What Will Come of This 4T?

[pbrower2a]

(04-15-2020, 08:49 AM)namentstone Wrote: The U.S. is now at least halfway through the 4T (going by Howe's start date of 2008) and it's not at all clear which side's ideas will triumph, or how those ideas could form the basis for a new 1T consensus. While COVID-19 has rapidly strengthened popular support for drastic, immediate public action and perhaps for "big government" of a kind, we are still heading into a tossup election with the potential to leave our federal government yet more gridlocked and public confidence in it less sturdy than ever.

The public mood has changed, but the attitudes of the rich-and-powerful haven't ... and they have been able to protect their economic and bureaucratic power effectively with few concessions. They have waxed fat with practices that treat workers badly for maximal profit. They have pressed people to work while sick, and that has made possible the spread of a viral disease that is both dangerous and extremely contagious. As usual the common man pays a high price for the callow greed of elites, and the elites reply that they were the most wonderful of benefactors. Innocent people such as flight crews, traveling salespeople, health professionals, operators of public transit, grocery workers, nursing-home staff, and of course people who already have existing conditions die. 

Profit becomes more precious than life in a 3T, and if the 4T fails to shake that it only intensifies the reality as bosses become more demanding, real pay shrinks, workplace safety deteriorates, and economic security vanishes. 

Guess what happens: if the death toll becomes comparable as a share to the losses of the American Civil War, then much of the gravy train of high rents and long fuel-consuming commutes comes to an end.  It could be worse -- our elites could have given us a war for profits that devours cannon fodder while workers become serfs as in Nazi Germany. (Mistreatment of industrial and farm workers is not what the Third Reich was most infamous for, in view of genocide and the plunder of occupied countries -- but Nazi Germany was a workers' Hell, and much of the concentration camp system existed for punished those who did not work up to the standards that their brutal bosses established. Now, as the late Paul Harvey said, you know the r-r-r-r-rest of the story).  

Quote:I was a member of the old Fourth Turning forums about 12 to 14 years ago, when I was a teenager. At the time, the major debate among us was whether the 4T had yet begun. In fall 2008, it became eminently clear to me we had  entered the 4T. Liberal Millennial idealist that I was, I hoped to see Obama usher in a new era of progressive government. While he had meaningful legislative successes, the 2010 midterm elections upended those hopes and brought the federal government to new heights of dysfunction. Then came the 2016 election and (with it) the legitimation of isolationism, strongman politics, and blatant up-is-down falsehood in American politics. All of this was very 4T, of course, but with Trump losing the popular vote by 3 million and the Democrats regaining the House of Representatives in 2018, any hopes that Trumpism could form the basis for a new public consensus were thankfully dashed as well.

Civic generations rarely get to act idealistically. Early in life, life for those not brought up with silver spoons in their mouths often live hardscrabble lives in childhood. Educational costs have never been so high, and wages as a share of income have not been so low since the 1920's. Because young adults rarely have income other than wages, such is horrible. Add to this, real rents of property are not only nominally high but also high by the standard of any time in American history. 

The difference between the 1930's and the 2010's in political reality results from the difference between the economic collapses that led to hard times. The 1929-1932 meltdown destroyed about 87% of the valuation of share prices. The super-rich lost about 7/8 of their assets if those were shares of stock, and incomes plummeted to the point that Big Business was operating in survival mode for a few years. The super-rich were unable to prevent tax increases on unearned income and to fund right-wing front groups to sponsor reactionary politicians. Hoover failed to back the banks, and with that failure he destroyed much of the political power of the Lords of Wealth.

Contrast the aftermath of the 2008 Crash (really, the meltdown began in 2007); it was over in a year and a half. The consensus that government must back the banks to prevent the destructive runs that ruined so many people ensured that a crash that looked much like the meltdown of 1929-1932 ended after a year and a half. But only about 57% of market valuation was lost, and America went on a recovery. The rich got the benefits first, which may have been good for a quick and vibrant recovery. What also recovered? The political power of the economic elites, and those were already a merger of the heritage of Gilded-era plutocrats and racist agrarians (in the 1920's those were on opposite sides of the partisan divide) in one right-wing Party that serves the elites of ownership (industrialists, financiers, executives, and big landowners) and management (a bureaucratic elite that resembles a Soviet-style nomenklatura in self-selection, aristocratic practice, rapacious exploitation of power, and contempt for the welfare of the common man). Their optimum in politics is people who believe as they do that no human suffering can ever be in excess (so long as it is not their suffering) so long as it creates, indulges, or enforces a profit. The only good thing to say about them is that they are chary of war because war might destroy their precious assets. By 2017 the United States had become as pure a plutocracy as anything short of those kingdoms in which the economy is basically oil extraction and the royal family owns the oil with a President and majorities in both Houses of Congress that believe that ethos. 

But something resembling the classic Greek tragedy ensues. People with a little luck or advantage over-reach and bring ruin to themselves for taking on powers that they do not fully understand. A virus perfectly suited to ravaging overworked, underpaid people condemned by high real costs of living to overcrowding demonstrates how much people need rest, space, and recreation... and the decency to not have to work while sick.  Epidemics, whether the Black Death, cholera, HIV/AIDS, or COVID-19, spread most effectively where and when people have bad habits, whether living in the overcrowded and fetid cities of late-medieval Europe, drawing water from water sources that also function as sewers, IV drug use or reckless sexuality, or working too hard just to survive because the economic elites grab everything.  Unlike the classic Greek tragedy an epidemic leads to the calamity of people who did not themselves overreach but are instead mostly innocent bystanders. 

Quote:Nevertheless, a 4T is supposed to launch new public institutions and hopefully more effective government. There seems to be a powerful streak of anti-elitism and anti-plutocracy in U.S. politics that was a bit dormant before 2008, but with Republicans continuing to back fiscal policies that favor the wealthy, I don't see a 2020s New Deal around the corner. Expanding health care access, taxing the rich, and promoting renewable energy are all causes with majority support, but which are fiercely opposed by a party that wins half the votes and half the seats in Congress (and Democrats are unlikely to go full Bernie Sanders if they win a bare Senate majority on the backs of anti-Trump suburbanites in key states). At the moment, a critical mass of the American public cannot agree on basic facts, let alone solutions to complex policy questions like health care and climate change. How does government get anything done in this environment? How does either side remain in power long enough to enact an ambitious 4T agenda around which the 1T is organized? How does a 4T resolve in an age of hyper-polarization?

I follow the polls, and I see support for Donald Trump and Republican enablers cratering suddenly. If sordid behavior could not stop his election ("I grab 'em by the [kitty-cat]", stating that "he loves low-information voters", mocking the disabled and even a former POW, and vilifying one of the largest religions in the world), doing the impeachable act of attempting to blackmail the President of Ukraine for political advantage, and riding a speculative boom as evidence of his economic stewardship until that boom comes to an abrupt end, then about 2000 American deaths a day at what is so far the peak from COVID-19 as the result of his inept leadership may bring about the end of his Presidency after one term. (I will have to show some polls).  

Quote:I note that Millennials at the moment remain lopsidedly Democratic-leaning, and that even Republican Millennials tend toward a more internationalist and socially progressive orientation than their elders. (This is also true in the UK and a number of other democracies.) Is generational replacement the simple answer to my question?

Short paragraph with multiple questions. 

1. The Republican Party has practically nothing to offer young adults (the Millennial generation) except high levels of personal debt, low pay, insecure employment, harsh management, and an inordinately-high cost of living. Other generations have seen better. 

2. As Millennial adults start reaching the age at which major political careers manifest themselves (Congressional Representatives, state governors, cabinet positions, and the US Senate) in significant numbers, expect Millennial adults to start supplanting older politicians. This will get younger voters out to vote.  

3. The Millennial Generation is about 20% more D than R, and consists (at least in politics) about everyone under 40. People over 55, who consist (with the demise of the very old GI Generation) the Silent, Boomers, and first-wave X) seem to be about 5% more R than D, which has been good for Republican political victories from about 2000 to 2016. But note well that about 1.5% of the electorate, almost all over 55, dies off or goes terribly senile (don't double count) every year, and vanishes from the electoral process. People under 40 supplant them. Over four years that is an overall shift from R to D of about 1.5%. With nothing but demographics to force change, the Millennial generation can shift the vote enough to make an electoral loser out of Trump.  Note well that Trump got only 45.92% of the popular vote in the 2016 Presidential election and won only because he got the 'right votes' while the Democrats ran up 65-35 margins in fifteen states. As an example of how low 45.92% is... 

John McCain got 45.60% of the popular vote in 2008 and lost by a landslide margin in the electoral college.
Mike Dukakis got 45.65% of the popular vote in 1988 and won only 111 electoral votes.
The giant headline on the Chicago Tribune DEWEY WINS notwithstanding, Tom Dewey got 45.07% of the popular vote and only 189 electoral votes.
That is actually down as a percentage from what Dewey did against FDR in 1944 at 45.89% of the popular vote, although Dewey got only 99 electoral votes against FDR.  

Trump stands to get due to a likely shift of 1.5% of the popular vote alone (and 2018 midterm races suggest such) only about the percentage of vote that Adlai Stevenson got in 1952 (44.33%) of the popular vote.