FOURTH TURNING: CRISIS OF TRUST

“Imagine some national (and probably global) volcanic eruption, initially flowing along channels of distress that were created during the Unraveling era and further widened by the catalyst. Trying to foresee where the eruption will go once it bursts free of the channels is like trying to predict the exact fault line of an earthquake. All you know in advance is something about the molten ingredients of the climax, which could include the following:

  • Economic distress, with public debt in default, entitlement trust funds in bankruptcy, mounting poverty and unemployment, trade wars, collapsing financial markets, and hyperinflation (or deflation)
  • Social distress, with violence fueled by class, race, nativism, or religion and abetted by armed gangs, underground militias, and mercenaries hired by walled communities
  • Cultural distress, with the media plunging into a dizzying decay, and a decency backlash in favor of state censorship
  • Technological distress, with cryptoanarchy, high-tech oligarchy, and biogenetic chaos
  • Ecological distress, with atmospheric damage, energy or water shortages, and new diseases
  • Political distress, with institutional collapse, open tax revolts, one-party hegemony, major constitutional change, secessionism, authoritarianism, and altered national borders
  • Military distress, with war against terrorists or foreign regimes equipped with weapons of mass destruction” 

 The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe – 1997

September 2015 marks the seventh anniversary of this Fourth Turning Crisis. The economic, social, cultural, ecological, political, and military distress propagates by the minute as the globe is besieged by economic turmoil, increased human suffering, and endemic corruption of the political and ruling classes. The Federal Reserve/Wall Street created global economic implosion was the spark which catalyzed this fourth Crisis period in U.S. history in September 2008. Neil Howe in a 2012 essay assessed the beginning of this Fourth Turning and why 9/11 was not the catalyst:

“Pending stunning new developments, I believe the catalyst occurred in 2008.  It’s a date that is looking better and better as time goes by.  The year 2008 marked the onset of the most serious U.S. economic crisis since the Great Depression.  It also marked the election of Barack Obama, which could yet turn out to be a pivotal realignment date in U.S. political history. In fact, if I had to give the catalyst a month, I would say September of 2008.  The global Dow was in free fall.  Banks were failing.  Money markets froze shut.  Business owners held their breath.

9/11 will go down as one of the more famous crisis precursors in American history.  A crisis precursor is an event that foreshadows a crisis without being an integral part of it.  Other such precursors in American history include the Stamp Act Rebellion (1765), or Bleeding Kansas (1856), or perhaps the Red Scare (1919).”

The initial spark has triggered a chain reaction of unyielding responses by those in power, including: handing $700 billion of taxpayer funds to the Wall Street bankers whose reckless pervasive greed and fraudulent derivative products caused the worldwide conflagration, 0% interest rates for the last seven years, a quadrupling of the Federal Reserve balance sheet to $4 trillion through QE to infinity, government stimulus spending which increased the national debt from $10 trillion to $18 trillion in seven years, ongoing $600 billion annual deficits, using fraudulent accounting to disguise the insolvency of the Too Big To Fail Wall Street banks, and a conscious choice by corrupt politicians and captured government regulators to not prosecute one criminal banker.

None of these initial responses have solved any of our pervasive problems or averted further emergencies. Not only haven’t these responses resolved the intractable economic conundrums facing the world, but they have exacerbated the next round of monetary disasters rapidly approaching. Strauss and Howe predicted the initial catalyst event would not worsen into a full-fledged catastrophe because the powers that be would find a way to avert the initial danger and stabilize the situation “for a while”. The key point was those benefiting from the existing corrupt world order would do whatever it took to temporarily forestall a calamity which would result in their downfall, loss of power, and ultimate imprisonment. They have successfully delayed the regeneracy phase of this Fourth Turning by turning on the monetary debt spigot full throttle.

It is highly unlikely we will have a resolution to this Crisis period for at least another ten years, so if you think the worst is over you are badly mistaken. If the climax is somehow accelerated like the Civil War, it will likely result in bloody wars, with a horrific death toll. The five year lull can be viewed as the world passing through the eye of an immense hurricane. There will always be ebbs, flows and lulls within a 20 year long Crisis, as seen in previous Fourth Turnings.

The Boston Tea Party catalyst spark occurred in December 1773, but the fireworks didn’t get going until 1775 and the regeneracy Declaration of Independence event in 1776. The Civil War Fourth Turning had no lulls. The catalyst election of Abraham Lincoln to the regeneracy event of the First Battle of Bull Run was only nine months. The acceleration did not allow for cooler heads to prevail. The result was ghastly death and destruction. The 1929 Stock Market Crash catalyst was followed by a three year lull until FDR’s election and New Deal programs marked the regeneracy.

In my previous four part article Fourth Turning – The Shadow of Crisis Has Not Passed written early in 2015 I attempted to explain generational theory, provided evidence we are still early in this Crisis, pondered the potential clash between the citizens and our debased, dysfunctional, captured government, and contemplated the kind of war which will thrust the world through the gate of history towards an uncertain future. The misconceptions regarding generational theory and the Fourth Turning keep a vast swath of otherwise lucid thinkers from understanding the implications of generational mood changes which drive the cyclical nature of history. The cognitive dissonance and normalcy bias of most Americans blinds them to the lessons of history and leaves them vulnerable to the winter that has beset the nation.

The Fourth Turning is not a prophecy or some Nostradamus like predictions. It’s a logical theory based upon the average time span of a long human life and the four phases of that life: childhood, young adulthood, mid-life, and old age. The interaction of generations during their phases of life is what produces the profound mood changes throughout history. The dramatic events during the course of antiquity are less important than how society responds to them. The reaction is substantially determined by the season of the saeculum and the generational mood that aligns with that season. We’ve entered the Winter season, with bitterly cold days ahead and intense blizzard-like conditions forecast for the next decade.

The ignorance of linear thinking advocates regarding the cyclical nature of history is either due to their “progressive” public educational brainwashing or their intellectual inability to grasp the obvious. Our daily existence is cyclical with 24 hours in a day, 365 days in year based upon earth’s orbiting the sun, 12 months divided into four seasons, and the circle of life – birth through death is the ultimate cycle perpetuating life on this planet. There are dozens of astronomical, mathematical, religious, sleep, agricultural, social, economic and war cycles known to man. Martin Armstrong has a cycle theory predicting the collapse of government between 2016 and 2020. The Kondratiev Wave theory and Elliott Wave Theory are preached by “experts” and followed by millions. Of course, many of these “experts” are busy selling their predictions in newsletters to make a buck.

The thought leaders in academia, politics, business, and mass media perpetuate the myth of never ending linear progress created by technological advances and the ever increasing intellectual evolution of mankind. The hubris of these people is incomprehensible when viewing history. The myopic delusions of these arrogant egotists are easily shattered by the horrific regressions of history. Were the Great Depression and the 65 million people killed during World War II progress for mankind? Was Stalin’s murder of 20 million Russian peasants a linear progression? Was Mao’s Great Leap Forward murder of 45 million Chinese peasants really a leap forward? Was the death of 5% of the U.S. male population in the space of four years during the Civil War really progress?

Mankind and civilization do not advance in a straight line. Progression and regression alternate in a cyclical fashion. As generations die out, memories of the previous cycle are forgotten, and the mistakes are repeated again. Human nature does not change. Good, evil, greed, fear, bravery, honesty, arrogance, sacrifice, and truth intermingle to drive humans through the cycles of history.

Strauss & Howe were economists and historians who attempted to make some sense out of the seemingly convoluted twists of history. They deciphered a pattern which could be traced back for centuries based upon the age and alignment of generations throughout history. They never attempted to capitalize on their work by selling newsletters or peddling their predictions about the future. When they published their work in 1997 they couldn’t predict the exact events which would drive the next Fourth Turning, but they could estimate the general timing and the core elements which would drive the crisis: debt, civic decay, and global disorder. These areas were neglected, denied, and unaddressed during the Unraveling period from 1984 through 2008. To read their words now, eighteen years after they were written and eleven years before this Fourth Turning struck, is haunting, as they describe precisely where we stand today:

“As the Crisis catalyzes, these fears will rush to the surface, jagged and exposed. Distrustful of some things, individuals will feel that their survival requires them to distrust more things. This behavior could cascade into a sudden downward spiral, an implosion of societal trust.”

“But as the Crisis mood congeals, people will come to the jarring realization that they have grown helplessly dependent on a teetering edifice of anonymous transactions and paper guarantees. Many Americans won’t know where their savings are, who their employer is, what their pension is, or how their government works. The era will have left the financial world arbitraged and tentacled: Debtors won’t know who holds their notes, homeowners who owns their mortgages, and shareholders who runs their equities – and vice versa.”

The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe – 1997

Regeneracy – Where Art Thou?

The regeneracy during a Fourth Turning is when a sense of urgency about institutional dysfunction and civic vulnerabilities coalesce the nation or large blocs of the homeland behind a strong leader to tear down the existing social, economic and cultural order and replace it with something different. The different can be better or far worse. The Declaration of Independence, First Battle of Bull Run, and election of FDR marked the regeneracy in prior American Fourth Turnings. They all occurred within four years of the initial catalyst. It is now seven years into this Fourth Turning and a clear regeneracy event has not materialized. This has been a frustrating development for those who are impatient to get this Fourth Turning moving at a quicker pace. But, each Fourth Turning will proceed at its own pace dependent upon events, the country’s reaction to those events, and the leaders we choose during the Crisis.

Neil Howe, in his 2012 essay pondered the regeneracy issue and described it more as an era than an event. It requires something dramatic that unifies the country or causes the people to break into separate unified factions.

“I think it’s pretty obvious that the regeneracy has not yet started.  So how long do we need to wait for it?  And how will we know when it starts?  Those are good questions.  I recently went back over The Fourth Turning to recall how we dated the stages of the each of the historical 4Ts.  And I found that we were very explicit about dating the other three stages (catalyst, climax, and resolution) for each 4T.  But we were always a bit vague about dating the regeneracy, treating it more like an era than a date.  There is a reason for this.  We may like to imagine that there is a definable day and hour when America, faced by growing danger and adversity, explicitly decides to patch over its differences, band together, and build something new.  But maybe what really happens is that everyone feels so numb that they let somebody in charge just go ahead and do whatever he’s got to do.  I’m thinking of how America felt during the bleak years of FDR’s first term, or during Lincoln’s assumption of vast war powers after his repeated initial defeats on the battlefield.

The regeneracy cannot always be identified with a single news event.  But it does have to mark the beginning of a growth in centralized authority and decisive leadership at a time of great peril and urgency.  Typically, the catalyst itself doesn’t lead directly to a regeneracy.  There has to be a second or third blow, something that seems a lot more perilous than just the election of third-party candidate (Civil War catalyst) or a very bad month in the stock market (Great Power catalyst).

We are still due for such a moment.  We have not yet reached our regeneracy.  When it happens, I strongly suspect it will be in response to an adverse financial event.  It may also happen in response to a geopolitical event.  It may well happen over the next year or two.  Given the pattern of historical 4Ts, it is very likely to happen before the end of the next presidential term (2016).”

As previously stated, The Fourth Turning does not predict what series of events will trigger a regeneracy. It lays out a generational framework regarding how generations will react to the events. As Howe points out, the regeneracy requires a 2nd or 3rd blow which seems even more perilous than the initial shock. His suspicion that it will be in response to an even worse financial debacle than 2008 and very likely to happen before the next election in 2016 appears to be dead on. The oblivious trusting masses will again be shocked and bewildered when the second devastating shock wave of this Crisis strikes in the next twelve months. The next global financial meltdown, caused by the Federal Reserve, along with central bankers in Europe, Japan and China, will create a fearful panic and an intense urgency for a strong self-assured leader who promises to rescue the nation from peril. The panic will coincide with the presidential election in November 2016.

The “Great Divider” Barack Obama squandered his chance to be the leader who united the nation when he proved to be nothing more than a captured political hack, bowing down to the corporate fascist establishment, while stirring wide spread resentment with his culture war rhetoric and inability to inspire confidence with his toothless hope and change sloganeering. His failure to reign in or prosecute the greedy sociopathic Wall Street criminals, his acquiescence to the military industrial complex by expanding our war mongering and sowing chaos in the Middle East, and his total disregard for fiscal restraint as the country’s long term financial picture rapidly deteriorates, proved that he would not be the Fourth Turning Grey Champion leader.

In retrospect, neither McCain nor Romney would have united the country, as they are both crony capitalist establishment figures. The mood of the country has darkened substantially in the last year as people are fed up with their deteriorating economic circumstances, sick of both political parties, and angry at the unrestrained illegal immigrant invasion on our southern border.

I’m beginning to believe the nation will not be unified behind a common cause when the coming financial eruption unleashes molten lava of chaos, punishing economic distress, civil strife, class warfare, race wars, and ultimately global war. As Strauss and Howe foretold, the establishment (aka corporate fascist military industrial surveillance state) has seen a sequential loss of popular trust as their blatant corruption, sociopathic stranglehold on the levers of power, and unrelenting greed have angered the critical thinking aware citizens of this country. The next leg down in this Greater Depression will sever the remaining trust, disintegrating any remaining support for the existing civic order. What comes next will be heavily dependent upon whether the 5% to 10% of liberty minded believers in the Constitution are able to gain the trust of the masses. The odds will be long, but no longer than they were during that bitter winter at Valley Forge in 1777-1778.

“It could be a series of downward ratchets linked to political events that sequentially knock the supports out from under the residual popular trust in the system. As assets devalue, trust will further disintegrate, which will cause assets to devalue further, and so on. Every slide in asset prices, employment, and production will give every generation cause to grow more alarmed. With savings worth less, the new elders will become more dependent on government, just as government becomes less able to pay benefits to them. Before long, America’s old civic order will seem ruined beyond repair.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe – 1997

In Part 2 of this article I will ponder possible Grey Champion, prophet generation leaders who could arise during the regeneracy, try to assess which channels of distress are likely to burst forth with the molten ingredients of this Fourth Turning, and lastly make some guesses about potential climaxes.

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Tommy
Tommy

Jim, top notch – you’ve really got a knack for this writing thing.

Maggie
Maggie

My uncle built a very successful business in the farming community that was created when the Federal Government decided that draining the Mississippi floodplain, i.e., swamps of Missouri [http://showme.net/~fkeller/quake/lib/littleriverdrainage.htm] was a worthwhile endeavor.

Well, I wrote that story long ago and almost sold it to the Missouri Historical Society for their quarterly journal (IF I would give it an environmental impact slant. … screw that.) but my story here is about my uncle, not me.

He realized that once the swamplands were farmlands, people would need clean water. He started a well drilling business that was, at one time, the GO TO place for people in the tri-state area to get their wells drilled. He guaranteed good water and by making sure that he did everything correct the first time and trained his workers well, he was operating more than a dozen trucks drilling water wells in my teen years.

Well, one of the people he employed heard about this law that said that everyone who worked more than 8 hours per day should be paid overtime wages. Now, my uncle kept very careful records and he offered his workers compensation time when they had to work extra hours to bring in a well, or he allowed them to “bank” hours and save up additional vacation time so they could take long weekends or schedule time off when they needed it. All of his workers loved that policy and none of them seemed interested in making him pay them overtime.

However, that ONE GUY brought in the National Labor Board investigator, who informed all of his workers that not only would they get overtime pay from now on if they signed onto the case being brought against him, WHY each and every one of them would get retroactive overtime pay for all the compensation time he’d recorded in his very carefully kept books. Some of them realized that after working for him for over a decade, they might be looking at close to six figures in retroactive pay.

And, the National Labor guy assured them all that he could NOT fire them.

Well, they brought their case and won. I heard that one of the workers received $97,000… he was driving a really nice 4 x 4 around town soon after, so I don’t doubt it. My uncle was devastated, spiritually. These were men he’d trusted and worked side by side with for years. Some of them were family in many ways. Only ONE of them refused to sign on and became “management” in order to avoid causing him harm.

Well, while it was true that my uncle could not fire them, they never thought about what would happen if he decided he no longer wanted to run the business. He turned it over to his son, who reorganized and hired only one guy (guess who?) and sold off all the trucks but two, telling the world that he preferred to run a smaller business than his father had run.

Now, almost every single one of those clever bastards will turn red from humiliation if you ask them about it. Some work in labor positions locally; most are on the public dole.

And my cousin? Did not hurt the business one bit… He still runs an honest operation and has actually expanded into other areas. But, he will never hire anyone who is not someone he trusts completely. And even then, he keeps a close eye on them.

But, it broke my uncle’s heart and his health. He loved being able to run that business the way he ran it… and he called every one of those men among his friends.

Iconoclast421
Iconoclast421

I’m a big fan of generational cycles, Kondratiev winter, and all that. But one thing to keep in mind is that these cycles probably expand and contract along with average life expectancy. So there is an argument to be made that winter will last a great deal longer than we might otherwise think.

Innocent Bystander
Innocent Bystander

“$600 trillion annual deficits.” Come on, bro!

Rise Up

Stephanie Shepard says: “Gah, Admin! Can we get a comment section upgrade that allows for edits???”
——————————-
SS, you can make edits in the comment window BEFORE you hit “Submit Comment”. It’s called proofreading. Try it.

TE
TE

What scares the hell out of me, is that with the possible exception of Roman’s at the height of the leaded wine/vessel poisonings, and even then it may not have been as bad as now, there has never a society that has been intentionally and maliciously brain damaged to the extent I see around me now.

Not five out of a hundred people have an inkling of the very real damage the low fat diets and constant bombardment of chemicals and ingested non-food substances are doing to our brains.

This scares the bejesus out of me. How can people that are too stunted to think clearly EVER choose a concept like “freedom” that requires sacrifice ? I hope to hell we haven’t been so destroyed that it can’t be overcome.

@Stephanie. Wow. It has been a pleasure watching your personal growth.

@Llpoh, right as rain. The idiots are protesting outside Detroit city council “demanding” $15 minimum wage. In a city where building, liability, car and even health insurance is nearly double the surrounding ‘burbs. A city where losing 20% to “shrinkage” is just the cost of doing business. A city where the you, and your employees, face the threat of death nearly daily. A city where businesses are still culling employees thanks to Obamacare and the lack of customers.

Increase minimum wage for the lowest skilled, increase the costs of everything, struggle to understand why your skilled staff just figured out they would make more by being on welfare, or taking the menial labor jobs that come with none of the headaches that the office and management staff takes home.

The speed at which we are approaching the final catastrophe is accelerating. Great, that means the final collision will be even more spectacular.

Stephanie Shepard

Rise up- But I don’t wanna proof read!

comment image

Llpoh
Llpoh

TE – glad you comment here.

Steph – good stuff. You have left the dark side behind.

Francis – your mistake was talking to a teacher. Don’t do that. Just don’t. Otherwise, you are correct in what you say.

MAN
MAN

Rich,

I’m glad you solved your employee problems by only hiring subcontractors and eliminating any responsibility regarding eligibility to work, wages, deductions, insurance. Your really smart. I guess that makes you a BallSterian. I hope you sleep well at night.Hold on tight to those jewels.

Let us know what you peddle so we don’t buy it.

Llpoh
Llpoh

Man is a fucking moron. He is just another asswipe who believes people owe him a job, and that anyone who does not hire employees is evil and cruel.

What say Man go out and start a business, hire hundreds of folks, and shut the fuck up.

Stephanie Shepard

“Steph – good stuff. You have left the dark side behind.”

I wouldn’t consider it “the dark side”. I just realized a few things:

1. The “job economy” is dying. There is no reason to commune to work in office. There is no reason to have 1,000’s of sq. ft. of retail space when there is internet commerce.

2. Restaurants and the food industry was modeled after the efficiency of the industrial revolution. We no longer live in a mechanically predicable industrial era. And what will survive of the food industry are upscale restaurants that do not cater to all and more higher end food fast (bye-bye McDonalds)

3. I don’t want a job I want to make money. There is a huge difference. A job limits me. It tells me when I can work, how long I can work, and for how much I can earn without negotiation. Eff’ that!

4. My time is too valuable to wait in traffic, work for idiots, deal with petty co-workers, and be left emotionally drained and poor.

5. The founders weren’t messing around when they wrote humanity has the right to the pursuit of happiness. It is amazing how many problems in life can be solved by pursuing happiness.

rich
rich

“Let us know what you peddle so we don’t buy it.”

Man, I build beach houses that I rent out. Other than hiring subs, there is no way to build them.

starfcker
starfcker

I don’t believe MAN will be in the market for a beach house in this lifetime. Just a hunch.

Mark Timothy
Mark Timothy

“until the election of FDR and the New Deal marked the regeneracy” ? I haven’t read anything that moronic
in a long time.

tayronachan
tayronachan

Man,

Ever hear of “Liberty of Contract”?

Billah's wife
Billah's wife

I’ve got uh riddle fer yall. Who gits 15 wedgies uh week and works at Autozone?

Maggie, got any ideas?

Maggie
Maggie

Admin… eagerly awaiting part II.

Steph… I know my son is a bit younger than you, I’m still thinking it would be a match made on TBP.

BW or whomever? Not a riddle fan.

Billah's wife
Billah's wife

Maggie, is that goobery lookin young man got enough testicular fortitude to assume Steph’s unpaid student loans?

Maggie
Maggie

To whom it may concern… the young man in question intends to build himself a career, then a business, then a family, in that order. Since he’s the most serious-natured 21-year old I’ve ever known, I will have to withdraw my suggestion to Stephanie, at least for the time being.

In other interesting news, I see that Johnathan Cahn of Harbinger fame has an interview about the Shemitah on Hagmann and Hagmann…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qwoKqqvqUI

Was there discussion here about the Harbinger phenom when the book was released? If so, can you provide a link?

Billah's wife
Billah's wife

Good choice Maggie. FYI nerds r pretty much de facto serious natured, I bet he’s super serious about Harry Potter and shit. Plus, I been thinking Steph and Billy Jr would make uh pair. He couldn’t give a flyin monkeys anus if she’s uh deadbeat er not.

Maggie
Maggie

I doubt Stephanie would ever fall into the deadbeat category and, as for “nerd?”… It is the subtitle on all the rocket scientists’ nametags where he worked last summer.

We read Harry Potter books together when he was in elementary school. Got a call from the youth pastor when he was in second grade because I planned to take him to the first movie as a reward for finishing the second book of over 400 pages. Since the youth pastor thought it evil to take my son to the movie, I took him and 3 of his classmates. We left private school after that year… his father and I decided we would decide what to censor from his mind, not a bunch of self-serving bigots.

And, since I am making this reply mostly to defend Stephanie, whose name got dragged into this because of my silly comments to her, I will just assure those who suggest I ignore comments rather than respond, that I will try to refrain from such banter in the future. I’d almost forgotten the need for some here to make everything decidedly unfun.

Sensetti
Sensetti

Maggie TBP is a lot of things unfun is not one of them. You have way to much blood in your alcohol level. Take a break, make some adjustments, and then step back on TBP, everything will come into focus for you.

Maggie
Maggie

True… I’d forgotten my Sunday morning Bloody Mary.

Billah's wife
Billah's wife

Good gawd. Sensetti just rolled out of the ditch and is pawing around fer that last swig of Beefeaters. You’ve let yerself go ter hell Sensetti and that makes all of here very sad.

Maggie, I have a super awesome idea that’s gonna make yer famous. Take the sweet ass ideas of the messianic Jew novel Harbinger, mix in some Shemitah and shake it together with Jimmy q’s expertise on the 4th T. What you’d have there would be strong enough ter put Sensetti in a week long drunken stupor (which he’ll be in anyways)

Williebee
Williebee

Excellent article Admin, one thing you may want to restate this sentence:

” His suspicion that it will be in response to an even worse financial debacle than 2008 and very likely to happen before the next election in 2016 appears to be dead on.”

His “very likely” period was stated as during the next presidential cycle:

” It may well happen over the next year or two. Given the pattern of historical 4Ts, it is very likely to happen before the end of the next presidential term (2016).”

Is it a misunderstanding on my part?

Billah's wife
Billah's wife

Why the hell has this thread devolved inter Maggie Maggie talking about the Shemitah cycle while yer got Stucky’s multi pronged 911 pile uh retardation gettin all the action? Has this thing made Zero hedge yet?

I’m about ter start makin some calls and tryin ter git mah peeps ter help out admenstruater’s comment count.

ssgconway

The 4T, like certain other books (think ‘Camp of the Saints,’ for example) appears to have been written several years later than it was, so clairvoyant is the exegesis of the author’s thesis. I always enjoy Admin’s 4T posts and will look forward to his next, too While some would-be ‘Grey Champion’ possibilities that may have made sense if one were guessing months or years ago are now either marginalized (like James Webb, my pick) or our of the picture (like Rick Perry), a sudden system-shock may propel an obscure man or woman into the crux of events. The immigration crisis is my pick, as we face what the Eastern Roman Empire did in the Fifth Century, AD – loss of one of our two citadels of power, as Rome fell to the Goths. Losing Europe, soon, is a reality, at least in the sense of having a stable, prosperous collection of allies and trading partners. The survivors of the debacle (France, Poland and Hungary, plus any other nation not suicidally infused with guilt) will need help – fast – and our own Southwest may be destabilized enough to be in a similar position.
Someone as obscure as Ike in 1938 or Lincoln in 1857 may come to the fore. If not, it’s very possibly our last rodeo as a nation and a people.

Williebee
Williebee

Thanks admin, I am very much looking forward to the next installment.

M
M

Interesting conceptualization. Boom, Bust and Echo also link demographic ,generational patterns and needs to potential outflows, but within a smaller time frame. As mentioned, there are many wave or pattern recognition approaches to large scale data analysis over longer time lines. Very little is mentioned about climate change, which while not immediately catastrophic is already rippling impacts through increased disruptive effects. Technology and it’s misuse and destructive forces, as well as it’s revolutionary driver impacts are rippling with global connectivity. In a search for a higher level of organization, the world’s economies and cultures are impacting to a higher degree and merging. The immense destructiveness of this new phase will likely lead to major social upheavals and has the outcome dichotomy of a major structural revolution or high destructiveness. Our ability to communicate at satisfactory effectiveness will determine outcomes. The role social media is now playing with issues such as outliers being electoral possibilities, or transporting revolutionary ideas with contagion, will be the battleground for our global ability to transform into a global democractic-like global state.

This compares to the discussion of regeneration after collapse in many similar models. Wealth disparities and increased social violent revolutionary themes on a global scale, and likely to create incendiary social tinderboxes, as time and triggers pass. The Middle East has already engaged in large scale change and migrations. This will not be an isolated event in our time.

Billah's wife
Billah's wife

There ya go. Rallied the troops and got yer some comments jimmy q.

starfcker
starfcker

Ssgconway, jim webb was an interesting guy in 2007, but he has gotten lost in the weeds of party coalition politics, much as rand paul did. Instead of focusing on the good of the country, and letting the voters come to you, they got lost in the bullshit of ‘reaching out’. Fuck perry, he’s a company stooge.

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

Mark Timothy says: “until the election of FDR and the New Deal marked the regeneracy” ? I haven’t read anything that moronic in a long time.

Finally, a bit of recognition! But don’t go half-stepping, Mark. Do enlighten this poor fool. It’s not like you can’t get a word in edgewise between BW and Maggie trying to play matchmaker for their precious boys.

Mags, don’t stop the banter. Do you know why you like Stephanie for your boy? She can banter with the best of them, she doesn’t get the red ass over a bit of hazing. Like a true raptor, she learns and comes back even more dangerous. ER, maybe you better spare your boy, I think BW has a sister/cousin you might like for your boy.

Apropos of BW, I’m reminded of the old saying: every woman has some beauty, even if it’s a distant cousin.

tayronachan
tayronachan

@ssgconway

A Grey Champion coming out of the political class?!?!?! Most people are so fed up with the psycho politicians, that any Grey Champion coming from that class would more than likely get punch in the mouth before he had a chance to say anything.

RiNS

?

Winston
Winston

Haha

Shields up! Arm Photon torpedoes!

pbrower2a1
pbrower2a1

We need look at non-American Crises, too. The Spanish Civil War suggests itself in a country polarizing into Left and Right with rhetoric becoming increasingly strident. Millions of Americans would rather go to a foreign country knowing little about it than go from Dixie to the Northeast or vice-versa. As with Spain in the 1930s, so it is with America today, some parts as modern and sophisticated as anywhere else in the world, and others completely rejecting the values of the Enlightenment in return for medieval certainty. Does that look familiar!

The Right, I am afraid to say, has built-in advantages in owning the assets and being in tough with the ideology of the military. It has the most ruthless of the news media, media about as objective as Pravda was in its day. It also dominates the political life of rural areas. It can strangle the great cities that resist the demands of the Right by cutting off food, power, and water. Lose electrical power, and communications practically die. It can give the nastiest dichotomy possible to people — slavery or death, perhaps with methods out of the Spanish Inquisition, the Stalinist nightmare, or the Third Reich. Be not fooled, for every sociopath and fanatic knows that to make people most helpless they need only reduce life to the lowest levels of existence, groveling for food, water, air, or moderation from the brutal weather. Thus with Trotsky and thus with Franco.

There has hardly been a country more suited to a Gulag by its geographic scope and harsh climates than the USA. Escape from a desperate situation more than walking distance to a border will be as difficult as it was in the Soviet Union or China under Mao. Add to that our economic leadership has practically no virtues. It demands everything for itself, following a pattern of behavior out of the quack philosophy of Ayn Rand that invariably ends as

Freedom for me but not for thee.

Ayn Rand is the mirror image of Karl Marx for embracing the flaws of plutocracy instead of excoriating them. Both reject any incremental reform in favor of the purest expression of their faith to be imposed upon the whole of Humanity. Those who see no purpose in life other than enjoying sybaritic indulgence as the result of crass exploitation of everyone else could have never found a more sympathetic prophet.

We Americans have been fortunate in the past (First Peoples being subjugated and plantation slaves obviously excepted!) in having leadership largely rational and decent. But every Crisis is different, and class warfare that gets nukes behind it is the worst situation imaginable. So far the crony capitalists have all the strategic advantages. American oligarchs can bring forth the worst nightmare that Humanity has ever seen.

Remember the offensive images from Abu Ghraib in Iraq — you are warned! We have done far too little to undo the depravity of recent years.

LondonLad
LondonLad

Regeneracy – Where Art Thou?

Your US-centrism blinds you, we have a global fourth turning so stop looking at it from stupidly American perspective, the regeneracy is happening and it’s called Russia, their social cohesion and recent Middle East intervention

google

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Allen

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