12-22-2016, 01:40 PM
(12-22-2016, 08:50 AM)SomeGuy Wrote: So, nothing actually invalidating the idea of regular saeculum ending in 2025+/-5, it just doesn't fit in with your pet theories and indicators. Got it.
An end around 2025 isn't very far off. One around 2035 is. The political dynamics today are not much different than they were 20 years ago. Plenty of stuff has happened, but it’s the same old argument. Conservatives are still touting supply side economics, a notion from 40 years go. Liberals are still talking about identity politics--shades of the 1984 election. Have any of the problems that were already identified in the 3T (decline of middle class, an expensive and incomprehensible foreign policy, soaring debt, increasing partisanship, etc.) been addressed? American elections have become like Middle East peace plans, they never accomplish anything.
3Ts are typified by putting off problems, by culture wars, and gridlock. It was the same in the 1850's (abolition) and in the 1920's (prohibition). We are seeing the same stuff today and have been for 35 years. 4Ts are not intensified 3Ts. 4Ts accomplish structural change. Consider the Glorious Revolution, a 4T to which people often compare today. After rising for two centuries, English population slightly declined from mid-century to 1690. It then began a period of growth that continues to this day. English real per capita GDP was essentially unchanged for a century or two before the 1670's. It then began an uptrend that continues to this day. These are major structural changes that were accomplished during the Glorious 4T. The War of Roses 4T also inaugurated a two-century population rise after two centuries of decline. And we know that the Revolutionary, Civil War and New Deal/WW II 4Ts had huge structural changes. 4Ts accomplish big things. They are clear-cut changes from the previous status quo. This is what makes them secular crises. Nothing like that has happened since 2008
What is supposed to happen in a 4T just isn't happening. It should not be this hard to see it. Yes I can re-draw the Silent, Boomers, Xers, and Millies to have them born later. And then yep you can get a 4T that ends in 2030 or 2035. But if you do that you will find that Donald Trump, Bill and Hillary Clinton and George Bush are Silents after all. But this sort of destroys the notion that generations are an independent entity, that one knows what generation he falls into.