01-05-2020, 06:28 PM
(01-05-2020, 04:05 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(01-04-2020, 09:15 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Real Clear Politics polling average
Biden29.4
Sanders19.4
Warren14.8
Buttigieg7.9
Bloomberg5.8
Yang3.4
Klobuchar3.0
Booker2.3
Gabbard1.9
Steyer1.8
Castro1.1 (dropped out)
Delaney0.8
Williamson0.3
Bennet0.1
Biden +10.0
There's lots and lots of Boomers still in power. Even Silents. Plenty of time for the Crisis which is only half over to get more active and severe. It was always going to unfold this way; I predicted it. The split among Boomers, and Xers too, and white millennials, just indicates the double rhythm; this crisis is primarily domestic like the civil war, which had the same sort of divisions. Our crisis is already called the cold civil war. That may be its lasting title. Things are right on schedule!
I'd say you're a bit ahead ( a decade or so) of the game or schedule as far as where you seem to believe we are at right now. You say/ seem to believe that we are a decade into the 4T right now. Me, I happen to believe that we are nearing the end of the preparation phase and more or less a decade way from the beginning of a rough 4T era for the liberal believers. I don't know whether you'll still be living as the blue system of social and racial preference implodes or you'll be born but you'll be here to directly experience the end one way or another. Yes, we have two different societies with different values (one values this, the other values that instead), two different social structures with two different sets of rules (one earns, the other is granted, two sets of moral guides and principles (one is written stone, the other changes with the seasons and largely driven by emotions), two distinctly different ideologies and two different views of America ( One bad/ one good) and two different understandings of it's government role and it's role in the world.
I'd say the Cold Civil sounds about right. I'd also say that goal should be to keep it cold/cool as possible vs heating it up. Honestly, I don't really care if I see a bunch of dumb Democrats dying for doing something really stupid or a bunch of dumb liberal supporters dying or being drug out of office or losing their lively hoods and their homes and their national identities for supporting them.
It's a matter of interpretation. I see us deep into a Crisis mode, and if Obama successfully stalled an economic meltdown potentially as damaging as the one of 1929-1932 by getting the economy moving about half-way into the meltdown (analogous to the spring of 1931, when people were not yet speaking of a Great Depression), we had a political struggle between liberals and believers in a pure plutocracy, the latter offering Jesus as compensation for economic suffering. Never mind that Jesus stood for bringing dignity to the poor and opposition to institutional corruption. The Right seemed to fully consolidate power with the election of Donald Trump, as pure a crony capitalist as there is. Many of us liberals thought ourselves all but defeated.
Trump has proved to have abused the mandate that he got. OK, he lost the popular vote but won the critical votes, perhaps with some help from political bosses facilitating his win and with some possible aid from a Great Power hostile to democracy there and elsewhere. Maybe Obama slowed what seemed inevitable in 2017... but history rarely turns out as one expects.
At this point I see liberals much more decent, much more learned, much more rational, and much more knowledgeable about the Constitution and international law. Liberals have found themselves in the unlikely role of allies of the diplomatic corps, senior military officers, the intelligence services, and federal law enforcement. They also have the smarter parts of the media on their side, at least for now. If you really want to know what is going on, just watch the introductions to Saturday Night Live. The skits invariably skewer the President and his stooges. Comedy makes the best analysis of news because it can expose hypocrisy and dishonesty as little else can.
A year from now, one will be able to tell what happened from the lead in Saturday Night Live. Should Trump win and strengthen the position of the GOP to the extent of Republicans winning the House, then expect NBC to have sacked the current writers and comedians and replaced them with people more amenable to Trump. Liberals will be the ones mocked as losers, as will foreign leaders who are scared of a wave of the future in which people like Trump and Bolsonaro are the heroes. Of course the comedy will be weak, and maybe SNL will finally die unless it can make much of celebrity foibles or other such fluff. Comedy fares badly in dictatorial and despotic societies. What happens if we have a new Democratic President, and the GOP faces huge losses in the Senate? Maybe SNL will have a different problem -- to not kick Trump even more. It is bad form to kick someone when he is down unless he is an ogre.
I speak of Saturday Night Live because (1) it is free, and not on pay cable, (2) it has been in existence for more than half the time in which television has been in meaningful existence in America, and (3) it is accessible. If I had children I would let them stay up to see the lead because it has an insight on history... but then it would be off to bed. The kids would be in pajamas while watching it. Ordinarily I would have kids under 14 in bed at 9 PM if I had any. I have an authoritative style -- firm but knowledgeable, and kids do not need to watch entertainment TV. If my grandfather born in 1912 and raised on a farm was no worse for the lack of television in his day. Even if he had only an eighth-grade education... he read.
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.