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I believe there is a way a to end ideology in our ( well, maybe your ) lifetime(s). I see less and less ideology day by day. I think that Wm. F Buckley invented

I believe there is a way a to end ideology in our ( well, maybe your ) lifetime(s). I see less and less ideology day by day. I think that Wm. F Buckley invented this with "Firing Line". And with the Internet, it's eminently possible to train ordinary people in the rhetorical skills necessary to oppose ideology as a force in politics. And if I may, Trump is what a non-ideological politician looks like. So... his process is more akin to a standup comedian, refining his material in front of an audience. This is an interesting experiment. This being said, people throw the F-word (Fascism) around like they know what it means. The US was much more explicitly (economically) Fascist when J.K. Galbraith wrote "The Modern Industrial State" - there was little diversity in large business, central planning was believed-in and employment was cradle-to-grave. The U.S. is oh-so-very-much more free market, with (IMO) relatively weak challenges of the Piketty sort. I think his is important work but it's merely a grain of sand around which more analysis is needed. The strengthening of the Presidency ( and presumably, the weakening of the Legislature ) is due to one thing - nuclear weapons. The election cycle and advertising hasn't helped. There is perfectly useable nonfiction entertainment product out there. CSPAN for one. How do we get our friends and family to pay attention to it? Once you've developed a taste for it, the other stuff is clangorous and dissonant. But again, the solution is to embrace the core Liberal Art - rhetoric - at the level of the public, as it was (more) in say, the 1950s in NYC. But people are going to have to stop with criticizing the religious, the irreligious, the Left and Right and come to a human level understanding how it is that we are divided, what the limitations of our positions are. I do this with people I care about, I believe as a service. Or maybe I'm just a blowhard. I am Skeptical :) of that. If your politics are what props up your personal sense of identity, you're in trouble.

hga 10y ago
The strengthening of the Presidency ( and presumably, the weakening of the Legislature ) is due to one thing - nuclear weapons. The election cycle and advertising hasn't helped. And here I thought it was, at least as of late, the GOPe at the national level becoming gutless would be members of the ruling class, part of a "Uniparty". Or note how little sunshine you could put between George W. Bush and the Democrats on things like the Patriot Act and immigration.... But you bring up a number of good points, especially about the Fascism of the period at least from post-crash Hoover through when Galbraith wrote that book. James Burnham wrote about it more contemporaneously, in his 1941 The Managerial Revolution.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  The GOP thing is much, much later. I don't think it's the structural explanation. And I did throw in "the election cycle" and advertising - both mean a Representative has no time for nothing but campaigning. If POTUS has the "football", how is it that Congress can maintain control of the declaration of war? My explanation for the arc of the GOP is - term limits killed it. Dead. When Newt G. et al resigned, they lost all continuity - to the point to where hacks left over from Nixon came into power. Then, using the Internet as a formation mechanism ( under the auspices of the Vast Right Wing Konspiracy of anti-Clinton attack dogs) , you had the Tea Party, which seems designed for deadlock. It wasn't necessarily intended, but it was completely intentional.
  - hga 10y ago
    The GOP thing is much, much later. I don't think it's the structural explanation. Oh, agreed, but I think it's a very useful data point in studying this. And you have a point about the declaration of war, but, in our small c constitution, the president pretty much had free reign with the Navy, including of course the Marines, it took the Congress to get the Army seriously involved. Which ended with WWII (see e.g. http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/history/h_multi_sections_and_teasers/WarDeclarationsbyCongress.htm http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/history/h_multi_sections_an...), since then we've bled mightily in the Korean "Police Action" (although be careful about the figures for the dead, the initial one was accidentally for all servicemen in any part of the world who died for any reason), Vietnam, heck, the Republican Congress explicitly refused to declare war after 9/11, and I don't think that had anything to do with the football et. al. Between official governmental suppression and co-option, the "Tea Party" never got anywhere, I'm not sure it's relevant. My explanation for the GOP is that they never got over the minority party attitude that was inculcated from 1955 or 1931 through 1995. Even when Newt and company were in theory running it, they didn't act like the party in power, see e.g. the Waco hearing(s). Of course, your Nixon era retreads theory comports perfectly with mine ... but does it, for example, explain Boehner, who's political career started in 1981? Well, he he came of age before Nixon's election, but look at the much younger Ryan, he was born a few days into Nixon's 2nd year in office....

hga 10y ago

The strengthening of the Presidency ( and presumably, the weakening of the Legislature ) is due to one thing - nuclear weapons. The election cycle and advertising hasn't helped. And here I thought it was, at least as of late, the GOPe at the national level becoming gutless would be members of the ruling class, part of a "Uniparty". Or note how little sunshine you could put between George W. Bush and the Democrats on things like the Patriot Act and immigration.... But you bring up a number of good points, especially about the Fascism of the period at least from post-crash Hoover through when Galbraith wrote that book. James Burnham wrote about it more contemporaneously, in his 1941 The Managerial Revolution.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago
The GOP thing is much, much later. I don't think it's the structural explanation. And I did throw in "the election cycle" and advertising - both mean a Representative has no time for nothing but campaigning. If POTUS has the "football", how is it that Congress can maintain control of the declaration of war? My explanation for the arc of the GOP is - term limits killed it. Dead. When Newt G. et al resigned, they lost all continuity - to the point to where hacks left over from Nixon came into power. Then, using the Internet as a formation mechanism ( under the auspices of the Vast Right Wing Konspiracy of anti-Clinton attack dogs) , you had the Tea Party, which seems designed for deadlock. It wasn't necessarily intended, but it was completely intentional.
- hga 10y ago
  The GOP thing is much, much later. I don't think it's the structural explanation. Oh, agreed, but I think it's a very useful data point in studying this. And you have a point about the declaration of war, but, in our small c constitution, the president pretty much had free reign with the Navy, including of course the Marines, it took the Congress to get the Army seriously involved. Which ended with WWII (see e.g. http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/history/h_multi_sections_and_teasers/WarDeclarationsbyCongress.htm http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/history/h_multi_sections_an...), since then we've bled mightily in the Korean "Police Action" (although be careful about the figures for the dead, the initial one was accidentally for all servicemen in any part of the world who died for any reason), Vietnam, heck, the Republican Congress explicitly refused to declare war after 9/11, and I don't think that had anything to do with the football et. al. Between official governmental suppression and co-option, the "Tea Party" never got anywhere, I'm not sure it's relevant. My explanation for the GOP is that they never got over the minority party attitude that was inculcated from 1955 or 1931 through 1995. Even when Newt and company were in theory running it, they didn't act like the party in power, see e.g. the Waco hearing(s). Of course, your Nixon era retreads theory comports perfectly with mine ... but does it, for example, explain Boehner, who's political career started in 1981? Well, he he came of age before Nixon's election, but look at the much younger Ryan, he was born a few days into Nixon's 2nd year in office....