I'm a sceptic that the 4th Turning started in 2008

[Bob Butler 54]

(08-03-2020, 04:16 PM)Mikebert Wrote: A very simple way to put the saeculum is during a 4T a new order is formed.  This order works well for a time and then runs into difficulty when it encounters issues in the 2T that were not salient when it was established. The order is modified but not reforged. So these reforms do not work lie the original and during the next 3T more problems arise. Some are the result of design flaws in the original order and others are due to the inadequacy of the reforms made in the 2T.  This period continues until suddenly it becomes clear that the old order is broken and then you have a 4T crisis.

The issue with S&H is they assuming that these sequences have a roughly constant length, which is why we expected this crisis era to have started by now.  But the example of 2008 shows that an event essentially identical to 1929 did NOT collapse the economy (although it did give a deep bear market). Collapse was prevented by elite action. As a result what would have been a 4T was prevented from happening. The fact that we had a crisis generation constellation did not matter a damn...

I guess the big difference between my perspective and Mike’s is telling a catalyst from a trigger.  Some catalysts seemed very important at the time, but did not result in or demand a switch in values.  Triggers make the change in values debated during the unraveling nigh on inevitable.  If you don’t take that difference into account, it is easy to dismiss S&H Theory.

Leading up to our current situation we had a number of events.  Oklahoma City, September 11, Katrina, the Iraq War, the housing bubble collapse and the passage of Obamacare might all be given the catalyst label.  I talked about all of them, sometimes at length.  I did not label any of them as a trigger.  Catalyst, likely in most cases.

But did any of them cause you to abandon the old values?  Did any put the survival of the Republican Party at risk, or even threaten it with a decade plus long time out?  Was there anything like the Republicans Against Trump ads, saying the Republicans had an ethic of power and no longer represented them?  Was there anything like the Lincoln Project, saying the same thing from a more abstract perspective?

I did call trigger on COVID 19 fairly early.  A big part of red ethics was small government, low taxes, ignore the science and ignore all problems.  It was fairly clear early that you could not get past the COVID 19 problem that way.  I figured this would be obvious.  The reds could have made an exception out of the virus and kept their values more or less intact.  The chose rather surprisingly to stick to their usual way of looking at things.  Thus, the virus became more and more a true trigger in a way that none of the prior events were.

Now was Black Thursday a trigger?  Perhaps, not by itself, but as a cumulation of many economic failures.  It brought alive the perception that the combination of democracy and capitalism had failed.  The Communists were waiting in the wings.  If the New Deal had failed, a revolution was the next step.  As is, it was clear the old values had failed, that the government had to do something to regulate the economy.  This was done eventually, arguably by smoke and mirrors, but I deny that Black Thursday was comparable to the housing values collapse.  Black Thursday eventually made it clear that the old values had failed.  The housing bubble collapse did not.  One recession among many was navigated though.  The borrow and spend economics of the Republicans was not discredited.  Trump went right back to it when he got in.  The housing bubble did not cause the old values to be discredited.

Now if you call catalysts triggers you are going to be disappointed in the theory.  It is important to look at the real world event, and see if it makes the old values implausible.  Only then should you start using the ’T’ word.