Unresolved end to saeculum possibility?

[David Horn]

(06-06-2022, 01:10 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(06-06-2022, 10:26 AM)David Horn Wrote: It's hard to be certain of anything, but I'm more in the Failed 4T than Big Finale camp.  The very fact that we have siloed society to the point that many (most?) on the right are unaware of simple facts and, even more to the point, live in the "right" places in sufficient nyumbers to stymie any move to correct the problems they claim don't really exist (fake news, you know).  Short of a cataclysmic event that makes denial impossible, I don't see this getting rectified.  After all, we're having mass shootings at a rate of more than one a day, and the movement on gun control hasn't budged at all.  Short of a nuclear exchange (highly unlikely, in my opinion) nothing seems big enough to move the needle at all.

Today's youth have been the victims of this from day one.  Perhaps they can muster the will to do something ... anything!  If so, it won't be until they have the undeniable power to override the Boomers and Xers still creating the mess we're in.

That last could happen fairly soon, if you mean the Millennial generation. As Obama pointed out in that speech I have posted here several times, they have more power than any generation now to change things. In 2024 they will be almost half the electorate. The question now is will they be able to discern what to do. At the moment it seems they don't. Many of them seem to be deserting the president they voted for just because he mumbles or seems old. That would be a neglect of civic duty. Millennials need to live up to their archetype. And so to Boomers. They have not exercized the leadership that they still could. Blue boomers have not been allowed by our system to serve as president during the 4T yet.

Millennials aren't engaged, and will either decide to engage as a generation or just draw a lind through the entire idea of politics. Right now, they are fully engaged at a social level and disengaged everywhere else.

Eric Wrote:In the previous 4T, action to handle the Depression began 4 years in, but we still faced a threat from abroad that was not really engaged with until only 3 years of the 4T were left. In the civil war, total polarization was left to fester until the last 4 years of the 4T, and had to be resolved by war. In the Revolution things looked hopeless in the war right up to the victory 8-10 years into the 4T. As I see it, in 4Ts we don't know if we're going to make it through until sometime in the last 4 years. 

Millennials aren't worried about foreign wars. Climate change, maybe.

Eric Wrote:I agree things look bleak now, and too polarized with total ignorance as one of the poles. I don't know if we will make it. But the 4T still has 7 or 8 years to go, so I say it's still too early to tell if we will make it through, and whether it will take a war to resolve things as it did during the previous 3 occasions. I have always predicted it will take a small-scale civil war scenario, i.e. an expanded January 6th, to resolve things, starting in 2025. A substantial electoral victory, enough to suspend the filibuster, would be needed (with adequate Millennial Gen support) to preclude a needed victory in a total civil war, and to make sure the state is in charge of the army/national guard after the election to put down the Jan.6 style militia rebellion. We may also face war abroad. If Biden decides to run for re-election, nomination is highly likely. He could probably beat Trump again, or another challenger, though this is uncertain. If he bows out, Harris will have to be challenged and defeated by an effective candidate for the nomination, and right now I only see Landrieu or McAuliffe as possibilities; certainly not Elizabeth Warren or Pete Buttigieg or even Cory Booker, and even with his great energy I don't see Bernie as an alternative by then either. If it's Booker versus DeSantis I would still have to predict DeSantis winning.

Both parties do best with governors running for POTUS. Let's put a line through McAuliffe ( he lost an easy one to a hedge fund guy), and Lnadrieu seems solidly disinterested (and not interesting either). I would look to Michigan.

And btw, the DeSantis show will run out of gas pretty soon. The barnyard whiff is getting pretty strong -- even for the MAGA crowd.

Eric Wrote:It doesn't do any good just to think we will fail in this 4T, or to succeed either, really. We don't know. It is better to remember that there will be NO recovery and NO "high" at all if we DON'T succeed in this 4T. Our climate and our republic will be gone if we don't. But 4Ts have usually been such an existential crisis, even going back to the Renaissance era.

The Right gets exorcized over the most mundane issues, and Left can't get excited by anything. Abortion and guns should be enough, but I doubt they are.