11-02-2020, 08:40 AM
(11-02-2020, 06:07 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:(11-02-2020, 05:32 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: With the bug precautions, I haven't gotten around much lately. Still, the family that has been doing my shopping and dropping off my mail has been reporting folks going a little crazy. Locals have been thinking it is fun to drop a lit match or other fire source into a mailbox. The figure if Trump can mess with the mail, why shouldn't they. They are also ignoring the one way signs in grocery stores, running around unmasked, holding gatherings as they feel like. This exaggerates incidents like in Texas where the Biden caravan was harassed by local red fanatics, and the attempt to kidnap the governor of Michigan.
This sort of thing is related to the spirals of rhetoric and violence. The red culture is coming to have a strong element of negligent homicide, harassment and violence. It should be noted.
I have been predicting the old values will go away. They certainly take a big hit in a given crisis. Does anyone want this to become a regular feature of the culture? If the bulk of the country is voting to fight the bug, extend decency and reduce systematic racism, must something be done with the red renegades and just plain vandals?
How much is done to them will depend on what they do; how violent they get, whether they stage a violent rebellion, etc. I guess Classic Xer might have a handle on what the red renegades intend to do. Of course the vandals whether blue or red need to be curtailed; they provide Trump with his best campaign slogans. It is in the interest of the blue side to bring about genuine law and order with justice. We will then be the opposite of what Trump and his followers like Classic Xer will still say we are.
Assuming that Trump loses, it is up to us who have hated Trump to act compassionately toward people who supported him. One Trump ad has asserted that a Biden victory will unleash the Radical Left... just ask yourself whether we had a loud, destructive Radical Left acting up when Barack Obama was President. Political radicalism, Right or Left, arises in times of mass distress such as economic meltdowns, severe inflation, epidemics, dislocations from natural disasters, and military debacles. People happy with their lots in life like their politics placid and oriented to service.
This is a Crisis Era, and the majority of Americans have shown themselves ready to make sacrifices to win a Crisis-era war. Yes, this is a war, a costly stalemate at this stage, and... I really say no more about how I see his leadership in COVID-19. If we instead had a Dust Bowl scenario (a threat from AGW), Trump would bungle it into a famine. (It is worth remembering that the Dust Bowl, one of the greatest natural disasters ever in agricultural and economic disruption got a highly-rational response from the competent political figures of the time. The dust storms killed people from suffocation from the storms themselves and caused fatal vehicle crashes... but no American died of starvation. People got the needs for relocation and new lives.
...Two of Lichtman's keys to Presidential elections are catastrophic failures for the President this time:
8. There is no sustained social unrest during the term of the incumbent President
9. The incumbent administration is free of major scandal.
Social unrest demonstrates incompetence at best and evil at worst. Corruption is a choice, and always inexcusable. Contrast Trump to Obama, and Obama looks like a saint by contrast. Obama may not be the perfect Crisis-era President, someone better at mitigating faults in American society than at repealing them, and someone better at stifling trouble than at solving its core causes. But he is exactly what one wants in a 1T. I cannot say what time Donald Trump fits.
It is at least two days early for writing even a preliminary post-mortem on the Trump Administration, so I will save that for an appropriate time.
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.