08-12-2020, 08:16 AM
(08-11-2020, 09:44 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 11-Aug-2020 World View: Religion
(08-11-2020, 08:46 AM)David Horn Wrote: > That sounds a lot more like religion than historical
> analysis.
If that's a religion, then so is generational theory, and so is S&H.
As I often point out, I'm the only remaining member of the FT forum
who believes that generational theory is valid.
It is at best a tool, much like certain curves for predicting the direction of the price for a stock or the overall stock market. Think of the double dip and the head-and-shoulders patterns.
No two Crisis Eras are the same. The last Crisis seems to have wiped the militarism once endemic in German, Italian, and Japanese culture out for a very long time and weakened the unthinking belief that colonial empires were good ideas even among the victors. In contrast it made America and the USSR more willing to set up client states as captive suppliers and markets worthy of fights in proxy wars. The leader of a country during a Crisis might pick and choose from earlier Crises. With Britain as the #1 ally, FDR would have to downplay the American Revolution... but Abraham Lincoln was fine.
If I am to look at Presidents of the United States in this Crisis, then Dubya is the sort of leadership that people want when they seek to be left alone to wallow in greed and hedonism and proves a disaster when such greed and hedonism prove destructive. Obama is the sort of leader one typically gets after a Crisis is over or at the earliest as the Crisis is winding down. He might not be a perfect fit for a Lincoln, Juarez, FDR, Churchill, or Mannerheim, but if people do what he expects then things go well enough. Donald Trump has only one mitigating factor as President: he shows what can go wrong and the consequences, and leaders after him can use him as an example of how not to govern. See also Nero, Caligula, and Commodus as Roman Emperors. Imperator and Praesidens are not quite the same in authority, and they have very different resources of power at their disposal. I can imagine the difference in movies (or whatever the art form is in use in the 2200's) between a story on Obama (boring!) and Trump. Should there be a production code as there was in the 1950's, then we get something like Quo Vadis? (probably PG) for Trump. If none is in place, then we get Caligula (NC-17) or Gladiator (R for violence). Nero, Caligula, and Commodus were well remembered for entertaining the masses but horrid for all else. Ideally politics are boring, and an opera is available.
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.
