(08-18-2018, 08:01 PM)justpassingthrough Wrote: I haven't thought about S&H much for a while, but had a few random thoughts after some time away from it. I've had doubts about various aspects of their theories, especially the more specific details, but I think the more you zoom out, the more credibility it has. It doesn't fit exactly under any category, so I chose General. With that in mind, this is how I see things right now:
As an Australian I can provide my own perspective on what has been happening in the United States and put it into a global context. What has been happening in the United States has been happening through the Western World especially in Europe. To me it was obvious that the GFC in 2008 triggered the Fourth Turning and we are about half away through it now.
I have read a fair bit of European history during the Last Fourth Turning, America right now reminds me of the Weimar Republic in the early 1930's. Complete with left and right wing extremists fighting each other on the streets. Victor Davis Hanson terms it "Weimar America", if the United States now is like Weimar Germany before the Great Depression. The prospect what will happen once the next economic downturn comes scares me quite a lot.
Donald Trump's rhetoric reminds me a lot of Hitler, Mussolini or Franco in the 1930's, Victor Davis Hanson made this comparsion as well.
