Professor Thanks for this great reprise. Always good to go over again what a big part of the big picture looks like. i know they must pay you something for this, but of course it is not really about the money. I post things because I have little choice, call it lack of or little self restraint. At least you have self restraint, circumspection, discretion, or some such things as that. All the best
Thinking of Germany you avoided the great dictator comparisons by showing a nuanced knowledge of german history across the last century and a half. This is a welcome relief to the simplistic mentality in anglosaxon countries of sausage, mercedes, oktoberfest and ww2 when thinking Germany. Thank you. The two articles above show how 1) regime change and perpetual bombing has created islamist terrorism and the racist ant islamism of trump campaign is just a logical response. To blame non PC talk about terrorists as evil while condoning decades of mass murder in muslim countries is the height of hypocrisy much as the abuse of minority electorates by bougeois bohemes bobo american left to maintain power and epand wealth with rich conservatives hand in hand( end scene of animal farm by orwell). (Article is by an iranian american)2) Pepe Escobar's thoughtful intellectually stimulating article on use of twitter, facebook, instagram to bypass tv, broadsheets as opinionmakers seems to me to show Trump to have the makings of a propaganda genius like Goebbels. I recall Hitler's use of new medium radio and his mastery of public speaking, manipulation of masses got him very far.
So we have here an ancien regime of privileged elites,bobos and lobbyists, old blood lines, etc. with a postwar ideology of antirussian western hegemony on autopilot even after the fall of the wall(to a hammer every problem is a nail) expanding free trade, open borders, antiracism(PC ideology) on basis that the opposite caused last war but ignoring that anything, even good things, taken to their logical extremes, become those things themselves. Free trade in extremis means corporate monopoly without democratic control over global economy. Open borders meansendless turmoil and racial strife as social order decays due to complete lack of cultural norms and social stability. Antiracism includes quotas like an indian caste system, forced assimilation, of minorities, dictatorial speech controls. Meanwhile in support of all of this US military and Dollar hegemony are seen as without an alternative due to lack of democratic basis on earth in Russia, China, India, Arab countries. Only the West went through the eye of the needle of the enlightenment and democratization in last two centuries and is able to speak for humanity in terms of human rights, economic theory representing individual freedom. Other cultures, communist, postcommunist, postcolonial third world are way behind 'us' in social evolutionary progress, so we maintain our 'white man's burden' to control everything from Nato, Washington, IMF, western media monopoly, USD.
Like Catholic church in Luther's time, hypocrisy was rife in ideological elite.Printing press invention led to a similar spread of pamphlet propaganda, samizdat literature which toppled the religious monopoly, similar to enlightenment French philosophers setting ground for French revolution. Internet revolution allowed Arab spring, new parties of right wing in in Europe and Obama's victory in USA(ironically Trump's campaign role model).
So this victory has many historical parallels including ideologically encrusted regimes which were originally good turning evil ovr time in a cyclical fashion as in generational theory and in the linear development of technology upsetting power structures, going back to Alexander the great this was the case. The more things change the more they stay the same.
I'll but that Bush (W)'s presidency might mark a cusp. But it seems wrong that that presidency will define the coming generation, something that I think is key to the Strauss and Howe ideas. Among other things: * The war in Iraq was (deliberately) not the kind of all encompassing war WW2 was. Most Millennials are not touched by the war (unlike the GI generation). ISIS *may* change this, but that seems doubtful right now. * Few Millennials are self defined as in opposition to Islam/middle-east. For most, this is simply a non-issue. For the rest, most are self defined as inclusive. * Bush (and Trump's) candidacies were driven in large part by the fears of older people. There is a much better candidate for a generational defining crisis... The last decade or more we've watched the internet function as a tidal wave remaking almost every institution that the prior cycle knew: * Old media is (almost) dead - Trump in his way is the first Social Media president. * Our economy is now almost entirely driven by the internet. Old business models still work, but do not drive change. * Education, experiencing a near crisis in cost increases will increasingly look to internet like technologies (let alone the role that the internet now plays in disseminating knowledge of all sorts). * Both the Trump and Sanders presidencies suggest that future candidates will come not from the party faithful but from elsewhere, using the internet. More significantly, Millennials see themselves as defined by the internet.
3 comments:
Professor
Thanks for this great reprise. Always good to go over again what a big part of the big picture looks like.
i know they must pay you something for this, but of course it is not really about the money.
I post things because I have little choice, call it lack of or little self restraint.
At least you have self restraint, circumspection, discretion, or some such things as that.
All the best
http://theantimedia.org/trump-scapegoat-obamas-failures/
http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/11/17/welcome-brave-new-trumpolitical-trumponomic-world.html
Thinking of Germany you avoided the great dictator comparisons by showing a nuanced knowledge of german history across the last century and a half. This is a welcome relief to the simplistic mentality in anglosaxon countries of sausage, mercedes, oktoberfest and ww2 when thinking Germany. Thank you. The two articles above show how 1) regime change and perpetual bombing has created islamist terrorism and the racist ant islamism of trump campaign is just a logical response. To blame non PC talk about terrorists as evil while condoning decades of mass murder in muslim countries is the height of hypocrisy much as the abuse of minority electorates by bougeois bohemes bobo american left to maintain power and epand wealth with rich conservatives hand in hand( end scene of animal farm by orwell). (Article is by an iranian american)2) Pepe Escobar's thoughtful intellectually stimulating article on use of twitter, facebook, instagram to bypass tv, broadsheets as opinionmakers seems to me to show Trump to have the makings of a propaganda genius like Goebbels. I recall Hitler's use of new medium radio and his mastery of public speaking, manipulation of masses got him very far.
So we have here an ancien regime of privileged elites,bobos and lobbyists, old blood lines, etc. with a postwar ideology of antirussian western hegemony on autopilot even after the fall of the wall(to a hammer every problem is a nail) expanding free trade, open borders, antiracism(PC ideology) on basis that the opposite caused last war but ignoring that anything, even good things, taken to their logical extremes, become those things themselves. Free trade in extremis means corporate monopoly without democratic control over global economy. Open borders meansendless turmoil and racial strife as social order decays due to complete lack of cultural norms and social
stability. Antiracism includes quotas like an indian caste system, forced assimilation, of minorities, dictatorial speech controls. Meanwhile in support of all of this US military and Dollar hegemony are seen as without an alternative due to lack of democratic basis on earth in Russia, China, India, Arab countries. Only the West went through the eye of the needle of the enlightenment and democratization in last two centuries and is able to speak for humanity in terms of human rights, economic theory representing individual freedom. Other cultures, communist, postcommunist, postcolonial third world are way behind 'us' in social evolutionary progress, so we maintain our 'white man's burden' to control everything from Nato, Washington, IMF, western media monopoly, USD.
Like Catholic church in Luther's time, hypocrisy was rife in ideological elite.Printing press invention led to a similar spread of pamphlet propaganda, samizdat literature which toppled the religious monopoly, similar to enlightenment French philosophers setting ground for French revolution. Internet revolution allowed Arab spring, new parties of right wing in in Europe and Obama's victory in USA(ironically Trump's campaign role model).
So this victory has many historical parallels including ideologically encrusted regimes which were originally good turning evil ovr time in a cyclical fashion as in generational theory and in the linear development of technology upsetting power structures, going back to Alexander the great this was the case. The more things change the more they stay the same.
I'll but that Bush (W)'s presidency might mark a cusp.
But it seems wrong that that presidency will define the coming generation, something that I think is key to the Strauss and Howe ideas. Among other things:
* The war in Iraq was (deliberately) not the kind of all encompassing war WW2 was. Most Millennials are not touched by the war (unlike the GI generation). ISIS *may* change this, but that seems doubtful right now.
* Few Millennials are self defined as in opposition to Islam/middle-east. For most, this is simply a non-issue. For the rest, most are self defined as inclusive.
* Bush (and Trump's) candidacies were driven in large part by the fears of older people.
There is a much better candidate for a generational defining crisis...
The last decade or more we've watched the internet function as a tidal wave remaking almost every institution that the prior cycle knew:
* Old media is (almost) dead - Trump in his way is the first Social Media president.
* Our economy is now almost entirely driven by the internet. Old business models still work, but do not drive change.
* Education, experiencing a near crisis in cost increases will increasingly look to internet like technologies (let alone the role that the internet now plays in disseminating knowledge of all sorts).
* Both the Trump and Sanders presidencies suggest that future candidates will come not from the party faithful but from elsewhere, using the internet.
More significantly, Millennials see themselves as defined by the internet.
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