Joe Biden: polls of approval and favorability

[Bob Butler 54]

(10-09-2021, 03:19 PM)nguyenivy Wrote: I'm wondering if we really were in a 4T at all before 2020...

The heart of the crisis has always been shorter than a generation.  The peak is generally a crisis war, which takes about 5 years.  You commonly are in a crisis generation configuration for much longer than that.

At the same time, the crises do become less severe.  In the two race related crises, the Civil War was much more violent than the Floyd demonstrations or January 6.  If a crisis solves the worst problem facing a culture, as time goes on have the worst problems in the culture been solved already?  Is slavery worse than today's structural racism?  Is solving a problem with Industrial Age violence and war always going to be a bigger deal than the Information Age approach of nonviolent protest and legislation?

This time around we do seem to have multiple crises.  I view the Iraq war as an attempt to change values by the conservatives, and they failed to do so.  The economic collapse of 2008 was there, but not nearly as serious as 1929.  I felt no desire to call a trigger around 2008.  Obama was more concerned that the first black president be seen as acceptable than to see a particular agenda succeed.  He did well in putting the economy back together and passing Obamacare, but did not push once he did not have Congress behind him.  Covid and George Floyd’s death do seem more like triggers, causing values change and signaling a major change in dominant parties.  For the first time it feels like the real crisis.

I would say 2001 and 2008 did not resolve the small government vs solve the problem question as debated through the unravelling.  2020 might.  We will know better after the 2022 midterms.  The Republicans are pushing a 'do not solve problems' obstructionism.  We will see if the American people want the problems solved.