Election 2018

[Bill the Piper]

(10-29-2018, 12:38 PM)David Horn Wrote: The Information Age is a bit of a misnomer.  It's less about information, per se, and more about easy access to it, but that's a quibble.  The advent of computers is the technological precursor, but the cultural impacts were due to the rise of the PC, the internet and digital cellphones.  Has our thinking changed all that much due to Facebook and Twitter?  I don't think so.  So a marker for that transition is somewhere in the 1990-2005 range.  A follow-on Age will emerge soon, but what it will encompass and what it will be called is still TBD.

Remember than even in the early 2000s, a common pop culture trope was "computers are for nerds". Prince of Persia games were cool, but it was social media that started the Information Age. Another thread attributes the success of Trump to an online board called 4chan. What would be the equivalent in 2002? People sending text messages on their Nokia 3310s?

The next Age? Assuming the current 4T ends well, I see two possibilities:
-Transhuman Age - if the next technological revolution is the use of biotech to ennoble (or pervert) human nature
-Interplanetary Age - if the next revolution is the creation of settlements in outer space

The transition could coincide with next 4T, around the 2090s.

[David Horn]

(11-03-2018, 10:43 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote:

(10-29-2018, 12:38 PM)David Horn Wrote: The Information Age is a bit of a misnomer.  It's less about information, per se, and more about easy access to it, but that's a quibble.  The advent of computers is the technological precursor, but the cultural impacts were due to the rise of the PC, the internet and digital cellphones.  Has our thinking changed all that much due to Facebook and Twitter?  I don't think so.  So a marker for that transition is somewhere in the 1990-2005 range.  A follow-on Age will emerge soon, but what it will encompass and what it will be called is still TBD.

Remember than even in the early 2000s, a common pop culture trope was "computers are for nerds". Prince of Persia games were cool, but it was social media that started the Information Age. Another thread attributes the success of Trump to an online board called 4chan. What would be the equivalent in 2002? People sending text messages on their Nokia 3310s?

Two points:

• On the old board, we had a very poster (Rose) who railed against 4chan pre-Katrina
• The pre-social media technologies were clunky but still effective. Internet forums superseded Usenet, and listservs existed through the entire time.

Bill Wrote:The next Age? Assuming the current 4T ends well, I see two possibilities:
-Transhuman Age - if the next technological revolution is the use of biotech to ennoble (or pervert) human nature
-Interplanetary Age - if the next revolution is the creation of settlements in outer space

The transition could coincide with next 4T, around the 2090s.

I agree that both are in the future, just not the immediate future. Some low-level transhumanist implantation is not far off, but true transhumanism? I don't think so. We aren't ready for that grand leap. Space relocation is even further away: we still don't have a clue about shielding -- a must for the relocators to arrive alive. I assume some interstitial age we haven't seen coming will get us into the 22nd century. After that, who knows?

[Mikebert]

(10-29-2018, 05:11 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(10-28-2018, 11:45 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: FDR did not offer unity to the Nazis.
Lincoln did not offer unity to the confederates.
Washington did not offer unity to the King.
William did not offer unity to the Stewarts and Louis XIV
Elizabeth I did not offer unity to the Spanish or the Catholics.
Henry VII did not offer unity to Richard III.

One side won, the other lost. After that, a greater degree of unity was able to be created.

Most of the above people are clearly Industrial Age.  Thus, using violence as a solution would be expected. 

Eric is mostly right about how crises resolve, except the last one.  It's not FDR versus the Nazis. The conflict is *internal* not external, unless it involves invasion, in which case the external actor is now internal to the country being invaded. 

There is no seeking unity until one side prevails, but that does not have to be through violence.  For example, last time the crisis conflict was resolved electorally without violence over 1930-1934. By the 1934 election Democrats had won three elections in a row and Republicans were devastated, not to recover until the end of the 4T.  Unity had been achieved in 1934 because FDR could now withstand the hits the party in power takes in the non-presidential election, as Obama could not.

It is hard to see this as a major conflict because it was so fast. But the situation  today shows that it does not have to be fast.  This 4T the two sides have been fighting for 10 to 17 years, depending on when you choose to start the 4T. There is, at present, no clear-cut winner. The Republicans are in a position similar to where they were in 2006 and Democrats were in 2010. The election tomorrow will be another "battle" in this political war. Unless the polling is way off, Republicans look likely to lose the House next year, like Democrats in 2010. That is 2018 looks likely not to give the sort of final resolution of the internal political conflict that 1934 did. And given the prospect of a major bear market, possibly associated with financial crisis, we could well see another shift in the winds of fortune in this seemingly neverending political war.

[pbrower2a]

The difference may be the timing of the rescue of the banks. FDR rescued the banks only after the succession of bank runs that all but destroyed the financial system, putting the economy at the risk of making cash in the bank an unreliable store of wealth. At a certain point, people might get payroll and vendor checks that bounce. Taxing authorities might get checks that had sufficient funds deposited, only to find that the taxpayer's bank had defaulted. All stores of wealth might become irrelevant, and the economy would be reduced to barter.

Much paper wealth that people thought that they had in the 1920s was now void. (One explanation was that the government withdrew funds from the system as a classic deflation).

The rescue of the banks under Obama occurred just before there was a possibility of bank runs. Of course, FDIC insurance and the mandate that the Fed print money to meet banks' needs might have stopped the possible runs. If the autumn of 1929 and the autumn of 2007 are seen as the starts of the economic downturns, then the rescue of the banking system in the late winter 2009 corresponds to the inaction of the Hoover Administration in the late winter of 1931 in the earlier meltdown.

Obama rescued the banks, but he also rescued the people who would fund the reactionary causes set on transforming America into a pure plutocracy If the objective is to prevent the misery of a full-blown 'Second Great Depression' is the object, then Obama and the Democrats in Congress did what is right. If democratic institutions are even more important, the Democrats ended up stabbing themselves in their backs. In 2009 and 2010 America got an abortive Regeneracy. By 2011, America was back to the Degeneracy, reverting to 3T ways that got America into the mess that was the Double-Zero decade.

Question: how long will it be before we have another severe economic meltdown? If you thought Hoover bad, wait until you see Trump denying that a meltdown is underway when one happens.

The Regeneracy is anything but business as usual. In the 1920s, people were looking for the easy, quick buck in highly-marketable securities or real estate that could be traded almost like a stock or bond. In the 1930s people were stuck trying to survive on long-term, low-yield activities that one could not sell off easily. That was small business fitting the interstices that the business failures of the 1929-1932 meltdown made available. That meant small businesses that operated on shoestrings and relied upon an owner creating a customer base. Few people had the funds with which to buy the political process as they would have in the 2010s.

The Republican Party went deep into the shadows in the 1930s; in the 2010s it has so far used salami slicing to destroy one aspect of liberalism after another. The 2018 midterm election that has already begun in many places with early voting may decide at what the salami slicing stops.

[Eric the Green]

(11-05-2018, 08:42 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

(10-29-2018, 05:11 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(10-28-2018, 11:45 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: FDR did not offer unity to the Nazis.
Lincoln did not offer unity to the confederates.
Washington did not offer unity to the King.
William did not offer unity to the Stewarts and Louis XIV
Elizabeth I did not offer unity to the Spanish or the Catholics.
Henry VII did not offer unity to Richard III.

One side won, the other lost. After that, a greater degree of unity was able to be created.

Most of the above people are clearly Industrial Age.  Thus, using violence as a solution would be expected. 

Eric is mostly right about how crises resolve, except the last one.  It's not FDR versus the Nazis. The conflict is *internal* not external, unless it involves invasion, in which case the external actor is now internal to the country being invaded. 

There is no seeking unity until one side prevails, but that does not have to be through violence.  For example, last time the crisis conflict was resolved electorally without violence over 1930-1934. By the 1934 election Democrats had won three elections in a row and Republicans were devastated, not to recover until the end of the 4T.  Unity had been achieved in 1934 because FDR could now withstand the hits the party in power takes in the non-presidential election, as Obama could not.

It is hard to see this as a major conflict because it was so fast. But the situation  today shows that it does not have to be fast.  This 4T the two sides have been fighting for 10 to 17 years, depending on when you choose to start the 4T. There is, at present, no clear-cut winner. The Republicans are in a position similar to where they were in 2006 and Democrats were in 2010. The election tomorrow will be another "battle" in this political war. Unless the polling is way off, Republicans look likely to lose the House next year, like Democrats in 2010. That is 2018 looks likely not to give the sort of final resolution of the internal political conflict that 1934 did. And given the prospect of a major bear market, possibly associated with financial crisis, we could well see another shift in the winds of fortune in this seemingly never-ending political war.

I see these things a bit differently

WWII was the crisis climax, as S&H stated. The battle with the Nazis was all of a piece with the domestic fights between Republican oligarchy and Democratic New Deal. The crash of 1929 in the USA, as well as allied sanctions against Germany before then, led directly to the Nazi takeover and the simultaneous FDR Democratic takeover. From 1892 onward, we live in a world civilization where what happens in one place affects all the others. The last 4T was a good illustration of that. And in our own 4T, the American crash in 2008 had similar global impact.

The video of FDR I posted further shows that his battle with the Republicans was not over. FDR certainly fared better than Obama did, but Obama was not a true depression leader, and he had a less severe problem demanding less drastic solutions than what FDR faced. And FDR still endured quite a reversal of fortune in the 1938 midterms, as all 6th year terms do, and never got the majority that he got in 1936 again. And it was only WWII that decisively ended the Depression and propelled us into a successful first turning like no other before it. Only the battle with the Axis powers lifted us into our 1T. So in that sense there was no unity during the 4T, and there was more unity in the following 1T after the crisis was resolved.

It is somewhat tenuous, but the I think the double alternating rhythm of predominantly domestic and predominantly foreign-centered crisis has continued. Chas of course takes it further into his alternating "Dionysian and Apollonian" saecula; the former corresponding to internal crises and the latter to external. We are internal/dionysian centered, meaning that ours is predominantly an internal crisis, and it's more than economic, but a so-far cold civil war. That war will continue through the 4T until 2028-29 and perhaps beyond, whether or not another severe economic crisis occurs, and has yet to reach its climax in around 2025, again regardless of the economy.

[Bob Butler 54]

(10-29-2018, 12:49 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(10-29-2018, 08:01 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Turnings are short term.  Ages are much longer term.  Civilizations divide by area.  To make sense of history, you have to be aware of all three.

I wonder if the pace of change will make your statement, true as it is today, obsolete in a relatively short period of time.  It's already the case that the saeculum may be longer than any New Age.  Can Turnings be far behind?

If we look at the pace so far, the Hunter/Gatherer Age lasted for many 10s to 100s of millennia, depending on your demark for the emergence of humanity.  The Agricultural Age lasted ~12 millennia.  The Industrial age, 150-200 years.  The Information Age already feels mature.  Obviously, the pace is rising fast.

Definitely.  You may have noted that in some of my posts I used an all lower case 'the new age' rather than 'The Information Age'.  I just don't know what the pattern will become yet well enough to name it.

I still believe things started changing with nukes, computers, and an acceptance of of culture change internally using democracy rather than war.  That would put the first stirrings at WW II, though you could claim important markers at any point after that.

The hunter gatherer period and Agricultural Age lasted long enough to be viewed as steady state.  Things remained fairly stable for much longer than the transitions.  This seems not true of the Industrial Age.  You can see first stirrings with the printing press, chemical weapons and steam power, but the Industrial Age was more a process than a steady state.  The S&H crises of the Industrial Age each moved towards a steady state which was almost reached in America, Europe, Japan, Australia and elsewhere.  Yet, some civilizations still feature autocratic government.  To my mind, some civilizations were left hanging so to speak.  Some were transitioning to the Industrial Age pattern, some stubbornly sticking to the Agricultural Age pattern, when the new age started it's rumblings with WW II. 

If you get rigid about the age / turning / civilization triple partition, we could be entering a period of chaos.  If you treat the lessons learned with a grain of salt when you cross the border of an age / turning / civilization, we may be taking things with a grain of salt a lot.

Thus, I am not in a mood to name ages after the new age.  Is it a newer age, or did the pattern of the prior age never get set?

[David Horn]

(11-05-2018, 08:42 PM)Mikebert Wrote: ...  This 4T the two sides have been fighting for 10 to 17 years, depending on when you choose to start the 4T. There is, at present, no clear-cut winner. The Republicans are in a position similar to where they were in 2006 and Democrats were in 2010. The election tomorrow will be another "battle" in this political war. Unless the polling is way off, Republicans look likely to lose the House next year, like Democrats in 2010. That is 2018 looks likely not to give the sort of final resolution of the internal political conflict that 1934 did. And given the prospect of a major bear market, possibly associated with financial crisis, we could well see another shift in the winds of fortune in this seemingly never-ending political war.

Agreed. This looks less like a crisis than a marathon: the two sides gaining and losing position, the country slowly decaying, but nothing getting resolved.  The only potential triggers to bring this to a head and set a new and singular course would be a major war (none on the horizon) or a financial collapse.  Let's assume the market goes into a tailspin and that's the real crisis we've been waiting to address.  How much longer can we wait?  What would be the catalyst to push things over the edge?

[David Horn]

(11-06-2018, 03:47 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: … The hunter gatherer period and Agricultural Age lasted long enough to be viewed as steady state.  Things remained fairly stable for much longer than the transitions.  This seems not true of the Industrial Age.  You can see first stirrings with the printing press, chemical weapons and steam power, but the Industrial Age was more a process than a steady state.  The S&H crises of the Industrial Age each moved towards a steady state which was almost reached in America, Europe, Japan, Australia and elsewhere.  Yet, some civilizations still feature autocratic government.  To my mind, some civilizations were left hanging so to speak.  Some were transitioning to the Industrial Age pattern, some stubbornly sticking to the Agricultural Age pattern, when the new age started it's rumblings with WW II. 

If you get rigid about the age / turning / civilization triple partition, we could be entering a period of chaos.  If you treat the lessons learned with a grain of salt when you cross the border of an age / turning / civilization, we may be taking things with a grain of salt a lot.

Thus, I am not in a mood to name ages after the new age.  Is it a newer age, or did the pattern of the prior age never get set?

Which finally brings us to the real question: did we define the saecular pattern just in time for it to cease being valid?  To my way of thinking, the lack of a steady state culture to overlay with the cyclic historical pattern we spend our time analyzing, makes the entire discussion of repeatability very likely invalid.   That doesn't mean that a similar cyclic process won't continue for some time to come.  It just makes it less coherent and, frankly, less useful.

[Bob Butler 54]

(11-06-2018, 02:44 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(11-05-2018, 08:42 PM)Mikebert Wrote: ...  This 4T the two sides have been fighting for 10 to 17 years, depending on when you choose to start the 4T. There is, at present, no clear-cut winner. The Republicans are in a position similar to where they were in 2006 and Democrats were in 2010. The election tomorrow will be another "battle" in this political war. Unless the polling is way off, Republicans look likely to lose the House next year, like Democrats in 2010. That is 2018 looks likely not to give the sort of final resolution of the internal political conflict that 1934 did. And given the prospect of a major bear market, possibly associated with financial crisis, we could well see another shift in the winds of fortune in this seemingly never-ending political war.

Agreed. This looks less like a crisis than a marathon: the two sides gaining and losing position, the country slowly decaying, but nothing getting resolved.  The only potential triggers to bring this to a head and set a new and singular course would be a major war (none on the horizon) or a financial collapse.  Let's assume the market goes into a tailspin and that's the real crisis we've been waiting to address.  How much longer can we wait?  What would be the catalyst to push things over the edge?

Or, If my theory is correct, the major changes to society in the new age occur at the 2T, with an awakening. Around the 50s, 60s, and 70s, the Civil Rights movement, the Woman's Movement, the Environmental movement, the way the Domino Theory is viewed (The Peace Movement) were major events. No more major events will swing by until the next awakening. We are on the see saw until then?

[Bob Butler 54]

(11-06-2018, 02:53 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(11-06-2018, 03:47 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: … The hunter gatherer period and Agricultural Age lasted long enough to be viewed as steady state.  Things remained fairly stable for much longer than the transitions.  This seems not true of the Industrial Age.  You can see first stirrings with the printing press, chemical weapons and steam power, but the Industrial Age was more a process than a steady state.  The S&H crises of the Industrial Age each moved towards a steady state which was almost reached in America, Europe, Japan, Australia and elsewhere.  Yet, some civilizations still feature autocratic government.  To my mind, some civilizations were left hanging so to speak.  Some were transitioning to the Industrial Age pattern, some stubbornly sticking to the Agricultural Age pattern, when the new age started it's rumblings with WW II. 

If you get rigid about the age / turning / civilization triple partition, we could be entering a period of chaos.  If you treat the lessons learned with a grain of salt when you cross the border of an age / turning / civilization, we may be taking things with a grain of salt a lot.

Thus, I am not in a mood to name ages after the new age.  Is it a newer age, or did the pattern of the prior age never get set?

Which finally brings us to the real question: did we define the saecular pattern just in time for it to cease being valid?  To my way of thinking, the lack of a steady state culture to overlay with the cyclic historical pattern we spend our time analyzing, makes the entire discussion of repeatability very likely invalid.   That doesn't mean that a similar cyclic process won't continue for some time to come.  It just makes it less coherent and, frankly, less useful.

Yep.  I worry about just that.  Even if you push the hairy edge of the new age back to World War II, we have only one awakening and one crisis to guess what to expect.  (A very wild awakening and not much of a crisis.)  One is not enough, or sure to hold true for long enough to count.

[pbrower2a]

Well, at the least, President Trump has not consolidated dictatorial power. He has no ability to pull a self coup. Governorships have heavily turned D.

[Bob Butler 54]

Yep. The see saw has half flipped. Neither party has enough reins to go crazy, excepting if the Supreme Court is stacked and gets the right cases to set some bad precedent.

[pbrower2a]

If anything happens to a moderate or liberal on the Supreme Court, then expect Donald Trump to nominate another extremist to replace that justice, with a hyper-partisan Senate rushing that Justice.

Under Trump's ideal, no human suffering can be in excess so long as it has elite gain, indulgence, or power attached. The Republican party is now a cadre party in the sense that is a Communist, fascist, or Baathist party.

[pbrower2a]

As soon as possible -- could anyone get a generational distribution of persons in high political office?

I don't see a bunch of geezers being defeated to be replaced by younger pols (X and Millennial) -- yet.

[pbrower2a]

I wish I could have more faith in people in "Red" America... but at this point I see enablers of the most crooked, crazy, and corrupt political actors possible. That's politics, and it is true that politics alone can rarely solve anything.

[Bob Butler 54]

And yet the blue need rural votes.

I’ll get back to that soon enough…

In his book On Killing, Lt. Col Dave Grossman goes into how humans have specific instincts that prevent killing of members of a tribe, counter instincts to allow soldiers to kill at need members of other tribes, how the US Army is aware of these instincts, and conditions it soldiers to kill.  Among other things, specific drills are designed to condition soldiers to obey orders without question, to kill without thinking.  The victory parade among other things is therapy against post traumatic stress.  If society shows approval, the shock induced on soldiers becomes less.  Part of it is dehumanizing the enemy though demonization, humiliation, of reducing them to stereotypes.  It is easier to kill the enemy if you give him buck teeth and thick glasses.

]It is exceedingly dangerous to remove the conditioning to prevent killing.  You wind up with people primed to kill.

In the Industrial Age, we had good reason to do just that.  Much of the Enlightenment ideals of progress was achieved at gunpoint, by demonizing the conservatives who resisted with older clinging to traditional privilege and power.  Wars and violence marked each crisis, and with that came stereotypes, hatred and violence.  It was the natural and perhaps correct thing to do, to paint the enemy as other, to justify, glorify and enable the instincts to kill.

But what if in the new age we can solve the great cultural problems without war and violence?  What if you can do the same cultural changes through democracy?  Why ride so many on the killing edge?  Why mark fellow members of society as plausible targets?

Kings and slaveholders were once rather easy targets for past crises.  I will grant that the victors write the history books, but they made those history books very easy to write.  I have been looking for something as easy to see in hindsight.  The readiness to demonize, to label as other, to treat with contempt, may be the lesson to be learned.  The red radio talk shows, the blue late night humor, may be the obvious elephant in the room.  Everyone is just addicted to the old Industrial Age habit to prime up for a conflict.

You want new values?  You want to change the culture?  Maybe you just do not in any way want to stimulate the instinct for violence.

[David Horn]

(11-06-2018, 03:12 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(11-06-2018, 02:44 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(11-05-2018, 08:42 PM)Mikebert Wrote: ...  This 4T the two sides have been fighting for 10 to 17 years, depending on when you choose to start the 4T. There is, at present, no clear-cut winner. The Republicans are in a position similar to where they were in 2006 and Democrats were in 2010. The election tomorrow will be another "battle" in this political war. Unless the polling is way off, Republicans look likely to lose the House next year, like Democrats in 2010. That is 2018 looks likely not to give the sort of final resolution of the internal political conflict that 1934 did. And given the prospect of a major bear market, possibly associated with financial crisis, we could well see another shift in the winds of fortune in this seemingly never-ending political war.

Agreed. This looks less like a crisis than a marathon: the two sides gaining and losing position, the country slowly decaying, but nothing getting resolved.  The only potential triggers to bring this to a head and set a new and singular course would be a major war (none on the horizon) or a financial collapse.  Let's assume the market goes into a tailspin and that's the real crisis we've been waiting to address.  How much longer can we wait?  What would be the catalyst to push things over the edge?

Or, If my theory is correct, the major changes to society in the new age occur at the 2T, with an awakening.  Around the 50s, 60s, and 70s, the Civil Rights movement, the Woman's Movement, the Environmental movement, the way the Domino Theory is viewed (The Peace Movement) were major events.  No more major events will swing by until the next awakening.  We are on the see saw until then?

I'm afraid that's the case.  It's hard to see any definitive movement, barring some catastrophic event that I don't find all that likely.  A recession won't do it, nor will another proxy war.  It look like we're on the rinse-repeat pattern until the 2T, and then, who knows.

[David Horn]

(11-06-2018, 11:34 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Yep.  The see saw has half flipped.  Neither party has enough reins to go crazy, excepting if the Supreme Court is stacked and gets the right cases to set some bad precedent.

Even then, the court is not likely to kill the political process, and righteous anger can trigger an all Blue election at some point in the future.  All Blue will equal a larger SCOTUS with a liberal tilt, and a reset on everything Trump, and any successors, have done to that time.  


At that point, we might just as well agree to separate or start the Constitutional process over from the convention onward.  The creaky system will be broken ... no fix will be possible.  I doubt I live long enough to see it, but I think it's in the cards.

[David Horn]

(11-07-2018, 01:22 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: As soon as possible -- could anyone get a generational distribution of persons in high political office?

I don't see a bunch of geezers being defeated to be replaced by younger pols (X and Millennial) -- yet.

The problem here is one of long duration.  The Dems have most of the same leaders today they had 20 years ago.  The GOP is trending that way too.  The only fix for that would be a massive election wave based on age rather than philosophy.  It's possible, but not anytime soon.

[Eric the Green]

Horrible election. older whites vote, young people don't. Red states and counties in the vast heartland only vote for their guns, lower taxes and regulations, and religious dogmas. Ted Cruz's platform rules America. The Senate is structured to favor red states. Majority vote doesn't rule. Our courts are stacked with reactionaries. Outlook dismal for USA.

The notion that there is any kind of "new age," whether it's the age of aquarius of the information age or whatever, is foolish as long as the red mentality (guns, low taxes, religious dogma, the Cruz platform and slogans) dominates our country. And any compromise with it also is no "new age," even if that's all we can hope for.