(02-26-2018, 11:42 AM)David Horn Wrote:(02-25-2018, 04:42 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:(02-25-2018, 10:16 AM)David Horn Wrote: I don't think the culture of the late 18th century and red culture today resemble each other at all. The only link: red culture idealizes: "the Founders" in a way that makes them unrecognizably rigid and absolutist. The red overlay is closer to a nihilistic version of libertarianism. They celebrate "freedom", as long as it's THEIR freedom: guns, yes; prayer, yes; abortion, no (actually, hell no), and patriotism as they define it ... and only as they define it. I live deep in Red America. I have friends that hold these views. They feel free to tell me how I should think, but act hurt and angry if their values are questioned even a little. It's your value-lock problem on steroids.
And let's understand: this is not an issue of "both sides do it", even though both sides rally to their respective flags. This is "We're right and you are evil" compared to "We don't agree".
But we are headed to another 1T, an inherently conservative time. But before current conservatives of the National Rifle Association and a Republican Party that seems to have an agenda reminiscent of the John Birch Society get excited about the impending new conservative era -- it won't be their style of conservatism. The conservatism will be forged in the darkest and most decisive years of the Crisis Era, and it will most likely be a rejection of much that is offered with the label conservative as 'movement conservatives' now promote. It will be more parallel to the conservatism of Dwight Eisenhower (preserve and defend the New Deal from radicalism and foreign menaces) than of people who want a New Feudalism.
It will be for law and order, such being seen as necessary for economic stability and growth as well as the protection of civil liberties. It will treat legal precedent and diplomatic protocol as virtues more important than the political fad of the day. It will put thrift above immediate self-gratification. It will see education far more useful for getting economic results than will be superstition and ignorance in achieving some transitory advantage for politicians. It will confirm same-sex marriage and homosexuality as unworthy of challenge (so long as such is between consenting adults) but crack down on sexual harassment and messing with children. It might tolerate marijuana but crack down harshly upon opiates and meth. In view of the success of America's non-Christian and non-white model minorities despite difficult times for many white Christians in the economy it will promote entrepreneurialism and formal education, the former for creating the necessary wealth and the latter in part to make Americans less amenable to demagogues (I expect Donald Trump to be one of the most widely-reviled figures in America for decades.
Of course I expect a crackdown on people seen as dangerous, disloyal radicals.
If it is parallel to Eisenhower, it will have substance more resembling what Obama sought. Consider that what the New Deal types wanted was something resembling the 1950s... and by the late 1930s America was already showing portents of what the 1950s (or at least the late 1940s) would look like. I take note of a recent poll of historians (paradoxically those students of the past are the best predictors of the future) in which the liberals already saw Obama among the top ten Presidents, and even the conservatives saw him 14th.
Surely you have seen my favorite map, the one comparing elections involving Eisenhower and Obama... right?
Most likely, I won't see the entire 1T, but it's not likely to be similar to the last one. It may more closely resemble the one prior, and be dominated by moneyed interests. Then again, the chaos Presidency of DJT could trigger a transformation I hadn't expected even two years ago, and the next 1T could be truly transformational. In any case, technology will march on, and whether it gets used for good or ill will dictate the following 2T and 4T.
Having been born near the middle of the last 1T, I also expect to see no more than the early part of the next 1T. But I also expect events to move much more swiftly during the Trump phase of the current Crisis than during the comparatively placid time of the Obama Presidency.
Of course, the Hard Right began by licking its wounds and steadily taking more power until the United States has become a near-dictatorship. Obama did most things by the book; Donald Trump seems to have defied the book. A leader who thinks that historical precedent has great relevance for a leader and who does not have hurt an agenda of salving his hurt feelings (Obama) is by nature cautious, whatever his ideology. A leader who thinks history can be shaped to fit his dreams and has copious scores to settle (Trump) sows the whirlwind, whatever his ideology.
I see President Trump more likely to place blame than to solve problems. That is the danger.
Should he be able to achieve his agenda, then he really will make America Great Again -- for the right people, and probably only those 'right people'. America will be a country to leave, and not to which to immigrate. America will have a brain drain and a disappearance of its most promising entrepreneurs. For most of the history of the world, America has demanded less in identity of people and offered the most that any country could offer. Crony capitalism with acid tests of faith in a right-wing orthodoxy in political and even religious values can send America into an era with an odd combination of stagnation and chaos.
The historical pattern in America has been that the cooler heads ultimately prevail. Maybe after a short era of Donald Trump (I see him as a one-term President even without potential issues of health) we will revert to old, successful patterns. Many countries have survived the fall of disgraced leaders only to come out of the experience with a firm resolve to prevent a repetition of a leader showing signs of potential disgrace. We have yet to solve much that was wrong in the latter years of the post-WWII era. The Multiversity that allowed college students to avoid liberal arts as if they were budding engineers or scientists must go in favor of the old standard of liberal arts that prepared people for genuine leadership by teaching values as suitable for a shop steward as for a college professor. Most of Postmodernist claptrap, the part that pretends that there is no real knowledge other than a personal solipsism, will find its way to the philosophical equivalent of the toxic waste enclosure.The dubious treatment of schlock entertainment as equal to Don Giovanni or Swan Lake will by necessity die. People will want inner peace, and they will need to offer a suitable legacy for their children even if t hey can offer nothing else. Superstition will give way to science which has solved far more problems than any divination. The undemocratic trends that give us (for now) a semi-dictator as President and a legislative process that corporate lobbyists dominate must give way to what Abraham Lincoln called for in a dark time: "a new birth of freedom". Above all, the economic idea that we are all operating only for ourselves and our untrained appetites must vanish. We will need to do big things just to get through an economic meltdown without tearing us apart as a people. Wise conservatives will promote thrift which creates savers who have a stake in a moderate conservatism instead of consumer debt that creates people in economic hardship.
I see some good signs even if the President seems like the sort of person for which Carly Simon offered the song "You're So Vain". First, someone that awful is not gaining support. Second, youth are capable of coherent, principled protest against the gun culture that puts gun sales above human life. Third, homosexuality is getting the respect that it deserves as a harmless inevitability at the same time that America shows signs of cracking down on abusive, destructive sexuality. We have big economic problems, and our political system offers most of us great sacrifices in the expectation that if we suffer enough for elites who act like a new aristocracy, then the scraps and cast-offs that those elites offer us will make our lives better. The President may be credited with the book The Art of the Deal, but we all have the responsibility to make choices that allow us to make better deals than the bad one that some shyster first offers. (If I am to make one lesson in economics, it is that the way to riches and happiness is to make frequent deals of quality for quality, and that creating quality is the prerequisite for prosperity. Garbage for garbage is futility; deals that burn one of the participants cripple those who get burned).
If the last Crisis Era tells us anything, we are on the brink of some of the greatest pop culture ever. We are approaching the 80th anniversary of the greatest year in the history of American cinema. If we don't do that, then some other country (India is most obvious as a challenger at that) will do so. It is also about 80 years since Big Band music, the greatest popular music since Mozart was composing music that succeeded on every esthetic level (Mozart wrote and performed music of mass appeal that modern rock stars would envy) , was beginning to reach us. All in all we will need to figure out for ourselves what is really good and go for it -- and to establish some workable virtues -- like integrity, fair play, empathy, and a solid work ethic. A good society fosters virtues; a bad one wastes and ultimately loses them and debases itself. It is our choice -- reform or ruin, and it begins with our personal lives.
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.