Authored by Squawker

“If you do a worldwide survey of eclipse lore, the theme that constantly appears, with few exceptions, is it’s always a disruption of the established order,” said E. C. Krupp, director of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, California. That’s true of both solar and lunar eclipses. “People depend on the sun’s movement,” Krupp said. “[It’s] regular, dependable, you can’t tamper with it. And then, all of a sudden, Shakespearean tragedy arrives and time is out of joint. The sun and moon do something that they shouldn’t be doing.”

On August 21st of this year, the United States will witness its first total solar eclipse seen across the totality of the country in nearly forty years. For millennia, humans have gazed towards the skies in awe, observing that heavenly bodies move regularly and predictably with mathematical certainty, and this has inspired poets, philosophers, and other thinkers to ruminate on man’s relationship to the universe, and the possibility that human activity is ruled by laws and patterns independent of human activity.

Although many of these ideas that were fashionable hundreds of years ago, such as astrology, have been put to rest by contemporary scientific knowledge, perhaps there is value to be gleaned from entertaining the possibility that there are indeed larger forces and patterns governing human affairs. Against the backdrop of this cosmically anomalous event, are we on the cusp of a more temporal form of disruption this summer in the United States?

Since President Donald Trump’s stunning victory over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, much of the press have made note of Steve Bannon’s interest in an influential book published in 1997 called, “The Fourth Turning: What Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous With Destiny.”

In this book, authors William Strauss and Neil Howe make the argument that our ideas about the nature of history, linear time, and progress are illusory, and that if we want a more accurate concept about the way that history unfolds, we would do well to study the ancient Greek concept of cyclical time. This concept views national and global historical phenomenon not as randomly occurring events, or the linear march of historical “progress,” but instead sees them as recurring archetypes placed into a larger tapestry of a greater repeating historical cycle.

According to Strauss and Howe, the relative geographic and historical isolation of the United States provides a unique opportunity to view this cycle unfolding regularly and predictably every 80 years.

This 80-year cycle can be divided into four stages or seasons, each lasting approximately twenty years:

High– This initial stage occurs immediately following a period of crisis. The High is characterized by strong institutions, a sense of collective destiny, and a weakness of individuality. The most recent example of this would be the period of prosperity and conformity in the U.S. immediately following the conclusion of World War II. Awakening- The second stage, or turning, is a period of questioning established values and asserting one’s independence from established norms and morals, be they spiritual or political. This stage may be seen as a rebellion of the previous era’s emphasis on material wealth and conformity. The 1960’s, with the psychedelic revolution, anti-war protests, Civil Rights marches, and New Age spiritual movements can be seen as recent characteristics of this second stage, as well as Reaganomics and the mid-1980s Wall Street ethos. Unraveling- The emphasis on autonomy and the questioning of spiritual, political, and individual authority in the Awakening stage eventually destabilizes society, leading to the Third Turning, in which institutions are weak and untrusted while the subjective experience of the individual is emphasized. This stage can be thought of as the inverse of the initial High stage, where collective destiny is replaced by atomization. Recent symptom of this stage would be the culture wars, corporate malfeasance, a lack of faith in government, social justice movements, and political correctness. Crisis- In the Fourth Turning, a destabilizing event, usually involving warfare, leads to the destruction and reconstruction of institutions of power. In the face of destruction, Americans are forced to unite and forge a vision to restructure a disrupted society. This fourth stage can be seen as the inverse of the Awakening stage, and the authors cite World War II as the defining event of the most recent period of Crisis.

Strauss and Howe predicted that the next Crisis period that the U.S. would face would happen sometime around 2005 and end around 2025. Anyone who has been paying attention over the last decade would have a difficult time refuting this. The financial crisis of 2008 threw the planet into discord, and we are now just beginning to see some of the political ramifications of this. We may be reaching the apex of this crisis this summer, or at least we will witness a significant acceleration of it.

The institutions that once defined American stability are rapidly crumbling. Mounting debt, unsustainable consumerism, and illegal immigration are chipping away at once sturdy foundation of America.

And the robust civil discourse needed to solve these problems has been interrupted by advocates of social justice, sometimes violently. Recent small skirmishes between the two sides may be headed toward larger eruptions.

Some analysts are predicting a ‘Summer of Rage’, which will boil over in violent protests all across the United States. The DNC has called for a George Soros-financed ‘Resistance Summer’, in which protestors are encouraged to invade town halls, and organize rallies and neighborhood meetings to undermine President Trump. This will culminate in a national training being billed as a ‘Resistance Summer Camp’ to effectively train operatives inorganizing strategies.

Meanwhile, other leftist groups are calling for a day of ‘Impeachment Marches’ on July 2nd in dozens of major cities across the country. Their goal is to pressure congressional representatives to begin impeachment proceedings against President Trump.

Emboldened by a mainstream media apparatus which functions as a mouthpiece of Deep State interests, these activists are determined to overturn democratically elected officials and overturn law and order on the grounds that they personally disagree with the results.

As we have seen in recent months, Trump supporters, conservatives, and other patriots are not afraid to confront leftist activists in the streets, and this is likely to intensify as these DNC-backed groups become more desperate and confrontational in their tactics.

James Comey’s congressional testimony this week showed that the Trump administration is indeed attempting to break the old political order and its far-too-power Deep State. The cracks are surfacing now, and this will likely shatter and spill into many facets of social life outside of the realm of politics.

This shattering seems to be the apex, or perhaps the precursor to the major Crisis event described by Strauss and Howe in the Fourth Turning, and it is proving to be a global movement, as evidenced by the recent elections this week in the United Kingdom.