The Unbearable Slowness of Fourth Turnings - By Jim Quinn

“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 Strauss, Neil ... Best Price: $7.06 Buy New $11.16(as of 04:55 EST - Details) 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.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/11/jim-quinn/the-unbearable-slowness-of-fourth-turnings/

FOURTH TURNING: CRISIS OF TRUST

Strauss & Howe were economists and historians who attempted to make some sense out of the seemingly convoluted twists of history. They deciphered a pattern which could be traced back for centuries based upon the age and alignment of generations throughout history. They never attempted to capitalize on their work by selling newsletters or peddling their predictions about the future. When they published their work in 1997 they couldn’t predict the exact events which would drive the next Fourth Turning, but they could estimate the general timing and the core elements which would drive the crisis: debt, civic decay, and global disorder. These areas were neglected, denied, and unaddressed during the Unraveling period from 1984 through 2008. To read their words now, eighteen years after they were written and eleven years before this Fourth Turning struck, is haunting, as they describe precisely where we stand today:

“As the Crisis catalyzes, these fears will rush to the surface, jagged and exposed. Distrustful of some things, individuals will feel that their survival requires them to distrust more things. This behavior could cascade into a sudden downward spiral, an implosion of societal trust.”

“But as the Crisis mood congeals, people will come to the jarring realization that they have grown helplessly dependent on a teetering edifice of anonymous transactions and paper guarantees. Many Americans won’t know where their savings are, who their employer is, what their pension is, or how their government works. The era will have left the financial world arbitraged and tentacled: Debtors won’t know who holds their notes, homeowners who owns their mortgages, and shareholders who runs their equities – and vice versa.”

The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe – 1997

Mankind and civilization do not advance in a straight line. Progression and regression alternate in a cyclical fashion. As generations die out, memories of the previous cycle are forgotten, and the mistakes are repeated again. Human nature does not change. Good, evil, greed, fear, bravery, honesty, arrogance, sacrifice, and truth intermingle to drive humans through the cycles of history………….

……….. Regeneracy – Where Art Thou?

The regeneracy during a Fourth Turning is when a sense of urgency about institutional dysfunction and civic vulnerabilities coalesce the nation or large blocs of the homeland behind a strong leader to tear down the existing social, economic and cultural order and replace it with something different. The different can be better or far worse. The Declaration of Independence, First Battle of Bull Run, and election of FDR marked the regeneracy in prior American Fourth Turnings. They all occurred within four years of the initial catalyst. It is now seven years into this Fourth Turning and a clear regeneracy event has not materialized. This has been a frustrating development for those who are impatient to get this Fourth Turning moving at a quicker pace. But, each Fourth Turning will proceed at its own pace dependent upon events, the country’s reaction to those events, and the leaders we choose during the Crisis.

In Part 2 of this article I will ponder possible Grey Champion, prophet generation leaders who could arise during the regeneracy, try to assess which channels of distress are likely to burst forth with the molten ingredients of this Fourth Turning, and lastly make some guesses about potential climaxes.

http://www.theburningplatform.com/2015/09/10/fourth-turning-crisis-of-trust/

CIVIL WAR II – FOURTH TURNING INTENSIFYING (PART I) – The Burning Platform

“History offers even more sobering warnings: Armed confrontation usually occurs around the climax of Crisis. If there is confrontation, it is likely to lead to war. This could be any kind of war – class war, sectional war, war against global anarchists or terrorists, or superpower war. If there is war, it is likely to culminate in total war, fought until the losing side has been rendered nil – its will broken, territory taken, and leaders captured.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe -1997

As we enter the final stretch of this vitriolic, deplorable, venomous, propaganda saturated, deceitful, rigged presidential election spectacle, it becomes painfully obvious this Fourth Turning is careening toward bloodshed, bedlam, confrontation, and civil war. The linear fixated establishment, who fancy themselves intellectually superior to the irredemables, are too blinded by their sociopathic, increasingly audacious subversion of the Constitution, to grasp the level of rage and disillusionment of a white working class that has been screwed over for decades.

As the Wall Street shysters frantically accelerate their embezzlement of what remains of middle class wealth, with the Fed and the corporate media propagandists as their wing-men, the country devolves into a corporate fascist state. The disposition of the nation grows dark like the sky before an approaching deadly blizzard. As passions boil over and violence portends, this Fourth Turning hastens towards a bloody decade ahead with an uncertain climax.

If you think this is just hyperbole, you either haven’t studied history or your cognitive dissonance and normalcy bias prevent you from seeing the unavoidable societal altering clashes, which occur like clockwork on an eighty year cycle, when the portents are right in front of your eyes. Historian Arnold Toynbee’s great war cycle that arise every 80 years or so, aligns perfectly with the Fourth Turning generational theory. Great wars occur when the generation that doesn’t remember the last catastrophic war ascends to leadership of the country.

We are eight years into a Crisis period which won’t end until the mid-2020s. As this bitterly vicious presidential campaign accelerates towards a finale which will leave the country divided and irate, the hostile opposing forces will be seeking revenge, retribution, and retaliation no matter the outcome. There is no doubt the regeneracy is well under way.

“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 

It was five years ago I spent a couple fascinating hours with Neil Howe, co-author of the Fourth Turning, during the Occupy Wall Street protests. He thought the protests were all passion and no depth, engineered by anarchist Boomers. He was right. I thought OWS might be the start of the regeneracy, but it flamed out quickly. It was only a foreshadowing of what was to come. Whatever event or movement created the regeneracy, it would be driven by the toxic combination of debt, civic decay, and global disorder.

Neil was particularly worried about the Federal Reserve zero interest rate policy and how it was ruining our economic system, creating disincentives to saving and encouraging warped, debt driven speculation. And that was in 2011. The Fed keeping interest rates near zero on behalf of a corrupt establishment for the last eight years has been the primary factor in creating the anger, disillusionment and revolutionary spirit driving the regeneracy.

No critical thinking human being can deny this tumultuous presidential election and its equally turbulent primaries have been fueled by the dreadful self-serving response of the establishment to the 2008 Wall Street created financial collapse; the geopolitical anarchy created by U.S. interventionism in the Middle East; the civic decay created by a failing government educational system; rampant debt financed materialism enabled and encouraged by the financial/media complex; and racial division facilitated by the president and his social justice warrior brethren.

The rescue of Wall Street and destruction of Main Street by the Fed, Wall Street and the captured politicians of both parties in Washington D.C. has created the angry, acrimonious, throw the bums out mood boiling over in flyover America. The widening Grand Canyon gap in wealth between the haves and the have nots, produced by solutions from sociopaths in suits has reached the pitchfork and torch level.

The linear thinking ruling class has been in denial since this Crisis catalyzed in September 2008. Their looting, pillaging and ransacking campaign, designed to enrich and empower a small cadre of shadowy, powerful, wealthy men, had been successful for decades. When you control the currency and interest rates; rig the financial markets; buy the politicians; write the laws and regulations; own the corporate propaganda machines known as the mainstream media; operate a high tech surveillance state; create a dumbed down populace through government school indoctrination; and distract the masses with iGadgets, reality TV, hero worship, professional sports, social media, irrelevant cultural issues, and literally thousands of other modern day bread and circuses; you become arrogant and careless.

These sociopaths are so consumed with their ravenous fleecing of the middle class, waging wars for profit, and shredding the Constitution, they failed to recognize 2008 for the seismic earth shattering event that will change everything. The mood of the country shifted like tectonic plates beneath the nation. The mood continues to grow dimmer, as the peasants grow poorer and the modern day aristocracy (Wall Street bankers, corporate executives, corrupt politicians, shadowy billionaires) accumulate obscene ill-gotten wealth through their complete capture of the system. This perverted, degenerative, criminal degradation of our society is powerfully summed up by Jesse from Jesse’s Café Americain:

“Not all sociopaths wield knives and knotted cords. Some wear suits, and are exceptionally intelligent and articulate, obsessively driven, and are able to use and undermine the law and the rules for their advantage, like weapons.  It is never about the win, never about the money.  It is about the kill, the expression of their hatred, about elevating themselves with the suffering of others. Bind, torture, kill.  Not only with ropes and knives, but also with power and money, and the subversion of law.  Lawlessness is their addiction, their will to power.

When societies become lax and complacent, these sociopaths can possess great political power through great amounts of unprincipled money.  And over time they become almost anti-human, destroyers of all that is good, all that is life, all that offends their insatiable sickness with its goodness.  They twist the public against itself, and turn a broad sweep of society into their killing grounds. This is the undeniable lesson of the last century.  There are monsters, and they walk among us.”

Neil Howe has noted in previous articles the catalyst, climax and resolution of Fourth Turnings can be specifically dated. But the regeneracy is more of an era than a date. With only three previous American Fourth Turnings, I imagined the regeneracy to be a specific event where the American people, faced with growing peril and danger, put aside their differences and rallied around a strong leader to build something new. Boy was I wrong.

In retrospect, the American people were numbed by the Great Depression and the bloody initial battles of the Civil War. They just let FDR and Lincoln do whatever they needed to do. The regeneracy marks a growth in centralized authority and resolute governance at a time of great risk and urgency. I believe this era of regeneracy began at the outset of the presidential primaries early in 2016.

Based upon the reaction of the citizens in the last ten months, the dire problem facing the nation, perceived as the largest threat to our future, happens to be the Deep State establishment currently ruling the country. The captured mainstream media and grey beards running both political parties were completely stunned, horrified, and irate at the unprecedented success achieved by the two anti-establishment candidates, Trump and Sanders.

This election was supposed to follow the script as planned and coordinated by the establishment, with Hillary Clinton defeating Jeb Bush and continuing the corrupt status quo policies agreed to by the bought off leaders of both parties. They badly miscalculated the mood of the country and the whirlwind of change seeking to sweep away the stubborn remnants of a crooked, decrepit, putrid, existing social order. This collective middle finger to the establishment could only happen during a Fourth Turning.

This regeneracy is well under way and is poised to transform and replace the very foundation of this crumbling empire of debt, delusions, and denial. The unanswered question is what happens next. I posed that question to Neil Howe five years ago and he said the specific events of a Fourth Turning are unknowable, but the reaction to those events by the generational cohorts is consistent over time.

We are seeing the reaction of critical thinking Americans as they come to the realization the system is rigged against them. A revolutionary spirit is once again rising among the deplorables. I also asked Neil about the theory Fourth Turnings alternate between external conflicts and internal conflicts. He found the subject fascinating, but didn’t think there were enough data points to make a determination.

Based on the current path of this Fourth Turning, I’m now convinced of this alternating sequence between advancement cycles and atonement cycles. The advancement cycles can be seen as establishing, whereas atonement cycles are disestablishing. It is apparent each Fourth Turning alternates between an external struggle and an internal struggle. The American Revolution was a struggle against an external oppressor – Great Britain.

The Civil War was an internal struggle between the industrial North and the agrarian South. The Depression/World War II struggle was mainly against an external threat – Germany, Japan, and Italy. The American Revolution established our country. There was optimism and elation as a new republic, forged under an enlightened Constitution and led by judicious intelligent men, was born. It was clearly an advancement cycle.

The Civil War disestablished states’ rights, slavery, agrarian society and Constitutional rights. It was an atonement cycle for our actual and implicit sins. There was no glorious high. The resolution felt more like defeat, with the country exhausted, bitter and angry. The country had exhausted itself, spilling the blood of over one million men. The new High after an atonement cycle is like a cold miserable rainy dark Spring.

The Great Depression/World War II Fourth Turning established a new world order led by the United States. As the only major country left unscathed by the ravages of global war, the U.S. became the producer for the world, whose dollar was unquestioned as the currency of global trade. The new High was unleashed with fanfare and adulation. It was like a delightfully warm Spring, with flowers blooming and children frolicking.

All signs point toward this Fourth Turning being a life or death struggle between the ruling class of sociopathic bankers, corporate elites, and sleazy politicians versus the oppressed and infuriated middle class. The lying, deceit, rigging, deception, theft and other crimes perpetrated by the ruling elites will be atoned for. The heroic patriotic revelations from Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and Bradley (Chelsea) Manning proving the government and politicians to be lying, corrupt, immoral, sociopathic traitors to the Constitution have undermined the last vestiges of trust in the system and the establishment. The alignment of generational dynamics will provoke the responses to events moving forward. We have been badly led. A silent coup by Deep State perpetrators has led to the complete capture of our economic, financial, judicial and political systems.

A vast swath of the populace has been lured into living beyond their means. The existing system is unsustainable. The Boomer generation does not want to yield on their perceived entitlements. The Millennial generation is saddled with un-payable debts, living in their parents’ basements, working the night shift at Ruby Tuesday. Generation X is trapped in the middle of this generational struggle. The huge economic imbalances, created by politicians buying votes and engineering wealth inequality to benefit the few, have built up over decades like flood waters behind a weakening levee. When the levee breaks the morally bankrupt criminal social order will be swept away in the raging torrent to follow.

Winter will eventually turn into Spring, but it might be a bitter, gloomy, austere Spring. Every Fourth Turning brings on forecasts of imminent doom, but that is also a trait of Prophet (Trump, Clinton) Generations. It’s how they feel about the prospects of their imminent die off; they expect the entire world to go with them. The 2008 financial crisis was horrific, scary and an eye opener for those who blindly believed what they were told by their establishment zoo keepers. The regeneracy has begun; trust in the system has further disintegrated; this presidential election has further deepened this distrust of the entrenched establishment; and the coming bust for stocks, bonds, and real estate will knock out the supports for the dwindling remaining trust in this crooked system.

“This might result in a Great Devaluation, a severe drop in the market price of most financial and real assets. This devaluation could be a short but horrific panic, a free-falling price in a market with no buyers. Or it could be a series of downward ratchets linked to political events that sequentially knock the supports out from under the residual popular trust in the system. As assets devalue, trust will further disintegrate, which will cause assets to devalue further, and so on.”

Eventually, all of America’s lesser problems will combine into one giant problem. The very survival of the society will feel at stake, as leaders lead and people follow. The emergent society may be something better, a nation that sustains its Framers’ visions with a robust new pride. Or it may be something unspeakably worse. The Fourth Turning will be a time of glory or ruin.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

The next ten or so years will be atonement for decades of bad choices, corrupt leadership, living beyond our means, waging wars of choice across the globe, believing blatant falsehoods, exhibiting willful ignorance, ignoring facts, and failing to uphold the Constitution. Don’t think you can escape the consequences of this Fourth Turning. It doesn’t matter whether you lived according to a moral code, avoided debt, worked hard, paid taxes, and generally lived an upstanding honorable life.

The death and destruction headed our way will engulf the innocent as well as the guilty. I’m reminded of the penultimate scene in Clint Eastwood’s dark, brooding, vengeful western Unforgiven when Little Bill Daggett laments to “killer of women and children” William Munny that he doesn’t deserve to die this way. Munny responds, “deserves got nothin’ to do with it.” Then he pulls the trigger. This is the kind of future we will be dealing with, whether we like it or not.

In Part Two of this article I will use recent polling data to assess where the most likely sparks will arise to start the civil war conflagration which will accelerate the crumbling of the American Empire. To reinforce the obvious, Fourth Turnings NEVER de-intensify. They end after the spilling of much blood, incomprehensible destruction and the total defeat of the vanquished.

http://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/11/03/civil-war-ii-fourth-turning-intensifying-part-i/

The Gathering Storm - The 4th Turning is upon us, says Jim Quinn.

“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. The 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 

The chart below was posted by Jesse a few weeks ago. It accompanied a post titled Gathering Storm. He doesn’t specifically refer to the chart, but his words reflect the ominous view of the future depicted in the chart.

“When gold and silver finally are able, through price action, to have their say about the state of Western fiscal and monetary policy actions, it may break a few eardrums and shatter a more than a few illusions about the wisdom and honesty of the money masters. Slowly, but surely, a reckoning is coming. And what has been hidden will be revealed.”

The title of the post and the chart both grabbed my attention and provide a glimpse into the reality of our present situation. The Gathering Storm was the title of Winston Churchill’s volume one history of World War II. Churchill documents the tumultuous twenty years leading up to World War II in The Gathering Storm. The years following World War I, through the Great Depression and the rise of Hitler were abysmal, but only a prelude to the approaching horror of 65 million deaths over the next six years. What appeared to be dark days in the 1930’s were only storm clouds gathering before a once in a lifetime tempest. In my view, we stand at an equally perilous point in history today.

The graph represents the standard progress of a three-act drama in literature. In the three-act structure, act one has the least tension, since it is only establishing the characters and the settings. The catalyst triggers an increase in tension with the revelation dramatically escalating the pressure as you approach the climax. The intensity remains high in act three as the final confrontation and resolution play out. Every Shakespearean tragedy follows this general pathway to a final denouement. It peculiarly parallels the path of a Fourth Turning.

A Fourth Turning’s three acts are the catalyst phase, regeneracy stage, and climax. The plot of this Fourth Turning crisis revolves around the core elements of debt, civic decay, and global disorder. The 2008 global financial crisis, manufactured by the Fed and their Wall Street puppeteers, was catalyzed by hundreds of billions in bad debt issued as part of the largest control fraud scheme in world history. The brunt of this banker formulated disaster has been borne by the former working middle class and senior citizens dependent upon interest income to survive in an inflationary world. The initial threat of full-fledged collapse was deferred through extreme monetary and fiscal actions by the establishment vassals, as they created trillions in new debt to fill the vortex produced by the trillions in bad debt.

We are only in the early stages of Act 2 of this tragedy we call The Fall of the American Empire. The tension triggered in 2008/2009 by the Federal Reserve/Wall Street created subprime debacle subsided, as the ruling class was able to expand their wealth (rigging the financial markets), while crushing dissent (OWS, Tea Party), expanding their surveillance state (as revealed by Snowden), waging undeclared wars around the globe (Syria, Libya, Iraq, Yemen), adding $10 trillion to the national debt, while distracting the masses through propaganda, electronic bread and circuses, and trivial societal diversions. While the public is busy arguing about gay marriage, wedding cakes, transgender bathrooms, safe spaces, triggers, SJWs, Bruce Jenner becoming Caitlyn Jenner, and apes rights, the ruling class pillages the remaining wealth of the nation and forges ahead with their plans to control our lives.

Despite knowing a Fourth Turning generally ebbs and flows over a two-decade time frame, it can be frustrating watching the corrupt crony capitalist pigs running this shitshow continue to flagrantly disregard the rule of law, the Constitution, and abusing the citizens of this country. But the temporary lull in intensity is coming to an end. We are now eight years into this Fourth Turning with at least a decade to go before the climax. The regeneracy has been slow in coming, but it appears the mood of the country has been catalyzed by the anti-establishment campaigns of Trump and Sanders. They have begun the process of regeneracy against the ingrained, corrupt, immoral establishment.

The people are collectively revolting against the existing social order as they are finally realizing they have been used and abused by the ruling oligarchy as pawns in their game of world domination. The obscene wealth of the .1% has been absconded from the working class through abuse of the tax laws, trade deals, regulations, monetary policy, public school indoctrination, peddling of debt to the masses, and relentless propaganda. The systematic manipulation of the financial, monetary, political and commercial markets by the money masters has left the country like a mighty diseased, hollowed out, rotting oak tree – one storm away from collapsing and splintering into a thousand pieces. A gathering storm approaches.

The mood of the country has turned dark. The political parties are splintering. The elites in NYC, DC, and LA are appalled the peasants in flyover country are not following orders and voting for the hand-picked lackey candidates. If Clinton can avoid indictment, she’ll represent the establishment versus the anti-establishment Trump in the upcoming election. The establishment is using the power of the press to try and discredit Trump and Sanders. It’s failing. The mainstream media is now trusted and respected on par with Congress – lower than whale shit.

The establishment is now resorting to paying thugs to violently disrupt Trump campaign events. This ploy is backfiring, as the white silent majority gravitates toward Trump every time an illegal immigrant burns an American flag or a young woman is assaulted by Black Thugs Matter paid rioters. With the economy in freefall, rigged financial markets immensely overvalued, debt levels at extremes, global tensions rising, and an increasingly angry American populace desperate for change, it appears the stars are aligning for a Trump presidency. He is a flawed human being, with a huge ego, no filter, and no experience governing. But none of that matters. He has captured the zeitgeist of this moment in history.

At this juncture in a Fourth Turning the public is ready to dump leaders who have downplayed the vast problems facing the country (unfunded liabilities, illegal immigration, entitlements, debt, wars, jobs, bankers) in favor of leaders who are willing to amplify and tackle those problems head on. A new civic ethos of addressing and responding to threats is taking hold. The generational configuration is aligned and the mood of the country is ripe for a prophet generation Boomer, like Trump, to be the Grey Champion who will lead the country through the darkest most perilous portion of this Fourth Turning.

As this Fourth Turning careens towards its climax, the intensity will escalate. Bold decisions will need to be made requiring a leader who displays tremendous confidence and strong leadership. Political correctness will be cast aside. The previous two Grey Champion leaders – Lincoln and Roosevelt – are despised on many levels by many people, as they both ignored the Constitution on many occasions while attempting to do what they thought best in leading the country through desperate times. Their policies and executive actions during those dark days of the Civil War, Great Depression, and World War II left a long-lasting impact on the country and play a major role in our current crisis. As Strauss and Howe predicted almost 20 years ago, the regeneracy is solidly under way.

“Soon after the catalyst, a national election will produce a sweeping political realignment, as one faction or coalition capitalizes on a new public demand for decisive action. Republicans, Democrats, or perhaps a new party will decisively win the long partisan tug of war. This new regime will enthrone itself for the duration of the Crisis. Regardless of its ideology, that new leadership will assert public authority and demand private sacrifice.Where leaders had once been inclined to alleviate societal pressures, they will now aggravate them to command the nation’s attention. The regeneracy will be solidly under way.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

It is difficult for the vast majority of people to comprehend the likely chaos, pain, bloodshed and war which will overspread the nation and the world during the final two acts of this tragic play. The discomfort most people are feeling is just their cognitive dissonance telling them everything will be fine as they experience a steady decline in their standard of living. Harkening back to Jesse’s original chart, the Fourth Turning regeneracy is aligning with the Revelation in Act 2.

The day of reckoning will arrive when Trump is elected and that which has been hidden is revealed. Anyone who doesn’t grasp the increasing intensity of the rhetoric, opponent interactions and media responses will be blindsided by the coming storm. The days of delusion, denial and debt are going to revert to dismay, depression and death.

There is no more room to increase leverage. Americans are up to their eyeballs in mortgage, credit card, auto loan, and student loan debt ($17.4 trillion). Corporations are stuffed with record levels of debt ($14 trillion) they used to buy back their stock at all-time high prices. State and local governments are drowning in trillions of debt and unfunded pension liabilities. The Federal government is $19.3 trillion in debt, with unfunded entitlement liabilities exceeding $200 trillion.

It is mathematically impossible for this debt to be repaid with a rapidly aging developed world and a debt saturated developing the world. With financial markets as overvalued as they have ever been, the next crash will leave all the heavily indebted parties with no assets to repay the debt. The losses will make the 2008 financial crisis look like a stroll in the park. And the Fed shot their load years ago, without having the guts to reload. Their credibility is shot and their $4 trillion balance sheet is insolvent. The Wall Street banks are zombies sustained by 0% interest rates and accounting fraud.

I know the last few years have been frustrating for the “doom and gloomers” who actually have critical thinking skills and understand the nature of our dire economic situation. Much like Michael Burry, as described so well by Michael Lewis in The Big Short, your facts may be 100% correct but markets and people can remain irrational for longer than you think possible. By having the courage of your convictions, you must be prepared for scorn, ridicule, and mocking.

As the unpayable debt has expanded to ever greater heights and monetary authorities across the globe implement a wildly desperate measure like negative interest rates and buying financial assets to prop up stock markets, the public has become more unquestioning of reality and deluded by the seeming stability of financial markets. Record-low-interest rates and rising stock prices reinforce the normalcy bias of most people.

Many smart, normally skeptical, people have thrown in the towel. Because the gathering storm has not struck as predicted, they begin to believe it will never strike. This same mindset existed in 1860, 1929, 1940, 1999, and 2007. It easy to be lulled to sleep by the propaganda media machines, lying politicians, and extreme monetary schemes portrayed as normal by the money men. Things are not getting better. We are not at the end of this crisis.

We are in the midst of a Greater Depression, with the most trying times still ahead. Fourth Turnings never de-intensify. They intensify into a chaotic whirlwind, where the future of our civilization hangs in the balance. The climax of this play is a long way off. The election of Trump in November will trigger the transformational change that always happens during a Fourth Turning. An ill wind is beginning to blow. You can’t avoid the coming storm, but you can mentally and physically prepare. Our choices will make a difference.

“The seasons of time offer no guarantees. For modern societies, no less than for all forms of life, transformative change is discontinuous. For what seems an eternity, history goes nowhere – and then it suddenly flings us forward across some vast chaos that defies any mortal effort to plan our way there. The Fourth Turning will try our souls – and the secular rhythm tells us that much will depend on how we face up to that trial. The speculum does not reveal whether the story will have a happy ending, but it does tell us how and when our choices will make a difference.”  – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

Reprinted from The Burning Platform.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/06/jim-quinn/gathering-storm/

GREY CHAMPION ASSUMES COMMAND (PART ONE) - by Jim Quinn

At each of these great gates of history, eighty to a hundred years apart, a similar generational drama unfolded. Four archetypes, aligned in the same order – elder Prophet, midlife Nomad, young adult Hero, child Artist – together produced the most enduring legends in our history. Each time the Grey Champion appeared marked the arrival of a moment of “darkness, and adversity, and peril,” the climax of the Fourth Turning of the saeculum. – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe

 

 

In September 2015 I wrote a five part article called Fourth Turning: Crisis of Trust. In Part 2 of that article I pondered who might emerge as the Grey Champion, leading the country during the second half of this Fourth Turning Crisis. I had the above pictures of Franklin, Lincoln, and FDR, along with a flaming question mark. The question has been answered. Donald J. Trump is the Grey Champion.

When I wrote that article, only one GOP debate had taken place. There were eleven more to go. Trump was viewed by the establishment as a joke, ridiculed by the propaganda media, and disdained by the GOP and Democrats. I was still skeptical of his seriousness and desire to go the distance, but I attempted to view his candidacy through the lens of the Fourth Turning. I was convinced the mood of the country turning against the establishment could lead to his elevation to the presidency. I was definitely in the minority at the time:

Until three months ago the 2016 presidential election was in control of the establishment. The Party was putting forth their chosen crony capitalist figureheads – Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. They are hand-picked known controllable entities who will not upset the existing corrupt system. They are equally acceptable to Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve, the military industrial complex, the sickcare industry, mega-corporate America, the moneyed interests, and the never changing government apparatchiks. The one party system is designed to give the appearance of choice, while in reality there is no difference between the policies of the two heads of one party and their candidate products. But now Donald Trump has stormed onto the scene from the reality TV world to tell the establishment – You’re Fired!!!

The linear thinking supporters of the status quo are flabbergasted and outraged by Trump’s popularity. The ruling classes never anticipate the mood shift of the peasants as they look down on the masses from their gated estates and penthouse suites. The country is looking for someone who can tear down the entire fetid, corrupt, rotting structure. The onset of phase two of this Crisis in 2016 will produce a populace more desperate, less trusting of the establishment and likely to turn towards someone like Trump, in despair. – Fourth Turning – Crisis of Trust (Part Two)

Strauss and Howe wrote their prophetic tome two decades ago. Their prognostications have played out exactly as they prophesied. They did not know which events or which people would catalyze this Fourth Turning. But they knew the mood change in the country would be driven by the predictable generational alignment which occurs every eighty years. Our regeneracy is now solidly under way.

“Soon after the catalyst, a national election will produce a sweeping political realignment, as one faction or coalition capitalizes on a new public demand for decisive action. Republicans, Democrats, or perhaps a new party will decisively win the long partisan tug of war. This new regime will enthrone itself for the duration of the Crisis. Regardless of its ideology, that new leadership will assert public authority and demand private sacrifice. Where leaders had once been inclined to alleviate societal pressures, they will now aggravate them to command the nation’s attention. The regeneracy will be solidly under way.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

Linear thinking pundits, politicians, businessmen, bankers, bureaucrats, and citizens fail to grasp the cyclical nature of history. They think themselves progressives, falsely believing humanity and history move forward in a straight line. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is why they throw hissy fits when their predictions and beliefs are thrown into disarray by events and mood changes in the country.

The linear thinking establishment is losing their proverbial minds over Trump’s landslide electoral victory, they never saw coming. They’re flabbergasted, angry, and living in denial as history tracks a path it travels every eighty years or so. As the Greatest Generation departs this earth, there are few left who lived through the last Fourth Turning. That’s why the living generations are always surprised when another predictable crisis arrives. We never seem to learn the lessons of history.

Perpetual progress is a myth. Average American households haven’t seen economic progress in decades. Education continues to deteriorate, as the young become progressively dumber. Well-paying goods producing jobs have been shipped overseas, replaced by low paying, no benefits service jobs. Government is corrupt, inept, and discredited. Our culture is degraded, decadent, depraved, and despoiled.

Progress has devolved into regression. We’ve entered our saecular Winter and there is no turning back. It arrived with ferocious blizzard like conditions in 2008, and had been in a debt induced lull until this election. A bitter fierce wind has begun to whip across the plains and black swirling clouds portend a tempestuous future. As the gathering storm looms, the Grey Champion appears on the mountaintop.

“Americans have always been blind to the next turning until after it fully arrives.

Most of today’s adult Americans grew up in a society whose citizens dreamed of perpetually improving outcomes: better jobs, fatter wallets, stronger government, finer culture, nicer families, smarter kids, all the usual fruits of progress. Today, deep into the Third Turning, these goals feel like they are slipping away. Many of us wish we could rewind time, but we know we can’t – and we fear for our children and grandchildren.

Many Americans wish that, somehow, they could bring back a saecular spring now. But seasons don’t work that way. As in nature, a saecular autumn can be warm or cool, long or short, but the leaves will surely fall. The saecular winter can hurry or wait, but history warns that it will surely be upon us.

We may not wish the Grey Champion to come again – but come he must, and come he will.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe

To those who have never read the book or understand generational theory, they are appalled I would declare Donald Trump as the Grey Champion. They interpret the word “champion” as having a positive connotation. It has nothing to do with whether the Grey Champion is a good person, moral person, or likeable person. It doesn’t even have to be one person. Ben Franklin and Samuel Adams, both from the Prophet generation, are considered the Grey Champions of the American Revolution Fourth Turning. One was a diplomat who used his guile and cunning to propel the revolution forward. The other was a firebrand, in the mold of our current Donald Trump.

In most cases the Grey Champions are not revered or glorified until decades after the Crisis is resolved. Lincoln was and still is despised by just about everyone living south of the Mason Dixon line. Outraged businessmen attempted to convince Smedley Butler to lead a coup against FDR. Large swaths of Americans believe he is responsible for creating our welfare state and the unfunded liabilities which are playing a large part in this current Fourth Turning. The unintended consequences of decisions made in previous Fourth Turnings often become the catalysts for the next crisis.

The Grey Champion or Champions are Prophet Generation leaders who command respect due to their age, attitude and warlike demeanor. They were born shortly after the previous Great War Crisis and became the narcissistic young crusaders during the Awakening, driven achievers during the midlife Unraveling, and principled moralists summoning great deeds during the next Crisis.

They tend to inspire through their words and rhetoric, rather than through grand deeds. They are human beings, and as with all humans, they exhibit both positive and negative traits. Prominent positive traits include being principled, resolute and creative. Detrimental traits include being narcissistic, presumptuous, and ruthless. The Grey Champion arrives when the situation looks grim and the people need a jolt of courage to meet the frightful challenges ahead.

One afternoon in April 1689, as the American colonies boiled with rumors that King James II was about to strip them of their liberties, the King’s hand-picked governor of New England, Sir Edmund Andros, marched his troops menacingly through Boston. His purpose was to crush any thought of colonial self-rule. To everyone present, the future looked grim.

Just at that moment, seemingly from nowhere, there appeared on the streets “the figure of an ancient man” with “the eye, the face, the attitude of command.” His manner “combining the leader and the saint,” the old man planted himself directly in the path of the approaching British soldiers and demanded that they stop. “The solemn, yet warlike peal of that voice, fit either to rule a host in the battlefield or be raised to God in prayer, were irresistible. At the old man’s word and outstretched arm, the roll of the drum was hushed at once, and the advancing line stood still.” Inspired by this single act of defiance, the people of Boston roused their courage and acted. Within the day, Andros was deposed and jailed, the liberty of Boston saved, and the corner turned on the colonial Glorious Revolution.

“Who was this Gray Champion?” Nathaniel Hawthorne asked near the end of this story in his Twice-Told Tales. No one knew, except that he had once been among the fire-hearted young Puritans who had first settled New England more than a half century earlier. Later that evening, just before the old priest-warrior disappeared, the townspeople saw him embracing the 85-year-old Simon Bradstreet, a kindred spirit and one of the few original Puritans still alive. Would the Gray Champion ever return? “I have heard,” added Hawthorne, “that whenever the descendants of the Puritans are to show the spirit of their sires, the old man appears again.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe

The old man has appeared again. Just as he appeared eighty years after the glorious revolution behind the breastworks on Bunker Hill, providing spiritual inspiration to the farmer militia. The greying peer of Samuel Adams and Ben Franklin was just playing his role in the generational alignment which occurs every eighty years like clockwork. As the hour of darkness, adversity and peril arrives, the virtuous, fiery and unrepentant Gray Champion(s) appear through the fog of history like an apparition.

As the clock counted down to 1860, seventy-nine years after the climax of the previous Crisis, ideologues, warriors and righteous politician Grey Champions like John Brown, William Tecumseh Sherman, Robert E. Lee and Abraham Lincoln stepped into the breach, as the terrible swift sword felled over 700,000 citizens.

Seven decades later as financial markets collapsed, the world sank into a global depression, with world war just over the horizon, a moralistic no-nonsense prophet generation leader arose to lead his nation towards their rendezvous with destiny. As ancestral generations entered the constellation that reoccurs every eighty years, elder warriors FDR, Douglas MacArthur, and Winston Churchill appeared to revive the spirits of their countrymen and fight the scourge of fascism.

No one can make the argument these three Crisis leaders were likeable. In fact, their personalities were grating and they were detested by friends and foes alike. What they did was ignore protocol, feelings, and minutia, to focus on the only thing that mattered – prevailing at all costs.

The previous two Grey Champion leaders – Lincoln and Roosevelt – are still reviled by many Americans, as they were by millions during their time. Unconstitutional policies and executive actions during the gloomy ambiguous days of the Civil War, Great Depression, and World War II left a long lasting impression on the country and play a major role in our current crisis.  Both centralized power with the Federal government, drastically weakening the power of the states. Both set the country on a path towards increased taxation, spending and waging war.

Lincoln and FDR were elected Grey Champions, but Lincoln only received 39.9% of the popular vote in a four way race, while FDR won in a landslide with 57% of the vote over Hoover. It was clear Lincoln didn’t have a mandate, as Southern states began seceding after his election.  Lincoln’s support in the North was halfhearted at best.

Lincoln captured only 55% of the vote in the 1864 election, with only northern states voting. His cabinet of rivals despised him. They plotted against him, actively opposed his policies, and gloried in his failures. After four grim years of slaughter and failure, he was assassinated just as his armies’ attained victory. To this day he is still despised by liberty minded states’ rights proponents.

Even though FDR won landslide popular vote victories in 1932 and 1936, his detractors and adversaries were numerous. FDR’s confiscation of gold, antagonism toward big business, and dictatorial style, convinced a number of wealthy businessmen to approach General Smedley Butler to lead a coup against FDR and install a fascist regime to run the country. His New Deal “make work” projects and socialist policies were widely scorned by free market capitalists, as they prolonged the Great Depression.

No one can assert Lincoln or FDR united all Americans in a common cause. Grey Champions are not universally adored or defended. They aggravated societal pressures that had been ignored or deferred by their predecessors. Compromise was not an alternative for these men. They were going to lead in a confrontational style suited to the times, using unyielding principles to vanquish their enemies. Grey Champions have a particular set of personality traits making them well suited to lead during a Crisis. They have the facility to overlook the complexities of life and focus on one simple imperative: society must prevail.

In Part Two of this article I will assess the prospects of success for our new Grey Champion – Donald J. Trump and why this Fourth Turning is about to turn nasty.

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/11/19/grey-champion-assumes-command-part-one/