The Fourth American Revolution

[Animekitty]

"Not in total agrrement with this blog but profoundly woried Am I" - Animekitty

“Sometime around the year 2005, perhaps a few years before or after, America will enter the Fourth Turning. A spark will ignite a new mood. It will catalyze a Crisis. In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party. It could be a rapid succession of small events in which the ominous, the ordinary, and the trivial are commingled.” – The Fourth Turning - Strauss & Howe -1997

We have crossed the threshold into a decisive era of secular upheaval, when the values regime will propel the replacement of the old civic order with a new one. The Silent Generation (1925-1942) is dying off, Baby Boomers (1943-1960) are entering elder hood, Generation X is entering midlife, Millenials are entering young adulthood—and a new generation of child Artists are being born. Strauss & Howe have documented that a long human life of 80 to 100 years makes up a social cycle of growth, maturation, entropy, and death (and rebirth) known as a Saeculum. Within each cycle, four generations proceed through their four stages of life. Every 15 to 25 years a new Turning surprises those who only think of history in a linear way. Strauss & Howe are historians who have been able to document this generational cycle going back to the 1400s.

The Federal government’s response to the crisis was to create a mandated healthcare benefit for 35 million more Americans with no means to pay the untold trillions in future costs. Our leaders’ solution to a crisis caused by excessive debt has been to create twice as much debt. A passage from the Book of Matthew which Abraham Lincoln utilized during a prior Fourth Turning Crisis is a fitting description of where we stand today:

“Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.” - Matthew 12:25

The subsequent battle between the Haves and Have Nots is likely to flair into protests, riots and increasing violence. There will be no compromises. The 2012 Presidential election could incite reactions on par with the election of Lincoln in 1860.

The First American Revolution was fought on American soil by a loose confederation of autonomous states against the overbearing control of a great European empire. The Second American Revolution was fought by Americans against Americans and resulted in a vast expansion of Federal government power and diminishment of state power. The Third American Revolution took place under the auspices of saving America from the depths of Depression with government social programs and the birth of the Nanny State. Each Revolution has further expanded the power and control of the Federal government. I believe the Fourth American Revolution will ultimately come down to a battle between the Liberty movement and the ruling oligarchy of Wall Street, Mega-corporations and supporters of the Military Nanny State.

[Cognisant]

I believe the Fourth American Revolution will ultimately come down to a battle between the Liberty movement and the ruling oligarchy of Wall Street, Mega-corporations and supporters of the Military Nanny State.

Gee I wonder who's going to win...

I think it's pretty obvious America has become the "big bad empire", which is to say nothing of evil because in this world there is no standard by which would could determine such a thing, at most you could call it a necessary evil, though the only utility it fills is the void in which the next will inhabit should this one fall.

[Zensunni]

The Third Revolution occurred at the turn of the last century when the government changed from being the arbiter of disputes to taking sides. In the 1890's, the US government switched to interfering in peoples' lives. And after the Spanish-American War, the US had the option of remaining a republic or choosing to step out onto the world stage. We chose to step out and we chose to own Cuba, the Virgin Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico, etc. We decided to own other people and not free them or give them the right to vote. We became an empire and subscribed to the White Man's Burden theory.

Teddy Roosevelt mitigated this abuse by taxing the wealthy to the hilt to redistribute wealth back down to the middle class, the only thing that ensures a republic remains a republic. So, like the British, we remained a nominal republic at home but an imperial nation abroad. This began our economic imperialism since we saw that colonization was too expensive.

FDR was the fourth revolution. If you want to play with the big boys on the international stage, you need to have centralized power. A true republic cannot do anything in a concerted way for any extended period given the constant change of regimes. Bureaucracy and reliance on experts is the way to assure a more steady course can be followed even whilst leadership changes.

Since this is where we are now, what is your hypothesis on what grand, ground-shifting change will take place to alter our current reality?

[Bird]

[Jesse]

[Jackooboy]

Hopefully America will just slowly decline like the British Empire slowly evaporated. The Commonwealth still has a little pull, but certainly doesn't dominate international or domestic politics in sovereign nations' affairs.

On the other hand, there could be a more soviet style crisis at some point when the foreigners refuse to buy our treasuries, at which point America would have a major problem and try to solve the domestic problems by starting another war.

Who knows what will happen... just be prepared...

[onthewindowstand]

You forgot to add the religious as another opponent to liberty.

[Zensunni]

Religion is the cause of liberty in the modern era. Give them some credit.

[Da Blob]

In my youth I was a Hippie. Back in the 60's the common mantras of the youth were. "Big Business = Big Brother" and "Russia and the US are both military/Industrial dictatorships, that tell their citizens different lies about their form of government".

It is sad that so many of my generation have abandoned these truths from our youth. The corporations of the world now have more power than most of the national governments of the world. Reagan is credited with ending the Cold War. Yet only the wealthy in America and Russia benefited from the end of this decades-long stand off. America and Russia can now be said to be oligarchies, "that tell their citizens different lies about their form of government". It is only the members of the ruling class, the wealthy in America that has seen their incomes rise over the last four decades. All other classes in America have had declining income since the Reagan Era.

I believe the fourth revolution will be against this new American aristocracy involving violence against and assassination of the wealthy and their most notorious government lackeys. Unfortunately, this will just set the stage for the International Corporations to assume the role of Big Brother with impunity. In fact, there could be backing in the corporate world for a pogrom against the wealthy...(?)

[Zensunni]

Just taxing the rich will solve the problem. There is no need for killing.

[ScorpioINTP]

Originally Posted by Zensunni

Just taxing the rich will solve the problem. There is no need for killing.

The rich and their lobbyist have too much control/influence for that to ever happen.

[onthewindowstand]

Originally Posted by Da Blob

In my youth I was a Hippie. Back in the 60's the common mantras of the youth were. "Big Business = Big Brother" and "Russia and the US are both military/Industrial dictatorships, that tell their citizens different lies about their form of government".

It is sad that so many of my generation have abandoned these truths from our youth. The corporations of the world now have more power than most of the national governments of the world. Reagan is credited with ending the Cold War. Yet only the wealthy in America and Russia benefited from the end of this decades-long stand off. America and Russia can now be said to be oligarchies, "that tell their citizens different lies about their form of government". It is only the members of the ruling class, the wealthy in America that has seen their incomes rise over the last four decades. All other classes in America have had declining income since the Reagan Era.

I believe the fourth revolution will be against this new American aristocracy involving violence against and assassination of the wealthy and their most notorious government lackeys. Unfortunately, this will just set the stage for the International Corporations to assume the role of Big Brother with impunity. In fact, there could be backing in the corporate world for a pogrom against the wealthy...(?)

Hm. I actually agree with a lot of this. It's strange to me that you can see the plutocratic aspects of our society and not the theocratic ones though...

[Zensunni]

Originally Posted by ScorpioINTP

The rich and their lobbyist have too much control/influence for that to ever happen.

Ever?

That's a long time. No one thought Teddy Roosevelt would wrest control from the rich and yet he did and the country got better until Reagan.

[Jackooboy]

If you really want to get into the nitty gritty... if America has a catastrophic economic implosion (which I doubt will happen, but is possible) I think we will break apart into a Balkanized number of countries.

As for Da Blob's assassination and mobs in the street theory-- I doubt we'll see anything like the Reign of Terror in France or the communist takeovers in Russia, China, etc. and accompanying violence. The U.S. is way too fat dumb and happy and our social structure allows everyone to pretend they're "middle class." I'm just not seeing the American public dragging rich people out of their mansions and killing them even if they lose their house and can't find a job. As far as I can tell Greece, Iceland, Ireland, etc. haven't seen an increase of assassinations against bankers and govt. officials etc., though I do remember they had some mobs/riots directed at the government, but no real deaths of anyone that might be deserving of a death (I remember there was a female bank teller killed in Greece when rioters set the bank she worked in on fire, but surely she didn't deserve to die).

If it gets to the point of starvation, then you might see something like that happen, but I have much doubt you'll ever see that day. The rich people aren't stupid, they'll take everything you have, but they know starvation threatens their own power... (notice it was only starving mobs that began the French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions)...

You would like to think that with the financial crisis the public would demand we, via the state, pay the bankers back by providing them with a trip to jail, but this hasn't even happened. Only a few trials here or there have really occurred. Goldman Sachs paid a routine fine of a couple hundred million dollars and that was it... A nice little slap on the wrist for public consumption 99% of people don't even know about. I bet most people don't know of Goldman Sachs' role in the financial crisis. The avg. person knows nothing about credit default swaps.

Hell, most people probably think GM paid off all their debt because they ran that commercial saying they paid back their loans in full (they actually did pay back the loan in exchange for government purchase of stock)...

Americans get the country, economic system, and the government they/we deserve.

My dad is buying guns, ammo, and food now, just in case.

[Stoic Beverage]

Animosity is a-brewing, I imagine it'll come to a boiling point by 2020.
However, I think the average person will just think "I don't like the way things are. Change!", and then they'll leap into the fray. What I fear, though, is that the general person won't really know what direction of change they're fighting for. At that point I figure a few people will give these people direction, and we'll have different factions fighting for different government types.

What these will be... I haven't a clue.

I'll just take a hike up to Canada and watch, chanting "An-ar-chy...An-ar-chy...An-ar-chy..."

[gruesomebrat]

Originally Posted by Stoic Beverage

Animosity is a-brewing, I imagine it'll come to a boiling point by 2020.
However, I think the average person will just think "I don't like the way things are. Change!", and then they'll leap into the fray. What I fear, though, is that the general person won't really know what direction of change they're fighting for. At that point I figure a few people will give these people direction, and we'll have different factions fighting for different government types.

What these will be... I haven't a clue.

I'll just take a hike up to Canada and watch, chanting "An-ar-chy...An-ar-chy...An-ar-chy..."

Canada's not that much better than the States, Stoic. Chances are that if Americans decide they've had enough of the current power allocation and decide to riot for change, Canada will not be too far behind. Although, that may not be entirely true, considering that our government, although influenced by corporations, has, in the last few years, started looking far too much like a dictatorship to me.

[Stoic Beverage]

Originally Posted by gruesomebrat

Canada's not that much better than the States, Stoic. Chances are that if Americans decide they've had enough of the current power allocation and decide to riot for change, Canada will not be too far behind. Although, that may not be entirely true, considering that our government, although influenced by corporations, has, in the last few years, started looking far too much like a dictatorship to me.

Damn. In that case, to New Zealand!

[Zensunni]

In the 1890's the party in power of the House of Representatives changed hands for three straight elections. A third party tried to rise and get a foothold in Congress, we switched presidents twice and we had just finished fighting a war.

Things will settle down. Americans have an apocalyptic imagination, always have. And the young see things as so much more dramatic because they are seeing it for the first time.

[Vrecknidj]

Originally Posted by Zensunni

Things will settle down. Americans have an apocalyptic imagination, always have. And the young see things as so much more dramatic because they are seeing it for the first time.

Yep. Also, the distribution of resources is nothing new; and it won't change either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

Dave

[Thoughtful]

I think it could be an interesting show. I'll grant that there's plenty of fuel for fire, but I don't see a spark. The gun crowd is armed and crazy enough to do something if certain lines were crossed, but without a well publicized Boston Massacre or Wiemar style catastrophe I don't see any big changes happening.

Though another series of bailouts could bring riots, and if you combine riots with gun nuts I guess you could see some fireworks.

If something broke us up, The result I imagine would look something like the collapse of the roman empire. I think America as a "homeland" is too big geographically to simply set like the British empire did.

[Gluon the Ferengi]

Most unfair and poverty stricken systems across the world seem to be quite stable. Bangladesh, Honduras, and Chad don't seem like they'll be affluent countries any time soon. And yet they seem to have been quite stable across the centuries.
So long as America's slide into third world conditions is not too sharp, it could be on the way to becoming another Mexico.

L.A., for example, already is a third world city state, the rich living on the hilltops with an impoverished sprawl below them in the armpits between hills.
Truly, LA is a sister city of Ancient Rome. Yet there's not exactly a revolution brewing.

The fact is, most Americans still subscribe to the idea of America. Discontent is rising. But there is a long way from general discontent to revolt. People have to be truly desperate.

There's a reason a single line of riot cops can hold back a mob of tens of thousands. No single individual wants to get hit by a club, get arrested, choke on tear gas, much less actually get shot.

[Animekitty]

Originally Posted by Animekitty

"Not in total agrrement with this blog but profoundly woried Am I" - Animekitty

“Sometime around the year 2005, perhaps a few years before or after, America will enter the Fourth Turning. A spark will ignite a new mood. It will catalyze a Crisis. In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party. It could be a rapid succession of small events in which the ominous, the ordinary, and the trivial are commingled.” – The Fourth Turning - Strauss & Howe -1997

[Animekitty]

YouTube - ‪The Zeitgeist Movement Response to FBI Targeting Political Activists as Terrorists‬‏

YouTube - ‪The Zeitgeist Movement Response to FBI Targeting Political Activists as Terrorists‬‏

[mke2686]

Ever heard of "anonymous"? i suggest you google anonymous hacks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ET4Ki...ature=youtu.be

the 2nd video is linked in description

[EditorOne]

I'm having trouble accepting the idea that poor people are the benefit of a revolution that shifted government largesse to them when most of the subsidies, tax breaks, contracts and outright grants are going to big business. We have agribusiness subsidies for growing dirt that date back to the 1920s, never repealed, no sunset provision. We have private legislation giving business breaks to shipping firms, disguised as public law by including phrases like 'this shall apply to all businesses owning four 1983 Heminotron freighters of 20000 tons displacement', disguising as a class of businesses what is actually one business with a friend in Congress. Let's not get confused. You are not in good hands with Allstate, Nationwide is not on your side, and the poor people aren't the ones getting the most benefit out of government. It's businesses. I believed that in 1963. I believe it more after all these years watching and learning. The basic trick of any con artist is misdirection; by pointing out, with manufactured indignation, a few programs benefitting the poor, those who are reaping the really big money are diverting your attention from what they are doing and calling free enterprise.

[NoMan]

Originally Posted by mke2686

Ever heard of "anonymous"? i suggest you google anonymous hacks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ET4Ki...ature=youtu.be

the 2nd video is linked in description

Anonymous are just flash mobs of nerds who go on 4chan's /b/ board (most of the rest of 4chan is actually quite sane and regularly posts interesting content, depending on what board you're on and what your interests are).

I have a v mask on my wall. I've used it in public before. It's not some esoteric group of hacking geniuses. If anything, they're like an impotent Internet rebirth of the dada movement of the '20s.

Originally Posted by anonymous

Despite all the verbal masturbation anonymous produce, they are really not scary or evil. Anonymous is a Panopticon in reverse. A group where everyone is invisible and appears to speak from the center. Anonymous collectively contains every belief, creed, cultural status, sexuality, fetish, hobby, job, likes, dislikes, (insert any quality), etc. They have collectively experienced every act of violence and kindness. They know every language, probably even the dead ones. They know everything that can be known, and can perpetrate any act a person can. However, because they dwell in a reverse-panopticon, the individual anonymous who "yell" the loudest, most often, or most provocatively will be heard and remembered the most. This is why the anonymous seems so cruel and disgusting. But for every grotesque abomination that posts anonymously, there are probably 100 more who are decent human beings that are just too lazy to post, or are indifferent to the topic at hand.

However, their scientology protests have made me think a lot: It really shows how the Internet might spice up global politics in the coming decades.

[Jordan~]

Uh, referencing the notion of a fight between the proponents of 'liberty' and those of statism, I think there's a major problem in the ideology of the liberty side that's sounded the deathknell of all recent struggles for 'liberty'. Several, really.
The first and most important is that people who advocate the reduction or removal of state control generally hypocritically believe in the protection of the notion of property. All property is defined legally, and the law is granted its legitimacy by the state, which holds the monopoly over the legitimate use of physical force (Weber) - i.e., the only way of defending a claim to property, ultimately. That is to say, no one owns anything without a state to assert that ownership. This is why anarcho-capitalism can never work, I think (it has been tried, subtly, over the last decade and the current anti-state panic is really a reaction to the reinstatement of the economic controls that were in place before the disastrous liberalisation of the financial sector). Anarchism is, by definition, the belief in a stateless society; yet capitalism requires property to exist that someone may claim ownership of the means of production who doesn't actually use them to produce. Capitalism without property isn't capitalism, it's something like syndicalism. Thus I think there's an inherent contradiction in the philosophy; that "anarcho-capitalism" is oxymoronic as a term (and the same applies to its relatives, or to any anarchist philosophy that attempts to be compatible with the notion of property).
Wall Street, then, would not be fighting on the side of liberty but on the side of the state. Everyone with power would fight for the state because the only legitimate power that exists would be the state. Alternatively, the most powerful would fight to establish dominance of the state for themselves. A conflict between economic radicals and the state would be identical to a conflict between two feudal lords for control of a kingdom a thousand years ago - the differences in their policies would be miniscule, with the primary difference being the allocation of privelege, which would accord to nepotism of a sort. It wouldn't be a revolution but a 'rebellion', you might say, a coup d'état.

As to the notion of a fourth revolution itself:
Well, I think for a start it's a very America-centric term. A 'fourth revolution' in America would certainly not be limited to America. If the evil empire succumbs to revolution it starts a chain reaction. I'd struggle to express the joy with which the revolutionary left around the world would receive the news that America was in revolution and had dissolved into warring factions - the inspiration originating from the fact that a force that looms as vast in the global consciousness as the USA can be toppled would be mobilising and polarising, I think, to say the least, both for the hand-wringing leaders of states that are considered less secure and for those who oppose them.
Additionally, I think the idea of an internal revolution in America by now is, while something to be hoped for (depending, naturally, on the ideology of the revolutionaries and on their ability to steer the aftermath of the revolution according to that ideology; something that I don't believe has ever been achieved) not something that's likely. The more probable form of revolution would be that of the developing world rising up against the developed world. I say this because the developed world is principally to blame, in many ways, for the problems of the developing world - despite being the origin of a great deal, if not the majority, of our wealth, we stuff our faces with wide-screen televisions and new cars even in the midst of economic ruin, relatively speaking, while they starve during boom years. Our economic and industrial practices result in wealth produced by them or using resources which we have seized from them in various ways being allocated in gross disproportion to us. Class has become a phenomenon on a global rather, as well as a national, scale.
There's also a problem of individualism in the western world. By now our belief in our personal isolation is almost total - I could go on at length about why I say this, but that would better be suited to another thread. In short, we've ceased to think of ourselves as members of groups, almost everywhere in the world, to be capable of revolution. The recent revolutions, while heralded with optimism, against oppressive regimes around the world have disintegrated into unfocused milling around and done nothing but create power vacuums. These were people brought together not by a common ambition but by a common grievance. Once the object of their ire was disposed of, they had no notion of what they wanted to achieve, save perhaps "well, democracy, I suppose", never mind how to go about achieving it. We're capable of mobilising great people power but to little avail, because each of us is an individual rather than a member. Most of us have lost the capacity to view ourselves as servants to a higher calling.
As I say I think this has been the case, to a lesser extent, in past revolutions - the French revolution resulted in France's strongest monarchical empire ever, the October Revolution created a bizarre, grotesque and paradoxical distortion of communist society as defined by Marx, going so far as to create the oxymoron of a communist state, as did subsequent Stalinist revolutions, the American Revolution resulted in modern America, an analogue to every predominant empire of the past writ larger, in its reaction against the British Empire. Perhaps there are a few examples somewhere of a revolution actually achieving its aims in the long run, but I'm not sure where you'd find them.

So much for that. That's not to say that I think the status quo is now eternal. That would be unimaginably bizarre. Just that I think the meaningful shifts in the status quo result from long term, relatively slow cultural transformations - an almost invisible, gradual and simultaneous reform of the minds of everyone living. That, it seems to me, is the true origin of social and political change, and the identification of events, or especially of people, to account for the products of the far more complex underlying principles that drive them is sophomoric.
I call myself a revolutionary rather than a reformist nonetheless, because I remain confident that a 'good revolution' is possible, learning from the failures of the past and operating in such a way as to avoid and overcome them. It would necessarily be a different sort of revolution, too - a revolutionary vanguard is unlikely to be able to muster the support of enough of the population in a world where the predominant ideology, hammered into us from all angles by the state and its dependents, is one of selfish, isolated individualism that views principled self-sacrifice, and to a point any act of altruistic selflessness, as an act of madness. There would need to be a cultural transformation driven by revolutionary ideologues that was capable of beating down the resistance of the entrenched ideologies: a war that's been fought at a stalemate for the last century. Whenever the revolution's gained ground, the status quo's found a way to steal it back. I'm trying to think of how that might be achieved. I'll get back to you on that one, write your answers on a postcard. :P

On the other hand, I also wonder if we actually have time for a revolution, by which I mean that the unhaltable progress of technology might beat us to it, eliminating our problems before we have a chance to attempt to tackle them ourselves. That said, I also worry that if such technology were to come to a world unprepared for its arrival, the result would be horrific - a thought that lends an urgency to the revolutionary cause and steers it towards a certain goal.

[Animekitty]

hollow point bullets homeland security

YouTube

YouTube

[thehabitatdoctor]

Nice necro.

The prediction cited in the OP is ~a decade premature: http://cliodynamics.info/


Note that this one's driven by terrorism.


Sorry. It manifests in terrorism. It's driven by various forms of inequality. I need a nap.