08-20-2019, 05:45 AM
(08-19-2019, 08:05 PM)Hintergrund Wrote:(08-14-2019, 05:19 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:(08-14-2019, 08:33 AM)Hintergrund Wrote: Four castes, four Turnings. Is there a connection? Prophets - Brahmans (stupid idea to give the top position to the most reality-impaired caste...)? Kshatriya - Heroes? But after that...
The prophets are extremes of wisdom and stupidity on politics and culture.
Yes, it seems that they still have to learn their lesson. Even if the oldest Boomers are beyond 75, FFS. Can those old dogs even learn new tricks?
The three Boomer Presidents were all born in 1946 -- early cohorts. Clinton will probably go down in history as mediocre and disappointing, Dubya as awful, and Trump as the worst of all time. Boomers born in the middle-to-late 1950's have yet to be seen as President. Does the equivalent of an FDR, Churchill, D'Israeli, Juarez, Blum, Adenauer, Gandhi, or Mannerheim come from among them? (Obama is definitely not a Boomer; he is simply too rational and pragmatic, suggesting a piecing-together of Idealist and Civic traits as he finds desirable and useful).
We are talking about three people and not tens of millions, or of greater relevance, those few who could get the chance. Another Bill Clinton? Too little and too late. Another Dubya? Too superficial and otherwise inadequate. Another Trump? Aside from being ill-prepared, having evil tendencies, living on impulse, being full of himself even if he is morally vacuous, disregarding the Wisdom of the Ages, being ill-tempered, and completely misunderstanding how government works, he isn't that bad (snark intended).
Some people never learn their needed lessons for what they get swept into, and that has nothing to do with the generation from which they come. Trump was damned to failure because he was Idealist vices with weak expressions of Idealist virtues? Do you see principle, culture, or vision in him? His 'vision' is that of a Babbitt-like real-estate huckster... but I certainly see ruthlessness, arrogance, and selfishness suited to wet-behind-the-ears Boomers in their twenties (Peace, Love, and Dope). In his seventies, he is the same arrogant, ruthless, selfish, limelight-seeking anal orifice that he was when he was young.
Had I been swept into his situation I would be very different, and -- yes -- I am a Boomer. In view of the Crisis I recognize that I might never get to enact my pet agenda. We have a firearms industry that seems to have the idea that thousands of death are well worth their profits by selling huge numbers of weapons to weapon-hoarders who cherish firearms as a classical-music fan might cherish multiple versions of J S Bach's Suites for Solo Cello (OK, they are all powerful expressions of the personality of the cellist, and each version is worth the difference). A small number of crazy people buy the bulk of the firearms; a sport hunter needs only one deer rifle; it may be a good and expensive rifle, but it is useful for a short window of time every year. Someone obsessed with the idea that the International Zionist Plot for World Domination (there is no such thing) is out to ruin him needs the massacre weapons to ward off ZOG. I also recognize that the people who own the assets and manage the corporate bureaucracies want nothing more than to be coddled economically for what they already do and, as exploiters, expect us all to show the definitive civic duty of recognizing their exploitation and indulgence as the highest expression of economic morality. The guns-and-ammo industry is simply the worst. I also recognize that for the fossil-fuels racket, exploitation of dwindling resources and accelerated consumption of such resources takes precedence over any scientific evidence of global warming and risks that people not connected to the fossil-fuel industry recognizes. I also understand that businesses that rely on cheap labor fare better with more and even cheaper labor that has no means of escape from dehumanizing exploitation. We have the worst characteristics of capitalism and socialist-style bureaucracy melded into an economic order for which our political system is wholly unsuited except for the compromises it made to please slave-owning planters. Get a President who seeks to reform a corrupt segment of the order -- a profits-first system of medical payments -- and one ends up with political figures who believe exactly what the Master Class wants, to wit, people who believe that no human suffering can ever be excessive so long as it creates and enforces maximal profit. Our Master Class is no better than the German equivalent that thought Hitler useful.
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.