Originally Posted by oy

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

How will the ideological Republicans react, especially if civil unions pop up around the country and Kerry gets to nominate a Supreme Court Justice? (Well, that one, obviously, will be filibustered)

What the poster is saying here is that he would fully expect the Democrats to get the same filibustering treatment they themselves have perfected.

It's called escalating the "politics of personal destruction" until finally the destruction envelopes much more than just the "personal." Hey, I say, "bring it on," dude! Let's just get on with it. The sooner the real shootin' starts the sooner it will end.

Yep, the way things are going now, if the situation doesn't boil over this year, then every year that passes will make it all the more likely, and all the nastier when it does. The longer the hatreds on both sides remain pent up, the more savage the results when they are finally acted upon.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

Which reminds me--it's clear none of the Republicans who voted Bush into office dare quit the Supreme Court and let him name a successor until he's actually been elected. Quite ironic, really.

I expect better than that from you. You know perfectly well that the SCOTUS did not put Bush in office, they simply cut short (perhaps mistakenly) a political process that was already pretty much locked on that destination. All roads led to Bush once Gore failed to produce a decisive Florida majority, and repeating the canard about how the SCOTUS 'appointed' Bush serves little good purpose.

Originally Posted by Titus Sabinus Parthicus

Originally Posted by oy

Originally Posted by David Kaiser, famous author

How will the ideological Republicans react, especially if civil unions pop up around the country and Kerry gets to nominate a Supreme Court Justice? (Well, that one, obviously, will be filibustered)

It's called escalating the "politics of personal destruction" until finally the destruction envelopes much more than just the "personal." Hey, I say, "bring it on," dude! Let's just get on with it. The sooner the real shootin' starts the sooner it will end.

Yep, the way things are going now, if the situation doesn't boil over this year, then every year that passes will make it all the more likely, and all the nastier when it does.

Notice my rolling eyes? I remain an optimist despite this constant depressing drivel from people like the highly esteemed author, David Kaiser. Steeped deeply in the blood-soaked jungles of Vietnam, Kaiser's breed is very much like the ruined businessman of the post-Crash of 1929. A dream gone awry. A misplaced idealism in something doomed to crash and burn.

Like Barnard Baruch's warning prior to the Crash of 1929, Eisenhower warned of the dangers posed in unbridled faith in the "military industrial complex." Kaiser's superior officers, the Best and the Brightest, did not heed the warning. A quagmire ensued, a young man's faith destroyed, a nation recoiled.

Only the nation recovered. But the David Kaisers and the John Kerrys did not recover. Soiled idealism seldom does. Pity that. They were of a generation poised to do even greater things than their fathers did. Indeed, that new "Idealist" generation moved on.

They did not. Kaiser and Kerry were left behind.

Originally Posted by oy

Like Barnard Baruch's warning prior to the Crash of 1929, Eisenhower warned of the dangers posed in unbridled faith in the "military industrial complex." Kaiser's superior officers, the Best and the Brightest, did not heed the warning. A quagmire ensued, a young man's faith destroyed, a nation recoiled.

Only the nation recovered. But the David Kaisers and the John Kerrys did not recover. Soiled idealism seldom does. Pity that. They were of a generation poised to do even greater things than their fathers did. Indeed, that new "Idealist" generation moved on.

They did not. Kaiser and Kerry were left behind.

Still, remember the major themes of the Awakening. Civil rights, and the rejection of racism. The woman's movement, another push towards equality. A rejection of a balance of power war that did not clearly support the interests of the people in the region we were fighting in. The environmental movement, the beginnings of a call to protect the planet. There was also a rejection of the Military Industrial Complex, a power and profit driven way of looking at the world.

Watergate ended in a crash of cynicism and selfishness both the GI's drive to work hard to achieve great things, and the Boomer's idealism. Still, when crisis returns, should it become clear that we need to pull together and remake the world, common interest can trump selfishness. That might be one key thing to look for here in the 3T / 4T cusp. Are we still acting selfishly in our own interest, or are we pulling together for a cause larger than ourselves. From my perspective, we haven't done much in the way of pulling together since Watergate.

The themes of the Awakening do apply to the global level crisis. Racism is a recurring theme, whether one takes Chua's economic 'market dominant minority' perspective or Huntington's more military Clash of Civilizations view. The other idealistic perspectives also apply. The question is whether we as a society remain selfish, or return to idealism.

Crisis combines pragmatism and idealism in ways our modern culture has forgotten. One sacrifices. One gives for a greater cause. One does this to a great degree because it is necessary. Failure to act in the common good would result in personal disaster. Rebuilding society and building a new world is a selfish act, as well as an idealistic act, as the alternative is ruin at both the cultural and personal level. It takes an idealistic prophet generation to create the vision for a better future. It takes the pragmatic hero generation to provide the needed blood, toil, tears and sweat.

Anyway, in abstract, we are not back in the 60s. The pigs are no longer beating up the heroic idealistic youth cause the pigs want to see the prejudice continue, and the power of the military industrial complex thrive. The hippies are no longer marching, and the pigs are no longer abusing their authority. No one cares enough anymore.

Anyway, I don't see an internal US Civil War as likely. The differences separating red and blue are selfish differences. They are not about survival of the society. They are about unraveling issues, not crisis issues. There is no spiral of violence building between the red and blue zones. There hasn't been since the OKC bombing generated a broad consensus that violence was not the appropriate way to resolve the red / blue differences. Red and blue united fairly cleanly in response to the September 11 threat. September 11 reinforced the OKC consensus that use of terrorist violent means to achieve political ends is not how the American People wish to go. It seems clear to me that red and blue would unite again should an external threat rematerialize.

I don't anticipate external threats will rematerialize until it is clear to the world how the Iraq / Afghanistan US offensive plays out. The next moves in the Great Game might not be makable until enough US forces are out of Iraq that whomever is in the White House might consider invading somewhere else. With the cost of the Iraq occupation in dollars and blood, a renewed unilateral offensive using conventional means isn't an obvious move.

Anyway, crisis is about idealism and necessity, not greed and selfishness. Greed and selfishness are central to unraveling. I wouldn't dump too hard on idealists. I wouldn't embrace too openly the military industrial complex.

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

Very little of major significance has happened since 911, with the limited exception of the Iraq War and the conquest of Afghanistan. Even they aren't as big a deal as they look like at first glance.

Well how much of consequence happened during the 1860's Crisis in Britain? How much of consequence happened in America during the 1680's and 1690's? Was even the American Revolution of such great consequence for Britain? At the minimum, the S&H cycle is an Anglo-American saeculum, so what happens in Britain should "count" too.

There are a total of ten Crisis, six British and four American. Half of them showed great turmoil. Could it just be bad luck that three of these five happened in a row here in America? Just because you flip three tails in a row doesn't mean the next coin flip has to be tails, it is still just as likely to be heads.

Hopeful cynic is half right. The best evidence we have suggests that Gore would have lost had he gotten the recounts he asked for, althogh, ironically, he would quite possibly have won had they recounted the whole state.
That does not change the fact that the five justices, betraying their supposed federalist principles, took the case out of the hands of the state where it belonged in defiance of real precedents (see Hawaii 1960, for one.)
And I certainly do believe that the circumstances of the election have inhibited O'Connor from quitting.

David K '47

Originally Posted by Brian Beecher

Instead of the areas getting colder as was pointed out, it seems to me like the opposite situation is occurring. Here in the midwest our recent winters, with the exception of the month of December 2000(when we had record snowfall) have seen, for the most part, very little snowfall and temps considerably milder than normal.

In the southwest, areas around Phoenix this year saw 100+ temps as late as October 23, about a month longer than normal.

There is a paradox involved in the idea that global warming causes ice ages.

Let's start with a visit to http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/comp/cmoll/cmoll.html "Land Sea Tamps & Clouds" The global weather systems are a means to even out the distribution of heat. Lots of heat around the equator. Not so much near the poles. Between the Earth's rotation, winds, ocean currents, and mountains deflecting winds, there is a moderately predictable pattern. Tis quite visible in the Global Clouds animation. There are spinning bands of clouds moving west to east near the poles, mechanisms for moving heat. (Thus, in the United States, weather systems come from the Pacific and travel east.) There is another band of systems near the equator, less clearly moving east to west. (Thus hurricanes, forming further south, fueled by the ocean's heat, approach the US from the east.) Between these busy cloud bands are gaps where there is considerably less activity.

The more heat you throw into the system, the more energetic the system becomes. Global warming results in more storms. But it might also mean one of the bands of clouds spinning around the planet might move north or south of its normal position. Places which normally get lots of rain or snow, don't, cause the great conveyer belt of clouds aren't where they ought to be. This happens anyway, even in 'normal' times. Some changes are essentially random, or caused by butterflies flapping their wings, to use the usual Chaos Theory example. There are also long cycle patterns, such as the El Nino / La Nina patterns known for making it wetter than normal in one place, dryer somewhere else. It is all about those bands of moisture circling the globe in the animation drifting out of the expected positions.

Thus, while global warming means more storms, more moisture, more heat, overall, none of the above might be where they usually are.

The big shift that has started concerning people involves the Gulf Stream stopping. Heat in the Arctic is melting polar ice caps, decreasing the salinity of the water, changing its density, which could stop the sinking of water to the bottom. Without the sinking effect, no Gulf Stream, a much colder north Atlantic, a much warmer equatorial Atlantic. Thus, much less mosture in the air in the north, considerably more near the equator.

As I understand it, there is still lots of heat during an Ice Age. It just doesn't get as far north without the Gulf Stream. Historically, this has meant dry poor farming conditions in the Ukraine and US Great Plains. While no one I've heard of has dwelt on what it means to the tropics, I would expect warmer oceans would result in hurricanes and more extreme monsoons. In short, more activity in the east to west middle band around the equator, less activity in the west to east bands nearer the poles.

I'm winging it a bit here, weather isn't exactly my best field, but that's how it is supposed to go. Supposedly the Gulf Stream could die rather quickly. A matter of a few years to a decade could require a major shift in what crops have to be planted where.

Add the "Raging Oughts" to the "Phony Fourth" to describe the last phase of the our current third turning.

Steve Barrera in the 12/21/04 entry of his blog asks, answers, and analyzes . . .

Originally Posted by Steve Barrera

Question: When does a massive terror attack on a country fail to ignite a new social mood of perceived vulnerability and urgent need for action? Answer: When the generations in that society aren?t yet ready to cross into a new era.

It is just amazing to me, after all this country has been through in the past three years, that the electoral map from the 2004 presidential election looks just like the map from the 2000 election. For all that has changed in this country ? new skylines, new wars, new laws, new agencies ? we just haven?t become a nation united with a common goal, in a profoundly tranformative new age.

Instead, we?ve become a polarized society of angry patriots and resentful intellectuals ? of conservative Christians battling against a morals revolution, and despairing progressives aghast at the idiocy of middle America. We?ve been through this before ? in the 1920s ? and I believe that the 2000s will be a repeat of that thrilling decade, but perhaps a bit uglier because of the pall cast by the War on Terror.

He goes on to compare our reaction to 9/11 and the Bush Doctrine to World War One and compares the Terror Scare to the post-WWI Red Scare. I have made the same comparison, saying the Phony Fourth greatly resembles 1917-1920, except this time the analog is happening much later in the turning. His comparisons to the cultural battles of the 1920's are also very interesting.

I think Steve has come up with a good designation for the decade. Since it starts with E2K is covers more than the "Phony Fourth", but the same general ideas apply.

I am not sure that he believes it's likely that a full-on 3T mood will last to the end of the decade, but I doubt he does. I certainly don't think so. I think we are due for the actually trigger and subsequent cascade phase any time now. I'll be very, very surprised if it is not blatantly obvious that we are cascading by 2008.

Lastly, allow me to note that Steve was convinced we were 4T less than a year ago.

PS. I don't know if Steve intended this, but besides "ought" being an old designation for zero (ie., the "Oh-Oh's") it also can come across as "ought" as in "ought to be" signifying the exaccerbated Culture Wars aspect occuring at the end of this 3T. I found that satisfying.