re: #153 GeneJockey

I tend to see it more as the cultural has been slowly following an inevitable path, the ‘Arc of Justice’ if you will.

Economically, we lurched suddenly and dramatically to the left as a result of the Great Depression, and we kind of stayed there for about 40 years, before turning to the Right 30 years ago. That rightward turn, I think, is the result of forgetting the lessons of the Depression, and failing to understand that a lot of the prosperity that followed was the result of exactly the programs the Right chafed under, and which they mistakenly believed were actually holding back prosperity.

I suspect that in normal times, the plutocrats get things to go more and more their way by simple relentless persistence (e.g., sooner or later, the multinationals will get their overseas tax holiday). Money talks, after all, and there is grossly inadequate sustained opposition to the plutocracy agenda. Furthermore, it is impossible to see how such opposition could form in a population that is either over-worked or desperately looking for a job.

Only at crisis time (e.g., the great depression), is a leftward lurch is possible. This doesn’t bode well for the future, since if this model is correct, the grip of the plutocrats will only be loosened by an actual revolution, or by a crisis so severe that it makes revolution a real threat. The great recession didn’t do the job.