12-18-2016, 04:16 PM
(11-07-2016, 09:23 PM)Mikebert Wrote: In chapter 2 of Ages of Discord Turchin introduces the political stress indicator or psi. I simplified his equations, making psi a function on inequality alone. Using my measure of inequality I get the figure below for psi over time. As you can see psi serves as a secular crisis indicator showing the connection between the secular cycle and the saeculum.
![[Image: Political-stress-fig.gif]](http://mikebert.neocities.org/Political-stress-fig.gif)
Assuming that economic inequality becomes more severe (I expect Donald Trump to achieve one campaign promise, basically to cut down the status of the educated 'elites'), I can easily extrapolate the trend to a very high level before 2020. Political stress will then crash as it did in the 1780s, late 1860s, and the 1930s. But in what year? 2019? 2025?
And how does the fall in political distress manifest itself? A coup? Dissolution of the USA? Military defeat? Revolution?
Maybe we get a Constitutional Convention in which wise people get to determine what protections we Americans need. We might need to make big amendments to the Constitution. We might choose to go parliamentary. We might replace district-based representation with first-past-the-post voting with proportional representation. Maybe we ditch the Electoral College.
This will be especially so should the Republicans do Constitutional mischief, like gutting the Bill of Rights or establishing a "Bill of Rights for Corporate America"
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.