12-21-2020, 03:23 PM
(12-21-2020, 11:07 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(12-21-2020, 10:58 AM)David Horn Wrote:(12-21-2020, 01:54 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Update: the lawsuits to negate the 2020 Presidential election by the Trump campaign have practically all failed, and the electors in the various states and District of Columbia have convened, and accordingly the electors have authorized a vote of 306 electoral votes for Joe Biden for President and Kamala Harris for Vice President, with incumbents Donald Trump for President and Mike Pence for Vice-President getting 232 electoral votes.
None of which precludes some random acts of belligerence -- even violence, perhaps. Weird times and weird people yield weird results.
I'm trying to figure out some combination of random acts of belligerence which would combine to something dangerous. An insurrection seems most likely to come from the reds, who have been fed the rigged election myth. Martial law in response to a red insurrection seems unlikely. It could happen, but if you demand people to react to nothing? It seems that patience seems the most likely conspiracy among the blues.
Certain random acts of violence could be considered terrorist attacks. The Trump campaign has played up hurt feelings without offering meaningful solutions, but note well: the Blue side has shown a willingness to treat such deeds as criminal acts. Prosecutors will do everything possible to ensure that offenders not get a chance to use any criminal trial as a stage for offering some political rationale. Fidel Castro (of course he was a Leftist) got his start and established his bona fides as revolutionary leader while on trial for storming the Moncada barracks. Don't fool yourself: fascism all too often is the use of Bolshevik tactics in the service of a reactionary agenda, and some ruthless figure would be delighted to use Castro-style tactics to achieve an America in which (to the delight of many already rich and powerful) are rewarded solely for being rich and powerful and others are punished for not being so... and outlawing abortion and even contraception, treating minorities as pariahs, and perhaps having wars for profit (poor people become cannon fodder, but the rich get to reap the profits steeped with the blood of American soldiers and oppressed peoples outside America, again rewarding the rich and powerful for being that already and punishing the poor. The American Right includes people just as delighted at listening to incoherent harangues by Donald Trump as Cuban Commies were delighted to hear the incoherent harangues of Fidel Castro.
The Blue side has taken on some classical traits of conservatives. It was once the conservatives who stood for tradition, for formality, for precedent, for legal niceties, and for overall decency in conduct. Liberals acquiesced with LGBT rights in part because such was consistent with law and order necessary for making civil liberties meaningful. Lawlessness is not liberty. Liberals have sought inclusion, but that implies a desire to repress resentment of personal successes of minorities. People whose economic interests based upon their economic positions would ordinarily be on the Right are with the Democrats because the GOP has been fomenting resentment.
OK, resentment of honest success has never done any society any good. The classic example of a successful minority, Jews in Europe and the Americas, demonstrates that a society is better off with them than without them. Much of America's success in fighting Hitler was Jews as business owners, scientists, and creative people. Hitler threw away that potential asset. Imagine that the Good Guys and Bad Guys are inverted, and Germany becomes a safe haven for Jews while America has the concentration and even murder camps. The Germans stumble their way into a hegemony over Europe that sticks from Lisbon and London to Leningrad... whoops, Petrograd... The Japanese would have been wise to cultivate the Chinese diaspora as desirable allies, which they might have done had they not been the brutes that they were in World War II. It is far easier to win the peace if one leaves the defeated no cause for striking back. Occupation duty was so easy in Italy that few Americans got the chance to do it even though Mussolini had excoriated America throughout the time in which America was at war for decadence and depravity.
America has several Model Majorities, including Jews and Chinese-Americans that the Axis gangsters treated badly... and I would suggest to those white people who resent the success of those minorities that it is wiser to imitate Jews, Chinese-Americans, Korean-Americans, Japanese-Americans, middle-class Hispanics, Arab-Americans, Americans of South Asian origin, and of course the (much expanded) "Talented Tenth" of African-Americans than to claim victimhood. Don't get me wrong; poor white people in Appalachia and the Ozarks, and in dying cities from Pennsylvania to Illinois are just as oppressed as poor blacks used to be. Opiates, meth, and fentanyl are themselves oppression. The Model Minorities have succeeded, and they are a big part of the Democratic Party. They are setting much of the agenda within it.
Maybe Germany would have had a different history had it treated Adolf Hitler much as America treated Ted "Unabom" Kaczynski, ensuring that he never used a court trial as a forum for pushing his twisted ideas upon America. We hear nothing from him; we see no writings emanating from his cell. Timothy McVeigh is of course silenced forever, and he has been unable to leave any testament to whatever sick ideas he had.
It is up to Democrats now to seek to improve the lot of Americans in distressed areas even if -- and perhaps especially -- those areas went for Donald Trump. I don't know how we get the old-fashioned jobs in mining and early-industrial manufacturing back. We are at the end of the era of material shortages, but many of us are spiritually empty. It is no longer possible to get rich simply by making more stuff. I would suppose that it was far easier to make a good living making console color TV sets for Magnavox in the 1970's or to sell them as a commissioned salesperson at the time than it is to work for Wal*Mart selling the better (by every technological standard) large-screen, flat-screen TV's that cost less than the console sets in real money. The age in which scarcity disappears, a time that Marx prophesized would happen ("Socialism" would accelerate the process by cutting out the greedy plutocrats who take more than their share of income) and that many science-fiction writers suggested was an inevitability is no unmixed blessing. We have millions of people tailor-made to do semi-skilled manufacturing because they are athletic enough, have a good work ethic, have motivation in material prosperity, and don't care about any high-fallutin' culture or ideas. America needs room for dullards and mediocrities as well as for brilliant people if it is to be good for us all.
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.