Re: Polyticks: Bob Butler's Perspective
Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2023 3:02 pm
** 20-Jul-2023 World View: E-mail message about Fourth Turning
A correspondent sent me the following
message:
The Fourth Turning was published in the
mid-1990s, and was the foundational book
on general theory and Generational
Dynamics. However, the book contains a
number of errors and limitations that
I've corrected. The main limitation is
that FT applies only to the
Anglo-American timeline (England and
North America) since the War of the
Roses in 1400s England. The main errors
are a consequence of this limitation.
FT assumes that everyone is on the same
timeline, causing major problems and
inconsistencies in analyzing the 1600s.
When I started developing Generational
Dynamics in 2003, the first thing that
was obvious to me was that Eastern
Europe was on a different timeline than
Western Europe. So I developed the
"Principle of Localization," which says
that each nation has its own timeline,
and in particular that the timelines of
England and North America diverged
during the 1600s.
The interesting thing is that both
Strauss and Howe were Democrats, and the
FT theory was geared to Democrat Party
values. So when Bush became president,
S&H began to abandon their own theory
because it supported the
neo-conservatives. When Obama became
president, they predicted that the
"generational crisis" would be Obama's
transformation of America into we would
now call a "woke" culture. When that
didn't happen, Obama himself was blamed
for not being forceful enough. That
explains why the FT community has pretty
much abandoned their own theory, and why
Biden and the Democrats have adopted
far-left socialist policies -- declaring
war on the energy industry, opening the
border to millions of illegal
immigrants, sexualizing young children,
spending billions of dollars on cronies,
attacking Israel, accepting bribes from
China, reducing funding for armed
forces, implemnting "Ministry of Truth"
censorship regime, and so forth.
Fortunately, most of these Socialist
policies have been collapsing.
In the forum, Bob Butler is a far-left
Democrat who supports the original
Fourth Turning theory. He is most
active in the "Polyticks: Bob Butler's
Perspective" thread.
A correspondent sent me the following
message:
Here was my response:I don't know if you are seeing the same
thing, but people everywhere are talking
about The Fourth Turning again....the
New York Times just wrote an article
about it (which I haven read yet because
I don't have a subscription), Neil Howe
is on the Realignment Podcast right now
(I have it on in the background), but
this is only two of maybe 10 places I
have heard this book discussed in the
past 2 weeks
The Fourth Turning was published in the
mid-1990s, and was the foundational book
on general theory and Generational
Dynamics. However, the book contains a
number of errors and limitations that
I've corrected. The main limitation is
that FT applies only to the
Anglo-American timeline (England and
North America) since the War of the
Roses in 1400s England. The main errors
are a consequence of this limitation.
FT assumes that everyone is on the same
timeline, causing major problems and
inconsistencies in analyzing the 1600s.
When I started developing Generational
Dynamics in 2003, the first thing that
was obvious to me was that Eastern
Europe was on a different timeline than
Western Europe. So I developed the
"Principle of Localization," which says
that each nation has its own timeline,
and in particular that the timelines of
England and North America diverged
during the 1600s.
The interesting thing is that both
Strauss and Howe were Democrats, and the
FT theory was geared to Democrat Party
values. So when Bush became president,
S&H began to abandon their own theory
because it supported the
neo-conservatives. When Obama became
president, they predicted that the
"generational crisis" would be Obama's
transformation of America into we would
now call a "woke" culture. When that
didn't happen, Obama himself was blamed
for not being forceful enough. That
explains why the FT community has pretty
much abandoned their own theory, and why
Biden and the Democrats have adopted
far-left socialist policies -- declaring
war on the energy industry, opening the
border to millions of illegal
immigrants, sexualizing young children,
spending billions of dollars on cronies,
attacking Israel, accepting bribes from
China, reducing funding for armed
forces, implemnting "Ministry of Truth"
censorship regime, and so forth.
Fortunately, most of these Socialist
policies have been collapsing.
In the forum, Bob Butler is a far-left
Democrat who supports the original
Fourth Turning theory. He is most
active in the "Polyticks: Bob Butler's
Perspective" thread.