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So Trump isn't THAT BAD?
#1
(Posted in a very different web site)


The fault with Trump is not that he is an idealist. His fault is that he has the wrong ideas. It is not mandatory that one understand the cyclical pattern in American history, but it certainly helps.

Trump does something terribly wrong that neither Bill nor Hillary Clinton, "Baby" Bush, nor Obama ever did: he romanticizes the past, alleging that above all, America suffers from the loss of some Golden Age. I can think of people for whom social characteristics not fully modern in American life were anything but golden. If one is black, especially in the South. then American 'greatness' implies that Jim Crow is killed once and for all. It is hard to imagine any competent and intelligent woman seeking a full return to the old patterns of male supremacy. A bit over a century, women did not have the vote, and men were commonly beating  their wives after drinking up their pay in the saloon... and did not have the opportunities of employment so that they had some control of the purse-strings.If one is a homosexual, then for LGBT rights alone this is as close to a Golden Age as there ever has been.

Much of the fault of Donald Trump is his extreme narcissism, something to which elite Idealists are especially prone. Figure that someone like "the Donald" has always been able to ensure that someone else pays the price if he fails. He assumes the reward and pushes the risk onto others. Such is pathology in economics.Those elites have become an exclusive club that ensures a homogeneous clique loyal to itself and containing nobody with empathy for those who might get hurt. Thus if one has ever known hardship one is corrupt in the sense of having empathy for others one gets locked out of responsible roles in life. Lack of empathy? Such characterizes narcissism at best and either sociopathy or psychopathy at its worst.

American progress depends upon the system clearing out vices before they become entrenched. Go in the direction that Trump promotes, and we end up with a hereditary hierarchy of the sort that entrenched social rot and ensured that people who suffered from it had no recourse other than revolution (likely futile), a focus on the Next World (which does nothing to improve things in This World), or defeatism (awaiting liberation from conquerors not as pathological as the oppressive elite), 

(more, and not relevant to that site but relevant here)

The generational cycle has kept America from going too far in any one direction by forcing change, much of it disconcerting. America has tended to be as militaristic as necessary when facing a 4T Crisis, has tended to put a focus on commercial prosperity in a 1T recovery or High, has led in innovative thought in a 2T, and has had the most intense hedonism in a 3T that allows Americans to explore the means of enjoying life as they might not enjoy it in other times and places . One consequence is that we Americans never develop a permanent character or the perception of a Golden Age. All Turnings are flawed, and such becomes more evident as society goes deeper into each turning. 

It is best that America break off any tendency to empire building once it has won the peace. Militarization of the culture degrades the culture. Just contrast Sparta to other Greek city-states in the Hellenic golden age, as does Toynbee. All Greek cities from antiquity have their historical museums, but that of Sparta shows a sudden decline of creativity at the point at which it becomes a garrison state -- which is about the time in which other Greek City states are reaching for the stars in science and are creating great literature and art. The Spartans had their priorities but those cane at a cost. A society that has expansion as its objective and finds peace simply a time in which to seek out opportunities to push its way in places in which such is unwelcome but possible due to intrigues and brute force eventually finds itself a dangerous enemy that can maul that society badly. Preserving 4T ways beyond a generation that need those for survival is one way to ensure that society fails to innovate and imagine its ways into making itself morally better than it was. 

A 4T typically leaves much wreckage behind and makes people want to make up for life put on hold during a Crisis.  Because work is reliably available, this is a good time for starting careers and family life. Such is the most obvious direction, and in a free society that is the direction that most people want. at the time. Philosophical depth? Such is a pointless distraction from the need to build a recently-neglected outer world. Intense feeling in culture? There was plenty of intensity in the militancy that made the previous 4T such a danger. A healthy society can certainly meet its dangers, but it generally seeks to mitigate any potential apocalypse.The highly-organized society necessary for meeting a demonized enemy gets in the way of commerce, stultifies the  raising of precious children who are more to be indulged than to be regimented, and of course in the way of making up for time. People in their mid-twenties who gave up their early adulthood for their country or their civilization have some catching up to do. 

A 1T is commercially successful. People know what is best done with military-style regimentation (let us say law enforcement and fire-fighting) and what is not so easily done (creative work, education, and collegial politics). People are scared of intense passions, those having recently making the previous 4T.. Blandness becomes the norm even in cuisine. So does meat loaf supplant Szechuan cuisine as something desirable to eat out in the 1T as the opposite happened in the 3T? Who knows?

I will make a prediction on popular music: if the most daring trends in 1T music were either "race" music (blacks could seemingly get away with more)  or sheer whimsy (Oh, Mr. Sandman... bring me a dream!") then I would expect something parallel.

About twenty years after the Crisis is over, kids who never knew the Crisis but instead knew relative safety get bored  and seek something very new.... and what might have been stale forty years earlier. In an Awakening Era, "commercial" styles start to seem dowdy.Intense feeling  looks safe enough for people who have never known it being used as a pretext for apocalypse. After all, Idealist kids can't imagine themselves being as "uptight" as Hitler or Mussolini. Sexual strictures that promote  exclusivity in relationships breaks down. Those who cannot think much often grab the seemingly-easy enlightenment of hallucinogens. Communes start looking attractive. Industrial work becomes unattractive,and much of it will disappear to the detriment of the people of little education who have made their incomes off a strong back and a good work ethic at "the plant".   On the other hand... a healthy society allows its assumptions to face a needful challenge. 

So what can go wrong in a 2T? Drug use flourishes, as does crime, Economic opportunity lessens, and people still want some semblance of the Good Life. Maybe Americans refine their principles, but perhaps refine them too much. Mysticism appears as a solution. Mysticism has solved nothing. The children of this time get neglected because Mommy and Daddy are contemplating everything but children that they take for granted.

So keep going the 2T way and society goes the way of the shaman, perhaps a competent thinker but a foolish  incompetent  at all else;. Society forgets its material basis and poverty ensues.

So it is off to materialistic hedonism as the Awakening era. One marker is that the popular culture quits pretending to have any high purpose. Thus Peter, Paul, and Mary give way to Michael Jackson and Madonna. The kids growing up have no use for philosophical depth; they want to have fun, and they insist upon its material basis. Big Business is delighted to offer such. On the other hand, society atomizes even more. Poli9tics becomes a means of enriching extant elites while real wages fall. Trickle-down economics become the sole offering in political life. Underpaid and overworked? Then solve that problem with another job! Corporate profits and executive salaries bloat as never before, and the elites in command of the economy and even non-profits become increasingly demanding, oppressive, and exclusive."Greed is good". Although the 3T might at first allow people the fullest enjoyment of life because nothing gets in the way, such is the lull before the storm. Because honest-to-proletarian work pays badly, people of talent start to seek speculative bubbles that promise high rewards on small investments. Speculative booms invariably go bust while bringing out the worst in commercial ethics. 

Along comes failure and the 4T. But you would not want a 3T to continue indefinitely.The system would become increasingly repressive, exploitative, and inequitable. Who wants a feudal economy? Who wants fascistic corporatism? Who wants to live in a society in which talent must defer to an entrenched hierarchy capable of imposing its economic ways upon everyone?       
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist  but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.


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#2
What website?
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#3
I'm keeping that hidden to protect the privacy of a fellow poster.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist  but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.


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#4
I have another diagnosis. Your website poster is correct about a lot of things, especially that the USA has never developed a character or had a golden age because of this saeculum cycle. That is a clue that it is dysfunctional. The USA and its culture is still primitive, and cannot endure as it is. Perhaps it won't; most powers and empires arrive at their prime and then fail, and new ones arise. I think ours is much like Rome; it will continue for another 400 years, but it will go through constant decay from now on, or at least so it appears. Our chance for a real golden age came in the late 20th century, and we blew that chance.

Mysticism never fails, though. It is not just a 2T fad. It endures as the basic truth of all. It doesn't matter if USA people don't pay attention to it, except that, in not paying attention to it, we fail. Your writer did not dwell on the failures of the 1T, just the other turnings. I think the 2T is the best. Mysticism and spirituality is the ground of all being and the basis of societies that last. It is the spiritual basis of life and society, not the material, that the USA neglects. That is ultimately fatal. Other societies have always had this basis, and not just for one turning, but throughout. Properly understood, it forms the basis of success in all endeavors, and during all turnings. Properly understood, it informs all activities and motivates them, including the needs of what we call physical or material life. It provides the needed guidance at all times. It is not escapist, but life itself.

The USA is materialist, and materialistic. That is its undoing.

Donald Trump is Exhibit A.

Jesus said, seek first the glory of God, and divine righteousness, and all else will be added. Words to live by.
"I close my eyes, and I can see a better day" -- Justin Bieber

Keep the spirit alive;
Eric M
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#5
I wrote the material in response to someone whom I am not mentioning. That person is welcome to say who it is.


The 2T is innocuous to the extent that those taking the Voyage to the Interior recognize that reason is necessary for making sense of the journey and that that voyage is best done with an intent to offer some interesting 'tales of the traveler'. So if someone gets psychedelic visions and can put them into coherent form for the entertainment of others, then such is wonderful. But much of the Voyage to the Interior involves a deep dive into booze and hallucinogens.

If there were ever a Golden Age it would be one of a balance between the positive virtues of all four turnings with none of the vices. That is a pipe dream. We are stuck with the generational cycle a s a way of compelling us to adapt to the time and respond as quickly as possible to a needful trait that we neglect. Bad as a 3T goes, it at least forces us to pay attention to the children again so that they not become cynical and helpless and that people enjoy some hedonistic delights that give them some memories just in time for recollection for the upcoming era of stark deprivation.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist  but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.


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#6
(06-29-2020, 04:05 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: If there were ever a Golden Age it would be one of a balance between the positive virtues of all four turnings with none of the vices. That is a pipe dream. We are stuck with the generational cycle a s a way of compelling us to adapt to the time and respond as quickly as possible to a needful trait that we neglect. Bad as a 3T goes, it at least forces us to pay attention to the children again so that they not become cynical and helpless and that people enjoy some hedonistic delights that give  them some memories just in time for recollection for the upcoming era of stark deprivation.

When we master life extension, there will be a time when all four archetypes are equally active. Maybe that will be a golden age. But this might be stagnation. There is no rapid progress in a society ruled by centenarians.
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#7
(03-14-2021, 06:29 AM)Captain Genet Wrote:
(06-29-2020, 04:05 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: If there were ever a Golden Age it would be one of a balance between the positive virtues of all four turnings with none of the vices. That is a pipe dream. We are stuck with the generational cycle a s a way of compelling us to adapt to the time and respond as quickly as possible to a needful trait that we neglect. Bad as a 3T goes, it at least forces us to pay attention to the children again so that they not become cynical and helpless and that people enjoy some hedonistic delights that give  them some memories just in time for recollection for the upcoming era of stark deprivation.

When we master life extension, there will be a time when all four archetypes are equally active. Maybe that will be a golden age. But this might be stagnation. There is no rapid progress in a society ruled by centenarians.

They won't be equally active. let alone similarly active. The behaviors that promote long lifespans (staying physically fit and intellectually active as long as possible, not smoking, drinking in moderation or not at all, avoiding str4eet drugs and reckless sexuality, and remaining connected) were basically a GI innovation, and the Silent and Boomers in old age ("70" may be the new "50" in many respects if one takes care of oneself, but "90" is still "90") have largely followed the same  pattern. Will Generation X do much the same? If so, then the pattern is figuratively set in stone as it has lasted a full cycle and is not simply a consequence of generational identity.    

Young adults are typically making the investments in other people's wealth and power by seeking opportunities in which they get to establish their competence and their loyalty to a vile order by being overworked and underpaid. They develop skills that the formal system of education does not teach, such as bowing and scraping to bosses and customers that elites love, and vocational athleticism. Such people are never involved in high-level politics; you see few twenty-something Congressional representatives, let alone Senators and Governors. The few who achieve prominence early include star athletes, actors, and popular musicians. If not born into privilege they endure poverty from which elites prosper. Midlife adults start making appearances in high-paid and high-profile  activities. The athleticism fades; note well that one sees few professional athletes in the mid-30's as reflexes slow, injuries increasingly devastate abilities, and spectacular strength for working through an offensive line to get to the quarterback, skating faster than other hockey players, or hitting a baseball, fades. 

Reputations build, and in midlife those with some semblance of power are able to force change. Some of that change is welcome and some of it is not so welcome. People have honed their talent into excellence (if ever) and become authorities in the field. Creative activities peak, and people generally cast off the aspects of life that contribute little to their happiness and economic gain. Bowing and scraping proves nothing other than a lack of personal dignity that one must have at once sold out for rent for a dreary flat, clothes necessary for work, and cheap vittles. Incomes from employment typically peak except among unskilled and semi-skilled workers who get little chance to improve their earnings on the job. In old age one may rely more upon investments (such as ownership of gussied-up slums, let alone financial securities and IRA's or 401K's). Maybe a few people can remain influential into old age, such as journalists, politicians, scholars, and artists. This is the emeritus era of life, one that few people used to reach, let alone enjoy.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist  but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.


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#8
(03-14-2021, 06:29 AM)Captain Genet Wrote:
(06-29-2020, 04:05 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: If there were ever a Golden Age it would be one of a balance between the positive virtues of all four turnings with none of the vices. That is a pipe dream. We are stuck with the generational cycle a s a way of compelling us to adapt to the time and respond as quickly as possible to a needful trait that we neglect. Bad as a 3T goes, it at least forces us to pay attention to the children again so that they not become cynical and helpless and that people enjoy some hedonistic delights that give  them some memories just in time for recollection for the upcoming era of stark deprivation.

When we master life extension, there will be a time when all four archetypes are equally active. Maybe that will be a golden age. But this might be stagnation. There is no rapid progress in a society ruled by centenarians.

I suspect that this would be the beginning of end of the currently understood cycle and the beginning of another as yet undetermined one.  This is definitely outside our area of concern by a saeculum or two.
Intelligence is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom, but they all play well together.
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#9
(03-14-2021, 11:07 AM)David Horn Wrote:
(03-14-2021, 06:29 AM)Captain Genet Wrote:
(06-29-2020, 04:05 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: If there were ever a Golden Age it would be one of a balance between the positive virtues of all four turnings with none of the vices. That is a pipe dream. We are stuck with the generational cycle a s a way of compelling us to adapt to the time and respond as quickly as possible to a needful trait that we neglect. Bad as a 3T goes, it at least forces us to pay attention to the children again so that they not become cynical and helpless and that people enjoy some hedonistic delights that give  them some memories just in time for recollection for the upcoming era of stark deprivation.

When we master life extension, there will be a time when all four archetypes are equally active. Maybe that will be a golden age. But this might be stagnation. There is no rapid progress in a society ruled by centenarians.

I suspect that this would be the beginning of end of the currently understood cycle and the beginning of another as yet undetermined one.  This is definitely outside our area of concern by a saeculum or two.

Maybe. Howe and Strauss suggest that America is particularly under the influence of a historical cycle because it is safe from more dangerous cycles. We have yet to freeze either some unachievable dream as an impossible objective or to acquiesce to some permanent order in which we let the horrific be the defense of something hideous. The Soviet Union tried that, warning people to stay clear of anything inconsistent with the System, but people still found the social and economic failures as well as the moral depravity. It did not quite last a full Saeculum. The bad Roman Empire effectively covered its internal rot, yet the rot eventually destroyed the system. 

This is one way in which to depict the denial of a cycle of history:



   

A high level of formal education, once a great pride in Germany with its old and distinguished Universities, gave way under Nazi ideology to propaganda and command. Although the focus here is on primary education as preparation for become first fighters who put other nations in thrall and then slave-masters of those people in thrall, the fine Universities of Germany became diploma-mills to prepare youth as higher-level administrators and amoral professionals after such people had shown themselves as "good" Nazis. The generational cycle in America and Britain, at the least, was able to prove at the end of the war that Nazism had given the Germans and Austrians nothing worthy of cherishing. 

German universities from before 1933 were well respected worldwide. German universities from after 1945 were well respected. Between 1933 and 1945 a diploma from a German university was suspect in the extreme. As German soldiers filled POW camps at the end of the war, German soldiers were generally shown to have needed basic education that the Nazis had neglected in favor of obedience to "Herr Hitler", "Herr Goering", and "Herr Goebbels". This was not only in the basic decencies of life, but even in mathematics, science, and reading.

The nation that messes up worst in the generational cycle can find the generational cycle of another system, a system that did not muck so much up, restarting the generational cycle in a way of the victor's choosing as a default.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist  but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.


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#10
The saeculum is a vicious cycle. Civics forget about individuality. Prophets forget about community. Golden mean is never sought. The only way out seems to be biotechnological life extension, leading to a more mature society, lead by centenarians or even supercentenarians with the health of today's 40-year-olds, which will finally achieve the golden mean between civic discipline and prophetic creativity.

I imagine there will be no distinctive generational traits in a world where children born at the same time can have 30-year-old or 70-year-old parents. Other, more long-term trends might appear.
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#11
(03-20-2021, 05:07 AM)Captain Genet Wrote: The saeculum is a vicious cycle. Civics forget about individuality. Prophets forget about community. Golden mean is never sought. The only way out seems to be biotechnological life extension, leading to a more mature society, lead by centenarians or even supercentenarians with the health of today's 40-year-olds, which will finally achieve the golden mean between civic discipline and prophetic creativity.

I imagine there will be no distinctive generational traits in a world where children born at the same time can have 30-year-old or 70-year-old parents. Other, more long-term trends might appear.

OK, but then you have the problem of permanent stasis. If nothing changes, advancement ceases as well.  Eventually the weight of never-ending sameness will trigger something as yet TBD.  We can speculate, but it's hard to cross that barrier from where we are today.  Arthur C. Clark had it exactly right: "a sufficiently advance technology is indistinguishable from magic". That applies to such an advanced culture as well.
Intelligence is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom, but they all play well together.
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#12
Joe Biden is old. At age 78 he is one year younger than Dwight Eisenhower was when he died. Of course, what was considered "old" when the Lost were around in big numbers and what is "old" when the middle-to-late waves of the Silent and the early-wave Boomers are the bulk of the people in their seventies. This is the point: Joe Biden seems to know what he is doing to a greater extent than any President that we have had in the last few decades. Obama has FDR-style brilliance, but he still made some mistakes.

Having four active adult generations is one way of ensuring that all generational types get some roles in public life and commerce. With the Silent around, the full ferocity of a Crisis may not emerge. Sure, the Progressive Generation would have despised the Axis gangsters, but they might have not been so quick to use an atomic bomb on Japan. The lack of Missionary creativity ensured a cultural staleness in the following American High that caused youth to chafe. The lack of Lost realism allowed adults of all ages to go into "swinging" lifestyles or to extend childhood that must end when one starts having children... and the Boom Awakening was not safe for children even if it promoted druid-like attitudes toward nature.

The GI's really did take care of themselves, which ensured that the recent 3T would still have some solid organization, if only in local life. Boomers never fully accepted the need for community as did the GI's, and the worst Boomers became t he worst executives in American history for demanding the most and offering the least to workers (unless you want to call "pie in the sky when you die" a sort of generosity. So did the slave-master on the plantation).

The contributions that people in their 70's can make are very different from those of people in their 20's. Twenty-somethings are still mostly laborers, clerks, and servants whose influences upon society are largely their consumer choices in style and culture. Yes, we need more people to milk cows, change the oil on vehicles, drive trucks, and run cash registers. More people in the entertainment industry work in the theaters where movies are shown than in the writing, direction, or production of the movies whether live or animated. Elderly people are mostly retired or doing some sort of light work if at all, although creative activities, law, medicine, and to some extent academia are well suited with appropriate adaptations to those who lack the athleticism necessary to do warehouse work.

We can all expect that the biggest influence that a new generation of adults can have is their vote. Change the demographics of 1984, when Ronald Reagan won a landslide, and transmute those to those of today, and someone like Reagan would lose.

So what is Joe Biden? The most experienced politician that America has had as President since James Buchanan, who was also an elderly Adaptive. Obviously that is not the analogue that one wants, although I can imagine some people in one part of the political spectrum seeing him that way, with its version of Abraham Lincoln "emancipating" America from liberal follies and directing America toward the alleged great wisdom that comes from greed and hard management that punishes laziness and ensures that the Right People get whatever they claim to need.

(OK, my record of disdain for Donald Judas Iscariot Trump is well-known here, and you know where I am going). We are entering that economic age in which surfeit is more of a threat than is shortage. Much will be sorted out, and that will not be a political decision. I look at those once-magnificent shrines to consumerism, the shopping mall, and recognize that the thrill is gone. Environmental concerns alone require Humanity to do more with less, and the natural constraints of time mandate that we be more selective of how we use time. Even if we were to reduce the requirement of work to five hours a week we would find much time-consuming stuff (bad art, bad books, bad movies, bad music, inapt conversation, and other dreadful wastes of time) that does nothing for us. This may say much about me, but gambling casinos, amusement parks, and strip clubs turn me cold. For those who love those, I at the least recognize your contributions to the strength and solidity of our economy, some that I could never make.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist  but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.


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