09-02-2021, 07:25 PM
Quote:So we have been, stupidly, for years, predicting something that looks like past Crises. When we already know what the issues are. All you have to do is look at the 1960s and 1970s. Mao-inspired neo-Marxist identity politics, cultural revolution and terrorism, economic and cultural decline, the disintegration and demoralization of American society, and of American geopolitical standing, allowed by widespread narcissistic hedonism, greed and corruption. That's Boomers. Always has been, always will be.
1. No two Crises in American history have been alike. The public enemies have not been the same. We are not in a struggle for independence or deciding whether slavery will persevere or be abolished. Our enemy isn't the genocidal racists of Germany, Italy, and Japan in World War II. If anything, Germany, Italy, and Japan are quite placid; if anything happened to American democracy those three countries would be at or near the top of the list as places of political refuge.
We have a nasty virus. Maybe the personal dynamics behind the Michigan plot have parallels in John Brown's raid and Bloody Kansas/Bleeding Kansas just before the Civil War. A President who had just lost his bid for re-election fair and square sought to remain President in violation of Constitutional norms by, at the least, egging on his supporters to go "on to the Capitol". We have a terribly-bungled response to COVID-19.
I doubt that anyone involved with the generational theory believes that Crisis Eras will be quite alike.
2. The Hard Right is as capable of Identity Politics as was the Hard Left of the 1960's and 1970's. Knowing that Marxism-Leninism is dead (or at least moribund, as in Cuba) as an economic system except in North Korea even if formerly-Marxist dictatorships as in China, Vietnam, and Laos. Maoism is dead in China even if his image appears on Chinese currency if only because he is the world's best-known Chinese. China, lacking a welfare state, is arguably more capitalist than the USA or the EU.
The racist KKK and neo-Nazis are now far more relevant to American reality, at least if one looks at police efforts to quash their terrorist activities. Of course they are pure disgrace, but tell their members that! White losers go to prison and get connected all too often to the Aryan Nations cult. But even without the odious stench of Nazism (anyone who still thinks that there is a meaningful difference between neo-Nazis and the KKK deludes himself) we have people with a complete rejection of the Western Enlightenment.
The American and French Revolutions were consequences of the Enlightenment, as were the revolutions of 1848 (if only they had succeeded!), as was the great flowering of European and American culture. It even extended to Russia, with its great blossoming of music and literature. In science it includes the establishment of chemistry, biological evolution, Freudian psychoanalysis, and electromagnetic theory.. and even Einstein's relativity. It includes music from Bach and Rameau to Mahler and Scriabin. It questioned stale thought with experiment and daring expressions.
I have heard people define themselves as "Tenth Amendment Citizens". Why the Tenth and not something later?
(the 13th)
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
(the 14th)
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
(the 15th)
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
no longer relevant
women and persons attaining the age of 18 are now eligible to vote in accordance with Constitutional amendments
no longer relevant as t applies to the Confederate cause unless there should be some other rebellion at a later date. January 6, 2021?
America has recently had a significant number of former slaves -- of the Nazis. This point is becoming irrelevant as such people die off in extreme old age, and was never an issue in the United States except in the post-war settlement in Germany after WWII.
I think we all know the distinction between a "Tenth Amendment citizen" and a "Fifteenth Amendment citizen". need I say "race"? The abolition of slavery was very much an Enlightenment ideal and practice. Racism and religious bigotry are not Enlightenment ideals.
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3. Some have sought to repudiate (Nazis and other fascists) the Enlightenment; some perverted it (Marxist-Leninists, especially Stalinists) for political reasons. Some act as if it never happened (ISIS, Taliban). Some, like fundamentalist Christians, often seek to pick and choose what parts of the Enlightenment that they wish to undo. Fundamentalist Christianity is comparatively new (1926), but it often denies evolution promotes such pseudo-history as the claim that the Founding Fathers were Biblical literalists like modern Fundamentalists. Add to this we have had people denying the dangers of lead (especially as tetraethyl lead), carcinogens in tobacco, and now AGW.
To be sure, we have identity politics -- but most of it is on the Right. Liberals are a broad coalition of people very different in ethnicity, cultural traditions, gender preference, and religion. The Hard Right is often white and proud of it. "Black Power" is very much on the fringe, and losing all relevance. Would that "white power" were vanishing.
Identity politics solves nothing. Democrats are far more advanced in finding shared ground on such issues as education and workplace equity. Where but America could Jews and Muslims vote nearly alike? OK, a place like Dearborn, Michigan can be extremely intolerant in part because of its large Arab and Muslim population. Yes, indeed. No sexually-oriented businesses, much unlike the southwest side of Sodom and Gomorrah (Detroit). Whores, addicts, and drunks get busted if they wander in from Detroit, as there is a Dearborn city police car stationed at the Dearborn-Detroit city limit. Although one can still go to a bar in Dearborn, rowdiness in a bar is out of the question, for the city has no tolerance for such. Horrible? Well, plenty of Christians and Jews like it that way. Better the mosque than the strip club or whorehouse, right?
We all know and recognize out differences. Most of us recognize that they have much in common. The middle class and upper class of all minority groups agree on the desirability of formal education and the dangers of violent crime.
5. Cultural decline? Yawn! Late-Romantic music got that description. Impressionist art got that label. If you really want to see cultural decline, then just look for the world of meth. We are now in one of the most creative times in world history.
6. Do you know what is really demoralizing? Hearing Donald Trump speak. Watching video of the Capitol Putsch.
7. American geopolitical standing? That used to correspond with American dominance of the world economy outside the Sino-Soviet bloc. That is over... so make your adjustment. We can still live well so long as our economy remains productive -- and especially, equitable.
8. widespread narcissistic hedonism, greed and corruption. Yes. Donald Trump exemplifies that.
9. We Boomers are not a monolith. The problem is that our economic and administrative elites are a monolith that has lorded it over us all. People who have unchallenged power become extremely narcissistic. Those among us who never became part of the Boomer elite may be decent and competent enough that if we ever got a chance to prove ourselves would do things as well as any generation. The problem is that the Boomer elite has shut us out until they themselves become too old to participate... as is so with us.
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.
