I have a feeling that future historians will label this period as "The Great Unraveling."

[MrScorpio]

That is, if we survive this period. The future looks particularly bleak right now and there doesn't seem to be enough general consensus to stop what could be an insurmountable, self-created global crisis from happening.

Especially if Le Pen gets elected in France and then proceeds to help dismantle the EU. That will be one of the biggest nails in this coffin that we're all currently building for Western Civilization. What then, another European war? Why?

War on the Korean Peninsula? Whatever happened to maintaining the peace which allowed the freer nations of the East Asia to prosper? Are we going to throw that all away now?

Trump is going out of his way to withdraw from trade and defense agreements that have shaped our world of the last sixty years. What good will that do for everyone?

If anything, he's turning the United States into a weak, isolated giant that's dying from within, and so few people are willing to notice. The voices who are speaking out about this possibility are being ignored.

There's nothing "great" that he's done so far, except pad his own pockets with our tax dollars. Our greatness had always been based on both the strength of the Middle Class and our prominence as a economic, diplomatic and military superpower. What he's doing is cutting off two legs of that three legged chair in order to make the remaining leg the longest.

It's insanity.

We're turning into a failed state and the world is becoming more disarrayed. All because the corporatists, proto-fascists, nativists and those in the electorate with an authoritarian streak have taken over.

Given what's at stake: The global economy, the environment, nuclear weapons, general sanity... Who knows if we'll make it through to the other end.

I haven't been this concerned about anything before in my entire life.


FDT.

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. Great post, and no, we wont survive. Hell, he is gonna start WWIII this weekend.

Net neutrality, gone.

Energy Star, gone.

Infrastructure and food stamps and Medicare and Social Security and Disability and welfare, gone.

Environment, destroyed and gone.

Even if he doesnt start WWIII, we are done.

WOMEN'S RIGHTS , GONE

VOTING RIGHTS, GONE

etc

[Bernardo de La Paz]

7. All those things will be brought back by Democrats.

WW3 is a possibility but still unlikely.

[First Speaker]

11. Will they? With a 6-3 or 7-2 Supreme Court of reactionaries?...

...or even worse, a new "Constitutional Convention" that will enshrine every one of our worst instincts in our basic charter of "freedoms"? Any future Dem for a generation has this over their heads like the Sword of Damocles. Think of FDR vs the Nine Old Men, and square it. *Any* attempt to create even sane, moderate liberal policies will lead to unprecedented constitutional crises, one after the other. This was why the GOP was willing to do anything--including commit treason, in my opinion--to pack the Court. To overcome it, the Dems will have to play the same type of hardball. For instance, revive FDR's Court-packing plan, and make it stick. This would bring the Flying Monkeys out in force, and the GOP and the media would call us all sorts of nasty names, which would probably be enough to make us retreat with our tails between our legs. But if we aren't willing to get tough, as tough as the GOP themselves, then all is lost.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

13. Yes they will be. Democrats will find Constitutional ways. . . nt

[Bernardo de La Paz]

9. Please do NOT indulge in B&W binary all-or-nothing thinking. It does not reflect reality

Binary thinking is a fallacious way of thinking. It is anti-pragmatic. It demands purity tests. It is part of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. It is part of the fallacy of making the Perfect attack the Good for not being perfect enough.

All-or-nothing thinking is not helpful. It is not realistic. It sabotages people who are working hard at resisting, persisting, and progressing.

Net neutrality is not gone. The first step is only being proposed now: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10141761357

Infrastructure still stands. Food stamps (cards) are still being issued and used and honored. Medicare is being provided and paid for. Social Security stands. Welfare is being provided.

The environment has not been destroyed. Some regulations are starting to be rolled back, but they will be challenged. Even if the challenges don't succeed, the environment will be damaged, not destroyed. That damage will mostly take years and will be stopped before too long.

Women's rights still exist, even though they are under attack.

Voting rights still exist in very large part. The attack on them is due to RepubliCON interference and due to state power they gain from gerrymandering. It began long before tRump was being groomed by the Russians.

Fight gerrymandering and that will have a big impact. Districting needs to be permanently in the hands of independent commissions that draw boundaries on rational lines, not for political advantage.

[Eliot Rosewater]

17. Simple, either vote in EVERY election for ONLY democrats or you help trump...

Yes, most if not all I listed will be gone, eventually. But I hope YOU are right and I am wrong.

[gristy]

23. Thanks for your wise post

As I have a tendency to wallow in the dark side of the binary thinking that you refer to, your post was quite helpful. Thanks!

[Bernardo de La Paz]

24. Thank you. The price of free thinking is eternal vigilance over the nature of one's own thoughts.

Paraphrasing John Philpot Curran (1790) and Major General James Jackson (1809) http://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2011/01/eternal-vigilance-is-price-of-liberty.html

You can't fight your thoughts (that makes them stronger, more entrenched) but you can guide them. One great way is to always try to see and understand at least three sides of any issue.

[emulatorloo]

2. Unfortunately you are right about everything. What the hell can I do to change this?

Thanks for posting.

[CrispyQ]

3. I am also alarmed.

We're reminded on DU that it took two years to take Nixon down & to be patient. But we don't have two years. Trump is taking a wreaking ball to our government & the dems are basically neutered. McConnell is slime & will ram his agenda down our throats if he has to change all the rules to do it. I've never had such a grim outlook on the future.

[AJT]

4. "Dark Ages II" The Wrath of the Con

[Historic NY]

5. We're never going to go back again either.....

its will take decades and decades. Meanwhile we have people that, tell us what Democrats should do. Its doesn't matter right now because many opt to listen to unicorns when reality is closing the door. This isn't Obama 3 dimensional chess any more, were dealing with people that can't govern.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

6. We Resist and Persist (which includes Survive). Before too long, Democrats will Triumph.

The Minority President keeps crumbling. His wall is unfunded and delayed. His repeal of Obamacare failed. His idea to not pay Obamacare payments has been withdrawn.

tRump is stonewalling documents in the Flynn fissure in the #TrumpRussia scandal. It won't work any better than it did for Nixon.

In the end we will triumph.

[Hekate]

8. FDT

[Left-over]

10. It is so sad that this is happening.

The right wingers turn everything they touch to garbage except their profits. And soon they will not even have that when we are all living in poverty. Who will purchase their junk.

[lunatica]

12. It helps to resign oneself to the fact that

we're living in very interesting historic times. If this country manages to survive I believe you're right about going down in history as the Great Unraveling.

Interesting times.

[bucolic_frolic]

14. Le Pen will not win

Last edited Wed Apr 26, 2017, 05:26 PM - Edit history (1)

Corporatists are pushing the idea that government is obsolete. It's sort of all right
in their minds because they are the winners of this rumble. Regulation of free markets,
monopoly power over individuals, and all the rest that you mention are not being given
any airtime. The effects on those who do not control the power are clearly detrimental.
If guns rule, corporations rule, money rules, it's a one-sided society, like the proverbial
company town. No counterbalances. In my judgment, it's been tried before. 19th century
Europe came close, where the strong pummeled the weak with political, pricing, economic,
and confiscatory power of land, wages, labor, taxes. That loosely was the Revolutions of 1848.
Europeans fled en masse to the United States. It could be argued that Italy in the late 1800s
and the Romanov's were another iteration of the same. It never ends well, or at least peaceably.
Class conflict, that thing we are told does not exist, surfaces as the poor become worse off, and
the money and wealth are vacuumed up the ladder. It doesn't always end in revolution or in an
entirely different form of government, but Garibaldi, the American South, and Lenin were in some ways
fighting a similar struggle against oppressive economic interests. These trends affected Canada too. Many
French decendants fled high-priced goods sold by British affiliated merchants and lack of economic
progress in the Quebec Diaspora (roughly 1820-1860 or so). Don't know enough about history to say whether
the Fourth French Republic, or the continental Europe of the 1800s fit the pattern. I know 1848 was a
good year for revolt with similarities in many European countries.

[0rganism]

15. Putin's historians will label it as "The Great Unification"

as the USA and nations of Europe become Russian client states

[tiredtoo]

16. and i was thinking more along the lines of...

The rise and fall of the American empire.

[oldcynic]

18. isn't anybody thinking about the weather?

Whoever has political power is already on the tiger's back. We are so far past the "tipping point" politics are irrelevant except as disaster relief.

[GliderGuider]

19. I saw the truth of this about a decade ago.

The problem with the "Democrats will fix it" belief is twofold.

One is that this is not an American problem that American Democrats can address. It's a global problem, especially when you factor in unstable international finance and national debt loads, skyrocketing climate change and the planet-wide extermination of wildlife.

The more uniquely American problem is that even if the Democrats regained control of all three branches, the deplorables aren't going anywhere. It will take at least a generation and a half (and probably much longer) to curb their aggressively divisive influence on American society, politics and business.

We are in the midst of what systems scientists call a "wicked problem". The world as a whole is well into it, with only the symptoms differing from place to place. I see no way out.

Wicked problem

A wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. The use of the term "wicked" here has come to denote resistance to resolution, rather than evil.

Moreover, because of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may reveal or create other problems.

[world wide wally]

20. I want to opt for "The Great Exodus Part 2"

[byronius]

21. It looks bad. Hope for the Lashback that sets up the next hundred years.

Until the last one of us that lived through this dies and we have to learn the goddamn lesson all over again.

[Hugin]

22. Some of my associates and I refer to this period as the "Dumbining".

A term originally coined by Lisa Simpson from an episode of "The Simpsons".

I laughed then... But, I don't laugh anymore.

[UTUSN]

25. "The Great Aberration"

[defacto7]

26. Then comes, The Dark Ages... again

Thank you for this. We must understand where we really stand in history right now. It was so easy to become complacent as a nation thinking it could never happen and that our Constitution was a flawless religious masterpiece that could never fail. Now the creeping crud has arrived.

It's the history of human civilization.

[marybourg]

27. It could also be called the "Great Backlash".

After 50 years of huge cultural changes; the civil rights movement, feminism, gay rights, globalism, decline in religious influence in public life, progressive education, etc., etc., those who were reluctantly dragged along are having a last retrograde fling. It too shall pass - if we survive it.

[Spider Jerusalem]

28. If they don't nick a term from William Gibson and call it "the Jackpot", that is

[DFW]

29. IF we as a country ever get the chance to reverse the damage

This time, NOTHING can be allowed to be "off the table."

History has once again proved that, given the chance, selfish, greedy people would rather sink and go down with their ship than see someone else as a better captain.

[malthaussen]

30. Already been done.

In 1986, Alan Matusow wrote a book called The Unraveling of America: a History of Liberalism in the 1960s.

And there's one out now (published June 2016) called The Unraveling of America: Who is Pulling the Strings? (Ron M. Phillips and J. Tod Zeigler)

According to the conservatives, the "unraveling" was all due to the Liberals undermining Great American Values (tm), and Mr Trump and company are working to restore that. Didn't you get the memo?

-- Mal

[FSogol]

31. Following the death of Christ, there was a period of readjustment that lasted for approximately

one million years.” - Kurt Vonnegut, jr.