The Great Awakening?

A segment on Glen Beck's program today talked about a radical leftist book being translated from French, "The Coming Insurrection" that was written the the communists at the heart of the recent riots. You can find it on the web. I downloaded it because I believe as Glen does, that you need to understand the mindset of those behind the events that will eventually culminate in the next 60's style "revolution" - something YOU and I will live through.

Some years ago I read "Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069", written by two historians, William Strauss and Neil Howe, who build upon the shoulders of previous historians (as Sowell did in "A Conflict of Visions"). I subsequently read their follow on, "The Fourth Turing: An American Prophecy: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous With Destiny".

These were truly eye-opening books. The first is an academic (i.e., readable but not well written) review of the 80-110 year cycle the USA (and related western countries) pass through. During this cycle, society goes repeatedly goes through 4 distinct cycles (I'm starting at an arbitrary point in the cycle):

1. The Awakening (Spiritual Crisis)
2. The Unraveling
3. The Crisis (Civic Crisis)
4. The High
5. Rinse and repeat.

We are currently in the Civic Crisis. Each era lasts about 20 years and has distinctly different characteristics.

The second book, written in the 1990's, discusses one of these eras, the "Fourth Turning". It predicted the "crisis" (9/11 and the economic crisis) though the war came a little earlier than expected. You can read more detail on wikipedia and the Fourth Turning web site.

It is because of these books that I knew that the 9/11 crisis would not only fundamentally change the texture of the next 20 years, but also end up with a large change of ideological hands soon after the end of Bush's term. That is part of the cycle. They even predicted a FDR style "savior" to appear that would make massive changes that in order to get us out of the crisis. They even called it a "New New Deal". I'm not kidding. They predicted Obama, not by name, but by archetype.

I blathered on about all that was in order to give you background before I try to link what the Strauss and Howe books predict will happen in the future with the growing radical leftist movement Glen Beck mentioned.

There has actually been one anomaly in the 4 era pattern: the Civil War (the Civil Crisis) came "early" in the cycle and was especially devastating because of that. You'll have to read about it in the book, but suffice it to say that it was because Lincoln was a "moralistic prophet" leader, seeing things as good and evil making the war worse, and not a member of the next generation which possesses the same pragmatic characteristics as generation X does. This caused the US to completely skip the High 50s's style era and go into the Awakening 60's style era (after a delay).

Why is this important? The Crisis Era is always about war and economics. When 9/11 happened, Strauss and Howe speculated that we may be repeating the Civil War sequence. The (war) crisis came early. It wasn't due until... 2009 or so (I believe)... and the president was, again, from the "moralistic/prophet" generation. The jury's out on wether we'll have another High, 50's style era after this crisis is over (feeling relief and elation that the crisis is over), or wether we'll go right into the next Awakening era: another 60's style era with all of it's societal upheaval: a spiritual crisis, so to say. I personally believe we'll unfortunately skip the 50's style High.

However, regardless of wether we miss the 50's style era or not, at this point in the cycle, we should start seeing the beginnings of the next Awakening right now. It's always "spiritual" in nature, went underground during the crisis and is very often a communal revolution.

Why all this?

I've been wondering when it would begin and looking for the first inklings of the next crisis because we're all going to live through it. I just hope we can moderate it because we know it's coming. We've already seen some of this with Obama's far left ideology, and with Hillary declaring herself not a "liberal", but a "progressive" of the 1920/30's style. However, we're reliving the the FDR era with them. The Awakening is still in the future, either close by or at least 20 years away. However, the "Progressive" movement is gaining force. I believe that the book Beck mentioned is the first sign of the coming tumult in the next Awakening Era. As with the 60's, it will evidently be violent. Perhaps more so than the 60's were.


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