No more Millennial children

[Craig '84]

On December 31, 2017, the last Millennials turned 13.

No more Millennials are children. My generation are all teens, twentysomethings and thirtysomethings now!

[Warren Dew]

We don't know yet when the crisis war will happen, so we don't know yet when the dividing line was between Millennials who will fight in it and postMillenials who will be too young.

[Eric the Green]

(01-01-2018, 02:23 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: We don't know yet when the crisis war will happen, so we don't know yet when the dividing line was between Millennials who will fight in it and postMillenials who will be too young.

On the other hand, the crisis war in the last 4T came at the end of it. I'm predicting this will happen again, circa 2025-2028. If so, then like in the 1940s, some of the early-cohort, post-Millennial artists/adaptives will be joining the youngest Millennials on the front lines.

A major war will start around the end of the year 2020, but the USA may be only be involved by proxy. The 2025-26 war will probably be a combination of action abroad (perhaps related to the 2020 war), and a large skirmish between the red and blue factions in the (formerly-perhaps)-United States of America.

I hope the blue faction will triumph over the red, and that the violence will be minimal. That way we can continue to progress, leave trickle-down supply-side libertarian Reaganomics forever behind, and thus enter a first turning that will be prosperous and steady. A blue win with too much violence will leave us in a 1T that might progress, but not so steadily and with less consensus; similar to the Gilded Age in that respect.

If the red side wins, with too much violence involved, the decline of the USA will proceed rapidly. Donald Drump is the kind of demagogue capable of arousing the alt-right red side to fight and even win. Comparable figures will need to emerge on the blue side.

[Kinser79]

(01-01-2018, 01:42 AM)Craig 84 Wrote: On December 31, 2017, the last Millennials turned 13.

No more Millennials are children. My generation are all teens, twentysomethings and thirtysomethings now!

This would make a 35 year generation if one uses the S&H date of 1982 for the start of the Millies. I personally use 1984 as the cut off date with 1978-1983 being cusp years. That is based on my personal observations. I'm a 1979 co-hort and am strongly nomadic with some civic characteristics. My husband is 1982 and is closer to 50/50 while my sister is 1984 and almost totally civic with some nomad characteristics.

Also my son who was born in 1999 insists he isn't a Millie. I would argue that even on the outside chance that he was the last Millie was born sometime around 31 December 2004 or 2005 (at the latest). My much younger niece and nephew are completely different yet again.

As such I typically break down the turnings with the current 4T starting around 2006.

As such Boomers would remember JFK assination but not VJ Day;
Xers would remember Challenger but not JFK;
Millies would remember Katrina/Crash of '08 but not Challenger;
Zeds would likely not remember the Crash of 08 except for the oldest but would remember the end of the 4T.

(01-01-2018, 02:23 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: We don't know yet when the crisis war will happen, so we don't know yet when the dividing line was between Millennials who will fight in it and postMillenials who will be too young.

I know Xenakis (or whatever his name is) claims there is ALWAYS a crisis war but history does not bear this out. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 was called Glorious because of the lack of bloodshed. That being said a war during a 4T is more likely to occur, and such wars are typically total wars. That being said wars are not limited to 4Ts as the US has been involved in a war of some sort or the other every turning since its founding. Other powerful countries tend to have a similar history. The relative passivity of Europe is a recent phenomenon.

[MillennialJim]

(01-06-2018, 11:32 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(01-01-2018, 01:42 AM)Craig Wrote: On December 31, 2017, the last Millennials turned 13.

No more Millennials are children. My generation are all teens, twentysomethings and thirtysomethings now!

This would make a 35 year generation if one uses the S&H date of 1982 for the start of the Millies.  I personally use 1984 as the cut off date with 1978-1983 being cusp years.  That is based on my personal observations.  I'm a 1979 co-hort and am strongly nomadic with some civic characteristics.  My husband is 1982 and is closer to 50/50 while my sister is 1984 and almost totally civic with some nomad characteristics.

Also my son who was born in 1999 insists he isn't a Millie.  I would argue that even on the outside chance that he was the last Millie was born sometime around 31 December 2004 or 2005 (at the latest).  My much younger niece and nephew are completely different yet again.

As such I typically break down the turnings with the current 4T starting around 2006.

As such Boomers would remember JFK assination but not VJ Day;
Xers would remember Challenger but not JFK;
Millies would remember Katrina/Crash of '08 but not Challenger;
Zeds would likely not remember the Crash of 08 except for the oldest but would remember the end of the 4T.

(01-01-2018, 02:23 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: We don't know yet when the crisis war will happen, so we don't know yet when the dividing line was between Millennials who will fight in it and postMillenials who will be too young.

I know Xenakis (or whatever his name is) claims there is ALWAYS a crisis war but history does not bear this out.  The Glorious Revolution of 1688 was called Glorious because of the lack of bloodshed.  That being said a war during a 4T is more likely to occur, and such wars are typically total wars.  That being said wars are not limited to 4Ts as the US has been involved in a war of some sort or the other every turning since its founding.  Other powerful countries tend to have a similar history.  The relative passivity of Europe is a recent phenomenon.

FWIW, I think we are going to see some major differences between the first and second halves of the Millennial generation.  I'm also an '82 cohort but I'm very late '82 and strongly identify with the first wave Millennials.  Life, and outlook on life, is completely different than a '99 cohort, though.  I do think the second half of the generation will turn out to be less liberal politically than the first half, especially the men.  

Also, I agree with you re: the crisis war comment.  It's possible if not probable that we find ourselves in some type of new armed conflict in the next decade, but the scope of that remains unclear to me.  There may eventually be a reckoning with China and/or Russia, for example, or more likely a Cold War-style series of proxy wars.  I suspect it won't happen in Trump's first term despite  a lot of white knuckle moments.

If he's re-elected, all bets are off.

[pbrower2a]

(01-06-2018, 11:32 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(01-01-2018, 01:42 AM)Craig Wrote: On December 31, 2017, the last Millennials turned 13.

No more Millennials are children. My generation are all teens, twentysomethings and thirtysomethings now!

This would make a 35 year generation if one uses the S&H date of 1982 for the start of the Millies.  I personally use 1984 as the cut off date with 1978-1983 being cusp years.  That is based on my personal observations.  I'm a 1979 co-hort and am strongly nomadic with some civic characteristics.  My husband is 1982 and is closer to 50/50 while my sister is 1984 and almost totally civic with some nomad characteristics.

I'm not so sure that the generational boundaries are so fixed as Howe and Strauss put them until the Crisis defines them. The generational boundary between the GI and the Silent  Generations was not established until World War II. People born in 1924 could get some glory out of World War II; those born in 1925 rarely could. Had WWII dragged on a couple years longer, then the line might have been between 1926 and 1927. There was no sharp change in child-raising techniques that distinguished the GI from the Silent during the 1930s. Likewise the boundary between the Lost (until 1900) and the GI (1901 on) reflects that if the response of the Lost was 'back to normal, at least as they knew it', that of the GI Generation was to make the most of the change. It was possible for a high-profile GI figure (the elder Bush) to have a GI parent who was not a teenage mother (teenage mothers are usually weak or suspect influences upon their children).

We are in a Crisis even if we manage to avoid an apocalyptic war.

Quote:Also my son who was born in 1999 insists he isn't a Millie.  I would argue that even on the outside chance that he was the last Millie was born sometime around 31 December 2004 or 2005 (at the latest).  My much younger niece and nephew are completely different yet again.

We have yet to see the first of the Homeland generation (most likely pop musicians, child stars, and athletes) establish any semblance of a character -- yet. We don't see a change in voting patterns so far as was clear in 1980 (when the youngest of all voters, the first Generation X voters, strongly supported Ronald Reagan and his rightward trend to the surprise of those with the conventional wisdom of the time).

In November the youngest voters will still be born in 2000; voters in the 2020 Presidential election will include people born as late as 2002. We will also start seeing superstar athletes making major-league baseball and hockey teams this year. But so far even the absence of an obvious break between the Millennial and Homeland youth may reflect that the Silent followed the GI lead in patterns of life even if they could not quite experience the empowerment that GI adults knew.

But note well -- this Crisis must end well for anything analogous to the last one.

As such I typically break down the turnings with the current 4T starting around 2006.

Quote:As such Boomers would remember JFK assassination but not VJ Day;
Xers would remember Challenger but not JFK;
Millies would remember Katrina/Crash of '08 but not Challenger;
Zeds would likely not remember the Crash of 08 except for the oldest but would remember the end of the 4T.

...and GIs could remember the tail end of the 1920s (a slum of a decade) including the Great Stock Market Crash, and the Silent couldn't. X would remember when the Soviet Union was a menace, and Millennial kids would have never known that.

There is also the technology of entertainment and travel: the Lost would remember when horse-and-buggy travel. The Silent would know a time without television, and Boomers rarely would have been free of television. Boomers can remember when cable TV was simply a way to get TV signals from 80 miles away in isolated rural areas instead of unwatchable static; X kids would see cable TV as a way to get HBO or ESPN (and MTV).

But heck, I am 62. I was born closer to the horse-and-buggy era than to the legalization of same-sex marriage. How long ago was that? Johannes Brahms and Giuseppe Verdi were still alive, and Victoria was Her Britannic Majesty... and "red" on a map meant "British rule or influence". I may be an influence upon kids who will be approaching the ends of their careers in the 2070s or 2080s. Maybe those kids will grow old in an era in which cancer and prion diseases are things of the past.

Quote:

(01-01-2018, 02:23 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: We don't know yet when the crisis war will happen, so we don't know yet when the dividing line was between Millennials who will fight in it and postMillenials who will be too young.

I know Xenakis (or whatever his name is) claims there is ALWAYS a crisis war but history does not bear this out.  The Glorious Revolution of 1688 was called Glorious because of the lack of bloodshed.  That being said a war during a 4T is more likely to occur, and such wars are typically total wars.  That being said wars are not limited to 4Ts as the US has been involved in a war of some sort or the other every turning since its founding.  Other powerful countries tend to have a similar history.  The relative passivity of Europe is a recent phenomenon.

[/quote]

There will be wars and rumors of wars -- and the Crisis might this time be great reorganizations of the world to prevent an apocalyptic war. People will be scared -- and in view of North Korean nukes, we are all more scared of those than we are of British, French, Pakistani, Indian, Russian, and Chinese nukes -- or for that matter, our own. Xenakis believes that the world operates on a materialistic clockwork that overpowers human wishes and abilities. Of course I would like to disagree with him on that. But I used to believe that we Americans were too wise and decent to vote for an amoral demagogue for President and give him an obedient Congress.

[Kinser79]

(01-19-2018, 09:17 AM)MillennialJim Wrote: FWIW, I think we are going to see some major differences between the first and second halves of the Millennial generation.  I'm also an '82 cohort but I'm very late '82 and strongly identify with the first wave Millennials.  Life, and outlook on life, is completely different than a '99 cohort, though.  I do think the second half of the generation will turn out to be less liberal politically than the first half, especially the men.  

That is a possiblity.  A 99 Cohort would be closer to the cut off line between Millie and Zed.   That being said, men in general tend to be more conservative than women.  In the case of my son he's a white male who is more or less libertarian being raised by more or less civil nationalists.  While I tend to favor Trumpian populism my husband is more traditionally libertarian.

Quote:Also, I agree with you re: the crisis war comment.  It's possible if not probable that we find ourselves in some type of new armed conflict in the next decade, but the scope of that remains unclear to me.  There may eventually be a reckoning with China and/or Russia, for example, or more likely a Cold War-style series of proxy wars.  I suspect it won't happen in Trump's first term despite  a lot of white knuckle moments.

If he's re-elected, all bets are off.

Russia is a spent force.  It will take a minimum of a saeculum for Russia to rise to be a threat to the US unless the US expressly antagonizes them (which is pretty stupid, and thus all the more reason to not elect Dimocrats) and its position has severely degraded to the point that our nuclear arsenal does not deter them.  If anything the Russians would welcome a cold war with the US.  It would prevent rising decadence in their society as the US slowly collapses in the Mega-Crisis.

China is unlikely to be a threat unless and until the Yuan, Gold, or some other currency replaces USD as the main currency of international exchange, and in particular the currency in which oil is traded in.  There are already moves under foot to replace the USD as the currency of international exchange.  It is far better to allow a managed transfer to that new currency than to force a hard break internationally.

Trump will be re-elected in 2020.  The Dims have nobody unless they run Michelle Obama or Oprah in desperation (and one has already alienated a generation of younger voters--my son says of the former first lady "the bitch that ruined lunch"--Oprah would crack under the pressure Trump would put her under--being president is far more difficult than giving everyone in your studio audience a new car).  The GOP majorities will weaken slightly in 2018 but mostly that will be replacing Neo-Con incumbents.  2020 Trumpians will sweep Congress and unless they majorly mess things up will remain in charge until the end of the 4T sometime around 2028 and will likely manage most of the 1T.

In any event I expect Trump to ultimately serve as a Gorbachev type figure which will lead to a Putin like figure in the 1T.  And that really is a bad metaphor as the Russians are on a different mega-saeculum than the West.  While the next saeculum for the US would be a Mega-Crisis, the Russians are in a Mega-Awakening which will be having a 2T in just a few years.

[Kinser79]

(01-20-2018, 12:06 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: I'm not so sure that the generational boundaries are so fixed as Howe and Strauss put them until the Crisis defines them.

That is perhaps one of the most retarded things you've ever said PBR...and you've said some real doozies in your day.  Generations are formed by their time and place in the historical arch.  Considering Human biology indicates that most people baring war, famine, or pestilence will live into their 80s the four stages of the human life cycle can be more or less divided evenly into 20 year blocks.

Circumstance can retard the progression from one turning to the next certainly but not much more than a half-decade since the industrial revolution.  The longer pre-industrial saeculum is irrelevant unless one plans on destroying all the products of industrialism in some sort of global dark age.

Quote:The generational boundary between the GI and the Silent  Generations was not established until World War II. People born in 1924 could get some glory out of World War II; those born in 1925 rarely could.

It was just as rare for a 1924 cohort to gain any glory in WWII.  Most of that cohort that served in that war were either never deployed or were casualties.  As the Grandson and Nephew of Combat Veterans of WWII, Korea and Vietnam I can tell you there is no glory to be found in war.  In the words of my Grandfather a 1919 Cohort and survivor of many battles in Europe "War is mud, blood and death.  You fight for the man in the fox hole next to you, as he fights for you.  Mom, apple pie and the flag is at best tacky propaganda the recruiter uses to get you into the door--and that assumes you're not just drafted."

I would say that the cut off point was found in hindsight, which is how the cut off points for generations usually are determined.  Generational cut off points are lagging indicators at best.  That being said I've seen little argument against my general model I've presented.

Quote:Had WWII dragged on a couple years longer,

I'm not interested in discussing alternative-history with you in this particular subforum.  I'm pretty sure Dan created an Arts and Literature subforum where we can discuss fiction.

TL;DR:  Not an argument.

Quote:We are in a Crisis even if we manage to avoid an apocalyptic war.

Indeed, which is a major criticism I have of the Generational Dynamics model proposed by Xenakis.  From reading his books it seems that he insists that 4Ts always, ALWAYS, feature an apocalyptic war.  My argument is that this is not the case because the presence of a saeculum wherein such a war was avoided falsifies the statement that 4T "ALWAYS" feature an apocalyptic war.

I will say that such wars are more common in 4Ts but I view that particular hypothesis as false as the hypothesis that All Swans have White feathers.  Since swans with Black Feathers exist the statement "All Swans have white feathers" must therefore be false.  Even if swans with with white feathers are far more common than swans with black feathers.

Quote:We have yet to see the first of the Homeland generation (most likely pop musicians, child stars, and athletes) establish any semblance of a character -- yet. We don't see a change in voting patterns so far as was clear in 1980 (when the youngest of all voters, the first Generation X voters, strongly supported Ronald Reagan and his rightward trend to the surprise of those with the conventional wisdom of the time).

We've debated the Election of 1980 previously and I've already demonstrated this statement to be false.  In 1980 the youngest demographic of voters was still boomer dominated.  The only cohort in that election that could be considered Xer (and usually aren't by Xers or themselves actually) would be 1962 cohorts.

I'm not interested in walking you through the statistics again.  I suggest looking at the last time we discussed the election of 1980 using the search feature of the forum.  Or you could continue with your usual methodology and present non-arguments

Quote:In November the youngest voters will still be born in 2000; voters in the 2020 Presidential election will include people born as late as 2002. We will also start seeing superstar athletes making major-league baseball and hockey teams this year. But so far even the absence of an obvious break between the Millennial and Homeland youth may reflect that the Silent followed the GI lead in patterns of life even if they could not quite experience the empowerment that GI adults knew.

This only indicates that you expect that legacy cultural outlets are still relevant.  Zeds are already producing music which is widely distributed.  Have already started in journalism.  And already regularly post on political topics.  All of these can be found on various online sources.  Minds and Bitchute have the most as they are rising platforms though declining platforms such as Facebook and Youtube also feature Zed produced content.  

I don't think that professional sports figures will have quite the impact in the 21st century that they did in the 20th simply due to changing tastes and media platforms.  Hockey is irrelevant except in Canada and maybe Psudo-Canada where you live.  Baseball has been declining in popularity for two generations now.  And the latest antics of NFL players have spelled the doom for feetsball.  (I won't call the "game" that consists of running two feet, falling down and getting a concussion football--there is an other more civilized game played by far more Xers, Millies and Zeds that has that name.)

I think you're inability to see a demarcation the generational line already is due to looking for the wrong things in the wrong areas.  It could be a manifestation of your self-proclaimed ASD, but more likely it is just plain old Boomer Pigheadedness.

Quote:But note well -- this Crisis must end well for anything analogous to the last one.

True, but irrelevant. The S&H name "High" is unfortunate.  After all Last Time Round both Germany and Japan had 1Ts at around the same time as the US but neither era would be considered a "high".  The same is true of France and Britain.  I typically divide 1Ts into two phases:  Resolutions (of the previous era) and Expositions (of the new era).  This is far more accurate as it does not require the nation (not to be confused with the state--see Marxism and the National Question by J.V.Stalin on the definition of what a nation is and is not [and no I've found no one better yet]) undergoing a 4T to emerge victorious.  After all the nature of 4Ts dictate that someone has to lose.  It is after all a prerequisite for someone to win.

Quote:As such I typically break down the turnings with the current 4T starting around 2006.

One of the few things I agree with you on actually.  This necessitates therefore that the very youngest Millies would have to have been born no later than the 2003-2004.  I would argue that perceptions of Zed/Millie similarities can largely be attributed to the fact that X in general still has dominance in the Child Rearing institutions and in Culture generally.  Boomers may still dominate politics but as I've stated previously politics is a lagging indicator.

Quote:But heck, I am 62. I was born closer to the horse-and-buggy era than to the legalization of same-sex marriage. How long ago was that? Johannes Brahms and Giuseppe Verdi were still alive, and Victoria was Her Britannic Majesty... and "red" on a map meant "British rule or influence".

Brahms died in 1897 and was long dead before you were born.  Verdi died in 1867 and was dead longer and Victoria ceased being "Her Britannic Majesty" in 1901 when she croaked.  All of these people were dead at least a half century before you were born.  So comparatively speaking you're probably in the middle between them and Obergefell V. Hodges ruling.

Both of us have lived in times where "red" on maps indicated British Rule or Influence.  I have access to a 1982 Atlas that still used that color scheme.  Strictly speaking the British Empire still exists though it is now limited to British Overseas Dependencies such as the Fawklands and some insignificant islands.  The Commonwealth of Nations has largely replaced the Empire and will grow in influence due to Brexit.  Britain's future (and having been there I know) lies with trade with the Commonwealth and her Rebellious Daughter with which a saeculum long Special Relationship has been established.

Brexit was the UK largely unshackling itself from a corpse.  It appears that they learned from their German Cousins after all.  The EU is Soviet in Form and Austro-Hungarian Empire in function.

Quote:I may be an influence upon kids who will be approaching the ends of their careers in the 2070s or 2080s. Maybe those kids will grow old in an era in which cancer and prion diseases are things of the past.  

I doubt that.  You would have to have reproduced which you did not, or adopted, which I would argue you should not.  And I say this as someone who has an adopted son, even if we finally formalized that after his 18th birthday and it was largely irrelevant at that point legally.

 

Quote:There will be wars and rumors of wars -- and the Crisis might this time be great reorganizations of the world to prevent an apocalyptic war. People will be scared -- and in view of North Korean nukes, we are all more scared of those than we are of British, French, Pakistani, Indian, Russian, and Chinese nukes -- or for that matter, our own. Xenakis believes that the world operates on a materialistic clockwork that overpowers human wishes and abilities. Of course I would like to disagree with him on that. But I used to believe that we Americans were too wise and decent to vote for an amoral demagogue for President and give him an obedient Congress.

There are many things with which to disagree with Xenakis on.  Materialism is not one of them.  As for the President and the Congress all I have to say is:

H. L. Menken Wrote:Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

[pbrower2a]

(01-21-2018, 03:35 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(01-20-2018, 12:06 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: I'm not so sure that the generational boundaries are so fixed as Howe and Strauss put them until the Crisis defines them.

That is perhaps one of the most retarded things you've ever said PBR...and you've said some real doozies in your day.  Generations are formed by their time and place in the historical arch.  Considering Human biology indicates that most people baring war, famine, or pestilence will live into their 80s the four stages of the human life cycle can be more or less divided evenly into 20 year blocks.

Howe and Strauss said that the GI/Silent boundary was not well defined until the end of World War II, as shown by biographical details of prominent figures of politics, business, and mass culture. I may be reading something into it, but I am guessing that 1924 cohorts were more likely to do enough combat to make rank (as from battlefield commissions) or to get the specialized training that got them rank (as with fliers in the Army Air Corps or naval aviation) while World War Ii was going on. Cohorts of 1925 or 1926 could be scarred but only rarely develop the hubris of those with longer service and more exposure to danger -- and triumph. Tail-end soldiers may have been formal veterans, but occupation duty is far from the same experience as charging beaches or driving a tank into Hitlerland. This made a difference in political success: there have been two GI Presidents born in 1924, three Boomer Presidents born in the mid-1940s, but no Silent Presidents. As I see it the most likely Silent President will be Nancy Pelosi under the condition that the Democrats take over the House of Representatives in the next election, choose her as Speaker of the House, and she is present when a President leaves office while there is no Vice-President. Now that is a stretch.

I have also noticed that the Silent include something unique: a large number of self-effacing comedians, either zany characters (Jerry Lewis, Carol Burnett, Christopher Lloyd), neurotic personalities (Woody Allen), or parodies of GI efficiency (Andy Griffith, Leslie Nielsen, Dick Van Dyke). Howe and Strauss did not notice that -- but I did.
 

Quote:Circumstance can retard the progression from one turning to the next certainly but not much more than a half-decade since the industrial revolution.  The longer pre-industrial saeculum is irrelevant unless one plans on destroying all the products of industrialism in some sort of global dark age.

Using the duration of the last three completed Crisis Eras, the Great Depression/WWII  Crisis (Crisis of 1940) lasted at most 16 years in America, if longer elsewhere in countries that endured great physical destruction in the war or had revolutionary changes soon afterward; Bloody Kansas and the American Civil War (Crisis of 1860) lasted six years; the Revolutionary and Constitutional Crisis (from the Boston Massacre to the ratification of the Constitution) lasted long enough for children born at its start to become fully adult.

But at this stage we are discussing history itself and theory as well as the generational effects upon personalities.

Quote:

Quote:The generational boundary between the GI and the Silent  Generations was not established until World War II. People born in 1924 could get some glory out of World War II; those born in 1925 rarely could.

It was just as rare for a 1924 cohort to gain any glory in WWII.  Most of that cohort that served in that war were either never deployed or were casualties.  As the Grandson and Nephew of Combat Veterans of WWII, Korea and Vietnam I can tell you there is no glory to be found in war.  In the words of my Grandfather a 1919 Cohort and survivor of many battles in Europe "War is mud, blood and death.  You fight for the man in the fox hole next to you, as he fights for you.  Mom, apple pie and the flag is at best tacky propaganda the recruiter uses to get you into the door--and that assumes you're not just drafted."

I would say that the cut off point was found in hindsight, which is how the cut off points for generations usually are determined.  Generational cut off points are lagging indicators at best.  That being said I've seen little argument against my general model I've presented.

You basically said what I had to say about the cut-off between generations. War is nasty; it is best that leaders not see war as their glory. The Civil War started before Lincoln was inaugurated, and FDR didn't want the war that he got. Glory-seekers are horrible leaders in war.

Quote:

Quote:We are in a Crisis even if we manage to avoid an apocalyptic war.

Indeed, which is a major criticism I have of the Generational Dynamics model proposed by Xenakis.  From reading his books it seems that he insists that 4Ts always, ALWAYS, feature an apocalyptic war.  My argument is that this is not the case because the presence of a saeculum wherein such a war was avoided falsifies the statement that 4T "ALWAYS" feature an apocalyptic war.

I will say that such wars are more common in 4Ts but I view that particular hypothesis as false as the hypothesis that All Swans have White feathers.  Since swans with Black Feathers exist the statement "All Swans have white feathers" must therefore be false.  Even if swans with with white feathers are far more common than swans with black feathers.

It may take longer to resolve a Crisis without a war. War forces a national focus as diplomacy and social reforms do not.  I can think of some resolutions of this Crisis, one of which is that Donald Trump and the GOP successfully transform America into a pure plutocracy with no welfare, in which the rich are exempt from responsibilities, and all Americans learn that their fate is responsibility above all else to make the filthy rich even filthier rich. I can imagine a scenario in which the economic order criminalizes failure (for a fictional example think of the Klingon Empire in the Star Trek universe). This might be a harsh price to pay for avoiding a nuclear exchange, but history has had so many odd and unlikely twists that almost anything not a violation of physical law or biological reality is possible. (OK, people do not rise from the dead!)

Quote:

Quote:We have yet to see the first of the Homeland generation (most likely pop musicians, child stars, and athletes) establish any semblance of a character -- yet. We don't see a change in voting patterns so far as was clear in 1980 (when the youngest of all voters, the first Generation X voters, strongly supported Ronald Reagan and his rightward trend to the surprise of those with the conventional wisdom of the time).

We've debated the Election of 1980 previously and I've already demonstrated this statement to be false.  In 1980 the youngest demographic of voters was still boomer dominated.  The only cohort in that election that could be considered Xer (and usually aren't by Xers or themselves actually) would be 1962 cohorts.

The trend toward political conservatism began among late-wave Boomers and  got really-well marked with cohorts born in 1961. Most of the liberals born in 1961 were from ethnic or religious minorities that largely voted Democratic or were from unionized households.

Quote:

Quote:In November the youngest voters will still be born in 2000; voters in the 2020 Presidential election will include people born as late as 2002. We will also start seeing superstar athletes making major-league baseball and hockey teams this year. But so far even the absence of an obvious break between the Millennial and Homeland youth may reflect that the Silent followed the GI lead in patterns of life even if they could not quite experience the empowerment that GI adults knew.

This only indicates that you expect that legacy cultural outlets are still relevant.  Zeds are already producing music which is widely distributed.  Have already started in journalism.  And already regularly post on political topics.  All of these can be found on various online sources.  Minds and Bitchute have the most as they are rising platforms though declining platforms such as Facebook and Youtube also feature Zed produced content.  

Of course "Zed" chronicles already exist. But so far their journalism is high-school journalism. It will shortly be college journalism. It will be a while before they are employed as journalists who get bylines, do investigative or battlefield reporting, etc. Facebook and YouTube are mostly non-professional. They could be practice for the real thing. To be successful in any profession or art still takes about 10K hours of dedicated effort to polish one's craft, as says Malcolm Gladwell (who explains much well). That is the difference between the amateur ande either the success or failure in all but a few cases.

Quote:I don't think that professional sports figures will have quite the impact in the 21st century that they did in the 20th simply due to changing tastes and media platforms.  Hockey is irrelevant except in Canada and maybe Psudo-Canada where you live.  Baseball has been declining in popularity for two generations now.  And the latest antics of NFL players have spelled the doom for feetsball.  (I won't call the "game" that consists of running two feet, falling down and getting a concussion football--there is an other more civilized game played by far more Xers, Millies and Zeds that has that name.)

Other sports include tennis, gymnastics, and golf, all of which are excellent forums for asserting the personalities of the athletes down to their eccentricities.  

Quote:

Quote:But note well -- this Crisis must end well for anything analogous to the last one.

True, but irrelevant. The S&H name "High" is unfortunate.  After all Last Time Round both Germany and Japan had 1Ts at around the same time as the US but neither era would be considered a "high".  The same is true of France and Britain.  I typically divide 1Ts into two phases:  Resolutions (of the previous era) and Expositions (of the new era).  This is far more accurate as it does not require the nation (not to be confused with the state--see Marxism and the National Question by J.V.Stalin on the definition of what a nation is and is not [and no I've found no one better yet]) undergoing a 4T to emerge victorious.  After all the nature of 4Ts dictate that someone has to lose.  It is after all a prerequisite for someone to win.

A post-Crisis era can be an era of harsh repression and poverty if the leadership is pathological (as under Commie regimes in central and Balkan Europe or in China.  Communities that might have had easy connections before WWII (like Weimar and Bayreuth) could be separated by an internal border within a nation, with hostile political and economic systems on other sides.

This said, Germans (at least outside the Soviet zone and DDR), Italians, and Japanese had real Highs analogous in economics, politics, and mass culture to those in the USA, Britain, and France -- and far nicer 'Highs' than did such nominal winners as Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, where Commies established stultified cultures, overpowering propaganda, and an economic order obsolete from its inception.

Quote:As such I typically break down the turnings with the current 4T starting around 2006.

One of the few things I agree with you on actually.  This necessitates therefore that the very youngest Millies would have to have been born no later than the 2003-2004.  I would argue that perceptions of Zed/Millie similarities can largely be attributed to the fact that X in general still has dominance in the Child Rearing institutions and in Culture generally.  Boomers may still dominate politics but as I've stated previously politics is a lagging indicator.

The highest offices of the land are usually staffed with people at or just past retirement age. Experience matters greatly in democratic politics, and very rarely do young adults rise so rapidly in the political system as did Grant, T. Roosevelt, Kennedy, Clinton, or Obama. I still predict that Trump will be a failure as President and be one-and-out... and it is quite possible that his successor will be a late-wave Boomer who becomes the next analogue for Lincoln or FDR.

The end of the Crisis, Howe and Strauss tell us, typically comes when the Idealist generation fades out of political life either cast out due to incompetence or retired due to mass aging, fading relevance, and debility.  (As far as I am concerned, the end of Boomer dominance in executive and bureaucratic elites cannot happen fast enough. They are simply awful!)

Quote:

Quote:But heck, I am 62. I was born closer to the horse-and-buggy era than to the legalization of same-sex marriage. How long ago was that? Johannes Brahms and Giuseppe Verdi were still alive, and Victoria was Her Britannic Majesty... and "red" on a map meant "British rule or influence".

Brahms died in 1897 and was long dead before you were born.  Verdi died in 1867 and was dead longer and Victoria ceased being "Her Britannic Majesty" in 1901 when she croaked.  All of these people were dead at least a half century before you were born.  So comparatively speaking you're probably in the middle between them and Obergefell V. Hodges ruling.

Both of us have lived in times where "red" on maps indicated British Rule or Influence.  I have access to a 1982 Atlas that still used that color scheme.  Strictly speaking the British Empire still exists though it is now limited to British Overseas Dependencies such as the Fawklands and some insignificant islands.  The Commonwealth of Nations has largely replaced the Empire and will grow in influence due to Brexit.  Britain's future (and having been there I know) lies with trade with the Commonwealth and her Rebellious Daughter with which a saeculum long Special Relationship has been established.

62 is either middle-aged or old  depending upon personal habits. 62-year-old smokers, dopers, and alcoholics are old. My biggest vice is diet soda... and one beer or one glass of wine is good for dissolving some anxiety, and safer and more predictable than pills. But I stop at one.

...Verdi lived until 1901, and he was only four years younger than Abraham Lincoln. Yes, I remember people born as early as 1877, and no small number of the Lost. 1955-62 = 1893, and the horse-and-buggy era lasted into the first decade of the 20th century. But this said, I am already a fogy when it comes to technology. I may have to 'borrow' someone's kid so that I can make an intelligent purchase  of a smartphone soon.

Quote:Both of us have lived in times where "red" on maps indicated British Rule or Influence.  I have access to a 1982 Atlas that still used that color scheme.  Strictly speaking the British Empire still exists though it is now limited to British Overseas Dependencies such as the Fawklands and some insignificant islands.  The Commonwealth of Nations has largely replaced the Empire and will grow in influence due to Brexit.  Britain's future (and having been there I know) lies with trade with the Commonwealth and her Rebellious Daughter with which a saeculum long Special Relationship has been established.

Ignoring the Commonwealth and the questionable claim on a sector of Antarctica, it is possible that by now even Norway has more non-metropolitan territory by area than does the UK. Of course, Spitsbergen has little population. I heard talk at the time that the British Empire effectively came to an end with the retrocession of Hong Kong to China.

"Red" of course has also meant "Communist"... but you know that anyway.

Quote:

Quote:I may be an influence upon kids who will be approaching the ends of their careers in the 2070s or 2080s. Maybe those kids will grow old in an era in which cancer and prion diseases are things of the past.  

I doubt that.  You would have to have reproduced which you did not, or adopted, which I would argue you should not.  And I say this as someone who has an adopted son, even if we finally formalized that after his 18th birthday and it was largely irrelevant at that point legally.

Teaching, even if it is as a substitute. I do real teaching. I can make some interesting contribution when the opportunity arises.
 [/quote]

Quote:[quote pid='34368' dateline='1516523741']
There will be wars and rumors of wars -- and the Crisis might this time be great reorganizations of the world to prevent an apocalyptic war. People will be scared -- and in view of North Korean nukes, we are all more scared of those than we are of British, French, Pakistani, Indian, Russian, and Chinese nukes -- or for that matter, our own. Xenakis believes that the world operates on a materialistic clockwork that overpowers human wishes and abilities. Of course I would like to disagree with him on that. But I used to believe that we Americans were too wise and decent to vote for an amoral demagogue for President and give him an obedient Congress.

There are many things with which to disagree with Xenakis on.  Materialism is not one of them.  As for the President and the Congress all I have to say is:

H. L. Menken Wrote:Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

[/quote]

Materialism may be how the universe works down to the level of the subatomic particle, but attempting to explain natural phenomena an a gross scale is impossible (Uncertainty Principle and other limits -- too many variables for too few equations, and the practical impossibility of measuring the phenomena without altering them).

Mencken was certainly right about democracy and demagogues.

[Kinser79]

(01-21-2018, 06:10 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Howe and Strauss said that the GI/Silent boundary was not well defined until the end of World War II,

Which supports my view that generational boundary definition is a lagging indicator. It does not however support the absurd theory that generations can last much longer than a quarter century, maximum. At least no in the industrial saeculum. Pre-industrial saecula are more murky. (and less relevant)

Quote:I am guessing that 1924 cohorts were more likely to do enough combat to make rank (as from battlefield commissions)

As NCOs at most. 1923s regularly made 2nd Lieutenant by battlefield commission.

Quote: or to get the specialized training that got them rank (as with fliers in the Army Air Corps or naval aviation) while World War Ii was going on.

The more likely scenario for Jr Officer ranked 1924s. We've had two presidents already from such backgrounds: George H. W. Bush (who also saw some combat as a naval aviator) and Jimmy Carter who was a naval officer.

Quote: Cohorts of 1925 or 1926 could be scarred but only rarely develop the hubris of those with longer service and more exposure to danger -- and triumph. Tail-end soldiers may have been formal veterans, but occupation duty is far from the same experience as charging beaches or driving a tank into Hitlerland.

That is something of an understatement. Occupation duty was relatively cushy unless one was in logistics. Storming Normandy (or the Jap held islands for that matter) or driving a tank under fire into "Hitlerland" is a whole different kettle of fish. As I said, my grandfather was a WW2 combat vet. I have two uncles who were also combat vets, one for Korea (he was born in the mid 1930s, my grandfather being in the army had a steady job at the time and thus my grandmother was comfortable marrying him and breeding), and one a Vietnam vet (who was a 1947 cohort. Both confirmed that experiencing battle is far different than the bureaucratic mess that is the military in peace time.

Quote:This made a difference in political success: there have been two GI Presidents born in 1924, three Boomer Presidents born in the mid-1940s, but no Silent Presidents. As I see it the most likely Silent President will be Nancy Pelosi under the condition that the Democrats take over the House of Representatives in the next election, choose her as Speaker of the House, and she is present when a President leaves office while there is no Vice-President. Now that is a stretch.

It is quite a stretch because the Dims aren't taking back the house this year. Second even if they did and somehow managed to remove Trump, Pence (a Boomer) would become president and they would then have to impeach him as well. I would venture to guess that the reason that there was a lack of Silent presidents (though they maintained control over congress far longer than either the GIs or Boomers did) may have something to do with the fact that they were bookended by two large and dominate generations.

Quote:I have also noticed that the Silent include something unique: a large number of self-effacing comedians, either zany characters (Jerry Lewis, Carol Burnett, Christopher Lloyd), neurotic personalities (Woody Allen), or parodies of GI efficiency (Andy Griffith, Leslie Nielsen, Dick Van Dyke). Howe and Strauss did not notice that -- but I did.

Jerry Lewis, Carol Burnett, Christopher Lloyd, Andy Griffith, Leslie Nielsen and Dick Van Dyke quite simply did not have much impact on society except as entertainment. Woody Allen serves more as a butt of a joke than as cultural phenominon. S&H probably noticed but like myself did not consider them important enough to notice. If one views generational formation as a tide chart one doesn't need to factor in how many fish are in the area to know within a quarter of an hour when high and low tide are.
 

Quote:Using the duration of the last three completed Crisis Eras, the Great Depression/WWII  Crisis (Crisis of 1940) lasted at most 16 years in America, if longer elsewhere in countries that endured great physical destruction in the war or had revolutionary changes soon afterward; Bloody Kansas and the American Civil War (Crisis of 1860) lasted six years; the Revolutionary and Constitutional Crisis (from the Boston Massacre to the ratification of the Constitution) lasted long enough for children born at its start to become fully adult.

Not quite. I generally date the ACW 4T starting around 1850 and ending in 1865 (or 15 years), GD/WW2 from 1930 (for simplicity) to 1945 (or 15 years), the Revolutionary Crisis lasted from around 1763 to 1789 or 26 years but that was on a longer pre-industrial saeculum and thus irrelevant now.

In those two previous cases those born at the start of the 4T were not even close to being the youngest adults. In general the new generation starts being born a few years before the turning turns, and a certain set of cohorts are "cuspy".

But at this stage we are discussing history itself and theory as well as the generational effects upon personalities.

Quote:You basically said what I had to say about the cut-off between generations. War is nasty; it is best that leaders not see war as their glory. The Civil War started before Lincoln was inaugurated, and FDR didn't want the war that he got. Glory-seekers are horrible leaders in war.

I did...but we're long past the end of WW2, a whole saeculum past. The lagging indicators from then are all ironed out already. I do agree that glory seekers make horrible leaders during a war. Which makes me confident should there be a war Trump would be a near perfect president during it. If he wanted glory he could build yet an other tower and dip it in gold, or make an even better reality Tee-Vee show. Believe what you want about Daddy but I know it isn't glory he was seeking in running for President. Having been to the White House myself before the place is pretty much a dump (I mean it is a very very old house after all) in comparison to his three storey penthouse in Manhattan, and he certainly didn't run for office for the 400K. He wipes his ass with 400K.

Quote:It may take longer to resolve a Crisis without a war. War forces a national focus as diplomacy and social reforms do not.

Or perhaps there is no real solution to the crisis we now face--the break down of the old order and the rise of the new one. I have often compared the current 4T to the Glorious Revolution for a reason. Neither had a major war (yet), have been mostly internally focused, and based on moderate reforms that give rise to a 2T that will result in a later 4T that completely over turns the old order. After all the last monarch of Britain to exercise Royal Veto was Queen Anne.

Quote:  I can think of some resolutions of this Crisis, one of which is that Donald Trump and the GOP successfully transform America into a pure plutocracy with no welfare, in which the rich are exempt from responsibilities, and all Americans learn that their fate is responsibility above all else to make the filthy rich even filthier rich.

The welfare state is doomed Trump or no-Trump. Socialism stops working when you run out of other people's money. Furthermore plutocrats really really love highly regulated economic orders so if you want a plutocracy then you should be voting for the Dimocrats. After all they are the low wage, import cheap labor from foreign countries to screw the black man, and the slavery party. They really haven't changed that much since the days of Jefferson Davis, never mind George Wallace.

Do not be fooled, Trump is at most a mild reformer. As I said I see him as a Gorbachev like figure who will preside over a controlled dismantling of the American Empire. Anything else begs for national annihilation. I don't know about you, but I'm not into suicide.

Take your sci-fi talk elsewhere.

Quote:The trend toward political conservatism began among late-wave Boomers and  got really-well marked with cohorts born in 1961. Most of the liberals born in 1961 were from ethnic or religious minorities that largely voted Democratic or were from unionized households.

Not quite true. Most of the so-called Red Boomers are actually "Big Government Liberals". It is just they want their big government ensuring that little Johnnie isn't touching himself in his bed room, Tyrone isn't smoking a blunt and Adam and Steve can't get married. That form of conservatism drew its last breath in 2004 in the last election of the late 3T. It isn't going to come back, and it isn't relevant now except for perhaps clueless Blue Boomers who never understood that they were the opposite side of the same coin (and still don't).

Since the birth of the Tea Party and other such movements conservatism has been taking a more libertarian and conservatarian aspect of X, which respects Reagan in the sense that "at least the fucking 70s are over now".

Quote:Of course "Zed" chronicles already exist. But so far their journalism is high-school journalism. It will shortly be college journalism.

Not quite. High School and college publications are still publications. But that is a minority of the cultural output that they are already putting out. Social media has had a leveling effect and reduced entry cost to zero (which is why CNN, MSNBC and the Alphabet Networks are losing their shit over it).

Quote:It will be a while before they are employed as journalists who get bylines, do investigative or battlefield reporting, etc

What century are you living in? Most journalists who work for the legacy media don't do that now. Ever notice that the news of the day usually consists of the President's tweets? And when not that, it is unnamed sources on Capitol Hill or the White House (which means officals leaking).

Quote:Facebook and YouTube are mostly non-professional. They could be practice for the real thing.

Prior to the Radio Era most journalism was non-professional. It is not practice for the real thing. One either is reporting the relevant information of the day (even if it is for Bobby Lee High School) or they are not. Reduction of entry costs to journalism will result in the de-professionalization of journalism.

Quote:To be successful in any profession or art still takes about 10K hours of dedicated effort to polish one's craft, as says Malcolm Gladwell (who explains much well). That is the difference between the amateur ande either the success or failure in all but a few cases.

In that case your standard youtube vlogger will have that if they post three times a week in 2 years. Video editing is somewhat labor intensive.

Quote:Other sports include tennis, gymnastics, and golf, all of which are excellent forums for asserting the personalities of the athletes down to their eccentricities.  

As usual, you miss the point. Actors, Singers and Sports figures are not indicative of the generation at large. The notion that they are is something Boomers seem to believe but has no basis in reality. Much like the Boomer notion that these persons should serve as "role models" for children. That isn't their job. Children do need role models, they come with two unless death or family court deprives them of one.

Quote:A post-Crisis era can be an era of harsh repression and poverty if the leadership is pathological (as under Commie regimes in central and Balkan Europe or in China.  Communities that might have had easy connections before WWII (like Weimar and Bayreuth) could be separated by an internal border within a nation, with hostile political and economic systems on other sides.

This said, Germans (at least outside the Soviet zone and DDR), Italians, and Japanese had real Highs analogous in economics, politics, and mass culture to those in the USA, Britain, and France -- and far nicer 'Highs' than did such nominal winners as Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, where Commies established stultified cultures, overpowering propaganda, and an economic order obsolete from its inception.

If Britain had a post WW2 "High" it didn't come until long after the war (if at all). Britain, France and Western Germany were simply put exhausted. Italy was destroyed and rationing there remained until the 1960s (and just about everyone was poor there). In western Europe the one country that did have a "High" in the 1950s was Spain. Franco being an avowed anti-communist got a lot of aid from the US during then which he plowed into industrialization, infrastructure and better housing for the population. Oh and Franco was supposed to be a fascist or something. (Really he was a Spanish Nationalist but according to the lefties these days anyone slightly to the Right of Mao is Hitler.)

Eastern Europe and the USSR especially did not have a high at all. With perhaps the exception of the Poles and Czechs (they are Catholic and Westward looking to start with) the orthodox states, including Greece started in on their 3T (which is why communism fell there half a saeculum later in their 4T).

Just because the US, UK and Germany had a 4T war in the 1940s doesn't mean that the USSR did. The Soviet "High" I usually date from 1922-1942. Oh and that "high" featured repression in spades. Stalin was a Nomad and had a background as a brigand he dealt with enemies and persons assumed to be enemies harshly.

Quote:The highest offices of the land are usually staffed with people at or just past retirement age. Experience matters greatly in democratic politics, and very rarely do young adults rise so rapidly in the political system as did Grant, T. Roosevelt, Kennedy, Clinton, or Obama. I still predict that Trump will be a failure as President and be one-and-out... and it is quite possible that his successor will be a late-wave Boomer who becomes the next analogue for Lincoln or FDR.

That isn't why politics is a lagging indicator. Culture is changed before politics changes. Grant was famous as a general and a mediocre president. T. Roosevelt had the presidency thrust on him by an assassin's bullet (he was picked for VP to keep him out of NY politics, he was not well liked in Albany, not because he was the best the GOP could come up with). Kennedy's father and his father's connections essentially bought him the presidency. Clinton was a mediocre president, he's only remembered fondly because of his "Bubba Bill" persona but really the man is a crook. Obama managed to win an election against an old man in he wrong party for the wrong year and win re-election against a man who couldn't make up his mind and in general acted too weird to be trusted with the Presidency.

I doubt that the Boomers have someone who lacks gray hair that can take on the GC role as Trump already fits the bill. You just don't want that to be true so you're ignoring the evidence of your lying eyes.

Quote:The end of the Crisis, Howe and Strauss tell us, typically comes when the Idealist generation fades out of political life either cast out due to incompetence or retired due to mass aging, fading relevance, and debility.  (As far as I am concerned, the end of Boomer dominance in executive and bureaucratic elites cannot happen fast enough. They are simply awful!)

Well Boomers in Congress lost the majority during the Obama Administration and have been completely replaced on the state level except for a few lingering Governors. Mass aging is taking its toll but it is slow. After the ACW the compromisers were thrown out on their ears as they had been discredited.

Quote:62 is either middle-aged or old  depending upon personal habits.

If average life expectancy is 80 years then 40 is middle aged. The key feature of being middle aged is that it happens in the middle of the life cycle. A 62 year old is old. It doesn't matter if he smokes 3 packs a day and eats Wendy's triple baconators every day for lunch washed down with 3 gallons of coke or is a non-smoking vegetarian who runs marathons for fun. The only difference between the two is that the smoker will waste less resources being old.

Quote:I may have to 'borrow' someone's kid so that I can make an intelligent purchase  of a smartphone soon.

No you don't. You need to find an Xer who can tolerate you for more than five seconds. Kids don't know shit about smartphones except how to play angry birds on them. Xers on the other hand had to study computing from the ground up and know good value for money. Otherwise you might as well buy an Ishit since that is what the kid will recommend.

Quote:Ignoring the Commonwealth

So you're saying you don't know what the Commonwealth of Nations is....got it.

Quote: and the questionable claim on a sector of Antarctica, it is possible that by now even Norway has more non-metropolitan territory by area than does the UK. Of course, Spitsbergen has little population. I heard talk at the time that the British Empire effectively came to an end with the retrocession of Hong Kong to China.

Not really. The UK retains dominion over minor island colonies and overseas dependencies (usually of places too small and too remote to be of any importance and with too small a population to afford a native government). Norway does have some rather large non-metropolitan island in the Arctic Ocean but they are uninhabited and uninhabitable so completely irrelevant.

The bulk of the Empire was gone by 1997 with the Hong Kong transfer.

Quote:"Red" of course has also meant "Communist"... but you know that anyway.

It has but historically atlases and the like prefered to use pink for Russia. I think it has something to do with the British Army using red coats on their uniforms in pre-smokeless powder times. That selection was fairly uncommon as it was considered to be flashy.

Quote:Teaching, even if it is as a substitute. I do real teaching. I can make some interesting contribution when the opportunity arises.
 

I had substitute teachers in school. They rarely if ever taught anything except for one year when I was in 7th grade and the regular teacher had a nervous breakdown at the beginning of the year and his substitute really became the regular teacher. She "subbed" for him for three years according to rumor.

Quote:Materialism may be how the universe works down to the level of the subatomic particle, but attempting to explain natural phenomena an a gross scale is impossible (Uncertainty Principle and other limits -- too many variables for too few equations, and the practical impossibility of measuring the phenomena without altering them).

I think your understanding of quantum mechanics is on par with Eric's. Meaning you don't know what you're talking about and would be better served by shutting up now.

Materialism maintains that the real world exists independently of human perception. IE a tree falling in the woods with no one around does make a sound (assuming of course this tree is in a place with some sort of atmosphere though I suppose water or similar liquid could work too).

Quote:Mencken was certainly right about democracy and demagogues.

He was right about idealism too. I suggest checking out his brainy quote page.

[pbrower2a]

(01-21-2018, 10:20 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(01-21-2018, 06:10 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Howe and Strauss said that the GI/Silent boundary was not well defined until the end of World War II,

Which supports my view that generational boundary definition is a lagging indicator.  It does not however support the absurd theory that generations can last much longer than a quarter century, maximum.  At least no in the industrial saeculum.  Pre-industrial saecula are more murky.  (and less relevant)

Industrial era? We are in the post-industrial era in which the basic consumer goodies are cheap. Of course, real estate, medicine, public services, legal process, and especially real estate aren't cheap. Some of the cost reflects monopolization which will turn anything into a rip-off.

Quote:

Quote:I am guessing that 1924 cohorts were more likely to do enough combat to make rank (as from battlefield commissions)

As NCOs at most.  1923s regularly made 2nd Lieutenant by battlefield commission.

But even NCO's can develop some talent for command useful as blue-collar supervisors. Let us not forget that post-WWII veterans' organizations offered more to veterans of the GI Generation for participation in "the Big One -- "Double-ya, Double-ya Two", as the fictional Archie Bunker put it. Combat in Korea didn't count for as much, and occupation duty in Japan or western Germany after the war (a near-vacation) didn't count much either. Young Silent soldiers were in Europe in case the Soviet Union tried to push it's order into western Europe by military invasion.

Quote:This made a difference in political success: there have been two GI Presidents born in 1924, three Boomer Presidents born in the mid-1940s, but no Silent Presidents. As I see it the most likely Silent President will be Nancy Pelosi under the condition that the Democrats take over the House of Representatives in the next election, choose her as Speaker of the House, and she is present when a President leaves office while there is no Vice-President. Now that is a stretch.

It is quite a stretch because the Dims aren't taking back the house this year.  Second even if they did and somehow managed to remove Trump, Pence (a Boomer) would become president and they would then have to impeach him as well.  I would venture to guess that the reason that there was a lack of Silent presidents (though they maintained control over congress far longer than either the GIs or Boomers did) may have something to do with the fact that they were bookended by two large and dominate generations.

Should Donald Trump have to resign in disgrace, then most likely Mike Pence has dirty hands too. I doubt that Republicans and Democrats could concur on appointing a VP  should the Democrats have one or both Houses of Congress. Approval ratings of both the Presidency and Congress are now far worse than those for Obama and the Democratic-majority House and Senate in early 2010. If the Tea Party could wear down Obama and the Democratic-majority Congress, then the larger and more coherent opposition to this President can do even more damage to those in power.
 

Quote:

Quote:I have also noticed that the Silent include something unique: a large number of self-effacing comedians, either zany characters (Jerry Lewis, Carol Burnett, Christopher Lloyd), neurotic personalities (Woody Allen), or parodies of GI efficiency (Andy Griffith, Leslie Nielsen, Dick Van Dyke). Howe and Strauss did not notice that -- but I did.

Jerry Lewis, Carol Burnett, Christopher Lloyd, Andy Griffith, Leslie Nielsen and Dick Van Dyke quite simply did not have much impact on society except as entertainment.  Woody Allen serves more as a butt of a joke than as cultural phenominon.  S&H probably noticed but like myself did not consider them important enough to notice.  If one views generational formation as a tide chart one doesn't need to factor in how many fish are in the area to know within a quarter of an hour when high and low tide are.

Which is like saying that Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, and Prokofiev are 'mere entertainment'.  Yes, composers did not have the effect upon political life that a Lincoln, Bismarck, Churchill, or Mandela could have. But one goes through the secondary channels of broadcast stations when the newer material is dull and one can find such a program as M*A*S*H. Actors are generally not scriptwriters who write something that can be reused, and we obviously have no recording of how Bach, Paganini, or Schubert played the instruments of their specialization. (There are player-piano rolls of Brahms, Rachmaninov, and even Mahler which have been recorded onto disc, and those deserve attention). Programs that television executives consider 'evergreen', not all of them comedies, are safe materials to broadcast because they are good and because they are written in conformity with the old broadcast code.

Quote:

Quote:Using the duration of the last three completed Crisis Eras, the Great Depression/WWII  Crisis (Crisis of 1940) lasted at most 16 years in America, if longer elsewhere in countries that endured great physical destruction in the war or had revolutionary changes soon afterward; Bloody Kansas and the American Civil War (Crisis of 1860) lasted six years; the Revolutionary and Constitutional Crisis (from the Boston Massacre to the ratification of the Constitution) lasted long enough for children born at its start to become fully adult.

Not quite.  I generally date the ACW 4T starting around 1850 and ending in 1865 (or 15 years), GD/WW2 from 1930 (for simplicity) to 1945 (or 15 years), the Revolutionary Crisis lasted from around 1763 to 1789 or 26 years but that was on a longer pre-industrial saeculum and thus irrelevant now.

So what does a post-industrial world in which people cannot buy happiness by simply buying more stuff do to the generational cycle? We cannot know, and of this we must remain mute.  I would guess that elites who have spend a Junior Year in Paris are less likely to want to destroy Paris.

Quote:... Which makes me confident should there be a war Trump would be a near perfect president during it.  If he wanted glory he could build yet an other tower and dip it in gold, or make an even better reality Tee-Vee show.  Believe what you want about (President Trump) but I know it isn't glory he was seeking in running for President.  Having been to the White House myself before the place is pretty much a dump (I mean it is a very very old house after all) in comparison to his three storey penthouse in Manhattan, and he certainly didn't run for office for the 400K.  He wipes his ass with 400K.  

He renovated the old Post Office Building in DC as one of his hotels, and those who want his favors are wise to show receipts from their stays there. I've seen images of the gaudiness of some Trump Towers... and I prefer the integrity of the minimal Motel 6 to that should I travel alone. I might want to catch up on some news and my favorite computer sites before I go to bed.  But I am an educated person of rural middle-class origin who does not fall for ostentatious display. Surely you remember my thread in which I compared Trump taste to that of some up-from-nowhere tyrants and eventually drug lords... although I can admire legitimate achievement as in old movie palaces I'm not much into expensive, wasteful display.

Quote:

Quote:It may take longer to resolve a Crisis without a war. War forces a national focus as diplomacy and social reforms do not.

Or perhaps there is no real solution to the crisis we now face--the break down of the old order and the rise of the new one.  I have often compared the current 4T to the Glorious Revolution for a reason.  Neither had a major war (yet), have been mostly internally focused, and based on moderate reforms that give rise to a 2T that will result in a later 4T that completely over turns the old order.  After all the last monarch of Britain to exercise Royal Veto was Queen Anne.

Possible. The Trump 'solution' could backfire badly. He lacks the political skills of Ronald Reagan, the last conservative President to effect lasting change in American political practice (and not all for the good). What happens if the Democrat elected in 2020 or 2024 is basically a "Reagan of the Left"?

A hint -- the Right wanted Obama to fail, and they did everything possible to ensure that he would fail.

Quote:

Quote:  I can think of some resolutions of this Crisis, one of which is that Donald Trump and the GOP successfully transform America into a pure plutocracy with no welfare, in which the rich are exempt from responsibilities, and all Americans learn that their fate is responsibility above all else to make the filthy rich even filthier rich.

The welfare state is doomed Trump or no-Trump.  Socialism stops working when you run out of other people's money.  Furthermore plutocrats really really love highly regulated economic orders so if you want a plutocracy then you should be voting for the Dimocrats.  After all they are the low wage, import cheap labor from foreign countries to screw the black man, and the slavery party.  They really haven't changed that much since the days of Jefferson Davis, never mind George Wallace.

Do not be fooled, Trump is at most a mild reformer.  As I said I see him as a Gorbachev like figure who will preside over a controlled dismantling of the American Empire.  Anything else begs for national annihilation.  I don't know about you, but I'm not into suicide.

First of all:

1. The gig economy with no job security makes a welfare state necessary. At the least we will need unemployment insurance so that people who have highly-honed talent can wait out a cyclical downturn and not take a job from some unskilled worker.

2. Big Business has itself adapted to the welfare state. Wal*Mart may be quite reactionary on labor-management relations, but it makes much profit off food aid. SNAP turns people who out of desperation might be shoplifters into paying customers. Government relies heavily upon the educational system for job training. 

3. Then why do Hispanics and Asians who have few cultural affinities to American blacks vote like blacks?

4. The Dixiecrat wing of the Democratic Party of the once-solid South found its way to the Republican Party as they found that without the Republican Party they would have to share power with blacks in the South. But what do the current southern Republicans have in common with the Dixiecrats of the 1960s and earlier? They could entrench themselves in power, but they often governed  badly.

 The former Confederate States except for Virginia and to some extent Florida and Texas are all worse than average in educational achievement, crime, public health, and worker pay. What the Dixiecrat pols did badly, contemporary Democrats do little better now.

Quote:Take your sci-fi talk elsewhere.

Who knows? I might write a novel some day.
 

Quote:

Quote:The trend toward political conservatism began among late-wave Boomers and  got really-well marked with cohorts born in 1961. Most of the liberals born in 1961 were from ethnic or religious minorities that largely voted Democratic or were from unionized households.

Not quite true.  Most of the so-called Red Boomers are actually "Big Government Liberals".  It is just they want their big government ensuring that little Johnnie isn't touching himself in his bed room, Tyrone isn't smoking a blunt and Adam and Steve can't get married.  That form of conservatism drew its last breath in 2004 in the last election of the late 3T.  It isn't going to come back, and it isn't relevant now except for perhaps clueless Blue Boomers who never understood that they were the opposite side of the same coin (and still don't).

Since the birth of the Tea Party and other such movements conservatism has been taking a more libertarian and conservatarian aspect of X, which respects Reagan in the sense that "at least the fucking 70s are over now".

Re-read Generations. America is becoming more repressive about sex except on same-sex rights.  I got on that side out of the conservative concern for law and order. There's nothing like the threat of gay-bashing (even if one is not gay) to take revenge upon people who see their bigotry as the right to beat and rob people. I still strongly disapprove of underage sex whether it is between naive underage people or whether it is between someone underage and an exploitative pervert. Marijuana? I don't like it, but a crackdown on it does more harm than good.

The corporatist right-wingers, the Bible-thumpers, and the (utopian) libertarians on the Right have begun to turn on each other. As a liberal I have no stake in either of them prevailing. I am reminded of what Henry Kissinger said of the opposing sides in the Iran-Iraq war -- he wished that they could both lose.

Quote:

Quote:Of course "Zed" chronicles already exist. But so far their journalism is high-school journalism. It will shortly be college journalism.

Not quite.  High School and college publications are still publications.  But that is a minority of the cultural output that they are already putting out.  Social media has had a leveling effect and reduced entry cost to zero (which is why CNN, MSNBC and the Alphabet Networks are losing their shit over it).

Quote:It will be a while before they are employed as journalists who get bylines, do investigative or battlefield reporting, etc

What century are you living in?  Most journalists who work for the legacy media don't do that now.  Ever notice that the news of the day usually consists of the President's tweets?  And when not that, it is unnamed sources on Capitol Hill or the White House (which means officals leaking).

The masters of most fields develop their passions in childhood, hone their craft in early adulthood, and go on autopilot as they approach midlife.

Quote:

Quote:Facebook and YouTube are mostly non-professional. They could be practice for the real thing.

Prior to the Radio Era most journalism was non-professional.  It is not practice for the real thing.  One either is reporting the relevant information of the day (even if it is for Bobby Lee High School) or they are not.  Reduction of entry costs to journalism will result in the de-professionalization of journalism.

But quality-control matters.  Branding matters. of course I expect a shake-out in the media. It could be that the New York Times is more useful in Lansing, Michigan as a news source than is the Lansing Journal-Gazette.  We will still need local media for local news, weather, sports, TV listings, death notices, and the like. Rags like the Detroit News and Free Press put much of their attention into the sports pages., which will be one means of survival.

Quote:

Quote:To be successful in any profession or art still takes about 10K hours of dedicated effort to polish one's craft, as says Malcolm Gladwell (who explains much well). That is the difference between the amateur ande either the success or failure in all but a few cases.

In that case your standard youtube vlogger will have that if they post three times a week in 2 years.  Video editing is somewhat labor intensive.

As a journalistic hobbyist, basically an editorial writer, I am well past the 10K hours.

Quote:

Quote:Other sports include tennis, gymnastics, and golf, all of which are excellent forums for asserting the personalities of the athletes down to their eccentricities.  

As usual, you miss the point.  Actors, Singers and Sports figures are not indicative of the generation at large.  The notion that they are is something Boomers seem to believe but has no basis in reality.  Much like the Boomer notion that these persons should serve as "role models" for children.  That isn't their job.  Children do need role models, they come with two unless death or family court deprives them of one.

But they (and I forgot to mention child film and TV stars) are the first to get recognition.  Thus in any time a sports star can be in the public eye for his athletic achievements before his generational peers get through law  or med school. In the old days, business executives were drawn heavily from traveling salesmen after about twenty years of dedicated, loyal, competent service. So if you establish a screen persona by age 20 the media will try to find out if there is more to you than your acting. if you win 20 games as a pitcher or hit 50 homer runs in a season the sports journalists will be interested in things other than your baseball play. Actors, pop musicians, and athletes are the first to give indications of the personality of a generation.  Detroit media paid much attention to Justin Verlander, one of the first  superstars to emerge from what Howe and Strauss call the Millennial Generation (he was born in 1982). He seems rather bland, but that is a commonplace rap on Civic young adults.

Quote:

Quote:A post-Crisis era can be an era of harsh repression and poverty if the leadership is pathological (as under Commie regimes in central and Balkan Europe or in China.  Communities that might have had easy connections before WWII (like Weimar and Bayreuth) could be separated by an internal border within a nation, with hostile political and economic systems on other sides.

This said, Germans (at least outside the Soviet zone and DDR), Italians, and Japanese had real Highs analogous in economics, politics, and mass culture to those in the USA, Britain, and France -- and far nicer 'Highs' than did such nominal winners as Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, where Commies established stultified cultures, overpowering propaganda, and an economic order obsolete from its inception.

If Britain had a post WW2 "High" it didn't come until long after the war (if at all).  Britain, France and Western Germany were simply put exhausted.  Italy was destroyed and rationing there remained until the 1960s (and just about everyone was poor there).  In western Europe the one country that did have a "High" in the 1950s was Spain.  Franco being an avowed anti-communist got a lot of aid from the US during then which he plowed into industrialization, infrastructure and better housing for the population.  Oh and Franco was supposed to be a fascist or something.  (Really he was a Spanish Nationalist but according to the lefties these days anyone slightly to the Right of Mao is Hitler.)

Eastern Europe and the USSR especially did not have a high at all.  With perhaps the exception of the Poles and Czechs (they are Catholic and Westward looking to start with) the orthodox states, including Greece started in on their 3T (which is why communism fell there half a saeculum later in their 4T).

Just because the US, UK and Germany had a 4T war in the 1940s doesn't mean that the USSR did.  The Soviet "High" I usually date from 1922-1942.  Oh and that "high" featured repression in spades.  Stalin was a Nomad and had a background as a brigand he dealt with enemies  and persons assumed to be enemies harshly.

How good is the High?

1. Does a country emerge victorious but not exhausted, or if it is defeated or exhausted does it recover quickly? Much of Britain's problem was its costly and internally-divisive decolonization. See also France, the Netherlands, and at a later stage Portugal.

2. Does the country reject austerity? Britain preserved its wartime rationing a bit too long. Not until Thatcher dod the Brits open the spigots on consumerism as America did in the late 1980s.

3. Does the political and cultural order eschew cultural repression? Culturally-repressive societies like the Soviet Union typically fossilize despite their pretensions to continuing revolution just as Franco-era Spain and Salazar-era Portugal did with the support of reactionary leadership that rejected modernity. It is hard to imagine the Beatles emerging from the Soviet Union or some fascistic country. What many of us see as Spanish cultural achievement (Miro, Picasso, Casals) occurred in countries like France and the USA after Franco took over.

Fossilized cultures show evidence of decline. Fossilization preserves the facade over the rot, as in the Roman Empire.

Quote:

Quote:The highest offices of the land are usually staffed with people at or just past retirement age. Experience matters greatly in democratic politics, and very rarely do young adults rise so rapidly in the political system as did Grant, T. Roosevelt, Kennedy, Clinton, or Obama. I still predict that Trump will be a failure as President and be one-and-out... and it is quite possible that his successor will be a late-wave Boomer who becomes the next analogue for Lincoln or FDR.

That isn't why politics is a lagging indicator.  Culture is changed before politics changes.  Grant was famous as a general and a mediocre president.  T. Roosevelt had the presidency thrust on him by an assassin's bullet (he was picked for VP to keep him out of NY politics, he was not well liked in Albany, not because he was the best the GOP could come up with).  Kennedy's father and his father's connections essentially bought him the presidency.  Clinton was a mediocre president, he's only remembered fondly because of his "Bubba Bill" persona but really the man is a crook.  Obama managed to win an election against an old man in he wrong party for the wrong year and win re-election against a man who couldn't make up his mind and in general acted too weird to be trusted with the Presidency.

I doubt that the Boomers have someone who lacks gray hair that can take on the GC role as Trump already fits the bill.  You just don't want that to be true so you're ignoring the evidence of your lying eyes.

Most of America disagrees with you about Donald Trump. There is time enough for another Lincoln or FDR. Donald Trump is an incompetent political leader, the 'my way or the highway' type that people try to find ways to avoid. He has no principle other than the enrichment, power, and indulgence of economic elites. He is intellectually and morally hollow, and the only way in which he reshapes America is if he and his political flunkies are able to crush liberalism and the welfare state once and for all.

Sure, this is a Crisis Era, and seemingly anything can happen except for a continuation of 3T patterns of life.

Quote:

Quote:The end of the Crisis, Howe and Strauss tell us, typically comes when the Idealist generation fades out of political life either cast out due to incompetence or retired due to mass aging, fading relevance, and debility.  (As far as I am concerned, the end of Boomer dominance in executive and bureaucratic elites cannot happen fast enough. They are simply awful!)

Well Boomers in Congress lost the majority during the Obama Administration and have been completely replaced on the state level except for a few lingering Governors.  Mass aging is taking its toll but it is slow.  After the ACW the compromisers were thrown out on their ears as they had been discredited.

The Idealist generation reaches the peak of its power when it takes over the highest offices. But even that is the end of the line.

Quote:

Quote:62 is either middle-aged or old  depending upon personal habits.

If average life expectancy is 80 years then 40 is middle aged.  The key feature of being middle aged is that it happens in the middle of the life cycle.  A 62 year old is old.  It doesn't matter if he smokes 3 packs a day and eats Wendy's triple baconators every day for lunch washed down with 3 gallons of coke or is a non-smoking vegetarian who runs marathons for fun.  The only difference between the two is that the smoker will waste less resources being old.

Some people reach chronological old age -- the people who stay physically active, avoid cancerweed products, eat healthy foods, and drink in moderation if at all. Some people get old before others, and that means people with sedentary lifestyles, bad eating habits, use of street drugs, cancerweed products, and alcoholism.

Quote:I may have to 'borrow' someone's kid so that I can make an intelligent purchase  of a smartphone soon.

No you don't.  You need to find an Xer who can tolerate you for more than five seconds.  Kids don't know shit about smartphones except how to play angry birds on them.  Xers on the other hand had to study computing from the ground up and know good value for money.  Otherwise you might as well buy an Ishit since that is what the kid will recommend.

Quote:

Quote:Teaching, even if it is as a substitute. I do real teaching. I can make some interesting contribution when the opportunity arises.
 

I had substitute teachers in school.  They rarely if ever taught anything except for one year when I was in 7th grade and the regular teacher had a nervous breakdown at the beginning of the year and his substitute really became the regular teacher.  She "subbed" for him for three years according to rumor.

I know my material, and I get to the school as early as possible to be prepared for the coming day. The district gets an honest day's work for an honest day's pay. I'm really good at math and science, but I can administer an English class if it involves reading or spelling. I am also a firm disciplinarian who starts rigid and can loosen up as a reward. I typically lecture for about five minutes  (which is about all that most K-12 students can tolerate, anyway), give an in-class assignment, and circulate around to see who is struggling.  But -- students will do classwork while I am the sub. I cannot work any other way.

Quote:

Quote:Materialism may be how the universe works down to the level of the subatomic particle, but attempting to explain natural phenomena an a gross scale is impossible (Uncertainty Principle and other limits -- too many variables for too few equations, and the practical impossibility of measuring the phenomena without altering them).

I think your understanding of quantum mechanics is on par with Eric's.  Meaning you don't know what you're talking about and would be better served by shutting up now.  

Materialism maintains that the real world exists independently of human perception.  IE a tree falling in the woods with no one around does make a sound (assuming of course this tree is in a place with some sort of atmosphere though I suppose water or similar liquid could work too).

I could never make sense of quantum mechanics, which indicates that I do not have a PhD in physics and nothing else. 

Quote:

Quote:Mencken was certainly right about democracy and demagogues.

He was right about idealism too.  I suggest checking out his brainy quote page.

It's usually pointless to suggest what someone deceased for sixty years would say of someone around today -- but Mencken would probably have ripped Donald Trump for his sexual depravity, moral relativism, and hollow intellect. Mencken was an iconoclast.

[Warren Dew]

(01-06-2018, 11:32 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(01-01-2018, 02:23 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: We don't know yet when the crisis war will happen, so we don't know yet when the dividing line was between Millennials who will fight in it and postMillenials who will be too young.

I know Xenakis (or whatever his name is) claims there is ALWAYS a crisis war but history does not bear this out.  The Glorious Revolution of 1688 was called Glorious because of the lack of bloodshed.  That being said a war during a 4T is more likely to occur, and such wars are typically total wars.  That being said wars are not limited to 4Ts as the US has been involved in a war of some sort or the other every turning since its founding.  Other powerful countries tend to have a similar history.  The relative passivity of Europe is a recent phenomenon.

The Glorious Revolution involved plenty of bloodshed, but it was mostly in Scotland and Ireland rather than England.  As it was preindustrial warfare, most commoners weren't involved, but that's just because of the different technology of war at the time.

Edit:  That said, I read an article recently noting that wars continue until the losing side gives up.  One could argue that James gave up early in the Glorious Revolution, reducing the amount of warfare.  Without knowing what the sides are this time around, it's hard to evaluate the probability of their giving up early.

That does explain why crisis wars tend to be won by idealists, since idealists don't tend to give up even when they should.

[Kinser79]

(01-21-2018, 02:18 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(01-21-2018, 10:20 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(01-21-2018, 06:10 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Howe and Strauss said that the GI/Silent boundary was not well defined until the end of World War II,

Which supports my view that generational boundary definition is a lagging indicator.  It does not however support the absurd theory that generations can last much longer than a quarter century, maximum.  At least no in the industrial saeculum.  Pre-industrial saecula are more murky.  (and less relevant)

Industrial era? We are in the post-industrial era in which the basic consumer goodies are cheap. Of course, real estate, medicine, public services, legal process, and especially real estate aren't cheap. Some of the cost reflects monopolization which will turn anything into a rip-off.

I think you don't understand what I mean by Industrial and Pre-Industrial.  I do not buy into the notion that we are in, or could be post-industiral. Just like I don't believe in the notion of being a post-agricultural.  All those cheap consumer goodies are made in a factory after all.  Corn is cheap because we grow it by the ton on huge ass farms too.

While I would say that we are currently undergoing a information revolution, we are not now, nor ever can be post-industrial.  Just like people didn't stop farming because the industrial revolution happened.  Of course it has occurred to me that you're just an idiot and say things with no meaning like the word "post-industrial" because some academic whose connection with reality is tenuous at best made it up.  I'm not one to ever really accuse you of having original thoughts PBR.

Medicine, public services, legal processes are an economic expense.  They consume the wealth generated by productive sectors of the society (namely agriculture, industry and resource extraction).

Quote:But even NCO's

The "N" part of NCO stands for the prefix "non-".  I'm going to out on a limb here and assume you understand what the prefix "non-" means.  If you don't well I'm wasting my time as it is a fairly common prefix in the English Language.

Quote:can develop some talent for command useful as blue-collar supervisors. Let us not forget that post-WWII veterans' organizations offered more to veterans of the GI Generation for participation in "the Big One -- "Double-ya, Double-ya Two", as the fictional Archie Bunker put it. Combat in Korea didn't count for as much, and occupation duty in Japan or western Germany after the war (a near-vacation) didn't count much either. Young Silent soldiers were in Europe in case the Soviet Union tried to push it's order into western Europe by military invasion.

Agreed.  Korea is largely a forgotten conflict.  Occupation duty as I said was actually pretty cushy if you weren't in logistics (it took several years to repair the transport infrastructure in Europe.  As I said previously the hard break only became evident after the fact hence why I say that generational boundaries are lagging indicators.  You do understand what the phrase "lagging indicator" means don't you?  Then again you might not since you seem to think that new home starts are a leading economic indicator.  

Quote:Should Donald Trump have to resign in disgrace,

Donald Trump is not Richard Nixon.  We've been hearing "Muh Racism" and "Muh Russia" for over two years now from the Dims.  If he was dirty something would have been found long before now.

Quote:then most likely Mike Pence has dirty hands too.

Like what? Sauce or it didn't happen (Lefty rags probably won't be counted as Sauce either).  He signed a couple unpopular laws as Indiana Governor?  That doesn't mean shit.  The worst anyone can really say about Pence is he doesn't like fags too much.  That also doesn't mean shit.  Considering Pence opposes throwing me off roofs and the Dims want to import people who want to throw me off a roof he's the lesser evil in that reguard.

Quote:I doubt that Republicans and Democrats could concur on appointing a VP  should the Democrats have one or both Houses of Congress. Approval ratings of both the Presidency and Congress are now far worse than those for Obama and the Democratic-majority House and Senate in early 2010. If the Tea Party could wear down Obama and the Democratic-majority Congress, then the larger and more coherent opposition to this President can do even more damage to those in power.

Approval polls that do not reveal their methodology doesn't mean shit.  Sure the President and the GOP in general are not popular in Commiefornia but who cares (people are fleeing that shithole state).  Remember these same polls said that HRC was certain to be President and yet she isn't

That being said, here's some analysis from my favorite former satanist as to the liklihood of the Dims taking back the House, (The senate is unlikely to even be in play).




 

Quote:Which is like saying that Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, and Prokofiev are 'mere entertainment'.  Yes, composers did not have the effect upon political life that a Lincoln, Bismarck, Churchill, or Mandela could have.

Exactly.  Mere entertainers are not all that important unless they are informing the broader cultural narrative.  The Silents you illustrated really didn't.  They may have at most painted themselves of parodies of the GI established order.

Quote:But one goes through the secondary channels of broadcast stations when the newer material is dull and one can find such a program as M*A*S*H.

I wouldn't know.  I've not watched Tee-Vee in years.  And why should I, when I can watch whatever I want, whenever I want with a few clicks of the mouse.  Tee-Vee is dead.  I don't even watch it for the news.  The Tee-Vee is in the house to pacify my mother who is the only person who gives a damn about having it on.  Mind you she's a couple years older than you. 

Quote:

Quote:
So what does a post-industrial world in which people cannot buy happiness by simply buying more stuff do to the generational cycle? We cannot know, and of this we must remain mute.  I would guess that elites who have spend a Junior Year in Paris are less likely to want to destroy Paris.

Well since we dispute there being a "post-industrial" world to start with I would say not a whole lot.  After all you have yet to convince me that manufactured goods are not made in a factory somewhere.  Do not be fooled by a half dozen hipsters making arteasonal cheese in your locality most goods are still mass produced and produced for mass consumption.  After all I have no interest in "arteasonal" 30 mg psudoephadrine nasal decongestant tablets (and I use that example because it literally is the last consumer good I bought).

Though I did buy a personal vaporizor that is produced in few numbers--the maker is a Navy vet too and it was just too sexy a mod to not buy.

Mostly I think like usual you lack any argument so you've resorted to talking out of your ass and out of envy.  And I've been to Paris (the one in France)  it needs a good firebombing as it is overrun with turdworld barbarians and of course the French.

Quote:He renovated the old Post Office Building in DC as one of his hotels,

So fucking what?  The Postal Service sold the building to him.  It was his to do as he pleased with.

Quote:and those who want his favors are wise to show receipts from their stays there.

Citation needed.  But even assuming you're right without the citation, so fucking what?  Every other politican expects a donation in exchange for favors.  If anything a recipt for staying at a nice Trump hotel in exchange for a favor is probably selling himself short.

 

Quote:I've seen images of the gaudiness of some Trump Towers... and I prefer the integrity of the minimal Motel 6 to that should I travel alone. I might want to catch up on some news and my favorite computer sites before I go to bed.  But I am an educated person of rural middle-class origin who does not fall for ostentatious display. Surely you remember my thread in which I compared Trump taste to that of some up-from-nowhere tyrants and eventually drug lords... although I can admire legitimate achievement as in old movie palaces I'm not much into expensive, wasteful display.

Yeah, I remember that thread.  And as I said there so far your only real criticism of the President is that he has poor taste.  I actually agree with you that he has poor taste.  However, I didn't vote for him to decorate the country--I voted for him to run it.  So far, despite the opposition he's faced that is nearly unprecedented in the first half of a first term he's done spectacularly. 

Quote:Possible. The Trump 'solution' could backfire badly. He lacks the political skills of Ronald Reagan, the last conservative President to effect lasting change in American political practice (and not all for the good). What happens if the Democrat elected in 2020 or 2024 is basically a "Reagan of the Left"?

A hint -- the Right wanted Obama to fail, and they did everything possible to ensure that he would fail.

The Democrats don't have a "Reagan of the Left".  I'd also argue that Regan was a decent actor and not a very hands on doer--he delegated a great deal to George H. W. who filled the administration with what would later be called Neo-Cons.  I would say the difference is that Reagan played a good president on Tee-Vee.  Trump is a (so-far) good president who seems to be quite eccentric on Tee-Vee.  Not that it really matters how the President seems on Tee-Vee since the only people watching that garbage should have been dead five years ago.

Quote:First of all:

1. The gig economy with no job security makes a welfare state necessary. At the least we will need unemployment insurance so that people who have highly-honed talent can wait out a cyclical downturn and not take a job from some unskilled worker.

Unemployment insurance is just that:  Insurance.  It is not welfare.  It is payed into through contributions by the employers of the state.  I should know since I have to sign off on those payments as a monthly expense.  You would know that if you've ever managed a business (never mind owned one) but you haven't so whatever.

Quote:2. Big Business has itself adapted to the welfare state. Wal*Mart may be quite reactionary on labor-management relations, but it makes much profit off food aid. SNAP turns people who out of desperation might be shoplifters into paying customers. Government relies heavily upon the educational system for job training.

Have you stopped to consider that Wal-mart in particular can offer the low wages that it does because it externalizes the wages it would otherwise pay in cash assistance, AFDC and SNAP?  Of course not...but then again working retail is beneath you after all.  In the absence of a welfare state yes there will be slightly more crime but also many people will take a job, any job, reguardless of pay.  

Quote:3. Then why do Hispanics and Asians who have few cultural affinities to American blacks vote like blacks?

Citation needed.  Where I live we have a large population of Latinos (Cubans [and their offspring] in particular) as well as quite a few East Asians (my kid's boyfriend for example is first generation American, his folks are from Korea).  They all vote overwelmingly Republican.

Quote:4. The Dixiecrat wing of the Democratic Party of the once-solid South found its way to the Republican Party

No not really.  I've already posted you Dinesh D'Souza's video elsewhere as to why you are wrong on this.  It is some myth that feels good to believe, I understand, but it is still a myth.

As too the South being governed badly you should probably check out statistics more recent than the 1960s or something.  While Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana are governed badly--they always have been.  Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, the Carolinas as well as Texas and Virginia are largely speaking governeed well.  And with the exception of Virginia which has a giant blue blotch on its top third these states are overwhelmingly Red.

Quote:What the Dixiecrat pols did badly, contemporary Democrats do little better now.

Indeed most of the Northern cities that are broke and broken are Dimocrat run.

Quote:Who knows? I might write a novel some day.

I doubt you will.  Writing novels takes effort and as someone who regularly writes short stories writing takes a creativity you've not demonstrated on the forum, and effort I've not seen you apply to anything.
 

Quote:Re-read Generations. America is becoming more repressive about sex except on same-sex rights.

Strangely it is the ones who style themselves as liberals who are the most repressed sexually.  Sex negative Feminazis are not on the right.  The Civic Nationalist right doesn't care what one does with their genitals provided the other person(s) involved are consenting adults.  You of course would know that if you left the fucking house on occasion.

Quote:I still strongly disapprove of underage sex whether it is between naive underage people

Sexual activity between two persons who are underage is not an issue--unless your issue is with normal teenage sexuality.  But you are a liberals so you probably do have an issue with normal sexuality in general--never mind the teenagers.

Quote:or whether it is between someone underage and an exploitative pervert.

Child molestation is a crime and it is also rape and completely unacceptable.  That being said I think there needs to be greater leeway in statutory rape.  After all 18 y/o fucking his 16 y/o girlfriend is not a pervert exploiting someone.

 

Quote:Marijuana? I don't like it, but a crackdown on it does more harm than good.

The eventual legalization of Marijuana is baked it.  It will likely be removed from the Controlled Substances Act once the first Core Xer President is elected.  Obama was just barely an Xer.

Quote:The corporatist right-wingers,

Are really big government liberals.  Corporatism requires big government liberalism to exist.  It is a creature of the left.  Much like National Socialism though called right wing is likewise a creature of the left.

 

Quote:the Bible-thumpers,

I don't like them either but they are less objectionable than the Jihadis that the Left has been cozying up to and want to import in unlimited numbers into this country.

 

Quote:and the (utopian) libertarians on the Right have begun to turn on each other.

Libertarians are a fractious bunch to start with.  When they aren't arguing with each other you should be worried.

Quote:The masters of most fields develop their passions in childhood, hone their craft in early adulthood, and go on autopilot as they approach midlife.

Not an argument.  The fact remains that Zeds are already engaging into the fields of journalism, culture and politics.  They are also doing so from a far more conservative direction than has been seen since before WW2.

Quote:But quality-control matters.

Well if it is quality you're after and quality control matters then you won't find it on CNN, MSNBC, the Alphabet Networks, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times.  If you think you can then you've clearly not been paying attention to their output in the past ten years.

 

Quote:Branding matters. of course I expect a shake-out in the media. It could be that the New York Times is more useful in Lansing, Michigan as a news source than is the Lansing Journal-Gazette.  We will still need local media for local news, weather, sports, TV listings, death notices, and the like. Rags like the Detroit News and Free Press put much of their attention into the sports pages., which will be one means of survival.

It is unlikely that the tradition news paper will survive.  My local newspaper the Daytona Beach News-Journal  is particularly terrible.  Typically I only buy editions during two seasons of the year--hunting season (where it serves me in the woods as cheap and hardy toilet paper and kindling, and fishing season where I use it to wrap up fish.  Otherwise I wouldn't buy it at all.  The NYT could probably provide me more TP and fish wrappings than the News-Journal but I find the price prohibitively expensive for the intended use of the product.

Quote:As a journalistic hobbyist, basically an editorial writer, I am well past the 10K hours.

The difference between a "journalistic hobbyist" and a Alternative Media Journalist is a Patreon account.  I you're well past 10K hours I'm sure that you could perhaps make a few hundred a month just asking for donations.

Quote:How good is the High?

Is irrelevant to the fact that the name "high" was a poor word choice on the part of S&H.

Quote:1. Does a country emerge victorious but not exhausted, or if it is defeated or exhausted does it recover quickly? Much of Britain's problem was its costly and internally-divisive decolonization. See also France, the Netherlands, and at a later stage Portugal.

2. Does the country reject austerity? Britain preserved its wartime rationing a bit too long. Not until Thatcher dod the Brits open the spigots on consumerism as America did in the late 1980s.

3. Does the political and cultural order eschew cultural repression? Culturally-repressive societies like the Soviet Union typically fossilize despite their pretensions to continuing revolution just as Franco-era Spain and Salazar-era Portugal did with the support of reactionary leadership that rejected modernity. It is hard to imagine the Beatles emerging from the Soviet Union or some fascistic country. What many of us see as Spanish cultural achievement (Miro, Picasso, Casals) occurred in countries like France and the USA after Franco took over.

All of this sounds like an argument for my division of 1Ts into Resolutions and Expositions.  I'm not going to even bother to discuss with you my opinion on Miro, Picasso and Casals.  So-called modern "art" is almost always ugly pretentious crap.

Quote:Most of America disagrees with you about Donald Trump.

Citation needed.  Also I don't give a fuck about polls without methodologies and National Polling in particular is useless.

 

Quote:The Idealist generation reaches the peak of its power when it takes over the highest offices. But even that is the end of the line.

Then the Peak for Boomers happened around 1994.

Quote:Some people reach chronological old age -- the people who stay physically active, avoid cancerweed products, eat healthy foods, and drink in moderation if at all. Some people get old before others, and that means people with sedentary lifestyles, bad eating habits, use of street drugs, cancerweed products, and alcoholism.

Are Boomers opposed to mathmatics on principle?  If average life expectancy is 80 then Middle age must begin at 40.  Once one reaches 60 then they would be in the last quarter of their 80 year expectation.

Birth-20:  Childhood
20-40:  Young Adulthood
40-60:  Middle Age
60+:  Old age.

The fact that some people are healthier longer than others does not change the fact that the average is the average.  Or are you like Eric the Ignoramus intentionally ignoring the forest for the fucking trees.

Quote:I know my material, and I get to the school as early as possible to be prepared for the coming day. The district gets an honest day's work for an honest day's pay. I'm really good at math and science, but I can administer an English class if it involves reading or spelling. I am also a firm disciplinarian who starts rigid and can loosen up as a reward. I typically lecture for about five minutes  (which is about all that most K-12 students can tolerate, anyway), give an in-class assignment, and circulate around to see who is struggling.  But -- students will do classwork while I am the sub. I cannot work any other way.

1.  I doubt you know your material unless the curriculum has been dumbed down in your area to the point of anyone with an IQ above room temperature being able to obtain a passing grade.  Where do you sub--Detoilet?

2.  Showing up early doesn't mean very much.

3.  Let me guess, you're not afraid to send referrals to the office.  Good for you.  Doesn't mean that you are controling the class anyway.  My husband is a teacher and according to him only about 10% of the kids are really troublemakers anyway.

4.  I would venture to guess you largely are following the predtermined lesson plan of the regular teacher--and that assumes you actually teach instead it basically being an easy day for the students.  That being said I wouldn't want you subbing for science, math or civics.  Your posts on the forum would indicate you're simply not qualified to teach those courses.  Maybe you can buy pass that by restricting yourself to students in Elementary or Mi

Quote:I could never make sense of quantum mechanics, which indicates that I do not have a PhD in physics and nothing else.

Most physicists cannot make sense of quantum mechanics either so having an PhD in physics probably wouldn't help you much. 

Quote:It's usually pointless to suggest what someone deceased for sixty years would say of someone around today -- but Mencken would probably have ripped Donald Trump for his sexual depravity, moral relativism, and hollow intellect. Mencken was an iconoclast.

I'm not so sure about that.  Trump has had three wives but a surprisingly low number of sex scandals--that number being zero.  So he's likely not sexually depraved.  Moral relativism is par for the course in politics--I'd be more shocked if he wasn't.  I'm not concerned by hollow intellect--we had an intellectual president and he quite frankly fucking sucked.  I'm speaking of Professor Urkle...er...I mean Obama

I'm somewhat of an iconoclast myself, and I think Daddy is great.  He certainly triggers all the right people.

[pbrower2a]

Quote:1.  I doubt you know your material unless the curriculum has been dumbed down in your area to the point of anyone with an IQ above room temperature being able to obtain a passing grade.  Where do you sub--Detoilet?

I may not have kept up on the novel that kids in an English class are reading, but that matters little. The basics are what every college student needs to know anyway. If you can do integration you know everything that precedes it in math. Science? I do keep up. Civics? I am smart enough to avoid discussing partisan politics.

Quote:2.  Showing up early doesn't mean very much.

Yes it does -- for understanding the instructions from the regular teacher  that I follow as closely to the letter as possible, for putting what I need to put on the chalkboard, for making sure that educational materials are where they need to be; that takes at least thirty minutes. I am typically one of the first to the office, and I need to be.

Quote:3.  Let me guess, you're not afraid to send referrals to the office.  Good for you.  Doesn't mean that you are controling the class anyway.  My husband is a teacher and according to him only about 10% of the kids are really troublemakers anyway.

Absolutely. But I am especially proud of days when I refer nobody. I can deal with small stuff. I have my limits, and fighting words (especially "F--- you" and "I will kill you") get a quick trip to the principal's office. If I keep students busy I solve my problems. I act decisively on fighting words because those precede the one thing I least want to see -- a fight. You would be surprised how I deal with simple profanity, as in "I don't like this f---ing assignment". I call the kid up and have him say that without the variant of the f-word and demonstrate that the word is empty. Then I tell him that we all have to do things that we don't really like to do at the time.

Quote:4.  I would venture to guess you largely are following the predtermined lesson plan of the regular teacher--and that assumes you actually teach instead it basically being an easy day for the students.  That being said I wouldn't want you subbing for science, math or civics.  Your posts on the forum would indicate you're simply not qualified to teach those courses.  Maybe you can bypass that by restricting yourself to students in Elementary or (Middle School). 

No problem. I follow instructions, and I have few problems except in classes that concentrate trouble-makers, and one reason for coming in early is to find out who the potential trouble-makers are. I have shown such classes a ream of referral papers and warned that I know how to use them. My reputation follows me. Students can have a good day of classwork or they can refuse. Should they refuse, then the consequences are theirs.
...I could go on about education and teaching, but that is beyond the scope of this thread.  It suffices to say that most K-12 teachers have done little to know what the Real World (the factory and the office) are like.  Most K-12 students need to prepare for the regimented world of commerce and industry. I'd like to see teachers have to do a year or two of non-teaching work -- real work -- before they get a real teaching job.

[Tim Randal Walker]

As I recall the old 4T site had a thread regarding 4T wars.  The different 4Ts of different countries were analyzed.  Turned out that a majority of 4Ts had full blown Crisis/apocalyptic wars.  A few 4Ts had non apocalyptic wars.  A few 4Ts lacked real wars, and had remarkably little blood shed for a 4T.

[David Horn]

(01-25-2018, 03:22 AM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: As I recall the old 4T site had a thread regarding 4T wars.  The different 4Ts of different countries were analyzed.  Turned out that a majority of 4Ts had full blown Crisis/apocalyptic wars.  A few 4Ts had non apocalyptic wars.  A few 4Ts lacked real wars, and had remarkably little blood shed for a 4T.

We agree: 4Ts look very different in different countries and at different times.  I'm less than certain that this one will have a war that qualifies as more than the miserable wars we have already.  Internal unrest: this I buy.

[Tuss]

(01-01-2018, 01:42 AM)Craig Wrote: On December 31, 2017, the last Millennials turned 13.

No more Millennials are children. My generation are all teens, twentysomethings and thirtysomethings now!

In my experience, that's too young. Based on my highly scientific analysis of friends and kin, I'd say no Millennial was born after 1998. In other words, on December 31st, 2017, the last Millennial turned 19. After that, it's all Green Frog Generation.

[David Horn]

(09-21-2018, 09:51 AM)Tuss Wrote:

(01-01-2018, 01:42 AM)Craig Wrote: On December 31, 2017, the last Millennials turned 13.

No more Millennials are children. My generation are all teens, twentysomethings and thirtysomethings now!

In my experience, that's too young. Based on my highly scientific analysis of friends and kin, I'd say no Millennial was born after 1998. In other words, on December 31st, 2017, the last Millennial turned 19. After that, it's all Green Frog Generation.

Let's agree to disagree about your timing, while I ask a dumb question.  Do you see this from the perspective of a Swede, or is this a more general analysis?  I may be of Swedish decent, but it wasn't until I worked for Ericsson for several years that I cam to appreciate the differences, not just in culture, but in perspective.  Swedes my age seemed at once more relaxed and more youthful.  There was even a point where I started to meet what would have been Gen-Xers that were solidly Millennial in thinking, though I didn't know that at the time.

You may be seeing an effect that applies to you and your country but not this one.

[Tuss]

(09-22-2018, 08:16 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(09-21-2018, 09:51 AM)Tuss Wrote:

(01-01-2018, 01:42 AM)Craig Wrote: On December 31, 2017, the last Millennials turned 13.

No more Millennials are children. My generation are all teens, twentysomethings and thirtysomethings now!

In my experience, that's too young. Based on my highly scientific analysis of friends and kin, I'd say no Millennial was born after 1998. In other words, on December 31st, 2017, the last Millennial turned 19. After that, it's all Green Frog Generation.

Let's agree to disagree about your timing, while I ask a dumb question.  Do you see this from the perspective of a Swede, or is this a more general analysis?  I may be of Swedish decent, but it wasn't until I worked for Ericsson for several years that I cam to appreciate the differences, not just in culture, but in perspective.  Swedes my age seemed at once more relaxed and more youthful.  There was even a point where I started to meet what would have been Gen-Xers that were solidly Millennial in thinking, though I didn't know that at the time.

You may be seeing an effect that applies to you and your country but not this one.

I see it from the perspective of a Swede mostly. I look at my nephews and the sons of my friends who are now in various stages of adolescence (these guys never knew a world before 9/11 and "religion of peace" beheadings) and believe I find marked differences between them and the typical mindhive Millennials who are now in their 20's. These younger kids often appear to feel more suffocated by an adult world they have generally stopped trying to make sense of. Their trust is low, they tend to be right-wing and somehow appear tougher and more independent than their next elders. Not the expected Silent traits perhaps, but the main thing is they are different. Actually, apart from the obvious overprotection from ideas and reality, they remind me more of my own X Generation at a like age than either the Silent or the Millennials. I also get the same vibe from US dominated forums where some of these youngsters congregate and share the green frog wit they call "memes". There's a certain "cool" about them.

But like I said, I have nothing solid with which to back these impressions up, so no way of knowing how much is just my own prejudice and projection.

Hm, question before I reply further: Those Swedish Xers you found to be solidly Millennial in thinking, how old were they?

[David Horn]

(09-27-2018, 07:44 PM)Tuss Wrote: Hm, question before I reply further: Those Swedish Xers you found to be solidly Millennial in thinking, how old were they?

I didn't ask directly, but they seemed to be about the same age as my son and his then girlfriend -- I'm thinking late 30s and early 40s today.  I have a son ('77 cohort) and daughter-in-law ('79 cohort) who still show definite Xer traits, especially my son.  Yes, they are on the cusp, but they are not Millennials at all.  My DIL has a few Millie-like traits.  My son has none I can see.