The First Turning and The Trumpian Age

Nothing ever happens until it already did

Europe was ready for a gospel that would exalt feeling above thought. It was tired of the restraints of customs, conventions, manners, and laws. It had heard enough of reason, argument, and philosophy; all this riot of unmoored minds seemed to have left the world devoid of meaning, the soul empty of imagination and hope; secretly men and women were longing to believe again. Paris was weary of Paris, of the turmoil and hurry, the confinement and mad competition of city life; now it idealized the slower pace of the countryside, where a simple routine might bring health to the body and peace to the mind, where one might see modest women again, where all the village would meet in weekly armistice at the parish church. And this proud “progress,” this vaunted “emancipation of the mind” - had they put anything in place of what they had destroyed? Had they given man a more intelligible or inspiring picture of the world and human destiny? Had they improved the lot of the poor, or brought consolation to bereavement, or pain?

Thus begins the thirteenth installment of Will Durant’s epic saga, The History of Civilization. One could be forgiven for imagining Durant describing modern America, but actually the passage describes France in the mid to late 1700s, on the eve of Revolution. Reading Durant, one is struck by the recurring theme of historical cycles. The thoughts and feelings in pre-Revolutionary France are much the same as the late Roman Republic, or a dozen other, lesser known social revolutions throughout the 2000 year history of European civilization. Essentially, Durant takes up fourteen volumes and over 15,000 pages to explain the meme Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, etc.

This understanding of history stands in direct contrast to Progressive ideology, which views history as a linear progression towards some future, utopian “end of history.” This is a very shallow and uninformed perspective. Yes, technology improves, medical sciences improve; things change, but the Human Condition remains constant. As Martin Luther King Jr said, We have guided missiles, and misguided men. Thus, the progression of history is cyclical, and Utopia is a fantasy.

One of my favorite theories of cyclical history is The Fourth Turning by William Strauss and Neil Howe. In their book, Strauss and Howe argue, persuasively in my opinion, that historical cycles are driven by intergenerational turnover, and each new “phase,” which they refer to as a “turning,” arises when the next generation takes power. Because the thoughts and beliefs of each generation are necessarily shaped by the cultural milieu in which they are raised, each subsequent generation is influenced by, and develops in reaction against, the previous, and thus history becomes locked in an eternal cycle. The book is well-worth the read, and apparently Howe put out a sequel last year, which I haven’t read.

The Previous Cycle

I don’t want this article to turn into a book review, but just to give the unfamiliar reader an idea of the four “turnings” which make up a complete cycle, I will briefly describe the last complete cycle, along with the definition provided by Strauss and Howe.

The First Turning is a High, an upbeat era of strengthening institutions and weakening individualism, when a new civic order implants and the old values regime decays.

The cycle begins with Reconstruction after the American Civil War (The Civil War was the Crises event of the previous Fourth Turning). This was the High, or First Turning, stretching from 1865 to roughly 1886. Also known as the Gilded Age, this was an era of industrial expansion and economic growth. It was also the period of America’s Second Founding, and the consolidation of Federal power at the expense of “States’ Rights.” An new civic order implanted, the old values regime decaying.

The Second Turning is an Awakening, a passionate era of spiritual upheaval, when the civic order comes under attack from a new values regime.

Following the High is the period from 1886-1908, the Second Turning, which Strauss and Howe deem the Awakening. During this cycle, we saw the rise of the Social Gospel, a Protestant revivalist movement which applied Christian ethics to social issues, and led directly to the Progressive ideology that would dominate US culture for most of the 1900s. A new values regime emerges.

The Third Turning is an Unraveling, a downcast era of strengthening individualism and weakening institutions, when the old civic order decays and the new values regime implants.

From 1908-1929 we witnessed a Third Turning, what Strauss and Howe term the Unraveling. This was a period of individualism and moral debauchery (think Flapper Girls and The Great Gatsby). Internationally, WWI initiated the collapse of the Westphalian system, and domestically, culture war issues like Prohibition, women’s suffrage, and immigration led to a sense of civic pessimism. The old civic order was decaying, while the new Progressive values system cemented itself.

The Fourth Turning is a Crises, a decisive era of secular upheaval, when the values regime propels the replacement of the old civic order with a new one.

Finally, we come to the Fourth Turning, or Crises. It’s important to note that the Crises period stretches from 1929 to 1946, and includes not just WWII but also the Great Depression. This is important to remember for the “Nothing Ever Happens” crew, who keep waiting for a complete Doomsday Prepper scenario in order to declare the arrival of the Prophesied End Times. World War II was the most cataclysmic event in human history. By definition, not all Fourth Turnings can be the most devastating war ever. Sure, the Civil War was also pretty bad, but some of the Fourth Turning periods listed by Strauss and Howe are much less severe, such as the Armada Crises of 1585. What is more important than the severity of the Crises is the civic and cultural ramifications of the period. If WWII had never happened, the Great Depression itself would have been sufficient for the Fourth Turning.

The Current Cycle

Pax Americana

So what happened after WWII? Well, we had another High period. A new First Turning. This was the period from 1946-1964, after the Allies emerged victorious and the US established a new Pax Americana throughout the Western world. This was the period when the CIA was established, and the size and scope of the Federal government was vastly increased, mostly as a result of the Cold War. Again, we see the the cementing of new civic institutions. At the same time, we see the decay of the old, Protestant, moral order, making way for the next Awakening.

I probably don’t need to overly describe America’s most recent Second Turning, the Cultural Revolution of 1964-1984, in which the modern secular religion of Anti-Racism was born. Suffice it to say that it follows the pattern, with the new values regime gaining prominence and the new generation attacking the post-war consensus of their forefathers.

The Third Turning is where it gets interesting. Strauss and Howe published their book in 1997, at a time which they considered to be nearing the end of the Third Turning. (They predict the Third Turning to last from 1984 to roughly 2005). While most people would agree that we’ve been living through a period of Unraveling, it begs the question: Fourth Turning When?

There have been a few theories offered up for why this particular Unraveling period seems to be lasting so damn long. One observation is that, with Americans tending to postpone having children until later in life, the intergenerational turnover may just be taking longer than the normal 20 years. It’s also true that medical science has extended the length of human life, meaning previous generations have been sticking around past their expiration date. Indeed, it’s a popular complaint among younger generations that the Boomers (now septuagenarians), have clung to power far longer than their forebearers. Really, it should be Gen X now leading the country through it’s Fourth Turning, but, other than Barack Obama, the Gen X’ers mostly got passed over in terms of holding office and/or running the institutions. These demographic changes could be enough to “break the cycle,” as it were.

But, the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that America already had it’s Fourth Turning. It just ended. Remember, as I mentioned above, not every Fourth Turning is a monumentally devastating human tragedy on the scale of WWII. Let’s take a look at some of the Crises events predicted by Strauss and Howe in their book (which again, was published in 1997):

• A global terrorist group blows up an aircraft and announces it possesses portable nuclear weapons. The United States and its allies launch a preemptive strike. The terrorists threaten to retaliate against an American city. Congress declares war and authorizes unlimited house-to-house searches. Opponents charge that the president concocted the emergency for political purposes. A nationwide strike is declared. Foreign capital flees the US.

• An impasse over the federal budget reaches a stalemate. The president and Congress both refuse to back down, triggering a near-total government shutdown. The president declares emergency powers. Congress rescinds his authority. Dollar and bond prices plummet. The president threatens to stop Social Security checks. Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling. Default looms. Wall Street panics.

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announce the spread of a new communicable virus. The disease reaches densely populated areas, killing some. Congress enacts mandatory quarantine measures. The president orders the National Guard to throw prophylactic cordons around unsafe neighborhoods. Mayors resist. Urban gangs battle suburban militias. Calls mount for the president to declare martial law.

• Growing anarchy throughout the former Soviet republics prompts Russia to conduct training exercises around its borders. Lithuania erupts into civil war. Negotiations break down. US diplomats are captured and publicly taunted. The president airlifts troops to rescue them and orders ships into the Black Sea. Iran declares alliance with Russia. Gold and oil prices soar. Congress debates restoring the draft.

A less catastrophic version of each of these scenarios has actually happened over the last 20 years. We certainly had a terrorist attack involving airplanes, much more devastating than simply blowing one up. While al-Qaeda didn’t possess nuclear weapons, I remember much agit-prop at the time about “rogue states” furnishing WMD’s to “proxies” as justification for the Global War on Terror, which spanned the past 20 years. Throw in the surveillance powers authorized by the Patriot Act, and the myriad BlueAnon conspiracies around “Bush did 9/11,” and I think we’ve hit each major theme of that bullet point.

The impasse over the federal budget is an interesting one. Strauss and Howe were writing just after Newt Gingrich, as Speaker of the House, forced Bill Clinton to negotiate on the budget by threatening a Government Shutdown. (To his credit, Clinton did negotiate on the budget, and the US actually ran a budget surplus for a brief period in the late ‘90s). So, people used to think a Government Shutdown was scary. But, old heads will remember during the Obama years when it seemed like they were shutting the government down every few months, and mostly nobody cared. That being said, we did have the 2008 financial crises, and of course, the Federal deficit has been ballooning out of control to the point where now interest on the national debt is the single biggest line item on the Federal budget. So, the country isn’t in a great place financially, although how close you think default is currently looming depends entirely on your trust in Modern Monetary Theory.

And, it turned out that the civil war broke out in Ukraine, rather than Lithuania, which is not technically a member of NATO, so we have thus far managed to avoid a wider conflict. Although, in what can only be interpreted as an attempt to poison the well with regards to Trump’s proposed peace negotiations, the Biden admin did recently authorize long-range strikes inside Russia with US weapons. This will not ultimately change the outcome of the conflict, but the Russians did respond by firing a (non-nuclear) ICBM at Ukraine as a warning. So, it’s possible that this thing expands into a limited nuclear exchange, but honestly, I doubt it. Even without a nuclear strike, however, the Russo-Ukrainian war is easily the largest and costliest conventional conflict since at least the Iran-Iraq war in the 80s. So it is a crises, if not the Crises of the Fourth Turning.

I think it was actually Covid which was the apotheosis of this most recent Fourth Turning. Or, rather, the government response to Covid, since Covid itself was essentially just a rather bad case of the flu. While martial law was not technically enforced, in some ways the Lockdowns were even worse. At least under Martial Law you are still allowed to go to work.

While the first twenty years of the 21st century will probably go down in American history as the “War on Terror” era, I think Covid was the final breaking point, where the credibility of the regime, running on fumes for a decade, completely collapsed and something new was born. A lot of people on the Right were discouraged by the complacency of the general populace, and the effectiveness of the propaganda around lockdowns and vaccine mandates. But, let us recall the definition of the Fourth Turning:

The Fourth Turning is a Crises, a decisive era of secular upheaval, when the values regime propels the replacement of the old civic order with a new one.

2020 was the pinnacle of the secular “woke” religion that began its rise in the Second Turning of the 1970s. Since then, it has been receding. Even Harris’ failed campaign tried desperately to moderate their position on some of the more extreme culture war issues. We’ve seen, over the past twenty years, a marked decline in American’s faith in their institutions (for good reason). This also reached its zenith under the Covid regime. The abject failures of our education system, the corruption of our justice department, the stunning incompetence of our foreign policy establishment, and the economic disasters wrought by our central banking cartels and open border policies, have completely delegitimized our civic institutions, paving the way for something new.

The Trumpian Era

Everyone agrees there is a vibe shift. Many have commented on the seemingly subdued reaction from the Left compared to Trump’s 2016 victory. Some of this may simply be fatigue. As Caesar said, the temper of the Gauls is eager and ready to begin a campaign, but their purpose is feeble and in no way steadfast to endure disasters. After four years of “resistance” during the first Trump administration, and another four years of frantic Covid hysteria, many of these Leftists simply have no gas left in the tank. However, some of them may finally be developing the capacity for introspection.

I’ll probably make a separate post on how I feel about this kind of thing.

Regardless, with the securing of the popular vote, and a majority in the House and Senate, Trump has a clear mandate from the people to make Major Reforms. Will he do this? Forever-Doomers say no, he will not. The Babylon Bee recently published a humorous article to this effect. And its certainly true that, for the past twenty years, Republican politicians have run on campaign promises which they never deliver, and probably never even intended to deliver. So, there is plenty of reason for cynicism. But, let us remember the definition of the First Turning:

The First Turning is a High, an upbeat era of strengthening institutions and weakening individualism, when a new civic order implants and the old values regime decays.

This is a new era. We are finally seeing a changing of the guard, many of the Boomercons are retiring. There is reason to be optimistic that the incoming Trump administration might actually implement some major reforms. Take for example Trump’s plan to close the Department of Education. Will this happen? This is the sort of thing we’ve come to expect Republican candidates to say during the primaries, and then quietly shelve if and when they get elected. But, Trump started talking about it after he won. This would be huge. For the past 100 years, government has never shrunk, it has only expanded. It’s impossible to overstate how much of a paradigm shift it would actually be to shutter a federal agency.

Sure, policy nerds will point out that shutting the Department will require an act of Congress, and even with a majority, they don’t have the 60 votes needed in the Senate to pass such a bill. But remember, the Constitution is a living document. Where there is a will, there is a way. I would see such a development as a bellwether test of my theory. If the Department of Education remains unclosed, then I am wrong and nothing ever happens. If the Department of Education is eliminated, that is a harbinger of the Trumpian age, and we can expect more monumental changes to follow.

I feel the same way about DOGE in general. Many people are skeptical that DOGE is much more than a PR stunt. And that may be the case. Curtis Yarvin in particular has voiced his skepticism of DOGE. But, this is the same guy who criticized Chris Rufo for successfully taking over New College in Florida. I respect Yarvin as a thinker, and he has been instrumental in my own shift from lolbertarian to deranged rightwing extremist. But, as far as I can tell, Yarvin’s big plan for establishing his New America seems to consist entirely of mumbling semi-coherently about 14th century monarchs on obscure podcasts, so his opinions on actual men of action can be safely ignored. In the beginning was not the Word, but the Deed.

So, I’m going to go ahead and make bold predictions here (which Doomers can subsequently mock me for should they not materialize).

1. I think Trump will either get rid of the Department of Education altogether, or at least drastically reduce it’s size and function. (I think the official plan right now is to devolve many of the functions back to the states). This will set a precedent for the dismantling of many bloated government agencies over the next 20 years (the length of the First Turning).

2. I believe DOGE will make significant headway on cutting government. I realize that “significant headway” is not an objective statement that can be measured, so I’ll put it this way: I don’t think it’s possible to balance the federal budget over the next four years, due to the amount of money currently spent on Social Security and Medicare, which will never, ever get cut even a little. But, Javier Milei has so far fired 24,000 government employees in Argentina, and I think we can do better.

3. The Mass Deportations will commence. Will every last illegal immigrant be deported in the next four years? No. But, if anyone can start making significant headway, it’s Thomas “Families Can Be Deported Together” Homan. I predict that, let’s say, 1 million illegal immigrants will be deported under the Trump administration. That, coupled with an increasingly strict immigration policy will bring us back in line with how things were 100 years ago. In fact, it really was only in the last 80 years, ie the previous “cycle,” that American immigration policy became so absurd. This will change in the First Turning.

4. The Biden administration represents the high water mark of the secular religion of anti-racism / LGBTQ++. We will, unfortunately, have to wait until the Second Turning to see a full moral revival of American culture, but so-called “wokeism” will recede over the next 20 years. That doesn’t mean there won’t be out of touch corporate execs pushing lame ad campaigns like that cringy Jaguar ad, but this will increasingly be seen for what it is: lame corporate slop not representative of the culture at large.

5. I don’t have a specific prediction regarding the security state, because quite honestly that is going to be a tough nut to crack. The degree to which the intelligence community has embedded itself in our public and private institutions is quite demoralizing when you stop and ponder it. But, I think Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence is a fantastic start (assuming she doesn’t Epstein herself). I don’t know too much about Kash Patel; I’m hearing good things, although to be honest his book looks a little cringe to me. But, Republicans have always had this problem. They haven’t quite figured out aesthetics yet, which is why they always come off as not-quite hip. (I expect this to change as well, by the way). If anyone has a prediction here, drop it in the comments section below.

So, that’s it: my Hopium peddling for today. Let me know in the comments what you think of my analysis, are we heading into a new Age, or are we stuck in a forever Unraveling because demographic and technological changes have broken the intergenerational cycle? Also, subscribe and give me money.