06-23-2018, 10:35 AM
(06-23-2018, 10:02 AM)David Horn Wrote:(06-22-2018, 01:45 PM)TheNomad Wrote: Maybe I did not communicate properly? What you say above about "symptom as problem". I never meant to say the OP issue is - itself - the very thing exactly that is changing national mood. Actually I did say just exactly the opposite I think.
I said flare events like this can be the little ice cube at the top of the water and then the big iceberg starts to emerge. It may have nothing to do with this current event. The events of catalyst simply occur and becomes a springboard for some of explosion or implosion with greater implications.
In this thread, I was asking others to predict or foresee what could come from this or after this (because of this or not) but it being just a symptom when the larger "fever" emerges afterward.
I think this could be something. I can see this becoming a mega issue later on and being heaped in front of the door of anyone that supported it, was involved with the implementation, did not stand against it, etc. It could be a "enough is enough" moment that devolves into frustration toward Federalism in general.
* I am trying my absolute best in this forum to stay away from any political sides or citing color issues or aisle sides. It is difficult but I believe is not impossible.
Crises happen because something gets too far out of whack. What it is is always questionable ... Until it isn't. Obviously, I have a theory that may prove true, because it's based on stupid decisions that are now be recognized as such. I certainly can be wrong, but I'll stand by my analysis until it's shown to be.
We've had decades of unjustified wealth transfer, running parallel with an economy changing faster than average people are able to adjust to. At the moment, those average people are aligning with the oligarchs, because they have been convinced that their grief is caused by"others" they dislike for other reasons. It's neat, clean and wrong. Somehow this gets resolved. It may not be to my liking.
The oligarchic order will make things even harder for almost everyone. It will set economic priorities, all tending to intensify wealth transfer and to give the oligarchs more power over people's lives. The oligarchs will of course have command of the three instruments most effective in controlling the masses -- media, the police, and the legal system. Anything that gets in its way will be vulnerable to 'removal with extreme prejudice'. Think of some South American countries during their 'dirty wars'. What our political leaders in the 1970s and 1980s promoted elsewhere on behalf of "American interests (read, corporate investments) abroad" -- a prime example of a thought-destroying meme" will be operating here. The consequence is that about everyone will feel as if he is in a bad colonial order without knowing where the center of power is.
Things get worse, but we are expected to put on broad theatrical smiles and endorse the nastiness as the best thing that ever happened to us. When we start seeing the elites building castles and palaces with near-forced labor and get nothing out of it we will be told that the problem is that the elites aren't building enough castles and palaces, so we need to work harder and endure pay cuts and unpaid overtime to make such possible.
That happens when the oligarchic elites operate without conscience. We will have the sort of economic and political order that usually precedes a proletarian revolution.
Such is my fear if much goes wrong. Such elites will consolidate power just as the Crisis Era is due for an end. We would have a plutocratic mirror image of Communist regimes, complete with repression and barely-hidden mass despair. Because incentives will be gone, economic efficiency will erode. Fear becomes the sole motivator, and that simply degrades whatever compet4ence people have. Nobody will believe anything, especially in the economic basis of the system or the media outlets that regularly disgorge Orwellian propaganda. Words themselves become lies and cripple the ability of anyone to think.
This is one possibility. The other is part of the masses that think themselves told that they are privileged because of ethnicity or culture decide that they are simply getting the shaft a bit less than others -- but that they are being cheated out of their 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.