That's what I don't understand. If you constantly see authority not handling things right, why would you trust them more? Especially after seeing how authority acts in a 4T like Hitler or Stalin. I mean the 4T was full of bad examples for authority. So why did they trust lobotomies and thalidomide and take every authority's word?

http://linkis.com/evonomics.com/yEWV1

Quote:Cliodynamics is a new “transdisciplinary discipline” that treats history as just another science. Ten years ago I started applying its tools to the society I live in: the United States. What I discovered alarmed me.

My research showed that about 40 seemingly disparate (but, according to cliodynamics, related) social indicators experienced turning points during the 1970s. Historically, such developments have served as leading indicators of political turmoil. My model indicated that social instability and political violence would peak in the 2020s (see Political Instability May be a Contributor in the Coming Decade...



http://linkis.com/evonomics.com/yEWV1

David Kaiser, historian and author, posted a column today in Time.com that is highly relevant to Fourth Turning theory, and how Donald Trump and Stephen Bannon fit into the current crisis epoch: "Donald Trump, Stephen Bannon and the Coming Crisis in American National Life"

http://time.com/4575780/stephen-bannon-f...emailshare

Below are select excerpts:

During the  1990s, two amateur historians, Neil Howe and the late William Strauss, developed a new theory of American history in two books...They identified an 80-year cycle in American history, punctuated by great crises that destroyed an old order and created a new one.

Though their theory is not widely taught in colleges or discussed in the media, Strauss and Howe may well play a major role in Donald Trump's administration.  Stephen Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News who has been appointed Trump's chief strategist in the White House, is very familiar with Strauss and Howe's theory of crisis, and has been thinking about how to use it to achieve particular goals for quite a while.  I know this because Bannon interviewed both Neil Howe and myself in 2009 while he was making a documentary film about the ongoing financial crisis.  The film, called Generation Zero, discussed those ideas in some detail...

Strauss and Howe's major prediction has now obviously come true: Few would deny that the U.S. has been in a serious political crisis for some time, marked by intense partisan division, a very severe recession, war abroad and, above all, a breakdown in the ties between the country and its political establishment...

The power of Strauss and Howe's theory of crisis comes from its lack of a specific ideology.  My own interpretation of it is that the death of an old political, economic and social order creates an opportunity for any determined movement or leader to put a new vision in place.  To use the most striking example, both the United States and Germany were in the midst of a terrible economic and political crisis in 1933.  The United States turned to Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal; Germany turned to Adolf Hitler and National Socialism. 

In 2009, when Bannon and I met, I [had] hoped that Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress would use the economic crisis of our own age to revive the values of the New Deal.  Bannon obviously had other ideas about where the crisis would lead.

As it turned out Obama failed to embark on a New Deal.  He evidently believed that there was nothing fundamentally wrong with our system and that it could be fixed with only marginal adjustments.  Late in his term, he told David Remnick of the New Yorker that presidents could not, in fact, remake American society, and that that was a good thing.  That differentiated him from Lincoln and FDR--and also from today's Republican Party.

Since at least 2000, in my opinion, the Republican Party has managed to seize and generally keep the initiative during our current crisis precisely because it is the revolutionary party of change, while the Democrats are essentially the party of the status quo...

Trump, Bannon and the rest of the Trump campaign have already managed to destroy the old political order...

What will they do?  Their rhetoric and personalities, viewed in the context of Strauss and Howe's theory of crisis, suggest they will not be bound by existing precedents and that they will rely on their own view of the heroes and villains of our time.

Generation Zero slanted the story of the economic crisis rather cleverly.  On the one hand, plenty of contributors pointed out that greed and shoddy banking practices had brought about the economic collapse, but the ultimate blame is placed on liberals, bureaucrats and established politicians.  And just as Republican politicians and commentators have done for the last seven years, many of the contributors--speaking at the dawn of the Obama administration--pictured a horrible fate under Barack Obama, featuring economic catastrophe and attempts to impose socialism.

This, however, is one of the terrible things about crisis periods: many people will believe almost anything.  The United States faces a terrible crisis right now even though our economy is much improved from eight years ago and we are not involved in a large war.  And the Republican Party and Donald Trump are poised to take advantage of it.  In my opinion, Trump, Bannon...and the rest will use their opportunity during the next year or two to undo as much of the Democratic legacy as they can--not only the Obama legacy, but that of FDR and LBJ as well.

Meanwhile, however, two other dangers lurk--one of then embodied in my most vivid memory of my own encounter with Bannon...

Apocalyptic rhetoric and apocalyptic thinking flourish during crisis periods.  This represents perhaps the biggest danger of the Trump presidency, and one that will bear watching from all concerned citizens in the months and years ahead.

An editorial comment of my own: 

I disagree somewhat with Kaiser that the Trump campaign has already "managed to destroy the old political order."  Neoliberalism, the latest and most pernicious mutation of capitalism, is the old political/economic order that still holds sway in America and, indeed, in much of the developed world.  Neoliberalism is broken, of that I have no doubt.  But it still clings desperately to life and could, in fact, enjoy one supercharged last gasp in a Trump administration.

I agree with Chris Hedges that we are in an interregnum, which Antonio Gramsci defined in his Prison Notebooks: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” 

Cornel West believes that neoliberalism has already given way to neo-fascism with the triumph of Donald Trump.  I'm not yet ready to concede that point, though, as Kaiser suggests in his conclusion, the Trump presidency bears close watching.

Trump's Top Environmental Adviser Says Pesticides Aren't Bad for You

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2...pesticides

In addition to not believing in climate change, Myron Ebell has several other lovely qualities.
TOM PHILPOTTNOV. 16, 2016 6:00 AM



Like pesticides? Trump's got the right man for you. Dave Martin/AP Photo

To lead the transition of the Environmental Protection Agency, President-elect Donald Trump settled on notorious climate change denier Myron Ebell. The decision rattled climate activists—see Julia Lurie's interview with Bill McKibben andDavid Roberts and Brad Plumer on Vox. But it isn't just greenhouse gas emissions that are likely to get a free ride under an Ebell-influenced EPA. Farm chemicals, too, would likely flow unabated if Ebell's agenda comes to dominate Trump's EPA.

Ebell's group dismisses the well-established existence of endocrine-disrupting chemicals as a myth conjured by "anti-chemical activists."

Ebell directs the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The group runs a  website,SafeChemicalPolicy.org, that exists to downplay the health and ecological impacts of chemicals.If the incoming EPA takes its cues from Ebell's group, the agency's coming decisions on some widely used farm chemicals won't be hard to predict........

My madman friend Krieg noted that Trump looked more and more out of his depth, with each Presidential Briefing he received.

You will note that each President's hair went to grey, or white, while in office.

He feared that even the implanted toupee would come off during the first year of Trump's term.

More to the point, he might resign, due to either health reasons (heart, etc), or he simply could not deal with the job anymore.

That means Pence.

Also, imagine Congress in shutdown mode *against* Trump. From his own party.

As Statler and Waldorf, Krieg and I are going to enjoy this. The entire country will not.

We'd do well to keep track of Pence too, now that he wants to be the new Dick Cheney.

But first he's decided to take a page from Hillary:

This is a question I have pondered a lot lately. 

Bernie Sanders, as we all know, peppered his stump speech throughout his quixotic campaign with the phrase "political revolution."  As appealing as his siren call for revolution was, I would characterize his grab bag of policy proposals as reform, not revolution--a new New Deal, as Noam Chomsky and others observed.  To his credit, however, at least Bernie Sanders broached the possibility of some kind of political revolution.  As for his rivals on both sides of the political divide, nary a word.  To my knowledge, Hillary Clinton mentioned the word revolution in her DNC acceptance speech, but only as a reference to the American Revolution, hardly a "call to arms."  Unless I'm mistaken, Trump never mentioned the word; it only came up as a threat by certain of his unhinged supporters if the "rigged election" kept him out of the Oval Office.  

Americans are not terribly disposed to revolutions to begin with.  A socialist revolution--or a fascist reaction, for that matter--was certainly possible in the midst of the Great Depression, but Americans thankfully opted for real reform, not an overthrow of the government, under the leadership of FDR.  The last "revolutionary moment" in America--and abroad--took place in the late Sixties and early Seventies, its epicenter being the chaotic year 1968.  A cultural revolution was launched and largely succeeded over time, but no way did a political or economic revolution prevail, certainly not the overthrow of capitalism once envisioned by militant groups, such as the Weathermen or the Black Panthers.  

A definition of revolution is in order.  There are several possible definitions but, for purposes of this thread, I much prefer the succinct and flexible definition provided by The Free Dictionary online:

    n. the overthrow or repudiation of a regime or political system by the governed

This simple definition allows for revolutions ultimately accomplished by means of either passive resistance or armed struggle.  So the Indian independence movement would qualify, as well as the American and French revolutions--and the various socialist revolutions of the 20th century.

What underscored my interest in this topic is an article published this week by University of Connecticut professor, Peter Turchin, a political theorist whom mikebert has liberally referenced on this forum: "So This Is How the US 'Revolution' Will Unfold"

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/366639-us-ele...ens-elite/

The article:

In late 2012, Peter Turchin, a professor at the University of Connecticut made a startling claim, based on an analysis of revolutionary upheavals across history.

He found there are three social conditions in place shortly before all major outbreaks of social violence: an increase in the elite population; a decrease in the living standards of the masses; and huge levels of government indebtedness.

The statistical model his team developed suggested that, on this basis, a major wave of social upheaval and revolutionary violence is set to take place in the US in 2020. His model had no way to predict who would lead the charge; but this week's election gives an indication of how it is likely to unfold.

Let's take the first condition, which Turchin calls "elite overproduction,” defined as "an increased number of aspirants for the limited supply of elite positions.” The US has clearly been heading in this direction for some time, with the number of billionaires increasing more than tenfold from 1987 (41 billionaires) to 2012 (425 billionaires). But the ruling class split between, for example, industrialists and financiers, has apparently reached fever pitch with Trump vs. Clinton.

As Turchin explains, "increased intra-elite competition leads to the formation of rival patronage networks vying for state rewards. As a result, elites become riven by increasing rivalry and factionalism." Indeed, based on analysis of thousands of incidents of civil violence across world history, Turchin concluded that "the most reliable predictor of state collapse and high political instability was elite overproduction.”

The second condition, popular immiseration, is also well advanced. 46 million US citizens live in poverty (defined as receiving an income less than is required to cover their basic needs), while over 12 million US households are now considered food insecure. While this figure has been coming down consistently since 2011 (when it reached over 15 million), it remains above its pre-recession (per-2007) levels.

Trump's policies are likely to sharply reverse this decrease. Trump's second promise in his 'contract with voters' is a "hiring freeze on all federal employees,” amounting to a new onslaught on public sector jobs. This is in addition to what seems to be a promise to end the direct funding of state education (to, in his words, "redirect education dollars to...parents"), and to end all federal funding to so-called 'sanctuary cities', that is cities which do not order the state harassment of immigrants or force employers to reveal the nationalities of their workers. These cities are some of the most populated in the country, including NYC, LA, Dallas, Minneapolis and over two dozen others.

In concert with his avowed intention to lower taxes on the wealthy, including slashing business tax from 35 to 15 percent; to smash hard fought workers' rights (under the mantra of 'deregulation'); and to scrap what little access to healthcare was made available to the poor through Obamacare - not to mention his threat to start a trade war with China - poverty looks set to skyrocket. It is not hard to see how social unrest will follow.

As for the third condition - government indebtedness - it is hard to see how the massive tax breaks Trump has proposed can lead to anything else.

Turchin writes that "As all these trends intensify, the end result is state fiscal crisis and bankruptcy and consequent loss of military control; elite movements of regional and national rebellion; and a combination of elite-mobilized and popular uprisings that manifest the breakdown of central authority."

But Trump is also preparing for that. Exempt from his public spending cuts, of course, are police and military budgets, both of which he promises to increase. And when questioned on the issue of police brutality last year, Trump said he wanted to see the police be given more powers. In other words, the tacit impunity which currently exists for police violence looks set to be legalized. And history shows that there is nothing like police impunity to spark a riot.

Meanwhile, as his policies fail to deliver the land of milk and honey he has promised, the demonization of scapegoats will continue. Having already vowed to round up and deport two million immigrants, and to ban Muslims from entering the US, it is already clear who these scapegoats will be. However, as well as migrants, popular anger will also be directed toward whatever namby-pamby liberals have blocked him from waging his promised war against them: be it Congressmen, judges, trade unions, pressure groups, or whoever. A combination of increased executive powers plus the use of his newly mobilized mass constituency will be directed toward purging these 'enemies within'.

"My model suggests that the next [peak in violence] will be worse than the one in 1970" says Turchin, "because demographic variables such as wages, standards of living and a number of measures of intra-elite confrontation are all much worse this time". All that remains to be seen is - who will win.

I have long speculated that the 2016 election would not be a change election, as I assumed Hillary--and the neoliberalism that the Clintons represent--would become president.  But the improbable victory of Trump raises the possibility of transformation.  I stress possibility.  Neoliberalism is broken--here and in the West--but it may well go into hyper-drive now that Trump has won with a GOP Congress in tow, as columnist Chris Hedges recently suggested.  If that comes to pass, neoliberalism--regressive tax cuts, privatization, entitlement reform, etc.--may well enjoy an undeserved "last gasp" these next four years.  Make no mistake, neoliberalism is the dying political and economic order that must be overturned.  If not by reform, then by revolution.

Those people in the upper midwest; who gave us Trump, Ryan and McConnell on Tuesday Nov.8, what do we make of them?

First of all, I don't know how they are surviving at all. Not only are their small and medium-town industries gone, and their big city industries gone, but they vote themselves out of any government assistance, because they resent others getting benefits.

What do they live on, then? How do they make a living? Industries are gone; small family farms are mostly gone. They get no benefits. What are they doing out there? And most of all, why do they stay out there?

Maybe Classic Xer and Odin have some sense of this. I really don't just want to put them down. Obviously they make stupid political decisions, many of them. As I said, they are not inherently dumber than me, and I'm not inherently any better than them. I feel for their plight. But I don't understand what's going on with them that they can't see even for themselves what's happening to them, what to do about it, or even why they stay there in such large numbers-- large enough to vote, overwhelm the urban vote, put up signs and drive long distances to Trump rallies, and give us a dufus, con-man president and an oligarchical congress over and over again.

They insist that they are self-reliant, and oppose government assistance for themselves or those folks they don't like, and fear taking over their country. So they blame them, instead of the oligarchs who have actually taken over the country and ruined their lives and society. Somehow some of them think that their problems exist because women have abortions, or because people in the big city want to regulate guns. They can't see; they don't know.

They voted self-destructively, over and over again. What's going to happen to these unhappy folks, as their plight gets worse and worse under the clowns they keep voting for?

The critical part of the electorate was the demographic best described as readers of the fecal tabloid National Inquirer.  All sorts of renowned, often conservative newspapers including the Dallas Morning News, the Detroit News, and the Arizona Republic endorsed Hillary Clinton.

The story about the health of Hillary Clinton was in the National Inquirer.

The way to get the votes of the most gullible voters is to get one's excessively-simple message to the least-learned masses through the intellectually-lowest means, typically the media most attractive to the least-learned of people, like low-brow tabloid media whose users are toward the bottom in effective education:

\Adolf Hitler' in Mein Kampf Wrote:"Propaganda must always address itself to the broad masses of the people. (...) All propaganda must be presented in a popular form and must fix its intellectual level so as not to be above the heads of the least intellectual of those to whom it is directed. (...) The art of propaganda consists precisely in being able to awaken the imagination of the public through an appeal to their feelings, in finding the appropriate psychological form that will arrest the attention and appeal to the hearts of the national masses. The broad masses of the people are not made up of diplomats or professors of public jurisprudence nor simply of persons who are able to form reasoned judgment in given cases, but a vacillating crowd of human children who are constantly wavering between one idea and another. (...) The great majority of a nation is so feminine in its character and outlook that its thought and conduct are ruled by sentiment rather than by sober reasoning. This sentiment, however, is not complex, but simple and consistent. It is not highly differentiated, but has only the negative and positive notions of love and hatred, right and wrong, truth and falsehood."[5]

The Democratic voters are the majority in this country, yet we have no voice in the federal government and not much voice at the state level either. The Republicans are able to routinely now win the electoral college despite our majority, and squeeze us out. 

The Republicans don't represent the people, but only the wealthy and powerful, as they:

1. Declare war on the environment, emasculate or shut down the EPA and unleash more global warming during the only time left for averting disaster.

2. Unleash trickle-down economics on a massive scale with huge tax cuts for the wealthy, massive repeal of business regulations, and massive cuts to social programs, possibly including medicare and social security as well as health care reform, and huge new debt; even after two previous administrations in which this program was tried and failed.

3. Provide a voice or an excuse for prejudice or violence against non-white, non-Christian Americans and women, and possible deportations of immigrants who may have committed no crime, and curtailing voting rights, the free press, the right to protest, and other rights important to these and other groups and all people.

4. Waste billions on an un-needed military and nuclear weapons expansion, thus providing new military toys to put at the hands of an unstable and tempermental (and perhaps treasonous) reality-TV star commander in chief who thinks he can get away with anything.

5. And lots more; what else have I forgot?

The demonstrations that Galen ridicules are in fact means of helping to organize this opposition, and a new DNC chair will lead it. This effort starting now was broadcast on the news concerning a huge demonstration tonight as people joined hands around Lake Merritt in Oakland. It's happening. I think those of us who agree need to join in. Democrats and Democratic voters need to organize the resistance to the Republican takeover now, and for years to come. We will need to write to Democratic legislators to man-up and resist Trump's Court nominees, and oppose all the Republican plans, unless they are consistent with the goals of progressive Democrats.

What is happening where you live?