Caesar

One of the useful attributes of generational theory is seeing extreme change as a natural part of history, and by extension of everyday life. 

Without it, it would seem ridiculous to suggest that the United States is entering a new civil war, or that the next two or four or eight years could be as bad as World War II. Instead, these declarations are backed up by a half-dozen year of posts on related topics; a decade of pushing this theory on anyone who will listen; and a twenty-five-year-old book that has forecast much of what has happened since it was published. 

Twenty-five years ago, the idea that the next president of the United States would be its last was extreme. Now, well, it’s a possibility.

Which is all prologue, a way to point out that this isn’t intended as hyperbole, or demonization. It’s just how history is working out.

Surprises

The empire of Japan achieved a stunning tactical victory when it snuck a half-dozen aircraft carriers across the Pacific in early December 1941. On the bright Sunday morning that was December 7, waves of planes attacked American ships and sailors in Pearl Harbor. Wielding bombs and air-launched torpedoes, Mitsubishi Zeroes left the pride of the American Pacific fleet as smoking hulks. Japan had gained unchallenged control of the western Pacific. 

For about 6 months. 

It was in May 1942 that the Battle of Midway revealed that the Americans had quickly learned the importance of air power. (The ability to crack Japan's  cryptography was also very helpful.) The victory there showed that the United States was going to fight back forcefully in response to the Day of Infamy. It took almost three more years of fierce fighting to move across other Pacific islands, but that December morning had given Americans all the incentive they needed. Soon, bombers were able to reach from American bases there to the Japanese home islands.

On July 16, 1945, the Trinity test confirmed the ability to trigger an atomic explosion using plutonium, in a weapon nicknamed "Fat Man". That same day, the USS Indianapolis departed San. Francisco with the "Little Boy" uranium device. It would arrive at Tinian ten days later. Only a week and a half passed before the Little Boy was loaded onto the Enola Gay and dropped upon Hiroshima. Three days after that, on August 9, a Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki.

On August 15, less than a week later, Japan announced that it would be surrendering. Less than a month after the Trinity test, the war was over. The United States had achieved a surprise victory, one that avoided the need for a full invasion of the Japanese home islands which would likely have resulted in millions of American and Japanese casualties. 

The unexpected power vacuum was noticed quickly in a little-remarked area of Southeast Asia. After Japan's announcement of surrender, revolutionary forces immediately took control of Vietnam. In the North, anyway - Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh were unable to do the same in the more diverse South of the country before Allied troops took over a month later. The division between north and south accentuated by the sudden changes would lead to nearly thirty years of war involving the French and, later, the United States. 

Great tactical successes may require surprise. They can also change power structures and invite a disproportionate response. Someone who has enjoyed an unexpected victory, however well-deserved, may want to keep this in mind. 

The Surprising 9/11 Response

If the planners of the 9/11 attacks really expected no immediate and deadly response, from Bush or any American president, they were a lot dumber than their planning indicated.

The source for this assertion is the man called the mastermind of the attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, through a book by James E. Mitchell. Rather than taking this at face value, it may be worth considering the advantages that both men have in proposing an alternative narrative at this time. Revealing that Khalid Mohammed talked to him about what went wrong makes Mitchell seem like a hero. Calling Bush's response effective encourages a Republican government to repeat the mistakes made then.

The 9/11 attacks were planned to destroy the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and the U.S. Capitol, using 4 airplanes with more innocent civilians aboard. The Towers alone could have meant the death of ten thousand people, and I recall estimates of up to fifty thousand on that day. It was fortunate, as far as it goes, that total casualties were only three thousand, with one of the terrorist cells unable to complete its mission. The 9/11 attacks were the deadliest day on American soil since Antietam, 149 years earlier. and comparable to Pearl Harbor, 60 years earlier. Knowing ahead of time the magnitude of expected casualties, and believing the response would be comparable to, say, the 1993 Twin Towers attack that was less than 1% as deadly, requires a vast misunderstanding of not just American policy but of human psychology.

When there are complaints about George W. Bush, they are usually not that his response was too violent or immediate. It’s that he went into Afghanistan, “The Graveyard of Empires,” with no plan for success or withdrawal. It’s that he set up a “detention center” that was not suitable either as POW camp or for civilian prosecution. It’s that a year later he pushed through an attack on Iraq using bogus intelligence fed to the United Nations. It’s that the Iraq war similarly had no realistic plan for success. It’s that the United States still has people in both of these war zones 16 YEARS after the 9/11 attacks that Bush so brilliantly responded too.

Responding quickly and militarily wasn't a mistake. Everything else was.

Don't Mess With the Hufflepuffs

At the Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, House Hufflepuff is where you go if you value the attributes of friendship, loyalty, and hard work. We don’t see a lot of Hufflepuffs over the series. Harry Potter and the other main characters are in Gryffindor, while their enemies are mostly Slytherin. Hufflepuff seems on the surface like some sort of Isle of Misfit Toys, a place to go if you don't fit elsewhere. And despite the impressive skills of dueling champion Cedric Diggory or auror Nympadora Tonks, there’s a tendency to think of them as relatively weak.

In the rich world of Harry Potter fan fiction, the limited activities of Hufflepuffs has lead to speculation of what it would mean to be in that house. One possibility considered is that they may avoid the downsides of inclusiveness by working well together, being individually unexceptional but collectively United. 

Which could be summarized as: Attacking one Hufflepuff is a good way to get a pack of Hufflepuffs returning fire. 

Or put another way: Don't Mess With Hufflepuff. 

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There had been speculation in recent weeks, before the presidential election, about what would happen when Trump lost. Supporters had made comments about picking up their muskets, and fears of altright and militia groups taking up arms in

protest were out there.

There was much less talk about what would happen if Trump won. That was at least partly due to the consideration that his victory was an unlikely event. The expectations that weak, unarmed Blue-state Hillary supporters would certainly be opposed to anything gauche or crude as physical violence may have had a part, too. 

Which was a bad assumption on the face of it, one that Trump supporters in Blue states could easily advise you on. Even now.

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Some friends were complaining about Millennial reactions to the election results, such as “cry-in” days at universities and protests on the streets. One common meme has been a comparison between 18-year-olds storming Normandy with college students needing a safe space.

It’s worth noting that the average age was closer to 25, and that many of the young men there would have been blooded in Tunisia and Sicily. Those who made it to Normandy had been through an extensive training period that weeded out anyone constitutionally unable to be part of such an endeavor. The further one digs into what was really involved, the more you find that the comparison is not nearly as simple as this meme suggests.

It’s also somewhat ironic from a generational view, since the guys who coined “Millennials” in 1991 also predicted that they would be of a similar generational type as the GI or “Greatest” generation, the very ones who had landed at Normandy and advanced to Berlin.

The assumption of this part of the generational model is that generations like GenX, relatively neglected by parents during childhood, would supervise and support their children to a much higher degree. They would make “kids look alike and work together” and “implant civic virtue.” Working well is not valued quite as much as working well as a group. That means being exceptional isn’t a prize, while being part of the team is - and that is what a participation trophy is for, isn’t it?

===========================

Millennials are Hufflepuffs, not necessarily exceptional individually, but able to work together and bring collective firepower to bear. Whatever their political leaning, don’t assume that they will lie down or roll over in response to adversity. They were told from the start to watch out for the people around them, to help them out and work with them. Sometimes that will mean joining the armed services  - like on September 12, 2001, when any young new recruits would certainly have been millennials.  Other times it will mean taking to the street in protest against a lawful result they don’t understand or accept. It’s all part of these ingrained personal attributes, the same personal attributes that helped those Normandy attackers win World War II. Take seriously that they will go after any perceived enemy, wands a-blazing. 

Crisis, Cloverfield, Et Cetera

Another little while since trying this.

Crisis: Problems in Michigan cities, warning of a Fiscal Crisis, Weapons of Math Destruction about the once and future financial crisis, and opioids in Ontario

Apocalypse: A few Trump == Apocalypse items, go figure.

Collapse: South China Sea fishery - which references the Chinese claims to an extraordinary area, one that could turn into a shooting war, eventually. Although less so if the fish are all gone, no doubt.

Cloverfield: Okay, so in part the recent news about closing Santa Monica airport is what jogged the memory of this anyway,but 10 Cloverfield Lane was released on DVD a few weeks ago.

A bit more diverse results than previous searches for these sorts of indicators. Maybe it means something, maybe not.

A Moment of Clarity

Today's problems won't be solved by looking to the past.

Reading through recent proposals of various sorts, including but not exclusively the Better Way proposed by Republican legislators, this truth has become clearer and clearer.

It's not that there's anything egregiously wrong with the ideas there. They are, however, more of the same, at least for Republicans: Smaller government, less regulation, lower taxes. If there was a counter from the other side of the aisle, it would likely be more of their same as well. Or looking at different problems in their same way: more gun control, more unions, more government to resolve any issue. It's not like those have worked so far, either. At this point, every ordinary way to fix what's wrong - whatever you think is wrong - has been proposed, debated, exaggerated, sometimes implemented, usually ignored.

Soon, a moment of clarity will occur. It always does.

Everyone will realize that there's not an alternate interpretation of the Constitution that will fix it all. Congress won't pass some law that will resolve all major problems to everyone's satisfaction. The next president won't magically realize how to convince the nation to enact policies that have been previously proposed over and over again.

We the people probably know the answer already, a certainty that we each hold onto, nursing quietly, acknowledging the difficulty, the problems we will have to endure, that personal disagreement - perhaps with some minor part - that keeps us from shouting out what should be done. 

In the early 1770s, options for taxation of the American colonies based on their representation in Parliament were brought up, debated, considered, sometimes approved, mostly ignored.

In the 1850s, there were multiple changes in how slavery was treated, sometimes in favor of the practice, sometimes not. Most of them satisfied few and antagonized everyone else, until the only solution was a war that effectively decided that slavery would no longer exist in the United States of America.

Today, different parts of the political spectrum propose what they consider appropriate ways to handle the economy, the role of government, the need for the populace to protect itself against the government, how the economy should work for the people, when the people should support the government...or not. Even if this isn't a problem that's well defined, it's clearly the case that a significant portion of the American people do not believe their government is helping them.

It's not relevant that the distrust of government is for different reasons, even antithetical ones. Trump supporters blame the Democrats, the elite, and immigrants. Sanders supporters blame the Republicans, the 1%, and banks. This fundamental distrust of existing institutions will eventually make it clear that the only resolution will come not from evolution, but from revolution - from a major change, not an incremental one.

There isn't a way out that will be painless, or perfect. What might have been proposed in the last year, decade, or half-century has already been debated endlessly.  If it's helpful there's no agreement; if there's agreement, it has downsides; if it's perfectly safe, it doesn't resolve anything.

This inability to do anything will end the only way it can. At some point, the standard options that have been chewed up and spat out will give way to options that are new, unexpected, creative - dangerous - not standard at all. No more than it was a standard option to replace a British (but Catholic) king with a Dutch (but Protestant) one. Nor to say "we are leaving, you can't stop us, if you try it's war."   Nor to fight people who had been countrymen a few short months before.

Whatever this solution might be, there will be those who oppose it. There will be others who think it won't go far enough. When it is over, some will think the battle must continue. At the end, the predominant attitude may be relief that it has passed. 

It might turn out that some of today's concerns are a distraction, a minor discomfort, a sign/portent that's not close to the real problem. A few people killed during civil unrest, environmental issues, overreaching by the head of state - important to understanding the problem, if you look at it with the right sort of squint, but not the source nor target of solutions. 

And of course, a moment's thought brings a reminder that this has all been said before, and surely will be said again. 

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

A Fourth Turning is a point where there are no solutions available through appeals to history. Considering what They meant by how They set up the system will not help - whether that system was set up ten, twenty, one hundred, or five hundred years ago. Finding a solution will be the responsibility of today's living generations.

That's you and me.

Cultivate Patience and Keep Your Hands Clean

In this election year which feels too much like 1860, an obscure quote by Winston Churchill comes to mind. It's from page 91 of a 1961 book called "Official Secret." The author, Clayton Hutton, had worked for the Britsh military during World War II, creating equipment like silk maps, tiny compasses, and survival kits. With them, surviving crew members of shot-down aircraft could evade the enemy, and prisoners of war (POWs) could attempt escape and return to areas under Allied control. 

Although Churchill's name is not mentioned,  the allusions to the highest possible authority being a "cigar-smoking" "elderly gentleman" are clear enough. The meeting came about when Hutton had to justify having Red Cross parcels in his office. In his book he insists that he was only investigating their contents, not thinking of incorporating his escape tools into them. Including military supplies in Red Cross packages would have contravened the Geneva Conventions, and would also have risked having those parcels and others withheld from the POWs. He eventually used other channels to sneak in his inventions, such as "donations" to POW camps of unused books - which happened to have maps and currency hidden in their covers. 

Upon hearing Hutton's confirmation that his work had been legitimate, Churchill goes on to give a description of the planning for  the war:

Always remember that at the end of this war we want to be in a position to say that we fought and won it fairly. I think you’re trying to go much too quickly. Reconcile yourself to the fact that it takes us four years to attain victory. In the first year we have to sell the war to the public; in the second we are busy jiggering and tooling for the latest weapons; in the third supplies come pouring in; and in the fourth we press buttons everywhere and the enemy has a most unpleasant time. So cultivate patience and - keep your hands clean.

Which is quite good advice in general, and particularly here as we approach the peak of this Crisis.

Crisis, Collapse, and Cloverfield

A lot of changes and new items since I last tried this:

Crisis: Refugee crisis in Europe continues. Pope Francis calls the U.S.-Mexican border a "humanitarian crisis." The water problem in Flint, Michigan shows up, too.

Apocalypse: More X-Men: Apocalypse, naturally, but particularly because Deadpool did so well last weekend that it's raising comparisons and one-up attempts. There's a show called "You, Me, and the Apocalypse" on NBC - but probably for not much longer. And Amazon included a zombie apocalypse opt-out clause in a terms of service agreement.

Collapse: After an uninteresting first page, there are stories about the collapse of Saudi Arabia, North Korea, and Ukraine's coalition government.

Cloverfield: Everything is about 10 Cloverfield Lane, a sequel (of sorts) to the monster-takes-Manhattan original.

The Two Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Every 80 to 100 years, people look around and agree that whatever it is society is up to, it is no longer working. 

1933 - The Securities Act of 1933 

That doesn't mean that everyone agrees on the solution, just that it's time to find one. 

1861 - The Secession Winter 

It may require a statement of purpose, and the powers that be may have their own ideas about how to respond to that. 

1779 - The Spanish in the Revolutionary War 

It may result in a change that seems odd and unexpected in a did-they-really-do-that way. 

1688 - The Glorious Revolution 

It can easily end up as a total war, one that changes who are the players of the game, or even how the  game itself is played

1588 - The Defeat of the Spanish Armada. 

Apocalypse, sayeth Wikipedia, is an unveiling, a revelation, a gain of new knowledge. It has taken on its meaning of The End Times because of its association with The Revelation of St. John the Divine, which prophesies the new Kingdom of Heaven, and the tribulations which lead up to it.

I don't think Trump is War. I don't think Sanders is Famine. I don't think either is Death or Pestilence.  They are loose about the land, though, and they are speaking to a belief that This Isn't Working. Sanders blames the banks and the 1%, and the government that has allowed them to do what they wish. Trump blames immigrants and ISIS, and the government that has allowed them to do what they wish. There is a connection here, and it's one that can be seen in the financial crisis, in the years leading to the financial crisis, in the response to Katrina, even in 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq: The government isn't doing what it should, what it is supposed to. We aren't even sure what it is supposed to do, anymore.

The American people supporting Trump and Sanders - and for that matter Cruz and Clinton - have all had a few months of schooling on Your Government and How It Works. Yet they have completely different ideas of what government should do. Whatever issues their proposed policies might have, though, both Trump and Sanders are espousing the idea that the government should do what the people want it to do. They are seen as proposing new solutions, not the status quo.

And that's why Bernie and Donald are both harbingers of a time, coming soon, when we are going to have to seriously agree to seriously disagree. People are ready to start choosing between bad alternatives - and between good ones as well. Want small government, expect an end to Too Big to Fail. Want free child care, expect liver wurst on rye. You can have a car with two doors, or with four doors, but not both at once.

Prepare to choose.

Now Leaving Flyover Country

We are leaving Flyover Country behind. Did you notice?

A map metaphor works well with history in a number of situations. There are different views you can use, depending on whether you care about what people do or what has changed or what has stayed the same. Whatever there is has to be at a useful scale. 1:1 maps aren't of much use in any way.  A globe isn't helpful for getting to the grocery store, but is great to see how the continents are shaped. For a long enough trip, you may need a wide country-to-country view along with specific directions to get to the final address. With history, too, if we're trying to make sense of what's around us, the effective result is similar: There are these close and crowded districts that anyone can discuss easily, separated by long, wide, boring stretches that nobody ever asks about. Flyover country.

Big sections of history are flyover country. Sumer and Ur are the first civilizations, but everyone remembers the Egyptians. Rameses and Tutankhamen are 4000 years ago, but there's nothing interesting after that until Greece 1500 or so years later - flyover country. It's good to know about the Romans - until the death of Christ, anyway, at which point who cares about them?  Turns out they are still the only interesting thing for roughly another 1500 years, when the Renaissance happens.  There, everyone pays attention again...but it's kinda flyover country too, once you've seen a few of the paintings. At least until Columbus shows up, when people start paying attention again.

We've just left another of those sections, if the generational view is right at all, The period of time we left a few years ago - perhaps as much as ten years, now - is a time that will be treated in history books as less important, even least important, compared to the big wars that are easily managed.  From Reagan's re-election until 2008, nobody is really going to comprehend what happened. They might understand why he was elected in the first place, but why was it so divisive? What did Clinton do that was different? There will be conjecture about 9/11 and the market meltdown and the Great Recession, and dissection of why different policies were exactly right and completely wrong and extended and helped quickly resolve the problems....for anyone who really wants to dig into it,  and most folks probably won't, any more than most people can discuss what happened between 1928 and 1939.

(It's not certain that 2016 will be like 1939, of course, but (if you'll forgive further map metaphors) it feels like that's the direction we're heading, in approaching years.)

And it's too bad people won't think of it.  If you lived through it you know that there was a lot to like about the time since the mid-1980s. It was exciting and vibrant and things were changing. There was the Web and full-immersion video games and computer generated graphics. Cell phones became smartphones, information went everywhere, digital media became streaming, solar cells went from spacecraft to rooftops.  There is probably a way to make sense of some parts of it, along the way.   There's no story, though, that has a beginning and ending, that ties video games and the web into the financial crisis and what's happened since.

That's probably because, for this little while, people individually did what they thought was important and worthwhile. Whether they are fought for just causes or not, wars require a lot of people moving in the same direction and agreeing on what is to be done. Individual efforts get lost in the larger    pushes - one person invented the World Wide Web, but many people were involved in getting the U.S. into WWII. Those individual threads don't tie together as easily as larger government-supported efforts.

Now, though, people are getting tired of the government not doing much. While there's disagreement about what should be done, support for outsiders like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump point to a desire that the government should start being effective in a way it hasn't been. I'm not sure exactly what it will be, but I do think that people tired of confused foreign policy and unhelpful domestic policy will start demanding that the government do its job properly.  There are good things and bad things that government can do, if this widespread support is real. Everybody will probably find something they don't like about how it's done.

Keep it in mind. We're leaving flyover country. It's going to get interesting again soon.

Christmas Songs

At Hollywood  and Highland today, heard the song It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. Very cheerful and uplifting.

Which doesn't fit the mood of the day at all. Where are our depressing Christmas songs? We're solidly in our Crisis, so where is our White Christmas?

Was that really a Crisis tune, though, or did it just become famous then? When was it actually composed? The answer is (according to Wikipedia), nobody really knows. It says, though, that the first performance was Christmas Day, 1941 - also known as a few weeks after Pearl Harbor.  They'd really earned their hopeful-but-not-happy Christmas song.

What other not-quite-happy ones are there? There's The Christmas Song,  although that's more solemn than depressing. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, certainly counts, though - it's all about how your life can only get better from here. Both of those were from 1944 -  when the War was ongoing, that is, even if there was some hope that it would be done in Europe soon.

Maybe that happy one was from the same time, though? Nope, 1963. Probably released a month after  JFK, but still sounds like the cheery post-war period.

Crisis Resurgent

This is about the Crisis. Nothing more nor less.

I was looking forward to an observation about the Regeneracy, which is a proposed mechanism in the generational model for how people start to take control of the Crisis period. The thought was that decisions in renewable energy - electric cars and solar on rooftops - indicated that we were no longer interested in solutions to terrorism that required violence.

And then Paris happened.

I've waited a day to write, and a day to post, and then another day to consider some more. I'm going to do my best not to make policy recommendations, or to blame, or to suggest that If Only X Then Not Paris. Not that it has really helped.

There are a limited number of reactions, to the current situation in Europe - and, if you like, the world.

A.We can accept that asymmetric warfare is a fact of life, that it's too clear that a single person can have an extreme impact, and therefore that every few years a dozen or a hundred or so will die for political causes. We will expect our government forces at all levels to do what they can to reduce such, but accept that they won't eliminate them. And if that means increased surveillance and drone strikes and  low-level combat, so it goes.

B. We can let other countries handle their own problems, and accept that they may have honor killings, destroy important cultural artifacts, and generally be unpleasant to the locals, potentially resulting in massive emigrations. We keep our nose out of such problems, and when someone points out that life sucks in Xlanistan, we can point to the results of these last 15 years for why we aren't going to do anything about it.

C. We can hold state or non-state actors responsible for actions they take responsibility for. If destroying them means destroying the other 90% of the country they currently occupy, then that's an unfortunate but unavoidable fact. Ignoring the Nazis for several years didn't bring World War II to a close any faster. We would have to mobilize in a real way to bring the problem to a resolution. While air strikes might be a part, boots on the ground, and lots of them, would have to be the goal, from the start and to the end.

Option A is the status quo, where we are now.  It's a pragmatic option, although it does imply ubiquitous government involvement in your life. You may need to send some of your offspring into harm's way, and/or they will be at risk of being in the dozen or hundred who die on occasion.

Option B should appeal if you like your own freedom and don't expect you can help with anyone else.  And it's really what we've done with problems in sub-Saharan Africa: Endless bloodshed and child armies? Make blood diamonds a thing and then ...  and people will forget about the rest. The idea that we can starve the beast by using renewable energy (i.e. not oil) supports this one. Although if we reduce the money flowing into the Middle East significantly, short-term disruptions might make the problems worse for a while. And it doesn't help with the emigration problem.

Option C, though, feels like the way things are headed. It may not occur without a really massive attack, and some will certainly say, like Pearl Harbor, such an attack could be a false flag in some way. Daesh is managing to push too many buttons, finding ways to make liberals and conservatives unhappy, that it will have to happen.

(Which seems so obvious, that couldn't there be a reason they are doing it? Do they believe that chaos is in their best interest? Attacks on the Muslim world getting Pakistan's nukes on the market, perhaps?)

Concerning which, notes of the sort "Where's the outrage on Lebanon/Baghdad/Kenya/Nasty Incident in Country Z" implicitly support Option C. If France is attacked because they are in Syria, then France can decide on a response. If everyone is being attacked everywhere, then it would seem a more unified resolution is called for. The clearer it becomes that this is a worldwide problem, the more it will require a forceful unified solution.

Not that I like the idea. It would mean, as David Kaiser noted, that the Crisis isn't going in a direction any of us might prefer. And it seems like what will happen next.

In 1991, Generations predicted that we would be in a Crisis period by now, and that the peak would start in 2020. That was a distant future date at the time, but is only half a decade away now. And a lot can happen in five years - I was thinking today how Pearl Harbor was only five years after Jesse Owens appeared in the Olympics in Berlin. Don't see how any of the options get better any time soon. 

Today in Crisis

Haven't done this in a while:

Crisis: Something new since last time: The migrant crisis in Europe, as Syrians attempt to leave their country and go anywhere that isn't torn apart by, well, by the kind of mess that Syria is right now.

Collapse:Not much, actually - some structural failures of various sorts, including one that killed a man who had noted safety issues at his worksite. Also, the president of France note the danger of a "collapse" of the Schengen border area because of the migrant crisis.

Apocalypse: Mostly about the upcoming X-Men movie, still. Although one story about how a meteor over Thailand brought fears of an "asteroid apocalypse."

Cloverfield: Nothing, really - a recent story from someone who liked the movie.

Maybe things are a little better. For a little while.

The Next Day

September 3, 1945, was a Monday - Labor Day, in fact. Japan's surrender had been signed the previous morning, and it was the first day of the post-World War II era.

Eleanor Roosevelt's daily article was about Labor Day. Not too surprising: she certainly had written many things ahead of time and it was probably not worthwhile to swap them out.  It doesn't mention the surrender of Japan or atomic bombs or anything about the war - perhaps, if you like, the tone suggests that she knew it would be over shortly

Trinity had been on Monday as well, exactly 7 weeks earlier - 49 days from that to the day after the end of the war. A lot had happened even in that short period of less than two months. It can be helpful to consider history in these smaller pieces, to realize how short or long some periods of time really are. They can make momentous events that much more comprehensible. 

George Orwell reviews Mein Kampf

Found on Twitter: Cory Doctorow posted a review of Mein Kampf by George Orwell. The date is given as March 1940 - which is to say, about six months after the invasion of Poland,  perhaps two before the invasion of France, during a period called the "Phoney War." While Hitler is recognized as the enemy of Britain, the review is almost matter-of-fact in tone, even when describing how Hitler's plans and philosophy appealed to the millions of (formerly) unemployed Germans.

For the purpose here, though, what's unexpected is how current it sounds. For example:

The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do. 

Or perhaps this assessment of the gap between progressive goals and human reality:

... [human beings] also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. 

Other similarities are left as an exercise for the reader. Even if we aren't quite there yet, echoes are in the wind.

Capitol Investment

Here's a picture of the U.S. Capitol dome currently:

Here's one from 1861 - Lincoln's inauguration in March:

Crisis is a time for investment of all sorts, a time to repair and handle problems long put off. And here it is again.  Evidently there has been some significant damage to the dome since the last major restoration 55 years ago.

Although you have to think that the South should have seen that - a major addition to the existing government buildings for aesthetic reasons despite the pending conflict - and reconsidered secession...

Lana del Rabbit

Listening to Lana del Rey the other day, the idea that she was a Civic torch singer reminded me of Mrs. Jessica Rabbit.  Had anyone else thought of that idea? Well, yes - and fairly recently, at that.

Jessica Rabbit is the unexpectedly sultry wife of Roger Rabbit, in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The movie is set in 1947, just after World War II. In addition to the persecution of Toons, it relies on post-war corruption as part of the tale.  Although her age is not precisely given, she appears to be in her 20s - perhaps early 30s -  which would have her born around or soon after 1917 - a solid Civic herself.

(Although, as a color Toon, she must be younger than Betty Boop, of course...)

In any case, Lana del Rey has been covering the Peggy Lee tune that Jessica Rabbit sang quite memorably. And she's been dressing up like her, as well.

Don's Monitor Top

Watching Singing in the Rain the other day and noticed that Gene Kelly's character, Don Lockwood, has a Monitor Top refrigerator in his kitchen. Which didn't seem anachronistic, necessarily, but didn't seem right, either.

Well, it's fine:As that earlier post noted, they were in production starting in 1925, a couple of years before The Jazz Singer came out.

Happyish Curmudgeons

I'm working on a separate blog with a goal to focus on stories - film, television, literature - and how it changes through the Saeculum.  And as such, this article about a new series, Happyish, would be a great fit with it. However, it kept hitting so many Crisis touchpoints that it seems worthwhile to list them here, anyway:

• "A curmudgeon creates a curmudgeon" and Xers are the new curmudgeons, like other Reactive/Nomad generations.
• The idea that the change to this current turning is very much starting to creep into how people view the world, as the lead character tries to understand his Millennial co-workers and their different perspectives on life.
• The character's name is Thom Payne, and references to Common Sense are called out in the article and presumably on the show as well.
• The ads juxtapose a standard-for-advertising happy family with a mushroom cloud. And really, isn't that how life feels right now?

Unfortunately, initial critical response appears to be negative.

Boyhood

In the film Boyhood, there can be a tendency to view the product closeups as being intentionally shown to indicate a point in time - Game Boys and Halo on Xbox and iPods and iPhones.  Usually, of course, that's just what such things are - and indeed, in this case they are again. The twist is that the shots had to be set up when those products were actually being used, because the film was done over the course of 12 years. There was no need to go back and find those products so they could be included: The shots were done then and there, or they were not. Similarly, nobody had to craft how Ethan Hawke's Dad was railing against Bush and Iraq and McCain so that it sounded as if it fit in that time: It already would have, because nobody would have known a different way to talk about them.

It makes the film its own special kind of time capsule, showing how the world changed over a specific decade. In this way it's similar to The Best Years of Our Lives. That film came out right after World War II ended, and can't have shown how folks viewed the war upon further reflection. It had to show attitudes that were already prevalent. Nobody was going to come from the future and tell the filmmakers about the Cold War or McCarthy or revisionism in Japan. Or, for that matter, about how people 70 years later might see the ubiquitous smoking as an indicator of the time period, rather than just What People Did at that time.