Happy 420 day, y'all.  

https://twitter.com/hashtag/Happy420?src=tren

I just put up this blog post inspired by seeing a play (Marie Antoinette). I couldn't help but see parallels between our time and the French Revolution. I had noticed them before when reading about the French Revolution.

In summary:
        Extreme Partisanship (remember, they invented left vs. right)
        Fake news - rumors spread like mad then, and mobs acted on completely false information and overblown fears about what the other side was up to
        Hashtag this/that - political correctness was enforced 

In conclusion: there is nothing about the Internet/social media that is making us different as a society; we simply use that technology where the French of the late 1700s used word of mouth/pamphlets for the same purposes. 

I'm not saying that this 4T exactly parallels the French Revolution; just that are identifiable similar elements. What other comparisons could be made to other past 4Ts?

Here is the post:

http://stevebarrera.com/the-hashtag-queen/

THE HASHTAG QUEEN
 April 17, 2019  Steve Comments 0 Comment

Last weekend I watched The Baldwin School’s production of Marie Antoinette. It was a challenging play for a high school to put up, and they did so brilliantly. 

The script covers the Queen’s life from her early years in the French court up until her fateful end, focusing on her character and attitude, and her reaction to how her adopted country perceived her – which is to say, in an unflattering light. Marie Antoinette was the victim of scurillous slander at the expense of her virtue, and scapegoated for France’s problems, particularly the country’s financial troubles and food shortages. She was blamed because, as an elite living in a bubble, she was unwilling or unable to appreciate how her actions looked to her poor and desperate subjects.

Marie Antoinette was known as the Butterfly Queen, but she might have been called the Hashtag Queen instead, as she was victimized by the same kind of mobbing that happens today on social media. Back then, they used word of mouth and the printed page to transmit information, instead of the Internet, but the effect was the same.

In fact, from what I’ve read about the French Revolution, there are many parallels with our time. France was divided into partisan factions, each seeing the other as a threat to society. The extreme left and right (the terms originate from this era) each enforced their own version of political correctness, making centrist politics untenable. Fake news was as much of a problem then as now, with rumors spreading across the country, inciting the factions against each other. Does it really matter how information is spread? It’s not about the technology, but about the social predilection.

The production I saw reminded us of current events, by dressing the revolutionaries and prison guards in yellow vests. How bad could it get today? I do think that the French Revolution was more violent than we are likely to experience now because the people then were so desperate – France was struggling to emerge from the feudal period, and people were literally on the brink of starvation, meaning they didn’t have much to lose.

In France during the time of Marie Antoinette, everyone eventually got tired of the extremism and just wanted law and order. That was how they ended up with Napoleon. How things will all play out in our time I cannot say, but it is always prudent to reflect on history.

https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf

In the first 55 pages:

1. The material is reduced from "Attorney Work Project".


2. Redactions appear largely as "Harm to ongoing matter" (most space taken), "Investigative technique", or rarely "Personal privacy".  These. to the extent that they are valid redactions, are mandated by law. Potential "harm to ongoing matter" suggests that further investigatione and prosecutions remain possible and even likely. I am willing to accept "investigative technique" for what it is, and "personal privacy" as mandated u8nder federal law against the release of classified or confidential information.

3. The Russian role is heavily delineated. If Trump is not a conspirator, then he is at the least a dupe. Russian intelligence agencies and front groups are named.

4. Julian Assange is apparently quite guilty as a foreign agent for disseminating materials, stolen or perhaps forged, through Wikileaks. 

Go ahead. Read it. I shall spare my usual judgments. Yours matter more.

Hero archetype was skipped after the Civil War (or during? how is that said).  The next cycle was normal.  This one may be repeating the CW turning.  Many, MANY Americans were slaughtered in the Civil War and other factors as to why Hero was not manifested.  Could it be Vietnam decimated a whole generation of would-have-been heroes?  Rather, would they (had they lived) been the parents OF the Heroes had they returned home?  The facet of that generation which survived were not the most honorable people and as is known, were Boomers that were only in it for themselves. 

I am suggesting the possibility of a really long X generation that bled right into a pseudo Artist.  In fact, looking at the previous model without a Hero, it's possible the authors did not know what to make of it so they adjusted the brackets to omit the Hero simply because nothing in the past (or after) made sense in that context.  Meaning, they may have overlooked a "special-rule" archetype that fits between Nomad and Artist that is just marginally manifesting Hero.  Because, we have yet to experience any baby boom in America, even though the time is getting really short for that to happen if is going to happen.  Artists (according to the current model) are approaching full adulthood themselves.  Millennialls are not in a position to produce such a baby boom without their bracket being moved entirely.  The oldest of them being approx 40 and the youngest about 18.

Any answers welcome.  Please provide context.

“Democracy requires a minimum amount of mutual trust among citizens, and conspiracism destroys it.”

By Sean Illing@seanillingsean.illing@vox.com Apr 11, 2019, 8:10am EDT

Are we living in a golden age of conspiracy theories?

That’s the argument Harvard politics professor Nancy L. Rosenblum makes in her new book, A Lot of People Are Saying. And it’s not merely that conspiracy theories are thriving — they’re also getting more absurd, less substantive, and harder to refute.

In fact, what we’re seeing now, according to Rosenblum and her co-author Russell Muirhead, is more “conspiracism” and less theory. Which is to say, the purpose of conspiracy theories is no longer to explain reality or offer some account of the world; instead, the point is to erode trust in public figures or institutions.

She points to the recent Pizzagate conspiracy as a perfect example. This was a fake news story alleging that Hillary Clinton and her former campaign chair, John Podesta, ran a child sex ring in the basement of a pizzeria in Washington, DC. It was totally fabricated, but it proliferated enough online that a man eventually showed up at the restaurant with an assault rifle and fired at least one shot.

Rosenblum believes this new form of conspiracism amounts to a direct attack on the foundations of liberal democracy and what she calls “knowledge-producing institutions.” As conspiracism takes root in our politics, she says, we lose our capacity to deliberate about the direction of the country. And ultimately, democracy itself becomes impossible.
I spoke to Rosenblum about the nature of modern conspiracy theories and how they’ve evolved into an existential threat for democratic societies. A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

Sean Illing
Why write a book about conspiracy theories now?

Nancy Rosenblum
Charges of conspiracy have in the last two years become a malignant element in public life, and I think it’s been really corrosive to our politics. But what struck me and my co-author was this intrusion of conspiracism, which we think is fundamentally different from conventional conspiracy theories.

Not a day passes without some sort of conspiracist claim about rigged elections or fake news or something absurd like Pizzagate. And the cast of characters that are engaged in conspiracy charges now ranges from a compulsively conspiracist president to public officials — elected representatives who either endorse these conspiracist claims or acquiesce to remain silent — to conspiracy entrepreneurs and their followers.
So it’s a not-insignificant part of our population, and it’s a common element now in public life.

Sean Illing
And how do you define a conspiracy theory?

Nancy Rosenblum
A conspiracy theory is an explanation of an event — an event that seems otherwise unintelligible or improbable. And the explanation is that underneath what seems unintelligible is actually some sort of conspiracy or secret plot. Sometimes conspiracy theories are true, sometimes they’re false. It’s often hard to tell the difference, but in all cases, it’s an attempt at some reasoned explanation for a complicated event.

Sean Illing
So a conspiracy isn’t wrong by virtue of being a conspiracy theory, but it’s more likely to be wrong because it’s an attempt to take a complicated event and fit it into a broader narrative framework?

Nancy Rosenblum
That’s right, and I’m so glad you said that, because Wikipedia actually defines a conspiracy theory as a false threat of a conspiracy, and that’s not true. There are both progressive conspiracy theories that are not only true but have advanced American democracy, and there are total fabulations that are pure inventions.

Sean Illing
Can you give me an example of an accurate conspiracy theory and one that was totally fabricated?

Nancy Rosenblum
Examples of sheer fabulation would be the “faked moon landing” (Stanley Kubrick actually filmed it in a studio) or that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is dead (the Democrats found a body double to deny her death in order to prevent President Trump from filling her seat on the Supreme Court). Or, more to the point, perhaps, the recent Pizzagate conspiracy.

As far as useful progressive conspiracy theories go, a good example is the work by academics like Naomi Oreskes documenting conspiracies by the tobacco and fossil fuel industries to cast doubt on climate science, which actually refutes the climate hoax conspiracy that says global scientists are bribed to produce reports of catastrophic human-caused global warming.

Or the Progressive movement in the early 20th century that cast corporate boardrooms and smoke-filled rooms of political bosses as potential roadblocks to democracy; the result of what they called “muckraking” reporting on this corruption was democratic reforms that are still with us, like direct democracy and referenda, etc.

https://www.vox.com/2019/4/11/18291061/c...-rosenblum

Brown University Political Economist Mark Blyth shortly after the 2016 US Presidential Election released a lecture explaining macroeconomic regimes from the New Deal to Supply Side Economics to today's Populist uprisings and how they are all interrelated. I believe that his theory ties heavily into both the 4th/1st Turnings of the 1930s-50s along with the Great Awakening and Unraveling leading to today's Fourth Turning.

Here is a link to his lecture. I encourage everyone to watch it in its entirety if they can spare an hour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY


His thesis statement is this: The New Deal and post-Great Depression era coupled with the emerging threat of Communism led to our institutions focusing on Full Employment first and foremost to provide higher wages and strong unions. Eventually, the hyper-focus on this sole macroeconomic variable caused rifts in our economy that led to the high inflation of the late 1970s which crippled creditors. As a result, we switched course starting in the late 1970s and accelerating in the 1980s with folks like Reagan and Thatcher by targeting inflation. By targeting solely inflation for about the same time period we targeted full employment, we have now created a new set of problems in our society and that that led to the system blowing up in 2008. Since the system wasn't properly reformed we have spurred both right and left wing populists revolts throughout the first world (And possibly in developing economies looking at Brazil, Turkey, the Philippines, etc). 

As a result of the 4th and 1st Turning Civic GI's flexing their collectivist teamwork agenda onto society due to their upbringing in the Great Depression, our economy eventually looked like this in the late 1970s:

1. Targeting full employment at all costs
2. Labor share of national income at an all-time high
3. Corporate profits at an all-time low
4. Strong Unions
5. Low inequality
6. National Markets
7. Finance and Central banks are both weak
8. Legislative bodies are strong
9. Great economy for debtors
10. An economy focused on the collective

Then, as a result of the 2nd and 3rd Turning Prophet Boomers rebelled against collectivist society and with the 1970's stagflation began exerting their individualist agenda which focused on itemizing society, After about 30-40 years we now have this:

1. Targeting inflation at all costs
2. Labor share of national income at an all-time low
3. Corporate profits at an all-time high
4. Weak Unions
5. High inequality
6. Global Markets
7. Finance and Central banks are both powerful
8. Legislative bodies are weak
9. Great economy for creditors
10. An economy focused on the individual


While the global financial crisis is generally considered to be the start of the Fourth Turning, there wasn't a system reset. Look at all 10 bullet points above and you'll see that our current economic system in 2019 is almost identical to the one in 2007. Populist movements of the Left and Right have sprung up across the western world as a rebellion against the current system.

It's worth noting that according to Howe we aren't even halfway through this turning. It's also worth noting that if the current conomic expansion reaches to summer 2019, it'll officially be the longest documented economic expansion in American history. Could that spell another major bubble and crash? We'll see how everything falls between now and 2030.

In the 4T you see the worst nature of humanity and you see them at their worst. How can you go through a 4T without thinking people are evil by nature and not wanting to fit in with them at all after seeing the nature of human beings?

I completed my politics PhD thesis in December last year and am now wanting to undertake a Postdoc concerning the political sociology of Anglo-American historical and generational cycles: scrutinising, modifying and expanding upon Strauss and Howe's generational theory. [See attached] I have identified a similar, though significantly different cycle that appears to have begun in the late 14th century and which came undone during the Stuart dynasty in Britain but remained strong in the US. The pattern re-emerged in the UK. It's been present since at least the Great Depression. There is also some evidence that the pattern has been present in German history for a number of centuries, perhaps since the 30 Years War. I'm wondering whether there is some connection between the pattern and the values associated with Protestantism (rather than Catholicism or High Church Anglicanism). The emergence of the pattern coincided with the beginnings of lollardy. Can anyone here familiar with Strauss and Howe take the cycle back further than the Great Depression in Britain? Is it at all present in Canadian or New Zealand history? I can see it present in Australian history since at least the Depression, but perhaps it goes back further.

Attached Files

  6 Turnings Notes - Copy.docx (Size: 36.67 KB / Downloads: 2)

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