(01-18-2020, 07:04 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(01-18-2020, 01:29 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: Rags made an interesting comment. What if this 4T turns out to be a dud?
What it is starting to look like to me in terms of turnings:
1. Boom Awakening.
2. Culture Wars 3T
3. Dud Crisis.
4. Weak 1T, characterized by a peace of exhaustion. This may seem almost a blank turning.
I am seeing a blank crisis. Nukes stop international crisis wars. People are looking to the legislature for change, not a revolution or civil war. Again, no crisis war to transform internally. A split idealistic generation makes change impossible. The see saw blocked consensus as whenever the country started to drive in one direction, the other side was put in power to keep the more extreme agendas of both the radical left and right in check.
This Crisis Era will be dissimilar to the American Revolution in that we have no colonial overlord against which to rebel after having largely been left to take care of themselves, even if Donald Trump almost makes George III look humane and sane by contrast. (What a dubious achievement!). It will be different from the Civil War in that we do not have regions separating on economic realities that have incompatible ideas of what constitutes freedom. Freedom to own slaves and freedom from slavery are incompatible. If one looks at international enemies capable and likely to maul America as enemies of every concept of freedom and democracy... then Germany, Italy, and Japan are non-threats because those countries now have firmer commitments to liberal democracy than America now has.
Nobody wants to unleash the nukes. Maybe some sick society whose leadership sees everything falling apart and no fate other than the noose of the victors upon defeat might choose to loose the fateful lightning; such leaders know that they are doomed, so they might be satisfied to take the "Great Satan" down with them. One hopes that there would be some pragmatic senior officers who would thwart such. Climatic disasters that kill multiple hundreds of people? More likely in the next Crisis Era, the Crisis of 2100 when much of the world's prime farmland is inundated and food production drops severely with famine that will make the Black Death seem like revelry by contrast.
Quote:The upcoming period is something else. The old idealists are aging out of power. The period of split idealists will end as the boomers age out of power. I don’t believe you can leave problems unsolved indefinitely. The refusal to look at real problems which has been a common theme during the unraveling and dead crisis looks like it is coming to an end. Between the ‘OK boomer’ meme, two bad conservative presidents lying to the people and impeachment, the old conservative memes seem discredited. If we went from a progressive time from FDR through LBJ, and a conservative time from Nixon through Trump, I wouldn’t be shocked by the beginnings of a new progressive time coming.
Some big problems will be met, and some will not. Maybe we have major changes to our economic reality through major reforms -- but we end up getting something very wrong. Do we sacrifice consumer choice for a planned economy (to the benefit of plutocrats)? What we now have is awful -- and although rot usually has strident defenders the rot creates more problems than the special privileges that go to 'the right people' with the rot. I see the end of the era in which people can make themselves happier just by making, buying, and having more stuff.
Quote:This leaves me most confused about the turning immediately approaching. Will it be transformative, changing the culture, making changes, resembling a weak crises during the Industrial Age or the 60s awakening? Will the generations line up 1T, making us tempted to step on conservative thought patterns of the previous crisis, much as McCarthy tried to step on Communism in the last 1T, or McCarthy got stepped on in turn. Will it be a time of building of new infrastructure, a common trend of first turnings, with renewable energy and bridges being a big area of focus.
We have yet to figure how life will operate when ease is the norm. The age of shortages has nearly morphed into an age of excess. We may find ourselves in the unlikely position of making a transition from capitalism to Marx' dream of Communism without having gone through Marxist "Socialism". It may be the most advanced of capitalist societies, the ones that can fulfill the psychic needs of the most people, that make such a transition to Marx's "communist" dream.
Scarcity in a plutocratic society such as contemporary America (and make no mistake; this is a plutocracy) may simply be a tool of command and control. What happens if we find ourselves no longer needing command-and-control to compel people to work harder and longer for less? Maybe we will rediscover the merits of small business as more sustainable than monopoly with an oppressive bureaucracy. Maybe more of us will have to consider operating food carts and repair shops. Peonage on behalf of corporate overlords is far worse.
Quote:The focus on 1T stepping on conservative ideas while building infrastructure is possible.
The optimal solution for what now ails us is that conservatism that depends upon regional and ethnic divides, sectarian conflicts, irrationality of superstition and hurt feelings, and rampant nationalism disintegrates. I expect a new conservatism to form to address the faults in what we have in the wake of a Crisis that ends with a freeze of the results. I see the Tea Party - Trump agenda as a non-solution that will resolve nothing. We are past the stage of one side completely quashing the values of the other side as did the Nationalists of the Spanish Civil War (I once thought that a possibility for America).
Quote:If it is to be a new progressive time, will it have the transformational feel of the 1960s awakening? Will the OK boomer meme overflow into voting a lot of the progressive agenda in?
We go through a conformist, if in some ways progressive time like the late 1940's and the 1950's first. Pay-as-you-go supplants borrow-and-hope. Bankers will be more guardians of other people's money than the shysters that they often were in the early part of the Double-Zero decade, when bankers sold over-priced houses to borrowers who could have never paid off the loan, with the banker foreclosing upon an appreciated property for huge profit. Such behavior will be unthinkable because it will be criminal in fact as in ethics. I expect regional divides between "winner" cities (like Boston) and "loser" cities (like Baltimore) to smooth out. A dump like Flint might be adequate for telecommuting so long as one can tolerate the nasty climate and the paucity of attractions; it will obviously be far cheaper a place in which to live, and more friendly to a family with small children if such is the desire of a young worker, than high-cost San Francisco.
Quote:I do not see what is coming as being weak and reflecting exhaustion. Not entirely.
Boomer quarrels will become irrelevant quibbles about which few people care except among elderly people who never get the message that their stilettos-out rhetoric has gone completely out of vogue -- like leisure suits.
Quote:Thus I see perhaps a progressive getting elected in 2020, a weak crisis resulting, and shifting to something like a high. I’m not quite sure.
...maybe with huge political and economic reforms that the Hard Right suppressed since the early 1980's. Think of the latter stages of the Crisis of 1780 -- the founding of new political norms.
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.