tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post8300386230268793737..comments2024-03-29T02:03:49.151-04:00Comments on History Unfolding: The Fourth Great Crisis in American National LifeDavid Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05020082243968071584noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-86383488280426875622015-12-08T12:28:34.730-05:002015-12-08T12:28:34.730-05:00Just a short note concerning the election results ...Just a short note concerning the election results in Florida. Both the purge and the butterfly ballot were small compared to the nearly one hundred thousand votes that Ralph Nader syphoned off from Gore.That Liberal Guyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16911555670896844672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-6877189342155690432015-12-05T20:20:14.711-05:002015-12-05T20:20:14.711-05:00Dr. Kaiser,
Thanks for your response to my earlie...Dr. Kaiser,<br /><br />Thanks for your response to my earlier posting.<br /><br />True, very few countries have active conscription. Although our draft is dormant, it can be activated quickly enough. (And apparently the girls would be scooped up with the boys, given SecDef Carter’s announcement this week.) I believe S&H’s point about the catalyst (in the face of an existential threat to the nation/society) is that armies would be raised, citizens would be conscripted to defend the homeland. Look at Pearl Harbor. Before 12/7/1941, there was a strong stay-out-of-Europe’s-wars sentiment throughout the country. Afterwards, young men flocked to the military to defend the nation. It may have been less so in the aftermath of the attack on Fort Sumpter, but certainly characteristic of American sentiments in the revolution.<br /><br />I don’t believe that the climatic catalyst has happened yet. On 9/11, as I said in my earlier post, I wondered if that was it. Even if it wasn’t, GWB over reacted to it, as S&H feared, especially when he used 9/11 as an excuse to invade Iraq. The current consequence of that invasion is the ISIS mess as well as the Syrian mess. Indeed, GWB’s Iraq moves dumped the US into the middle of a resurgent, centuries-old religious war between the Shia and Sunni branches of Islam as reflected in the worldly contest for Middle East supremacy between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Now Turkey (a NATO state) is trying to put its finger on the scale between those two.<br /><br />The Iraq military adventure was compounded by the poor regulation of US financial business (actually started with Bill Clinton’s approval of the repeal of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act) that led to the 2009 financial crisis that still hovers over us. That crisis is helping to recreate the economic imbalances characteristic of the Gilded Age. Unease is all around us and the globe. As you wrote: “The general decline in authority and broad loyalties that has hurt civic life in the US so much has affected the whole developed world.”<br /><br />However, as I said in the earlier post, ISIS does not bring the existential threat. Only Russia or China could become that for the US. The question is, what could be the catalyst? It could be something big like Pearl Harbor. Or it could be something small like the shooting of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo in 1914. It could be the Russians taking out a Turkish war plane. It could be a Chinese military unit on its recently-built artificial island in the Spratly Islands firing on and damaging or destroying an American ship or plane approaching the site. The fact is, at this stage we can’t know, can’t even guess correctly.<br /><br />You asked about next year’s presidential election. It’s way too early to tell. There are loose cannons rumbling over the deck. The election is taking place in circumstances that, in some manner or degree, are reminiscent of the 1933 German election that brought Hitler to power. Now, I’m not suggesting any of the candidates bear any resemblance to him. Instead I’m suggesting that the American electorate bears some resemblance to the German electorate of that day: frustrated, fed up, angry with their leaders. They are looking for something very different from the status quo. They are looking for someone to make them feel safe again, to make them feel economically secure again, to make the bad cess go away. If they choose poorly? We’ll have to wait and see. <br />Ed Cilibertihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09378230201414293974noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-35412748781439194852015-12-05T15:33:31.208-05:002015-12-05T15:33:31.208-05:00Dear Dr. Kaiser,
Thanks for this very thoughtful...Dear Dr. Kaiser, <br /><br />Thanks for this very thoughtful essay. I wonder if you've considered relating the Strauss-Howe theory to the broader historical perspective of Arnold Toynbee, which seems very appropriate to your essay's topic. Toynbee argued, if I may summarize a complex theory too briefly, that civilizations flourish as long as they are able to come up with novel responses to the challenges of each era, and begin their decline and fall once they stop doing so and insist on applying the same responses to problems whether those responses work or not. <br /><br />In the first three of the generational crises you've sketched out here, American society did in fact come up with novel and appropriate responses to the crises in question. This time around, that didn't happen; instead, what Toynbee called "the idolization of an ephemeral technique" led America's leadership to double down on existing commitments and approaches instead of reinventing the American project as Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt did. While, as you've pointed out, the social programs of the New Deal are being gutted, the rest of Roosevelt's legacy -- the imperial presidency, the seamless fusion of corporate and government power, a foreign policy oriented toward global dominance, and so on -- remains the keynote of today's America<br /><br />I would be interested in your thoughts regarding Toynbee's analysis, not least because he -- like Strauss and Howe -- deals with the cyclical dimensions of human history, which have been neglected to an embarrassing extent by the mainstream of the historical profession in recent decades. If Toynbee's analysis has anything to offer, furthermore, it may allow for some degree of prediction over a longer scale than the Strauss-Howe generational model.John Michael Greerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04737693388485635100noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-29971096965594269252015-12-05T14:37:04.748-05:002015-12-05T14:37:04.748-05:00This is amazing. Thank you for your work. I also...This is amazing. Thank you for your work. I also do not see any political figure on either side who is uninterested in more than just getting rich and important.<br /><br />No care at all about what this will do to the nation. <br /><br />I wish I could see a way this all turns out well but I just can't. Balkanization is the more likely outcome. <br /><br />Thanks again.<br /><br />JimAssurance-First-Assurancehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03957716561174470697noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-8603630226739040132015-12-05T08:17:57.504-05:002015-12-05T08:17:57.504-05:00Dear Ed,
Thank you for your comment. I'm ...Dear Ed,<br /><br /> Thank you for your comment. I'm sorry our paths never crossed during my own long association with the military. Let me explain why I disagree.<br /> The general decline in authority and broad loyalties that has hurt civic life in the US so much has affected the whole developed world. Very few countries have conscription any more. I honestly don't think they are capable, politically, of the kind of mobilization that characterized the Civil War or the Second World War. While developments in Russian-American relations are alarming, even there I think we will see nibbling around the periphery, not general war. <br /> Lastly regarding the election, what candidate of either party do you think might play the role you have in mind?David Kaiserhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05020082243968071584noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-79866762580092642342015-12-05T01:53:59.460-05:002015-12-05T01:53:59.460-05:00Dr. Kaiser,
As a career public affairs specialist...Dr. Kaiser,<br /><br />As a career public affairs specialist in the military and the Federal government, I’ve always been concerned with the “big picture”. My “Generations” eureka moment was reading the Time magazine review of the book in 1991. I hurried out to buy and read the book.<br /><br />So, I agreed with almost all of the excellent essay you’ve written about our present state of affairs. You seem to say that the Crisis is indeed upon us; that our political disfunction is indeed a bloodless civil war and that the GWOT is the conflict characteristic of a Crisis climax. I disagree.<br /><br />All the Crises have climaxed in a war, a bloody one, in which the nation faced an existential threat. Look at them: Revolutionary War, Civil War, World War 2. In each of them, the nation was mobilized, citizens took up arms, significant numbers of them died or were wounded. In contrast, the US, as a nation, has not been mobilized for GWOT. Combat deaths over the past 14 years don’t even begin to approach the 30,000+ that die each year on America’s highways. So, how is this existential?<br /><br />From my perspective, we are still in the unraveling stage, only this time the unraveling is global as much as it is local (to the US). As I tuned into the terrorist attack on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon, It suddenly occurred to me that I might be seeing the catalyst for the Fourth Turning’s climax. I grabbed the book and read the page that described that catalyst. On the bottom of the page S&H wondered what would happen is the catalyst came early, before the Prophets mellowed out. If it happened early, they cautioned restraint in reaction. <br /><br />You have seen the question, I’m sure, about whether other nations/societies experience the generational/saecula phenomena that S&H described for America. S&H track generations forward from the Hundred Years War (1400s) between England and France. In the Revolutionary Saeculum they branch off onto a purely American track. Yet, while America was reorganizing itself after the Revolutionary War, England was locked in what it perceived as a existential struggle with France, a 23-year, bloody, world-wide conflict known as the Napoleonic Wars. From a world-view, how does that fit into who’s generational/saecula scheme?<br /><br />No, Dr. Kaiser, I think the war-beast of the our (or the world’s) Fourth Turning still lies ahead. The terrorists are ankle biters. From their efforts we, as FDR said, have only to fear fear itself. On the other hand, we are tweaking the Russian Bear on Europe's Eastern edge and China is flexing its military muscle in the Western Pacific. Only we three have the ability to light off a truly existential conflict. Only America is currently a disorganized, dysfunctional society. A lot may depend, going forward, on who the American electorate puts in the White House on November 8. Even that choice may not bring us safely through the Valley of Death. We are no longer the meanest MF in the valley.Ed Cilibertihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09378230201414293974noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-79526757430118239162015-12-04T12:23:59.487-05:002015-12-04T12:23:59.487-05:00Very good missive, David. As a conservative, I agr...Very good missive, David. As a conservative, I agree with much/most of what you say in it. I am most concerned about what you mention in the next-to-last paragraph...that corporations will continue to exert more and more dominance over our federal government. And Glass-Steagal...what a terrible loss.<br /><br />I once again enjoy your remarkable ability to put things in historical perspective. I am saddened to hear that the historians of yesteryear, and the manner in which they pursued their craft, are becoming fewer in number.<br /><br />I am 66 years old...and fully old enough now to realize that each generation is unique and thus seeks its own way...though (sadly), each refuses to look back at the lessons earlier generations learned the hard way.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14093586972931925258noreply@blogger.com