12-11-2018, 06:02 PM
(12-09-2018, 05:47 PM)Mikebert Wrote: I am increasingly of the opinion that the S&H theory is probably wrong. 27 years ago they wrote in Generations about the test of the theory. They said that the next few years or a decade would tell little, but in thirty years we should know. In the time I have been at one of the T4T sites several dates for a 4T start have been floated, 2001, 2005, 2008, and I will now add 2016. I spent a long time identifying a handful of markers for progress though the cycle. Based on these markers I eliminated 2001 as a candidate in 2012, when Obama won a second term.
...and I am tempted to believe that either
(1) we are approaching the definitive end of a Crisis Era, with the response to the despotic tendencies of Donald Trump forcing such;
(2) a lengthening of the saeculum due to the increased length of human lifespans
(3) the weakening of the basis of the generational cycle because we typically have four active adult generations at once instead of three
If I am to make any analogue to a leading figure in American history to Donald Trump, then it is George III, who tried to micromanage American politics when such was unnecessary or even counterproductive. Donald Trump is the most intellectually-unfit person to be President since at least Andrew Johnson. He tries to exercise powers that the Constitution denies him, and he acts with a combination of cruelty, corruption, and incompetence that most people here would never do.
The late William F. Buckley said that he would rather be governed by a similar number of people picked at random from the New Haven telephone book than a similar number of Yale faculty... well, here is someone picked at random from the Social Register.
Quote:One of the things that happens in a social moment turning is a critical election that signals a shift towards on or another party. In 2001 there was an opportunity to establish Republican ascendency for the next generation. Initial it looked like this was happening. Republicans passed a tax cut, started a war and won the 2002 election (which is unusual). They then did the same thing again, passing another tax cut, starting another war and winning the 2004 election. They were riding high, and then they gave all their gains back in 2006 and 2008. After Obamas victory in 2012 that ended any chance for Bush's victory in 2000 to have started anything.
Now it was Democrats turn. After winning big in 2006 and 2008, Democratic were crushed in 2010 losing the House. They won the 2012 election but then lost the Senate in 2014. Finally, they lost in 2016 against an inferior candidate. Just as the final nail in the coffin for a 4T start under Bush came with Obama's reelection, the same will be true for Democrats if Trump wins in 2020.
This pushes the next most likely 4T start to 2016, 32 years after the 3T start in 1984. This essentially invalidates the theory.
Consider, it has been ten years since 2008 and 17 years past 2001. In all three American 4Ts it was crystal-clear than there had been huge, radical changes 10 (and especially 17) years into the 4T. This alone makes anything other than a 2016 start sketchy, and that date invalidates the theory by the too-long 3T.
If the election of Donald Trump constitutes the beginning of the end, then (1) is true. Political tendencies that began in the Third Turning and that powerful people tried to implement even as they proved rotten can implode, compelling Americans to find a new consensus. That consensus will imply the complete repudiation of Reaganomics, neoconservatism, the Tea Party, and above all, Donald Trump. For (1) to be true we will need to choose far better and stick with genuine progress instead of letting the Perfect be the enemy of the good.
If (2), we could be on course for a protracted nightmare until the Boom generation is basically knocked out. Should elite Boomers follow the same pattern of remaining mentally and physically active past retirement age as did GIs and the Silent, then we could have the Trump agenda being entrenched until some calamity (an apocalyptic war or a depression as severe as that of the 1930s) forces change or solidifies the right-wing dream of a society in which religious fundamentalism sets the moral agenda and a profits-first economy transforms most people into near-serfs. Few of us want such an America... but we can still have a 1T as sanctimonious but soulless, and as mind-numbing as Spain under Francisco Franco. America might be a nice place to visit on a holiday for cheap ski vacations, gambling junkets, and beach parties much more expensive in places in which people aren't so overworked and underpaid -- but the sort of country that smart people want to get out of.
If (3), then historical patterns will show that where people commonly live into their nineties and have their cultural values set in stone in their teens, which applies to the GI Generation and the Silent, and that Boomers are beginning to show, then a certain tendency in history in which a generational void (practically no Idealist adults in a High, similarly few Reactive adults in an Awakening Era, precious few Civic adults in an Unraveling, and much the same number of Adaptive adults in a Crisis. We just had Bernie Sanders running for President in 2016 and have much talk of Joe Biden doing so in 2022 -- and we are about to have Nancy Pelosi as the second-most powerful person in American politics in a month.
Maybe Donald Trump wants to invade Cuba or Venezuela in a war for his glory and gain -- but Nancy Pelosi can stop him.
Always examine the assumptions in a theory that predicts history. The assumptions that fit the Crisis of 1940 do not quite fit the reality of the countdown to 2020. even if the usual 80 years has nearly passed. I saw the early and middle Double-Zero decade as an analogue to the Roaring Twenties complete with the bad behavior, the dumbed-down culture, and the Devil-take-the-hindmost politics and economics. I saw the Crash of 2008 as an analogue to that of 1929, and I saw the equivalent of the twelve years of harding, Coolidge, and Hoover telescoped into eight years of Dubya. Sure, Obama is not quite the new FDR -- but Trump is about as far from being another FDR as any President could be.
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.