05-13-2019, 01:50 PM
(05-13-2019, 10:00 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(05-04-2019, 05:06 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:I'd say it peaked during the 60's (2T) and has declined to the point of needing a bit of revival to keep it in business today.(05-03-2019, 01:00 AM)TheNomad Wrote: When is bigotry and racism or hatred and tribalism happening most in American civilization according to past Turnings?
In what Turning (of the four laid out by S&H) are these things happening the most?
Why does it seem that America always descends into factions during certain Turnings? The idea of building walls and "grouping up" seems to make sense to many while in that period. Folks are more willing to be against others and have no desire to "meld" with neighbors.
When this is happening, is it a peak idea we can look at as to WHEN certain Turnings are happening?
Such as:
Where inside the Turning we are. Beginning? Middle? End? Does it correlate directly to the Turning? When these things are at the societal zenith, we might be right in the Middle. Or, if we see it happening, the Beginning. Or, if it is getting resolved, the End?
I'd say it is strongest from third turnings to early 1st turnings, with some kind of climax in 4th turnings.
We are certainly experiencing it now, in the middle of a 4th turning. Racism received a major correction in the sixties, but the backlash and southern strategy has grown as a reaction and retrenchment to this, and now has been stoked for a rebirth by Trump and his fear-mongering about immigrants.
Racism was strong in the mid-1920s in the late 3rd turning, with the revival of the KKK and promotion of eugenics in the 1920s and 1930s, which was eagerly taken up by the Nazis in the fourth turning, which presented virulent racism as a threat to the United States and other liberal-democratic countries in World War II. Also, anti-immigration sentiment was strong in the 1920s and 30s and led to the anti-immigrant law of 1924.
The American Party or Know-Nothings sought to keep America white and protestant, for fear the American traditions would be ruined, in the 1850s-- a fourth turning as I see it. In Europe in the same decade, scientific racism received great boosts from the theories of Darwin, Spencer and Gobineau. This helped to stoke the nationalist wars by Bismarck, Cavour, and Jefferson Davis in the 1860s 4th turning. Reconstruction saw the birth of the KKK in the reunited states in the late 1860s, early 1st turning. The Chinese exclusion act of 1882 came late in a 1st turning.
The alien act was a major component of the post-revolution era, early 1st turning.
Trying to connect bigotry and the turnings:
The 4T is the time with the greatest potential for massacres, genocide, and apocalyptic war based upon a division of Humanity into Good and Evil often defined by nationality, race, religion, or region. At the end of the 4T people come to realize that much that they were told was completely wrong. I can only imagine how different the German image of Jews was in 1946 from what it was when Hitler, Goebbels, Streicher, et al were demonizing them. Many Germans came to recognize that the corpses stacked like cord wood while on guided tours (the guides being British or American troops) of concentration camps had been human beings more like them than the monsters of Nazi propaganda. I can only imagine what German civilians who experienced such guided tours thought. American male soldiers propagandized on Japan as the barbarous people who abused American and other Western prisoners at Bataan and other such horrors but then got to do occupation duty frequently ended up with Japanese wives. Nobody had told them that Japan had a distinguished and sophisticated culture during the war, and some GIs discovered the reality among people who had recently imitated white racism only to place themselves at the apex of the human pecking order.
The world practically turns upside down from the 4T to the 1T in its attitudes. People get sick of mass retribution, as there is plenty of blame and shame on all sides -- and people want to get their lives back together. Figure that many WWII veterans were nearly 30 at the end of the war, and they had no desire to examine the inner world when their conventional desires had been put off 'for the duration'. They want social and economic stability with clear definition of human roles that make life predictable. New or revived hierarchies form quickly. As an example, Polish-Americans and Italian-Americans were largely seen as losers in social-economic status. Some made rank quickly during the War, and the Polish joke that one might have said to "Stanley ...ski" when he was a factory worker was something that one did not say to COLONEL Stanley...ski toward the end of the war -- or later, when you met him at the VFW. Groups and their roles are well defined. Life was still awful in the ghetto, barrio, or Reservation, or Backwoods.
In a 2T people start to question the social hierarchies and the assumptions. Think of the musical Hair, in which young Boomers (yes, all X, Millennial, and post-Millennial readers, we really were young forty years ago) question the male chauvinism, corporate culture, sexual taboos, and ethnic hierarchy that people usually thought little of challenging in the 1950s but got jaded of if they did not know the Crisis of 1940. Thus Woodstock. The feminine ideal goes from Doris Day to Peggy Lipton (they will be missed!) in a short time. Confrontation begins between 'squares' and the 'hip'.
In a 3T the intellectual challenge fades in favor of unprincipled hedonism early during the Unraveling, although that trend sets in in late in the 2T in such areas as sport and popular music. Commercial interests start to find ways to profit on the changed culture, and people accept new norms. But scummy behavior sets in. As the Unraveling becomes a Degeneracy, business practices and politics debase. The confrontational style intensifies in the public debate, and people are more concerned with convincing others than in objective truth. People who believe in little become purely commercial -- and easy marks for the equivalents of supply-side ideology.
In a 4T events require a sudden and severe accounting for the depraved behavior, the social equivalent of a hoard of oily rags that can catch fire in spontaneous combustion. Ruthless demagogues find ready scapegoats -- like successful 'model minorities' and anyone on the fringe of toleration. In a 'moderate' form such is Donald Trump, and at the worst is Lev Trotsky or Adolf Hitler. Basic realities that people have neglected start hitting people hard. We Americans may be fortunate in simply getting a hard lesson in civics without the mass destruction and genocide of WW II. The Germans and Japanese did not have it so easy.
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.