It is easy to get distracted by the daily gyrations, ceaseless media propaganda, political theater, false narratives, and delusional beliefs of both the left and right, as this military empire built on debt and deceit spirals towards its fiery cataclysmic climax. 

Opposing forces have gathered themselves into position focusing on defeating their domestic enemies, with the left seeming to have strategic advantage but led by hubristic dullards, while numerous foreign adversaries circle like hungry vultures ready to pounce on the dying beast of an empire.

-The Burning Platform

The Fourth Turning is when (the American) society passes through a great and perilous gate in history. This idea of cycles and change where society rises and falls upon generational maturity was developed by two authors; Strauss and Howe. They postulated that there are four turnings in society. Together, the four turnings comprise history’s seasonal rhythm of growth, maturation, entropy, and rebirth.

This is a prediction of the future based upon the generational and social cycles of the past history. It is fundamentally an American observation, though the system and predictions can be applied to other cultures and other societies.

According to the predictions…

Even if the nation stays together, its geography could be fundamentally changed, its party structure altered, its Constitution and Bill of Rights amended beyond recognition. 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. And if there is total war, it is likely that the most destructive weapons available will be deployed.

After the Crisis event…

With or without war, American society will be transformed into something different. 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.

This post asks if the predictions made by the authors [1] actually manifested as predicted, or are [2] yet still to manifest.

Prediction

Taking note of “The Fourth Turning” and the Strauss and Howe generational theory of predictive behavior in America, we note that they predicted a Crisis Catalyst in 2005 and a Climax in 2020.

If the Crisis catalyst comes on schedule, around the year 2005, then the  climax will be due around 2020, the resolution around 2026. 

What will  America be like as it exits the Fourth Turning? History offers no  guarantees. Obviously, things could go horribly wrong—the  possibilities ranging from a nuclear exchange to incurable plagues,  from terrorist anarchy to high-tech dictatorship. We should not assume  that Providence will always exempt our nation from the irreversible  tragedies that have overtaken so many others: not just temporary  hardship, but debasement and total ruin. 

Since Vietnam, many Americans  suppose they know what it means to lose a war. 

Losing in the next Fourth  Turning, however, could mean something incomparably worse. It could  mean a lasting defeat from which our national innocence—and perhaps even  our nation—might never recover. As many Americans know from their own  ancestral backgrounds, history provides numerous examples of  societies that have been wiped off the map, ground into submission, or  beaten so badly they revert to barbarism.

Indeed, the dates are close but seem to be off by a few years.

In our case, it appears that the “Crisis catalyst” did not occur in 2005 as predicted. It occurred in 2008 with the Wall Street “too big to fail” debacle.

That is three years later.

Adjusting the dates

“It seems I always underestimate the ability of sociopathic central  bankers and their willingness to destroy the lives of hundreds of  millions to benefit their oligarch masters. I always underestimate the  rampant corruption that permeates Washington DC and the executive suites  in mega-corporations across the land. And I always overestimate the  intelligence, civic mindedness, and ability to understand math of the  ignorant masses that pass for citizens in this country. It seems that  issuing trillions of new debt to pay off trillions of bad debt,  government sanctioned accounting fraud, mainstream media propaganda,  government data manipulation and a populace blinded by mass delusion can  stave off the inevitable consequences of an unsustainable economic  system.”

-The Burning Platform

Adjusting the Strauss and Howe dates to account for the delay in the catalyst, messes things up a bit. They predicted…

There is a nice graphic that I composed for your purposes of planning out the next few years. I hope that it is helpful. Adding three years, gives us…

• “Crisis catalyst” in 2008.
• Climax in 2023.
• Resolution in 2029.

.

Of course, you could argue the 2020 was the “climax” simply because it was one Hell of a shitty year. But you all know, it was a shitty year for everyone on the globe. Not just Americans. I argue that it was just foreplay for bigger stuff to come.

Am I right or am I wrong?

I'd say that America is inching closer to 476 - 1000 era (the Dark Ages). Free thought and speech is dying. Common sense is gasping its last breath. Freedom will be a pleasant memory if we remain on our current path. A handful of evil despots are grasping for world domination and they aim to take their wrath out on all us peasants and serfs.

-Action Jackson

The way I see things is in a very simplistic manner.

I view the entire event cycle as if one would clear out the dead-wood and brush that accumulates in a field gone wild. There, the weeds and undergrowth are permitted to grow and clutter up and starve the field in such a ways that no productive crops can grow. Instead of having a field full of tomato plants, you end up with a plot full of weeds, long woody undergrowth, and difficult to remove tenacious shrubbery and young trees.

Obviously you need to tend to the field to prevent this from ever getting so bad, but as the farmer gets old, and his children move to other pursuits in the cities, he just cannot tend to the weeds and growth. They start to overtake the farm. Pretty soon eventually all that remains are but one or two well tended productive fields and the rest are permitted to go fallow.

The thing is about fallow fields is that the farmer can light a periodic fire and burn away all the problematic undergrowth. But if the farmer fails to do this, the undergrowth just piles up and accumulates.

Eventually it reaches a point of spontaneous combustion. Whether the spark that ignite it is a heat wave, lightening, or an errant cigarette butt, eventually the field will catch fire and burn up.

The amount of damage that occurs is directly proportional to the amount of debris that is present. Thus if the field has been permitted to grow fallow for a decade or more, it will go up in a braze of fire that will burn uncontrollably, perhaps even extending well past the borders of the farmer’s field.

Thus I contribute this thought…

The United States is a field that has been permitted to go fallow. It has been untended for a long, long time. Other farmers have predicted that any day now that it would start to burn up. But…

… those dates seemed to come and go.

Now the debris is piled up really high. And it is bone dry. No rain for a couple of years. There seems to be things that are smoldering. You see some smoke here and some smoke there. But no real fire has yet to ignite.

Thus we enter 2021…

Nothing caught fire yet.

I believe there are smoldering embers just waiting to be stirred into a conflagration which will engulf the entire world in a fiery purging of the existing social order, which has exhausted itself and needs to be cleansed. Jefferson understood the nature of Fourth Turnings two hundred years before Strauss & Howe put it to paper.

-The Burning Platform

Sure 2020 was a shit year, and the United States handled it terribly. The smoke is wafting up from the brush piles in the fields. But nothing has yet ignited. It hasn’t.

• Wall Street is still cheating. And they getting away with blatant crimes and raking in billions of dollars. Sure there was the Game Stop and Robinhood scandals. But nothing has changed.
• Race relations are at the lowest point. And laws, protests, and social re-engineering are not achieving anything other than pissing people off from both sides of the isle.
• The Coronavirus showed how incompetent the United States government actually is. And yet aside from a few shuttered businesses, and having to wear masks, everything else seems to be a continuation of the status quo. The only difference is that the poor are poorer, the rich are richer, and the middle class are turning into the lower-middle class.
• Donald Trump had an opportunity to make a difference. But in hindsight he talked a big game but pretty much wrecked not only the economy, but the global standing of the United States in the eyes of the world. He left office in disgrace. The GOP is in shambles, leaving the DNC as the only party of worth standing. Radical elements stand in the wings waiting to take over.
• The Washington DC riots were a joke. This was not a revolution. It was a party by drunk frat boys. Yet there is evidence that it will result in laws that are going to turn up the Police State from idle to aggressive.
• Armed rebellion is all talk with no substance. Sure gun stores are out of stock of everything from guns to bullets to flack vests. But aside from one or two well reported incidents, no “hot” fighting has occurred.

All this tells me that the “Crisis” has yet to occur.

Having studied the Civil War exensively when I was a history major years ago, I would say there are many very clear parallels with the 1850's right now. The level of division and hate is comparable. 

What many seem to forget is the war didn't just start out of the blue nor did most people in the 1850's believe war was going to happen. War became entirely unavoidable in 1859 with John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. That was a tipping point. 

The southerners began arming themselves to the teeth and preparing for war. 

That raid was itself more or less inevitable after the Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court in 1857, which so angered abolitionists that they became far more aggressive. 

In 1860 of course the South realized they had no ability to sway the outcome of the election and they could not block anything the north wanted.

 To compare this to current events I would say the SCOTUS refusal to address the second amendment violations ongoing, particularly with multiple cases denied cert this summer, can be compared with Dred Scott in terms of effects. 

The various one person-one vote rulings in the 60's which held that states could not model their legislatures after the federal Congress (i.e., towns or counties equally represented in one house, representation by population in another) handed total power to the big cities, stripping rural areas of any power to prevent trampling of their rights. 

So we have the legal/political situation that existed in the 1850's/60's with a large swath of the population, a minority in terms of numbers but still substantial, essentially having no real voice in the government. 

We also have the hate and division over various issues. Gun control, notably. A Biden presidency implementing his gun control plans could trigger a modern-day John Brown moment.

 But it's important to also remember that as civil wars go, ours in the 1860's was quite unusual. We had a relatively clean dividing line. State governments versus a federal government. And leaders who were honorable enough people they more or less accepted defeat in the case of the south, and didn't mass incarcerate the defeated enemy afterwards as criminals in the case of the north. 

Most civil wars particularly in more recent times are not this clean. 

They tend to be messy with less clear geographical boundaries to delineate the opposing sides. Armed groups rise and fall, violence tends to be random and sporadic, and you don't necessarily have two opposing government-controlled armies more or less following the rules of conventional warfare. 

If we have another civil war this is how I would expect it to go. Neighbor versus neighbor, city versus country, far left vs far right. Very violent, bloody, disorganized, highly desperate as one side will criminalize the other for participating, and hard to stop once it starts. And of course foreign governments would be involved if indirectly.

 I would say toss a coin for the answer on if it happens. I think the risk is high. The only way to avoid it is for the politicians to back off of the divisive issues to attempt to bring back some national unity. But neither side is showing any such signs of doing so. The SCOTUS could single handedly prevent the gun control plans of the democrats with some well written rulings on pending cases but I doubt it will.

-Vermont Mountain Man

2020 was NOT the Crisis.

I could be wrong

The historical target dates are approximate. Which is something at I believe. And that there are elements that will cause variances on the target dates.

In my mind the Crisis catalyst was targeted for 2005 +/- 3 years. And we have pretty much identified 2008 as this Fourth turnings Crisis Catalyst. It is three years later. Which means that if the time from the catalyst remains stable, then the Climax has yet to occur.

With this knowledge, we can say that the Climax is targeted for 2023.

Or, any day now with the range of 2023 +/- 3 years. Means 2020 though 2026.

Any. Day. Now.

What does Mr. Howe say?

Below is a brief essay originally published on 3/11/19 by Neil Howe discussing the typical progression of each “Turning”. It remains more relevant than ever amidst our current zeitgeist. It was written nearly a year before 2020 showed it’s ugly, ugly face.

NH: We live in a tumultuous time in American history.

 The 2008 financial crisis and all its hardships, was the catalyst  that tipped us into this age of uncertainty. It marked the start of a  generation-long era of secular upheaval that will continue to run its  course over the next decade or so. This is the generational theory I  laid out in “The Fourth Turning,” a book I co-authored with William Strauss in 1997.

 The Fourth Turning explains the rise of a figure like  President Trump. In Trump’s Inauguration Day speech, he painted a bleak  picture of “American carnage,” of “rusted-out factories scattered like  tombstones across the landscape of our nation” with “mothers and  children trapped in poverty in our inner cities.”

 Looking abroad, it’s unclear whether America will turn inward and fall prey to nativism or maintain it’s nearly seventy year role as  leader of the Free World. Other countries are becoming similarly insular. Britain voted to exit the European Union and we’ve heard  anti-E.U. rumblings echoed throughout Europe from France to the  Netherlands.

 Other nations and peoples around the world are looking to either fill  the vacuum in global leadership or exploit it to advance their own ambitions. We’ve seen the thunderous rise of Chinese economic clout, the calculating geopolitical maneuvering of a resurgent Russia, and the barbarous chaos wrought by the so-called Islamic State.

 In many ways, this era of uncertainty follows the natural order of  things. Like Nature’s four seasons, the cycles of history follow a natural rhythm or pattern. Over the past five centuries, Anglo-American society has entered a new era – a new turning – every two decades or so.

 At the start of each turning, people change how they feel about themselves, the culture, the nation, and the future. Turnings come in cycles of four. Each cycle spans the length of a long human life, roughly eighty to one hundred years, or a unit of time the ancients called the saeculum.

 The First Turning is called a High.
 This is an era when institutions are strong and individualism is weak. Society is confident about where it wants to go collectively, even if those outside the majoritarian center feel stifled by the  conformity.

 America’s most recent First Turning was the post-World War II  American High, beginning in 1946 and ending with the assassination of John Kennedy in 1963, a key lifecycle marker for today’s older Americans.

 The Second Turningis an Awakening.
 This is an era when institutions are attacked in the name of personal  and spiritual autonomy. Just when society is reaching its high tide of public progress, people suddenly tire of social discipline and want to recapture a sense of personal authenticity. Young activists and spiritualists look back at the previous High as an era of cultural poverty.

 America’s most recent Awakening was the “Consciousness Revolution,”  which spanned from the campus and inner-city revolts of the mid 1960s to  the tax revolts of the early ‘80s.

 The Third Turning is an Unravelling.
 The mood of this era is in many ways the opposite of a High. Institutions are weak and distrusted, while individualism is strong and  flourishing. Highs follow Crises, which teach the lesson that society  must coalesce and build. Unravelings follow Awakenings, which teach the  lesson that society must atomize and enjoy.

 America’s most recent Unraveling was the Long Boom and Culture Wars,  beginning in the early 1980s and probably ending in 2008. The era opened with triumphant “Morning in America” individualism and drifted toward a pervasive distrust of institutions and leaders, an edgy popular culture, and the splitting of national consensus into competing “values” camps.

 And finally we enter the Fourth Turning, which is a Crisis.

 This is an era in which America’s institutional life is torn down and rebuilt from the ground up—always in response to a perceived threat to the nation’s very survival. Civic authority revives, cultural expression  finds a community purpose, and people begin to locate themselves as members of a larger group.

 In every instance, Fourth Turnings have eventually become new  “founding moments” in America’s history, refreshing and redefining the  national identity. Currently, this period began in 2008, with the Global  Financial Crisis and the deepening of the War on Terror, and will extend to around 2030. 

If the past is any prelude to what is to come, as  we contend, consider the prior Fourth Turning which was kicked off by  the stock market crash of 1929 and climaxed with World War II.

 Just as a Second Turning reshapes our inner world (of values, culture  and religion), a Fourth Turning reshapes our outer world (of politics,  economy and empire).

 To be clear, the road ahead for America will be rough. But I take  comfort in the idea that history cycles back and that the past offers us  a guide to what we can expect in the future. Like Nature’s four  seasons, the cycles of history follow a natural rhythm or pattern.

 Make no mistake. Winter is coming. How mild or harsh it will be is anyone’s guess but the basic progression is as natural as counting down the days, weeks and months until Spring. 

Exerpts from the book The Fourth Turning

In 1860-1861 southern states took the Lincoln victory as a de-facto proof that the North would increasingly seek to impose its will upon the south (they were right, but losing the war actually made it happen faster and more completely). 

What people generally forget is that all states had large militias that were beholden ONLY to the states, and people had much more belief and legal adherence to the individual states, than now. 

Terrorist actions do not start a war, because you cannot really go to war conventionally against terrorism. What happened in the 1860's is that state governments formed a new nation in rebellion. 

Personally I don't think the Left or the Right, as a whole, have the balls to do this today. But I guess we'll see. Eventually the threats become real enough that it's hard to ignore them and just hope everything goes back to normal.

-Aerindel, SoJ_51 and Observer

This is straight from the book …

“Something happened to America at that time,” recalled U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye on V-J Day in 1995, the last of the 50-year commemoratives of World War II.  “I’m not wise enough to know what it was.  But it was the strange, strange power that our founding fathers experienced in those early, uncertain days.  Let’s call it the spirit of America, a spirit that united and galvanized our people.”  Inouye went on to reflect wistfully on an era when the nation considered no obstacle too big, no challenge too great, no goal too distant, no sacrifice too deep.  A half-century later, that old spirit had long since dissipated, and nobody under age 70 remembered what it felt like.  When Joe Dawson reenacted his D-Day parachute drop over Normandy, he said he did it “to show our country that there was a time when our nation moved forward as one unit.”

The Eternal Return

On the earthen floors of their rounded hogans, Navajo artists sift colored sand to depict the four seasons of life and time.  Their ancestors have been doing this for centuries.  They draw these sand circles in a counter-clockwise progression, one quadrant at a time, with decorative icons for the challenges of each age and season.  When they near the end of the fourth season, they stop the circle, leaving a small gap just to the right of its top.  This signifies the moment of death and rebirth, what the Hellenics called ekpyrosis.  By Navajo custom, this moment can be provided (and the circle closed) only by God, never by mortal man.  All the artist can do is rub out the painting, in reverse seasonal order, after which a new circle can be begun.  Thus, in the Navajo tradition, does seasonal time stage its eternal return.

Like most traditional peoples, the Navaho accept not just the circularity of life, but also its perpetuity.  Each generation knows its ancestors have drawn similar circles in the sand—and each expects its heirs to keep drawing them.  The Navaho ritually reenact the past while anticipating the future.  Thus do they transcend time.

Modern societies too often reject circles for straight lines between starts and finishes.  Believers in linear progress, we feel the need to keep moving forward.  The more we endeavor to defeat nature, the more profoundly we land at the mercy of its deeper rhythms.  Unlike the Navajo, we cannot withstand the temptation to try closing the circle ourselves and in the manner of our own liking.  Yet we cannot avoid history’s last quadrant.  We cannot avoid the Fourth Turning, nor its ekpyrosis.  Whether we welcome him or not, the Gray Champion will command our duty and sacrifice at a moment of Crisis.  Whether we prepare wisely or not, we will complete the Millennial Saeculum.  The epoch that began with V.J.-Day will reach a natural climax—and come to an end.

An end of what?

The next Fourth Turning could mark the end of man.  It could be an omnicidal armageddon, destroying everything, leaving nothing.  If mankind ever extinguishes itself, this will probably happen when its dominant civilization triggers a Fourth Turning that ends horribly.  But this end, while possible, is not likely.  Human life is not so easily extinguishable.  One conceit of linear thinking is the confidence that we possess such godlike power that—at the mere push of a button—we can obliterate nature, destroy our own seed, and make ourselves the final generations of our species.  Civilized (post-Neolithic) man has endured some 500 generations, prehistoric (fire-using) man perhaps 5,000 generations, Homo Erectus ten times that.  For the next Fourth Turning to put an end to all this would require an extremely unlikely blend of social disaster, human malevolence, technological perfection, and bad luck.  Only the worst pessimist can imagine that.

The Fourth Turning could mark the end of modernity.  The Western saecular rhythm—which began in the mid-fifteenth century with the Renaissance—could come to an abrupt terminus.  The seventh modern saeculum would be the last.  This too could come from total war, terrible but not final.  There could be a complete collapse of science, culture, politics, and society.  The “Western Civilization” of Toynbee and the “Faustian Culture” of Spengler would come to the inexorable close their prophesiers foresaw.  A new dark ages would settle in, until some new civilization could be cobbled together from the ruins.  The cycle of generations would also end, replaced by an ancient cycle of tradition (and fixed social roles for each phase of life) that would not allow progress.  As with an omnicide, such a dire result would probably happen only when a dominant nation (like today’s America) lets a Fourth Turning ekpyrosis engulf the planet.  But this outcome is well within the reach of foreseeable technology and malevolence.

The Fourth Turning could spare modernity but mark the end of our nation.  It could close the book on the political constitution, popular culture, and moral standing that the word America has come to signify.  This nation has endured for three saecula; Rome lasted twelve, Etruria ten, the Soviet Union (perhaps) only one.  Fourth Turnings are critical thresholds for national survival.  Each of the last three American Crises produced moments of extreme danger: In the Revolution, the very birth of the republic hung by a threat in more than one battle.  In the Civil War, the union barely survived a four-year slaughter that in its own time was regarded as the most horrible war in history.  In World War II, the nation destroyed an enemy of democracy that for a time was winning; had the enemy won, America might have itself been destroyed.  In all likelihood, the next Crisis will present the nation with a threat and a consequence on a similar scale.

Or the Fourth Turning could simply mark the end of the Millennial Saeculum.  Mankind, modernity, and America would all persevere.  Afterward, there would be a new mood, a new High, and a new saeculum.  America would be reborn.  But, reborn, it would not be the same.

The new saeculum could find America a worse place.  As Paul Kennedy has warned, it might no longer be a “great power.”  Its global stature might be eclipsed by foreign rivals.  Its geography might be smaller, its culture less dominant, its military less effective, its government less democratic, its Constitution less inspiring.  Emerging from its millennial chrysalis, it might evoke nothing like the hope and respect of its “American Century” forbear.  Abroad, people of goodwill and civilized taste might perceive this society as a newly dangerous place.  Or they might see it as decayed, antiquated, an Old New World less central to human progress than we now are.  All this is plausible, and possible, in the natural turning of saecular time.

Alternatively, the new saeculum could find America, and the world, a much better place.  Like England in the Reformation Saeculum, the Superpower America of the Millennial Saeculum might merely be a prelude to a higher plane of civilization.  Its new civic life might more nearly resemble that “shining city on a hill” to which its colonial ancestors aspired.  Its ecology might be freshly repaired and newly sustainable, its economy rejuvenated, its politics functional and fair, its media elevated in tone, its culture creative and uplifting, its gender and race relations improved, its commonalities embraced and differences accepted, its institutions free of the corruptions that today seem entrenched beyond correction.  People might enjoy new realms of personal, family, community, and national fulfillment.  America’s borders might be redrawn around an altered but more cogent geography of public community.  Its influence on world peace could be more potent, on world culture more uplifting.  All this is achievable as well.

Conclusion

2020 was not the Climax; the Crisis of the Forth Turning in America. That still lies ahead of us.

I hope it never comes to this. In lieu, I can see the Balkinization of the country take place, sides would move to designated areas and set up permanent camp. There may be 2, 3 or more countries within the US before the dust settles.

-Survivalist Boards

A climax is a major event. It is typically marked by full-scale discord and absolute totality of full-scale war. That did not occur in 2020. That is not occurring now. 2020 was marked by a “pandemic”. Most Americans (through their media) believe that either [1] it is a hoax, or [2] it is a new strain of flu that is sweeping the globe. It is neither. It is a bio-weapon attack on China by the neocon Trump administration gone terribly wrong.

Xi Peng and Putin do not get their intel from Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, and CNN. They get it from their Intel divisions. And both nations have a full picture of what is going on, has gone on and will go on further.

Both nations (China and Russia) filed a formal complaint against the United States for launching this bio-weapon (and all the others that it launched in late 2020). And while Americans ignored this complaint, pretending that it is meaningless, it did do something. It marked the start of Russia and China teaming up militarily against the United States.

…

United States. (With the UK, Canada, Israel, and Australia.) Today there is isolated America. Confused. Arrogant. Thrashing and moaning. Demanding all sorts of things.

The Rest of the World. And the rest of the world, lead by Russia, and China, that are very carefully and very precisely planning to stop all this nonsense once and for all.

…

…

And America learned nothing.

Keep in mind that the last pandemic of 1918 was not a climax event, though it certainly was a contributor that lead to events that shaped the actual Climax. A climax is full-scale-war. It’s terrible discord at home domestically, and engagement with a major “hot” war. Both at the same time.

The “Fourth Turning” is a crisis, a decisive era of secular upheaval — the old order is toppled and a new one put in its place. 

As America’s most recent “Third Turning” began in the mid-1980s, it was due to expire in the first decade of the 21st century. If we accept Howe and Strauss’ thesis, America has already entered its next “Fourth Turning”.

-What exactly is the “Fourth Turning” envisioned by William ...

It’s a combination of events that will shatter all norms, and make people settle down and just be happy to drink some simple tea under the shade of a tree.

No.

It hasn’t yet arrived.

Many world leaders feel that we are approaching a major war. Countries are preparing for war, with Russia and China at the forefront, and Japan starting its own re-militarization program. 

According to the Strauss-Howe theory, 2017 is equivalent to 1933 (when Hitler got in charge and started rebuilding Germany’s army), 1854 (when the prospect of an American Civil War felt more and more imminent), and 1779 (the middle of the American Revolutionary War against Britain, and the year of the French Revolution). 

Needless to say, right now we are living in very interesting times.

-Charting the Strauss Howe Fourth Turning

The piles of brush and fallow fields are all smouldering. A bunch of kids are playing with matches at the edge of the field, a lighting storm is gathering in the skies, a dog knocked over the logs that held the fire pit and the ashes are smoldering in the dry grass, and a tanker truck full of gasoline crashed and tipped over and all the gasoline is spilling into the dry, dry field.

All the signs are there.

No one is calling the fire department to start engaging in preventative measures. Instead every one is standing by watching it smolder, chewing on crud and going moo.

…

The nearest practical equivalent that I can illustrate is a Civil Defense officer wearing a helmet and telling everyone to get into the bomb shelter. Meanwhile you can hear the bombs drop and explode in the far distance, as they are getting closer and closer to you.

A “Crisis” will be an actual “Crisis”. All you need to do is compare it to previous fourth turnings.

The “Fourth Turning” is a crisis, a decisive era of secular upheaval — the old order is toppled and a new one put in its place. 

-What exactly is the “Fourth Turning” envisioned by William ...

The last crisis was a five year war, with nuclear, and chemical weapons. It consisted of a complete meltdown in the American economy, and the loss of the lives of millions of people. It changed America and resulted in the formation of outsourcing Congressional power to alphabet organizations, turning America into a military empire, and a multi-decade “cold war”.

The crisis before that was also a five year war, using the most modern weapons available at the time. The entire society was torn apart and rebuilt. American state economies were shattered and the resulting reconstruction period lasted a full decade. It changed America and resulted in not only a ban on alcohol, but also the income tax system.

No.

The Crisis hasn’t yet arrived.

Check out this most interesting graphic. It’s a close up view of a much larger graphic that puts all the Strauss and Howe Fourth Turning writings into a really nice pictorial. Amazing.

.

This chart is just one quadrant of a much larger graphic. It shows the seasonality of Anglo-American history since the end of the Middle Ages, according to the Strauss-Howe Generational Theory (as described in their 1997 book The Fourth Turning). Click here to download an enlarged version of the entire chart..

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