Here is a potentially interesting topic. As we all know there is a type of nostalgia for the 1950s. The belief (likely only part true) that *things were better back then*. This nostalgia provides a great deal of fuel for those who, examining the present (and the perversions they notice in it), desire to *restore* values and value-principles that are now out of favor or unrecognized.FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Sun Sep 10, 2023 11:58 amWhich bits of the 50s are you most excited to bring back? Is it the right to rape your wife if she holds out on her wifely duties? Or is it just the segregated schools and the Jim Crow election laws?
Indeed the Make America Great Again movement (the slogan was borrowed from an earlier movement) is both activist-nostalgic and activist-reactionary.
But as per usual Flash, in his unique and predictable way, convolutes what is genuine in a movement toward value-restoration through ridicule. Here, the *Progressive Left* refuses any conversation with the *Conservative Right*, and of course all this is predictable and repeats itself endlessly.
However, just a few short years back the American Progressive Left did indeed conserve important principles. For example, they supported American labor and so were opposed to massive (illegal) immigration which destroys higher wages and the middle-class life-style. This previous Left (and the values it held to) offer a view of how forms of radicalism have transformed such *sensible* stances.
In any case here is what we face: If one wants to look at it in strict binary terms (not wise but generalizations have their use) there are two opposed camps today: Those who seek to advance radical principles based in a (I think skewed) sense of liberty and liberation, and those who seek to ground value-principles through more classical and traditional -- conservative -- formulae.
The only way to grasp what these core battles are about is to investigate, and understand, the principles being expressed and defended.
However, in social war it must be understood as well that for some no quarter will be ceded. For some their are lines that cannot be crossed. And when these two camps cannot work out their differences (in a classically Liberal context) then indeed social warfare is inevitable.
The battle, by the *powers that be*, against Trump and the reactionary social movement that he seems to be spearheading (in one aspect rational and articulate, and on another lunatic, paranoid and half-insane, let's be honest), seek to conserve a status quo ante and, therefore, use the State and its intelligence apparatus to attack what it understands to be an assault on its function and well-being.
So in this sense the lawfare battles against Trump, and the comments by Shumer that opposing the Intelligence Establishment who have *six ways from Sunday of getting back at you* can be examined and help to explain what goes on today.
"Our democracy" is actually today a strange code-word that has to be deciphered and translated into genuine terms. The Powers That Be (if you will allow this phrase) are not concerned for democracy but for establishment power and the maintenance of the status quo.
So it seems to me that the endless bickering going on here can be interrupted if there is a genuine effort made to really & truly grasp the nature of the struggle going on.
We're all doing what we want in the way that suits us.