Has the regeneracy arrived?

[Mikebert]

(12-14-2016, 07:53 PM)Bourbonista Wrote: Hi, new member here, long-time fan of 4T.

I think that the Trump election marks the beginning of the Regeneracy. The fact that most of the “establishment” media and political elites missed the strength of support for Trump among rural white voters and especially among educated suburban voters shows that Trump tapped in to a significant consensus among many Americans that the current system is irreparably broken and they are willing to bet on a crude, misogynistic, self-serving dilettante over any career politician, right or left.
But I don’t think Trump is the Grey Champion. He will precipitate the Crisis – trade war with China, Great Depression II, a likely constitutional crisis – but will not get a second term. It may be bad enough that a true Grey Champion, equal to Roosevelt or Lincoln will emerge.
God help us if not.

Welcome.

Your description makes 2016 sound more like a crisis trigger, not a regeneracy. After all I think most folks would see the 2016 electoral outcome as the electorate calling for change.  Change from what?  From what came before: Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama. That is change from the 3T.  I thought 2001 and 2008 were crisis triggers because big shit happened. But big shit happened around 1920, and that was no 4T.  The English Civil War was a far bigger event than the Glorious Revolution, yet it was the latter that was the 4T. 

What makes a 4T a 4T is there is a change in the trajectory of the nation's history. For example, inequality was high and real wages at starvation levels mid-17th century.  It helped set the stage for the war.  Population declined during the war and for decades after.  Times did not improve.  And then population bottomed in 1690 and began a rise, which accelerated a couple of decades later.  GDP per capita, which had been flat for a century, began to rise in the late 17th century.  Times got better. There was a sea change in the demographic and economic trajectory in a positive direction that occurred contemporaneously with the GR, not the ECW.  There were also fundamental changes in government.

American inequality peaked in 1916, declined to 1920, then rose to 1916 levels by 1929, and then went down, bottoming only in the late 1970's.  Peacetime government spending had been about 3% of GDP for half a century before 1929.  Over the next couple of decades peacetime government spending rose about six fold, as did the number of federal employees.  In the two decades after 1929, America emerged as the world hegemonic power.  These major changes in the nation's historical trajectory were contemporaneous with the 4T, not the period around 1920, despite the revolutionary zeitgeist present then.

Since 2001, or 2008, there has been no change in trajectory.  The slow-motion collapse of the middle class that has been going on for decades, continued on. This is what the 2016 election was about.  People were writing about it 25 years ago, and are saying the same things today.