05-15-2017, 08:46 AM
(05-15-2017, 05:42 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Reagan's being perfectly able to sense and articulate the nation's mood as it entered a 3T mood is a dubious gift. It changed the country profoundly and earned him the illusion of sainthood. It prolonged and deepened the unraveling. Trump is still riding his rails, borrow and spend, trickle down, the government is the problem and strengthen the military.
He is driving the train faster into a zone of steep grades and sharp curves. I want off that train, but he faults me for my lack of faith in him.
Quote:But unravelings don't or shouldn't last forever. There comes a time when new problems have to be solved. The conservative attachment to the ways things are is a formidable inertia that Reagan made more formidable. I'm not sure where the faint praise 'sensed the mood of the country well' should give way to the raging frustration at conservative selfishness, and refusal to see oncoming problems.
Unraveling eras eventually go too far in their destruction of basic human decencies. President Trump has offered a return to the 3T as a path to happiness. It's a path to ruin, nearly an assurance that when the real Crisis hits we will be bereft of the means with which to do something about it. Can you imagine an adequate leader for the 4T being corrupt, vindictive, autocratic, and incoherent? Can you imagine Americans being satisfied with the idea that they will be subjects of people whose sole claim to political authority and economic dominion is that those making such claims have simply taken such roles and the perquisites thereof for themselves and their heirs forever?
I wonder how things were in late Roman times. Maybe there were few freehold farmers left due to the harsh taxation that brought ruin to the last remaining ones. Meanwhile the aristocrats waxed fat. I'm guessing that as the barbarians moved in on the rotting edifice of a bad political order, they found that the peasants and proles were glad to accept this offer:
"Show me where your masters are, where the gems and precious metals are, and where the princesses are. We will take the gold and the jewels, and ravage their virgin daughters. After we kill the lords who have enslaved you, we will give you freedom and a plot of land. Any takers?"
That is how one of the most destructive 4Ts ever ended. Let's not take that course.
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.