Is It "Just Me," or Are We STILL in a 3T?

[Anthony '58]

Ted Cruz's "attack" on Big Bird - and so many other examples I can cite?

As they used to say on ESPN, c'mon, man!

[pbrower2a]

We have people like Ted Cruz trying to maintain the Culture Wars of the 3T. The right thing to do is to get inoculated against COVID-19, and anyone who gets in the way should be disgraced.

3T behavior tends to become at best irrelevant and at worst failed and disgraced toward the end of a 4T at the latest.

[AspieMillennial]

The reason the culture war will stop in the 1T is NOT because we will agree on the culture. What will happen is people who like things to be one way will live in their separate towns and the people who want things to be another way will live in their separate towns. It's already this way a lot of the time. We will just not talk to each other and raise our kids away from each other.

[pbrower2a]

It is possible that Americans will separate into such places as "Klan Hollow" and "Commie Canyon", as extremists will mock the safe and unreachable communities of the other. Even so we have mass culture that can unite much of the young population and shape values. This said, there is Kiryas Joel, New York, a very exclusive community for reasons other than income and vocational status.

[AspieMillennial]

(11-14-2021, 05:14 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: It is possible that Americans will separate into such places as "Klan Hollow" and "Commie Canyon", as extremists will mock the safe and unreachable communities of the other. Even so we have mass culture that can unite much of the young population and shape values. This said, there is Kiryas Joel, New York, a very exclusive community for reasons other than income and vocational status.

But this turning resembles the Civil War more than WW2.

[galaxy]

We are not in a 37-year turning.

2008-2020 was a bit of an ambiguous period, but now we are *definitely* in a 4T.

I guess it's a bit of a division like the 3T before the previous - you had a 2T/3T ambiguous period, then the war, then super-3T thereafter.

[pbrower2a]

(11-14-2021, 12:43 PM)AspieMillennial Wrote:

(11-14-2021, 05:14 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: It is possible that Americans will separate into such places as "Klan Hollow" and "Commie Canyon", as extremists will mock the safe and unreachable communities of the other. Even so we have mass culture that can unite much of the young population and shape values. This said, there is Kiryas Joel, New York, a very exclusive community for reasons other than income and vocational status.

But this turning resembles the Civil War more than WW2.

Yes, it does. It is easy for the secularists, religious minorities, and the Left (there is little of any Secular Right; Liz Cheney seems to be an example, as her isolated position places her) on the one side to vilify the Right as unlearned, superstitious, anti-scientific, bigoted fanatics while the Christian-fundamentalist Right to deprecate the Other Side as godless promoters of an America as a Sodom and Gomorrah.  As someone familiar with both worlds I can take my choice based on historical patterns that have held reliably true over several centuries. Religious fanaticism and ethnic bigotry kill. Economic exploitation and the denial of opportunity waste human ability in favor of privilege that does more to divide Humanity into predators and prey. Superstition thwarts progress. American politics became uncannily placid after Pearl Harbor.

OK, it is not necessary to be on the cultural avant-garde; I will accept twelve-tone music when I am told that some folk tune (classical musicians are wise, which Bartok and Shostakovich have done, to recognize folk traditions as a source of musical coherence when twelve-tone rows fail), but until then atonal music lacks the coherence needed for memorability. Some old norms fit the test of time. Does anyone think murder, theft, rape, fraudulent oaths, perjury, and abandonment of the vulnerable as good ideas? Law and order is usually a right-wing meme in the mistreatment of pariahs, but in its strictest sense it is a defense against chaos that endangers people who deserve protection. I came to give full support to LGBT rights after being gay-bashed. What makes my life safer serves my interests. The problem isn't that some fool thinks (as if that is the operative word) that I am a homosexual. I can be as wrong on that in assessing people as anyone. What is inexcusable is attacking people for homosexuality. I recognize much of the cultural divide in America as differences not so much between tradition and the avant-garde (few really get postmodernism, let alone like it) as it is between different traditions that can coexist peacefully because those traditions see each other as equally valid even if not theirs. Maybe if the tradition involved sacrificing children to some Harvest God or endorsed dishonesty in dealing with strangers I might have a problem. 

The Civil War became so violent because people Americans took on polar opposites on a belief core to American identity. It is easy to understand why people who had no use for chattel slavery because they could never, at the least charitable interpretation, fit it into their economic life -- and people who could convince themselves that slavery, far from an abomination, was benevolence toward the slaves who could never handle freedom. Slave-owners did not consider themselves exploiters and abusers of their slaves but instead guides to a way that allowed the slaves to have food and shelter. Slave-owners frequently freed slaves who could no longer work -- so that they would starve to death or die of exposure in the winter. As you can recognize, people can rationalize practically any evil that serves their economic ends or allows them to feel good about themselves.

The Second World War was no less a struggle over slavery than was the American Civil War. Nazi Germany was one of the harshest systems of slavery that ever existed. The plantation owners at least saw slaves as valuable assets to not be worked to death or murdered for some trivial offense. Nazis used forced labor in murderous ways. The V-2 program ended up killing more forced laborers in Hitlerland than civilians or military in Allied territory. It required huge quantities of potatoes to be fermented into alcohol. Potatoes were a staple food in most of Europe, and this use of potatoes created a severe food shortage. German industrial workers were transformed into serfs on behalf of (mostly) large, politically-connected tycoons. The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was little better. The Japanese turned most of their young men into soldiers and sailors instead of agricultural laborers who grew the rice to feed the soldiers and the industrial workers. The Japanese thug empire solved the problem of food shortages by bleeding occupied countries from Manchukuo to Indonesia for food that usually had gone to the local populace. American and British capitalists may have been exploitative but not that exploitative. Murdering people for their religious beliefs or the religious beliefs of their grandparents (Nazi antisemitism was racism above all else) was a clear abomination to anyone whose beliefs derived from the Enlightenment.  

The Enemy this time is an insidious virus. In the time between getting my first inoculation and my recent booster, hundreds of thousands of Americans have died of COVID-19. Whether one takes measures that greatly reduce the chance of contracting COVID-19 and severe consequences that can include pointless death largely reflects cultural values. COVID-19 has caused more deaths on some days than the Pearl Harbor attack or 9-11. America got angry after both, and rightly so. 

I am already contemplating my "Pearl Harbor" rhetoric against COVID-19. I can forgive the Japanese people who have redeemed themselves as 'generally harmless' -- so generally harmless that I would feel safer in Tokyo than in any American city. COVID-19 is not going to surrender, and it has no attractive culture worthy of preservation and promotion. 

I can think of no profanity strong enough to express my hatred of the SARS-2 virus that causes COVID-19. Neither can I find one for the bubonic plague or the Holocaust.

[Eric the Green]

The enemy in our entire fourth turning, and which grew our of the 2T Counter-Awakening, took power late in the 2T and established itself in the 3T, is neoliberalism. Not just covid, which is just one expression of it. And the 4T definitely started in 2008 when the results of neoliberalism came home to roost. Neoliberalism is the Republican Party, under Reagan and Bush, but also took hold within the Democratic Party to an extent, with the "New Democrats" who, although they raised wages and earned income credits, also permitted more freedom for financial companies to make riskier investments.

Neoliberalism says let business do whatever the hell they want, with fewer or no regulations and taxes, and cut back on social programs and wealth distribution to reduce dependency on government, because government is the problem and enterprise of the "free market" is "freedom" and prosperity, for it all trickles down from the job creaters.

The philosophy is false. It is a scam. Wealth does not trickle down from the rich and the big corporations. The owners and CEOs use their breaks and their extra money to send jobs overseas and replace workers with robots, speculate in risky investments to ruin the economy (as in 2007-2008), buy out other companies and create monopolies and oligarchy, buy back stock or luxuries for themselves, pay themselves 300 times more than their workers who get starvation wages, keep people poor by cutting all social programs that keep wealth and power from concentrating and accumulating for the rich and thus keep the poor poor, and buy politicians to keep the big breaks and the big bucks coming. They pollute the environment and the climate and give the rest of us the cost, especially the poor here in the USA and abroad. They exploit their workers, provide lousy products, provide unsafe services, etc.

The results of neoliberalism have been seen since 2008, in one continuous 4T. There was no phony 4T, we've been in it all along. Big time. First the great recession, which hung around longer because the Tea Party arose to challenge and restrict the remedies. In 2011 the results of the Great Recession abroad helped lead to a massive revolution centered in the Arab world but exploding all over the world, which was followed by war and ruthless repression (especially in Syria and also Egypt, Yemen, and elsewhere), leading to an immigration crisis that lit up Europe with resurgent nationalism and racism. Meanwhile, the climate crisis exploded much bigger than before as the 4T opened with the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, worsening fires and floods, and massive droughts like the one in Syria which led to its civil war, mass murder and torture and exile of most of its people that fueled the immigration crisis. And the same climate change and tyranny also affected Central and Latin America, leading to mass immigration to the USA as well, readily exploited by our own Nazi demagogue who himself personified the 4T crisis with his attacks on democracy, his flagrant corruption, and his environmental destruction justified by even more neoliberal trickle-down slogans. And this attack continues by him and his Republican Party, which has put our nation in an existential crisis that could destroy our 250-year old republic.

And our massive encroachment on Nature all around the world resulted in a series of worsening pandemics, from SARS to Zika and Ebola and climaxing with the covid-19 disease, which spread much more massively precisely because that neoliberal demagogue shut down the response team to pandemics that had been built, and spent his administration mostly denying the problem and saying it would just go away with less government, and always opening the economy too soon-- hoping that this would help him get re-elected; and his henchmen Republican governors and other neoliberal leaders in the UK, Brazil and India helped this denial and thus this disease along too.

But the resistance to the neoliberal nazi demagogue grew from his first day in January 2017 in the most massive demonstration ever, and his premature openings of the economy in 2020 made covid worse, and so he was NOT re-elected, and Biden was elected instead, and a new split congress; so now we are in a potential regeneracy, which has never been clear-cut once and for all, even under FDR, but a fight has ensued which got violent just before the Nazi left office and beforehand, and could again, as well as political fights to save democracy, start fighting climate change, overthrow neoliberalism to rebuild a socially-responsible economy, and deal with covid and the resisters to needed vaccines and mandates.

Being the new "cold civil war" fourth turning, our 4T is not any more "unified and obedient" than the one in the 1860s, so it has seemed we have not arrived in a 4T like the previous one, but we have indeed arrived in a 4T like the next-previous one in circa 1850-1865. And we are barely half way through; don't think this is over. The biggest conflicts, dangers and changes may be yet to come, but also the biggest expressions and activities of regeneracy are yet to come as well. As always, we don't know if the progressive side will win and thus keep the country moving together, or if the reactionary side will win instead and our republic fails. It is up to us to defeat the Classic Xers and the other retrograde folks. The progressive side has always defeated those folks before; can our generations do any less? NO, we can't.

[David Horn]

(11-11-2021, 09:14 AM)Anthony Wrote: Ted Cruz's "attack" on Big Bird - and so many other examples I can cite?

As they used to say on ESPN, c'mon, man!

Ted Cruz is his own parody, and has been for quite a while.  Eventually, he'll need a clown suit to match his act.

[galaxy]

(11-14-2021, 06:06 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: As always, we don't know if the progressive side will win and thus keep the country moving together, or if the reactionary side will win instead and our republic fails. It is up to us to defeat the Classic Xers and the other retrograde folks. The progressive side has always defeated those folks before; can our generations do any less? NO, we can't.

I hate to be that guy, but you're such a Prophet. Fanatically ideological. To be clear, I agree with most of your post, but I hope you realize that this trait of your generation is a big part of what has put us in our current situation.

Regardless of who "wins," this 4T will end. Every turning that has ever happened has ended, and this one will be no exception. Obviously, I very much hope the "progressive side wins," but it's important to remember that we *will* arrive in a 1T regardless, and that the only constant is change.


For what it's worth, it increasingly looks like the "sides" of the Cold Civil War - which are basically equivalent to the parties these days - are actually converging on a lot of issues, even as they claim to be further apart than ever. I view that as a good sign.

[Eric the Green]

(11-15-2021, 03:58 PM)galaxy Wrote:

(11-14-2021, 06:06 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: As always, we don't know if the progressive side will win and thus keep the country moving together, or if the reactionary side will win instead and our republic fails. It is up to us to defeat the Classic Xers and the other retrograde folks. The progressive side has always defeated those folks before; can our generations do any less? NO, we can't.

I hate to be that guy, but you're such a Prophet. Fanatically ideological. To be clear, I agree with most of your post, but I hope you realize that this trait of your generation is a big part of what has put us in our current situation.

Regardless of who "wins," this 4T will end. Every turning that has ever happened has ended, and this one will be no exception. Obviously, I very much hope the "progressive side wins," but it's important to remember that we *will* arrive in a 1T regardless, and that the only constant is change.


For what it's worth, it increasingly looks like the "sides" of the Cold Civil War - which are basically equivalent to the parties these days - are actually converging on a lot of issues, even as they claim to be further apart than ever. I view that as a good sign.

I am not a fanatic; just a good observer and historian. And I am indeed a prophet, in every sense. I am certainly outspoken and not always diplomatic.

The people who have put us in this situation are those who cling to false ideologies: neoliberalism (Reaganomics), racism, militarism, the religious right. It is a mistake to think Boomers are the only ones who promote and get stuck on these. I am not ideological; I understand what the nation needs to do. Saying what needs to be done is not fanaticism or ideology. I am also not ideological because I do see that compromise and settling for what we can get are options to consider, and that expecting perfection from our elected officials is for those people even further off the deep end or outside the box than I am.

Gen X and Millennials and Silents and our forebears are just as responsible if not more so than Boomers for our current plight. Gen Xers are cynics and too easily bamboozled by individualist nonsense. Millennials do not fulfill their civic role well enough, such as voting in midterms, probably because education and especially civics classes have been sabotaged and destroyed by the neoliberal owners of this society. Silents have become insecure, reactionary sticks in the mud. Not that I say Boomers are without fault; we have not stayed true to our original ideals, but are still pompous and arrogant as we always were-- except during the 2T. I hope we have it within us to pull through; I have always believed so, but right now I am not so sure.

We will not arrive in a 1T unless the progressive side wins. A nation declines and dies if it does not advance and meet the needs of the time. We have always made it before; the progressive side has always won. If a 4T fails, the nation fails and ends soon, or is taken over by external powers. This may be the end of the 4T, but it is not a first turning as the authors described it. You can't just say "things always change" and expect to say anything coherent. Change into what? Whether things turn out OK will depend on what we do and how/whether we vote.

A win does not mean final victory on all issues, or elimination of those who disagree; just enough to make some progress rather than the nation being destroyed. A 4T is always a struggle for the continued existence of the nation. It is under severe threat now, and it hangs in the balance, and our decision is on the ballot in every election now. Keep that in mind; it has always been that way during our fourth turnings. Remember the Gettysburg address.

I don't see much convergence. The Congress did finally pass some infrastructure funding, but the parties are divided on build back better and voting rights, including being blocked by two DINOs, and unless these pass we have not yet addressed our urgent needs without which we cannot survive. Right now the Republicans continue to be stuck on Reaganomics and racism, and the people are still willing to desert a Democratic president if everything doesn't go perfectly. About 40% or more of us no longer know what democracy and rule of law means. Americans are as ignorant today as they have ever been. 

I realize though that reform and crisis eras do not achieve progress all at once, and it takes time. Things seem to be failing when we are in the middle of the 4T, as we are now.

[pbrower2a]

Strictly speaking, it is nearly impossible to not be ideological these days. 45% of Americans seem to believe the Trump ideology and 45% seem to reliably abhor it. And, yes, the Trump agenda implies demonization of everything liberal and enlightened as an affront to the True Believer MAGA types. I see plenty of houses (I live in rural Michigan, which politically might as well be western Nebraska or the Teas panhandle) , and I see Trump banners (including those that say "Trump won and you know it!"), F--K Biden, Gadsden (rattlesnake) flags, and even Confederate flags. No Nazi stuff; there are too many Polish-Americans who would rend or burn those demonic banners.

The MAGA types are going to keep believing their junk with the expectation that they will convince us liberals to stop our "baby-killing", replace Critical Race Theory with an acceptance of slavery and Jim Crow practices as necessary, reject our acceptance of exotic culture, acquiesce in the new aristocracy of neoliberalism, and recognize that creationism is truth because it is supposedly in the Bible and evolution is in the Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital, or the Sayings of Chairman Mao... or whatever. Then and only then will we mostly be happy serfs basking in the glow of castles and palaces instead of ingrates who want more to eat and more rest and have problems with our kids becoming cannon fodder..

It's the choice between fascism and freedom. The firmest supporters of fascism, other than the sadistic brutes who take delight in beating, robbing, and killing people or burning books and smashing storefront windows, are the aristocratic types who were the financial backers of fascist causes.

The progressive side has already adopted some old-fashioned conservative values including the rule of law, recognition of the need for law and order, and acquiescence with tradition (of course not always their personal traditions Then again, pluralism recognizes tradition (s long as it isn't exploitative or abusive) for its validity if people feel comfortable with ii.

[Eric the Green]

The rich must be reined in, required to pay living wages to workers here in the home country, not outsource or downsize or buy-out or pollute. Neoliberalism must go! Reagan was wrong! We must learn this lesson, or our world will succumb to global warming. The rich must be taxed whether they like it or not!

[Anthony '58]

As much as I would like to to be a "Girondist," this is becoming increasingly impossible - so I am becoming increasingly likely to end up being a refugee,  to somewhere like Australia, or better yet, New Zealand.

[pbrower2a]

(11-17-2021, 02:26 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The rich must be reined in, required to pay living wages to workers here in the home country, not outsource or downsize or buy-out or pollute. Neoliberalism must go! Reagan was wrong! We must learn this lesson, or our world will succumb to global warming. The rich must be taxed whether they like it or not!

China needs to pay its workers well enough that they can largely buy the stuff that they produce.

As for America -- no country has ever stayed rich by buying its luxuries from overseas.

[David Horn]

(11-18-2021, 05:05 PM)Anthony Wrote: As much as I would like to to be a "Girondist," this is becoming increasingly impossible - so I am becoming increasingly likely to end up being a refugee,  to somewhere like Australia, or better yet, New Zealand.

Unfortuantely, there's no place to hide now and that will only get moreso in the future.

[Anthony '58]

I'd go live in Antarctica at this point - which is becoming increasingly more plausible, thanks to global warming.

Babies have been being born at Esperanza Base for decades.  The base even has a hospital, and a university!

I'll have to brush up on my high-school Spanish though - as Esperanza Base belongs to Argentina.

But hey, since Spanish closely resembles Italian, I don't see that as an insuperable problem!

[pbrower2a]

(11-21-2021, 12:24 PM)Anthony Wrote: I'd go live in Antarctica at this point - which is becoming increasingly more plausible, thanks to global warming.

Babies have been being born at Esperanza Base for decades.  The base even has a hospital, and a university!

I'll have to brush up on my high-school Spanish though - as Esperanza Base belongs to Argentina.

But hey, since Spanish closely resembles Italian, I don't see that as an insuperable problem!

As I understand, the population of Argentina is more than half Italian.

[Anthony '58]

(11-22-2021, 03:15 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(11-21-2021, 12:24 PM)Anthony Wrote: I'd go live in Antarctica at this point - which is becoming increasingly more plausible, thanks to global warming.

Babies have been being born at Esperanza Base for decades.  The base even has a hospital, and a university!

I'll have to brush up on my high-school Spanish though - as Esperanza Base belongs to Argentina.

But hey, since Spanish closely resembles Italian, I don't see that as an insuperable problem!

As I understand, the population of Argentina is more than half Italian.

So much the better!

Uruguay is the same way.

[Mikebert]

(11-14-2021, 04:27 PM)galaxy Wrote: We are not in a 37-year turning.

2008-2020 was a bit of an ambiguous period, but now we are *definitely* in a 4T.

I guess it's a bit of a division like the 3T before the previous - you had a 2T/3T ambiguous period, then the war, then super-3T thereafter.

I don't see the structure of a 4T. It's been 20 years since 911 and 13 since the financial crisis, yet no regeneracy. The path to the end of this saeculum is no clearer today than it was when I first came to the T4T site in 2000. You would think the passage of a quarter of a saeculum to a point that should be close to the end of the 4T (1946+80 = 2026) we would have more clarity. Using an 80 year "ruler" today is equivalent to 1942. Applying it a second time gives us 1862, and again gives us 1782. We were in the midst of WW II and the Civil War in the first two of these comparisons, the conclusion of which would give the end of the 4Ts in 1946 and 1865. As for the third date the Revolutionary war was all but over.

Seeing it's been 20 years since 911, if we call that equivalent to the 1675 start of the Glorious 4T we are cycle-equivalent to 1695, at which point the Glorious Revolution was completed. 

What I am getting at is for all previous 4Ts by this far past the trigger most of the crisis has already happened. This time no action has happened on the problems we faced in 2000 are all still with us. We were polarized and unable to act when Clinton was president, and we still are. The showdown between the two sides that resolved this problem in the past 4Ts has not happened. It has been delayed. Every time a potential crisis shows up: 911, 2008 panic, March 20202 crash, Jan 6 uprising elites find a way to paper over it and prevent any resolution from happening. These delaying actions, or kicking the can down the road, is the hallmark of the 3T. Examples from the 1990's include the Gulf War than wasn't ended (the war continued with Iraq invasion in 2013 and the 2014 ISIS war). Financial bubbles such as the one in 2000 when I first came to T4T are still with us 22 years later. Does anyone *really* think that throwing trillions of dollars of QE and deficit spending into financial markets won't eventually lead to currency debauchment? Does anyone think the growing divide between Red and Blue America can be bridged by speeches from a somnolent Joe Biden or a mendacious Trumpian figure?

Of course not, but that's all there is on offer as long as elites believe they can "manage the situation," keep kicking that can down the road as they have been doing for thirty years.ANd as long as they continue to do so, We Be 3T.