Quote:A week after 9/11 Bush went to a mosque and said that Muslims were not the enemy and that Islam was a religion of peace. Now compare that with now, where the Republicans have gone full Islamophobic bigot, inciting people to hatred with hysterical fears. That is the difference between a 3T and a 4T.

Quote:All you people who still think that 9/11 was the start of the 4T are just simply wrong, period.

Quote:Also, I hope "Neo-Cohen" is a typo, and not an antisemitic slur...

eaths of despair’ are cutting life short for some white 
Deaths of despair are cutting life short for some white Americans

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/deaths-de...americans/





In spite of decades of advancements in health care, diet and safety, white Americans are now living shorter lives, a trend that has surprised experts. Economics correspondent Paul Solman reports out of Maysville, Kentucky, an area struggling with an increase in addiction, overdoses and suicide.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Now a look at a demographic trend that is surprising the experts.
Despite decades of advancements in health care, diet and safety, middle-aged white Americans are now living shorter, not longer, lives.

Our economics correspondent reports in the latest installment of Making Sense.

PAUL SOLMAN: Maysville, Kentucky, in the northeast corner of the state, just a short bridge away from Ohio, despite some merchants’ best efforts at cosmopolitan outreach, the downtown is struggling. But at one local establishment, business is brisk and growing.

DAVID LAWRENCE, Mason County Coroner: This is the Batesville 20-gauge steel protector.

PAUL SOLMAN: This one is Churchill blue. (speaking about available coffins)

DAVID LAWRENCE: Churchill blue. We can get this in a misty rose for the ladies.

PAUL SOLMAN: David Lawrence manages the Knox & Brothers Funeral Home, is also the county coroner. He’s been seeing a lot of dead white males of late, especially ages 45 to 54.

DAVID LAWRENCE: A lot of it due to alcohol or drug abuse.

DR. WILLIAM CRAIG DENHAM, Family Physician: There has been a Denham practicing medicine.

PAUL SOLMAN: Craig Denham wears multiple hats too.

DR. WILLIAM CRAIG DENHAM: This small bag is my grandfather’s medical kit.

PAUL SOLMAN: A fifth-generation Kentucky family physician.

DR. WILLIAM CRAIG DENHAM: My great-great-grandfather’s.

PAUL SOLMAN: He’s also medical director for the fire department’s emergency service.

DR. WILLIAM CRAIG DENHAM: In the past two, two-and-a-half years, we have had about a 300 percent increase in the drug-related overdose ambulance runs. And the prevalence of opiate addiction in this area continues to increase.

BECKY MANNING, Widow: He’s like, mom, it’s nothing that you did. It’s me.

PAUL SOLMAN: Becky Manning’s son got hooked on drugs. Fortunately, he’s still alive.

BECKY MANNING: Almost 40 now.

PAUL SOLMAN: But she blames the drugs in part for her husband’s suicide.

BECKY MANNING: He just carried this tremendous guilt for everything, for our son doing drugs. Then he started getting depressed, and then my husband took his own life.

PAUL SOLMAN: How did he do it?

BECKY MANNING: He blew his head off. I came home to that.

PAUL SOLMAN: Best friend Marcy Conner’s husband also killed himself.

MARCY CONNER, Widow: He developed alcoholism very young in life.

PAUL SOLMAN: An addiction he shared with lifelong friends.

MARCY CONNER: One died with a heart attack, but drug use and alcohol use played all the way through his life. Another one died of cancer, drank up to the very end. And my husband actually had a G-tube in, a feeding tube in, and poured alcohol down his feeding tube until he died.

BECKY MANNING: Alcohol poisoning.

PAUL SOLMAN: These cases fit a disturbing national pattern. Though U.S. life expectancy has been going up steadily over the last century, there’s now been a sudden and dramatic reversal, for just one demographic.

ANNE CASE, Economist: White non-Hispanics in America, middle-age, are dying in large numbers.

ANGUS DEATON, Economist: It was certainly a huge surprise to me.

PAUL SOLMAN: Economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case, who are married, published their finding just after Deaton won the 2015 Nobel Prize in economics.
The paper showed that, starting in 1999, the death rate of middle-aged white Americans has been going up, instead of down.

ANGUS DEATON: We thought we must have made an error. I mean, the whole world is getting better. This middle-aged group is the one that’s benefited most, at least since 1970, from advances in the treatment of heart disease, from people quitting smoking, all of those things. And then suddenly for this trend that’s going down just to reverse out seemed like it had to be wrong. But it wasn’t wrong.

PAUL SOLMAN: The big increase was in what Case calls deaths of despair, alcohol-related liver disease, suicide, drug overdose.

ANNE CASE: People kill themselves slowly with alcohol or drugs, or quickly with a gun. For people aged 50-55, for example, those rates went from 40 per 100,000 to 80 per 100,000 since the turn of the century.
And it’s people with a high school degree or less who are killing themselves in these ways in large numbers. That’s the group that’s getting hammered.

DR. ELLEN KUMLER, Mason County Health Department: And now the CDC is paying more attention to that age group and demographic.

PAUL SOLMAN: Ellen Kumler, a public health doctor for Mason County, Kentucky, says the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control pick up where the Case-Deaton study leaves off.

DR. ELLEN KUMLER: When we look at the suicide rate, when we look at unintentional injuries, a lot possibly related to substance abuse, as well as liver disease, the rates of those issues have actually increased.

PAUL SOLMAN: Marcy Conner is a nurse specializing in substance abuse who has experienced deaths of despair time and again in her own family.

MARCY CONNER: I had a brother that committed suicide, also.

PAUL SOLMAN: And two cousins, one of them a nurse.

MARCY CONNER: And he started telling me that his depression medication wasn’t working as well, and pain medication wasn’t working as well. And he lost his temper at work one night and got fired.

PAUL SOLMAN: Got fired.

MARCY CONNER: They found him hanging in his garage.

PAUL SOLMAN: And the other cousin?

MARCY CONNER: She overdosed.

PAUL SOLMAN: And why so much drug use and abuse? Anne Case and Angus Deaton found something else in their study.

ANNE CASE: Since at least the mid-1990s, people’s reports of pain, of sciatic pain, of neck pain, of lower back pain year on year have increased.

MAN: Our best, strongest pain medicines are the opioids.

PAUL SOLMAN: The mid-’90s was also when the opioid painkiller OxyContin was approved by the FDA, and began to be marketed aggressively to doctors.

MAN: They do not have serious medical side effects, and so these drugs, which I repeat, are our best, strongest pain medications, should be used much more than they are for patients in pain.

PAUL SOLMAN: Within five years, the drug’s maker, Purdue Pharma, was earning a billion-dollars-a-year profit on OxyContin, which soon rose to $3 billion. As for the lack of serious side effects? Well, it did have one.

ANGUS DEATON: It’s basically heroin in a pill with an FDA label on the front. So, people get addicted to this.

ELIZABETH EASTON, Recovering Painkiller Addict: I started on oxycodone, or OxyContin, in high school.

PAUL SOLMAN: Elizabeth Easton is now in recovery.

ELIZABETH EASTON: I unleashed something horrid in me many years ago from doing one — one pill. I went from taking them to snorting them to, yes, injecting, which is really, really horrid.

PAUL SOLMAN: Because you have got to have it.

ELIZABETH EASTON: You have to. It’s the only thing that makes you feel normal. And it’s the farthest thing from normal.

BECKY MANNING: It controls your life. You’re a different person.

PAUL SOLMAN: That’s what Becky Manning saw in her son.

BECKY MANNING: Seeking and finding the next high was his priority, no matter who he took down with him.

MARCY CONNER: The brain is telling you, I have got to have it again. I need more. So that’s where you end up with that craving. The craving ends up with, you know, seeking supply.

PAUL SOLMAN: And though lawsuits and a government crackdown have helped curb the supply of OxyContin, cheap heroin is more than filling the void.

DR. WILLIAM CRAIG DENHAM: If you can’t get your pain pills that you’re abusing, you’re going to find the source somewhere. And so people are turning to the street drug heroin, which is more dangerous, in the sense that you’re taking something made in somebody’s garage vs. something made in a factory.

CHRISTOPHER RUHM, Economist: In many areas, it’s cheaper to get high on heroin than it would be to get drunk.

PAUL SOLMAN: Economist Chris Ruhm.

CHRISTOPHER RUHM: This is a major health crisis. I mean, drug poisonings have become the biggest source of preventable premature death. So, for example, there are more drug poisoning deaths than car crash deaths. And that’s quite recent.

PAUL SOLMAN: And says Dr. Denham:

DR. WILLIAM CRAIG DENHAM: I’m seeing just as many middle-aged women as I am middle-aged men.

PAUL SOLMAN: Bucking a century-long improvement in white longevity.

DAVID LAWRENCE: People without jobs and people kind of just keeping themselves secluded from others.

PAUL SOLMAN: For the PBS NewsHour, economics correspondent Paul Solman, reporting grimly from Maysville, Kentucky.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, next week, Paul returns to Maysville to ask the obvious question: Why the startling increase in deaths in white America?

So, we really are Russia, now.

I miss that guy who went to Russia, and got The Russian Smile.

I miss Glick, and Rani, and Hopeful Cynic, and the Republican Shill, and the Auteur Paratrooper.

I would love for them to come on the board, and defend the ongoing train-wreck. 

This weekend CN takes on the sorry state if our educational system........

http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/left-behind/

Discuss!

I recently spent a stomach-churning 90 minutes watching Steve Bannon's 2009 documentary Generation Zero.  An abstract describes his film thusly:

"The current economic crisis is not a failure of capitalism, but a failure of culture. Generation Zero explores the cultural roots of the global financial meltdown--beginning with the narcissism of the 1960's, spreading like a virus through the self-indulgent 1990's and exploding across the world in the present economic cataclysm."

 As patently ideological as it is, and as specious as some of its conclusions are, especially with respect to federal deficits and the printing of money, I intend to watch it again.  If anyone else cares to do so, here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3SLtP10NQ8

The documentary does get a few things right, and there exist a number of film reviews, some quite critical (and deservedly so.)  I thought I would post a link to the brief review by The Christian Science Monitor, as it is a newspaper that tends to be more centrist than others:

"Generation Zero Documentary Looks at Another Inconvenient Truth: US Debt"
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/new-ec...th-US-debt

As a follow-up to this documentary, I would suggest Hedgeye's recent video interview with Neil Howe, posted only a few days ago:

Replay | Inside Bannon's Brain with "The Fourth Turning" Author Neil Howe
https://app.hedgeye.com/insights/57111-i...uthor-neil

I have some strong views about both videos, but I'm most interested to hear from other members of the forum about your takeaways.

Witnessing how Duginists and Bannon have latched onto turning theory, most especially the notion of a 4T Total War, I am now deeming it the weaponization of Generational Theory / Turning Theory.

Similarly, the various totalitarians which Paul R. Johnson labeled "The Monsters" - during the last 4T, latched onto things like Spengler's writings, and proceeded to massively twist and abuse them to their own nefarious ends.

It's only a model  - not a play book.

The sad thing is that we will all end up being smeared due to the abuse of these models by crazy people.

Generational Theory could have been so powerful and done so much good.

It's probably too late now to prevent an unfortunate outcome.

We face a polarization and conflict in our country. Though essentially beyond the partisan labels, it does cluster around Republicans and Democrats, which we now call red and blue.

What is this contest, or conflict?

I like to see it on many levels. I prefer most of the time to frame it as a contest between ideas, not people. The people on the other side are not my enemies, I like to think. It's the ideas, the delusions and deceptions they hold that must be dispelled.

Bob Butler likes to frame it as a contest between values; we can't hold the values of those we oppose, so we must accept this and accept that people have different values.

I think there's some truth in that, but on the other hand, framing it this way makes it harder to resolve; it says things can't be changed, because values are too hard to change. Whereas if one has a delusion or has been deceived, all one has to do is wake up from it.

Of course, framing the conflict in terms of deceptive ideas, also has its problems. Reading me saying to dispell the deceptions, sounds like I'm saying that I am right and the other person is wrong. Once in a while, a person can be in what's called a contemplative mode, and is willing to listen. In our society today, it appears that less than 10% of the people are capable or willing to listen to the other side. The rest have their minds made up.

When I speak of deceptive ideas, it is not just my ego speaking, because it is not only myself who "knows the truth" and others who don't. It is myself and many others, opposing another and many others. And I like to say that, if I know the truth, it is because I have been open and willing to listen. But the divide remains. If another person is not in contemplative mode, there is little chance I can convince them that I know the truth, and that they are deluded. And they may take is as an insult if I tell them that they have been deceived, and that I know the truth and they don't.

Let's see in my next post if I can frame the contest we are in a little differently.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monk...1e140df66e

Quote:In 2017, the Supreme Court will take up the issue of partisan gerrymandering. Depending on how the court rules, its decisions could have far-reaching implications for the partisan balance in the U.S. House of Representatives and state legislatures — and for the future of redistricting across the country.

I'm going to play provocateur for a moment, if only because the placards are popping up already in the street demonstrations: "Trump Is a Fascist."  So, too, evidently were Nixon, Bush 43 and Obama, judging by the protest signs in mass demonstrations past.  For those of us who have been around for a while, broad-brushing U.S. presidents with that epithet has long since lost its punch.  Calling someone a fascist has become a tired--almost laughable--cliché.  If throwing that f-word in someone's face is meant to shut down--much less, win--the debate...well, that just doesn't fly with me.  Nor, do I suspect, with others on this forum.

So, let me say right up front that I am neither an anti-Trump rabble-rouser, nor am I his apologist.  I did not--could not--vote for him for any number of reasons that I will not elucidate.  Trump poses a certain danger that I have discussed at length on the old 4T forum.  I will now concede, however, that he may spark a regeneration of some kind, and that's a big concession for me.  Just where that regeneration leads our country is an open question.  And I don't think it's going too far out on a limb to say that a Trump presidency is high-risk, high-reward, as conservative columnist Ross Douthat recently pointed out:

"Trump Will Remake U.S. Conservatism, Or It Will Break His Presidency"
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/ross-douthat-trump-will-remake-u-s-conservatism-or-it-will-break-his-presidency
    
The impetus for this new thread stems from a recent article in the left-leaning The Guardian, written by a senior correspondent of the Federalist, typically a champion of conservative causes.  (How's that for Left, Right?) I generally agree with his assessment, and take exception only with one of his assumptions that I have not seen support for in any poll that I'm aware of.

"Trump Is No Fascist. He Is a Champion for the Forgotten Millions"

He begins by writing--

Amid the ongoing protests against President Trump, calls for “resistance” among Democratic politicians and activists, and the overheated rhetoric casting Trump and his supporters as fascists and xenophobes, an outsider might be forgiven for thinking that America has been taken over by a small faction of rightwing nationalists.

America is deeply divided, but it’s not divided between fascists and Democrats. It’s more accurate to say that America is divided between the elites and everybody else, and Trump’s election was a rejection of the elites...

Read further at this link: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/05/trump-not-fascist-champion-for-forgotten-millions

Whether Trump emerges as a "champion," it's premature to say.  He has been dealt a pretty good hand--a reasonably healthy economy and a bullish stock market.  Trump has not yet been "fire-tested."  (Only in a political sense with his improbable victory.)  Should another crisis present itself--financial, geopolitical, whatever--the question is, will he meet the moment?

With the election of Donald Trump, the Republican Party is now functioning in Crisis mode.  The "small government which does nothing" Republicans have been pushed aside to make way for the crisis turning Republicans, those who want to use the power of government to do big things, to shape society and the world and solve what they see as America's problems.

The Democratic Party, on the other hand, is still entirely committed to its former Unraveling era politics.  The 60s counterculture hippies' goal of smashing the establishment became the unraveling policies designed to eradicate all traces of the former 50s society.  Whites must be disempowered to make way for minority races, men to make way for women, christianity to make way for other religions and beliefs.  All of this is entirely unworkable in a Crisis, and can never be carried forward into the next High.

Democrats are now on track to be completely ignored for the the rest of the crisis and possibly much longer, as Republican control of the country becomes as much a fixture of society as Democractic control was during and beyond the last crisis.

The election of 1932 left the Democrats in control of the presidency and both houses of congress, and they kept it all until the crisis was over.  More than that, other than two brief 2 year periods, democrats controlled both houses of congress until 1980, long long after the crisis was over.  The democratic party of the 1930s pushed the New Deal policies which were intended to bring the country out of the great depression, while the republican party's goal was to stop the democrats from doing that.

Today, Donald Trump plans to "make America great again".  He's going to secure our borders, build a 2000 mile wall, stand for law and order by possibly kicking out millions of illegal immigrants, reorder the world by forging new alliances and breaking old ones, renegotiate all our trade agreements, bring manufacturing back to this country, and no doubt much more.  The democratic party's goal is to stop him from doing all of that, and the democrats' constant cries of "nazi" and "racist" are falling on deaf ears, much as the cries of "socialist" and "communist" were ignored by Americans suffering through the Great Depression.

Furthermore, Democrats are opposing all of this in entirely the wrong way, in ways which worked during the unraveling but which are doomed to failure today.  Now is the time to bring people together, to focus on our commonalities, on what unifies us, but Democrats are still stuck in the politics of raising up minorities.  The great protest marches which were organized to oppose Donald Trump becoming president?  They were designed as a women's march, instead of as a people's march.  Exactly the opposite of what should have been done.

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/platforms.php  Here is a link to the Republican and Democratic party platforms since 1840.  The Democratic Party Platform of 2016 contains the term "LGBT" 19 times, "racial" 14 times, "people of color" 6 times, "black" 5 times, "African American" 6 times, "latino" 5 times, "minority" 7 times, "transgender" 5 times, "gender" 12 times.  The term "white" appears 4 times, each occasion a complaint about some unfair advantage.

It should be no surprise that most of these terms don't appear at all in the Republican party platform.  This is an Unraveling era document, a long list of oppressed minorities who must be raised up and taken care of.  Look for any of this in the Democratic party platforms of the 1930s, you won't find it.  (By 1940, both party platforms contain a brief and equal length paragraph opposing "Negro" discrimination)

What should the Democratic party be focusing on?  An American liberal party in a crisis or a high should be paying attention to things that affect the average worker in this country.  Replacing the mess of a way we manage and pay for health care in this country with some sort of tax supported single payer system, so that businesses and individuals are free from having to pay for or worry about medical expenses.  The $15 per hour minimum wage is an excellent idea, although it needs to be sold as something which will raise the wages of a wide range of working Americans.  If someone making $8 per hour is raised to $15, then someone making $15 today ought to be making $25 per hour.  The general idea is that the U.S. is a wealthy, prosperous country, and this wealth need not all be concentrated to the top, leaving a few billionaires and millions of working people unable to afford a car or a doctor.

During an unraveling, when government is impotent and everyone, including billionaires and corporations, is supposed to be free to do what they want, the above seems impossible.  The time has come where government can do things, where the vast imbalance in the allocation of wealth in this country can be changed.  But Democrats will change nothing by wearing pink vagina hats and screaming "racist" at everyone politically right of center.