10-04-2016, 01:50 PM
(10-04-2016, 12:04 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: Are you arguing that there's very little dispersion in when the political paradigm "flips"? What do you see as the defining moments of change since WWII?
Pretty much. The 2T is roughly around 1963-80. In 1960 the election was seemingly about almost nothing, sort of like 2000. Kennedy essentially ran to the right of "Kitchen debate" Nixon on foreign policy. How on Earth do you do that? By going for the nutty by embracing tax cuts and a war of choice like the guy who won in 2000.
Short after that history was filled with momentous events, civil rights, the women's movement, the Vietnam war, the sexual revolution, domestic turmoil on a scale far larger than anything seen since, pollution, gay rights, guns n butter, end of Bretton Woods, first oil crisis, stagflation, second oil crisis, Hostage crisis, and then the Reagan revolution. After that things calmed down, the social moment was over. Early wave Boomers (like Eric and Dave) were imprinted in the sixties. The events of this time: blacks gaining their long-denied 15th Amendment rights plus the right to live wherever they could afford, the Vietnam war ending, more sex, pollution getting cleaned up were seen as good things. It was an empowering time. Late-wavers were imprinted by stagflation, oil crises, the US seeming to lose on every front were imprinted during a disempowering time. Both were imprinted with an anti-establishment bias. Those who tend progressive would see the establishment as the corporate Right, while those who are conservative would see the establishment as the Cultural elite and so vote for different parties.
After 1980 it seemed like the establishment had gotten their act together. Inflation came down and there was no more talk of stagflation. Gas that had been $1.30 in 1980-1 was down to 70 cents in 86. The US then fought a war which we won in four days. Booyah! And after that we had a decade of prosperity, fiscal balance, AND America once again bestrode the world as a colossus, like back in the Fifties when my dad was in the CIA. It's not really a party thing. During the 1963-80 period, both Republicans (Nixon) and Democrats (Johnson, Carter) looked by hapless losers who couldn't find their ass with both hands. After 1980, both Republicans (Reagan, Bush I) and Democrats (Clinton) looked like they knew what they were doing. So the folks imprinted over 1980-2000, the GenXers, were less anti-establishment, more willing to let things in Washington be while they pursued their private lives.
And then after 2000 things start to fall apart its the social moment CF all over again. Folks getting imprinted in the early 2000's and after (those born in the 1980's and 1990's) are Millennials. And so it goes, the GIs are those imprinted by the Depression and WW II, and the Missionaries by the Jim Crow/Progressive era. Contrary to S&H there was a Civil War generation created by the experience of the Civil War and Reconstruction. The Abolitionist/Confederate generation who split the nation in 1861 was forged in the 1830's by the Aboltionist and Jackson movements.
Jefferson's generation was imprinted by their experience of the Revolution, the Constitution and the period in between, and stood on both sides of the "Revolution of 1800", our first critical election. It was the aftermath of this that birthed the "old Republicans" (those who claimed to represent the true inheritance of Jefferson) and the "new Republicans" like John Q. Adams. The conflict between these drove the critical election of 1828 that started a new social moment (2T) that created the Jacksonians (Democrats) and what would eventually come to be called Whigs (many of whom would end up reflecting Abolitionist sentiments). The political heirs of these were the Abolitionist/Confederate generation.
