[lpetrich]

CYCLES OF AMERICAN HISTORY - Historians Arthur Schlesinger I and II have concluded that US history moves in cycles. The phases are

• Liberal - Public Purpose - Increase democracy - Improve status quo
• Conservative - Private interest - Contain democracy - Maintain status quo

• 1776-1788 - Lib - Liberal Movement to Create Constitution
  
• 1788-1800 - Con - Hamiltonian Federalism
  
• 1800-1812 - Lib - Liberal Period of Jeffersonianism
  
• 1812-1829 - Con - Conservative Retreat After War of 1812
  
• 1829-1841 - Lib - Jacksonian Democracy
  
• 1841-1861 - Con - Domination of National Government by Slaveowners
  
• 1861-1869 - Lib - Abolition of Slavery and Reconstruction
  
• 1869-1901 - Con - The Gilded Age
  
• 1901-1919 - Lib - Progressive Era
  
• 1919-1931 - Con - Republican Restoration
  
• 1931-1947 - Lib - The New Deal
  
• 1947-1962 - Con - The Eisenhower Era
  
• 1962-1978 - Lib - Sixties Radicalism
  
• 1978- .... - Con - Gilded Age II

The last ones were extrapolated and named by myself, with some hints from Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s "The Cycles of American History".

Each phase of the cycle is self-limiting, and generates the other kind of phase.

Conservative phases accumulate social problems, problems which society's elites are reluctant to accept the existence of, let alone try to solve. For instance, slavery had been a festering sore in the body politic for a long time before the Civil War, but the arrival of hordes of immigrants in the northern states made it worse. Many northerners decried the "slaveocracy" or "slave power", what they considered the excessive political power of Southern slaveowners. The slaveowners, in turn, feared that these immigrants would deprive them of political clout by making the northern states much more populous.

Liberal phases end because reform efforts require a lot of effort to sustain, and society may want to take a break from such exhausting efforts. Related to this is such phases becoming victims of their successes. For instance, there was a big feminist movement over a century ago, but after it got women the vote in 1920, it fizzled out, and it did not revive until the 1960's. These second-generation feminists had to do a lot of work to recover the history of their suffragette predecessors. Likewise, the ending of slavery in the 1860's and the civil-rights efforts of the 1960's were big successes with inadequate followup.

Where are we now? In my mind, in Gilded Age II, with its strong resemblance to the first Gilded Age. It has lasted longer than the previous Gilded Age, and both Gilded Ages have likely lasted long because of their following of times of race-relations upheaval. I had high hopes for Bill Clinton, but he wimped out VERY fast, and he was anything other than the left-wing ogre that the right wing considered him. I have much the same feeling about Barack Obama. I remember the Wisconsin Revolt and how Obama let it hang out to dry. Also the Occupy movement and how it failed to find meeting places other than city parks. But gerrymandering has now gotten some attention and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has become a big celebrity.

[Plantagenet]

...slavery had been a festering sore in the body politic for a long time before the Civil War, but the arrival of hordes of immigrants in the northern states made it worse. Many northerners decried the "slaveocracy" or "slave power", what they considered the excessive political power of Southern slaveowners. The slaveowners, in turn, feared that these immigrants would deprive them of political clout by making the northern states much more populous.

You've summarized the cartoon version of history quite nicely. However, in reality the north was never unified in opposition to slavery and the south was never unified in support of slavery.

The Democratic Party, both in the north and south, were the party of slavery and the Republican party was the party that opposed slavery. Even in the midst of the civil war Democrats in the North, known as "copperheads", worked to undermine the war effort and to help the Democratic party traitors in the south who were willing to destroy the country to keep their slaves.

Cheers!

[Cog]

Lincoln himself was unwilling to go to war over slavery. He only did so to preserve the union and because the Confederacy committed violence on federal installations. From Lincoln's first inauguration address:

"Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States, that by the accession of a Republican Administration, their property, and their peace, and personal security, are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed, and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery where it now exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this, and many similar declarations, and had never recanted them."

Lincoln went on in a further statement to journalist Horace Greeley

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union."

https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/ ... litionists

[lpetrich]

I fully concede that this history is rather complicated. Many northerners were reluctant to fight a war over slavery, even many northerners that abhorred it and wanted to end it. As to why the North wanted to defeat the South, I think that it was fear of being internationally weak from being divided. British troops burning down the White House was something that happened when President Lincoln was a 5-year-old boy.

Even during the war, Lincoln was reluctant to move against slavery for fear of alienating pro-Union slaveowners. But as the war dragged on, he wanted more support for it, so he decreed the freedom of the slaves in the Confederate states but not in those Union ones. Even then, some Union generals treated some now-free blacks rather shabbily. On the plus side, some sizable number of blacks joined the army on the Union side. On the Confederate side, they discussed having black soldiers out of desperation, and that never happened.

[KaiserJeep]

You kinda suck at the analysis of History. There have been more words written about the US Civil War than any other. Most of those words are available online and are searchable. That does not make one interpretation better than another, or the commonly accepted one.

In particular, these "Schiesinger Cycles" are nonsense. They are a foolish theory produced by someone whose entire life has been spent in today's extremely polarized. R vs. D political environment. This sad present state of affairs came about in the early 1960s with the JFK/RFK reforms of the D's, also known as the "Camelot" reforms.

Secondly, we are discussing "current events", not History. Current events are still present in the living memories of those who experienced them. WW1 is History, WW2 is current events. During all of History, there was more ideological variation within both political parties then between them. Both the R's and the D's strove to present a "balanced" political choice to the voters. A Liberal such as Eisenhower was balanced by a Conservative VP such as Nixon. JFK was balanced by LBJ. JFK was also a new sort of Northern Democrat, socially Liberal and fiscally Conservative - yet overall, considerably to the Right of Eisenhower, who actually did more than JFK to promote Civil Rights.

However, the "solid Democratic South" was a monolithic ultra-Right-Wing political block, which had been in place since the Reconstruction. It's purpose was to suppress the Civil Rights of minorities. JFK did what he did for a good reason, but in doing so, he broke US politics. Then when millions of Blacks became voters, they did so as Democrats to end the racial tyranny of the (white and bigoted) Dixiecrats. It was a different time, one when Democratic members of both Congress and the Senate openly and proudly proclaimed membership in the KKK to win elections, and Black bodies dangled from the trees they had been lynched in. It was the 20th Century.

JFK may have done many admirable things during his career, but the ideological sort that produced today's R = Conservative, D = Liberal political arena has resulted in the most disfunctional US politics that has existed so far. In another 40 years this may be recorded in History as his most important legacy, rather than the Moon Landing.

[lpetrich]

The Civil War was followed by Reconstruction, when blacks started living almost as well as their white neighbors. This was followed by Redemption, where blacks were terrorized into second-class citizenship and became not much different from serfs. Thus marking the beginning of the first Gilded Age.

The New Deal was also rough going, with the New Dealers not willing to push very far and and trying to avoid spending very much. But their limited efforts provoked a lot of ideological hostility. It took World War II to provoke the sort of massive Keynesianism that was necessary, and even that was only after Japan's attack of Pearl Harbor.

The Sixties were also a time of turmoil. Its activism started before it, in the previous conservative era, the Eisenhower Era, with President Eisenhower himself willing to support school desegregation efforts. It was the result of civil-rights activism, and it involved marches and sit-ins and the like, activities that many white people considered counterproductive. Martin Luther King Jr., of "I Have a Dream" fame, got jailed for a while, and in jail, he complained about the sort of white moderate who claimed to sympathize but who was unwilling to do anything about it. Nevertheless, the black activists in that movement were joined by sympathetic white ones from northern cities, white ones who were willing to share the risk of violence from the movement's opponents, including being murdered (Civil Rights Martyrs | Southern Poverty Law Center). Among these white fellow activists was a certain Bernie Sanders, the recent Presidential candidate.

This activism paid off in the mid 1960's, with the Civil Rights Act and the like. It is telling who supported it. Its biggest supporters were Northern Democrats, with Northern Republicans not being far behind. Southern Democrats tended to oppose it, as did the few Southern Republicans at the time. But in that time were race riots, black people rioting because of some nasty police brutality and the like. That did not make many white people sympathetic to them, and Richard Nixon played into that lack of sympathy with his Southern Strategy. This led to the Republican Party becoming the party of Jefferson Davis.

The Sixties had a lot of other activism, like activism against the Vietnam War, feminist activism, and environmentalist activism, and the activists often seemed like scruffy spoiled brats. Feminism restarted then, from many female activists discovering how sexist their fellow male activists often were, like their nineteenth-century predecessors discovering how sexist some male antislavery activists were.

[Cog]

The Republicans never became the racists that the Southern Dems were. That is pure revisionist history.

[lpetrich]

In particular, these "Schiesinger Cycles" are nonsense. They are a foolish theory produced by someone whose entire life has been spent in today's extremely polarized. R vs. D political environment.

A good marker date for that hyperpolarization might be 1992, when Bill Clinton was elected President. The right wing totally hated his guts, despite him being a moderate reformist rather than a left-wing ogre. Arthur Schlesinger I lived 1888-1965, dying well before then. AS II lived 1917-2007, with the last decades of his life extending into it. So the Schlesinger theory is much older than the current hyperpartisanship.

A Liberal such as Eisenhower was balanced by a Conservative VP such as Nixon. JFK was balanced by LBJ.

Eisenhower a liberal??? Is he also a part of the International Communist Conspiracy? :D

[lpetrich]

In her Twitter account, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has pinned a video depicting a rather cheery, optimistic future for her Green New Deal: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "Climate change is here + we’ve got a deadline: 12 years left to cut emissions in half. A #GreenNewDeal is our plan for a world and a future worth fighting for. How did we get here? What is at stake? And where are we going? Please watch & share widely ⬇️ https://t.co/IMCtS86VXG" She herself narrated it, and it followed the career of someone like her over the next decade.

I'm going through all this history to suggest that a new wave of reform is likely to be rough going and not as cheery as that video.

[lpetrich]

Some more history cycles. Peter Turchin Secular Cycles - Peter Turchin and Peter Turchin War and Peace and War - Peter Turchin discuss cycles of history for preindustrial society. The data for them are not nearly as high-quality as what we can get for present-day societies, but they cover a much longer amount of time, complete with covering several complete cycles. Here are those phases of those cycles:

• Integrative - centralized, unified elites, strong state, order, stability -- wars of conquest against neighbors
  
  • Expansion (Growth) - population increases
  • Stagflation (Compression) - population levels off, elites increase
• Disintegrative - decentralized, divided elites, weak state, disorder, instability -- civil wars
  
  • Crisis (State Breakdown) - population declines, elites continue, lots of strife
  • Depression - population stays low, civil wars, elites get pruned
• Intercycle - if it takes time to form a strong state

It is backed up with a lot of data from ancient and medieval societies.

Industrialism made enormous economic changes, so one may ask if it has altered the dynamics of those cycles. Peter Turchin has found that indeed it has, at least for the United States. He also finds that the US is in a downward part of the cycle,

[Cog]

I'm ready for that cycle in history where we throw communists from helicopters.

[KaiserJeep]

Look, you can choose certain features of society and say they happen periodically. There are still far far more differences than similarities, and you can only look at similarities in retrospect, you learn nothing whatsoever about the future that way.

As for Eisenhower, yes I stand behind my judgement - based on my experiences and those of my relatives - that he was a Liberal. I lived in the segregated South (North Carolina, Louisiana, Virginia), and in the North (Illinois, New York, and Massachutsets). I remember MLK's marches and the rest of the struggle for Civil Rights, it happened during my life.

What you thought was "history" simply cannot be written about current events. The Histery and Civics textbooks in the North and South are very different and cater to the prejudices of the local School Board. I am also afraid that the US Civil War is still a controversial period, with dueling texts.

I do know something of what I speak. I am a lifetime member of the Nantucket Historical Association, with multiple published articles about Whaling in the 18th Century, working on my first book.

[lpetrich]

Peter Turchin Ages of Discord - Peter Turchin
Dynamics of political instability in the United States, 1780–2010 reported on in Human cycles: History as science : Nature News & Comment
Peter Turchin – The history of inequality

Peter Turchin and his colleagues have collected several social indicators for the United States over its history, and they find some remarkable correlations in their trends.

• Labor oversupply - Proportion of population born outside the USA (---)
• Price of labor - Wage in relation to GDP per capita (+++)
• Biological well-being/Health - Average stature and life expectancy (+++)
• Social optimism - Age at first marriage (both sexes) (---)
• Wealth inequality - Largest fortune in relation to the median wage (---)
• Intra-elite competition/conflict - Political polarization in the Congress (---)
• Sociopolitical instability - Fatalities per 5 years per 1 million population (---)

The fitted curve:

• 1800: 0.4
• 1824: 0.8 - Era of Good Feelings
• 1904: -1.4 - Gilded Age bottoming out
• 1960: 1.3 - Eisenhower/Kennedy era
• 2000: -0.3

We are still going downward.

Peter Turchin in "Ages of Discord" even has some measurements of patriotism, of identification with one's nation.

The first is who to name counties after. Local people or more broadly-known people? Before the Revolution, it was British royalty and nobles and the like. After it, it was American Revolutionary heroes and the like. There were a lot of such names in the early 19th cy., not as many in the late 19th cy.

The second is visits to nationalistically significant sites like George Washington's Mt. Vernon estate and the Statue of Liberty. A clear decline over the last half century.

[lpetrich]

The premodern cycles had periods of some 300 - 400 years, and this US cycle went peak-to-peak on about 130 - 140 years.

The disintegrative parts of the premodern cycles did not have continuous strife. They usually had a peak in violence every two generations. This cycle's length has a simple dynamic. One generation fights, and its successor generation is not willing to repeat the experience. But for that generation's successor generation, the first generation's fights are a more distant memory, and it becomes willing to fight.

The US fits that pattern also, with peaks in sociopolitical violence around 1870, 1920, and 1970, though none in 1820. This means that one is on the way around 2020.

So from the long cycle and the short cycle, the US may be in for a rough time in the next few years.

[KaiserJeep]

Again, I find nothing useful in the idea that cycles occur. I suggest that for somebody writing such, the attraction of the idea is selling books.

[Cog]

Cycles or patterns are not predictive. The USA, on average, has recessions every ten years. This does not mean you can predict with certainty that we will have a recession this year or any other year. Same concept as 100 and 500 year floods. Or Yellowstone eruptions.

The concept that an event is "due" because it has happened in cycles in the past is flawed.

[lpetrich]

Again, I find nothing useful in the idea that cycles occur. I suggest that for somebody writing such, the attraction of the idea is selling books.

Why that reason? I think that another one is to find patterns, to discover that history is more than one accursed thing after another. If one can make a good case for that, then why not?

[KaiserJeep]

Because there is no reason to do so because there is nothing gained by such analysis. The idea is hardly new as you point out, much time has been devoted to the process of drawing parallels, and there is no clearly distinguishable result. Arguing about whether one has learned anything usefull via such analysis is a dead giveaway that such efforts are in fact wasted.

Among recent changes to human culture is one that ranks with such things as the mastery of fire, or the discovery of agriculture, or the industrial revolution. I refer to humans evolving into cybernetic colony creatures networked with mobile devices. Sometimes I sit in a restaurant or on a park bench and just watch the strange colony primates. When on a beautiful sunny Spring day, in excess of 90% of the humans you see are actively networking, you realize what a fundamental change has occurred.

I really believe it is an evolutionary step, not ever to be undone. If the environment crashes badly and we all die, the last two humans will sit near one another, texting.

Futurism + Netwrking = Cyborgs. They are all around you, perhaps you didn't notice because you yourself are immersed in your cell phone.

[Ibon]

Sometimes I sit in a restaurant or on a park bench and just watch the strange colony primates. When on a beautiful sunny Spring day, in excess of 90% of the humans you see are actively networking, you realize what a fundamental change has occurred.

i agree

I really believe it is an evolutionary step

i disagree.

Being asleep to organic reality is deevolution

not to mention the content of the hypnosis which is 99% garbage

[KaiserJeep]

Ibon, your perspective is that of a single individual, who spends most of his time off the network. You have not joined the new species, and probably never will.

Although I value your inputs and opinions, I believe you are dead wrong about this one. In Silicon Valley, the cyber humans were out with a vengeance. Even the Silly Valley homeless were given recycled phones which allowed them to access services and soup kitchens and get job interviews.

Without any doubt, the networked humans gain a synergism via the network. Group productivity spikes, and even individuals benefit from instant access to the latest information. The digital revolution is a huge bump in efficiency and productivity as I mentioned above, and quality of life improves even though we are past many resource peaks.

I am also an old style, individual human. I get my kicks observing the other apes, and I believe that those immersed in the network for decades are very different from before they got connected. It is literally a form of group mind. Whether the change is good or bad is not settled, but I'm firmly on the side of "this is a good thing" at least for the race as a whole. You seem less sure, but are evaluating behaviors solely as an individual human, on the periphery of the net.