Historians William Strauss and Neil Howe's generational theory of "the fourth turning" argues each generation is comprised of four 20- to 22-year "turnings", or cultural attitudes about society. Four turnings make up a saeculum, Latin for "a long human life" or "a natural century".
Meticulously tracing historic events, Strauss and Howe delineate how the most consequential societal-shaping events have predictably adhered to this 80-year cycle.
For example, 80 years after the American Revolution the United States was gripped in the Civil War. 80 years after that saw the end of the second world war.
From that point to now has been--that's right--80 years.
In the 1930s, as fascism was consuming Europe--and even threatened to take over here--we elected a president, Franklin Roosevelt, who could have used the presidency's awesome power at a time of great national weakness to join the authoritarian trend, and flip the United States to an autocracy.
He alluded during his first inaugural address to sweeping governmental reforms he intended to implement:
It is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure.
I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption.
But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis--broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.
We normally only focus on the "all we have to fear is fear itself" slogan at the beginning; rarely do we remember the part about "broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency".
Instead, Roosevelt used his "broad executive power" to expand government's potential to strengthen democracy, creating America's middle class, which thrived for 40 years until Ronald Reagan declared war on the New Deal when he pronounced in his first inaugural address that government isn't "the solution to the problem; government is the problem".
A decade ago the suggestion we could slide into fascism was the province of fringe conspiracy enclaves.
Now it is no longer hyperbole.
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