AN HOUR OF DARKNESS, ADVERSITY AND PERIL

At the crossroads again in 2024

In their 1991 book, Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584 to 2069, William Strauss and Neil Howe predicted a major crisis for the United States around the year 2020.  Strauss, who passed away in 2007, was a faculty fellow at the University of Notre Dame, and Howe, an historian, economist and writer, believed there is a cyclical pattern to the general personality characteristics of America’s generations.  Civic generations, for example, who gave us the American Revolution and Constitution, and more recently who took the country through the Depression and World War II, are productive, industrious and self-sacrificing.  They are “heroic and achieving” builders of institutions.  Their childrens’ generations tend to be idealists.  Growing up “as increasingly indulged youths after a secular crisis [idealists come of age] inspiring a spiritual awakening.”  As adults, write Strauss and Howe, they are narcissistic, and as elders they are “visionaries…guiding the next secular crisis.”

The idealist generation born in the first two decades of the eighteenth century, for example, brought “hysteria, shattered families, and split towns.”  A Salem minister wrote the following in 1742: “It is impossible to relate the convulsions into which the country is thrown.”

      Idealist generations tend to upset the status quo.

      Is this beginning to sound familiar?

Boomers, the latest incarnation of these narcissistic, indulged generations, were born after World War II.  Their spiritual awakening was the sociological explosion known collectively as the Sixties.  While we generally associate religious awakenings with fire and brimstone preachers, tent revivals and sinners coming forward to be saved, the spiritual nature of the Sixties was religious in intensity and secular in nature. The primary projects of this Boomer cohort were 1) to protest the war in Viet Nam, and 2) to convince themselves and the rest of the world, that Amerikka was inherently evil – imperialist, capitalist, racist – and should be brought down “by any means necessary.”  

Born into peace, prosperity, security, freedom, and unprecedented opportunity, they weren’t satisfied; they needed something more; a cause bigger than themselves.  On the road to “authenticity,” a favorite buzz word of that generation, they brought us free love, hippies, drugs, Woodstock, violence and a manufactured hatred of their country.   

“Historically,” wrote Straus and Howe, “aging idealists [like the Baby Boom generation], have been attracted to words like ‘exterminate,’ and ‘eradicate,’ words of apocalyptic finality.  If the purpose of the crisis is inner principle, the degree of outer-world destruction needed for those ideals to triumph will be of secondary consideration.” The deaths of others, I would add, is generally inconsequential to those who believe they are accomplishing something of historical, if not cosmic, importance. 

They wrote further:

· “The crisis of 2020,” “will be a major turning point in American history and an adrenaline-filled moment of trial.  At its climax, Americans will feel that the fate of posterity – for generations to come – hangs in the balance.”  

· “It’s easy to picture aging Boomers as noble, self-sacrificing patriarchs – but just as easy to see these righteous Old Aquarians as the worst nightmare that could ever happen to the world.”  

· “If the future cycle continues, old Boomers will bring world history to a decisive turning point.”   (Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Bernie Sanders, Bill O’Reilly, and Maxine Waters). 

In their 1997 book, The Fourth Turning, Strauss and Howe doubled down on their predictions.

“The very survival of the nation will feel at stake.  Sometime around the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with American Revolution, Civil War and twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II.”

“The nation could erupt into insurrection or civil violence…[it] could end in apocalypse – or glory.  The nation could be ruined, its democracy destroyed, and millions of people scattered or killed.” 

 When I first read those words, they struck me as extreme.  Explaining historical patterns is a chancy business.  Making predictions is even harder.  But looking back from the lofty perspective of the end of the twentieth century, the social, political, psychological strands continued on their torrid, misguided pace.  Picking-up on those threads, in 2003, I wrote a 212,000-word book explaining how the United States was heading toward, as Strauss and Howe predicted, “a major turning point in American history… an hour of darkness, adversity and peril.”

That hour has arrived.

      Here is a summarizing excerpt from my 2003 book, The Crisis of 2020.

As we look out into the new century and the new millennium, the idealist generation of Baby Boomers is already in the process of creating a society with the potential to explode in twenty years.  The religious awakening of the Sixties has evolved into a paradigm of emotion over reason, feelings over logic, subjectivity over objectivity and belief over facts.  Although the movement is secular in nature, it is religious in spirit.  The rejection of their parents’ generation, their moral certitude and their hunger to do something of worth, is reminiscent of past “idealist” generations.

                                  PREDICTIONS FROM 2003

· When the Crisis explodes in 2020, few Americans will have any reverence for their common heritage.  Forget love of country; we won't even like our country.  Our past will be seen as one of exploitation and brutality.  Our historical icons will have been transformed from heroes to villains.  The conscious and purposeful denigration of our past is a pernicious point of darkness - a growing cancer - on our national soul.

· By 2020, our sense of self, our sense of national purpose, our respected common heritage, our love of country, the strength of our institutions and our reverence for freedom, will have been sucked out of us, and we shall be a fragile shell, easily cracked.

                         TODAY’S POLLS VERIFY YESTERDAY’S PREDICTIONS

• A 2022 Gallup poll found that a shockingly low thirty-eight percent of Americans say they are “extremely proud” of their country, while a meager twenty-seven percent have confidence in our major institutions.

· In July, 2023, a New York Times/Sienna poll found that 65% of registered voters thought the country was moving in the wrong direction.  Thirty-seven percent of that 65%, believe "our problems are so bad that America is in danger of failing as a nation."

· A July, 2023 Gallup poll found that American’s trust in its institutions is at an all-time low.  The percentage of Americans reporting a “a great deal /quite a lot of confidence in our institutions are; the Presidency 23%; the Supreme Court 25%; Congress 7%; public schools 28%; newspapers 16%; criminal justice system 14%, television news 11%.

In 2001, Haynes Johnson, journalist, author, and political commentator, was ambivalent about America’s future.  Looking back at the decade of the nineties, he wrote:

        With all these assets, and with confidence in their future, solid

        grounds existed for Americans to think their good fortune would

        continue, perhaps even multiply, propelling them into an even

       more golden period.  A disturbing disconnect was present, however. 

       Despite their blessings, Americans increasingly felt something was

       wrong with their society.

The title of Johnson’s book was:

The Best of Times: The Boom and Bust Years of America Before and After 

                                   Everything Changed.

Something was wrong with their society. 

Everything changed.

Now, a quarter of a century later, that disturbing disconnect - call it a malaise - has crystalized into a crisis.