2000th post!
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What really happens? In the harsh transition from 3T to 4T, the economically-libertarian model of extreme social inequality with anything-goes hedonism for anyone who can buy it collapses. Too many people find themselves priced out of the fun while inequality intensifies. An orgy of reckless speculation in a bubble economy (1857, 1929, 2008) comes to an abrupt end, and the illusion of prosperity vanishes. People realize that they have been had.
Probably because there was little intellectual support for fascism in America, the government could leave academic life unhindered. America's intellectuals generally found ways to support the war effort -- and much military and medical research went on at the colleges and universities... of course, formal college enrollment obviously shrank, but the colleges and universities could be used as training academies for specialized members of the Armed Services.
But the most dangerous fascist movement in America, the 1915 Klan, shrank steadily until it declared bankruptcy and dissolved over back taxes in 1944. The Communist Party did grow substantially due to its promise to jump-start prosperity for most by disposing of the economic elites, but it never posed a real threat to the Establishment.
Fascism was a political fad that became unsupportable after about 1935 in the United States.
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Warren Dew Wrote:(02-05-2017, 09:54 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: No worse than anyone else.
This is really the point. Authoritarian governmental models such as fascism are natural fits for fourth turnings. I'd say the best way to put it would be to say FDR's America tended toward fascism, but everyone else did as well.
What really happens? In the harsh transition from 3T to 4T, the economically-libertarian model of extreme social inequality with anything-goes hedonism for anyone who can buy it collapses. Too many people find themselves priced out of the fun while inequality intensifies. An orgy of reckless speculation in a bubble economy (1857, 1929, 2008) comes to an abrupt end, and the illusion of prosperity vanishes. People realize that they have been had.
Quote:Quote:Intellectual life went on after Pearl Harbor as it did before -- and there was practically no sympathy for fascism in America before, let alone after.
There was plenty of sympathy for fascism in America in the mid 1930s.
Probably because there was little intellectual support for fascism in America, the government could leave academic life unhindered. America's intellectuals generally found ways to support the war effort -- and much military and medical research went on at the colleges and universities... of course, formal college enrollment obviously shrank, but the colleges and universities could be used as training academies for specialized members of the Armed Services.
But the most dangerous fascist movement in America, the 1915 Klan, shrank steadily until it declared bankruptcy and dissolved over back taxes in 1944. The Communist Party did grow substantially due to its promise to jump-start prosperity for most by disposing of the economic elites, but it never posed a real threat to the Establishment.
Fascism was a political fad that became unsupportable after about 1935 in the United States.
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.