I always enjoy your culture/political pieces. The dissonance between thinking, you are brilliantly insightful yet hopelessly naive; inspiringly idealistic yet completely unrealistic, inspires a buzz of thoughts like bees in dancing cloud/swarms of ideas.
I enjoy it but it can be uncomfortable. You are challenging. Thanks, I appreciate that, so few are.
I find myself in this place where I agree with everything you say but wanting to ask you how you view the function and role of government.
What do you want "government" to do and how do you want it to accomplish those ends?
Keep in mind that there is ALWAYS about 40% of the population that NEVER participates in any social/communal activity. These are the fabled "Silent Majority" who throughout history prefer to sit out the fighting and then pay their taxes to whoever wins.
Controlling them is the "prize" that the 60% fights over.
In order for a faction to control a society it needs about 30% of the population on its side. IE it needs about half of the "Active 60%".
The greater the percentage of the 60% one side gets, the greater its social control overall.
If one side gets to 30% and the other 30% is splintered you can have a multiparty system dominated by one party. Think of this as the situation in the US after the Great Depression and WWII, a period dominated by the Democratic Party espousing FDR policies.
If no party can get to 30% you have unstable coalition governments that make governing chaotic and unstable. Think postwar Italy.
If one sides gets to 30% and MURDERS as many of the opposing 30% it can get its hands on. The overall population declines about 30% but the society tends to become stable and very compliant to governmental authority.
Think post Revolutionary America or Franco's Spain. In America our Founding Fathers slaughtered the Loyalists, who were about 30% of the population. Franco did the sane in Spain. So did Mao. It's what happens in "revolutions".
If both sides pull in about 30% so that they are evenly matched and get VERY POLARIZED on their differences. Well, that's when civil wars, ethnic cleansing, political cleansing, pogroms, and mass murders happens.
Think America, RIGHT NOW.
I agree with you in principle. We have had this discussion before. I HATE where we are as a country at this moment. I despise Biden.
But, I BELIEVE in the value of government and good governance. And, I understand the HORROR of what social collapse looks like. So I have kept plugging away for 50 years fighting "rear guard" actions and making "hopeless" stands against the tide of WHITE NATIONALISM that the Republican Party became since 1972.
Things could be MUCH worse.
This is their last stand moment. When they go down there will be a moment of fluidity to "reinvent" American politics.
I'm to old for that moment. I am part of the "dead hand" of the past. It belongs to you and your generation.
What do you WANT TO DO with it?
