Polyticks: Bob Butler's Perspective

[Bob Butler]

Yes.

I've since noted that the fake electors were major Republicans in borderline states that Biden won. Could they be charged with seditious conspiracy? In most states they were a major part of the overthrow plan. Would 20 years plus being disqualified from office be the implied threat to the Republicans hesitant to push a pardon gambit?

Gads, I hope the end game doesn't get that wild.

[Bob Butler]

I note one issue in the recent SVB collapse is the Democratic propensity for regulation to prevent disaster, and the Republican tendency to free institutions from regulation. I suppose one case supporting regulation? I don't see a country wide pattern as there was in 2008, but it is making a bunch of people nervous. I get the feeling that enough nervous to paranoid people could cause this to cascade.

I know two financial service companies that I have dealt with (a safety deposit box and a car loan) recently sent a "Don't Panic" e mails. Not inclined to panic.

One big high powered lawyer on MSNBC gave her formal legal and economic opinion. If she didn't make firm rules for her teenaged son, he would be an idiot. She figures that the same could be said for SVP's decision makers.

[Bob Butler]

It seems like Bing and ChatGPT are more describing what Strauss and Howe came up with, the idea of an all out crisis conflict every four score and seven years. What John added was the Marco Polo bridge effect, that there is an instinct to hate, oppress, and/or kill those that are different. Related, sure, but not the same.

[Bob Butler]

But this didn't stop the Japanese taking a huge risk by attacking America.

Even in the Industrial Age, the risk for military expansionist cultures was the defensive economic cultures uniting against you, This was the problem that confronted Napoleon and Hitler. It has grown greater in this age of deliberate containment, not to mention sanctions, proxy war and insurgent war.

This doesn’t mean the WW II Japanese weren’t taking a big risk. They were. But in order to maintain their existing aggression they needed the raw materials to the south. They underestimated the reaction of the ‘soft isolationist’ Americans, the waking of the sleeping giant. Aggressive conquest was and is becoming more and more a risk. The question is whether Xi will take it. He has enough problems as is. He needs the capital that the remnants of globalism is providing.

[Bob Butler]

Just learned from Dr. Ben Carson on Fox News that immigrants from Nigeria and Ghana have no wealth gap with whites in America, because of their hard work culture.

This is never mentioned by liberals because it violates their narrative.

Nigeria is 11th in West Africa and 100th out of 163 countries globally. Nigeria has an income inequality of 1 to 14 for the top 10% to the bottom 50% of the population and 1 to 37 for the top 1% to the bottom 50%.

Wealth disparity in Ghana is extreme. The top 10% of Ghanaians consume more than the bottom 60%, and the lowest 10% only consume only 2%

(On the US.) By 2021, the top 10% of households by net worth owned 70% of the country's wealth. Between 2007 and 2019, household wealth declined for all but the top 20%, despite a historic period of GDP growth. The wealth divide is further explained by differences in ownership of key assets and debts.

I suspect that immigrants going to Nigeria and Ghana are doing so to take advantage of a good opportunity. Immigrants to the US are moving to avoid hardship and oppression. Fox, thanks to the Dominion discovery, will clearly lie to the people to tell them what they want to hear. Thus they increase ratings and as a result advertising. For many at Fox, it is all about the money. Yet, I mostly believe them this time. It is a case of apples and oranges. The people are immigrating for very different reasons.

But I did take a look at the wealth divide numbers. The answers came from divergent sources, likely with different methodologies and agendas. They should be taken with a grain of salt. Still, they illustrate that wealth inequality is a global problem. A few have absurdly much, while many have little or nothing, I assume it is much the same elsewhere, hardly unique to the three countries.

This does not seem to have risen to a crisis issue this time around. Issues like BLM, Covid, the Big Lie, the insurrection, China's troubles and the Ukraine war have been much more to the foreground. Yet, I have a feeling that come the next crisis, a few people taking most of the wealth will be a big priority and target. The Democrats do talk about taxing the rich. In any given issue, you have to expect the Democrats backing the people and labor, the Republicans backing the elites and corporations. Some movement in either direction has taken place under various administrations. But this has been a sideshow compared to the big issues? I suspect it won’t be next time around.

[Bob Butler]

As I pointed out in my post, the Democrats were corrupted long before Trump.

Both Clintons and the Bidens deserve(d) criminal charges. Obama, Bush II, and Kamala, and MGT are examples of flaming incompetents. So we have had our pick of criminals and/or incompetents for quite a while.

Looking at it from the Strauss and Howe perspective, part of it is that Trump chose the wrong side of all the crisis issues. Economy over lives with Covid. Prejudice over equality with BLM. Criminality over rule of law with his multiple impeachments and other legal difficulties. Putin and aggression over NATO and containment internationally, though admittedly Trump’s time was before the invasion of Ukraine.

I kind of expect such questionable behavior in an unravelling. I expect a faction will arise which favors the old way of life, continuing as we always have, representing the old values. I expect that faction to lose come the crisis peak, that the greatest problems confronting the culture will be solved. From that angle, Trump better personifies the crisis than any gray champion has in the past. While Washington, Lincoln and FDR should not feel their place in history threatened, George III, Jefferson Davis and Herbert Hoover will certainly have to make space in the loser’s room.

It is just that we have an entire executive agency, the Department of Justice, that has nothing to do but step on the worst example of criminality. There is a firm partisan bias here. Democratic politicians of the unravelling are viewed here even more poorly than they really were. But really, when the crisis comes to a head, the problems are solved, and the person who stands for the old culture takes the blame.

It is just that this time around he really deserves it. Well, colonial imperialism, slavery and no regulation of the economy with isolationism were worse? Maybe not. Still, Trump has earned his place is the loser’s room.

Each crisis America steps forward. American values become more than what they have been in the past. Trump has certainly personified where there is room for improvement.

[Bob Butler]

It gave me a chance to comment on a political party being 'pure'.

Granted, I should have used a much less extreme word than pure. Still, I show the current conservative alliance being between bigots, criminals, religious fanatics trying to impose their doctrine on those who don’t share it, elites, corporations and those who value economics over lives.

Each crisis massively upgrades American values. Colonial Imperialism, bad. Slavery, bad. Industrialization, good. Regulating the economy, good. Containment of autocratic conquest, good. What could compare with that? Well,Trump found a way.

[Another guest]

I show the current Leftist alliance being between bigots, criminals, woke fanatics trying to impose their doctrine on those who don’t share it, elites, corporations and those who value economics over lives.

There. I fixed it for you.

[Bob Butler]

I show the current Leftist alliance being between bigots, criminals, woke fanatics trying to impose their doctrine on those who don’t share it, elites, corporations and those who value economics over lives.

There. I fixed it for you.

Hmm. When has a democratic administration since FDR has as many felons as Trump managed? And woke means many things to many people. To a progressive it is the secular equivalent of the christian 'love thy neighbor'. To a conservative, they mangle the meaning to mean something quite different in order to be able to criticize it meaningfully.

But if you would rather remain blind to history, convolute away.

[Bob Butler]

It's clear from this list that Israel is going through lunacy just like America. This happens because both countries are in a generational Crisis Era, and the lunacy will end when these countries face an existential crisis in the form of World War III.

Thing is, Israel’s judicial reform problem and our problems with Trump have little to do with the external war crises. It is up to the autocratic expansionist states to figure out that trying conflict is a losing proposition in the Information Age. Putin is giving them a hand there with his Ukraine difficulties. In Trump’s case, the recent elections seem to show the flirting with unraveling autocratic conservative politics is turning around, heading for the usual crisis peak collapse. The Democrats claiming the woman’s health care, common sense weapons control and law and order votes is leaving the opposition grasping. I have been following Israel less well, but from the looks of Netanyahu’s lack of popularity they are drifting the same way.