Brian:
I think that you and I agree that both the war-generated boom and the post-war boom were fueled essentially by a certain amount of government intervention and government sponsorship. Certainly, a total war effort means that the greatest demand for goods is going to come from the Defense (or War) Department...to the degree that consumer goods were rationed.
From your post, it seemed you had implied a kind of continuity between the two booms existed: both provided the means by which a greater number of Americans could purchase the goods that industry was always capable of providing. While that is certainly true, I would think we have to take into account two key factors: the fundamental change in <u>who</u> was producing the goods and <u>what</u> goods were produced (and perhaps for whom).
With factories shifting their output from war materiel to consumer goods, responding to new kinds of demands, and hiring a workforce composed of men with a particular set of (shared) experiences which were different from those whom they replaced, I wonder if the distinction between the two booms was so great as to constitute separate phenomena?
I think the premise upon which you base your observations is sound; I think the distinctions, though, are great enough to require some clarification.

Hello all, some of you may remember me from way back. I have
finally registered with the new server after spending countless
hours lurking since 911. When I heard the news, you were the
second group of people I thought of (the first was my family in
D.C. - thankfully all OK.)</p>



Witnessing the reactions of our leaders and fellow citizens I
have to agree with those on this site who believe we are still in
the final stages of the Unraveling. That the 911 massacre brought
the country together is hardly surprising given its magnitude. We
would have seen a similar outpouring of patriotism had the 1993
attack on the WTC succeeded as intended. But I just don't see the
generations rising to their Fourth Turning roles, and there is
still much Silent influence in the upper echelons of government.
All in all, it's too soon to say; we'll only know in hindsight.</p>



Personally, I'm glad for the caution provided by the old
Artists, despite feeling angry when I hear of such idiocy as
airport officials promising not to profile Middle-Eastern
travellers, or American institutions banning patriotic displays
for fear of offending the sensibilities of non-Americans. Even
though I think airport security should use racial profiling, and
think Americans have the right to express themselves peacefully
even though others are offended, I don't think it would be wise
to rush headlong into war right now, and the Silents in the
Senate and cabinet are our best hope for restraining their
juniors who are ready to "loose the fateful lightning."
</p>



To those convinced we must quickly nuke Afghanistan or carpet
bomb the Taliban or send "special" forces to capture
bin-Laden, I highly recommend a thorough browsing of the articles
at Janes.com. To those who think we must atone for our sins
before casting stones, perhaps you will find inspiration in these
words of the Koran:</p>



<font size="2">[2.216] Fighting is enjoined on you, and it is
an object of dislike to you; and it may be that you dislike a
thing while it is good for you, and it may be that you love a
thing while it is evil for you, and Allah knows, while you do not
know.</font></p>



It looks like we have our own Black September now.</p>

I'm not entirely sure that we are in 4T either. But it is likely that we are in it. Let's see what happens in the November 2002 elections (which seems pretty far off :sad.

The Chinese are working overtime to sew American flags!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2001Sep19.html

Doesn't anyone else see this as desecration (sp?)? I find it sad that we do not even produce our own flags.

911 was the catalyst, as was the stock market crash of 1929 at the end of the last Unravelling.

I've said before that in order for a majority of people to get behind a Boomer faction in the Crisis, the Boomer faction has to be totally in the "right" - no room for all the angles and shades of gray. The current Silent in the upper echelons of government are making choices which, process-wise, place the US more and more in the posiiton of being perceived as "right", thus laying the ground work for the bulk of the Crisis to be managed by Boomers.

Not five or fifteen, but four: 1942-1945. Important to understand that "demand" in the technical economic sense does not mean merely the desire to buy, but also the ability to buy. For a consumer to represent "demand," he's got to have money

Brian, you obviously have some training in formal economics, I do not. However, I think it is important to realize that the desire to buy is, while not quantifiable, nonetheless important, e.g. I have the desire to buy a Ferarri, but according to your definition, since I don't have the money, there is no demand. While for macro analysis that may well be true, when I win Lotto I'm darn sure going to buy one. That's why the pent-up "desire" from a decade of depression was most definately a factor in the post-war boom. People spent not only because they now COULD, but because they really, really WANTED TO!!

A find it interesting that statists such as you can find any reason to trust government intervention, and deny the power of millions of independent agents making decisions based upon self-interest. (Be aware that, paradoxically, altruism can be in ones self-interest.) Even if all of your assertions have an element of accuracy, until we can rewind the clock and do it all again with a free market economy, there's no way to know with any certainty what is correct. This lack of control (in an experimental sense) is why economics is not a science, but an art, no matter how much calculus you throw at it. No, more than an art, it is almost faith based, as the our vastly divergent convictionsindicate. I worship and the alter of the free market, while you worship at the alter of the state. Either of us can present cogent arguments showing our philosophy in a favorable light. Personally, I find discussions such as this much better over a couple of beers...

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: cecilalb on 2001-09-20 20:28 ]</font>

On 2001-09-20 18:14, Brian Rush wrote:
Regarding the cure of the Depression and the postwar boom, I'm finding that a lot of posters are catching some of the essentials correctly, but failing to connect the dots.


First of all, to understand how the Depression was cured, it's important to understand what was wrong in the first place. And to understand that, you need to look at the right function of the economy, and that is NOT productivity or production or supply. It is demand.


There was absolutely nothing wrong with the U.S. economy's ability to produce goods and services during the Depression. The country was swamped with wealth that could not be distributed, goods that could not be sold. Why could they not be sold? Because people who wanted them didn't have the money to buy them. And why was that? Initially because jobs didn't pay enough, and later because jobs not only didn't pay enough but in large measure didn't exist.


During the war, on the other hand, there was a shortage of goods and services and no shortage of demand. Why? Because so much of the country's productivity was channeled into the war effort, at the same time as most people were employed at good wages. After the war, this accumulated buying power represented a huge demand for goods and services of all kinds, which prompted investment in consumer production, which kept employment high, which kept demand high, which kept profits high, which justified further investment -- and so on.


Cecil said:


the post-war boom had absolutely nothing to do w/ government intervention, but w/ 5 (or 16) years of pent-up demand - nothing more.


Not five or fifteen, but four: 1942-1945. Important to understand that "demand" in the technical economic sense does not mean merely the desire to buy, but also the ability to buy. For a consumer to represent "demand," he's got to have money. In the Depression, demand wasn't pent-up, it was extremely low, because so many people had no money.


Over the war years, yes, demand accumulated. But that in itself was due to government intervention, not, to be sure, done for that purpose, but nevertheless done to that effect.


As to my assertion that FDR economics had been discredited, take a look at his supreme court packing and lots of other stuff. Even you maintain that much of his program had to be repealed after the war.


Every leader makes mistakes. Most people would agree that Roosevelt's court-packing scheme was one of them. That doesn't mean FDR was "discredited."


What I said was that the wartime emergency regulations were repealed afterward. The key elements of the Second New Deal were Social Security and the Wagner Act. We still have those.


Kevin said:


With an enormous world market(subsidized in part by the Marshall Plan -- another government program) needing goods, I'm not certain a hands-off policy was even necessary to continue the boom. It was going to happen even if America was only nominally capitalist.


That "enormous world market" was almost entirely subsidized by the Marshall Plan. Again, demand means money as well as need. The war-devastated world had little money. With productivity shattered, there was little of value to offer in exchange for America's relatively undamaged productivity output. So there was, in fact, no "enormous world market." Both supply and demand were American almost in toto.


By the time world demand increased to make this statement no longer true, so had world production, to the point that the U.S. no longer held a monopoly. In fact, that's a tautology. "Beggar thy neighbor" is as pointless when the culprit is war as when it is a tarriff.


If we're looking for a generational reason for the post-war boom, I would put my money on the power wielded by the returning GI's.


I agree. But part of the reason for that is that the GIs tended to be skeptical of laissez-faire, as illustrated by your characterizing them as a union boss' dream.

Brian may be surprised to find me agreeing with a lot of what he says about the economy after World War II.

I agree with his assessment of the failure of laissez-fair economics to a large extent, though I differ with his final conclusion in part.

The success of the union movement was possibly the most important legacy of the Roosevelt Administration. I waver back and forth between it and Social Security. For people who doubt the importance of these, a quick look at the percentages of homeowners in 1920 vs 1950 is revealing. There are many economic indicators that show that a certain amount of governmental supervision/check in the economy is both necessary and helpful.

Where Brian and I differ is in the degree of the necessary and useful intervention. A poster earlier suggested that the post-war boom might have gone on longer without the interference of the government, and this too is at least plausible.

I would suggest that the government managed to both usher in and disrupt the boom, ushering it in through legal support for unions, the Social Security system providing a little security for the future, and through military spending for Korea and the Cold War that helped stoke the economy.

The government also helped end the boom, though, by many of the same means, and with the unintentional help of the same unions that helped bring it in. The tax rates rose to bizarre levels, and government policies on energy and security became somewhat counter-productive.

An interesting question: what are the best dividing lines to set the beginning and end of the 'post WW II' economic boom?

On 2001-09-20 20:34, HopefulCynic68 wrote:


The success of the union movement was possibly the most important legacy of the Roosevelt Administration. I waver back and forth between it and Social Security. For people who doubt the importance of these, a quick look at the percentages of homeowners in 1920 vs 1950 is revealing.

The practice of the 30 year mortgage is a large factor in the widespread ownership of homes as was the IRS allowance of the mortgage deduction. Previously, home loans were for much shorter periods with a balloon payment at the end. The growth of S&Ls and Credit Unions also made money available to the lower orders. HTH

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Virgil K. Saari on 2001-09-20 20:49 ]</font>

My 30% figure comes from the membership of evangelical and fundamentalist Christian churches. It is probably slightly inflated, since not all such members share the values of the Christian right (e.g., Jimmy Carter, Al Gore and Bill Clinton, all Southern Baptists). But it's a pretty decent shorthand, if we want to include not only the firebreathing clinic-bombers, but anyone who shares those values (whether or not they agree with the extreme actions of some who do). And for voting purposes, that's what we should do. The extremists are always a minority of any political or social movement.


I cannot see how the total could be as high as 40%, let alone 50%.

Your figures for official membership are probably spot-on. However, many members of the RR are not even regular church-goers.

I know that often surprises people who are not familiar with some of the quirks of the Bible Belt and the Red Zone, but it's true.
Just as some members of the Southern Baptist and related denominations are very moderate, some people rarely seen in church are devout believers and vote that way.

Also, in the Blue Zone, a sort of mirror effect exists. A surprising number of the older voters who voted for Gore could arguably be called religious right, but they are scared to death of losing Social Security. It's not an accident that all Gore revved up the 'mediscare/starving seniors' machine as the election came down to its final weeks in E2K.

I personally know of one woman, who hasn't attended a formal church service in at least ten years, as far as I know. This woman agrees essentially 100% with Falwell/Robertson, and maintains that she agreed with Al Gore on Social Security (I wish that didn't abbreviate to SS!), unemployment comp, unionization policy, and the like. She voted for Bush purely because of his anti-abortion stance (such as it was) and because he claimed aloud to be a born-again Christian in the primary debate.

Bear in mind that by your standards, she would _not_ be counted as religious right, since she rarely if ever attends services. There are a lot like her.

Another group with strong beliefs parallel to the religious right is a big chunk of the black community. They vote as a bloc for Democrats, but that's (I assume) because of civil rights and affirmative action positions. A poll of many black's religious outlook tends to make them very religious in something like the fundamentalist cast.

I don't know if that would ever break them away from the Democratic Party, or what circumstances it would take, but the potential is there.

(Furthermore, nowhere is it written in stone that the Democrats will always be the secular party, and the Republicans the redoubt of the religious right. As political opinion sways back and forth in the country, a person can find himself going from liberal to conservative to dove to hawk to extremist to mainstream, without ever really changing his positions at all.)

Cecil, I think you're a good guy, too. :smile: Really, the idea here is not to provoke a big fight. And I have no objection to the beers; I'll even stand for the first couple of rounds.


But let me say that, while economics isn't an exact science, there are certain objective observations that can be made, and certain propositions that we know are true, because history has repeatedly shown them to be true.


It is not at all the case, as you stated, that I "worship at the altar of the state." I am not a socialist. I believe one of the things that history shows is that an economy centrally planned in detail suffers from poor predictive and response ability. Or, in plainer language, the planners often fail to anticipate what people want and the whole thing goes bust. They make ten zillion widgets that sit on the shelves while people are scalping thingamabobs on the black market. You just can't control a chaotic system like an economy in that kind of detail. A better response is provided by an equally chaotic system (with many multiple independent decision-makers), where any mistakes have relatively limited consequences, mostly borne by those who make them. The same arguments can be made against socialism as hold against monopolies.


What I'm trying to say here, though, is that because an excess of planning is a bad thing, it does not follow that an absence of planning is a good one. There are areas where the market's tendencies need to be corrected. One of those is the tendency to distribute wealth so inequitably that the base of consumer demand is too small to justify the economy's productive capacity. Or, again in plainer terms, there's too little money in enough hands for people to buy all the stuff we can make.


However, I think it is important to realize that the desire to buy is, while not quantifiable, nonetheless important, e.g. I have the desire to buy a Ferarri, but according to your definition, since I don't have the money, there is no demand.


The desire to buy is important. In fact, from a microeconomic standpoint -- and especially if you're trying to market a luxury product or a product in a very competitive market -- desire to buy is the biggest variable of all. It's what determines the success of one product instead of another. It's why the Edsel was a bust, while the Honda Civic makes lots of money. But over the whole economy, it pretty much cancels out. You assume some products are going to fail, while others succeed. People will always want to buy things, though, just not always the same things. So the real determiner on a large scale is how much money they have to spend.


A Ferrari is a luxury sportscar. It's very expensive. It's out of the price range of most of the people who might want to buy a sporty car. So those people settle for something lower priced that's kind of sporty. If everyone was a lot richer, perhaps more Ferraris would sell. (Then again, maybe the price would just go up. That often happens with luxury status-symbols, too.)


In the Depression, it wasn't just luxury sportscars that were out of most people's reach. It was basic stuff: food, clothing, rent, doctor visits, hygiene. There was still plenty of food being grown, clothing being made (or stored in warehouses), housing for rent, doctors, and soap. And people surely needed these things. But without money to pay for them, they couldn't buy them. So no matter how much they wanted to buy them, the stuff just didn't sell, and so businesses went bankrupt.


During the war, we had full employment. People were making lots of money. Now they had no trouble buying the basic stuff, but they also had money left over from the paycheck after that. What was there to buy with it? Hardly anything. So they stuck it in the bank, or bought war bonds. And so after the war was over, practically everyone had all this money in the bank or in bonds.


That's the reason that the people who were afraid the Depression would come back after the war were wrong. There was this huge accumulated pool of buying power out there, just waiting for consumer goods to start rolling off the assembly lines again. So as soon as the factories could retool to make cars and dresses instead of tanks and uniforms, the boom was on.


What I'm saying at bottom line is this. There is no reason, except for politics, that FDR couldn't have done all that in 1933 or 1934, without all the carnage. We had the productive capacity. All that was missing was money in people's pockets. Had New Deal programs like the WPA and the CCC and the TVA expanded by about a factor of five, which is what the war effort amounted to, the Depression would have been over. And if the Wagner Act had been passed a lot earlier, too, it would never have come back.

[quote]
On 2001-09-20 20:47, Virgil K. Saari wrote:

On 2001-09-20 20:34, HopefulCynic68 wrote:


The practice of the 30 year mortgage is a large factor in the widespread ownership of homes as was the IRS allowance of the mortgage deduction. Previously, home loans were for much shorter periods with a balloon payment at the end. The growth of S&Ls and Credit Unions also made money available to the lower orders. HTH

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Virgil K. Saari on 2001-09-20 20:49 ]</font>

Good point! My Xer lack of deep understanding and education now rears its head. Does anyone know off-hand when the 30 year mortgage became standard practice? I know that credit, even for home loans, was once very tightly restricted, but off hand I don't recall ever reading or hearing when the change came.

An interesting question: what are the best dividing lines to set the beginning and end of the 'post WW II' economic boom?


I'd say 1947 to 1972. There were some recessions in between, but they were mild punctuations. Incidentally, marginal tax rates were lower at the end of that period than when it started.


In 1970, U.S. oil production peaked. Very soon thereafter, the U.S. became a net oil importer instead of experter. In 1973, OPEC imposed an embargo on oil sales to the U.S. because of U.S. support for Israel. (Sound familiar?)


By the time that problem had been (temporarily) resolved in the 1980s, information technology had progressed enough to allow the modern global economy to develop. This created a capital drain, as manufacturers invested in very-low-wage countries and real wages in the U.S. declined.

On 2001-09-20 06:58, Pat Mathews wrote:
My hat's off to the 13-er firefighters who went into the burning Wolrd Trade Center and lost their lives every one, as well as to the passengers of the Pittsburgh plane. Up until this morning I was very proud of the way the Silent leadership was keeping cool heads in this, even though my mood has changed drastically - never thought I'd see this old Silent wanting a flag pin! Though I'm certainly keeping my "Hate Free Zone" bumper sticker.

However - after this morning's news, I'm very much afraid this is neither Pearl Harbor *nor* the 1920s Morgan Bldg bombing. I'm afraid Bin Laden (if it is him) has fired on Fort Sumter.

And Bush is both a Boomer and a conservative. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

In my case, Bush's behavior (so far) has been one of the few reassuring aspects of this whole horrid business!

Now, for scary factor, hearing a song I normally love, the Battle Hymn of the Republic, sung by Boomers in _that_ tone of voice and context...oh goody.

On 2001-09-20 21:05, Brian Rush wrote:
An interesting question: what are the best dividing lines to set the beginning and end of the 'post WW II' economic boom?


I'd say 1947 to 1972. There were some recessions in between, but they were mild punctuations. Incidentally, marginal tax rates were lower at the end of that period than when it started.


In 1970, U.S. oil production peaked. Very soon thereafter, the U.S. became a net oil importer instead of experter. In 1973, OPEC imposed an embargo on oil sales to the U.S. because of U.S. support for Israel. (Sound familiar?)


By the time that problem had been (temporarily) resolved in the 1980s, information technology had progressed enough to allow the modern global economy to develop. This created a capital drain, as manufacturers invested in very-low-wage countries and real wages in the U.S. declined.

Those are not bad lines.

You may be right about the marginal rates, you're usually pretty good about getting specific facts straight. I still think that the tax rates were broadly too high, in part because the government had tried to do more than it had the practical ability to carry off, and had ended up trapping itself.

What were the marginal rates in 1972? ISTR that by the late seventies, they had crept back above 90%, but it's been a long time ago and I could be wrong about that.

I see in many people a reaction of, in a sense, relief - I don't like that word but I don't have a better one. What I mean by 'relief' is that I see people doing all the things we've observed of coming together, burying disagreements, talking honestly and supporting each other with a subtext I perceive as, "Finally, an excuse to behave decently and leave that divisive, selfish behavior behind."

I could be seeing this through my own filters since I confess to having some of the same reaction myself. A 4T is not my favorite saeculum but the 3T is my least favorite.

I also see what looks like nostalgia for the WWII period, ironic considering that it is expressed by people who weren't alive at the time. I expect some of the popular cultural icons from that period to make a comeback for no other reason. This is understandable since it was the climax of the last 4T and capped America's confidence in itself.

But we are not at that point in history now. We are at the beginning of the 4T, and we can't expect to skip over the 15 or so years between us and the climax.

So I would like to know what we are in for in the next few years. Can we expect the current concord to fall apart in partisanship ? Is the apparent appetite for total war transitory? (The Bush speech tonight sounded pretty much in that vein.)

Of course, I'm assuming that 911 was the catalyst and that we're now in the 4T. You can't convince me otherwise.

On 2001-09-20 20:34, HopefulCynic68 wrote:
The government also helped end the boom, though, by many of the same means, and with the unintentional help of the same unions that helped bring it in. The tax rates rose to bizarre levels, and government policies on energy and security became somewhat counter-productive.

An interesting question: what are the best dividing lines to set the beginning and end of the 'post WW II' economic boom?

Though we look back on those tax rates (70-90%)with amazement, even horror, I think it's important to remember that they affected a tiny fraction of Americans. In an economy that was essentially driven <u>by and for</u> the new-found affluence and power of returning GI's (due to the GI Bill of Rights, the rise of suburbia and other phenomena), we're looking at a population that saw the middle-class as the apex of their ambition. This was not an entrepreneurial boom -- like the Reagan and Clinton booms. It was a revolution devoted to purchasing toasters and washing machines...hardly the kinds of activities likely to be stifled by tax-bracket fears.

Lest I sound as if I champion those tax rates, all I mean to say is that I doubt their impact was as great on that economy as they would have been in recent decades.

I'm inclined to believe that a fundamental shift in our view of work occured in the last 30 years, and that it is <u>this</u> change that has made the prospect of high tax rates unthinkable. Conventional wisdom holds that unions are weaker today because they overstepped themselves; their demands on corporate America became prohibitive. While I think that one can make that claim anecdotally, I believe it more likely that unions became irrelevant. GI's were quite satisfied with adhering to the party line in the same way they held Bastogne. Sacrifice for the "greater good" be it increasing every member's wages or breaking the Seigfried Line was second nature.

America's sense of individualism has always had a greater hold on us than our sense of community. Increasingly (just as the US Army's ads entice young people to join "the army of one') the demands on union members (i.e. adhering to the party line) became anathema to each successive generation. As the economic booms of the 80's and 90's served the ambitions of well-educated individuals, the boom of the 50's served the collective ambitions of war-experienced GI's.

I would (believe it or not) mark the end of the post-war economic boom with the repeal of baseball's Reserve Clause in 1976. Certainly, this is not a moment that any economist would acknowledge (especially since it would imply that the expansion lasted 30 years). But it <u>is</u> the moment at which the collective efforts of a "union" resulted in the elevation of the individual above the team. Free agency was the key. And so, rather than aspiring to the middle class via the wage gains wrought by collective action, we aspire to become "small businesses" (creators, producers and distributors of ideas, just as Barry Bonds is a small business who produces home runs). If there was a moment that signalled the end of GI-era conformity, and the start of individual entrepreneurship, that was it.

Who can read what Bush said tonight and not believe that we are formlly committed to a 4T crisis. See it at: http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/20/gen.bush.transcript/
This goes way beyond a measured response, it plots a new course the world needs to sail, sail into a "novus ordo seclorum".

On 2001-09-20 21:18, HopefulCynic68 wrote:

What were the marginal rates in 1972? ISTR that by the late seventies, they had crept back above 90%, but it's been a long time ago and I could be wrong about that.

Prior to 1964, the top marginal tax rate was 91% and the bottom rate was 20.2%. JFK went on record (in late 1962) as advocating an across-the-board tax cut, but it was not enacted until a few months after he was assassinated. The new rates became 70% at the top and 14% at the bottom. These rates remained in effect until the Kemp-Roth tax cut of 1981, which made the top rate 50% and the bottom rate 11%. Then, the 1986 Tax Reform Act did something that had never been done before in the history of the federal income tax: The top rate went down and at the same time the bottom rate went up - the new rates became 28% and 15% respectively (indeed, these became the only two brackets). Then, between 1990 and 1993 there was a series of increases in the top rate, which by 1993 was 39.6% (the bottom rate remained at 15%). Then of course came this year's tax cut, which took the bottom rate back down to 10% immediately; starting next year all of the other brackets, including the top one, are scheduled to come down in stages until eventually the top rate will be 35%. Whether this will now actually be proceeded with is anybody's guess.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Anthony '58 on 2001-09-21 01:52 ]</font>

I thought Bush's speech was fitting for the leader of a country that has been the victim of probably the most vicious sneak attack in world history, using children and other innocents as human bombs to commit mass murder.

I request clarification, however, from the President. We are taking on ALL terrorists, and ALL countries that harbor them. Does this include:

1. Bin Laden's Qaeda?
2. Afghanistan?
3. Saddam Hussein and Iraq?
4. Syria?
5. Iran?
6. Libya?
7. Sudan?
8. Hamas?
9. Hezbollah?
10. Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka?
11. Irish Republican Army?
12. Ulster Protestant extremists?
13. Colombian drug lords?
14. Chechen separatists?
15. Basque militants?
16. Remnant domestic terrorists (abortion clinic bombers, KKK, militia, etc.)?

Seems like quite a mouthful for one little Hero generation to chew on...

On 2001-09-20 20:13, Donna Sherman wrote:
911 was the catalyst, as was the stock market crash of 1929 at the end of the last Unravelling.

I've said before that in order for a majority of people to get behind a Boomer faction in the Crisis, the Boomer faction has to be totally in the "right" - no room for all the angles and shades of gray. The current Silent in the upper echelons of government are making choices which, process-wise, place the US more and more in the posiiton of being perceived as "right", thus laying the ground work for the bulk of the Crisis to be managed by Boomers.

Right on, Donna. Bush managed to surprise and delight me last night by his strength, clarity, and moderation. (Where's Cheney? Does anyone know?). Though the Secretary of Homeland Security as a position per se scares me quite a bit. Given the right or wrong person in it, or even creeping expansion, we could be in for another Head of the Obsidian Order. (For you DS-9 fans out there.) Hoover tried very hard to head America's Secret Police. This guy really could somewhere down the road.

Ted, I take it to mean them all, yes. Hopefully, some (many?) will view this as an opportunity to reform themselves and cease such violence, and thus removing any need to hunt them down.

On 2001-09-21 05:58, Ted Hudson '47 wrote:

I request clarification, however, from the President. We are taking on ALL terrorists, and ALL countries that harbor them. Does this include:

1. Bin Laden's Qaeda?
2. Afghanistan?
3. Saddam Hussein and Iraq?
4. Syria?
5. Iran?
6. Libya?
7. Sudan?
8. Hamas?
9. Hezbollah?
10. Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka?
11. Irish Republican Army?
12. Ulster Protestant extremists?
13. Colombian drug lords?
14. Chechen separatists?
15. Basque militants?
16. Remnant domestic terrorists (abortion clinic bombers, KKK, militia, etc.)?

Seems like quite a mouthful for one little Hero generation to chew on...

And what of:

17. The Earth Liberation Front
18. The Free Brittany Movement
19. The Corscican Independence
20. Japanese cults
21. The Sihks in India
22. WTO Anarchists (violent branch)...etc.

It gets to be a pretty daunting task when you start making a war of Manichean good vs. evil. There's a lot of the latter out there for Crisis fodder. HTH

Clarification: we will take on all terrorist organizations of global scope.

Ted Hudson requests? I request clarification, however, from the President. We are taking on ALL terrorists, and ALL countries that harbor them.

Interesting request. It goes to emphasize that Dubya is fighting a tactic, and a potentially effective tactic, not a group of enemies. This would imply a total renunciation of the tactics he is fighting against. Is it OK to drop bombs from military aircraft to destroy military targets, but not OK to hijack civilian aircraft to destroy civilian targets? This is a plausible distinction, but if we are fighting against people using specific tactics, we ought to clearly define the tactics.

I tuned into Dubya?s speech last night, but decided to flip channels until Dubya got past introducing people to loud applause. The major competition to Dubya?s speech was a PBS channel running a one hour introduction to Bin Ladin and recent Middle East history. Some of the Saudi dissidents interviewed compared the current Saudi royalty with the USA?s old friend, the Shah of Iran. The US oil industry and government is looking towards the best deal possible short term. In doing so, as in Iran, they may be alienating the vast majority of the local population. It seems, in spite of the tremendous oil profits, the current arrangements have left Saudi Arabia a debtor nation. PBS didn?t go into details, but a good sized part of this debt would likely be paying for the Gulf War. A lot of dissident Saudis see the royalty as puppets of the US, not interested in the long term interests of the common people. A lot of folk are concerned that no thinking is going towards the time decades out when the oil is gone.

The piece presented Bin Ladin as one of many fighters in Afghanistan who together defeated the old Soviet Union. After winning that battle, with Allah on their side, they perceive they can defeat anyone. As I understand, this was the days of their high Awakening? The program also mentioned ethnic-religious difficulties in East Africa, south of Egypt, where Muslim poor majorities lived under regimes controlled by Christians. To anyone familiar with Rodney King or Northern Ireland, the basic pattern in a broad sense is very familiar.

OK, watching a one hour TV special doesn?t make me a Middle East expert. However, as I expected, it will be quite possible for Bin Ladin to gather a backing of people who see him as a hero. He has contacts and favorable publicity throughout the Middle East region. His politics and use of religion has made him enemies in the region as well. Any presentation of the New War as black and white, heroes against villains, is pure (expletive deleted) propaganda. At this point, I would not want to label either Bush or Bin Ladin as representing the future, a shining a light for the world to follow. Anyone sincerely interested in building a just world would have to acknowledge both sides can make points. Anyone buying into Bush?s Big Oil viewpoint 100% should really think thinks through.

I note we are waving US flags, while the opposition is calling for holy war. I am still seeing economics as a key factor, the underlying cause for the nationalistic, religious, ethnic and human rights themes. However, this is not to say the other themes are not real and important. This is a multi faceted gem. No competent propagandist is going to issue a call to arms in the name of economics. (Marx is still out of fashion, though some of the issues associated with his name are hot.) Again, I am reminded of the US Civil War, when propaganda purposes led both sides early on to say that slavery was not the major issue. There is certainly room for an equivalent of the Emancipation Proclamation, a major moral speech or declaration that transforms and clarifies the purpose of the war. I?d still look to the Four Freedoms as a prototype.

For decades, I?ve held a cynical belief that Big Oil is blocking serious government grants to research fusion power. They wish to maintain the current economic status quo as long as they can. This may be the wild card, an attempt to discover if a fusion ? hydrogen economy is possible. I would call this ?Manhattan Project II,? and recommend that it run at a priority similar to the original. I can?t see Big Oil?s Dubya Administration walking that path. In fact, I am having trouble seeing Dubya in any perspective save attempting to brute force maintain the status quo at a time when a new world order is necessary.

This isnt the Fourth Turning.
I felt this for a week.
Now the Xer in me is still saying whatever.
Can I ask the other Xers on this list, if they are into all this patriotic stuff.
My gut instinct has been to protect myself and my family. I havent really bought into the American part of it, other than as Americans we are in danger.
I do think that this is the event for Millennials.
I know Challenger was pretty pale in comparison, but at least I had that memory of something terrible happening to prepare myself for this shock.
But I really feel bad for the younger kids.
People of my generation have born witness to terrible things our whole lives, from divorce and domestic abuse, to drug use, gang violence. Were used to dealing with the bad daily.
But Millies have been sheltered.
I remember in the lockerroom in high school, these two millie kids were discussing what would happen if we went to war.
They were talking about duty, and responsibility.
To them it was their responsibility to serve their nation.
I thought they were nuts. For those of us that have a memory of a time when Vietnam was semi fresh in the public mind, and nobody wanted to talk about it...military service is the last thing you want to get involved in.
<y Dad practically coached me with the ideas...go to Canada...go to Sweden..whatever you do...dont go.
And so the boundary draws itself up.
One towards self preservation, the other towards social responsibility.
Id be interested to see how those Millies are feeling right now.