2001=1836, 2008=1843, 2019=1854 and 2026=1861

[Victorian Jim Dandy]

I've finally realized there's no sense in comparing Millennials to the Greatest Generation.  This is a Second Civil War Saeculum and no heroes are going to be found. Even if it turns out to be a cold civil war, the fact that the topic is on everyone's minds is almost enough. Yesterday, I learned that my life, beginning in 1987, is very comparable to a man born in 1822.  It's not a perfect comparison, but it works better than the Greatest Generation comparison.

9/11 was our Alamo, an event of the unnecessary and stupid Mexican-American War. The War on Terror was our Indian Wars and Mexican-American Wars. Bill Clinton deregulating Wall Street was one of the major events that led to the 2008 recession and Andrew Jackson's Bank Wars caused major recessions from 1836 to 1857. This would make 2008 our 1843.The worldwide cholera pandemic, peaking in 1854, is our Covid-19 Pandemic, beginning in 2019, but peaking in 2020 and 2021. This leaves 2026 as our 1861.  I don't have to tell you that racial tensions are still with us. A couple things are different, which is fine because our times are never going to line up perfectly.  As a Navy combat veteran during the war on terror, I don't think my experience would be quite as difficult as a Navy veteran during the Mexican-American War (Yes the Navy was used in the war) but the experiences would definitely be comparable. If you look up the Pacific Squadron of the Antebellum U.S. Navy, some of their deployment experience matched closely to some of mine.

Another thing is the presidents don't line up at all, but that's okay because it doesn't have to match perfectly. A slight comparison that could be made is that after James Monroe (The Era of Good Feelings) we had a string of weak presidents until the civil war and since Eisenhower and to a lesser extent Kennedy (The American High,) we've had a string of weak (or downright evil) presidents until the present. Yes Millard Fillmore was president during the 1854 peak of cholera and he looks just like Donald Trump (and Alec Baldwin) but Fillmore wasn't a hugely damaging president who was divisive and impeached twice. In Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, we had presidents who did nothing in the face of a looming civil war, with Donald Trump, we have a president who's actively marching us towards civil war. The only question now is who will be president in 2026, when we face our next civil war. 

A quote from Wikipedia: "Strauss and Howe define the Gilded Generation (nomad archetype) as those born from 1822 to 1842. They came of age amid rising national tempers, torrential immigration, rampant commercialism, conspicuous consumerism, declining college enrollment and economic disputes. This led to a distrust of zealotry and institutional involvement, shifting focus to a life of materialism." That definition, of my generation being "directionless" sounds more accurate than the current write-ups on Millennials. The fact that we're the "entitled" generation is pretty laughable to me at this point considering what we've been through.

[pbrower2a]

The Gilded are an awkward anomaly in having been raised as Reactive/Nomad kids with little direction until they got thrust into a Hero role, taking on most of the characteristics of a Civic generation in adulthood. They weren't as brainy as one would expect of a Civic generation.

Should there be any military equivalent of the Civil War, this one will have a genuine Civic generation in place. The Millennial Generation has been slow to achieve high public office due to the extended tenures of late-wave Silent (we are seeing their last acts) and early-wave Boomers (between Clinton, Dubya, and Donald Trump, that was not so great). As Silent and early-wave Boomers die off or become unpresentable, younger pols (almost certainly a mixture of middle-to-late X and early-wave Millennials) will be showing up in the Senate, the House, Governorships, Cabinet posts, and the roles of big-city mayors. Early-wave X? Note well that Obama is approaching elderhood, as he will be turning 61 in August.

Political styles will change. I see it likely that we will have a "mature Reactive" or two as President. One of them could be a conservative version of Barack Obama, a chilly rationalist who respects tradition, expertise, formality, precedent, and protocol and is more likely to solve problems than to play them up. (The immature Reactive is well reflected in angry firebrands who have scores to settle as foci of their destructive agendas, as shown by Lost fascists and the Lost stooges of Stalin. Ferenc Szalasi and Matyas Rakosi were a fascist and a Stalinist, and both had far more in common than being Hungarians, and all to the evil side in history. A hint: they now dwell in much the same bolgia of Hell, the more recent annex full of Nazis, Stalinists, Ba'athists, and ISIS). I like Ike as a model for sober leadership, but I see the Obama and Eisenhower Presidencies as very similar.

The Mature reactive is a valid transition from apocalyptic war to a time in which (Civic) adults can do big things, young (Idealist) can think big things, and midlife (Adaptive) adults can loosen the strictures of life. Obama came too early for such, but he certainly did his share to calm America and avoid trouble in a potentially-dangerous time. Between two troubled Presidencies that is exactly what America needed.

[galaxy]

The Cold Civil War will not turn hot in the same way the (1860s) Civil War did. If it becomes violent (which may have already happened on 1/6/21), it will much more closely resemble The Troubles in Northern Ireland than a true war. I stand firm on this, I have gone into the reasons for my stance in other posts.

If you want to assign a year to 1861, 2020 is a good bet, and I'd match it up with 1941 as well: it's "the year it suddenly got real." We have entered the most extreme and intense phase of the 4T, when the most dramatic and radical changes occur. Pay close attention and don't blink - we live in very consequential times.

[pbrower2a]

X is more like the Liberty or Lost generations than the Gilded by now. It has largely mellowed, and the example of Barack Obama well reflects what people will insist in an X President. The Mature Reactive (Washington, John Adams, post-Civil War Gilded Presidents, Truman, Eisenhower, Obama) who has no personal scores to settle and isn't going to try to enrich himself in public office but is more likely to adopt political virtues desirable in other generations (kindness, caution, and conscience) can be just what we need. Obama is pre-seasonal, but in view of what preceded (the troubled Dubya) and what followed (the disastrous Trump) he looks necessary. A conservative version of Barack Obama would cause far fewer problems than a liberal version of Trump.

Republicans will be in far better shape when they recognize that all that they can find objectionable about Obama was that he is not a full conservative.

Reactives entering their sixties is compatible with the end of a Crisis Era and not with the full apocalypse. The COVID-19 plague and the Capitol Putsch could be the focus of danger of this Crisis Era. Maybe by backing the banks President Obama kept a Hitler-like or Tojo-like figure from entering the scene in some significant country that one cannot want as an enemy.

So here are the generations that hold people between 20 and 90 at the start of 2022 and how they fit the time:

Silent (1925-1942) 79-97
Boom (1943-1960) 61-78
X (1961-1981) 40-60
Mill (1982-2004?) 17-39

Contrast 1944

Prog (1843-1859) 82-99
Miss (1860-1882) 61-81
Lost (1883-1900) 43-60
GI (1901-1924) 19-43

The generational constellations of 2022 does not quite suggest that we are at the beginning of the end, but we could be. The Adaptive types are still in positions of relevance, which reflects that people live longer and take care of themselves... and stay active. Boomers have mucked things up as much as they can. X is mature enough , and Millennials are on the brink of a big gain in political life.