No more Millennial children

[Kinser79]

(01-21-2018, 06:10 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Howe and Strauss said that the GI/Silent boundary was not well defined until the end of World War II,

Which supports my view that generational boundary definition is a lagging indicator. It does not however support the absurd theory that generations can last much longer than a quarter century, maximum. At least no in the industrial saeculum. Pre-industrial saecula are more murky. (and less relevant)

Quote:I am guessing that 1924 cohorts were more likely to do enough combat to make rank (as from battlefield commissions)

As NCOs at most. 1923s regularly made 2nd Lieutenant by battlefield commission.

Quote: or to get the specialized training that got them rank (as with fliers in the Army Air Corps or naval aviation) while World War Ii was going on.

The more likely scenario for Jr Officer ranked 1924s. We've had two presidents already from such backgrounds: George H. W. Bush (who also saw some combat as a naval aviator) and Jimmy Carter who was a naval officer.

Quote: Cohorts of 1925 or 1926 could be scarred but only rarely develop the hubris of those with longer service and more exposure to danger -- and triumph. Tail-end soldiers may have been formal veterans, but occupation duty is far from the same experience as charging beaches or driving a tank into Hitlerland.

That is something of an understatement. Occupation duty was relatively cushy unless one was in logistics. Storming Normandy (or the Jap held islands for that matter) or driving a tank under fire into "Hitlerland" is a whole different kettle of fish. As I said, my grandfather was a WW2 combat vet. I have two uncles who were also combat vets, one for Korea (he was born in the mid 1930s, my grandfather being in the army had a steady job at the time and thus my grandmother was comfortable marrying him and breeding), and one a Vietnam vet (who was a 1947 cohort. Both confirmed that experiencing battle is far different than the bureaucratic mess that is the military in peace time.

Quote:This made a difference in political success: there have been two GI Presidents born in 1924, three Boomer Presidents born in the mid-1940s, but no Silent Presidents. As I see it the most likely Silent President will be Nancy Pelosi under the condition that the Democrats take over the House of Representatives in the next election, choose her as Speaker of the House, and she is present when a President leaves office while there is no Vice-President. Now that is a stretch.

It is quite a stretch because the Dims aren't taking back the house this year. Second even if they did and somehow managed to remove Trump, Pence (a Boomer) would become president and they would then have to impeach him as well. I would venture to guess that the reason that there was a lack of Silent presidents (though they maintained control over congress far longer than either the GIs or Boomers did) may have something to do with the fact that they were bookended by two large and dominate generations.

Quote:I have also noticed that the Silent include something unique: a large number of self-effacing comedians, either zany characters (Jerry Lewis, Carol Burnett, Christopher Lloyd), neurotic personalities (Woody Allen), or parodies of GI efficiency (Andy Griffith, Leslie Nielsen, Dick Van Dyke). Howe and Strauss did not notice that -- but I did.

Jerry Lewis, Carol Burnett, Christopher Lloyd, Andy Griffith, Leslie Nielsen and Dick Van Dyke quite simply did not have much impact on society except as entertainment. Woody Allen serves more as a butt of a joke than as cultural phenominon. S&H probably noticed but like myself did not consider them important enough to notice. If one views generational formation as a tide chart one doesn't need to factor in how many fish are in the area to know within a quarter of an hour when high and low tide are.
 

Quote:Using the duration of the last three completed Crisis Eras, the Great Depression/WWII  Crisis (Crisis of 1940) lasted at most 16 years in America, if longer elsewhere in countries that endured great physical destruction in the war or had revolutionary changes soon afterward; Bloody Kansas and the American Civil War (Crisis of 1860) lasted six years; the Revolutionary and Constitutional Crisis (from the Boston Massacre to the ratification of the Constitution) lasted long enough for children born at its start to become fully adult.

Not quite. I generally date the ACW 4T starting around 1850 and ending in 1865 (or 15 years), GD/WW2 from 1930 (for simplicity) to 1945 (or 15 years), the Revolutionary Crisis lasted from around 1763 to 1789 or 26 years but that was on a longer pre-industrial saeculum and thus irrelevant now.

In those two previous cases those born at the start of the 4T were not even close to being the youngest adults. In general the new generation starts being born a few years before the turning turns, and a certain set of cohorts are "cuspy".

But at this stage we are discussing history itself and theory as well as the generational effects upon personalities.

Quote:You basically said what I had to say about the cut-off between generations. War is nasty; it is best that leaders not see war as their glory. The Civil War started before Lincoln was inaugurated, and FDR didn't want the war that he got. Glory-seekers are horrible leaders in war.

I did...but we're long past the end of WW2, a whole saeculum past. The lagging indicators from then are all ironed out already. I do agree that glory seekers make horrible leaders during a war. Which makes me confident should there be a war Trump would be a near perfect president during it. If he wanted glory he could build yet an other tower and dip it in gold, or make an even better reality Tee-Vee show. Believe what you want about Daddy but I know it isn't glory he was seeking in running for President. Having been to the White House myself before the place is pretty much a dump (I mean it is a very very old house after all) in comparison to his three storey penthouse in Manhattan, and he certainly didn't run for office for the 400K. He wipes his ass with 400K.

Quote:It may take longer to resolve a Crisis without a war. War forces a national focus as diplomacy and social reforms do not.

Or perhaps there is no real solution to the crisis we now face--the break down of the old order and the rise of the new one. I have often compared the current 4T to the Glorious Revolution for a reason. Neither had a major war (yet), have been mostly internally focused, and based on moderate reforms that give rise to a 2T that will result in a later 4T that completely over turns the old order. After all the last monarch of Britain to exercise Royal Veto was Queen Anne.

Quote:  I can think of some resolutions of this Crisis, one of which is that Donald Trump and the GOP successfully transform America into a pure plutocracy with no welfare, in which the rich are exempt from responsibilities, and all Americans learn that their fate is responsibility above all else to make the filthy rich even filthier rich.

The welfare state is doomed Trump or no-Trump. Socialism stops working when you run out of other people's money. Furthermore plutocrats really really love highly regulated economic orders so if you want a plutocracy then you should be voting for the Dimocrats. After all they are the low wage, import cheap labor from foreign countries to screw the black man, and the slavery party. They really haven't changed that much since the days of Jefferson Davis, never mind George Wallace.

Do not be fooled, Trump is at most a mild reformer. As I said I see him as a Gorbachev like figure who will preside over a controlled dismantling of the American Empire. Anything else begs for national annihilation. I don't know about you, but I'm not into suicide.

Take your sci-fi talk elsewhere.

Quote:The trend toward political conservatism began among late-wave Boomers and  got really-well marked with cohorts born in 1961. Most of the liberals born in 1961 were from ethnic or religious minorities that largely voted Democratic or were from unionized households.

Not quite true. Most of the so-called Red Boomers are actually "Big Government Liberals". It is just they want their big government ensuring that little Johnnie isn't touching himself in his bed room, Tyrone isn't smoking a blunt and Adam and Steve can't get married. That form of conservatism drew its last breath in 2004 in the last election of the late 3T. It isn't going to come back, and it isn't relevant now except for perhaps clueless Blue Boomers who never understood that they were the opposite side of the same coin (and still don't).

Since the birth of the Tea Party and other such movements conservatism has been taking a more libertarian and conservatarian aspect of X, which respects Reagan in the sense that "at least the fucking 70s are over now".

Quote:Of course "Zed" chronicles already exist. But so far their journalism is high-school journalism. It will shortly be college journalism.

Not quite. High School and college publications are still publications. But that is a minority of the cultural output that they are already putting out. Social media has had a leveling effect and reduced entry cost to zero (which is why CNN, MSNBC and the Alphabet Networks are losing their shit over it).

Quote:It will be a while before they are employed as journalists who get bylines, do investigative or battlefield reporting, etc

What century are you living in? Most journalists who work for the legacy media don't do that now. Ever notice that the news of the day usually consists of the President's tweets? And when not that, it is unnamed sources on Capitol Hill or the White House (which means officals leaking).

Quote:Facebook and YouTube are mostly non-professional. They could be practice for the real thing.

Prior to the Radio Era most journalism was non-professional. It is not practice for the real thing. One either is reporting the relevant information of the day (even if it is for Bobby Lee High School) or they are not. Reduction of entry costs to journalism will result in the de-professionalization of journalism.

Quote:To be successful in any profession or art still takes about 10K hours of dedicated effort to polish one's craft, as says Malcolm Gladwell (who explains much well). That is the difference between the amateur ande either the success or failure in all but a few cases.

In that case your standard youtube vlogger will have that if they post three times a week in 2 years. Video editing is somewhat labor intensive.

Quote:Other sports include tennis, gymnastics, and golf, all of which are excellent forums for asserting the personalities of the athletes down to their eccentricities.  

As usual, you miss the point. Actors, Singers and Sports figures are not indicative of the generation at large. The notion that they are is something Boomers seem to believe but has no basis in reality. Much like the Boomer notion that these persons should serve as "role models" for children. That isn't their job. Children do need role models, they come with two unless death or family court deprives them of one.

Quote:A post-Crisis era can be an era of harsh repression and poverty if the leadership is pathological (as under Commie regimes in central and Balkan Europe or in China.  Communities that might have had easy connections before WWII (like Weimar and Bayreuth) could be separated by an internal border within a nation, with hostile political and economic systems on other sides.

This said, Germans (at least outside the Soviet zone and DDR), Italians, and Japanese had real Highs analogous in economics, politics, and mass culture to those in the USA, Britain, and France -- and far nicer 'Highs' than did such nominal winners as Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, where Commies established stultified cultures, overpowering propaganda, and an economic order obsolete from its inception.

If Britain had a post WW2 "High" it didn't come until long after the war (if at all). Britain, France and Western Germany were simply put exhausted. Italy was destroyed and rationing there remained until the 1960s (and just about everyone was poor there). In western Europe the one country that did have a "High" in the 1950s was Spain. Franco being an avowed anti-communist got a lot of aid from the US during then which he plowed into industrialization, infrastructure and better housing for the population. Oh and Franco was supposed to be a fascist or something. (Really he was a Spanish Nationalist but according to the lefties these days anyone slightly to the Right of Mao is Hitler.)

Eastern Europe and the USSR especially did not have a high at all. With perhaps the exception of the Poles and Czechs (they are Catholic and Westward looking to start with) the orthodox states, including Greece started in on their 3T (which is why communism fell there half a saeculum later in their 4T).

Just because the US, UK and Germany had a 4T war in the 1940s doesn't mean that the USSR did. The Soviet "High" I usually date from 1922-1942. Oh and that "high" featured repression in spades. Stalin was a Nomad and had a background as a brigand he dealt with enemies and persons assumed to be enemies harshly.

Quote:The highest offices of the land are usually staffed with people at or just past retirement age. Experience matters greatly in democratic politics, and very rarely do young adults rise so rapidly in the political system as did Grant, T. Roosevelt, Kennedy, Clinton, or Obama. I still predict that Trump will be a failure as President and be one-and-out... and it is quite possible that his successor will be a late-wave Boomer who becomes the next analogue for Lincoln or FDR.

That isn't why politics is a lagging indicator. Culture is changed before politics changes. Grant was famous as a general and a mediocre president. T. Roosevelt had the presidency thrust on him by an assassin's bullet (he was picked for VP to keep him out of NY politics, he was not well liked in Albany, not because he was the best the GOP could come up with). Kennedy's father and his father's connections essentially bought him the presidency. Clinton was a mediocre president, he's only remembered fondly because of his "Bubba Bill" persona but really the man is a crook. Obama managed to win an election against an old man in he wrong party for the wrong year and win re-election against a man who couldn't make up his mind and in general acted too weird to be trusted with the Presidency.

I doubt that the Boomers have someone who lacks gray hair that can take on the GC role as Trump already fits the bill. You just don't want that to be true so you're ignoring the evidence of your lying eyes.

Quote:The end of the Crisis, Howe and Strauss tell us, typically comes when the Idealist generation fades out of political life either cast out due to incompetence or retired due to mass aging, fading relevance, and debility.  (As far as I am concerned, the end of Boomer dominance in executive and bureaucratic elites cannot happen fast enough. They are simply awful!)

Well Boomers in Congress lost the majority during the Obama Administration and have been completely replaced on the state level except for a few lingering Governors. Mass aging is taking its toll but it is slow. After the ACW the compromisers were thrown out on their ears as they had been discredited.

Quote:62 is either middle-aged or old  depending upon personal habits.

If average life expectancy is 80 years then 40 is middle aged. The key feature of being middle aged is that it happens in the middle of the life cycle. A 62 year old is old. It doesn't matter if he smokes 3 packs a day and eats Wendy's triple baconators every day for lunch washed down with 3 gallons of coke or is a non-smoking vegetarian who runs marathons for fun. The only difference between the two is that the smoker will waste less resources being old.

Quote:I may have to 'borrow' someone's kid so that I can make an intelligent purchase  of a smartphone soon.

No you don't. You need to find an Xer who can tolerate you for more than five seconds. Kids don't know shit about smartphones except how to play angry birds on them. Xers on the other hand had to study computing from the ground up and know good value for money. Otherwise you might as well buy an Ishit since that is what the kid will recommend.

Quote:Ignoring the Commonwealth

So you're saying you don't know what the Commonwealth of Nations is....got it.

Quote: and the questionable claim on a sector of Antarctica, it is possible that by now even Norway has more non-metropolitan territory by area than does the UK. Of course, Spitsbergen has little population. I heard talk at the time that the British Empire effectively came to an end with the retrocession of Hong Kong to China.

Not really. The UK retains dominion over minor island colonies and overseas dependencies (usually of places too small and too remote to be of any importance and with too small a population to afford a native government). Norway does have some rather large non-metropolitan island in the Arctic Ocean but they are uninhabited and uninhabitable so completely irrelevant.

The bulk of the Empire was gone by 1997 with the Hong Kong transfer.

Quote:"Red" of course has also meant "Communist"... but you know that anyway.

It has but historically atlases and the like prefered to use pink for Russia. I think it has something to do with the British Army using red coats on their uniforms in pre-smokeless powder times. That selection was fairly uncommon as it was considered to be flashy.

Quote:Teaching, even if it is as a substitute. I do real teaching. I can make some interesting contribution when the opportunity arises.
 

I had substitute teachers in school. They rarely if ever taught anything except for one year when I was in 7th grade and the regular teacher had a nervous breakdown at the beginning of the year and his substitute really became the regular teacher. She "subbed" for him for three years according to rumor.

Quote:Materialism may be how the universe works down to the level of the subatomic particle, but attempting to explain natural phenomena an a gross scale is impossible (Uncertainty Principle and other limits -- too many variables for too few equations, and the practical impossibility of measuring the phenomena without altering them).

I think your understanding of quantum mechanics is on par with Eric's. Meaning you don't know what you're talking about and would be better served by shutting up now.

Materialism maintains that the real world exists independently of human perception. IE a tree falling in the woods with no one around does make a sound (assuming of course this tree is in a place with some sort of atmosphere though I suppose water or similar liquid could work too).

Quote:Mencken was certainly right about democracy and demagogues.

He was right about idealism too. I suggest checking out his brainy quote page.