COVID-19 is the climax to this 4T

[pbrower2a]

(04-12-2020, 12:32 PM)Generational Wrote:

(03-22-2020, 12:43 PM)Drakus79 Wrote: I decided to check back here, since it seems pretty obvious that this pandemic crisis is the climax of this 4T and I'm surprised there hasn't been a thread on this already (although I may have missed it).  Nevertheless, here are my thoughts.

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Hi Drakus et al.,
Thanks for opening this thread which I thought was also "obvious" but will be missed by most people. Even ardent followers of the generational theory will by now be so tired and frustrated by our current 4t that they miss the climax while it stares them in the face. Regarding the intensity - I think there is a general trend towards less intense and deadly 4ts. As a percentage of population loss from the Wars of the Roses to WW2 and now COVID - it's less and less, thanks Goodness! I am impressed by Strauss/Howe foresight when they state that "governments will decide winners and losers and no-one has a choice". This applies to who's job will be shut down right now vs. who still makes money. There are breadlines of 4+ miles in Las Vegas right now (albeit in cars to maintain social distancing and even the financially dead of our 4t are much better off than those of the Great Depression - not to minimize anyone's suffering which is VERY real).

America's twelve deadliest wars:

1
American Civil War
1861–65
750,000 (est.)(U.S./Confederate)[86]
520
31,443,000
2.385% (1860)
2
World War II
1941–45
405,399
297
133,402,000
0.307% (1940)
3
World War I
1917–18
116,516
279
103,268,000
0.110% (1920)
4
Vietnam War
1961–75
58,209
11
179,323,175
0.032% (1970)
5
Korean War
1950–53
54,246
45
151,325,000
0.036% (1950)
6
American Revolutionary War
1775–83
25,000
11
2,500,000
1.00% (1780)

(CORVID-19 deaths just reached 20,000 as a comparison)

7
War of 1812
1812–15
15,000
15
8,000,000
0.207% (1810)
8
Mexican–American War
1846–48
13,283
29
21,406,000
0.057% (1850)
9
Iraq War
2003–11
4,576
2
294,043,000
0.002% (2010)
10
Philippine–American War
1899–1902
4,196
3.8
72,129,001
0.006% (1900)
11
Spanish–American War
1898
2,246
8.9
62,022,250
0.004% (1890)
12
War in Afghanistan
2001–present
2,216
0.36
294,043,000
0.001% (2010)

One of those, the Philippine war, is largely forgotten -- but it was nasty. The raw number of American deaths from COVID-19 now exceeds those of all but six American wars, and it seems on the brink of surpassing the deaths of the American Revolutionary War. 

But not so fast: the real measure of the deadliness of war to a nation is the percentage of people killed. The numbers of American military deaths in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War (both sides), and even the Second World War involve a nation with far fewer people. 


1
American Civil War
1861–65
750,000 (est.)(U.S./Confederate)[86]
520
31,443,000
2.385% (1860)
6
American Revolutionary War
1775–83
25,000
11
2,500,000
1.00% (1780)
2
World War II
1941–45
405,399
297
133,402,000
0.307% (1940)
7
War of 1812
1812–15
15,000
15
8,000,000
0.207% (1810)
3
World War I
1917–18
116,516
279
103,268,000
0.110% (1920)

The death rate as a share of the population is highest for the three wars that Howe and Strauss suggest as Crisis wars. The War of 1812 may not have been a Crisis War for the United States, but it was for America's enemy of the time (Britain under the still-tyrannical George III) World War I may have been a short war for America, but it had a high death rate per day... and it was beginning to take on Crisis characteristics in some of the participants. The War of 1812 and the First World War are spill-overs from the Crises of other countries. 

2000 deaths per day? Only the Civil War surpasses that with respect to impact per capita. I do not expect that number to fall soon.  If you were looking forward to a Crisis to bring pervasive change to your life, then here it is. The only good thing about it is that it isn't as lethal as thermonuclear war, which is about like saying that dying of a stroke is better than being ripped to pieces by feral dogs. 

Quote:The one country I look to as a harbinger is Russia. The October Revolution 1917 foreshadowed the trend to social-democrat / socialist policies like the New Deal 16 years later across the globe. It also foreshadowed the rise of extreme autocratic, aggressive and anti-human regimes across the globe in the 1930s. The Red Mass Terror was a glimpse to come for Jews, Chinese, Ethiopians and many more. The National Socialist regime in Germany became the epitome of this trend. 

Unless Donald Trump is re-elected and Democrats lose the House, and the GOP finds its majorities an excuse to entrench power permanently in an authoritarian order in which complicity with the new and sordid system gives one a better chance in life than competence and skill, Russia is not a political portent for America. To be sure, the Bolshevik Revolution was a harbinger of other political changes, beginning with Mussolini's Fascist  regime that slowly adopted the totalitarianism while supporting plutocracy instead of socialism. It is hardly surprising that most of the shaky democracies that formed in the wake of WWI (including, most catastrophically Weimar Germany) eventually became authoritarian right-wing regimes; even the well established French Republic came close to going fascist in 1934. Let's not forget one of the vilest of fascistic movements, the 1915 KKK, which shared much the same objects of hatred as the Nazis did even before Mussolini adopted the fasces as a symbol of his inhuman cause. At times the 1915 was bigger than the Nazi Party in Germany. 

Fascist movements ranged from conservative-traditionalist causes (let us say the comparatively gentle ones of Dollfuss/Schuschnigg in Austria, Metaxas in Greece, Pilsudski in Poland, and Salazar in Portugal) to the full-blown genocidal causes of the Nazi Party, the Hungarian Arrow Cross, and the Ustase of Croatia. Does anyone want to guess what the Klan would have done in America had it achieved Nazi-like power?  

Weak institutions invite demagogues to tell people exactly what they want to hear, and once those demagogues take power they reward supporters and punish opponents. Generally incompetent to achieve their contradictory promises they quickly establish near-absolute power for themselves and suppress all dissent. Maybe we Americans have learned fast enough about a President who shows despotic tendencies to weaken his power before he could achieve his sick dream. It may be too early to predict, but a President who has proved inept as much may be defeated, along with enough of his political enablers; in the aftermath Americans will get a quick resolution of the Crisis with a swift transition to a new political and economic paradigm. The ethos that holds that the common man exists solely to enrich and pamper those already super-rich, which came in on little cat feet  with Reagan and has become a charging tiger under Trump.  

A well-placed gunshot can take a tiger down. If impeachment did not remove Trump, then an economic meltdown and a bungled response to COVID-19 together do. 

So what will we get? Most likely we will have a tendency to eschew debt in favor of pay-as-you-go, to decentralize the economic system to foster small business, and much more respect for the well-honed intellect as a solution. The banking system will become more dependent upon personal savings for the funds for loans. The celebrity culture will be gone, and anyone who makes good money in mass media will do so without resorting to such bilge as fart jokes. We already see people who will be models of behavior across ethnic divides -- our model minorities. In the 1940's and 1950's that meant the Jews. Will it be (East) Asian-Americans, (South) Asian-Americans, Arab-Americans, middle-class blacks, middle-class Hispanics... or Jews again? Educational standards will be high again -- even in the Mountain and Deep South.           
 

Quote:In our present cycle Putin came to power around 2000, again 15ish years before we see leaders from the traditionalist, nationalist and populist spectrum arise to power across the globe. Once again, no Western country will become a quasi-dictatorship, but sooner or later they all become traditionalist, populist and nationalist. Some sooner, some later. This is indeed the end of globalism. I have noticed a lot of underlying trends confirming this that the media ignores whether on purpose or not. Conservative-Christian families still have 3.5 children per family and the fall in the birthrate is mostly due to liberal families. Political attitudes are largely genetic so liberal globalist elitist attitudes fall out of the gene pool. If you rank all US counties by birth rate top to bottom then Trump one all the upper ones and Hillary all the lower ones. The future is traditionalist, populist and nationalist.

Hungary has come to approach a full-blown dictatorship, and Brazil is on the brink. Venezuela has a left-wing dictatorship. Populism is a disaster unless humanist first; nationalism has validity in bringing independence where a country is under another country's thumb. Traditionalism is fine as a default when radical reforms fail... so long as part of the tradition is democratic norms. Churchill was no less a traditionalist than was Franco, but we know which one stood for old decencies and which one stood for romantic nostalgia for a hierarchical order.  

Quote:Finally, the three defining secular movements in the last Turnings are: fascism, socialism and classical liberalism. They dominated societies in the last 200 years. Everyone vying for power had to position himself between those three. The last 4t required a total war (WW2) to defeat fascism. In the last 3t Socialism collapsed more by itself following a lengthy cold war. Currently, it's liberalism's turn to die and it just requires a Cultural War to accomplish this. Less intensity each time. After this, it's a brave new world of traditionalism, populism and nationalism waiting for us and generations to come.

Nobody admits to being a fascist. Calling an authoritarian rightist a fascist is like calling a woman who sleeps with anything that moves a "slut". She will take offense at the word even if it fits her character. I look at a racist, violent organization that seeks to restore an economic hierarchy of either the post-Civil-War "restoration" in the South or its last hurrah in Jim Crow practice (surely you know what group) and see almost everything about it characteristic of fascist causes elsewhere, past and present. But these people will tell you that they are Americans and not fascists. Those sorts of people figure out quickly (and wrongly) that I am Jewish and deserve to be beaten, robbed, and killed. My values hold that nobody deserves to be beaten, robbed, and killed.   

Socialism seems to mean whatever one wants it to mean, whether it means a regimented but nominally-egalitarian order (think of a military barracks that destroys individuality, and you have the typical Communist order), a muted form of Marxism-Leninism ("reformed" Commies such as the German PDS, or "party of democratic socialism" that often showed its origins in the old East German SED (the commie-dominated "Socialist Unity Party"), social democrats, anarcho-syndicalists, and parties that have unionized blue-collar workers as mass support in elections. Even Hitler's extreme-right party that one easily describes as a workers' nightmare called itself the "National Socialist German Workers' Party". Socialism is a political cuss word in America almost as egregious as fascism and communism.          

Classical liberalism has become a cover for pure plutocracy; a few people get to live like sultans, and most of the rest are obliged to endure grinding poverty yet praise its cruelty as benefice. Modern technologies, including those that allow a high level of productivity, alone make it obsolete. 

I see another force of the last few decades: religious fundamentalism. Before one ascribes this strictly to Islam, one need remember that America has plenty of people would like to transform America into a Christian version of Iran.  Women would of course submit to men, abortion would be outlawed; schools would promote young-earth creationism as historical and scientific truth; religious authorities would wax rich while getting away with incredible corruption. (Iran is one of the most corrupt societies on Earth, the regime-connected ayatollahs getting rich by confiscating property of dissidents who want to leave Iran).