About that Fourth Turning
Back on November 22, 2016, I wrote a post (on a different Medium account — oops!) about Trump and Strauss-Howe Generational Theory of History.
Not to toot my own horn (it isn’t really my horn but rather Strauss-Howe’s horn), but 2020 is almost precisely the year in which the “crisis event” was predicted to take place (with 2030 predicted to be the conclusion of this generational cycle).
That post posited that Trump was a prime example of the “grey leader” archetype who will face some kind of crisis in which he is forced into a showdown with death.
Grey Leader Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln is another grey leader archetype who stared down deathly odds, was destroyed by his enemies, and yet rose to a position of prominence as a result. Lincoln is the Grey leader martyr figure in the fashion of Obi Wan Kenobi who famously said to Vader, “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”
Grey Leader Gandalf
As I referenced in my 2016 post, Tolkein’s Gandalf is another quintessential “grey leader” archetypal figure. His fate is somewhat different. As a result of his battle with the Balrog (the quintessential suicidal showdown), a kind of transfiguration ocurred. Gandalf the Grey became Gandalf the White.
So here we are in 2020, right in the full bloom of the Strauss-Howe Fourth Turning, and a few things have become clear. What was left in doubt in my previous article had to do with whether or not Trump the Grey would fight. Not all grey leaders fight. Some like FDR triangulate and mortgage future generations into dealing with the problem. Did Trump fight? Well, all would agree that question has been answered.Trump has stared down death and it seems clear that the “Grey Leader” has been dealt a fatal blow by his enemies.
Now two new possibilities emerge:
Either Trump will die of the Balrog inflicted wounds or he will not.
Either way, the historical/literary evidence suggests some kind of transfiguration. And this bodes ill for the other side.
The most improbable outcome is that through a series of unprecedented legal actions, the election results will be overturned, Trump will emerge as the electoral victor and big parts of urban America will burn.
The more probable outcome is that all of the evidence which could either prove or disprove election fraud will be left unexplored and Donald Trump will be removed from office in January 2021. His removal will be perceived to be unjust or potentially unjust by 70 plus million people and some kind of orange-man martyr will emerge.
So either we get Obi Wan or Gandalf. In both instances, if the Straus-Howe theory is correct, we will not see this Grey Leader shrink in political power but rather increase in influence.
Let’s see what happens. I am not married to the Strauss-Howe theory but am certainly intrigued. It essentially predicted the 2020 phenomenon and has many other interesting things to say.
If the Strauss-Howe theory is illegitimate, Trump’s political influence will become relatively inconsequential in the next year or so and he will not be relevant in any way to a first-turning event.
Again, let’s see.