said Malloy. Wrote:"'Never forget that day and keep digging,' say Americans who believe the foundations of democracy were threatened on January 6th. But the cynicism runs as deep as the call for justice. The majority think nothing substantive will come of a Congressional investigation,"

(09-21-2021, 11:20 AM)tg63 Wrote: Long time lurker here - fwiw I find myself thinking of the theory far less than I used to - not sure why but I suspect the pandemic commands so much attention, and everything is unchartered territory - it feels like there are no patterns anymore - I'm not instinctively relating current events to the theory because nothing seems to fit anything.

But as I think about it maybe that's the way it's supposed to work ... the social response in a 4T must be one of urgency & action ... which seems to be the sentiment of the day - heck in 18 months we went form normal to pandemic to having vaccines in anyone's arms that want it ...

We all now are crying for things to return to normal, even if it's a different normal than what we had before. Plus we're so tired. Now that I think about it, that sounds kind of pre-1T ...

(09-21-2021, 12:58 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(09-21-2021, 11:20 AM)tg63 Wrote: Long time lurker here - fwiw I find myself thinking of the theory far less than I used to - not sure why but I suspect the pandemic commands so much attention, and everything is unchartered territory - it feels like there are no patterns anymore - I'm not instinctively relating current events to the theory because nothing seems to fit anything.

But as I think about it maybe that's the way it's supposed to work ... the social response in a 4T must be one of urgency & action ... which seems to be the sentiment of the day - heck in 18 months we went form normal to pandemic to having vaccines in anyone's arms that want it ...

We all now are crying for things to return to normal, even if it's a different normal than what we had before. Plus we're so tired. Now that I think about it, that sounds kind of pre-1T ...

Yes, we're looking ahead to a 1T while trying to make our way through this 4T.  I agree: maybe that's normal.  I'm sure my parents felt the same as they tried to think of life after WW-II.  Like them, we'll get a lot of it wrong.

(09-23-2021, 04:36 AM)taramarie Wrote: And yes i agree, i am tired of the 4T. I long for my childhood when things felt better for me. But wish for something even better. I fear that things are turning for the worse and worry about what hellish 1st turning we will make happen. If my fears turn out correct, i pray the next idealists tear down the new civic order my foolish generation is creating right now.

Quote:Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
and wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."

Quote:The wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail.
With Peace on Earth, good will toward men

(09-23-2021, 06:04 AM)might have given America the equivalent of taramarie Wrote:

(09-23-2021, 05:58 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(09-23-2021, 04:36 AM)taramarie Wrote: And yes i agree, i am tired of the 4T. I long for my childhood when things felt better for me. But wish for something even better. I fear that things are turning for the worse and worry about what hellish 1st turning we will make happen. If my fears turn out correct, i pray the next idealists tear down the new civic order my foolish generation is creating right now.

If you think you are tired of this 4T, then think of how tired most Europeans and East Asians were of the last 4T -- if it did not kill them!. Consider that Ann Frank and Lauren Bacall were close contemporaries. One lived to a ripe old age and one didn't. There was a huge difference between being a Dutch Jew and an American Jew. I'm satisfied that Anne Frank would have had a very long and interesting life as an American Jew, as did her contemporary the great actress Lauren Bacall. 90% of Dutch Jews perished in the Holocaust. Such Dutch Jews as survived the Holocaust had to hide that they were Jewish successfully, which meant obliterating any ties to Judaism.

This 4T has ugly politics in America, and I am surprised that we haven't had anything like the Spanish Civil War or the Yugoslav break-up.  We have split into two hostile and exclusive camps as a nation, and whether America is a nation anymore is highly suspect. One side is extremely self-righteous despite little cause for believing in its righteousness, and the other is wholesomely rifted on ethnic and religious identity that it lacks the ability to do really-nasty things to people. I can say this: I would be more comfortable in an American Chinatown than I would in those superstition-laden parts of America in which people are proud to be white because they need something to be proud of and know little else to be proud of.

As the old Christmas Carol from the American Civil War goes (we have suddenly gotten some chilly weather in my part of America, so it is easier to think of Christmas carols goes),

Quote:Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
and wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."

which says much (Longfellow) about the time, using the conventions of Christmas in contrast to the uncharitable attitudes of the Confederacy toward human kindness, especially in clinging to the rotten slave system that underpinned their reactionary, agrarian order. With a few modifications it could have applied to the Axis Powers, who had slave systems even more horrific than that of the Confederacy. The agrarian reactionaries of the antebellum South wanted "their" prime field hands to live long and productive lives, even if practically all that they produced went to the indulgence of the lawfully-recognized owners of those field hands.  

To be sure, the Germans could be as sentimental about Christmas as any people, and much that we consider an American about Christmas is really German (the Christmas tree is a late adoption from Germany in the English-speaking world and even the Nutcracker ballet is a treatment of a German story even if the music is composed by a Russian -- the music fits a German tradition. As for music: Handel's Messiah and J S Bach's Christmas Oratorio are by German composers). There was no Christmas spirit in any Nazi KZ-Lager, as the murders went on every day, including Christmas. 

The last 4T was far worse than this one, which is already going stale because we are deep into it.

I can imagine how the Other Side sees me as thoroughly horrible because I am for LGBT rights and recognize abortion as a necessity. (Hey you on the Right -- do you hate abortion? Then stop the boozing and whoring that gives women and girls, some as young as ten years old, pregnancies that they cannot handle!), do not see one possible manifestation of American identity, and recognize the Trump cult as bane instead of blessing.

I can already see one vision of the forthcoming 1T, and that assumes that "my" side wins. That is a multicultural America in which most communities recognize the validity of core traditions of their origins but also the need for Constitutional norms to keep people from going after each others' throats. "My" side recognizes that. I was raised by two antisemitic parents, and if one has any moral compass at all, then there is nothing easier against which to rebel than antisemitism. I came to recognize that the difference between the Jews that my parents hated and me was some semi-mythical character Whose Life Story was warped to fit the tastes of a still-pagan Greco-Roman world in order to convert that still-pagan Greco-Roman world.

This said,

Quote:The wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail.
With Peace on Earth, good will toward men

is the best that anyone can hope for. By the end of the last Crisis Era, Americans had come to recognize the Italian people as victims of Mussolini's fascism.

Here's how things went on April 30, 1945 (the day on which Satan Incarnate offed himself!) in the supposed "capital of the National Socialist Movement" -- Munich:







"The wrong shall fail, the Right prevail"... indeed. Two days earlier some of those troops had liberated Dachau, the concentration camp that had kept people of Munich cowed.

When the fear and loathing comes to an end, then so does the 4T... and the 1T begins. So it would be in Japan in four months.

The gangsters who ruled Germany, Italy, and Japan as leaders of the Axis Powers remain objects of hatred, and will remain so into the next Saeculum. The world must never forget the atrocities of the Axis Powers.

...Demographics are destiny in a country as polarized as America. The Hard Right depends upon demographics themselves doomed: it lacks the mass support of younger adults that it needs for winning free and fair elections and having the ability to dictate what goes on in Congress. The Hard Right is old, and it depends upon a population not replacing itself... and it has plenty of young defectors who desert to a spouse from an ethnic or religious group that has no stake in the Hard Right. The Hard Right has no intellectual appeal, and it is losing the smart people -- even those white, straight, and Christian. Donald Trump did well among ill-educated white people... but could not win any ethnic group or even the male gender (Trump is as blatant a male-chauvinist pig as there has ever been!) within that ethnic group. White men withe college degrees voted barely against Trump.

After Trump, what does the Hard Right have to offer? A great new world -- but only for economic elites. It is difficult to win people over with an appeal for the profit, power, and privilege of irresponsible people who expect the rest of the world to defer to the sybaritic excesses of that elite with offers of Pie in the Sky When You Die, But Only If You Comply and death -- swiftly by shooting or the gallows or slowly by starvation, followed by eternal damnation -- for those who fail to comply. The capitalist system has always had self-interest (which is not all bad) as its philosophical justification, and unlike feudalism it has expected the toilers to act in their best interest.

Trying to diminish what is happening in this 4T without asking first what the experience is so far from my perspective? Not surprised to be honest as that seems to happen a lot lately. The world is so fucking disconnected from each other that i am not surprised. If you are as clever as you claim you are, perhaps ask next time WHY this millennial feels completely burned out.