Long term readers of this website know that I am a huge fan of cycles.
Some of them are in your face, like fall, winter, spring, into summer. And others, like the more general social cycles are harder to see and understand.
The idea that there are social cycles is most easily seen not directly, but by what we believe in.
For example, because liberalism (and its pals deficit spending) have pretty much been in a great rise and fall since Marxism came along, we can see how socialism/communism has been little more than a huge wave.
Waves never come alone.
In Elliott theory, as applied to the stock market, you have three and five wave groupings and at sea, you can often find 7, 9, 11, and even 13 wave “sets.”
But to settle on communism as a “wave set” you can see one wave in the Russian revolution, decline, then the Stalin wave (of death), the Khrushchev wave, and finally the ending wave which featured a variety of archetypes. This last included a joker/drunk, a troika, and so on.
Social waves do not happen in isolation anymore, thanks to the omnipresence of media.
As a result, the bad ideas of communism were, at least in part, adopted in the West. As they were, we can judge (roughly) our current state ion social cycles, by noticing our thinking about the West’s mirroring of Stalinism in things like the National Recovery Act here in the US.
We can also see where we are in the long wave social cycle, already well documented by authors like Strauss and Howe in The Fourth Turning, by looking at what we believe presently of past events.
Take the last Depression, for example. The common teaching when I was growing up, was that government deficits and watering down the supply of money must be good, because it helped in the great depression,
Except, that in recent years, we have seen this laid out as a Great Lie.
In short: If you think the Great Depression was abbreviated in any way by more government, extremely high taxes, and a police state that forced labor unionism on America, think again. It was as close as we’ve been to communism in many ways.
There’s a fine video on point and the article (and audio book) Great Myths of the Great Depression which springs from the Foundation for Economic Education over here.
Suddenly, the Great Depression seems less like the liberalists “success of Big Government and deficit spending” and more like an utter failure of both. Misery prolonged by bad policy. But, then again, nothing new in that.
As that wave of terror and death passed in Russia, and evolved into the Cold War with the West, the myth was repeated. And even now that communism/socialism has failed and been cast out of the Soviet Union, a great “tainted thinking” remains in the US in the form of political correctness and utter contempt for the what Donald Trump has tapped into:”the silent majority” in America.
The social wave is no less interesting to watch than the stock market waves. Although, as any reader of UrbanSurvival, or more so our www.peoplenomics.com website knows, the odds of a first major low being completed 55-days from the top of the market seems like a pretty good estimate.
This infers that our current rally will, shortly, complete, and we should continue on down to a significant low which is likely in the September 10-16 range. As much as anything, this should be accompanied by the Fed NOT raising rates and if they get the wording just right, we should be off on a rally lasting several months which will be a wave 2.
Perhaps because we are in the vicinity of a Super Cycle (and even 250 and 500 year Grand Super Cycle top) it should be instructive to see how closely the social cycles and the market cycles line up.
Which is to hint that Donald Trump, who has a vastly different view of the “right role” of government that either Joe Biden of the current fellow next door, seems to have really soared in poles as the markets have declined.
But, once the first market wave 1 down from early/mid July finishes, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Hillary Clinton’s fortunes turn a bit as well as ascendancy of the old view of the world, as embodied in modern day democrats, who are still selling the Marxist/social echo that big government is good.
Not that Trump[ is arguing that government isn’t necessary, but it’s all measured in how well it’s executed.
Look for something else to peak: The last gasps of political correctness which will be undone by the excessive zeal of its followers; the extremists. As an example, the fellow that killed the TV reporter and cameraman trying to set off a race war. Ultimately, that’s where political correctness and soft-headed thinking leads.
At its “marketing best” you see (and you can see this with too much government in the Great Depression as well, battering down doors to make sure no one was sewing clothing in the garment district at night), terms like workers paradise and Utopian society.
The ugly liberalista thinking that is never acknowledged is that every last one of these Utopia peddlers I have questioned, sooner or later reveal that everyone else is part of their scheme. Except them.
Their special role is that they get to be in charge. And that’s how all these Utopian dreams (like Russian communism) morph from an interesting collective cooperation into a dystopian nightmare.
As we come up on the 250th anniversary of America, therefore, I will predict the decline of political correctness as we shake of still more of our misguided thinking from the past and begin to realize that the beliefs of the few do not trump (used non politically) the interests of the many.
Should be an interesting show. But it will be a slow process seeing “political correctness” unwind, although the TV murders will go a long ways. As will the continued crime wave brought to America by illegal immigrants.
But here’s the point.
People are waking up to political bullshit which much of “political correctness” is. Would you refer to a plane crash as an “over speed landing”?
How about this: Rather than say three people were killed in a head-on car accident on the 405, how about “Three people received permanent tax breaks when two vehicles stopped abruptly on the 405 this morning…” Yet this is how mental acuity has been attacked.
Over the next 10-years we will see correctness and mind-control by social-psychology driven foundations slowly rooted out.
One phrase which I expect to decline will be “undocumented alien” which is used by media to “correct” to report the perps were illegals.. In the case of this rape and murder by two illegals in California, you have to read way down into the story to find out yep, illegals from Mexico….again.
I love Mexico, the Mexican people, but I have a problem with criminals and it is against the law to enter the U.S. without documents. Yet the late wave apologists cry their eyes out about clear thinking.
The thing to do is here is watch the market levels as we watch the word/thought distortions. The next 11-years should be a revealing time, indeed.
Real change is a slow-motion thing. If it were any faster, people would have to admit to their own stupidity and who wants to do that? It’s one of those things people want to work up to…slowly.
– – –
There are three kinds of people in the world: Some of us are “future people” and we are always living 10-minutes to 10-years in the future. Then there are “present people” who are in the hear and now. But the ones to watch for at the “people past” because they are what holds back the world and prevent us from all “keeping it real.”
A Research Note: If you ever run across it, I’d sure be interested in any studies you might stumble across linking health, income, and longevity to a person’s temporal orientation.
Word from the WoWW
Here’s the latest from one of our readers who is dealing with the World of Woo-Woo. That place where things disappear and then reappear and then….
“I’m into the quantum leap. Back in the early 80s, I was putting together a bed and was putting the three wood planks on the rails to hold the box springs.
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