01-06-2017, 01:41 PM
(01-06-2017, 12:52 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: I don't know that it's a different theory from Strauss & Howe. There is a subcycle within the generational cycle of alternation between dominant generations - idealists and civics - and recessive generations - adaptives and reactives.
If there's a pattern here, it's an interesting question whether Trump fits into the Carter slot or the FDR slot. Certainly Bill Clinton adapted to the Reagan orthodoxy the same way Eisenhower did to FDR's. Carter tried to change it, but his ideas - zero based budgeting, etc. - didn't work on a federal level. If Trump moves toward real protectionism and tries to disassemble the globalist system, he might end up in the mold of Hoover and Carter. On the other hand, one could argue that Obama has already moved well away from the Reagan orthodoxy; he certainly didn't embrace it the way Clinton did.
That cycle is about forty years in duration. Think about this: Ronald Reagan became President about forty years after the pearl harbor attack. The President elected in 2020 will be half a generational cycle away from the transition from Carter to Reagan. One cycle in the article is about half a generational cycle, and it makes sense that even if the two cycles in the Presidency have very different effects, two of them make a generational cycle. It makes sense that fundamental change in the political order happens in a Crisis, and less likely in more placid times.
George III to the Continental Congress, Buchanan to Lincoln, and Hoover to FDR signal massive change in the political order.
The Reagan era comes to an end in two weeks, at least in foreign policy. Economics? Economic inequality will be intensified so much that millions will quickly become far poorer. "Make America Great Again" may be the slogan, but "Worse for me" may be a commonplace for multitudes.
The peak of danger in the last Crisis was 1940... when Western Christian Civilization seemed on the brink of collapse in the wake of sudden, swift, unforeseen victories of Nazi Germany. The Wave of the Future expected to be singing the Horst-Wessel-Lied in the British Parliament and perhaps the Capital building in
Five years later, the US Army was taking over in Dachau and Mauthausen, putting an end to the nightmare.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.