America is a sick society

[David Horn]

(08-01-2017, 12:35 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-01-2017, 09:10 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(07-31-2017, 01:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I agree about the not-so beneficial impact of NAFTA, but your cart is before the horse on that. The Religious Right dates back to the 1970s, and probably its ancestors to the 1920s at least. Flyover country was taking refuge in and enclosing their minds in fundie churches long before NAFTA. The Bible Belt has a long history.

As the article mentions, it is more likely that fly-over country caused its own problems because of their retrograde ideas, values and votes, than by economic policies that ignored them. So, they feel their economic pain now, but their solution in 2016 was to vote for Trump. That just shows their apparently-incurable ignorance and inability to grasp solutions.

Assuming you are right, and the author of the referenced article is as well, nothing short of a cataclysmic crash that triggers mass dislocation and even starvation is going to overcome that mind set.  As a nation, we can't survive that and rebound to anything greater than second class status, so another answer needs to be found.  I don't have it, and no one seems to be proposing one either.  Bernie Sanders did yeoman's work trying to raise the flag and get things rolling, but we let that opportunity pass.  Trying a second time will be ignored in much the same way all other evidence-based solutions are ignored.

I'm convinced that this won't be fixed in our lifetimes, so our discussions here are of academic interest but little else.  If the right wins the day in this 4T, and they are heading in that direction, then the next 2T will either start the new ball rolling or it won't.  In any case, it will take another 4T to get it resolved.  The world will look dramatically different by then.

Maybe, but I think it's resolved in this 4T, or never. Otherwise, we decline fairly rapidly after this 4T, with NO further opportunity for change. There's time, because the climax is due in the mid 2020s, with the 1T due in 2028-29. That timetable is virtually certain. When 4Ts start moving toward resolution, change happens quickly, just as it also did in the 2T sixties years. It doesn't mean all problems are totally resolved in this 4T; just enough to permanently get back on the track of progress and rejoin the world movement, and put the right-wing crazies behind us as a minority no longer able to influence or dictate policy.

The only chance is if millennials vote and stay liberal, and if they and other voters stop indulging the crazies and reject their memes and slogans. If people would just vote, and vote correctly, we would resolve the problems fairly easily. We would have steady change for the better, if we could have a Democratic or otherwise moderate-to-liberal congress and president able to push past the obstructions, and stay in office longer than 1 or 2 years. I still predict this will happen, and have predicted such (and in the same time frame as I say today) for decades now. But we'll see what actually happens. I also would not rule out more drastic changes being made in the 2020s, such as transition to a parliamentary system, a new party system or a division of the country.

If this 4T had less in common with the last, I might agree.  This time, the reactionary side saw the problems coming (actually, much sooner than the progressive side), and prepared.  Killing off opposing power bases, like unions, and turning up the volume on religion as "the truth" makes it hard for any opposition effort to gain enough mass to succeed.  Add the use of aggressive voting tactics, and things don't look good.