If the 4T started in 2001, therefore the 3T would only have lasted 17 years, which is too short.

Perhaps the 3T started earlyer than 1984? In 1981 for example? But therefore we would have a 2T of only 17 years and again, it's too short.

Perhaps the 2 started earlyer than 1964 too? In 1960 for example? Well, but in that case, we would have a 1T of only 14 years, and that don't make any sense.

Also, the 2000s where similar with the 1920s NOT with the 1930s. Like in the 1920s, financial speculation and individualism flourished, and there's was nothing like a "national union", culture wars were exacerbated instead.

Originally Posted by Speed Gavroche

If the 4T started in 2001, therefore the 3T would only have lasted 17 years, which is too short.

Perhaps the 3T started earlyer than 1984? In 1981 for example? But therefore we would have a 2T of only 17 years and again, it's too short.

Perhaps the 2 started earlyer than 1964 too? In 1960 for example? Well, but in that case, we would have a 1T of only 14 years, and that don't make any sense.

Also, the 2000s where similar with the 1920s NOT with the 1930s. Like in the 1920s, financial speculation and individualism flourished, and there's was nothing like a "national union", culture wars were exacerbated instead.

After 9/11 Bush told us all to go out and go shopping. No victory gardens or rationing, no sir. We were definitely still in the 3T!

If the 4T started in 2001, therefore the 3T would only have lasted 17 years, which is too short.

I think older adults seem to forget that Millenials were not that traumatized by 9/11. It was a sad day and a memorable one, but overall we see it as a national disaster incompetently handled rather than a Pearl harbor type of an event. I think it felt that way for some Xers because they were young adults at the time and most of their adult lives had been spent without any sort of unifying, defining event. (The Berlin Wall being an exception). So 9/11 is like their Pearl harbor.

My Pearl Harbor would have to be something incredibly serious.

Some people believe that we're heading for a 4th turning reset, but I don't believe that to be the case. What super traumatic war came out of 2001? Afghanistan was certainly traumatic for the soldiers that went there, for the rest of us...well we spent that time watching celebreality and listening to bad crunk music.

Also, the 2000s where similar with the 1920s NOT with the 1930s. Like in the 1920s, financial speculation and individualism flourished, and there's was nothing like a "national union", culture wars were exacerbated instead.

I've always felt this way. We forget that people thought the 20s were kind of gaudy and flashy at the time.

After 9/11 Bush told us all to go out and go shopping. No victory gardens or rationing, no sir. We were definitely still in the 3T!

Exactly...the Christmas of 2006 was the best Christmas my family ever had. I got an ipod for christ's sake, definitely no rationing at my house. The unravelling was an era of opportunity for many people and the crisis is what freezes people right where they are. 2008 was when time stopped for us. I feel like we've been struggling to stay afloat for 7 years now.

A line from Anything Goes:

"In Olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, but now God knows. Anything Goes"

This sentiment sounds familiar.

I don't think 2001 or 2008 fits. There's no valid narrative for either. If it was 2001, then the fight between Al Queda and the US would have deepened significantly at least or been won in 2010 when we killed Osama Bin Laden. Instead we still struggle. We're struggling now more than ever with the erosion of civil liberties, and with what our law enforcement agencies have become in the wake of 9-11. Comparing 9-11 to world war 1 doesn't really work because world war 1 narrates the US and Europe into the 4T. 9-11 doesn't.

Meanwhile, 2008 doesn't have any narrative value at all it's merely a date wherein we fell into recession. Other than the economic recession it is culturally not really divergent from that of the 2003-08 period. Neither of these years have any greater narrative value and therefore are not likely starting points for a 4T.

Originally Posted by Kepi

I don't think 2001 or 2008 fits. There's no valid narrative for either. If it was 2001, then the fight between Al Queda and the US would have deepened significantly at least or been won in 2010 when we killed Osama Bin Laden. Instead we still struggle. We're struggling now more than ever with the erosion of civil liberties, and with what our law enforcement agencies have become in the wake of 9-11. Comparing 9-11 to world war 1 doesn't really work because world war 1 narrates the US and Europe into the 4T. 9-11 doesn't.

Meanwhile, 2008 doesn't have any narrative value at all it's merely a date wherein we fell into recession. Other than the economic recession it is culturally not really divergent from that of the 2003-08 period. Neither of these years have any greater narrative value and therefore are not likely starting points for a 4T.

In a way, this is why I chose 2005 and Katrina. That was the first solid validation of the collapse of effective governance, which still continues to this day. There is no higher theme I can find. It's entropy, pure and simple. Whether we can overcome cynicism and restart the American narrative is still an open question ... at least for now. As things continue to degrade, it's all recriminations and finger pointing, but no solutions or even plans to find one.

I can't think of a really good historical parallel off hand. It's like purgatory or even limbo. We're going to move on, probably in a positive way, but when and how are still mysteries.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

In a way, this is why I chose 2005 and Katrina. That was the first solid validation of the collapse of effective governance, which still continues to this day. There is no higher theme I can find. It's entropy, pure and simple. Whether we can overcome cynicism and restart the American narrative is still an open question ... at least for now. As things continue to degrade, it's all recriminations and finger pointing, but no solutions or even plans to find one.

I can't think of a really good historical parallel off hand. It's like purgatory or even limbo. We're going to move on, probably in a positive way, but when and how are still mysteries.

I go 03 because of the Iraq War, but I'd accept 05. And it's for much the same reason. The crisis is about making America work, and this is the point in time where you can really point to where it looked more like it didn't work than it did.

Well, I'm going with 2008, and here are some thoughts as to why.

The events of the catalyst don't always have much to do with the core issues of the Crisis. For example, the Boston Tea Party was just another protest against the East India Company and British attempts to govern the colonies directly, if a particularly flamboyant and amusing one,except that the British government took it much more seriously, passing acts of Parliament that were far more serious than anything the colonists had been bitching about up until then.

What's the issue at the moment? "Making America work" as Kepi said, but why is America not working? Because we're in the final phase of the American Civil Conflict. This is not Great Depression Redux. It's Civil War Redux. Instead of seceding and building armies, the Neo-Confederates have remained in the Union and are paralyzing it from within. That began happening in 2008, not so much as a result of the Great Recession, but as a result of Obama's election. It was not going on in 2005. The failure to deal effectively with Hurricane Katrina was not due to a paralyzed government but to plain old incompetence, the kind that can happen any time we get unlucky in an election, or collectively foolish.

The significant events of the 4T so far are neither wars nor economic meltdowns, although both have happened. They're elections, civil disturbances and movements, government shutdowns, and action at the state and local level, such as:

1. Obama's election in 2008.
2. The emergence of the Tea Party movement.
3. Passage of the Affordable Care Act and emergency anti-recession measures.
4. Occupy Wall Street.
5. The 2010 mid-term election and Republican takeover of the House.
6. The increasing control of the Republican Party by the Neo-Confederates.
7. Obama's re-election in 2012.
8. The government shut-down and increasing triviality and lack of realism in Congressional actions, showing a disinterest in actually governing.
9. The 2014 mid-term election and Republican takeover of the Senate, together with passage of many progressive reform initiatives the same year, and Obama's increasing use of unilateral executive orders to govern in the face of a useless Congress.
10. Increasing use of Internet protests to sway government action.

The next act will be the Republican political melt-down of 2016, together with more progressive action at the state and local level. After that, the GOP will either divorce the Neo-Confederates or circle the drain, and in the latter case a new party will begin to emerge to replace it, absorbing the remaining sane and rational Republicans along with the more conservative Democrats (eventually).

This will finally put us in a position to do something about the non-internal Crisis issues, all of which are international in scope.

Since the first phase of the 4T is Civil War Redux, we can't date it as emerging before the rise of the Neo-Confederates to paralyze the government. That didn't happen during the Bush years, nor was he himself a Neo-Confederate.

So you don't consider, for instance, indefinite detention to be an example of the government not working? I dunno, I kinda look at "the government not working" as being a much longer term thing. It's not like we can point to the 2000's as being a time of worth while governance. I think that 03 works because it's really the first time you see people saying "wait, what?" When it came to what our government was doing. Nothing like "Mission Accomplished". Really I think the era was best encapsulated by this song:

Leftöver Crack - Baby-Punchers: http://youtu.be/Y5KC6AD1Kl8

I didn't feel that way in the immediate aftermath of 9-11. It's a tone thing. The mania of the mid 2000's wasn't the same as the wild and free wheeling 90's our early 2000's. Spending billions to hunt down a desert hermit and failing is not an indication that the system had much hope. Whereas you could say that the excesses of the nineties were a crass display of American opulence and success. The excesses of the aughts was pure, distilled mania. A nation that was off it's rails with absolutely nothing to check it. The 20's were gaudy and flashy, the 30's added a cynical, hard boiled quality to it (that's where our noir detective archetype comes from, a guy who knows all too well what to do when the good times go sour). The late 90's were brash and celebratory, but I don't even have words to describe what the mid 2000's was. It was like the entire country was coming down off a coke bender in cripplingly slow motion. The 3T is all the things that make a for a great party, but when the party is no longer great, it's the 4T, even if the party keeps going.

Also, just want to point out that I don't think that we're going to do anything effective in an international scope. By the time we get the freedom to do so, Europe, China, and Japan will have reached their terminus, well be too busy trying to assemble a new economic core to actually work on continued mismanagement of the Middle East. Our empire will be an entirely new animal, and we might not have the same position in it that we once enjoyed.

Originally Posted by Kepi

I don't think 2001 or 2008 fits. There's no valid narrative for either. If it was 2001, then the fight between Al Queda and the US would have deepened significantly at least or been won in 2010 when we killed Osama Bin Laden. Instead we still struggle. We're struggling now more than ever with the erosion of civil liberties, and with what our law enforcement agencies have become in the wake of 9-11. Comparing 9-11 to world war 1 doesn't really work because world war 1 narrates the US and Europe into the 4T. 9-11 doesn't.

I predicted a USA holy war to break out in the Summer of 2001, decades in advance. So, this was no surprise, and I never thought of it as something that would start a 4T. It didn't. On the other hand, I predicted the year and month in which a recession would hit that could be as severe as the Great Depression, and that it would start the 4T. It happened, and it started a 4T according to Mr. Howe.

He is correct. The economy was rapidly falling off a steep cliff in the Fall of 2008. This time, thanks to lessons learned, there was some concept of government intervention to stop it, even under the new Hoover, and even if the actions taken were only designed to save the banks and big business. But Bush and his successor Obama's stimulus and regulations in 2009 stopped the slide. Still, it was the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, and even today wages have not recovered, though some other indexes have recovered somewhat. And Europe recovered even more slowly.

Comparing 9-11 to World War I works well, even if not perfectly; but no historical comparison between times is perfect. It couldn't get much better, in fact. Both WWI and 9-11 opened a period of conflict in a 3T with a foe which did not really go away in the 3T. Conflict with Islamic extremism is a "generational conflict" according to reporters and is still going on, likely leading to a greater conflict to come in the 2020s before this 4T is over in 2028-29. In both cases, therefore, the narrative is nearly identical. The only difference is that the Afghanistan War and the unnecessary Iraq War lasted longer than World War I, though WWI was more deadly by far. But World War II was World War I part 2, and if the Islamic State and other Islamic militants continue to wreak havoc on the world as they are doing now, there will likely be a part two to Afghanistan too. And both 9-11 and WWI were notable for causing severe infringements on civil liberties in the USA.

Meanwhile, 2008 doesn't have any narrative value at all it's merely a date wherein we fell into recession

The greatest recession since the previous 4T by far, and also the causes of it have not been dealt with well enough to be sure that some of the same issues will not be with us for the rest of this 4T, with another recession due during this 4T at decade's end (or sooner, if I am incorrect). Even the Republicans are now claiming the income inequality issue that they themselves caused during the 3T.

Other than the economic recession it is culturally not really divergent from that of the 2003-08 period. Neither of these years have any greater narrative value and therefore are not likely starting points for a 4T.

Many posters here have agreed with me that there's been a shift to more typical 4T fare in pop music. I don't know about other kinds of culture, but certainly the shift to social media has been a notable feature of the years since 2008. I don't think there could have been anything like a "what the fox says" video in the 3T that could have found such a vast audience, not to mention Gangnam Style, Baby and other cultural phenomena garnering billions of views that are notably different from the typical 3T cynical loud angry grungy stuff.

Originally Posted by Kepi

So you don't consider, for instance, indefinite detention to be an example of the government not working? I dunno, I kinda look at "the government not working" as being a much longer term thing. It's not like we can point to the 2000's as being a time of worth while governance. I think that 03 works because it's really the first time you see people saying "wait, what?" When it came to what our government was doing. Nothing like "Mission Accomplished". Really I think the era was best encapsulated by this song:

Leftöver Crack - Baby-Punchers: http://youtu.be/Y5KC6AD1Kl8

Probably a typical 3T style that is now passe. "the first time you see people saying "wait, what?"??? I guess only someone born in 1981 could possibly say that. Actually, it was the drumbeat of the 2T, and certainly continued in the 3T.

I didn't feel that way in the immediate aftermath of 9-11. It's a tone thing. The mania of the mid 2000's wasn't the same as the wild and free wheeling 90's our early 2000's. Spending billions to hunt down a desert hermit and failing is not an indication that the system had much hope. Whereas you could say that the excesses of the nineties were a crass display of American opulence and success. The excesses of the aughts was pure, distilled mania. A nation that was off it's rails with absolutely nothing to check it. The 20's were gaudy and flashy, the 30's added a cynical, hard boiled quality to it (that's where our noir detective archetype comes from, a guy who knows all too well what to do when the good times go sour). The late 90's were brash and celebratory, but I don't even have words to describe what the mid 2000's was. It was like the entire country was coming down off a coke bender in cripplingly slow motion. The 3T is all the things that make a for a great party, but when the party is no longer great, it's the 4T, even if the party keeps going.

Possibly the 2000s' tone was less celebratory, but from my point of view I don't notice any difference, especially in pop culture. The 3T was trashy and boring almost from beginning to end, and in almost all media; that is, from 1984/85 to 2008. Even a fairly averagely-good song like "Rude" by Magic! is a vast improvement and vastly different from the commercial and grungy trash of the 3T. If it was a "great party," I'm glad I wasn't invited. At least I saved my head and my hearing.

Also, just want to point out that I don't think that we're going to do anything effective in an international scope. By the time we get the freedom to do so, Europe, China, and Japan will have reached their terminus, well be too busy trying to assemble a new economic core to actually work on continued mismanagement of the Middle East. Our empire will be an entirely new animal, and we might not have the same position in it that we once enjoyed.

After this 4T is over in 2029, the world may not resemble too much the world of 2008. Our nation may no longer be top dog in the world, or even holding together as a nation (certainly the Civil War redux that Brian describes is part of our current crisis, as I have said also, and the deadlock must be broken during the 4T). But, the USA is doing its part now to hold back the Islamic State and is dealing wisely with Iran, and will be involved in some kind of conflict from 2025 to 2028; and we may be effective then, if we have good allies. Even if our position in the world is diminished, it looks like we'll have a fortunate outcome to our 4T, and social justice and environmental stewardship will advance even if we can no longer have the excess material wealth typical of the previous 1T in America or recent times in China.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

In a way, this is why I chose 2005 and Katrina. That was the first solid validation of the collapse of effective governance, which still continues to this day. There is no higher theme I can find. It's entropy, pure and simple. Whether we can overcome cynicism and restart the American narrative is still an open question ... at least for now. As things continue to degrade, it's all recriminations and finger pointing, but no solutions or even plans to find one.

I can't think of a really good historical parallel off hand. It's like purgatory or even limbo. We're going to move on, probably in a positive way, but when and how are still mysteries.

The closest parallel to our time is the early 1850s. The parallels are quite striking, as I have related before. But it's been a gradual breakdown in governance since JFK's assassination that opened the 2T. "Effective governance" all but collapsed in Vietnam, Watergate, the "win buttons" oil blockade and recession, Carter's "malaise," Reaganomics, the Bushes' wars, the Contract on America and Monicagate, etc. The typical comment heard everywhere is that only core boomers or older know of a time in America when government worked. We seemed to cross a threshold into total stalemate in 2009-2010 with the rise of the Tea Party and the "neo-confederates," and now it's a battle that can only end when one side triumphs. It must be the progressive side if the 4T pattern still holds even a little bit. Even if the "Tea Party" is now on the side that's going to lose, the echo of 2009 with Dec.1773 is interesting.

It doesn't seem too much of a mystery to me, even if crystal balls are not perfect. The progressive side will win sometime in the 2020s, and we'll move on. 2025 seems like the critical year.

Calling the War on Terror a holy war is more than a bit of a farce, Eric. Comparing 9-11 to anything akin to the Crusades, including our level of mobilization or interest in winning the thing is laughable. We couldn't even set terms for victory that actually made some semblance of sense. Gas prices over $3 a gallon have made more of an impact on the average person's life than either of these events, and that's been a reality since 04.

What matters is the narrative of the masses. I.e. what the average person on the other side of the crisis says when everything started to suck and why. It's laughable enough that you seem to think the crisis will be allowed to continue until 2029, but that Millennials and Xers will think that 2003-2007 are amongst the "good old days"? Starkly laughable.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

... After this 4T is over in 2029, the world may not resemble too much the world of 2008. Our nation may no longer be top dog in the world, or even holding together as a nation (certainly the Civil War redux that Brian describes is part of our current crisis, as I have said also, and the deadlock must be broken during the 4T). But, the USA is doing its part now to hold back the Islamic State and is dealing wisely with Iran, and will be involved in some kind of conflict from 2025 to 2028; and we may be effective then, if we have good allies. Even if our position in the world is diminished, it looks like we'll have a fortunate outcome to our 4T, and social justice and environmental stewardship will advance even if we can no longer have the excess material wealth typical of the previous 1T in America or recent times in China.

Assuming any of this is correct, I don't see fragmentation as a good outcome. Using Brian's term, the neo-Confederate option is much easier to maintain than it is to overturn. Saying no is always the default position for any government like ours that is intentionally fragmented, as we've been shown these last several years. Since this meets the need of the oligarchs quite well, they'll fund more obstruction and justify it as FREEDOM. That's still a highly popular meme.

I see little chance that anything short of another economic collapse will move us beyond that framework, so this may be the 1T precursor. The only alternatives are a dramatic electoral shift, either right or left, or a revolution. Does anyone see either of those happening? Barring economic collapse, I don't.

Originally Posted by Kepi

Calling the War on Terror a holy war is more than a bit of a farce, Eric. Comparing 9-11 to anything akin to the Crusades, including our level of mobilization or interest in winning the thing is laughable. We couldn't even set terms for victory that actually made some semblance of sense. Gas prices over $3 a gallon have made more of an impact on the average person's life than either of these events, and that's been a reality since 04.

What matters is the narrative of the masses. I.e. what the average person on the other side of the crisis says when everything started to suck and why. It's laughable enough that you seem to think the crisis will be allowed to continue until 2029, but that Millennials and Xers will think that 2003-2007 are amongst the "good old days"? Starkly laughable.

There has been a long period of degraded governance starting in earnest with Newt Gingrich and his scorched earth policies, but they aren't all 4T events. It's not unreasonable to blame Bill Clinton for a lot of this. He killed Glass-Steagle. But it took a while for private power to grow sufficiently large that it could forestall public power. Since Citizens United, the roles are now officially reversed. The change has been gradual but relentless. Somewhere along that line, the 3T ended and the 4T began. I'm less concerned about the exact point in time than I am about the chances for a successful reversal.

Instead of arguing (again) that the War on Terror is actually a relatively huge troop commitment and occupation by relative, historical standards (nation-building, length of occupation, per-soldier spending, and number of non-combat civilians working in National Security positions)...

The main political difference I see between 3Ts and 4Ts is the attitude toward getting stuff done.

In a 3T, very little tends to happen. The WTC got bombed, the OKC federal building was reduced to rubble, and we honestly didn't do too much about it. We talked about doing something - we even debated the various merits and faults of the things we might have done, but we ultimately did squat. LA burned for a while and knocking out Saddam's army seemed a "good enough" counter to his active invasion of a defenseless, oil-producing ally. Speaking of oil, gas cost less than a buck a gallon. That's the 3T. It runs from the early 80s to the late 90s, and I really don't think most Millennials have much perspective on it because it was also a time that children were increasingly sheltered. Even if an individual's parents weren't sheltering them, society had shifted that way. The whole goal of child-rearing in the 3T was to prevent Millennials from witnessing a 3T! (and of course, this is taken to a further extreme in regard to sheltering artists from the 4T)

In a 4T, you STFU and do what you need to do. Even if you live in a consumer-based economy that relies on the fact that workers spend more than their paychecks on crap they don't need. The drop in consumer spending is exactly what prolonged the Great Depression and spending in the face of contraction is exactly what Keynes said we should do should another 4T-like deflation event show up. Even Bush's deficit spending and record debts were straight out of an economic textbook. Without those things, we probably would have experienced a much more severe economic downturn after the 99 tech bubble and 9/11. Even with the real estate bubble to cushion that blow, those two events still stand out as larger macroeconomic fault-lines than 2009. We can definitely find economic fault with the "long term value" of Bush's deficit spending investments (shitty)but the general idea is on the right track to avoiding a more horrific economic situation. We're learning. Each 4T should be less bad than the last.

If anything, the 4T starts off over-correcting 3T procrastination by undertaking large and often stupid decisions at major scales, with very little discussion. Can anyone think of a dumber government decision than, say, South Carolina seceding from the Union? Like the PATRIOT Act, it was a unanimous decision and anyone who disagreed with the all-or-nothing logic of crisis was a damned yankee-sympathizer and traitor to the Confederacy.

So that's what 4Ts are about. They're not about honor and duty and sacrifice and wars and dead people: They're about fear and panic shocking people in to action.

I don't think it will be a reversal so much as an over turn. What really going to be interesting is to see if we devise a new way of doing things before or after a major US city's electrical or sewage infrastructure goes completely belly up. That's going to really make the difference, at least to millions of people.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Assuming any of this is correct, I don't see fragmentation as a good outcome. Using Brian's term, the neo-Confederate option is much easier to maintain than it is to overturn. Saying no is always the default position for any government like ours that is intentionally fragmented, as we've been shown these last several years. Since this meets the need of the oligarchs quite well, they'll fund more obstruction and justify it as FREEDOM. That's still a highly popular meme.

I see little chance that anything short of another economic collapse will move us beyond that framework, so this may be the 1T precursor. The only alternatives are a dramatic electoral shift, either right or left, or a revolution. Does anyone see either of those happening? Barring economic collapse, I don't.

Economic collapse or WWIII would do it.

I am ready for a real third party to emerge.

Originally Posted by Kepi

So you don't consider, for instance, indefinite detention to be an example of the government not working?

No, I consider it an example of government working in ways I don't approve of. It's certainly operating efficiently.

It's not like we can point to the 2000's as being a time of worth while governance.

As I said, there's such a thing as plain old-fashioned incompetence. But we seem to disagree about the Crisis issues themselves, Kepi. I don't consider "government not working" to be an issue in and of itself. Government failure that's caused by this phase of the Civil Conflict, yes.

Also, just want to point out that I don't think that we're going to do anything effective in an international scope. By the time we get the freedom to do so, Europe, China, and Japan will have reached their terminus, well be too busy trying to assemble a new economic core to actually work on continued mismanagement of the Middle East. Our empire will be an entirely new animal, and we might not have the same position in it that we once enjoyed.

When I say "international in scope," I'm not referring to foreign adventurism and military mayhem such as we saw during the Bush years (and that Obama has so far failed to stop). I'm referring to the fact that our major problems are all ones that no single nation, however powerful, can solve. The global economy can't be regulated by a national government. Climate change requires a multi-national effort to solve. None of this is military, which is not to say that there won't be any wars. But if there are, they won't be as big and won't play the crucial role that World War II did in the last 4T.

Originally Posted by radind

Economic collapse or WWIII would do it.

I am ready for a real third party to emerge.

So which of our two pathetic parties gets to be the Whigs this time? More to the point, who gets to play Lincoln?

Originally Posted by Felix5

I think older adults seem to forget that Millenials were not that traumatized by 9/11. It was a sad day and a memorable one, but overall we see it as a national disaster incompetently handled rather than a Pearl harbor type of an event. I think it felt that way for some Xers because they were young adults at the time and most of their adult lives had been spent without any sort of unifying, defining event. (The Berlin Wall being an exception). So 9/11 is like their Pearl harbor.

Xer males IMO have always secretly held the desire to follow in GI Grandpa's footsteps (Xers, not Millies, are the biggest consumers of WWII memorabelia, WWII films, WWII video games, anything and everything WWII-related), which is somewhat understandable IMO as fighting in a clear cut war such as against the Evil Nazi regime sure beats the Vietnam they grew up watching on TV and the First Persian Gulf War, Lebanonese Police Action, Granada Police Action, Bosnian Police Action, etc. that they would have had the opportunity to fight in before that lull in peacetime seen circa 1992 - 2001.

I've always felt this way. We forget that people thought the 20s were kind of gaudy and flashy at the time.

People also forget that the 1920s was different depending upon where you lived. If you were a farmer in the 1920s, the Great Depression would have felt that it started immediately after WWI ended (and all that good "bean" money that they were making selling beans to the Brits dried up) and didn't let up until WWII. To use a non-farming example. Look at how in The Great Gatsby, there's this island of poor between the wealthy mansions of Long Island and the booming city of Manhattan--notice how gritty and hardscrabble it is portrayed as being.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

... As I said, there's such a thing as plain old-fashioned incompetence. But we seem to disagree about the Crisis issues themselves, Kepi. I don't consider "government not working" to be an issue in and of itself. Government failure that's caused by this phase of the Civil Conflict, yes.

But this is a similar problem to that encountered under Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. Of the three, only Fillmore was a Whig, yet it was the Whigs that got the axe. The country just became ungovernable, and would have remained that way if the South hadn't seceded. This time, they believe they can win, so the Rural Right (the current equivalent) will be sticking around, and gumming up the works.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush ...

When I say "international in scope," I'm not referring to foreign adventurism and military mayhem such as we saw during the Bush years (and that Obama has so far failed to stop). I'm referring to the fact that our major problems are all ones that no single nation, however powerful, can solve. The global economy can't be regulated by a national government. Climate change requires a multi-national effort to solve. None of this is military, which is not to say that there won't be any wars. But if there are, they won't be as big and won't play the crucial role that World War II did in the last 4T.

I don't see a lot of progress here either. AGW is particularly dangerous, because the hysteresis is so long. We've already baked-in change through mid-century. Eventually, delay is death.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

But this is a similar problem to that encountered under Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. Of the three, only Fillmore was a Whig, yet it was the Whigs that got the axe. The country just became ungovernable, and would have remained that way if the South hadn't seceded. This time, they believe they can win, so the Rural Right (the current equivalent) will be sticking around, and gumming up the works.



I don't see a lot of progress here either. AGW is particularly dangerous, because the hysteresis is so long. We've already baked-in change through mid-century. Eventually, delay is death.

But the South is getting more and more urban and diverse. Today's immigrants (who are mostly people of color) cannot afford most places in the North East and West Coast. They now target Dixie. Meanwhile, nation wide, South and elsewhere, rural poverty has not been this bad since the 1930s. We are starting to become more like Mexico or even Thailand.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

So which of our two pathetic parties gets to be the Whigs this time? More to the point, who gets to play Lincoln?

No Lincoln on stage.
The GOP can be the Wigs.
Still need a new viable third party. ( The Peoples Party?)

Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

But the South is getting more and more urban and diverse. Today's immigrants (who are mostly people of color) cannot afford most places in the North East and West Coast. They now target Dixie. Meanwhile, nation wide, South and elsewhere, rural poverty has not been this bad since the 1930s. We are starting to become more like Mexico or even Thailand.

Part of the reason that there cannot be a secession this time, regardless of how much both sides may desire it, is the dispersal of the Red faction. Most are located in exurban and rural areas - spread far and wide. Then there are the old industrial and agricultural cities. San Francisco may be Azure Blue, but what about Bakersfield or even Fresno?