Polyticks: Bob Butler's Perspective

An alternate home for the community from the legacy Fourth Turning Forum
John
Posts: 11478
Joined: Sat Sep 20, 2008 12:10 pm
Location: Cambridge, MA USA
Contact:

Re: Polyticks: Bob Butler's Perspective

Post by John »

"John, with his advocacy of rape" -- Fuck you. I never advocated rape.

User avatar
Bob Butler
Posts: 1462
Joined: Wed Jun 10, 2020 9:48 am
Location: East of the moon, west of the sun
Contact:

The Survival of the Fittest

Post by Bob Butler »

A few general trends. Progressives are more helpful of those in need, supporting things like increased domestic spending and sanctuary cities. The MAGA faction plays more with the truth, dealing with the Big Lie and endless conspiracy theories. Progressives are more inclined to embrace diverse cultures, people and values. Both parties have at times embraced containment and law an order.

But there is another axis of sorts.

Darwin’s theory can be summarized as the survival of the fittest. This is fine as a scientific theory. It is less fine as a basis for a moral system. You can conquer rival racial, religious or political groups to spread your genes. You can take lives, property or women to the same ends. You rapidly can find yourself practicing invasion and criminality and opposing containment and law and order if one gets a bit enthusiastic about being fit. One aspect of Generational Dynamics is being aware of this trend in individuals and cultures. I’m with the awareness. I’m against embracing crime and invasion.

One might consider there to be a conflict between making your own culture more fit, or making it more pleasant. You can become more fit, superior, or you can become more wishy washy, suppressing conquest and crime. From this perspective, I would prefer pleasant over fit. I would prefer rule of law and containment over crime and invasion.

But is fit really winning? Is Russia confronting NATO containment winning? Is prejudice winning? Did the insurrection succeed? Is it clear that using violence selfishly, being fit, is really a survival trait? Is there a backwards perspective on fit?

I would hope so.

User avatar
Bob Butler
Posts: 1462
Joined: Wed Jun 10, 2020 9:48 am
Location: East of the moon, west of the sun
Contact:

A Minor Personal Encounter

Post by Bob Butler »

Last week I lost my glucose meter, which led me to replace it. A short time later, I got a note from UPS that something was being shipped from a company, Luxsan, which I had never heard of before. Luxan? Tracking it through UPS I found out they were from a suburb of Shanghai. From there the package followed a familiar route, Anchorage, Louisville, Manchester New Hampshire, here.

So I am guessing my glucose meter is made in China. The various disease, economic and political disruptions are not yet effecting at least some echos of globalism.

User avatar
Bob Butler
Posts: 1462
Joined: Wed Jun 10, 2020 9:48 am
Location: East of the moon, west of the sun
Contact:

Lies, Crimes and Racism

Post by Bob Butler »

Cool Breeze wrote:
Sun Dec 11, 2022 7:33 pm
The reason we generally can't talk to the man, or understand anything he says (apart from lacking any coherent statements), is that he uses general terms like this. And thinks he knows what he means when he levels charges, which are always buzzwords that have no support whatsoever ("lies", "crimes", "racism", etc)
Federal crimes are created by Congress, fall into felonies and misdemeanors, are listed in the US Code, and you are considered guilty if a jury convicts you or you enter a guilty plea. That is widely and officially defined. States and territories have similar procedures. Lies and racism are not as officially defined, but they are just a well understood. By most people. Cool Breeze has a habit of altering what other people mean when they use a word and come to a conclusion he doesn’t like. Once again, as per the forum rules, I am asking him to cease referencing me. This is John’s thread, not to be polluted by personal attacks.

User avatar
Bob Butler
Posts: 1462
Joined: Wed Jun 10, 2020 9:48 am
Location: East of the moon, west of the sun
Contact:

Crises

Post by Bob Butler »

Guest wrote:
Tue Dec 13, 2022 5:39 am
In a mark of how insidious the modern age truly is, there are those in the establishment and its various tentacles, especially the Guardian, that perceive themselves to be the owners of the truth. As its owners, they cannot allow the truth to be challenged or even discussed. This applies to their ideas about Covid and climate change and anything else that they declare to be off limits.
There are many areas where conservatives might be honorable and coherent in their worldview. I see many of these areas focusing on formerly progressive values. Independence in the Revolution. Freedom in the Civil War. Containment in FDR’s time. It’s not as if I oppose conservatives for wanting to sustain the best of America. They have their place.

But worldviews contradict.

Prejudice. In a time when minorities are coming to outnumber whites, some want white culture to remain held superior and to oppress.

Religious fanatics. They wish the government to enforce religious doctrine in a time where secular perceptions are growing in strength. They don’t seem to see these ancient values as building hostility among women. I have no opposition to worshipping God as one wishes, but imposing these wishes on a massive voting opposition?

Elites. In politics, they provide much money and few votes. Giving political power to a few cannot be sustained.

And as Guest said, those who submerge themselves in such views perceive themselves to be owners of the truth. During a time when many have moved on from these old values, they are trying to force them anyway. Overturn Roe. Enter a minority club with an assault rifle and intent. Push to grow an already absurd division of wealth. Have worldview, try to impose it on others.

Does Covid exist? Did it become politicized, with the Republican hostility to precautions result in Republican deaths? In watching the news recently they had 76% more Republican deaths than Democrat after the vaccines came out. Should this be contested? Is there an obligation by the healers and politicians to preserve lives? Should the Republicans try so hard to kill their own?

Hurricanes in Florida? Fires in California? Floods and power outages in Texas? Rising sea levels? Are these real? Are the progressive correct to try to do what we can to alleviate them?

So, sure, people who hold various worldviews advocate them. One side advocates for prejudice, enforcing religious doctrines on those who do not share faith, and exaggerating division of wealth. The other wants to save lives and preserve the environment.

We are in a crisis. The conservative faction attempts to preserve ill considered obsolete values. The progressive faction introduces new ones. The progressive side comes out on top. Do you wonder why it always ends up that way in the American crises? Why do we avoid being the colony in a colonial imperialistic relationship? Why did our industrial sector establish dominance over the agricultural? Why does our government regulate the economy?

The solutions to the greatest problems confronting the culture get implemented. The solutions become the new values.

It is natural for conservatives to cling to what was, for progressives to fix what is broken. Inevitable. Regrettable. Today, the struggle is between prejudice, maximizing division of wealth and death against using new technology, protecting the environment and healing. Something similar has happened in prior crises. Still, every four score and seven years, a new birth of freedom. I see the transformation in culture due being comparable to prior crises.

The trouble the conservatives are having organizing the House of Representatives, the recent rejection of Trump and his candidates, would just be the start. The domestic crisis is peaking. The death throes of the old values, the triumph of the new, is just starting.

User avatar
Tom Mazanec
Posts: 4180
Joined: Sun Sep 21, 2008 12:13 pm

Re: Polyticks: Bob Butler's Perspective

Post by Tom Mazanec »

BB, I agree on all these except your Roe comment (which outweighs the other agreements). Does this make me a 'conservative' by your definition?
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”

― G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain

User avatar
Bob Butler
Posts: 1462
Joined: Wed Jun 10, 2020 9:48 am
Location: East of the moon, west of the sun
Contact:

Lumping folks together

Post by Bob Butler »

Tom Mazanec wrote:
Sat Dec 17, 2022 2:18 pm
BB, I agree on all these except your Roe comment (which outweighs the other agreements). Does this make me a 'conservative' by your definition?
Not really. It is mildly surprising that the obvious labels like 'conservative' and 'progressive' are as useful as they are. If most of your views commonly are one or the other, the labels are useful, but it should not be much of a surprise if there are one or two exceptions.

User avatar
Bob Butler
Posts: 1462
Joined: Wed Jun 10, 2020 9:48 am
Location: East of the moon, west of the sun
Contact:

Helping voters

Post by Bob Butler »

The Republican strategy is to make the Democrats look bad. They will vote against everything that Biden wants to ruin his agenda. The Democratic strategy is to help the voters. Thus, the incoming Republican house speaker has promised to investigate Hunter’s laptop and do little else.

I’ve been wondering, is there any Republican that wants to be speaker enough that he could gather a half dozen representatives to make life better for the voters? He could get in as speaker with Democratic support and get things done? I don’t mind the investigations, but it would be nice to have some support for the voters.

The problem being to find a half dozen Republican representatives who want to help voters…

User avatar
Bob Butler
Posts: 1462
Joined: Wed Jun 10, 2020 9:48 am
Location: East of the moon, west of the sun
Contact:

The Ultimate Folly?

Post by Bob Butler »

Before the latest MSNBC blue fest, they tried to link Zelensky’s speech to Trumps legal difficulties. It seemed a mild stretch. Supposedly this was a big news day, but ultimately it was all the same story?

Autocrats believe rule of law does not apply to them, and that conflict is cost effective. They will use rule of law to oppress their people while they somehow acquire yachts and mansions. I suppose Trump ignores the law enough. He has so long ignored the law that invoking it seems unfair to him. Weaponizing the law seems so natural that he assumes that must be the motivation of his opponents. The idea that the law is a good thing seems not to occur. Then too some Republicans are making noise about not supporting Ukraine. If containment and rule of law are supposed to be well established American values, they seem to be not shared by all. Equality isn’t either.

Is that at the basis of the divide? The creation of new values that are the solutions to the crisis problems just don’t take for some people?

I have been skirmishing lately with a drug gang. Getting the next fix, loyalty to the gang and anger at the world are their predominant values. If you can get the next fix thereby, non gang members property doesn’t matter. That the property belongs to family doesn’t matter. A lawyer associated them will work for himself or the gang, not for his client. If a member’s daughter wants a fix, the mother will teach her to do tricks. If you want to take a rich guy’s yacht for a midnight spin, that’s a fine thing. The rocks be damned.

The grandmother just didn’t understand that values could be so twisted. Family, helping others, helping animals, generosity, honesty… They just didn’t apply and she could not understand that. Finally, after years, it got though to her. Values can be radically different, entirely off, entirely missing. Now she is going after her daughter to the fullest extent of the law, just because her daughter had her declared dead so she could steal her own mother’s inheritance.

If some do not believe in containment, rule of law and equality, is it the same selfishness, the same callousness? One’s own situation is what is important, the other guy be damned? The ideas of loving your neighbor and honoring the Ten Commandments are turned upside down? Love and the Ten Commandments are the ultimate folly?

User avatar
Bob Butler
Posts: 1462
Joined: Wed Jun 10, 2020 9:48 am
Location: East of the moon, west of the sun
Contact:

Playbooks?

Post by Bob Butler »

I think three playbooks dominate. The blue plan is to serve the people to earn their votes.

The communist plan is autocratic, using a perverted rule of law to keep the people down while usurping wealth and using violence to acquire power. As they are working for themselves rather than a solid culture, they cannot compete with the west.

The Republican plan is more complex. The religious extremists, the bigots, and the elite, all contribute either money or votes to get their own type of reward. In Bush 43’s time you could add the Neo Cons, trying to renew attempts at colonial imperialism, underestimating the Middle Eastern cultures. Those who believed in western values found it easier to immigrate than to overcome their regional autocratic influence. That element of the alliance was discredited, and we learned the usual crisis lesson of no boots on the ground. That lesson seems to be holding with no US boots on the soil of Ukraine.

How well will the red alliance survive the crisis? Will the demographics of whites losing their majority make it harder for white supremacy to dominate? Will the woman’s vote dominate the religious vote? Will we finally look askance at the elite dominance of politics? How much will another former criminal president hurt the alliance?

But containment remains key. The Republicans leapt on the containment bandwagon through the Cold War, but some are now leaning the other way, siding with the autocratic conquerers. I suspect containment will hold. It wouldn’t take many Republicans supported by the Democrats to continue the aid.

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 9 guests