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The 4T Generational Constellations - Red v Blue
#17
(09-24-2020, 09:08 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:
(09-24-2020, 01:25 PM)sbarrera Wrote: Can you be more specific, re: "other errors" ? 

I am curious if you have your own version of the red and blue generational constellations.

I'd rather not waste a lot of time on a political argument, and your original post is way too deep in the blue koolaid to answer briefly, so I won't go into specifics.

I don't think there are separate constellations.  You can divide people by Red or Blue, which is merely party labeling, or you can divide them between the outgoing neoliberal regime and the incoming regime, which we don't know the details of yet.

Red Idealists include Gingrich and Trump, and also some younger people like Romney and Baker.  Of these examples, all but Trump are stuck in the neoliberal mindset, though Gingrich might be able to adjust.  Pence is also Idealist, and if Trump is so successful that Pence wins a term in 2024-2028, it remains to be seen whether he will build on Trump's movement toward a nationalist workers' future, or if he'll be the final exponent of neoliberalism.

Trump has the ideology; he has simply added his style, that of the Limbaugh-style shock jock. Trump is a classic blowhard, the sort of person who gets away with noxious behavior because he can buy sympathetic supporters who tell him how wonderful he is. It is about like his treatment of sex partners, especially paid ones. The rest of Humanity is expendable and disposable to him as impossible as such is to most people. Trump is Hollywood glitz without the veneer of creativity. Some horrible people in Hollywood have been fantastically successful (John Wayne, Roman Polanski, Bill Cosby) while being horrible persons -- but they could act, direct coherently, or get us to laugh. It is hard to see what Trump does well that makes him worth his nastiness.

Oh, by the way -- Mitt Romney is old. He had his narrow opportunity in which to become President, 2012 and 2016. The new guys are like Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton, and they fully believe in capitalism with no pretense of any service by capitalists and government by the economic elites, for the economic elites, and for the economic elites in return for which we will probably get even more growth in productive capacity. (At this point, the economic objective is more appropriately doing better with what we have than in having more but having it all go to a few rapacious plutocrats and their retainers).     


Quote:Blue Idealists include the Clintons, and Sanders and Obama act a lot like Idealists though they are on the edges of the generation at best.  The Clintons are neoliberalism personified.  Sanders and Obama could be exponents of a different future, one where workers are marginalized but neoliberalism is replaced by an oligarchy of economic elites legitimized by votes from the government dependent welfare masses.  Or rather, that's what their vision of socialism will become once it's implemented by Blue Reactives.

We have been in a neoliberal time and ethos since 1980. Such is the current phase of the Skowronek cycle. Reagan initiated this era; Trump brings it to its preposterous conclusion. Basically we are being set up for a very new era. Biden may be a transition more than a leader. This said, there will be some tough decisions for him, especially what to do with his predecessor. Trump might have loved to send Barack Obama to prison; Biden may have a situation in which... well, he succeeds Milosevic with Milosevic still having fanatical supporters.   

Reagan starts and defines the era. The elder Bush continues it. Bill Clinton refines it some. Dubya tries to bring it back to life, but falls clearly short. Obama gives portents of how it might transform into something better, but Trump brings it back harder and without compromise. The last is failure.     


Quote:Red Reactives are dominant in the active Republican party - almost all Republican Senators of note are Reactives, along with the Republican House leadership.  These are the guys doing the detailed planning to finish the transition of the Republican party into a workers' party - one that champions people who work for a living over people who don't, where the latter includes both people on long term welfare and ridiculously rich owners and investors.

Well, there is a list of US Senators, and it can be sorted for age.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cu...s_senators

By generation (as Howe and Strauss describe them) we have nine US Senators from the Silent Generation, and two of those are retiring. All are at least 78 years old. It is amazing that we have nine US Senators who are at or above the normal life expectancy. There will not likely be any new ones from this generation. 

Twenty-two are born in what one can call the first wave of the Boom Generation, as I arbitrarily cut off on December 31, 1950 and January 1, 1951. All have turned 70 or are passing 70. By most objective standards this is old, although one can fend off many of the ravages of age if one remains active intellectually and physically and otherwise avoids bad habits. Thirty-eight Senators are born between 1951 and 1960, rounding out Howe and Strauss' Boom Generation. Fully sixty US Senators are Boomers, and that is likely the peak for them in the Senate. 

I must have miscounted, but I come up with 32 Senators from the Thirteenth Generation, all born between 1961 and 1981, inclusively. The youngest US Senator turns 41 this year,  and it is amazing that we have no 30-something US Senator. I do not know who will be the first US Senator from the Millennial Generation, and I don't know so much ages as partisan affiliations of challengers this year. Going on seat-of-the-pants predictions I would now largely expect most turnover in the US Senate to be members of Generation X replacing Generation X if the most important change is partisan affiliation. Such will be clearer when the Senate elections of 2020 are settled. 



Quote:Blue Reactives dominate the ranks of those ridiculously rich owners and investors - Bezos, Pichai, etc.  These are the people who wouldn't mind transitioning from being oligopolists to being oligarchs, and wouldn't mind replacing pesky workers with machines and an expanded welfare vote plantation, at least until they can get rid of democracy entirely.

Among the Generation X Republicans I find a currency trader, an ophthalmologist, directors of non-profits, business owners, former professors and military officers, public administrators, and one farmer. There are obviously millionaires, but no billionaires that I can identify. The oligarchs and plutocrats seem perfectly happy with finding loyal supporters who believe what the most swinish people of all economic elites have predictably believed (that no human suffering can ever be in excess so long as it serves the economic elites); if they could get such from a mechanic they would choose that fellow over a Distinguished Professor of Economic History who might not be adequately obedient. The elites will find tools.     


Civics I think are tougher to get a handle on, mostly because they parrot memes from Idealists, thinking they are their own ideas, without actually having independent ideas of their own.  You can argue that the Charlottesville marchers and the BLM and Antifa rioters - not the protesters, the rioters - are examples, but these aren't their own causes; they're the causes of the Idealists who brainwash them.  To the extent that Civics have an interest of their own, it's to get back a share of the increasing productivity that has since 1970 been going entirely to employers and investors.  Some would prefer to work and get back some of the increasing share that has been going to welfare recipients over that time; others would prefer to become welfare recipients as long as they can get a share of the increasing productivity; many are neutral as to which happens, but they want what they perceive to be their share.  None of this is conscious, but it drives the Idealist ideas they are willing to embrace, and their rejection of the ideas they don't support.[/quote]

As for rioters -- our system is reasonably good at keeping outright criminals from winning high public office. This said, the temptations of corrupt gain are huge. Some, like insider dealing on knowledge of how legislation was going or keeping campaign funds for oneself upon retirement, are now illegal. Illegality has not prevented bribery. Personal violence is obviously rare among people who have everything to lose if caught in the act or if huge amounts of exposure of misdeeds comes into the media... nobody has his character tested as does someone with great power.

If you want a political career, avoid a diversion as "drug dealer" or "car thief".  

(09-24-2020, 02:56 PM)David Horn Wrote:
(09-23-2020, 05:14 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:
(09-23-2020, 04:01 PM)David Horn Wrote: If the Democratic centrists lose this one, after losing under Hillary, there will be no centrist Democratic candidate again anytime soon --  nor should there be.

Even if Biden wins, there won't be another centrist Democrat any time soon.  Neoliberalism has run out of steam and a President Biden would merely preside over its final collapse.

Good point, though the bitterness will be much less if he wins.

The bitterness of the neoliberals?

George Friedman thinks the last neoliberal term will be 2024-2028, which he thinks will have a Democratic President.  I agree that 2024 is a little early for the final nail in the coffin of neoliberalism.  It's also possible that a Red neoliberal like Romney or Baker will wrest back control of the Republican party and be President then, but that doesn't seem the way to bet right now.[/quote]

Neoliberalism has its believers. Any ideology that predominates over forty years (unless it topples in war or revolution) will have its acolytes. Millennial adults (who will soon appear in the Senate) will have often learned their college-level economics from college professors and will have read books by authors who espouse neoliberalism as the best way to get economic growth and technological progress -- by treating workers badly and taking choice from consumers. The last forty years have been a heyday for monopolization and vertical integration. 

Replacing even a rotten order with a new one is never so easy as it looks. It is easy to suggest change, but implementing it is never easy. Any system creates its dependencies and plenty of helpless people. Few have a coherent idea for what can supplant neoliberal politics and economics. Reversion to small business? The people who have the ability to make a go of it either have some other way to fare sort-of-OK in the economic order or have little-to-no access to capital from financial sources other than loan sharks.  In theory it would be possible to subdivide all the vacant husks that used to be Sears stores into little mom-and-pop operations or to revitalize old shops downtown, but I have yet to see that happening. 

Economic elites typically distrust outsiders, and usually seek to pass down power, wealth, and even opportunity in a hereditary manner (the aristocratic "principle" of slave-owning planters and the Soviet-era nomenklatura alike despite diametric positions on economics and social organization).

It will take an economic calamity of the sort of 1929-1932, and not the 'wimpy' meltdown of 2007-2009, to break the over-leveraged, politically-connected corporate behemoths, cast corporate employees out into the cold, and give people few alternatives to starting family businesses with the usual hardships that one associates with such in the 1930's. Such, should it happen, would be by the design of nobody; it would result from blunders that expose institutional shakiness.
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.


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RE: The 4T Generational Constellations - Red v Blue - by pbrower2a - 09-25-2020, 10:53 AM

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