Trump's legacy: A more divided America, a more unsettled world

[HealthyDebate]

Trump's legacy: A more divided America, a more unsettled world

https://ph.news.yahoo.com/analysis-trump...48500.html

[pbrower2a]

(03-12-2021, 07:37 AM)HealthyDebate Wrote: Trump's legacy: A more divided America, a more unsettled world

https://ph.news.yahoo.com/analysis-trump...48500.html

So the American Right has learned that Big Government can serve it as an enforcer of abuse of working people and a conduit for easy profits from war, repression, and sweetheart deals. At the least the old small-government types who pushed austerity fostered thrift that creates genuine wealth and promoted self-reliance. The newer sorts of right-wingers, Dubya with kitten-like steps and Trump with cougar-like steps, offer the worst of both worlds. The tiger-like steps are by someone like Benito Mussolini, who proclaimed that the twentieth century would be the age of Big Government.

It's one way or the other: a government that goes into the background and lets the markets perform its miracles or a government that serves as a welfare state that smooths the gaps between deprivation and crass indulgence of economic elites. 

Trump causes me to miss the old liberal-conservative debate. It is now a debate between fascists and liberals. Donald Trump is neither a conservative nor a free-market advocate: he is a full-blown corporatist.

[Bob Butler 54]

I see Trump as an example of how not to do it.  It is traditional to precede the grey champion with a bad leader who represents the old values very poorly, and thus contrasts with the grey champion and makes it a bit clearer that something new should be tried.  George III, Buchanan, and Hoover are the other three US representatives of the old values, with Bush 43 as an honorable mention.

Trump did it so extremely to be in a class by himself.

[Einzige]

Biden is most definitely not the Grey Champion, lol.

[pbrower2a]

(03-12-2021, 10:26 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I see Trump as an example of how not to do it.  It is traditional to precede the grey champion with a bad leader who represents the old values very poorly, and thus contrasts with the grey champion and makes it a bit clearer that something new should be tried.  George III, Buchanan, and Hoover are the other three US representatives of the old values, with Bush 43 as an honorable mention.

Trump did it so extremely to be in a class by himself.

Trump isn't so much old values as he is an exemplar of 3T fads that get swept aside in a 4T. Much of what gets blown away is from the most recent 3T.

[Bob Butler 54]

(03-12-2021, 11:47 AM)Einzige Wrote: Biden is most definitely not the Grey Champion, lol.

Not yet.  Still, his administration looks like it could solve or make a large dent in the crisis problems:  COVID, the economy, systematic racism, red violence and global warming.  If he gives them all a good performance after a conservative administration that took the no-solve option on all these, he will fit all the criteria S&H set.

I do not see any of the problems as taking more than a few years.  The Big Lie cannot last.  They have good video on a lot of the insurrectionists.  We have the vaccines, we will see how they race against the mutated variants.  We have therapies too if the bug is caught soon enough.  If we solve COVID, the economy should follow.  Global Warming will take time, but if he organizes a good start, the other four issues will serve.  We are currently of a mood to get back to 'normal', but it will be a step forward to the high not backward into unraveling.  Solving problems will be considered a good idea.  Lies will not.  Respecting the science will be mandatory.  Voter suppression and racism might still be common in the reddest of states, but let's see if they are tolerated at the federal level.

Traditionally, it takes at least four years to win a crisis war, but I am not seeing one starting.  We are not looking to start a land war is Asia.  China is not looking to start a sea war with the US.  Finance games are more profitable lately than expanding turf anyway.  Thus, the timing says the problems will be well on their way to being solved by the time Harris has her turn.

Lincoln and FDR had no great following going into their crises either.  But the history books are not written going in, but after the crisis.

I am not amazed that much yet by Biden, but the conservatives have painted themselves into a corner.  I respect more the forces of history than the individual man.  The grey champion just gets credit for what has to be done.  

The Marxists are not in contention currently.  I can easily see the division of wealth being the largest problem remaining if the crisis issues are resolved.  I could easily see the excessive influence of the elites coming to a head in the next awakening or crisis.  I can easily see them solved by non violence and legislation, at least in the democratic west.  But the Marxists have not solved the problem of how to check the folk that organize the revolution.  They just propose switching one set of elites for another.  As long as that holds, Marxism as conceived over a century ago will be rejected by the modern people.  It has become a dead end theory for armchair wannabe politicians.

[Eric the Green]

Biden may be fulfilling the role as president #1 in a new Skowronek cycle, especially if his administration lasts for 2 terms. Maybe even if it lasts for one term. There may yet be another president elected in 2024 who better fits the image of a gray champion, IF Harris or Biden are not nominated in 2024, but the Democrat that IS nominated wins. Meanwhile, Biden is the gray champion we got, whether he is the ideal one to fill the role and the image or not.

Einzige's gray champion will likely not come along for another 400 years at least; IF THEN.

[Einzige]

(03-12-2021, 12:33 PM)Bob Butler 54. Wrote: Lincoln... had no great following going into their crises either. 

Wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Awakes

[Bob Butler 54]

(03-12-2021, 01:30 PM)Einzige Wrote:

(03-12-2021, 12:33 PM)Bob Butler 54. Wrote: Lincoln... had no great following going into their crises either. 

Wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Awakes

Oh, yes.  The Abolitionists were quite active and Lincoln won the presidency.  He had a following at least in the north, and the south was quite paranoid that he would kill their culture, which he ultimately did.  They demonized him, and scared themselves with the resulting demon.  The Wide Awakes never went down south, but you would never guess it by the propaganda the south put out.  

But Lincoln was not sainted yet.  Right now we have a pantheon of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, and not even Regan is close.  Assuredly, Biden is even further away.  Still, the forces of history are aligning to make him the best person to personify the change in the history books.  Looking around, if there is a grey champion every crisis, who would you nominate?  Sanders?  Warren?  Harris?  If the crisis is a quick as I suspect, Biden seems to have the best shot, however unlikely it seems right now.

[Bob Butler 54]

(03-12-2021, 12:47 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Biden may be fulfilling the role as president #1 in a new Skowronek cycle, especially if his administration lasts for 2 terms. Maybe even if it lasts for one term. There may yet be another president elected in 2024 who better fits the image of a gray champion, IF Harris or Biden are not nominated in 2024, but the Democrat that IS nominated wins. Meanwhile, Biden is the gray champion we got, whether he is the ideal one to fill the role and the image or not.

Einzige's gray champion will likely not come along for another 400 years at least; IF THEN.

Things are looking quick.  We will see if things go slowly enough that someone else can step in.

I'm not into your astrology, but it seems to be warping your view of the future.  However, it seems futile to try to change your worldview.  We shall see how things develop.

Again, the division of wealth is big on the list of coming problems with the culture.  It could easily reach the #1 slot by the next awakening or crisis?  Of course, in the Information Age cultures can change without violence, so the result in western cultures is not the classic Marxist revolution.  China?  They are reluctant to listen to the people, but also reluctant to open the door into chaos.  Not sure what will happen there.

[Bob Butler 54]

(03-12-2021, 12:16 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(03-12-2021, 10:26 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I see Trump as an example of how not to do it.  It is traditional to precede the grey champion with a bad leader who represents the old values very poorly, and thus contrasts with the grey champion and makes it a bit clearer that something new should be tried.  George III, Buchanan, and Hoover are the other three US representatives of the old values, with Bush 43 as an honorable mention.

Trump did it so extremely to be in a class by himself.

Trump isn't so much old values as he is an exemplar of 3T fads that get swept aside in a 4T. Much of what gets blown away is from the most recent 3T.

I wouldn't consider racism, the elite dominance including division of wealth or red violence fads.  The reluctance of reds to solve problems was in great part racism.  It was though that if you stuck poor people without services, you were increasing the division of wealth and hurting the minorities at the same time.

These are genuine crisis problems, not fads.

[HealthyDebate]

Life may be all fun and games now in the USA, but as offshoring increases, illegal immigration rises, hard-working Americans die off or dropout due to higher taxes and more regulations, the national debt climbs, there is more terrorism as the result of illegal American wars, the police become more brutal enforcing draconian decrees, the US Ponzi economy and stock markets collapse, cash is banned, Americans are implanted with microchips, and real crises and false flags are used to force Americans to go to the gulags and finally to the gas chambers and ovens, will Americans wish that they had spoken out earlier against the dangers of wars, debt, and tyranny?

[David Horn]

(03-12-2021, 06:47 PM)HealthyDebate Wrote: Life may be all fun and games now in the USA, but as offshoring increases, illegal immigration rises, hard-working Americans die off or dropout due to higher taxes and more regulations, the national debt climbs, there is more terrorism as the result of illegal American wars, the police become more brutal enforcing draconian decrees, the US Ponzi economy and stock markets collapse, cash is banned, Americans are implanted with microchips, and real crises and false flags are used to force Americans to go to the gulags and finally to the gas chambers and ovens, will Americans wish that they had spoken out earlier against the dangers of wars, debt, and tyranny?

This is a real post.  Do more of this and less of the "bald link" and "gripe list" variety.

[pbrower2a]

(03-12-2021, 04:26 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(03-12-2021, 12:16 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(03-12-2021, 10:26 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I see Trump as an example of how not to do it.  It is traditional to precede the grey champion with a bad leader who represents the old values very poorly, and thus contrasts with the grey champion and makes it a bit clearer that something new should be tried.  George III, Buchanan, and Hoover are the other three US representatives of the old values, with Bush 43 as an honorable mention.

Trump did it so extremely to be in a class by himself.

Trump isn't so much old values as he is an exemplar of 3T fads that get swept aside in a 4T. Much of what gets blown away is from the most recent 3T.

I wouldn't consider racism, the elite dominance including division of wealth or red violence fads.  The reluctance of reds to solve problems was in great part racism.  It was though that if you stuck poor people without services, you were increasing the division of wealth and hurting the minorities at the same time.

These are genuine crisis problems, not fads.

Sometimes it is tricky to discern the bad new fads of the recent 3T from the bad old ways from earlier times. Racism is a bad old practice, but it can be 'modernized', as into eugenics in the last 3T or into genocidal racism as in Germany within the NSDAP, definitely a 3T innovation. Antisemitism is nothing new; it is always vile and potentially lethal. Popularization of the horrid Protocols  that asserted that all Jews from childhood to senescence are part of some great evil conspiracy to exploit and dominate gentiles was a 3T innovation. Refutation of those charges may be easy enough, but not by the standards of people who fully believe it. This bilge resurfaces when it is convenient, as it is popular in the Arab world to explain away failures of dictatorial and incompetent regimes.

(Most obviously, the work self-contradicts; people who can achieve what they want from economic success to cultural achievement ordinarily have other explanations and stay clear of criminal conspiracies too dangerous to put into practice -- criminal conspiracies are for schmucks; there is no Jewish 'race'; Judaism is a religion connected to a culture, and its ethical tenets are as decent as any religion 'out there'; it is a blatant forgery; it fosters a paranoid conception of Humanity that itself suggests mental illness; the work is above all a supposed "insider" manual, yet much of what it says is Jewish isn't. As someone with a love-hate relationship with Germany (I love much about German culture, admire some German figures of history, and have much German ancestry) it is easy to imagine what I (and anyone claiming any goodness at all) despise about German history. Let's put it this way: there was nothing wrong about the German people in the early half of the twentieth century that Judaism would not have solved. If I had to choose between being a Nazi and a Jew I would be a Jew, as such would require no ethical and cultural compromises. 

Modern antisemitism is racist in nature. I cannot say that racism in our time is somehow any better than that of a century to seventy-five years ago, as it has the same potential for destructiveness. Maybe the Nazis could be banned once and for all in Germany... but neo-Nazis appear in, paradoxically, the countries that were victorious in World War II, even in Russia! Klan groups have much the same objects of hatred as Hitlerites did, and I can imagine some Kluxers doing massacres and setting up extermination camps. Hatred gets revivals even if the basis is ancient disputes such as the Crusaders. (Don't fool yourself; not only did the Crusaders kill Muslims and Jews, but they also persecuted Eastern Orthodox Christians who often had to take shelter in Islam to save their lives from the Crusaders. To be sure, the Crusades did not have racism at their core, but they have scarred the human psyche.

The last Crisis of course destroyed German and Japanese militarism once and for all. 

...As for Donald Trump I see him as far more innovative in American politics than is comfortable. He unleashed a paranoid style of politics on a national scale that both lacks merit (OK, there really was a Communist plot to steal nuclear secrets; illegal drugs really are dangerous; pedophilia is destructive; the Axis powers were genuine menaces to much that defined the American political heritage) and that has apparently solved nothing. Both Presidents Bush made sure to distinguish Islam from al-Qaeda and the Taliban, let alone the fascistic regime of Saddam Hussein. Trump attempted to make all American politics fit through his ideological prism and established a personality cult that still has followers. His disdain for vital components of the American political tradition, including his sore-loser approach to an election that he lost, has no precedent in American political tradition.   

People are going to be in deep trouble for following Donald Trump on January 6. They put their lives, their fortunes, their freedom, and their reputations on line as did those who signed the Declaration of Independence... except that they put their lives, their fortunes, their freedom, and their reputations at risk for something worthless and both morally and intellectually indefensible. Had it been successful it would have been more analogous to the Bolsheviks storming the Winter Palace in Petrograd in 1917; it failed, and except that Donald Trump is unlikely to have any relevance in American political life ten years from now and that there will be no political careers that rise from the ashes of a failure, this is more like the Beer Hall Putsch.  

The big political fad to be dumped is neoliberal politics best described as having mirror-image Marxism at its core. COVID-19 shattered many of the complacent assumptions that many of us -- and especially people in our economic and bureaucratic elites -- have depended upon. It will be easy enough for people who have been overworked and underpaid all their adult lives to repudiate neoliberal ideology... but perhaps too late to start over or even to establish some comfort in old age.

[Bob Butler 54]

(03-13-2021, 08:50 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(03-12-2021, 06:47 PM)HealthyDebate Wrote: Life may be all fun and games now in the USA, but as offshoring increases, illegal immigration rises, hard-working Americans die off or dropout due to higher taxes and more regulations, the national debt climbs, there is more terrorism as the result of illegal American wars, the police become more brutal enforcing draconian decrees, the US Ponzi economy and stock markets collapse, cash is banned, Americans are implanted with microchips, and real crises and false flags are used to force Americans to go to the gulags and finally to the gas chambers and ovens, will Americans wish that they had spoken out earlier against the dangers of wars, debt, and tyranny?

This is a real post.  Do more of this and less of the "bald link" and "gripe list" variety.

Or create 'bald link' and 'gripe list' threads so you don't take over the front page and people will know what they are getting into. 

[upside2]

Does anyone get the feeling that the Uniparty has been bought off by the elites?