10-08-2020, 01:55 AM
(10-08-2020, 12:50 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I think one side, so clearly represented by Pence tonight, wants to hold back the changes in society over the last 60 to 90 years and make America great again, meaning the way they liked it: more uniform in race and religion, more male dominated, more sexually closeted, more preferential to the wealthy, more abusive to those perceived as weak, more straight in their style of living, more self-reliant as they see it, more restrictive about who can vote, more militaristic, more about the business of America being business regardless of who gets hurt, and more willing to sacrifice our environment to the dirty energy industry.
The problem with that is the following:
(1) the Good Old Days weren't all that good
(2) the Good Old Days are no longer a valid destination
What most people miss about the "good old days" are their youth, missed opportunities or blunders that one could avoid if one knew enough to avoid them, and lower costs in some things (like housing), and some of the certainties that no longer valid. Wouldn't we all like to get our youth back and do things differently with the knowledge that we now have? Many of us would make different choices in education and career. That's before I even discuss knowing when to buy into stock markets and sell out... The arrow of time goes but one way, and if it went some other way things would be incredibly crazy.
Quote:Another side, somewhat embodied by Kamala Harris, wants to continue the arc toward justice whose foundations were erected in the progressive movements which began 120 years ago, 80-90 years ago and 50-60 years ago, as well as at the founding of the republic in the age of revolution. Since I am on that side, I will call it "our side." Our side wants a functioning and not a stalemated government, as well as individual and entrepreneurial activity, that addresses problems and creates a better world for all. We want equal respect, justice and opportunity for people of many and diverse races, religions, genders and sexual orientations. We want to unleash our personal creativity, fulfilling relationships, and the unfolding of human potential and higher consciousness on all levels, so repressed by some of our ancient authoritarian traditions. We want more democracy, more opportunity for the less fortunate, more science and freedom of thought, more action to save our environment and climate, more dedication to building peace instead of the military and a gun-obsessed society, and an end to the trickle-down libertarian-economics ideology dominating our country, so that repealing needed regulations and taxes are not falsely held up as boosters of "job creators," when in fact this neo-liberal philosophy creates a banana republic.
Neoliberalism is a bill of goods. For many of us it is the ZONK. On Let's Make A Deal one gets to see the result quickly: it can a be car... or a collection of old, smelly shoes. With neoliberalism we are told that the rich and powerful can better manage assets and opportunities than we do because we are inadequate to take such a role. We must defer to the desire of those elites because such allows us a super-prosperity that will somehow make things better for us than will our own efforts.
Such has been the claim of every exploitative elite: that only a few can deserve opportunity, and the rest of Humanity must trust the good intentions of that elite.
Quote:As the need for change becomes ever more pressing, and the power of the dominant status quo becomes threatened, the two sides, and the parties that more-or-less represent them, have become more polarized. That always happens in a 4T as the need for decisions becomes more pressing. There are a number of folks too who are a mixture of the two sides to some extent or another, and some of them feel caught in the middle of a squeeze. But these are times called a fourth turning, whose nature it is for neglected issues to be forced, and a national decision is to be made about how to move forward. And the forward side has always won. Our side must win, therefore, because ours is the forward side, and theirs is the side of defending America as it was. What emerges from this decade may be like a different country from what it was in 2008.
Human happiness is the measure of virtue. To be sure our senses can deceive us, as poisons can taste sweet. But even a core tenet of economics applies: marginal utility. $1000 to a very poor person can usually bring more happiness to that poor person than $1000 in a tax cut to some tycoon for whom $1000 means little. Neoliberalism has concentrated wealth and power into few people and has even ensured that that much of America be economically ravaged. Although there is more wealth, more people are destitute. More places are economic wrecks. People have fewer choices of employment.
We reject neoliberalism or we end up with a high-tech fascism, something resembling the Planet Mongo on Flash Gordon serials.
Quote:Important decisions must be made in this 4T, substantially favoring our side over the other. But the conflict, the contest, the political game, whatever you call it, goes on. Reactions will recur again, and still more progress will break out again, and new ideas and cultures will emerge again. More decisions on lesser scales will happen as the saeculum begins its next cycle, and as a new consensus develops around the winning side-- and as, possibly, some of the victories in the 4T are put back in the closet in the first turning, only to re-emerge again sooner or later. The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice for all of life and spirit.
We have endured a reactionary trend that tantalizes us with the taste of some modest reversal -- only for the reactionary trend to come back even harder after a taste of a little relaxation.
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.