Election 2020

[Eric the Green]

Here is Howe's description from his website. He gives credit to a four-phase model of social change devised by the famous sociologist Talcott Parsons, who hypothesized that society moves into a new phase every time the availability or demand for social order rises or falls. I don't know his work.
https://www.lifecourse.com/about/method/...nings.html

Quote:Fourth Turning

The Fourth Turning is a Crisis. Old Artists die, Prophets enter elderhood, Nomads enter midlife, Heroes enter young adulthood—and a new generation of child Artists is born. This is an era in which America’s institutional life is torn down and rebuilt from the ground up—always in response to a perceived threat to the nation’s very survival. Civic authority revives, cultural expression finds a community purpose, and people begin to locate themselves as members of a larger group. In every instance, Fourth Turnings have eventually become new “founding moments” in America’s history, refreshing and redefining the national identity. America’s most recent Fourth Turning began with the stock market crash of 1929 and climaxed with World War II. The generation that came of age during this Fourth Turning was the Hero archetype G.I. Generation (born 1901 to 1924), whose collective spirit and can-do optimism epitomized the mood of the era. Today’s Hero archetype youth, the Millennial Generation (born 1982 to 2004) show many traits similar to those of the G.I. youth, including rising civic engagement, improving behavior, and collective confidence.

In Parsons’ terms, a Fourth Turning is an era in which the availability of social order is low, but the demand for such order is high. Examples of earlier Fourth Turnings include the Civil War in the 1860s and the American Revolution in the 1770s—both periods of momentous crisis, when the identity of the nation hung in the balance.

I just marvel after watching the debate how closely this matches where we are, with Biden as the agent who seeks to restore the social order and respond to the threats to the nation's very survival. Biden says this election is a decision of what kind of country we want to be, and offers solutions that require community purpose. Classic Xer would call it collectivism. And there was Trump, the very embodiment of the social disorder that threatens the nation, defending completely his policies of not dealing with our problems and allowing them to fester and destroy us. All this means we are surely not near the end of this 4th turning. Much strife and struggle remains bringing down the Republican walls that block the 4th turning's agenda, and work to lay the foundations for the new social order we will take for granted once the first turning starts around 2029.

Then Ivanka or Spencer Cox can win the presidency, and it won't matter much more than it did when Ike was elected. But someone besides Kamala Harris must enter the breach for the Democrats in 2024 or it will all come crashing down before it starts. Tom Cotton has a stronger horoscope score in the new system too.