Unresolved end to saeculum possibility?

[Eric the Green]

(06-06-2022, 10:26 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(06-04-2022, 03:37 PM)nguyenivy Wrote: Is there a non-zero possibility that we get neither a good or bad ending to this 4T and just end up sliding into the next 1T with nothing resolved? Have a look at the lie-flat / other similar movements going on now. People are just losing hope and giving up. Prior 4Ts had clear wartime periods where society was upended and life afterwards was different to before. Climate change is a big threat but has already been ongoing since long before this present 4T. Not much is being done about it as of yet. The pandemic's early waves sure felt 4T but now nobody really cares about COVID anymore. Are our Millennial & Z generations just losing faith in the system or are we being actively blocked from pushing for change by say big oil/corporate America? Is it's the former, do we have prior examples of societies where the populace lost faith in their system but didn't care enough to push for change? Where did those societies end up? If we are indeed being blocked by big oil it looks like the problem should resolve itself but not until around the 2040s when society flips to having the majority having experienced the negatives of fossil fuel reliance & the car-centric US.

(06-05-2022, 12:21 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I have always predicted that the decisive period won't happen until the end of the 4T. So fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy ride through the rest of this decade when the 4T ends. We won't know that this prediction is coming true until 2025 when the decisive period begins. I hope it's not a nuclear ride, what with Putin threatening attack on NATO. But we are being blocked by the Republican representatives of big fossil fools, prejudice, ammosexuality and neoliberal ideology. I don't think this stalemate can continue past the 4T, although right now it looks like hopeless stalement forever.

It's hard to be certain of anything, but I'm more in the Failed 4T than Big Finale camp.  The very fact that we have siloed society to the point that many (most?) on the right are unaware of simple facts and, even more to the point, live in the "right" places in sufficient nyumbers to stymie any move to correct the problems they claim don't really exist (fake news, you know).  Short of a cataclysmic event that makes denial impossible, I don't see this getting rectified.  After all, we're having mass shootings at a rate of more than one a day, and the movement on gun control hasn't budged at all.  Short of a nuclear exchange (highly unlikely, in my opinion) nothing seems big enough to move the needle at all.

Today's youth have been the victims of this from day one.  Perhaps they can muster the will to do something ... anything!  If so, it won't be until they have the undeniable power to override the Boomers and Xers still creating the mess we're in.

That last could happen fairly soon, if you mean the Millennial generation. As Obama pointed out in that speech I have posted here several times, they have more power than any generation now to change things. In 2024 they will be almost half the electorate. The question now is will they be able to discern what to do. At the moment it seems they don't. Many of them seem to be deserting the president they voted for just because he mumbles or seems old. That would be a neglect of civic duty. Millennials need to live up to their archetype. And so to Boomers. They have not exercized the leadership that they still could. Blue boomers have not been allowed by our system to serve as president during the 4T yet.

In the previous 4T, action to handle the Depression began 4 years in, but we still faced a threat from abroad that was not really engaged with until only 3 years of the 4T were left. In the civil war, total polarization was left to fester until the last 4 years of the 4T, and had to be resolved by war. In the Revolution things looked hopeless in the war right up to the victory 8-10 years into the 4T. As I see it, in 4Ts we don't know if we're going to make it through until sometime in the last 4 years. 

I agree things look bleak now, and too polarized with total ignorance as one of the poles. I don't know if we will make it. But the 4T still has 7 or 8 years to go, so I say it's still too early to tell if we will make it through, and whether it will take a war to resolve things as it did during the previous 3 occasions. I have always predicted it will take a small-scale civil war scenario, i.e. an expanded January 6th, to resolve things, starting in 2025. A substantial electoral victory, enough to suspend the filibuster, would be needed (with adequate Millennial Gen support) to preclude a needed victory in a total civil war, and to make sure the state is in charge of the army/national guard after the election to put down the Jan.6 style militia rebellion. We may also face war abroad. If Biden decides to run for re-election, nomination is highly likely. He could probably beat Trump again, or another challenger, though this is uncertain. If he bows out, Harris will have to be challenged and defeated by an effective candidate for the nomination, and right now I only see Landrieu or McAuliffe as possibilities; certainly not Elizabeth Warren or Pete Buttigieg or even Cory Booker, and even with his great energy I don't see Bernie as an alternative by then either. If it's Booker versus DeSantis I would still have to predict DeSantis winning.

It doesn't do any good just to think we will fail in this 4T, or to succeed either, really. We don't know. It is better to remember that there will be NO recovery and NO "high" at all if we DON'T succeed in this 4T. Our climate and our republic will be gone if we don't. But 4Ts have usually been such an existential crisis, even going back to the Renaissance era.