(08-04-2018, 09:20 AM)Marypoza Wrote:(08-03-2018, 01:41 PM)David Horn Wrote:(07-25-2018, 07:30 AM)Marypoza Wrote: -- a Mild Crises could explain why we can't figure out if we're in a 4T or still in an extremely long 3T. Maybe we're supposed to be fighting the Culture Wars this time around. I honestly can't see a civil war involving 2 opposing armies. I can & do see guerilla style civil unrest, & on the non-violent side, mass protests as we move forward into this 4 T
Unrest can devolve into chaos, and that's at least as bad as a true war. We have all the elements that can make that possible, including a irrational belief by many Americans in our Huckster in Chief. Irrational ideas, when put to the test, typically disappoint. In a 4T, disappointment can lead random violence on a broad scale.
-- exactly, & that is how l see this 4T playing out. I also like your idea about a schism where the wingnuts are still living in the 3T while the rest of us have moved on
The wingnuts are living in the depraved 3T while the rest of us are ready to go on. Donald Trump is an exaggeration of bad trends that began with Reagan and got intensified while Dubya was President. They may have thought they won with this sort of appeal:
They 'gave' us Donald Trump as President and a Congress with a stooge majority. They created a climate in which it was acceptable to emit racist material analogous to the eugenics movement of the early 20th century. (something few of us can legitimately miss about the supposed time of lost American greatness that Donald trump wishes to revive. What else? Children back in the mines and factories? 70-hour workweeks and 40-year lifespans for industrial workers? The conception that pollution is the mark of prosperity? The KKK as the political force that it was in the 1920s (the KKK was ahead of the Nazis in transforming their respective countries into Evil Empires in the mid-1920s).
"Make America Great Again". Back when there was no Social Security and no minimum-wage law, when depositing money in a bank was a gamble due to bank runs, when an eighth-grade education was considered 'solid'? (that is about the perfect level of education for a totalitarian regime like Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union, or Satan Hussein's Iraq -- enough education to make people adequate machines of production, cannon fodder, baby-factories, and brutal guards in labor camps... and if that is greatness, then that is something that we Americans have transcended, I would hope!)
Yes, it was a depraved 3T. A few things went right, like the demise of most Commie regimes, some inexpensive entertainment in electronic media, the Harry Potter novels, and Barack Obama. But what went right will stick around, and what was awful will get shoved aside. We will need to make adjustments for technological changes that have forced fundamental changes in how we do even some of the most basic deeds in life, from communication to economic choices. An i-device as a substitute for a library and a record connection and as a connection to anyone who seems interesting?
What was said of young adults in the 1970s "We may not convince 'Archie Bunker' but we can convince his kids" applies today.
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.