09-08-2020, 04:20 AM
(09-08-2020, 03:07 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(09-07-2020, 09:58 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote:(09-07-2020, 03:38 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: It may be that if you are a Nazi, you actually do want living space and to kill Jews.
My point is that they all want the violent outcomes. The Nazis want to kill the hated Jews,and Lori Lightfoot and Ted Wheeler and Bill deBlasio want to see the homes and businesses of the hated Tea Partiers and Trump supporters destroyed. De Blasio, in particular, appears to me to be certifiably insane.
I wouldn't say all. At a high level, you can see the difference. You can see the old hunter gatherer approach. Divide us and them, vilify them, and use violence to keep them in their place. Then there is the Information Age approach. Unify, allow non violent expression of the will of the people, and use legislation to implement what the people want.
There were some brilliant, wise figures in the Agricultural Age and the early industrial age who chose to tolerate non-violent expressions of dissent and allow the political system to bend without breaking. It is telling that the American system was founded a few decades before the Industrial Revolution took off in America. Cause and effect are not obvious.
Quote:Some ideologies are using the divisive approach. Trump is using a divisive approach. Minorities are them. You send escalating troops into black controlled areas to instigate violence. Trump supporters go in and instigate violence. The Boogaloo Bois are also attempting to start provoking violence. The racist violent cops use violence to keep minorities oppressed. I see this as much akin the the Nazi of the last crisis. You use violence to acquire living space while oppressing or killing the Jew or the Slav. The level of violence is different, and it is the blacks and Latinos that are the oppressed minorities, but it is much the same. The difference is between gas chambers full of minorities as opposed to one minority at a time, face to the asphalt, and a knee to the neck.
If there is one reliable lesson from totalitarian movements it is not so much the ideological content but instead the warning "You're next!" Any degradation of human rights for one set of pariahs is a warning to everyone else. Nobility, then people of faith, then kulaks, then people with subtle differences from Stalin on policy. Violent crime is where the demonization rightly stops.
I see nothing particularly avant-garde about America's successful minorities in values or culture except as contributions to the mainstream. No identifiable ethnic or religious group offers 'cultural Bolshevism'; they all have very different traditions that each consider equally valid.
Quote:Biden and most blues are attempting to resolve the differences using non violence. Biden has explicitly denounced the violence, as have most blues. Now, the ideological difference between reds and blues is not universal. There are individual variations. On the whole. though, the blues would prefer the demonstrate and legislate approach. the reds the divide and use violence approach. Continued violence, oppression, destruction.
...and the ultimate futility of violence and criminality. The only defense from the eyes of a camcorder from exposure for wrongdoing is to avoid wrongdoing.
Quote:Now I am not one to say the last crisis is just like this one. Hitler is not Trump or vice versa. It is not difficult to tell the difference between the Nazi of the last crisis and the Republicans of today. But on the bottom line, the bad guys, the Nazi and the Republicans, are provoking violence and advocating racism. I would include the Trump's federal secret police, the Trump 'militia' supporters going into neighborhoods with paint ball guns and real guns, and the racist cops murdering people on whim due to skin pigmentation. The Boogaloo Bois attempting to start their boogaloo also are bad guys seeking division and violence, but they are not acting out of similar motives. The two arrested men calling themselves both Boogaloo Bois and militia do not quite bring the two violent factions seeking a violent resolution together.
Hitler seized absolute power in Germany because of a terribly-flawed political system, one that created a vacuum in the absence of the Kaiser. In 1918 the Kaiser fled and the Weimar Republic formed without any change in structure except to declare that there was no longer a Kaiser. Germany had been a federation of kingdoms. Maybe had it not been for the vindictive treatment of the German Republic (hey, democrats everywhere -- the Weimar Republic was no more militaristic than your victorious societies!) but everyone kissing up to the Antichrist incarnate once he asserted an aggressive nationalism there might have been no rise of Hitler. Maybe had the strong right-wing German Nationalist Party morphed into a responsible conservative party instead of becoming fascism-lite there might have been solutions other than to give some slimeball the power that the Kaiser had and then some.
America is not Weimar Germany, but I see the Republican Party acting irresponsibly, perhaps with a dissident wing recognizing that Donald Trump is an unmitigated disaster as a leader as well as a person. Note well, though, that Donald Trump exploited the irresponsible tendencies in the Right that many of us thought entirely of the past, like racism and religious bigotry and the tendency (not exclusive to the Right) to hold that rational thought is something to abandon should rationality become inconvenient.
Quote:The good guys at least today are bringing together and seeking to resolve things through legislation. This step doesn't seem to be advancing pending control of the senate and White House. Most try to save violence as a last resort. I'm not sure four more years of Trump would encourage patience by those trying to avoid violence. Last resorts are known to become the remaining resort. But we'll wait on the November election and the Trump reaction before guessing what will happen. It is a little early to count chickens or to guess which of Trump's options he will take, though not too early to consider what steps might become necessary.[/quote]
And such is essential for a successful resolution of much that has careened into a fraudulent dichotomy of anarchy and despotism. Trump gave us the whirlwind. We must divest ourselves of him the old-fashioned way, which means in a free election.
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.
