There's an old shibboleth in American culture that describes a cultural cycle, and reads thusly:
- Hard times make tough people.
- Tough people make good times.
- Good times make weak people.
- Weak people make hard times.
It's easy to see that we're in the last phase of that cycle; weak people like Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and others of their ilk have done inestimable damage. But this cycle is a simplified version of a complex theory of generational progression, called the Strauss-Howe Generational Theory, after its original proponents. There are two great books that William Strauss and Neil Howe have written describing this theory, "The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny" and "The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us About How and When This Crisis Will End." I can't recommend these works enough; agree with the theory or not, the arguments therein are worth considering.
But taking either the simplified version or the longer academic theory, there's an argument to be made that we have seen the end of the last cycle, the cumulative crisis has been met and dealt with, and we are back on stage one, where hard times are making tough people. I'm not so sure, but let's take a look at where we stand. The fourth turning - the crisis phase that resets the calendar - may be defined thus:
According to the authors, the fourth turning is a crisis. This is an era of destruction, often involving war or revolution, in which institutional life is destroyed and rebuilt in response to a perceived threat to the nation's survival. After the crisis, civic authority revives, cultural expression redirects toward community purpose, and people begin to locate themselves as members of a larger group.
There's an argument to be made that the rise of "woke" sensibilities and the concomitant presidency of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris was the crisis. Unknown powers behind the scenes who, let's be honest, were running the show while President Biden's mental and physical deterioration became too obvious to ignore, as did Kalama Harris's incompetence, inflicted as many "woke" policies and DEI hires on us as they could manage, ranging from press secretaries to Supreme Court justices. The border was thrown open, the dollar was devalued, and the production of energy was hobbled. This has led to a crisis of competence at levels the nation can't afford.
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Thanks, Joe: Tren de Aragua Gang Members Wielding Blades, Tire Irons, Storming Border Crossings
Now a new administration is coming in, in only 18 days, and we now have some hope for a return of competency to some of these offices - but the bureaucratic state that actually wields a great deal of power in the country, well, dealing with that is another matter. We also have the matter of our badly abused military to deal with.
Still - I don't think this is the reset. I don't think we are there yet. There is one more problem, a problem on a Pantagrulian scale, that has yet to be addressed, and within the last few days, we've seen that this crisis is still ongoing.
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Political and sectarian violence is still seen by too many as an acceptable solution to problems, real or imagined. And as I wrote on New Year's Day, we haven't seen the last of it yet - and won't, any time soon.
That's pointing a dripping, red finger right at a root cause: A vicious, Bronze-age ideology masquerading as a major religion. People will be quick to point out that not all Muslims are jihadis, and that's true; I've known a few Muslims who were perfectly reasonable people. But only a few years back people who knew the New Orleans attacker, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who was born in the United States and served in the United States Army, as one of those perfectly reasonable people - until he wasn't, and now he has driven a truck through a crowd of people while flying an ISIS flag. There is something deeply and fundamentally wrong with an ideology that provokes this behavior. Some will point at these words and cry "racist," but I've had enough; it's time to call a spade a friggin' shovel. It is what it is.
So, when we ask, "Can it happen here?" The answer is "It already is." We are embroiled in a clash of civilizations - no, scratch that; we are in a clash of civilization vs. the uncivilized. It's a global conflict, and it's going to get nastier, because wars of attrition and religious wars always do, and this one is both.
Granted, there is an economic aspect to the crisis, as noted above. Donald Trump's historic non-consecutive reelection was largely decided on economic factors, including the economic implications of expensive energy and unchecked illegal immigration. The late, great Andrew Breitbart famously said, "Politics is downstream from culture," but I would add that culture is downstream from economics, and we saw the results of that last November. But this is only part of the crisis. There is a sign, though, that we may be nearing the end. Whatever one thinks of Donald Trump, one has to admit he wields authority naturally, and his strength and the tough people, most notably Tom "The Hammer" Homan, makes one hopeful that things will start to get straightened out. I also have hopes that the efforts of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy and the newly-minted Department of Government Efficiency - the DOGE - will start taking slices out of that bureaucratic state, but I have to admit, I'll believe that when I see it.
The larger conflict, though, is still out there. The world is still a very chaotic place. There are still bad actors out there. There's still a conflict ongoing, a clash of cultures the likes of which hasn't been seen since World War Two. But I think we're getting closer; as Winston Churchill said, "It's not the end; it's not even the beginning of the end. But it might be the end of the beginning." The overt silliness, at least, seems to be fading. The overt threats, though, remain.
