07-20-2018, 05:11 AM
(07-20-2018, 12:58 AM)TheNomad Wrote:(07-19-2018, 11:30 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: I recall that the paleo site had a thread listing 4Ts for various countries.
Not every one had a war. During the 19th century, Britain had a bloodless Reform Crisis, and Canada had a rather low key Confederation Crisis.
That is interesting when I read the books the authors really never talked about other nations very much. And when they talk about America they really only use examples that involve kind of ideology.
American Revolution was ideology that America did not want to be subjugated to a crown. Then after that you have the Civil War which was obviously based on an ideology North vs South. After that we have World War II obviously a clash of ideologies on a global scale.
All three of those resets in American civilization involved violence great amounts of violence. I'm trying to remember if there was anything in the texts that was an example of a bloodless American fourth turning. Can anyone remember that?
But I see it possible that one could interpret the Second World War as the civil war of Western civilization itself. This fits Toynbee's explanation that the civilization is the unit of history. It may have been seen as the clash between Good and Evil -- and Nazism was about as pure evil as the world could ever know. But Hitler could see the British as 'Aryans' in good standing except for their tolerance of the supposedly non-Aryan Jews that Hitler saw as debasing all that he cherished. As is difficult to explain any irrational ideology, I will not try.
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.