06-18-2020, 06:24 AM
The two previous Crisis Eras (Civil War and Great Depression/WWII) had big economic meltdowns (Panic of 1857, Great Stock Market Crash of 1929) that destroyed the complacency of the end phase of the preceding Third Turnings. The financial meltdown of 2008 was similarly inevitable, coming at the end of a speculative boom that coincided with maximal inequality and severe corruption. After a year and a half of economic decline, the economic meltdown beginning in 2007 (2007 was the real peak, as was 1929; 2008 and 1930 had the real crashes) securities prices had fallen about as much -- in the 50-55% range. So America got out of the 2007-2009 meltdown after a year and a half instead of after three years after the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929? Such is the difference between Herbert Hoover and Barack Obama.... and Obama and about everyone knowing how to prevent a repetition of the latter half of a 1929-1932 meltdown. Obama and Democratic majorities in the House and Senate backed the banks to prevent the destructive bank runs that bedeviled the American economy in the latter half of 1931 and throughout 1932.
Problem solved? No. Right-wing economic interests that recovered used part of their profits in an effort to re-create America as a pure plutocracy, the sort in which 2% live in opulent splendor as if sultans in countries in which a ruling family owns the oil resources and 95% suffer for those 2%. They backed a pseudo-populist Tea Party that concurred with the ideas that reason, morality, observation, and feeling were untrustworthy for the common man but rigid doctrine imposed from On High (basically God as CEO) is the sole measure of truth. No human suffering can ever be in excess so long as the worthiest people in the nation get what they want. Extreme narcissism, and Boomer economic and administrative elites never had any economic reality, ethical principle, or learning get in the way of this, allows people to live without awareness of any limits to their greed and lust. If you think that I have Donald Trump as the prime illustration -- you are precisely right.
Right-wing operatives steadily eroded all traces of liberalism at the national level until by 2017 the United States was fully under the grip of mirror-image Marxists, people who accept that capitalism is an inhuman monstrosity to any but the economic elites and to people who fare well no matter what the social system (such as senior military officers, chiefs of police, physicians, judges, attorneys, and some creative people) and brutal to everyone else. They differ with Marxists only in endorsing such a reality.
We have a President typical of the sort of leader in charge at the time in which a proletarian insurgency starts.... and plenty of collaborators. That marks a Crisis.
OK, American elites tried to return to the 3T that got America into the mess that it was in in 2008, only without quite the same level of institutional corruption. Or did Obama get in the way of a similar level of economic corruption -- sub-prime mortgages made available on property of rising value that the lender could foreclose upon profitably when the borrower failed because he could never meet the balloon payment following negative amortization?
OK, Obama wasn't exactly the sort of leader that you want in office if you want corruption in high places. But Trump is.
OK... Fourth Turnings are rough times. Unless we are to discuss some year that had strictly personal tragedies (let us say that you had some freakish tragedy, 2020 is almost certainly the worst year of your life. Unless you survived something like the Killing Fields of Cambodia or the Rwanda genocide, 2020 is the most hideous year of your existence. Much that you took for granted before this year has become unavailable... and in my case I do not trust any form of shared transportation or dining out inside any restaurant. If I do take a trip then it will be by car, and I will pack some picnic lunches if I don;t want to rely upon fast food. I expect economic hardship to persist throughout this year. Big consumer purchases? Only as an emergency.
Some people are treating COVID-19 as a hoax or triviality. May they be personally, if not statistically right -- like the smoker who somehow doesn't experiences the shortened lifespan from a horrid habit. 5% chance of death for contracting the disease? I do not drive drunk; I do not use street drugs; I do not do high-risk sex with strangers; I don't provoke dogs or jump into pig sties. Were I not 4T... even combat made more sense than any of those. From what I understand, combat on behalf of the US Armed Forces since the Civil War has had less than a 5% chance of death for a soldier, which is about the death rate among people who are known to contract COVID-19.
If you thought the Vietcong and North Vietnamese Army were dangerous...
![[Image: 120px-SARS-CoV-2_without_background.png]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/SARS-CoV-2_without_background.png/120px-SARS-CoV-2_without_background.png)
This little virus is even more dangerous. I expect it to get recognition as the equivalent of Time Magazine's "Man of the Year"
Go ahead. Hate that virus. I certainly do!
Problem solved? No. Right-wing economic interests that recovered used part of their profits in an effort to re-create America as a pure plutocracy, the sort in which 2% live in opulent splendor as if sultans in countries in which a ruling family owns the oil resources and 95% suffer for those 2%. They backed a pseudo-populist Tea Party that concurred with the ideas that reason, morality, observation, and feeling were untrustworthy for the common man but rigid doctrine imposed from On High (basically God as CEO) is the sole measure of truth. No human suffering can ever be in excess so long as the worthiest people in the nation get what they want. Extreme narcissism, and Boomer economic and administrative elites never had any economic reality, ethical principle, or learning get in the way of this, allows people to live without awareness of any limits to their greed and lust. If you think that I have Donald Trump as the prime illustration -- you are precisely right.
Right-wing operatives steadily eroded all traces of liberalism at the national level until by 2017 the United States was fully under the grip of mirror-image Marxists, people who accept that capitalism is an inhuman monstrosity to any but the economic elites and to people who fare well no matter what the social system (such as senior military officers, chiefs of police, physicians, judges, attorneys, and some creative people) and brutal to everyone else. They differ with Marxists only in endorsing such a reality.
We have a President typical of the sort of leader in charge at the time in which a proletarian insurgency starts.... and plenty of collaborators. That marks a Crisis.
OK, American elites tried to return to the 3T that got America into the mess that it was in in 2008, only without quite the same level of institutional corruption. Or did Obama get in the way of a similar level of economic corruption -- sub-prime mortgages made available on property of rising value that the lender could foreclose upon profitably when the borrower failed because he could never meet the balloon payment following negative amortization?
OK, Obama wasn't exactly the sort of leader that you want in office if you want corruption in high places. But Trump is.
OK... Fourth Turnings are rough times. Unless we are to discuss some year that had strictly personal tragedies (let us say that you had some freakish tragedy, 2020 is almost certainly the worst year of your life. Unless you survived something like the Killing Fields of Cambodia or the Rwanda genocide, 2020 is the most hideous year of your existence. Much that you took for granted before this year has become unavailable... and in my case I do not trust any form of shared transportation or dining out inside any restaurant. If I do take a trip then it will be by car, and I will pack some picnic lunches if I don;t want to rely upon fast food. I expect economic hardship to persist throughout this year. Big consumer purchases? Only as an emergency.
Some people are treating COVID-19 as a hoax or triviality. May they be personally, if not statistically right -- like the smoker who somehow doesn't experiences the shortened lifespan from a horrid habit. 5% chance of death for contracting the disease? I do not drive drunk; I do not use street drugs; I do not do high-risk sex with strangers; I don't provoke dogs or jump into pig sties. Were I not 4T... even combat made more sense than any of those. From what I understand, combat on behalf of the US Armed Forces since the Civil War has had less than a 5% chance of death for a soldier, which is about the death rate among people who are known to contract COVID-19.
If you thought the Vietcong and North Vietnamese Army were dangerous...
This little virus is even more dangerous. I expect it to get recognition as the equivalent of Time Magazine's "Man of the Year"
Go ahead. Hate that virus. I certainly do!
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.