Although the product rollout is Traditionally done in the autumn, the POTUS will attempt to "sell" the Mess in Mesopotamia begining tomorrow evening on Tuesday 28 June 2005. And, in a product tie-in, ABC will launch Empire later the same evening.


Is the Bush production a summer placeholder until the fall release of a improved new product, Messing with the Medes, Chokin' the Chosen, or the blockbuster Celestial Seasoning? Or, is it a rebranding of an old reliable, a quagmire without the moisture that Texan Presidents seem to be noted for?


Is 2005 a year ahead of the Republican Redesign of the Reform of Eurasia which will be released for the 2006 elections and we will get only a preview of the things to come? Is this 3T or 4T behavior? Or is it SOP for an executive in a Commercial Republic?

Can you help the POTUS and Mr. Rove with a jingle/slogan to rebrand the Irak campaign. Something on the order of "Remember the Maine!".

Yeah, come on all of you, big strong kids,
The U S of A is on the skids.
First there was an attack,
Not from way down yonder in Iraq
So ignore Osama and pick up a gun,
We're gonna have a whole lotta fun.

And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a crap,
Next stop is Iraq;
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.

Well, come on generals, let's move fast;
Your big chance has come at last.
Gotta go out and get the evil axis —
The only good terrorist is one who never attacked the US.
And you know that safety can only be won
When we've blown 'em all to kingdom come.

Virgil needs a column, or TV show or something. Someone give the man one.

Mr. Tony Judt considers The New American Militarism How Americans are Seduced by War by Mr. Andrew J. Bacevich among others in "The New World Order", an article online at the 14 July 2005 number of the Progressive NRB.

Originally Posted by Mr. Judt

Among democracies, only in America do soldiers and other uniformed servicemen figure ubiquitously in political photo ops and popular movies. Only in America do civilians eagerly buy expensive military service vehicles for suburban shopping runs. In a country no longer supreme in most other fields of human endeavor, war and warriors have become the last, enduring symbols of American dominance and the American way of life. "In war, it seemed," writes Bacevich, "lay America's true comparative advantage."

Here in the North Star State our GOP Governor called a special session after the regular session ended with work on the budget undone. A partial "shutdown" looms as 1 July nears. In a somewhat "Wolf Lair"-ian move, Mr. Pawlenty announced he had a plane waiting to whisk himself, the Senate Majority and Minority Leaders (Democratic-Farmer-Labor and Republican) and House Speaker and Minority Leader (GOP and DFL) to a military base miles north of the Capitol to conduct a final solution of our fiscal woes.

That we taxpayers provide the governor (and the others) office space in the Capitol for public meetings, a governor's mansion for his use, and adequate salary to maintain his private suburban home for just such occasions as a meeting of five people has been deemed inadequate. He saw the need for the militarization of the public space. Off to Camp Ripley.


PS: I shall watch tonight with the sound off as I do with most political speechs of this sort with some martial music on the CD player. I am most interested in the focus group tested visuals (Thanks to Mr. Deaver, et al.) and the focus group tested words (Thanks to Ms. Hughes and Mr. Rove, et al.) will have to wait until I can read them in the WaPo.

PSS: ABC's Empire will give us an Octavius somewhat interested in women (rather than power alone) and a British cast that should speak clearly. I think I shall turn up the sound.

Originally Posted by Mr. Andrew J. Bacevich in the 28 June 2005 number of the Wa[i

Po[/i]]Who "lost" Iraq? With blame for the unhappy course of events since U.S. forces occupied Baghdad in April 2003 routinely heaped on civilian officials, the military itself has gotten a pass. In fact, senior U.S. commanders have botched the war. Acknowledging that fact is an essential first step toward improving the quality of U.S. generalship.

For this reason, reported plans to promote Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez deserve particular attention. According to media reports, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld intends to nominate Sanchez for a fourth star. But the general does not merit promotion; he can best serve his country by retiring forthwith.

from Command Responsibility

We have need of something of the like of a House of Lords or Established Church livings in this country for the important drunks who always fall up the stairs.

It's a pleasure to find myself agreeing with Mr. Saari about somethign again. Since he has brought up Andrew Bacevich, I would like to post my review of his recent book, which appeared on a professional listserve.

Andrew J. Bacevich, The New American Militarism. How Americans are Seduced by War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 226 pages, plus notes.

Andrew Bacevich’s new book combines a concise survey of changes in the American military, American politics, and American foreign policy over the last thirty years with some deeply felt suggestions for change. The author spent the first half of his adult life in the US Army, and the book is most detailed on developments relating to the military, and especially to relations between military and civilian leaders and the increasing gulf, as he sees it, between civilian society and our military forces. Like his last book, American Empire, this one shows a profound discomfort with the hegemonic tendencies of American foreign policy and military strategy—tendencies which have grown, not abated, since the end of the Cold War. Unlike American Empire, The New American Militarism ends with a list of specific proposals for change—most of them institutional. It is both a useful summary of various aspects of recent history and a provocative critique of militarism, neoconservatism, and the influence of Christian apocalyptic thought, but it still tells us just a bit more about the author’s concerns about our current course—concerns which I share—than about exactly how he would like to correct it.
The theme of the book is the United States’ increasing belief in, idealization of, and reliance upon the American military to solve all our problems, and it explores how this has come about. Like many officers of his generation, Bacevich credits the post-Vietnam military leadership, led by Creighton Abrams, with checking civilian tendencies to involve American forces in dangerous adventures. That role, of which he thoroughly approves, began to ebb during the 1990s and now has evidently been abandoned. Bacevich then traces, angrily and effectively, the growth of neoconservativsm, showing especially how a younger generation of neoconservatives shifted their doctrine’s basic principle from vigilant resistance to evil to the need for an aggressive crusade against it wherever it arises after the Soviet Union collapsed. In the eyes of Norman Podhoretz and Bill Kristol, such a crusade is critical not only to our strategic position, but to the moral nature of the United States itself, and President Bush has evidently embraced this vision as well. “In America’s future,” he summarizes ironically, “loomed the prospect of one, two, many Iraqs, and the future at long last appeared bright.” Bacevich is deeply disturbed by the implications of our current national security strategy, which asserts the right to overthrow any regime we deem hostile and dangerous, and which has not gotten enough analysis in public life or in the press.
Turning from intellectuals to politicians, Bacevich deals succinctly with Ronald Reagan’s rehabilitation of the military spirit (and of the purported “noble cause” of Vietnam), and argues that subsequent Presidents, including Bill Clinton, have climbed on the bandwagon. Here as in American Empire, I do not see Clinton exactly the same way. While it is true that he did nothing to alter the rhetorical direction of American foreign policy and went along with legislation like the Helms-Burton Act and the resolution calling for Saddam’s overthrow, in practice he was a genuine multilateralist who showed no lust for a new great war. That meant, however, that he erected no obstacles to a return to a more militant course after he left. Nor does any leading Democrat today challenge the basic premises of our foreign policy—that supporting our troops is the first priority, and that military power, properly applied, will solve all the problems we face. Interestingly enough, the only President for whom Bacevich expresses clear admiration in this book is Jimmy Carter, and he focuses on Carter’s “malaise” speech of 1979. While acknowledging that the speech was politically disastrous, Bacevich reminds us that it was one of the few times in recent history that a President both focused on one of our major national problems—our dependence on foreign oil—and did not suggest that our military would provide the solution. That approach, however, was short-lived, and just six months later Carter had taken the first step down the road that has led to Kabul and Baghdad by proclaiming that the United States would defend the Persian Gulf by force if necessary. By 2003, of course, we had concluded that “defense” was not enough.
Subsequent chapters describe the role of Christian Evangelicalism and its alliance with the militant wing of the GOP, an alliance stemming largely from the Religious Right’s view of the state of Israel as the harbinger of the last judgment. (In a welcome reminder, Bacevich mentions (p. 124) that despite Christ’s own pacifism, “Christians historically have slaughtered their fellow men, to include their fellow Christians, in breathtakingly large numbers.”) And then, he shows how all this political and religious enthusiasm for warfare has moved forward together with new approaches to fighting wars, specifically the emphasis on precision-guided munitions, smaller ground forces and fewer casualties that originated, in his view, with Albert Wohlstetter and has been promoted within the Pentagon by the venerable Andrew Marshall. All these changes, the book clearly implies, reflect reactions, in different spheres, to the catastrophe of Vietnam. Reagan rehabilitated the military morally, the all-volunteer force freed the population at large from much of its fear of foreign wars, the neconservatives found new dragons that had to be slain, Evangelicals found a moral basis for further struggles, and military theorists found cheaper, cleaner ways to fight. Only late in the book, however, does he turn to the question of what the new wars are about.
The answer, he feels, is oil. Faced with political threats to American hegemony in the Middle East, the United States beginning in the 1980s began a long and escalating series of military involvements in the region, culminating in the March to Baghdad. (Bacevich, like virtually every Administration critic, supports the war against Afghanistan, but not, clearly, the war against Saddam Hussein.) Now the neoconservatives are trumpeting this extension of our empire as “World War IV”—even though, as Bacevich says (p. 191) it is clearly a regional conflict that is really confined to just one part of one continent, an area that our foreign policy elite has decided we must control. Bacevich spends relatively little time on the other source of our involvement in the Middle East, the unwavering support of the neoconservatives for Israel and for any expansion of Israeli territory that Israeli leaders find necessary. That, I think, rather than oil, was probably the original impetus for the emergence of neoconservatism in the late 1960s, as Judith Klinghoffer showed in her book on the subject, but at this point it is probably impossible to disaggregate the two influences anyway.
And what is to be done? With respect to political objectives, even Bacevich has been swept along by events. There is no alternative, he says, to continuing our struggle with Osama Bin Laden for the soul of the Middle East. However, his recommendations would inevitably mean that the United States would have to give up its obsession with controlling political and military events around the globe. In general, he wants a more defensive orientation for American foreign policy, a revived Congressional role to restrain executive adventures, a major reduction in our dependence upon foreign oil, and a withdrawal of foreign troops from nations that, in his view, no longer need them, including the European Union, Korea, and Japan. He also wants a drastic reduction in the military budget, to bring it more in line with what other countries spend. In a sense, these proposals seem to reflect Bacevich’s nostalgia for the late 1970s and early 1980s, when a chastened military leadership checked its civilian superiors. Rather than propose specifically to re-orient America’s objectives, he would prefer to leave civilians without options. As a contemporary of Bacevich’s whose life has also been divided between civilian academia and working for the Department of Defense—and who shares his interest in Charles A. Beard, who received more attention in his last book than in this one—I would have preferred to see an alternative view of what the American place in the world might be, but as a historian I must agree that anything that might restrain over-ambitious civilians must generally be welcomed. The simple temptation of power remains perhaps the biggest danger to the peaceful and productive life of the human species.
His more specific recommendations involve the military. He does not call for a renewed draft, but proposes creatively that any young American signing up for the military receive a free college education. That undoubtedly would broaden the military’s social base and free hundreds of thousands of talented young people of major educational debt burdens, but in today’s fiscal climate it seems quite unlikely. And in an equally radical step, he proposes that the officer corps receive its education exclusively in civilian institutions, spending just one year at a service academy after graduation before commissioning. To one who has spent the last fifteen years in the military educational system that seems like a very interesting idea as well, but, I am afraid, equally unlikely of adoption.
While regretting that Bacevich could not offer new goals or more likely solutions to our current problems, I certainly cannot claim that I can do better. The author and I are virtually the same age, both of us served (in my case, only briefly and safely) in the Vietnam-era military, and both of us clearly have been questioning the scope of the United States’ role in the world ever since. But in the wake of the end of the Cold War, when, as we agree, the United States essentially gave up the chance to return to a much narrower view of its world responsibilities, I have had to conclude that we have simply succumbed, like so many other nations of the past, to the temptations of superior power, and that nothing but a new series of setbacks is likely to make us reverse course. Neoconservatism, militant Evangelical religion, and our crusade for democracy are simply the contemporary manifestations of something much older and more intractable. For the time being, only our relatively restricted military capabilities will check what we can do, and only after we clearly have failed to achieve some of the extraordinary goals we have now set ourselves will we be forced to accept something less. But in the meantime, it is reassuring, in a small way, to see that we still produce dissenters, like Bacevich, who refuse to be swept along in the flow.


Meanwhile, I have been reading a great new book, Washington's Crossing, by David Hackett Fisher. It is the story of the campaigns of 1776-7, and it points out that the colonies only got their act together in the last two months of 1776 (when Thomas Paine wrote The Crisis), after their fortunes had sunk to new lows. The same thing, of course, happened to the North after Bull Run, and to the US in 1933. I hate having to waste the decade of my fifties watching us sink lower and lower, but evidently, that is the way history works, and this seems to be the only way that we will produce the leadership we really need.

David K '47

Originally Posted by Milo

Virgil needs a column, or TV show or something. Someone give the man one.

NPR might like his style. :lol:

Mr. Bush spoke in front American flags and Presidential seals all washed up and worn to match his pale neckwear. Only ABC seemed to show our French capped armed forces in reaction shots, CBS and NBC seemed to focus only on the POTUS. CBS had the best color filters (the President looking a combination of floridity and tan) with ABC in the middle and NBC all gray. (Duluth, MN stations at 70 miles remove).


The shock of the evening was the wide-eyed Democrat, Ms. Nancy Pelosi of California on NBC. Her smokey pearls looked ever so much like a string of human eyeballs strung about her neck. This may have been the Democrat attempt to seem fierce to the rest of the world and the Red Zone at home. It may well succeed, this Blue Zoner thought it creepy.


Over at ABC's Empire Caesar became more convincing after he expired; more Caesar-like as a corpse than when he walked. Cassius, my sentimental favorite from Shakespeare's play came off pretty well. Rome seemed to be rather small Provincial town. Serviila, Brutus' mother came off well acted as I have come to understand her. Octavian seemed a bit too naive. But, this was the evening's second fiction so we must not press for too much.


More anon.

We have a Fourth of July Summer Promotion.

It's time to move product to clear the path for the new fall models...The Irak Constitutionalism. The speech (I read the transcript in the Guardian (UK) so there may have been certain language translation problems) was much of what I heard in 1966-67 from that other Texan about another corner of Asia. 9-11=Irak=WOT is the Tall Tonkin Tale four decades later. It was a mixture of evasion and cant that would have made Mr. Lyndon Johnson smile.

Originally Posted by POTUS

If our commanders on the ground say we need more troops, I will send them. But our commanders tell me they have the number of troops they need to do their job.

As we determine the right force level, our troops can know that I will continue to be guided by the advice that matters: the sober judgment of our military leaders.

WaPo American translation

Mr. Johnson too was giving the commanders everything they asked for after making sure that they never asked for more than he wished to send. This is a poll driven, politically managed "war" that the GOP is said to have decried when the Democrat Party was managing one of the like.

Perhaps with cooler weather and cooler heads in the autumn, something like the truth will come from Mr. Bush's regime. With global warming one cannot count on such a thing.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

... I hate having to waste the decade of my fifties watching us sink lower and lower, but evidently, that is the way history works, and this seems to be the only way that we will produce the leadership we really need.

David K '47

Sadly, I must agree.

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

Originally Posted by Milo

Virgil needs a column, or TV show or something. Someone give the man one.

NPR might like his style. :lol:

Indeed!

Me, too, on the last two posts!

--Croakmore

Originally Posted by POTUS

If our commanders on the ground say we need more troops, I will send them. But our commanders tell me they have the number of troops they need to do their job.

Who the hell is he kidding?!? Scratch that. I guess he's kidding about 40-45% of us.

Originally Posted by Witchiepoo

I have a suggestion: Stop watching television.

Maybe he'll stop invading places if his TV ratings go down?

Who has time for television between work, family, and T4T?

Then again, I must admit I do make time for the Daily Show when I can. [And Battlestar Galactica when it puts on new shows again]

Originally Posted by Peter Gibbons

And Battlestar Galactica when it puts on new shows again

Just over two more weeks to wait, Sean! (July 15th, to be exact!) Believe you me, I'm counting the days, too.

BTW, do you have the new soundtrack?

Originally Posted by Sabinus Invictus

Originally Posted by Peter Gibbons

And Battlestar Galactica when it puts on new shows again

Just over two more weeks to wait, Sean! (July 15th, to be exact!) Believe you me, I'm counting the days, too.

BTW, do you have the new soundtrack?

Soundtrack?!? No. Should I get it?

I am as excited as you are about the new episodes. I haven't been this engrossed by a TV series in over 20 years.

Originally Posted by Peter Gibbons

Originally Posted by Sabinus Invictus

BTW, do you have the new soundtrack?

Soundtrack?!? No. Should I get it?

YES!!!

I do have it, and it is GREAT!!!

I'm surprised V. hasn't garnered cult status.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

... I have had to conclude that we have simply succumbed, like so many other nations of the past, to the temptations of superior power, and that nothing but a new series of setbacks is likely to make us reverse course.

I hate having to waste the decade of my fifties watching us sink lower and lower, but evidently, that is the way history works, and this seems to be the only way that we will produce the leadership we really need.

It is interesting that the writer, here, is a full-fledged liberal Democrat. History recalls the time when, before American began to "sink lower and lower," Democrats cornered the market on Congress and the Commander in Chief. For more than twenty years, from 1930 to 1952, Democrats owned Washington D.C., and transformed it from a dreary little town to the new dealin', vast industrial military complex that it became. When Truman finally turned the reigns of power over to a Republican, fully 70% of the nation's budget was earmarked for military and defense.

Somewhere in between Ike, and when Democrats finally ceded control of Congress to Republicans, in 1994 -- Nixon, or Reagan, I presume -- I would suppose the writer believes American began her downward slide to "lower and lower" depths. And with her slide, of course, sank the fortunes of liberal Democrats like David Kaiser.

Two strikingly downward trends, sinking seemingly on parallel paths.

But Kaiser has "high hopes," we might say. He firmly believes the Democrat's "future is with the Millennial generation," and has quite plainly said so.

Given the nature of previous "fourth turnings," I am left to conclude that Kaiser's new generation of liberals will be poised to embrace confiscatory taxes and near stifling military budgets, with Kaiser himself cheering every increase, not to mention his approving the loss of liberty to military conscription.

But, of course, this isn't the future Kaiser's liberal Democrats are dreaming of at all. Quite the opposite is what they have in mind. Quite the opposite from our previous FDR New Dealin' Democrat dominance is what they'd like to see. No, instead of a renewal of the Great Power turning, they dream of no more "militant Evangelical... crusade for democracy" ala FDR's Four Freedoms.

If history repeats, it would appear Kaiser's liberal friends believe one of two things: No more Hitlers or Stalins will threaten the world of tomorrow, or America herself is the Great Satan of the future.

Selecting either choice, of course, is why liberal Democrats themselves seem to "sink lower and lower" every single day.

EJ Dionne has it about right:

"Bush's supporters could argue that the lack of interest suggests that the Iraq war has yet to arouse passionate opposition. But the obverse is also true: There is very little enthusiasm for this war. Support or acquiescence might not survive much more than another year, less if there is a significant run of bad news."

Given the plummeting enlistment numbers, and our likely inability to sustain the occupation at current force levels for more than another year without a draft, will Americans support a draft for a war they have little enthusiasm in? Will they be willing to support a counter-insurgency in Iraq that lasts (as Rumsfeld has suggested) twelve years, maybe longer? What happens when the boomers begin to retire en masse, and taxes must be doubled or more than doubled to pay for both guns and butter? If the American people aren't enthusiastic about this war now, how enthusiastic will they be when it causes them significant financial hardship, and the prospect of their children dying?

Originally Posted by Devil's Advocate

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

... I have had to conclude that we have simply succumbed, like so many other nations of the past, to the temptations of superior power, and that nothing but a new series of setbacks is likely to make us reverse course.

I hate having to waste the decade of my fifties watching us sink lower and lower, but evidently, that is the way history works, and this seems to be the only way that we will produce the leadership we really need.

It is interesting that the writer, here, is a full-fledged liberal Democrat. History recalls the time when, before American began to "sink lower and lower," Democrats cornered the market on Congress and the Commander in Chief. For more than twenty years, from 1930 to 1952, Democrats owned Washington D.C., and transformed it from a dreary little town to the new dealin', vast industrial military complex that it became. When Truman finally turned the reigns of power over to a Republican, fully 70% of the nation's budget was earmarked for military and defense.

Somewhere in between Ike, and when Democrats finally ceded control of Congress to Republicans, in 1994 -- Nixon, or Reagan, I presume -- I would suppose the writer believes American began her downward slide to "lower and lower" depths. And with her slide, of course, sank the fortunes of liberal Democrats like David Kaiser.

Two strikingly downward trends, sinking seemingly on parallel paths.

But Kaiser has "high hopes," we might say. He firmly believes the Democrat's "future is with the Millennial generation," and has quite plainly said so.

Given the nature of previous "fourth turnings," I am left to conclude that Kaiser's new generation of liberals will be poised to embrace confiscatory taxes and near stifling military budgets, with Kaiser himself cheering every increase, not to mention his approving the loss of liberty to military conscription.

But, of course, this isn't the future Kaiser's liberal Democrats are dreaming of at all. Quite the opposite is what they have in mind. Quite the opposite from our previous FDR New Dealin' Democrat dominance is what they'd like to see. No, instead of a renewal of the Great Power turning, they dream of no more "militant Evangelical... crusade for democracy" ala FDR's Four Freedoms.

If history repeats, it would appear Kaiser's liberal friends believe one of two things: No more Hitlers or Stalins will threaten the world of tomorrow, or America herself is the Great Satan of the future.

Selecting either choice, of course, is why liberal Democrats themselves seem to "sink lower and lower" every single day.

Partisan, but I almost agree with that summary. Let me attempt a rewording which attempts a generational perspective rather than a red / blue partisan spin.

In addition to the Four Freedoms -- of Speech, of Religion, from Fear and from Want, everywhere in the world -- I'd propose one more line tagging the GI Generation's Big Government Liberalism. It would be JFK's willingness to bear any burden, pay any price. FDR's and JFK's ideas combine to a notion that Big Government can do Great Things... World War II, the Cold War, the War on Poverty, the Civil Rights Movement, the Moon Race... There was a belief in government, and a willingness to give government the resources it needed to achieve these great things.

To me, this belief in government, America and the Military Industrial Complex came apart with a series of disasters which befouled our belief in ourselves. Watergate, the Fall of Saigon, stagflation, the Hostage Crisis and the Oil Crisis deflated the United States, and ushered in the unraveling. The positive aspects of both the GI Generation and the Boomers were submerged in a selfishness. Our belief in massive programs to do the nigh on impossible vanished. Reaganomics promised something for nothing, and America bought into it. To me, Morning in America was a false dawn. The varied followers of both Reagan and Clinton asked not what they could do for their country, but what their country could do for them.

To me, it is not clear that a true dawn is pending. A few Memorial Days ago, shortly after Columbine, I visited the memorial battleship USS Massachusetts. There were a bunch of World War II army recreationists behind Turret Three, wearing period uniforms, displaying period equipment. Two things rang alarm bells for me. When a teen ager asked if he could hold a rifle, the recreationist had to refuse. Massachusetts gun laws forbade long arms in the hand of kids. It was also noted that they were displaying cartridge belts and boxes, but there were no rounds present, not even blanks. Not when there might be kids about.

The kids being refused permission to touch, being denied access to munitions, were nigh on the average age of the crew of the USS Massachusetts during her active years. The Millenials are not trusted as the GIs once were. This would make any rendezvous with destiny problematic.

One of the clichés of the GI Generation was their walking 10 miles through snowstorms to get to school. The Millennial cliché is that they got driven to soccer practice in SUVs. There is far too much truth in the gap between these two clichés. And it isn't just the Millennials that I question. Nobody is walking 10 miles through snowstorms to get anywhere. All generations are riding in SUVs. No one is willing to bear undue burdens, or pay any price higher than the post Berlin Wall level peace time budget.

If we are to remake the world into something startlingly new and different, as is traditional in American Fourth Turnings, the spirit of the Four Freedoms driven by a willingness to bear any burden, to pay any price would have to return. I'm not seeing it. The problems are out there: economic, military, ecological, moral, religious and political. It is hard to see all of them stagnating unaddressed for long. But I don't see anyone with vision in either the Red or Blue camps, or more importantly the will and energy. At the moment, I am less concerned with the lack of leadership than a lack of people ready to be led. Too many, in both red and blue states, do not see a need for the sort of radical transformation normal in a Fourth Turning. If the people are not ready to be led, the Grey Champion is apt to remain hidden in fog, or might he or she rise up in a land where the problems are more blatantly visible, where need for change cannot be denied?

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

One of the clichés of the GI Generation was their walking 10 miles through snowstorms to get to school. The Millennial cliché is that they got driven to soccer practice in SUVs. There is far too much truth in the gap between these two clichés. And it isn't just the Millennials that I question. Nobody is walking 10 miles through snowstorms to get anywhere. All generations are riding in SUVs. No one is willing to bear undue burdens, or pay any price higher than the post Berlin Wall level peace time budget.

If we are to remake the world into something startlingly new and different, as is traditional in American Fourth Turnings, the spirit of the Four Freedoms driven by a willingness to bear any burden, to pay any price would have to return. I'm not seeing it. The problems are out there: economic, military, ecological, moral, religious and political. It is hard to see all of them stagnating unaddressed for long. But I don't see anyone with vision in either the Red or Blue camps, or more importantly the will and energy. At the moment, I am less concerned with the lack of leadership than a lack of people ready to be led. Too many, in both red and blue states, do not see a need for the sort of radical transformation normal in a Fourth Turning. If the people are not ready to be led, the Grey Champion is apt to remain hidden in fog, or might he or she rise up in a land where the problems are more blatantly visible, where need for change cannot be denied?

That's pretty much it. The neoconservative elite dreams of a new era of national purpose, but not even red staters wish to sacrifice their young for this cause (which is what exactly? someone remind me...), let alone fat and happy purple America. I sense a certain Great Power fatigue now, a waning cultural cohesion that can't be resurrected, and a slouching toward global corporate plutocracy that can't be reversed. This isn't the end of America, but that doesn't mean our best days aren't behind us.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

In addition to the Four Freedoms -- of Speech, of Religion, from Fear and from Want, everywhere in the world -- I'd propose one more line tagging the GI Generation's Big Government Liberalism. It would be JFK's willingness to bear any burden, pay any price. FDR's and JFK's ideas combine to a notion that Big Government can do Great Things... World War II, the Cold War, the War on Poverty, the Civil Rights Movement, the Moon Race... There was a belief in government, and a willingness to give government the resources it needed to achieve these great things.

To me, this belief in government, America and the Military Industrial Complex came apart with a series of disasters which befouled our belief in ourselves. Watergate, the Fall of Saigon, stagflation, the Hostage Crisis and the Oil Crisis deflated the United States, and ushered in the unraveling. The positive aspects of both the GI Generation and the Boomers were submerged in a selfishness. Our belief in massive programs to do the nigh on impossible vanished. Reaganomics promised something for nothing, and America bought into it. To me, Morning in America was a false dawn. The varied followers of both Reagan and Clinton asked not what they could do for their country, but what their country could do for them.

What you are describing is very similar to my paradigm model for the saeculum. The first paragraph described elements of the "Progress through Pulic Action" paradigm of the GI's. Progress paradigms arise in a Crisis and come under attack during the Awakening as described in the second paragraph.

One of the clichés of the GI Generation was their walking 10 miles through snowstorms to get to school. The Millennial cliché is that they got driven to soccer practice in SUVs. There is far too much truth in the gap between these two clichés. And it isn't just the Millennials that I question. Nobody is walking 10 miles through snowstorms to get anywhere. All generations are riding in SUVs. No one is willing to bear undue burdens, or pay any price higher than the post Berlin Wall level peace time budget.

Here you describe some elements of the "Self Actualization Paradigm" of the Boomers. This paradigm belongs to the "Freedom" class of paradigms that arise during the Awakening and comes under attack in the Crisis.

If we are to remake the world into something startlingly new and different, as is traditional in American Fourth Turnings, the spirit of the Four Freedoms driven by a willingness to bear any burden, to pay any price would have to return. I'm not seeing it. The problems are out there: economic, military, ecological, moral, religious and political. It is hard to see all of them stagnating unaddressed for long. But I don't see anyone with vision in either the Red or Blue camps, or more importantly the will and energy. At the moment, I am less concerned with the lack of leadership than a lack of people ready to be led. Too many, in both red and blue states, do not see a need for the sort of radical transformation normal in a Fourth Turning. If the people are not ready to be led, the Grey Champion is apt to remain hidden in fog, or might he or she rise up in a land where the problems are more blatantly visible, where need for change cannot be denied?

Here you lament the lack of a new progress paradigm. Your invoking of the "Four Freedoms"--a conception of the old progress paradigm, now practically extinct--shows we have no conception about what the new paradigm is going to look like and must look at the past for clues.

People have never become willing to bear any burden out of a sense of civic duty. They have done so only when they had to. It is the job of the Crisis to produce that "have to". Willingness to bear burdens and national unity comes towards the end of the High. This is decades away so its not surprising we don't see it now.

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

Here you lament the lack of a new progress paradigm. Your invoking of the "Four Freedoms"--a conception of the old progress paradigm, now practically extinct--shows we have no conception about what the new paradigm is going to look like and must look at the past for clues.

People have never become willing to bear any burden out of a sense of civic duty. They have done so only when they had to. It is the job of the Crisis to produce that "have to". Willingness to bear burdens and national unity comes towards the end of the High. This is decades away so its not surprising we don't see it now.

Hmm... I see the various progress paradigms as extensions of one another. The preamble to the Declaration of Independance, the Gettysburg Address, the Four Freedoms, King's "I Have a Dream," explicitly evoke their predicessors. (The Dream speech opens, "Five score years ago...") Each restatement of these basic ideas extends them, asserts new rights, or applies them to a new group of people. At Gettysburg, 'all men' meant 'all men.' FDR added the Freedoms From to the Freedoms Of, and repeated the phrase 'everywhere in the world' for each Freedom. If the Four Freedoms are dead, they are dead like the Phoenix. Keep an eye on the ashes.

But are you saying that the GIs in World War II were not willing to bear any burden, pay any price? The unity phrase "Politics stops at the water's edge" originated in a 1944 Republican speech. Is this "towards the end of the High?" I see such unity as running the duration of the High. Such unity is born out of the lessons learned of the crisis, and a need for stability following great trauma. This unity falls apart with the Awakening, as the new prophets question the status quo, proclaiming new visions, new values. Thus, I am very dubious about your timing.

I can agree that the 'new births of freedom' coming about every 'four score and seven years' is driven by crisis, by flaws in society no longer endurable. I see each great restatement coming with these rebirths as building on the previous, and borrowing much from existing culture and traditional values of prior crises. While I might be as radical an advocate of these values as anyone active on this board, even I don't see much of a need to extend things further than the Four Freedoms and the Dream Speech. We don't need new ideals as much as we need to embrace the old.

Of course, embracing a phoenix isn't done lightly. You are correct, we are not apt to do so unless we have to.