Start of the new cycle

[Bill the Piper]

When do you expect the 1T to start? Also, will there be a difference between America and Europe in that respect?

I think it could be late 2020s. Perhaps like 2024 in America and a few years later in Europe, since there has usually been a lag.

Some factors to consider:
-how Brexit unfolds
-US elections of 2020. If a moderate (probably gen X) candidate wins, this could be a start of the 1T. If a polarizing (probably boomer) candidate wins, the 4T will continue.
-what happens to the EU

[Eric the Green]

(09-30-2018, 05:56 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: When do you expect the 1T to start? Also, will there be a difference between America and Europe in that respect?

I think it could be late 2020s. Perhaps like 2024 in America and a few years later in Europe, since there has usually been a lag.

Some factors to consider:
-how Brexit unfolds
-US elections of 2020. If a moderate (probably gen X) candidate wins, this could be a start of the 1T. If a polarizing (probably boomer) candidate wins, the 4T will continue.
-what happens to the EU

Yes, but "late 2020s" means 2028-29, not 2024.

According to my indicators, only a boomer can be elected in 2020. But that could be a late-wave boomer.
https://youtu.be/i5P3iKplmWY

[Bill the Piper]

So, who voted for 2030s? Why do you think it'll take so long?

[David Horn]

(10-02-2018, 07:29 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: So, who voted for 2030s? Why do you think it'll take so long?

That was my question as well.  


I'm in the "potential 4T failure" camp, and that makes the next few years hard to fathom.  If the economy crashes, we enter another war (especially a major one) or chaos erupts on a large scale, then the 4T will have to play out one way or another.  It seems to me that our patience for more disruption is fading pretty fast, so the resolution might be authoritarian but it will be definitive.  On the other hand, we might continue to muddle through, with inequality continuing to rise, but with overall living standards high enough to make the issue secondary to our many animosities.  In that case, we'll go through placid pendulum swings until something serious finally does erupt -- assume it's in the next 2T.  In neither case, can this wait another 12+ years to get stable.

[pbrower2a]

Early-middle 2020s, suggesting that the 1T ends when one side of the political spectrum is either knocked out or sent into political hibernation. I see either a new New Deal or a New Feudalism as options. FDR or Franco. We have a center-left that will recognize human rights and promote social equity as most of us understand the term. We have a Hard Right that believes that no human suffering is excessive so long as it turns, indulges, or enforces class privilege -- and has shown its willingness to establish a new order in which 95% of the people suffer for the top 2% (the in-between 3% would fare well whatever the political order were) with the rationale that the poor 'at least can find Jesus'.

We do not have a Hard Left with any relevance (Thank God!) but no center-right (which is too bad, because such would be a stabilizing influence). But with a new New Deal we will see the Establishment that is moderately-left start to have people drifting off to the center-Right. There will be something worthy of conservatism. Class privilege, contempt for learning, contempt for the poor, and a profits-only mentality do not merit preservation.

This assumes that we do not get into a major war. Note well that a fascistic America is a menace that few people ever want as an enemy. Sure, you say -- America at its worst has been more like a well-behaved giant breed of dog and not a bear or Big Cat. The world knows the rules with a giant dog, an animal that can do horrible things to human flesh if provoked severely enough. The rules aren't so obvious with a bear or Big Cat aside from 'keep a safe distance'.

[Bill the Piper]

(10-02-2018, 11:09 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: We do not have a Hard Left with any relevance (Thank God!) but no center-right (which is too bad, because such would be a stabilizing influence). But with a new New Deal we will see the Establishment that is moderately-left start to have people drifting off to the center-Right. There will be something worthy of conservatism. Class privilege, contempt for learning, contempt for the poor, and a profits-only mentality do not merit preservation.

You mean something like the old-fashioned leftists who became neo-conservatives in the 1960s because they weren't happy with the countercultural trends?

[Eric the Green]

(10-02-2018, 07:29 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: So, who voted for 2030s? Why do you think it'll take so long?

I could not vote in the poll. It needs to be clear that 2025 is the date of the climax, not the end, of the 4T. The end of the 2020s is the date at which the 4T will end. We have much more to go through first, and it will take a few years. It cannot end during the current regime, and correcting it will take some years in addition. The current situation in which the hard right dominates our country cannot continue; it must be displaced. That might require violent confrontation, not to achieve a leftist takeover, but to curtail a hard right rebellion that might break out against the policies of a soft-left regime that needs to replace today's hard-right regime.

Notice my point that Trump might be re-elected. This will make our domestic crisis much more extreme. Notice my point that the current Democratic Party challengers most talked-about cannot win a presidential election against Donald Trump, no matter how bad his presidency is perceived to be by a slight majority of Americans. The Democrats and the pundits will have to choose candidates that can win, and that hasn't happened yet.

It is also likely that this 4T's upsurge in world affairs of tyranny, civil wars, terrorism, and retreat by the USA in the face of Russian advances into the fray, will need to be dealt with and at-least subside and those trends be reversed before a 1T can begin. Such Russian advance is likely to increase in 2021.

USA 4Ts usually have both a domestic and a foreign crisis component. There's an accent on one or the other, alternating in a double rhythm. In our current 4T, the domestic crisis is paramount, but the foreign crisis also applies. But we need not underestimate the scope of the challenges we face.

[pbrower2a]

(10-03-2018, 08:11 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote:

(10-02-2018, 11:09 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: We do not have a Hard Left with any relevance (Thank God!) but no center-right (which is too bad, because such would be a stabilizing influence). But with a new New Deal we will see the Establishment that is moderately-left start to have people drifting off to the center-Right. There will be something worthy of conservatism. Class privilege, contempt for learning, contempt for the poor, and a profits-only mentality do not merit preservation.

You mean something like the old-fashioned leftists who became neo-conservatives in the 1960s because they weren't happy with the countercultural trends?

David Horowitz is a prime example, although it was for a different reason (radical chic included 'Hate Whitey'm even if 'Whitey' was a sympathetic ally to begin with).

Extremists are surprisingly adept at going from one extreme cause to another. Many fascists were ex-communists, and many commies had been fascists. Although the Commies in Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia executed leading members of such thug organizations as the Arrow Cross, Iron Guard, and Ustase, they readily found rank-and-file members of such groups easy to brainwash into being enforcers for Commie regimes. Because the Commies had little local support in the sense of fanatical Commies already in place, they had to find others to do the dirty work -- people already brutal, people who had a vacuum where purpose and meaning were because they could no longer be fascists -- so who could be better?

Just replace the fascist symbols with hammers and sickles and images of lionized fascist leaders with Stalin or the local Red Quisling, and one had the ideal Red Thug.

[Bill the Piper]

(10-03-2018, 01:18 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: David Horowitz is a prime example, although it was for a different reason (radical chic included 'Hate Whitey'm even if 'Whitey' was a sympathetic ally to begin with).

Extremists are surprisingly adept at going from one extreme cause to another. Many fascists were ex-communists, and many commies had been fascists. Although the Commies in Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia executed leading members of such thug organizations as the Arrow Cross, Iron Guard, and Ustase, they readily found rank-and-file members of such groups easy to brainwash into being enforcers for Commie regimes. Because the Commies had little local support in the sense of fanatical Commies already in place, they had to find others to do the dirty work -- people already brutal, people who had a vacuum where purpose and meaning were because they could no longer be fascists -- so who could be better?

Just replace the fascist symbols with hammers and sickles and images of lionized fascist leaders with Stalin or the local Red Quisling, and one had the ideal Red Thug.

Neoconservatives were by no means extremists. If you want an extremist of the capitalist "yellow sector", try libertarians and Randians. If you want a conservative ("black sector") extremist, try Dominion theologists or European counterparts like Marcel Lefebvre. Neoconservatives weren't like either of these two.

But 1T is not a time for neo-cons. It's more likely cautious politicians, focused on domestic issues, will be elected throughout the West. Neo-conservatives will be remembered as one out of many types of misguided boomer idealists. I wonder however, what the new idealists will think about them?

[pbrower2a]

(10-04-2018, 07:05 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote:

(10-03-2018, 01:18 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: David Horowitz is a prime example, although it was for a different reason (radical chic included 'Hate Whitey'm even if 'Whitey' was a sympathetic ally to begin with).

Extremists are surprisingly adept at going from one extreme cause to another. Many fascists were ex-communists, and many commies had been fascists. Although the Commies in Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia executed leading members of such thug organizations as the Arrow Cross, Iron Guard, and Ustase, they readily found rank-and-file members of such groups easy to brainwash into being enforcers for Commie regimes. Because the Commies had little local support in the sense of fanatical Commies already in place, they had to find others to do the dirty work -- people already brutal, people who had a vacuum where purpose and meaning were because they could no longer be fascists -- so who could be better?

Just replace the fascist symbols with hammers and sickles and images of lionized fascist leaders with Stalin or the local Red Quisling, and one had the ideal Red Thug.

Neoconservatives were by no means extremists. If you want an extremist of the capitalist "yellow sector", try libertarians and Randians. If you want a conservative ("black sector") extremist, try Dominion theologists or European counterparts like Marcel Lefebvre. Neoconservatives weren't like either of these two.

But 1T is not a time for neo-cons. It's more likely cautious politicians, focused on domestic issues, will be elected throughout the West. Neo-conservatives will be remembered as one out of many types of misguided boomer idealists. I wonder however, what the new idealists will think about them?

Dominionist theologians are totalitarian, so I can dispense with them quickly as you can. I have had plenty of debates with fanatical supporters of Rand, and they seem just as fanatical as Marxist-Leninists.  The transformation of a liberal, socialistic society or even a welfare state to the Randist ideal could result in mass death that fanatical Randists would think a necessary 'cleansing' of society of human dreck. The Rand ideal has little to offer the common man except the duty to suffer (if given the alleged privilege necessary for survival, and if they never get that privilege they can simply die of starvation) for the economic elites. I can easily imagine Randian society becoming as hierarchical and inequitable as feudalism at its worst. The neo-conservatives seem to believe that the poor will always be among us, and they might be useful as (sorry about the Marxist term) "the reserve army of the unemployed". The Randist may be the antithesis of a Strasserite (the sort of Nazi like the brothers Otto and Gregor Strasser who wanted a socialist if antisemitic revolution -- to them the Jews were the worst capitalists and the ones most in need of liquidation), but just because someone is the antithesis of one part of the perimeter of the pentagon, that might ignore the fanaticism of both.

Ayn Rand is an extremist, and  it is a good thing that nobody has built a political order upon her principles.

[Bill the Piper]

(10-04-2018, 04:22 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Ayn Rand is an extremist, and  it is a good thing that nobody has built a political order upon her principles.

Absolutely. I'm not a Rand supporter, and never was. I only agree with some stuff that she said about the countercultural movements being the rebellion against reason. Her worship of selfishness and contempt for altruism is wicked in the extreme. It's worth noting that La Vey, the founder of modern Satanism, held Rand in high regard.

I think we will be done with Randians in the next cycle, because post-scarcity is closer and closer, and the power of money will be waning. The main reason why people worship money is that money can buy you pleasures. But in the future, more and more pleasures will be available in virtual reality for free.

[David Horn]

(10-05-2018, 05:35 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote:

(10-04-2018, 04:22 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Ayn Rand is an extremist, and  it is a good thing that nobody has built a political order upon her principles.

Absolutely. I'm not a Rand supporter, and never was. I only agree with some stuff that she said about the countercultural movements being the rebellion against reason. Her worship of selfishness and contempt for altruism is wicked in the extreme. It's worth noting that La Vey, the founder of modern Satanism, held Rand in high regard.

I think we will be done with Randians in the next cycle, because post-scarcity is closer and closer, and the power of money will be waning. The main reason why people worship money is that money can buy you pleasures. But in the future, more and more pleasures will be available in virtual reality for free.

I couldn't disagree more.  Plutocrats are plutocrats because we allow them to be.  Apparently, we seem to need them … or many of us do.  Free is only free if we don't allow someone the right of ownership.  We've already seen ownership extend to amorphous concepts like the community square.  Facebook owns that because we allowed it.  The fact that no one knows how to control thoughts for profit doesn't mean it would happen at some point in the future.

Don't discount greed until it's fully contained.

[pbrower2a]

The post-scarcity society could be a boon or a nightmare, depending on what skills and desires one has. The Marxist precept that the industrial worker has nothing to sell but his toil remains undeniably true irrespective of any technological advance. Skilled activities could at times vanish, as in some obsolete areas of computer work. Word processing and computer operating were once highly-desired occupations. They are vanishing.

We will need less raw labor except perhaps for (for all irony) farm labor. People will still need to eat.

Many things will be so cheap that they won't merit accounting for them. People will have so much stuff that they will not need more. More stuff simply means more clutter. The collection of inexpensive stuff will be absurd, like hoarding.

Manufactured status symbols will be pointless, as they will mean nothing.

[Eric the Green]

(10-04-2018, 07:05 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote:

(10-03-2018, 01:18 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: David Horowitz is a prime example, although it was for a different reason (radical chic included 'Hate Whitey'm even if 'Whitey' was a sympathetic ally to begin with).

Extremists are surprisingly adept at going from one extreme cause to another. Many fascists were ex-communists, and many commies had been fascists. Although the Commies in Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia executed leading members of such thug organizations as the Arrow Cross, Iron Guard, and Ustase, they readily found rank-and-file members of such groups easy to brainwash into being enforcers for Commie regimes. Because the Commies had little local support in the sense of fanatical Commies already in place, they had to find others to do the dirty work -- people already brutal, people who had a vacuum where purpose and meaning were because they could no longer be fascists -- so who could be better?

Just replace the fascist symbols with hammers and sickles and images of lionized fascist leaders with Stalin or the local Red Quisling, and one had the ideal Red Thug.

Neoconservatives were by no means extremists. If you want an extremist of the capitalist "yellow sector", try libertarians and Randians. If you want a conservative ("black sector") extremist, try Dominion theologists or European counterparts like Marcel Lefebvre. Neoconservatives weren't like either of these two.

But 1T is not a time for neo-cons. It's more likely cautious politicians, focused on domestic issues, will be elected throughout the West. Neo-conservatives will be remembered as one out of many types of misguided boomer idealists. I wonder however, what the new idealists will think about them?

Millennials today often mis-identify all older people as "boomers," including some whom boomers themselves staunchly opposed. S&H devotees might then call these neo-cons "idealists." Actually, Neo-conservatives are both older boomers (especially including those older than demographic boomers) and silents.

The main program of neo-cons is to take our nation to war for no good reason. Not good.

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

[pbrower2a]

We Boomers have had a bad run for America even if we have had three Presidents -- the sort-of-OK Bill Clinton, the dreadful Dubya, and the worst President in American history, a President who would rule as a dictator or despot if he could -- as shown in his behavior. Add to this, Boomers have been the most rapacious executives who have made sure that people have lost all chance of getting ahead in life beyond a 'safe' level unless they are practically born into the elite. Business formation? Better than the Silent, but that is not saying much. Boomers have been far better at monopolizing and consolidating industry and commerce than at creating new industry and commerce -- Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Jeff Bezos notwithstanding. Note well that Microsoft and Apple (and its competitors) have done much to destroy well-paying clerical jobs and that Amazon.com has killed much small-scale retailing. So far Boomers will be remembered fondly only for cultural creativity, which is impressive.

That is not much different than what one could have said of Missionaries around 1930, either. Harding was a corrupt fool, Coolidge was a genuine dotard, and the heavily-touted Hoover was a complete incompetent at dealing with an economic downturn. Missionaries did pioneer cars as a solution to personal transportation and the supermarket as a retailing phenomenon, and I would say that those were more important than computers and e-retailing in people's lives unless they were employed in those industries.

Maybe we have not seen the last act of Boomer politics -- but that last act will involve the choices more of people younger than Boomers. That Boomer will (like FDR) appeal to the pragmatism of X and the itch of Millennial adults to have something benign and big. Maybe just in time for an economic meltdown or severe stagflation?

[sbarrera]

One thing that could cause the 4T to drag is the stubborn persistence of the Silent generation in leadership roles, both in government and business. I still voted for 2025-29, though, with the thought that it would be late in that time frame. That still gives three exciting Presidential elections. Maybe 2028 will be the 1T election. I think there is a chance it could be 2032 that is the 1T election, but the odds are not in favor of that.

[pbrower2a]

(10-08-2018, 09:19 AM)sbarrera Wrote: One thing that could cause the 4T to drag is the stubborn persistence of the Silent generation in leadership roles, both in government and business. I still voted for 2025-29, though, with the thought that it would be late in that time frame. That still gives three exciting Presidential elections. Maybe 2028 will be the 1T election. I think there is a chance it could be 2032 that is the 1T election, but the odds are not in favor of that.

As the oldest Silent are now 75, their role in business is largely in ownership, and not operation. They have retired from the executive suites, with Boomers (who may be the worst business executives ever from the standpoint of treatment of workers and customers ever). Middle age typically ends at 65, which means that Boomers born in 1953 are often reaching mandatory retirement age.

Politics? The Silent are already vanishing. As with the GIs about fifteen years ago, the prominent ones are replaced by people decidedly younger. Should Mitch McConnell be defeated in 2020 or should he lose control of the Senate earlier, then he will not return to a role of prominence. His successor will be Boom or X.

2020 will have an exciting Presidential election. 2024? It depends upon the competence of the President elected in 2020 -- and whether we have a free and fair election (which will be much in doubt if Trump or Pence wins in 2020).

Crisis eras end with rapid denouements, as illustrated by the short time between the establishment of the Constitution , between General Sherman splitting the Confederacy through Georgia, and D-Day and the suicide of Satan Incarnate in a bunker. The Japanese leadership thought that it could hold on until the atom bomb blasts and the Soviet invasion of Manchukuo... and suddenly collapsed.

History moves fast in the latter stages of a Crisis Era. Generals recognize a hopeless situation and surrender like a chess player who sees "mate in 4" against him that he cannot stave off... and if the conqueror has any decency, the defeated find that resistance is pointless because defeat is the last tragedy for them. It is worth remembering that the American and British victories in Italy and Germany had as their deciding factor that the Italians and Germans had no cause for resistance. 

This Crisis could end with something as unprecedented as a military coup against a President attempting to rule as a despot... with the military leadership establishing through its behavior that people have nothing to fear. Farewell, first Republic, welcome Second, one with a tighter Constitutional system.

[Bill the Piper]

(10-05-2018, 11:21 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Millennials today often mis-identify all older people as "boomers," including some whom boomers themselves staunchly opposed. S&H devotees might then call these neo-cons "idealists." Actually, Neo-conservatives are both older boomers (especially including those older than demographic boomers) and silents.

The main program of neo-cons is to take our nation to war for no good reason. Not good.

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

George W Bush and Bill Cristol are proper boomers.
Michael Gove, a British politician who self-identifies as a neo-con, is an Xer.

To do away with tyrants like Saddam and the Taliban is idealism. You can criticise the way it was done, but it's hard to deny that the intent was idealistic.

The Wikipedia article is terrible. A better description of the neoconservative doctrine is there:
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/upl...vaisse.pdf

[David Horn]

(10-08-2018, 09:19 AM)sbarrera Wrote: One thing that could cause the 4T to drag is the stubborn persistence of the Silent generation in leadership roles, both in government and business. I still voted for 2025-29, though, with the thought that it would be late in that time frame. That still gives three exciting Presidential elections. Maybe 2028 will be the 1T election. I think there is a chance it could be 2032 that is the 1T election, but the odds are not in favor of that.

I agree.  The persistence of the "fading" generation in positions of power warps the S&H pattern substantially.  The moderating influence of Artists is probably less toxic than the hubris older Boomers will provide in the next 1T, but it's still acting to suppress the emerging pattern that needs to run its course.  In fact, it may act to mute the process sufficiently that the regeneracy never really congeals, and the challenges never get fully addressed.  


With lifetimes growing every generation, this may eventually kill the cycle entirely.  Of course, we'll never live to see it-- which brings us to timing.  I can't see the current 4T running-on for an extended period while we collectively try to resolve our crises.  At some point, the emotional level has to drop, individuality has to recede and something akin to a 1T has to start.  We're human, and maintaining that level of intensity is impossible.

[pbrower2a]

(10-09-2018, 12:56 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(10-08-2018, 09:19 AM)sbarrera Wrote: One thing that could cause the 4T to drag is the stubborn persistence of the Silent generation in leadership roles, both in government and business. I still voted for 2025-29, though, with the thought that it would be late in that time frame. That still gives three exciting Presidential elections. Maybe 2028 will be the 1T election. I think there is a chance it could be 2032 that is the 1T election, but the odds are not in favor of that.

I agree.  The persistence of the "fading" generation in positions of power warps the S&H pattern substantially.  The moderating influence of Artists is probably less toxic than the hubris older Boomers will provide in the next 1T, but it's still acting to suppress the emerging pattern that needs to run its course.  In fact, it may act to mute the process sufficiently that the regeneracy never really congeals, and the challenges never get fully addressed.  


With lifetimes growing every generation, this may eventually kill the cycle entirely.  Of course, we'll never live to see it-- which brings us to timing.  I can't see the current 4T running-on for an extended period while we collectively try to resolve our crises.  At some point, the emotional level has to drop, individuality has to recede and something akin to a 1T has to start.  We're human, and maintaining that level of intensity is impossible.

It has been a rare time in American history in which there has been a transition from four active adult generations through five to four as there was when Millennials came on the political and economic scene while GIs disappeared. Consider 2005

GI, Civic/Hero  81+
Silent, Adaptive/Artist  63-80
Boom, Idealist/Prophet 45-62
X, Reactive/Nomad 24-44
Millennial 23 or younger

among adults.

GI influence was not yet dead, as there were still plenty of them in positions of high responsibility. To be sure, this was an awkward time as the Civic component of public and economic life was going from being very old to wet-behind-the-ears. The truly awkward times in history are those in which one of the generational components of history is fully lacking in public life.

The GIs have set a pattern of staying active in public life and staying fit as long as possible. There may be limits, but this could be the difference between having having some very elderly people reminding us of what is then weak in public life and that such is a good model  for young adults -- rather than having young adults find out the hard way.

I see no detriment to older people staying active as long as possible. The Silent are following the GI pattern of staying physically active and
socially attached quite well, and I see signs that Boomers will do much the same. X? Ask again in about fifteen years.

I remember the Lost getting left behind. Unable to adapt to the highly-mobile, rapidly-changing world of the 1960s they often got sent to the "Home For the Golden Years" -- while their child and spouse, and grandkids took a cross-country relocation to advance the career of one or the other. Maybe that will happen again just in time for X to get such treatment. Grandpa or Grandma was simply not going to move from Greater Milwaukee to Greater Denver.