01-31-2017, 08:45 PM
(01-31-2017, 12:41 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: As Emman pointed out, you are basically abandoning the S & H model of turnings. The 4T is not a collection of big events so much as it is a change in mood.What is a change in mood? Isn't mood in the eye of the beholder. As for the model, a theory must be supported by the facts, not the facts interpreted so as to fit the theory. How would you disprove the theory?
The way I look at is, 2001 was potentially a 4T trigger until future events proved otherwise. 2001 was not a perfect fit, but turnings can be off, there is a fair bit of slop in the model. When 2008 came along it looked better, but it has since failed one of the tests. The 3 previous American 4Ts has critical election-type events near their beginnings (1174, 1860, 1932). 2008 had a number of the features of a critical election, high turnout, change in party control, and active policy-making immediately after. Confirmation of a critical election would be a third Democratic term. It didn't happen, strongly suggesting that 2008 was not a critical election. Another indicator that 2008 was the 4T start was the financial panic. If this is the only financial panic for 20 years after 2008 this would be significant. But suppose there is another one in the next 2-3 years? We had panics in 1857, 1873. 1884, 1893 and 1907 giving spacing of 9-16 years (average 12.5) so there is precedent.
Quote:The two big candidates for that were 2001 and 2008.So far. Suppose we get another candidate--another crisis like suggested above or something else? Why should 2008 be favored over the other two? If you say 2008 fits the generations better, isn't that fitting the facts to the theory?
Quote:The big protest movements which one would expect (Tea Party, Occupy, BLM, etc.) date from this period.Except these aren't big movements. They are similar in scale to the Religious Right, Divestment and Anti-nuke protests of the eighties. Nothing we have seen is remotely on the scale or intensity as the protests of the 1960's and early 1970's. There has been rising sociopolitical instability of a vastly larger scale in terms of violence. These are the rampage killings.
Quote:Here in the US we had an intensified period of political conflict that just saw one party seize the majority of offices, state and federal,A situation the Democrats had in 2009, and Republicans had in 2005.
Quote:under the aegis of the oldest and most outlandish presidential winner in US history, a living incarnation of 80s Boomerism.The hysteria is much like that after the 1980 election. Feels about the same to me.
Quote:As far as the orthodox S & H model goes, I am satisfied that we are still following the model as predicted. Questions of what events occur in the future, and how we should interpret past events in light of them, should probably wait until said events have gone to the trouble of actually happening, you know?Exactly. But I've seen this rodeo before, after 2001, when we had the "Phoney Fourth" as Sean Love put it.
What I am getting at, is if there is something to this theory, it should be possible to predict that certain events will/will not happen as an experiment, so as the test the theory. Otherwise how can you ever validate it?