The obsession with historical "cycles - and the coming 'hero generation!'

Again and again, I keep encountering time fetishes that correlate with political ones.

For example, traditional Marxists tended toward teleology, belief that civilization has an inevitable course, propelledtoward inevitable outcomes by class war and by ever-increasing industrial production. Though today's 'leftists' wouldn't know anything about that - I have yet to meet one - even one - who could describe old Karl's historical patterns or future extrapolations. Or what he actually said about capitalism. Nor, indeed, do they ever put any of today's passions in a context of 6000 years. (A very badly needed context!)

On the other hand, they are positive geniuses compared to today's Mad Right. And I mean all of it, from the world oligarchy of casino mafiosi, hedge squires, oil sheiks, Kremlin "ex"-commissars, techie preppers, mandarins and inheritance brats, all the way down to your frenzied MAGA uncle, who dreams that wreaking McVeigh-ngeance on nerds will somehow make him superior to all those smartypants 'fact' users. Nearly all members of that reactionary cult wallow in the same macro-delusion...

...cyclical history.  WIthout actually knowing anything about those 6000+ years, they cling to fantasies that "We've all been here before. And this phase will bring my decadent foes crashing down, just like..."

... just like, what? Well, there's the rub.

== Let's get into those patterns and 'cycles' ==

 While there is zero evidence for  'cycles,' history does show some basic 'attractor states'... above all a tendency for human males to do many of the same tiresome things that almost ALL other males do, in nature...

... which is take advantage of any opportunity to monopolize reproductive success at the expense of other males. (Pick almost any animal type; that is the most visible and garish intra-species struggle, though taking a wide variety of competitive modes, from violence to 'gaudy plumage.')

 In humans, this Darwinian tendency manifested - with the arrival of agriculture and towns - in 8000 years of varied forms of feudalism, wherein gangs of bullies smashed all potential competitors, while taking other men's women and wheat. (8000 years ago especially, there was a huge event, a 'Y-chromosome bottleneck when - as told by DNA - for a few centuries only about 15% of male humans reproduced! Look it up.)

A strong argument can be made that feudalism - in the varied types that dominated 99% of those 80 centuries - is the most 'natural' human governance mode. Certainly every generation features SOBs trying hard to re-impose it! (Including each phase of the U.S. Civil War; we're now in phase #8.)

Alas, while it may be the 'natural attractor state' - (we're all descended from those cruel harems, folks) - it's also true that feudalism has proved always to be crappy at governance! 

Look at that awful litany of horrors called... history!  Even good kings - and there were some! - barely budged the needle, seldom encouraged real progress, and almost always left things to idiot sons or grandsons to f___ up.  This happened - always - because autocratic rule suppresses the one thing that allows discovery and correction of leader delusions and errors...

That one thing was - and remains - reciprocally accountable criticism. The ability of critics to point out leadership errors, before they become lethal, and then argue out alternative, based on facts.

That trait - suppression of error-discovery criticism -is why almost all feudal regimes governed terribly! Leading to that litany of horrors called history.

== Is there a way out? ==

Humans did find an alternative to this trap! A rare one! Indeed, one that was perhaps so unlikely that we may be the only ones in the galaxy to stumble into it! (One of my top five theories for the Fermi Paradox!)  

That alternative mode of governance - the Enlightenment Experiment - is very good at fostering corrective, fact-using criticism! And it works. Flattened societies that allow free-fair-open competition always do better - by orders of magnitude - discovering errors and exploiting opportunities. 

These 'enlightenment' departures from kingship/lordship were starkly rare!  One experiment in ancient times - Periclean Athens - stunned all the surrounding kingdoms and oligarchies... till those surrounding, macho-lordly realms swarmed in to crush it. 

- Renaissance Florence fell the same way, after its burst of glory drew savage response from terrified autarchies. 

- Amsterdam barely survived the same feudal attacks... but endured to spread seeds leading to 3 centuries of spectacular successes! 

Success that oligarchies have since tried to destroy every generation, including a major attempted putsch as we speak.

== Qualifying my praise of Enlightenment Society ==

I go into a lot of this - and especially the role played by modern mythic systems - in Vivid Tomorrows: Science Fiction and Hollywood. 

But still, for honesty's sake: let me stipulate two flaws to the prodigiously more fair, scientific, progressive, creative, free and fun enlightenment approach - flaws that we have yet to solve:

1. The criticism habit can metastasize! It can become cancerous to society - as it did in post Periclean Athens - when sanctimony becomes a drug abused by all sides, robbing criticism of its corrective value, devolving it into rituals of hate.

2. Much of that enlightenment progress - correcting countless past injustices, for example - came at an incremental pace we now view as appallingly, horrifically slow! 

Though far faster than any other, recalcitrant human society.

== Can we get back to those cycles of history? ==

Why did I just go into that? Because all of it is ignored by the simplistic political cults out there... 'Marxists' who know nothing about Marx... the non-Marxist left, who believe their (mostly laudable!) liberal reformist demands somehow erupted from their own brows, instead of from hard increments, won by ten preceding generations... 

...and especially today's flaming-rightists whose uber-favorite book, nowadays, is called The Fourth Turning, by Strauss & Howe -- an exercise in mesmerizing pareidolia that's especially alluring for folks on that side of the aisle. 

And yes, 4T is a pile of historical/teleological nonsense, utter hogwqash that caters - like porn - to the desperate need of conservatives for 'cycles'. (Confederates, Nazis, you name the fascist cult; they all throw themselves at cycle-fetishism in one form or another.)

It's always lurked there on the right.  But The Fourth Turning cult is part of a final phase, toxic frenzy. It has so many former Goldwater conservatives - now fervent or uncomfortable Trumpists - salivating for a coming Grand Crisis.  Worse, many are eagerly helping to bring one about!

Carumba, I don't have time to describe this quasi-religious tract that uses Bible-style incantations plus pseudo-sci mumbo jumbo to cram American history - somehow in isolation from the world(!) - into a perfect 80 year pattern of four generational personalities: each cycle or 'turning' concluding with an admirable 'hero generation' of the US Revolution, the Civil War, WWII... 

...and now the millennials + Gen-Z'ers are gonna have to step up to fulfill that ordained heroic role!

I know more history than most folks - (it's typical of sci fi authors, actually) - and I fail to see any correlation between The Fourth Turning (4T) BS and any aspect of American life!  Howe's fabulations are based upon stories about vast and varied, borderless populations of individuals, stereotyping them as monotone 'generations.'  Even the Boomers - who might be said to have some recognizable 'generational' demographics - overlap with these traits of Howe's only if you squint hard, after pouring lemon juice in your eyes.

Take young people, in their twenties. The ones I've met certainly do seem generally nicer than most boomers were, I'll avow. Much less sex-frantic and more diversity comfortable... 

...but so now are half of those same boomers! Half of the Boomers you know, in fact, are nicer than they used to be! Those millions laid the groundwork for every 'heroic' thing the the 4T cultists expect from my poor kids. So... maybe we grew up a bit together?

== Okay, let me conclude by giving into grouchy temptation! ==

In fact, if I may be indulged a brief, old-fart-grumble? The one trait that I see -- pan-spectrum -- among young people -- a quality that does seem somewhat 'generational' -- is a wee bit of a cult belief in fragility. That mere words might wound someone so deeply that there's no recovery, no walking it off, no chance of toughing out the 'verbal trauma' and moving on.

 Hey, this trend is rooted in a good impulse!  Because it can happen! People are vulnerable and resilient across a vast range. I'd say 10% of folks were never able to 'tough it out and move on' after mere verbal triggers - not in olden times and not now.  We should change our ways, every year, to be more kind! 

We should move toward a diversity that includes allowances that some folks don't benefit from 'walking it off'!  

But a majority? Of... the toughest species the world ever saw?

 No, no, girls and boys and others. That person you see in the mirror is likely a whole LOT more resilient than this generational fragility-incantation encourages you to believe! (And yes, and it correlates with video-playing physical passivity.)

Kids, you are descended from all those heroes of history who had things far worse than you do. Every generation overflowed with 'heroes' who picked themselves up, brushed themselves off and then strove to make the world better. 

Not perfect! But better-enough for you to now improve it, further-still!

Especially if... according to all that Fourth Turning cycles blather... YOU are gonna have to be the scheduled Hero Generation!  

If that is your destiny - because idiots deliberately incite a 'crisis' to fit their cult incantations - then sure. You be heroes! 

I know you've got it in you.

So do I.

Economics and investment gurus abandoning the GOP... and John Roberts's agenda... and again with this "Fourth Turning" voodoo?

Starting with economics: How are my investment-pundit friends reacting to these insane times? Here's one denouncing a second round of ripoffs.

"$1,000,000,000,000. Or a TRILLION dollars. That's enough to give all 1,000 Billionaires in the World another Billion. Wait, we did that already. Well it's enough to give a Million Millionaires another Million. We did that too? Well it's enough to buy 3,000 masks for each American so we wouldn't need to spend Trillions propping up the economy or to accelerate money velocity by giving $600 to 30M people for a year."

"ROFL!!! Who are we kidding, this is America, we're going to give it to the rich people again!" ---

-- And that from a stock investment guru... one of those who love markets, but who get that driving average folks toward revolution may not be good for values.

"The funny thing is the rich people are pissed that they are only getting $1Tn this time (got $6.7Tn last time) ...The biggest stimulus issue will hit us on Friday, it's the end of the $600 weekly unemployment bonus and the Democrats in the House wanted to extend it through Christmas while the Scrooges in the Senate said not only do they want it dropped to $200 now but they want all unemployment capped at 70% of wages AFTER it's combined with any State Benefits people are receiving."

There's more. But you get it. The rich are swiftly dividing into two camps: the unsapient and insatiably greedy that I depicted in Existence... versus those who understand what ol' Joe Kennedy did, when that SOB mogul shocked his peers and backed Roosevelt: 

"I'd rather have half my wealth taken to foster a happy middle class than lose it all to revolution."

And again, I know a dozen ways that some sub-billionaire could make a huge difference, the next two months. And go down in history.

Meanwhile... continuing with economics...

The FCC has approved a petition from Cumulus Media to permit more than 25% foreign ownership of US media, up to and including 100%. Yep. Part of the steady effort to give puppetmasters all the strings.

The best online zine about economics in the modern context – and the top venue that discusses the deeply compassionate and moral ways that Adam Smith first broached the stunning advantages of flat-fair-open-transparent competitiveness – is the EVONOMICS site.  Highly recommended.  And yes, I have one of the channels there, talking about Smith… and why advertising can no longer carry the weight of supporting the Web. 

And see their piece on the economic effects of the pandemic.

== Roberts the "moderate" or "liberal"? ==

Again and again. The top oligarchs don't care about race or gender or abortion, except as dog whistles to rile up red-heads and confeds. John Roberts will side with the Court's liberals on those topics, in order to get balance cred. But he will never side with the people or precedent, or the Constitution, or honesty, when it comes to power. 

And now someone else is pointing at the emperor's nakedness:

"Conservatives really aren't paying good attention to [chief justice] Roberts. He knows what is important and what is not. He knows that LGBTQ rights and religion get lots of media coverage, but what really matters to him is keeping Republicans in power via gerrymandering, voter suppression etc. On the latter kind of cases, he is an unwavering supporter of the Republican Party. 

"To mask that, he votes with the four liberals from time to time in the hopes that everyone is distracted by bright shiny objects and fails to notice that what he really cares about is keeping Republicans in power. With this mix of rulings, he can claim he is just calling balls and strikes (even if baseball itself is in trouble, as described below). Conservatives seem to be unable to comprehend that he is on their side on the stuff that really matters long term."

At last. A pundit who isn't denser than lead.

== Again with this garbage? ==

One of the most-absurd pieces of pattern-seeking nonsense is "The Fourth Turning" by Strauss & Howe, a fable about American "generations" that both ignores the rest of the world and all the rest of human history... plus biology, evolution and almost any inconvenient facts... but has become a touchstone catechism for the US right, feeding into a conservative proclivity toward CYCLICAL HISTORY.

As some kind of cause-effect predictor, it is nonsense... though as a metaphor for what we are going through, the fable does have some charms. It does seem as if millennials will be forced into "hero generation" status akin to the World War II clade. Not because of some teleological 'cycles,' but because imbecile believers in such nonsense, like Steve Bannon, have circled the globe hell bent on helping the enemies of our Great Experiment to provoke such a crisis, where none had been necessary at all. Ironically, they are doing it for evil reasons that the millennials themselves utterly reject. And those millennials will hunt them down, if this gets really dark.

I go into these cycles & such in an earlier posting as well as here and here.

==  The mumbo gets more Jumbo... ==

This interesting piece surveys the notions of William Strauss and Neil Howe that led to their famous prediction of a Great Crisis around the year 2020. I am much less impressed… in fact I have a chapter in Polemical Judo about "patterns of history" - or "teleology" - dissecting how mystical-minded folks on the left view such patterns quite differently from the way folks on the right generally adore "cyclical" incantations about nations going "decadent" and "falling" in rhythmic fatal sequences. (The Nazis believed in cyclical-history crap, proving decisively that they were a phenomenon of the right.)

Ironically, Strauss and Howe... authors of Generations and The Fourth Turning were actually quite upset over how fervently their thesis -- that US history obeys prim 80 year cycles -- was embraced by the radical right. Excuse some repetition, but Howe repeatedly stressed that the asses gleefully calling for a 2020 era crisis - many of whom, like Steve Bannon, helped artificially to cause it -- are exactly the sort of boomer dogmatists whom the new, millennial "hero generation" utterly despise!

  If millennials swing any way politically, it will be to emulate the previous "hero clade," the so-called Greatest Generation who adored one living human above all others... Franklin Roosevelt.

Oh, but now comes a "paper" that takes this nonsense to the nth degree, using Sciencey-jabber and impressive looking "charts" and inapropos 'citations.' There's hardy a sentence in this scroll of dreck that isn't easily disproved babble and confabulation with tables and graphs that are outright LSD fantasies... but wow what an incantation!

Again. In this link I point out the both leftists and rightists tend to desperately seek patterns of teleological ordained history. The left often sees this as heading inexorably in a particular direction, while the right nearly always plunges into "cycles." They draw comfort from the notion that all efforts will fail.

Oh, by the way... Did you know that private banks have police - and can arrest you? Without any Congressional hearings on the matter, the USA Patriot Act in 2001 bestowed on the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks domestic policing powers. While the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington, D.C. is deemed an “independent federal agency,” with its Chair and Governors appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, the 12 regional Fed banks are private corporations owned by the member banks in their region. … The Fed’s police officers are technically known as FRLEO, short for Federal Reserve Law Enforcement Officer. The system has its own police academies for training, their own patch and badges, uniforms, pistols, rifles, police cars and the power to arrest coast to coast without a warrant.”

And finally...

See this: The most surprising revelations from Mary Trump's just-released tell-all book about the president: Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man - which joins the shelves along with Bolton's The Room Where it Happened.

Inside the luxury nuclear bunker protecting the mega-rich from the apocalypse. “While humanity is still dealing with an ongoing pandemic of disastrous proportions, some Americans are preparing for a very different doomsday scenario: waiting out a nuclear winter inside a condo complex of luxurious underground bunkers.” 

First, these jerks think they are so modernist and even science fictional, and they haven’t a hair’s breadth of logic or imagination among them… like remembering that we nerds know where every single one of these hidey holes are, including those in Patagonia, the Urals and under the sea. And in the event of a calamity, if we feel betrayed or even just abandoned by oligarchs whose actions or negligence contributed to that fall, then we who know nuclear physics, cyber, bio and genetics will seek out those holes, pry out the soft nuts and turn them into peasants in the new order that they made.

Friends and enemies. The military. And what might a "good billionaire" do?

Two powerful groups could make a difference in this crisis... one of them by staying aloof and professional but making their loyalty clear. The other can take decisive and bold action individually, even out of whim!

I've said for years the greater part of the U.S. Military Officer Corps is inherently on our side, for many reasons, though they desperately hope they'll never be asked to step in explicitly, as Praetorian protectors of the Republic vs. internal enemies.  I'll get to that, in a minute.

But first, what could a billionaire, or sub-billionaire, who is loyal to Western Civilization, do that could be decisive at this critical time?

There are many rich folks who feel loyalty to this Great Experiment that gave them everything. They're grateful especially for vast numbers of nerdy creative types who made all their successes and toys and interests possible.  For every mafiosi, KGB-oligarch, gambling lord or inheritance brat, there is some tech-mogul who does not want this unique experiment to dissolve into just another boring feudalism -- especially given feudalism's dismal record of bad governance. And so, many of these folks are donating large sums to PACs aimed at slashing the puppet strings used by Putin, MBS and others to revive treason and confederacy.

But there are better ways a good zillionaire could spend this money. Some of them, like Nicolas Berggruen, Bill Gates and Mark Cuban seek their own paths to enhance democracy... and I offer over a dozen potentially original methods in Polemical Judo.

But down below, in this posting, I'll summarize just one. One that might make the biggest difference.  In fact, it cannot help but make a difference... and possibly save the American Republic.

== The military may be our friend. Get used to it ==

First though, take the time. Read this short letter from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley to all American forces, that was all in the news a few weeks ago. 

The US military officer corps isn't just deeply committed to civilian rule and law. They are also the third-best educated clade in American life and the most dedicated to fact-centered, pragmatic problem-solving. George Marshall and Harry Truman desegregated the military knowing it was the one move creating momentum against prejudice, from which there'd be no turning back. 

Yes, they are imperfect, as are we all. But if we spurn these skilled and principled and loyal men and women, we are doing Putin's work for him.

A demographic profile of the U.S. military verifies the officer corps is much better educated than the average public and at higher ranks they equal college professors, which many become, after retirement. Enlisted personnel are also demographically above average. And while I am disturbed that Fox News blares out of the TVs in many noncom ready rooms, the proliferation of racial minorities and women in important jobs helps me feel pretty confident we’ll see loyalty, if the Putinists try to trigger civil war. (Though national guard units in some southern states might be iffy.)

And I wrote the above before news broke of strong intel that Russian agencies offer bounties on American lives in Afghanistan.  At which point, I stopped worrying about a possibly lethal split between officers and noncoms, if 'the balloon goes up.' And I welcome reports from any of you, whether the channels are changing on those nocom lounge TVs.

ADDENDUM: Another respected republican comes out against Trump... Former defense secretary William Cohen, a veteran Republican senator, says a second Trump administration would mean the end of American democracy.   See also: “How Trump Lost the Military.” And for some related polemic -- See the Court Martial of Donald Trump. Surely Putin/Murdoch are as surprised as liberals seem to be, by the fierce loyalty to the constitution of our officer corps.

== The coming wave of cheating ==

Okay, we need one more clue. Alas, this alarming list of currently perfected and plausibly-prepared Republican electoral cheats is all-too realistic! The only way to prevent it is by making this a tsunami election, so overwhelming that they don't dare. And even in that case, the cheating will simply shift from the lost presidential race to preserving obscure State Assembly and State Senate positions, where America's real power lies. We need maps showing which LOCAL precincts might be pivotal, if "isolated cases" of fraud disenfranchise a few thousand. 

And Stacey Abrams's voter registration drive must have a second phase. Now ask everyone you know if they are registered. Then ask "Have you checked?"  And yes, many of these aspects are in Polemical Judo.

Okay, let's go back to where we started and put these pieces together.

== Zillionaires who want to save enlightenment… and themselves ==

Abigail Disney helped establish Patriotic Millionaires, a group of wealthy Americans concerned about rising income inequality, who favor higher taxes on the wealthy. “In the U.S., executive compensation has increased by 940% since 1978; during the same period, worker pay has risen twelve per cent. Income inequality hasn’t been this extreme since the nineteen-twenties. Under the 2017 G.O.P. tax bill, the 400 richest Americans pay a lower over-all tax rate than any other group.”

An important article… that leaves out the biggest reasons why the smarter zillionaires - including many of the tech guys - are supporting Democrats. First, competitive market enterprise simply does better under democrats. Period. Almost always, and its most fecund/productive era was during the aftermath of FDR, until the supply side experiments that started our decline in all metrics, beginning with Reagan.  See: economic outcomes vs. rhetoric.

Second, we mentioned how those tech guys owe their fortunes to working side-by-side with middles class engineers who were trained at magnificent public universities. Some still remember who helped them thrive.

Third, while returning to feudalism may sound good to overprivileged male inheritance brats, in fact, our science-loving, educated, transparent and middle class society has out produced the total of all other nations and societies, summed across all of the last 6000 years.

Fourth - patriotism… the blatant association of the Republican Party with the made-over KGB, with Salafist fanatics, Earth-wreckers and others who have systematically torn down American sciences, alliances and the very rule of law that has made it the safest time to be rich.

Which leads us to the biggest reason that many rich folks are veering away from today’s mad oligarchic putsch.  The same reason the ruthless depression era bootlegging millionaire Joseph Kennedy supported FDR… “because I’d rather lose half my wealth to help the middle class than lose it all to angry mobs.”  The imbecile ‘preppers’ who think they can fund wars against all fact-professions and crush all the smartypants ‘boffin’ castes actually think we don’t know where their survivalist hidey-holes are. We who know nuclear science, geneticism cyber and all the rest.

The smartest zillionaires know it’s time for a reset for one reason. Because they can spell the word “tumbrels.”

== And finally... that one thing a zillionaire could do to save the day ==

This was a long posting, but our foundation is laid, now - the coming wave of cheating, the fact that some of the rich realize their time to act has arrived. And so...

The one thing would be to offer whistleblower prizes. Big ones. For any henchman or contractor or aide who knows about a coming cheat. Some scheme now in-motion to purge voter rolls, or to "accidentally shutter polling stations, or lose or invalidate mail-in ballots, or to pervert voting machines, to stir violence... or even to bypass the clear will of the people.

Think about it. Plots and schemes need henchmen! The almost-universally corrupt Republican Secretaries of State in red states cannot do it alone. They have helpers, co-conspirators, foot-soldiers and bribed programmers... any of whom might record a skulking, Bond-villain meeting or copy documents or simply come out in the open. And thus spoil the whole scheme.

This is the greatest fear of the Cabal. It is why their desperate efforts for four years have been to prevent light and transparency from pouring across the land. They know their servants in DC and state capitals and boardrooms are fickle, and so they use more than mere money... tools like blackmail and other threats...

...but a liberal zillionaire needn't erect anything complex, just a prize! And offer to pay legal bills. And heck, throw in some personal security protection, why not? In exchange for an evidence-backed denunciation of plots against Americans' civil rights. 

Dig it: just the announcement of such prizes might terrify some plotters into shutting down!

If you can think of a simpler way for a sub-billionaire to make a crucial difference in our current crisis, you are welcome to offer it below, in comments. But that's my number one. I've been pushing is since the last century. 

And this may be our last chance to see someone step up. Step up to save us all.

The magic folks who can save us, though few are still alive. Plus sending the Electors to "College."

I'll get to this week's fetish -- the Electoral College -- in a bit, with some thoughts that never entered your awareness, before. But first, something you've seen me rant about time and again. How every single democrat and journalist has missed the blatantly obvious.

== Again, go to the Greatest Generation ==

I don't get it. There is a polemical judo move that could be startlingly effective in this civil war: rubbing the noses of Deep-Red America in their hypocritical betrayal of the heroic Greatest Generation (GG). 

 The Boomers' parents are now lionized, but only in abstract, without ever mentioning their politics! Or the name of their favorite living human - Franklin Roosevelt. When Alexandia Ocasio-Cortez talks about a 70% marginal tax rate, she says "it was higher under Eisenhower... clever! But how much more effective to cite those who defeated Hitler, contained Stalin, went to the Moon and built the fantastic-confident American middle class, using exactly the measures she now recommends. 

Screw "democratic socialism!" It's a buzz word to drive confederates back into Hannity's arms. But "Rooseveltean" would let you keep focus on the GGs! 

Hammer home that they were union members. They hated nazis. And every single "supply side" (voodoo) so-called "reform" that rescinded the Rooseveltean social contract led directly to slower growth! To declining investment and R&D. To slackening entrepreneurship and lazier styles of business. To wider disparities and a sickening middle class. Again, not a single Supply Side prediction came true, ever! No wonder they hate science.

Crow that enterprise and ingenuity flourish under democratic policies and wither under republican ones. *You already own the left, dear charismatic-one. Now steal the part of the Fox base that can remember hearing stories from their GG parents, about how FDR helped them save America and the world.* Those hero-parents found a successful balance-point and would be ashamed of Boomers who became tools of oligarchy.

Want redoubled irony? The book that the American right – especially Steve Bannon – fetishes is The Fourth Turning, by Howe and Strauss, claiming that every fourth generation is a “hero” generation that overcomes the crisis caused by the decadent second generation, restoring America to vitality and vigor and wisdom. We boomers are the decadent ones in this scenario, while Millennials will be the heroes, just like the “heroes” of WWII.  Elsewhere, I dissect the right’s fetish with “cyclical history,” a bona fide insanity that’s been disproved again and again. But sure, there are some blurry patterns. And yes, the millennials I know are better people, and we Boomers have made a mess.

Still note the irony: Bannon is flitting around the world, helping Putin to provoke the crisis when there was zero evidence one would have come, without them.  He and his fellow Kremlin-commie-nazi-oligarch-mafia cabal members are pushing boomer buttons hard, to send the West tipping into hot civil war. He rationalizes that Millennials will then rise to the occasion, overcoming even a myriad mushroom clouds and a broiling Earth to restore virility.  

Only… um… Steve? Won’t that entail the young folks rejecting… you? The quintessential sanctimonious-manipulative right-wing oligarch-racist boomer-thug?  Already, polls show youths – even republican ones – turning hard left, while the works of Karl Marx are again flowing across campuses.

Was this the plan, Steve?

  
Now to two nations that really need a better voting system.

== Sending Electors to "College" ==

Elizabeth Warren is growing on me. She’s smart, utterly fearless and targets proto-feudal power in all of its incarnations. Alas, her latest - demanding an end to the Electoral College or EC - is Quixotic without a chance of coming true till this phase of civil war is ended by many dozen other means.  And even if it were possible, we must get past the loony “first past the post” rules that let someone awful, who gets 40% of the vote in a state - or in some national popular vote - defeat two far better candidates with 30% each … or one with 39% plus a spoiler. We’ve long needed Preferential Balloting… and maybe the dems - having to sort through 20 primary candidates - will lead the way.

One workaround popular among liberals is the “the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact”… an absolutely stupid idea that cannot possibly work, at any level, at any stage in any realistic process.  

Anyway, the EC was written into the Constitution in order to offer a way to avoid exactly the sort of the insane result we saw in 2016, a blatant madman and likely traitor given the presidency because the EC is made of party hacks who mail in a form-“ballot” and do not act like a “college,” at all.  

Which suggests a possible way to make things better without having to amend the Constitution! And it could possibly be set in motion by just one rich philanthropist.

In November 2016 I wrote to a few millionaires suggesting they do something historic.  Simply rent a luxury resort hotel somewhere and announce "For one week only Electors will be allowed to enter (other than staff). They will get all meals and amenities on the house. There are no conditions. They are not required to deliberate or talk to each other. But if a quorum shows up, it is within their power to call it a "college" and discuss whatever they like." 

No coercions suasion or influence. Just a place to spend one week in luxury, and experience being - briefly - the 538 most important people on Earth.

Oh, the howls it would have raised! Would a quorum have shown up? I bet it would, but we'll never know. Well, well. Think about it for next time.

Let me conclude this Electoral College musing by quoting from one of the members of my blog community at CONTRARY BRIN:

“There have been 58 presidential elections in the United States. In just five of them did the Electoral College pick a winner who got fewer popular votes. When the EC ratifies the same choice the popular vote did, it is as if the EC had done nothing at all. It may as well be a rubber stamp. It is in those rarer cases, only five in our nation's history, where the greater number of voters choose one candidate, and the EC the other, where the rubber hits the road. In these, the EC has done something! But what has it done?

“Of those five cases, two (the 1824 decision for John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson and the 1888 decision for Benjamin Harrison over Grover Cleveland) do not seem, to me, very important in their effects. In both, the loser would go on to win the office later, and the nation's course not be critically affected for better or worse.

“In 1876, the EC would choose Rutherford B. Hayes over Samuel Tilden, as a compromise which included the end of Military Reconstruction and the beginning of the Jim Crow era. This stands as an historic disaster America is still paying for.

“The EC didn't overturn another popular vote until recent times, the 2000 and 2016 elections. The 2000 result gave us George W. Bush over Al Gore, plus 9/11 and an ongoing Middle East quagmire plus no action on climate change, the USA Patriot Act, waterboarding, far-right Supreme Court judges, the 2008 economic debacle, and whatever else Pandora's Box had to offer at that moment. The 2016 result, as we know, gave us Donald Trump, a sogheaded, parasitic ponzi charlatan and racist psychopath in the pocket of a hostile foreign spy agency.

“In the 2016 case especially, the winner was precisely the sort of obviously unfit president the 'wiser heads' of the EC were supposed to spit out like a mouthful of gristle. The EC delegates had the power to vote 'faithlessly' if they chose. Instead, (with the exception of a tiny handful of faithless Clinton electors) they dutifully followed party over country and voted Trump into the White House.

“So, to recap: of the five occasions when the Electoral College chose differently than the popular vote, two were (as far as I can tell) a wash, and three were unmitigated disasters for the nation. The Electoral College has a demonstrably worse track record for choosing presidents than the popular vote. It is as useful as a goiter.”

And yet, see my riff above about possibly (at last) listening to the Founders and making the Electors go to College.


== The second nation? ==

Again, Brexit. Let the people vote again. They did not know about Vladimir Putin, first round.

Only do it using a preferential ballot  with four or more ranked choices.  We all know what they'd choose, by a huge margin.

Now let's close with perspective on why the left should accept incrementalism... and why sane conservatism should accept the well-deserved end of the Republican Party.

== Protect the big tent ==

When self-righteousness reigns.... Greenpeace co-founder tears into Ocasio-Cortez and the Green New Deal: ‘Pompous little twit.’  And hence a lesson to the Left: stop doing what Putin and Fox clearly want: splitting and breaking up the Big Tent coalition that’s the only thing that can win this wretched phase of the American Civil War. Stop pissing on your allies!  Think. If the Democrats can win over just ONE million more RASRs (Residually Adult-Sane Republicans) 2020 will be a rout and we can burn Foxism to the ground. 

Squint at that delicious fantasy. But then, what happens next?

The Dems will get a lot of incremental stuff done. Restoring science, freeing the civil service, ending the Drug War, ending gerrymandering and other cheats, providing Medicare at least for all children till age 26, achieving reform of college debt, major action on Climate, restoration of the CFPB and breakup of some monopolies… 

...and none of it will satisfy the Left, which is fine!  The center of argument will be hugely shifted and you can push again from there. 

If history is any judge, the DP will split into a Clinton-Obama wing that wants science and facts, fairness and a healthy-flat-fair-competitive capitalism, and balanced budgets, paid for by the rich...

...and that won't suffice for the a socialist wing! But what a better starting point that would be, from which to make your case for more!

Then you can have the party that you want. After the Confederacy and Putinism are routed, you will have a better chance to take halfway reforms further. Those who demand a liberal civil war are either sanctimoniously suicidal or else witting or unwitting Kremlin stooges.

AOC is smart enough to learn – rapidly! – how to do politics, can you? She’s the one teaching Democrats to do judo, instead of sumo. Try learning.

Oh, BTW, I’ve been a Greenpeace member (with some lapses) for 40 years. Sanctimonious-pushy jerks have real uses! Just don’t let them taunt you into doing stupid things.

== And the same goes for you RASRs ==

I know dozens who admit that the GOP has gone treasonous and insane, but who fear the left. To which I answer read the previous section! If the GOP gets deservedly blasted to smithereens and then the atoms broken down to quarks, what will happen?

The Democrats will break up in two.  You'll see tax-fairness, and end to drug wars and electoral cheating, some anti-trust and consumer protection and a bunch of other things, like an end to insane Supply Side... but then the DP will split and half will be pro-free-competitive-flat-fair enterprise. That half will be pro fact and science but also pro-competition. And what more could you wish for, oh you residually sane conservatives, out there?

Stop clinging to the Putin Party, run by communist and "ex" communist despots and Saudi sheiks. Join the revolution, then help forge a "conservatism" that isn't treason.

Looking for destiny ... in false historical parallels

Teleology is a quality of humans -- the pattern-seeking animals -- to ascribe foregone destiny to both history and the future.

Yes, I admit there are some undeniable historical patterns, like the tendency for groups of males who have an advantage -- muscles, swords, money  or persuasive voices -- to take advantage... using it to cheat, crushing fair competition by giving their sons overwhelming, inherited advantages.  Inheritance-hierarchies dominated across 99% of history. The truest "attractor state," feudalism (in its general sense) is what Adam Smith and the American Founders successfully (at last) rebelled against. 

Much of U.S. history has been about efforts by cheaters to restore feudal hierarchy  under a vaiety of excuses (including some lefto-Marxist ones), ending our brief experiment in flat-fair-open-Smithian systems. The Greatest Generation did a fantastic job of staving off that failure mode, resisting extremist temptations in all directions, establishing the most creative, productive, and progressively-improving nation ever seen. 

Alas, these things tend to be temporary. One of the worst oligarchy putsches is happening right now, but that’s not today’s topic, which is teleology.

Is history ordained or cyclical? I’ve been talking a lot about this human obsession. Religions fixate on it, almost everywhere. Mystics sought to predict using auguries and oracles and prophets. Recently I laid out a fascinating overlap -- how romantics of the left are remarkably similar those on the right. Both groups believe in a compulsory future. Leftists tend to see it as an often-violent upward climb toward zero-coercion utopia.  (In this end goal, they are amazingly like libertarians.)

The right is enamored of a different forecast of gloomy futility -- Cyclical History -- the notion that societies go through life cycles of youthful vigor, senescence and decay. Take Oswald Spengler's The Decline Of The West, for example. Or the Nazis’ notion of rhythmic collapse via plunging ice-moons, followed by a resurrected reich. 

Or the insipid Tytler Calumny.

As far back as Toynbee, historians have debunked this jibbering nonsense, yet pattern seekers keep rushing to embrace it, finding solace in a sense of "historical inevitability."  The latest version, beloved across the American right, is The Fourth Turning, by Neil Howe and William Strauss.  (Not related to the University of Chicago's Leo Strauss, who trained a generation of neoconservatives to undermine every American strength.)  I critique this just-so story in detail, elsewhere. But we need reminding that it has become a cult bible to many of our neighbors.

Yes, in this case, Strauss and Howe provide a lovely, symmetrical tale fitting the dyspeptic narrative. According to their story, it seems that, despite their near-total victory at demolishing the Greatest Generation's Rooseveltean social contract, every value held by today's U.S. majority is destructively self-indulgent. Hence (oligarchs and flacks tell themselves), cheating is justified to prevent that benighted majority from having any say.  Moreover, despite Republican dominance for 30 years, things have reached a pass where only a horrific cleansing will bring a new, vigorous generation out of the ashes.

There are countless problems with this narrative of hand-rubbing glee over looming catastrophe:

1)  Very few metrics suggest such a crisis is a foregone conclusion. Yes, there is a rising wealth and influence disparity, reversing the Greatest Generation's (GG) finest accomplishment: the flattest and most dynamic free market society the world ever saw.  And - oh, yes - there is a looming ecological crisis. But other than those two dangers, most indicators are rather positive. And those two could be fixed with some GG pragmatism. In other words, by not repressing all the creative castes.

2) Not satisfied with inevitability, the most vigorous Fourth Turning believers, like Steve Bannon, have openly declared their intent to provoke the crisis.  To thwart (as the Fox-GOP has done for 25 years) any processes of negotiation by which adults might resolve issues without crisis. They proclaim that they’ll be satisfied with nothing less than violent Civil War. 

3)  It is assumed, because Fox succeeded at riling up proto-fascist populism among the more ill-educated white males, that this trend can be maintained forever, under tight control by the Murdochians. But history reminds us:

   a) The oligarchs in 1930s Germany lived to regret riling up a similar, Know-Nothing hate movement, that served its initial purpose against the left, but then turned on them, as we are now seeing Trumpist fascism start to turn on the Kochs and other oligarchs.

   b) In America, 1930s populism instead veered leftward, but not to communism. Rather, to Rooseveltean reforms and that flat-dynamic free market success story. The most successful – by all measures - social contract the world ever saw, and the very one that Republicans have proudly dismantled since 1981.

4) None of the scenarios promulgated by Bannon and others realistically assess whom the millennials – who are presumably the next "hero generation" according to Fourth Turning theory -- will blame for the crisis, and which direction they will veer.  Think about this irony: Bannon, Alex Jones and the Murdochs and Putin all utterly depend on riling-up unwise, precipitative wrath out of aging American white male Baby Boomers, exactly the "dupe Generation" disparaged by Howe and Strauss! So… why would Bannon assume that the subsequent hero generation will march in lockstep down the same path?

Um, doesn’t  the Fourth Turning theory suggest that millennials will reject everything crisis-making boomers like Steve Bannon have done? (Raising an intriguing deep-conspiracy notion, that’s probably occurring to you, right now.)

Millennials are already swinging soft-left, emulating the Greatest Generation and rejecting their grandparents' raving, boomer inanities.  (Like the insipidly self-indulgent "I'm as mad as hell" meme.) Millennials can clearly see what every single "reform" made by the GOP since 1981 has wrought -- steadily declining growth, except in skyrocketing debt, disdain of the science that delivered a myriad miracles, and a new gilded age of neo-feudalism. The works of Karl Marx – moribund in the 1990s – are now flying off the shelves.

Exactly where do the Murdochs, Kochs, Mercers and Bannons think this is likely to end?  Especially when the well-educated whites (and others) in the fact-professions feel warred upon every day, by every reflex of a mad right?

Sensible men and women conservatives need to try actually parsing this out. 

Even if Howe and Strauss are correct, the crisis scenario does not bode well for any aspect of a moderate, free-market American right. And every day that passes without U.S. conservatism awakening to its duty, we come closer to a climax that will make even Vladimir Putin writhe with regret over what he and Murdoch and the other rich fools awakened...

...either a Rooseveltean outcome of overwhelming, resurgent strength... or a Huey Long... or a Hitler.

== Prepare for a “U” to turn sideways ==

As Samuel Johnson wisely observed, scoundrels run to “patriotism” when they feel cornered and have no other recourse. And abandon patriotism when anything is asked of them, like keeping their word. In particular, confederates are always the most fervent wavers of the red, white and blue, swearing oaths to America… until it becomes even slightly inconvenient.  Like when a Lincoln wins an election.

Then just watch as the “U” in their shouted “U S A!” turns sideways, into a “C,” and the confederacy drops all pretense. Signs are already erupting. See this anecdotal preview: Neo-Confederates reach out to their ‘Russian friends’ in new project : "Once again, racist secessionists are looking to Moscow for succor.” Then the League of The South, an organization described by analysts as a neo-confederate hate group, has launched a Russian language page on their website to explore shared ideas on "Southern nationalism."

Yeah, yeah, one can find anecdotes for almost anything. Indeed, the #1 Fox trick is to show anecdotes of absurd-pathetic “social justice warrior” flakes and then declare that “all liberals and democrats are like this!”  I hope I’ll prove just as wrong about the trend toward a deeply violent phase of the American Civil War.

Still, you need to be thinking ahead. And there's still time to order that Halloween costume I’ve been urging on all loyal Americans for two years.  A blue, union Kepi hat.  It will speak volumes this fall, one week before the mid-terms.

== Another hat idea ==

I still prefer the kepi. But one of you chimed in with an alternative:

“I want to have a hat made with the letters moved around: AWGA. ‘America Was Great Already!’"

Indeed, recall the trap I suggested for your mad, confederate uncle. Demand of him: “Okay then, when do you think America was great?”

Spring the trap! If they say “the 1950s,” you can both show that we got way-better, still… and that the “Greatest Generation” of that era were mostly liberals, who adored Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

(See my earlier posting: Was 1957 America better than today?