“The next Fourth Turning is due
to begin shortly after the new millennium, midway through the Oh-Oh decade.
Around the year 2005, a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood. Remnants of
the old social order will disintegrate. Political and economic trust will
implode. Real hardship will beset the land, with severe distress that could
involve questions of class, race, nation and empire. The very survival of the
nation will feel at stake. Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass
through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution,
Civil War, and twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II.” – Strauss
& Howe– The Fourth Turning
This Fourth Turning was ignited suddenly in September
2008 as the housing bubble, created by the Federal Reserve and their criminal
puppeteer owners on Wall Street, collapsed, revealing the greatest control
fraud in world history. A crisis mood was catalyzed as the stock market dropped
50%, unemployment surged to highs not seen since 1981, foreclosures exploded,
and captured politicians bailed out the criminal bankers with the tax dollars
of the victims.
The
mood of the country darkened immediately as average Americans flooded their congressmen’s
websites and phone lines with a demand not to bailout the felonious Wall Street
banks with $700 billion of TARP. But they ignored their supposed constituents
and revealed who they are truly beholden to.
Trust
in the political and financial system disintegrated and has further
deteriorated as the ruling elite continue to loot and pillage as if the
2008/2009 global financial meltdown never happened. From the perspective of the
archaic social order there is no longer a crisis. The recovery narrative,
flogged ceaselessly by the crooked establishment and their propaganda fake news
corporate media mouthpieces, has convinced millions of willfully ignorant
Americans progress is occurring.
The Fourth Turning: An... William
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Could
they be right? Is the Crisis over? Has this Fourth Turning been
managed to a successful conclusion by central bankers issuing tens of trillions
in debt, politicians spending tens of trillions supplied by taxpayers, bankers
rigging financial markets, and consumers leveraging up to maintain their
lifestyles? Has the exiting corrupt social order successfully retained their
power, control and influence over the masses by manipulating the levers of
society and fending off their demise? Have they already won?
Could
they be right? Is the Crisis over? Has this Fourth Turning been
managed to a successful conclusion by central bankers issuing tens of trillions
in debt, politicians spending tens of trillions supplied by taxpayers, bankers
rigging financial markets, and consumers leveraging up to maintain their
lifestyles? Has the exiting corrupt social order successfully retained their
power, control and influence over the masses by manipulating the levers of
society and fending off their demise? Have they already won?
This Fourth Turning just passed its ninth anniversary.
The Civil War Fourth Turning lasted only
five years, but that was because it was accelerated, with an enormous amount of
bloodshed crammed into a short time frame. The American Revolution Crisis
lasted twenty one years. The Great Depression/World War II Crisis lasted
seventeen years. All three prior American Fourth Turnings ended with an all-out
decisive war, with clear victors and vanquished.
Based on historical precedent,
this Fourth Turning shouldn’t reach its resolution
until the mid-2020’s, with a major global conflict on the near term horizon.
Those who understand that something wicked this way comes are frustrated by the
apparent slowness of the progression. They shouldn’t be too anxious for an
acceleration.
Since Strauss & Howe
didn’t formulate their generational theory until 1997, this is the first Fourth
Turning in which some people understand the dynamics driving the Crisis. Does
knowledge about a cycle change the underlying forces propelling history? Has
the establishment oligarchy co-opted the crisis mood of the country to avoid
its own demise? Or, is this Fourth Turning just
proceeding according to the standard morphology along its two decade long test
of survival?
I honestly don’t know. This
is my first and only Fourth Turning. What
I do know is the Crisis began in the time frame predicted by Strauss &
Howe. The catalyst was the 2008 financial meltdown created by Wall Street and
the Federal Reserve, just as they had done in 1929 to catalyze the
previous Fourth Turning. Strauss and Howe documented the four
stages of a Fourth Turning.
- A Crisis era begins with a catalyst – a
startling event (or sequence of events) that produces a sudden shift in
mood.
- Once catalyzed, a society achieves a regeneracy –
a new counterentropy that reunifies and reenergizes civic life.
- The regenerated society propels toward a climax –
a crucial moment that confirms the death of the old order and birth of the
new.
- The climax culminates in a resolution – a
triumphant or tragic conclusion that separates the winners from losers,
resolves the big public questions, and establishes the new order.
The
2008 global financial meltdown most certainly produced a sudden shift in mood.
Average working class Americans saw their retirement savings obliterated for
the second time in the space of eight years. Millions lost their jobs and got
thrown out of their homes by the Wall Street bankers who perpetrated the
greatest financial fraud in world history. The American citizens, who
overwhelmingly disapproved of TARP, were disregarded as captured corrupt
congressmen handed $700 billion of taxpayer funds to the Wall Street criminals.
The
darker shift in mood produced the Tea Party movement and the Occupy Wall Street
movement. Both movements were co-opted by the establishment and effectively
extinguished as change agents. Over the next seven years a massive debt produced
bubble has been blown in stock, bond and real estate markets to benefit only
those in the upper echelon of wealth. Wall Street is winning in a blowout over
Main Street.
As
2015 morphed into the historic year of vitriol, hate, fake news, Russians, pussy
grabbing, and an all-out establishment effort to discredit and defeat Donald
Trump – 2016 saw battle lines drawn and combatants armed. The oligarchs used
every propaganda trick in their bag. They used their vast limitless wealth to
insure the election of their hand-picked candidate – Hillary Clinton. Black
Lives Matter terrorists slaughtered policemen in cold blood. Social justice
warriors were triggered on campuses across the land, retreating to safe spaces
with crayons and coloring books.
Antifa
fascists rioted, beat Trump supporters and attempted to shutdown free speech at
every opportunity. Violent clashes, provoked by leftists, roiled the country
and hardened the resolve of normal people in flyover America. The fake news
corporate media produced fake polls showing an overwhelming victory for
Clinton. The ruling elite underestimated the anger among the silent majority.
Trump won an unlikely victory.
The basket of deplorables and
millions of other disillusioned regular people chose the Grey Champion of
this Fourth Turning on November 8, 2016. It was
possibly the biggest upset in presidential history. The long awaited regeneracy
had arrived. Just as the election of FDR marked the regeneracy of the
last Fourth Turning, the election of Donald Trump marks the
regeneracy moment of this Crisis.
His
election has energized the country in positive and negative ways. He has
unified factions for and against his agenda. His election has revealed an
ingrained establishment (aka swamp creatures) inhabited by politicians of both
parties who are intent on sabotaging his presidency. The first ten months of
his presidency has been a tumultuous clash between an entrenched establishment
and a tweeting, insulting, volatile, unpredictable, rude outsider real estate
mogul from NYC.
The
mood of the country has clearly darkened as 2017 has progressed. There is no
middle ground or compromise. The tension between the two Americas rises with
each mass shooting, Russian collusion revelation, exposure of media bias, proof
of Hollywood degradation, judicial overreach, Soros funded staged protests,
Donna Brazile tell all book and censorship actions by Twitter, Facebook, and
other left wing slanted media outlets.
Only
24% of Americans think the country is headed in the right direction, and they
are right. With a $20 trillion national debt, $200 trillion of unfunded welfare
liabilities, pension plans underfunded by hundreds of billions, rampant
governmental corruption, blatant Wall Street criminality, undeclared wars being
waged across the globe, and a feeble minded corporate propaganda media spewing
fake news, the nation has already hit the iceberg and the ship is going down.
The
level of divisiveness and anger in this country grows exponentially, with the
flames being fanned by the corporate media intent on creating a civil war.
Battle lines are being drawn between Republicans and Democrats; the
establishment GOP and the Steve Bannon alt-right disciples; far left Sanders
Democrats and Clinton partisans; BLM terrorists and police; Soros funded Antifa
scum and free speech conservatives; SJW’s and normal people; elites and
deplorables; whites and blacks; liberals and conservatives; Wall Street and
Main Street; Hollywood deviants and people with morals; Muslims and infidels;
those who are awake and those who are ignorant; gun owners and gun
confiscators; surveillance state and citizens being surveilled; young and old;
haves and have nots; workers and parasites; government union workers and
taxpayers; left wing academia and those with common sense; arrogant hubristic
oligarchs and humble hard working Americans.
If you can’t comprehend the
sense of foreboding engulfing the nation and the globe, you aren’t paying
attention. Despite a global recovery narrative and record high stock markets
supercharged by irresponsible debasing schemes implemented by captured central
bankers, the world is hurtling relentlessly toward conflict, war and bloodshed.
Every previous American Fourth Turning saw
an upwards ratchet in violence, death and technological killing devices.
This Fourth Turning will see a continuation of this
trend. Fourth Turning wars are always decisive, with
clear winners and losers.
The
Revolutionary War erupted two years after the Boston Tea Party catalyst and
lasted for eight years. The Civil War swept the country into conflict shortly
after Lincoln’s election. The Second World War didn’t encroach on the lives of
Americans until 12 years after the 1929 Great Crash. Each Crisis will have its
own dynamics, pace, and timing, based upon specific events, leadership
decisions, and generational reactions to the incidents and episodes driving the
crisis. We are in year nine of this Fourth Turning and a looming bloody
conflict is just over the horizon, but the vast majority of the American
populace is unprepared and unaware for such a trial by fire.
The
2008 volcanic eruption has continued to flow along the channels of distress
impacting nations across the globe. Yeoman efforts by the Deep State to keep
the molten flow within controlled channels are failing, with the eruption about
to burst free and cause global havoc on a grand scale, as predicted by Strauss
& Howe.
“Imagine some national (and
probably global) volcanic eruption, initially flowing along channels of
distress that were created during the Unraveling era and further widened by the
catalyst. Trying to foresee where the eruption will go once it bursts free of
the channels is like trying to predict the exact fault line of an earthquake.
All you know in advance is something about the molten ingredients of the
climax, which could include the following:
- Economic distress, with public debt in default, entitlement trust
funds in bankruptcy, mounting poverty and unemployment, trade wars,
collapsing financial markets, and hyperinflation (or deflation)
- Social distress, with violence fueled by class, race,
nativism, or religion and abetted by armed gangs, underground militias,
and mercenaries hired by walled communities
- Political distress, with institutional collapse, open tax
revolts, one-party hegemony, major constitutional change, secessionism,
authoritarianism, and altered national borders
- Military distress, with war against terrorists or foreign
regimes equipped with weapons of mass destruction”
The
Fourth Turning – Strauss
& Howe
The American Revolution
military conflict was with an external enemy. The Civil War was an internal
conflict between Americans. World War II was again an external conflict. Will
the coming conflict be domestic, foreign or both? Every Fourth Turning has internal and external struggles
and skirmishes. Loyalists battled patriots during the American Revolution. Both
sides attempted to seek European support during the Civil War.
A resolute opposition
despised FDR and even sought to organize a military coup to seize power of the
government. This Fourth Turning is progressing
along a dual path of internal and external clashes destined to define the
events which will propel the world towards a climax and resolution of this
fourth crisis period in U.S. history.
The apparent slowness of
this Fourth Turning is not unusual and the rise in the
stock market in the midst of the crisis does not alleviate the dire
circumstances of the crisis. From its low in 1932 the stock market rose by over
400% by 1937, in the midst of the Great Depression, before another 45% plunge.
The current Fed financed stock market rally has driven stocks up about 400%
from the 2009 lows. Stock markets do not define when a crisis has ended for the
majority of Americans because so few people own a significant amount of stock.
The
average American suffered economic hardship throughout the 1930s, just as
average Americans have continued to suffer economic hardship since 2008. As
Americans dealt with privation and poverty in the late 1930s the coming global
conflict was brewing. Animosities, prejudices and resentments, exacerbated by
economic turmoil, stirred militaristic ambitions of hubristic rulers in Europe
and Asia. The parallels with the current international dynamic are eerie. The
exact timing of the chaotic dangerous portion of this Fourth Turning is
uncertain, but it can’t be escaped.
“Don’t think you can escape the
Fourth Turning the way you might today distance yourself from news, national
politics, or even taxes you don’t feel like paying. History warns that a Crisis
will reshape the basic social and economic environment that you now take for
granted. The Fourth Turning necessitates the death and rebirth of the social
order. It is the ultimate rite of passage for an entire people, requiring a luminal
state of sheer chaos whose nature and duration no one can predict in
advance.” – Strauss & Howe –The Fourth Turning
In Part 2 of this article I
will examine the devolving global environment and the implications on markets
and the course of this Fourth Turning.
