now that I think about it, we were quite the 4T nation for a while (very briefly)

[pbrower2a]

(09-24-2021, 03:40 PM)galaxy Wrote:

(09-24-2021, 10:30 AM)sbarrera Wrote: Now where I live in semi-rural Pennsylvania most of the folks are anti-maskers, and I am often the only one in a store who is wearing a mask, or in the small minority in a big box place like the WalMart (literally the only substantial retail outlet in my town). I suppose, in a way, this element is also 4T because they are united in their own version of *what must be done* - resist the tyranny of the Democrats, I think, is what they think they are doing, though I would say they are misguided.

It's not "in a way" 4T, it's perfectly 4T. The fundamental center of this Crisis Era, the Crisis underlying all others, is the Cold Civil Culture War, the result of the ideological Prophet generation, now unobstructed because no Artist generation currently has enough power to stop them, taking their ideologies and "values" to their maximum possible extreme, regardless of the cost. In this case, with the polarized Boomer generation, the Culture War generation, we end up with a Culture War that is now so extreme that it colors huge parts of everyone's daily lives and is in large part responsible for the other Crises we have experienced. If the nation had had a unified response to the pandemic, rather than a fractured one, I think we can all agree that the death toll would be lower, probably dramatically lower. Even going back to the 2008 financial crisis - if the nation had put the partisanship and culture wars aside, then the response probably could have been stronger and the recovery faster.

As the late great Rod Serling would put it, "Now, for your consideration". Who could better fit our time? Hitchcock, perhaps?

One generation after another ages into irrelevance, and all that remains of the Silent generation is some superannuated geezers who have gotten early starts in politics and had freakishly-long careers. Feinstein. Pelosi. Biden. McConnell. Those careers too will end, and when they do there will be no more Silent to replace them in high positions of power.

The first wave of the Boom Generation, including both the "Good-bye" babies of 1943 and "Welcome home" babies of 1946 (including three Presidents -- Clinton, Dubya, and Trump -- are themselves getting extremely old by the standards of electoral politics. In 2021, people born in 1951 turn 70, and people born in 1956 turn 65. Political careers almost never (Donald Trump is the most blatant exception) begin in the middle-to-late 70's. Maybe the Gingrich-Trump types will become irrelevant.  We are seeing some prominent deaths among Boomers, including the late Rush Limbaugh. Any new Boomers in political prominence will be selected largely by younger members of the electorate.

As for the financial crisis of 2008... Obama rescued entities that got strong enough fast enough to buy enough of the political process to ensure that he who owns the gold makes the rules. Obama could stave off some of the effects of a political system intent on establishing a pure plutocracy responsible only to those with wealth and bureaucratic power, much unlike the situation in the 1930's when the rich-and-powerful could not buy the political system as their analogues could in the 2010's. Obama put an end to the bleeding of the economy in an earlier stage of the meltdown beginning in 2007 than could FDR following the meltdown starting with the Crash of 1929, but at a cost of social justice.

We could still be in for another financial panic. We may have saved entities Too Big to Fail in 2008 and some that were Too Corrupt to Save as well. Some that were Too Big To Fail have become Too Corrupt to Save in the event of another financial meltdown... and those that got saved despite being Too Corrupt to (merit) Saving are, not surprisingly, still Too Corrupt to Save.

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(09-24-2021, 12:09 PM)Anthony Wrote: I can't see how we are going to evade a Second Civil War - and since the "Mexican War and Sectionalism" 3T was clearly shorter than it should have been while this 3T was not, the Second Civil War is going to be far deadlier than the first, if for no other reason that the civil war will be nationwide, instead of confined to the nation's southeast quadrant, the way the original one was.

I continue to doubt that the Cold Civil War will ever become hot. The original Civil War resulted from an extreme regional division over a single issue. It wasn't identity, it was a single issue - as the existence of border states and Southern Unionist areas like East Tennessee showed, "Southern" identity was not the driving force behind the secessions that began the war. Slaveowners wanted to keep their slaves, Northerners wanted to contain slavery, and eventually wanted to end slavery. It was a single specific issue, and the Transcendentals, like the Prophets they were, were ideological and ruthless about it. They pursued their "values" above all else, regardless of the cost, and they did so so forcefully that they distorted the saeculum itself, effectively skipping a turning and creating two hybrid generations. It was quite a cost.


Today, the situation is very different. The divide is identity, and it is totally unregional. The nation has split into two main identities, which I have previously described as the 3T Forever Identity* and the No It's A 4T Now Identity, but they actually agree on a lot more than they think they do. It's identity, not issues, that divide the nation. There is also very little regionalism, and what little regionalism does exist is still declining.** I'm from Missouri. I share my "identity" with people in huge numbers from all 50 states, and no state is truly "dominated" by one. To conflate it with partisanship a little bit (though it of course doesn't match perfectly), even if California votes 60-40 Democrat, it's still 40% Republican, still 4 out of 10 voters voting Republican. Trump received more votes in California than he did in Texas. There is no way for the two sides to sort themselves into two geographically distinct nations, let alone actually begin to function as two and fight each other. A hot Civil War now would be more like The Troubles than a true war. Actually, now that I think about it, does 1/6 mean that we're already there?

*the Tea Party was a 3T Policy Forever movement, Trumpism is a 3T Society And Culture Forever movement

**regionalism is declining generally, but there's also another interesting phenomenon, the "Southernization" of rural America, an increasing conflation of rural identity and Southern identity (and with it also 3T Forever identity, which results in Republican voting). It should be noted however that regionalism will never completely go away - it's just not possible - and as evidence of this, for example, there's a gradient across rural Iowa. The west of the state is far more Republican, with corresponding culture and identity features, than the east.

Political divisions within society typically peak around the 3T-4T cusp, as in America around 1860 or Russia at the start of World War I. Although the polarization seems to have receded little, the fanaticism has abated some. In 1860 the slave-owning interests tried to convince Northerners that slavery was a wondrous practice even for the slaves... and they went too far. It is easy for d@mnyankees to curse the South, yet Georgia voted (barely) for Biden, which reflects that Atlanta is politically and even culturally more like Cleveland than it is like rural Georgia. Florida gets a rap for Republican pols, but Florida is almost always close in its elections at the federal level.

We have yet to see the manifestations of the Capitol Putsch on a national scale (although on the very day, Georgia had two runoff elections for Senate seats, and Democrats ousted two incumbent Republicans. which may not be coincidence). If that is not coincidence, then much of the common wisdom of American politics applying in the neoliberal era (1980-2020) in the Skowronek cycle (two such cycles usually correspond with a full Saeculum) disintegrates soon.

3T culture generally dies in a 4T... but 3T politics seems so far to have remained intact. It is not gaining support. It needs young voters to replace those voters excited by Gingrich's "Contract With America" and the Tea Party movement are dying off without being replaced by a fresh crop of young, reactionary voters. Maybe the next group of conservatives will be less reckless and reactionary so that they don't offend so many people... but by now, I see Democrats taking on plenty of conservative tendencies.

3T politics and mass culture depend upon the splintering of a society before a Crisis era but are inconsistent with the more conformist, placid, and moderate world of a 1T. People like Newt Gingrich, Ted Cruz, and Donald Trump would have never appealed to GI-like adults and did not have to when they won high office. When GI-like adults (the Millennial Generation is clearly Civic by now) are much of the electorate, then people like Gingrich, Ted Cruz, and Trump lose such appeal as they had. People will then prefer pols more like Lloyd Bentsen, George Romney, and Ed Koch.

The Hard Right does not want a civil society. It wants one of subjection and deference, in an economic order in which everything is a privilege instead of something that one earned but instead keeps by obeying the Right People who can end their careers abruptly.