BOOMERS – Your Crisis Has Arrived

[swgprop]

There have been a couple of recent threads on Generational Theory as laid out by Strauss & Howe and others.

This is an article following that theme by James Quinn, whose writings I usually enjoy (in a depressing sort of way).

BOOMERS – Your Crisis Has Arrived

"There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations, much is given. Of other generations, much is expected. This Generation has a rendezvous with destiny." Franklin Roosevelt – 1936

President Roosevelt was correct. The generation he was speaking to was already dealing with the worst financial crisis in the history of the United States, the Great Depression. By 1945, over 400,000 of this generation had lost their lives. Another 600,000 men were wounded. Much was expected and much was sacrificed. Every generation has a rendezvous with destiny. The generation that won World War II passed the ultimate test and proceeded to produce the next generation, the Baby Boom Generation. Their rendezvous with destiny is underway. Will it be a rendezvous with history that results in World War III, the collapse of the Great American Republic, dictatorship, or a return to the original Constitutional principles upon which this country was founded? Many of you are probably thinking the idea of WW III, collapse or dictatorship is crazy. I’d respond with the wisdom of Kramer from the classic Seinfeld show.


Jerry: "Oh you're crazy"
Kramer: "Am I? Or am I so sane that you just blew your mind?"
Jerry: "It's impossible"
Kramer: "Is it? Or is it so possible your head is spinning like a top?"
Jerry: "It can't be"
Kramer: "Can't it? Or is your entire world just crashing down all around you?"

...

The good news is that every modern Crisis has been followed by a new High. Of course, in every modern U.S. Crisis we had a strong leader. Will Barack Obama be that strong leader? If no strong wise leader emerges, could we follow the path of the Roman Empire? Can we as individuals change the course of history? I don’t know the answers to these questions. It is up to each of us to analyze the facts and act accordingly. A recent song by The Fray, You Found Me, asks the question we will all need to answer.


Where were you?
When everything was falling apart

[metalman]

Re: BOOMERS – Your Crisis Has Arrived

seen itulip's 2010 election video... this time we have nothing to fear but nothing itself!

[media]http://www.itulip.com/video/loveyou.mp4[/media]
really, who thinks like this? who asks, 'is it easier to kill than control 1 million people'? he's got the answer, but what kind of person even asks the question?

[jtabeb]

Re: BOOMERS – Your Crisis Has Arrived

seen itulip's 2010 election video... this time we have nothing to fear but nothing itself!

http://www.itulip.com/video/loveyou.mp4
really, who thinks like this? who asks, 'is it easier to kill than control 1 million people'? he's got the answer, but what kind of person even asks the question?

That does it, I'm running for elective office when I get out of the airforce in 2012 (If I make it back from iraq in 2011, that is).

I can't take this crap anymore. If we don't step up, who will?

[cobben]

Re: BOOMERS – Your Crisis Has Arrived

"who asks, 'is it easier to kill than control 1 million people'? "

Iosif Vissarionovich is your man, he tried everything, study his life & times.

Many for example think that the Ukraine famine was intentional genocide.

from Wikipedia:

"
Stalin launched a command economy, replacing the New Economic Policy of the 1920s with Five-Year Plans and launching a period of rapid industrialization and economic collectivization. The upheaval in the agricultural sector disrupted food production, resulting in widespread famine, such as the Soviet famine of 1932-1933, known in Ukraine as the Holodomor.^[2]
During the late 1930s, Stalin launched the Great Purge (also known as the "Great Terror"), a campaign to purge the Communist Party of people accused of corruption or treachery; he extended it to the military and other sectors of Soviet society. Targets were often executed, imprisoned in Gulag labor camps or exiled. In the years following, millions of ethnic minorities were also deported"

[Master Shake]

Re: BOOMERS – Your Crisis Has Arrived

Excellent article. Unfortunately, I don't think the our current political leaders are up to the task.

[Serge_Tomiko]

Re: BOOMERS – Your Crisis Has Arrived

When it comes to theories of historical cycles, I'll take Spengler or Nietzsche any time over Strauss and Howe. It's interesting, but its precision is too much like astrology for my tastes.

[petertribo]

Re: BOOMERS – Your Crisis Has Arrived

The good news is that every modern Crisis has been followed by a new High.

Aren't we learning now that this is not so. The Party may be over, over, over. There is no new High. Humans may have reached their limits and the paradigm may now be:

The bad news is that every modern Crisis is now followed by a new Low.
Remove the disguises and this is true of the US over the last forty years.

[dbarberic]

Re: BOOMERS – Your Crisis Has Arrived

Thanks for the reminder on Generational Theory.

I thought in the last thread that this came up that Fred said that iTulip was working on an article that ties Generational Theory to an investment thesis. I wonder where that is at?

[bobola]

Re: BOOMERS – Your Crisis Has Arrived

On Baby Boomers..."They say that we will enter a permanent decline if we don’t spend our way out of a situation that was caused by spending too much".

Exactly. I have been wondering how that works...spending more and more...to fix our current problems...???

[jtabeb]

Re: BOOMERS – Your Crisis Has Arrived

seen itulip's 2010 election video... this time we have nothing to fear but nothing itself!

http://www.itulip.com/video/loveyou.mp4
really, who thinks like this? who asks, 'is it easier to kill than control 1 million people'? he's got the answer, but what kind of person even asks the question?

This the other "great lie". Hmm, I bet you could control 98% of the population by say taking away their jobs, retirement, houses, medical, and make them totally dependent on government aid including food stamps.

Gee, you think that might work to control 280Million pissed off people in the US not to mention the same thing repeating all over the rest of the G-20.

Think you might be able to control people then?

[santafe2]

Re: BOOMERS – Your Crisis Has Arrived

This the other "great lie". Hmm, I bet you could control 98% of the population by say taking away their jobs, retirement, houses, medical, and make them totally dependent on government aid including food stamps.

Gee, you think that might work to control 280Million pissed off people in the US not to mention the same thing repeating all over the rest of the G-20.

Think you might be able to control people then?

People are best controlled with a surprise shock to the system. See 911 as an example of shock perfectly applied and the Iraq war's "shock and awe" as a bad example, telegraphed for weeks and ill applied. One can side with the official 911 version, 19 crazy guys and with radical external support or the less respected, inside job theory. But no matter your position, 911 provided great control over 98% the population.

You can't control '280 million pissed off people', but you can control 280 million scared people. My take on 2009 is that people are angry and only scared of going down without a fight. An attempt to control this crowd will be done at your own risk. The show trials will apparently begin soon. It's much more Paris 1789 than the rise of Stalin.

And your central point may be moot. It's likely always possible to control 98% of the population. But if the other 2% start a revolution, that's a serious problem because you're now fighting for the hearts and minds of the 98% who only want to get along.

[Penguin]

Re: BOOMERS – Your Crisis Has Arrived

Hmmm. How about a little Moody Blues for our English brethren instead?

Listen to the tide slowly turning
Wash all our heartaches away
We're part of the fire that is burning
And from the ashes we can build another day

I still follow the technical data as far as my schedule and limited economics background will allow, but me the bigger deal is, as you say, the human reaction and mood. Right now I still see denial. Some anger. Some fear. A lot of frustration. But this is from a suburb of one of the epicenters of the banking industry: Charlotte NC.

Myself? I have always been a builder. So many things we will need to build and design if we make the move back to an industrial based economy. I am almost ecstatic about the long terms prospects even as I remain fearful of the short term carnage.

So I hope things break right and we become a nation of builders and designers and merchants instead of what we morphed into over the last couple decades. I hope we choose this route. Too early to say.

But this the perspective of a guy who is Generation X. Not a Boomer. And I am an engineer who loves building things. I may be a tad too optimistic.

Will

[junkacc]

Re: BOOMERS – Your Crisis Has Arrived

As an X-Gen myself, I say its fitting the boomers go out with a boom. Or more a KA-POOOOOM!!!!!

[D-Mack]

Re: BOOMERS – Your Crisis Has Arrived

seen itulip's 2010 election video... this time we have nothing to fear but nothing itself!

http://www.itulip.com/video/loveyou.mp4
really, who thinks like this? who asks, 'is it easier to kill than control 1 million people'? he's got the answer, but what kind of person even asks the question?

Nothing new under the sun, especially for him

“I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot…. Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him, but China could.” [Blum, 1995; Z Magazine, 1997]
http://www.historycommons.org/entity...iew_brzezinski

[johnnybill45]

Re: BOOMERS – Your Crisis Has Arrived

"Modern" as in "modern crisis" is relative. As described in Jarod Diamond's book Collapse, there may never be a new high. Could be, we just lived through the greatest, most comfortable times we will see for hundreds of years.