Generational Dynamics World View

[pbrower2a]

Now on the article:



...Did you notice that the percentage of Americans disbelieving in democracy increased for all age groups? Maybe it seemed to be working better in 1995 than in 2014. American politics were much less acrimonious in 1995 than in 2014. Democracy and political acrimony do not go well.

Maybe there is a generational factor. In 1994 there was still a large number of living GIs who firmly believed in democracy. After all, they knew what  promise tyranny had for Humanity:

(OK, we do not need another Holocaust image to make the point).

I miss the GI generation in American politics. So long as they were numerous, GIs were able to convince us of the need for shared purpose and to recognize the need for good intentions on both sides. Once they retired from public life or died off, the political polarization could run wild. GIs did not like demagogues, as  demagogues were obviously untrustworthy tro them as they were not so obviously untrustworthy to younger generations.

Note also that politics became more a theater for getting what one could while one could, and that the political donors became far more important as time passed. Since January 21, 2017, they are the only people who matter. Lobbyists are the real power in Congress, and we have a President who better resembles Wilhelm II of Germany than he resembles any President since the start of the 20th Century. But this chart stops in 2014.



From 2016, just after the election of Donald Trump.

This is from when America was a democracy. It is not a democracy now. One Party now calls all the shots, and it may seek to entrench itself permanently. There is no room for compromise. In case people speak about times when one party had the Presidency and both Houses of Congress under either Dubya or Obama, at least there was then some effort to seek compromise. There were real moderates in both Parties. Such is not so under Donald Trump. We have a president acting much like a dictator, fitting the character of a bad noble who acts impetuously on whatever hurts his feelings at the time.

I would guess that the percentage of people who believe that a military coup is unacceptable in America is lower now than the figures shown above. But that is an imperial President at his worst, a reckless glory-seeker who insists that things go his way no matter what. Military coups are rare in well-functioning democracy, but they are much more common in non-democracies. If it takes a military coup to prevent a horrific war in the Korean peninsula or an unjustifiable invasion of Cuba or Venezuela, then so be it.

Senior officers are responsible for their roles in planning or executing a war of aggression. If they must choose between a coup and war crimes, then they must choose a coup. Of course that would create its own mess. It would be at the least an impeachment by people with no legal power with which to impeach a sitting President and his cabinet. Of course there would also be legislators culpable in the situation.

We have a President who has already shown admiration for dictators instead of politicians in the American tradition from Washington to Obama. This is worse than, for an example, a Greek leader showing admiration for Metaxas, a Hungarian leader showing admiration for Horthy or Kadar, or a Spanish leader showing admiration for Franco -- because dictatorship is 100% un-American!