Unresolved end to saeculum possibility?

[nguyenivy]

Is there a non-zero possibility that we get neither a good or bad ending to this 4T and just end up sliding into the next 1T with nothing resolved? Have a look at the lie-flat / other similar movements going on now. People are just losing hope and giving up. Prior 4Ts had clear wartime periods where society was upended and life afterwards was different to before. Climate change is a big threat but has already been ongoing since long before this present 4T. Not much is being done about it as of yet. The pandemic's early waves sure felt 4T but now nobody really cares about COVID anymore. Are our Millennial & Z generations just losing faith in the system or are we being actively blocked from pushing for change by say big oil/corporate America? Is it's the former, do we have prior examples of societies where the populace lost faith in their system but didn't care enough to push for change? Where did those societies end up? If we are indeed being blocked by big oil it looks like the problem should resolve itself but not until around the 2040s when society flips to having the majority having experienced the negatives of fossil fuel reliance & the car-centric US.

[Eric the Green]

I have always predicted that the decisive period won't happen until the end of the 4T. So fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy ride through the rest of this decade when the 4T ends. We won't know that this prediction is coming true until 2025 when the decisive period begins. I hope it's not a nuclear ride, what with Putin threatening attack on NATO. But we are being blocked by the Republican representatives of big fossil fools, prejudice, ammosexuality and neoliberal ideology. I don't think this stalemate can continue past the 4T, although right now it looks like hopeless stalement forever.

[JasonBlack]

A bit from a conversation I had with Neil Howe relates strongly to this topic. He is a bit more optimistic about me that we can pull through this already....but both of us are extremely pessimistic about the prospect of this ending any time soon. I wouldn't be surprised if it lasted until 2032 or even 2034 at this rate.

Quote:If we look at an overview of cultural/economic objectives a 4th turning is meant to correct, we have reached many of the necessary milestones yet.
1) The trend toward greater unconscious valuation of masculinity is more clear than most realize (more on that below), but younger men still haven't risen to the challenge of stepping into positions of authority and making the necessary changes society (and, for that matter, dating) needs. They need less of the "Fight Club masculinity" of their next elders, and more of the self-assured, assertive leadership of a Charlton Heston or Liam Neeson.
2) The institutionalized bureaucracy is as fossilized and entrenched as ever. If the 4th Turning is the proverbial forest fire that clears the debris and makes way for new life, we're sitting on a pile of dry tinder.
3) The unsustainable "borrow and spend" policies of the 3T have never really gone away. For example: the exact same lending policies which led to the 2008 crash are still in place today.
4) We have no Grey Champion: it's clearly not Biden, Harris has no charisma and comes off like an insincere reptile. No one in the senate or house really fits the bill either. There is a small chance Trump could make a comeback, but even then the odds are unlikely given his previous divisiveness.
5) There is still way too much political gridlock to allow millennials to begin the great building projects we've all wanted to implement since our teens (indeed "the builder generation" makes for a good alternative name when you look at how Civics behaved in each saeculum).
6) The entrenched establishment has not been forced to cede any power or wealth to the young.
7) Millennials haven't really had their initiation yet. I'd argue they've proven they can be hard working, adaptable and cooperative, but they're still lacking that final push: the catalyst that will inspire them to fulfill a common mission. Fortunately or unfortunately, this potential war with Russia (especially if China comes to their aid) might just be it. Speaking for myself, I have always been very slow to support war, but at the moment, what we're seeing could be a choice between war with Russia, which would at least give us some chance for a collective purpose, vs a civil war, which would just lead to this saeculum finishing on a downward spiral rather than an upward one. Naturally, there are more options than just this, but with both being reasonably likely scenarios, I'm not really sure what the best path forward is.
8) A lot of people (particularly boomers and, oddly enough...late wave millennials) are trying to treat the 4T like it's a 2T: insisting that the problems all stem from "awareness" and ideals. We need to make the transition from primarily inner-focused to a primary focus on external problems, external competence and restoring the external institutions that will make prosperity tangible rather than simply spiritual.

[David Horn]

(06-04-2022, 03:37 PM)nguyenivy Wrote: Is there a non-zero possibility that we get neither a good or bad ending to this 4T and just end up sliding into the next 1T with nothing resolved? Have a look at the lie-flat / other similar movements going on now. People are just losing hope and giving up. Prior 4Ts had clear wartime periods where society was upended and life afterwards was different to before. Climate change is a big threat but has already been ongoing since long before this present 4T. Not much is being done about it as of yet. The pandemic's early waves sure felt 4T but now nobody really cares about COVID anymore. Are our Millennial & Z generations just losing faith in the system or are we being actively blocked from pushing for change by say big oil/corporate America? Is it's the former, do we have prior examples of societies where the populace lost faith in their system but didn't care enough to push for change? Where did those societies end up? If we are indeed being blocked by big oil it looks like the problem should resolve itself but not until around the 2040s when society flips to having the majority having experienced the negatives of fossil fuel reliance & the car-centric US.

(06-05-2022, 12:21 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I have always predicted that the decisive period won't happen until the end of the 4T. So fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy ride through the rest of this decade when the 4T ends. We won't know that this prediction is coming true until 2025 when the decisive period begins. I hope it's not a nuclear ride, what with Putin threatening attack on NATO. But we are being blocked by the Republican representatives of big fossil fools, prejudice, ammosexuality and neoliberal ideology. I don't think this stalemate can continue past the 4T, although right now it looks like hopeless stalement forever.

It's hard to be certain of anything, but I'm more in the Failed 4T than Big Finale camp.  The very fact that we have siloed society to the point that many (most?) on the right are unaware of simple facts and, even more to the point, live in the "right" places in sufficient nyumbers to stymie any move to correct the problems they claim don't really exist (fake news, you know).  Short of a cataclysmic event that makes denial impossible, I don't see this getting rectified.  After all, we're having mass shootings at a rate of more than one a day, and the movement on gun control hasn't budged at all.  Short of a nuclear exchange (highly unlikely, in my opinion) nothing seems big enough to move the needle at all.

Today's youth have been the victims of this from day one.  Perhaps they can muster the will to do something ... anything!  If so, it won't be until they have the undeniable power to override the Boomers and Xers still creating the mess we're in.

[Eric the Green]

(06-06-2022, 10:26 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(06-04-2022, 03:37 PM)nguyenivy Wrote: Is there a non-zero possibility that we get neither a good or bad ending to this 4T and just end up sliding into the next 1T with nothing resolved? Have a look at the lie-flat / other similar movements going on now. People are just losing hope and giving up. Prior 4Ts had clear wartime periods where society was upended and life afterwards was different to before. Climate change is a big threat but has already been ongoing since long before this present 4T. Not much is being done about it as of yet. The pandemic's early waves sure felt 4T but now nobody really cares about COVID anymore. Are our Millennial & Z generations just losing faith in the system or are we being actively blocked from pushing for change by say big oil/corporate America? Is it's the former, do we have prior examples of societies where the populace lost faith in their system but didn't care enough to push for change? Where did those societies end up? If we are indeed being blocked by big oil it looks like the problem should resolve itself but not until around the 2040s when society flips to having the majority having experienced the negatives of fossil fuel reliance & the car-centric US.

(06-05-2022, 12:21 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I have always predicted that the decisive period won't happen until the end of the 4T. So fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy ride through the rest of this decade when the 4T ends. We won't know that this prediction is coming true until 2025 when the decisive period begins. I hope it's not a nuclear ride, what with Putin threatening attack on NATO. But we are being blocked by the Republican representatives of big fossil fools, prejudice, ammosexuality and neoliberal ideology. I don't think this stalemate can continue past the 4T, although right now it looks like hopeless stalement forever.

It's hard to be certain of anything, but I'm more in the Failed 4T than Big Finale camp.  The very fact that we have siloed society to the point that many (most?) on the right are unaware of simple facts and, even more to the point, live in the "right" places in sufficient nyumbers to stymie any move to correct the problems they claim don't really exist (fake news, you know).  Short of a cataclysmic event that makes denial impossible, I don't see this getting rectified.  After all, we're having mass shootings at a rate of more than one a day, and the movement on gun control hasn't budged at all.  Short of a nuclear exchange (highly unlikely, in my opinion) nothing seems big enough to move the needle at all.

Today's youth have been the victims of this from day one.  Perhaps they can muster the will to do something ... anything!  If so, it won't be until they have the undeniable power to override the Boomers and Xers still creating the mess we're in.

That last could happen fairly soon, if you mean the Millennial generation. As Obama pointed out in that speech I have posted here several times, they have more power than any generation now to change things. In 2024 they will be almost half the electorate. The question now is will they be able to discern what to do. At the moment it seems they don't. Many of them seem to be deserting the president they voted for just because he mumbles or seems old. That would be a neglect of civic duty. Millennials need to live up to their archetype. And so to Boomers. They have not exercized the leadership that they still could. Blue boomers have not been allowed by our system to serve as president during the 4T yet.

In the previous 4T, action to handle the Depression began 4 years in, but we still faced a threat from abroad that was not really engaged with until only 3 years of the 4T were left. In the civil war, total polarization was left to fester until the last 4 years of the 4T, and had to be resolved by war. In the Revolution things looked hopeless in the war right up to the victory 8-10 years into the 4T. As I see it, in 4Ts we don't know if we're going to make it through until sometime in the last 4 years. 

I agree things look bleak now, and too polarized with total ignorance as one of the poles. I don't know if we will make it. But the 4T still has 7 or 8 years to go, so I say it's still too early to tell if we will make it through, and whether it will take a war to resolve things as it did during the previous 3 occasions. I have always predicted it will take a small-scale civil war scenario, i.e. an expanded January 6th, to resolve things, starting in 2025. A substantial electoral victory, enough to suspend the filibuster, would be needed (with adequate Millennial Gen support) to preclude a needed victory in a total civil war, and to make sure the state is in charge of the army/national guard after the election to put down the Jan.6 style militia rebellion. We may also face war abroad. If Biden decides to run for re-election, nomination is highly likely. He could probably beat Trump again, or another challenger, though this is uncertain. If he bows out, Harris will have to be challenged and defeated by an effective candidate for the nomination, and right now I only see Landrieu or McAuliffe as possibilities; certainly not Elizabeth Warren or Pete Buttigieg or even Cory Booker, and even with his great energy I don't see Bernie as an alternative by then either. If it's Booker versus DeSantis I would still have to predict DeSantis winning.

It doesn't do any good just to think we will fail in this 4T, or to succeed either, really. We don't know. It is better to remember that there will be NO recovery and NO "high" at all if we DON'T succeed in this 4T. Our climate and our republic will be gone if we don't. But 4Ts have usually been such an existential crisis, even going back to the Renaissance era.

[pbrower2a]

(06-04-2022, 03:37 PM)nguyenivy Wrote: Is there a non-zero possibility that we get neither a good or bad ending to this 4T and just end up sliding into the next 1T with nothing resolved? Have a look at the lie-flat / other similar movements going on now. People are just losing hope and giving up. Prior 4Ts had clear wartime periods where society was upended and life afterwards was different to before. Climate change is a big threat but has already been ongoing since long before this present 4T. Not much is being done about it as of yet. The pandemic's early waves sure felt 4T but now nobody really cares about COVID anymore. Are our Millennial & Z generations just losing faith in the system or are we being actively blocked from pushing for change by say big oil/corporate America? Is it's the former, do we have prior examples of societies where the populace lost faith in their system but didn't care enough to push for change? Where did those societies end up? If we are indeed being blocked by big oil it looks like the problem should resolve itself but not until around the 2040s when society flips to having the majority having experienced the negatives of fossil fuel reliance & the car-centric US.

Some people are going to get a good ending and some will get a bad ending. For the slave-holders of the Confederacy, the good ending would have been that their "peculiar institution"  (slavery) remained intact,  Lincoln and all abolitionists were disgraced, and the Fugitive Slave Law was more rigidly enforced throughout the United States with the aid of some new secret police. Perhaps in the anarchy some states (Michigan? Wisconsin? Minnesota? Iowa? Oregon? California? Nevada?) secede to become part of the newly-independent Canada. 


This scenario has influence into the next Saeculum. Such a subtlety as the failure of the United States to purchase Alaska allows Alaska to become part of an expanded Soviet Union after 1917. Slavery intensifies racist beliefs even more firmly. Maybe Brazil does not outlaw slavery in 1875 or so... Slave-holding societies become an anathema in politically-civilized countries like France, Britain, and Germany. Should Hitler become a menace, Hitler has a scarier Canada to face at the outset. Maybe there is a Canadian Expeditionary Force  able to make the difference in whether the German thrust to the English Channel succeeds.  

Of course what would be ideal for the slave-owning interests -- the enshrinement of slavery for at least another hundred years -- would be a nightmare for many others, beginning with the slaves. Slave-holding societies are slow to innovate, and a secret police delegated to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law would expand as all bureaucracies do, to repress political dissent of all kinds. Slavery would retard the discovery of such entertainment devices as the phonograph and radio and the telephone as a mode of communication. Slaves would be excellent messengers, and with messengers that cheap, who would need a telephone? The motor vehicle doesn't take on as fast -- and a slavery-tolerating USA would probably be slow to develop the mobile weaponry such as tanks necessary in the following war. Slavery would also make labor so cheap that some other countries would be more attractive to eastern Europeans, especially Yiddish-speaking Jews. A hint: Germany actually had much immigration of Yiddish-speaking Jews from the Russian Empire. Germany becomes the leading country in cinema, as it might have been had it not been for Hitler... and figuring that immigrant Jews in Germany would act much like those in reality in the United States and be present in larger numbers, I can easily see Germany having a much-stronger Social-Democratic Party at the critical moment.  Maybe World War I never happens, and neither does the Bolshevik Revolution.

Sure, I am contradicting myself in many ways, but consider what history is most of the time. As Shakespeare puts it in Macbeth:

 “Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, / And then is heard no more. It is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.”

Isn't that the truth about most of us?  Isn't much of of life as we know it what history allows? Maybe "history" make more sense, but life rarely does.  Trying to explain what happens if something goes very differently if something else happens is nearly madness. Just look at all those alternative history novels that have the Axis Powers winning the Second World War.  I see the Axis Powers doomed by their inability to win the peace. 

The Congressional investigation into the Capitol Putsch begins tonight, and the results could be interesting. We could see all sorts of exposures of misconduct of the Trump Administration and establish what went catastrophically wrong. For my view, the worst that can happen is that Congress ultimately whitewashes President Trump. 

The Capitol Putsch may have been the pivotal event of American political life since the Civil War. Sure, there have been some major political reforms and court decisions. The Great Depression did not lead to violent revolution, and American political life was unusually placid while America was at war with the demonic Axis Powers.    

We had a forceful attempt to nullify a free, competitive, and fair election  on behalf of a President who was becoming increasingly despotic in his behavior. We could have easily ended up with a second term of Donald Trump. Trump did lasting damage in putting three Justices on the US Supreme Court who seem chosen more for ideological rigidity than legal dexterity or respect for legal precedent. All sorts of mischief are possible with a Court in which three Justices get their opinions on critical issues pre-digested for them by some shadowy organization with a far-right agenda. I have no idea of what this group believes about the civilian-military relationship, "gun rights", LGBT rights, the environment, labor-management relations, welfare, and even voting rights of people not owners of "adequate" property. So far as I can tell that group holds firmly upon the conception that he who owns the gold makes the rules is the proper way in which to operate politics. If that holds true then we might as well accept a fascistic organization of everything, and it will be up to us all to teach children not born to great advantage that the sole purpose of their lives is to make people already filthy=rich even more filthy-rich, enforce their will with ruthlessness and brutality, or to indulge the vilest whims of irresponsible people who can buy anything while everyone else is damned to destitution. The American Hard Right differs from Commies only in endorsing the rot that Commies associate as inevitable and indelible vices in capitalism. 

Obviously capitalism survived because the capitalists chose to let workers have a stake in the system. Workers were going to be sullen goldbricks until some political cataclysm at which time a socialist revolution would break forth. Progress, whether intellectual, technological, social, or moral is neither inevitable nor irreversible. The reality of the failure of Reconstruction and the even greater tragedy of fascism must press this upon our knowledge and concern. 

By the way: Shakespeare had an agenda in Macbeth: to show that political thuggery even in the name of some good cause  (or at least what the leaders and followers consider a good cause) leads to ruin. I am completely satisfied in believing that those culpable in the Capitol Putsch thought themselves profoundly correct in their cause.   

Shakespeare is very much a part of the American cultural heritage. We ignore his wisdom at great risk.

[pbrower2a]

This Crisis Era can end without a shooting war. It can end with some radically-new arrangement that is likely to be either center-left or Hard Right. Whoever wins, there will be rearguard violence. This one will de3cide among other things whether property determines power or one-man, one-vote does. One side has reason and science on its side, but is unable so far to enforce its vision; it expects the culture to drive the reality. The other has a firm set of values that it has determined is the ultimate reality., and that brute force in the service of those values will establish what is right.

If the Hard Right prevails, then we will have a hierarchical, anti-egalitarian, and repressive society in which any individual thought, let alone any show of dissent, becomes a grave peril. That sort of America will have a brain drain much as have many societies similarly hierarchical, anti-egalitarian, and repressive. It could also have torture chambers and shooting pits. There might be small rewards for compliance -- maybe occasional trips to an amusement park or a cruise on a riverboat casino -- in the equivalent of the Nazi Kraft durch Freude. Religion will play a role in offering a wondrous Afterlife in return for acquiescence with the hell that America will have become.

[Eric the Green]

(06-06-2022, 04:33 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: This Crisis Era can end without a shooting war. It can end with some radically-new arrangement that is likely to be either center-left or Hard Right. Whoever wins, there will be rearguard violence. This one will decide among other things whether property determines power or one-man, one-vote does. One side has reason and science on its side, but is unable so far to enforce its vision; it expects the culture to drive the reality. The other has a firm set of values that it has determined is the ultimate reality., and that brute force in the service of those values will establish what is right.

If the Hard Right prevails, then we will have a hierarchical, anti-egalitarian, and repressive society in which any individual thought, let alone any show of dissent, becomes a grave peril. That sort of America will have a brain drain much as have many societies similarly hierarchical, anti-egalitarian, and repressive.  It could also have torture chambers and shooting pits. There might be small rewards for compliance -- maybe occasional trips to an amusement park or a cruise on a riverboat casino -- in the equivalent of the Nazi Kraft durch Freude. Religion will play a role in offering a wondrous Afterlife in return for acquiescence with the hell that America will have become.

It still needs to be remembered that not only is all that true, but our very existence as a civilization is at stake. The climate crisis won't wait. Tipping points are starting now, and more will tip. Without a change of course this decade, we will not be able to reverse the crisis. It is not only the USA but all nations must act. No more should it ever be said that the next 4T will see the climate crisis come upon us. It is upon us now. Never should it be omitted from the list of events and trends within our failed society, such as the above list.

If this 4T fails and the hard right wins, fear will be a constant and ever-increasing pall. No street, no type of facility will be safe from guns. Violence will be oft-erupting, and epic disasters of every kind routine. Ignorance and superstition will rule the day, and that means fear over nothing multiplies as well. We will be in a new dark age that will never lift. Every group will be suspicious and afraid of every other; every group will try to rule over every other. And only some, the most privileged, will win. Exactly how long it will be until our republic and our civilization ends entirely is not clear, but certainly this will happen in no fewer than 2 centuries.

Today, people often still talk as if we have a future. They talk about what we leave for our children. People don't realize that we may have no future. The future is on the ballot, and it is partisan, and we don't realize that.

[David Horn]

(06-06-2022, 01:10 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(06-06-2022, 10:26 AM)David Horn Wrote: It's hard to be certain of anything, but I'm more in the Failed 4T than Big Finale camp.  The very fact that we have siloed society to the point that many (most?) on the right are unaware of simple facts and, even more to the point, live in the "right" places in sufficient nyumbers to stymie any move to correct the problems they claim don't really exist (fake news, you know).  Short of a cataclysmic event that makes denial impossible, I don't see this getting rectified.  After all, we're having mass shootings at a rate of more than one a day, and the movement on gun control hasn't budged at all.  Short of a nuclear exchange (highly unlikely, in my opinion) nothing seems big enough to move the needle at all.

Today's youth have been the victims of this from day one.  Perhaps they can muster the will to do something ... anything!  If so, it won't be until they have the undeniable power to override the Boomers and Xers still creating the mess we're in.

That last could happen fairly soon, if you mean the Millennial generation. As Obama pointed out in that speech I have posted here several times, they have more power than any generation now to change things. In 2024 they will be almost half the electorate. The question now is will they be able to discern what to do. At the moment it seems they don't. Many of them seem to be deserting the president they voted for just because he mumbles or seems old. That would be a neglect of civic duty. Millennials need to live up to their archetype. And so to Boomers. They have not exercized the leadership that they still could. Blue boomers have not been allowed by our system to serve as president during the 4T yet.

Millennials aren't engaged, and will either decide to engage as a generation or just draw a lind through the entire idea of politics. Right now, they are fully engaged at a social level and disengaged everywhere else.

Eric Wrote:In the previous 4T, action to handle the Depression began 4 years in, but we still faced a threat from abroad that was not really engaged with until only 3 years of the 4T were left. In the civil war, total polarization was left to fester until the last 4 years of the 4T, and had to be resolved by war. In the Revolution things looked hopeless in the war right up to the victory 8-10 years into the 4T. As I see it, in 4Ts we don't know if we're going to make it through until sometime in the last 4 years. 

Millennials aren't worried about foreign wars. Climate change, maybe.

Eric Wrote:I agree things look bleak now, and too polarized with total ignorance as one of the poles. I don't know if we will make it. But the 4T still has 7 or 8 years to go, so I say it's still too early to tell if we will make it through, and whether it will take a war to resolve things as it did during the previous 3 occasions. I have always predicted it will take a small-scale civil war scenario, i.e. an expanded January 6th, to resolve things, starting in 2025. A substantial electoral victory, enough to suspend the filibuster, would be needed (with adequate Millennial Gen support) to preclude a needed victory in a total civil war, and to make sure the state is in charge of the army/national guard after the election to put down the Jan.6 style militia rebellion. We may also face war abroad. If Biden decides to run for re-election, nomination is highly likely. He could probably beat Trump again, or another challenger, though this is uncertain. If he bows out, Harris will have to be challenged and defeated by an effective candidate for the nomination, and right now I only see Landrieu or McAuliffe as possibilities; certainly not Elizabeth Warren or Pete Buttigieg or even Cory Booker, and even with his great energy I don't see Bernie as an alternative by then either. If it's Booker versus DeSantis I would still have to predict DeSantis winning.

Both parties do best with governors running for POTUS. Let's put a line through McAuliffe ( he lost an easy one to a hedge fund guy), and Lnadrieu seems solidly disinterested (and not interesting either). I would look to Michigan.

And btw, the DeSantis show will run out of gas pretty soon. The barnyard whiff is getting pretty strong -- even for the MAGA crowd.

Eric Wrote:It doesn't do any good just to think we will fail in this 4T, or to succeed either, really. We don't know. It is better to remember that there will be NO recovery and NO "high" at all if we DON'T succeed in this 4T. Our climate and our republic will be gone if we don't. But 4Ts have usually been such an existential crisis, even going back to the Renaissance era.

The Right gets exorcized over the most mundane issues, and Left can't get excited by anything. Abortion and guns should be enough, but I doubt they are.

[David Horn]

(06-06-2022, 07:00 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Today, people often still talk as if we have a future. They talk about what we leave for our children. People don't realize that we may have no future. The future is on the ballot, and it is partisan, and we don't realize that.

To quote Joni Mitchel, "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone." I doubt that's changed in the last 50 years.

[Tim Randal Walker]

As I recall Ireland had a Crisis that was muddled rather than decisive. It was a time of civil war and pestilence. It was the 4T between the final defeat of the Vikings and the arrival of the British empire.

[Eric the Green]

(06-07-2022, 06:48 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: As I recall Ireland had a Crisis that was muddled rather than decisive.  It was a time of civil war and pestilence.  It was the 4T between the final defeat of the Vikings and the arrival of the British empire.

I would say that any turnings in the dark ages would have been muddled. Society in those days did not have the structure or population to support a saeculum.

[Eric the Green]

(06-07-2022, 04:25 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(06-06-2022, 07:00 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Today, people often still talk as if we have a future. They talk about what we leave for our children. People don't realize that we may have no future. The future is on the ballot, and it is partisan, and we don't realize that.

To quote Joni Mitchel, "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone."  I doubt that's changed in the last 50 years.

Yup, we paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

[Eric the Green]

(06-07-2022, 04:21 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(06-06-2022, 01:10 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(06-06-2022, 10:26 AM)David Horn Wrote: It's hard to be certain of anything, but I'm more in the Failed 4T than Big Finale camp.  The very fact that we have siloed society to the point that many (most?) on the right are unaware of simple facts and, even more to the point, live in the "right" places in sufficient nyumbers to stymie any move to correct the problems they claim don't really exist (fake news, you know).  Short of a cataclysmic event that makes denial impossible, I don't see this getting rectified.  After all, we're having mass shootings at a rate of more than one a day, and the movement on gun control hasn't budged at all.  Short of a nuclear exchange (highly unlikely, in my opinion) nothing seems big enough to move the needle at all.

Today's youth have been the victims of this from day one.  Perhaps they can muster the will to do something ... anything!  If so, it won't be until they have the undeniable power to override the Boomers and Xers still creating the mess we're in.

That last could happen fairly soon, if you mean the Millennial generation. As Obama pointed out in that speech I have posted here several times, they have more power than any generation now to change things. In 2024 they will be almost half the electorate. The question now is will they be able to discern what to do. At the moment it seems they don't. Many of them seem to be deserting the president they voted for just because he mumbles or seems old. That would be a neglect of civic duty. Millennials need to live up to their archetype. And so to Boomers. They have not exercized the leadership that they still could. Blue boomers have not been allowed by our system to serve as president during the 4T yet.

Millennials aren't engaged, and will either decide to engage as a generation or just draw a lind through the entire idea of politics. Right now, they are fully engaged at a social level and disengaged everywhere else.

Eric Wrote:In the previous 4T, action to handle the Depression began 4 years in, but we still faced a threat from abroad that was not really engaged with until only 3 years of the 4T were left. In the civil war, total polarization was left to fester until the last 4 years of the 4T, and had to be resolved by war. In the Revolution things looked hopeless in the war right up to the victory 8-10 years into the 4T. As I see it, in 4Ts we don't know if we're going to make it through until sometime in the last 4 years. 

Millennials aren't worried about foreign wars. Climate change, maybe.

Eric Wrote:I agree things look bleak now, and too polarized with total ignorance as one of the poles. I don't know if we will make it. But the 4T still has 7 or 8 years to go, so I say it's still too early to tell if we will make it through, and whether it will take a war to resolve things as it did during the previous 3 occasions. I have always predicted it will take a small-scale civil war scenario, i.e. an expanded January 6th, to resolve things, starting in 2025. A substantial electoral victory, enough to suspend the filibuster, would be needed (with adequate Millennial Gen support) to preclude a needed victory in a total civil war, and to make sure the state is in charge of the army/national guard after the election to put down the Jan.6 style militia rebellion. We may also face war abroad. If Biden decides to run for re-election, nomination is highly likely. He could probably beat Trump again, or another challenger, though this is uncertain. If he bows out, Harris will have to be challenged and defeated by an effective candidate for the nomination, and right now I only see Landrieu or McAuliffe as possibilities; certainly not Elizabeth Warren or Pete Buttigieg or even Cory Booker, and even with his great energy I don't see Bernie as an alternative by then either. If it's Booker versus DeSantis I would still have to predict DeSantis winning.

Both parties do best with governors running for POTUS. Let's put a line through McAuliffe (he lost an easy one to a hedge fund guy), and Landrieu seems solidly disinterested (and not interesting either). I would look to Michigan.

My point is, besides Landrieu and McAuliffe, there IS noone else besides Biden. The Michigan governor's numbers are mediocre. Even DeSantis can beat most known Democratic possibilities. Unless the Reprobates choose a solid loser.

I admit, McAuliffe hurt himself by losing his gov race last year, though he remains the only Democrat to be elected Virginia governor under a Democratic president in many decades. You never know though; he still has talent and recognition in the Party. Nixon lost a race for CA governor and came back to get elected president.

Quote:And btw, the DeSantis show will run out of gas pretty soon. The barnyard whiff is getting pretty strong -- even for the MAGA crowd.

Gee I hope you are right.

[nguyenivy]

(06-07-2022, 04:21 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(06-06-2022, 01:10 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(06-06-2022, 10:26 AM)David Horn Wrote: It's hard to be certain of anything, but I'm more in the Failed 4T than Big Finale camp.  The very fact that we have siloed society to the point that many (most?) on the right are unaware of simple facts and, even more to the point, live in the "right" places in sufficient nyumbers to stymie any move to correct the problems they claim don't really exist (fake news, you know).  Short of a cataclysmic event that makes denial impossible, I don't see this getting rectified.  After all, we're having mass shootings at a rate of more than one a day, and the movement on gun control hasn't budged at all.  Short of a nuclear exchange (highly unlikely, in my opinion) nothing seems big enough to move the needle at all.

Today's youth have been the victims of this from day one.  Perhaps they can muster the will to do something ... anything!  If so, it won't be until they have the undeniable power to override the Boomers and Xers still creating the mess we're in.

That last could happen fairly soon, if you mean the Millennial generation. As Obama pointed out in that speech I have posted here several times, they have more power than any generation now to change things. In 2024 they will be almost half the electorate. The question now is will they be able to discern what to do. At the moment it seems they don't. Many of them seem to be deserting the president they voted for just because he mumbles or seems old. That would be a neglect of civic duty. Millennials need to live up to their archetype. And so to Boomers. They have not exercized the leadership that they still could. Blue boomers have not been allowed by our system to serve as president during the 4T yet.

Millennials aren't engaged, and will either decide to engage as a generation or just draw a lind through the entire idea of politics.  Right now, they are fully engaged at a social level and disengaged everywhere else.

Eric Wrote:In the previous 4T, action to handle the Depression began 4 years in, but we still faced a threat from abroad that was not really engaged with until only 3 years of the 4T were left. In the civil war, total polarization was left to fester until the last 4 years of the 4T, and had to be resolved by war. In the Revolution things looked hopeless in the war right up to the victory 8-10 years into the 4T. As I see it, in 4Ts we don't know if we're going to make it through until sometime in the last 4 years. 

Millennials aren't worried about foreign wars.  Climate change, maybe.

Eric Wrote:I agree things look bleak now, and too polarized with total ignorance as one of the poles. I don't know if we will make it. But the 4T still has 7 or 8 years to go, so I say it's still too early to tell if we will make it through, and whether it will take a war to resolve things as it did during the previous 3 occasions. I have always predicted it will take a small-scale civil war scenario, i.e. an expanded January 6th, to resolve things, starting in 2025. A substantial electoral victory, enough to suspend the filibuster, would be needed (with adequate Millennial Gen support) to preclude a needed victory in a total civil war, and to make sure the state is in charge of the army/national guard after the election to put down the Jan.6 style militia rebellion. We may also face war abroad. If Biden decides to run for re-election, nomination is highly likely. He could probably beat Trump again, or another challenger, though this is uncertain. If he bows out, Harris will have to be challenged and defeated by an effective candidate for the nomination, and right now I only see Landrieu or McAuliffe as possibilities; certainly not Elizabeth Warren or Pete Buttigieg or even Cory Booker, and even with his great energy I don't see Bernie as an alternative by then either. If it's Booker versus DeSantis I would still have to predict DeSantis winning.

Both parties do best with governors running for POTUS.  Let's put a line through McAuliffe ( he lost an easy one to a hedge fund guy), and Lnadrieu seems solidly disinterested (and not interesting either).  I would look to Michigan.

And btw, the DeSantis show will run out of gas pretty soon.  The barnyard whiff is getting pretty strong -- even for the MAGA crowd.

Eric Wrote:It doesn't do any good just to think we will fail in this 4T, or to succeed either, really. We don't know. It is better to remember that there will be NO recovery and NO "high" at all if we DON'T succeed in this 4T. Our climate and our republic will be gone if we don't. But 4Ts have usually been such an existential crisis, even going back to the Renaissance era.

The Right gets exorcized over the most mundane issues, and Left can't get excited by anything.  Abortion and guns should be enough, but I doubt they are.

Do Millennials really care as much about climate change as they do other things that are affecting us these days (and over the past 20+ years)? Prior to COVID, it seems there were movements for protests against big oil et al on climate change but weren't they mainly participated by Gen Z or the very youngest of the Millennials? Obviously climate change should be the big one for us as Millennials are at the age now (average age 31) where they usually would be having kids - something that affects anyone's outlook on the future in a major way. I for some reason suspect we will prioritise domestic things over global things due to how we're so directly affected. Look at the guns and social system problems and you'll probably see that more people would want to fix those before we tackle climate change and a war in another part of the world. I expect climate change will take a backseat vs things like ensuring their child doesn't become the next school shooting victim and having a decent stable income.

[pbrower2a]

(06-06-2022, 07:00 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(06-06-2022, 04:33 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: This Crisis Era can end without a shooting war. It can end with some radically-new arrangement that is likely to be either center-left or Hard Right. Whoever wins, there will be rearguard violence. This one will decide among other things whether property determines power or one-man, one-vote does. One side has reason and science on its side, but is unable so far to enforce its vision; it expects the culture to drive the reality. The other has a firm set of values that it has determined is the ultimate reality., and that brute force in the service of those values will establish what is right.

If the Hard Right prevails, then we will have a hierarchical, anti-egalitarian, and repressive society in which any individual thought, let alone any show of dissent, becomes a grave peril. That sort of America will have a brain drain much as have many societies similarly hierarchical, anti-egalitarian, and repressive.  It could also have torture chambers and shooting pits. There might be small rewards for compliance -- maybe occasional trips to an amusement park or a cruise on a riverboat casino -- in the equivalent of the Nazi Kraft durch Freude. Religion will play a role in offering a wondrous Afterlife in return for acquiescence with the hell that America will have become.

It still needs to be remembered that not only is all that true, but our very existence as a civilization is at stake. The climate crisis won't wait. Tipping points are starting now, and more will tip. Without a change of course this decade, we will not be able to reverse the crisis. It is not only the USA but all nations must act. No more should it ever be said that the next 4T will see the climate crisis come upon us. It is upon us now. Never should it be omitted from the list of events and trends within our failed society, such as the above list.

If this 4T fails and the hard right wins, fear will be a constant and ever-increasing pall. No street, no type of facility will be safe from guns. Violence will be oft-erupting, and epic disasters of every kind routine. Ignorance and superstition will rule the day, and that means fear over nothing multiplies as well. We will be in a new dark age that will never lift. Every group will be suspicious and afraid of every other; every group will try to rule over every other. And only some, the most privileged, will win. Exactly how long it will be until our republic and our civilization ends entirely is not clear, but certainly this will happen in no fewer than 2 centuries.

Today, people often still talk as if we have a future. They talk about what we leave for our children. People don't realize that we may have no future. The future is on the ballot, and it is partisan, and we don't realize that.

We will also end up with wars for profit that go badly, and wars going badly have toppled nasty regimes. We can also have a Depression that makes the Great Depression of the 1930's look mild by comparison because a right-wing regime will push faith in the regime, the economic elites that failed and will continue to fail, and a sadistic concept of God instead of any solutions that even mitigate the hardships. 

I recall a political science textbook on comparative political systems that showed what led to proletarian revolutions:

1. absence of democracy. Where there is democracy in which workers have the vote, people are able to vote for political leaders attentive to their needs. Laborers in the factories and fields need some recourse against ruthless aristocrats and plutocrats. Where democracy exists, reform movements are possible. Where democracy does not exist, the regime is able to suppress any dissidents who act civilized, and such opposition as exists narrows into secretive, radicalized, well-disciplined, terroristic cells like the Bolsheviks.

2. early stages of industrialization. This may seem irrelevant, but the Hard Right wants to return to the conditions in which slumlords and loan-sharks fleece workers compelled to toil for  precarious survival. As the safety net disappears, any personal calamity can doom one to death by starvation. Proletarian revolutions do not succeed once there is a well-defined consumer society. 

3. irresponsible, corrupt leadership. The political leaders are themselves crooks bleeding the country for their sybaritic indulgence. They may export food during a famine. That leadership is often an interlocking directorate of the state bureaucracy, the military, the aristocracy, the tycoons, and the clergy who take everything that they can get away with. Just read 19th-century Russian literature and you will see exactly that. 

4. excessive centralization of economic activity. It's mostly in one or two giant cities, which well fits just-in-time productivity. Contrast Russia to Britain. The industrial revolution in Britain was based on cottage industries at the start. British workers were still close to the farm, and industry had to fit the seasons with industrial workers doing farm labor in planting and harvest seasons so that there could be food for them. In Russia the workers were concentrated in gigantic slums in which epidemics and fires raged. There were plenty of angry people, and if the food crop failed to reach the urban populace the civil strife would begin. One can contrast China and India, both of which were similarly poor after WWII. India pushed village-based cottage industries while the Republic of China had entrenched its little industry in a few giant cities. Gandhi was eccentric, but he wasn't crazy. 

5. Emphasis on luxury exports, armaments, and heavy industry. It is best that workers can imagine themselves using the sorts of things that they make. Shoes that they can wear, crockery, winter coats (in cold climates), and eventually electronic goodies are more likely to create good feelingsd among workers. Capitalism saved itself by turning the proletariat into a class of consumers as well as toilers. 

Does anyone want an economic order in which a few wallow in sybaritic indulgence while the rest starve? To be sure, nothing more effectively fosters narcissistic behavior than a quasi-aristocratic order in which a few command and the rest suffer. The elites must offer something better than "pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die" in return for suffering in This World.     

.........................

It may be difficult to see how this Crisis area will end, but it is easy to see that when the generational alignment is again much the same eighty years from now . I saw projections of climate in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Ukraine... these countries are major producers of wheat, a crop that grows best near the borderline between humid and arid climates. The lowlands of these countries trend strongly to cross into the arid zone more because of higher temperatures than because of reduced rainfall. Wheat is the crop closest to fitting a dry climate, and any place too dry for wheat is too dryu for any food crop. 

If you think that the Russian invasion is trouble in Ukraine now, then wait until you see what climate change can do:

https://www.climatelinks.org/sites/defau...kraine.pdf

Ukraine relies heavily upon agricultural exports -- and many people depend upon imports of Ukrainian wheat. Agriculture may lack the glamor of high tech or Hollywood movies... but it is still the most basic of industries. There is no technological fix for a food shortage and especially not for hunger. .  

Add to this, much of the world's rich agricultural lowland will be inundated. Where do all the peasant farmers of Bangladesh go? Australia? It is getting hotter and drier. Before you say "Australia"... Australia is getting hotter and drier. Melbourne is an a region that could be going from being like central Texas in its agricultural productivity to like western Texas. Australia is going to need huge amounts of rain to create the sort of terrain that can suit over 100 million peasant farmers.

[David Horn]

(06-08-2022, 05:53 AM)nguyenivy Wrote: Do Millennials really care as much about climate change as they do other things that are affecting us these days (and over the past 20+ years)? Prior to COVID, it seems there were movements for protests against big oil et al on climate change but weren't they mainly participated by Gen Z or the very youngest of the Millennials? Obviously climate change should be the big one for us as Millennials are at the age now (average age 31) where they usually would be having kids - something that affects anyone's outlook on the future in a major way. I for some reason suspect we will prioritise domestic things over global things due to how we're so directly affected. Look at the guns and social system problems and you'll probably see that more people would want to fix those before we tackle climate change and a war in another part of the world. I expect climate change will take a backseat vs things like ensuring their child doesn't become the next school shooting victim and having a decent stable income.

Millennials got sucked into the great social media machine, and don't seem inclined to leave.  Not all, of course, but enough to make a change regime impossible -- exactly when one is most needed.  Maybe the threat of gun violence will finally break that hold.  I hope so for my grandchildren's sake.

[JasonBlack]

Quote:Do Millennials really care as much about climate change as they do other things that are affecting us these days (and over the past 20+ years)? Prior to COVID, it seems there were movements for protests against big oil et al on climate change but weren't they mainly participated by Gen Z or the very youngest of the Millennials? Obviously climate change should be the big one for us as Millennials are at the age now (average age 31) where they usually would be having kids - something that affects anyone's outlook on the future in a major way. I for some reason suspect we will prioritise domestic things over global things due to how we're so directly affected. Look at the guns and social system problems and you'll probably see that more people would want to fix those before we tackle climate change and a war in another part of the world. I expect climate change will take a backseat vs things like ensuring their child doesn't become the next school shooting victim and having a decent stable income.

Millennials still have memories of when times were good. They don't have quite the backed-into-a-corner, "we have nothing to lose!" mindset of a lot of Gen Z (well "Gen Z". about half of what we call Gen Z is still later wave Civic, and I'd argue they are the most vocal of the bunch. the Adaptive second half of Gen Z are much more agreeable, goofy/trolly, less opinionated)

[Eric the Green]

(06-08-2022, 10:06 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(06-06-2022, 07:00 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(06-06-2022, 04:33 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: This Crisis Era can end without a shooting war. It can end with some radically-new arrangement that is likely to be either center-left or Hard Right. Whoever wins, there will be rearguard violence. This one will decide among other things whether property determines power or one-man, one-vote does. One side has reason and science on its side, but is unable so far to enforce its vision; it expects the culture to drive the reality. The other has a firm set of values that it has determined is the ultimate reality., and that brute force in the service of those values will establish what is right.

If the Hard Right prevails, then we will have a hierarchical, anti-egalitarian, and repressive society in which any individual thought, let alone any show of dissent, becomes a grave peril. That sort of America will have a brain drain much as have many societies similarly hierarchical, anti-egalitarian, and repressive.  It could also have torture chambers and shooting pits. There might be small rewards for compliance -- maybe occasional trips to an amusement park or a cruise on a riverboat casino -- in the equivalent of the Nazi Kraft durch Freude. Religion will play a role in offering a wondrous Afterlife in return for acquiescence with the hell that America will have become.

It still needs to be remembered that not only is all that true, but our very existence as a civilization is at stake. The climate crisis won't wait. Tipping points are starting now, and more will tip. Without a change of course this decade, we will not be able to reverse the crisis. It is not only the USA but all nations must act. No more should it ever be said that the next 4T will see the climate crisis come upon us. It is upon us now. Never should it be omitted from the list of events and trends within our failed society, such as the above list.

If this 4T fails and the hard right wins, fear will be a constant and ever-increasing pall. No street, no type of facility will be safe from guns. Violence will be oft-erupting, and epic disasters of every kind routine. Ignorance and superstition will rule the day, and that means fear over nothing multiplies as well. We will be in a new dark age that will never lift. Every group will be suspicious and afraid of every other; every group will try to rule over every other. And only some, the most privileged, will win. Exactly how long it will be until our republic and our civilization ends entirely is not clear, but certainly this will happen in no fewer than 2 centuries.

Today, people often still talk as if we have a future. They talk about what we leave for our children. People don't realize that we may have no future. The future is on the ballot, and it is partisan, and we don't realize that.

We will also end up with wars for profit that go badly, and wars going badly have toppled nasty regimes. We can also have a Depression that makes the Great Depression of the 1930's look mild by comparison because a right-wing regime will push faith in the regime, the economic elites that failed and will continue to fail, and a sadistic concept of God instead of any solutions that even mitigate the hardships. 

I recall a political science textbook on comparative political systems that showed what led to proletarian revolutions:

1. absence of democracy. Where there is democracy in which workers have the vote, people are able to vote for political leaders attentive to their needs. Laborers in the factories and fields need some recourse against ruthless aristocrats and plutocrats. Where democracy exists, reform movements are possible. Where democracy does not exist, the regime is able to suppress any dissidents who act civilized, and such opposition as exists narrows into secretive, radicalized, well-disciplined, terroristic cells like the Bolsheviks.

2. early stages of industrialization. This may seem irrelevant, but the Hard Right wants to return to the conditions in which slumlords and loan-sharks fleece workers compelled to toil for  precarious survival. As the safety net disappears, any personal calamity can doom one to death by starvation. Proletarian revolutions do not succeed once there is a well-defined consumer society. 

3. irresponsible, corrupt leadership. The political leaders are themselves crooks bleeding the country for their sybaritic indulgence. They may export food during a famine. That leadership is often an interlocking directorate of the state bureaucracy, the military, the aristocracy, the tycoons, and the clergy who take everything that they can get away with. Just read 19th-century Russian literature and you will see exactly that. 

4. excessive centralization of economic activity. It's mostly in one or two giant cities, which well fits just-in-time productivity. Contrast Russia to Britain. The industrial revolution in Britain was based on cottage industries at the start. British workers were still close to the farm, and industry had to fit the seasons with industrial workers doing farm labor in planting and harvest seasons so that there could be food for them. In Russia the workers were concentrated in gigantic slums in which epidemics and fires raged. There were plenty of angry people, and if the food crop failed to reach the urban populace the civil strife would begin. One can contrast China and India, both of which were similarly poor after WWII. India pushed village-based cottage industries while the Republic of China had entrenched its little industry in a few giant cities. Gandhi was eccentric, but he wasn't crazy. 

5. Emphasis on luxury exports, armaments, and heavy industry. It is best that workers can imagine themselves using the sorts of things that they make. Shoes that they can wear, crockery, winter coats (in cold climates), and eventually electronic goodies are more likely to create good feelingsd among workers. Capitalism saved itself by turning the proletariat into a class of consumers as well as toilers. 

Does anyone want an economic order in which a few wallow in sybaritic indulgence while the rest starve? To be sure, nothing more effectively fosters narcissistic behavior than a quasi-aristocratic order in which a few command and the rest suffer. The elites must offer something better than "pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die" in return for suffering in This World.     

It's well worth posting this vital, landmark video again. What you wrote here reminds me of what Nick Hanauer says toward the end of this video that "after everything burns down, they'll say we should do something about this"

Quote:.........................

It may be difficult to see how this Crisis (era) will end, but it is easy to see that when the generational alignment is again much the same eighty years from now . I saw projections of climate in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Ukraine... these countries are major producers of wheat, a crop that grows best near the borderline between humid and arid climates. The lowlands of these countries trend strongly to cross into the arid zone more because of higher temperatures than because of reduced rainfall. Wheat is the crop closest to fitting a dry climate, and any place too dry for wheat is too dry for any food crop. 


If you think that the Russian invasion is trouble in Ukraine now, then wait until you see what climate change can do:

https://www.climatelinks.org/sites/defau...kraine.pdf

Ukraine relies heavily upon agricultural exports -- and many people depend upon imports of Ukrainian wheat. Agriculture may lack the glamor of high tech or Hollywood movies... but it is still the most basic of industries. There is no technological fix for a food shortage and especially not for hunger. .  

Add to this, much of the world's rich agricultural lowland will be inundated. Where do all the peasant farmers of Bangladesh go? Australia? It is getting hotter and drier. Before you say "Australia"... Australia is getting hotter and drier. Melbourne is an a region that could be going from being like central Texas in its agricultural productivity to like western Texas. Australia is going to need huge amounts of rain to create the sort of terrain that can suit over 100 million peasant farmers.

We face all this now; thanks for mentioning this. And it is this current generational constellation that must deal with this crisis. It will be too late for future 4Ts to change it.

[David Horn]

(06-08-2022, 08:54 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

Quote:Do Millennials really care as much about climate change as they do other things that are affecting us these days (and over the past 20+ years)? Prior to COVID, it seems there were movements for protests against big oil et al on climate change but weren't they mainly participated by Gen Z or the very youngest of the Millennials? Obviously climate change should be the big one for us as Millennials are at the age now (average age 31) where they usually would be having kids - something that affects anyone's outlook on the future in a major way. I for some reason suspect we will prioritise domestic things over global things due to how we're so directly affected. Look at the guns and social system problems and you'll probably see that more people would want to fix those before we tackle climate change and a war in another part of the world. I expect climate change will take a backseat vs things like ensuring their child doesn't become the next school shooting victim and having a decent stable income.

Millennials still have memories of when times were good. They don't have quite the backed-into-a-corner, "we have nothing to lose!" mindset of a lot of Gen Z (well "Gen Z". about half of what we call Gen Z is still later wave Civic, and I'd argue they are the most vocal of the bunch. the Adaptive second half of Gen Z are much more agreeable, goofy/trolly, less opinionated)

Millennials have no memory of "when things were good" if you apply an unbiased measurement to "good times".  There is a 5 decades long march to the right that has empowered the powerful and weakened the already weak.  It's as if a bedridden polio victim looked back on the "good times" when she could still walk with leg braces and crutches.  As a society, we need to aim much higher, but the memory of that target is fadin with the aging populous who do remember.