The Next 10 Years: A Deep Sense of Foreboding

[tg63]

(12-02-2016, 12:34 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(12-01-2016, 11:35 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Sometimes, the simplest model is the best.

We tend to get wrapped around the axle here trying to discern the crisis.

Was the Great Recession and its jobless recovery aftermath the Crisis, or the beginning of it? Perhaps. But I think we all sense that the real worst of it has yet to arrive. I think we now have the parameters for a perfect storm.

Firstly, unless one is blinded by political partisanship, it is apparent that come 2017 we will enter into a leadership crisis the likes of which we have not seen in the US at least since Nixon's fall, and I will state, even much longer than that.

Trump has spent 50 years in a business space where bullshit is king, bluster the norm, and sleaziness accepted. It is a space where true leadership, process expertise, attention to detail, and good management skills, are not expected. Meanwhile he has zero experience with public leadership. Beyond all this, it's quite apparent that he has one or more personality disorders. A man like this is destined to collapse like a wet paper bag, during the inevitable "3AM call" situations that will haunt him.

Meanwhile, a cult like sea of followers and fellow travelers are geared up to "tear down the Establishment." What will they do when his naked highness falls apart? There is nothing worse than an angry leaderless mob that has authoritarian impulses.

However, this is just an overture. The real storm will be a combined global financial crisis and geopolitical crisis. While I don't agree with all the details he has laid out, John Xenakis' analysis of emerging threat vectors world wide on both the financial and geopolitical fronts are here for all to see. Flammable materials are everywhere and ignition is sure to happen.

This coming storm will be the Climax of the Crisis. The leadership void in the US and a number of other NATO countries will invite geopolitical adventurism by the enemies of the West. Millions upon millions will be harmed initially by financial pain and later by war. We are going to witness phenomena which have thus far been unknown in human history. The forces of a world unraveling meeting high tech and mass destruction weapons will be a cataclysm. A few decades from now there will be no doubt that a crisis - in fact, the mother of all crises, has occurred.

However, for this Crisis to demonstrate the Strauss and Howe cycle, it must be not only survivable, but lead to a more stable place in a 1T for lots of folks in many places.

Your post above is well-said. I think the problem may be that we forget what lies over the rainbow. Remember it was 1939 when Dorothy sang that, and she defeated the wicked witches of the East and West-- as did the USA shortly thereafter. And in the midst of the crisis Americans went to world fairs in 1939 and dreamed of the future.

...

I also think that was a well-written post ... and I too am far more pessimistic than I was even a few months ago ... I'm not saying everything is going to come apart at the seams, but if it were to, I suspect the intro would look an awful lot like this.

And re: Eric's post, maybe it's just semantics, but the 4T doesn't lead to a more stable 1T ... the stability of the 1T comes because 4T events will have reached such a frenetic level that they can't be sustained (think D-Day, or Grant's total war approach).  So yes, there will be stability eventually, for those who are around to experience it.

The term survivable is interesting; not sure if there is a threshold tho. (90%? 50%? 1%?)