Originally Posted by Eric the Green

The point about Senator Grumpy, is that he is genuine, and he is angry. In other words, he's a real fighter for the people. A Mars-in-Aries guy. He won't let up. This may put him too far out of the mainstream, and the odds still favor Hillary to be nominated and perhaps win narrowly in the Fall. On the other hand, Sanders won't back down if he's the nominee, and will compromise less in his campaign than Hillary or O'Malley would.

Sanders is courageous and has real heart. He is a whole and genuine person, and he's a strong and courageous fighter. Yet he can still compromise with opponents to get things achieved. So he's pragmatic too, while not abandoning his principles and fudging in his rhetoric. He says Wall Street will not like him, while Hillary says everyone should like her. Being a fighter with real heart and soul will appeal to the people. The stars are with him. Don't underestimate him, or Trump either. It could very well be Sanders vs. Trump in the Fall of 2016, and in that contest, Trump will meet his match in Sanders in energy, in fight, in confidence and in charisma, and far surpass him in honesty, wisdom, vision and knowledge of issues, and Trump will lose.

A Sanders vs. Trump campaign would be regenerating. I don't know if we're ready for it yet.

For the Democrats to win the White House for a third consecutive term would be highly unusual. Hasn't happened since 1940, and that was a highly unusual (and not to be repeated since the passage of the 22nd Amendment) situation. I don't think Bernie Sanders expects to be President either and if he does win such a "black swan" election, he will be in the position of the dog that caught the car he chased. Sanders expects his campaign to be the beginning of a 4 year long slog back from political oblivion for the Democratic Left, building an organisation that can run primary opponents to remaining New Democrat incumbents in 2018 in both Congress and statehouses and maybe start recapturing some statehouses in preparation for 2020. Whether that would be easier if he is in the White House is an open question. It did not work out that way for Obama.

Originally Posted by MordecaiK

For the Democrats to win the White House for a third consecutive term would be highly unusual. Hasn't happened since 1940, and that was a highly unusual (and not to be repeated since the passage of the 22nd Amendment) situation. I don't think Bernie Sanders expects to be President either and if he does win such a "black swan" election, he will be in the position of the dog that caught the car he chased. Sanders expects his campaign to be the beginning of a 4 year long slog back from political oblivion for the Democratic Left, building an organisation that can run primary opponents to remaining New Democrat incumbents in 2018 in both Congress and statehouses and maybe start recapturing some statehouses in preparation for 2020. Whether that would be easier if he is in the White House is an open question. It did not work out that way for Obama.

Even George Herbert Walker Bush succeeding Ronald Reagan or the near-miss involving a succession from Dwight Eisenhower to Richard Nixon (both Vicce Presidents) are suspect analogues. Unlike Eisenhower or Reagan, Obama did not get re-elected in a landslide, so it is not as if the other Party is disorganized.

The Republicans have an excellent fund-raising campaign and no scruples.

But are any two Presidential elections really alike?

Originally Posted by MordecaiK

For the Democrats to win the White House for a third consecutive term would be highly unusual. Hasn't happened since 1940, and that was a highly unusual (and not to be repeated since the passage of the 22nd Amendment) situation. I don't think Bernie Sanders expects to be President either and if he does win such a "black swan" election, he will be in the position of the dog that caught the car he chased. Sanders expects his campaign to be the beginning of a 4 year long slog back from political oblivion for the Democratic Left, building an organisation that can run primary opponents to remaining New Democrat incumbents in 2018 in both Congress and statehouses and maybe start recapturing some statehouses in preparation for 2020. Whether that would be easier if he is in the White House is an open question. It did not work out that way for Obama.

He will be doing well just to get rid of Republicans, which Obama didn't even try doing. Sanders can work with "New Democrats" in congress. We do have a highly unusual situation, just like during that previous 4T: an opposing party that has gone off the deep end and can't win a presidential election. Since Hillary is a weak candidate it would still be close if she were nominated, and Sanders-Trump might be close too since Sanders is on the left. But either one can win, and Sanders definitely would win if nominated.

Originally Posted by MordecaiK

It's easy to forget these days that Obama only won a majority of 53%. McCain would very likely have won the White House if Lehman Brothers had waited until after the November election to fail. It was the timing of the tanking economy that doomed McCain. That and the poor judgement he showed on two occasions: Nominating Sarah Palin for VP instead of Mitt Romney or even Jeb Bush (Lindsay Graham was not acceptable to the Party) and his attempt in September to suspend the campaign and the debate one week.

Your points are reasonable. However, McCain was not appealing as a candidate. He lost by twice the margin that Romney lost by, about 10% of the popular vote. He could not have beat Obama at any time, as I see it.

Someone with a negative score on my system is extremely unlikely to win the general election, especially if running against someone with a very good score.

Originally Posted by MordecaiK

For the Democrats to win the White House for a third consecutive term would be highly unusual.

That's the whole point. It's not supposed to happen. Except strange things have a habit of happening in 4Ts. The GOP should win next year. If they do it means that no matter how bad they fuck up, it won't hurt them for any length of time. On the other hand, if Democrats win against all odds, then this suggests a new wind might be blowing.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

That's the whole point. It's not supposed to happen. Except strange things have a habit of happening in 4Ts. The GOP should win next year. If they do it means that no matter how bad they fuck up, it won't hurt them for any length of time. On the other hand, if Democrats win against all odds, then this suggests a new wind might be blowing.

Indeed, the ultimate effect of this 4T could still be the full consolidation of a pure plutocracy in which people are nominally represented but wealth and corporate power has the real power, with the Religious Right as the approved expression of populism. America would become much like Spain or Portugal in the last 1T -- a great place to visit on an inexpensive holiday because services are incredibly cheap due to ultra-cheap labor, but a horrible place to live as a worker, a country with a brain drain. America would have a brain drain just because of the influence of the Religious Right and nativist bigotry.

It's all in flux. The Republicans certainly know how to entrench themselves in power when they get the chance. They need no purge or concentration camps; they can do what the racist Nationalist Party of Apartheid-era South Africa did: make the opposition permanently irrelevant. There will still be Democrats running for Congress and winning the obvious seats and having maybe a 30% share of Congressional representation.

Does that sound tolerant? That's how the Volkskammer of the old German Democratic (East) Germany operated, except that the ruling Party was the Communist-dominated Socialist Unity Party.

That is one possibility, indeed one of many.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

That's the whole point. It's not supposed to happen. Except strange things have a habit of happening in 4Ts. The GOP should win next year. If they do it means that no matter how bad they fuck up, it won't hurt them for any length of time. On the other hand, if Democrats win against all odds, then this suggests a new wind might be blowing.

It seems to validate their do-nothing program; it has proven to be a powerful conservative countermeasure. I don't think the Democrats can play the same game, so this is a uniquely GOP tactic.

Originally Posted by MordecaiK

It's easy to forget these days that Obama only won a majority of 53%. McCain would very likely have won the White House if Lehman Brothers had waited until after the November election to fail. It was the timing of the tanking economy that doomed McCain. That and the poor judgement he showed on two occasions: Nominating Sarah Palin for VP instead of Mitt Romney or even Jeb Bush (Lindsay Graham was not acceptable to the Party) and his attempt in September to suspend the campaign and the debate one week.

Nobody else has gotten more of the vote (the elections involving Bill Clinton were split three ways) since the elder Bush did in 1988. Anyone who expects anyone to get more than about 53% of the vote against anyone in 2016 at this point is making a wild guess.

Ronald Reagan got 51% of the vote in 1980, so Barack Obama won very decisively in 2008. The only time in which Barack Obama was projected to lose, was immediately after the Republican National Convention. Obama was winning some states with margins with margins characteristic of Ronald Reagan in 1984 or Ike in the 1950s. He got just over 270 electoral votes from states that he won by 9.53% or more, which is more impressive than what Reagan did in 1980. Indeed, Reagan got 270 electoral votes in states that he won by 7.93% or more.

1980 and 2008 both follow Presidents generally recognized as failures, with the winners of each very smooth-talking politicians. One difference is that 1980 had a significant third-party/independent candidate who got 6.61% of the overall vote; the other was that President Obama was losing a raft of states by 20% or more. If America went into the 3T with little polarization in voting, the 3T left America extremely polarized in voting.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

That is this 4T: a divided country, a cold civil war. Red states and blue states.

A Cold Civil War-an apt term!

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

It seems to validate their do-nothing program; it has proven to be a powerful conservative countermeasure.

Yes it has

I don't think the Democrats can play the same game, so this is a uniquely GOP tactic.

I agree.

So what is the outcome? A lot depends on whether or not the S&H cycle is valid. If it is, then we pretty much have to be in a 4T, the turning when the big political changes are supposed to occur. The whole point of the T4T book was that this period was coming and that big fundamental changes are coming. Time is running out. As I talk about elsewhere, it is really too late for us to still be in a 3T. So we have ~20 years for the 4T to happen. The latest date for a 4T start put forth by someone here is 2008, in which case we have maybe until 2030 or so for things to happen. A GOP victory in 2016 will largely invalidate 2008 as significant. Even if the GOP sees losses in 2018 and loses in 2020, it still will not support the 2008 narrative of Democratic resurgence, particularly if any Democrat who wins in 2020 is Obama'd. And if Democrats win in 2016 only to be crushed in 2018 and lose in 2020 that does the same thing.

Thus, it seems to me, it comes down to either something unexpected happens to change things up, or the S&H model is invalid.

I am leaning to the latter and so am thinking more along the lines of the secular cycle rather than the saeculum. With this you look ca. 100 years back, rather than 76-80 years back for analogies. That is today is more like the 1910's rather than the 1930's. BLM, OWS, and the Sander's campaign would be analogous to the events leading to Red Summer, the Red Scare and the Debs campaign. The white movement being stirred up might be seen as analogous to the implementation of segregation in the Federal government, Birth of a Nation and the resurgence of the KKK. Republicans will return to power for another heyday analogous to the 1920's before the final economic debacle that leads to the collapse of Micheal Lind's Third Republic. Economic inequality would peak then. IOW it gets worse for 15 more years.

Could this 4T last longer than average? What is the longest 4T on record?

Originally Posted by Mikebert

I am leaning to the latter and so am thinking more along the lines of the secular cycle rather than the saeculum. With this you look ca. 100 years back, rather than 76-80 years back for analogies. That is today is more like the 1910's rather than the 1930's. BLM, OWS, and the Sander's campaign would be analogous to the events leading to Red Summer, the Red Scare and the Debs campaign. The white movement being stirred up might be seen as analogous to the implementation of segregation in the Federal government, Birth of a Nation and the resurgence of the KKK. Republicans will return to power for another heyday analogous to the 1920's before the final economic debacle that leads to the collapse of Micheal Lind's Third Republic. Economic inequality would peak then. IOW it gets worse for 15 more years.

I'd suggest that it takes a severe not to be ignored problem to shake a culture out of the selfish 3T pattern into the sacrifice for the common good 4T pattern. Each crisis resolves one of the worst aspects of the culture. If one resolves enough worst aspects, the problems left aren't necessarily very bad. Have we got enough really bad problems left that it seems necessary to stop indulging and start sacrificing?

Is there an external threat comparable to Fascism or Communism?

Are our racial problems as bad as they were in the 1850s and 1860s, or the 1950s and 1960s?

Are our economic problems as bad as they were in the 1930s?

I'll add that lots of people would rather ignore a problem than solve it. The People will pretend that what has always been is good enough. Slavery, for example, was the cornerstone of all civilization. Why should that arbitrarily and capriciously change in the 1860s? The founding fathers never gave the government authority or responsibility to regulate the economy. Just who does That Man in the White House think he is? The problem has to be really in-your-face with obvious and unavoidable consequences for the People to transition to 4T mode.

Global Warming could lead to a magnificent disaster, but it's a slow motion thing. It's an easy problem to solve by closing one's eyes.

Black lives do matter. How many of them have to be lost, though, to create an impact on the culture similar to Pearl Harbor? How is it my problem, other than in a distant and abstract sense?

Our current economic inequality is extreme, but does that matter if most everyone has cars and video games? If we don't have the absolute poverty of the 1930s, do we get to 4T? Our ability to burn fossil fuels coupled with computerized increases in productivity has produced a lot more wealth to distribute inequitably. Is the result crisis worthy for a large enough portion of the People?

The S&H pattern can be force fit reasonably on Anglo-American civilization during the Industrial Age. I'm inclined to believe that nukes, renewable energy and computerized information can reshape human culture to the same degree as gunpowder, fossil fuel and the printing press. If this seems plausible, if we are starting to transition to the hypothetical Information Age, I wouldn't cling too tightly to the lessons learned during the Industrial Age. I wouldn't ignore them. We can see what we can see only by standing on the shoulders of giants. I just wouldn't count on finding the answers to the odd numbered questions at the back of the book.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

... So what is the outcome? A lot depends on whether or not the S&H cycle is valid. If it is, then we pretty much have to be in a 4T, the turning when the big political changes are supposed to occur. The whole point of the T4T book was that this period was coming and that big fundamental changes are coming. Time is running out. As I talk about elsewhere, it is really too late for us to still be in a 3T. So we have ~20 years for the 4T to happen. The latest date for a 4T start put forth by someone here is 2008, in which case we have maybe until 2030 or so for things to happen. A GOP victory in 2016 will largely invalidate 2008 as significant. Even if the GOP sees losses in 2018 and loses in 2020, it still will not support the 2008 narrative of Democratic resurgence, particularly if any Democrat who wins in 2020 is Obama'd. And if Democrats win in 2016 only to be crushed in 2018 and lose in 2020 that does the same thing.

Thus, it seems to me, it comes down to either something unexpected happens to change things up, or the S&H model is invalid.

I am leaning to the latter and so am thinking more along the lines of the secular cycle rather than the saeculum. With this you look ca. 100 years back, rather than 76-80 years back for analogies. That is today is more like the 1910's rather than the 1930's. BLM, OWS, and the Sander's campaign would be analogous to the events leading to Red Summer, the Red Scare and the Debs campaign. The white movement being stirred up might be seen as analogous to the implementation of segregation in the Federal government, Birth of a Nation and the resurgence of the KKK. Republicans will return to power for another heyday analogous to the 1920's before the final economic debacle that leads to the collapse of Micheal Lind's Third Republic. Economic inequality would peak then. IOW it gets worse for 15 more years.

I don't accept the idea that every 4T has to resolve the issues that triggered it. If the impetus is too small and the opposing factions too well balance, then the result can be a muddle that hardens into a melancholy 1T. That would make the next 2T absolutely critical. I've never been optimistic about this 4T. Counting on a 2T I'll never witness is pretty safe, as speculation goes, but you have to go with your best guess. The issues are still there ... especially AGW. Inequality is also getting worse. Unless we assume that the end is near, these both must to be resolved. Unless something dramatic happens soon, I don't see enough 4T left to resolve them.

What might be resolved is this Cold Civil War. By Red and Blue, in effect, dividing the country between them. The USA might still remain in one piece-as a decentralized country-with a care taker Federal Gov't.

Originally Posted by TimWalker

Could this 4T last longer than average? What is the longest 4T on record?

I'm not sure if it is the 4T that is extending, but the 3T. To me, the heart of the 4T doesn't happen until the final Trigger Event (think Pearl Harbor) produces a Regeneracy. We aren't really 4T while the compromisers and stagnation enablers are preventing serious experimentation with radically new solutions.

As I see it, we had the beginnings of a security focused crisis with September 11th and Bush 43's wars. Radically new approaches were tried, preemptive unilateral serial nation building at gunpoint. Unfortunately, these radically new approaches were poor, failed, so the new approaches didn't lead to a gloriously transformed culture. We rewound to 3T mode and might or might not wind up coming around to try 4T mode again.

Long 4Ts? China was a mess from the Opium Wars through the Cultural Revolution. One might not think the English Civil Wars complete until Charles II was crowned, or perhaps even the Glorious Revolution. The French Revolution led into an awful lot of turmoil that didn't really end until Napoleon was exiled the second time. The longer times of grave crisis, though, generally have times of relative peace that might be interpreted as distinct turnings. I'm not sure the turnings are firmly defined enough for a definitive record setting answer, but times of trouble can certainly linger.

The three examples I gave above, though, were critical transformation periods where various nations were transitioning from the Agricultural Age tyrannical pattern towards Industrial Age democracy. That makes for unusually painful transition crises. We've got something different right now, perhaps an Industrial Age to Information Age transition. Different beast.

Originally Posted by B Butler

... The three examples I gave above, though, were critical transformation periods where various nations were transitioning from the Agricultural Age tyrannical pattern towards Industrial Age democracy. That makes for unusually painful transition crises. We've got something different right now, perhaps an Industrial Age to Information Age transition. Different beast.

Yes, different for sure. In what way is still to be determined. The next saeculum, assuming such will continue, will certainly see the Singularity, whatever that actually turns out to be. This one is still 100% human, so we should be following the script in some fashion. I'm just skeptical that, this time, the script is similar to earlier ones. The one driver that hasn't changed is human nature. Let's see if that's enough to keep us on track.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

I don't accept the idea that every 4T has to resolve the issues that triggered it. If the impetus is too small and the opposing factions too well balance, then the result can be a muddle that hardens into a melancholy 1T. That would make the next 2T absolutely critical. I've never been optimistic about this 4T. Counting on a 2T I'll never witness is pretty safe, as speculation goes, but you have to go with your best guess. The issues are still there ... especially AGW. Inequality is also getting worse. Unless we assume that the end is near, these both must to be resolved. Unless something dramatic happens soon, I don't see enough 4T left to resolve them.

Eh why me worry?

Originally Posted by Eric

"I close my eyes, and I can see a better day" -- Justin Bieber

There's no need to fight when you're rockin' right.



Rags has bad habits

Originally Posted by B Butler

I'd suggest that it takes a severe not to be ignored problem to shake a culture out of the selfish 3T pattern into the sacrifice for the common good 4T pattern. Each crisis resolves one of the worst aspects of the culture. If one resolves enough worst aspects, the problems left aren't necessarily very bad. Have we got enough really bad problems left that it seems necessary to stop indulging and start sacrificing?

Is there an external threat comparable to Fascism or Communism?

Are our racial problems as bad as they were in the 1850s and 1860s, or the 1950s and 1960s?

Are our economic problems as bad as they were in the 1930s?

Collectively we are a nation of inebriates who solve our problems with another drink. We wallow in a 3T culture because solving our pathologies of economic inequity, of corruption in business and government, depraved culture, social atomization, and mass delusion. All of those enrich people who deserve no trust. The inebriate enriches the distiller and the saloon-keeper while messing up his liver and solving nothing. Others may cover for us, but in the end those people lose their patience. Eventually we end up on the Skid Row of history or give up the very bad habit.

OK, so I have a harsh view of alcoholics. The ones that I have known refuse to grow up while their bodies endure accelerated aging. By age 55 they are physically old while they have mental development still in the teens. (Maybe the good life is having a 50-year-old mind in a 20-year-old body... but I digress there. It's terrible to have a 20-year-old mind in a 75-year-old body). In view of what alcoholism does to people I wouldn't wish alcoholism on my worst enemy; it would make him an even worse enemy.

The alcoholic must hit bottom, and it fits bad country lyrics.

My wife left and took the kids and the bank account. I wrecked my car and got two broken legs. Even the dog has nothing to do with me. I need a drink, but the bar isn't extending credit anymore. I no longer have any friends.

We have yet to hit bottom. We got a healthy scare when the stock market took a year-and-a-half dive that lost about 57% of its value. That's nothing in contrast to the three-year meltdown that began in the autumn of 1929. The only business executives that we saw falling from high windows jumped from the Twin Towers in 2001 -- and that had nothing to do with economics or personal shame or disgrace.

Unlike the last Crisis Era we Americans are incapable of any sense of shame or disgrace. We have some of the worst Presidential candidates ever, and one of those could be elected. We could end up with a President worse than Harding or Dubya -- as if anyone could see that possible even in 2008. Maybe we will end up, after some President who offers some impressive pageantry and carnivals only to feel real shame and disgrace when things go awry. At the end of the Crisis we may look upon what we did and reflect, "Did we really do such horrible things? Are we that bad?"

Maybe we will not have things go so badly as they did for the populace of a defeated country whose citizens were compelled to put on their Sunday best to take tours of concentration camps and find out what went on in the name of their nation. No people were more proud of themselves than Germans were in the mid-1930s. No people were more shamed ten years later. National failure need not be that stark. Even a small portion of what the Germans felt would be extremely unpleasant -- and well worth avoiding.

We solve our problems ourselves -- or others will do so on our behalf on far nastier terms.

I'll add that lots of people would rather ignore a problem than solve it. The People will pretend that what has always been is good enough. Slavery, for example, was the cornerstone of all civilization. Why should that arbitrarily and capriciously change in the 1860s? The founding fathers never gave the government authority or responsibility to regulate the economy. Just who does That Man in the White House think he is? The problem has to be really in-your-face with obvious and unavoidable consequences for the People to transition to 4T mode.

The mess under our skulls is the problem.

Global Warming could lead to a magnificent disaster, but it's a slow motion thing. It's an easy problem to solve by closing one's eyes.

I can't. Agricultural productivity is the ultimate reality, and when it fails everything else becomes irrelevant. If one starves, then all the culture, all the fine objets d'art, and all the market valuations of securities become meaningless.

Black lives do matter. How many of them have to be lost, though, to create an impact on the culture similar to Pearl Harbor? How is it my problem, other than in a distant and abstract sense?

Blacks already recognize this. Most white people do not. Say what you want about Rachel Dolezal (who has problems other than identity), but I would probably have to put on a very dark shade of spray tan and wear very different hair to learn the difference the hard way. Of course I am old enough that I would be an un-threatening 'uncle' because I am nowhere near the age at which black males experience the harshest of white judgment. Is there a young white male who would take that risk?

Our current economic inequality is extreme, but does that matter if most everyone has cars and video games? If we don't have the absolute poverty of the 1930s, do we get to 4T? Our ability to burn fossil fuels coupled with computerized increases in productivity has produced a lot more wealth to distribute inequitably. Is the result crisis worthy for a large enough portion of the People?

It does -- because we can easily lose all the accoutrements of "Affluenza" and suddenly feel capitalism at its harshest and cruelest. Maybe if I can laugh my way to the bank the sight of people indulging themselves in opulent splendor things aren't so bad. Maybe if I can only cry my way to the poorhouse in the presence of the abandoned wreck of the artifice of excess, then others are also in great pain themselves.

The S&H pattern can be force fit reasonably on Anglo-American civilization during the Industrial Age. I'm inclined to believe that nukes, renewable energy and computerized information can reshape human culture to the same degree as gunpowder, fossil fuel and the printing press. If this seems plausible, if we are starting to transition to the hypothetical Information Age, I wouldn't cling too tightly to the lessons learned during the Industrial Age. I wouldn't ignore them. We can see what we can see only by standing on the shoulders of giants. I just wouldn't count on finding the answers to the odd numbered questions at the back of the book.

We are entering an age of perhaps the end of scarcity, a time when people no longer need to work themselves to exhaustion to meet basic needs. That is an even greater challenge to entrenched elites than is Marxism-Lerninism. The end of scarcity reads much like the Communist end of economic history as Marx predicted. The idea of people using their imagination and creativity to blur the line between work and play poses a gigantic threat to crony capitalism and command-and-control management. Poor people suffering for the indulgence of elites has a powerful, well-heeled, and ruthless constituency, and that constituency may stop at nothing -- even undoing the material and social progress of a century -- to save its class privilege.

Originally Posted by TimWalker

Could this 4T last longer than average? What is the longest 4T on record?

As I interpret Russian and Soviet history, roughly thirty years between the collapse of the Imperial Russian Army in 1915 and the end of the Great Patriotic War (as known in Russia as it is a war in itself largely separate from other theaters of war) is the second-worst in recent history. That includes the Russian Revolutions (both February and October), the Russian Civil War (as ferocious as the American Civil War, only with opposing sides devoid of any gentlemanly qualities), the forced collectivization of Soviet agriculture, Stalin's Great Purge, and the bloodiest front of the deadliest war ever that included about half the Holocaust. Many can't accept that as a protracted and extremely-nasty Crisis Era.

China had a longer internal civil war even before its horrific war with Japan, followed by the Communists taking over after World War II. Korea had what might be a protracted Crisis beginning with the Japanese takeover of Korea and armistice stopping the fighting in the Korean War.

...Thirty Years' War? Arguably the most devastating war for its primitive technology.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Even George Herbert Walker Bush succeeding Ronald Reagan or the near-miss involving a succession from Dwight Eisenhower to Richard Nixon (both Vicce Presidents) are suspect analogues. Unlike Eisenhower or Reagan, Obama did not get re-elected in a landslide, so it is not as if the other Party is disorganized.

The Republicans have an excellent fund-raising campaign and no scruples.

But are any two Presidential elections really alike?

And the Republicans may have a presidential candidate in Donald Trump with his own funds which can be a firewall against any lack of enthusiasm by Republican donors (who if Trump gets the nomination might quietly support Hillary, being more comfortable with her than Trump and willing to see Trump go down like Goldwater). I'm not sure when the last time we had a candidate with that kind of money was. George HW Bush in 1988? Nelson Rockefeller in 1964 and 1968? JFK (who was known for using a lot of his own money) in 1960? FDR in 1932?

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Collectively we are a nation of inebriates who solve our problems with another drink. We wallow in a 3T culture because solving our pathologies of economic inequity, of corruption in business and government, depraved culture, social atomization, and mass delusion. All of those enrich people who deserve no trust. The inebriate enriches the distiller and the saloon-keeper while messing up his liver and solving nothing. Others may cover for us, but in the end those people lose their patience. Eventually we end up on the Skid Row of history or give up the very bad habit.

OK, so I have a harsh view of alcoholics. The ones that I have known refuse to grow up while their bodies endure accelerated aging. By age 55 they are physically old while they have mental development still in the teens. (Maybe the good life is having a 50-year-old mind in a 20-year-old body... but I digress there. It's terrible to have a 20-year-old mind in a 75-year-old body). In view of what alcoholism does to people I wouldn't wish alcoholism on my worst enemy; it would make him an even worse enemy.

The alcoholic must hit bottom, and it fits bad country lyrics.

My wife left and took the kids and the bank account. I wrecked my car and got two broken legs. Even the dog has nothing to do with me. I need a drink, but the bar isn't extending credit anymore. I no longer have any friends.

We have yet to hit bottom. We got a healthy scare when the stock market took a year-and-a-half dive that lost about 57% of its value. That's nothing in contrast to the three-year meltdown that began in the autumn of 1929. The only business executives that we saw falling from high windows jumped from the Twin Towers in 2001 -- and that had nothing to do with economics or personal shame or disgrace.

Unlike the last Crisis Era we Americans are incapable of any sense of shame or disgrace. We have some of the worst Presidential candidates ever, and one of those could be elected. We could end up with a President worse than Harding or Dubya -- as if anyone could see that possible even in 2008. Maybe we will end up, after some President who offers some impressive pageantry and carnivals only to feel real shame and disgrace when things go awry. At the end of the Crisis we may look upon what we did and reflect, "Did we really do such horrible things? Are we that bad?"

Maybe we will not have things go so badly as they did for the populace of a defeated country whose citizens were compelled to put on their Sunday best to take tours of concentration camps and find out what went on in the name of their nation. No people were more proud of themselves than Germans were in the mid-1930s. No people were more shamed ten years later. National failure need not be that stark. Even a small portion of what the Germans felt would be extremely unpleasant -- and well worth avoiding.

We solve our problems ourselves -- or others will do so on our behalf on far nastier terms.



The mess under our skulls is the problem.



I can't. Agricultural productivity is the ultimate reality, and when it fails everything else becomes irrelevant. If one starves, then all the culture, all the fine objets d'art, and all the market valuations of securities become meaningless.



Blacks already recognize this. Most white people do not. Say what you want about Rachel Dolezal (who has problems other than identity), but I would probably have to put on a very dark shade of spray tan and wear very different hair to learn the difference the hard way. Of course I am old enough that I would be an un-threatening 'uncle' because I am nowhere near the age at which black males experience the harshest of white judgment. Is there a young white male who would take that risk?



It does -- because we can easily lose all the accoutrements of "Affluenza" and suddenly feel capitalism at its harshest and cruelest. Maybe if I can laugh my way to the bank the sight of people indulging themselves in opulent splendor things aren't so bad. Maybe if I can only cry my way to the poorhouse in the presence of the abandoned wreck of the artifice of excess, then others are also in great pain themselves.



We are entering an age of perhaps the end of scarcity, a time when people no longer need to work themselves to exhaustion to meet basic needs. That is an even greater challenge to entrenched elites than is Marxism-Lerninism. The end of scarcity reads much like the Communist end of economic history as Marx predicted. The idea of people using their imagination and creativity to blur the line between work and play poses a gigantic threat to crony capitalism and command-and-control management. Poor people suffering for the indulgence of elites has a powerful, well-heeled, and ruthless constituency, and that constituency may stop at nothing -- even undoing the material and social progress of a century -- to save its class privilege.

In your first comment, you may have just put your finger on just why Scots-Irish poor whites have as much tolerance for inequality as they do. One of the commentators on the recent Kentucky Governor's race pointed out that rural Scots-Irish don't just look down on African Americans of which there are few. They look down upon their hard-luck alcoholic cousins and want to believe that they are getting exactly what they deserve. (Maybe it's a hangover from the Scottish Presbyterian Calvinist predestinarianism they brought to this land). They don't look beyond the drug habit to the long hours that meth helps them work or the mine injury that created the pain (and the blacklung) that the oxycodone alleviates or makes tolerable. Or the constant exposure to aromatic hydrocarbons by refinery or oil patch workers that gave them the tolerance for alcohol that gave them the drinking problem, just like it does with house painters. It's not until the economic inequality and precariousness affects enough of them directly that they feel the need to speak, however incoherently, truth to power.

God help us if it's the Chinese who end up solving our problems for us.

And yes, things like 3-d printing and nano and atomic scale technology DO promise us an end to scarcity. How the work that is left is to be divvied up when 3-d printers make the components that robots assemble and self-driving trucks deliver will be our biggest challenge--and a lot sooner than whatever challenge climate change hands us. (We actually have environmentalists like Herman Daly who argue that scarcity is good and should be deliberately created if it dosen't exist). How can we adapt to shorter workdays and workweeks and income security when Boomers moralise about the virtue of hard work and long hours and our "working rich" CEOs work the same 16 hour days as their flunkies, turning them into Moonies with no time to reflect upon what they are doing? Maybe we need to start thinking of people who work more than 6 hours a day as "workhogs". Our biggest challenge, should we decide to accept it, is the gathering of resources from and settlement of the rest of the Solar System. Which may require that we abandon the pursuit of a global government and economic order that is giving the 1% more in common with their counterparts in other countries than the rest of us and may well lead to de facto serfdom and slavery for most of us in the name of "social stability" and "sustainability".

Sustainability is a requirement for our future on this planet. Globalization is inevitable, but people and cultures need to see that it is balanced with more local needs and rights. Trade needs to be regulated again.

Scarcity is not good. The blue boomers with support of millennials will push in the years ahead for more government programs and policies to help support the people by distributing the wealth created by technology. The tech advances do not belong solely to its owners. Tech does not create abundance and save labor if all the benefits accrue to the elites. Wages must rise, hours fall, and support for the arts must be given.

Climate change is affecting us severely now. We have no right to kill other species by allowing it to rise 4C. We can and must keep global warming below 2C (and some are pushing for 1.5); there's no reason why we can't, if the blue boomers take the lead and dethrone Reaganism. Both the grid and decentralized alternative energy need support, and will push out and price out dirty energy. The challenges of automation, inequality and globalization must be met in concert with the climate challenge, and the principal need is to vote out Republicans and vote in progressives. That way, the trickle-down policies that block government action and support for inventive tech made available to all can be overthrown, and progress can resume after the now-35-year hiatus.

Originally Posted by MordecaiK

And the Republicans may have a presidential candidate in Donald Trump with his own funds which can be a firewall against any lack of enthusiasm by Republican donors (who if Trump gets the nomination might quietly support Hillary, being more comfortable with her than Trump and willing to see Trump go down like Goldwater). I'm not sure when the last time we had a candidate with that kind of money was. George HW Bush in 1988? Nelson Rockefeller in 1964 and 1968? JFK (who was known for using a lot of his own money) in 1960? FDR in 1932?

Ross Perot, the independent, in 1992 and 1996. Trump's run is quite similar, especially if he goes independent too. The issues they raised were similar, especially trade, and also the candidate's approach: not specifying policy proposals too much, but touting himself as someone to have confidence in and not dependent on money and contributors. His slogan was "let's look under the hood of this engine called the USA and see how I can fix things."

Originally Posted by TimWalker

A Cold Civil War-an apt term!

Thanks Tim

Could this 4T last longer than average? What is the longest 4T on record?

I wouldn't speculate about other countries. I think the first one that S&H identified, the Wars of the Roses, is probably the longest. Since the early-modern, pre-industrial, pre-revolution saecula were longer, their 4Ts were longer. The Revolution was still a long one too according to the authors, 21 years or so. The hurricane we call the saeculum speeded up as modern times arrived and sucked in more water (more people). The civil war saeculum speeded up the process. Now, the speed is stabilizing, as if moving into colder waters now. In the future, as life spans increase and wisdom is gained about the saeculum, the hurricane could slow down even more and eventually end up as a tropical storm (again).

Originally Posted by MordecaiK

In your first comment, you may have just put your finger on just why Scots-Irish poor whites have as much tolerance for inequality as they do. One of the commentators on the recent Kentucky Governor's race pointed out that rural Scots-Irish don't just look down on African Americans of which there are few. They look down upon their hard-luck alcoholic cousins and want to believe that they are getting exactly what they deserve. (Maybe it's a hangover from the Scottish Presbyterian Calvinist predestinarianism they brought to this land). They don't look beyond the drug habit to the long hours that meth helps them work or the mine injury that created the pain (and the blacklung) that the oxycodone alleviates or makes tolerable. Or the constant exposure to aromatic hydrocarbons by refinery or oil patch workers that gave them the tolerance for alcohol that gave them the drinking problem, just like it does with house painters. It's not until the economic inequality and precariousness affects enough of them directly that they feel the need to speak, however incoherently, truth to power.

Interesting -- but my reference to "inebriates" was metaphor You have something there. Get black lung or a mine injury, and you may need oxycodone. Meth to numb people to the harshness of the work? Maybe we need to humanize the workplace. I had no idea that exposure to aromatic hydrocarbons literally drives one to drink...

Appalachia now looks like a good place to avoid if one wants to enjoy the American dream.

God help us if it's the Chinese who end up solving our problems for us.

Start a war with China and there will be Hell to pay. But the sort of regime that would start a war with China would be the sort of America that would have to be toppled. Paradoxically the Chinese might allow a liberal democracy -- so long as it turns over war criminals. The Japanese would be much the same.

And yes, things like 3-d printing and nano and atomic scale technology DO promise us an end to scarcity. How the work that is left is to be divvied up when 3-d printers make the components that robots assemble and self-driving trucks deliver will be our biggest challenge--and a lot sooner than whatever challenge climate change hands us. (We actually have environmentalists like Herman Daly who argue that scarcity is good and should be deliberately created if it dosen't exist). How can we adapt to shorter workdays and workweeks and income security when Boomers moralise about the virtue of hard work and long hours and our "working rich" CEOs work the same 16 hour days as their flunkies, turning them into Moonies with no time to reflect upon what they are doing? Maybe we need to start thinking of people who work more than 6 hours a day as "workhogs". Our biggest challenge, should we decide to accept it, is the gathering of resources from and settlement of the rest of the Solar System. Which may require that we abandon the pursuit of a global government and economic order that is giving the 1% more in common with their counterparts in other countries than the rest of us and may well lead to de facto serfdom and slavery for most of us in the name of "social stability" and "sustainability".

I predict that the coming 1T will be a time of much less clutter. If nearly all intellectual property is available on electronic media, then we will not need so many books, video and music discs, or photographs. Paintings and textiles might be desirable because they have texture. 3D printing will make faux antiques so tawdry that only the crassest people will seek and display them. Video screens will likely offer remarkable reality... so if you live in Indianapolis you might have an excellent view of San Francisco if you so wish. If it isn't decorative or useful you won't have it.

Unless we load everything with economic rents (basically loan-shark interests or private quasi-taxes) we will not need to work so much time as we used to. That's progress -- using fewer inputs (including labor as well as material) to get something better. The intelligent among us will find plenty of use for free time, as in creative activities. Painting, anyone? Sculpture? Writing? Composing?