A commentary from Rudy Fritsch…
Donald Trump is now the POTUS… unless he is impeached or assassinated. Neither possibility should be dismissed out of hand. The US deep state is in total panic over what is happening worldwide. Recall that Lincoln and the Kennedy’s were assassinated.
Hegemony and full spectrum dominance are threatened; and seemingly Trump is part of the threat… or not? Perhaps he is simply a tool being used by the Kissinger crowd to further the Anglo/American Empire’s agenda that has been in play for many decades, indeed since Nixon made his historic visit to China.
Kissinger’s idea is for the US to ‘befriend’ the third greatest world power, in order to confront the second greatest power… the power that presents the greatest obstacle to the hegemon. Back in the 1970’s the USSR was the second power, and presented the greatest challenge to US hegemony; China was as yet far from being the great power it is now. Thus, Nixon’s ‘befriend’ China to ‘contain’ the USSR.
Today China is the second greatest world power… if not already the greatest, especially from an economic perspective; thus the ploy to ‘befriend’ Russia and ‘contain’ China. Indeed, Trump has made noises about this very action; he has named China as ‘public enemy no. 1’, along with Iran, ‘public enemy no.2’.
Time will tell how all this plays out, but no matter what one thing is sure; the world wide crisis is deepening. As Winston Churchill put it, “The farther backward you can look the farther forward you can see”. Or, according to Santayana, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.
Two authors who took a good long look at the past are William Strauss and Neil Howe. Their 1997 best seller The Fourth Turning examined history, mainly Anglo American history, back to the middle ages. What they found was a cyclical history, not the linear history (of Western Civilization) as usually taught by mainstream education.
Each historical cycle or saeculum lasts for about 80 years, a typical long human lifetime. Each saeculum is divided into four ‘seasons’, rather like a year is divided into spring, summer, fall, and winter. Each season is one generation long, about 20 years. Strauss and Howe named the four seasons or ‘turnings’ the High, the Awakening, the Unraveling, and the Crisis. Examples of past crises are the Great Depression / WWII, the American Civil War, The American Revolution… and so on back to the Wars of the Roses at the end of the middle ages.
Following WWII, the last Crisis, came the American High in 1946… Then the Awakening in the sixties, the Unraveling in the nineties… and the Crisis we are in, the ‘Millennial Crisis’. The spark that started this Crisis was the 2008 financial meltdown. As each turning lasts about 20 years, we are almost half way through (and not yet at the peak) at least according to the examples of previous historical cycles.
History affects human generations, and humans create history. Clearly a traumatic crisis like WWII will affect the participants and their children (in very different ways); less so their grandchildren, who never experienced the direct effects of the crisis. By the coming of age of the great grandchildren, the crisis is hardly more than a page of (ancient) history. Those who participated in WWII are now almost all gone… certainly retired from power… and society is again vulnerable.
The Fourth Turning is not a book of prophecies or predictions; it does not pretend to anticipate what spark sets off the NEXT Crisis… although the debt problem was apparent even back in 1997. Even less so does it try to predict the path of the Crisis; it simply shows how society will respond to a spark, based on historical, generational lessons.
Each previous Crisis brought about major destruction… of the old social structure… and the creation of a new, different, renewed order. The exact outcomes are not predictable, but the total effect is clear; winter is here, and winter brings death. Spring will renew life, but winter must come before spring.
SO, it seems that Trump, the Gray Champion of the Millennial Crisis, may play the role that Washington played (Revolutionary Crisis), Lincoln played (Civil War Crisis) and F.D. R. played (WWII Crisis). Now ‘Gray Champion’ does not necessarily mean a nice person; rather, it means a leader with the single minded focus, dedication, and power (of ego?) to ride out the Crisis.
Will this play out? Will Trump truly be the millennial Gray Champion? Who knows… but all the indications written about by Strauss and Howe are coming into play. I suggest you read the book… and draw your own conclusions. There are several web sites, some by Neil Howe, that bring the predictions of the book up to date;
http://www.theburningplatform.com/?s=fourth+turning
http://www.lifecourse.com/about/method/insight-overview.html
The bottom line is, Trump or not, Gray Champion or not, the Crisis is in play and will play out. We may have Total War, a la WWII but with plenty of nukes, the USA may have another Civil War; the current political and social setup will change radically. End of Empire is at hand.
This is the truth behind winter, behind the fourth turning; without crisis, no real change is possible, the embedded PTB would simply continue with business as usual. Crisis knocks over the existing order, giving room for something new and hopefully better to emerge.
What can we do, if Crisis is inevitable, and ongoing? Simply this; just like we prepare for the winter season, we must prepare for Crisis. We prepare by learning as much about it as we can, and by acting on our knowledge. We encourage others to do the same; to retain sanity and balance even when the winds of destruction howl about us.
We prepare the storm cellar, with ample supplies and good neighbors to help each other in times of need. As always, especially as the initiating spark is financial… or rather, monetary… we must have a supply of real money on hand; Gold and Silver. Other preparations depend on our specific circumstances.
Even a squirrel has enough brains to know when winter is coming, and to hoard an ample supply of nuts, hidden away, to help it survive until spring arrives. As Homo Sapiens Sapiens, do we have as much brains as a squirrel?
Rudy J. Fritsch