01-07-2020, 12:26 PM
(01-05-2020, 07:32 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:(01-05-2020, 01:37 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: As usual, if you want to believe stupid things, then listen to the
idiots in Washington. If you want to know what's actually going on in
the world, then follow the Generational Dynamics analyses that I've
been posting.
I wonder if there's anyone in the Pentagon who is familiar with generational theory. Certainly an understanding that Iran is in a generational Awakening would have helped to make the decision that killing Soleimani had limited downside risk.
Many still consider the generational theory a fringe study. The faults are obvious. We try to interpret history, but such is messy. The American Revolution is not the Civil War, is not the Great Depression and World War II, and is not this time. Even so, Lincoln made allusions to the American Revolution, and FDR made plenty of allusions to Lincoln, even treating the Nazis as rebels against old and necessary virtues. If anything, Spain in the 1930's seemed more an analogue to contemporary America due to the ideological polarization and the ruthlessness of at least one side. The threat to American democracy does not come from a despotic king in London, spiders in the soul of one region (slavery in the South), or foreign powers whose leadership is ominously similar to images of Satan in behavior. The threat comes from people already here, people generally pampered from childhood, who put their self image and economic interests above the basic humanity of other Americans.
Once you get past the politics, the supporters of Donald Trump aren't bad people. They could never get away with the horrible things that Trump has done. Many of them do jobs in which they die a little every day -- like getting to run a cash-register transaction at a convenience store in which someone fills his bloated pick-up truck and the boat that it tows.. and loads up with drinks and party foods for a great time on the nearby lake. Such a transaction may be more than one gets in a month of work, and the customer finds it no great difficulty for himself. And that person must put on a big, bright, happy-to-serve-you smile. Life can be marginal in what is supposedly the richest country in the world. Maybe they recognize that efforts to challenge the idea that 95% of the people are to suffer for 2% who get to live like sultans are pointless -- or at least if they must suffer so that a few can live like sultans, evening it out between themselves and perhaps 40% who do not suffer as they do makes things more equitable.
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.
