Neil Howe: 'Civil War Is More Likely Than People Think'

[beechnut79]

(01-14-2019, 07:53 PM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(01-13-2019, 07:57 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(01-13-2019, 05:15 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: [quote pid='40947' dateline='1547394058']
(excised for brevity)

I've had some women use their sexuality  to entice me/attract me or suckle up to me and get close to me   in the past. I'm not in the same league as Trump as having achieved national  celebrity status or multi millionaire or billionaire status but I can relate to what he was caught saying about the sexual nature of  certain liberal minded women to someone off the record that was unknowingly recorded and later given to some person connected with the Democratic campaign and used by the Democrats during the presidential campaign as means to alter public opinion and turn decent minded women against him or turn them away from voting for  him on election day. I mean, lets face it, Stormy Daniels did stuff like that for a living. I'm sure there are all kinds of interesting/sexually enticing and stimulating views of Stormy's crotch available to the public for public view that's either available to see for free or see for a small fee.

You miss the point.

First of all, celebrity status is a mixed blessing. It usually cones with a high income but also with a loss of privacy. If a celebrity does something that Humanity starts to condemn, like sexual harassment recently, one can be ruined and shamed as nobody else can be.

Donald Trump has inherited great wealth from his father, but otherwise he has mostly been famous for being famous. People wanted to deal with him because he is Donald Trump. He has shown himself as the sort of person with whom you count your fingers after dealing with him. Now he is President, and he is shamed for the swine that he is.

He has protection from some consequences of his prior misdeeds because he is President. I expect Democrats to go through a wringer to determine whether they might have walked off with something from the store.

[/quote]
Looks as though R. Kelly is the latest celeb to join the laundry list of those who have paid dearly for post-seasonal, boys-will be boys type behavior.

[Hintergrund]

(01-13-2019, 07:57 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Donald Trump has inherited great wealth from his father

Many people have done - but how many did become as rich as Trump is now?

[Eric the Green]

(02-06-2019, 10:29 AM)Hintergrund Wrote:

(01-13-2019, 07:57 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Donald Trump has inherited great wealth from his father

Many people have done - but how many did become as rich as Trump is now?

Trump didn't do anything to acquire his wealth except manipulate the wealthy New York real estate market. Mostly what he has done is scam people and rip people off to make his money. And he has lost almost as much as he has gained. Americans were stupid to elect a president who is dishonest, power-hungry, spoiled and totally unqualified for the job. And his policies and priorities are almost entirely wrong.

His only talent is his ability to fool and persuade people. He is effective as a speaker and TV personality. He can reach people and make people believe in him. "Everybody likes me" he says.

[Bill the Piper]

(01-14-2019, 09:40 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Prestan prestupovat zakony, idiote!

Is this supposed to be Russian? I cannot find the first two words in my dictionary. Zakony means laws, yes. Idiot is spelled идиот without the -e.

[David Horn]

(02-06-2019, 10:29 AM)Hintergrund Wrote:

(01-13-2019, 07:57 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Donald Trump has inherited great wealth from his father

Many people have done - but how many did become as rich as Trump is now?

Just for the record, we have no idea how wealthy Trump is.  Judging by his general lack of truthfulness, I suspect he's got less now than the $200 Million he inherited from Good Old Dad ™.

[pbrower2a]

(02-06-2019, 12:05 PM)Bill the Piper Wrote:

(01-14-2019, 09:40 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Prestan prestupovat zakony, idiote!

Is this supposed to be Russian? I cannot find the first two words in my dictionary. Zakony means laws, yes. Idiot is spelled идиот without the -e.

It's Czech subtitles for the English "Stop breaking the law, @$$hole!". Sorry -- no hacek which would give it away as Czech, Slovak, Slovene, or Croatian.

I was trying to be cute.

[Bill the Piper]

(02-06-2019, 01:42 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(02-06-2019, 12:05 PM)Bill the Piper Wrote:

(01-14-2019, 09:40 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Prestan prestupovat zakony, idiote!

Is this supposed to be Russian? I cannot find the first two words in my dictionary. Zakony means laws, yes. Idiot is spelled идиот without the -e.

It's Czech subtitles for the English "Stop breaking the law, @$$hole!". Sorry -- no hacek which would give it away as Czech, Slovak, Slovene, or Croatian.

I was trying to be cute.

I'm astonished how similar Czech and Russian are! Do you speak any Czech, BTW?

[pbrower2a]

(02-06-2019, 01:58 PM)Bill the Piper Wrote:

(02-06-2019, 01:42 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(02-06-2019, 12:05 PM)Bill the Piper Wrote:

(01-14-2019, 09:40 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Prestan prestupovat zakony, idiote!

Is this supposed to be Russian? I cannot find the first two words in my dictionary. Zakony means laws, yes. Idiot is spelled идиот without the -e.

It's Czech subtitles for the English "Stop breaking the law, @$$hole!". Sorry -- no hacek which would give it away as Czech, Slovak, Slovene, or Croatian.

I was trying to be cute.

I'm astonished how similar Czech and Russian are! Do you speak any Czech, BTW?

No. I wish I had gotten a good chance to learn a Slavic language as a way of expanding my intellectual universe.

[Tim Randal Walker]

Three suggested outcomes:

1. Conciliation

2. Gridlock

3. Civil War

Because the USA is structured as a federation, another possibility comes to mind-decentralization. Things are loosened up enough that different regions are free to pursue their own visions.

[TnT]

(02-13-2019, 01:57 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: Three suggested outcomes:

1.  Conciliation

2. Gridlock

3.  Civil War

Because the USA is structured as a federation, another possibility comes to mind-decentralization.  Things are loosened up enough that different regions are free to pursue their own visions.

There's an old book, The Nine Nations of North America, by Joel Garreau, published 1981, that outlines a rough model that could work:

A rough description -

Quebec
New England
The Foundry (PA, OH, MI, IN)
Dixie
The Breadbasket (the great plains states)
Mexamerica (parts of TX, NM AZ & southern CA, and Mexico)
Ecotopia (Pacific NW)
The Empty Quarter (Rocky Mountains & much of western & northern Canada & Alaska)

For an old book, I think he divides us up rather nicely and it fits much of the present polarization.  One can also see natural alliances forming between various ones of the areas.

[pbrower2a]

(02-17-2019, 04:36 PM)TnT Wrote:

(02-13-2019, 01:57 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: Three suggested outcomes:

1.  Conciliation

2. Gridlock

3.  Civil War

Because the USA is structured as a federation, another possibility comes to mind-decentralization.  Things are loosened up enough that different regions are free to pursue their own visions.

There's an old book, The Nine Nations of North America, by Joel Garreau, published 1981, that outlines a rough model that could work:

A rough description -

Quebec
New England
The Foundry (PA, OH, MI, IN)
Dixie
The Breadbasket (the great plains states)
Mexamerica (parts of TX, NM AZ & southern CA, and Mexico)
Ecotopia (Pacific NW)
The Empty Quarter (Rocky Mountains & much of western & northern Canada & Alaska)

For an old book, I think he divides us up rather nicely and it fits much of the present polarization.  One can also see natural alliances forming between various ones of the areas.

I saw faults with this division. First, I recognize a huge difference between the Mountain South and the Deep South.Appalachia and the Ozarks are dead-ringers for each other, and they can be connected through southern Indiana, central Kentucky, and south-central Ohio. It is worth remembering for sophisticated northern urbanites even if they are from the three C's of Ohio (Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati): get more than 20 miles east of I-71 while south of I-76, and you are in a foreign country. But the Mountain South is itself very different from the Deep South.

Second, the urban-suburban-rural division is huge. Cleveland and Atlanta have far more in common with each other than they do with rural areas outside their suburban sprawl. A city like Chicago or Denver is very dissimilar from its surroundings and is tolerated despite its difference from the much-more reactionary rural areas that depend upon farming, ranching, or mining. Greater Chicago does about everything other than farming and mining in Illinois; it transports and processes the grain, turns the coal and local limestone (with some Minnesota iron ore) into steel and in turn machinery -- and it processes the notes that farmers pay. That is a stark contrast to "Downstate Illinois" with few parallels elsewhere.

[Eric the Green]

It seems like the Mountain South and the Deep South differ only in the number of African Americans there. But in the Deep South the African Americans remain repressed and out of power, so politically there's little difference.

[pbrower2a]

(02-18-2019, 12:47 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: It seems like the Mountain South and the Deep South differ only in the number of African Americans there. But in the Deep South the African Americans remain repressed and out of power, so politically there's little difference.

The Mountain South was less suited to plantation-based slavery because of its more-rugged terrain and a slightly-cooler climate. Such a state as Tennessee was rifted before the Civil War between the cotton-growing west (with plantation slavery) and the east, whose agriculture was more based upon subsistence farming, typically grains. In a referendum on secession of Tennessee, the referendum was strongly for secession in the planter-dominated west and hostile to secession in the east.

Eastern Tennessee, home of the Mountain folks largely of Scots-Irish origin (as is most of Appalachia south of the New York-Pennsylvania line)  was never friendly to the planters dominating state politics. and they were not going to die to defend slavery.

The paucity of African-Americans indicates (1) that the planters did not command the Mountain South because their way of life was not viable there, and (2) the African-American slaves could never really fit in in the Mountain South. It was pro-Union and anti-slavery because it was hostile to Planter power and domination. It was not friendly to slaves that it saw as part of the problem of Planter domination of state politics.

During the Great Migration, blacks went from the Plantation South to the industrial cities of the North. They found little opportunity in the Mountain South, as was so for many whites in the region. The key to economic success for many from the Mountain South, to the same industrial plants Up North, was to keep driving north on US 19 to Pittsburgh; 21 to Canton, Akron, or Cleveland; 23 to Toledo (and perhaps Detroit via 25), 25 to Cincinnati, Dayton, Toledo, or Detroit; 27 to Fort Wayne or Lansing;  31 to Louisville, Indianapolis, or South Bend; maybe 52 (a diagonal route) leading eventually with 41 to Chicago after Cincinnati or Indianapolis.

[Eric the Green]

These differences existed, but are they relevant today politically? The Deep South white and the Mountain South whites both vote heavily Republican and have the same racist tendencies.

[pbrower2a]

(02-18-2019, 11:31 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: These differences existed, but are they relevant today politically? The Deep South white and the Mountain South whites both vote heavily Republican and have the same racist tendencies.

Mass politics in America depend heavily upon regional coalitions. Poor Southern blacks may have little in common with middle-class Chinese-Americans, but they seem to vote much alike. This said, blacks seem to matter not at all in any former Confederate states except in Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia. Such is a consequence of winner-take-all at the state level. Usually that evens out.

Before 2016 I had suggested that agrarian interests in some Northern  states including Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin usually got overpowered in Presidential elections, but they probably made the difference in America being a shining example of democracy and a snake-pit in 2016.

President Trump's economic policies seem to have a basis in an assumption that the common man has the duty to suffer as much as possible for the economic elites just to earn the privilege of survival. which is exactly how feudal lords, planters, German and Japanese plutocrats of the 1930s, and operators of the Soviet Gulag system or the infamous Tucker Prison Farm of Arkansas see things. People who act upon such beliefs, whether out of traditional cruelty or extreme 'post-modern' narcissism, get horrid results for everyone else.

We are more likely to have a 1929-style implosion of the economy than a civil war. We have had a foretaste of a 1929-style implosion; just look at what happened for a year and a half beginning in the autumn of 2007 and compare it to the year and a half beginning in the autumn of 1929:




I don't have the detail for 2019 yet, but 192% to 158% (my guess of magnitudes from eyeballing the graph) is a 17.8% drop. I see one nasty leading indicator in people being behind in meeting their debts -- the number of people and the volume indicate that people are in trouble and that consumer purchases on debt should slow down.

The Great Depression at the least undid the severe inequality of the 1920s, the Last Hurrah of the Gilded Age, anhd humbled the rich and powerful by forcing them to focus on economic survival instead of on trying to control the political system. The Little Depression of 2007-2009 solved neither such problem, and both problems threaten to implode the American economy. The economic elites recovered quickly an, much unlike the case in the 1930s, funded the destruction of such influence as organized labor has and promoted monopolistic consolidation of the economy, supposedly to promote growth. They got growth, all right -- in economic inequality and the economic distress that it generates.

If I am to take my choice it would be a 1929-1932 meltdown. Such humanized the American economy and created opportunities for mom-and-pop enterprises to fill the gaps that the business failures left behind. It may be ironic, but the 1930s (once the danger of bank runs was over) was one of the best times ever to start a business. Market realities compelled good habits such as caring about customers -- and business loyalty among customers. There was no easy money, so people were obliged to think of the long term (which people seemed to not care about in the 1920s). People who had industrial jobs found that they could not work as many hours. which is when the 40-hour workweek replaced the 60-hour workweek that had been normal in the 1920s.  Perhaps as significantly as anything else, business profits could not easily be funneled into reactionary politics analogous to the Tea Party  and such Hard Right advocacy groups as Club for Growth, Freedom Works!, and Americans for Prosperity.

In the 1930s there was no possibility of a return to the 3T economics that culminated in the Great Depression. In the 2010s we have felt a reversion of capitalism at its most inexcusable harshness since the time of the slave-owning planters. At the least the Gilded Age was a time of great innovation in technology and business methods that changed li9fe for the better.

[Anthony '58]

Remember Bleeding Kansas?

Well Bleeding Portland is coming - on Saturday!

https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2019/08/...tland.html