Of Time, Turnings, Stars & Wars

by Uncola for TheBurningPlatform.com

Like nature, history is full of processes that cannot happen in reverse. Just as the laws of entropy do not allow a bird to fly backward, or droplets to regroup at the top of a waterfall, history has no rewind button. Like the seasons of nature, it moves only forward.

Straus and Howe:  “The Fourth Turning”, FIRST EDITION, page 255

Contemplating the concept of time can be quite confounding, to say the least.  In the extreme, considering the paradoxical nature of time’s passage will stretch the mind causing thoughts to invert like taffy in a rolling machine or light yielding to the gravity of an Event Horizon before the edge of a Black Hole in deep space.

Knowing Einstein was right means time stops at the speed of light.  Surely then, waves of thought must generate their own specific gravity to capture both light and sound, together.  Our eyes and ears record each moment and translate events into high definition digital memories which we can recall upon demand and view as celluloid film stock in a dark room.

However, in this dimension, there is another aspect at play that comes attached to time.  Space: The final frontier.  These conflagrate together and then separate at any given moment never to coalesce again in quite the same way.  Time can be recalled like a ghost, or a spectral hologram, on the mind’s screen, but the space will have changed and dissipated entropically like dust digested in the amorphous bellies of Stephen King’s Langoliers.

To put it another way, time changes everything.

This week one of my offspring had a milestone birthday so we went to a morning movie matinee followed by an expensive late lunch at a fine dining venue.  It was there where I chewed my food and contemplated the confounding conceptual continuations of space and time.

The movie was the new Star Wars flick, Rogue One and the state-of-the-art theater featured stadium seating and a massive UltraScreen Deluxe® with Dolby® Atmospheric Surround-sound which, according to the advertisements, offered the “ultimate moviegoing experience”.

As I watched the story unfold in REAL D 3D® with my 3D glasses in place while eating my popcorn and nestled comfortably in the red leather DreamLoungerTM recliner, I thought to myself how I really am in the future.  In the lobby after the movie, I checked Drudge on my smartphone and learned Carrie Fisher had just died in Los Angeles.

This made me remember way back to my past when I was a preteen and first saw the original Star Wars.  I watched it with several friends in an ornately vintage, and solitary, theater in my small town.  Through the patina of time and the opaque looking glass of my mind’s eye, I remember hoping no one would tell my parents, or my orthodontist, that I was eating popcorn and lemon drops with new braces on my teeth.  Although I was an avid reader back then with a keen appreciation for science fiction, I had not seen a film before that captivated me like the first Star Wars. The excellent storyline, superior special effects, and the characters in the film really made an impression on me.

If my current self could go back to that day, I would meet the geeky, metal-mouthed kid after the movie and tell him some things. I would also mention how, in 39 years, he will celebrate his progeny’s birthday who, at that time, will be several years older than he is now and how he will be seeing another Star Wars movie on the very same day that Princess Leia dies in real life.

The ironic confluence of time and space, indeed.

I am sure the mini-me at that time would have pegged me as a brain-damaged old fool and, in turn, would have attempted to persuade me into buying him and his friends a six-pack of beer, a fifth of peppermint Schnapps, a Playboy and a can of chew.

After all, according to The Fourth Turning, by Strauss and Howe, the year 1977 was two and a half “Turnings” ago. Back then, the future wasn’t set.  Or was it?

We perceive our civic challenge as some vast, insoluble Rubik’s Cube. Behind each problem lies another problem that must be solved first, and behind that lies yet another, and another, ad infinitum. To fix crime we have to fix the family, but before we do that we have to fix welfare, and that means fixing our budget, and that means fixing our civic spirit, but we can’t do that without fixing moral standards, and that means fixing schools and churches, and that means fixing the inner cities, and that’s impossible unless we fix crime. There’s no fulcrum on which to rest a policy lever. People of all ages sense that something huge will have to sweep across America before the gloom can be lifted – but that’s an awareness we suppress. As a nation, we’re in deep denial.

Straus and Howe:  “The Fourth Turning”, FIRST EDITION, page 2

Written by the historians William Strauss and Neil Howe, The Fourth Turning was published in 1997 and was, at that time, boldly proclaimed by the authors to be an “American Prophecy”.  The book is fascinating in that it very thoroughly documents recorded cycles of history across multiple cultures and eras in order to predict the timing of “America’s next rendezvous with destiny”.

Processing almost like a Cliff’s Notes summary, the book identifies the timelines of historical events and matches them to specific life cycles of people in the form of generational archetypes. What is also interesting is how Strauss and Howe quantify and compare the recordings of history of multiple authors throughout the millennia to find uncanny comparisons in both historical and generational cycles.  Ironically, the comparisons stand up not only to the test of time regarding recorded events in history, but the generational turnings and archetypes also translate to ancient literature and other writings as well, ranging from Homer’s Iliad to the Holy Bible.

The concept of time is discussed in the context of both circular and linear perspectives as Strauss and Howe describe what is called the “saeculum”.  The saeculum represents a “long human life”, or approximately 80 to 90 years comprising of four turnings each lasting about 20 to 22 years.

Just as there are four seasons consisting of spring, summer, fall and winter, there are also four phases of a human life represented in childhood, young adulthood, middle age and old age, or elderhood.  As each phase of human life represents approximately 20 years, so is each generational archetype identified within historical cycles, or turnings, as follows.

The generational archetypes experience the historical turnings according their life stage, or age.  Amazingly, history shows a consistent pattern in how the generations both cause and affect historical events.  The patterns develop based upon how each generation interacts with the other and this also has documented consistencies that are delineated by the authors.

At any given “turning” during the saeculum, the set order of the generations on the age ladder is called a “constellation”.

For example, during the Fourth Turning Crisis of 1929 through 1945, America experienced a financial crash, a great depression and a world war.  During this period, the Prophet generation was entering Elderhood, the Nomad generation were middle-aged and the Hero generation fought WW II as young adults while the Artist generation were children during that time.

When the Crisis (Winter) era of financial hardship and war was over, the Spring of another First Turning began as the Hero generation led America into a season of unparalleled prosperity from 1946 through President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963.  It was then the baby boomer, Prophet, generation began.  As young adults, the boomers began to rock the nation with new age flower-power, feminism, guitars and free love.  Thus began the Awakening that lasted through Ronald Reagan’s first term that ended in 1984.  It was then the Third Turning of the Unraveling began.

In 1997, when the Fourth Turning was published, Strauss and Howe used their generational model to predict with remarkable accuracy, the start of the next Crisis in 2005:

By the middle Oh-Ohs, institutions will reach a point of maximum weakness, individualism of maximum strength, and even the simplest public task will feel beyond the ability of government. As niche walls rise ever higher, people will complain endlessly how bad all of the niches are. Wide chasms will separate rich from poor, whites from blacks, immigrants from native borns, seculars from born agains, technophiles from technophobes.  America will feel more tribal. Indeed, many will be asking whether fifty states and so many dozens of ethic cultures make sense any more as a nation – and, if they do, whether that nation has a future.

Straus and Howe:  “The Fourth Turning”, FIRST EDITION, page 252

In 1997 there was no way to foresee the sequencing of 911, the Patriot Act, Edward Snowden, government incompetence after Hurricane Katrina, the financial crisis of 2007 – 2008, the subsequent TARP bailouts or the election of a mysterious, biracial pied piper to the presidency of the United States.

There is no way anyone could have predicted the ensuing eight years of Obama, the nationalization of healthcare, the orgy of greed hosted by Wall Street at the expense of Main Street, endless wars, unchecked immigration, the TSA, NSA, Homeland Security, the CIA versus the FBI, smart phones, drones, religious discriminations, Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party, the Alt-right, Black Lives Matter and fake news.

Given the accuracy and timing of Strauss and Howe’s predictions, perhaps there is real validity behind their generational theory after all.  And, given this, then we are now within the Winter of a Fourth Turning Crisis.

Can you feel it in the air?

High powers in dark places are gathering and sides are being chosen as potential treachery and intrigue lurk around every corner.  A global empire stands prepared to battle with populist movements and sovereign nations across the globe while rumors of a neo American civil war abound here at home.

Captured corporate media propaganda outlets and deep state government agencies relentlessly shill for a global empire and stoke the fires of war against a free alternative media while simultaneously provoking a nuclear armed Russia.

Half of the nation’s electorate, on the brink of a financial abyss, would rather kneel before an evil empire than to support the outcome of a free election.  It matters not that the new President Elect happens to be the most successful guy in the world with a great family; or the fact he self-funded his campaign and overcame great odds against a blatantly biased media and corrupt-to-the-core establishment fighting him and his millions of deplorable supporters at every turn.

Of course, there is no unity in America today. Those days are long gone.

People young and old will puzzle over what it felt like for their parents and grandparents, in a distantly remembered era, to have lived in a society that felt like one national community. They will yearn to recreate this, to put America back together again. But no one will know how.

Straus and Howe:  “The Fourth Turning”, FIRST EDITION, page 252

Winter is here.  War is coming. Battles will be waged and conflicts will rage. There will be no escape for what is coming and no guarantee as to any outcome, save one:   After this Fourth Turning, there will remain only liberty or tyranny. One, but not the other. For this will be a fight unto the death.

Even so, do many Nomads now entering middle-age, and their Hero generation progeniture, actually understand what is about to befall them?   Do they even care?  And, for those who do understand and do care; do they know how to fight?

Truly, there are many variables to this historical cycle that were absent in the all of the previous Fourth Turnings throughout history.  A few examples would include pervasive and devastating technology with the capabilities of either enslaving, or killing, entire generations of people; a global corporatocracy in control of government agencies, mass flows of information, food and resources; entirely misinformed and apathetic populations with no moral bearing, belief system, or willingness to accept truth in order to stand strong against the dark powers now encroaching; and, finally, there are so many who have been trained to embrace the utopian lie of one world under tyranny.  Sadly, many of these may be the new Stormtroopers in waiting.

In the end, we must choose.  And not choosing, by default, is a choice.  Can a rag tag federation of freedom fighters with truth, liberty and history on their side under a flag of 13 stripes and 50 stars, with idea-fueled keyboards, a compromised internet, and semi-automatic weapons prevail against a galactic empire in control of a technocracy more powerful than any fictional Death Star?

We’re about to find out.

In 1977, Carrie Fisher’s star was born in the form of Princess Leia.  Today, her light has faded; imploded like a supernova in the vacuum of space and time.  Yet, even now, we see through the lens of Hollywood’s telescope a reflective luminance shining from a fictional galaxy, far, far away.

The year 2017 has arrived.  Cheers to the New Year.  Everything that has ever happened before has delivered us to where we are now.  Hold on to that.  Even more importantly, don’t forget to fasten your seatbelts and place your trays in the upright and locked position. The warp drive is about to be engaged.  A new journey has begun.

May the Force be with you.

Author: Uncola

I am one who has found the road less traveled while remaining a whiskered, whispering witness to the world. I hope what you just considered was worth the price and time spent. www.TheTollOnline.com

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hardscrabble farmer

Great analogy. I too recall the original Star Wars, sitting in the little theater in Lawrenceville, NJ with my popcorn and the scrolling intro as the film opened thinking that this was the most modern, technologically advanced entertainment that had ever been seen by human eyes.

Now?

How quaint our lives are in the galactic spin of eternity.

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

We got to see the movie in a similar little theater in Champaign, IL with all the fancy chandeliers and Louis XV decoration in the ceiling. Maybe I’m confusing it with a theater on Broadway in downtown LA but that’s what the mind does to memories, improves on them like a good writer and records them as they should have been.

Westcoaster
Westcoaster

The galactic spin continues; just back from Wal-mart and they’re selling the curved-screen 4K models for under $1K.

Stucky

I haven’t read it yet because I generally don’t like to read books about predictions …. cuz most of the time they are wrong.

The Y2K bug was going to usher in the end of the world.
Jesus is coming back in the year 2000.
THIS (insert really really big news event here) is the beginning of the end!!!!

Sure. Whatever.

I’m fucken sick and tired of waiting for The End To Come. Then again, I’m probably a fucken moran.

Maggie
Maggie

You are ONE Mr. Grumpy Gills these days, Stucky.

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

He’s one what, fucken moran?

See that? That’s why you shouldn’t trust women; to paraphrase my HS coach with his all of 21 years of wisdom, “enjoy the girls now because once they turn 55, they turn into bitches.”

Of course he said 21 but I updated it, ok?

Uncola

Wow! Hardscrabble, Stucky and Maggie for the first three comments. It’s going to be a good day, indeed.

I hear ya’ Stuck. FYI – the embedded links for the Fourth Turning above go to Amazon via TBP’s button so Admin can collect his 6%. You’d probably enjoy it.

I read it before but rescanned it again over X-mas break. It’s a classic.

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

Your chart shows a corresponding link between Nomad and elderly. It brought to mind a story my mom tells from time to time, probably a scene from a Mexican movie but the movie is gone, the story remains.

The old man had become a burden in the household and his son prepared to take him out to the desert or the mountain, wherever. He herded his dad outdoors holding on to the old man’s arm to steady him while his own son carried a blanket. When they had gone far enough away that the old man would not make his way back alone, the son set his dad on the blanket. As they started away, the boy asked to go back for a bit. Perhaps he means to say goodbye, thought his dad. The boy returned with half the blanket. Why do you bring that? asked the father. The boy replied, for when it’s time to take you out to the field.

Yep, I can see how winter, nomad, crisis and elderly fit together. Maybe they will take us boomers out to the field when the SS runs out.

Frank Boso

The SS “squeeze” is already on. Notice your benefits went up a mighty 0.3% for 2017. Now honestly, do “they” really expect us to buy that prices went up this anemic amount last year? Medical costs alone were up 10-15%, and we’ve been very lucky with low gasoline prices that now appear to be ending. Seniors have earned NOTHING on bank deposits for several years due to Fed policy. We seniors are already in the pot of water and the heat is being tuned up gently so we won’t know what is happening.

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

It really brings home the point of Marquez’ story ‘No One Writes the Colonel’. In the story, he spends many years waiting for a government pension that never comes. He has a cock he keeps in the hopes of entering him in a cockfight. Marquez describes his plight as he describes the colonel scraping the bottom of the coffee can, getting both coffee grounds and bits of rust.

Maggie
Maggie

AND a cameo from EC, my co-mentor of one tadpole swimming in deep water in the theater of thespian primates of shit-throwing disposition.

I came back and read it more thoroughly after the long day’s work at moving my son from his mold and mildew-infested sub-level apartment (the earthquakes last summer that cracked the wall? Well, the property manager didn’t really think he was responsible, he told my son.) I called the guy (only after my son relented and admitted he didn’t know how to argue the point.) I asked him to verify that I had the city manager’s number correct. Then, I explained how I’d taken pictures of the crack in August, October and then in early December… so I could show the city manager or whomever needed to see it that the crack has travelled not only around the corner of the subwall, but up to the apartment overhead on the corner of the apartment building. I told him I hoped that the city’s engineers don’t discover a structural danger!

Ten minutes later my son called and said he’d been released from his lease. His roommate was impressed. (And so was my son.)

Unappreciated, the analogy is very well done and I remember a member of our little Family of Families group who made the same conclusive jump to Star Wars Comparison. Someone asked is an EMP knocked out power, how would we communicate. And “Tom” spoke up and said that just like the Force, some way of communicating against the dark force would be created or modified.

Everyone laughed at Tom, but I told him later I understood what he meant (in front of others, I’m no coward.) However, if the blogosphere is going to become the Committees of Correspondence, then we will be needing a poet laureate along the lines of Thomas Paine, whose prose inspired patriotic fervor like no other.

I talked to my US Diplomacy professor about the role Paine had in the Revolution and then, later, his less successful attempt to propagandize the French Rebellion. He said that while it was true that while “Paine may have been a powerful author of propaganda and prose for the Committees of Correspondence and the patriot cause, but he was a fucking nutcase.”

I really liked that professor. He was denied tenure. He must have been too honest.

Francis Marion

Stucky,

I am not sure we can predict what will happen exactly, we can only observe that human history runs in cycles and fill in the blanks based on context.

That is what makes this site so much better than most. It is responsive to patterns, open to ideas based on context and ready to challenge any argument or perspective that does not hold weight within these parameters.

In this sense, TBP is less about predictions than it is about and patterning human behaviour over long periods of time. Time tells all though and the pattern we are seeing develop over a period of a decade or more suggests we are headed for a period of more problems, not fewer. Eventually, the pressure will need to be released one way or another. How that will happen nobody really knows. All I do know is that as a civilization divided someone will not be happy when it does happen.

Stucky

I said “prediction” and even put it in italics just to stir some shit. Specifically, to piss off Admin.

I know the 4th Turning is not about predictions. I thought so a few years ago, and Admin really set me straight on that in the way only he can.

So, I thought I’d throw that word out there again, maybe to show him that I haven’t learned jack shit. However, it failed. He hasn’t responded to me but for a few times in the past year. It’s as if I don’t exist.

Maggie
Maggie

I have felt like that a time or two…

Maggie
Maggie

I have felt like that a time or two…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY_Fl78WKSI

Francis Marion

Weird. There’s an echo in here tonight.

Maggie
Maggie

Sorry, my phone stutters. Spent the day moving my son into an apartment over a bar! Is he ever lucky!

He and Nick made trips back and forth while I sat downstairs and drank my own with two old guys (80ish) from the bar. LOL My poor son was horrified… now he’s going to have drunk old men asking to buy his mom a drink.

A great article, Uncola. You make me want to try to write some more. Perhaps in 2017.

Francis Marion

Sorry Stuck. The italics went in one ear and out the other. According to my folks, it’s the same problem I’ve had since I was a kid.

Bea Lever
Bea Lever

Time really does take care of everything………

That is one thing I seriously like about this construct in which we live. So far as the ever present gloom and doom scenarios, they come and go like the latest hot movie/tv show but one would still be wise to be prepared like a good boy scout for the big events. The concept of a hundred year war is far too long in the great scheme of things yet some cultures are still warring after two thousand years.

The Garden of Eden was a bore, they complained, this is what we inherited.

TJF
TJF

Stuck, the ‘predictions’ in the book are generalized and vague. They do not claim to be able to predict the future and explain that whatever happens will be a surprise when it occurs and only seem like something that could be seen coming after the fact. It is not a book about absolute specific predictions, it is generalized and it is creepily accurate so far. I resisted reading it because I refused to think that my actions were some how controlled by the year of my birth. Every person in a generation is not the same, so how could they lump us all together, but after reading it, it makes sense to me.

May the force be with us indeed.

Rise Up

Good summation, TJF. I see the 4th Turning book as more of a reference to likely set of possibilities, and as you say, not absolute predictions. That subtle distinction makes the book more plausible. Strauss/Howe did a lot of serious historical research–they weren’t just 2 guys looking into a crystal ball. It’s a sociological theory, not a Nostradamus prophecy.

Jason Calley
Jason Calley

Hey Uncola! Nice post, salient points! Use of the Star Wars tie-in reminds me of something from my own past, and something pertinent to the process of predicting the future.

In September of 1976 (almost a year before the release of the Star Wars movie) my two brothers and I happened to attend the World Science Fiction Convention. On display were costumes, photos and artwork from what looked to be a good upcoming movie, “Star Wars”. Both my brothers and I were scifi fans, and were all working in the motion picture industry at the time. We also knew that there had been a series of rather expensive scifi movies over the previous decade or so which had been real money losers at the ticket booth. Our consensus opinion? “Wow! Looks like a great movie! What a shame that it probably won’t do any business…”

Predictions are hard. Especially about the future.

javelin
javelin

A nice heady start to the day, a touch of quantum…a mix of entropic theory and then an insightful piece about our current position in space/time and the progression of the Fourth Turning.
Thank You…….
I fear though, in your scenario of an ultimate battle between the scraggly band of freedom and liberty loving peoples vs the programmed masses, the MSM, the Corporate/Military Industrial complex and the Globalist Elites who would foist their tyranny upon us–my fear is that we have little chance.
Well armed and hunkered down means little when we can be scanned and located by satellite, drone bombed and obliterated indiscriminately from high above. I fear in such a war, that most of us will die without ever seeing the faces of our murderers.

Rise Up

If central command can be infiltrated, the power structure can be defeated.

comment image

B Lever (aka Bea) I give up.
B Lever (aka Bea) I give up.

Riser- nice visual.

Are you volunteering?

Maggie
Maggie

Now how am I gonna needle Coyote?

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

Pourquoi?

And here I said something nice about your dad on Grrl Power

Maggie
Maggie

I haven’t read that one yet… now you have intrigued me.

Rise Up

Riser- nice visual.
Are you volunteering?
———–
What’s my moniker? Says it all…

Unpossible
Unpossible

“If central command can be infiltrated, the power structure can be defeated.”
_______________
Great quote and words to live by.

I also like Robert Gore’s “never underestimate the power of a question”.

In addition, I always try to remember that just one idea can change the world and that reality sucks but hope springs eternal. That’s what I hold onto when seas get rough and times get tough.

BB

Star Wars was one of the most over rated movies in history.I remember feeling disappointed 40 years ago.Never paid money to see another.Never watched Any of the other Star Wars movies. Uncola ,you will be dead in the long run so the only thing you really need to worry about is meeting your Maker.Besides if you read the last Book of the Bible you know how the story ends.

Anonymous
Anonymous

Star wars set the entire direction of all future science fiction movies both in theme and the use of intensely realistic special effects as the basis of the movie (remember that this was prior to the computer generated and enhanced era of special effects).

You are probably the only person I’ve heard from that was disappointed by it.

Vic
Vic

I tried to watch the first “Star Wars” movie, didn’t like it, couldn’t even get through half of it. Never tried to watch another. I’m not really into the space-oriented movies.

BB, I guess we’ll be considered weird.

But I have read the entire Bible several times through. Definitely worth reading over and over again.

Stucky

“I tried to watch the first “Star Wars” movie, didn’t like it, …….. But I have read the entire Bible several times through. Definitely worth reading over and over again.” ———- Vic

You traded one space fantasy for another.

Anonymous
Anonymous

I just read the last line of the Bible. The Jew wins.

Anonymous
Anonymous

The last line of the Bible:

Rev 22:21 “I pray that the Lord Jesus will be kind to all of you.”

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

There are so many parallel scenes in Alien that you have to watch SW to appreciate them fully. (I could say the same about the old and new testaments but the point would be lost on you.)

Star Wars enjoyed positive press as young folks made light of the “walking gas pump”. It was an update on Errol Flynn’s swashbuckler movies. I recognized a toy car robot from the old ‘Journey to Mars’ flick. It had that ‘Flo from the insurance commercials’ hyper-clean look of THX 1137. And it had Harrison Ford from American Graffiti.

Alien inverted the story and removed all the cartoonish aspects of Star Wars, it re-imagined Darth Vader as a nightmarish alien threat. It also kept the hexagonal runways in the ship. Sigourney Weaver reprises Harrison Ford’s role. She has a gun in her hand and the lanyard attached to the spear is the same one he uses to rescue Princess Leia. The jump to light speed scene is recreated in reverse in the destruction of the Nostromo. George Lucas’ collapsing garbage room which was reused in Indiana Jones is re-imagined in Alien as a computer countdown to the ship’s self destruct program.

Rise Up

The name was THX 1138 (not 1137) and was the first movie that George Lucas’ directed. He was involved in other films prior, however. That number was also used on John Milner’s ’32 Ford Coupe license plate (Harrison Ford drove a ’55 Chevy in American Graffiti):

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EL Coyote
EL Coyote

Riser, Lucas went out of his way to make his gals as unsexy as possible. Grease, otoh, has nothing but sexy gals. The sterile environment of THX is implied in AG in the form of passion-killing women, even when John Milner picks up a chick, she is an unappealing bit of jailbait. Where he gives the audience an appealing girl, she is always out of reach in a white TBird. In Grease, you can almost reach out and grab Cha-Cha DiGregorio.

Lucas’ vision of a sexless world continued in the TV series Happy Days where nobody ever had sex, they just petted heavily and you just knew mom and pop had double beds.

Annie
Annie

About the time that the first Star Wars movie came out all of my family and friends had the attitude that the world was our oyster – that, while our parents were living the best life ever known we would have it even better. On the other hand I was daydreaming about building a stone castle into the side of a hill so that when it all fell apart my household would be secure. Here it is 40 years later, things haven’t fallen apart to the extent the stone castle is needed (good thing because I never managed to build it), and my health isn’t good enough to fight when things do finally fall apart. It looks like I’m out of sync with history, but at least I recognized that there are cycles.

Hubby had similar feelings in the mid to late 70s. Anybody else have that feeling back then? That while things looked great on the surface they were already rotting underneath?

Unpossible
Unpossible

There was something seedy about the 70s. A little too plastic. Sort of a saccharine taste. Too disco. Like the party was over and all that remained were cigarette butts, stale beer, vomit and used condoms.

B Lever (aka Bea) I give up.
B Lever (aka Bea) I give up.

Happy New Year Uncola! Thanks for all of the fantastic articles in 2016.

Uncola

Thanks Bea. Happy New Year to you too.

Suzanna
Suzanna

I will interject here…I too want to thank Uncola for all the wonderful?/
thought provoking articles/essays posted here on TBP.
I especially enjoyed this one!

Happy New Year to to you, and to all. We need some luck, and we need to rid
ourselves of the war party and the murderers. We also need to root out the
drug addled perverts and their blood transfusions. We love you God, please,
we pray, help us to accomplish the above. And Happy New Year to you too,
God, the Power of Good.

Suzanna

pyrrhus
pyrrhus

‘Generations’ is the greater work by Straus and Howe, IMO. It goes into detail on the rotation of the four types of generation over the centuries.

Vic
Vic

I thought “Generations” covered the topic better than “The Fourth Turning,” too.

Anonymous
Anonymous

Uncola you are quite the pithy cat. Hope to see more of your work in 2017.

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

Anon, do you have a lisp?
Do you like musicals?
Did you take tap dancing classes in grade school?

B Lever (aka Bea) I give up.
B Lever (aka Bea) I give up.

EC- Stop picking at Anon, he graduated top in his class from the Bob Fosse school.

Uncola- not to be argumentative but I’m pretty sure I have seen a Hummingbird fly backwards, I could be wrong. 🙂

Uncola

@ Anon says: “Uncola you are quite the pithy cat. Hope to see more of your work in 2017.”

_____________

Stick around kid. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. In the meantime, don’t forget to tip your waitress.

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

OMG, there’s a few waitresses I’d like to tip. But your young and don’t understand.

Hollow man
Hollow man

It don’t mean nothing. Shit happens. Life is a bitch and then you die. So enjoy what you can while you can. Cause eventually we always screw up a good thing. Redneck wisdom

Overthecliff

It will be interesting the next 7 or 8 years. I wonder, will we be able to follow the events on TBP?

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

Admin said if Trump so much as steps on a crack, he’ll be there.

Farris

I think your analogy and commentary is super insightful, and having read The 4th Turning a couple of times, I am definitely inclined to agree with a majority of your assumptions and assertions. Except for one glaring one: You seem to think Trump is going to fight the good fight on behalf of liberty, freedom, etc.

I concede that Trump has taken an outsider posture in many ways, but he has offered no meaningful evidence that he is going to fundamentally change anything. Another prescient series of predictions about the period of time in which we’re currently in, written in 1998, was authored by a late Stanford Philosopher named Richard Rorty, who predicted the rise of a Trump-like figure and a dissolution of the liberal coalition. Among those predictions was the expectation that whatever the strongman claims during their rise to power, they would ultimately make peace with the international superrich, and double-down on many of the same policies that have created our biggest problems.

Based on Trump’s cabinet picks so far, there is no indication that he is going to represent the cause of individual liberty, but rather use his newfound power to increase his own wealth, and benefit those political and economic elites that have leached prosperity from the masses, like parasites.

In any case, I enjoy your blog immensely, but I would be very interested to hear your response to the charge that Trump isn’t going to do anything to solve our problems – and in fact, will likely make our problems worse.

Thanks for the great work!

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