Annie

It can sometimes take having a solid handle on What Happened When to really understand What People Were Saying.

The 1977 musical Annie includes the following two songs and their associated scenes:

• We'd Like to Thank You, Herbert Hoover: The residents of a Hooverville break out in song to excoriate the former president for his response to the Crash and the Great Depression.
• A New Deal for Christmas: Annie, Warbucks, and others gush over the idea that the new president's policies will improve the upcoming Christmas season.

Leaving aside historical accuracy or lack of same, it is surprising how it unabashedly cheerleads for a point of view that is absolutely in favor of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's policies. It's not like he still needed the help forty years later. It's even more surprising since, evidently, the original Little Orphan Annie comic strip was much more conservative and the cartoonist, Harold Gray, was not a fan. Indeed, Daddy Warbucks was "killed off" in 1944, dying of despair when FDR was re-elected - although he came back (waking from a "coma") after FDR's passing the following year.

The setting of the play in 1933 is clearer still with a definite anchor like what is on The Grid, which may make it easy to recall that 1) FDR had just become president 2) his term started several months into the year 3) he worked to get his policies (particularly securities reform) implemented as soon as possible. Knowing that during the course of the musical's year there was a lot happening with the new president makes it more fitting, somehow. In any case, we can know that he was recently elected and conversely Hoover was recently out of office, so for some this looks like an historical document.

(Granted that other dates could have been chosen for the previous Crisis. Then again, 1929 and 1941 weren't used because they are already well-known dates. Every year during World War II had distinctive turning points with memorable details, which might be usable in the same way. There are other FDR innovations that could work similarly. Most of them wouldn't be as helpful with comprehending Annie's situation... )

The latest movie version, meanwhile, is smack in the middle of this Crisis. (The previous two film versions, perhaps coincidentally, were at the end of the Second and the middle of the Third, respectively.) It may play very differently than those others, which could be seen as sentimental and nostalgic, in their time. This one, though, would have to deal with the current economic situation, which might be a little too close to be comfortable.

Bluster

It’s been 6 months since that Ukraine prediction:

As both Ukraine and Russia are in their Second Turning,  it feels like this cannot get out of hand. It's going to remain internal.

This still seems correct. The U.S. doesn’t have any direct strategic interests in the area. There are advantages, perhaps, to Ukraine and Russia being separate entities, although the current state of affairs suggests that isn’t going to be a real problem. After twenty years of even nominal sovereignty, the Ukrainians won’t be hurrying to do the Russian’s bidding again. While there's still the concern that Putin might turn out to be a Very Bad Man, there's no other clear reason that might lead to involvement from others. Especially if Russia is having trouble even with what it's doing so far.

Meanwhile, there’s Putin’s reminder that Russia is not to be trifled with because it’s a nuclear power. The problem is that, while true, it is not a game changer. U.S. strategy was going to be a balancing act even if there was some sort of gentleman’s agreement limiting the weapons used.  To put it another way, the U.S. isn’t going to escalate to a Fulda Gap-level tank assault that requires a Return of Forces to Germany in order to repel Russian tanks in Ukraine. Putin’s comment is like pulling a gun out during a poker game: Whether or not it’s a bluff, it’s an acknowledgement of a weak hand. 

Finally, mentioning a strength that dates back to the Cold War risks reminding people that Soviet military technology lagged behind NATO’s. Twenty years later, there’s no indication Russian military systems have leapfrogged the competition, or have been built up beyond where they were when the Soviet Union dissolved. There were concerns even then that their ICBMS wouldn’t make it past the Arctic Circle.  Reminding an enemy of your weaknesses is rarely a smart thing to do.

Advances

In the posting on antibiotics, it was noted that the initial discoveries were at the very end of the Unraveling and the start of the Crisis. They were in production soon enough that they were available in large amounts by the peak of the crisis a few years later -- 12 years for penicillin, less than 10 by any count for the sulfas. 

Meanwhile, a few months Mark Andeesen noted that smartphones are going to be available everywhere within a few years - again, right around the expected peak of the Fourth Turning. The first smartphones were the BlackBerry variants around 2003 but it was when the iPhone came out in 2007 that they really became an item available to the masses. In either case, though it can be seen as an advance from the tail end of the Unraveling. 

How could we better confirm that these might be analogous? We could look at other similarities and differences. We could see what predictions were made for antibiotics after their initial discoveries. We could identify other tech that made a difference in previous Crisis periods. 

The longbow - while it made a difference, certainly, in English history -  isn't a matching example.   It was available for hundreds of years before and for much of the Hundred Years' War, including Crécy in 1346, almost 70 years before Agincourt. 

2008

Crisis - 2008 -  The Bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers

Generations came out in 1991, The Fourth Turning in 1997, and both included a prediction that the Crisis would start sometime after the turn of the century. And almost from the start of the year 2000, there were candidates for When Did It Begin:

• The Dot-com bubble bursts (April 2000)
• Bush v. Gore  (November-December 2000)
• The 9/11 attacks and the invasion of Afghanistan (2001)
• The invasion of Iraq (2003)
• Hurricane Katrina (2005)

Among people discussing the Strauss & Howe model, there was disagreement about which - if any - of these constituted the start of The Crisis. Despite these varied harbingers of doom, it didn't seem as if the Crisis had started yet - that you would KNOW when it was really happening.

By the end of 2008, though, there wasn't much question anymore. If the Crisis hadn't started at one of those earlier points, it started in September 2008.

That was a busy month. The Republican and Democratic conventions had recently finished, and the Presidential Election was two months away. John McCain had chosen his running mate, Sarah Palin, in order to give the ticket credence with the more conservative among the GOP, and to gain some exposure in a news cycle that favored Democratic candidate Barack Obama. It did not help McCain when it was soon revealed that Palin's unmarried daughter was pregnant.

Which all paled when it was became clear that Lehman Brothers was in serious trouble. It announced layoffs, then announced a loss of nearly 4 billion dollars, then filed for bankruptcy on September 15. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped over 4%, and dropped more over the rest of the month.

It had been clear for over a year that the United States housing market was in a bubble, and that people were choosing foreclosure over continuing payments on overpriced mortgages.  Lehman Brothers had invested in securities that depended on people continuing these payments.  These securities were basically bonds that generated their interest payments from those people paying their mortgages. When they stopped paying, the securities became worth...well, that was part of the problem.

The value of the securities could be seen as either a) the present value of future payments or b) what they could be sold for on the market.  As more mortgagees considered not paying, the value of future payments could not be effectively calculated - it was not possible to determine if a given security was worth the full expected value (because everyone was going to pay) or half of it (because half of the mortgagees were going default) or nothing at all. Unfortunately, it became clear that the second option was also not available, for much the same reason: Potential buyers wouldn't risk overpaying so potential sellers had to accept much less than previously - or acknowledge that there were effectively no buyers available.  Making them worth less...if not worthless.

Lehman Brothers was caught on it. They were bought out by Barclay's a week later. The loss of faith in the financial system caught hold. The options were limited and none off them were good. Businesses dependent merely on liquidity - department stores like Gottschalks, say, who depend on credit to buy merchandise before selling it - ran out of cash. Foreclosures continued. Planned housing developments were never completed, and completed developments were unable to be sold.

McCain's chances for victory - weak enough after the choice of Palin backfired - were destroyed.  He was handily defeated by Obama just over a month later.  The ripple effects of the liquidity crunch included a recession that continued through the following year  and even today doesn't quite seem over. 

Millennials

Even if you don't think that Millennials are necessarily only about Me, this article on Linked In is worth considering.

One of the attributes of the model that can be difficult to grasp, here, is the idea that the Millennials are supposed to be the next Greatest Generation. As a Civic/Hero generation, they are similar in outlook to the folks who fought Hitler, or King George, or defeated the Spanish Armada.

Or maybe it's less that it's difficult to grasp than difficult to believe. These kids - not all kids, anymore, the youngest are in their early teens but the oldest are 32 - coddled and protected, self-centered and insular - are going to rise up and willingly take on the greatest threats to our nation and our world?

There are other parts that seem to make sense, even if they are similarly paradoxical. The teamwork thing, for example, where the end result of being coddled and protected is being able to work together  exceptionally well. They watch out for each other, they do activities together, they are willing to take risks for their friends. And perhaps that goes along - perhaps the willingness to step up when needed follows on from the interest in their fellows which is a unexpected but result of being brought up knowing that someone has your back.

BuyPartisan

It seems likely - especially through the lens of Strauss & Howe - that BuyPartisan won't make things hyper-partisan.

Or at least no worse than they already are.

Because we're past all that. The Unraveling is over, the Crisis started. Although partisanship is significant, it's not clear that it's worse than 10 years ago. (2004, for one obvious example, was the year of John Kerry campaigning against George W. Bush, which often felt like a struggle between anti-Democrats and anti-Republicans.) A case could be made that it peaked in 2008, just as the Crisis was starting.  Partisanship continued after - check the debates for the Affordable Care Act - and continues now, but you don't see the same amount of rancor. Even if there are "End of an Error 2017" shirts, they aren't as ubiquitous as the 2009 ones.

People want to know what they are getting, is all. Tools of the modern era help you to determine what's happening in the world around you, better than before.  Being able to make more educated decisions helps everyone.

PlayStation

Initially, the PlayStation network attack and associated Twitter bomb threat seemed like a prelude to the data wars.

Reconsidering, though, the bomb threat could have been done in other ways,  and the perpetrators would be in plenty of trouble whether they used Twitter, a phone call, or a letter using words cut from magazines.  It didn't depend on being part of the connected world.

Getting the information about the plane, however, did. Being able to directly affect a large corporations large and expensive assets is significant. As more large and expensive assets are online, this will be more possible. If there are those who can gain from such actions - monetarily, increased influence, or as a way to delay the inevitable - then these actions will increase.

It's a possibility worth considering.