Neither of the current major party candidates is the "Grey Champion".

[pbrower2a]

(09-03-2016, 07:33 AM)Einzige Wrote: That's the result of a confusion of terms on my part. I was thinking of the Wide Awakes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Awakes

Four hundred thousand young men joined up as Lincoln partisan Wide Awakes throughout the North in 1860.

Incidentally, your point about college-educated youths supporting Hoover over FDR doesn't demonstrate anything more than the fact that the college educated have always historically supported the GOP, even against Obama in 2008:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trum...graduates/



Historically this was, probably, a function of income. All it shows is that collegiate youth in 1932 were of a kind with the self-selecting rich Republicans who convinced Reader's Digest that Landon would win in a walk four years later. There's no question that Roosevelt had the overwhelming backing of poor and working-class youths - that is to say, the vast majority of them. And it was this group that turned him into the Grey Champion.

Income has become less closely connected to a Republican lean in voting. People with above-average incomes can now have good cause to not vote for the Right -- like having a well-paying job, professional practice, or even a lucrative business that depends upon the government. Note also that many people not WASP males (women and 'ethnics') and not of 'upper-crust' origin have gotten college educations beginning with the GI Bill after World War II. College attendance used to be strongly connected to class privilege before attending college; that is over.

Something else: college education has some effects on the way people think. College culls out people who could never graduate -- scatterbrains and people with primitive thought. It demands that people show some logical processes and intellectual discretion. Could it be that college makes people less vulnerable to demagogues? Democrats may have been more likely to make demagogic appeals or appeal to such fears as nuclear war, the end of Social Security, abolition of the minimum wage, etc. .... and programs like Social Security and Medicare can look demagogic at first. Note also that Democrats used to get far more votes in the least well-educated part of America -- the South.

Donald Trump is a demagogue, something extremely uncharacteristic for a Republican. He appeals heavily to ignoramuses.

[David Horn]

(09-03-2016, 01:31 PM)Einzige Wrote: As far as the Revolutionary Crisis goes, part of the problem, I think, is that it has no obvious, singular Grey Champion incarnate to compare with Lincoln and Roosevelt. The generation of Adams and Franklin never produced one transformative leader in that style, so it's more difficult to gauge Hero support for that Prophet cohort.

At any rate, I can hazard a guess that Trump isn't going to be the Grey Champion if he comes anywhere close to polling in fourth place among Millennial voters, as the link I posted above suggests.

Here's one possibility: a lot of us have been positing parallels between this Crisis and the Glorious Revolution. James II ruled for four years. Might not Trump be a worthy analogue for the Pretender, to be deposed of four years from now in a glorious restoration of prior principles?

I agree with the thrust of the first two paragraphs, but the possibility that Trump could win is very small.  The rest can't follow with out that first step.

[Mikebert]

(09-03-2016, 01:31 PM)Einzige Wrote: Crisis and the Glorious Revolution. James II ruled for four years. Might not Trump be a worthy analogue for the Pretender, to be deposed of four years from now in a glorious restoration of prior principles?

Minor point.  James II wasn't the Pretender.  That was his son, who came to be called that after the Fifteen.  And his son, (grandson of James II) was also called the (Young) Pretender after the Forty-Five.

[Eric the Green]

(09-03-2016, 05:09 PM)Einzige Wrote: All I'm proposing is that Trump might pull out a surprise nailbiter, flail around in office for four years and get punted by a True Progressive like a Republican Jimmy Carter. The 2020 election would then be the climax, with everything else a descending action. Vóila, James II/Glorious Revolution analogue.

What is the MOST unlikely element in this scenario is that there could be a "true progressive like a Republican Jimmy Carter."

Besides the fact that Jimmy Carter is not much of a progressive, the idea that such a progressive could be a Republican is much less likely than Trump getting elected president.

[pbrower2a]

(09-03-2016, 05:09 PM)Einzige Wrote: All I'm proposing is that Trump might pull out a surprise nailbiter, flail around in office for four years and get punted by a True Progressive like a Republican Jimmy Carter. The 2020 election would then be the climax, with everything else a descending action. Vóila, James II/Glorious Revolution analogue.

He would fail catastrophically as President and create an opening for someone even worse -- maybe someone unafraid to say that blacks are subhuman, that Jews are a conspiracy for world domination, and that America needs a war with Islam to settle things once and for all. I can see Donald Trump so bumbling in economic stewardship that America finds itself in an economic meltdown that begins like that of 2007-2009 and festers into one like the one beginning in the autumn of 1929. Meanwhile his people have ensured that no liberal solutions are possible even through the electoral process, so people must turn to extreme-right solutions. If people dislike having to work to exhaustion for near-starvation pay, then it is their fault that they dislike it, and they might as well be sent to a 'corrective' labor camp for readjustment of their attitudes.

By the way -- the first year and a half of the 1929-1933 meltdown and the year-and-a-half meltdown beginning in the autumn of 2007 were at the same point about a year and a half later.

Donald Trump has introduced a sickness into American political discourse, an equivalent of syphilis that can appear once as an inconvenient but survivable illness but that then re-emerges to do even greater harm. I was tempted to say venom, but once one is cured of the venom from a snakebite that has not caused gangrene or necrosis one has no recurrences of the envenomation.

[Einzige]

(09-14-2016, 12:53 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(09-03-2016, 05:09 PM)Einzige Wrote: All I'm proposing is that Trump might pull out a surprise nailbiter, flail around in office for four years and get punted by a True Progressive like a Republican Jimmy Carter. The 2020 election would then be the climax, with everything else a descending action. Vóila, James II/Glorious Revolution analogue.

What is the MOST unlikely element in this scenario is that there could be a "true progressive like a Republican Jimmy Carter."

Besides the fact that Jimmy Carter is not much of a progressive, the idea that such a progressive could be a Republican is much less likely than Trump getting elected president.

You misunderstood me. I was drawing parallels between Trump and Carter.

On the one hand, in terms of their personality, they're worlds apart. Trump of course is a bloviating narcissist, while Carter - or his public persona, at least - is a humble Southern Baptist.

But, politically, there are a Hell of a lot of parallels between them. They're both significantly more moderate on a number of issues than the Party base they represent. And they're both from States that were rapidly trending away from their own Party at the time they were nominated. And Carter, like Trump, butted heads quite often with the activist Congressional wing of his Party. Hell, they both even used their business credentials as political branding, Carter the peanut farmer and Trump the hotelier and real estate mogul.

I'm positing a chain of events that looks something like this:

Clinton I = Eisenhower
Bush II  = Kennedy (his incredibly narrow victory) /Johnson (his increasing "radicalism", foreign adventurism, domestic ills)
Obama = Nixon, sans Watergate; consequently, Clinton II = a Ford who never became President in his own right
Trump = Carter
??? (Elizabeth Warren? Tulsi Gabbard?)  = Reagan

This, roughly, is the model:

Quote: 


The Prophet—The prophet comes to the scene with a completely new ideological approach to a stagnating problem. People attach themselves to the prophet affectively, and his (or her) key strength is communication. The prophet is able to package the ideological and structural changes such that ordinary people can not only understand it (in its own ideological space), but hook into some part of it, become affectively invested in it. The prophet will run over the opposition effectively on issues that would have been taboo even a few years before, largely because people have been primed communicatively for a general social transformation. The prophet will usually become an iconic figure within the ideological boundaries, and within the culture at large. The examples in the recent 30 year cycles are, of course, FDR and Reagan.

The Bureaucrat—The bureaucrat will usually be attached to the Prophet as a calmer and less radical figure, though he will share the ideological worldview of the prophet for the most part. He will be perceived as a less exalted continuation of the prophet, but it is precisely the lack of the affective investment that will sink the bureaucrat in the end. The bureaucrat will be perceived not as a transformational figure, but as a capable manager of a change that’s already taken place. But because he can’t inspire the sort of attachments that the prophet could, he will usually be doomed to a short reign, as the affective energy swings in the other direction. The examples in the recent 30 year cycles are Truman and Bush Senior.

The Interregnum—Because the affective attachments of the prophet waned during the reign of the bureaucrat, it really has nowhere else to go. It swirls around attaching itself to various secondary issues, though the bureaucrat may try to hook it into a war posture. As the reign of the bureaucrat comes to an end, then, you will often see deeply invested social conflicts (McCarthyism, the Culture Wars and L.A. Riots, etc.), as the affective energies once attached to the ideology gets set loose across the social landscape. This will lead to what i call the interregnum: the emergence of the other ideology within the 30 year cycle. In the case of the Roosevelt cycle, we see the emergence of Eisenhower. In the middle of the Reagan cycle, we see the emergence of Clinton. In both cases, the interregnum will be run by a relatively mild version of the second ideology, since the affective energies attached to the prophet have not completely disappeared. Because the interregnum will be relatively mild in terms of social transformation, it will almost always end in a painfully close election, since the distinction between the ideologies will seem less severe, and the middle group of undecideds will be unable to hook into one program or the other: Kennedy/Nixon; Bush/Gore.

The Disaster—As the ruling ideology endured the interregnum, it intensified its polarity as a matter of distinguishing itself from the mildness of the second ideology. When it gets into power after the interregnum, it throws this radicalization wholeheartedly at whatever social problems it perceives. For this reason, the Disaster is an amped up, highly volatile affective era, as we move from relative mildness in the distinction between ideologies to hard core distinction in the development of policy. In the first 30 year cycle, you thus get the rapid changes in civil rights laws and the war on poverty, while in the Bush 2 era you get the most extreme tilting toward neo-liberal economics, far beyond what Reagan could have dreamed of accomplishing. This radicality, moreover, will lead to the kind of social instability that makes war more probable, and pushes the ideology above any connection to reality. It thus leads to disaster for the ideology: the 60’s as the moment when the 30 year Democratic cycle became so radical that it could not sustain itself; the 00’s as the moment when Reaganism collapsed under the pressure of ideological purity.

So, if you’re smart, you should be asking the following: What about Nixon? In my view, Nixon/Ford/Carter were transition figures, placeholders as the electorate waited for a new cycle. The affective attachments of the period are confused, swaying from deep hatred and unmitigated love, to depression, and general ennui. They were, in short, unordered attachments. It’s not a mistake, I think, that the late 1960’s and early 1970’s were thus a period of structural readjustment in the economy and massive technological transformation of the society. The affective attachments, set loose from the mainstream ideologies, sunk themselves into all forms of economic and cultural production, actually collapsing the distinction between economy and culture in the process.

Now, you might be asking: are we in for another period of transition? Certainly, the economic factors would point to a situation nearly parallel to that of 1968: the dominant ideology has sunk the economy into a ideological black hole, perhaps requiring structural readjustment in the same way as the early 1970’s was the economic push of neo-liberalism that was only later cashed out as Reaganism.

I would simply add to this my perspective that there is a fifth full aspect of this cycle, the Transition, consisting of a premature figure who interrupts the majority discourse and prefigures what is to come rhetorically while still being rooted politically in the old system - Nixon/Obama - and a final figure who attempts one last check on the ascending discourse, rooted rhetorically in the old system while politically prefiguring what is to come - Carter and, potentially, Trump. [Ford and, by extension, Clinton are in this view basically superfluous, with Ford doing nothing more than serving as a placeholder for Nixon's final two years in office and a Clinton Presidency not at all necessary to complete the cycle.]

Granted, this cycle did not quite play out in the era prior to Roosevelt, so perhaps I'm reading too much into it. We'll see.

[pbrower2a]

Somehow I cannot see Kennedy/Johnson as quite the disaster that Dubya was. Dubya was a thoroughly-awful President, essentially the telescoping of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover disasters of twelve years into eight. Any decay during the Kennedy/Johnson years was of a cultural consensus (the Counterculture with the introduction of the Boom Awakening).

Attempting to force an eighty-year cycle, I can easily see Harding-Coolidge-Hoover as a 3T disaster, FDR as a 4T prophet, Truman as a 1T Bureaucrat, Eisenhower as a 2T interregnum, Kennedy-Johnson as a 4T over-reach, Nixon-Ford as a very flawed pair, Carter as a 2T delay, Reagan as a TR-style radical reformer, Bush I as a Taft-like successor, Clinton as a Wilson-like placeholder, Bush II as a 4T disaster, and Obama as... an FDR-like Prophet?

McKinley, the last real Gilded-Age President might be an interregnum. Just try figuring out Cleveland-Harrison-Cleveland!

[Einzige]

I don't think it works quite as well in the pre-New Deal era; actually, the model works a bit better in the Jacksonian era - Jackson as Prophet, van Buren as Bureaucrat, Harrison/Tyler as Interregnum, Polk as Disaster, Taylor/Filmore as Transitional and Pierce/Buchanan as Transitional II - though of course it's still far from a perfect fit, and Polk is only a "Disaster" in hindsight, in that his expansionism opened the door to increased sectionalism in the 1850s. The Gilded Age is harder to score along these lines, so who knows? Maybe it's an empty pattern. Or maybe not.

[Eric the Green]

Nice graphic and idea, Einzige. Myself, I still prefer the four turnings approach. Clearly, that works well. The "disasters" are the late 3T presidents, never the 2T presidents: Fillmore/Pierce/Buchanan, Coolidge/Hoover, Bush II. The 4T prophets are Lincoln, FDR and Obama, with more to come this time. The 1T presidents keep the new consensus going: Washington/Adams/Jefferson, Grant and successors, Truman/Eisenhower. The 2T presidents are the awakeners: Jackson, TR, Kennedy/Johnson. The other presidents are just fill-ins; especially Reagan, who offered nothing but deception.

[Einzige]

As I see it, Nixon rhetorically prefigured the coming realignment ("the Silent Majority"), while remaining rooted politically in the then-current one (the EPA, wage and price controls, etc.) Carter was rhetorically rooted in the then-current alignment (his rhetoric was that of the New Deal coalition) while politically prefiguring the coming realignment (Carter deregulated the airline and beer industries, tried to streamline the Federal bureaucracy, etc.).

Ford is an outlier who filled in for Nixon and has no bearing on the cycle.

Likewise, Obama rhetorically prefigures the coming realignment (his rhetoric is that of the most liberal President since the 1960s) while remaining rooted politically in the present alignment (Obamacare is essentially corporate welfare for insurance companies, the extension of the Bush tax cuts and the War on Terror, etc.). A hypothetical President Trump would be rhetorically rooted in the present alignment ("the Silent Majority" again) while politically prefiguring the coming realignment (his atypical economic proposals that we virtually never see from Republicans - maternity leave, support for some kind of Federal role in health care, etc., as well as his apparent isolationism).

The role of both Nixon and Obama was to loosen the grip on the political process of the prevailing paradigm, through political jujitsu that splits apart the reigning coalition. The role of both Carter and Trump was and is to try, and fail, to hook the gestating forces trickling up from below into the old politics, to preempt the realignment. Carter failed, and Trump probably will, too.

We wouldn't need a Ford figure in this cycle, because Gerald Ford was an accident of history, and events probably would have played out fairly similarly had Nixon never resigned - a relatively fiscally conservative Democrat was probably inevitable in 1976 (if not Carter then perhaps "Moonbeam" Brown), while a relatively fiscally "liberal" Republican looks like a possibility this time.

One of the great ironies of American political history is that Reagan was able to successfully portray Carter as a profligate big gubmint liberal, when he was probably the most restrained President since the Republicans of the 1920s on fiscal matters. It's very likely, if Trump wins, that his eventual Democratic successor will be able to portray him as a heartless servant of business, when he'll likely be the most fiscally interventionist President since the Democrats of the 1960s.

[Eric the Green]

(09-15-2016, 03:45 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(09-15-2016, 03:30 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Nice graphic and idea, Einzige. Myself, I still prefer the four turnings approach. Clearly, that works well. The "disasters" are the late 3T presidents, never the 2T presidents: Fillmore/Pierce/Buchanan, Coolidge/Hoover, Bush II. The 4T prophets are Lincoln, FDR and Obama, with more to come this time. The 1T presidents keep the new consensus going: Washington/Adams/Jefferson, Grant and successors, Truman/Eisenhower. The 2T presidents are the awakeners: Jackson, TR, Kennedy/Johnson. The other presidents are just fill-ins; especially Reagan, who offered nothing but deception.

JFK died at the end of the 1T. And he fit in squarely with Truman and Ike. A WW2 figure, leading a largely unified people during a High.

Yes, but since he was an awakener who inspired the activists of the 1960s, he was pre-seasonal.

There is no exact correspondence between leaders across decades, as Einzige tried to show. The timing of the appearance of equivalent leaders also is affected by other cycles and tides. There's always more than one cycle going on. And they can all be charted by you know what.

Quote:The 2T Presidents were LBJ, Nixon, Ford and Carter. Reagan was a transitional figure, became 3T 2nd term. The thing is, during a 2T, Presidents merely react to the turning. They never lead events or inspire the change. At best, they eventually offer up some elements of change (e.g. the Civil Rights Act, the EPA ... hmmm ... Ford and Carter? .... I'm drawing a blank). The whole point of a 2T is the change wells up, it's grass roots. The Establishment cannot lead a 2T.

Yes they can; Jackson, TR and LBJ led the change quite a bit. It wells up from the grass roots, for sure, but it can also be pushed, legislated and inspired by leaders. It works both ways. Not all of the leaders, but some of them. And of course, a reactionary like Reagan was the same way. He rode the backlash, but also further inspired and pushed and legislated it, going all the way back to 1964. And here we are, because of him.

Nixon was an awakening leader too, in so far as he pushed further the already-existing tides of the sixties peace and ecology movements. But his own lies and misconduct also inspired the great mistrust of American presidents and leaders that is still with us, and was part of the Awakening too. Without Nixon, I'd venture to say that Hillary would now be up by 20 points.

[Warren Dew]

(09-15-2016, 12:10 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Somehow I cannot see Kennedy/Johnson as quite the disaster that Dubya was.  Dubya was a thoroughly-awful President, essentially the telescoping of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover disasters of twelve years into eight.  Any decay during the Kennedy/Johnson years was of a cultural consensus (the Counterculture with the introduction of the Boom Awakening).

You weren't draft age during the Vietnam war, were you?  You might look at how many Americans got killed in Vietnam versus Iraq.

[Eric the Green]

(09-20-2016, 11:46 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(09-15-2016, 12:10 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Somehow I cannot see Kennedy/Johnson as quite the disaster that Dubya was.  Dubya was a thoroughly-awful President, essentially the telescoping of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover disasters of twelve years into eight.  Any decay during the Kennedy/Johnson years was of a cultural consensus (the Counterculture with the introduction of the Boom Awakening).

You weren't draft age during the Vietnam war, were you?  You might look at how many Americans got killed in Vietnam versus Iraq.

To that I would say, I agree; Vietnam was a worse disaster than Iraq.

However, all the "awakener" presidents, like Jackson and TR, were also war mongers.

Vietnam was LBJ's disaster. Bush had more disasters though; a whole set of them: 9-11/Afghanistan, Iraq, Katrina, the crash of 2008. Bush was the Hoover, but not Johnson, because LBJ did not lead us into a 4T as George W Bush did. The legacy of LBJ is mixed, and your view of him depends on your politics. Same with Bush II, but there's more consensus that Bush II's legacy is disaster, and little if anything good.

[Einzige]

At any rate, calling both Kennedy-Johnson and Bush II "Disasters" is meant only within the context of their respective, hitherto politically dominant, ideologies - Kennedy-Johnson was a Disaster for New Deal liberalism and Bush II was a Disaster for Fusionist conservatism. Both came to power in incredibly tight, highly contested elections (here I'm treating Kennedy-Johnson as a single figure, as well as Nixon-Ford) and proceeded to govern as if they had an overwhelming mandate. Both represented the apogee of their respective ideological paradigms, and both discredited that paradigm through overreach.

The next President of their Parties, under this theory - Carter and, theoretically, Trump - are condemned to try to straddle a growing divide between a discredited system and a realigning electorate. Carter tried and failed to solve this problem by using liberal rhetoric over a conservative policy package; Trump will probably sound extremely conservative while governing pretty much like a (non-racially-egalitarian) New Dealer. This is also a strategy doomed to failure.

We're really long past due for the political re-emergence of a decentralizing, anti-hierarchical, anarchist-influenced Left that shirks the Statist ideology of the New Deal, and a centralizing, interventionist, paternalistic Right that includes the New Deal as part of a heritage worth conserving. The old interventionist Left/anti-interventionist Right paradigm has very nearly exhausted itself intellectually and historically. We came close to this in the early seventies, in the dispute between the New Left (which had as a main representative Gene McCarthy, who went on to become a libertarian) and the Nixonite Hard Hats, but it only lasted a few years.

[Mikebert]

(09-14-2016, 09:49 PM)Einzige Wrote:

(09-14-2016, 12:53 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(09-03-2016, 05:09 PM)Einzige Wrote: All I'm proposing is that Trump might pull out a surprise nailbiter, flail around in office for four years and get punted by a True Progressive like a Republican Jimmy Carter. The 2020 election would then be the climax, with everything else a descending action. Vóila, James II/Glorious Revolution analogue.

What is the MOST unlikely element in this scenario is that there could be a "true progressive like a Republican Jimmy Carter."

Besides the fact that Jimmy Carter is not much of a progressive, the idea that such a progressive could be a Republican is much less likely than Trump getting elected president.

You misunderstood me. I was drawing parallels between Trump and Carter.

On the one hand, in terms of their personality, they're worlds apart. Trump of course is a bloviating narcissist, while Carter - or his public persona, at least - is a humble Southern Baptist.

But, politically, there are a Hell of a lot of parallels between them. They're both significantly more moderate on a number of issues than the Party base they represent. And they're both from States that were rapidly trending away from their own Party at the time they were nominated. And Carter, like Trump, butted heads quite often with the activist Congressional wing of his Party. Hell, they both even used their business credentials as political branding, Carter the peanut farmer and Trump the hotelier and real estate mogul.

I'm positing a chain of events that looks something like this:

Clinton I = Eisenhower
Bush II  = Kennedy (his incredibly narrow victory) /Johnson (his increasing "radicalism", foreign adventurism, domestic ills)
Obama = Nixon, sans Watergate; consequently, Clinton II = a Ford who never became President in his own right
Trump = Carter
??? (Elizabeth Warren? Tulsi Gabbard?)  = Reagan

This, roughly, is the model:

Quote: 


The Prophet—The prophet comes to the scene with a completely new ideological approach to a stagnating problem. People attach themselves to the prophet affectively, and his (or her) key strength is communication. The prophet is able to package the ideological and structural changes such that ordinary people can not only understand it (in its own ideological space), but hook into some part of it, become affectively invested in it. The prophet will run over the opposition effectively on issues that would have been taboo even a few years before, largely because people have been primed communicatively for a general social transformation. The prophet will usually become an iconic figure within the ideological boundaries, and within the culture at large. The examples in the recent 30 year cycles are, of course, FDR and Reagan.

The Bureaucrat—The bureaucrat will usually be attached to the Prophet as a calmer and less radical figure, though he will share the ideological worldview of the prophet for the most part. He will be perceived as a less exalted continuation of the prophet, but it is precisely the lack of the affective investment that will sink the bureaucrat in the end. The bureaucrat will be perceived not as a transformational figure, but as a capable manager of a change that’s already taken place. But because he can’t inspire the sort of attachments that the prophet could, he will usually be doomed to a short reign, as the affective energy swings in the other direction. The examples in the recent 30 year cycles are Truman and Bush Senior.

The Interregnum—Because the affective attachments of the prophet waned during the reign of the bureaucrat, it really has nowhere else to go. It swirls around attaching itself to various secondary issues, though the bureaucrat may try to hook it into a war posture. As the reign of the bureaucrat comes to an end, then, you will often see deeply invested social conflicts (McCarthyism, the Culture Wars and L.A. Riots, etc.), as the affective energies once attached to the ideology gets set loose across the social landscape. This will lead to what i call the interregnum: the emergence of the other ideology within the 30 year cycle. In the case of the Roosevelt cycle, we see the emergence of Eisenhower. In the middle of the Reagan cycle, we see the emergence of Clinton. In both cases, the interregnum will be run by a relatively mild version of the second ideology, since the affective energies attached to the prophet have not completely disappeared. Because the interregnum will be relatively mild in terms of social transformation, it will almost always end in a painfully close election, since the distinction between the ideologies will seem less severe, and the middle group of undecideds will be unable to hook into one program or the other: Kennedy/Nixon; Bush/Gore.

The Disaster—As the ruling ideology endured the interregnum, it intensified its polarity as a matter of distinguishing itself from the mildness of the second ideology. When it gets into power after the interregnum, it throws this radicalization wholeheartedly at whatever social problems it perceives. For this reason, the Disaster is an amped up, highly volatile affective era, as we move from relative mildness in the distinction between ideologies to hard core distinction in the development of policy. In the first 30 year cycle, you thus get the rapid changes in civil rights laws and the war on poverty, while in the Bush 2 era you get the most extreme tilting toward neo-liberal economics, far beyond what Reagan could have dreamed of accomplishing. This radicality, moreover, will lead to the kind of social instability that makes war more probable, and pushes the ideology above any connection to reality. It thus leads to disaster for the ideology: the 60’s as the moment when the 30 year Democratic cycle became so radical that it could not sustain itself; the 00’s as the moment when Reaganism collapsed under the pressure of ideological purity.

So, if you’re smart, you should be asking the following: What about Nixon? In my view, Nixon/Ford/Carter were transition figures, placeholders as the electorate waited for a new cycle. The affective attachments of the period are confused, swaying from deep hatred and unmitigated love, to depression, and general ennui. They were, in short, unordered attachments. It’s not a mistake, I think, that the late 1960’s and early 1970’s were thus a period of structural readjustment in the economy and massive technological transformation of the society. The affective attachments, set loose from the mainstream ideologies, sunk themselves into all forms of economic and cultural production, actually collapsing the distinction between economy and culture in the process.

Now, you might be asking: are we in for another period of transition? Certainly, the economic factors would point to a situation nearly parallel to that of 1968: the dominant ideology has sunk the economy into a ideological black hole, perhaps requiring structural readjustment in the same way as the early 1970’s was the economic push of neo-liberalism that was only later cashed out as Reaganism.

I would simply add to this my perspective that there is a fifth full aspect of this cycle, the Transition, consisting of a premature figure who interrupts the majority discourse and prefigures what is to come rhetorically while still being rooted politically in the old system - Nixon/Obama - and a final figure who attempts one last check on the ascending discourse, rooted rhetorically in the old system while politically prefiguring what is to come - Carter and, potentially, Trump. [Ford and, by extension, Clinton are in this view basically superfluous, with Ford doing nothing more than serving as a placeholder for Nixon's final two years in office and a Clinton Presidency not at all necessary to complete the cycle.]

Granted, this cycle did not quite play out in the era prior to Roosevelt, so perhaps I'm reading too much into it. We'll see.

Time to give credit where credit is due.  This is Marc Lamb's forty year cycle. Take it back a step further and you have T Roosevelt as the prophet, Taft as the bureaucrat, Wilson as the Interregum, and Harding-Hoover as the disaster.  Marc never presented it formally with nice graphics as you did (nice job!).  It came about in a discussion I had with him around 2002/3.  In those days I was an economic cycles guy and was focused on Kondratieff cycle points, 1981 as the K-peak (cycle equivalent to 1920) and the 2000 stock market peak as cycle-equivalent to 1929.  So I saw the scandal-ridden Reagan as the scandal-ridden Harding, Bush I as Coolidge's 1923-25 term and Clinton as Coolidge's 1925-29 term.  Hence Bush II was Hoover and destined to be replaced by a new Democratic Roosevelt.  Marc said he saw Reagan as T Roosevelt.  I could not grok that at the time.  He then said there was a 40 year cycle.  He held much store in the 40 years period of Democratic dominance between 1954 and 1994 as a measure of this natural political yardstick.

Marc always looked at the cycle in political terms, initially I believed because he mostly functioned here as a rightwing political troll, but he was civil and reasonable with me, at least in the early days.  When I asked why he makes everything political (this was a case of the pot calling the kettle black since I was making everything economic) he said that politics reflects the unity of history, economics, culture, policy, religion (Marc is born-again) etc, and so is the best indicator for changes in the cycles of history.

It took me several years (until 2006 or 2007) to come around to his way of thinking.  When I did I could easily see his initial point and draw out the 40 year cycle as you have above and I extended further back. What you have done is added some nice nomenclature to this cycle, names for the pieces.   By adding the third piece we can now compare each recent president with one of the opposite party one cycle back and another to one of the same party two cycles

Thus we have:

Reagan = T or F Roosevelt
Bush I = Taft or Truman
Clinton = Wilson or Eisenhower  (note Clinton himself complained that the Fed was forcing him to be fucking Eisenhower and Lamb argued in 2001 that 911 was akin to the terrorist wave in 1919-20 and was NOT the 4T trigger)
Bush II = Harding + Coolidge + 1st half of Hoover
Obama = 2nd half of Hoover + early FDR
2016 = 1940 or a 1976 without Watergate.

Note without Watergate, Carter would be facing Reagan in 1976, not an unelected Ford.  It is likely Republicans would have won, and the 1976 Reagan would has extended the Nixon Revolution, instead of losing to Ford, becoming more radicalized during the Carter years, and  then taking credit for the Reagan revolution, which was actually launched by Carter.

[Einzige]

I ought to add a caveat that the theory I've presented isn't mine (I hope I made that clear when I mentioned "I'd simply add..".), but that I found it in a post on Democratic Underground, author unattributed. My only innovation is to clarify my perspective on the role of Nixon-Ford-Carter and Obama-(Trump) in this cycle.

The only one I have trouble accepting is Wilson = Eisenhower = Clinton. Clinton and Eisenhower are in similar positions historically, but Wilson reads more like a continuation of Roosevelt-Taft than a moderate form of an opposing ideology, to my view. And I think that the analogy is stronger between Nixon and Obama, given their political acumen (Obama is perhaps a Nixon without either a landslide victory or a disgraceful resignation) than with either Hoover or FDR - Obama isn't an abject failure like Hoover, but he also isn't a transcendent figure riding in like FDR. He reads much more like a precursor to a realignment to me.

I see very little parallel between Clinton/Trump and Roosevelt '40/Willkie on either side. I think (inverted) parallels with Ford and Carter ring much more true. Willkie was a wealthy businessman and former Democrat, like Trump, but he also ran a very civil campaign and would have been a virtual third Roosevelt term anyway. I see no parallel between either Clinton or Trump and FDR.

Everything since Bush II feels more like a weird inverted repetition of the late 60s/early 70s than it does the Great Depression.

[Einzige]

By the way, what did Marc Lamb prognosticate?

[Mikebert]

Lamb thought the 4T would begin later than 911, along the lines of what S&H had projected in Generations.  Although he was here a long time until he got banned, after the first few years or he became a full-time troll and there was no more forthcoming from him.  He went from maybe 95% troll/5% theory in the earliest times to ~98% troll within a year or two year and then rising to 100% troll after a few years.  So, although he made thousands of posts, only a few dozen were not trolling.

[Mikebert]

(09-24-2016, 09:52 AM)Einzige Wrote: By the way, what did Marc Lamb prognosticate?

Well looky here.  In response to my question as the the origin of the term Homelander, folks here posted a thread preserved at Generational Dynamics  

http://generationaldynamics.com/tftarchi...-00018.htm

Here is a  post of mine (Post#448 at 10-21-2001 02:17 PM by Mikebert

I'll take a stab at what I believe to be the basic thrust of Marc's argument.

Strauss and Howe posit that history creates generations and generations create history. S&H show turnings that are closely aligned with generations that are being born. A long generation has a long turning, a short generation a short turning. This observation shows the idea that history (turnings) creates generations. Generations precede turnings by 2-5 years since history doesn't start to affect a generation until they reach the earliest age at which they can remember anything.

S&H also say that generations create history. That is, generations create turnings. Obviously, it is not the generation being born that created the associated turning. Rather is the the "constellation" of adult generations that creates the turning.

Marc points out that the generational mix currently in power contains far too many Silents for it to be the beginning of the Crisis. He is absolutely right. There are far too many Silents in power right now for a Crisis to begin if the S&H model is correct.

Now Stonewall points our that S&H have the Crisis beginning in 2005 and so 76 years is consistent with their model. No it isn't. A 76 year cycle means a 19 year phase of life, which implies that elderhood begins at age 57, which simply doesn't jive with the common experience of today. S&H developed their model with a 22 year phase of life that has elderhood beginning at age 66, which makes much more sense. S&H advanced the idea that 2005 is the beginning of the next turning to hedge their bets. They know from their work in T4T that turnings are getting shorter. Suppose there really was no Civil War anomaly, generations are only 18 years long and the Crisis begins in 2001. If they stuck to their model with the standard 22 year generations they would look for the Crisis to begin in 2013 at the earliest (as they said in Generations) and be way off. By using 2005 its just four years late with 18 year gens. If Harry Dent is right and it comes in 2009, its just four years early. And if it turns out to come late next decade, that's OK since they already predicted a "Crisis of 2020" in Generations. One does not get the beginning of the Crisis in 2005 using the S&H phase-of-life based model.

Having made the theoretical point, Marc then collects some empirical data. He makes the correlation between the Palmer raids and the hysteria surrounding the 911 attack. He notes a poll that shows overwhelming support for the "3T" approach of President Bush, as evidence of a 3T mood.

In all he gives a fairly convincing argument for "It be 3T". Had I not done an extensive study of my own that suggests otherwise, I'd be in the 3T camp with Marc. But others here have not done the extensive study that I have, and yet appear to reject his hypothesis.

I wonder if perhaps he thinks this rejection has more to do with people's rejection of him (perhaps for how he expresses some of his views) than with his analysis. (I'm not sure at all about this latter, its just my interpretation). I am NOT speaking for Marc, just giving my own interpretation of where IMHO I think he might be coming from.

[Einzige]

Part of the problem with this mode of analysis is that the pre-New Deal period is pretty muddled.

Theodore Roosevelt does look like a Prophet, and Taft looks like a Bureaucrat. On the other hand, Woodrow Wilson seems in a lot of ways to have been closer ideologically to Roosevelt than either Harding or Coolidge - who we are supposing were the Disaster to Teddy's Prophet - were. And while Herbert Hoover was a Roosevelt-supporting Progressive in the nineteen tens and his governance vaguely reflected that, supposing that Hoover alone was the Disaster leaves us without a place for Harding/Coolidge in the equation.

Moreover, the New Deal was in a lot of ways a continuation of Theodore Roosevelt's political system. We don't have the benefit of the new Prophet rejecting the legacy of the preceding one here, as we do with Reagan rejecting FDR.


Further, I have a bit of a problem with Marc Lamb's analysis of 9/11. If it were a direct analogue to the wave of anarchist terrorism in 1919/1920, we should have expected there to be some sort of equivalent to World War I under Clinton in the 1990s. But of course there was nothing of the sort.

I think this particular cyclical model works pretty well for 1932 to the present, and also looks vaguely applicable to the Jacksonian period. But I have a very hard time squaring it with the Civil War and the Gilded and Progressive Ages.