West: Is history about to repeat itself -- sort of?

It begins, “America feels like it’s unraveling. Though we live in an era of relative peace and comfort, we have settled into a mood of pessimism about the long-term future, fearful that our superpower nation is somehow rotting from within.”

Is that an accurate statement of the nation’s current state? The book was written in 1997.

“The Fourth Turning” describes how, throughout history, going back to ancient times, mankind has repeated four phases. Each phase lasts approximately 20 years (give or take five years).

It is no accident, the authors write, that the U.S. Civil War occurred approximately 80 years after the American Revolution and 80 years before World War II. If one lives to old age, four generations of humans are born during one’s life. Today, we have Baby Boomers becoming elderly. Gen Xers are moving into mature adulthood. Millennials are in young adulthood and Gen Z is in childhood.

Live a long life, the authors assert, and you will go through four “turnings.” The First Turning is a High, when a new civic order is implanted. The Second Turning is an Awakening, when the existing order experiences a spiritual upheaval. The Third Turning is an Unraveling, a downcast era in which the old civic order decays. The Fourth Turning is a Crisis, a time of great social unrest or war in which the old civic order is replaced by a new one. Each generation is born during a different turning, and thus has a different perspective on society’s challenges.

The argument can be made that the most recent First Turning in the United States occurred in the 1940s-50s, during and immediately after World War II. The Second Turning came in the 1960s-70s with the civil rights and anti-war movements, women’s liberation and the hippie culture. The Third Turning occurred from the 1980s into the early 2000s. The Fourth Turning is still going.

Since the turn of the century, Americans have gone through three major crises: 9/11, which embroiled us in 20 years of war; the Great Recession; and the COVID pandemic. These can be compared to the period that had two world wars as bookends to the Great Depression. Only now, the crises are ongoing.

A few years ago, a friend recommended a blog, armstrongeconomics.com. It is run by Martin Armstrong, who spent several years in prison for running a Ponzi scheme 25 years ago, and also claims to have been an adviser to high government officials and foreign nations. I offer that background only to be fully transparent.

He has developed a following, some of it behind a paywall and some not. The items behind the paywall are mostly financial in nature, describing the global flow of capital. His free posts are mostly political.

Armstrong claims to have a computer program named Socrates that, based on the cycles of history, can predict with some accuracy what and when things are going to happen.

While adding the disclaimer that it is not his opinion but only Socrates’, Armstrong is adamant that the war in Ukraine is the start of World War III. He notes that Sweden and Belarus, for example, are implementing a military draft and Poland is increasing its army to 250,000. He notes that western media have hidden the fact that 100,000 Ukrainians have been killed so far in the war with Russia. Russians outnumber Ukrainians 3 1/2 to 1, so a war of attrition favors Putin, like it or not — unless NATO becomes more than an arms supplier. This week, Armstrong reported that the U.S. embassy in Moscow urged all Americans still in Russia to get out without delay.

He also notes that the Chinese have begun buying gold ever since the West imposed sanctions on Russia. He says that is because, if the West can impose sanctions on Russia, it can do the same thing to China, and holding U.S. sovereign debt could be problematic. That gold-buying, in turn, could bring an end to America’s socialistic trends, since we have been using federal debt, not taxation, to feed our ever-expanding government.

From my perspective it is difficult to see how any good end will come to the Ukraine war. If Russia wins, it will greatly diminish U.S. and European global leadership, and heighten that of Russia, China and Iran.

However, if the Ukrainians win, Russia may be pushed into desperate straits, and unleash its nuclear arsenal.

Socrates, the computer, says that 2023 will be a bad year (particularly late April) as the crisis grows. It also predicts that China will go to war and win Taiwan in 2025, and that the U.S. will break up in 2031. Maybe it is all a bunch of hooey. As is said about computers: garbage in, garbage out.

Regardless, it appears that the world is still in the midst of the Fourth Turning.

Tom West, now retired, is the former general manager of this paper. Reach him at westwords.mcr@gmail.com.