Re: POTUS 45.7 - Has the left reached the acceptance stage yet?
You guys ever listen to Jordan Peterson? He figures we're heading for totalitarian mayhem and destruction, but not "because" of Trump, who is a temporary symptom of the madness. He comes down hard on lazy entitled millennials and identity politics and ideologues of all stripes for very well-thought-out reasons. The overview introduction is his interview with Joe Rogan "the Joe rogan experience #877"
The question is whether citizens are engaged and believe in democracy and are willing to face down whatever the generational challenge to it is. Today the generational fight is against a fascist alliance of billionaires and the far right. If we get past that in 2040 it may be something from the far left (bwahahaha).
There's no Final Boss. Democracy has to keep on winning, and it has to win
every time. So we need to raise citizens who understand and are committed to democratic values, and who will do the work needed to keep scum like Trump or the Kochs away from our institutions. Nowhere is it written that America is forever. If we stop caring it will fall -- forces have
always pushed for plutocracy since 1776, and they'll keep on pushing forever.
I would like to see us, basically, tell the liberals to shut up early in education, and unapologetically restore civics in elementary and middle school, and basically indoctrinate our kids in core American values (they're not hard to explain, they're right there in the Declaration). I'd wait until high school to get into the bad stuff the US has done, and I'd present those things not as intractable systemic problems but as flaws that we overcame or are in the process of overcoming. Slavery does not negate America, because abolition is also part of America.
We should raise all the kids to be right wingers -- the smart ones will figure it out and become left wingers later. That is how it has always worked, in everything from politics to religion. Our problem is we now raise all the kids to always withhold judgment and never adopt any value for fear that value might be exclusionary. This doesn't help the smart ones -- they would have figured it out eventually on their own. But it confuses the dumb ones and makes them very vulnerable to hard core authoritarianism later on.
Most people need a rock to stand on. So give everybody America as their rock. The adventurers who are able to swim on their own power will eventually do so, but this way we're not dooming the vast majority to insecurity that leads inevitably to a pandering ideologue.
