Trump as 4T Leader

[pbrower2a]

(08-29-2019, 09:22 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(08-29-2019, 02:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-24-2019, 03:21 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(08-24-2019, 01:46 PM)sbarrera Wrote: The point is Trump is leading in a manner consistent with what turnings theory predicts for his generation in this turning.

Absolutely.  In fact, Trump's victory in the 2016 election was a major victory for generational theory.

The major questions at this point are how the crisis war will start, and whether we'll be on the winning side or the losing side.

Hillary's victory would have been far better as such a victory for generation theory. She represented the better side of boomers, and is also very typical for better or worse.

Hillary's platform was similar to her husband's in the 1990s, with perhaps the exception of a little more warmongering.  Third turning platforms like that winning in 2016 would have been inconsistent generational theory predicts for fourth turnings, providing strong evidence against the theory.

Like it or not, Trump got elected due to a populist campaign, exactly as predicted by generational theory.

Trump appealed to racist and anti-intellectual sentiments and has since governed as a true believer in a pure plutocracy. If he has a vision, it is one of 95% of the people enduring a far nastier world on behalf of a small sliver of the population who have no responsibilities except to themselves. He is firmly for the sorts of trusts that populists of the late nineteenth century railed against. If anything he has become a fascist except for establishing the torture chambers and killing sites for opponents. He is more for economic fascism, basically government by the owners and administrators of the greatest assets with others left out if they pose any challenge. People who live solely for achieving eternal bliss by suffering as completely as possible for their economic masters are no threats to his agenda, but people who believe that the mind is something to cherish and develop get pariah treatment from the Trump regime. 

Trump has not betrayed racism, anti-intellectualism, and religious bigotry that are parts of his agenda. He wants people other than the elites to subordinate all to those elites. Note well: every totalitarian movement has eventually proved anti-intellectual. Totalitarian ideologies work well with people who believe that life is little more than toil to create wealth not theirs in the supposed good of Humanity as a whole while being denied more than bare survival so that economic progress can accelerate. Such requires people who think at an elementary level, people incapable of reading between the lines, judging promises against their achievement and validity. The ideal subject of a totalitarian regime is either marginally literate, intellectually lazy, or co-opted. Totalitarian regimes such as Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China, Thug Japan, and the Ba'athist nightmares of Hafez Assad and Saddam Hussein pushed elementary education as a public achievement so that people could understand the orders that they got, read basic technical manuals, and absorb the content of ideological hectoring. Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and Vichy France debased the educational standards that already existed so that people could not think for themselves. Apartheid-era South Africa and "Ku Kluxistan" made sure that education was solely for technical purposes and military training for a white elite (all whites in South Africa, but a minority of whites in the pre-1965 South) so that the subordinates could be farm laborers and domestic servants. It is telling that German universities were well respected before 1933 and after 1945... but not in between, when German universities became diploma mills for the Nazi Party.

What fails in a totalitarian society? The technical complexity necessary for manufacturing tractors in wholly inadequate for making the favorite toys of the leaders -- the weapons systems. That complexity requires some intellectual sophistication, and that requires a willingness to learn foreign technologies. But with the learning of foreign technologies comes the dangerous siren of liberal learning and practice. Thus jazz, about as anti-totalitarian as an expression of music as there could be. Thus modern art (as opposed to neo-classical schlock of Socialist Realism or propagandistic $#!+ such as this:



requires a sharp mind to appreciate. A propaganda piece that juxtaposes Saddam Hussein  with Nebuchadnezzar and Salah ud-Din "liberating" Jerusalem (Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem, but the Bible sees him as anything but a liberator, Salah ud-Din would have liberated Jerusalem from Crusaders* and not from the Jews... and AK-47 rifles do not belong with Nebuchadnezzar's chariots) well serves leaders who demand that people not think and a populace that does not think.

Latin intelligens  literally means "reading between the lines" (inter-, "between", and legens, "reading"). . Any blockhead can learn how to connect letters to sounds and the patterns of local speech, but the capacity to judge the content that one absorbs requires more complicated thought. Even the medieval Catholic Church needed priests able to recognize the flaws in heresies so that it could oppose those in sermons by the parish priest. The fascist, Nazi, Ba'athist, or Bolshevik could only shut such thinking down.

Trump will fail because the economy that creates the prosperity that we have needs sophisticated people just to create the bilge of mass entertainment that constitutes the opiate of the masses -- and to create the weapons systems. The intelligence necessary for something as apolitical and culture-free as engineering can turn to culture and morality. Trump can deny something like global warming only by shutting off the thought about it.   

Trump is hostile to American democracy, and American democracy is hostile to him. A sophisticated economy and a moral community are both inconsistent with a poltroon like him as Leader.  Trump cannot win a free election in 2020. To keep himself and his political progeny in power in view of the demographic trends in politics he will need to destroy American democracy. Donald Trump may be the focus of the Crisis this time.

*By any standard, the Crusaders were far worse to people of the Levant, irrespective of religion, than any Arab or Muslim sources can say of the "Zionists".