Are We Heading to Civil War II?

I just finished up two books prophesying bad times ahead. The first was The Fourth Turning by William Strauss and Neil Howe. It advances a cyclical theory of history using Jungian archetypes; there are "saeculum" cycles -- lasting about 80-100 years -- and then there are generational cycles with Prophets, Nomads, Heroes, Artists. Here's La Wik.

The second was Ages of Discord by Peter Turchin, which proposes a secular cycle based on demographic data like GDP and immigration and intra-elite competition. Peter Turchin was born a Russian; he came to the US in 1977 when his father was exiled from the Soviet Union. Here's La Wik.

Both of the books propose that we are heading for a crisis that may well involve a civil war in America.

I'd say that The Fourth Turning reduces to the notion that we all tend to turn to squabbling in times of peace, leading to a crisis. And then in the crisis we all have to unite and pull together. In the aftermath of the crisis successfully concluded we all sit around for a while telling each other how nice we are. Until people start to squabble again. Right now we are headed for a crisis, because it is 75 years since we were united by the experience of World War II.

Ages of Discord proposes that people get angry in tough times. Thus, for the ordinary commoner, things get tough when real incomes are flat or going down; so people get angry. For the average elitist things get tough when there are too many people competing for elite jobs like politician and doctor and lawyer; that's what makes elitists angry with each other. Right now everyone is angry. Commoners are angry because incomes have been flat ever since 1970; Elitists are angry because the explosion in college education means an explosion in people that think the world should listen to them.

I am reminded of radical Randolph Bourne's maxim that "war is the health of the state." People come together in a crisis. In other words, a war. Another way of saying this is that politicians are always looking to fight some frightful foreign foe. They instinctively know that their dream of leading their people depends on there being a threat to overcome. Alternatively, if there isn't a foreign foe, then you lead your partisan faction to battle against the other partisan faction who, as everyone knows, are monsters.

Incidentally, this is the meaning of the two front war proposed by the Biden Administration. The first is fighting climate change, a very cunning way of mobilizing the whole country as if to war. The second is fighting "systemic racism," fighting for "oppressed peoples" against the "white oppressors."

And again, this reflects the truth about government, that its only warrant is to protect us against enemies, foreign and domestic. Real or imaginary.

Let us analyze things using Turchin's "Well-Being Index" and "Political Stress Index." Back in 1820, the "Era of Good Feelings," ordinary Americans felt pretty good. The Well-Being Index was high, and American had united during the Indian Wars. And there was no real conflict in the elites.

But then began the great wave of 19th century immigration, and wages suffered. Then began the rise of the North with manufacturing and railways challenging the dominance of the South's cotton economy. So, by the 1850s the commoners were pissed off by the Irish and German immigrants pulling wages down and the Northern industrialists were pissed off by the lordly South that had dominated politics and government since the Founding. It was time to teach the other guys a lesson.

And everyone stayed pissed off until after World War I. But then Congress wrote a bill to sharply curb immigration and real wages started to rise. The crisis of the Great Depression and World War II inspired everyone to pull together under the brilliant leadership of FDR and Jobs for progressive intellectuals. By the end of WWII we were all united, and in the 1950s and 1960s commoners benefited from a surge in real incomes.

But all good things must come to an end. In 1965 Congress passed a new immigration bill that sharply increased immigration. And real wages stopped climbing in the 1970s. The sharp increase in college education meant that more would-be elite people were competing for doctor jobs and lawyer jobs and political jobs.

So now you come to today, where the commoners are rebelling against half a century of no real increase in income, and the cognitive elite is pushing back against the nerve -- the noive -- of the commoners critiquing their wisdom.

I have two ideas. First, let's limit immigration (hey, I'm an immigrant, but I got mine). Then maybe the incomes of ordinary Americans will start to rise. Second, let's replace college with technical schools and apprenticeships and internships for most Americans. Then there won't be so many people educated for political leadership competing for the same glorious prizes. And then everyone will live happily ever after.

Could it work? Maybe.

But first, I suspect, our glorious elite will have to screw up big time -- like they did in the 1970s. Politics does not proceed on the well-tended garden of good ideas, but on the bonfire of bad ideas.

I just hope we don't have a civil war.