Polyticks: Bob Butler's Perspective

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Bob Butler
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Re: Polyticks: Bob Butler's Perspective

Post by Bob Butler »

John wrote:
Tue Sep 07, 2021 9:40 am
Apparently I was right about that, since you found it interestingenough that you've written an entire Dostoyevsky novel in response.
Ideally, I’d like your rules to be consistent. I wander onto your primary thread only when mentioned by name or to make a brief comment that will not divert the thread. Even then, I am usually censored. You are just too insecure in your reading of history to have it commented on. On the other hand, you have no compunctions on writing Dostoyevski length essays here quite unprompted.

The other thing that gets me is your claim to still be a champion of S&H. Now, I have diverged somewhat from S&H too. They focused on turnings to the point of missing out entirely on ages. It is easy to assume that as crisis wars were central to the Industrial Age, it would be true as well in the Information Age, nukes, insurgencies and proxy wars disregarded. You have to be familiar with turnings, ages, civilizations and the instincts man evolved with. You have to study history with more intent to understand it than to justify your agenda.

But the keys are that the crisis is telegraphed by the debates and compromises of the unraveling, the problem is always solved, the progressive side triumphs over the stay the same faction, and the old way of thought is crushed by the uniformity of the high. In order to not acknowledge these basics, you have to butcher what S&H said.

For example, you seem to stand by your Dostoyevski length regeneracy event post in spite of it being debunked thoroughly by mine. A sudden attack will create unity if the government acts on the unity and unless the culture has a defeatist element where such attacks have happened before and nothing good occurred by resisting. Still, an attack which has nothing to do with the major problem the culture faces which has been debated for the length of the unravelling does not stop the crisis. In this case it may delay it, but the crisis eventually occurred.

Whether you noticed it occurring or not.

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Re: Polyticks: Bob Butler's Perspective

Post by John »

** 11-Sep-2021 World View: Unity after 9/11/2001
Bob Butler wrote:
Fri Sep 10, 2021 9:24 am
> For example, you seem to stand by your Dostoyevski length
> regeneracy event post in spite of it being debunked thoroughly by
> mine. A sudden attack will create unity if the government acts on
> the unity and unless the culture has a defeatist element where
> such attacks have happened before and nothing good occurred by
> resisting. Still, an attack which has nothing to do with the major
> problem the culture faces which has been debated for the length of
> the unravelling does not stop the crisis. In this case it may
> delay it, but the crisis eventually occurred.
I think that the events of today prove that I'm right and that you're
wrong. Did you see George Bush's speech? Did you see Kamala Harris's
speech? Both of them talked at length about the country's unity after
9/11/2001. That's because 9/11/2001 was a Regeneracy Event.

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Brief Unity

Post by Bob Butler »

John wrote:
Sat Sep 11, 2021 2:51 pm
I think that the events of today prove that I'm right and that you're wrong. Did you see George Bush's speech? Did you see Kamala Harris's speech? Both of them talked at length about the country's unity after 9/11/2001. That's because 9/11/2001 was a Regeneracy Event.
That's fine if regeneracy event 'unity' is expected to last far shorter than a term, far less than a crisis. The 'stay the course' vs 'cut and run' divide did exist. Bush 43 even went with 'cut and run' in the end. If the Obama vs McCain election was a referendum on the question, 'cut and run' won. The US never did deny Bin Ladin's people a place to train.

Politicians say stuff. In this case it was even true for a brief time. The government just failed to act on the will of the people, so the 'unity' did not last for any significant length of time.

But by S&H standard, September 11 was not the trigger of a successful crisis. The unravelling debate on the issue did not happen. The war that resulted failed, was not existential. We did not enter a high after the conflict, but resumed unravelling, a sign that the true crisis issues had not been resolved.

We were attacked. We did respond somewhat. It was just not a true crisis. A failed crisis, maybe, an attempt by the conservatives to insert new values into the culture, to justify using our supposed sole superpower military force. But if that is what they tried to do, it failed. Putting boots on the ground for whatever reason - to block terrorist training, to eliminate WMDs, to gain control of oil, or to expand democracy - faded with a crisis like consensus to avoid putting boots on the ground. This feeling is prevalent though most of the country which is concerned with the real crisis, unlike most people on this site who are obsessed with imaginary Industrial Age behavior.

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Re: Polyticks: Bob Butler's Perspective

Post by John »

** 11-Sep-2021 World View: Regeneracy Events and firecrackers
Bob Butler wrote:
Sat Sep 11, 2021 4:04 pm
> That's fine if regeneracy event 'unity' is expected to last far
> shorter than a term, far less than a crisis. The 'stay the
> course' vs 'cut and run' divide did exist. Bush 43 even went with
> 'cut and run' in the end. If the Obama vs McCain election was a
> referendum on the question, 'cut and run' won. The US never did
> deny Bin Ladin's people a place to train.
Actually, except for a change in terminology, S&H say exactly the same
thing that I said. What I'm saying is that the Regeneracy consists of
multiple Regeneracy Events, with the result of creating civic unity
for the first time since the end of the last crisis war.

Here's what they said:
> "The catalyst can be one spark or, more commonly, a
> series of sparks that self-ignite like the firecrackers
> traditionally used by the Chinese to mark their own breaks in the
> circle of time. Each of these sparks is linked to a specific
> threat about which the society had been fully informed but against
> which it had left itself poorly protected. Afterward, the fact
> that these sparks were foreseeable but poorly
> foreseen gives rise to a new sense of urgency about
> institutional dysfunction and civic vulnerablity. This marks the
> beginning of the vertiginous spiral of Crisis."
The concept is exactly the same -- a series of events, each of which
builds on the previous one. If Douglas MacArthur had defeated the
Japanese quickly, then Pearl Harbor's civic unity effects would have
fizzled and been brief. But it needed the Bataan Death March to
continue the series and cement the civic unity.

In the case of 9/11, if Osama bin Ladan had been sitting in Xinjiang
rather than Tora Bora, then 9/11 might well have led to war with
China. As it was, the Taliban were defeated almost overnight, and the
civic unity effect over 9/11 fizzled and was brief.

Keep in mind that S&H's Fourth Turning is very limited in scope,
applying only to just seven cycles on the Anglo-American timeline.
Generational Dynamics is much wider in scope, since it applies to
every country at every time in history, and even applies to
intelligent species elsewhere in the universe.

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Except didn't the Taliban win?

Post by Bob Butler »

John wrote:
Sat Sep 11, 2021 6:26 pm
Actually, except for a change in terminology, S&H say exactly the same hing that I said.
The S&H terminology did include a number of catalyst events occurring before a single trigger event. The catalyst events preceded the regeneracy. They can be important. For example, in the Four Freedoms speech, FDR established that US willingness in a bipartisan way to rearm and support the allies had already occurred, well before Pearl Harbor. Bleeding Kansas and the Harper Ferry raid occurred before Fort Sumter. The Boston tea party and massacre occurred before Lexington. Once the trigger and regeneracy had occurred, any subsequent stuff was part of the crisis. For example, the Bataan Death March, Midway, Kursk and so many others may have been important, but they were not triggers. They did not alter the effort underway. A military trigger is when a commitment is made to violence. It occurs once per crisis.

Have you read the news lately? The Taliban won long term control of Afghanistan. They were never defeated. Your analysis is ridiculously faulty. I can agree the ‘unity’ was very short, but the conflict has been ongoing for decades, and only ended with Biden’s refusal to spend big bucks and lives propping up a corrupt unpopular government. Are you going to pretend the casualties and sacrifice of American servicemen never occurred?

I doubt very much that the US would have started a land war in Asia over September 11. China’s allies in the Middle East are other. Your what if is so diverged from reality that I feel no desire or need to rebut it. You can make up absurdities to justify most anything.

I can agree S&H was limited in scope, but Generational Dynamics has an agenda to justify a particular perspective. Thus, terminology under GD means what is has to mean, and the same for events. In this case, the Taliban is counted as defeated in a short time not as if they won after a long battle. This repeated turning of history upside down is why I deem it necessary to constantly correct your lies.

Any military trigger is going to incite brief unity unless the target has been repeatedly the victim of tribal thinking and resisting has done no good in the past. That certainly is not the case for the US. If you think this a big deal in your system, you can pretend it is so. I just do not see how September 11 can be linked to the unravelling debate or the crisis in progress. I certainly do not think violence is necessary to hold a crisis, to change a culture, to see the turnings progress from unraveling to crisis to high.

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Re: Generational Dynamics World View News

Post by FullMoon »

I haven't seen much about the recent Capitol rally. Apparently it was so flagrantly staged that it wasn't worth airing the footage? Was it a flagrantly staged false flag event?

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Re: Generational Dynamics World View News

Post by Bob Butler »

FullMoon wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 8:05 pm
I haven't seen much about the recent Capitol rally. Apparently it was so flagrantly staged that it wasn't worth airing the footage? Was it a flagrantly staged false flag event?
I think the guy that organized it was genuinely for Trump, but the security was overkill and there were few others joining the protests and nothing to disrupt. Dud?

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Re: Polyticks: Bob Butler's Perspective

Post by FullMoon »

Bob Butler wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 8:53 pm
FullMoon wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 8:05 pm
I haven't seen much about the recent Capitol rally. Apparently it was so flagrantly staged that it wasn't worth airing the footage? Was it a flagrantly staged false flag event?
I think the guy that organized it was genuinely for Trump, but the security was overkill and there were few others joining the protests and nothing to disrupt. Dud?
Yes it was a dud a big dud. It was setup for the media because the last one gave them so much. But nobody showed up this time. I mean, why would they? Mr. Butler thinks so badly of his fellow countrymen.... Care to hurl.so insult now? I mean after you have argued incessantly about jan 6 being some kind of turning point?

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Re: Polyticks: Bob Butler's Perspective

Post by Bob Butler »

FullMoon wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 9:24 pm
Bob Butler wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 8:53 pm
FullMoon wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 8:05 pm
I haven't seen much about the recent Capitol rally. Apparently it was so flagrantly staged that it wasn't worth airing the footage? Was it a flagrantly staged false flag event?
I think the guy that organized it was genuinely for Trump, but the security was overkill and there were few others joining the protests and nothing to disrupt. Dud?
Yes it was a dud a big dud. It was setup for the media because the last one gave them so much. But nobody showed up this time. I mean, why would they? Mr. Butler thinks so badly of his fellow countrymen.... Care to hurl.so insult now? I mean after you have argued incessantly about jan 6 being some kind of turning point?
Not so much a turning point, but a desperation time for Trump to overturn the Constitution and will of the people. He didn't have much other choice. He was out of other options.

The turning points were choosing the economy continuing well over fighting Covid and choosing 'law and order' supporting of continued racist oppression after George Floyd's death. These are also my choices for triggers of the current crisis. In choosing 'stay the same' over 'this cannot continue' he misjudged the people and the upcoming vote. The mood was for saving lives and equality, but he missed it.

Tying the Republicans to elite and racist interests worked through the unraveling. The approach does not need extraneous insults. One should just not expect it to continue unopposed indefinitely.

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Re: Polyticks: Bob Butler's Perspective

Post by Another guest »

Bob Butler wrote:
Tue Sep 21, 2021 4:04 am
FullMoon wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 9:24 pm
Bob Butler wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 8:53 pm


I think the guy that organized it was genuinely for Trump, but the security was overkill and there were few others joining the protests and nothing to disrupt. Dud?
Yes it was a dud a big dud. It was setup for the media because the last one gave them so much. But nobody showed up this time. I mean, why would they? Mr. Butler thinks so badly of his fellow countrymen.... Care to hurl.so insult now? I mean after you have argued incessantly about jan 6 being some kind of turning point?
Not so much a turning point, but a desperation time for Trump to overturn the Constitution and will of the people. He didn't have much other choice. He was out of other options.

The turning points were choosing the economy continuing well over fighting Covid and choosing 'law and order' supporting of continued racist oppression after George Floyd's death. These are also my choices for triggers of the current crisis. In choosing 'stay the same' over 'this cannot continue' he misjudged the people and the upcoming vote. The mood was for saving lives and equality, but he missed it.

Tying the Republicans to elite and racist interests worked through the unraveling. The approach does not need extraneous insults. One should just not expect it to continue unopposed indefinitely.
Sounds like an effective recipe for the collapse of America.

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