02-27-2017, 03:24 AM
My comment on the Washington Post blog:
I have read much of the Howe and Strauss canon, and the one conclusion that I can derive from such reading, is that history gets much more fearsome about 80 years after a Crisis Era. Howe and Strauss could never say what the Crisis would be except to say that it would shake many of the political, cultural, and economic assumptions of most people. Spanish Armada in Britain, chaos of the late 17th century in Britain, American Revolution, Civil War, Great Depression and World War II -- why should we expect placid times now? We had a President who tried to keep things as placid as possible, and now we have a President who shakes the foundations of American democracy.
Howe and Strauss did not say that the Crisis would be benign. Crises in some other countries (think of Spain and all Axis Powers except perhaps Finland) could culminate in the destruction of democracy and even with genocide. As in Spain the winners could be brutal tyrants. As in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia the Crisis could end with the replacement of one form of tyranny (fascism) with another (Communism).
The most salubrious result is that America solves its problems with a combination of moral probity, economic reform, a leveling of inequality, and a general consensus that such is right. Barack Obama had his virtues, but he was not the one to achieve this when he had resolute opposition to everything that he stood for. That opposition has taken over America and has an agenda of hierarchy, repression, inequality, conformity, and perhaps even tyranny. We could have a single-Party political system in which anyone who runs afoul of the official ideology faces ruin, torture, or murder if he does not flee. America could be the sort of place that imaginative and creative people want to escape much like the Soviet Union or Franco's Spain.
Only fools believe that history is a benign force in life.
I have read much of the Howe and Strauss canon, and the one conclusion that I can derive from such reading, is that history gets much more fearsome about 80 years after a Crisis Era. Howe and Strauss could never say what the Crisis would be except to say that it would shake many of the political, cultural, and economic assumptions of most people. Spanish Armada in Britain, chaos of the late 17th century in Britain, American Revolution, Civil War, Great Depression and World War II -- why should we expect placid times now? We had a President who tried to keep things as placid as possible, and now we have a President who shakes the foundations of American democracy.
Howe and Strauss did not say that the Crisis would be benign. Crises in some other countries (think of Spain and all Axis Powers except perhaps Finland) could culminate in the destruction of democracy and even with genocide. As in Spain the winners could be brutal tyrants. As in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia the Crisis could end with the replacement of one form of tyranny (fascism) with another (Communism).
The most salubrious result is that America solves its problems with a combination of moral probity, economic reform, a leveling of inequality, and a general consensus that such is right. Barack Obama had his virtues, but he was not the one to achieve this when he had resolute opposition to everything that he stood for. That opposition has taken over America and has an agenda of hierarchy, repression, inequality, conformity, and perhaps even tyranny. We could have a single-Party political system in which anyone who runs afoul of the official ideology faces ruin, torture, or murder if he does not flee. America could be the sort of place that imaginative and creative people want to escape much like the Soviet Union or Franco's Spain.
Only fools believe that history is a benign force in life.
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.