The US and Western Europe are not on the same timeline

[Remy Renault]

(03-06-2021, 03:24 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(03-05-2021, 08:00 AM)Remy Renault Wrote: Personally, I think the 80 year cycle only applies to the US and that the Western Europe cycle is roughly 150 years, with the Continent smack dab in the middle of a cycle as we speak. The US will have its 4T, but I'd argue France, Germany et al. are in fact transitioning from a 2T to a 3T within a much longer saeculum. Look at the major sign posts of European history (Treaty of Westphalia, French Revolution/Napoelon, then the World Wars). Sure, things hit the fan circa 1870 in Europe but it was relatively subdued compared to the crisis eras that bookended it. You could argue Europe had a drawn out 1T that lasted into the 1980s and centred around the theme of postwar prosperity. This was then followed by a 2T preoccupied with the concept of multiculturalism and its effect on "European identity". This of course reached a fever pitch with the refugee crisis. The question is how will Covid be politically leveraged in Continental Europe in the near future. It's possible the far right will ultimately take advantage of the continent's mental exhaustion resulting from Covid and sweep to power with Europeans finding themselves in a boiling frog scenario that will spiral out of control during their next drawn out crisis era towards the end of the 21st century. Only time will tell.

A weaker crisis is safely within the patterns established by S&H. That's what the 1860s were in Europe. Even in America S&H shortened it to 5 years, when it could be conceived as 15 or more encompassing the pre-civil war era of the 1850s. Europe certainly entered our current 4T at the same time as the USA, with the worldwide great recession followed by the Arab Spring and resultant refugee crisis, and then the resultant xenophobia and retreat from democracy just like in the USA, and now covid has hit Europe as hard as the USA. This may turn out to be a weaker and milder 4T like the 1860s; the double rhythm applies. I have no indication of where Europe is going politically in the aftermath of covid. Since Europeans are more intelligent politically and socially/healthwise than Americans, the American-style right-wing resistance to covid measures has not really appeared, although the same tendency to relax controls too soon has happened.

Well it could be that within the European context every other 4T is relatively mild whereas in the US every 4T is just as tumultuous as the previous one. The early 18th century and the events that occurred circa 1870 were relatively tame compared to on one side the World Wars and on the other the French Revolution followed by the Napoleonic Wars. But then Europe essentially had one long 4T that extended from 1914 up to the late 1940s. Every single war is a crisis war for at least one of the parties involved.