Will The Oligarchy that owns the US eeeevvvvveerrrrrr be slightly reined in?

[lpetrich]

Naomi Klein on opposition to the original New Deal:

From the start, elite critics derided FDR’s plans as everything from creeping fascism to closet communism. In the 1933 equivalent of “They’re coming for your hamburgers!” Republican Sen. Henry D. Hatfield of West Virginia wrote to a colleague, “This is despotism, this is tyranny, this is the annihilation of liberty. The ordinary American is thus reduced to the status of a robot.” A former DuPont executive complained that with the government offering decent-paying jobs, “five negroes on my place in South Carolina refused work this spring … and a cook on my houseboat in Fort Myers quit because the government was paying him a dollar an hour as a painter.”

Far-right militias formed; there was even a sloppy plot by a group of bankers to overthrow FDR.

Self-styled centrists took a more subtle tack: In newspaper editorials and op-eds, they cautioned FDR to slow down and scale back. Historian Kim Phillips-Fein, author of “Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal,” told me that the parallels with today’s attacks on the Green New Deal in outlets like the New York Times are obvious. “They didn’t outright oppose it, but in many cases, they would argue that you don’t want to make so many changes at once, that it was too big, too quick. That the administration should wait and study more.”

And yet for all its many contradictions and exclusions, the New Deal’s popularity continued to soar, winning Democrats a bigger majority in Congress in the midterms and FDR a landslide re-election in 1936.

Part of that was all the abundance of artwork that the New Dealers commissioned.

The Federal Art Project alone produced nearly 475,000 works of art, including over 2,000 posters, 2,500 murals, and 100,000 canvasses for public spaces. ...

Much of the art produced by New Deal programs was simply about bringing joy and beauty to Depression-ravaged people, and challenging the prevalent idea that art belonged to the elites. ...

There was more overtly political art too, like the highly controversial theatrical productions of Sinclair Lewis’s “It Can’t Happen Here,” which opened in 18 cities. ...

Other artists produced more optimistic, even utopian creations, using graphic art, short films, and vast murals to document the transformation underway under New Deal programs — the strong bodies building new infrastructure, planting trees, and otherwise picking up the pieces of their nation.

 

[James Brown]

There is a very honorable exception: Star Trek. Most of its iterations have portrayed a future that is very worth looking forward to -- humanity at peace with itself and expanding outward across interstellar space.

I'd add The Martian to that list as a near-future vision of optimism.

But then, she did say, "Almost every vision."

 

[lpetrich]

Arthur Schlesingers I and II would have a chuckle at that video -- it fits their description of a liberal period very well.

This video was inspired by With a Green New Deal, Here’s What the World Could Look Like for the Next Generation

The Intercept published a piece by Kate Aronoff that was set in the year 2043, after the Green New Deal had come to pass. It told the story of what life was like for a fictionalized “Gina,” who grew up in the world that Green New Deal policies created: “She had a relatively stable childhood. Her parents availed themselves of some of the year of paid family leave they were entitled to, and after that she was dropped off at a free child care program.” After free college, “she spent six months restoring wetlands and another six volunteering at a day care much like the one she had gone to.”

The Battle Lines Have Been Drawn on the Green New Deal notes about the original New Deal:

Which is why it is so critical to remember that none of it would have happened without massive pressure from social movements. FDR rolled out the New Deal in the midst of a historic wave of labor unrest: There was the Teamsters’ rebellion and Minneapolis general strike in 1934, the 83-day shutdown of the West Coast by longshore workers that same year, and the Flint sit-down autoworkers strikes in 1936 and 1937. During this same period, mass movements, responding to the suffering of the Great Depression, demanded sweeping social programs, such as Social Security and unemployment insurance, while socialists argued that abandoned factories should be handed over to their workers and turned into cooperatives. Upton Sinclair, the muckraking author of “The Jungle,” ran for governor of California in 1934 on a platform arguing that the key to ending poverty was full state funding of workers’ cooperatives. He received nearly 900,000 votes, but having been viciously attacked by the right and undercut by the Democratic establishment, he fell just short of winning the governor’s office.

All of this is a reminder that the New Deal was adopted by Roosevelt at a time of such progressive and left militancy that its programs — which seem radical by today’s standards — appeared at the time to be the only way to hold back a full-scale revolution.

It’s also a reminder that the New Deal was a process as much as a project, one that was constantly changing and expanding in response to social pressure from both the right and the left.

This should be a reminder that at least since the Civil War, liberal periods have had a lot of tumult in them. They were often very rocky going.

 

[lpetrich]

It also means that there must be mass movements supporting these periods, movements with large numbers of ordinary people participating. Most of the previous liberal eras had notable presidents involved in them - Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, and LBJ - but those presidents did not do it alone. Andrew Jackson was nicknamed "King Mob" by his detractors, and there were plenty of mass movements in later liberal periods.

That may be why Bill Clinton and Barack Obama both failed to end Gilded Age II -- not enough mass movements behind them. That also means that one should not count on some president being a savior -- we will have to save ourselves by mass mobilization. BO didn't do anything for the Occupy movement or the Wisconsin Revolt, sad to say.

I can't help but notice the contrast between Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Donald Trump in this context. AOC checks off all the boxes for a liberal era, and DT does so for a conservative era.

 

[lpetrich]

Peter Turchin - Ages of Discord - this is a book that discusses some long-term trends in US history.
Peter Turchin Age of Discord II - Peter Turchin
Peter Turchin Dimensions of Well-Being - Peter Turchin
Dynamics of political instability in the United States, 1780–2010 - JPR442078 1..15 - Turchin_JPR2012.pdf

This is inspired by some work on preindustrial societies:
Peter Turchin - War and Peace and War - nice introduction
Peter Turchin - Secular Cycles - rather technical
Peter Turchin - Structural-Demographic Theory - not very clear

Previous threads:
Peter Turchin's Cycles of History
Peter Turchin: US-History Cycles
Ages of Discord -- American History's Big Cycle -- by Peter Turchin

Preindustrial societies go through cycles with integrative and disintegrative phases. In an integrative phase, the population grows and the elite is not too large. But the population reaches the carrying capacity and the elite continues to grow. That leads to a disintegrative phase, where the elite splits up into hostile factions, causing civil wars and dropping population. Then the next integrative phase.

There is evidence of a similar cycle in one of the earliest nations to industrialize, the United States, though it is of only 1 1/2 cycle. However, the available data has much higher quality than comparable data for earlier societies. The data fall under these categories:

• General Well-Being
  • Employment (foreign-born fraction of population - inverted)
  • Relative wage (median wage / GDP per capita)
  • Health (life expectancy, physical height)
  • Family (age of first marriage - inverted)
• Elite Overproduction
  • Top Wealth (maximum fortune / median wage)
  • Education cost (tuition of Yale, an elite university / median wage)
  • Elite fragmentation (party polarization)
• Social Unrest: riots, lynchings, terrorism

The variables in general well-being are well correlated with each other, though some of them have to be inverted. Likewise, the variables in elite overproduction are well correlated with each other. The overall correlation is

General Well-Being (inverted) - Elite Overproduction - Social Unrest

 

[lpetrich]

Looking at overall behavior and comparing to Arthur Schlesinger's phases, I find:

Rising
- Lib Constitution
- Con Hamilton
- Lib Jefferson
- Con Aftermath of 1812 war
Falling
- Lib Jackson
- Con Slaveowner Domination
- Lib Civil War and Reconstruction
- Con Gilded Age
Rising
- Lib Progressive Era
- Con Republican Return
- Lib New Deal
- Con Eisenhower
Falling
- Lib Sixties
- Con Gilded Age II

From the looks of it, the US Left is trying to start some Progressive Era II. The Occupy movement failed as did the Wisconsin Revolt. The latest push is to try to get progressives into Congress, with AOC being the most prominent success so far.

 

[DBT]

Business as usual Trumps the opposition, it appears.

 

[lpetrich]

This 1981 book eerily predicted today's distrustful and angry political mood - Vox - 2016 Jan 6
The book itself: American Politics — Samuel P. Huntington | Harvard University Press

... Voters are in a foul mood, seething with distrust and anger. They feel like the government is corrupt and unresponsive, and it's time to do something about it. America has lost its way. We need to get back to our roots. We need to make America great again.

While this apoplectic outburst of raging disillusion does feel like a new force in American politics, it's actually an old one, and a recurring one. It's just that we haven't experienced it this fully in decades. Really, since the 1960s. And before that in the 1900s. And before that in the 1830s. And before that in the 1770s.

This pattern is from historian Samuel Huntington's 1981 book "American Politics: Promise of Disharmony". Author Lee Drutman states

It's goose-bump prophetic in its prediction that around this time we would be entering a period of "creedal passion" — Huntington's term for the moralizing distrust of organized power that grips America every 60 years or so. In such periods, the driving narrative is that America has lost its way and we need to return to our constitutional roots.

SH states that there is a fundamental American ideology of government, one that has unresolvable contradictions.

In terms of American beliefs, government is supposed to be egalitarian, participatory, open, noncoercive, and responsive to the demands of individuals and groups. Yet no government can be all these things and still remain a government.
...
The American people believe that government ought not to do things it must do in order to be a government and that it ought to do things it cannot do without undermining itself as a government.
...
The dominant political creed constitutes a standing challenge to the power of government and the legitimacy of political institutions. Political authority is vulnerable in America as it is nowhere else.

SH calls it the IvI gap, ideals vs. institutions. Most of the time, it is tolerable, but every 6 or 7 decades, it produces a big burst of creedal passion, and each burst lasts roughly 15 years.

 

[lpetrich]

Periods of creedal passion have 14 features, with their general mood having 9 features:

• "Discontent was widespread; authority, hierarchy, specialization, and expertise were widely questioned or rejected."
• "Political ideas were taken seriously and played an important role in the controversies of the time."
• "Traditional American values of liberty, individualism, equality, popular control of government, and the openness of government were stressed in public discussion."
• "Moral indignation over the IvI gap was widespread."
• "Politics was characterized by agitation, excitement, commotion, even upheaval — far beyond the usual routine of interest-group conflict."
• "Hostility toward power (the antipower ethic) was intense, with the central issue of politics often being defined as 'liberty versus power.'"
• "The exposure or muckraking of the IvI gap was a central feature of politics."
• "Movements flourished devoted to specific reforms or 'causes' (women, minorities, criminal justice, temperance, peace)."
• "New media forms appeared, significantly increasing the influence of the media in politics."

Their political changes have 5 features:

• "Political participation expanded, often assuming new forms and often expressed through hitherto unusual channels."
• "The principal political cleavages of the period tended to cut across economic class lines, with some combination of middle- and working-class groups promoting change."
• "Major reforms were attempted in political institutions in order to limit power and reshape institutions in terms of American ideals (some of which were successful and some of which were lasting)."
• "A basic realignment occurred in the relations between social forces and political institutions, often including but not limited to the political party system."
• "The prevailing ethos promoting reform in the name of traditional ideals was, in a sense, both forward-looking and backward-looking, progressive and conservative."

What provokes eras of creedal passion?

Generally, they do not occur during times of war or economic crisis. But they are more likely to occur "during periods of rapid social and economic change, when established relationships among groups are disrupted."

SH proposes that creedal-passion eras end with people accepting IvI gaps and becoming cynical. This fades, resulting in complacency and detachment from politics. Next is hypocrisy, claiming that "the US has the world's greatest politics and the world's greatest society". But that makes the IvI gap very obvious, leading to another era of creedal passion.

 

[lpetrich]

Donald Trump is promising to "Make America Great Again." Tea Party Republicans are offering "constitutional Training" and citing the Constitution as a defense against every federal policy they dislike. Ammon Bundy, leader of the Oregon militia occupying a federal wildlife refuge, has named his group "Citizens for Constitutional Freedom." Sizable majorities of Americans think the government is run for the superrich, by the superrich, and that they have little say in what happens. Trust in institutions is at history-of-polling lows

But each creedal-passion era is different.

One way this period may be different is that impetus for reform will probably come from the political right this time, given both that Republicans are likely to control Congress and most state legislatures for at least the next decade (and probably longer), and that more of the moralizing passion is currently on the political right than on the political left.

This was written in early 2016, and since then, the Left has become much more energized - and it also talks the language of creedal passion. Like when AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, and Ilhan Omar rebutted President Trump's demand that they return to their home countries, clean them up, and only then come back.


More broadly, all of Huntington's creedal-passion periods are Schlesinger liberal periods, though some liberal ones are not creedal-passion ones:

Revolution - Jefferson - Jackson - Civil War - Progressive - New Deal - Sixties - (upcoming?)

 

[lpetrich]

The US has gone through several party systems -  Party system where each party system is a characteristic platform and set of constituencies for each political party.
[TABLE="class: grid"]
[TR]
[TD]Begin[/TD]
[TD]End[/TD]
[TD]System[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]1792[/TD]
[TD]1824[/TD]
[TD] First Party System[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]1828[/TD]
[TD]1854[/TD]
[TD] Second Party System[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]1856[/TD]
[TD]1894[/TD]
[TD] Third Party System[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]1896[/TD]
[TD]1930[/TD]
[TD] Fourth Party System[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]1932[/TD]
[TD]?[/TD]
[TD] Fifth Party System[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]?[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD] Sixth Party System[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
The proposed dates for the transition from the fifth to the sixth party systems range over 1960's - 1990's, and the transition was likely gradual over that time.

The first four party systems ended near the ends of conservative periods, with their successors starting at the beginnings of liberal periods or shortly before.

The fifth one faded into the sixth one over the middle of the Sixties Era to the middle of Gilded Age II.


Related to this are realigning elections -  Realigning election - elections that make major political changes very quickly.

Generally accepted ones are in 1800, 1828, 1860, 1896, and 1932, with sometimes-proposed ones in 1874, 1964, 1968, 1980, 1992, 1994, 2008, and 2016.

Of the generally accepted ones, 1800, 1828, 1860, and 1932 are associated with the beginnings of liberal eras, 1896 was just before the beginning of a liberal era, and considered somewhat doubtful, and the sometimes-proposed ones are a mixed bag.

 

[Elixir]

Here is a table of what the liberal and the conservative phases are like.
[table="class:grid"]
[tr][td]Liberal[/td][td]Conservative[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Wrongs of the Many[/td][td]Rights of the Few[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Increase Democracy[/td][td]Contain Democracy[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Public Purpose[/td][td]Private Interest[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Human Rights[/td][td]Property Rights[/td][/tr]
[/table]
Each kind of phase is generated from the other kind of phase.

Conservative phases end because of problems that pile up, problems that society's elites are unwilling or unable to address, if they accept that those problems are problems at all.

Liberal phases end because activist efforts can be difficult to sustain, and also because such efforts often succeed or seem to succeed, or else are perceived as going too far. The body politic may also need a rest, a chance to digest the big changes.

The Eisenhower era (deemed "con) was an era of vast public works... which was followed by unforetold prosperity. Just bringing that up because I have an aversion to such dualistic (lib/con) representations, even when used to illustrate a "cycle".

 

[lpetrich]

Different liberal periods have had different sorts of movements in them:
[TABLE="class: grid"]
[TR]
[TD]Period[/TD]
[TD]GSt[/TD]
[TD]WfS[/TD]
[TD]BRg[/TD]
[TD]Lab[/TD]
[TD]CvR[/TD]
[TD]Fem[/TD]
[TD]Env[/TD]
[TD]CdP[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Civil War[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]X[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Progressive[/TD]
[TD]X[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]X[/TD]
[TD]X[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]X[/TD]
[TD]X[/TD]
[TD]X[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]New Deal[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]X[/TD]
[TD]X[/TD]
[TD]X[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Sixties[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]X[/TD]
[TD]X[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]X[/TD]
[TD]X[/TD]
[TD]X[/TD]
[TD]X[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

• GSt = government structure (direct election of Senators)
• WfS = welfare state (Social Security, Medicare)
• BRg = regulation of business (antitrust, food safety, banking)
• Lab = labor unions
• CvR = racial/ethnic civil rights
• Fem = feminist issues
• Env = environmental issues
• CdP = Huntington creedal passion

 

[lpetrich]

The Eisenhower era (deemed "con) was an era of vast public works... which was followed by unforetold prosperity. Just bringing that up because I have an aversion to such dualistic (lib/con) representations, even when used to illustrate a "cycle".

The Eisenhower Era (late Truman to early JFK) didn't have any far-reaching changes comparable to the New Deal or the Sixties-era reforms. The closest, I think, was the early part of the civil-rights movement.

 

[lpetrich]

 Cyclical theory (United States history)

I've added Stephen Skowronek's identifications of US Presidency types.
[TABLE="class: grid"]
[TR]
[TD]Dominant Party[/TD]
[TD]President's Party[/TD]
[TD]Type[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Vulnerable[/TD]
[TD]Opposition[/TD]
[TD]Reconstruction[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Vulnerable[/TD]
[TD]Dominant[/TD]
[TD]Disjunction[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Resilient[/TD]
[TD]Opposition[/TD]
[TD]Preemption[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Resilient[/TD]
[TD]Dominant[/TD]
[TD]Articulation[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
SS proposes that the Presidency has gone through several cycles. Each cycle starts with a reconstructing President, one who is involved with creating a new political order, one which makes his party dominant. He typically serves two terms, and he is often succeeded by his Vice President, someone who typically serves only one term. The next Presidents can be in either party. If in the dominant party, they are articulating ones, working within the dominant political order. If in the opposition party, they are preempting ones, trying to get some of the opposition party's program enacted, but much of the time working within the dominant political order. Each cycle ends with one or two disjunctive Presidents, presidents in the dominant party but presidents who struggle to keep their party's program going.

Reconstructing Presidents are often remembered as great Presidents, while disjunctive Presidents are often remembered as bad Presidents. Here are all the reconstructing Presidents:

• George Washington
• Thomas Jefferson
• Andrew Jackson
• Abraham Lincoln
• (Some in-between President?)
• FDR
• Ronald Reagan

 

[lpetrich]

I'll list all the Presidents:

• (Rec): Washington, Dis: Adams, J.
• Rec: Jefferson, Art: Madison, Art: Monroe, Dis: Adams, J.Q.
• Rec: Jackson, Art: Van Buren, Pre: Harrison, W.H., Pre: Tyler, Art: Polk, Pre: Taylor, Pre: Fillmore, Dis: Pierce, Dis: Buchanan
• Rec: Lincoln, Pre: Johnson, A., Art: Grant, Art: Hayes, Art: Garfield, Art: Arthur, Pre: Cleveland, Art: Harrison, B., Art: McKinley, Art: Roosevelt, T., Art: Taft, Pre: Wilson, Art: Harding, Art: Coolidge, Dis: Hoover
• Rec: Roosevelt, F.D., Art: Truman, Pre: Eisenhower, Art: Kennedy, Art: Johnson, L.B., Pre: Nixon, Pre: Ford, Dis: Carter
• Rec: Reagan, Art: Bush, G.H.W., Pre: Clinton, Art: Bush, G.W., Pre: Obama, Dis?: Trump

Teddy Roosevelt is a possible reconstructing president, something that would make William McKinley a disjunctive one.

I also note that George Bush II's presidency was so awful that it seemed like a disjunctive one.

 

[lpetrich]

Samuel Huntington proposes four phases of his creedal-passion IvI-gap cycle:
[TABLE="class: grid"]
[TR]
[TD]Ideal
[/TD]
[TD]Gap
[/TD]
[TD]Mood
[/TD]
[TD]Action
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]High
[/TD]
[TD]Clear
[/TD]
[TD]Moralism
[/TD]
[TD]Eliminate
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Low
[/TD]
[TD]Clear
[/TD]
[TD]Cynicism
[/TD]
[TD]Tolerate
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Low
[/TD]
[TD]Unclear
[/TD]
[TD]Complacency
[/TD]
[TD]Ignore
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]High
[/TD]
[TD]Unclear
[/TD]
[TD]Hypocrisy
[/TD]
[TD]Deny
[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
Then the cycle repeats.

SH notes that at other times, there were significant shifts in the relative power of different social and economic groups. They correspond to the Schlesinger liberal periods that are not creedal-passion periods.

Jefferson - rise of South and West agrarian interests and displacement of Northeast commercial interests

Civil-War/Reconstruction - ouster of Southern agrarian interests and rise of Northern business and industrial interests

New Deal - recent immigrant groups, organized labor, and the urban working class gained a lot of political influence

Back to the creedal-passion periods, SH states "The Revolution was the most dramatic, most sweeping, and most successful of the efforts to articulate and to realize in practice American political values and ideals." By some standards, the American Revolution was a rather conservative affair - it did not involve one social class destroying another social class - but it had a very radical idea: that government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed. It also had a big success: successfully throwing off British colonial rule. Latter creedal-passion periods have attempted to repeat that success with other villains.

 

[lpetrich]

Samuel Huntington: "The moralistic intensity of the creedal passion periods clearly has distinguished them from other times of change in American politics, as well as from eras of stalemate and stagnation." - Revolution, Jackson, Progressive, and Sixties. SH calls the Sixties era "Sixties and Seventies" or S&S.

He then compares the New Deal, and he argues that it was not a creedal-passion period. He notes that its primary concern was not the reform of politics but the restoration of prosperity. Unlike most creedal-passion periods, the New-Deal period was a time of depression. The Sixties, for instance, were a time of overall prosperity, even if that prosperity was not as shared as equitably as one might want.

Opposition to bigness was not a big part of the New Deal - it tended to accept governmental and collective action. The New Deal was also never very hostile to the two big Progressive-era villains: big-city political-party machines and big-business trusts (monopolies and cartels). The New Deal was also not very moralistic, but more pragmatic and opportunistic and experimental. If anything, it was its conservative critics who had a lot of moral indignation.

Also during the New Deal, society was split on it on class lines, with the have-nots usually being New Dealers and the haves usually being opponets. This was unlike creedal-passion eras, when the splits were more vertical. It also produced major new economic programs rather than trying to morally cleans and purify government. It was also forward-looking, rather than looking both forward and backward, as in the creedal-passion eras. That included the American Revolution, which included looking back to John Locke and similar advocates of individual liberty.

The creedal-passion periods included attacks on concentrated political and economic power and supported participation by large numbers of ordinary people. This included formation of political and advocacy organizations - the basic manner of forming them was established during the Jackson era.

New forms of communications media were typical of creedal-passion eras. Maybe not quite new, but widely exploited by activists.

• Revolutionary: pamphlets
• Jacksonian: newspapers
• Progressive: magazines
• Sixties: TV, national news media

"Muckraking" is a common feature of creedal-passion periods, with journalists exposing misdeed after misdeed after misdeed.

 

[lpetrich]

I decided to look at the various proposals that the Left has been offering, and try to see how they stack up. Creedal passion? Or New-Deal technocratic social-democracy? It is a mixed bag. To use two examples, immigration reform seems like creedal passion, while Medicare for All seems like social democracy.

The Occupy movement was a creedal-passion sort of movement, but it was soon crushed, and its organizers never developed new meeting places. I call it that because it is very close to Samuel Huntington's description: "In terms of American beliefs, government is supposed to be egalitarian, participatory, open, noncoercive, and responsive to the demands of individuals and groups. Yet no government can be all these things and still remain a government."

Black Lives Matter and Me Too are also creedal-passion movements, because they are about making one's nation a good place for everybody to live in. However, raising the minimum wage is a social-democratic sort of thing.


AOC is only one person, but she likely expresses what many others are feeling. It also helps that she is a very good public speaker.

Bernie Sanders on Twitter: "“It’s time that we become the party of FDR again.
It’s time for us to become the party of the Civil Rights Act again.
It’s time for us to become the party that fights for queer liberation again, the anti-war party, a party that establishes peace and prosperity.” -@AOC https://t.co/8APqzdFiNV" / Twitter

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "I want to be the party of the New Deal again.
The party of the Civil Rights Act, the one that electrified this nation and fights for all people.
For that, many would call us radical.
But we aren’t “pushing the party left,”
we are bringing the party home. https://t.co/wLeDaxCHkZ" / Twitter

AOC's Twitter tagline: In a modern, moral, & wealthy society, no American should be too poor to live. % People-Funded, no lobbyist .

A mix of creedal passion and creedal-passion-style support for social democracy.

 

[Elixir]

The Eisenhower era (deemed "con) was an era of vast public works... which was followed by unforetold prosperity. Just bringing that up because I have an aversion to such dualistic (lib/con) representations, even when used to illustrate a "cycle".

The Eisenhower Era (late Truman to early JFK) didn't have any far-reaching changes comparable to the New Deal or the Sixties-era reforms. The closest, I think, was the early part of the civil-rights movement.

I'd take issue with that assertion if there was any objective metric by which "far reaching changes" could be tracked. I do know that the interstate highway system was instrumental to enabling the reforms of the '60s, and is still in heavy use. I think that fact alone belies your assertion, but again, there's no way to know "what if" Eisenhower's infrastructure initiatives had never been adopted.