The Boston Massacre happened 246 years ago today. Tensions were high in this country at that time, as the tyranny of the establishment pushed the people of this country beyond the breaking point. Anyone who doesn’t feel the same tension today is either part of the establishment or too ignorant to understand what is happening. This Fourth Turning has just reached the regeneracy stage, with Trump as the Grey Champion. Now it gets really interesting. There will be blood.
In Part 1 of this article I discussed the catalyst spark which ignited this Fourth Turning and the seemingly delayed regeneracy. In Part 2 I pondered possible Grey Champion prophet generation leaders who could arise during the regeneracy. In Part 3 I focused on the economic channel of distress which is likely to be the primary driving force in the next phase of this Crisis. In Part 4 I assessed the social and cultural channels of distress dividing the nation. In Part 5 I examined the technological, ecological, political, military channels of distress likely to burst forth with the molten ingredients of this Fourth Turning, and finally in this final part, our rendezvous with destiny, with potential climaxes to this Winter of our discontent.
We are now in the seventh year of this Fourth Turning. A famous quote from the seventh year of the last Fourth Turning portended the desperate, bloody and ultimately heroic trials and tribulations which awaited generations of our ancestors. What will be our rendezvous with destiny?
“There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt – June 27, 1936 – Philadelphia, PA
“The seasons of time offer no guarantees. For modern societies, no less than for all forms of life, transformative change is discontinuous. For what seems an eternity, history goes nowhere – and then it suddenly flings us forward across some vast chaos that defies any mortal effort to plan our way there. The Fourth Turning will try our souls – and the saecular rhythm tells us that much will depend on how we face up to that trial. The saeculum does not reveal whether the story will have a happy ending, but it does tell us how and when our choices will make a difference.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning
The people have been permitting a small cadre of elitists, billionaire financiers, corporate chiefs, propagandist media moguls, and crooked politicians to make the choices dictating the path of our country since the 2008 dawn of this Fourth Turning. The choices they have made and continue to make have imperiled the world and guaranteed a far more calamitous outcome as we attempt to navigate through the trials and tribulations ahead. Their strategy to “save the country” by saving bankers, while selling the plan to the public as beneficial to all and essential to saving our economic system, has proven to be nothing more than the greatest wealth transfer scheme in human history. The ruling class is deliberately blind to their own venality and capacity for evil.
Continue reading “FOURTH TURNING – OUR RENDEZVOUS WITH DESTINY”
In Part 1 of this article I discussed the catalyst spark which ignited this Fourth Turning and the seemingly delayed regeneracy. In Part 2 I pondered possible Grey Champion prophet generation leaders who could arise during the regeneracy. In Part 3 I will focus on the economic channel of distress which is likely to be the primary driving force in the next phase of this Crisis.
There are very few people left on this earth who lived through the last Fourth Turning (1929 – 1946). The passing of older generations is a key component in the recurring cycles which propel the world through the seemingly chaotic episodes that paint portraits on the canvas of history. The current alignment of generations is driving this Crisis and will continue to give impetus to the future direction of this Fourth Turning. The alignment during a Fourth Turning is always the same: Old Artists (Silent) die, Prophets (Boomers) enter elderhood, Nomads (Gen X) enter midlife, Heroes (Millennials) enter young adulthood—and a new generation of child Artists (Gen Y) is born. This is an era in which America’s institutional life is torn down and rebuilt from the ground up—always in response to a perceived threat to the nation’s very survival.
For those who understand the theory, there is the potential for impatience and anticipating dire circumstances before the mood of the country turns in response to the 2nd or 3rd perilous incident after the initial catalyst. Neil Howe anticipates the climax of this Crisis arriving in the 2022 to 2025 time frame, with the final resolution happening between 2026 and 2029. Any acceleration in these time frames would likely be catastrophic, bloody, and possibly tragic for mankind. As presented by Strauss and Howe, this Crisis will continue to be driven by the core elements of debt, civic decay, and global disorder, with the volcanic eruption traveling along channels of distress and aggravating problems ignored, neglected, or denied for the last thirty years. Let’s examine the channels of distress which will surely sway the direction of this Crisis.
“In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party. The catalyst will unfold according to a basic Crisis dynamic that underlies all of these scenarios: An initial spark will trigger a chain reaction of unyielding responses and further emergencies. The core elements of these scenarios (debt, civic decay, global disorder) will matter more than the details, which the catalyst will juxtapose and connect in some unknowable way. If foreign societies are also entering a Fourth Turning, this could accelerate the chain reaction. At home and abroad, these events will reflect the tearing of the civic fabric at points of extreme vulnerability – problem areas where America will have neglected, denied, or delayed needed action.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe
In Part 1 of this article I discussed the catalyst spark which ignited this Fourth Turning and the seemingly delayed regeneracy. In Part 2 I will ponder possible Grey Champion prophet generation leaders who could arise during the regeneracy.
The nearly seven year reign of Barack Obama has resulted in furthering wealth inequality, in spite of his socialistic rhetoric. Notwithstanding his Nobel Peace Prize, military spending is at all-time highs and we are engaged in actual and proxy wars across the Middle East and in the Ukraine. Race relations have never been worse. Poverty levels have never been worse. Real median household income is lower than it was in 1989. Real hourly wages are at 50 year lows. Home ownership has plunged to 50 year lows, as middle class workers have been kicked out of their homes and young people are saddled with so much student loan debt and bleak job opportunities they will never have an opportunity to own. The ownership society pushed by Clinton and Bush, with the proliferation of Wall Street created “exotic” subprime mortgages, peddled to people incapable of paying their mortgages, blew up the world in 2008, and the fall out will last for decades.
Meanwhile, Wall Street banks have reaped $700 billion of ill-gotten profits since 2010 as the Federal Reserve has handed them trillions of interest free funds to gamble with, while rigging the financial markets, and paying their executives obscene bonuses. The hubris and arrogance of the Wall Street titans is appalling, as they buy politicians, write toothless financial regulations (Dodd Frank) for their bought off politicians to pass, report fraudulent financial results with the stamp of approval from the FASB, blatantly rig interest rate, currency, stock and commodities markets, and use deception and propaganda to distract and mislead the public through their corporate media mouthpieces – dependent upon Wall Street advertising revenue to thrive.
“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:
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:
“The risk of catastrophe will be very high. The nation could erupt into insurrection or civil violence, crack up geographically, or succumb to authoritarian rule. If there is a war, it is likely to be one of maximum risk and effort – in other words, a total war. Every Fourth Turning has registered an upward ratchet in the technology of destruction, and in mankind’s willingness to use it.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning
“In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air. Now, that is necessary and important to the United States as we look abroad at enemies or potential enemies. We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left such is the capability to monitor everything—telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.
If this government ever became a tyrant, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.
I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.” – Frank Church on Meet the Press regarding the NSA – 1975
Ever since Edward Snowden burst onto the worldwide stage in June 2013, I’ve been wondering how he fits into the fabric of this ongoing Fourth Turning. This period of Crisis that arrives like clockwork, 60 to 70 years after the end of the previous Fourth Turning (Civil War – 66 years after American Revolution, Great Depression/World War II – 64 years after Civil War, Global Financial Crisis – 62 years after World War II), arrived in September 2008 with the Federal Reserve created collapse of the global financial system. We are now five and a half years into this Fourth Turning, with its climax not likely until the late-2020’s. At this point in previous Fourth Turnings a regeneracy had unified sides in their cause and a grey champion or champions (Ben Franklin/Samuel Adams, Lincoln/Davis, FDR) had stepped forward to lead. Thus far, no one from the Prophet generation has been able to unify the nation and create a sense of common civic purpose. Societal trust continues to implode, as faith in political, financial, corporate, and religious institutions spirals downward. There is no sign of a unifying regeneracy on the horizon.
The core elements of this Fourth Turning continue to propel this Crisis: debt, civic decay, global disorder. Central bankers, politicians, and government bureaucrats have been able to fashion the illusion of recovery and return to normalcy, but their “solutions” are nothing more than smoke and mirrors exacerbating the next bloodier violent stage of this Fourth Turning. The emergencies will become increasingly dire, triggering unforeseen reactions and unintended consequences. The civic fabric of our society will be torn asunder.
In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party. The catalyst will unfold according to a basic Crisis dynamic that underlies all of these scenarios: An initial spark will trigger a chain reaction of unyielding responses and further emergencies. The core elements of these scenarios (debt, civic decay, global disorder) will matter more than the details, which the catalyst will juxtapose and connect in some unknowable way. If foreign societies are also entering a Fourth Turning, this could accelerate the chain reaction. At home and abroad, these events will reflect the tearing of the civic fabric at points of extreme vulnerability – problem areas where America will have neglected, denied, or delayed needed action.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe
Debt
The core crisis element of debt is far worse than it was at the outset of this Crisis in September 2008. The National Debt has risen from $9.7 trillion to $17.5 trillion, an 80% increase in five and half years. It took 215 years for the country to accumulate as much debt as it has accumulated since the start of this Crisis. We continue to add $2.8 billion a day to the National debt, and the president declares it is time for this austerity to end. The total unfunded liabilities of the Federal government for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, government pensions and now Obamacare exceeds $200 trillion and is mathematically impossible to honor. Corporate debt stands at an all-time high. Margin debt is at record levels, as faith in the Federal Reserve’s ability to levitate the stock market borders on delusional. Consumer debt has reached new heights, as the government doles out subprime auto loans to deadbeats and subprime student loans to future University of Phoenix Einsteins. Global debt has surged by 40% since 2008 to over $100 trillion, as central bankers have attempted to cure a disease caused by debt with more debt.
All of this debt accumulation is compliments of Bernanke/Yellen and the Federal Reserve, who have produced this new debt bubble with their zero interest rate policy and quantitative easing that has driven their balance sheet from $935 billion of mostly Treasury bonds in September 2008 to $4.2 trillion of toxic mortgage garbage acquired from their owners – the insolvent Too Big To Trust Wall Street banks. This entire house of cards is reliant upon permanently low interest rates, the faith of foreigners in our lies, and trust in Ivy League educated economists captured by Wall Street. This debt laden house of cards sits atop hundreds of trillions of derivatives of mass destruction used by the Wall Street casinos to generate “riskless” profits. When, not if, a trigger ignites this explosive concoction of debt, the collapse will be epic and the violent phase of this Fourth Turning will commence.
Civic Decay
The core crisis element of civic decay is evident everywhere you turn. Our failed public educational system is responsible for much of the civic decay, as a highly educated critical thinking populace is our only defense against a small cabal of bankers and billionaires acquiring unwarranted influence and control over our country. Our children have been taught how to feel and to believe government propaganda. The atrocious educational system is not a mistake. It has been designed and manipulated by your owners to produce the results they desire, as explained bluntly by George Carlin.
“There’s a reason that education sucks, and it’s the same reason it will never ever ever be fixed. It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it. Be happy with what you’ve got. Because the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the real owners now, the big, wealthy, business interests that control all things and make the big decisions. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I’ll tell you what they don’t want—they don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interest.”
The urban ghettos become more dangerous and uninhabitable by the day. The inner cities are crumbling under the weight of welfare spending and declining tax revenues. The very welfare policies begun fifty years ago to alleviate poverty have hopelessly enslaved the poor and ignorant in permanent squalor and destitution. The four decade old drug war has done nothing to reduce the use of drugs. It has benefited the corporate prison industry, as millions have been thrown into prison for minor drug offenses. Meanwhile, millions more have been legally addicted to drugs peddled by the corporate healthcare complex. The culture warriors and advocates of new rights for every special interest group continue their never ending battles which receive an inordinate amount of publicity from the corporate media. Class warfare is simmering and being inflamed by politicians pushing their particular agendas. Violence provoked by race and religion is growing by the day. The fault lines are visible and the imminent financial earthquake will push distress levels beyond the breaking point. Once the EBT cards stop working, all hell will break loose. Three days of panic will empty grocery store shelves and the National Guard will be called out to try and restore control.
Global Disorder
The core crisis element of global disorder is evident everywhere you turn. The false flag revolution in the Ukraine, initiated by the U.S. and EU in order to blunt Russia’s control of natural gas to Europe, has the potential to erupt into a full blown shooting war at any moment. The attempt by Saudi Arabia, Israel and the U.S. to overthrow the Syrian dictator in order to run a natural gas pipeline across their land into Europe was blunted by Russia. Iraq is roiled in a civil war, after the U.S. invaded, occupied and destabilized the country. After 12 years of occupation, Afghanistan is more dysfunctional and dangerous than it was before the U.S. saved them from the evil Taliban. Unrest, violent protests, and brutal measures by rulers continue in Egypt, Turkey, Thailand, Venezuela, Bahrain, Brazil, and throughout Africa. American predator drones roam the skies of the world murdering suspected terrorists. The European Union is insolvent, with Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal propped up with newly created debt. Austerity for the people and prosperity for the bankers is creating tremendous distress and tension across the continent. A global volcanic eruption is in the offing.
It is clear to me the American Empire is in terminal decline. Hubris, delusion, corruption, foolish disregard for future generations and endless foreign follies have set in motion a chain of events that will lead to a cascading sequence of debt defaults, mass poverty, collapsing financial markets, and hyperinflation or deflation, depending on the actions of feckless bankers and politicians. There is no avoiding the tragic outcome brought on by decades of bad choices and a century of allowing private banking interests to control our currency. The “emergency” QE and ZIRP responses by the Federal Reserve to the Federal Reserve created 2008 financial collapse continue, even though the propaganda peddled by the Deep State tries to convince the public we have fully recovered. This grand fraud cannot go on forever. Ponzi schemes no longer work once you run out of dupes. With societal trust levels approaching all-time lows and foreign countries beginning to understand they are the dupes, another global financial crisis is a lock.
The Snowden Factor
With ten to fifteen years likely remaining in this Fourth Turning Crisis, people familiar with generational turnings can’t help but ponder what will happen next. Linear thinkers, who constitute the majority, mistakenly believe things will magically return to normal and we’ll continue our never ending forward human progress. Their ignorance of history and generational turnings that recur like the four seasons will bite them in the ass. We are being flung forward across the vast chaos of time and our existing social order will be transformed beyond recognition into something far better or far worse. The actual events over the coming decade are unknowable in advance, but the mood and reactions of the generational archetypes to these events are predictable. The actions of individuals will matter during this Fourth Turning. The majority are trapped in their propaganda induced, techno distracted stupor of willful ignorance. It will take a minority of liberty minded individuals, who honor the principles of the U.S. Constitution and are willing to sacrifice their lives, to prevail in the coming struggle.
Despite fog engulfing the path of future events, we know they will be propelled by debt, civic decay, and global disorder. Finding a unifying grey champion figure seems unlikely at this point. I believe the revelations by Edward Snowden have set the course for future events during this Fourth Turning. The choices of private citizens, like Snowden, Assange, and Manning, have made a difference. The choices we all make over the next ten years will make a difference. A battle for the soul of this country is underway. The Deep State is firmly ingrained, controlling the financial, political and educational systems, while using their vast wealth to perpetuate endless war, and domination of the media to manipulate the masses with propaganda and triviality. They are powerful and malevolent. They will not relinquish their supremacy and wealth willingly.
Snowden has revealed the evil intent of the ruling class and their willingness to trash the Constitution in their psychopathic pursuit of mammon. The mass surveillance of the entire population, locking down of an entire city in pursuit of two teenagers, military training exercises in major metropolitan areas, militarization of local police forces by DHS, crushing peaceful demonstrations with brute force, attempting to restrict and confiscate guns, molesting innocent airline passengers, executive orders utilized on a regular basis by the president, and treating all citizens like suspects has set the stage for the coming conflict. Strauss & Howe warned that history has shown armed conflict is always a major ingredient during a Fourth Turning.
“History offers even more sobering warnings: Armed confrontation usually occurs around the climax of Crisis. If there is confrontation, it is likely to lead to war. This could be any kind of war – class war, sectional war, war against global anarchists or terrorists, or superpower war. If there is war, it is likely to culminate in total war, fought until the losing side has been rendered nil – its will broken, territory taken, and leaders captured.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe -1997
It appears to me the Deep State is preparing for armed conflict with the people. Why else would they be utilizing Big Brother methods of surveillance, militarization of police forces and Gestapo like tactics of intimidation to control the masses? This doesn’t happen in a democratic republic where private individuals are supposed to know everything done by public government servants, not vice versa. They know the cheap, easy to access energy resources are essentially depleted. They know the system they have built upon a foundation of cheap energy and cheap debt is unsustainable and will crash in the near future. They know their fiat currency scheme is failing.They know it is going to come crashing down.
They know America and the world will plunge into an era of depression, violence, and war. They also know they want to retain their wealth, power and control. There is no possibility the existing establishment can be purged through the ballot box. It’s a one party Big Brother system that provides the illusion of choice to the Proles. Like it or not, the only way this country can cast off the shackles of the banking, corporate, fascist elites, and the government surveillance state is through an armed revolution. The alternative is to allow an authoritarian regime, on par with Hitler, Stalin and Mao, to rise from the ashes of our financial collapse. This is a distinct possibility, given the ignorance and helplessness of most Americans after decades of government education and propaganda.
The average mentally asleep American cannot conceive of armed conflict within the borders of the U.S. War, violence and dead bodies are something they see on their 52 inch HDTVs while gobbling chicken wings and cheetos in their Barcalounger. We’ve allowed a banking cartel and their central bank puppets to warp and deform our financial system into a hideous façade, sold to the masses as free market capitalism. We’ve allowed corporate interests to capture our political system through bribery and corruption.
We’ve allowed the rise of a surveillance state that has stripped us of our privacy, freedom, liberty and individuality in a futile pursuit of safety and security. We’ve allowed a military industrial complex to exercise undue influence in Washington DC, leading to endless undeclared wars designed to enrich the arms makers. We’ve allowed the corporate media and the government education complex to use propaganda, misinformation and social engineering techniques to dumb down the masses and make them compliant consumers. These delusions will be shattered when our financial and economic system no longer functions. The end is approaching rapidly and very few see it coming.
Glory or Ruin?
The scenario I envision is a collapse of our debt saturated financial system, with a domino effect of corporate, personal, and governmental defaults, exacerbated by the trillions of currency, interest rate, and stock derivatives. Global stock markets will crash. Trillions in paper wealth will evaporate into thin air. The Greater Depression will gain a choke-hold around the world. Mass bankruptcies, unemployment and poverty will sweep across the land. The social safety net will tear under the weight of un-payable entitlements. Riots and unrest will breakout in urban areas. Armed citizens in rural areas will begin to assemble in small units. The police and National Guard will be unable to regain control. The military will be called on to suppress any and all resistance to the Federal government. This act of war will spur further resistance from liberty minded armed patriots. The new American Revolution will have begun. Leaders will arise in the name of freedom. Regional and local bands of fighters will use guerilla tactics to defeat a slow top heavy military dependent upon technology and vast quantities of oil. A dictatorial regime may assume power on a Federal level. A breakup of the nation into regional states is a distinct possibility.
With the American Empire crumbling from within, our international influence will wane. With China also in the midst of a Fourth Turning, their debt bubble will burst and social unrest will explode into civil war. Global disorder, wars, terrorism, and financial collapse will lead to a dramatic decrease in oil production, further sinking the world into depression. The tensions caused by worldwide recession will lead to the rise of authoritarian regimes and global warfare. With “advances” in technological warfare and the proliferation of nuclear warheads, this scenario has the potential to end life on earth as we know it. The modern world could be set back into the stone-age with the push of a button. There are no guarantees of a happy ending for humanity.
The outcome of this Fourth Turning is dependent upon the actions of a minority of critical thinking Americans who decide to act. No one can avoid the trials and tribulations that lie ahead. We will be faced with immense challenges. Courage and sacrifice will be required in large doses. Elders will need to lead and millennials will need to carry a heavy load, doing most of the dying. The very survival of our society hangs in the balance. Edward Snowden has provided an example of the sacrifice required during this Fourth Turning. How we respond and the choices we make over the next decade will determine whether this Fourth Turning will result in glory or ruin for our nation.
“Eventually, all of America’s lesser problems will combine into one giant problem. The very survival of the society will feel at stake, as leaders lead and people follow. The emergent society may be something better, a nation that sustains its Framers’ visions with a robust new pride. Or it may be something unspeakably worse. The Fourth Turning will be a time of glory or ruin.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning
Click these links to read the first two parts of this three part series:
Do No Evil Google – Censor & Snitch for the State
Google, China, the NSA and the Fourth Turning
A Grey Champion must step forward and lead. Who will it be? Where will they lead us? These are the questions of our time.
By: Strauss & Howe
One afternoon in April 1689, as the American colonies boiled with rumors that King James II was about to strip them of their liberties, the King’s hand-picked governor of New England, Sir Edmund Andros, marched his troops menacingly through Boston. His purpose was to crush any thought of colonial self-rule. To everyone present, the future looked grim.
Just at that moment, seemingly from nowhere, there appeared on the streets “the figure of an ancient man” with “the eye, the face, the attitude of command.” His manner “combining the leader and the saint,” the old man planted himself directly in the path of the approaching British soldiers and demanded that they stop. “The solemn, yet warlike peal of that voice, fit either to rule a host in the battlefield or be raised to God in prayer, were irresistible. At the old man’s word and outstretched arm, the roll of the drum was hushed at once, and the advancing line stood still.” Inspired by this single act of defiance, the people of Boston roused their courage and acted. Within the day, Andros was deposed and jailed, the liberty of Boston saved, and the corner turned on the colonial Glorious Revolution.
“Who was this Gray Champion?” Nathaniel Hawthorne asked near the end of this story in his Twice-Told Tales. No one knew, except that he had once been among the fire-hearted young Puritans who had first settled New England more than a half century earlier. Later that evening, just before the old priest-warrior disappeared, the townspeople saw him embracing the 85-year-old Simon Bradstreet, a kindred spirit and one of the few original Puritans still alive. Would the Gray Champion ever return? “I have heard,” added Hawthorne, “that whenever the descendants of the Puritans are to show the spirit of their sires, the old man appears again.”
Posterity had to wait a while before seeing him again—the length of another long human life, in fact. “When eighty years had passed,” wrote Hawthorne, the Gray Champion reappeared. The occasion was the revolutionary summer of 1775—when America’s elders once again appealed to God, summoned the young to battle, and dared the hated enemy to fire. “When our fathers were toiling at the breastwork on Bunker’s Hill,” Hawthorne continued, “all through that night the old warrior walked his rounds.” This “old warrior”—this graying peer of Sam Adams or Ben Franklin or Samuel Langdon (the Harvard president who preached to the Bunker Hill troops)—belonged to the Awakening Generation, whose youth had provided the spiritual taproot of the republic secured in their old age.
Hawthorne wrote this stirring legend in 1837, as a young man of 33. The Bunker Hill “fathers” belonged to his parents’ generation, by then well into old age. The nation had new arguments (over slavery) and new enemies (Mexico), but no one expected the old people of that era—the worldly likes of John Marshall and John Jacob Astor—to be play the role of Gray Champion.
“Long, long may it be ere he comes again!” Hawthorne prophesied. “His hour is one of darkness, and adversity, and peril. But should domestic tyranny oppress us, or the invaders’ step pollute our soil, still may the Gray Champion come….” Although Hawthorne did not say when this would be, perhaps he should have been able to tell.
Had the young author counted eight or nine decades forward from Bunker Hill, or had he envisioned the old age of the young zealots (like Joseph Smith, Nat Turner, and William Lloyd Garrison) who had recently convulsed America’s soul, he might have foreseen that the next Gray Champion would emerge from his own Transcendental Generation. Seared young by God, Hawthorne’s peers were destined late in life to face an hour of “darkness, and adversity, and peril.” The old priest-warrior would arise yet again in John Brown, damning the unrighteous from his scaffold; in Julia Ward Howe, writing “a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel”; in William Tecumseh Sherman, scorching Georgia with “the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword”; in Robert E. Lee commanding thousands of young men to their deaths at Cemetery Ridge; and especially in Abraham Lincoln, announcing to Congress that “the fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the last generation.”
Were Hawthorne to have prophesied yet another eight decades further ahead, he might have foretold another Gray Champion whose childhood would begin just after the “fiery trial” of Hawthorne’s own old age. This generation would come of age scorching the elder-built world with its inner fire—and then, a half-saeculum later, complete its self-declared “rendezvous with destiny” as “the wise old men of World War II.” By adding FDR’s Missionary Generation to the recurrence, Hawthorne’s Tale would have been not Twice, but Four Times Told.
When ancestral generations passed through these great gates of history, they saw in the Gray Champion a type of elder very different from the bustling “senior citizens” of America’s recent past—and from the old “Uncle Sam” Revolutionary War survivors of the 1830s, when Hawthorne wrote his tale. Who were these old priest warriors? They were elder expressions of the Prophet archetype. And their arrival into old age heralded a new constellation of generations.
“We may not wish the Gray Champion to come again – but come he must, and come he will.”
Strauss & Howe
Great article on the Lew Rockwell site. This guy would fit in real well on TBP. It seems his definition of Generation X is spot on.
Members of Generation X, born 1962 to 1981, and Generation Y, 1982-2004, are rallying behind Ron Paul in his run for president. Media commentators find it odd that people under the age of 40 in the X Generation and especially voters under age 30 in the Y Generation are so taken with this unassuming, soft-spoken 76-year-old candidate. Ron Paul is in the Silent Generation, whose members are now 70 to 87 years of age (born 1925-1942).
Exit polls show that Ron Paul won the majority of voters under age 40 in the Iowa caucus and in the New Hampshire primary. He received 21.4 percent of the votes in Iowa (first-place Rick Santorum got 24.6 percent) and came in second in New Hampshire with 22.9 percent of the votes (first-place Mitt Romney got 39.3 percent). More voters under age 30 chose Ron Paul over the other candidates in the South Carolina primary and Nevada caucus. He garnered 41 percent of the under 30 vote in Nevada – Mitt Romney got 36 percent; Newt Gingrich, 16 percent; and Rick Santorum, 7 percent. But only a small minority of older people has voted for him, as was especially evident in the Florida Republican primary.
In Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584-2069 (1991) and The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy (1997), William Strauss and Neil Howe examine the four main generations alive today, including the Boom (“Baby Boomer”) Generation, born 1943-1961. They show how these generations mirror ones in the past. They note that a “Young Hero and Elder Prophet” pairing occurs repeatedly in history, myth, and art, as with Joshua and Moses in the Old Testament, the Gray Champion in Colonial America, King Arthur and Merlin in Celtic myth, Tolkien’s Frodo and Gandalf, and Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars. In Star Wars, Episode IV, Obi-Wan Kenobi instructs Luke in the ways of the Force and in Episode VI tells him that killing Darth Vader (his father) is the only way to destroy the evil Galactic Empire. And as Joseph Campbell, the American mythologist, notes, the young hero’s close bond with a wise elder is essential to his ultimate success.
The “Gray Champion” precipitated the Boston Revolt of April 1689, mounted to protest King James II’s increasingly autocratic rule of the British-American colonies. As Nathaniel Hawthorne describes it in his Twice-Told Tales, the King-appointed governor of New England marched British troops through Boston to intimidate the public and quell any thoughts of colonial self-rule. Hawthorne writes:
“Suddenly, there was seen the figure of an ancient man, who seemed to have emerged from among the people, and was walking by himself along the center of the street, to confront the armed band. He wore the old Puritan dress, a dark cloak and a steeple-crowned hat, in the fashion of at least fifty years before…”
This elderly champion with a manner “combining the leader and saint” commanded the soldiers to stop; and “at the old man’s word and outstretched arm, the roll of the drum was hushed at once, and the advancing line stood still.” Then, “inspired by this single act of defiance, the people of Boston roused their courage and acted. Within the day, Andros [the governor] was deposed and jailed, the liberty of Boston saved, and the corner turned on the colonial Glorious Revolution.” This revolt led to the American Revolution 85 years later.
Ron Paul is the Obi-Wan Kenobi and Gray Champion of our time, and the Darth Vader of our U.S. Empire is the Federal Reserve.
The Federal Reserve System, with its network of twelve regional private banks, was established in 1913. The Fed is the country’s third central bank (the first two, established in 1791 and 1816, each lasted for 20 years). The Fed issues token coins and paper dollars, and creates and transfers unlimited amounts of computer-generated digital money. Manufacturing money this way, during its 99-year existence the Fed has destroyed 98.8 percent of the value of the dollar, as calculated by the Shadow Government Statistics (SGS)-Alternate-Consumer Price Index (CPI). Using this measure of inflation, a basket of goods and services that cost $100 in 1913 now costs $8,204! (Even the Bureau of Labor Statistics admits that the dollar has lost 96 percent of its value since 1913, with that $100 basket of goods and services now said to cost $2303.) Using the more accurate SGS-Alternate-CPI, the greatest drop in the dollar’s value, 95.1 percent, has occurred since 1971, when president Nixon severed the dollar’s last remaining link with gold, turning it into an effortlessly issued fiat currency. (A fiat currency is one that has no hard asset backing it such as gold and derives its value from government edict.) Like a virulent virus, the Fed has infected the U.S. dollar and made it grow like a cancer.
The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1921 killed somewhere between 20 to 40 million people (including my 22-year-old grandmother and my wife’s 23-year-old grandmother). What the Fed is could result in an equally dire hyperinflationary economic collapse, similar to what happened in the Weimar Republic, Austria, and Hungary in the 1920s, Argentina in 1989, and Zimbabwe. (A practical definition for hyperinflation is that the country’s largest pre-inflation bank note – for the U.S., the $100 bill. – becomes worth more as toilet paper, or for stoking a fire, than as a currency. The currency remains “current” but no longer serves as a medium of exchange.)
Dr. Paul prescribes an Austrian cure for our country’s economic problems (see below). A professor at the University of Vienna, Carl Menger (1840-1921), founded the Austrian School of Economics, which is named for its country of origin. (Government officials and economists in Austria do not follow or endorse “Austrian Economics.”) This branch of economics studies the action of individuals in the marketplace and puts forward a subjective theory of value. It explores important subjects like marginal utility (the amount of benefit derived from consuming one additional unit of a product or service, a concept that debunks the labor theory of value), moral hazard (where being covered against loss increases risk taking – executives at the leading investment banking and securities firm, Goldman Sachs, make a bad, multibillion dollar investment in AIG, and the government, i.e., U.S. taxpayers, bails them out), and malinvestments (making the wrong kind of investments, like building too many shopping malls, encouraged by Fed-set artificially low interest rates). Austrian economists don’t spin their wheels constructing mathematical models of the economy on a large, “macroeconomic” scale, something that Keynesian economists like to do and which have little bearing on the real world of human action. In contrast to pump-priming, big government Keynesianism, Austrian economics stresses the importance of free markets and a stable currency for economic calculation and setting prices.
Starting at a young age, Americans need to learn the basics of Austrian Economics and appreciate how it restores economic health. But government schools do not teach Austrian economics or the concomitant Jeffersonian vision of individual liberty. These subjects make a compelling case for limited government and are thus politically incorrect.
The primary role of government schools, where 90 percent of U.S. children are educated, is to inculcate, in the words of John Calvin, “the duty of obedience to rulers.” Government-employed bureaucratic officials determine what political and economic ideas children are to be taught. Compulsory government schooling has become a zero-tolerance, one-size-fits-all, dumbed-down operation that focuses on social engineering rather than on learning and individual achievement. James Ostrowski, in Government Schools Are Bad for Your Kids, puts it this way: “[The government school] produces barely literate, historically ignorant, uncultured lovers of big government.” Sadly, public schools have evolved into prison-like indoctrination centers that children and adolescents in the Y Generation currently endure – six and seven hours a day for thirteen years. For a sobering assessment of what our nation’s public schools have turned into, watch the online documentary on tagtele.com titled “War on Kids,” available HERE.
Nevertheless, there is reason for hope.
The outpouring of support by young people for Ron Paul is truly heartening. In Texas, for example, students at the Hudson Middle School in Hudson overwhelmingly cast ballots for Ron Paul in the school’s mock GOP primary, “after spending weeks studying the candidates’ views on the issues and watching debates among the hopefuls” according to a newspaper account, which reported: “They liked Paul’s anti-war stance, as well as his willingness to talk straight and not attack his opponents to make a point. ‘He’s just like this down-to-earth dude who just seems like he knows what he’s doing,’ seventh-grader Danielle Heidkamp said.”
Generation Y members like Danielle will carry the Ron Paul banner forward. The Y Generation is also named the “Millennial Generation,” coming of age as it is at the beginning of a new millennium. This generation must cope as young adults with the unfolding global financial crisis. When the Baby Boomer generation was growing up in the 1950s and 60s U.S. government debt increased $2.5 Billion a year. Life was good. Today, with the Millennial Generation coming of age, U.S. government debt increases by $2.5 Billion every 16 hours.
After the housing boom peaked in 2006 and foreclosures began to mount, the so-named “Millennial Crisis” began in February, 2007 when the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) announced that it would no longer buy subprime mortgages or mortgage-related securities (collateralized debt obligations). The Y Generation facing this crisis today bears some likeness to the GI Generation, born at the beginning of the last century (1901-1924), who became young adults during the last big crisis in U.S. history, the Great Depression and World War II. Strauss and Howe see the GI and Y generations as both manifesting a “Hero” archetype – can-do heroes and competent pragmatic managers who possess confidence and optimism.
Strauss and Howe name Generation X the “13th Generation” because it is the thirteenth one to call itself “American,” beginning with the Awakening Generation born 1701-1723. The Glorious Revolution (Revolution of 1688) brought this about, which dethroned King James II and led Parliament to pass the 1869 English Bill of Rights, called “An Act declareing the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Setleing the Succession of the Crowne.” This Act enabled people in the American colonies, emboldened by the Boston Revolt and this Bill of Rights, to see themselves as distinctly American and not servile British subjects.
Progressives view human history as a linear process. Beginning with Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson early in the last century, progressives have sought to expand government power and use it to effect what they consider to be beneficial social, political, and economic change. They are notable for launching the FED, an income tax, World War I, Prohibition, and the New Deal. Linear thinkers, which include politicians, the mainstream media, and CEOs of big corporations, work to maintain the status quo and their power and wealth. Rather than progress in a linear fashion, however, human history has a more seasonal, cyclical nature. As Mark Twain observed, “It is not worthwhile to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man’s character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible.” Twain is also alleged to have said something like, “Although history doesn’t repeat itself, it often rhymes” (source unknown). Whatever “rhyme” or “repetition” that might have helped bring about the Millennial Crisis, having a linear-thinking progressive president will only serve to make things worse. That includes President Obama and all the Republican presidential candidates except Ron Paul. He alone knows what is really going on, understands it, predicted it, and knows how best to deal with it.
Not counting the earlier crisis that caused the colonial Glorious Revolution and its Boston Revolt (1675-1704), there have been four crises in American history: the American Revolution (1773-1704), followed 66 years later by the Civil War (1860-1865), 64 years later by the Great Depression and World War II (1929-1946), and 61 years later by the current Millennial Crisis (2007-?). Each crisis has been worse than the previous one. There were 25,000 deaths in the American Revolution. Some 600,000 to 800,000 people died in the Civil War. And in World War II 50 to 70 million people died (civilian and military). In the American Revolution hyperinflation of the Continental Dollar rendered it worthless, and in the Civil War the Confederate Dollar suffered the same fate.
In The Fourth Turning, William Strauss and Neil Howe predicted, in 1997 when the book was published, that the next period of crisis in our country’s history, the “Fourth Turning” (following the first three crises) which they named the Millennial Crisis, would begin in 8 to 10 years. They were spot-on predicting when it would begin, 10 years later (in 2007), and this is what they say about its course:
“The risk of catastrophe will be very high. The nation could erupt into insurrection or civil violence, crack up geographically, or succumb to authoritarian rule. Thus might the next Fourth Turning end in apocalypse – or glory. The nation could be ruined, its democracy destroyed, and millions of people scattered or killed. Or America could enter a new golden age, triumphantly applying shared values to improve the human condition. The rhythms of history do not reveal the outcome of the coming Crisis [the one we are experiencing now]; all they suggest is the timing and dimension.”
One thing is certain. This crisis, now in its 6th year, will not be over anytime soon. How bad it becomes will depend on whether or not our country heeds the teachings of Ron Paul and his advocates.
Unfortunately, the establishment media tries to ignore Ron Paul and pretend he doesn’t exist. Jon Stewart, on The Daily Show, skewers the media’s talking heads on this score, asking “How did Ron Paul become the 13th floor in a hotel?” in “John Stewart Shows How Ron Paul Is Feared By The NWO Mafia Controlled Mainstream Media,” which can be seen on YouTube HERE. But other wiser heads can see and appreciate his true worth.
Bill Buckler, Captain of the financial newsletter The Privateer, published in Australia, has this to say about Ron Paul:
“Dr. Paul’s great and merited attractiveness to a growing number of admirers has a very simple source. He is that rarest of creatures – a FREE man. He is beholden to nobody. He has developed his ideas and his convictions over a long and fruitful life of independent thinking. He does not compromise. He homes in on the fundamental issue and principle of any political issue and serves it up without salt or other ‘seasoning.’ He says what he means and he means what he says. He is the living embodiment of the ‘dream’ that most Americans have long since given up on as they saw it slip further and further beyond their grasp. He is the only prominent person who is doing everything he can to turn the non-debate which masquerades as the ‘mainstream’ in the US and global political economy into something of substance. That, far more than presidency, is his goal.”
Ron Paul wants to legalize freedom and have the government stop punishing people for using the freedom that is rightfully theirs (as long as you, of course, do not encroach on other persons and their property). All the other leading candidates who want to be elected president are pro-big government and seek power. Mitt Romney is Wall Street’s Republican candidate, with the investment banking and securities firm Goldman Sachs being his biggest contributor. There is little difference between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, except perhaps that Romney is even more pro-war than is Obama. I highly recommend Andrew Napolitano’s YouTube video “Judge Napolitano What if the Government Has Been Lying to You” where he portrays Republicans (excluding Ron Paul) and Democrats as “two wings of the same bird of prey.”
Ron Paul is different. As the YouTube video What Is It About Ron Paul? affirms,
“Once you get hooked on Ron Paul you can no longer bear listen to a man who wants power. You become instantly disgusted whenever they begin to speak. Before they were just boring, but now they’re revolting. Listening to a Romney, or a Gingrich, or a Bush, or Obama makes you sick; and you just don’t understand how Ron Paul can get through those debates without getting nauseous. You see a political veneer in these politicians that is so transparent, like a ghost flapping its ethereal tongue at you.”
A poster shown in the video states, “Once you get hooked on Ron Paul you can no longer bear to listen to a man who wants power.”
People all over the world are getting hooked on Ron Paul. A Canadian citizen, Terry Neudorf, for example, writes this in a blog titled “Ron Paul Shakes the World”:
“When the name Ron Paul is mentioned to my grandchildren, a smile will creep across their faces, and they will recall, and speak with excited tones about a time where an idea was born, a message was spread, and a revolution took hold that shook the world. That’s the time I’m living in right now. I will treasure every moment. Thanks for all you do.”
Young Americans are joining The Ron Paul Movement, like those manning phone banks to promote and raise funds for his campaign. (Don’t expect Goldman Sachs to contribute any money to Ron Paul’s campaign.) Leaders of the X and Y Generations allied with Ron Paul are our best hope for the future – and for coming through the Millennial Crisis without war. A third world war, with nuclear weapons in play, could well prove to be even more devastating than was World War II. But even if he is not elected president, all is not lost. Like Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ron Paul’s spirit and teachings will live on and guide a new generation of Luke Skywalkers, including his son, X-Generation Rand Paul, to lead our country safely through this time of economic and social peril.
The Austrian Cure for Economic Illness
Dr. Paul’s Austrian treatment for the Millennial Crisis comprises six parts:
1) End the Fed – close down the central bank. “Unplug the machinery of the Fed,” as Ron Paul puts it in his book End the Fed (see also the other three books he has written on government and liberty in “Suggested Reading” below). The market must be free to set interest rates without a central bank artificially lowering them and inflating the money supply. Banks should once again exist as free-enterprise institutions without privileges or bailouts from the state. ATMs, Web-based systems of funds transfer like PayPal, and online trading can function perfectly well without a Fed. 2) Restore sound money to the economy – privatize the country’s monetary system, abolish legal tender laws, and allow the free market to determine the forms of money it prefers.3) Lower taxes and cut government spending – close military bases that the U.S. maintains in more than 130 countries around the world and bring the troops home; defund unconstitutional departments like Education, Housing and Urban Development, Agriculture, etc.; abolish the personal income tax. 4) No bailouts – the economy needs to liquidate all the malinvestments and mistakes made during the boom in order to be able to move on and recover from the bust.5) Allow prices and wages to fall to levels the market sets – propping up prices stifles recovery, as the Great Depression proved. 6) Regulate the government, not private property and markets – entrepreneurs and investors will only make long-term investments that spur recovery and boost employment if they feel that their property is secure. (Fifteen cabinet-level departments control different parts of the economy, along with 100 federal regulatory agencies that have produced more than 81,000 pages of regulations, not including those set by state and local governments.)
Disclosure:
Like Ron Paul, I am a member of the Silent Generation.
Suggested Reading:
Articles
Books
By Ron Paul
Others
February 9, 2012
Donald Miller (send him mail) is a cardiac surgeon and Professor of Surgery at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. He is a member of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness and writes articles on a variety of subjects for LewRockwell.com. His web site is www.donaldmiller.com