(02-14-2018, 05:15 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I don't see red America as violent enough as a whole. The 2nd Amendment is only one element of a glorification of war and violence that has faded. We are no longer happy with war, with Sousa marches a major part of the pop culture. An example is the rejection of the post war soviet government, but not the people.
But "Red" America is much more authoritarian than "Blue" America. It has suckered far more toward a President with autocratic tendencies that no prior President has shown. We have checks and balances to constrain the President, Congress, and the courts... and Congressional Republicans seem to be doing little to constrain the President from his autocratic tendencies. This happens when politicians put power and personal gain above service to the People, many of whom did not vote for them. I look at the tax 'reform' as an example of legislation intended to punish people for belonging to demographic groups that voted against Trump (even if the primary effort was simply to cut taxes for the super-rich).
"Red" America is no more violent once one adjusts for education and poverty. Nebraska has a low rate of violent crime even even if it is one of the strongest Republican states, and New Mexico has a high rate of violent crime despite being about as Democratic as Massachusetts. The difference is poverty and low levels of education. Take away poverty and low education as an ethnic marker, and that is the difference.
But that is not to say that Republicans would foster street crime or family violence; quite to the contrary, they would intensify the punishments for such. The issue might be with American law enforcement being dragooned into the service of the partisan ends of an increasingly authoritarian regime as Republicans marginalize liberalism. I can imagine some journalist being killed with the aid of polonium-210 or ricin, and some partisan hack making a smarmy comment such as "Curiosity killed the cat".
That will not happen soon, but I see Donald Trump degrading democratic process and the rule of law even faster than did Mussolini in Italy. I don't see him changing his ways; his behavior is rigid and so are his values. I can also imagine the System stopping him if he goes too far for its traditions.
Quote:The US conservatives may be selfish and not look into the future very well, but they are not as evil as you seem to paint them. You have an extreme partisan's ability to misrepresent and misunderstand those who disagree with you. In the real world, half the country is not as evil as you claim. Think how the extreme reds misrepresent the blues. They are little worse in their perception than you.
I am projecting a potential trend, one still reversible. This Crisis Era may have as its defining factor whether it can reverse a tendency toward a pure plutocracy and toward a despotic President. I know what conservatism used to be, and that would be an improvement -- more of a reliance upon thrift, self-restraint, looking to the long term, and entrepreneurialism. Crony capitalism, the trend of the current GOP, implies that conservatism will simply be compliance with the will of elites that they acquiesce with sever inequality and that they believe the propaganda that the Leadership promotes -- and even speak the Newspeak of a dictatorial regime that enforces monopolistic gouging and low wages.
Conservatism will revive after the Crisis, but it will promote saving to ensure that people have a stake in "sound money", entrepreneurialism so that people have more choices in ways of life and in consumer choice, and a rejection of personal debt. It may acquiesce with a Welfare State more generous than what we now have so that people not-so-well-off have something to lose in the event that someone offers a socialism that depends upon collectivization of ownership.
I have noticed a basic pattern of history: debtors tend to be on the Left (think of debt-bonded peasants) and creditors tend to be on the Right (think of the Lords of the Manor). The more that one feels the talon-like grip of debt the more one wants an overheated economy to inflate the currency and create upward pressure on wages. On the other side, think of the planter who holds farm laborers in their grip, compelling workers to assume debt to get the means of survival. As I recall, the usual pattern was for the farm workers to await 'settlement time', and usually fall short... and have the same needs as after the last 'settlement'. The French Revolution followed a series of bad harvests (paradoxically the result of a natural phenomenon, the eruption of a volcano in Iceland) that aggravated the usual inequities of peasant life, including debt to landlords.
Small-scale creditors -- people who have a savings account and insurance policies, maybe a small portfolio of stocks and bonds -- have a stake in preventing inflation that guts the value of their investments. But they need solid incomes to keep from having to dig into savings. Small-scale creditors, a big part of the economy in the 1950s, voted heavily for Eisenhower. Slightly less a share in the 1970s and 1980s, they ended up voting for Reagan.
So what about small-scale debtors? People with student loans are not in quite the same plight as farm laborers in the American South as late as the early 1960s, but they need a vibrant economy and would gladly endure inflation to relieve them of debt. They would love to have the government assume their debts, especially if they have big loans that have allowed them to take jobs with low remuneration. They are not so bad off as people who can't shake off payday loans or pay off a 'buy here/pay here' auto loan on a jalopy likely to die before the car is paid for. So maybe it is not so simple. Donald Trump has never promised to offer debt relief; if anything he would like more people to be in hock to loan-shark lenders. He has appealed to mass superstition and ignorance -- but for this people like Rush Limbaugh and numerous televangelists have prepared much of the public for such.
But this Crisis will be nothing like the hardening forge of the Great Depression and World War II; the bankers know how to stop a meltdown similar to the 1929-1932 before people begin to starve and strike. A war waged with the fervor of the apocalyptic rhetoric between the Allies and the Axis powers has the deterrent of nuclear weapons. The Japanese leadership of the summer of 1945 had no idea of what was coming. We do. A Civil War similar to that of the early 1860s is unlikely now because the generational cycle suggests a time closer to the end of a window for the Crisis than at its start. American Revolution? Do you see a distant king clutching his fists tighter on America and trying to micromanage the economy?
Do I see what is coming? No. I can imagine the worst, including a nuclear exchange. I can also imagine a pervasive change in American institutions to achieve peace, prosperity, and freedom that we have never quite experienced. I see positive signs in the legalization of same-sex marriage and the crackdown on abusive sexuality. I see a debate on whether cops need to be so trigger-happy when they see young black males acting unlike the young white males that they associate with -- while having something that somehow reminds the cops of a weapon.
The Trump Presidency is a reactionary response to economic and cultural trends, and as is usually so with reactionary movements it lacks subtlety and conscience. We have yet to answer how life changes when productivity is so high that it requires much less toil to achieve. We may also be approaching the ominous Singularity in which machine power to create information outstrips human ability. How can we make life decent for people whose toil is no longer needed? Do we rely upon the harshness of markets to drive wages to starvation levels, or do we subsidize life?
Heck, we don't even know what the questions are. We are finding out what some of the wrong answers are, including the old vices of corruption, superstition, male chauvinism, white supremacy, religious bigotry, dishonesty, bureaucratic elitism, and despotism.
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.