• OpenStars@startrek.website
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    8 months ago

    Keep in mind that people will PROMISE that, but then not deliver. Worse, they will promise it and then WILL deliver their distorted view of it - an example is Trump “draining the swamp”, which he did, sort of, so long as you define “draining” as “installing” and “swamp/corruption” as “efficient and capable leadership, using fact-based policymaking decisions rather than whoever donates the most gets to wear the shiny hat”.

    If you can just remember that “good=bad” and vice versa, “up=down”, “forward=reverse” and so on, then the fact that conservatives want to “innovate” the nation to “remove corruption” is a “good” thing!:-)

    Sadly, whether we vote on it or not, powerful people are going to implement the 4th Turning regardless. Possibly they will use corporations to become powerful lobbying groups and then after taking over the government from the inside turn around and use the facade of it to take over, or maybe they’ll just do an end-run around it altogether and let us have whatever silly little government we want, while they ignore it and do whatever they please free of interference from it. Most likely they will do both at the same time. Source: they have already been doing both of these for decades, and while corruption goes back beyond the dawn of humankind lately the swing does seem to have turned more towards rather than away from it.

    • flatbield@beehaw.org
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      8 months ago

      Just FYI. By 4th Turning I mean the book. A couple of decades ago there was a book that takes about patterns in US history. The 4th Turning was about 2020 time frame if you followed the book. A turning from the books thesis is a time of political and social unrest. Weakening institutions. Usually a major war. We see signs of this all around us.

      Edit: Feels very pre world war 2 too. America retreating into isolationism. Russia planning to expand. Lot of similarities.

      • OpenStars@startrek.website
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        8 months ago

        I meant that people like Matt Gaetz and MJT are promising to make the 4th turning happen, by escalation of the existing obstructionism and even outright bringing about a second civil war. I do not think it will happen so quickly, but they will try again, and again, and maybe one day it will. So this is a time of “replacement”. But I did not read the book, just a wikipedia article about it, so probably I am not matching up the terms well.