All studies seem to indicate the opposite, and that we are still steeped in a mode of consumption rather than frugality. One of the big examples is that in spite of gasoline prices which are 40c/gal ahead of last year, demand is still rising, and nobody seems to be cutting back on their driving. Although this is something we should be doing, I doubt if it will happen before it absolutely has to.
Assuming our consumption binge is part and parcel of the 3T mood, and I suspect it is, we should have one hell of a transition to a 4T on this aspect alone. :shock:Originally Posted by Brian Beecher
Americans have had enough of glitz and roar . . Foreboding has deepened, and spiritual currents have darkened . . .
THE FOURTH TURNING IS AT HAND.
See T4T, p. 253.
Yeah. I notice that even Greenspan is finally worried.Assuming our consumption binge is part and parcel of the 3T mood, and I suspect it is, we should have one hell of a transition to a 4T on this aspect alone. :shock:
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
A
To really answer whether or not the Fourth Turning
started is to determine how America would look after Bush
leaves office in 2009. By then the Unraveling would
seemed played out as worries of the concensus from Culture
Wars grow into real fear of Post-Bush America.
Only by then maybe, the Millennials would be called upon to
change this around.
Amphibian Suicide Bombers???
Re: Amphibian Suicide Bombers???
Shocking! Orthodox Amphib'ians frown on these violent insurgents from Toadistan.
I say we are still very much in 3T at this point, because the consumption binge seems to still be very alive and well, as well as a certain cockiness on the part of most Americans. Last night I had dinner with a female friend and we got to talking about the spike in gas prices and where it might play out to where people could no longer afford it. Her response was that people want to go where they want to go and do what they want to do when they want to do it, with a defiant tone in her voice. She seems to think that this mentality will not end even if gas reaches $10/gal. If she is right, I'm afraid that there is a better chance of seeing pigs fly than there is of our voluntarily reducing our dependency on the auto anytime soon.
Holding an opinion and having to acutally deal with the result are two different things. I'll bet on sticker shock at $10/gal., because a typical car with a 20 galon tank will require $200 to fill-up. THat sounds a lot different than $10/gal.
Once that sinks-in, the fact that fuel costs $.50/mile will be the next revelation.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
Comments by Bush Judicial Nominee and California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown
Reported in LA Times
Do Evangelicals sense something that the rest of the country, those reading this being excluded of course, do not? Have they smelled the approaching storm in the air and are positioning themselves to have their ideals imprinted on the next saeculum? Or is this a product of the Unraveling rather than a conscious preparation for the Crisis?"There seems to have been no time since the Civil War that this country was so bitterly divided. It's not a shooting war, but it is a war," she said, according to a report published Monday in the Stamford Advocate.
"These are perilous times for people of faith," she said, "not in the sense that we are going to lose our lives, but in the sense that it will cost you something if you are a person of faith who stands up for what you believe in and say those things out loud."
Leave No Child Behind - Teach Evolution.
It all sounds a lot like paranoia to me. This idea that they are persecuted when they are clearly in the majority and clearly setting the agenda is bizarre ... or is it?
Is their unrest due to the assumption that the attitudes they hold toward others the same as others hold toward them? Are they secret haters worried about the 'other' secret haters? They certainly support the use of punishment over prevention - just note the overflowing prisons. Perhaps they expect to have that inflicted on them ... or they think God will banish them to Hell for not being good Christian soldiers.
Pick one.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
Well, Teaspoon certainly seems to expect some fire-and-brimstoning from the opposition once his boys let loose of the levers of power...
I had a fairly conservative student in class who was clearly quite religious. Anyway, some of her comments reminded me that some ppl of faith still think they are being fed to the lions. From the other side of the culture divide, I find this belief quite strange, but I do know it's there. They really see moving the 10Cs off the courthouse lawn as similar to chomping lions. This particular student brought up a story of evangelists being executed for evangelizing. IN CHINA! Seriously, how does one even talk to such ppl?
MGibbons is not hallucinating. One of the reasons I am now a poodle instead of a Southern Baptist (baptised at age 8, first in my class in Sunday School for many years) is that many of my fellow Baptists were, and I use the term advisedly, nutcases. No small part of this is the Scots-Irish warrior culture that has adopted evengelistic Christianinty as thier state religion.
Wally (59)
I have always been bemused by the fact that they want to be the Silent Majority and the Prosecuted Minority at the same time.
I also love the fact that many of these 10C monuments were erected as part of a marketing scheme for a certain Charlton Heston film... Ah, the Lord does work in mysterious ways.
Leave No Child Behind - Teach Evolution.
The ancestry culture of the Upland Southerners was the Scots-Irish or Borderer subculture of Britain. It extends from Northern England into Lowland Scotland and Ulster.MGibbons is not hallucinating. One of the reasons I am now a poodle instead of a Southern Baptist (baptised at age 8, first in my class in Sunday School for many years) is that many of my fellow Baptists were, and I use the term advisedly, nutcases. No small part of this is the Scots-Irish warrior culture that has adopted evengelistic Christianinty as thier state religion.
Wally (59)
In Ulster especially the Borderers had and still have a siege mentality, they lived in a land which had a Catholic majority for a long time and they felt scared, also during the 18th century the Presbyterian Ulstermen were being persecuted by the Anglican authorities. This siege mentality and feeling of being persecuted persisted into the American backcountry.
The same sort of siege/persecution mentality existed in the Irish Catholics, which was carried to America and Australia. I think it died out among the Irish Catholics when they took control of their society.
"If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion"
L. Ron Hubbard
Christians are the overwhelming majority and Evangleicals are the Christian Soldiers, marching as to war. I know of no other religous group that wants to rule the world, with the possible exception of some fringe Muslim sects.I'm not sure that I follow here. If I understand you correctly, you're saying that evangelicals are in the majority? Or are you saying that Christians in general are? The former is simply untrue and the latter is true, but it only means what you seem to be suggesting if you conflate all Christians into a single, monolithic group.It all sounds a lot like paranoia to me. This idea that they are persecuted when they are clearly in the majority and clearly setting the agenda is bizarre ... or is it?
Is their unrest due to the assumption that the attitudes they hold toward others the same as others hold toward them? Are they secret haters worried about the 'other' secret haters? They certainly support the use of punishment over prevention - just note the overflowing prisons. Perhaps they expect to have that inflicted on them ... or they think God will banish them to Hell for not being good Christian soldiers.
Pick one.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
Huh? The expectation is that 200K hybrids will be sold this year, up from 40K last year. There are waiting lists for these models.
The biggest factor holding back more aggressive rollout of hybrids is that they are considerably more expensive than a similar conventional automobile. Hybrids aren't experimental any more, the Honda Accord hybrid is indistinguishable from the regular Accord (except for the price). There is also a question of battery lifetime that will affect resale value for at least a decade.
At present gas is far too cheap to clearly justify paying the premium price for the hybid. But when gas rises above $4/gallon hybrids will make sense. So will hybrid-electrics which get much higher mileage in short-distance driving, but for these the technology is still experimental.
Unless you expect gas prices below $4 to get people to carpool and combine trips to reduce gas consumption, gas will get to $4 and higher if the peak oil theory is correct.
And even if hybrids do become popular, prices will continue to rise if the peak oil hypothesis is correct, they will simply rise more slowly.
What do you think it would take to get people interested in carpooling or considering alternatives to the automobile, such as mass transit? If studies conducted recently are correct, there already is a trend toward consolidation of non-work related trips. Is anybody on this forum doing it? To me more public transit would be the logical thing, because, as I have pointed out many times and this is something the pundits don't seem to mention is that you can switch to hybrids to reduce oil dependency, but the gridlock problem still remains, and we can't go on forever building our way out of congestion, which I believe does negate much of the convenience of driving. I'm sure there are many people right here on this forum who have had experiences of being late for work or other important engagements as a result of being stuck in traffic. Yet this never seems to get mentioned in many discussions. In a later post I shall point out why switching to public transit can be liberating rather than confining, something else the cocky American public has refused to consider.
Well, there are evangelicals and there are fundamentalists and then there are Christian Reconstructionists/Dominionists. The latter group is the one that scares me the most, because they actually want to throw out the Constitution and make this country a Christian theocracy.At the risk of seeming dense, is it the evangelicals who want to rule the world, or Christians in general? If it's the former, are we including the large minority (something like 10 million) of self-professed evangelicals who voted Kerry, or the 55% of self-professed evangelicals who chose President Clinton over Senator Dole? Was this all part of their nefarious plan to rule the world, or what?Christians are the overwhelming majority and Evangleicals are the Christian Soldiers, marching as to war. I know of no other religous group that wants to rule the world, with the possible exception of some fringe Muslim sects.
In the DC area, particularly Northern Virginia, hybrid sales are booming. You know why? Because in Northern Virginia, an area known for horrible traffic congestion, carpool-only lanes are open to hybrids. I personally know people who bought hybrids specifically so that they could commute downtown in the carpool lanes.
That is one way that governments can influence purchasing decisions and steer consumers towards ecological choices.
I want people to know that peace is possible even in this stupid day and age. Prem Rawat, June 8, 2008
Said siege mentality still persists, in America, as part of the "Border/Backcountry' subculture. (In fact, losing a certain 4T war 140 years ago reinforced it!)The ancestry culture of the Upland Southerners was the Scots-Irish or Borderer subculture of Britain. It extends from Northern England into Lowland Scotland and Ulster.MGibbons is not hallucinating. One of the reasons I am now a poodle instead of a Southern Baptist (baptised at age 8, first in my class in Sunday School for many years) is that many of my fellow Baptists were, and I use the term advisedly, nutcases. No small part of this is the Scots-Irish warrior culture that has adopted evengelistic Christianinty as thier state religion.
Wally (59)
In Ulster especially the Borderers had and still have a siege mentality, they lived in a land which had a Catholic majority for a long time and they felt scared, also during the 18th century the Presbyterian Ulstermen were being persecuted by the Anglican authorities. This siege mentality and feeling of being persecuted persisted into the American backcountry.
The same sort of siege/persecution mentality existed in the Irish Catholics, which was carried to America and Australia. I think it died out among the Irish Catholics when they took control of their society.
Note to Liberals: Trying to get rid of that mentality with ridicule and scorn, however emotionally satisfying to you, is like trying to use kerosene or gasoline to put out a fire. :wink:
No, most Christians, like most members of other faiths, tend to compartmentalize faith, politics and many other aspects of their lives. The Evangelicals are called to break-down those barriers and proselytize. The most agressive, who seem to speak for all these days, take that evangelical mission to the extreme.At the risk of seeming dense, is it the evangelicals who want to rule the world, or Christians in general? If it's the former, are we including the large minority (something like 10 million) of self-professed evangelicals who voted Kerry, or the 55% of self-professed evangelicals who chose President Clinton over Senator Dole? Was this all part of their nefarious plan to rule the world, or what?Christians are the overwhelming majority and Evangleicals are the Christian Soldiers, marching as to war. I know of no other religous group that wants to rule the world, with the possible exception of some fringe Muslim sects.
Of course, all evangelicals are not created equal, and their views on various issues are actually pretty diverse. (And when we widen the net to include Christians in general, that diversity increases substantially.) While there are some rather spooky neo-traditionalist elements within the larger community of evangelicals, there's little evidence to suggest that they're in the majority. (And they're certainly not in the majority of Christians in general.)
The problem is really an internal one. Do the less dogmatic allow themselves to be pawns of the extremists. So far, the jury is out on that.
People who base their world view on mythology are going to make the news. People who use that view to issue a call to action are going to get a reaction.
If people of faith want this to stop, then they need to be the ones chastising their brethern. I think Kiff is taking this task to heart. So is Jenny and few others. Anothe tact can be a simple refusal to be included in the nonsense, like Virgil Saari and Seadog.
Personally, I'd just as soon not get involved in these religous conflicts. I'm a poor messenger.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
Both of you are quite correct. I don't see a fix for it.Said siege mentality still persists, in America, as part of the "Border/Backcountry' subculture. (In fact, losing a certain 4T war 140 years ago reinforced it!)The ancestry culture of the Upland Southerners was the Scots-Irish or Borderer subculture of Britain. It extends from Northern England into Lowland Scotland and Ulster.MGibbons is not hallucinating. One of the reasons I am now a poodle instead of a Southern Baptist (baptised at age 8, first in my class in Sunday School for many years) is that many of my fellow Baptists were, and I use the term advisedly, nutcases. No small part of this is the Scots-Irish warrior culture that has adopted evengelistic Christianinty as thier state religion.
Wally (59)
In Ulster especially the Borderers had and still have a siege mentality, they lived in a land which had a Catholic majority for a long time and they felt scared, also during the 18th century the Presbyterian Ulstermen were being persecuted by the Anglican authorities. This siege mentality and feeling of being persecuted persisted into the American backcountry.
The same sort of siege/persecution mentality existed in the Irish Catholics, which was carried to America and Australia. I think it died out among the Irish Catholics when they took control of their society.
Note to Liberals: Trying to get rid of that mentality with ridicule and scorn, however emotionally satisfying to you, is like trying to use kerosene or gasoline to put out a fire. :wink:
Wally.
That is hilarious! Americans will spend thousands of dollars to use the carpool lane but not one penny to actually form a carpool and use the lane for free!
Leave No Child Behind - Teach Evolution.
Neither do I. At least none short of either backing off and giving them their space, or else doing the very things to them which they fully expect their enemies to do. And if someone chooses the latter option, that someone had best be ready to back it up. :twisted:Both of you are quite correct. I don't see a fix for it.Said siege mentality still persists, in America, as part of the "Border/Backcountry' subculture. (In fact, losing a certain 4T war 140 years ago reinforced it!)The ancestry culture of the Upland Southerners was the Scots-Irish or Borderer subculture of Britain. It extends from Northern England into Lowland Scotland and Ulster.MGibbons is not hallucinating. One of the reasons I am now a poodle instead of a Southern Baptist (baptised at age 8, first in my class in Sunday School for many years) is that many of my fellow Baptists were, and I use the term advisedly, nutcases. No small part of this is the Scots-Irish warrior culture that has adopted evengelistic Christianinty as thier state religion.
Wally (59)
In Ulster especially the Borderers had and still have a siege mentality, they lived in a land which had a Catholic majority for a long time and they felt scared, also during the 18th century the Presbyterian Ulstermen were being persecuted by the Anglican authorities. This siege mentality and feeling of being persecuted persisted into the American backcountry.
The same sort of siege/persecution mentality existed in the Irish Catholics, which was carried to America and Australia. I think it died out among the Irish Catholics when they took control of their society.
Note to Liberals: Trying to get rid of that mentality with ridicule and scorn, however emotionally satisfying to you, is like trying to use kerosene or gasoline to put out a fire. :wink:
Wally.
