Generational Theory Forum: The Fourth Turning Forum: A message board discussing generations and the Strauss Howe generational theory

I have been half wondering what the leftover conservatives would look like as the crisis ends.  I feel the crisis fixes the greatest problem facing the culture.  The conservatives go for no change, no fix to the problem, continue the problem, often profit off the problem.  The progressive come out ahead, forcing a change, fixing the problem…. To me the results of the crisis was more obvious than what would get us here.  Covid would be handled.  The election would be upheld.  Bad cops killing minorities would be no longer acceptable.  Voting rights haven’t quite yet been secured, but you could see it happening if the Senate gets a few more votes and the filibuster is canceled.  What the problem is is so obvious that the crisis continues until there is a consensus that what is wrong has to be fixed.

And then the conservatives do something.  The certainly can’t admit they were wrong,  After the Revolution, they moved to Canada.  After the Civil War they created the KKK.  After the last crisis they stole some of FDR’s best ideas such as regulating the economy and containment.  After Trump?

Maybe after the hatred and violence of the recent past one can start to guess.  Drive though a peaceful protest of police abuse.  Take an assault rifle to a bar full of minorities.  Drive from rural to urban areas to give the resident minorities a problem.  Implement a violent insurrection.  Gerrymandering.  Deny lost elections.  Impose their culture on all as they did repealing choice.  Attack doctors, teachers, poll workers, the DOJ, the FBI.

I can see a rough remnant of MAGA becoming professional bad neighbors.  Not most of MAGA.  The Big Lie and Trump’s criminality is becoming very obvious, if at a slow pace by people who limit themselves to MAGA loyal media.  But there will be a small fraction of those who hate because they have always hated, who make other people miserable because that is what they do.

That is what has to be crushed in the high.  It is said that the values of the high support the solutions to the preceding crisis.  This hate reflects the methods and attitudes of MAGA.  The culture of the high has to reflect that this hate is not acceptable moving forward.

(09-18-2022, 07:50 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]I have been half wondering what the leftover conservatives would look like as the crisis ends.  I feel the crisis fixes the greatest problem facing the culture.  The conservatives go for no change, no fix to the problem, continue the problem, often profit off the problem.  The progressive come out ahead, forcing a change, fixing the problem…. To me the results of the crisis was more obvious than what would get us here.  Covid would be handled.  The election would be upheld.  Bad cops killing minorities would be no longer acceptable.  Voting rights haven’t quite yet been secured, but you could see it happening if the Senate gets a few more votes and the filibuster is canceled.  What the problem is is so obvious that the crisis continues until there is a consensus that what is wrong has to be fixed.

Crisis Eras typically end with political alignments very different from those going into them. A Crisis is not only a sequence of ominous and traumatic events, but also a transition from 3T ways to 1T. Much that was fashionable in a 3T goes out of mode, and what does survive from the 3T to the 1T is very good. The crap gets consumed in the bonfires of the vanities. Political habits that got society into the economic meltdown that initiated the Crisis Era die in disgrace -- or at least go into hiatus until people who see the easy money but not the ruin find nothing stopping them. The Panic of 1857, the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929, and the financial crisis of 2008 happened in intervals of 71 to 79 years -- enough time for people not even the scared children of the time to remember them to leave economic and political life. 

Let's remember that Edmund Burke, the Founding Father of modern conservatism (as opposed to the premodern conservatism of feudal elites waging a rearguard effort to prevent modernity) , recognized that for conservatism to be viable it needed to defend values worthy of protection -- protocol, precedent, sobriety, integrity, rational thought, national loyalty, fair play, community, rule of law, protection of the vulnerable, sexual modesty, affirmation of learning as a virtue, a market economy, and tradition.  This is not to be confused with the hierarchy, repression, and inequality of feudal times or of rotten systems particularly vulnerable to Jacobin or Marxist revolutions. Burke and his successors insist that we scrap the rot and accept gradual advancements in technology, political reform, technology, and intellectual life. 

Obama may not be the model of a conservative by the standards of the John Birch Society now difficult to distinguish from the Republican Party. Sixty years ago the Birchers were a sick joke to the entrepreneurial part of the American Right. The Birch Society is what it was sixty years ago, and "Eisenhower/Rockefeller  Republicans" despised them. The Republican Party has gone very far to the Right over forty years into the realm of QAnon craziness. The "Eisenhower/Rockefeller Republicans" still exist as a tendency. Most (and I allow for younger voters replacing older ones as one annual calendar replaces another) are now "Obama Democrats". Surely you have seen my map overlaying Obama and Eisenhower elections.

Conservatism circa 2035 will owe much more to Obama than to Trump. Obama may have decided that no particular tradition must thrive at the expense of others. Obama created a viable agenda to protect from radical change. Trump created a nightmare unlikely to achieve much good. It might make some people feel good about themselves; so supposedly does cocaine (I have never touched the stuff, thank you!). Obama may have liberal attitudes on social issues and economic matters, but otherwise he is more a Burkean conservative than a radical of any kind.   

Conservatism has evolved over more than 200 years, and it has in many ways defined itself by what it isn't (feudalism, Jacobinism, Bolshevism, fascism, Ba'athism, and Taliban practice). This said, most of the commandments of the best-known set of moral practices defines what is not moral.  

 

Quote:And then the conservatives do something.  The certainly can’t admit they were wrong,  After the Revolution, they moved to Canada.  After the Civil War they created the KKK.  After the last crisis they stole some of FDR’s best ideas such as regulating the economy and containment.  After Trump?

Fascists (like the Second Ku Klux Klan whence Hitler got many of his ideas) and proto-fascists (like the original KKK) are not conservatives. They are extremists. The Tories weren't bad people; they were simply the last to get the message of the American Revolution. Eighty years after the American Revolution their ideological descendants would found the English-speaking part of the Dominion of Canada. All Klans have been nefarious supporters of a backward and violent attack on anything not white and Christian.

Donald Trump is no conservative. He stands for nothing that could ever stand the test of time. The coup on his behalf resembled of all things the Bolshevik Revolution, an anathema to any genuine conservative. His rhetoric is demagoguery. 

Quote:Maybe after the hatred and violence of the recent past one can start to guess.  Drive though a peaceful protest of police abuse.  Take an assault rifle to a bar full of minorities.  Drive from rural to urban areas to give the resident minorities a problem.  Implement a violent insurrection.  Gerrymandering.  Deny lost elections.  Impose their culture on all as they did repealing choice.  Attack doctors, teachers, poll workers, the DOJ, the FBI.

In the first case you will see the police and the protesters on the same side. I can imagine a DA using a violent attack on minorities as a pretext for a display that the courts of law in his bailiwick are color-blind with respect to overt, murderous crime. What do Black Lives Matters protesters do when they see someone torch a police car? They let the cops do their job. We are about to see the sentencing of people who plotted to kidnap and lynch the Governor of a State, and as more serious offenses go on trial involving the Capitol Putsch, the sentences get increasingly severe. Attacking and professions institutions that most people see desirable and necessary is not a good way to win friends and influence people. 

The Trump agenda has little appeal to youth. It is much more likely to engender protests than to set lasting norms. The base between Trump's one electoral win is shrinking, as shown in the attendance of his rallies. Trump's support is among voters over 50, and new voters supplant the voters at a rate of roughly 1.6% a year. Even without a formal collapse of Trump ideology, voting patterns (new voters are about 20% more Democratic than Republican, and voters over 50 are about 5% more Republican than Democratic), then that alone suggests that with nothing else changing, Democrats can expect to gain 1.6% every four years at election time.  That is the difference between 2016 and 2020, and that is enough to explain how Trump lost the Presidential election in 2020. At the start of 2020 I predicted that Trump would lose 2020 election by losing (by diminishing margins) Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Florida with a simple application of that rule. I got three states wrong, but I came within one electoral vote because Arizona, Georgia, and NE-02 combine for one fewer electoral vote than Florida. That was still possible with a shift of 1.6% of the popular vote from 2016. 

Trump did nothing to reverse that trend. He did not expand his coalition; he kept his coalition intact, but if the demographics are not in one's favor following a bare win, then one loses. What is so amazing about 2020 was that it was as close as it was despite one of the worst Presidents in American history running for re-election. Polarized as American politics have become, demographics is practically everything.       

Quote:I can see a rough remnant of MAGA becoming professional bad neighbors.  Not most of MAGA.  The Big Lie and Trump’s criminality is becoming very obvious, if at a slow pace by people who limit themselves to MAGA loyal media.  But there will be a small fraction of those who hate because they have always hated, who make other people miserable because that is what they do.

Well, the John Birch Society never went away. Neither did the Black Panthers. g0dh@tesf@gs.com is still around. $cientology still does its stuff. Porn has yet to disappear from the Web. 

Quote:That is what has to be crushed in the high.  It is said that the values of the high support the solutions to the preceding crisis.  This hate reflects the methods and attitudes of MAGA.  The culture of the high has to reflect that this hate is not acceptable moving forward.

In time, MAGA and QAnon will be objects of ridicule, much like 1930's British fascists such as Oswald Moseley in Monty Python's Flying Circus.  Note well that a new Adaptive generation is just beginning to reach adulthood, and I predict that it will do comedy and do it well, much like its Silent predecessors. The best analysis is comedy, as much that is gross failure gets its harshest criticism through ridicule of its stupidity, emptiness, and vileness. 

MAGA, QAnon, and other totalitarian or quasi-totalitarian movements have little use for comedy. Everything important is deadly-serious, never to be challenged or mocked. But MAGA and QAnon must be mocked for their hideous qualities.

(09-18-2022, 07:50 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]I have been half wondering what the leftover conservatives would look like as the crisis ends.  I feel the crisis fixes the greatest problem facing the culture.  The conservatives go for no change, no fix to the problem, continue the problem, often profit off the problem.  The progressive come out ahead, forcing a change, fixing the problem…. To me the results of the crisis was more obvious than what would get us here.  Covid would be handled.  The election would be upheld.  Bad cops killing minorities would be no longer acceptable.  Voting rights haven’t quite yet been secured, but you could see it happening if the Senate gets a few more votes and the filibuster is canceled.  What the problem is is so obvious that the crisis continues until there is a consensus that what is wrong has to be fixed.

And then the conservatives do something.  The certainly can’t admit they were wrong,  After the Revolution, they moved to Canada.  After the Civil War they created the KKK.  After the last crisis they stole some of FDR’s best ideas such as regulating the economy and containment.  After Trump?

Maybe after the hatred and violence of the recent past one can start to guess.  Drive though a peaceful protest of police abuse.  Take an assault rifle to a bar full of minorities.  Drive from rural to urban areas to give the resident minorities a problem.  Implement a violent insurrection.  Gerrymandering.  Deny lost elections.  Impose their culture on all as they did repealing choice.  Attack doctors, teachers, poll workers, the DOJ, the FBI.

I can see a rough remnant of MAGA becoming professional bad neighbors.  Not most of MAGA.  The Big Lie and Trump’s criminality is becoming very obvious, if at a slow pace by people who limit themselves to MAGA loyal media.  But there will be a small fraction of those who hate because they have always hated, who make other people miserable because that is what they do.

That is what has to be crushed in the high.  It is said that the values of the high support the solutions to the preceding crisis.  This hate reflects the methods and attitudes of MAGA.  The culture of the high has to reflect that this hate is not acceptable moving forward.

I think you've made a lot of assumptions that may not pan out.  Number one on the list: that the MAGA crowd doesn't want change.  Yes they do, but it's more like the change that happened after the ACW.  They know that going back to what was is out of the question, but winning as a dominant minority is a perfectly fine alternative for them.  Look at the work that's gone into making it viable: the neo-SCOTUS, the voting control acts, the armed citizenry.  They're ready; we're not.  So do they win?  I hope not, but it's certainly possible.

If not for the guns and the militias trainng for revolution, I might be less concerned ... but I am ... very!

(09-19-2022, 10:47 AM)David Horn Wrote: [ -> ]

(09-18-2022, 07:50 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ](snip)

I can see a rough remnant of MAGA becoming professional bad neighbors.  Not most of MAGA.  The Big Lie and Trump’s criminality is becoming very obvious, if at a slow pace by people who limit themselves to MAGA loyal media.  But there will be a small fraction of those who hate because they have always hated, who make other people miserable because that is what they do.

That is what has to be crushed in the high.  It is said that the values of the high support the solutions to the preceding crisis.  This hate reflects the methods and attitudes of MAGA.  The culture of the high has to reflect that this hate is not acceptable moving forward.

I think you've made a lot of assumptions that may not pan out.  Number one on the list: that the MAGA crowd doesn't want change.  Yes they do, but it's more like the change that happened after the ACW.  They know that going back to what was is out of the question, but winning as a dominant minority is a perfectly fine alternative for them.  Look at the work that's gone into making it viable: the neo-SCOTUS, the voting control acts, the armed citizenry.  They're ready; we're not.  So do they win?  I hope not, but it's certainly possible.

If not for the guns and the militias training for revolution, I might be less concerned ... but I am ... very!

MAGA has gone from largely conservative to fascist. The most that it can do is to entrench itself in States in which white male rage can be the dominant force in politics, entrenching itself in statewide politics. To forestall revolts in such places as Omaha and New Orleans  it might tolerate local havens for liberals analogous to "Red (socialist)" Berlin or Hamburg in Wilhelmine Germany or "Red (socialist) Budapest" of the interwar Regency in Hungary. To win nationwide the MAGA cult must win one of Michigan, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin as in 2016, all of which could turn even more sharply away from the Trump agenda over time.  Corporate agriculture has largely squeezed out the yeoman farmers of the Plains states and transformed agribusiness into Junker-style economics with ultra-reactionary politics to fit. In the South, MAGA has revived the politics of ethnic division by pitting poor whites against poor blacks. Grossly hostile to any intellect, MAGA would be delighted with education that achieves little more than bare literacy and perhaps some low-level technical or mechanical skills for men or the 'domestic arts' for women. It supports fundamentalist Christianity  due to the blindness of that religious tradition to injustice and inequity essential to Junker-style politics and economics.  

Like other authoritarian and totalitarian causes (and do not delude yourself that MAGA is in any way small-d democratic), MAGA depends upon people not thinking about anything more than immediate needs and avoiding trouble with the rich-and-powerful. It makes its appeal to white male rage, which is not enough to hold onto a majority nationwide or even in the Electoral College. It overplayed its hand with abortion, and if Trump's "Three Stooges" on the US Supreme Court decides (as it could be with those three who have turned the USSC majority into practically a cell of the John Birch Society) that Americans need 'freedom' from unions or environmental regulations or that basic education is no right, then MAGA will get larger and even more strident opposition.

(09-18-2022, 07:50 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]I have been half wondering what the leftover conservatives would look like as the crisis ends.  I feel the crisis fixes the greatest problem facing the culture.  The conservatives go for no change, no fix to the problem, continue the problem, often profit off the problem.  The progressive come out ahead, forcing a change, fixing the problem…. To me the results of the crisis was more obvious than what would get us here.  Covid would be handled.  The election would be upheld.  Bad cops killing minorities would be no longer acceptable.  Voting rights haven’t quite yet been secured, but you could see it happening if the Senate gets a few more votes and the filibuster is canceled.  What the problem is is so obvious that the crisis continues until there is a consensus that what is wrong has to be fixed.

And then the conservatives do something.  The certainly can’t admit they were wrong,  After the Revolution, they moved to Canada.  After the Civil War they created the KKK.  After the last crisis they stole some of FDR’s best ideas such as regulating the economy and containment.  After Trump?

Maybe after the hatred and violence of the recent past one can start to guess.  Drive though a peaceful protest of police abuse.  Take an assault rifle to a bar full of minorities.  Drive from rural to urban areas to give the resident minorities a problem.  Implement a violent insurrection.  Gerrymandering.  Deny lost elections.  Impose their culture on all as they did repealing choice.  Attack doctors, teachers, poll workers, the DOJ, the FBI.

I can see a rough remnant of MAGA becoming professional bad neighbors.  Not most of MAGA.  The Big Lie and Trump’s criminality is becoming very obvious, if at a slow pace by people who limit themselves to MAGA loyal media.  But there will be a small fraction of those who hate because they have always hated, who make other people miserable because that is what they do.

That is what has to be crushed in the high.  It is said that the values of the high support the solutions to the preceding crisis.  This hate reflects the methods and attitudes of MAGA.  The culture of the high has to reflect that this hate is not acceptable moving forward.

Thanks for your input. I hope you are doing OK after not being here for a while.

Your timing being off may account for being off on some of this analysis.

For sure, we are just past the half way point of a 4T that started in 2008. The crisis is not solved. As you say, voting rights are not handled; they are still on the ballot. Bad cops can still kill ethnicities without apparent cost. No legislation on either problem has been passed. No significant change has been made on gun ownership either, so mass shootings will continue and get worse. The MAGA crowd is armed with these guns, and plans to resist and overthrow democracy as Trump (their dear leader) is trying to do.

We can't talk about what the conservatives are doing yet in a 1T, beyond what they are continuing to do now until they are defeated to end this 4T: resisting what needs to be done to heal the crisis, and instead making the crisis worse.

The nub of the Crisis has not been fixed and is getting worse. It is obvious to those who look, but that doesn't mean people have looked. It doesn't mean you have looked.

It is a twin malady, as I see it. First, the cold civil war. The division of the country is still deep and getting deeper. Neither side trusts the other, and neither side trusts our institutions. The division seems mostly powered by ethnic (aka mis-titled "race") fears. One side wants to keep America white, the other is either not white or wants to accept diversity instead of prejudice. Deep demographic divisions exist in this divide: rural vs urban, college educated versus not, male versus female, ethnic divisions, old versus young, etc. The cold civil war could get hot, as it did on Jan.6, 2021.
Again, refer to this article:
http://generational-theory.com/forum/thr...l#pid82663

Part and parcel of the division is also the neoliberal ideology (aka Reaganomics, free-market ideology, trickle-down economics), which took power in this country at the end of the 2T. It has only very recently even begun to be challenged, when a 15% minimum tax on corporations was passed by reconciliation. In addition, since 2020 there have been bipartisan spending bills on a scale that had not been passed since before the neoliberal era began about 41 years ago. But as long as the wealthy get away without paying much in taxes, and are allowed to keep wages/salaries/overtime low, then inequality and middle class decline will continue. Neoliberalism by definition renders government incapable of dealing with any problems or concerns. This ideological malady has not been seriously dealt with, and unless it is, democracy itself will continue to be in serious danger along with economic and social/health viability.
http://philosopherswheel.com/freemarket.html

Hovering over all of this is the most dangerous crisis of our time: the climate crisis. Again you did not mention it. It gets noticed more and more all the time as the resulting disasters get worse and worse. Scientists scream that unless fossil fuel use and other changes are made in the next 10-20 years, tipping points will be reached that will make hothouse earth inevitable and irreversible. Civilization will not survive this condition, and it will last for thousands of years. The decision of whether to transform our energy sources in particular (and also start to deal with reforestation and changes in agriculture) MUST be made in this 4T, which means the 2020s. If that is not a crisis, I don't know what is. Only a start has been made to deal with this crisis. The fourth turning is described by the authors as archetypally symbolized by the season of winter. This is when bad weather happens. This time the symbol is quite literal.
http://philosopherswheel.com/globalwarming.html

But unless the cold civil war and its basis in prejudice and market ideology is resolved by a blue victory over the red, climate change will not be dealt with. Because every proposal to make the needed change in policy is lumped in together with the cold civil war division. This issue and every other issue is now part of the division between the blue and red tribes. Every issue is politicized and partisan now. The 4T is on the ballot

(09-20-2022, 07:41 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]Thanks for your input. I hope you are doing OK after not being here for a while.

Doing OK.  I got a new computer which no longer logged in automatically to this site.  Took me a while to chase around finding the password.  New computer teething problems...

(09-20-2022, 07:41 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]Your timing being off may account for being off on some of this analysis.

Yes, I am wondering at this point about what will happen in the high when the crisis is not over yet.  I can see a clear path to each true crisis problem being solved.  All crises in the past have resolved in the progressive pattern.  I see no reason they won't again.  But proceeding under that assumption likely was very premature.  I see Trump's legal problems catching up with him, and hopefully the Democrats pick up a few votes in the senate and kill the filibuster. The parts of the agenda that Manchin has been blocking may clear.  Why wait to count your chickens until after they hatch?  I might well go contemporary later.

(09-20-2022, 07:41 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]Hovering over all of this is the most dangerous crisis of our time: the climate crisis.

I am not sure climate change is a crisis problem quite yet.  Yes, addressing climate change is in Biden's agenda.  Yes it must be focused on and seriously addressed.  Still, it is not receiving the attention that Covid, the Black Lives Matter protests or the January 6 insurrection gathered.  Some correct steps will be taken, but I feel this issue will become more worthy and central a few decades downstream.

(09-20-2022, 07:41 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]Thanks for your input. I hope you are doing OK after not being here for a while.

Your timing being off may account for being off on some of this analysis.

For sure, we are just past the half way point of a 4T that started in 2008. The crisis is not solved. As you say, voting rights are not handled; they are still on the ballot. Bad cops can still kill ethnicities without apparent cost. No legislation on either problem has been passed. No significant change has been made on gun ownership either, so mass shootings will continue and get worse. The MAGA crowd is armed with these guns, and plans to resist and overthrow democracy as Trump (their dear leader) is trying to do.

In practice, 4T's are comparatively short. Once resolved they are over. The World War II Crisis that began with the Great Stock Market Crash and ended on V-J Day lasted sixteen years (and 14 if you count only the bank runs that did the real, lasting damage). We are fourteen years into an economic crisis. When COVID-19 dissipates as a perceived menace and the Russians seek a graceful exit from a nasty war, then this Crisis is over. 

The cultural climate is changing. MAGA is largely a rearguard defense of obsolete ways  steadily losing a constituency solely due to demographic change, and I hope (soon, like November 8) political viability.  I can see them holding onto some regional power, but that is it. 

Quote:We can't talk about what the conservatives are doing yet in a 1T, beyond what they are continuing to do now until they are defeated to end this 4T: resisting what needs to be done to heal the crisis, and instead making the crisis worse.

Are the economic reactionaries really so sympathetic with the superstition, the homophobia, the racism, the misogyny, and the religious bigotry? It looks bad for business.  

Quote:The nub of the Crisis has not been fixed and is getting worse. It is obvious to those who look, but that doesn't mean people have looked. It doesn't mean you have looked.

We have seen more and more bad stuff, and none of it undoes the perception of the bad stuff no longer so. Americans are going to remember the disaster that is Donald Trump for a very long time even after he has lost all relevance to contemporary politics.  Someone like Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, who did far less damage while offending too may sensibilities in the end, was remembered for at least fifty years after his antics were over. The right-wing dream of 95% of the people suffering  for 2%, as in Imperial Russia, never quite goes, but only rarely can it be achieved in modern times. 

Global warming is real, but its worst effects will not be obvious for at least fifty years -- and by sixty years it could easily be the basis of the next Crisis Era complete with mass death on the scale of either the Mongol invasions or the Black Death. (Those caused real declines in the human population!)  

Quote:It is a twin malady, as I see it. First, the cold civil war. The division of the country is still deep and getting deeper. Neither side trusts the other, and neither side trusts our institutions. The division seems mostly powered by ethnic (aka mis-titled "race") fears. One side wants to keep America white, the other is either not white or wants to accept diversity instead of prejudice. Deep demographic divisions exist in this divide: rural vs urban, college educated versus not, male versus female, ethnic divisions, old versus young, etc. The cold civil war could get hot, as it did on Jan.6, 2021.
Again, refer to this article:

http://generational-theory.com/forum/thr...l#pid82663

The Hard Right wants America to become a pure plutocracy in which white, straight, male, fundamentalist Protestants have dominion and tests of faith in the need for repression, hierarchy, and inequality offer proofs of reliability of people. He who shows greatest acceptance of personal suffering gets fed first. I can imagine it using global warming and energy shortages as pretexts to make life grossly impoverished for the vast majority. I do not see them achieving this through free elections. If they did get what they seek, then they would be the obvious 'first people before the firing squad' in the event of a revolution. 

Remember: capitalism saved itself by turning workers into consumers. Such allowed the blooming of such high technology of the time such as electricity, automobiles, radios, and phonographs... all the way to the miracles of our times. If the plutocrats simply have people working to exhaustion for bare sustenance as was the norm in Nazi Germany, then they will have lost all credibility once the system collapses in the wake of some catastrophic war. Vile, inhuman regimes start wars that they lose; they lose wars in which they seem to have every advantage of population size, pre-war build-up, and raw materials.  

Quote:Part and parcel of the division is also the neoliberal ideology (aka Reaganomics, free-market ideology, trickle-down economics), which took power in this country at the end of the 2T. It has only very recently even begun to be challenged, when a 15% minimum tax on corporations was passed by reconciliation. In addition, since 2020 there have been bipartisan spending bills on a scale that had not been passed since before the neoliberal era began about 41 years ago. But as long as the wealthy get away without paying much in taxes, and are allowed to keep wages/salaries/overtime low, then inequality and middle class decline will continue. Neoliberalism by definition renders government incapable of dealing with any problems or concerns. This ideological malady has not been seriously dealt with, and unless it is, democracy itself will continue to be in serious danger along with economic and social/health viability.

http://philosopherswheel.com/freemarket.html

The financial difference between the current Crisis and the previous completed Crisis is that the economic meltdowns that started similarly ended at different times. 

1929 peak 2007
1930 the real crash  2008
1931 breakdown of the financial system 2009 the forestalling of such 
1932 the real depression 2010 no such thing.

You will notice that FDR was elected President in 1932 when America was in full-blown depression. The economic elites might not have liked him, but they lacked the means with which to buy the political system. Obama was elected in 2008, and he pressed for the rescue of the financial system before it could start devouring savings accounts, payrolls, and collections of payables. Big Business could recover, and part of its recovery was the ability of Big Business to unleash the Dark Propaganda of ideological reaction. In the 1930's America elected economic liberals (even if some of them were virulent racists) . In the 2010's America increasingly elected people who believe that those who own the assets have ownership of the hopes of those who are the subjects of those assets -- and that no human suffering can ever be in excess in the service of the power, indulgence, and gain of the economic elites. Note that those elites were often Boomers full of themselves who had never faced any challenge to their bloated self-images and thus saw themselves the rightful masters of everything that they could influence. 

The economic elites going into the Great Stock Market Crash were humbled. All that they could hope for is survival within a capitalist system, and they could not waste precious assets buying the political process. 

Character is destiny, and those with bad character bring ruin until they themselves are ruined. Donald Trump exemplifies this. But we need ask ourselves whether our economic prowess, our sophisticated technology, and our formal education are nothing more than pearls before swine. If we the common people cannot act with charity and overall decency then we can expect rulers and manipulators like Donald Trump. We need to recognize learning as a virtue worthy of itself as an inculcator of virtue.  

Quote:Hovering over all of this is the most dangerous crisis of our time: the climate crisis. Again you did not mention it. It gets noticed more and more all the time as the resulting disasters get worse and worse. Scientists scream that unless fossil fuel use and other changes are made in the next 10-20 years, tipping points will be reached that will make hothouse earth inevitable and irreversible. Civilization will not survive this condition, and it will last for thousands of years. The decision of whether to transform our energy sources in particular (and also start to deal with reforestation and changes in agriculture) MUST be made in this 4T, which means the 2020s. If that is not a crisis, I don't know what is. Only a start has been made to deal with this crisis. The fourth turning is described by the authors as archetypally symbolized by the season of winter. This is when bad weather happens. This time the symbol is quite literal.
http://philosopherswheel.com/globalwarming.html

The world needs zero population growth and the end of the era of conspicuous consumption, the latter often compensation for empty, frustrated lives. We may not have the mass destruction of elderly assets such as housing of a war that forces us to do differently what we did before. The car culture must go. People must make it do or do without. We can do 'virtual' travel, enjoy 'virtual' music, and engineer foods that do not have animal flesh as their basis. Except for the poor who often endure extreme crowding we will need to have less space per capita. Maybe a single person can live in space roughly the size of a motel room. We will need changes in land use. All of that is generational change.    

Quote:But unless the cold civil war and its basis in prejudice and market ideology is resolved by a blue victory over the red, climate change will not be dealt with. Because every proposal to make the needed change in policy is lumped in together with the cold civil war division. This issue and every other issue is now part of the division between the blue and red tribes. Every issue is politicized and partisan now. The 4T is on the ballot

The Blue side has a more sustainable ideology. That matters greatly. Much of the Blue ideology is virtues once associated with conservatism. It may be multicultural, but the sort of multiculturalism that recognizes equal validity of ethnic and religious traditions. People who have some valid tradition are far more capable of adapting to needful change that blends with their tradition. Liberty and political competition are essential for good lives.  Law and order and the rule of law recognize the necessity of honest dealings and the rejection of personal violence. Personal responsibility and rational thought are both essential for prosperity. Precedent and protocol make predictable and reliable what must be predictable and reliable. Education is essential to the creation of the complete person, but it must inculcate virtues and knowledge that have always been true. Vice and corruption need be sacked. Above all, there must be something worth preserving -- and a combination of severe hierarchy, repression, and inequality all contribute to military defeats, economic stagnation, and violent revolution. That all (except for the multiculturalism that is reasonable and necessary in an Empire of Freedom) is the old conservatism. This is far closer to Obama than to the destructive Trump/MAGA cult.

The 4T crisis will not end until this decade is over. The planetary cycles as well as Howe's analysis indicates this, but most of all the climate crisis. We can't assume we are in a 1T while our lands are being flooded and burned and too little is being done. Changes are not made in 1Ts, and some big changes are need to deal with the climate crisis. Most of all this means replacing fossil fuels with renewables. That is the ONLY workable answer now. This can be done, but needs to be speeded up. No issue and no remedy is more significant than this, bar none. There is no chance the car culture will be replaced; it must be electrified. Nuclear and natural gas can help with the transition too, but must be faded out (especially gas). No-one should hope for consumers to change behavior, or impose upon them as the remedy. They don't have any alternative besides what the big compaines provide and impose on them. Reject neoliberalism; control and regulate the companies!

It won't matter that past 4Ts were shorter. The length of the saeculum as a whole won't be denied, and generational dates can't be shortened as Pew has done on the sole basis of demographics. The 4T is not defined by Covid; that was a 2-year crisis, not a 20-year one. And considering the likely fact that the civil war crisis was at least 15 years long, not 5, past 4Ts have never been only 14 years long; they have been at least somewhat longer than that. The first one of the USA was, according to S&H, 21 years long. The previous one to our current one was 17, but it was preceeded by turnings that were a little bit longer than usual.

The cold civil war is not over, nor its dire threat to democracy, and neither are gun massacres and militia threats. Neither are police killings. Ethnic divisions are still too strong, causing the divisions to continue. Immigration continues and will get worse, thanks to climate change and social upheaval elsewhere, and that issue is the one being used by the right-wing to foment the continued divisions and cold civil war. If Putin is not deposed he will strike again or keep the war going. China threatens Taiwan, and Biden pledges to help it. Much more repeal of neoliberalism is needed; Biden has only barely begun. If it continues to rule the USA, blocking needed tax increases and transformative programs, there will be NO 1T; only a continal crisis as the republic dies. If Biden does not run and win again, God only knows the scale of the mess we'll be in if a Republican succeeds in 2025, as would be very likely. It is horrific to even think about. And yet people are saying he should not run. That is the biggest red flag out there!

All this could turn the cold civil war hot. No-one here should be looking forward for a 1T to begin soon. Batten down the hatches. The battle outside ragin' will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls. The waters around us have grown. The first ones now will later be last; the order is rapidly fading. The times they are a-changin'.

Quote:The financial difference between the current Crisis and the previous completed Crisis is that the economic meltdowns that started similarly ended at different times.

1929 peak 2007
1930 the real crash 2008
1931 breakdown of the financial system 2009 the forestalling of such
1932 the real depression 2010 no such thing.

I don't quite agree. 1929 is equal to 2008, not 2007. And in the same month too.
The depression was only replaced by continued middle class decline and a sluggish recovery. The inequality and middle class decline continues. Neoliberalism still rules the roost. It does not matter if conventional economic indicators have improved since 2010. The recession continued. Republican power recovered in Nov.2010 and imposed further economic declines on the people. The people are still getting worse off.

(09-20-2022, 07:11 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]The 4T crisis will not end until this decade is over. The planetary cycles as well as Howe's analysis indicates this, but most of all the climate crisis. We can't assume we are in a 1T while our lands are being flooded and burned and too little is being done. Changes are not made in 1Ts, and some big changes are need to deal with the climate crisis. Most of all this means replacing fossil fuels with renewables. That is the ONLY workable answer now. This can be done, but needs to be speeded up. No issue and no remedy is more significant than this, bar none. There is no chance the car culture will be replaced; it must be electrified. Nuclear and natural gas can help with the transition too, but must be faded out (especially gas). No-one should hope for consumers to change behavior, or impose upon them as the remedy. They don't have any alternative besides what the big compaines provide and impose on them. Reject neoliberalism; control and regulate the companies!

4T's can end abruptly, and often do. 1945 began with the Battle of the Bulge not yet fully decided and with the Japanese Empire still holding a huge amount of territory.  On April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler blew his brains out; on May 1, 1945, Josef Goebbels offed himself, his wife, and their children; on May 8 and May 9 the top figures of the German Armed Forcers signed documents of surrender. In September the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. The Crisis was over, and it was over fast. There was no steady transition. The end was unambiguous. Likewise the American Civil War; the Confederacy still thought it had a chance during the Battle of Petersburg until it ran out of troops. General R0bert E. lee got out of a trap at Petersburg only to be caught in another one at Appomattox. Lincoln was assassinated, largely defining the post-war world in a surprising way. The last slaves were freed on June 19, 1865. 

This may be more a structural change in our political system, as there is no shooting war. It is premature to predict the result of the 2022 midterm election, but should it be a smashing defeat for the GOP then we are in for profound changes of political life, national culture, and much else. if the midterm has an ambiguous result, then we have until at least 2025 to see what is decided. If we have the election of a Trump clone in 2024, then we will be in for a nasty struggle that decides everything -- perhaps even with a military coup. The Joint Chiefs made their decision on January 6, 2021 on who would be President.  

If we get a Trump-like regime established once and for all after which nothing else is possible, then America ends up with a bleak 1T that portends a death spiral for America. In view of the desperation in which Humanity will be when AGW gets incredibly bad (starvation, riots, purges) in time for the next 4T (late 2070's or early 2080's) I can imagine the horrific regimes possible and their proclivity to solve international or even domestic disputes with nukes.   This 4T is mild for a paucity of shooting wars.          

Quote:It won't matter that past 4Ts were shorter. The length of the saeculum as a whole won't be denied, and generational dates can't be shortened as Pew has done on the sole basis of demographics. The 4T is not defined by Covid; that was a 2-year crisis, not a 20-year one. And considering the likely fact that the civil war crisis was at least 15 years long, not 5, past 4Ts have never been only 14 years long; they have been at least somewhat longer than that. The first one of the USA was, according to S&H, 21 years long. The previous one to our current one was 17, but it was preceeded by turnings that were a little bit longer than usual.

For America, COVID-19 is a war-like death toll. Yes, Crisis Eras can get protracted with malignant leadership, as I see in a very long crisis in Russia beginning with the First World War and ending in the Second or in China in a similar but even longer timeline that began with the 1911 revolution and ended with the takeover by Mao Zedong. 

Quote:The cold civil war is not over, nor its dire threat to democracy, and neither are gun massacres and militia threats. Neither are police killings. Ethnic divisions are still too strong, causing the divisions to continue. Immigration continues and will get worse, thanks to climate change and social upheaval elsewhere, and that issue is the one being used by the right-wing to foment the continued divisions and cold civil war. If Putin is not deposed he will strike again or keep the war going. China threatens Taiwan, and Biden pledges to help it. Much more repeal of neoliberalism is needed; Biden has only barely begun. If it continues to rule the USA, blocking needed tax increases and transformative programs, there will be NO 1T; only a continal crisis as the republic dies. If Biden does not run and win again, God only knows the scale of the mess we'll be in if a Republican succeeds in 2025, as would be very likely. It is horrific to even think about. And yet people are saying he should not run. That is the biggest red flag out there!

President Biden is pushing for 1T characteristics to supplant 3T characteristics. America had fully cast off 3T characteristics long before the Pearl Harbor Attack; it has cleaved to 3T tendencies at least until now. Neoliberalism needs political support even if it is strictly dark money that confuses people into tolerating it out of fear of change.  Donald Trump has clearly shown that democracy can die even in America if the worst trends overpower all else. Real progress toward a viable solution of a 4T comes as 1T tendencies supplant the 3T tendencies that made a 4T a certainty.  

Quote:All this could turn the cold civil war hot. No-one here should be looking forward for a 1T to begin soon. Batten down the hatches. The battle outside ragin' will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls. The waters around us have grown. The first ones now will later be last; the order is rapidly fading. The times they are a-changin'.

All possible, but not certain.

Quote:The financial difference between the current Crisis and the previous completed Crisis is that the economic meltdowns that started similarly ended at different times.

1929 peak 2007
1930 the real crash  2008
1931 breakdown of the financial system 2009 the forestalling of such
1932 the real depression 2010 no such thing.

I don't quite agree. 1929 is equal to 2008, not 2007. And in the same month too.
The depression was only replaced by continued middle class decline and a sluggish recovery. The inequality and middle class decline continues. Neoliberalism still rules the roost. It does not matter if conventional economic indicators have improved since 2010. The recession continued. Republican power recovered in Nov.2010 and imposed further economic declines on the people. The people are still getting worse off.[/quote]

My source:

There is no shooting war yet, but those who rose up and attacked the Capitol may rise up again. The prediction is that if the Democrats win in 2024 (which is likely to happen only if Biden runs again), then another battle will begin that will take 4 years. It looks like the last battles, whether foreign or domestic, will be in 2029, as until then it will only be scattered attacks here and there that have to be put down. It could end quickly, this 4T, but as I see it that does not mean such a quick end will happen soon as we see things in 2022.

Before the 4T ends, the changes will need to be made that establish a new society, if we are to have a good 1T. This has been the pattern in past 4Ts near the end. Once a 1T begins, changes cannot be made, except perhaps in a defeated country. Some of these changes may happen as early as 2025 this time, IF Biden wins, but this time they will elicit further resistance. The needed changes must be made to enter a renewable energy economy. Neoliberalism must end so that companies can be regulated. Raising taxes on the wealthy must be possible again. Democracy must be reformed and civil rights protected, and substantial reforms are still needed in these areas. I don't know if further gun control can be enacted or not, but the militias must be disbanded.

Until and unless these changes are made, the saeculum as we know it will end. The only thing that will follow will be continual decline. There will be no set time when a 4T can be designated 80 years or so from now; it will be one continuous 4T from 2029 onward, like in Russia from one great war to the next, but there will be no end, unless a rapid recovery happens in Europe or elsewhere, perhaps in 2029, and the USA is conquered and rescued by them. As I see it, this too can only happen at the end of a 4T and extending into the early 1T years, as in post war Europe and Japan in the 1940s or Reconstruction in the late 1860s.

Because global warming is already so baked in, further climate crisis events are inevitable through the 21st century, but the issue is whether tipping points will be crossed that make hothouse Earth inevitable. If the tipping points are averted, which must happen in the 2020s, then we will muddle through in a new saeculum. Adaptations will be made. Further changes will be made during the Awakening in the late 2040s and 2050s. The nature of the next 4T, in that case, will NOT be climate and weather related, but something else.

I know the peak in the stock market was on Sept.3, 1929, and a peak in this may have been in 2007, but the substantial crash did not happen until Sept. 2008 which only then developed into the Great Recession.

(09-21-2022, 08:34 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]There is no shooting war yet, but those who rose up and attacked the Capitol may rise up again. The prediction is that if the Democrats win in 2024 (which is likely to happen only if Biden runs again), then another battle will begin that will take 4 years. It looks like the last battles, whether foreign or domestic, will be in 2029, as until then it will only be scattered attacks here and there that have to be put down. It could end quickly, this 4T, but as I see it that does not mean such a quick end will happen soon as we see things in 2022.

When the big structural problems are resolved, the 4T becomes a 1T. The big structural problem for now is that the current GOP has gone from tentative, kitten-like steps down the fascist road to tiger-like leaps. 

Unusual events mark a 4T -- and the final events are often just as weird, whether the assassination of Abraham Lincoln or Adolf Hitler offing himself in a fetid cellar. Consensus marks the beginning of the 1T (it will not be any Age of Aquarius!) One part of the consensus is that most of those on the losing side realize that they were wrong. Whether that happens on November 8 of this year or in the 2024 general election, and it looks as if electoral politics is likely to be the measure this time in America, matters little. 2028? If that means another Trump-like figure, then we are in for another wave of political crisis with perhaps the institution of an authoritarian state and vicious deeds by its leadership.      

Quote:Before the 4T ends, the changes will need to be made that establish a new society, if we are to have a good 1T. This has been the pattern in past 4Ts near the end. Once a 1T begins, changes cannot be made, except perhaps in a defeated country. Some of these changes may happen as early as 2025 this time, IF Biden wins, but this time they will elicit further resistance. The needed changes must be made to enter a renewable energy economy. Neoliberalism must end so that companies can be regulated. Raising taxes on the wealthy must be possible again. Democracy must be reformed and civil rights protected, and substantial reforms are still needed in these areas. I don't know if further gun control can be enacted or not, but the militias must be disbanded.

All true! A 1T is a time of economic and technological transitions more than of culture. I can imagine a sort of Era of Good Feeling in which Americans recognize that Obama-style political practice is far safer and more satisfying than any alternative. We will be far safer if Donald Trump goes from an object of fear and disgust to something easily mocked. 

We will need pervasive changes in land use just for economic reasons. The quarter-acre lots for single-family housing will need to go if housing is not to be pushed into the zone of astronomical rents for others. Those who have an economic stake in the system have a responsibility to make their contributions to protect the system and to feed the goose that lays the golden eggs. We need a tax code friendly to small business as opposed to shareholders and executives of giant, monopolized corporations. We need to scrap "too big to fail" in favor of the attitude "too corrupt or incompetent to survive". The demise of retail giants such as Sears, K-Mart, and Bon Ton demonstrate the appropriateness of smaller, more community-based small business in retail. The demise of such chain restaurants as Bennigan's, Big Boy, and Perkins'  creates openings for mom-and-pop restaurants that have less bureaucratic toadying.  

Quote:Until and unless these changes are made, the saeculum as we know it will end. The only thing that will follow will be continual decline. There will be no set time when a 4T can be designated 80 years or so from now; it will be one continuous 4T from 2029 onward, like in Russia from one great war to the next, but there will be no end, unless a rapid recovery happens in Europe or elsewhere, perhaps in 2029, and the USA is conquered and rescued by them. As I see it, this too can only happen at the end of a 4T and extending into the early 1T years, as in post war Europe and Japan in the 1940s or Reconstruction in the late 1860s.

It would be a repressive and freakishly-stale (if less violent) 1T, a suppressed 2T that fails to shake assumptions, and a particularly-depraved 3T. That is one way that a Saeculum can work, and if that is the next one for America it might be a death spiral with America becoming an Evil Empire intent on destroying what freedom exists elsewhere. That could be a near-inverse of World War II in which America is partitioned or at least occupied by recently-hostile powers instead of what happened to Germany, Italy, and Japan after WWII. That could be the "Republic of Gilead", a "Union of Christian and Corporate States", or a Christian-fundamentalist version of Iran.

Bad polities may repress changes that might moderate or improve things, but all that they preserve is the rot that typically bring down the System. That is the warning of Arnold Toynbee.     

Quote:Because global warming is already so baked in, further climate crisis events are inevitable through the 21st century, but the issue is whether tipping points will be crossed that make hothouse Earth inevitable. If the tipping points are averted, which must happen in the 2020s, then we will muddle through in a new saeculum. Adaptations will be made. Further changes will be made during the Awakening in the late 2040s and 2050s. The nature of the next 4T, in that case, will NOT be climate and weather related, but something else.

Some effects, mostly bad, are to be expected. I have seen projections for Europe, where summers will get much hotter and droughts will become more pervasive and normal. The Sahara is on the brink of colonizing Spain, and most of southeastern Europe (basically Hungary and lowlands of Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, and southern Ukraine) are likely to become too dry for wheat production. Wheat requires less rainfall than any other grain crop, and those countries rely heavily upon grain production for their economies... and many countries rely upon wheat from these countries to feed their populations. Tropical diseases are likely to appear in lower-middle and middle latitudes, as shown with West Nile Fever appearing in Michigan.     

Quote:I know the peak in the stock market was on Sept.3, 1929, and a peak in this may have been in 2007, but the substantial crash did not happen until Sept. 2008 which only then developed into the Great Recession.

The Stock Market meltdown of September 1929 itself was merely a correction. Life went on, and people who had stupidly invested in 'easy money' got burned. Real prosperity comes from everything but 'easy money' investments, such as industrial commitments to job-creating plant and equipment, acquisition of specialized education and training such as medical school, creation of intellectual property, or the establishment of small business. 

The real crash, which gutted the value of existing assets from before the speculative frenzy, began in 1930 after the so-called "suckers' rally" in which people saw bargains in the stock market and snarfed them up. Then, and only then, did unemployment soar as a recession began and worsened into a full-blown depression. That is when solid investments during the saner part of the 1920's "New Era" boom lost their value. Things started to go back to normal immediately after the 1929 Crash -- but not after the real crash of 1930.

A minor insight -- why do so many market crashes happen in September and October? Investments in the stock market are largely by rich people who, as befits their class, typically send their kids to expensive colleges and boarding schools and withdraw money for that purpose typically in September. Middle-income people do not do that.

(09-21-2022, 10:07 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]

(09-21-2022, 08:34 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]There is no shooting war yet, but those who rose up and attacked the Capitol may rise up again. The prediction is that if the Democrats win in 2024 (which is likely to happen only if Biden runs again), then another battle will begin that will take 4 years. It looks like the last battles, whether foreign or domestic, will be in 2029, as until then it will only be scattered attacks here and there that have to be put down. It could end quickly, this 4T, but as I see it that does not mean such a quick end will happen soon as we see things in 2022.

When the big structural problems are resolved, the 4T becomes a 1T. The big structural problem for now is that the current GOP has gone from tentative, kitten-like steps down the fascist road to tiger-like leaps. 

Unusual events mark a 4T -- and the final events are often just as weird, whether the assassination of Abraham Lincoln or Adolf Hitler offing himself in a fetid cellar. Consensus marks the beginning of the 1T (it will not be any Age of Aquarius!) One part of the consensus is that most of those on the losing side realize that they were wrong. Whether that happens on November 8 of this year or in the 2024 general election, and it looks as if electoral politics is likely to be the measure this time in America, matters little. 2028? If that means another Trump-like figure, then we are in for another wave of political crisis with perhaps the institution of an authoritarian state and vicious deeds by its leadership.      

I would expect 2024 would be the best chance for the fascist Republican Party to take power. They will gain a huge advantage if Biden retires, since the Democratic Party bench is so vacuous and inadequate. Trump may still be able to run, and if Biden is not his opponent and someone like Kamala Harris is nominated, then Trump will win. I don't think the USA could survive such an eventuality. Trump would move quickly to consolidate a new autocracy, but the left wing today and in the USA generally is not competent to stage a revolution. The most that ever happens from the left is demonstrations and riots. That will only play into Trump's hands.

If Trump doesn't run, the Republicans have several prospects. Any one of them could defeat Kamala Harris, but who would win would largely depend on who the candidates and nominees are and what their horoscope scores are. The popular vote indicator gives the Republicans an advantage, so the Democrats would be wise to stick with Biden if he runs. It doesn't look like Landrieu will be in a position to run, and he is the only certain winner. I don't think Gavin Newsom will be ready by 2024, and it would be risky to nominate him then. But he could win in 2028. I suspect if Biden holds onto the presidency in 2024, and completes much of the 4T agenda, then another Democrat (Newsom being the best prospect) could easily succeed him. The early 1T leaders are likely to come from the Party that won the 4T. But a moderate Republican could win later on. Just what Party such presidents might belong to though is unclear. It is by no means certain that the two major parties we have today will survive the 4T after 2029. If the Republicans implode, new Parties will arrive. If the Democrats fail, we could have a one-party autocracy soon.

After the Civil War, the losing side did not admit defeat, and the "bloody shirt" arguments kept elections close. I don't expect the Trumpists to ever admit defeat after the cold civil war or a period of more January 6ths, but we can hope that they gradually fade due to their defeats (if they happen) and demographics.

Quote:

Quote:Before the 4T ends, the changes will need to be made that establish a new society, if we are to have a good 1T. This has been the pattern in past 4Ts near the end. Once a 1T begins, changes cannot be made, except perhaps in a defeated country. Some of these changes may happen as early as 2025 this time, IF Biden wins, but this time they will elicit further resistance. The needed changes must be made to enter a renewable energy economy. Neoliberalism must end so that companies can be regulated. Raising taxes on the wealthy must be possible again. Democracy must be reformed and civil rights protected, and substantial reforms are still needed in these areas. I don't know if further gun control can be enacted or not, but the militias must be disbanded.

All true! A 1T is a time of economic and technological transitions more than of culture. I can imagine a sort of Era of Good Feeling in which Americans recognize that Obama-style political practice is far safer and more satisfying than any alternative. We will be far safer if Donald Trump goes from an object of fear and disgust to something easily mocked. 

We will need pervasive changes in land use just for economic reasons. The quarter-acre lots for single-family housing will need to go if housing is not to be pushed into the zone of astronomical rents for others. Those who have an economic stake in the system have a responsibility to make their contributions to protect the system and to feed the goose that lays the golden eggs. We need a tax code friendly to small business as opposed to shareholders and executives of giant, monopolized corporations. We need to scrap "too big to fail" in favor of the attitude "too corrupt or incompetent to survive". The demise of retail giants such as Sears, K-Mart, and Bon Ton demonstrate the appropriateness of smaller, more community-based small business in retail. The demise of such chain restaurants as Bennigan's, Big Boy, and Perkins'  creates openings for mom-and-pop restaurants that have less bureaucratic toadying.  

Such a smaller is more beautiful policy would certainly be a good part of a shift away from oligarchy and revival of the middle class.

Quote:

Quote:Until and unless these changes are made, the saeculum as we know it will end. The only thing that will follow will be continual decline. There will be no set time when a 4T can be designated 80 years or so from now; it will be one continuous 4T from 2029 onward, like in Russia from one great war to the next, but there will be no end, unless a rapid recovery happens in Europe or elsewhere, perhaps in 2029, and the USA is conquered and rescued by them. As I see it, this too can only happen at the end of a 4T and extending into the early 1T years, as in post war Europe and Japan in the 1940s or Reconstruction in the late 1860s.

It would be a repressive and freakishly-stale (if less violent) 1T, a suppressed 2T that fails to shake assumptions, and a particularly-depraved 3T. That is one way that a Saeculum can work, and if that is the next one for America it might be a death spiral with America becoming an Evil Empire intent on destroying what freedom exists elsewhere. That could be a near-inverse of World War II in which America is partitioned or at least occupied by recently-hostile powers instead of what happened to Germany, Italy, and Japan after WWII. That could be the "Republic of Gilead", a "Union of Christian and Corporate States", or a Christian-fundamentalist version of Iran.

Bad polities may repress changes that might moderate or improve things, but all that they preserve is the rot that typically bring down the System. That is the warning of Arnold Toynbee.     

I suppose a death spiral could be considered a saeculum, although the first of its kind in Anglo-American history, and such a shame.

Quote:

Quote:I know the peak in the stock market was on Sept.3, 1929, and a peak in this may have been in 2007, but the substantial crash did not happen until Sept. 2008 which only then developed into the Great Recession.

The Stock Market meltdown of September 1929 itself was merely a correction. Life went on, and people who had stupidly invested in 'easy money' got burned. Real prosperity comes from everything but 'easy money' investments, such as industrial commitments to job-creating plant and equipment, acquisition of specialized education and training such as medical school, creation of intellectual property, or the establishment of small business. 

The real crash, which gutted the value of existing assets from before the speculative frenzy, began in 1930 after the so-called "suckers' rally" in which people saw bargains in the stock market and snarfed them up. Then, and only then, did unemployment soar as a recession began and worsened into a full-blown depression. That is when solid investments during the saner part of the 1920's "New Era" boom lost their value. Things started to go back to normal immediately after the 1929 Crash -- but not after the real crash of 1930.

A minor insight -- why do so many market crashes happen in September and October? Investments in the stock market are largely by rich people who, as befits their class, typically send their kids to expensive colleges and boarding schools and withdraw money for that purpose typically in September. Middle-income people do not do that.

I don't see that the crash of Oct 24/Oct 29 was not the turning point. Historians have all said that it was.

(09-21-2022, 03:13 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]

(09-21-2022, 10:07 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]Unusual events mark a 4T -- and the final events are often just as weird, whether the assassination of Abraham Lincoln or Adolf Hitler offing himself in a fetid cellar. Consensus marks the beginning of the 1T (it will not be any Age of Aquarius!) One part of the consensus is that most of those on the losing side realize that they were wrong. Whether that happens on November 8 of this year or in the 2024 general election, and it looks as if electoral politics is likely to be the measure this time in America, matters little. 2028? If that means another Trump-like figure, then we are in for another wave of political crisis with perhaps the institution of an authoritarian state and vicious deeds by its leadership.      

I would expect 2024 would be the best chance for the fascist Republican Party to take power. They will gain a huge advantage if Biden retires, since the Democratic Party bench is so vacuous and inadequate. Trump may still be able to run, and if Biden is not his opponent and someone like Kamala Harris is nominated, then Trump will win. I don't think the USA could survive such an eventuality. Trump would move quickly to consolidate a new autocracy, but the left wing today and in the USA generally is not competent to stage a revolution. The most that ever happens from the left is demonstrations and riots. That will only play into Trump's hands.

If Trump doesn't run, the Republicans have several prospects. Any one of them could defeat Kamala Harris, but who would win would largely depend on who the candidates and nominees are and what their horoscope scores are. The popular vote indicator gives the Republicans an advantage, so the Democrats would be wise to stick with Biden if he runs. It doesn't look like Landrieu will be in a position to run, and he is the only certain winner. I don't think Gavin Newsom will be ready by 2024, and it would be risky to nominate him then. But he could win in 2028. I suspect if Biden holds onto the presidency in 2024, and completes much of the 4T agenda, then another Democrat (Newsom being the best prospect) could easily succeed him. The early 1T leaders are likely to come from the Party that won the 4T. But a moderate Republican could win later on. Just what Party such presidents might belong to though is unclear. It is by no means certain that the two major parties we have today will survive the 4T after 2029. If the Republicans implode, new Parties will arrive. If the Democrats fail, we could have a one-party autocracy soon.

After the Civil War, the losing side did not admit defeat, and the "bloody shirt" arguments kept elections close. I don't expect the Trumpists to ever admit defeat after the cold civil war or a period of more January 6ths, but we can hope that they gradually fade due to their defeats (if they happen) and demographics.

Trump's ideology has inadequate appeal to new voters who have no connection to MAGA culture. Young adults often run away from it should it infect their parents. MAGA is not good for keeping extended families together, which may itself doom it as MAGA types become increasingly isolated. Entertainment media will of course mock the MAGA cause, which will hasten the demise of MAGA and Trumpism. MAGA-connected politicians will (if all goes as normal politics with electoral minorities well short of deciding Presidential elections or majorities in the House and Senate) become increasingly irrelevant, which ensures their failure. 

I cannot predict how partisan affiliations go through the Saeculum. The current GOP could reject the MAGA types much as it ditched McCarthyism, with the fringe of the GOP finding itself in such extreme groups as the John Birch Society, which has a continuing existence from the 1950's. The fault with that assumption is that the MAGA types have largely purged the moderates so that there might be no Eisenhower-like figure within the GOP to decide that a Supreme Court ruling that recognizes the wrongness of "separate but equal" or lets a McCarthy type implode because McCarthy's bombast has no factual backing. 

I can imagine Democrats developing a Big Tent that includes many conservatives on economics and 'cultural values' in a marriage of convenience intended to relegate MAGA and Trumpism into irrelevancy and harmlessness. Such a Big Tent is unwieldy in a democracy, and I can imagine it rifting once the perception of danger from MAGA/Trumpism vanishes because contradicting interests in the same geographic zone area cannot hold together. The Democratic Party began the last completed Saeculum as a coalition between Big Labor and southern agrarian racists who both had cause to oppose Yankee corporate power while the GOP was still more sympathetic with Southern blacks. Big Business and organized labor in the same part of the country are inherently at odds with each other, and nothing is likely to change that.  

Barack Obama is the model of "How to be President" at the least for adopting some conservative characteristics that once marked the GOP. I can imagine conservatives adopting much of Obama practice to a more pro-business stance and a recognition of religious faith as a cause for good citizenship. In general, conservatives need to recognize that Obama was an above-average President for which one has few objections and that Trump is a monster.     

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We will need pervasive changes in land use just for economic reasons. The quarter-acre lots for single-family housing will need to go if housing is not to be pushed into the zone of astronomical rents for others. Those who have an economic stake in the system have a responsibility to make their contributions to protect the system and to feed the goose that lays the golden eggs. We need a tax code friendly to small business as opposed to shareholders and executives of giant, monopolized corporations. We need to scrap "too big to fail" in favor of the attitude "too corrupt or incompetent to survive". The demise of retail giants such as Sears, K-Mart, and Bon Ton demonstrate the appropriateness of smaller, more community-based small business in retail. The demise of such chain restaurants as Bennigan's, Big Boy, and Perkins'  creates openings for mom-and-pop restaurants that have less bureaucratic toadying.  

Such a smaller is more beautiful policy would certainly be a good part of a shift away from oligarchy and revival of the middle class.[/quote]

Small business is also a stronger basis of community, and if people are to be happy then they must recognize that staying put is a genuine option. The Constitutional system that we have was predicated upon the norm of small business and small-scale farming, as the concentration of economic power (as was so in Germany and Japan from the foundation of the German Empire and the Meiji Restoration to catastrophic defeats for which the tycoons were partially culpable) weakens democracy. Except for racism, America was far more livable when mom-and-pop businesses were the norm in retailing, restaurants, banking, and even manufacturing. Yes. one paid MSLP, but at least 

(1) more of the money circulated locally
(2) merchandising was more attentive to personal needs, so one better liked what one got
(3) what one got wasn't on the fast track from some sweatshop in China to an American landfill
(4) communities did not homogenize as they do (the small town in which I live is best described as a "suburb of nothing"), and communities with populations of 2000 or so could be viable
(5) local institutions from schools to labor unions to churches and civic groups were stronger, so people experienced less alienation
(6) the capitalists class (including corporate bureaucrats) could not so easily buy the political process   

The sixth is the most important of all of these. Neoliberal economics and politics have far too much in common with fascist corporatism for the survival of liberal democracy in America. The ability of the super-rich to buy the political process. Note well that MAGA/Trumpists are textbook examples, almost as a rule of alienation in the extreme.  

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Quote:Until and unless these changes are made, the saeculum as we know it will end. The only thing that will follow will be continual decline. There will be no set time when a 4T can be designated 80 years or so from now; it will be one continuous 4T from 2029 onward, like in Russia from one great war to the next, but there will be no end, unless a rapid recovery happens in Europe or elsewhere, perhaps in 2029, and the USA is conquered and rescued by them. As I see it, this too can only happen at the end of a 4T and extending into the early 1T years, as in post war Europe and Japan in the 1940s or Reconstruction in the late 1860s.

It would be a repressive and freakishly-stale (if less violent) 1T, a suppressed 2T that fails to shake assumptions, and a particularly-depraved 3T. That is one way that a Saeculum can work, and if that is the next one for America it might be a death spiral with America becoming an Evil Empire intent on destroying what freedom exists elsewhere. That could be a near-inverse of World War II in which America is partitioned or at least occupied by recently-hostile powers instead of what happened to Germany, Italy, and Japan after WWII. That could be the "Republic of Gilead", a "Union of Christian and Corporate States", or a Christian-fundamentalist version of Iran.

Bad polities may repress changes that might moderate or improve things, but all that they preserve is the rot that typically bring down the System. That is the warning of Arnold Toynbee.     

I suppose a death spiral could be considered a saeculum, although the first of its kind in Anglo-American history, and such a shame.[/quote]

I would have hated to be a German or Japanese in the aftermath of the Second World War, not so much for the sting of defeat but for knowing that the deeds of leaders to which one had mandatory loyalty had done such horrible things. The war crimes tribunals exposed the horrific barbarity of gangster regimes. The death spiral, should it happen, would lead in the end to rule of America by a criminal syndicate in all but name, most likely during the Crisis Era. Should such ever happen, then the dissolution of whatever America becomes will be a historical necessity. Germany and Japan were and remain nation-states; the United States is not.  

  

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The real crash, which gutted the value of existing assets from before the speculative frenzy, began in 1930 after the so-called "suckers' rally" in which people saw bargains in the stock market and snarfed them up. Then, and only then, did unemployment soar as a recession began and worsened into a full-blown depression. That is when solid investments during the saner part of the 1920's "New Era" boom lost their value. Things started to go back to normal immediately after the 1929 Crash -- but not after the real crash of 1930.

A minor insight -- why do so many market crashes happen in September and October? Investments in the stock market are largely by rich people who, as befits their class, typically send their kids to expensive colleges and boarding schools and withdraw money for that purpose typically in September. Middle-income people do not do that.

I don't see that the crash of Oct 24/Oct 29 was not the turning point. Historians have all said that it was.

It's easy to mischaracterize the end of a speculative boom as a calamity. Speculative booms must fail. They devour assets without creating wealth but instead a delusion of prosperity. The economic activity before the heady speculation was sustainable until the rural crash (a common joke in rural America was "We beat the Crash of '29. We went bankrupt in 1927!") when America was much more rural than it is now. 

Investment in business formation, real-estate development (if sensible and not speculative), and in job-creating plant and equipment creates prosperity. Investment in speculative securities does nothing of the sort. The speculative boom continues until there is no last buyer.   

A minor downturn does not lead to a Crisis Era. The economic meltdown that led to the rise of the Antichrist in Germany destroyed the shaky Weimar Republic essential to the peace of Europe. The critical point was the failure of a big bank in Vienna in 1931 that ruined businesses throughout central Europe, including Germany. Had the economic meltdown ended before that, then  Adolf Hitler might have had to return to his artwork (it would have been adequate for advertising or stage sets; he just couldn't get the human face well). "No Hitler as Fuhrer" means no Holocaust, that the shaky Spanish Republic muddles through, and that if there is a Second World War that it is Stalin's Soviet Union that becomes the "baddies".

Obama says politics has not always been this polarized, but these days we need to know the truth that it IS, and that democracy itself is on the ballot. Vote Democratic, or vote for the USA to become Hungary, or Turkey, or Russia.

(09-18-2022, 07:50 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]I have been half wondering what the leftover conservatives would look like as the crisis ends.  I feel the crisis fixes the greatest problem facing the culture.  The conservatives go for no change, no fix to the problem, continue the problem, often profit off the problem.  The progressive come out ahead, forcing a change, fixing the problem…. To me the results of the crisis was more obvious than what would get us here.  Covid would be handled.  The election would be upheld.  Bad cops killing minorities would be no longer acceptable.  Voting rights haven’t quite yet been secured, but you could see it happening if the Senate gets a few more votes and the filibuster is canceled.  What the problem is is so obvious that the crisis continues until there is a consensus that what is wrong has to be fixed.

And then the conservatives do something.  The certainly can’t admit they were wrong,  After the Revolution, they moved to Canada.  After the Civil War they created the KKK.  After the last crisis they stole some of FDR’s best ideas such as regulating the economy and containment.  After Trump?

Maybe after the hatred and violence of the recent past one can start to guess.  Drive though a peaceful protest of police abuse.  Take an assault rifle to a bar full of minorities.  Drive from rural to urban areas to give the resident minorities a problem.  Implement a violent insurrection.  Gerrymandering.  Deny lost elections.  Impose their culture on all as they did repealing choice.  Attack doctors, teachers, poll workers, the DOJ, the FBI.

I can see a rough remnant of MAGA becoming professional bad neighbors.  Not most of MAGA.  The Big Lie and Trump’s criminality is becoming very obvious, if at a slow pace by people who limit themselves to MAGA loyal media.  But there will be a small fraction of those who hate because they have always hated, who make other people miserable because that is what they do.

That is what has to be crushed in the high.  It is said that the values of the high support the solutions to the preceding crisis.  This hate reflects the methods and attitudes of MAGA.  The culture of the high has to reflect that this hate is not acceptable moving forward.

It sounds like your definition of moderate conservative is "people who don't want to change anything", your definition of hard right/Trump supporter is "hateful people who like to shoot innocent victims for no reason", your definition of the crisis of this 4th turning is "bad cops shooting people of color" and your definition of overcoming the 4th turning is "they just need to roll over and agree with us, and we'll pick off the stragglers in the 1T".

In short, this conversation is framed in a way that is going to maximize the chances of people just talking past each other and attacking two oversimplified worldviews which have little to do with addressing real world problems.

In my opinion, that's....exactly what "extreme partisan divides" look like in practice. Regardless of political affiliation, I think it's important for everyone to ask "what are some rational criticisms someone might have of my viewpoints or solutions?" Neither the US government (either party), nor the mass media have even come close to honestly asking themselves this question, and the result is a futile, 3-way stalemate between insular elites who have no idea what 80% of the population really wants, and that 80% of the population bifurcating into two sides of angry populists railing against each other and the government/media/tech/corporate elite and their constituents.

(11-01-2022, 01:35 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]Obama says politics has not always been this polarized, but these days we need to know the truth that it IS, and that democracy itself is on the ballot. Vote Democratic, or vote for the USA to become Hungary, or Turkey, or Russia.

I am glad to have seen this and to recognize that America can have first-rate leadership again. It is not so much that we need one excellent leader: our system does not give dictatorial powers even to a great President. 

The vast majority of the GOP is still aligned with Donald Trump, who could hardly be more different from Obama. Obama exudes the empathy that Donald Trump completely lacks. Obama knows history as well as Trump does not. Obama expresses rational thought that the Q-Anon types pretend to repudiate.

(11-02-2022, 08:20 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: [ -> ]...
In my opinion, that's....exactly what "extreme partisan divides" look like in practice. Regardless of political affiliation, I think it's important for everyone to ask "what are some rational criticisms someone might have of my viewpoints or solutions?" Neither the US government (either party), nor the mass media have even come close to honestly asking themselves this question, and the result is a futile, 3-way stalemate between insular elites who have no idea what 80% of the population really wants, and that 80% of the population bifurcating into two sides of angry populists railing against each other and the government/media/tech/corporate elite and their constituents.

I suppose the difference here is whether a 4T is resolved through reasoned negotiation, or through one side winning the court of public opinion (or the war, or whatever). If it's the latter, then that reasonable question never needs to get asked, let alone resolved.

(11-06-2022, 07:43 AM)tg63 Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-02-2022, 08:20 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: [ -> ]...
In my opinion, that's....exactly what "extreme partisan divides" look like in practice. Regardless of political affiliation, I think it's important for everyone to ask "what are some rational criticisms someone might have of my viewpoints or solutions?" Neither the US government (either party), nor the mass media have even come close to honestly asking themselves this question, and the result is a futile, 3-way stalemate between insular elites who have no idea what 80% of the population really wants, and that 80% of the population bifurcating into two sides of angry populists railing against each other and the government/media/tech/corporate elite and their constituents.

I suppose the difference here is whether a 4T is resolved through reasoned negotiation, or through one side winning the court of public opinion (or the war, or whatever). If it's the latter, then that reasonable question never needs to get asked, let alone resolved.

We may get the opportunity to know first hand, but a good analog to today is how the ACW and Reconstruction played out.  Yes, the North won the war, but the South won the peace.  It took 100 years for the Civil Rights movement to finaly start to dismantle the after effects, and now we're back trying to reestablish inequality yet again.  I suspect that this is an unachievable effort, because it will rear it will rear its ugly head as soon as complacency sets in.

(11-02-2022, 08:20 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: [ -> ]

(09-18-2022, 07:50 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]I have been half wondering what the leftover conservatives would look like as the crisis ends.  I feel the crisis fixes the greatest problem facing the culture.  The conservatives go for no change, no fix to the problem, continue the problem, often profit off the problem.  The progressive come out ahead, forcing a change, fixing the problem…. To me the results of the crisis was more obvious than what would get us here.  Covid would be handled.  The election would be upheld.  Bad cops killing minorities would be no longer acceptable.  Voting rights haven’t quite yet been secured, but you could see it happening if the Senate gets a few more votes and the filibuster is canceled.  What the problem is is so obvious that the crisis continues until there is a consensus that what is wrong has to be fixed.

And then the conservatives do something.  The certainly can’t admit they were wrong,  After the Revolution, they moved to Canada.  After the Civil War they created the KKK.  After the last crisis they stole some of FDR’s best ideas such as regulating the economy and containment.  After Trump?

Maybe after the hatred and violence of the recent past one can start to guess.  Drive though a peaceful protest of police abuse.  Take an assault rifle to a bar full of minorities.  Drive from rural to urban areas to give the resident minorities a problem.  Implement a violent insurrection.  Gerrymandering.  Deny lost elections.  Impose their culture on all as they did repealing choice.  Attack doctors, teachers, poll workers, the DOJ, the FBI.

I can see a rough remnant of MAGA becoming professional bad neighbors.  Not most of MAGA.  The Big Lie and Trump’s criminality is becoming very obvious, if at a slow pace by people who limit themselves to MAGA loyal media.  But there will be a small fraction of those who hate because they have always hated, who make other people miserable because that is what they do.

That is what has to be crushed in the high.  It is said that the values of the high support the solutions to the preceding crisis.  This hate reflects the methods and attitudes of MAGA.  The culture of the high has to reflect that this hate is not acceptable moving forward.

It sounds like your definition of moderate conservative is "people who don't want to change anything", your definition of hard right/Trump supporter is "hateful people who like to shoot innocent victims for no reason", your definition of the crisis of this 4th turning is "bad cops shooting people of color" and your definition of overcoming the 4th turning is "they just need to roll over and agree with us, and we'll pick off the stragglers in the 1T".

In short, this conversation is framed in a way that is going to maximize the chances of people just talking past each other and attacking two oversimplified worldviews which have little to do with addressing real world problems.

In my opinion, that's....exactly what "extreme partisan divides" look like in practice. Regardless of political affiliation, I think it's important for everyone to ask "what are some rational criticisms someone might have of my viewpoints or solutions?" Neither the US government (either party), nor the mass media have even come close to honestly asking themselves this question, and the result is a futile, 3-way stalemate between insular elites who have no idea what 80% of the population really wants, and that 80% of the population bifurcating into two sides of angry populists railing against each other and the government/media/tech/corporate elite and their constituents.

If the right-wing Party is completely irrational, or is bowing to the influence of those hypnotized by the completely irrational, what basis is there for negotiation or reasoned debate and discussion? In past 4Ts there has always been almost none; it has always been war. I would like to think we might have progressed since then and brought history to a higher level. But the MAGA Republicans have exploded that hope to smithereens. This 4T will also likely be resolved by war, although as many observers like Bill Maher and others point out, it won't be two armies fighting from two contiguous territories, but sporadic acts of violence like Jan.6th or like Dylann Roof in many places. It can only be resolved in favor of the Left if the Left commands loyal state well-regulated militias, since if the Left is to be the rebel, it will be outmatched both by private and public militias. Riots in the streets is about all that the Left can muster without state power, and that will not resolve anything. This was all predicted by me through astrology decades ago and in my books and the scenario seems to be coming to pass as I expected.

But a Left or progressive victory is the only way a 4T can be positively resolved so that the nation continues to prosper and eventually progress again. I have predicted this victory. But if the right-wing ever wins the 4T, the nation and its saecula ends, unless rescued by an outside power just as the USA itself rescued Europe and Japan after their failed 4Ts last time. But who will rescue the USA this time?

(11-06-2022, 12:33 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]If the right-wing Party is completely irrational, or is bowing to the influence of those hypnotized by the completely irrational, what basis is there for negotiation or reasoned debate and discussion? In past 4Ts there has always been almost none; it has always been war. I would like to think we might have progressed since then and brought history to a higher level. But the MAGA Republicans have exploded that hope to smithereens. This 4T will also likely be resolved by war, although as many observers like Bill Maher and others point out, it won't be two armies fighting from two contiguous territories, but sporadic acts of violence like Jan.6th or like Dylann Roof in many places. It can only be resolved in favor of the Left if the Left commands loyal state well-regulated militias, since if the Left is to be the rebel, it will be outmatched both by private and public militias. Riots in the streets is about all that the Left can muster without state power, and that will not resolve anything. This was all predicted by me through astrology decades ago and in my books and the scenario seems to be coming to pass as I expected.

But a Left or progressive victory is the only way a 4T can be positively resolved so that the nation continues to prosper and eventually progress again. I have predicted this victory. But if the right-wing ever wins the 4T, the nation and its saecula ends, unless rescued by an outside power just as the USA itself rescued Europe and Japan after their failed 4Ts last time. But who will rescue the USA this time?

And you wonder why I am so pro gun? 

Honestly, in the event that we can reasonably see eye to eye with regards to just what qualifies as an "extremist", you have the Jason Seal of Approval to lock'em up and avoid trying to reason with them all you want. You have no such seal if we are talking about normal farmers, business owners, factory owners or (law-abiding) policemen.

Alas, we at least partially see eye to eye on this. The left don't have much hope here. 
1) Respectfully, hippies in the United States, be they boomer or later generations, have never been good at playing the side of the establishment. Their entire sense of self is built around rebelling against things.
2)The left cannot organize their way out of a grocery bag. Millennial Democrats are marginally better, but the heroes of a war are generally too young to be its organizers. You will need the help of midlife Nomads and elder Prophets to pull that off, and at present, the latter don't have a cohesive plan and the former tend to be much more moderate than the prevailing social winds of your party. 
3) The waves of Cancel Culture crashing against the shores of American culture have mostly washed away other liberals who become casualties of in-fighting. When you cancel right wingers, none of their base cares. It might even give them more street cred *insert clickbait "The Cancel Me For Saying __" video that gets a million years here* 
4) The majority of the fit young males in this country are right wing. 
5) Right wingers are considerably higher on trait conscientiousness 
6) Republicans outnumber Democrats in the military by considerable margin (something like 28% vs 45%)
7) As you said, the right wingers own all the guns.

None of these are themselves arguments about who is right, but they are arguments for who would win. 

Anyway, I haven't given up hope that some sort of more rational negotiation can take place (there is a reason I scream "I'm a moderate!" "I'm a moderate!" so often in these conversations). You can rest assured though, the ounce of satisfaction I will get from my side winning will not outweigh the pound of trauma, death and sacrifice it will come at the cost of, and that's assuming I live until the end of it.