Submitted by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,
In
Part 1
of this article I discussed the catalyst spark which ignited
this Fourth Turning and the seemingly delayed regeneracy. In Part 2
I will ponder possible Grey Champion prophet generation leaders who
could arise during the regeneracy.
The nearly seven year reign of Barack Obama has resulted in
furthering wealth inequality, in spite of his socialistic
rhetoric.Notwithstanding his Nobel Peace Prize, military
spending is at all-time highs and we are engaged in actual and
proxy wars across the Middle East and in the Ukraine. Race
relations have never been worse. Poverty levels have never been
worse. Real median household income is lower than it was in 1989.
Real hourly wages are at 50 year lows. Home ownership has plunged
to 50 year lows, as middle class workers have been kicked out of
their homes and young people are saddled with so much student loan
debt and bleak job opportunities they will never have an
opportunity to own. The ownership society pushed by Clinton and
Bush, with the proliferation of Wall Street created “exotic”
subprime mortgages, peddled to people incapable of paying their
mortgages, blew up the world in 2008, and the fall out will last
for decades.
Meanwhile, Wall Street banks have reaped $700 billion of
ill-gotten profits since 2010 as the Federal Reserve has handed
them trillions of interest free funds to gamble with, while rigging
the financial markets, and paying their executives obscene
bonuses.The hubris and arrogance of the Wall Street titans
is appalling, as they buy politicians, write toothless financial
regulations (Dodd Frank) for their bought off politicians to pass,
report fraudulent financial results with the stamp of approval from
the FASB, blatantly rig interest rate, currency, stock and
commodities markets, and use deception and propaganda to distract
and mislead the public through their corporate media mouthpieces –
dependent upon Wall Street advertising revenue to thrive.
And still, Obama has not prosecuted one banker for the
largest control fraud in world history, as he assumed the role of
useful puppet to the vested financial interests.I’m sure
he will be paid handsomely after he leaves office in 2017, just as
Bill Clinton, Alan Greenspan, and Ben Bernanke have been richly
rewarded by their Deep State benefactors for a job well done.
Illegal immigrants are pouring over our borders with
encouragement from the Obama administration. Obamacare has proven
to be a giveaway to health insurance conglomerates, hospital
corporations, and drug companies, as insurance costs are driven
higher, care deteriorates, and deficits soar ever higher. The
welfare state has grown to immense proportions, with 46 million
Americans remaining on food stamps, proving the reported
unemployment rate of 5.1% to be a fraud. The labor participation
rate of 62.6% is at levels last seen in 1977 and far below the
67.1% rate achieved from 1997 through 2000. The politicians and
corporate media applaud $600 billion deficits as an achievement,
while 10,000 Boomers turning 65 per day is guaranteed to drive
future deficits back over $1 trillion per year.
Laurence Kotlikoff, economics professor at Boston University,
reveals the truth about our true fiscal mess. Our unfunded
liabilities are too damn big and our current deficits are a
lie:
“I told them the real (2014) deficit was $5 trillion, not the
$500 billion or $300 billion or whatever it was announced to be
this year.
Almost all the liabilities of the government are being
kept off the books by bogus accounting. The government is 58%
underfinanced. Social Security is 33% underfinanced. So, the entire
government enterprise is in worse fiscal shape than Social Security
is, but they are both in terrible shape. So, how much is America on
the hook for in the future? If you take all the expenditures
that the government is expected to make, as projected by the
Congressional Budget Office (CBO), all the spending on defense,
repairing the roads, paying for the Supreme Court Justices’
salaries, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, everything
and take all those expenditures into the future
and compare that to all the taxes that are projected to
come in, and the difference is $210 trillion. That’s the
fiscal gap. That’s our true debt.”
We now know for sure Barack Obama is not the Grey Champion
of this Fourth Turning.
He has only worsened the three core elements of this Crisis –
debt, civic decay, and global disorder. Since his ascension to
power, U.S. and global debt has expanded at an astounding rate
never seen in world history. Class, race, political and cultural
divides have grown to vast proportions. The world is exploding in
violence, refugees flooding over borders, civil wars, proxy wars,
riots, currency wars and economic depressions caused by U.S.
military interventions and monetary policies.
The world is becoming increasingly chaoticand the
American people are seeking a leader who can bring order, make
tough decisions, and capture the zeitgeist of this moment in
history. They are in search of a prophet generation (Boomer) Grey
Champion, whose arrival marks the moment of darkness, adversity and
peril as the Fourth Turning careens towards its climax.
The Grey Champion doesn’t necessarily have to be a good
person, but they must lead and display tremendous confidence in
their cause and path.Franklin, Lincoln, and FDR have many
detractors, but during their Fourth Turnings, they most certainly
led, casting aside obstacles (sometimes illegally) and enduring
dark days and bleak prospects for success. Is there someone of that
stature ready to lead the American people now?
Gray Champion?
“Americans have always been blind to the next turning until
after it fully arrives.
Most of today’s adult Americans grew up in a society whose
citizens dreamed of perpetually improving outcomes: better jobs,
fatter wallets, stronger government, finer culture, nicer families,
smarter kids, all the usual fruits of progress. Today, deep into
the Third Turning, these goals feel like they are slipping away.
Many of us wish we could rewind time, but we know we can’t – and we
fear for our children and grandchildren.
Many Americans wish that, somehow, they could bring back a
saecular spring now. But seasons don’t work that way. As in nature,
a saecular autumn can be warm or cool, long or short, but the
leaves will surely fall. The saecular winter can hurry or wait, but
history warns that it will surely be upon us.
We may not wish the Grey Champion to come again – but come he
must, and come he will.”
–
The Fourth Turning
–
Strauss & Howe – 1997
When Strauss and Howe wrote these words eighteen years ago,
halfway through the Unraveling, the American Dream was already
turning into a nightmare. Perpetually improving outcomes have
turned into a perpetually declining standard of living for most
Americans. Fear for the futures of our children and grandchildren
were warranted. Millennials have been lured into and enslaved by
$1.3 trillion of student loan debt, left with limited job
opportunities and low pay, priced out of the housing market, and
handed a $200 trillion bill by their elders. Despite factual data
showing that default rates on for-profit student loans were even
three times as high as subprime mortgages in the early 2000s, the
government took over the student loan market in 2009 and proceeded
to dole out $500 billion (taxpayer money) in new debt over the next
six years to anyone that could fog a mirror and scribble an X on a
loan document.
The criminal enterprises known as for profit colleges such as:
University of Phoenix, Corinthian, ITT Tech, Strayer, and Devry,
have absconded with the money, provided dreadful education,
graduated about 20% of enrollees, and left millions of suckers with
billions of debt. With default rates now exceeding 50%, students
are angry, demanding relief from their own stupidity. Hard working
taxpayers who have struggled to put themselves and their kids
through college are angry they will foot the bill for defaults that
anyone with a high school diploma could see would happen. Trust in
the government’s decision making process and motives have been
rightfully shattered.
It is clear the Obama administration purposely enslaved
young people in debt to artificially lower the unemployment rate
for political purposes.The issuance of colossal amounts of
subprime auto loan debt (begun by Ally Financial when it was owned
by the Federal government) has also been politically motivated to
artificially increase GDP figures and pump up the financial results
of the US automakers (GM, Chrysler) saved with taxpayer funds in
2009. There are no free markets left. Everything is manipulated for
a political reason or to benefit a particular constituent. The
average American pays the price, while the connected .1% are
further enriched.
When young people protested against the true enemies of the
people on Wall Street in 2011, they were maced, beaten, tear
gassed, trampled by horses and imprisoned by the enforcers of the
surveillance police state. The working middle class has seen their
real wages stagnate for the last 50 years, as the dollar was
unpegged from gold, politicians were free to run up the national
debt with no short term consequences, and citizens were turned into
consumers through media propaganda, the peddling of debt by Wall
Street, and the complete and utter failure of our educational
system.
While working class Americans have seen no advancement in
their real wages in almost a half century, the cost of their food,
energy, education, healthcare, housing, and taxes have risen
astronomically.It is no coincidence the Wall Street
bankers stepped in to offer prodigious levels of consumer debt in
the form of credit card, mortgage and auto loans to allow Americans
to pretend their standard of living hasn’t fallen. Excessive levels
of debt leads to excessive profits for the moneyed interests. The
last 35 years have been a grand national delusion.
Trust in the economic system, financial markets, political
parties, mainstream media, and generational social contract has
been destroyed. Rampant irresponsible fraud, abuse,
deception, and deceit by the moneyed interests, lackey politicians,
their government apparatchiks, media mouthpieces, and legal system
have shattered the illusion the establishment is looking out for
your best interests. The revelations by Edward Snowden of illegal
mass surveillance, militarization of local police forces, military
exercises in US cities, attempts to roll back the 2
ndAmendment, and trying to control the internet has
revealed the true nature of the corporate fascist state. The
disintegration of trust began slowly after 9/11 but accelerated
rapidly over the last three years. Our leaders have done the exact
opposite of what needed to be done after 2008. Everything they have
implemented has failed. The average American is worse off than they
were in 2009 at the depths of the recession.
The highly educated, white collar, sociopath masters of the
universe have captured the levers of power in this
country.The world is enthralled and mesmerized by a gray
haired academic troll-like figure who will ascend her monetary
throne and pronounce whether her and her fellow central bank
lackeys will raise an obscure inconsequential interest rate from 0%
to .25%. This is nothing but a meaningless diversion as her owners
(Wall Street banks), their corporate brethren, captured
politicians, pliable judiciary, and media mouthpieces rig the
financial markets to enrich themselves while impoverishing the
masses and drowning current and future generations in un-payable
debt. Harry Markopolos, who uncovered Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme,
while the SEC and criminal co-conspirator Wall Street bankers
willfully ignored the blatant easily identifiable fraud, captures
the essence of why trust in our economic, financial, regulatory,
political, judicial and journalistic systems has collapsed:
“Government has coddled, accepted, and ignored white collar
crime for too long. It is time the nation woke up and realized that
it’s not the armed robbers or drug dealers who cause the most
economic harm, it’s the white collar criminals living in the most
expensive homes who have the most impressive resumes who harm us
the most. They steal our pensions, bankrupt our companies, and
destroy thousands of jobs, ruining countless lives.” –
Harry Markopolos, Congressional Testimony
The men who retain the levers of power are the same men who
were in command when the Crisis struck in 2008.They are
even more powerful and rich today than prior to the financial
collapse provoked by their unbridled greed and avarice. They
believed they could engineer a recovery by promoting confidence in
the Wall Street banks through the issuance of prodigious amounts of
debt to solve a crisis caused by too much debt. Total debt
outstanding in the U.S. rose from $52 trillion in 2009 to $59
trillion today, at the behest of the government and their Federal
Reserve cohorts.
While rational thinking Americans have continued to pay down
their mortgage debt and reduce credit card usage, the Federal
government through their insolvent (if using mark to market
accounting) entities Fannie and Freddie, along with their monopoly
on student loan issuance, and their massive deficit spending, have
accounted for more than 100% of the $7 trillion increase. Total
global debt approaches $230 trillion, up approximately $70 trillion
since the crisis began.
The mood change in the country is palpable as economic
misery besets the middle class; race wars break out in urban
ghettos across the land; push back against the police state
intensifies; distrust of a rigged financial system keeps people out
of the market; young people are priced out of the housing market by
Wall Street price manipulation; productive good paying jobs
dwindle; government bureaucrats prove themselves inept at
everything they attempt; illegal immigrants pour over the southern
border overwhelming the social safety net when it is already
stretched thin; and faith in both political parties is close to
zero.
The regeneracy has been delayed, but this has allowed the
anger, bitterness, and dismay with the government to grow to
staggering proportions. The country is growing desperate for
someone to lead. Ignoring the debt, civic decay and global disorder
is no longer acceptable. It’s time for someone to step forward and
tell the people the truth.
“Soon after the catalyst, a national election will produce a
sweeping political realignment, as one faction or coalition
capitalizes on a new public demand for decisive action.
Republicans, Democrats, or perhaps a new party will decisively win
the long partisan tug of war. This new regime will enthrone itself
for the duration of the Crisis. Regardless of its ideology, that
new leadership will assert public authority and demand private
sacrifice. Where leaders had once been inclined to alleviate
societal pressures, they will now aggravate them to command the
nation’s attention. The regeneracy will be solidly under way.”
–
The Fourth Turning
–
Strauss & Howe – 1997
The Grey Champion is likely to be elevated through an
election, but it isn’t a requirement.
Ben Franklin and Samuel Adams were the intellectual and
firebrand Grey Champions of the American Revolution. They inspired
the revolutionaries through writings and oratory. Lincoln and FDR
were elected Grey Champions, but Lincoln only won 40% of the
popular vote in a four way race, while FDR won in a landslide with
57% of the vote over Hoover. It was clear Lincoln didn’t have a
mandate, as Southern states began seceding after his election. No
one can argue Franklin, Adams, Lincoln or FDR united everyone in a
common cause. They actually aggravated the societal pressures that
had been ignored or deferred by their predecessors. Compromise was
not an option for these men. They were going to lead based upon
their own criteria. You were either with them or against them. And
many were against them.
It is widely believed only 20% of colonial Americans were
strong supporters of the American Revolution, with 20% Loyalists,
and the rest sitting on the fence.Franklin’s own son
remained a Loyalist throughout the fight. Half the country departed
the Union upon Lincoln’s election and his support in the North was
lukewarm at best. Lincoln captured 55% of the vote in the 1864
election, with only northern states voting. Even though FDR won
landslide popular vote victories in 1932 and 1936, his detractors
and enemies were many. FDR’s confiscation of gold and antagonism
toward big business convinced a number of wealthy businessmen to
approach General Smedley Butler to lead a coup against FDR and
install a fascist regime to run the country. So, it is clear Grey
Champions are not universally loved or supported. They have the
ability to ignore the complexity of life and focus on one simple
imperative: society must prevail.
Until three months ago the 2016 presidential election was
in control of the establishment.The Party was putting
forth their chosen crony capitalist figureheads – Jeb Bush and
Hillary Clinton. They are hand-picked known controllable entities
who will not upset the existing corrupt system. They are equally
acceptable to Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve, the military
industrial complex, the sickcare industry, mega-corporate America,
the moneyed interests, and the never changing government
apparatchiks. The one party system is designed to give the
appearance of choice, while in reality there is no difference
between the policies of the two heads of one party and their
candidate products. But now Donald Trump has stormed onto the scene
from the reality TV world to tell the establishment –
You’re Fired!!!
As Hillary’s crimes and lies catch up to her and Jeb Bush
drowns in a sea of irrelevance, low energy, and passionless
rhetoric, Trump and Bernie Sanders have surged ahead in the
polls.The country is tired of the Clinton and Bush
dynasties. They are tired of the existing ruling authority. My
initial reaction to Trump’s entering the presidential race was
scorn. He’s a bloviating, egocentric, self-promoting, reality TV
parody of himself. After seeing him in action for the last three
months it has become apparent the country deserves a president like
Trump.
He represents everything we’ve become as a nation. Sound bites,
no substance, self-involved, boastful, and in constant attack mode
are the qualities necessary to lead America today. Facebook twitter
nation merits a president like Trump. Bill Clinton playing sax on
Arsenio and Obama’s weekly guest appearances on the Daily Show or
Jimmy Fallon Show has already tainted and made a mockery of the
office of the president.
Trump was born in 1946 putting him in the Boomer Prophet
generation, so he fits the mold of Grey Champion from a
generational perspective. Hillary and Jeb are also Boomers, with
Sanders from the Silent generation. Trump has struck a nerve with a
wide swath of middle class America with his anti-illegal
immigration rhetoric, disdain for the elitist mainstream media,
unflinching assessment of his second string GOP opponents, and
exuberant confidence in his own abilities.
Building a wall on our southern border, going after billionaire
hedge fund managers, cutting government spending, and negotiating
trade deals that don’t ship American jobs overseas, are resonating
with fed up households across America. Some polls show Trump with
significant support among blacks and Hispanics. The linear thinking
supporters of the status quo are flabbergasted and outraged by
Trump’s popularity. The ruling classes never anticipate the mood
shift of the peasants as they look down on the masses from their
gated estates and penthouse suites. The country is looking for
someone who can tear down the entire fetid, corrupt, rotting
structure.
The moneyed interests are still betting on Hillary or Jeb,
but they are getting nervous.There is still time for them
to pull the old Ross Perot play by threatening Trump or his family
with harm or making him an offer he can’t refuse in financial
terms. But, with the Middle East awash in blood, refugees flooding
into Europe, China experiencing an epic meltdown, oil producing
countries suffering depressions, emerging market economic systems
collapsing under the weight of unpayable promises, the Federal
Reserve panicked as recession approaches with interest rates at
zero bound, and stock, bond and real estate bubbles approaching the
inescapable pin, the stars are aligning for a 2
ndcrisis more perilous and catastrophic than the 2008
catalyst event. The onset of phase two of this Crisis in 2016 will
produce a populace more desperate, less trusting of the
establishment and likely to turn towards someone like Trump, in
despair.
No matter who is elected in November 2016, there is no
turning back. Winter is here and Spring is many years away. Grim
times will befall the world. The potential for tragic consequences
is growing by the day. The storm clouds are gathering on the
horizon. There will certainly be famine, chaos, death, destruction,
and war. Let’s pray our Grey Champion can lead us through the
valley of death to a new High.
“The risk of catastrophe will be very high. The nation could
erupt into insurrection or civil violence, crack up geographically,
or succumb to authoritarian rule. If there is a war, it is likely
to be one of maximum risk and effort – in other words, a total war.
Every Fourth Turning has registered an upward ratchet in the
technology of destruction, and in mankind’s willingness to use
it.”
– Strauss & Howe –
The Fourth Turning
In Part 3 I will try to assess which channels of distress are
likely to burst forth with the molten ingredients of this Fourth
Turning, and lastly make some educated guesses about potential
climaxes.