Generational Dynamics World View

[pbrower2a]

(07-12-2019, 01:48 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 12-Jul-2019 Syria in World War II

(07-11-2019, 11:29 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: >   Wasn't Syria in a Crisis during the Second World War? It was a
>   combat zone between the Vichy -associated colonial rulers on the
>   one side, and the British and the Free French on the other. The
>   Nazis tried to establish a corridor of pro-Axis regimes in Syria
>   and Lebanon (the French mandate sheared off Ottoman Turkey), Iraq
>   under the fascistic regime of al-Gailani, and the absolute
>   monarchy of Reza Shah I (not to be confused with his son Reza Shah
>   II, Shah of Iran until the Islamic Revolution of 1979). The
>   British and Free French overthrew the Vichy rulers of Syria; the
>   British overthrew the pro-Nazi fascistic regime in Iraq; the
>   Soviet Union occupied northern Iran and the British occupied
>   southern Iran.

No, absolutely not.  World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman
Empire was a crisis war for Syria and the region.  There were armies
on the ground in Syria during WW II, but they were mostly fighting
each other.  WW II was an Awakening era war for the Mideast and
Russia.

Syria's next generational crisis was the Syrian civil war between
Shia/Alawites and Sunni Arabs, climaxing with the Hama massacre in
1982.

Here's an article that goes into the Alawite-Sunni history:

-- Roots of Alawite-Sunni Rivalry in Syria
https://www.mepc.org/roots-alawite-sunni-rivalry-syria
(Middle East Policy Council, Summer 2017))

(07-11-2019, 11:29 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: >   I recognize the rise of any totalitarian order as a Crisis in
>   itself ...

Lots of things are crises.  The hurricane approaching New Orleans this
weekend is a major crisis, but it's not a generational crisis war.
Neither is the rise of a totalitarian order.

(07-11-2019, 11:29 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: >   If you wonder how relevant this is to America -- this Crisis will
>   either establish Donald Trump as the founder of a new political
>   order -- at least authoritarian in its service of rentier-based
>   capitalism or the repudiation of the plutocratic principles that
>   Donald Trump expounds. It may have been hard to believe that
>   democracy could die in America, but it can -- and it will not die
>   of some predictable form of political senescence.

More idiotic nonsense based in vitriolic hatred of 60 million
Trump supporters.

Many Trump voters of 2016 are far better people than the man that they voted for. This will show true in 2020. To be sure there are some thoroughly-obnoxious people who insist that unqualified support for this President (as has never been the case before) is the measure of patriotism and civic duty. Obama supporters never went that far.

Sure, I hold Donald Trump in contempt. He is ruthless, arrogant, selfish, divisive, cruel, and corrupt. He is intellectually shallow. The British diplomat Kim Darroch,  canned for saying certain things

• Describes bitter conflicts within Trump's White House – verified by his own sources – as 'knife fights';
  
• Warns that Trump could have been indebted to 'dodgy Russians';
  
• Claims the President's economic policies could wreck the world trade system;
  
• Says the scandal-hit Presidency could 'crash and burn' and that 'we could be at the beginning of a downward spiral... that leads to disgrace and downfall';
  
• Voices fears that Trump could still attack Iran.
  

about Donald Trump, is surely not alone. 



https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...ional.html

Sure, it's the Daily Mail... but the story is corroborated. This would have never happened with either Bush or with Reagan, and certainly not with Obama or Clinton.


Trump is awful. We have never had a President like him, but 'more of the same' will be a disaster. This is a president with legal, diplomatic, and administrative chaos. Most people, so far as I can tell, await his political downfall in 2020 so that things can go back to normal.


.