11-24-2018, 10:05 AM
(11-23-2018, 02:37 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: … Conservatives and progressives often crash into each other. The conservative often benefits from the existing situation, and thus it seems to make sense. The progressive sees problems, and wishes to change the existing situation to solve said problems. I believe that if you don't address a problem, it will get worse until you do commit to solving it. Thus, the blues may have an advantage. If you wait long enough, the problems will definitely have to be solved. Until the problems are put in the past - like ruling nobility, kings, slaves, and wars between major powers - you get worse and worse. This seems to be the ruling dynamic between red and blue. The question is whether things have changed that much. What new dynamic has changed the established dynamic.
Among the things that must change in blue eyes are division of wealth, prejudice, global warming, reusable energy and pollution. The need for change is not clear on all issues, but they seem to get clearer with time. I see no reason to change the basic Whig perspective. There are always those who cling to the past, who worry only about their time, or cling to a certain political way of looking at things. Still, such people have faded away in the past...
This is exactly where the problems exist. We have a world in flux, driven by forces that are self-directed and, mostly, unmitigated. Does anyone or anything have a solid brake on the excesses of private business -- especially multi-national corporations? Yet the conservatives among us tend, by nature, to abhor correctives that threaten to change "the way things are", even though those current social economic structures are frayed to the point of decomposing. Meanwhile, private power continues on its current trajectory, with Silicone Valley now the emerging giant of bad behavior.
Our counter to private power is supposed to be public power, but public power has been so thoroughly trashed as "elitist" or "anti everything good and wholesome", that it is totally ineffectual. Before any of the real problems can be addressed, and most are screaming for focus and effort, the principal engine of change needs to set back on its feet and made whole again. Neither party is working to that end, and the Democrats, more than the GOP, should be making the effort. They are the party of government, or have been in the past.
Making government righteous again is not a trivial or short-term project. It may take a collapse of the economy or, far worse, the climate to adjust communal thinking. I would prefer a less draconian option, but I'm not sure that's even possible anymore.