Polyticks: Bob Butler's Perspective

An alternate home for the community from the legacy Fourth Turning Forum
User avatar
Bob Butler
Posts: 1463
Joined: Wed Jun 10, 2020 9:48 am
Location: East of the moon, west of the sun
Contact:

You're serious?

Post by Bob Butler »

John wrote:
Thu Mar 02, 2023 12:23 pm
CNN's hysterical, vitriolic, over the top hatred of Fox News has nothing to do with any of those fake news issues. The hatred is not red or blue. It's green. CNN is off the rails because Fox's ratings are so much higher than CNN's.
If so, that would be quite absurd. There are lots of MSM outlets, but only one Fox. They could hardly hope to compete one on one for market share. The hatred is because the perverse motives are so obvious and the Fox audience is either absurdly gullible or pretend to be. They actually believe the Big Lie. How gullible can one be?

John
Posts: 11479
Joined: Sat Sep 20, 2008 12:10 pm
Location: Cambridge, MA USA
Contact:

Re: Polyticks: Bob Butler's Perspective

Post by John »

Yes, I'm serious.

User avatar
Bob Butler
Posts: 1463
Joined: Wed Jun 10, 2020 9:48 am
Location: East of the moon, west of the sun
Contact:

Some reasons for the hate...

Post by Bob Butler »

Really? Let’s look at the motives behind the Big Lie and see if they are really fake news and give someone with a blue perspective reason to hate those with a red perspective.

The primary motive was to keep Trump as president. It was maintaining power by improper means and not by helping the people. Look at the speaker. Backroom deals in exchange for power? Same thing. MAGA, making deals to get their own way. Not bothering to come up with an agenda of kitchen table issues that would help the people? That is one way the red major players are viewed, and the MSM dislike it. They have good reason to. Not fake news at all, but a very real behavioral problem by the big Republicans.

Money motivation by Murdoch. Reporting on under oath court testimony. Not fake news. As solid as you can get. One MSNBC host - who admittedly was as vitriolic and serious about red misbehavior as any - claimed that he absolutely did not let the stock price of his parent companies affect how he was reporting facts and opinion. Nor was he asked to. A serious news organization wouldn’t have it any other way. Murdoch was and is not running a serious news organization. No wonder the main stream does not respect them, labels them as a propaganda organization rather than a news organization. Less hate than contempt.

And there is the association of MAGA politics with racism. Attacks on peaceful protestors. Republicans voting as a block against police reform and voting reform. Fake news? Or did this happen? Did this build the hatred?

It easy to ignore an issue by endlessly chanting ‘fake news’ and closing your mind. In doing so you will fail to see why power hungry, greedy, racist conservatives are quite honestly and vigorously hated. If you do not admit there is a problem, you have no chance of solving it.

I have said often enough that the conservative faction collapses at the end of each crisis. In earlier crises the conservative faction championed such dubious causes as colonial imperialism, slavery and isolationism, and seen instead independence, freedom and containment triumph as key American values going on. This is in the progress of repeating. Truth this time. The lies have to stop. The facts have to be checked. If you make yourself willfully blind to what is coming and why, this will not stop it from happening. You will end up dizzy and not comprehending.

That being said, your contributors here are less into these mind patterns than many conservatives. Oh, some will embrace hate, oppression and death of those who are different. A lot are more concerned with international conflict than spending time defending domestic policy. But this is a crisis. A major change in culture and values is due. You should allow yourself to be aware of what is coming.

Well, other than indictments, but those too.

User avatar
Bob Butler
Posts: 1463
Joined: Wed Jun 10, 2020 9:48 am
Location: East of the moon, west of the sun
Contact:

Racism

Post by Bob Butler »

John wrote:
Thu Mar 02, 2023 3:21 pm
The number of anti-Semitic events has been increasing sharply in the last two years.
I doubt it is just anti-semetic, but against many minorities. With whites heading out of the majority and Trump encouraging kickback, lots of minorities are feeling the pressure and rebelling against it. To me it is a flourish of the Generational Dynamic premise, hate, oppress and kill those that are different.

User avatar
Bob Butler
Posts: 1463
Joined: Wed Jun 10, 2020 9:48 am
Location: East of the moon, west of the sun
Contact:

Racism

Post by Bob Butler »

John wrote:
Thu Mar 02, 2023 3:21 pm
The number of anti-Semitic events has been increasing sharply in the last two years.
I don't think it is just the Jews, but many minorities. With demographics shifting away from the dominant white culture and Trump encouraging friction, there have been indents all around, with BLM, immigration and sexual orientation incidents highlighting the problem. It is in great part the Generational Dynamics central thrust. People hate, oppress and kill those that are different. This very real instinct has to be fought by an equally strong cultural rejection of that instinct.

User avatar
Bob Butler
Posts: 1463
Joined: Wed Jun 10, 2020 9:48 am
Location: East of the moon, west of the sun
Contact:

High?

Post by Bob Butler »

We are approaching the crisis peak. I predicted three collapses, Putin, Xi and Trump. All are well visible, but not yet complete. Until all three have happened, resolved and the never again steps taken, I won’t call the crisis over.

But…. Following the crisis is the high, where one focus is on infrastructure. In the guided age, they built the railroads. In the 1950s, the interstates. Recently Biden and McConnell put together a bipartisan infrastructure bill, which led to their standing together near a bridge long overdue for repair in the midwest. That was an early marker that the high is starting. For all the doom and gloom you see here, look to that for what is coming.

User avatar
Bob Butler
Posts: 1463
Joined: Wed Jun 10, 2020 9:48 am
Location: East of the moon, west of the sun
Contact:

Bogus accusations?

Post by Bob Butler »

Cool Breeze wrote:
Fri Mar 03, 2023 7:47 pm
More censoring? Curious, as the bish keeps the lies going, but remains unscathed here.
What lies and censorship? You make vague accusations but nothing specific. Differences of opinion, definitely. I have noted a bunch of pessimistic sometimes doomsday predictions from various posters, quite the opposite of what the S&H patterns describe. I would expect after a crisis you see a conservative collapse and an infrastructure fed boom. Freedman’s opinion was opposite enough S&H that a counter opinion seemed appropriate. I do see that if Putin and Xi collapse there will be less need for containment. With our borders being with non expansionist countries, we have been free to help others who are not so lucky. Perhaps our tremendous military spending could be curtailed later on. Still, until China and Russia do collapse, mid crisis is hardly the time.

Clarkmod
Posts: 184
Joined: Sat Oct 23, 2021 10:15 am

Re: Polyticks: Bob Butler's Perspective

Post by Clarkmod »

Bob Butler wrote:
Fri Mar 03, 2023 10:30 am
Tom Mazanec wrote:
Fri Mar 03, 2023 6:36 am
Ukraine: The Tunnel at the End of the Light
February 28, 2023
By Robert Freeman
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/02/28/u ... -the-light
The future will be very different for the U.S. than it has been for the past 80 years, since the end of World War II when it towered over the rest of the world like a giant among pygmies. Ukraine will prove to have been the turning point in this transformation, the tunnel at the end of the light.
Or you could look at it as a typical crisis. There is a struggle, then the conservative faction collapses. The prediction seems to be that containment will fail. Like the last crisis, a few countries are taking on the rest of the world, and are getting bit partly by the rest of the world, but as much by themselves. This is play it again, Sam, a lack of recognition that taking on the economic centered majority of powers is a bad idea. Sure, there is a steep cost, but fighting a crisis war always has a significant cost. Compared to the last few crises, this is a small one.

Clarkmod
Posts: 184
Joined: Sat Oct 23, 2021 10:15 am

Re: Polyticks: Bob Butler's Perspective

Post by Clarkmod »

Higgenbotham wrote:
Sat Mar 04, 2023 1:08 pm
Bob Butler wrote:
Sat Mar 04, 2023 4:01 am
I have noted a bunch of pessimistic sometimes doomsday predictions from various posters, quite the opposite of what the S&H patterns describe.
From The Fourth Turning,
The next Fourth Turning is due to begin shortly after the new
millennium, midway through the Oh-Oh decade. Around the year 2005,
a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood. Remnants of the old social
order will disintegrate. Political and economic trust will implode. Real
hardship will beset the land, with severe distress that could involve
questions of class, race, nation, and empire. Yet this time of trouble will
bring seeds of social rebirth. Americans will share a regret about recent
mistakes—and a resolute new consensus about what to do. The very
survival of the nation will feel at stake. Sometime before the year 2025,
America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with
the American Revolution, Civil War, and twin emergencies of the Great
Depression and World War II.

The risk of catastrophe will be very high. The nation could erupt into
insurrection or civil violence, crack up geographically, or succumb to
authoritarian rule. If there is a war, it is likely to be one of maximum
risk and effort—in other words, a total war. Every Fourth Turning has
registered an upward ratchet in the technology of destruction, and in
mankind's willingness to use it. In the Civil War, the two capital cities
would surely have incinerated each other had the means been at hand.
In World War II, America invented a new technology of annihilation,
which the nation swiftly put to use. This time, America will enter a
Fourth Turning with the means to inflict unimaginable horrors and,
perhaps, will confront adversaries who possess the same.

Yet Americans will also enter the Fourth Turning with a unique
opportunity to achieve a new greatness as a people. Many despair that
values that were new in the 1960s are today so entwined with social
dysfunction and cultural decay that they can no longer lead anywhere
positive. Through the current Unraveling era, that is probably true. But
in the crucible of Crisis, that will change. As the old civic order gives
way, Americans will have to craft a new one. This will require a values
consensus and, to administer it, the empowerment of a strong new
political regime. If all goes well, there could be a renaissance of civic
trust, and more: Today's Third Turning problems—that Rubik's Cube of
crime, race, money, family, culture, and ethics —will snap into a Fourth
Turning solution. America's post-Crisis answers will be as organically
interconnected as today's pre-Crisis questions seem hopelessly tangled.
By the 2020s, America could become a society that is good, by today's
standards, and also one that works.

Thus might the next Fourth Turning end in apocalypse—or glory. The
nation could be ruined, its democracy destroyed, and millions of people
scattered or killed. Or America could enter a new golden age,
triumphantly applying shared values to improve the human condition.
The rhythms of history do not reveal the outcome of the coming Crisis;
all they suggest is the timing and dimension.

Clarkmod
Posts: 184
Joined: Sat Oct 23, 2021 10:15 am

Re: Polyticks: Bob Butler's Perspective

Post by Clarkmod »

Higgenbotham wrote:
Sat Mar 04, 2023 1:58 pm
This is an addendum to my previous post.
John wrote:
Tue Apr 14, 2020 9:42 pm
** 14-Apr-2020 World View: Simultaneous cataclysmic crises

In the last century, the following three cataclysmic crises took place
ten years apart:
  • 1918-1919 Spanish Flu pandemic
  • 1929 Stock market panic and crash
  • 1940-45 World War II
Today, all three of these cataclysmic crises are occurring
simultaneously. In addition, the WW I and WW II fault lines and
timelines have been combined.

So the economic crisis will be much worse than the Great Depression,
and the war will be much worse than WW II.

I still don't agree that the world is headed for a new dark age, as
you claim, but I do agree that this is the best evidence so far that
supports your view.
I would agree with that assessment. This is a quote from last year, referring back to 2011 where we discussed the possibility of "multiple converging events".
Higgenbotham wrote:
Sun Mar 03, 2019 12:14 pm
I think there is something majorly different now versus the last crisis era, and that is the idea of multiple converging events mentioned 8 years ago when Lily was on the board. Some say this is like 1929, and I think they are right. Some say this is like 1937, and I think they are right. I think this crisis is going to hit with full force on all cylinders, all at once - economic, political, and social.

2011. I think this is just a fancy way of saying that kicking the can down the road until you run out of road is not necessarily a good idea.


Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 4 guests