treat Muslims as pariahs, and it won't be only "Radical" Islam that will hate us. It will also be the more moderate types that prevail in Indonesia and a large part of the Indian population. Do you think that the Hindu majority in India will treat Indian Muslims badly at the behest of America?

Populist demagogues have stabbed the common man in the back once they find or recognize that the real power is economic, and that it is far easier to sell out to the super-rich than to fight them.

Quote:I don't know that the unraveling / crisis cusp has been sufficiently defined.  S&H's examples of such borders give conflicting styles of events.  Do you place the border at a military event like Fort Sumter, Pearl Harbor or September 11th?  Is it the election of a president with the right ideals to solve the problem plus coalition building skills?  Do document proclaiming the new values count, such as the Declaration of Independence?  Does a major economic collapse count?  Do you have to wait until well after the crisis is over to decide which catalyst should be considered the trigger?

We are going to see much happen. I expect a huge increase in demonstrations and protests over unpopular policies of the Trump Administration. We could see many race riots as the Administration chooses to favor white people over minorities because white people supported Trump and minorities didn't. I expect no conciliation; authoritarian regimes almost invariably punish demographic groups that opposed them with economic punishment. I can even imagine an Apartheid system being established in America.

Quote:So I'd say we have seen a lot of catalyst events in the last decade plus, but no clear trigger event.  We've seen major policy changes, but none of them have really stuck or are major enough to say the culture has changed.  We still have the stagnant divided nation that says 'unraveling' clearly and without doubt.  We are still stuck in that awful no man's land between a clear need to change and a firm decision on how to change.

Barack Obama has done a good job of keeping the oily rags from collecting in the bright sunlight. But that ends in February.

Quote:I still haven't got a firm notion on what Trump is going to do.  I have a feeling that Trump still hasn't got a firm notion on what Trump is going to do.  He's saying a few things that make me almost hope, then follows it with stuff that makes me cringe.  I'm not inclined to propose that his election was the trigger event.  Way too soon to make that call.

Watch on January 21 if you can stand to. If he says conciliatory stuff, then don't believe it until you see it in practice.

Quote:But I'm not going to jump on the anti-Trump bandwagon yet either.  Lots of other folks are working that.  I don't see that another voice is needed.

It's still early.  But in a Crisis things can go very bad very fast. I think that President Trump, by making America work for only a small majority of Americans, can make things go very bad very fast. All bets are off, and I expect the worst from a sociopathic demagogue as leader of what has been a democracy.

But remember -- some scenarios that have existed in other countries' Crises (Spanish Civil War, Yugoslav breakup, establishment of Apartheid) are possible here and now.