Trump’s Sunzi Stratagem #27: “Feign madness but keep your balance”

(假痴不癲／假痴不癫, Jiǎ chī bù diān) Hide behind the mask of a fool, a drunk, or a madman to create confusion about your intentions and motivations. Lure your opponent into underestimating your ability until, overconfident, he drops his guard. Then you may attack.

In 1776 twenty-seven year old George  Washington took on the British and almost half of his fellow colonists to victory in the American Revolution. In 2016 Donald  Trump and Bernie  Sanders took on the Deep State and almost half of their respective  voting public.

Bernie, unintentionally exposed the establishment’s King George candidate – Hillary Clinton – to be the enemy of the people. And the rest is history.

Ms Kirchner telling Hillary how Argentina has been transferring spousal presidential power since Peron. “Don’t Cry for me Argentina” is a sad song because Evita died before her husband Juan Peron could break the presidential palace glass ceiling.

Nestor Kirchner remained a highly influential politician during the term of his successor and wife Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. The press developed the term “presidential marriage” to make reference to both of them at once. Some political analysts compared this type of government with a diarchy. 

Argentina’s former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was indicted on Monday on charges that her administration accepted bribes from construction companies in exchange for public works contracts, according to an indictment released by a federal judge. 18 September 2018

Ray Farnham, my 7^th grade Social Studies teacher, was always describing the challenge of history, since time began, as the nothing more than separating big potatoes from the small potatoes. Teacher Ray’s story example:

Once there was a man who was hired to sort potatoes into two piles—big potatoes and small potatoes. His employer thought this task should take no more than a couple of hours. However, when he returned at the end of the day, he found his helper sitting in front of the huge pile holding a potato in each hand, while muttering to himself, “decisions, decisions, decisions.”

U.S. government economic bailout of 2008 is the most recent example of the big potatoes sorting the potatoes into two piles with 99% ending up in the small potato pile.

We are truly grateful Bernie for your Political Revolution. You have brought us to the gates of the establishment. You are the Martin Luther King of 2016. You have educated, inspired and led the people with honesty, dignity and humility. You have won the battle for the hearts and minds of the electorate. You have said yourself that this Revolution is not about Bernie it’s about us.

The us in us knows that Trump is an asshole but he is our only option, if us wants to win the war. Hillary wouldn’t honor the Pledge of Allegiance let alone the Democratic Party Platform. Don’t waste your life energy attacking Trump. Don’t waste your life energy trying to negotiate with the Democratic Elite. Vet the Senate and House candidate list, regardless of party affiliation, then tell us for whom to vote.

Become the LBJ of future American political accomplishment. Lyndon Baines Johnson single-handily ran the Senate and with his buddy Sam Rayburn controlled the House. No one, whether they are Bourgeoisie or Proletarian, doubts your word – you remain the last honest politico in power – for example, when you announce legislation to pass Super Glass-Steagall the public and Congressmen who want to keep their job will say Amen.

Let Brexit be our guide, “Those with money are in, those without money are out.” 95 million Americans do not have a job and no hope of having a job. At least, 300 million Americans have no money and only a tiny hope of getting any money. LBJ was a lousy president because he used the Congress to enact his good, bad and ugly policy decisions, Civil Rights/Vietnam/Great Society. since 1964, the “do nothing Congress” has done nothing but make bad, very bad, policy decisions.

LBJ, to pay for his “Guns and Butter” folly was forced to break the chains of gold that kept the Federal Reserve, the Banks and most importantly, the US

We have paid dearly for Nixon’s colossal error. But this abhorrent deviation from a sound dollar can be corrected. The country — and the world — awaits the political leader who truly understands making the dollar as good as gold is vital to the prosperity, security and liberty of the American people, and who can therefore lead the country and the world forward to a 21st century gold standard.

According to Ed Sanders, the change in the public label from “beatnik” to “hippie” occurred after the 1967 Human Be-In in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, where Ginsberg,Gary Snyder, and Michael McClure led the crowd in chanting “Om”. Ginsberg was also at the infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention, and was friends with Abbie Hoffman and other members of the Chicago Seven. Stylistic differences between beatniks, marked by somber colors, dark shades and goatees, gave way to colorful psychedelic clothing and long hair worn by hippies. While the beats were known for “playing it cool” and keeping a low profile, hippies became known for displaying their individuality.

One early book hailed as evidencing the transition from “beatnik” to “hippie” culture, was Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me by Richard Fariña, brother-in-law of Joan Baez. Written in 1963, it was published April 28, 1966—two days before its author was killed in a motorcycle crash.

The Yippies had no formal membership or hierarchy. Abbie Hoffman, Anita Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Nancy Kurshan, and Paul Krassner founded the Yippies (according to his own account, Krassner coined the name) at a meeting in Abbie and Anita’s New York flat on December 31, 1967.^[7] “If the press had created ‘hippie,’ could not we five hatch the ‘yippie’?” Abbie Hoffman wrote.

Anita Hoffman liked the word, but felt that the New York Times and other “strait-laced types” needed a more formal name to take the movement seriously. That same night she came up with Youth International Party, because it symbolized the movement and made for a good play on words. The Yippies held their first press conference in New York at the Americana Hotel March 17, 1968, five months before the August 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. 

‘Get Clean for Gene”

Sister Sue, upper left, Walnut Hills High School ’64, dropped out of Miami of Ohio to run away to Haight Ashbury, San Francisco to be a Hippie. She shared her life with a Buppie but ventured to DC where she met her future husband John, front with baby. John was a Yippie at heart campaigning for Eugene McCarthy in he 1968 election. John retired from Yuppie-hood in 2012 as president of St. Charles Community College.

Jerry Rubin, the Yippie, Walnut Hills High School ’56 dropped out of UC Berkeley to be a full time socio-political activist.

Kenneth Elton “Ken” Kesey (/ˈkiːziː/; September 17, 1935 – November 10, 2001) was an American novelist, essayist, and countercultural figure. He considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s.

Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado and grew up in Springfield, Oregon, graduating from the University of Oregon in 1957. He began writing One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1960 following the completion of a graduate fellowship in creative writing at Stanford University; the novel was an immediate commercial and critical success when published two years later.

Authored by John  Mauldin, originally posted at MauldinEconomics.com,

Psychologists from Sigmund Freud forward have generally agreed: our core attitudes about life are largely locked in by age five or so. Changing those attitudes requires intense effort.

Neil Howe and William Strauss took this obvious truth and drew an obvious conclusion: if our attitudes form in early childhood, then the point in history at which we live our childhood must play a large part in shaping our attitudes.

It’s not only early childhood, however, that forms us. Howe and Strauss think we go through a second formative period in early adulthood. The challenges we face as we become independent adults determine our approach to life.

These insights mean we can divide the population into generational cohorts, each spanning roughly 20 years. Each generation consists of people who were born and came of age at the same point in history.

These generations had similar experiences and thus gravitated toward similar attitudes.

Four generational archetypes: Heroes, Artists, Prophets, & Nomads

In their book The Fourth Turning, Howe and Strauss identified four generational archetypes: Hero, Artist, Prophet, and Nomad. Each consists of people born in a roughly 20-year period. As each archetypal generation reaches the end of its 80-year lifespan, the cycle repeats.

Each archetypal generation goes through the normal phases of life: childhood, young adulthood, mature adulthood, and old age. Each tends to dominate society during middle age (40–60 years old) then begins dying off as the next generation takes the helm.

This change of control from one generation to the next is called a “turning” in the Strauss/Howe scheme.The cycle repeats on a “fourth turning” as a new hero generation comes of age and replaces the nomads. Each fourth turning, however, is a great crisis.

(The turnings have their own characteristics, which I describe in detail in this article. Today’s economic and political landscape, unfortunately, makes it clear we are about halfway through the fourth turning.)

Now, let’s get back to the archetypes and see how they match the generations alive today.

The characteristics of each archetype aren’t neatly divided by the calendar; they are better seen as evolving along a continuum. (This is a very important point. It’s why we get trends and changes, not abrupt turnarounds. Thankfully.) People born toward the beginning or end of a generation share some aspects of the previous or following one.

Hero generations are usually raised by protective parents. Heroes come of age during a time of great crisis. Howe calls them heroes because they resolve that crisis, an accomplishment that then defines the rest of their lives.

Following the crisis, heroes become institutionally powerful in midlife and remain focused on meeting great challenges. In old age, they tend to have a spiritual awakening as they watch younger generations work through cultural upheaval.

The G.I. Generation that fought World War II is the most recent example of the hero archetype. They built the US into an economic powerhouse in the postwar years and then confronted youthful rebellion in the 1960s.

Further back, the generation of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, heroes of the American Revolution, experienced the religious “Great Awakening” in their twilight years.

Artists are the children of heroes, born before and during the crisis. They are, however, not old enough to be an active part of the solution. Highly protected during childhood, Artists are risk-averse young adults in the post-crisis years.

They see conformity as the best path to success. They develop and refine the innovations forged in the crisis. Artists experience the same cultural awakening as heroes but from the perspective of mid-adulthood.

Today’s older retirees are mostly artists, part of the “Silent Generation” that may remember World War II but were too young to participate. They married early and moved into gleaming new 1950s suburbs.

The Silent Generation went through its own midlife crisis in the 1970s and 1980s before entering a historically affluent, active, gated-community retirement.

Prophet generations experience childhood in a period of post-crisis affluence. Having not seen a real crisis, they often create cultural upheaval during their young adult years. In midlife, they become moralistic, values-obsessed leaders and parents. As they enter old age, prophets lay the groundwork for the next crisis.

The postwar Baby Boomers are the latest prophet generation. They grew up in generally comfortable times with the US at the height of its global power. They expanded their consciousness when they came of age in the “Awakening” period of the 1960s. They defined the 1970s/1980s “yuppie” lifestyle and are now entering old age, having shaped the culture by virtue of sheer numbers.

Nomads are the fourth and final archetype. They are children during the “Awakening” periods of cultural chaos. Unlike the overly indulged and protected prophets, nomads go through childhood with minimal supervision and guidance. They learn early in life not to trust society’s basic institutions. They come of age as individualistic pragmatists.

The most recent nomads are Generation X, born in the 1960s and 1970s. Their earliest memories are of faraway war, urban protests, no-fault divorce, and broken homes. Now entering midlife, Generation X is trying to give its own children a better experience. They find success elusive because they distrust large institutions and have no strong connections to public life. They prefer to stay out of the spotlight and trust only themselves. Their story is still unfolding today.

Millennials are a new hero generation

After the nomad archetype, the cycle repeats with another hero generation: the Millennials (born from 1982 through about 2004) are beginning to take root in American culture.

They are a large generation numerically, filling schools and colleges and propelling new technology into the mainstream. If the pattern holds, they will face a great crisis. It will influence the rest of their lives… just as World War II shaped the G.I. Generation heroes.

It’s not going to be a short period of difficulty. It will be an existential crisis, one in which society’s strongest institutions collapse (or are severely challenged and stressed) and national survival is in serious doubt. The Crisis can be economic, cultural, religious, military, or all the above

Trump has served as the Che Guevara to Tulsi Gabbard’s Fidel Castro.

First Turning: A High

The First Turning is a High. Old Prophets die, Nomads enter elderhood, Heroes enter midlife, Artists enter young adulthood—and a new generation of Prophets is born. This is an era when institutions are strong and individualism is weak. Society is confident about where it wants to go collectively, even if those outside the majoritarian center feel stifled by the conformity. America’s most recent First Turning was the post-World War II American High, beginning in 1946 and ending with the assassination of Hero John Kennedy (29 May 1917) in 1963, a key life-cycle marker for today’s older Americans. Coming of age during this High was the Artist archetype Silent Generation (born 1925 to 1942). Known for their caution, conformity, and institutional trust, Silent young adults embodied the ethos of the High. Most married early, sought stable corporate jobs, and slipped quietly into America’s gleaming new suburbs.

In Parsons’ terms, a First Turning is an era in which both the availability of social order and the demand for social order are high. Examples of earlier First Turnings include the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era, sometimes called the Victorian High of industrial growth and stable families, and the post-Constitution Era of Good Feelings, when Thomas Jefferson celebrated the advance of science and empire.

Second Turning: Awakening

The Second Turning is an Awakening. Old Nomads die, Heroes enter elder hood, Artists enter midlife, Prophets enter young adulthood—and a new generation of child Nomads is born. This is an era when institutions are attacked in the name of personal and spiritual autonomy. Just when society is reaching its high tide of public progress, people suddenly tire of social discipline and want to recapture a sense of personal authenticity. Young activists and spiritualists look back at the previous High as an era of cultural poverty. America’s most recent Awakening was the “Consciousness Revolution,” typified by Bernie Sanders 8 Sep ’41 which spanned from the campus and inner-city revolts of the mid-1960s to the tax revolts of the early ‘80s. Coming of age during this Awakening was the Prophet archetype Boom Generation (born 1943 to 1960), whose passionate idealism and search for authentic self-expression epitomized the mood of the era. 

In Parsons’ terms, a Second Turning is an era in which the availability of social order is high, but the demand for such order is low. Examples of earlier Second Turnings include the Third Great Awakening around 1900, marked by labor protests, Billy Sunday evangelicals, and “new woman” feminists, and the Transcendental Awakening, which Henry David Thoreau described as a period “when we have lost the world…and begin to find ourselves.” 

Third Turning: Unraveling

The Third Turning is an Unraveling. Old Heroes die, Artists enter elder hood, Prophets enter midlife, Bill Clinton 19 Aug ’46 and Hillary Clinton 26 Oct ’47 Nomads enter young adulthood—and a new generation of child Heroes is born. The mood of this era is in many ways the opposite of a High. Institutions are weak and distrusted, while individualism is strong and flourishing. Highs follow Crises, which teach the lesson that society must coalesce and build. Unravelings follow Awakenings, which teach the lesson that society must atomize and enjoy. America’s most recent Unraveling was the Long Boom and Culture Wars, beginning in the early 1980s and probably ending in 2008. The era opened with triumphant “Morning in America” individualism and drifted toward a pervasive distrust of institutions and leaders, an edgy popular culture, and the splitting of national consensus into competing “values” camps. Coming of age during this Unraveling was the Nomad archetype Generation X (born 1961-1981), whose pragmatic, free-agent persona and Survivor-style self-testing have embodied the mood of the era. 

In Parsons’ terms, a Third Turning is an era in which both the availability of social order and the demand for such order are low. Examples of earlier Unravelings include the periods around the “roaring” 1920s of Prohibition, the Mexican War in the 1850s, and the French and Indian Wars in the 1760s. These were all periods of cynicism and bad manners, when civic authority felt weak, social disorder felt pervasive, and the culture felt exhausted.

Fourth Turning: A Crisis Nomads

The Fourth Turning is a Crisis. Old Artists die, Prophets enter elderhood, Nomads enter midlife, Michelle 17 Jan ’64 Barrack Obama 4 Aug ’61Heroes enter young adulthood—and a new generation of child Artists is born. This is an era in which America’s institutional life is torn down and rebuilt from the ground up—always in response to a perceived threat to the nation’s very survival. Civic authority revives, cultural expression finds a community purpose, and people begin to locate themselves as members of a larger group. In every instance, Fourth Turnings have eventually become new “founding moments” in America’s history, refreshing and redefining the national identity. America’s most recent Fourth Turning began with the stock market crash of 1929 and climaxed with World War II. The generation that came of age during this Fourth Turning was the Hero archetype G.I. Generation (born 1901 to 1924), whose collective spirit and can-do optimism epitomized the mood of the era. Today’s Hero archetype youth, the Millennial Generation (born 1982 to 2004) show many traits similar to those of the G.I. youth, including rising civic engagement, improving behavior, and collective confidence.

In Parsons’ terms, a Fourth Turning is an era in which the availability of social order is low, but the demand for such order is high. Examples of earlier Fourth Turnings include the Civil War in the 1860s and the American Revolution in the 1770s—both periods of momentous crisis, when the identity of the nation hung in the balance.

 

Fourth Turning Archetypes PROPHET, NOMAD, HERO & ARTIST historical record from the Civil War through the Great Depression to the approaching Millennial Big Bang.

I end with a new word, at least new to me. A friend called it to my attention. It speaks of the moment we’re in. It is “kakistocracy,” from the Greek. It means government by the worst persons, by the least qualified or most unprincipled.

Civil War Archetypes

	PROPHET	NOMAD	HERO	ARTIST
Civil War	Era of Good Feelings (1794–1822)	Transcendental Awakening (1822–1844)Grant 1822	Mexican War & Sectionalism (1844–1860)Lincoln 1843	Civil War (1860–1865)
	PROPHET	NOMAD	HERO	ARTIST
Great Power Archetypes	Reconstruction & Gilded Age (1865–1886)Stalin 1878 Hitler 1889 Mao 1893 Franco 1892 Mussolini 1883	Third Great Awakening (1886–1908)	World War I & Prohibition (1908–1929)JFK 1917 Reagan 1911 Carter 1924 Nixon 1913 LBJ 1908	Great Depression & World War II (1929–1946)Bernie 1941 Dylan 1941 Greenspan 1926 Thatcher 1925 MLK 1929
	PROPHET	NOMAD	HERO	ARTIST
Millennial Big Bang Archetypes	American High (1946–1964)George ‘W’ 1946Hillary 1947 Bill Clinton 1946 Trump 1946 Putin 1952 Xi Jinping 1953 Merkel 1954	Consciousness Revolution (1964–1984)Michelle O 1964Obama 1961	Long Boom & Culture Wars (1984–2008)Zuckerberg 1984Priscilla Z 1985 McKayla 1992 Tamara 1995	Global Financial Crisis (2008–2029?)Maxima Chan 2015

History is just a collection of four generation length movies that take 80 years to make. George and Tom played leading roles in the classic documentary, ‘The American Revolution.’ The second flick, ‘the Civil War’ took only 71 years to produce because Abe was shot before completion. Following this tragic-drama Teddy foreshadowed America’s leap on to the world stage in ‘the Great Wars of WWI & WWII.’ Our movie, our very own contribution to the fabled glory of the Generational Time Continuum, began in 1943, with in theater viewing scheduled no later than the summer of 2026. ‘Millennial’ was the generic title given, however, after Trump won in 2016, ‘Apocalypse Soon’ has been suggested.

Having a front row seat since September 1943, I’m going with The Conspiracy Wars as my title for this 4th and possibly last Turning flick.

The PROPHET: Harry Truman

Every great movie spills out in four stages, what Neil Howe in his book, Fourth Turning, calls turnings. The first act, in Howe lingo the 1^st turning, (1943-1963) opens with the situation, where we are, at that point in time.

The NOMAD: JFK

In the sequence of things, the next act belongs to the NOMAD, the pot stirrers, the men of action, the go-to-guys that get the show on the road for the 2^nd turning referred to as the Awakening  (1963-1986)

The HERO: George ‘W’ Bush

The 3^rd turning is always called the Unravelling  where history gets out of hand and the super HERO is born.  (1984-2008)

 

The ARTIST: Donald J. Trump

At last we get to the uncut action scenes with real and unrehearsed special effects, the 4^th turning A Crisis (2008-2026). The tension keeps building until the climax, followed by the resolution. This is always the best part of any story.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rock, my favorite 7^th grader ESL student, had spent the previous two years attending public school in Manhattan because his mother was part of the Chinese delegation to the UN. Rock, in his fluent unaccented English, explained to me why the US education system was so fantastically wonderful and China’s so deplorable – CRITICAL THINKING.

I spent the next seven years in China trying to teach ESL the way I was taught Architecture – KINESTHETICALLY. Rock said the teachers in NYC actually asked the students questions versus memorizing answers as they do in China – that’s why they excel in math, they know all the formulas by heart. That explained why Trig, Physics, Calculus and Chemistry were absent from my scholastic radar. I did learn that asking questions was referred to as the Socratic Method and quite possibly that was the secret ingredient for CRITICAL THINKING.

However, not wanting to burst Rock’s bubble about the magnificence of American education, teaching English to 900 kids where, except for Rock and a sprinkling of two or three others in each class of sixty, nobody understood a thing I said, was a challenge even for Socrates himself. Further, reflecting on how I only passed my third year of Latin by making a plaster of Paris scale model of the Colosseum that had nothing to do with CRITICAL THINKING or Socratic questioning. I decided to stick with EXPERIENTIAL SIMULATIONS or learn-by-doing exercises e.g. teach them how to play baseball, go bowling, act out Little Red Riding Hood, and conduct Cheerleading team competitions.

After, six years, five months and fourteen days of KINESTHETIC insanity, I got an offer I couldn’t refuse. Jane Marie, in a moment of CRITICALLY THINKING clarity, said lets move to Antalya and live off my Social Security. Soon after arrival we were both engaged in the sharing of our vast ESL experience with the young Turks, who, like the Chinese, were paying for CRITICAL THINKING, not Cheerleading monkey-business. No longer monetarily burdened, I had time to home study just what is this CRITICALLY THINKING business, anyway? Maybe they don’t teach CRITICAL THINKING in architectural schools?

How come the Turks have lived on the other side of the Bosporus from Socrates’s home amphitheater for 2,500 years without picking up on a few CRITICAL THINKING tips? The Chinese have lots of good excuses, they live far away and have a 9,000 character alphabet that only they can read. That’s why Ataturk introduced the Latin letters in 1925 but by itself can’t make up 2500 years of lost learning. That’s why we don’t read books in architecture after our freshman year, it might hinder our creativity.

My CRITICAL THINKING veil was lifted one day when our Turk ESL book publisher turned me on to the father of ESL Stephen Krashen. Krashen’s theory claims that first, second and third language acquisition comes from reading books – no other way. No cheerleading, no watching TV, no grammar-vocab memorization – comic books to short story books to field of interest books. And therein lies the answer to my CRITICAL THINKING dilemma nobody read any books until GUTENBERG invented the printing press in the 1400’s.

Without Gutenberg we would have no Canterbury Tales, no Grimm’s Fairy Tales, no Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, no Walt Disney, no Hollywood and no ZUCKERBERG.