11-07-2022, 03:30 AM
(11-06-2022, 12:33 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(11-02-2022, 08:20 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:(09-18-2022, 07:50 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I have been half wondering what the leftover conservatives would look like as the crisis ends. I feel the crisis fixes the greatest problem facing the culture. The conservatives go for no change, no fix to the problem, continue the problem, often profit off the problem. The progressive come out ahead, forcing a change, fixing the problem…. To me the results of the crisis was more obvious than what would get us here. Covid would be handled. The election would be upheld. Bad cops killing minorities would be no longer acceptable. Voting rights haven’t quite yet been secured, but you could see it happening if the Senate gets a few more votes and the filibuster is canceled. What the problem is is so obvious that the crisis continues until there is a consensus that what is wrong has to be fixed.
And then the conservatives do something. The certainly can’t admit they were wrong, After the Revolution, they moved to Canada. After the Civil War they created the KKK. After the last crisis they stole some of FDR’s best ideas such as regulating the economy and containment. After Trump?
Maybe after the hatred and violence of the recent past one can start to guess. Drive though a peaceful protest of police abuse. Take an assault rifle to a bar full of minorities. Drive from rural to urban areas to give the resident minorities a problem. Implement a violent insurrection. Gerrymandering. Deny lost elections. Impose their culture on all as they did repealing choice. Attack doctors, teachers, poll workers, the DOJ, the FBI.
I can see a rough remnant of MAGA becoming professional bad neighbors. Not most of MAGA. The Big Lie and Trump’s criminality is becoming very obvious, if at a slow pace by people who limit themselves to MAGA loyal media. But there will be a small fraction of those who hate because they have always hated, who make other people miserable because that is what they do.
That is what has to be crushed in the high. It is said that the values of the high support the solutions to the preceding crisis. This hate reflects the methods and attitudes of MAGA. The culture of the high has to reflect that this hate is not acceptable moving forward.
It sounds like your definition of moderate conservative is "people who don't want to change anything", your definition of hard right/Trump supporter is "hateful people who like to shoot innocent victims for no reason", your definition of the crisis of this 4th turning is "bad cops shooting people of color" and your definition of overcoming the 4th turning is "they just need to roll over and agree with us, and we'll pick off the stragglers in the 1T".
In short, this conversation is framed in a way that is going to maximize the chances of people just talking past each other and attacking two oversimplified worldviews which have little to do with addressing real world problems.
In my opinion, that's....exactly what "extreme partisan divides" look like in practice. Regardless of political affiliation, I think it's important for everyone to ask "what are some rational criticisms someone might have of my viewpoints or solutions?" Neither the US government (either party), nor the mass media have even come close to honestly asking themselves this question, and the result is a futile, 3-way stalemate between insular elites who have no idea what 80% of the population really wants, and that 80% of the population bifurcating into two sides of angry populists railing against each other and the government/media/tech/corporate elite and their constituents.
If the right-wing Party is completely irrational, or is bowing to the influence of those hypnotized by the completely irrational, what basis is there for negotiation or reasoned debate and discussion? In past 4Ts there has always been almost none; it has always been war. I would like to think we might have progressed since then and brought history to a higher level. But the MAGA Republicans have exploded that hope to smithereens. This 4T will also likely be resolved by war, although as many observers like Bill Maher and others point out, it won't be two armies fighting from two contiguous territories, but sporadic acts of violence like Jan.6th or like Dylann Roof in many places. It can only be resolved in favor of the Left if the Left commands loyal state well-regulated militias, since if the Left is to be the rebel, it will be outmatched both by private and public militias. Riots in the streets is about all that the Left can muster without state power, and that will not resolve anything. This was all predicted by me through astrology decades ago and in my books and the scenario seems to be coming to pass as I expected.
But a Left or progressive victory is the only way a 4T can be positively resolved so that the nation continues to prosper and eventually progress again. I have predicted this victory. But if the right-wing ever wins the 4T, the nation and its saecula ends, unless rescued by an outside power just as the USA itself rescued Europe and Japan after their failed 4Ts last time. But who will rescue the USA this time?
The secretive, moneyed interests behind the Republican Party are anything but irrational. They are consummately ruthless, with no principle beyond getting everything possible. They lie, and they cheat, and whether what they do other than that constitutes stealing is a question of definition.
I am one to interpret "Thou shalt not steal" to constructively include "thou shalt not exploit".
The lying is the use of dark money funds to convince people that anyone who does not believe in absolute plutocracy seeks the dissolution of all the threads of civil society. Hiring or retaining people to do the lying for one is lying just as much as hiring a hitman to do a murder that succeeds is murder.
Of course this time the hit is not on a spouse for insurance payout or to "rub out" some witness who exposes a criminal deed. The intended murder is of democracy itself.
They sponsor intellectual fraud, hiring people to do such, so they are culpable of the fraud. Intellectual fraud may be perfectly legal unless one makes money off it, as did Clifford Irving with the forged "Hitler Diary" or Mark Hoffmann with some fake documents involving the LDS Church. This intellectual fraud slanders any politician not a firm believer in pure plutocracy on behalf of those people who wish to have asset ownership or connection to the rich-and-powerful who own those assets to wield all political and hence economic power over everyone. Such was the theory behind Mussolini's "corporate state" in which the government represented the owners and executives of industries and pretended that a worker in a steel mill had the same interests as the owner of the steel mill and that a bank clerk had the same interests in economic results as the magnates who owned the bank. Intellectual fraud can be extremely dangerous, as with racist tracts such as Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion or Madison Grant's racist tome The Passing of the Great Race.
Some people distrust democracy because it can force accountability onto people who have great economic power. They might tolerate some perverse version such as one that represents wealth instead of people and silences the poor. It denies the reality of a Class Struggle, an essential part of the political debate even if such does not quite lead to Marxist conclusions. Those people may believe in precisely what Marxists deem the morally-damnable character of capitalism, defending to the death (of plenty of cannon fodder in wars and political offenders in unauthorized dissent).
Concentration of power in few hands is the essence of all oligarchy. Oligarchic power is the foundation of all inhuman social orders.
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.
