What Will Come of This 4T?

[pbrower2a]

(04-21-2020, 12:25 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(04-20-2020, 09:45 AM)Isoko Wrote: Eric,

I have seen you mention this several times, that the "progressive" side always wins. However I have to disagree with you on this for two reasons.

1) The only historical periods where the progressives have actually "won" has predominately been in Anglo countries, particularly the United States. In the case of let's say Russia for examples, the progressive side never wins and instead it is always the conservative side.

Take the Russian Revolution. The early Bolsheviks actually were the first government to permit gay sex. No other European country would touch the prospect. What happened? A man called Stalin took over, thought it was too bad for healthy family relations and made it illegal again.

Then we had Khrushchev who was a liberal reformer and then Brezhnev who started to scale back the reforms. Then we had Yeltsin who allowed everything to pretty much happen and then Putin who has followed in the footsteps of Stalin and Brezhnev.

This seems to be a repeat cycle in Russian history. There is a brief period of liberalism then the door is shut and it is back to conservatism again. Russia is just one example of this case on why the progressives do not always win. 

2) There is nothing else left to progress too. Everything has already been done that is, essentially, progressive. If you go any further down the liberal tree, you are going into some pretty vile territory. Therefore, the pendulum for the next few awakenings is probably going to swing more to the right. It's about the balance and you cannot keep progressing when there is nothing else left to progress too, otherwise you are going to end up in a very bad Sodom and Gomorrah situation.

As for the Populists, I agree when it comes to the Anglo countries. They are pretty comfortable where they are right now and there is no desire for major changes with I think Brexit and Trump being the big push.

However Europe is different. Europe is going to have right wing Populists like Le Pen, Salvini and Wilders getting into power. Another major economic meltdown there, another refugee crisis and it is pretty much guaranteed. When they get into power, well it'll be closed borders, mass deportations, etc. 

You will have protests and riots from the lefties but the people will support it. It won't be like the Nazis or anything but I think that it is pretty much inevitable for Europe. Europe always has these spikes of craziness every century as is the nature of the continent.

Overall Europe will go the right and that is pretty much inevitable.

I agree the progressive side may not always win in the non-anglo saeculum. But it often does. Not in Russia, as you point out; a very conservative country that rarely sees any progress that sticks. The Awakening does not end up shaping the crisis, as it does in the anglo saeculum. It's just cracked down on then.

People try things in a 4T. Major reforms find opposition from entrenched elites more intent on protecting their privilege an sybaritic indulgence by supporting mean-spirited, reactionary causes that dehumanize a society. At the milder level that means Trump in America or Bolsonaro in Brazil, people who hold people not already filthy-rich in contempt. At worst they use their power to bring about a Hitler who promises to make the common man responsible to irresponsible only to people like themselves -- aristocrats, executives, financiers, and industrialists... the contemporary equivalents of medieval nobility. Contrary to the meaning of the word noble, there is nothing noble in people who see no human suffering in excess if it serves their power, indulgence, and greed. At a low level such people are but common criminals if they survive at a low level and gangsters if they are more economically successful.    

Quote:Populists are never right wing. Populism means power to the people, not power to the prejudiced.

Sorry, Eric -- that is the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.

Some truly shady characters have called their ideologies populist. Populism needs humane values to have any attractiveness to me. Hypocrisy is commonplace on the extreme Right, as with Hitler's anti-human crime syndicate calling itself the National-Socialist German Worker's Party. Take out the "German" and "National" parts of the title and one has a frequently-used title for extreme-left (really Communist) parties. The most extreme-right political party in France in the late 1930's, a cadre of defeatists who welcomed Hitler to 'cleanse' France of what the French extreme right (fascists, antisemites, and people with a fondness for the pre-1789 France) called themselves the Parti Populaire Français.  Supposedly it was for the "French people" and claimed to call for freeing France from 'alien' and 'foreign' influences on French life (I interpret this to mean French Jews). This party was populist, but without humanizing qualities much like the dominant elite in the demonic regime that conquered France in 1940. 

I have no desire to 'free' my country from the influence of model minorities who differ from me in appearance, culture, or religion. I would far prefer to join such people than endure poverty or endorse stupidity... let alone plunder and kill. Maybe we Americans get through the political mess that we now have because we have multiple "model minorities". 

Populism without humane values and respect for the creative potential of the intellect is as vile as socialism without democracy. Populism without humanism gave the Germans Hitler; socialism without democracy gave the Russians Stalin and the Chinese Mao. One might as well have traditionalist conservatism as either a populism without human values or socialism without democracy.  

Quote:I couldn't disagree more with your #2, of course. We just barely opened up the Awakening when it was squashed and unfairly discredited. More Awakening along the same line as the sixties would be wonderful. It was peace and love, care for the Earth, respect the rights of all people, awakening to spiritual and sensory awareness. We need much more of this; the USA is too commercial and materialist. We need a renaissance. We need to come alive. We have the potential, because so much from the past and from the world is available to us at our fingertips to inspire us, but commercialism ties us down and keeps us focused on making money. The USA needs much-more powerful Awakenings. Most countries and peoples past and present are much more awake all through their saecula.

It won't be until the 2040's that we see an opening of culture as in the 1960's. This time some of us old Boomers might be around to give some frank and necessary advice to youth challenging the strictures of what might become a soulless, conformist, unimaginative society. Most obviously, stay away from drugs. Second, don't get full of yourself only to become mirror images of the likes of Robert McNamara. Third, look out for your children. Once you have children you can no longer act like a child without hurting real children.

I can't say that the Boom Awakening on the whole was more benign than harmful. From it came the reactionary 'born-again' movement in Christianity... one of the most mindless, authoritarian, and reactionary causes possible but with the obnoxious self-righteousness that allowed people to do horrible things under the delusion that such was good. Maybe the 2040's will be less nasty when the last people who remember those who lived in the Gay 'Nineties'. Maybe we can tell the up-and-coming youth of Gustav Klimt and Gustav Mahler. Better than LSD! 

Quote:There is so much further to go politically and economically too. After 40 years of regression in the USA, it is in the most need of further progress of any nation. Health care for all has been put off for a century! It's way past time. And climate change is a real threat that means we need massive shifts in the energy we produce. Only the uninformed deny this. After 40 years of Reaganomics, wages for many are far too low and a few people are far too rich and too influential. Our democracy is totally ineffective now, and has been for 40 years, because it is bought and paid for and dominated by massively-deluded fools of the red trumpist tribe. We only didn't get Sanders because boomers were afraid of the power of the right-wing, and they voted for Biden because they thought he could beat Trump more easily. OK, Boomer. But we still need to move left, and you know it! And the exit polls proved that you know it.

For now, pragmatism will have to serve as the pretext for positive change. Crony capitalism, the consequence of Reaganomics meeting the untrammeled power of entrenched elites, is proving itself a failure in meeting the most dangerous threat to the American life since fascism. Americans may have seen Communism as a menace, but Marxism-Leninism had no appeal beyond alienated intellectuals and people brought up in "Red Diaper" families. Heck, McCarthyism was more dangerous to America as a whole than any Soviet machinations. 

Reality has a way of showing the consequences of denying it. Failure to heed warning labels and signs is one way to meet bad ends. So it will be with anti-vaxxer types, people who throw stones at large predators, speeders, people who text while they drive... 

Quote:Europe's flirtation with right wing nationalism is over, and with brexit severe damage was done by it to the UK. It may never recover. Also, Eastern Europe has fallen back to its earlier Soviet-era condition. This right-wing spasm was, as I pointed out, solely due to excess migration because of the dire situation in Syria caused by horrific genocide imposed by Assad, and also due to war and famine troubles in Africa. Much more real populism will be needed in Europe, and the left will therefore revive, because although the arc of history is long, it bends toward justice. The left is always the direction of history, without exception. Fallbacks into rightwing prejudice just reinforces peoples awareness that this is true, as the Nazis and what has followed them proved. The left IS justice, and IS what is best for all the people, not just for the wealthy few, the better race or the most hoodwinked.

The Hard Right solved nothing. It has left countries more polarized -- not less. It did not create prosperity -- only economic chaos. It appealed to old vices and got a predictable result in calamity. The old institutions -- academia, the military, the police, the churches -- 
proved how wrong the Hard Right was. Superstition kills. Bigotry kills. At the best superstition and bigotry make life miserable.