The 4th Turning - our current events

[heydaralon]

Guinness is the Natty Ice of stout beers. Loves me an Irish pub though.

When I'm in the mood for some real Irish beer, I crack open an O'douls and take a tylenol pm. Last time I did that I passed the fuck out

[C-Mag]

I'm seeing a generational clash in the government spying vs civil rights crowd.

The primary politicians and reporters sticking up for civil rights are Gen X, names like Nunes, Gowdy and reporter Sarah Carter. The pro big government spy crowd seems to be led by Baby Boomers. Even on the GOP side there seems to be a split. Older politicians like McCain and McConnell tend to stick up for government spying while the younger ones want more civil protections.

[Speaker to Animals]

I'm seeing a generational clash in the government spying vs civil rights crowd.

The primary politicians and reporters sticking up for civil rights are Gen X, names like Nunes, Gowdy and reporter Sarah Carter. The pro big government spy crowd seems to be led by Baby Boomers. Even on the GOP side there seems to be a split. Older politicians like McCain and McConnell tend to stick up for government spying while the younger ones want more civil protections.

It's the Boomer/Millennial alliance again.

We have to wait for more boomers to die from shitty health choices and our own Gen Z children to become voters in order to counterbalance it.

The good news is that boomers led unhealthy, shitty lives and will likely die earlier than their parents did on average. Also, millennials are not having as many kids, so it looks like the effect of the baby boom will die with the third generation (I think of them as the baby momma generation, since most of them live in single-mother households with siblings from multiple unwed fathers).

The bad news is that the generation the millennials have spawned seem to possess the same factors that make the black urban communities such wonderful places to avoid.

[Smitty-48]

I would submit, If a global war of hegemonic succession were to occur, it would look nothing like the industrial wars of the early twentieth century, anyone imagining a war of tanks, planes and ships, engaged in massive conventional battles for territorial gain, is way behind the times.

To wit, rather than World War Three/Four, more likely to be Information War One/Two, and it may have already begun for all intents and purposes.

In terms of casualties, barring an unintended thermonuclear exchange, I seriously doubt the assertion that it will be comparable to the sort of attrition seen in the twentieth century, won't take that many killed to bring an Hegemony down in the post industrial age, nothing of the sort. Also likely to be prolonged, playing out over decades rather than years.

Global industrial wars of attrition are totally obsolete, no one will ever fight a war like that again on such a scale, all of that has been reduced to a simple binary by the hydrogen bomb, zero or one, zero being the most likely outcome, again, barring a catastrophic mistake.

The Cold War itself was arguably Information War One already fought, took 45 years for Voice of America to bring the Soviets down, so entirely plausible that we are already into Information War Two at this juncture.

In the event of global hegemonic succession, tanks, planes and ships, are about as relevant now as horses, spears, and longbows.

The industrial age is over, and in the post industrial age, I would assert, warfare itself; is giving way to lawfare, slowly, but relentlessly in fact.

It's all war amongst the people now, the terrain is demographic rather than topographic, and he who holds the opinions of the masses, holds the high ground.

The hegemonic succession in play, may in fact be the succession of Westphalia itself, a multigenerational hyperwar, to render war between nation states irrelevant.

[Speaker to Animals]

The war is already on, but the information war is only one part of it. The main portion of the war is being waged demographically. Immigration policy is the war right here and now.

[Smitty-48]

Migration merely a proxy, for the war against Westphalia itself, it's not the immigrants who are the threat, so much as the masses divesting themselves of adherence to sovereignty as a lever of control.

The far rights obsession with immigration misses the point, mass migration is merely a symptom of the breakdown of the Westphalian order, in the face of a global monocultural blitzkrieg.

They over there, you over here, it's starting not to matter anymore, and no Iron Curtain could save Westphalia in the face of it, you can't hold back irrelevance with a wall.

The hegemony is not a single country, it's the concept of a country in of itself, but you can't kill an idea, as the Americans proved in 1776, the Declaration of Independence, the doom of Westphalia long ago written.

[TheReal_ND]

Well he's not entirely wrong. There isn't much time left to see if something can be done legally.

[Smitty-48]

Legal by whose order tho? By order of the Sovereign? The Shot Heard Round the World; no crown, no sovereign but the masses, and good luck holding them back, when they vote with their feet, the doom of Westphalia, was long ago written, Philadelphia Pennsylvania unhorsed and unheaded Munster with the stroke of a pen.

You're going to mount your horses, and ride out to do battle with Demos unchained? Good luck with that, Don Quixote.

That war has already been fought, and lost, the Colours were surrendered to Demos, at Yorktown, and it's been one rout after the next ever since, Cemetery Ridge, Mons, Prokhorovka, the Iron Curtain itself, one bulwark after the next, has fallen in the face of Demos.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Look who got populist all of a sudden...

It was only a 2% pullback, Dude. The real fun hasn’t even started yet.

[Smitty-48]

No populist am I, but no fantasist neither, sitting to the right of the crown, dooms one to be on the losing side, it's merely a question of how quick and how total that defeat will be in the end.

As for the equity markets, a peripheral concern, who owns what, is already beyond the control of Westphalia, clinging tenaciously to your gold; the crown heads have already tried that, to no particular avail.

Whatever fantasy you have, of a equity doomsday, wherein everyone goes back to being yeoman farmers on the land ruled by the sovereignty of gold, is about as realistic as Dungeons & Dragons.