03-01-2018, 11:01 AM
(02-27-2018, 01:37 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:(02-27-2018, 10:35 AM)Cynic Hero Wrote: A Strike must go "all In" not striking North Korea or doing a half-measure limited strike is sheer folly. The Boomer refuses to comprehend the causes of the various issues both regarding the Korea issue or the world in general because doing so would force the boomer to admit that their preferences are the problem that the entire "peace dividend" since the late 1980s just led to the US being regarded as a wuss. The Boomer is emotionally attached to globalism and the peace dividend because those are the policies THEY advocated. Yet the same boomers refuse to let Xers and Millies into the government because they think the Xer or Millies MIGHT commit genocide in the future. Thats what makes boomer governance tyranny because boomers insist on trying to control the natural flows of events and social evolution and that is contrary to nature.
Every generation hangs on to power as long as possible. You'll have your turn; you just have to be patient.
The youngest Boomers are still in their late 50s, so Boomers are not yet in their last act on the historical scene, especially when many Boomers are following the GI practice (that the leading Silent seem to practice) of staying active physically and socially, which is good for longevity and the preservation of social prominence, Add to this, Boomers are the lightest smokers of all earlier American generations since at least the Transcendental Generation and have tended to eschew the hardest liquors in favor of milder beer and wine (which are easier to drink in moderation than the hard stuff) if they drink at all. Keep fit and stay connected -- such is good for getting old without becoming decrepit until one is really, really old.
Donald Trump is definitely not the last act for the Boomer generation. The next Boomer President may still be a conservative promoter of tradition and free markets, but as such will redefine conservatism so that it promotes thrift, a work ethic, intellectual probity and curiosity, family, expertise and competence, personal responsibility including the creation of wealth, and wholesome tradition even at the expense of class privilege and bigotry of any form. (That is not very "Trump-like"), The next Boomer President may also be a liberal as either a repudiation of Donald Trump to the greatest extent possible. Like other Idealist leaders in the past, Boom leaders have redefined American life as much as is possible at the time. Donald Trump is no exception at that, and the dispute about him is not whether American life (in economics, culture, and politics) but instead whether the Trump redefinition is the right definition. Donald Trump exemplifies the rent-seeker, an economic figure innovative only in how he is able to grab more of other people's money without improving what people other than the rent-grabbers get; he has gotten rich by raising the rent while trying to keep public services limited (to keep his property taxes as a cost of doing business down) and foisting schlock entertainment upon us. He is capitalism at its worst -- exploitative and lacking in innovation.
For a non-American analogue, Donald Trump is Neville Chamberlain without a moral compass. But we know well who followed in Great Britain -- the definitive Gray Champion in the Howe-Strauss lexicon. Churchill was much in the background in the 1930s because he would have offended Hitler about as much as a Trotskyite Commie of Jewish origin, then a seemingly-unwise thing to do. By May 1940 practically all British people had come to recognize Adolf Hitler as a demonic menace to everything that they cherished, and Churchill could offend Hitler as much as he saw fit. But that is how a Crisis Era goes.
OK -- neither Putin nor Xi is Hitler -- or anything near that. But Trump is not the last act for Boomers. He is almost certainly the penultimate (second-to-last) Big Act for Boomers before leadership devolves to the sorts of Reactive leaders (Washington, John Adams, Grant (faults and all), maybe Garfield (had he not been assassinated), Cleveland, Truman, and Eisenhower -- and Obama, who does not fit the Howe-Strauss model of an Idealist) that take over at the end of or soon after a Crisis Era. The Reactive leaders from after the Revolutionary War and Depression-WW II Crises -- and Obama -- are generally recognized as above-average Presidents. (Those mediocre-to-poor Presidents between Andrew Johnson and William McKinley took on Civic characteristics, if awkwardly, due to their roles in the Civil War as wartime heroes in the sense that Jefferson's Republicans and Kennedy's GIs did).
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.
