Looking Toward The Next High

[Eric the Green]

The civic heroes swing in youth and get in the groove, but then the children call them squares; and by then, they are.

[TheNomad]

(05-29-2018, 06:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The civic heroes swing in youth and get in the groove, but then the children call them squares; and by then, they are.

I've observed the shifts in archetypes through their ages and what part of the saeculum (high/crisis, etc) they are in.  The authors make a big deal out of this.  The most blatant example is the Prophet flower children who went on their mystic journeys and protested war and then when they become older, they turn the opposite: they become Elders who want to force morality (their version) on everyone, they mostly become conservative, and they themselves refused to go to war in youth but have no problem sending their youngers to do that.

So, the are right the first portion of the millenials are wild children with all that comes with it (chlamydia, tats, piercing, raucous music, high-risk behavior, drugs, etc) and the latter half of them transform into a phalanx of mediocrity in almost all ways.

They can have that so long as they fix all the institutions and the mindless processes we deal with every day where no on is in charge or takes responsibility for anything on a business/corporate level and all that which has already been mentioned. 

I WANT SQUARES!  They at least care about things and act like human beings.  They don't simply sell you a new $600 phone with the vapid excuse your old phone was exposed to water damage and cannot be repaired.  Yeah, my phone had some grime on the screen so I soaked it in a tepid bowl of water because clearly that is just something I would do with an electronic device.  These people coming up now will even be proud to work in McDonald's and make sure you get what you need - stuff like that.  

I can't be the only one who feels like WHATEVER store or business you deal with, there's a crew on the front lines placed there deliberately because they don't know shit about their jobs.  For me, it seems everywhere I go or interact with, they just started the job yesterday and (forgive me but maybe not) cannot speak enough english to make sure I do get what I need.  And neither do they care.

We need people to start caring.

If there ever comes something like a LIVING WAGE where ANYONE can work ONE (1) full-time job and actually afford rent, things might get better and workers may actually care about their job and the customers they deal with.  The infamous quote by Bush II was how proud he was a man in the audience was able to work three (3) jobs to make ends meet.......... because to him, that was an indicator America is the greatest in the world that if you work hard enough you can make it.



We are living in something arguably on the opposite spectrum from a "Social" structure.  I challenge anyone to say we are not living in some corporatocracy with a fascist bent.  It has been this way for most of my life.  Every time the vultures cry out "SOCIALISM" that only means they may be facing diminishing balance sheet numbers and the CEO instead of receiving, say, $4m for their inane efforts, the Board has to explain to them it may be rather like $2.5.  I'm crying a little about that.  Doctors are fearful they will not exceed into private practice and own his/her jaguars and lounging in Positano for months a year.  But the new people coming will see HEALTH as a public service not a way to create wealth on the backs of those who cannot afford their outrageous services.  THAT is why "Obamacare" had all the talking heads wiping the sweat from their brow on cable news and using the words "Socialized Medicine" as many times as their breath will allow them. And why rump's TOTAL platform is to roll back every progress the Obama admin made. How people keep getting sucked by this idea of Trickle Down Wealth, I don't understand. They voted for rump because he is a white male and they believed he would "stir things up" being not overtly affiliated with the side that eventually backed him in their primary.

Trickle Down only means you've been pissed on.

They all need to go.

[TheNomad]

(05-29-2018, 04:31 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

(05-29-2018, 10:22 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(05-29-2018, 05:16 AM)TheNomad Wrote: You said: The GIs liked their culture insipid, with bland crooners and the infamously-insipid "elevator music" that one heard on FM radio stations with the letters "EZ" in their call letters. That music took show tunes, TV themes, and rock top hits and gave them gimmicky orchestrations -- but apparently no violas in the string sections. It got very boring very fast if one knew anything about music. 

You mostly focused on music.... I recalled a quote from S&H when jazz and r&b got "christened" by Ed Sullivan who was a "magistrate" of (I believe) Silent generation.  Maybe this wasn't from the book but elsewhere.  So, that was the beginning of the boomer culture of Beats and eventually Hippies. 

What's different with this archetype, we may not be seeing their musical taste yet come to fruition.  I can only make the observation as I have before the people of that age are clean cut as can be.  No ink, piercings, crazy hair.... and they all look the same.  The average age for Millennial first intercourse is 26.  Total lack of risk.  Total lack of non-conformity.  From what I can tell, their preferred music is not so much bland as it is innocuous.  Maybe that is the same thing.  What they listen to is not hard edge, nor angry, nor political uprising, and certainly not anything involving revolutionary themes.

These are not the people who are going to fight a war.  And they aren't ones who are going to protest over ideology.  At least, not once they assume political power.  Millennials as a mirror echo to Boomers are still held captive by Boomer culture such as music.  They really will not ever form their own outer culture.  Their station is to transform inner structure.  They aren't tripping and tuning in or dropping out.

It could be that this varies by location. CA millennials are not so conformist as that. The older Millennials I know pretty much imitated the ways of their older Gen X brothers and sisters for a while; in youth children tend to do that. They just tamped down the Xer styles a bit and normalized them. Certainly millennial era pop music has been more innocuous and upbeat, much like that of the GIs "Greatest Generation." I felt that Justin Bieber's "Baby" was a smooth groove similar to "In The Mood" by Glenn Miller. "Happy" echoes "Get Happy." More will come from the Millennials, as you say. And although some Millennials echo Boomer music, as when Bieber's "Baby" also contained the same lyric line from the Silent/Boomer era Motown sound's similar paragon of smooth-groove, "Baby Love," (and Motown sound musicians had been big band members), the you tube views suggest Millennials are focused on their own music, and they still are influenced by some Xer styles like rap music as well, and Bieber imitated Michael Jackson and Boyz to Men.

In the Mood https://youtu.be/c2aqHGaSxRI

Baby Love https://youtu.be/mQvIbkFaq18

Baby https://youtu.be/kffacxfA7G4

Notice at the end of "Baby" Justin makes the victory/peace symbol, to a Beatles-like "yeah yeah yeah"

Uh no.   Millies are just the next renditions of squares.

haha...

RAP has been the greatest form of millennial 'angst' as far as I can tell.  And now, that's coming to an end with that genre becoming totally absorbed into the mainstream.  90s NWA and Public Enemy was co-opted by the must-need rapper appearing on some young white persons/groups hit single in the early new century.  It has only been more diluted over time.  Rap/hip-hop did not used to be angst but fun.  At least when I was a kid listening to kurtis blow or ll cool-j or beastie boys... it was never violent or offensive.

On that note, I cannot envision what comes next for music.  Music can be a huge indicator.  WHAT form will angst and rage assume in the near future?  What will the younger millennials and artists (those who want that) what will they be listening to?  I can't see it.  I'm sure they exist, but pop culture in general is on total lockdown.  The very last rockstar THING I have seen in the recent past is Lady Gaga performing LIVE at the VMA when she basically bled all over the stage and mock hung herself at the end.  I was beyond pleased with such a thing

[beechnut79]

(05-29-2018, 06:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The civic heroes swing in youth and get in the groove, but then the children call them squares; and by then, they are.

But much the same can be said about the Boomer Idealists who partied their brains out during their youth yet by the time they reached midlife tried to get as many of their former hangout closed as possible. It was like saying to the younger ones "We had our fun but we are going to as much as we can to keep you from having yours". And the Missionaries also danced and drank its way through its youth stage only to end up saddling society with Prohibition for 13 years.

The GIs in their youth may have danced to the likes of Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey, but the Millennials seem to dancing to no one other than their technology. There are not the dance clubs and all that like their was during the Boomer youth. Their dancing partners are their smartphones, I guess. Even the popularity of the "Dancing with the Stars" TV show didn't spawn a renewed interest like I for one hoped it would. If the history of the last saeculum repeats itself, it will be their own kids that will call them out on their tech addictions much as Boomers called the GIs out on their materialism and TV watching. Where the former is concerned, Boomers ending up taking materialism to new heights which their GI parents couldn't have imagine. Thus becoming their parents and then some.

[beechnut79]

(05-30-2018, 02:20 AM)TheNomad Wrote:

(05-29-2018, 04:31 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

(05-29-2018, 10:22 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(05-29-2018, 05:16 AM)TheNomad Wrote: You said: The GIs liked their culture insipid, with bland crooners and the infamously-insipid "elevator music" that one heard on FM radio stations with the letters "EZ" in their call letters. That music took show tunes, TV themes, and rock top hits and gave them gimmicky orchestrations -- but apparently no violas in the string sections. It got very boring very fast if one knew anything about music. 

You mostly focused on music.... I recalled a quote from S&H when jazz and r&b got "christened" by Ed Sullivan who was a "magistrate" of (I believe) Silent generation.  Maybe this wasn't from the book but elsewhere.  So, that was the beginning of the boomer culture of Beats and eventually Hippies. 

What's different with this archetype, we may not be seeing their musical taste yet come to fruition.  I can only make the observation as I have before the people of that age are clean cut as can be.  No ink, piercings, crazy hair.... and they all look the same.  The average age for Millennial first intercourse is 26.  Total lack of risk.  Total lack of non-conformity.  From what I can tell, their preferred music is not so much bland as it is innocuous.  Maybe that is the same thing.  What they listen to is not hard edge, nor angry, nor political uprising, and certainly not anything involving revolutionary themes.

These are not the people who are going to fight a war.  And they aren't ones who are going to protest over ideology.  At least, not once they assume political power.  Millennials as a mirror echo to Boomers are still held captive by Boomer culture such as music.  They really will not ever form their own outer culture.  Their station is to transform inner structure.  They aren't tripping and tuning in or dropping out.

It could be that this varies by location. CA millennials are not so conformist as that. The older Millennials I know pretty much imitated the ways of their older Gen X brothers and sisters for a while; in youth children tend to do that. They just tamped down the Xer styles a bit and normalized them. Certainly millennial era pop music has been more innocuous and upbeat, much like that of the GIs "Greatest Generation." I felt that Justin Bieber's "Baby" was a smooth groove similar to "In The Mood" by Glenn Miller. "Happy" echoes "Get Happy." More will come from the Millennials, as you say. And although some Millennials echo Boomer music, as when Bieber's "Baby" also contained the same lyric line from the Silent/Boomer era Motown sound's similar paragon of smooth-groove, "Baby Love," (and Motown sound musicians had been big band members), the you tube views suggest Millennials are focused on their own music, and they still are influenced by some Xer styles like rap music as well, and Bieber imitated Michael Jackson and Boyz to Men.

In the Mood https://youtu.be/c2aqHGaSxRI

Baby Love https://youtu.be/mQvIbkFaq18

Baby https://youtu.be/kffacxfA7G4

Notice at the end of "Baby" Justin makes the victory/peace symbol, to a Beatles-like "yeah yeah yeah"

Uh no.   Millies are just the next renditions of squares.

haha...

RAP has been the greatest form of millennial 'angst' as far as I can tell.  And now, that's coming to an end with that genre becoming totally absorbed into the mainstream.  90s NWA and Public Enemy was co-opted by the must-need rapper appearing on some young white persons/groups hit single in the early new century.  It has only been more diluted over time.  Rap/hip-hop did not used to be angst but fun.  At least when I was a kid listening to kurtis blow or ll cool-j or beastie boys... it was never violent or offensive.

On that note, I cannot envision what comes next for music.  Music can be a huge indicator.  WHAT form will angst and rage assume in the near future?  What will the younger millennials and artists (those who want that) what will they be listening to?  I can't see it.  I'm sure they exist, but pop culture in general is on total lockdown.  The very last rockstar THING I have seen in the recent past is Lady Gaga performing LIVE at the VMA when she basically bled all over the stage and mock hung herself at the end.  I was beyond pleased with such a thing

Your take on rap is no doubt quite similar that rock 'n rollers such as Elvis and Chuck Berry got incorporated into the mainstream after being considered a fringe segment of music. Yet some older style crooners such as Frank Sinatra and Perry Como continued to churn out hits well after the rock 'n roll revolution.

[Eric the Green]

(05-29-2018, 07:08 PM)TheNomad Wrote:

(05-29-2018, 06:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The civic heroes swing in youth and get in the groove, but then the children call them squares; and by then, they are.

I've observed the shifts in archetypes through their ages and what part of the saeculum (high/crisis, etc) they are in.  The authors make a big deal out of this.  The most blatant example is the Prophet flower children who went on their mystic journeys and protested war and then when they become older, they turn the opposite: they become Elders who want to force morality (their version) on everyone, they mostly become conservative, and they themselves refused to go to war in youth but have no problem sending their youngers to do that.

So, the are right the first portion of the millenials are wild children with all that comes with it (chlamydia, tats, piercing, raucous music, high-risk behavior, drugs, etc) and the latter half of them transform into a phalanx of mediocrity in almost all ways.

They can have that so long as they fix all the institutions and the mindless processes we deal with every day where no on is in charge or takes responsibility for anything on a business/corporate level and all that which has already been mentioned. 

I WANT SQUARES!  They at least care about things and act like human beings.  They don't simply sell you a new $600 phone with the vapid excuse your old phone was exposed to water damage and cannot be repaired.  Yeah, my phone had some grime on the screen so I soaked it in a tepid bowl of water because clearly that is just something I would do with an electronic device.  These people coming up now will even be proud to work in McDonald's and make sure you get what you need - stuff like that.  

I can't be the only one who feels like WHATEVER store or business you deal with, there's a crew on the front lines placed there deliberately because they don't know shit about their jobs.  For me, it seems everywhere I go or interact with, they just started the job yesterday and (forgive me but maybe not) cannot speak enough english to make sure I do get what I need.  And neither do they care.

We need people to start caring.

If there ever comes something like a LIVING WAGE where ANYONE can work ONE (1) full-time job and actually afford rent, things might get better and workers may actually care about their job and the customers they deal with.  The infamous quote by Bush II was how proud he was a man in the audience was able to work three (3) jobs to make ends meet.......... because to him, that was an indicator America is the greatest in the world that if you work hard enough you can make it.



We are living in something arguably on the opposite spectrum from a "Social" structure.  I challenge anyone to say we are not living in some corporatocracy with a fascist bent.  It has been this way for most of my life.  Every time the vultures cry out "SOCIALISM" that only means they may be facing diminishing balance sheet numbers and the CEO instead of receiving, say, $4m for their inane efforts, the Board has to explain to them it may be rather like $2.5.  I'm crying a little about that.  Doctors are fearful they will not exceed into private practice and own his/her jaguars and lounging in Positano for months a year.  But the new people coming will see HEALTH as a public service not a way to create wealth on the backs of those who cannot afford their outrageous services.  THAT is why "Obamacare" had all the talking heads wiping the sweat from their brow on cable news and using the words "Socialized Medicine" as many times as their breath will allow them.  And why rump's TOTAL platform is to roll back every progress the Obama admin made.  How people keep getting sucked by this idea of Trickle Down Wealth, I don't understand.  They voted for rump because he is a white male and they believed he would "stir things up" being not overtly affiliated with the side that eventually backed him in their primary.  

Trickle Down only means you've been pissed on.

They all need to go.

I don't know if I really want "squares" or not, but I'm in total agreement with you on the above, and very well said.

I still hold out the faint hope that there's still a lot of boomers around somewhere who didn't flake out and become worse than their parents, as beechnut related. I certainly don't fit that mold, but I noticed the change in my fellow boomers when the 3T started in 1984, and so many have since become righteous asses and authoritarian boors (of course I get righteous too, and I always was since 1967). It's also true that a lot of older boomers were never originally hippies, but were Eisenhower Republican types; and many of the later Jones-Xer cusp boomers never really got the hip vibe to begin with and are conservatives. It all depends to some extent on whether you live in the blue or the red world. That goes for Generation X too; the ones I know locally in the SF Bay Area are not all so cynical and rough and anti-hippie (though some are), as opposed to many I have encountered online who are.

[TheNomad]

(05-30-2018, 09:45 AM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(05-29-2018, 06:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The civic heroes swing in youth and get in the groove, but then the children call them squares; and by then, they are.

But much the same can be said about the Boomer Idealists who partied their brains out during their youth yet by the time they reached midlife tried to get as many of their former hangout closed as possible. It was like saying to the younger ones "We had our fun but we are going to as much as we can to keep you from having yours". And the Missionaries also danced and drank its way through its youth stage only to end up saddling society with Prohibition for 13 years.

The GIs in their youth may have danced to the likes of Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey, but the Millennials seem to dancing to no one other than their technology. There are not the dance clubs and all that like their was during the Boomer youth. Their dancing partners are their smartphones, I guess. Even the popularity of the "Dancing with the Stars" TV show didn't spawn a renewed interest like I for one hoped it would. If the history of the last saeculum repeats itself, it will be their own kids that will call them out on their tech addictions much as Boomers called the GIs out on their materialism and TV watching. Where the former is concerned, Boomers ending up taking materialism to new heights which their GI parents couldn't have imagine. Thus becoming their parents and then some.

Is there a way to mark certain posts you want to return to later?  Like, I don't want to miss some of the things I read and cannot immediately respond to or want to absorb more fully.  Like this post, for example.  some help?  don't want it to keep getting pushed further back by new ones and trying to keep up.

[TheNomad]

(05-30-2018, 09:49 AM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(05-30-2018, 02:20 AM)TheNomad Wrote:

(05-29-2018, 04:31 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

(05-29-2018, 10:22 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(05-29-2018, 05:16 AM)TheNomad Wrote: You said: The GIs liked their culture insipid, with bland crooners and the infamously-insipid "elevator music" that one heard on FM radio stations with the letters "EZ" in their call letters. That music took show tunes, TV themes, and rock top hits and gave them gimmicky orchestrations -- but apparently no violas in the string sections. It got very boring very fast if one knew anything about music. 

You mostly focused on music.... I recalled a quote from S&H when jazz and r&b got "christened" by Ed Sullivan who was a "magistrate" of (I believe) Silent generation.  Maybe this wasn't from the book but elsewhere.  So, that was the beginning of the boomer culture of Beats and eventually Hippies. 

What's different with this archetype, we may not be seeing their musical taste yet come to fruition.  I can only make the observation as I have before the people of that age are clean cut as can be.  No ink, piercings, crazy hair.... and they all look the same.  The average age for Millennial first intercourse is 26.  Total lack of risk.  Total lack of non-conformity.  From what I can tell, their preferred music is not so much bland as it is innocuous.  Maybe that is the same thing.  What they listen to is not hard edge, nor angry, nor political uprising, and certainly not anything involving revolutionary themes.

These are not the people who are going to fight a war.  And they aren't ones who are going to protest over ideology.  At least, not once they assume political power.  Millennials as a mirror echo to Boomers are still held captive by Boomer culture such as music.  They really will not ever form their own outer culture.  Their station is to transform inner structure.  They aren't tripping and tuning in or dropping out.

It could be that this varies by location. CA millennials are not so conformist as that. The older Millennials I know pretty much imitated the ways of their older Gen X brothers and sisters for a while; in youth children tend to do that. They just tamped down the Xer styles a bit and normalized them. Certainly millennial era pop music has been more innocuous and upbeat, much like that of the GIs "Greatest Generation." I felt that Justin Bieber's "Baby" was a smooth groove similar to "In The Mood" by Glenn Miller. "Happy" echoes "Get Happy." More will come from the Millennials, as you say. And although some Millennials echo Boomer music, as when Bieber's "Baby" also contained the same lyric line from the Silent/Boomer era Motown sound's similar paragon of smooth-groove, "Baby Love," (and Motown sound musicians had been big band members), the you tube views suggest Millennials are focused on their own music, and they still are influenced by some Xer styles like rap music as well, and Bieber imitated Michael Jackson and Boyz to Men.

In the Mood https://youtu.be/c2aqHGaSxRI

Baby Love https://youtu.be/mQvIbkFaq18

Baby https://youtu.be/kffacxfA7G4

Notice at the end of "Baby" Justin makes the victory/peace symbol, to a Beatles-like "yeah yeah yeah"

Uh no.   Millies are just the next renditions of squares.

haha...

RAP has been the greatest form of millennial 'angst' as far as I can tell.  And now, that's coming to an end with that genre becoming totally absorbed into the mainstream.  90s NWA and Public Enemy was co-opted by the must-need rapper appearing on some young white persons/groups hit single in the early new century.  It has only been more diluted over time.  Rap/hip-hop did not used to be angst but fun.  At least when I was a kid listening to kurtis blow or ll cool-j or beastie boys... it was never violent or offensive.

On that note, I cannot envision what comes next for music.  Music can be a huge indicator.  WHAT form will angst and rage assume in the near future?  What will the younger millennials and artists (those who want that) what will they be listening to?  I can't see it.  I'm sure they exist, but pop culture in general is on total lockdown.  The very last rockstar THING I have seen in the recent past is Lady Gaga performing LIVE at the VMA when she basically bled all over the stage and mock hung herself at the end.  I was beyond pleased with such a thing

Your take on rap is no doubt quite similar that rock 'n rollers such as Elvis and Chuck Berry got incorporated into the mainstream after being considered a fringe segment of music. Yet some older style crooners such as Frank Sinatra and Perry Como continued to churn out hits well after the rock 'n roll revolution.

Yeah it is quite the same.  It's truly revolutionary these texts by S&H I do not think there has been anything like their analyses.  How we can actually look back and identify certain trends that happened and happen again.  Anyone watch Battlestar Galactica where that's the famous saying?

There are "crooners" now and light stuff.  I was wondering what form will the 'angst' take next?  It probably won't be in the mainstream but I wonder what type of music it will be.  I always thought things like Linkin Park were the prevailing hybrid of rock and hip-hop.  And wow it happened before with Aerosmith and Run DMC (yuck btw).  Before that it was Blondie and Rapture.

[TheNomad]

(05-30-2018, 11:57 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(05-29-2018, 07:08 PM)TheNomad Wrote:

(05-29-2018, 06:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The civic heroes swing in youth and get in the groove, but then the children call them squares; and by then, they are.

I've observed the shifts in archetypes through their ages and what part of the saeculum (high/crisis, etc) they are in.  The authors make a big deal out of this.  The most blatant example is the Prophet flower children who went on their mystic journeys and protested war and then when they become older, they turn the opposite: they become Elders who want to force morality (their version) on everyone, they mostly become conservative, and they themselves refused to go to war in youth but have no problem sending their youngers to do that.

So, the are right the first portion of the millenials are wild children with all that comes with it (chlamydia, tats, piercing, raucous music, high-risk behavior, drugs, etc) and the latter half of them transform into a phalanx of mediocrity in almost all ways.

They can have that so long as they fix all the institutions and the mindless processes we deal with every day where no on is in charge or takes responsibility for anything on a business/corporate level and all that which has already been mentioned. 

I WANT SQUARES!  They at least care about things and act like human beings.  They don't simply sell you a new $600 phone with the vapid excuse your old phone was exposed to water damage and cannot be repaired.  Yeah, my phone had some grime on the screen so I soaked it in a tepid bowl of water because clearly that is just something I would do with an electronic device.  These people coming up now will even be proud to work in McDonald's and make sure you get what you need - stuff like that.  

I can't be the only one who feels like WHATEVER store or business you deal with, there's a crew on the front lines placed there deliberately because they don't know shit about their jobs.  For me, it seems everywhere I go or interact with, they just started the job yesterday and (forgive me but maybe not) cannot speak enough english to make sure I do get what I need.  And neither do they care.

We need people to start caring.

If there ever comes something like a LIVING WAGE where ANYONE can work ONE (1) full-time job and actually afford rent, things might get better and workers may actually care about their job and the customers they deal with.  The infamous quote by Bush II was how proud he was a man in the audience was able to work three (3) jobs to make ends meet.......... because to him, that was an indicator America is the greatest in the world that if you work hard enough you can make it.



We are living in something arguably on the opposite spectrum from a "Social" structure.  I challenge anyone to say we are not living in some corporatocracy with a fascist bent.  It has been this way for most of my life.  Every time the vultures cry out "SOCIALISM" that only means they may be facing diminishing balance sheet numbers and the CEO instead of receiving, say, $4m for their inane efforts, the Board has to explain to them it may be rather like $2.5.  I'm crying a little about that.  Doctors are fearful they will not exceed into private practice and own his/her jaguars and lounging in Positano for months a year.  But the new people coming will see HEALTH as a public service not a way to create wealth on the backs of those who cannot afford their outrageous services.  THAT is why "Obamacare" had all the talking heads wiping the sweat from their brow on cable news and using the words "Socialized Medicine" as many times as their breath will allow them.  And why rump's TOTAL platform is to roll back every progress the Obama admin made.  How people keep getting sucked by this idea of Trickle Down Wealth, I don't understand.  They voted for rump because he is a white male and they believed he would "stir things up" being not overtly affiliated with the side that eventually backed him in their primary.  

Trickle Down only means you've been pissed on.

They all need to go.

I don't know if I really want "squares" or not, but I'm in total agreement with you on the above, and very well said.

I still hold out the faint hope that there's still a lot of boomers around somewhere who didn't flake out and become worse than their parents, as beechnut related. I certainly don't fit that mold, but I noticed the change in my fellow boomers when the 3T started in 1984, and so many have since become righteous asses and authoritarian boors (of course I get righteous too, and I always was since 1967). It's also true that a lot of older boomers were never originally hippies, but were Eisenhower Republican types; and many of the later Jones-Xer cusp boomers never really got the hip vibe to begin with and are conservatives. It all depends to some extent on whether you live in the blue or the red world. That goes for Generation X too; the ones I know locally in the SF Bay Area are not all so cynical and rough and anti-hippie (though some are), as opposed to many I have encountered online who are.

Well, of course I don't want squares culturally.  But the trade off that they are stringent arbiters of structural solidification hell yes.

The culture war of the boomers is their defining factor.  As they age, it matters not what political affiliation, they are sentient robots of ideology which I don't think can unlearn their programming.  You make a good point not all boomers were picking flowers.  There was great strain among their peers who believed in the government and the war and hated people with long hair or smoking weed.  That's sometimes forgotten.  But what did they get for their troubles.... it isn't really known to me, but a huge portion of those people (the non-hippy boomers) who were killed in vietnam.  And the ones who returned were often hated instead of heroified (<- a word?). 

One of my all-time favorite movies is Born on the Fourth of July.  It changed my life in no small way.  It's a heavy film.  I piece together a lot of ideas from various sources both fiction and non-fiction.  There's a scene in that movie where Ronnie (the maimed war veteran) returns to visit his friend who did not go to war but instead went to college and started a business.  The business was a fast food restaurant.  The friend shows Ronnie the meat patties have a HOLE in the middle which is used to stuff pickles and tomato, etc.... it's kind of their GIMMICK. 

Something small and silly right?  But think of the greater symbolic significance of that.  It was a time when America began losing all moral compass.  When greed and trickery toward the common man began to enter the greater consciousness.  We began to see consumers as PREY, rigging everything to suck maximum $$ from them for our own benefit.  This has grown over the years exponentially.  f@cebook is this thing where you are told it's about sharing and connecting and all the nice things we want to hear.  When in reality, it is an information collection platform to sell to outside interests, exploiting all users by identifying their habits for the same purpose, and it now recently is clear the network is fundamentally in full control of election propaganda, who sees what, who is exposed to which candidates, etc.

But the metaphor of the hole in the meat burger is kinda profound.  He even went so far as to know how much each burger was saving the business due to the missing meat.  Corporations have drilled down on us so hard it's almost laughable.  Sitting in meetings CREATING ways to rip us off or making sure we spend more than we have to on their products/services... and who ends up winning?  Those at the top as usual because America refuses to regulate such practices.  Because regulating means Socialism and we all know Socialism is one step from the gulag of bread lines.  It is known. 

The same people always screaming about Socialism are the ones whose corporations benefit from lack of regulation.  Or, they themselves benefit.  At the same time, leaving the responsibility of regulation to a government just as corrupt is nonsensical.

Ultimately, regulation cannot be regulated.  It must come from individuals with a moral compass who DECIDE to do the right things instead of entering politics for the sole purpose of making it a career to make connections to build personal wealth. 

The latter half of the millennials I think can do this.  I keep going back to the "virginal" quality of them, and they even look like nice people.  They seem nice.  They seem as if they could enter positions of responsibility without some massive oversight to make sure they don't go with their hand in the till. 

It's shitty to keep saying the boomers need to leave already, but is true.  Boomers cannot regulate anything because as politicians they've lost most of their moral compass anyway..... and second, most are indebted to for their livelihood any things that would need regulation.  And corps will just replace them with other, more willing servants if the don't comply.

Everyone keeps saying "but everyone has a voice, the reps must listen to their constituents".  I haven't found an answer to this.  It takes money to get near these politicians, who can pay people to stand in lobby lines for days to get their issues heard.  Money is a problem.  Fine if someone can own 7 yachts, but that person should have no more access or influence on politicians than anyone else.  I don't have that answer

[TheNomad]

(05-30-2018, 09:45 AM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(05-29-2018, 06:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The civic heroes swing in youth and get in the groove, but then the children call them squares; and by then, they are.

But much the same can be said about the Boomer Idealists who partied their brains out during their youth yet by the time they reached midlife tried to get as many of their former hangout closed as possible. It was like saying to the younger ones "We had our fun but we are going to as much as we can to keep you from having yours". And the Missionaries also danced and drank its way through its youth stage only to end up saddling society with Prohibition for 13 years.

The GIs in their youth may have danced to the likes of Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey, but the Millennials seem to dancing to no one other than their technology. There are not the dance clubs and all that like their was during the Boomer youth. Their dancing partners are their smartphones, I guess. Even the popularity of the "Dancing with the Stars" TV show didn't spawn a renewed interest like I for one hoped it would. If the history of the last saeculum repeats itself, it will be their own kids that will call them out on their tech addictions much as Boomers called the GIs out on their materialism and TV watching. Where the former is concerned, Boomers ending up taking materialism to new heights which their GI parents couldn't have imagine. Thus becoming their parents and then some.

This is all good stuff.  How the archetypes can change dramatically when older.  The books always cite it always depends on how people were raised to what they do when older.  I was JUST reading that part of 4Th Turning when it talked about prohibition!  It was because of the kids.  They saw what the wasted "Lost" (is that the one from the roaring 20s?) were SO out of control, the elders put down prohibition because they did not want their children to end up like them.  So, it seems to come from how people want the children of any "roof tile" to be treated, then they make laws accordingly.

Your idea about the millennials not dancing lol.  You are right too that millennials really do not frequent bars or clubs... they exist, but the millennials are not really there.  I, too, have no idea and think maybe their phone IS their everything. 

I can really envision when millennials are a little older, we will see Swing return and big band dancing.  When you think about it, many of those younger people are so straight edge.... and they are going to get sick of the dance/mating rituals they've seen all their lives.... hands up, thrust pelvis, grind, hold that red cup....... they are going to not want that.  There will be more focus on intimacy, subtle courting, return to a gentler time.  I can totally see that.

[TheNomad]

i didn't make it up

[Mikebert]

(05-26-2018, 02:02 PM)TheNomad Wrote:

(05-26-2018, 11:21 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(05-26-2018, 09:39 AM)Mikebert Wrote:

(05-24-2018, 12:50 PM)TheNomad Wrote: Those kids in Florida -- Heroes and Artists (who are in the model supposed to be helpmates) are already of voting age and they are armed with networks and technology with one voice.  They will not ALLOW the government to put them in harm's way over assault weapons coming into their schools anymore.  Their voices can only be expanded upon to read a sea-change in MOOD.  I view that mood as having already changed....I am proposing maybe the Crisis has already come and went.

What I sense here is more hope than analysis.  What happened to the Parkland kids has happened to others before, and it continued on afterward. There is no evidence that it will be any different this time.  If Republicans hold on to their majorities this fall, the Parkland kids will have failed.  Odds are most of them will move on from high school and the issue will lose salience. We really don't know what will happen. 

You suggest 911 and 2008 were big enough deals for them to comprise a 4T. This of course is possible, but if its the case then, event wise, the 4T ended years ago.  For the 4T  to continue past 2010 or so, more stuff has to keep happening. One might think Donald Trump is something, but I do not see all that much difference between Trump and the alternative, Ted Cruz, who it seems to me would be just as bad (or good) as Trump. Trump hasn't done anything that a bog-standard Republican wouldn't do. He has embraced GWBush's neocon ways, his economics and his social policy.

Now if Clinton had won that would indicate a 4T continuation as the only time Democrats have won a third term were in social moment turnings. This has not been the case for Republicans who won third terms in 1988, 1928 and 1908 (all 3Ts) and 1872 (1T).  But that did not happen.

There was no change in foreign policy. We began a crusade in the Middle East in 1991 that continues on to this day. If we had a 4T, it didn't affect our crusading.

Economic trends of flat wages and rising inequality over the past 40 years are still in force. If we had a 4T it did not affect the economy in any persistence fashion that I can see.

Social moments are supposed to be a time of political turmoil and popular unrest. In past 2Ts and 4Ts were have seen lots of riots, assassinations, domestic terrorism, violent protest. None of this is present. To see social violence today one had to consider rampage murders (e.g. mass shootings) as an additional category of unrest like riots. I do this as so can show the expected spike in violence for this 4T, but it is not clear this categorization is valid. If I don't include these events then the past couple decades fail "the 4T test" for this measure too.

Finally a 4T is supposed to restructure the government. That hasn't happened either.

There is not a very strong case that we even had a 4T.

It is a weak case, for the reasons you say.

Even persecution of Muslims and so on has not risen to the level of what happened to perceived opponents in previous 4T wartime periods.

One thing to point out though, is that the kids have vowed to continue to be active. We'll see if they do this, but if so, they will be joined by a continual stream of new activists that has happened after almost every mass shooting. Mass shootings will continue and get worse until the politics of guns shifts, whether by the Parkland kids, Everytown for Gun Responsibility, Gabby Giffords' organization, or the next groups that form, and all of them together.

Hope is not analysis, but analysis alone is not prediction.

Please allow my addendum?

They said: What I sense here is more hope than analysis.  What happened to the Parkland kids has happened to others before, and it continued on afterward. There is no evidence that it will be any different this time.  If Republicans hold on to their majorities this fall, the Parkland kids will have failed.  Odds are most of them will move on from high school and the issue will lose salience. We really don't know what will happen.

CONTRARY!  I explained in another post, no one cared with that I think FIRST shooting in Colorado... no one cared for many of the shootings that happened after.  It was only until the Hero archetypes were being slain that public outrage happened.  If you cannot see th different between those earlier incidents and then these newer ones will millions gathering in washington mall, I don't know why.

You said: Economic trends of flat wages and rising inequality over the past 40 years are still in force. If we had a 4T it did not affect the economy in any persistence fashion that I can see.

This is because millennials are not fully established with the sufficient power to affect these things  But will be soon.  To say they must FIRST go fight a war and die en masse, I don't see it.  The end of a 4th turning is actually the beginning of the 1st.  And I was thinking, the Turning and the High (or crisis or any of the other monikers) they do not always exactly line up.

They was plenty of public outrage after Sandy Hook, but nothing happened.  Maybe Parkland is different, but that remains to be seen.

The civic generation was not responsible for reversal in inequality during the last 4T. Millennials don't come to power until the 2T. What happens in a 4T is the work of Prophets and Nomads. That's standard-issue S&H.

[Tim Randal Walker]

Perhaps we are experiencing an unusually mild 4T?

[Mikebert]

(05-27-2018, 04:13 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I agree. It may take more time than we want or expect. I suspect that Trump may even win re-election, perish the thought. The Democrats may not nominate Landrieu or McAuliffe, in which case they are likely to lose. Bernie would be a crapshoot I could not predict. It might take until 2022 before a progressive sunami wipes out the GOP (in the typical 6th year beating administered to the party in the White House, but even more so), and turns Drump into a virtual puppet or dumps him and Pence out of office. Then that leaves 4 years of full progressive leadership after 2024 (plus the prior 2 years of progressive congressional power) in which the country could change beyond recognition. Or, things may shift sooner. But if not, after 2020 I know that folks like you and David Kaiser and The Nomad here will be confirmed in their opinion, with much justice, that the 4T is over and has failed or never happened, while I will still proclaim that there is more ahead, even then!

I understand your point. It is fairly standard S&H, but as I pointed out above, the constellation model doesn't work. You also use your own methods, so S&H is merely a supplement. My own study of S&H has focused on Generations, their first work, and the only one with any rigor, mostly in terms of their references. Using these references and clues like the concept of dominant and recessive generations that has been mostly dropped in the subsequent books has, I believe, allowed me to reconstruct the path they followed to get what they came up with.

As I see it, dominant/recessive generations, and social moments are key. By the time they wrote T4T they had abandoned this terminology, and presented four turnings and four generations all playing more of less equal roles.

Since I keep the dominant/recessive concept and the idea of social moments I can see how these things are closely related to similar ideas advanced by other workers (all of which are referenced by S&H--so they had read them).  This means the S&H system contains all these other workers ideas, and one has to familiarize oneself with all of them to understand where S&H are coming from.

I have done that, but since I am working 25 years later I have access to ideas that came out AFTER they developed their ideas that have really helped make sense of this. One such idea is generational imprinting models for political behavior. This is an alternate mechanism S&H hinted at (because they had read Mannheim) but did not develop further. Having the mechanism demonstrated by real data makes the concept a lot more likely to be relevant than other ideas for which their is no evidence. But S&H could not make use of this because it came out years later. And then there is Stephen Skowronek's political time model, which is a version of the saeculum (although not immediately apparent unless, like me, you are familiar with many systems like it). Again this is too late for S&H to take advantage of.

So I can modify what S&H came up with to take into account this new information.  By doing this one finds that it is very unlikely the 4T will stretch to around 2030 (although that would only be a "standard" 22-year turning length after the 4T start in 2008). So I do not believe we have another decade plus.  On the other hand, I do not believe it is ending now, as a 2001 4T (consistent with the 18-year generation model I once favored)  implies. I think we have more time, around 5 years, rather than 10.

[pbrower2a]

(05-31-2018, 07:41 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: Perhaps we are experiencing an unusually mild 4T?

I thought such possible in the late 1990s, when the Crisis era could have been more a cultural phenomenon than one with potential for great ruin.

The extreme polarization in American political life, the intense inequality of economic results, and the utter ruthlessness of one side of the political spectrum suggest otherwise.

Remember: the weather before a severe blizzard can be freakishly balmy and gentle.  I have seen April blizzards that follow several days of temperatures around 70F. The disruptive April blizzard is still possible. A sharp cold wave overtakes some warm, humid weather, and the juiced air becomes the source of what can be the biggest snowstorm of the whole winter. That's Michigan.

[TheNomad]

(05-31-2018, 07:20 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

(05-26-2018, 02:02 PM)TheNomad Wrote:

(05-26-2018, 11:21 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(05-26-2018, 09:39 AM)Mikebert Wrote:

(05-24-2018, 12:50 PM)TheNomad Wrote: Those kids in Florida -- Heroes and Artists (who are in the model supposed to be helpmates) are already of voting age and they are armed with networks and technology with one voice.  They will not ALLOW the government to put them in harm's way over assault weapons coming into their schools anymore.  Their voices can only be expanded upon to read a sea-change in MOOD.  I view that mood as having already changed....I am proposing maybe the Crisis has already come and went.

What I sense here is more hope than analysis.  What happened to the Parkland kids has happened to others before, and it continued on afterward. There is no evidence that it will be any different this time.  If Republicans hold on to their majorities this fall, the Parkland kids will have failed.  Odds are most of them will move on from high school and the issue will lose salience. We really don't know what will happen. 

You suggest 911 and 2008 were big enough deals for them to comprise a 4T. This of course is possible, but if its the case then, event wise, the 4T ended years ago.  For the 4T  to continue past 2010 or so, more stuff has to keep happening. One might think Donald Trump is something, but I do not see all that much difference between Trump and the alternative, Ted Cruz, who it seems to me would be just as bad (or good) as Trump. Trump hasn't done anything that a bog-standard Republican wouldn't do. He has embraced GWBush's neocon ways, his economics and his social policy.

Now if Clinton had won that would indicate a 4T continuation as the only time Democrats have won a third term were in social moment turnings. This has not been the case for Republicans who won third terms in 1988, 1928 and 1908 (all 3Ts) and 1872 (1T).  But that did not happen.

There was no change in foreign policy. We began a crusade in the Middle East in 1991 that continues on to this day. If we had a 4T, it didn't affect our crusading.

Economic trends of flat wages and rising inequality over the past 40 years are still in force. If we had a 4T it did not affect the economy in any persistence fashion that I can see.

Social moments are supposed to be a time of political turmoil and popular unrest. In past 2Ts and 4Ts were have seen lots of riots, assassinations, domestic terrorism, violent protest. None of this is present. To see social violence today one had to consider rampage murders (e.g. mass shootings) as an additional category of unrest like riots. I do this as so can show the expected spike in violence for this 4T, but it is not clear this categorization is valid. If I don't include these events then the past couple decades fail "the 4T test" for this measure too.

Finally a 4T is supposed to restructure the government. That hasn't happened either.

There is not a very strong case that we even had a 4T.

It is a weak case, for the reasons you say.

Even persecution of Muslims and so on has not risen to the level of what happened to perceived opponents in previous 4T wartime periods.

One thing to point out though, is that the kids have vowed to continue to be active. We'll see if they do this, but if so, they will be joined by a continual stream of new activists that has happened after almost every mass shooting. Mass shootings will continue and get worse until the politics of guns shifts, whether by the Parkland kids, Everytown for Gun Responsibility, Gabby Giffords' organization, or the next groups that form, and all of them together.

Hope is not analysis, but analysis alone is not prediction.

Please allow my addendum?

They said: What I sense here is more hope than analysis.  What happened to the Parkland kids has happened to others before, and it continued on afterward. There is no evidence that it will be any different this time.  If Republicans hold on to their majorities this fall, the Parkland kids will have failed.  Odds are most of them will move on from high school and the issue will lose salience. We really don't know what will happen.

CONTRARY!  I explained in another post, no one cared with that I think FIRST shooting in Colorado... no one cared for many of the shootings that happened after.  It was only until the Hero archetypes were being slain that public outrage happened.  If you cannot see th different between those earlier incidents and then these newer ones will millions gathering in washington mall, I don't know why.

You said: Economic trends of flat wages and rising inequality over the past 40 years are still in force. If we had a 4T it did not affect the economy in any persistence fashion that I can see.

This is because millennials are not fully established with the sufficient power to affect these things  But will be soon.  To say they must FIRST go fight a war and die en masse, I don't see it.  The end of a 4th turning is actually the beginning of the 1st.  And I was thinking, the Turning and the High (or crisis or any of the other monikers) they do not always exactly line up.

They was plenty of public outrage after Sandy Hook, but nothing happened.  Maybe Parkland is different, but that remains to be seen.

The civic generation was not responsible for reversal in inequality during the last 4T. Millennials don't come to power until the 2T. What happens in a 4T is the work of Prophets and Nomads. That's standard-issue S&H.

The beginning of the Heroes' work begins when they reach adulthood.  You may not see rapid transformation, but the authors do make clear signs of what is to come are apparent if we look.

[TheNomad]

(05-31-2018, 07:41 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: Perhaps we are experiencing an unusually mild 4T?

I've been saying this a lot.  The events of the Crisis IMO have happened.  We had wars, we had the economic theft, we had massive upheaval with families and individuals losing everything and moving in with grandparents, etc.  Some can't accept that it was "enough" to be the actual crisis.  I say it was just about enough and if they want more, let them have it but leave me out

Oh and earlier I told a very personal story of ONE family who essentially mirrors Grapes of Wrath scenario of the Great Depression with an extended family in a loaded vehicle traveling to parts unknown just hoping to survive. Whether that actually happened to anyone posting here, I do not know. But it really happened to a lot of people. I've not called it GDII because I didn't want to be severe. But the early 21st century was truly a time of destitution, humiliation and national upheaval. I think we do not know the magnitude because media does not cover it. We know there is currently a homeless epidemic. But we never hear from the news WHY these people are homeless. Most of them lost everything in the crash and fell down hard. But no one talks about that. And there are homeless camps just as their were in GDI. Except they are not concentrated on the Washington Mall but scattered throughout every major city in America.

If someone brought them all together, the Mall would be quite full.

[Eric the Green]

(05-31-2018, 10:57 PM)TheNomad Wrote:

(05-31-2018, 07:41 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: Perhaps we are experiencing an unusually mild 4T?

I've been saying this a lot.  The events of the Crisis IMO have happened.  We had wars, we had the economic theft, we had massive upheaval with families and individuals losing everything and moving in with grandparents, etc.  Some can't accept that it was "enough" to be the actual crisis.  I say it was just about enough and if they want more, let them have it but leave me out

Oh and earlier I told a very personal story of ONE family who essentially mirrors Grapes of Wrath scenario of the Great Depression with an extended family in a loaded vehicle traveling to parts unknown just hoping to survive.  Whether that actually happened to anyone posting here, I do not know.  But it really happened to a lot of people.  I've not called it GDII because I didn't want to be severe.  But the early 21st century was truly a time of destitution, humiliation and national upheaval.  I think we do not know the magnitude because media does not cover it.  We know there is currently a homeless epidemic.  But we never hear from the news WHY these people are homeless.  Most of them lost everything in the crash and fell down hard.  But no one talks about that.  And there are homeless camps just as their were in GDI.  Except they are not concentrated on the Washington Mall but scattered throughout every major city in America.

If someone brought them all together, the Mall would be quite full.

I don't see how more crisis can be avoided, whether we want it or not, because the forces that made the war on terror possible, and the great recession possible, are still in power. It is a question of who is in power, and the system they have put in place to maintain themselves in power. As long as that is not toppled somehow, the crisis will never end. Powers are toppled in 4Ts, not 1Ts.

[beechnut79]

So how far away do you feel we are from the moment(s) of reckoning? Have not seen too many real signs of it so far.  Much of the angst occurring in the worst financial crisis since the GD were and largely have been muzzled by the MSM. Which could easily make one thing that things weren't nearly so bad this time around. Most of the headlines have been made around Trump having words to fly in his head and out of his mouth.

[pbrower2a]

(05-31-2018, 10:57 PM)TheNomad Wrote:

(05-31-2018, 07:41 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: Perhaps we are experiencing an unusually mild 4T?

I've been saying this a lot.  The events of the Crisis IMO have happened.  We had wars, we had the economic theft, we had massive upheaval with families and individuals losing everything and moving in with grandparents, etc.  Some can't accept that it was "enough" to be the actual crisis.  I say it was just about enough and if they want more, let them have it but leave me out

Oh and earlier I told a very personal story of ONE family who essentially mirrors Grapes of Wrath scenario of the Great Depression with an extended family in a loaded vehicle traveling to parts unknown just hoping to survive.  Whether that actually happened to anyone posting here, I do not know.  But it really happened to a lot of people.  I've not called it GDII because I didn't want to be severe.  But the early 21st century was truly a time of destitution, humiliation and national upheaval.  I think we do not know the magnitude because media does not cover it.  We know there is currently a homeless epidemic.  But we never hear from the news WHY these people are homeless.  Most of them lost everything in the crash and fell down hard.  But no one talks about that.  And there are homeless camps just as their were in GDI.  Except they are not concentrated on the Washington Mall but scattered throughout every major city in America.

If someone brought them all together, the Mall would be quite full.

Or, for that matter, places already known to be grossly unsatisfying. They might be cheap places to live, but that's about the only virtue. The hick hometown that lost its industry, and you might be able to get a job cleaning motel rooms or checking out videos. If things go bad enough there might be farm labor.

This began before Donald Trump, and some of it relates to the de-industrialization of American society. The halcyon time for America was when anyone with a good work ethic and a little integrity could get industrial work that allowed one a middle-class income. People who wanted a little more out of life than eight hours of drudgery in the plant could get a high-school diploma and become a clerk or a college degree and be some sort of professional. College was cheap -- less expensive than a hobby such as modifying cars to make them more racy.

Now that the industrial jobs have vanished, we have more people competing for what is left. We have college degrees expensively obtained -- for doing jobs that used to require only a high-school education. If you live in the fewer places that have the well-paying jobs, the boom-towns (or now, urban areas like Silicon Valley or greater Washington DC) you pay exorbitant rent. Unless you are at the top of your game, the rent is so high that you might live just as well doing agricultural labor in the Midwest. Something is wrong.

Of course, Big Business has found that profit comes not so much from efficiency (although it demands such from workers just to keep costs down) as it does from being able to gouge the customer. Rent is obvious enough, and Donald Trump exemplifies the landlord. We are also seeing spikes in highway tolls, fuel, utilities. medical costs, health insurance... monopoly and near-monopoly with a captive market is the optimum for profit so long as one is willing to dispense with competition and the public sector.

I am  finding that the very things that have made me human are detriments where I am in this time and place. What is left? Maybe I can simply wallow in a collection of electronic entertainments.

To get along with the new America it helps to be stupid. Then you can be happy. Entertainment, advertising, politics, and most work seems made for morons.