Dixie is hanging in there. She slept a bit more yesterday but that’s ok. The nurse asked if we wanted palliative care and Lori immediately said no. Dixie’s not in any pain and still jokes with us so why would we want that? When Lori went up yesterday morning, she asked her Mom if she could help her with anything and Dix said no but replied that she could help Lori with her hair as it was a mess! Of course we were headed to the gym so Lori’s hair was in a bun on top of her head. She told her Mom this and Dixie said something like, oh thank God! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We headed out to James and Addy’s around 4:30 in the afternoon and hung out for an hour or so before going to dinner. The food was bar food and kind of crappy but that was ok. Addy’s kids went with us. Riley, her daughter, has a degree in pastry cooking from culinary school and we were talking about setting up a food truck. Addy and James leave around noon today. They’ll fly private to Chicago before jumping on United to Amsterdam. The Company didn’t want to mess with any commercial delays out of Denver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We’re headed to the gym sometime this morning. We have some snow on the ground but not on the driveway or roads. It’ll probably melt this afternoon. The sky is all blue right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For those of you that want to read an objective view of the World and the possible changes coming based on history, read on. If not, you can skip down to the last sentence and have a great weekend. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
History\u2019s best seen as cyclical, rather than a straight-line progress to some preordained end the way both the Marxists and the Abrahamic religions see it. But then, Ecclesiastes has its famous quote that there\u2019s nothing new under the sun.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Plato in the Republic<\/em> talks about how the younger generation\u2014and we\u2019re talking fourth century BC\u2014can\u2019t stand up to the moral values of their forefathers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Older people have always thought that the younger generation wouldn\u2019t quite measure up. In recent American history, you\u2019ll recall, the younger generation were the beatniks in the \u201950s, the hippies in the \u201960s, and the yuppies in the \u201980s\u2014so it\u2019s a passing parade. Older people have a tendency to think the world is going downhill. Nothing new there. But there\u2019s always a rebirth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Niccol\u00f2 Machiavelli, in his Florentine Histories<\/em>, said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Virtue gives birth to tranquility, tranquility to leisure, leisure to disorder, disorder to ruin\u2026 and similarly from ruin, order is born, from order virtue, from virtue, glory and good fortune.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The bottom line is that societies arise from poverty through moral strength\u2014and that brings them prosperity. But that prosperity brings on arrogance, and the arrogance brings on laziness, which brings on weakness and moral decline. Then they\u2019re reduced to a condition of slavery and poverty again. Change is the only constant\u2014except in human nature.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n As I look at the United States, it seems to me the peak of American culture was the time just before Teddy Roosevelt came into office. Teddy is certainly among the top five worst presidents. And there\u2019s plenty of competition for that title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He was the first real \u201cprogressive\u201d president; he wanted the government actively involved in all areas of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, that\u2019s not to say that Teddy Roosevelt wouldn\u2019t have been a really great drinking pal, a wonderful guy to go camping with, a fun guy to have an intellectual conversation with. He had a lot of admirable personal values. But he was a nationalist, a statist, and a warmonger. That\u2019s why I say he was a horrible president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The long-term trend of US overseas imperialism started with the Spanish\u2013American War and the building of an overseas American empire in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Hawaii\u2014followed by World War I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The US has gone from being noninterventionist to now having many hundreds of bases around the world and trying to give orders to every other country in the world. That kind of arrogance always ends badly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a civilization\u2014a culture\u2014the US has been on an accelerating path downhill for about 120 years now. <\/strong>That\u2019s true even while science and technology have greatly increased the general standard of living. It\u2019s a mistake to conflate a higher standard of living with higher moral values\u2014that\u2019s what Machiavelli was talking about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I question whether that trend will change\u2014at least until we have a genuine crisis. Why not? Because a lot of the way a society acts comes from the way kids are brought up\u2014the values that are inculcated in them when they\u2019re young. And increasingly, kids are taught what I would call the wrong values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saint Ignatius said this in the 17th century, and Lenin repeated it in the 20th century. They both said that if you indoctrinate someone in his youth, chances are you\u2019ve directed his worldview for the rest of his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cultural Marxists are now totally in control of the US educational system, and have been for a couple of generations. That\u2019s absolutely the case in the colleges and universities but also in the high schools and even in the grade schools. Kids are being taught to be socialists, ecowarriors, social justice warriors, and \u201cwoke\u201d from an early age. It\u2019s really serious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And it\u2019s not a cyclical phenomenon. This is one of the few areas in which I take some issue with The Fourth Turning<\/em>. The trend towards collectivism and statism seems to be a secular long-term trend that\u2019s still accelerating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are a few bright spots. Libertarians, for instance, are somewhat more prominent than in the past. <\/strong>But the fact that libertarians believe in personal freedom, in the face of a societal trend in the opposite direction, makes me tend to believe they\u2019re actually genetic mutants. They\u2019re just a small percentage of the population, whose nature has resisted the prevailing nurture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m more of a maverick than most people are, however. Most just continue to believe what they\u2019re taught as kids, reflexively and automatically\u2014right or wrong. So I don\u2019t think there\u2019s really much hope of a serious change in the direction of American culture. At least until a major crisis\u2014and the outcome of that is in doubt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n International Man<\/strong>: OK. That\u2019s the long-term trend. Where are we in the generational cycle now? Are we moving into the fourth turning and\u00a0headed for a crisis<\/a>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Strauss and Howe take a cyclical point of view over the course of roughly 80 years, four generations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To very briefly summarize their theory, there are four \u201cturnings\u201d: a \u201chigh,\u201d an \u201cawakening,\u201d an \u201cunraveling,\u201d and a \u201ccrisis.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the last couple of decades, we\u2019ve been undergoing the unraveling, where old values fall apart. Next, Strauss and Howe predicted a crisis, starting about 2015, which tests the very existence of the society. Or at least the way it\u2019s run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They go beyond seeing generations as being simply \u201cliberal\u201d or \u201cconservative.\u201d According to Strauss and Howe, there are four generational archetypes that last over a cycle of 80 years\u201420 years per generation\u2014corresponding to the \u201cturnings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Without going into all the details, they see the baby boomers as being a \u201cProphet\u201d Generation. <\/strong>The authors are ideologically oriented\u2014fire and brimstone types\u2014very much like Bernie Sanders on the left and Donald Trump on the right. Kind of biblically apocalyptic by nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They were quite correct in defining the Generation X types as the so-called \u201cNomad\u201d Generation. These are kids who learned to take care of themselves\u2014and are not so ideological in the way they think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Millennials are who are relevant at the moment. They correspond, in Strauss and Howe\u2019s view, to the World War II generation. They\u2019d be the frontline soldiers in the coming crisis and conflicts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n International Man<\/strong>: What happens after a crisis? Is there a positive way forward?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Historically, the answer is,\u00a0\u201cAlmost never\u201d\u2014in the short run<\/strong>. The best recent example is the French Revolution. It got worse with Robespierre\u2014a Bernie Sanders of the era\u2014followed by Napoleon. Or take the case of the Russian revolution. As necessary as it was to get rid of Nicholas II, it got worse with Lenin, and then it got even worse with Stalin. But even in those cases, France and Russia recovered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it all comes unglued in the US over the next decade, those two revolutions could be templates. Look at the way leading Democrats think, and listen to what they\u2019re saying. They\u2019re echoing Robespierre and Lenin.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Republicans aren\u2019t much better, because although they sometimes talk the talk of peace and personal freedom, they almost never walk the walk. The two major US parties\u2014and people in the Red counties and the Blue counties\u2014seem to really hate each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s quite ugly sociologically. There are irreconcilable differences. They\u2019re exacerbated by the fact we\u2019re headed for a financial blow up. There\u2019s no doubt about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some years ago, there was a poll taken among Generation X types. It turned out that more of them believed that space aliens were going to invade than that they were ever going to collect Social Security. People have very little faith in \u201cthe system\u201d anymore, the society, or the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If we go back to the beginning of the 20th century, the country really wasn\u2019t very political at all. People worried about their own lives, their own families, and their own local communities. Americans shared a common culture, beliefs, and values\u2014that\u2019s no longer true. Now the country has become very politicized\u2014everybody has a loud voice and they use votes as weapons against their neighbors. It\u2019s become a nation of nasty busybodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That makes me think the next upset will be something like a revolution.<\/strong> It\u2019s likely to be really ugly, because we\u2019re looking, simultaneously, at an economic catastrophe, political chaos, and a social and demographic upset\u2014and probably a military situation as well. Government often sees war as a way to unite the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, what\u2019s going to happen?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ll hazard a guess that 50 years from now, the United States and, for that matter, most countries are not going to exist in anything like their present form. The best solution is a peaceful break up into smaller political subdivisions. As opposed to a civil war\u2014which is a contest between one or more groups for the control of a central government.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Hmmmm, lots to consider. You can read more in Strauss and Howe’s new book, The Fourth Turning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Ok, Ty cooked a great looking dinner last night. He’s on a roll and loves cooking. and that’s it, time to get moving. Enjoy the weekend and God Bless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dixie is hanging in there. She slept a bit more yesterday but that’s ok. The nurse asked if we wanted palliative care and Lori immediately said no. Dixie’s not in any pain and still jokes with us so why would … Continue reading \n