liberalism in descent
In our era they tend to think in terms of liberalism and conservatism.
Supposedly liberalism is for more expansive government, conservatism is for more minimalist government. But no matter the administration the governments are remote, bureaucratic, technocratic, irresponsive, and irresponsible. What matters in terms of basic reality is that life is not satisfactory enough for the masses. The masses express their amorphous displeasure by voting out the in-office political elites, the liberals and then the conservatives and then the liberals and then the conservatives.
Conservatism was ascendant during the 1920s. Liberalism was ascendant during the 1930s through the 1960s. Conservatism was ascendant during the 1970s and 1980s. Liberalism was ascendant for some decades after that. Now liberalism is descendant.
So what. There is very little momentous difference or real change. Our world is stuck in a paradigm. It’s simple to convey: barely-representative-democracy, mass-industrial-statist hypermodernity, globalized over-financialized capitalism, overpopulation, over-development, and general overshoot under which conditions we can’t possibly solve the problems of inequality, power-elitism, hyper-militarism, institutional impersonalism, or ruinous habitat destruction.
And so there is malaise all over the place. Neither the liberals nor the conservatives have any idea how to get us unstuck. Woe.
