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I have figured out what the main battle of this Fourth Turning, it is Liberal Democracy vs the Alt-Right/Neo-Nationalist (which I see as a spectrum) movement. For a while I was on the fringes of the alt-right scene, I got into because of the my involvement in the counter-jihad movement and in recent years it has been entering this territory. I have recently figured out how incredibly insidious this ideology is and they are duping a lot of people, usually gradually.
I don't believe law enforcement authorities (in general) know how bad it has gotten, because they only notice when the people have reached the alt-right stage, not the neo-nationalist/alt-lite stage. For example; Milo Yiannopoulos or Jordan Peterson* and Richard Spencer are in the same movement, just on different points of the spectrum. Essentially people start on the road to the alt-right when they get 'red-pilled' or starting believing in conspiracy theories say like that of cultural Marxism. I think writing book on this whole movement (if good guys win) will become my life work, so that future generations of people can avoid same fate.
The neo-nationalist parties which are major political players now aren’t too extreme. Although it is alarming that it has entered the American Right (which is 30% odd percentage of the American public that are Trump supporters). In Australia on the other-hand they are still pretty fringe, although starting to enter into a few minor parties.
However, the second global financial crisis will come and a lack of global effort to combat it will plunge the world into an massive economic downturn like the Great Depression. Then those countries with neo-nationalist parties in power will get more extreme or more extreme alt-right parties will come to power.
The countries of Western Europe have been pretty good at identifying and containing alt-right. However the European Union is weak and neo-nationalist parties are governments in some Eastern European countries. Such parties as the Austria Freedom Party and Italy's Lega Nord are in government in those countries. Millennial students on university campuses have been good at trying to prevent speakers they deem as having 'alt-lite' or 'alt-right' ideas.
Therefore, the first Turning Purge which the one in the last first turning was McCarthyism can go two ways depending on which side wins.
If Liberal Democracy wins, anybody who part of the Neo-Nationalist/Alt-Right or even suspected of Neo-Nationalist/Alt-Right leanings. Nationalism and Populism are going to become words akin to Fascism and Nazism. I applaud Twitter and Facebook for starting to purge people with this subversion elements. Donald Trump is complaining that it unfairly targets Conservatives.
If the Neo-Nationalist/Alt-Right wins, little doubt authoritarian regimes would emerge that would be at best 'illiberal democracies' at worst downright totalitarian.
They will purge what they consider their enemies which will be at the very least.
Anybody in the media and in public life they deem as "Leftists" or "Communists".
Feminist and LBGTQ activists.
Academics and teachers which they see as peddling "Cultural Marxism".
Transgender and even Homosexual people will be regarded as suffering from a mental illness and be sent to psychiatric hospitals to be retreated.
Depending on the regime in power:
Muslims (in some areas, where they are especially big enemies of whatever alt-right regime is in power)
Jews
Other ethnic groups deemed undesirable.
These regimes death toll won’t be on the scale of Nazism or Communism, still a lot of people killed.
Ultimately the alt-right want to take society back to the 1950's (well a fantasy version). Expect the education system to be purged of anything remotely resembling “cultural Marxism” and "post-modernism".
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(10-10-2018, 05:58 AM)Teejay Wrote: I have figured out what the main battle of this Fourth Turning, it is Liberal Democracy vs the Alt-Right/Neo-Nationalist (which I see as a spectrum) movement. For a while I was on the fringes of the alt-right scene, I got into because of the my involvement in the counter-jihad movement and in recent years it has been entering this territory. I have recently figured out how incredibly insidious this ideology is and they are duping a lot of people, usually gradually.
I don't believe law enforcement authorities (in general) know how bad it has gotten, because they only notice when the people have reached the alt-right stage, not the neo-nationalist/alt-lite stage. For example; Milo Yiannopoulos or Jordan Peterson* and Richard Spencer are in the same movement, just on different points of the spectrum. Essentially people start on the road to the alt-right when they get 'red-pilled' or starting believing in conspiracy theories say like that of cultural Marxism. I think writing book on this whole movement (if good guys win) will become my life work, so that future generations of people can avoid same fate.
The neo-nationalist parties which are major political players now aren’t too extreme. Although it is alarming that it has entered the American Right (which is 30% odd percentage of the American public that are Trump supporters). In Australia on the other-hand they are still pretty fringe, although starting to enter into a few minor parties.
However, the second global financial crisis will come and a lack of global effort to combat it will plunge the world into an massive economic downturn like the Great Depression. Then those countries with neo-nationalist parties in power will get more extreme or more extreme alt-right parties will come to power.
The countries of Western Europe have been pretty good at identifying and containing alt-right. However the European Union is weak and neo-nationalist parties are governments in some Eastern European countries. Such parties as the Austria Freedom Party and Italy's Lega Nord are in government in those countries. Millennial students on university campuses have been good at trying to prevent speakers they deem as having 'alt-lite' or 'alt-right' ideas.
Therefore, the first Turning Purge which the one in the last first turning was McCarthyism can go two ways depending on which side wins.
If Liberal Democracy wins, anybody who part of the Neo-Nationalist/Alt-Right or even suspected of Neo-Nationalist/Alt-Right leanings. Nationalism and Populism are going to become words akin to Fascism and Nazism. I applaud Twitter and Facebook for starting to purge people with this subversion elements. Donald Trump is complaining that it unfairly targets Conservatives.
If the Neo-Nationalist/Alt-Right wins, little doubt authoritarian regimes would emerge that would be at best 'illiberal democracies' at worst downright totalitarian.
They will purge what they consider their enemies which will be at the very least.
Anybody in the media and in public life they deem as "Leftists" or "Communists".
Feminist and LBGTQ activists.
Academics and teachers which they see as peddling "Cultural Marxism".
Transgender and even Homosexual people will be regarded as suffering from a mental illness and be sent to psychiatric hospitals to be retreated.
Depending on the regime in power:
Muslims (in some areas, where they are especially big enemies of whatever alt-right regime is in power)
Jews
Other ethnic groups deemed undesirable.
These regimes death toll won’t be on the scale of Nazism or Communism, still a lot of people killed.
Ultimately the alt-right want to take society back to the 1950's (well a fantasy version). Expect the education system to be purged of anything remotely resembling “cultural Marxism” and "post-modernism".
America is not Weimar Germany in its weak response to Nazis. Neo-Nazis in America did violent crimes including assassination of a radio talk-show host and some bank robberies (operating on the myth that the Jews own the banks -- they do not) as well as the big bugaboo of the financial system, counterfeiting. Those neo-Nazis faced the full power of law enforcement and were blown away or put away. Weimar Germany treated Nazi outrages with laxity that fostered their ruthlessness and risky behavior. A system that took its own sovereignty seriously would have treated the Beer Hall Putsch as severely as it treated the figures of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic instead of giving Hitler a slap on the wrist.
The Klan did not get away with the same stuff even if it was at times larger than Nazis in Germany. I can imagine a Klan-dominated America -- and it would have torture chambers and concentration camps. It might not have exterminated blacks, but it might have sought to restore slavery. Jews would have been in deep trouble, and they would have been more likely to be killed. Anti-Chinese violence might have been the model.
Fascistic movements are always hostile to any sexuality other than that expressing male dominance of women. It is telling that the British and Americans insisted on the enfranchisement of women in conquered Italy and Japan -- and in liberated France. France barely missed going fascist on its own, and the vulnerabilities of a sexist system made the Vichy regime as odious as it was. Women are more cautious and conventional in their politics, more likely to heed the sober pronouncements of a clergyman than the boozy appeals of a drunk howling his personal distress in politics to like-minded, similarly boozing men.
...Any war against Islam will turn the moderate Muslims against America. If it was a catastrophic blunder of the Nazis to persecute the Jews, think of what a war against Islam would be. The moderate Muslims, the ones who see no conflict between Jefferson or Lincoln with Islam, will in the end judge American war criminals harshly for violating the tenets not of the Koran, but instead of the American political heritage.
Consider how the Allies judged Japanese officials for mistreatment of prisoners of war after World War II. Having to determine whether such barbarity was inherent in Japanese culture, they contrasted humane treatment of Russian POWs after the Russo-Japanese war and of German soldiers (Japan was on the side of the Allies in WWI) to what the Japanese did to American, British, Dutch, Australian, and Chinese prisoners during WWII. Moderate Muslims will see American decency in the past closer to Islamic virtues than to brutality in a time of evil rule. Add to that, those moderate Muslims will take note of how American Christians saw Nazi brutality toward victims of the Third Reich; one need not be a Jew to recognize the obscenity of the Holocaust.
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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(10-10-2018, 05:58 AM)Teejay Wrote: I have figured out what the main battle of this Fourth Turning, it is Liberal Democracy vs the Alt-Right/Neo-Nationalist (which I see as a spectrum) movement. For a while I was on the fringes of the alt-right scene, I got into because of the my involvement in the counter-jihad movement and in recent years it has been entering this territory. I have recently figured out how incredibly insidious this ideology is and they are duping a lot of people, usually gradually.
Quote:I don't believe law enforcement authorities (in general) know how bad it has gotten, because they only notice when the people have reached the alt-right stage, not the neo-nationalist/alt-lite stage. For example; Milo Yiannopoulos or Jordan Peterson* and Richard Spencer are in the same movement, just on different points of the spectrum. Essentially people start on the road to the alt-right when they get 'red-pilled' or starting believing in conspiracy theories say like that of cultural Marxism. I think writing book on this whole movement (if good guys win) will become my life work, so that future generations of people can avoid same fate.
It's now up to the more basic means of addressing the potential for evil: the educational system. For years we could say "Tojo evil, Mussolini evil, and Hitler demonic". In the 1930s, evil had undeniably hijacked Germany, Italy, and Japan. Today we cannot simply say that because of America staying true to a decent heritage we Americans can expect to be on the same side of the Deity that Lincoln and FDR led us to. Referring to the purported Lincoln quote, we cannot be so complacent about America this time.
It will be easier to resist fascism in America when we do not yet fear torture chambers and summary execution than to resist it when any mistake, betrayal, or simple bad luck will put anyone at risk of death... or worse.
We need to inculcate our children with the recognition of the need for civil liberties, human rights, and checks and balances. The biggest checks and balances upon a potentially-wayward government is a population moral enough to resist such. It is not enough to brandish the word freedom; even in the hideous Horst-Wessel Lied the German words frei (an obvious cognate of English free) and Freiheit (which, not surprisingly, literally means freedom) appears. It is not enough to call for freedom; it is also necessary to recognize the need for the freedom of others. Freedom of the streets (for the Sturmabteilumgen) is the wrong sort of freedom.
Quote:The neo-nationalist parties which are major political players now aren’t too extreme. Although it is alarming that it has entered the American Right (which is 30% odd percentage of the American public that are Trump supporters). In Australia on the other-hand they are still pretty fringe, although starting to enter into a few minor parties.
America has had a dangerous fascist movement that took control of whole states and expressed bigotry as vehement as that of the Nazis. That was the 1915 Klan, which was a bigger share of the American populace in the mid-1920s than the Nazis of the time. We do not live in a nation of saints, and probably never will. Democracy does not require saints, but it certainly requires that most people be willing to lose an election to people that one loathes. I can name many political figures, beginning with Donald Trump, that I loathe, as well as journalists, and political operatives. At this point we can wait them out unless they do something so horrid as to rig or nullify an election.
Quote:However, the second global financial crisis will come and a lack of global effort to combat it will plunge the world into an massive economic downturn like the Great Depression. Then those countries with neo-nationalist parties in power will get more extreme or more extreme alt-right parties will come to power.
We got out of the most dangerous economic meltdown since the Great Depression because for a time Americans could agree on backing the banks as was not done in the aftermath of the 1929 Crash. America rescued most of the people who had created the corrupt bubble that burst catastrophically in 2008... and those people found salami tactics for taking over America until it has become a plutocracy with an aristocratic bureaucracy. With all the debt that we now have, a rescue of our bad actors will be far less effective, especially if the bubble is largely crony capitalism, the favorite capitalism of Donald Trump.
Economic inequality is still severe. The only stop to a crash is that we do not have a speculative boom to go bust. I do not know whether that is the result of Obama not sponsoring one even if he could, or Republicans making sure that the recovery was agonizingly slow. This said, we have the worst President possible for meeting any economic meltdown. Can his business acumen save us? Not likely! The President that we have is nothing more than a landlord and a purveyor of schlock television.
Quote:The countries of Western Europe have been pretty good at identifying and containing alt-right. However the European Union is weak and neo-nationalist parties are governments in some Eastern European countries. Such parties as the Austria Freedom Party and Italy's Lega Nord are in government in those countries. Millennial students on university campuses have been good at trying to prevent speakers they deem as having 'alt-lite' or 'alt-right' ideas.
On the other side -- the two countries that had the earliest escapes from Commie government (Poland and Hungary) have radical-right regimes.
Quote:Therefore, the first Turning Purge which the one in the last first turning was McCarthyism can go two ways depending on which side wins.
If Liberal Democracy wins, anybody who part of the Neo-Nationalist/Alt-Right or even suspected of Neo-Nationalist/Alt-Right leanings. Nationalism and Populism are going to become words akin to Fascism and Nazism. I applaud Twitter and Facebook for starting to purge people with this subversion elements. Donald Trump is complaining that it unfairly targets Conservatives.
If the Neo-Nationalist/Alt-Right wins, little doubt authoritarian regimes would emerge that would be at best 'illiberal democracies' at worst downright totalitarian.
I can imagine America as an Evil Empire. Just imagine what the world would be like if America had come under the rule of the KKK, the Weimar Republic survived and strengthened its institutions, Italians had sickened of Mussolini, and the nascent trends toward democracy in Japan before 1930 had entrenched themselves. The world map might look much like that of The Man in the High Castle, except with the Good Guys prevailing. Parts of America are rebuilt with the Rommel Plan and parts are rebuilt with the Yamamoto Plan.
(of the Hard Right)
Quote:They will purge what they consider their enemies which will be at the very least.
Anybody in the media and in public life they deem as "Leftists" or "Communists".
Feminist and LBGTQ activists.
Academics and teachers which they see as peddling "Cultural Marxism".
Transgender and even Homosexual people will be regarded as suffering from a mental illness and be sent to psychiatric hospitals to be retreated.
Depending on the regime in power:
Muslims (in some areas, where they are especially big enemies of whatever alt-right regime is in power)
Jews
Other ethnic groups deemed undesirable.
These regimes death toll won’t be on the scale of Nazism or Communism, still a lot of people killed.
Ultimately the alt-right want to take society back to the 1950's (well a fantasy version). Expect the education system to be purged of anything remotely resembling “cultural Marxism” and "post-modernism".
America has people with whom I have no trust with my human rights and civil liberties. If that Hard Right takes over and I lack the means to emigrate, I might want to make sure that I have some Valium® and vodka ready so that I can evade fates worse than death. Seeing my old age likely to not be a time of glorious and enriching hedonism, I have far less cause to fear death than I used to. Death used to scare me more for denying me delights that I might miss. A concentration camp or torture chamber is something to miss.
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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(10-25-2018, 11:43 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: On the other side -- the two countries that had the earliest escapes from Commie government (Poland and Hungary) have radical-right regimes.
Poland has had strong nationalistic and tribal sentiments for long. Solidarity, so beloved by Reagan, was a nationalistic-clerical movement. Even earlier, in the 19th century, various nationalistic uprisings against the tzar's universal monarchy.
In general, Reagan has supported national liberation movements that struggled against the Soviets, maybe it was the right decision back in the 80s, but it created further trouble.
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(10-26-2018, 02:40 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: (10-25-2018, 11:43 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: On the other side -- the two countries that had the earliest escapes from Commie government (Poland and Hungary) have radical-right regimes.
Poland has had strong nationalistic and tribal sentiments for long. Solidarity, so beloved by Reagan, was a nationalistic-clerical movement. Even earlier, in the 19th century, various nationalistic uprisings against the tzar's universal monarchy.
In general, Reagan has supported national liberation movements that struggled against the Soviets, maybe it was the right decision back in the 80s, but it created further trouble.
Revolution and restoration can serve their purposes, but both have their limits. Knowing when to stop is always tricky because there is always some innovative way to reshape society and culture as one wants to see it go. The American "Tea party" has never seen any good place to stop in transforming America into a clerico-fascist state. Real democracy is a good check on such tendencies, and democracy will eventually stop Donald Trump.
Russophobia has been a consistent thread in Polish culture. I once read in Wikipedia that despite the domination of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union that the Polish language has very few words of Russian origin, and those relate to Russian or Soviet practices and institutions that have always seemed 'foreign'. Polish has more words of Italian origin than of Russian origin even if the Italians never ruled Poland. A Polish version of "Josephine" was a very common given female name in Poland in the 19th century, honoring a wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, a man honored in the Polish national anthem. Note how hated Napoleon is in Germany and Russia; Napoleon set up the nearly-independent Duchy of Warsaw that was much more independent than the Russian-dominated Kingdom of Poland that simply had the Russian tsar as King or the Communist-dominated People's Republic. French words are common in Polish.
It is not enough to say that democracy had no chance to fully entrench itself in Hungary or Poland. Communist rule has been extinct in those countries for nearly thirty years.
Donald Trump has done much to gut the American political heritage to reshape America to fit his despotic personality. The last phase of this Crisis era will likely be undoing his damage.
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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10-26-2018, 12:02 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-26-2018, 12:03 PM by Bill the Piper.)
(10-26-2018, 09:23 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: A Polish version of "Josephine" was a very common given female name in Poland in the 19th century, honoring a wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, a man honored in the Polish national anthem.
Napoleon was a tyrant, in fact an early equivalent of Stalin.He derailed the Jacobin revolution much like Stalin derailed the October revolution. The British road to democracy was slower, but less bloody, except the Cromwell part.
The Poles are proud of their early democratic history, but what democrat reveres an absolute monarch?
(OK, enough Poland-bashing)
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Why is Cultural Marxism a conspiracy? Leftist Boomers tried to get jobs as teachers, profs, journos etc. because they wanted to influence the younger generations. Unfortunately they were successful, and the older generations (and conservative Boomers) failed in stopping them.
Of course, not all students believe all that shit their Boomer teachers tell. Since they're too full of themselves, they don't notice when nobody is listening to their ideological drivel.
(There are alt-righters too who want to build "cultural hegemony". But they just make the same mistake. Also, they're several decades late.)
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11-14-2018, 12:51 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-14-2018, 12:58 PM by Bill the Piper.)
(11-14-2018, 10:09 AM)Hintergrund Wrote: Why is Cultural Marxism a conspiracy? Leftist Boomers tried to get jobs as teachers, profs, journos etc. because they wanted to influence the younger generations. Unfortunately they were successful, and the older generations (and conservative Boomers) failed in stopping them.
Of course, not all students believe all that shit their Boomer teachers tell. Since they're too full of themselves, they don't notice when nobody is listening to their ideological drivel.
(There are alt-righters too who want to build "cultural hegemony". But they just make the same mistake. Also, they're several decades late.)
There cannot be a thing like Cultural Marxism, because it's a core tenet of Marxism that economics is everything. Bill Clinton's "it's the economy, stupid!" could come from Karl Marx, if you say it with a German accent.
The ideology you're referring to would be called Counterculture, or perhaps the New Left or Postmodernism. Purple sector of my pentagon. Many boomer rebels made peace with capitalism, moving to the Yellow-Purple cusp, which can be called Liberal Globalist.
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Call it how you want, I don't like it.
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11-15-2018, 09:26 AM
(This post was last modified: 11-15-2018, 09:27 AM by Bill the Piper.)
(11-15-2018, 08:45 AM)Hintergrund Wrote: Call it how you want, I don't like it.
Neither do I. I despise both Marxism and Counterculture. Extropian ethics is my style!
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(11-14-2018, 12:51 PM)Bill the Piper Wrote: (11-14-2018, 10:09 AM)Hintergrund Wrote: Why is Cultural Marxism a conspiracy? Leftist Boomers tried to get jobs as teachers, profs, journos etc. because they wanted to influence the younger generations. Unfortunately they were successful, and the older generations (and conservative Boomers) failed in stopping them.
Of course, not all students believe all that shit their Boomer teachers tell. Since they're too full of themselves, they don't notice when nobody is listening to their ideological drivel.
(There are alt-righters too who want to build "cultural hegemony". But they just make the same mistake. Also, they're several decades late.)
There cannot be a thing like Cultural Marxism, because it's a core tenet of Marxism that economics is everything. Bill Clinton's "it's the economy, stupid!" could come from Karl Marx, if you say it with a German accent.
The ideology you're referring to would be called Counterculture, or perhaps the New Left or Postmodernism. Purple sector of my pentagon. Many boomer rebels made peace with capitalism, moving to the Yellow-Purple cusp, which can be called Liberal Globalist.
It's true, cultural Marxism as an idea makes little sense for the reason you say.
Again, counter-culture and new left exist, but they don't define the entire left or liberal sector, as you seem to think. There is no place on your diagram for most liberal Democrats.
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(11-15-2018, 09:26 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: (11-15-2018, 08:45 AM)Hintergrund Wrote: Call it how you want, I don't like it.
Neither do I. I despise both Marxism and Counterculture. Extropian ethics is my style!
Where is extropianism on your diagram, then?
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11-15-2018, 03:38 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-15-2018, 03:47 PM by pbrower2a.)
What will be purged?
1. Corrupt politicians. They usually get knocked out of political life, but no time like a Crisis exposes and discredits them due to gross failure.
2. Bad business practices. The economic stresses of a Crisis Era make shady practices unsustainable and make bad business models implode. Toys 'R' Us died of debt, and Radio Shack died of neglecting a purpose that served it well and might still serve it well.
3. Outmoded habits and institutions. The traditional department store seems to be dying, many venerable ones having been merged into survivors (as in Hudson's into Marshall Field's and in turn Macy's) or going bankrupt (Montgomery-Ward, Mervyn's, Bon-Ton, American Apparel, and now Sears -- and I suspect JC Penney fairly soon). The turnover in tech firms has always been high. Restaurants? Rumor has it that many high-profile casual dining places will go under because people can cook a meal in a microwave oven instead of going into a restaurant. Yes, I miss Bennigan's, Steak and Ale, Perkins'. and Bill Knapp's. On the other hand, Big Boy was awful -- fast food not very good. People can get away with behaviors such as impulse shopping in good times, but in bad times people can no longer get away with it. Hardships of a 4T tend to knock out the overpriced and overrated.
As for cable TV -- people are looking for alternatives. Someone who can find a less expensive way to put entertainment into our houses will be richly rewarded.
4. Bad mass culture. Note well that as the Crisis of 1940 approached its climax, Americans gravitated to an omnibus culture that people could enjoy irrespective of region, religion, age, ethnicity, and even level of education. Consider that Big Band music is still highly listenable, and most movies from about 1940 (especially the Miracle Year 1939) are still enjoyable. Someone like me who disparaged special effects as substitutes for good script and acting saw some movies by Marvel studios and has begun to sing a different tune.
The movies are expensive enough to make that bad ones that have 'cult' audiences will fail at the box office. Eighty years after the Miracle Year of American Cinema? That corresponds to the 80-year cycle exactly (if possibly too precisely).
5. Bad political memes. The low levels of approval for Donald Trump demonstrate that even though he won in an electoral freak, he is widely disparaged. With approval around 40 and disapproval approaching 60, some people to the right of the political spectrum find this arch-conservative pol objectionable. People backing him in the House have been knocked off in big numbers in 2018 -- and I will reserve judgment about 2020. America is ready for an omnibus politician, and conservatives are having to reorganize to develop an attractive ideology that does not include the quirks of Donald Trump. If we should end up in a war, we are going to find many quickly-trained military officers who learn the academy honor code, formulated differently in the Service Academies, but essentially the same in meaning:
DO NOT LIE, CHEAT, OR STEAL, and DO NOT TOLERATE SUCH AT ANY TIME!
We will see that applied to all professional activities, including medicine, engineering, research, teaching, accounting, journalism, law, and police work. People who lie, cheat, and steal or tolerate lying, cheating, or stealing will be disgraced and relegated to the economic trash heap -- or worse. In a Crisis Era there is just too much to lose for any inexcusable shortcoming. Honest mistakes that people learn from might have to be tolerated, but dishonest and corrupt behavior will be disastrous.
6. People will be included. People with genuine talent will be sought out and be expected to do their share -- often achieving what they never expected to do. Scapegoating will be a sign of incompetence.
7. Pessimism and any level of disloyalty will be unwelcome. Caution has its merits, but despair that comes with pessimism will serve us badly. If the 4T culminates in war, then plenty of opportunities will arise for treason.
...because merchants already have Christmas as the objective of marketing (I love Thanksgiving because it is a family get-together, it is accessible at all ages and in all classes, it is not overtly materialistic, it has nothing macabre or grotesque attached as does Halloween, it is reverent without being religious in objective, and it is not an excuse for heavy drinking) I can only think of one Christmas carol, arguably the darkest one of them and introduced in a dark time in American history (the Civil War):
I HEARD THE BELLS ON CHRISTMAS DAY
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
and wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."
-- LONGFELLOW
I can only imagine what variant was sung in any British city during the Blitz, at Corregidor, or at Bastogne. Beast (especially "fascist beast" or "Nazi beast") and East obviously rhyme.
This is a 4T. The Wrong must fail, and the Right must prevail, as in the Civil War or World War II!
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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(11-15-2018, 03:38 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: What will be purged?
1. Corrupt politicians. They usually get knocked out of political life, but no time like a Crisis exposes and discredits them due to gross failure.
2. Bad business practices. The economic stresses of a Crisis Era make shady practices unsustainable and make bad business models implode. Toys 'R' Us died of debt, and Radio Shack died of neglecting a purpose that served it well and might still serve it well.
3. Outmoded habits and institutions. The traditional department store seems to be dying, many venerable ones having been merged into survivors (as in Hudson's into Marshall Field's and in turn Macy's) or going bankrupt (Montgomery-Ward, Mervyn's, Bon-Ton, American Apparel, and now Sears -- and I suspect JC Penney fairly soon). The turnover in tech firms has always been high. Restaurants? Rumor has it that many high-profile casual dining places will go under because people can cook a meal in a microwave oven instead of going into a restaurant. Yes, I miss Bennigan's, Steak and Ale, Perkins'. and Bill Knapp's. On the other hand, Big Boy was awful -- fast food not very good. People can get away with behaviors such as impulse shopping in good times, but in bad times people can no longer get away with it. Hardships of a 4T tend to knock out the overpriced and overrated.
As for cable TV -- people are looking for alternatives. Someone who can find a less expensive way to put entertainment into our houses will be richly rewarded.
4. Bad mass culture. Note well that as the Crisis of 1940 approached its climax, Americans gravitated to an omnibus culture that people could enjoy irrespective of region, religion, age, ethnicity, and even level of education. Consider that Big Band music is still highly listenable, and most movies from about 1940 (especially the Miracle Year 1939) are still enjoyable. Someone like me who disparaged special effects as substitutes for good script and acting saw some movies by Marvel studios and has begun to sing a different tune.
The movies are expensive enough to make that bad ones that have 'cult' audiences will fail at the box office. Eighty years after the Miracle Year of American Cinema? That corresponds to the 80-year cycle exactly (if possibly too precisely).
5. Bad political memes. The low levels of approval for Donald Trump demonstrate that even though he won in an electoral freak, he is widely disparaged. With approval around 40 and disapproval approaching 60, some people to the right of the political spectrum find this arch-conservative pol objectionable. People backing him in the House have been knocked off in big numbers in 2018 -- and I will reserve judgment about 2020. America is ready for an omnibus politician, and conservatives are having to reorganize to develop an attractive ideology that does not include the quirks of Donald Trump. If we should end up in a war, we are going to find many quickly-trained military officers who learn the academy honor code, formulated differently in the Service Academies, but essentially the same in meaning:
DO NOT LIE, CHEAT, OR STEAL, and DO NOT TOLERATE SUCH AT ANY TIME!
We will see that applied to all professional activities, including medicine, engineering, research, teaching, accounting, journalism, law, and police work. People who lie, cheat, and steal or tolerate lying, cheating, or stealing will be disgraced and relegated to the economic trash heap -- or worse. In a Crisis Era there is just too much to lose for any inexcusable shortcoming. Honest mistakes that people learn from might have to be tolerated, but dishonest and corrupt behavior will be disastrous.
6. People will be included. People with genuine talent will be sought out and be expected to do their share -- often achieving what they never expected to do. Scapegoating will be a sign of incompetence.
7. Pessimism and any level of disloyalty will be unwelcome. Caution has its merits, but despair that comes with pessimism will serve us badly. If the 4T culminates in war, then plenty of opportunities will arise for treason.
...because merchants already have Christmas as the objective of marketing (I love Thanksgiving because it is a family get-together, it is accessible at all ages and in all classes, it is not overtly materialistic, it has nothing macabre or grotesque attached as does Halloween, it is reverent without being religious in objective, and it is not an excuse for heavy drinking) I can only think of one Christmas carol, arguably the darkest one of them and introduced in a dark time in American history (the Civil War):
I HEARD THE BELLS ON CHRISTMAS DAY
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
and wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."
-- LONGFELLOW
I can only imagine what variant was sung in any British city during the Blitz, at Corregidor, or at Bastogne. Beast (especially "fascist beast" or "Nazi beast") and East obviously rhyme.
This is a 4T. The Wrong must fail, and the Right must prevail, as in the Civil War or World War II!
Re: #1: This doesn't happen just during a 4T. During the midst of the last 2T both Nixon and Spiro Agnew got knocked off their perch as did some lesser figures such as Carter's budget director Bert Lance.
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11-15-2018, 04:06 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-15-2018, 04:07 PM by Marypoza.)
(10-10-2018, 05:58 AM)Teejay Wrote: I have figured out what the main battle of this Fourth Turning, it is Liberal Democracy vs the Alt-Right/Neo-Nationalist (which I see as a spectrum) movement. For a while I was on the fringes of the alt-right scene, I got into because of the my involvement in the counter-jihad movement and in recent years it has been entering this territory. I have recently figured out how incredibly insidious this ideology is and they are duping a lot of people, usually gradually.
I don't believe law enforcement authorities (in general) know how bad it has gotten, because they only notice when the people have reached the alt-right stage, not the neo-nationalist/alt-lite stage. For example; Milo Yiannopoulos or Jordan Peterson* and Richard Spencer are in the same movement, just on different points of the spectrum. Essentially people start on the road to the alt-right when they get 'red-pilled' or starting believing in conspiracy theories say like that of cultural Marxism. I think writing book on this whole movement (if good guys win) will become my life work, so that future generations of people can avoid same fate.
The neo-nationalist parties which are major political players now aren’t too extreme. Although it is alarming that it has entered the American Right (which is 30% odd percentage of the American public that are Trump supporters). In Australia on the other-hand they are still pretty fringe, although starting to enter into a few minor parties.
However, the second global financial crisis will come and a lack of global effort to combat it will plunge the world into an massive economic downturn like the Great Depression. Then those countries with neo-nationalist parties in power will get more extreme or more extreme alt-right parties will come to power.
The countries of Western Europe have been pretty good at identifying and containing alt-right. However the European Union is weak and neo-nationalist parties are governments in some Eastern European countries. Such parties as the Austria Freedom Party and Italy's Lega Nord are in government in those countries. Millennial students on university campuses have been good at trying to prevent speakers they deem as having 'alt-lite' or 'alt-right' ideas.
Therefore, the first Turning Purge which the one in the last first turning was McCarthyism can go two ways depending on which side wins.
If Liberal Democracy wins, anybody who part of the Neo-Nationalist/Alt-Right or even suspected of Neo-Nationalist/Alt-Right leanings. Nationalism and Populism are going to become words akin to Fascism and Nazism. I applaud Twitter and Facebook for starting to purge people with this subversion elements. Donald Trump is complaining that it unfairly targets Conservatives.
If the Neo-Nationalist/Alt-Right wins, little doubt authoritarian regimes would emerge that would be at best 'illiberal democracies' at worst downright totalitarian.
They will purge what they consider their enemies which will be at the very least.
Anybody in the media and in public life they deem as "Leftists" or "Communists".
Feminist and LBGTQ activists.
Academics and teachers which they see as peddling "Cultural Marxism".
Transgender and even Homosexual people will be regarded as suffering from a mental illness and be sent to psychiatric hospitals to be retreated.
Depending on the regime in power:
Muslims (in some areas, where they are especially big enemies of whatever alt-right regime is in power)
Jews
Other ethnic groups deemed undesirable.
These regimes death toll won’t be on the scale of Nazism or Communism, still a lot of people killed.
Ultimately the alt-right want to take society back to the 1950's (well a fantasy version). Expect the education system to be purged of anything remotely resembling “cultural Marxism” and "post-modernism".
--- l just wish they'd purge Miz Nancy. We need fresh blood. Ain't gonna happen tho
ps, Toyz R Us is coming back
 my 2 yr old Niece/yr old Nephew 2020
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Re: #2: Where would you put the like of Sears, among a few others, who are dying a slow death in the retail world?
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(11-15-2018, 04:06 PM)Marypoza Wrote: (10-10-2018, 05:58 AM)Teejay Wrote: I have figured out what the main battle of this Fourth Turning, it is Liberal Democracy vs the Alt-Right/Neo-Nationalist (which I see as a spectrum) movement. For a while I was on the fringes of the alt-right scene, I got into because of the my involvement in the counter-jihad movement and in recent years it has been entering this territory. I have recently figured out how incredibly insidious this ideology is and they are duping a lot of people, usually gradually.
I don't believe law enforcement authorities (in general) know how bad it has gotten, because they only notice when the people have reached the alt-right stage, not the neo-nationalist/alt-lite stage. For example; Milo Yiannopoulos or Jordan Peterson* and Richard Spencer are in the same movement, just on different points of the spectrum. Essentially people start on the road to the alt-right when they get 'red-pilled' or starting believing in conspiracy theories say like that of cultural Marxism. I think writing book on this whole movement (if good guys win) will become my life work, so that future generations of people can avoid same fate.
The neo-nationalist parties which are major political players now aren’t too extreme. Although it is alarming that it has entered the American Right (which is 30% odd percentage of the American public that are Trump supporters). In Australia on the other-hand they are still pretty fringe, although starting to enter into a few minor parties.
However, the second global financial crisis will come and a lack of global effort to combat it will plunge the world into an massive economic downturn like the Great Depression. Then those countries with neo-nationalist parties in power will get more extreme or more extreme alt-right parties will come to power.
The countries of Western Europe have been pretty good at identifying and containing alt-right. However the European Union is weak and neo-nationalist parties are governments in some Eastern European countries. Such parties as the Austria Freedom Party and Italy's Lega Nord are in government in those countries. Millennial students on university campuses have been good at trying to prevent speakers they deem as having 'alt-lite' or 'alt-right' ideas.
Therefore, the first Turning Purge which the one in the last first turning was McCarthyism can go two ways depending on which side wins.
If Liberal Democracy wins, anybody who part of the Neo-Nationalist/Alt-Right or even suspected of Neo-Nationalist/Alt-Right leanings. Nationalism and Populism are going to become words akin to Fascism and Nazism. I applaud Twitter and Facebook for starting to purge people with this subversion elements. Donald Trump is complaining that it unfairly targets Conservatives.
If the Neo-Nationalist/Alt-Right wins, little doubt authoritarian regimes would emerge that would be at best 'illiberal democracies' at worst downright totalitarian.
They will purge what they consider their enemies which will be at the very least.
Anybody in the media and in public life they deem as "Leftists" or "Communists".
Feminist and LBGTQ activists.
Academics and teachers which they see as peddling "Cultural Marxism".
Transgender and even Homosexual people will be regarded as suffering from a mental illness and be sent to psychiatric hospitals to be retreated.
Depending on the regime in power:
Muslims (in some areas, where they are especially big enemies of whatever alt-right regime is in power)
Jews
Other ethnic groups deemed undesirable.
These regimes death toll won’t be on the scale of Nazism or Communism, still a lot of people killed.
Ultimately the alt-right want to take society back to the 1950's (well a fantasy version). Expect the education system to be purged of anything remotely resembling “cultural Marxism” and "post-modernism".
--- l just wish they'd purge Miz Nancy. We need fresh blood. Ain't gonna happen tho
ps, Toyz R Us is coming back
Purges have already started. We certainly can consider the likes of Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein and others has having been purged in the advent of the #MeToo movement. Yes, their behavior was horrible. Pointing this out as perhaps a preview of things to come in other arenas.
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(11-15-2018, 04:06 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: (11-15-2018, 03:38 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: What will be purged?
1. Corrupt politicians. They usually get knocked out of political life, but no time like a Crisis exposes and discredits them due to gross failure.
2. Bad business practices. The economic stresses of a Crisis Era make shady practices unsustainable and make bad business models implode. Toys 'R' Us died of debt, and Radio Shack died of neglecting a purpose that served it well and might still serve it well.
3. Outmoded habits and institutions. The traditional department store seems to be dying, many venerable ones having been merged into survivors (as in Hudson's into Marshall Field's and in turn Macy's) or going bankrupt (Montgomery-Ward, Mervyn's, Bon-Ton, American Apparel, and now Sears -- and I suspect JC Penney fairly soon). The turnover in tech firms has always been high. Restaurants? Rumor has it that many high-profile casual dining places will go under because people can cook a meal in a microwave oven instead of going into a restaurant. Yes, I miss Bennigan's, Steak and Ale, Perkins'. and Bill Knapp's. On the other hand, Big Boy was awful -- fast food not very good. People can get away with behaviors such as impulse shopping in good times, but in bad times people can no longer get away with it. Hardships of a 4T tend to knock out the overpriced and overrated.
As for cable TV -- people are looking for alternatives. Someone who can find a less expensive way to put entertainment into our houses will be richly rewarded.
4. Bad mass culture. Note well that as the Crisis of 1940 approached its climax, Americans gravitated to an omnibus culture that people could enjoy irrespective of region, religion, age, ethnicity, and even level of education. Consider that Big Band music is still highly listenable, and most movies from about 1940 (especially the Miracle Year 1939) are still enjoyable. Someone like me who disparaged special effects as substitutes for good script and acting saw some movies by Marvel studios and has begun to sing a different tune.
The movies are expensive enough to make that bad ones that have 'cult' audiences will fail at the box office. Eighty years after the Miracle Year of American Cinema? That corresponds to the 80-year cycle exactly (if possibly too precisely).
5. Bad political memes. The low levels of approval for Donald Trump demonstrate that even though he won in an electoral freak, he is widely disparaged. With approval around 40 and disapproval approaching 60, some people to the right of the political spectrum find this arch-conservative pol objectionable. People backing him in the House have been knocked off in big numbers in 2018 -- and I will reserve judgment about 2020. America is ready for an omnibus politician, and conservatives are having to reorganize to develop an attractive ideology that does not include the quirks of Donald Trump. If we should end up in a war, we are going to find many quickly-trained military officers who learn the academy honor code, formulated differently in the Service Academies, but essentially the same in meaning:
DO NOT LIE, CHEAT, OR STEAL, and DO NOT TOLERATE SUCH AT ANY TIME!
We will see that applied to all professional activities, including medicine, engineering, research, teaching, accounting, journalism, law, and police work. People who lie, cheat, and steal or tolerate lying, cheating, or stealing will be disgraced and relegated to the economic trash heap -- or worse. In a Crisis Era there is just too much to lose for any inexcusable shortcoming. Honest mistakes that people learn from might have to be tolerated, but dishonest and corrupt behavior will be disastrous.
6. People will be included. People with genuine talent will be sought out and be expected to do their share -- often achieving what they never expected to do. Scapegoating will be a sign of incompetence.
7. Pessimism and any level of disloyalty will be unwelcome. Caution has its merits, but despair that comes with pessimism will serve us badly. If the 4T culminates in war, then plenty of opportunities will arise for treason.
Re: #1: This doesn't happen just during a 4T. During the midst of the last 2T both Nixon and Spiro Agnew got knocked off their perch as did some lesser figures such as Carter's budget director Bert Lance.
...but Nixon and Agnew both died of natural causes as free men. Top leaders of discredited regimes , whether the Russian imperial family or the principal leaders of the Axis regimes, are often killed in harsh judgment.
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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(11-15-2018, 04:07 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: Re: #2: Where would you put the like of Sears, among a few others, who are dying a slow death in the retail world?
Gone forever. People thought Sears not worthy even of a trip until the vulture sales, as I did with Montgomery Ward and Bon-Ton. I did go to a closing Radio Shack, but I forget what I got.
Let me describe the department store. It used to be a better place to work than a factory, relying as it did upon people with 'solid eighth-grade educations' for reliable literacy and numeracy that one did not generally find among semi-literate farm and factory laborers. Retail paid better than raw labor, and at least allowed one to avoid much heavy lifting or getting one's clothes dirty or torn. In the 1930s, industrial workers got unions, and retail clerks did not. Factory labors started doing better, which may also reflect that factory workers also started getting 'solid eighth grade educations'. Retail clerks got paid better if they knew more about the merchandise because they might have to sell something to a customer.
Also during the Great Depression, school attendance by teenagers rose, and far more people started getting high-school diplomas. The retail environment did not change. The pay stabilized at lower real levels after World War II, and the work got a more transient work force: women making a little extra money to save money for a down-payment on a house. students trying to make a little money to support their cars or buy stuff for girlfriends, people not quite sure of whether they wanted to work in an office or factory...
As the pay falls for an occupation, the quality or workers decreases. The joke about Soviet labor-management relations "We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us" fit this job. The store clerk began as a rule to know little about the merchandise. (Note well that in some grocery stores, a meat-cutter might be able to tell you at what setting and for how long to cook some meat or fish. But meat-cutters are skilled tradespeople with an incentive to know about the merchandise).
Retail became the sort of work one did if one had nothing else to do. It paid badly. It was transition work for someone with the 'wrong' college degree or someone who thought office work excessively male-chauvinist. After about two months in a department store, stenography seems fulfilling as it wasn't before one started work in a retail store.
Not getting and keeping good employees long enough to get them onto management tracks, the quality of retail executives became, not surprisingly, execrable. Love of the merchandise? Not for long at that pay level. OK, I will concede that Wal*Mart, Costco, Target, and Meijer (maybe Kohl's) rely heavily upon information management to keep stores supplied, and those entities recruit people to do information management who may have never worked inside a store. The traditional department stores mostly did not do so until it was too late.
In recent years, Sears was consistently rated among the worst companies in which to work. Before that, so was Radio Shack. Notice also that some critical assessments of some college majors is that "if you take that major you might get a job in retail with your degree".
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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We can say things will be purged, but actually nothing is gone forever and virtually everything gets revived in some way at some time or another, probably unfortunately.
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