On 2002-04-25 23:53, JayN wrote:
This is a real possible 4th Turning event.

http://news.mysanantonio.com/story.c...682286&xld=340

someday = 2099?

On 2002-04-25 23:57, mmailliw wrote:

On 2002-04-25 23:53, JayN wrote:
This is a real possible 4th Turning event.

http://news.mysanantonio.com/story.c...682286&xld=340

someday = 2099?

Or, with the right technical backup behind our hypothetical terrorists, it could be sometime before the end of this decade. China, perhaps? Iran or Iraq, in all too few short years?

I would say impeachment generated mass hysteria but Seattle and the Asian meltdown did not.

I'd vote for economic problems driving a 4T, with a layer of war on top. There's an excellent site at http://www.financialsense.com which has a "perfect storm" series describing some of the ideas below in detail. I'd recommend people check out the articles -- they are well-written and do a good job describing things for non-finance people.

According to the Financial Sense site, debt is the number one problem we face. The reason that there wasn't a 1929-style crash two years ago is that the Fed lowered interest rates, causing a huge amount of cheap debt to be created. This debt money has "blown up" the stock and housing markets. In particular, this is why stock are still very pricey compared to historical averages -- they're inflated by cheap debt money. Many people estimate the Dow should be under 4,000 instead of at 10,000. But, at some point the debt has to be paid back via rising stock valuations. It doesn't seem likely that we can go to Dow 36,000, but this appears to be what would be required.

Debt is also rising in the housing market. Here in California, home prices jumped 20% last year in some areas. Despite this, people are taking on mortages like mad -- demand is huge.

So we have inflation, but it is confined to a few parts of the economy. This is why we've been able to keep low interest rates, which would normally cause inflation of consumer products. It has also helped that businesses overbuilt for demand that didn't materialize -- so we still have a buyers market outside of stocks and housing.

However, since most of the money to finance spending through the mini-recesison came from debt, our "recovery" is similar to a student who maxed out all her cards and suddenly gets two more in the mail. Several recent articles have described how Boomers are using their more pricey homes as giant ATMs (via refinancing) and taking on new debt they can't pay off in their lifetime. The money generated by refinancing was a significant boost to the economy in 2001. This generates extra overall debt.

The same cheap debt has kept lots of companies afloat which would have gone out of business in 2000-2001. Part of this debts is loans taken out by the companies (this area is drying up) and part is debt consumers have taken on to keep spending during the 2001 downturn. The result is that we're entering a recovery with big mounds of debt that normally wouldn't be there.

Also, the government is back to deficits, in other words, debt.

Cheap debt has led to more cheap debt, for example with senior citizens. Many seniors live on fixed incomes, which are ultimately derived from interest payments on debt. When the Fed dropped interest rates, money began to dry up from these sources. So, in order to pay for medication, seniors have been using credit cards -- maxing them out like the above college student and generating more debt.

As long as the Fed doesn't raise interest rates, the debt can continue to grow to historically never seen levels. If the recovery is slow or flat, as now seems to be the case, the Fed may not raise rates since inflation (outside stocks and housing) is so low. So...expect your card limits to go up!

The real crunch is 5-7 years off, when the Boomers begin to retire. Too much debt puts the economy in a highly unstable state.

Debt is supposed to be managed using financial instruments like derivatives, which essentially funcion like bets and/or insurance against interest rate changes. In normal times they tend to minimize investment risk. But in "interesting" times they can fail suddenly and all at once, wiping out monetary assets. The Financial Sense site has long articles discussing situations under which this can occur.

Because derivatives are so "leveraged" -- meaning small moves in the market can generate huge profits or losses -- a surprise event can cause a cascade of loss leading to an economic collapse. This effect is similar to physical systems near a phase transition -- a speck of dust can cause very hot water to suddenly boil. The Financial Sense site calls these "rouge waves" after the giant waves described in "The Perfect Storm."

The leverage of derivatives is so great that a single "rouge trader" can cause this to happen. Amazing, but I can see how the financial system could tolerate this -- it gives high-up traders a huge sense of power.

This is probably what radicals mean when they say the will destroy the US in the next phase. They probably figure they'll get a few "rouge traders" positioned, and bring down the whole house of cards, like Argentina only worse.

The other problem that comes up is with the dollar. The US has had policies which tend to keep dollars expensive ("strong") relative to other currencies. This (through a process I don't completely understand) causes dollars that would cause inflation (in other words, a devaluation) to flow out of the US. Apparently, this somehow also stabilizes our negative balance of trade -- it doesn't hurt much that we import more than we export. However, a "rouge wave" could cause all those dollars to come back here, causing a huge devaluation in our currency.

So the end result is a pretty nasty economic squeeze, unless business figures out a new pile of stuff to sell consumers, and energy gets cheaper. This would lead to a 30s-style 4T. But if it is combined with other forces (e.g., decline in the world oil supply after 2005 or so) things could get nasty indeed.

There are many interesting websites predicting a major economic catastrophe in the months ahead. But be wary -- many of these sites are backed by people promoting the sale of gold and gold stocks. In other words, there's just as much potential for fraud and greed during a bust than there is in a boom. Read widely, keep your head.

Personally, I do not think we're in a fourth turning. I'm amazed by the resilience of this third turning -- it took an impeachment, a collapse of tech stock valuations, a contested election, a massive terrorist attack and the biggest wave of corporate fraud since the 1920s and keeps chugging along.

The bad news is that if this Third Turning is ever going to end, it's going to take a cultural earthquake that makes all of these recent events look like tremors.

While I can agree that we are beginning to see economic upheaval, I think the primary drivers from 3t to 4t will be psycho-spiritual. This isn't fully developed yet, but has kind of piqued my interest.

While turnings involve the insertion of prophets into positions of power, I am not certain that prophets will all act consistently. This widens the potential for conflict between them without an effective external enemy, which bring us to 9/11.

While 9/11 was a horrible event and "outside the box" as so many military folk like to remind us, the plain fact that we are now examining economic issues and concerns tends to demonstrate that the terrorists do not represent (and may never represent) the arch-enemy necessary to externalize (beyond the nation) of our "enemy". Looking at our military might, there might not be an external enemy and this brings me to my point.

In WW2, we had external enemies of great threat. I believe that this united our country. Without this, we are looking more at a civil war scenario and this worries me far more than any current external threat.

On 2002-07-13 20:09, chandalar wrote:
While I can agree that we are beginning to see economic upheaval, I think the primary drivers from 3t to 4t will be psycho-spiritual. This isn't fully developed yet, but has kind of piqued my interest.

While turnings involve the insertion of prophets into positions of power, I am not certain that prophets will all act consistently. This widens the potential for conflict between them without an effective external enemy, which bring us to 9/11.

While 9/11 was a horrible event and "outside the box" as so many military folk like to remind us, the plain fact that we are now examining economic issues and concerns tends to demonstrate that the terrorists do not represent (and may never represent) the arch-enemy necessary to externalize (beyond the nation) of our "enemy". Looking at our military might, there might not be an external enemy and this brings me to my point.

In WW2, we had external enemies of great threat. I believe that this united our country. Without this, we are looking more at a civil war scenario and this worries me far more than any current external threat.

It's late so my thought processes are a bit sluggish but...

I agree that barring massive, repetitive terrorist strikes on the US and an unlikely failure of our government to retaliate in a swift and effective manner, that foreign terrorism is not likely to unite the nation as WW2 did. The War on Terrorism is perceived all but won save the actual capture of OBL himself. And if Al-Queda were to do something really nasty, like suitcase-nuke a major US city, the nation harboring its leaders would be reduced to a wide sheet of glowing, radioactive plexiglass the very next day. Problem solved.

However, nor do i quite see a Civil War parallel either. Nowhere in our current Culture Wars do i find an issue so divisive (like slavery was ) that people would be willing to see 5% of the US population killed off to make their point.

What i do see is another Great Depression looming, just like last time around, except possibly without a World War 2 to jazz up the economy. While FDR's New Deal bought time, if it wasn't for the War our economy might have imploded for good by the mid 40s. If this were to happen today, we could suffer a complete collapse of our socioeconomic system, with formerly upper middle class people lynching would-be repossessors from banks, taking up arms against law enforcement to protect what they own, National Guard members refusing to fire on their neighbors. Subdivisions in turn might become Jericho-like walled enclaves, defenses against marauding desparate bands of homeless roaming outside. People forced to grow their own produce and raise their own meat (rabbits, squirrlels, opossums, etc), because they wouldn't be able to get to work even if they did still have jobs.

It's late so my thought processes are a bit sluggish but...

I agree that barring massive, repetitive terrorist strikes on the US and an unlikely failure of our government to retaliate in a swift and effective manner, that foreign terrorism is not likely to unite the nation as WW2 did. The War on Terrorism is perceived all but won save the actual capture of OBL himself. And if Al-Queda were to do something really nasty, like suitcase-nuke a major US city, the nation harboring its leaders would be reduced to a wide sheet of glowing, radioactive plexiglass the very next day. Problem solved.

However, nor do i quite see a Civil War parallel either. Nowhere in our current Culture Wars do i find an issue so divisive (like slavery was ) that people would be willing to see 5% of the US population killed off to make their point.

What i do see is another Great Depression looming, just like last time around, except possibly without a World War 2 to jazz up the economy. While FDR's New Deal bought time, if it wasn't for the War our economy might have imploded for good by the mid 40s. If this were to happen today, we could suffer a complete collapse of our socioeconomic system, with formerly upper middle class people lynching would-be repossessors from banks, taking up arms against law enforcement to protect what they own, National Guard members refusing to fire on their neighbors. Subdivisions in turn might become Jericho-like walled enclaves, defenses against marauding desparate bands of homeless roaming outside. People forced to grow their own produce and raise their own meat (rabbits, squirrlels, opossums, etc), because they wouldn't be able to get to work even if they did still have jobs.

I agree and being a law enforcement officer I am concerned with this. New York City has about 7-10 days food supply. I don't think anyone realizes who tenuous and dependent our big cities are to the surrounding infrastructure.

Masses of starving people tend to act in a very unpleasant manner. I think we might find people that provide essential services (farmers, etc.) renegotiating their value in a hot hurry.

I'm not confident to speculate on what this would look like overall, but I would guess that law enforcement would devolve into feudal soldiers.

Critic of suburbanity has been writing on his site his missives on calapse of USA. Click on Clusterf*ck Nation for his latest.

Hi!

On 2002-04-26 20:02, Eric A Meece wrote:
I would say impeachment generated mass hysteria but Seattle and the Asian meltdown did not.

Perhaps not nationally, but locally the WTO upheaval did create something resembling mass confusion, if not hysteria. I was living in Seattle in November 1999, and worked about a mile south of all the action (right across the street from the late, great Kingdome). Both the entire retail core and the Capital Hill neighborhood were virtually shut down for three days-- many people who worked any closer in than I were afraid to go to work because no one knew what was going to happen next. It was much more troubling than, say, the 12-hour hippie-college-student smashfest that followed the Rodney King verdict in '92.

Airstrip One
by Christopher Montgomery
Antiwar.com
July 15, 2002
Does September 11th Matter? quoted for educational use only:



Everyone,
rightly, jumps up and down with enjoyable rage when anyone suggests that
America had September 11th 'coming'. And of course, no one would defend
crashing airliners into skyscrapers, nor the cause for which this act was
carried out. What is madness, plain and simple, is a refusal to consider
why 20 men (and twenty times twenty beyond them) were willing to do this.
What did they think they were doing, and why? It's not good enough to say
that this was just how they got their kicks. If that was the case, then there were an infinite number of murderous manners in which they could have
actualised themselves. Why planes into buildings?
If we had
remembered that question on that first dreadful morning, they'd have been
defeated there and then. For what these terrorists wanted is what all terrorists
want: they sought political change through violence. Thanks to a decade
and more of first covert appeasement, then open collaboration with the Provisional
IRA, we in this country have all but forgotten the highest shibboleth of
anti-terrorism: what they do should change nothing. Change coming
about, if at all, through exclusively constitutional and peaceful means.
Yet that's the thing ? nothing really has changed thanks to September the
11th. If we could but realise the truth of this, we would see all too clearly
the magnitude of the defeat and failure Bin Laden and his ilk have suffered.
Perversely, it is those who clamour loudest for war ? the friends of the
manic warnings about 'future attacks' and of numberless detentions without
trial ? who are handing victory to the terrorists. To apprehend our victory
it is only necessary, but then, completely so, to realise, save for the
slaughtered dead, September the 11th doesn't matter.
It certainly
doesn't matter to the US military. Their stunning incompetence, along with
all the other trillion dollar elements of the American national security
state, in failing to prevent the slaughter of some several thousand of their
wards having had, as yet, no consequences for a single, solitary officer
of the state. Not one. More fundamentally, September the 11th hasn't altered
pre-bellum US military doctrine. It has not 'reordered the cabinet of nations',
nor has it altered America's default foreign policy posture.
Just as the
response of the United States towards Palestinian terrorism against Israel
is just as it would have been had an X-ray machine gotten lucky on September
11th, so too is, for example, her attitude to Irish terrorism just so. As
and when Republicanism in this country resumes full-scale murder, wait and
watch for the American response ? it will be the same lack of a response
that the US, before she too suffered a dose, would have offered us.
To try and
remove the distorting lens of 9/11 from our vision of the last year, and
therefore, of the future too, is really not that difficult. Consider simply
all those things which excite liberal rage about the United States ? Kyoto,
the International Criminal Court, withdrawal from the ABM treaty ? on and
on it goes, and did September the 11th make a whit of difference to any
of it? No, of course not, not least because some of it preceded the spirit
supposedly inculcated by the horror. Though let's not forget the stuff Tories
ought to get visible ants in their pants about, the steel tariffs, the farm
subsidies, that sort of thing ? did Bin Laden do this too? Again, no, not
a bit of impact had he, one way or the other. He could have spent 2001 designing Al-Qaeda's entry for the Chelsea Flower Show for all the significance he's
due. Or at least, that's how we should see things if it wasn't for the Pentagon's
pom-pom girls in the press.
The key to
fostering the delusion that September the 11th matters is to contend that
we, or more pertinently, America is 'at war'. This is not a war; it is not
something between states; it is a matter of low order (as trivial in their
own way as the Israeli/Palestinian or Ulster conflicts are). The fact that
it is not, despite the rhetoric, actually a war has certain, ineluctable
consequences. Chief amongst these is that there is no enemy to defeat. What
honestly is, or was, a bunch of yahoos in a cave in Afghanistan to the United States? Nothing, as Americans, with a curl of their collective lips,
ought to have had the self-confidence to say. If Bin Laden were an immortal,
globe-spanning superman, with a fresh, inexhaustible cohort of fanatical Muslim youth at his disposal ? rather than being a rich lunatic, parasitically
feeding off the gangster regime which ended the Afghan civil wars on top
? what then? He could crash a fresh wave of planes, killing the same number
of people, into American cities, in alphabetical order every year on the
same date till the crack of doom, and what difference would it make to anything?
It is precisely by conjuring an enemy purely of the mind, and therefore
impossible to defeat by war, that the idea of an ongoing war can
be sustained.
To look at
this from the other side of the hill, in an effort to see why 9/11 doesn't
matter, or to put that another way, why it didn't achieve what its progenitors
hoped of it, what difference has it made to the goals of Mr Bin Laden? Whatever
we think they were, and whether the man himself is still much bothered by
them, we can fairly safely assume that they haven't been met. But then,
precisely because of this failure, nor have they changed.
Looked at
coldly, and trust me, this is what the history books will say, and in very
short order too, for UBL, 9/11: tactically superb, strategically inept.
The man had, by his own lights, rational causes ? most probably the open
and undeniable presence of US forces in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War
(as opposed to any nonsense that it was the miserable Palestinians that
got his goat). Having conceived of a reason to act, he then did, and, as
noted above, with undeniable technical finesse. So having conceded all that
to the brute what are we left with, which is to say, what is he left with?
To ask the question is surely to see, well, nothing. It's not for me to
say, but if I'd been him . . . killing, in random surges,? US troops stationed
overseas, that's the way I'd have gone about obtaining his goals,
had I been foul enough to subscribe to them. As it was, the entirely predictable
consequence of what he did do has been to copper-fasten the status quo Bin
Laden so manifestly objected to.
We haven't
got on our hands a war of civilisations, so if he was trying to start one
Bin Laden failed there as well. 9/11 hasn't altered by one iota hatred of
towelheads by those who already hated them; nor, admirably, has it led to
an upsurge of hatred for Arabs by those previously indifferent to them.
Just where does one have to look to see how little this date matters? It's
had no real impact in the yapping dogs of the Anglosphere, and as for the
real abroad, well you tell me, what of September 11th in France, or Germany,
or Brazil? Difficult to say, isn't it? Even the one change it's tempting
to attribute to it ? the dip in the loopy enthusiasm for a war with China
? saw, with Dubya's handling of the spyplane business, an entirely clear demonstration, well before 9/11, that the madness of the 'Chi-com' baiters
was merely the chatter of a faction. The faction, mind you, keenest to proclaim
war to the death against the invisible Mr Bin Laden. To take another of
their causes ? that the United States should start a war against
Iraq ? the balance of power within the administration has not been changed
by 9/11. Those who'll have to fight are still against, and those who'll
write it up in The Weekly Standard are still for it, and they wrestle
on regardless.
The stupidest
thing? The economy naturally. How many times have you read since last September
that whatever the economic fortunes of whichever patch of the planet you
sit on when you read Antiwar.com, it's magically, mysteriously, malignantly
and mendaciously all due to 9/11? How anyone can believe this witchcraft
is beyond me, but if for a second it were in some fantastical way possible,
then ? and maybe this was part of the whole UBL project, I don't know ?
ditching capitalism is one of the many, many things not to have happened,
since, because of, or due to September 11th that we really ought to wish
had.
It might
seem wilfully perverse to insist that the only thing different about the
post 9/11 world compared to the one that went before is the Manhattan skyline.
Doing so is not simply an urge to deny the fruits of victory (which is to
have achieved anything) to Bin Laden ? though that should be a large
part of our reaction. September the 11th can't matter because what gives
the West its place at the pinnacle of human civilisation is the peaceful
order our peoples know that they enjoy in sad contrast to the wretched of
the rest of the earth. Bin Laden's bombs having failed to be anything other
than a one day wonder, all that can take away that peaceful order, or freedom
if you will, is the demand on us that we should make war where none need
be made.

[quote]
On 2002-07-14 08:07, jds1958xg wrote:

On 2002-07-13 22:24, Kevin Parker '59 wrote:

It's late so my thought processes are a bit sluggish but...

I agree that barring massive, repetitive terrorist strikes on the US and an unlikely failure of our government to retaliate in a swift and effective manner, that foreign terrorism is not likely to unite the nation as WW2 did. The War on Terrorism is perceived all but won save the actual capture of OBL himself. And if Al-Queda were to do something really nasty, like suitcase-nuke a major US city, the nation harboring its leaders would be reduced to a wide sheet of glowing, radioactive plexiglass the very next day. Problem solved.

However, nor do i quite see a Civil War parallel either. Nowhere in our current Culture Wars do i find an issue so divisive (like slavery was ) that people would be willing to see 5% of the US population killed off to make their point.

What i do see is another Great Depression looming, just like last time around, except possibly without a World War 2 to jazz up the economy. While FDR's New Deal bought time, if it wasn't for the War our economy might have imploded for good by the mid 40s. If this were to happen today, we could suffer a complete collapse of our socioeconomic system, with formerly upper middle class people lynching would-be repossessors from banks, taking up arms against law enforcement to protect what they own, National Guard members refusing to fire on their neighbors. Subdivisions in turn might become Jericho-like walled enclaves, defenses against marauding desparate bands of homeless roaming outside. People forced to grow their own produce and raise their own meat (rabbits, squirrlels, opossums, etc), because they wouldn't be able to get to work even if they did still have jobs.

A very likely outcome to ths scenario, which could occur earlier into it's development, would see a population staring said economic collapse in the face quite possibly turning to a party of the extreme right, instead of the extreme left - before it reaches the point described in your post. Witness Germany in the early 1930's. After, all, it only took Hitler two years to virtually end unemployment in Germany - by drafting a lot of young men into the military, putting a lot of other people to work on public works projects and in war-related industries, and jailing all of the rest.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: jds1958xg on 2002-07-15 19:35 ]</font>

As a matter of fact, if Stonewall Patton is right about the machinery of a police state being almost in place, and waiting only to be turned 'on', and the current antics in the stock market are, in fact, phase one of the Great Devaluation predicted by S&H, then a prediction that a coworker of mine keeps making could come true - martial law before 2004, maybe even before the end of this year. The WOT would no doubt be the stated pretext, while a desperate attempt to avoid the otherwise all too likely political consequences of that kind of economic meltdown would be closer to the mark as the real reason. At this point, the main domestic issue of the 4T may well become our response as a people to the establishment of a right-wing authoritarian government. Also, with said regime in place, if the 4T does develop that way, we may well find the EU reluctantly replacing Islam or China as our primary enemy during the remainder of the 4T. Or else joining them.

Based on intervals between catalysts, does 9-1-1 "fit"?

Black Death 1346
War of Roses 1459
Armada Crisis 1569
Glorious Revolution 1675
American Revolution 1773
Civil War 1856
Depression/WWII 1929
9-1-1 2001
Intervals: 113,110,106,98,83,73,72 years.
This uses my dating of the Civil War catalyst as Bleeding Kansas, and my interpretation of the Black Death as a Crisis, of course.

On 2002-07-19 12:06, Tom Mazanec wrote:
Based on intervals between catalysts, does 9-1-1 "fit"?

Black Death 1346
War of Roses 1459
Armada Crisis 1569
Glorious Revolution 1675
American Revolution 1773
Civil War 1856
Depression/WWII 1929
9-1-1 2001
Intervals: 113,110,106,98,83,73,72 years.
This uses my dating of the Civil War catalyst as Bleeding Kansas, and my interpretation of the Black Death as a Crisis, of course.

Sounds to me like a pretty good fit. Also looks like the intervals between Catalysts is restabilizing in the 70 to 75 year range.

On 2002-07-19 12:06, Tom Mazanec wrote:
Based on intervals between catalysts, does 9-1-1 "fit"?

Black Death 1346
War of Roses 1459
Armada Crisis 1569
Glorious Revolution 1675
American Revolution 1773
Civil War 1856
Depression/WWII 1929
9-1-1 2001
Intervals: 113,110,106,98,83,73,72 years.
This uses my dating of the Civil War catalyst as Bleeding Kansas, and my interpretation of the Black Death as a Crisis, of course.

Picky comment. The War of the Roses was strictly an English crisis -- I doubt it mattered that much to the French, Germanic peoples, Italians, or Spaniards.

That means that if we are looking at Anglo-American cycles, we'd want to start the Black death crisis a couple of years later. Didn't it hit England in 1348 or 1349?

That reduces the first interval to 110 or 111 years, so your overall point is valid.

"By mid-1919, half of the world's population had contracted the disease and at least 22 million had died. More than a million Americans died from the Spanish flu outbreak, but Europe and Asia fared even worse."


What's the big deal about the Black Death of 13whatever?

On 2002-07-19 14:40, Marc Lamb wrote:

"By mid-1919, half of the world's population had contracted the disease and at least 22 million had died. More than a million Americans died from the Spanish flu outbreak, but Europe and Asia fared even worse."

What's the big deal about the Black Death of 13whatever?

To paraphrase the election 1992 slogan, its the mortality stupid!

I don't know how many Americans there were in 1918 -- 100 million? Assuming a population of 100 million, over a million deaths equals about 1 percent of the population. Horrible, but not cataclysmic, in that it didn't completely change the landscape of society.

However, the Black Death reduced Europe's population by a THIRD. I believe in England it was more like 40 to 50 percent. That kind of mortality in a short period of time will wreak havoc on a society.

Again, I'm discussing Anglo-American saeculi, not other societies. S&H's dates only apply to Anglo-American cycles.

On 2002-07-19 14:52, Jenny Genser wrote:

On 2002-07-19 14:40, Marc Lamb wrote:

"By mid-1919, half of the world's population had contracted the disease and at least 22 million had died. More than a million Americans died from the Spanish flu outbreak, but Europe and Asia fared even worse."

What's the big deal about the Black Death of 13whatever?

To paraphrase the election 1992 slogan, its the mortality stupid!

I don't know how many Americans there were in 1918 -- 100 million? Assuming a population of 100 million, over a million deaths equals about 1 percent of the population. Horrible, but not cataclysmic, in that it didn't completely change the landscape of society.

However, the Black Death reduced Europe's population by a THIRD. I believe in England it was more like 40 to 50 percent. That kind of mortality in a short period of time will wreak havoc on a society.

Again, I'm discussing Anglo-American saeculi, not other societies. S&H's dates only apply to Anglo-American cycles.

Jenny--a couple of years ago there was a documentary on PBS, Nova I think, on the 1918 flu. I can't recite the statistics which they gave but they focused quite a bit on the societal aspects of the epidemic, such as the mortality rate in comparison to the population of the U.S. at that time. Also the social effects that came from the flu's concentrated attack on the young and healthy, including young men who were crowded together in Army camps as part of the troop build-up for WW1.
I *recall* (my imperfect memory!) that they mentioned a likely decrease in the birthrate for that young generation, if only because a number of them died from the flu.
To me, the most interesting thing which was discussed was the societal amnesia about the epidemic. They said that people just wanted to put it out of their minds and in fact they were quite successful at forgetting it.(as a society, the individuals who lost loved ones grieved for the rest of their lives)
You may very well have seen the documentary--in case you didn't maybe you can find it on videotape. HTH

Black Death 1346
War of Roses 1459
Armada Crisis 1569
Glorious Revolution 1675
American Revolution 1773
Civil War 1856
Depression/WWII 1929
9-1-1 2001



"To paraphrase the election 1992 slogan, its the mortality stupid!"

Then it seems to me kinda "stupid" to place 9/11 in that kind of category.





The Black Death

About 550,000 Americans died of the 1918 flu, about 0.5% of the 103 million population.

http://chnm.gmu.edu/features/voices/...ngtowwith.html

This makes the relative impact of the 1918 pandemic on the U.S. about 1/60th that of the Black death (a crisis event) and 1/20th that of the Great Famine in 1315-17 (an awakening event).

What was the mortality of the Great Depression?
The Black Death *forced* a Crisis mode on Europe, especially England, likely starting the modern cycles of generations and seculae.
But a catalyst doesn't have to be that deadly once cycles are in motion and a society is "primed" for a Fourth Turning.

Osama bin Laden did not realize his goal of Jihad with the destruction of the WTC. There was no spontaneous uprising against U.S. interests at home or abroad.

Now people are predicting that Jihad will occur when we get Saddam and/or invade Iraq. Saddam is a two-bit thug most folks in the Middle East just as soon be rid of. They will secretly cheer when he is gone.

Meanwhile, it politics as usual with Democrats calling Republicans crooks and the Republicans cowering in the corner of the rotunda.

What's new, folks?

Oh yeah, stocks are down today... Here comes the New Deal II: Communism, this time, baby!

Some of you crisis-mongers out there need to go find a copy of this book. It'll do your heart good.