It has been three years since I last explored this.
I was surprised to hear yesterday that Neil Howe has published the sequel to The Fourth Turning. In his new book, he argues that it began in 2008 and will last until the mid-2030s.
I’ve been joking lately about my emotional disconnect from current events. By nearly every metric, we’re objectively in the vortex of a major historical crisis. Events are moving rapidly. And yet, I am utterly bored with the news cycle. I haven’t felt like covering or writing about it since around March.
- The former president and leading Republican presidential candidate being indicted and arrested twice and likely two or three more times has me yawning.
- The biggest land war in Europe since World War II has broken out and could potentially spiral out of control at any moment.
- Normies have radicalized over the past three years under Joe Biden.
- Most people in the country now expect a Civil War to happen in their lifetimes.
- Polarization is off the charts.
It still feels like nothing is happening though.
The scenario depicted by Neil Howe in The Fourth Turning back in 1997 is coming true: severe, authoritarian Boomers who lead rival values camps leading America into an abyss in the 2020s that will destroy the post-World War II order. He was imagining that would happen when Bill Clinton was president.
I can now easily imagine three scenarios which could bring on the climax of this Fourth Turning or whatever you want to call it. This is how the shit could really hit the fan.
- Something happens on the ground in Ukraine or possibly in Taiwan that triggers a war between NATO and Russia and China.
- Trump is CONVICTED and INCARCERATED in prison before the 2024 election
- The 2024 election ends up being really close and one side feels cheated and rebels.
In hindsight, the arc building up to the roller coaster ride will be obvious. The trends are unmistakable. The system is destabilizing and losing its legitimacy. Millions of people are poised for revolutionary change. It still feels like it is taking forever to get to the roof collapsing though.
I felt the system was destabilizing more in 2016-2017 because of the victory of Trump, The Brexit and the right arisen everywhere. Today i’m more bored and i feel like you Brad.
C,ville was break point. Enemy freaked out and started making fear and emotion based decisions.
Whatever happened there, Jew screamed in pain over the whole planet Earth. Was this self inflicted wound by panic attack or is there anything from anti communist side what we do not know , remains unclear.
In Europe, nothing happened but despite most of us can’t find C,ville on the map, European elite also freaked out and their attitude towards populists changed dramatically.
I agree and Cville galvanized even us in Europe because we saw a hard reply to the left whims.
I could be wrong but I regard the fiasco in Charlottesville as being roughly the equivalent of the Boston Massacre in 1770 or the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. An early and unsuccessful revolt which ultimately leads to a successful revolution.
Those were put down by governments military.
C’ville was a duplicate of the thug attack on the Bund in NYC, 1939. Same structure, paid thugs attack a peaceful gathering and cops support the thugs.
“Polarization is off the charts.”
Divershity is our greatest strength…….*Bwahahaha*
@Arrian…
‘Diversity is our greatest strength…’
You mean like arsenic is the best flavourant for your morning eggs?
Win is all I got to say to that,
Brad family is first concern!
Hope all is going well!
It is.
I’m personally doing fine. I have just been working a lot harder lately.
We really don’t have any choice, but, to abolish the FBI, or to strictly limit the FBI to its original chartered purpose of stopping bank robbery, and kidnapping.
Suggest this to your politicians.
My main beef with Fourth Turning is that it seems to predict a bounce back to a golden age after we have hit rock bottom. Sort of a secular version of Hindu Yugas. Spengler didn’t think so. I don’t either, but we’ll just have to wait. Although, as you wrote, it seems to be taking forever.
Yep.
I wouldn’t call the 1870s or 1880s a golden age. I’m going to write something about Turchin’s new book tomorrow which I think is more accurate. Turchin and Howe both come to the same conclusion by different means.
Turchin interviewed by Richard Heinberg:
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2023-07-19/are-these-the-end-times/
The 1870s and 80s were a time when the US was in a protracted depression, HW.
@Spahn…
Good point, but, dare I remind you, The South, throughout a lot of the 1870s, was still at war with The United States’ Government.
Hi HW, it’s been a while since I’ve posted. I’ve felt a similar blasé attitude about current events as of late. I’m trying to stay family focused, as I see is also your case. Hope your wife’s pregnancy is healthy and the fruit you have created will prosper.
I just wanted to comment on that photo of Biden with his face diaper on.
Isn’t it surreal, what we went through with that garbage? When you see that image, doesn’t it do something to you, viscerally?
What are the turning points in modern history? What are the mile markers that stand out? French Revolution, American Civil War, Russian Revolution, Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, 9/11, and then COVID?
Looking back on that entire mess, this 4th Turning that you speak of, it sure seems like COVID was used as the catalyst. Trump’s presidency was just a convenient excuse but COVID was the oxygen that they fed to the fire.
WTF happened? It’s surreal.
COVID was when it really began to accelerate. I think the bottom is really going to drop next year though during the election or during the transition. I don’t think we are prepared for it. We shall see.
“I can now easily imagine three scenarios which could bring on the climax”
4. Unforeseen economic collapse.
The Great Scamdemic didn’t show me how ill prepared we were to deal with the outbreak of a deadly virus, it showed me how weak, cowardly and neurotic this country has become.
it showed me how weak, cowardly and neurotic this country has become.
You needed more evidence ?
“Stupid”, should be first on that list.
@Spahn…
Unfortunately sad to say, it had the very same effect on me.
Though I had realized many years ago the system was irredeemably broken, I had not realized to what depth of weakness and fecklessness my fellow Southerners had sunken to.
That whole year we acted like sheep being led to the slaughter – masking up, staying away from church, no longer shaking hands, taking poison vaccines, and believing the scare porn on the boob tube.
Meanwhile cities burned, the greatest election scandal I have ever seen, and the only public that made sense to me was an Illinois boy acting like a knight in Wisconsin.
Like you, I’ve lost my confidence in America, Americans, and the American experience.
For that reason the wife and I have been preparing.
We won’t be like Russian aristocrats, who refused to believe what the Judeo-Bolsheviks were, or German Jews who kept on in denial, even though Hitler made his intents crystal clear, years in advance..
Nope, we have no choice but to accept this is what the vast majority of our fellow Americans, above all my fellow Southerners, have become – feckless – utterly feckless.
Hard to believe that I am surrounded by descendants of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee.
Feels more like Foghorn Leghorn, Daffy Duck, Minnie Mouse, and Shaggy.
Down here on the Gulf Coast nothing is really happening. I kinda like that, we aren’t considered important enough by outsiders ( except New Orleans) to really matter in the eyes of other Americans. Everything is calm and chill down by the Gulf. God Bless Acadia! God Be With Dixie!
Is the Florida panhandle a decent place for White folks to live?
Pensacola has some diversity problems, but it’s nice outside the city, and there’s a church on every street corner.
If you enjoy miserable heat and humidity.
@Spahn…
Arrian is right.
I’m a Southerner and I cannot stand The Deep South, between April 15 and November 1, each and every year.
Father John has the right idea – he moved to the Georgia Mountains, which is not only beautiful, it is not too hot.
Southern Appalachia is best for a Yankee, and, in NC, the best town for someone with your spirit would be Brevard – in the mountains and right over the SC line.
Folks are polite, friendly, Right/Far Right, and weather is nice – beautiful waterfalls and mountains all around.
” chill down by the Gulf.”
Chill ???
On what gulf coast, the Gulf of Alaska?
Love the memes of Brandon being (s)elected to make sabotage look like incompetence.
Joe Slovo Brandon will deliver the third world turd Chiquitastan “prize” to the globalists by any means necessary.
Enjoy the roller coaster ride, fellow zeks! You are wise to be focused on your family, HW.
Here in Australia, so many things are prevalent and in your face that doesn’t make the news cycle, and yet it’s enough to irritate an average thinking person. You see it around you and sometimes feel as if you’re the only one making the observations.
*We have the highest per capita immigration in the world.
*The Left are forever stirring up trouble, playing the victim and making proposals that generate division.
*Asians, particularly the Chinese, have stolen our manufacturing, are arriving here in record numbers, are buying our real estate at prices the locals can’t match, and are marrying white men in record numbers, destroying pretty much everything about my country.
*Gays talk about their marriages and relationships as if they’re now a normal thing.
Freakery and sickness will never be normal to me.
*We dole out endless foreign aid to third world countries when many Australians are over taxed, over billed and never have two cents to rub together, and these countries give nothing back in return.
*We have natural resources and commodities that we won’t use for ourselves because of emissions targets, yet sell them to China so THEY can pollute the planet…….then sell us the resulting cheap junk we should be making ourselves.
Do we blame the Jews? Well, most people here who drive policy are Anglo Saxons or other European ancestral people. Got it?! It’s US!
The Jews play a part to some degree, but here’s the rub……………we either let them, or replicate their conduct. So we should blame Jews, and ourselves, equally.
While we obsess over gays/ trans rights, China will soon become the largest economy.
While we compete to become the greenest, gayest, most diverse country on the planet, third world countries know who they are, and maintain their race and identity.
The West used to be superior, but our leaders are doing everything possible to swap that status.
Finally, we never voted for any of this, and were never asked.
“By nearly every metric, we’re objectively in the vortex of a major historical crisis. Events are moving rapidly. And yet, I am utterly bored with the news cycle.”
Yes, we are in the vortex.
You’re bored and disconnected because your brain, your mentality, is the opposite of most people.
Your mindset is like Ulysses S. Grant, he who, while others around him were nervous, under fire, was utterly cool and detached.
Your time to freak out and plunge into angst and despair was years ago – when you saw clearly into what was happening and what was coming, this while most normal Alabamans continued to strike a pose I would liken to a studied obliviousness.
Now they cannot get away from reality anymore. Thus, they are nervous, irate, and depressed about the national circumstance, all the while you are disinterested and calm.
This is you, in a nutshell.
I know you because I know me.
2024 is going to be an interesting year.
The aftermath, however, 2025-2026, will be most interesting, if for no other reason that one half of the nation will not accept the results of the election – whatever that is.
Given the lawlessness of the Jew England Yankee United States’ Government, it’s not out of bounds that the inauguration of the next president will have to take place from a courtroom or a jail.