"Table 1 shows 8 politically-significant attempted and successful assassinations in the last CPP compared to just two today"
Gabby Giffords in 2011 was a mass shooting event, but one done by a political misogynist. There have been a variety of anti-women / incel related killings in recent decades.
Or anti-government violence (usually considered synonymous with right-wing violence in the US), which has had notable events off cycle from what you're calling the current CCP.
"Rising inequality creates elite proliferation and increased competition between elites for prestigious and powerful positions. In politics this competition manifests as rising polarization, which shades into political warfare, which is measured by PSI. Political warfare can lead to the real thing in a showdown between elite factions such as insurrection or civil war."
It has been well over a hundred years since elites funded their own military units in large numbers. The only real civil wars (as opposed to temporary insurrections) in the US were state-backed. And the last time anything approaching a state-backed insurrection happened was during mandatory integration during the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s (the government of Arkansas in 1957).
"An early example of polarization might be the impeachment of President Clinton for lying about an affair under oath."
Polarization in right-wing talk radio preceded this. Maybe in left-wing talk radio too, I don't know, my father wasn't playing that.
"And the crisis resolution for this cycle, when it comes, will also feature significant changes in how our government works."
Maybe, but constitutional amendments are really hard to pass. The easiest pro-democracy resolution I could imagine would be completing the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
Elites tend to use the state to fund military operations should they choose to duke it out. That's what they did in 1861. I said the Clinton was an early example of polarization. not that it began then. It has been rising since around 1980, and passed through its average level in the early 1990's. But it did not have a real material effect on policy until the Clinton administration. Anything before 2000 would be early in my book.
The way our government functioned changed a lot during the last resolution (1929-42). No Amendments were necessary.
"Elites tend to use the state to fund military operations should they choose to duke it out. That's what they did in 1861."
And for both technological and political reasons I don't think that's really possible anymore. Unless they somehow manage to come up with a political equivalent of a cold war, which maybe the SCOTUS "state's rights" push, along with Vance-like federal extension of state law enforcement in the "fugitive slave law" modernization of state-level abortion law might actually do.
Up through 2010 the database I used is the one assembled Turchin for his 2012 paper. To that I added slave revolts and colonial unrest to extend the dataset back in 1720. The events you mention up through 2009 all appear in that database.
Since 2010 I used mass shootings from Mother Jones, plus a handful of other examples of violence like the Giffords shooting. I used a correlation between Turchin's frequency over 1982-2010 and this mass shooting database to convert the proxy into an estimate for what Turchin's database would look like had he continued it after 2010.
The Giffords shooting does not appear in the article because the CPP began in 2013, and the shooting was from before then. So it is not an example of CPP violence.
I think the primary issue I was having was in not seeing this as polarization among elites. A lot of non-elite polarization happens all of the time, but elites tend to focus on a few key topics and try their best to focus society around those topics. Given the mechanisms of power they have, they're generally successful.
The measurement of polarization is based on voting behavior in Congress. They are certainly elites. As for talk radio, folks like Rush Limbaugh got extremely wealthy stirring up the proles. I would certainly consider people like he as elites too.
Sure. I just meant that if the elites are not talking about it alot it isn't the kind of polarization you're measuring here. The elites ignore a lot of polarizing topics when it's not convenient for them to polarize around those topics (e.g. your example of the Reagan dispensation's realignment of Democrat priorities certainly didn't change the issues that worker's unions find to be important, it simply decentered many of those issues politically).
Elite polarization is about competition for power. What elites *talk* about for the mass's consumption is whatever helps them to achieve what they want.
Yep. I just didn't put it together that for all of these cycles you're talking about it's the elite that matters moreso than the hoi polloi. Sure, bonus armies and postal strikes can shake the elite around a bit and get them to side with certain numbers of the hoi polloi. And maybe every once in a while a hoi polloi can rise to elite status while championing a major wave. But as your friend said, in the grand scheme of things they're all the same. And change doesn't happen until elites latch onto it.
Other than 2008 I haven't been excited about an election since I could first vote. I am excited now. Good job, Biden. Left wingers finally have something to vote *for*.
Great work Mike, a very clear description of how secular cycles occur. I’ve been reading your work ‘Application of Mathematical Models to English Secular Cycles’ as background for some PhD research applying Cliodynamics to Early Medieval England. It would be interesting to have a chat about it.
"Table 1 shows 8 politically-significant attempted and successful assassinations in the last CPP compared to just two today"
Gabby Giffords in 2011 was a mass shooting event, but one done by a political misogynist. There have been a variety of anti-women / incel related killings in recent decades.
I'm also curious whether you'd consider anti-abortion violence part of a CCP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_terrorism_in_the_United_States#Anti-abortion_violence
Or anti-government violence (usually considered synonymous with right-wing violence in the US), which has had notable events off cycle from what you're calling the current CCP.
"Rising inequality creates elite proliferation and increased competition between elites for prestigious and powerful positions. In politics this competition manifests as rising polarization, which shades into political warfare, which is measured by PSI. Political warfare can lead to the real thing in a showdown between elite factions such as insurrection or civil war."
It has been well over a hundred years since elites funded their own military units in large numbers. The only real civil wars (as opposed to temporary insurrections) in the US were state-backed. And the last time anything approaching a state-backed insurrection happened was during mandatory integration during the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s (the government of Arkansas in 1957).
"An early example of polarization might be the impeachment of President Clinton for lying about an affair under oath."
Polarization in right-wing talk radio preceded this. Maybe in left-wing talk radio too, I don't know, my father wasn't playing that.
"And the crisis resolution for this cycle, when it comes, will also feature significant changes in how our government works."
Maybe, but constitutional amendments are really hard to pass. The easiest pro-democracy resolution I could imagine would be completing the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
Elites tend to use the state to fund military operations should they choose to duke it out. That's what they did in 1861. I said the Clinton was an early example of polarization. not that it began then. It has been rising since around 1980, and passed through its average level in the early 1990's. But it did not have a real material effect on policy until the Clinton administration. Anything before 2000 would be early in my book.
The way our government functioned changed a lot during the last resolution (1929-42). No Amendments were necessary.
"Elites tend to use the state to fund military operations should they choose to duke it out. That's what they did in 1861."
And for both technological and political reasons I don't think that's really possible anymore. Unless they somehow manage to come up with a political equivalent of a cold war, which maybe the SCOTUS "state's rights" push, along with Vance-like federal extension of state law enforcement in the "fugitive slave law" modernization of state-level abortion law might actually do.
I am not saying it is. I simply pointed out that Western elites haven't used private armies in a very long time.
Up through 2010 the database I used is the one assembled Turchin for his 2012 paper. To that I added slave revolts and colonial unrest to extend the dataset back in 1720. The events you mention up through 2009 all appear in that database.
Since 2010 I used mass shootings from Mother Jones, plus a handful of other examples of violence like the Giffords shooting. I used a correlation between Turchin's frequency over 1982-2010 and this mass shooting database to convert the proxy into an estimate for what Turchin's database would look like had he continued it after 2010.
The Giffords shooting does not appear in the article because the CPP began in 2013, and the shooting was from before then. So it is not an example of CPP violence.
I think the primary issue I was having was in not seeing this as polarization among elites. A lot of non-elite polarization happens all of the time, but elites tend to focus on a few key topics and try their best to focus society around those topics. Given the mechanisms of power they have, they're generally successful.
The measurement of polarization is based on voting behavior in Congress. They are certainly elites. As for talk radio, folks like Rush Limbaugh got extremely wealthy stirring up the proles. I would certainly consider people like he as elites too.
Sure. I just meant that if the elites are not talking about it alot it isn't the kind of polarization you're measuring here. The elites ignore a lot of polarizing topics when it's not convenient for them to polarize around those topics (e.g. your example of the Reagan dispensation's realignment of Democrat priorities certainly didn't change the issues that worker's unions find to be important, it simply decentered many of those issues politically).
Elite polarization is about competition for power. What elites *talk* about for the mass's consumption is whatever helps them to achieve what they want.
Yep. I just didn't put it together that for all of these cycles you're talking about it's the elite that matters moreso than the hoi polloi. Sure, bonus armies and postal strikes can shake the elite around a bit and get them to side with certain numbers of the hoi polloi. And maybe every once in a while a hoi polloi can rise to elite status while championing a major wave. But as your friend said, in the grand scheme of things they're all the same. And change doesn't happen until elites latch onto it.
I stand corrected: https://fortune.com/2024/07/29/biden-supreme-court-overhaul-president-appoint-justice-18-year-terms/
Other than 2008 I haven't been excited about an election since I could first vote. I am excited now. Good job, Biden. Left wingers finally have something to vote *for*.
Yes that’s fine.
Great work Mike, a very clear description of how secular cycles occur. I’ve been reading your work ‘Application of Mathematical Models to English Secular Cycles’ as background for some PhD research applying Cliodynamics to Early Medieval England. It would be interesting to have a chat about it.
How about 10 AM EDT (1400 GMT) tomorrow? I’ll be in a place where I can zoom then.