Victory

Edward is King.

The York family celebrate their victory.

Now, they hope, begins their lasting joy.

Thus opens the 1995 film of Richard III, starring Ian McKellen. It was a reminder of a previous thought about the difficulty of knowing the end of the Crisis while moving through it.

It is easy enough, now, to see postwar witch-hunts as a symptom of excess governmental power as the Fourth Turning winds down. There's a tendency to blame those who were involved, for not recognizing themselves what was happening - that with the most dangerous enemy vanquished, the nation will find new enemies with the support of the existing infrastructure.

Really, though, there isn't a trumpet that sounds when the peak of the Crisis is over, confirming that the most dangerous enemy ever is destroyed. Even with the recognition that history goes in cycles, the events marking the end of the Turning could still be seen as a local peak, and that the real dangers might yet be ahead. And sometimes that might really be the case. In 1940, it appeared that the Depression was gone - would it have been more foolish to think that A) the major disaster of the age had been overcome, or B) that the National Socialists were a European problem that Europe would have to handle? Five short years later,  was there more reason to think that the end of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were a well-fought ending to that Crisis, or would we need to fight the USSR to ensure a really peaceful world?

Which was about where the York family was when Edward took the throne.  It's not always obvious that the fight is over, the more so because sometimes it is not.

Dumb

It's previously been noted that 1994 was a significant year in film, at least for Generation X. While Boomer nostalgia tale Forrest Gump came out early in the year, it was Tarantino's Pulp Fiction that really made an impression and heralded the new kids in town.

(Although, yes, there was also Shawshank and Bullets Over Broadway and The Lion King and some other notable films, if you really want to dig into it....)

It was also the year that Jim Carrey made a splash in movies, after several years on In Living Color. First was The Mask (with Cameron Diaz), then Ace Ventura Pet Detective, and finally Dumb and Dumber.

Which has a sequel coming out ... twenty years later. Probably a little late, and not only because it's been twenty years.

Let it be noted, again, that the book Generations gives "stupid" as a "word of high praise" for Gen Xers. Still, here within the Crisis, and this Nomad generation in midlife, a movie about being stupid beyond mere words may be difficult to internalize. Really smart people have had trouble over the last five, ten, fifteen years: The survival of these two may be asking for too much suspension of disbelief in the modern world.

Choosing

Continuing on into the Awakening  - and for that matter unsuccessful movements - there is this speech from Ronald Reagan in 1964. "A Time for Choosing" was given by Ronald Reagan in support of the presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater. A televised broadcast of the speech was made on October 27, one week before the election.

It is perhaps not the most exceptional version of an Awakening speech. It was given by a member of the then-current Hero generation, was not associated with youth, and was not for a particularly popular cause. There are some religious allusions - Moses and slavery, Jesus and the cross, a joke about how "a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth."  In its own way, it does take on and oppose powerful interests, by challenging then-popular notions of the place of government in American life.

It did not help Goldwater much, who ended up losing by one of the widest electoral college margins ever. The speech is seen as launching Reagan's career - he would soon after be governor of California - and helped ignite the perception of him as a great communicator, as he put forth an alternative view of the future of the United States. He would be elected president 16 years later.

Four

Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming
We're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio. 

Neil Young's cri de couer about May 4 1970 on the radio, while protests continue in Hong Kong and with thoughts of Awakenings past still resonating, became a reminder that not all movements work out as intended.  Even if a protest doesn't succeed, though - even when it fails spectacularly - that doesn't mean it didn't make a difference,  that it wasn't important. 

Bryan lost to McKinley, then tried and lost again. Theodore Roosevelt, though, would soon after become known as a trust buster, taking on moneyed interests in a way that probably exceeded any potential effects of the coinage standard.  While the four students killed at Kent State ended an age when student protest meant something - and might be considered the point at which Hunter S. Thompson's "wave" began to roll back - the U.S involvement in Vietnam would stop soon after, and Nixon would resign 18 months into his second term. These are successes for their movements. That there were well-publicized failures along the way doesn't diminish them. 

Few would be paying attention to the minutiae of Chinese election law or the unusual history of capitalism in Hong Kong without the protests there now.  Indeed, while the Chinese government officially proclaims the necessity of the crackdown in Tiananmen Square in 1989, there seems to be some recognition that it was a major failure on their diplomatic front. It may turn out that the resolution in Hong Kong - however it might turn out - will owe some debt to that. 

Then again, based on reports of pro-government counter-protesters, it might follow a template that the Russians have found successful. Even that will say something about the next fifty years, there. 

Snowden

Where does Snowden fit in this current Crisis?

Starting with the generally accepted assumption that this Fourth Turning started 6 years ago, in October 2008, and using Wikipedia as primary source material, it appears Snowden was working for the CIA at that point, as he had been for about two years. He would resign the following February - which is to say, shortly after Obama's inauguration.

(Not that there's a connection, only that the activities cross administrations, and his CIA tenure included October 2008.)

Soon after, he began working for Dell, and was assigned to an NSA facility in Japan. He had an upwardly mobile career for the four years he was there, although he started downloading documents about surveillance activities in 2012. In March 2013, he quit Dell, with the proverbial straw breaking the camel's back being the Director of Central Intelligence lying to Congress.  His disclosures of NSA activities began shortly after,  in May of 2013.

Snowden is an early Millennial, born in 1983. Despite efforts to portray him as a bad guy, it often seems as he is a much better match for the Hero archetype. When other major intelligence lapses have come out - Pollard, Boyce,  Philby - they have been to specific governments. The rewards often involved personal gratification - not only money, but helping to assist Israel or Communism, seeing their work as a holy cause.  Snowden's leaks, meanwhile,  have been to the public, not to governments, and it does not appear that they have been for personal gain. Putin may stand to gain from the the U.S. being the bad guy here, but it doesn't sound as if he is getting additional intelligence for Russia alone. This relates to the notable difference that - unlike these others - Snowden's leaks happened after he had left his job.  He didn't have a handler who wanted him to be available long-term: When he was ready to go, he left.

Which is ranging rather far from that initial question: Where does Snowden fit? It might still be too soon to tell, but his revelations were a few years - not too many - into the Crisis.  He has fed a growing distrust in the government. As we look back, we may realize that the Crisis started to take its current form when Snowden decided to pledge his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor on a course that seemed to be the right thing to do.

1896

Awakening - 1896 - The Cross of Gold

As the American Presidential election of 1896 approached, the Democratic party was in the throes of a revolt.  The party leaders on the East coast had agreed in principle with tying the nation’s money supply to its reserves of gold. This possibility was not seen favorably in the South and Midwest. The young and fierce orator William Jennings Bryan  (born 1860) had joined with farmers and miners on the use of silver as an equivalent well of money.  Since recent mines in Nevada had made millions of ounces of silver available, coining that silver into dollars was naturally a good and reasonable way to allow farmers to more easily exchange their goods for equipment, necessities, and luxuries. 

The use of both gold and silver for coining money (bimetallism) had been officially supported by the United States government since 1792. It had been effectively dropped when Congress passed the Coinage Act of 1873, which eliminated the silver dollar.  While one could chart the effective flow of gold and silver into and out of the nation's borders, a more worthwhile view may be to consider the division between those rich enough to pay using gold, and those who were not. It was the latter group that Bryan championed. Thus was the stage set for a showdown between Bryan’s Free Silvers and the moneyed interests - first of the Democrats, later of the Republicans.

When Bryan rose to speak in Chicago at the 1896 Democratic Convention, he was 36 years old  - only a year more than the Constitutional minimum to be president. He was known to be a exceptional orator, but  being able to give an effective speech was not itself a sufficient reason to pick someone as party leader. Bryan, however, knew how to take advantage of his skills and the spirit of the times. He fully expected that, at the end, he would win the nomination.

Bryan spoke of how the free silver movement had grown in the small towns of the West, and how there the nation’s strength lies. He made pointed remarks at the expense of the richer areas of the country - the North, the cities, delegates from Boston or New York. He expanded the concept of a "businessman" to include laborers, farmers, retailers, and miners:

The man who is employed for wages is as much a business man as his employer; the attorney in a country town is as much a business man as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis; the merchant at the cross-roads store is as much a business man as the merchant of New York; the farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day—who begins in the spring and toils all summer—and who by the application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of the country creates wealth, is as much a business man as the man who goes upon the board of trade and bets upon the price of grain; the miners who go down a thousand feet into the earth, or climb two thousand feet upon the cliffs, and bring forth from their hiding places the precious metals to be poured into the channels of trade are as much business men as the few financial magnates who, in a back room, corner the money of the world. We come to speak of this broader class of business men.

From the start, it uses religious allusions:

I come to speak to you in defence of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty—the cause of humanity.......if protection has slain its thousands, the gold standard has slain its tens of thousands....

And it ends by invoking fundamentally Christian imagery that would later give the speech its name:

Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.

The showdown with the Democrats fell in Bryan's favor: On the fourth ballot of the convention, Bryan was selected as the Democratic nominee for President. Against the Republicans, he was not so lucky. He suffered defeat to the gold standard-waving Republicans and William McKinley. In 1900, he would face McKinley again, with much the same result. 

The gold standard would soon be supported by the Federal government, but with limited success. Roughly 40 years later, it would be effectively ended by Franklin Roosevelt, as part of attempts to stave off the effects of the Great Depression.

Censors

Beijing can stop Instagram, it can turn off cell phone towers, disconnect the Internet, but it can't censor people who travel on holiday.

While authorities in Beijing are eager to avoid dissent spreading from Hong Kong, with state-controlled media on the other side of a border just 20 miles (32 kilometers) away providing scant coverage of the protests, tourists are experiencing first hand the pro-democracy sentiment on display. Demonstrators are blocking key roads in shopping districts, providing backdrops for photos as mainland travelers visit the three main protest sites.

Over the last few days it has been frequently noted that Wednesday was a holiday in China, National Day. It commemorates the founding of the People's Republic of China, much as Independence Day does for the United States. There are fireworks, celebrations - and, yes, a day off.  This fortuitous coincidence meant that people in Hong Kong were free to join the protests if they desired, and many did.

What hadn't been noted as often is that people in mainland China often travel to Hong Kong on this day. Which means that they are getting a live-action view of the protests, unencumbered by government control of the media.

“You only need to look at the youngsters of a country to see its future: Hong Kong should be proud,” Ding, a middle school teacher from Shenzhen who toured the main protest site in the Admiralty district, said yesterday. 

Not everyone is happy about being there...

“I don’t know what the hell is going on in Hong Kong,” said Zheng Tian, 40, a tourist from Ningbo, who was trying to reach his hotel on Canton Road in the Tsim Sha Tsui shopping district. “It’s very inconvenient for me to drag my two luggages all the way to the hotel as taxi drivers refused to come to this area. Shops are closed, food is out of stock at restaurants, what am I supposed to do here?”

...but even those inconvenienced will see that, if only for a little while, the government is not all-powerful.