08-01-2020, 01:54 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-01-2020, 01:56 PM by Eric the Green.)
(07-30-2020, 06:59 PM)RadianMay Wrote: After reading parts of chapter 10 of TFT, I’ve become more sceptical of the assumption that 4T really started in 2008. S&H writes that the initial catalyst causes increase of demand of institutions, and these new institutions are created in response to the catalyst. By the time the climax comes around, these new institutions are put to the test. This implies these institutions are already mostly intact by the time the climax rolls around.
If the interpretation that 2008 economic crisis is the catalyst and 2020 pandemic is the climax, I just don’t see how new institutions and “civic order” were created after 2008, and how they are put the test right now. From what I see, we seem to be scrambling to create new institutions right now, as well as creating a somewhat new “post Covid” civic order, instead of putting our already new civic order to the test.
It really seems that the post 2008 response was more 3T than 4T.
We are in the cold civil war turning. My theory is that the "civil war anomaly" the authors created by deleting a generation was not correct. I do think there may have been hybrid generations. But the civil war turning I propose did not start in 1860, but around 1850, and our saeculum (which Chas Donald a former poster here called "dyonesian" like ours) is in a double rhythm with the civil war saeculum. So the 1850s were a "phony 4th" or an "indian autumn" in which solutions were put off because the country was divided and stalemated. That has been our situation in the 2010s too. No institutional solutions can be implemented if the country is divided. We are in a 4T, but it is not like the last one where institutions shifted soon after the 4T began. The 4T was not an internal kind, but focused more on external enemies. Ours is a civil war saeculum where our own lifestyle and politics are the issue. The division cannot be healed, in my opinion. There is NO hope that we can progress simply by being more civil with each other. Real issues must be confronted and resistance broken. One side must win, and it must be the blue or progressive side, and no institutions will be created or solutions implemented until the blue side wins.
The Donald Trump presidency, a crisis in itself, offers some hope that the red side will be discredited. But his cult is very steadfast and the Reaganomics dogma is tightly held by almost half of America. Half the registered voters in polls still think Trump handles the economy as well as Biden would. That means they think tax cuts and deregulation works. But trickle-down doesn't trickle. The greedy and ancient paradigm of self-reliance and individualism has to be defeated again so we can progress. I always predicted this to happen only in the 2020s, even though I predicted the 4T to start in 2008. Everything is right on schedule!