Generational Dynamics World View

[Bob Butler 54]

(10-23-2020, 04:27 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: America has plenty of equivalents of "Beavis and Butthead", and considering that those types are Generation X and are largely in their forties and fifties, they still vote. They may now have been culled for self-destructive stupidity (think of the Darwin Awards that mock people who make catastrophic errors that kill themselves), but they never learned much. I can imagine "Beavis and Butthead" as Trump supporters because Trump supporters believe in one of the most hare-brained ideologies ever brought forth...  (More stuff pretty much true.)

Not so long ago, it became ritual to call all Democrats communist, and all Republicans fascist.  There is an element of truth to it, but I would not at all have difficulty telling the difference between Hitler’s or Stalin’s approach to things and what the US is doing.  This is not the 1930s and 1940s.

Looking at it from a different slant, you can see it as dominance of policy by a particular class.  With rulers like Atilla, Napoleon and Hitler taking charge, the policy was tribal, aggressive, and territory oriented.  The more land one controlled, the more powerful one was.  This was very true in the Agricultural Age and became less true as the Industrial Age progressed.  With destructive weapons such as the machine gun and the nuke, with defensive alliances and proxy wars becoming better established, it became harder to profit from war.  This is not to say people will still try.  If you look at Bush 43’s Middle Eastern efforts as colonial imperialism revisited, as a war for oil, no matter how many noble excuses he came to use in public, it is still a thing that is tried.  If you do, you are apt to fail.  More and more the elites and the leaders are not apt to try.  There are more cost effective rackets.

There is a second class struggle where the robber barons attempt to keep wealth at the expense of the people.  The most visible indication is an extreme division of wealth.  If you are trying to cut benefits, limit the power of unions and ship jobs overseas where it is more profitable, you are taking the robber baron’s side.  This is more an Industrial Age problem.  The US was making strides against it, but the Republican united the elite’s cash with the racist’s vote.  The unraveling was a revisit of giving runaway influence to the elite class with the aid of the racist vote.

Now this view is different from Democrats are socialists and Republicans fascists.  The communists parties were essentially elites, ruling for their position not the people, caring mostly about maintaining power.  Major powers are not waging war against other major powers these days.  World War II was enough.  Bad things happen given modern weapons and the ability to fight proxy wars.  As a result those perspectives are badly flawed.

This does not mean we should try to contain any modern wannabe Attlla, Genghis, Napoleon or Hitler.  This does not mean we shouldn’t reduce the imbalance of wealth.

All of which does not make me like Bush 'war for oil' 43, Trump 'drain the swamp' 45 or the Republicans.

This crisis seems to be ending the alliance between the elites and the racists, making it no longer dominant.  It makes it harder to get involved in abuses either by military acquisition or construction of huge divisions of wealth.  There is reason to be optimistic.

But stupidity?  The elites and the racists are not stupid.  They have goals, even if these objectives are not constructive to the culture as a whole.  It is a mistake to allow them to justify themselves by creating an alternate fantasy reality which justifies their dated, misguided and sometimes downright evil aims.  But I am less inclined to believe they believe their justifications.

The big lesson learned is not to allow a sizable portion of the population indulge in such evil fantasies.  Fact checking must become a central part of the culture.