Back in 1997, when Bill Strauss and Neil Howe wrote about fourth turnings – those eras, roughly 80 years apart, when the generational gestalt propels transformative political action – they noted that these times are always characterized by tightening morality.
Twenty years later, with #MeToo now remediating gender power not only in business and culture but also, specifically, in political office, we see just how insightful Strauss and Howe really were. Right now, a new morality is being imposed, and it is going to root out all politicians who can’t, won’t or don’t meet the new standard.
Today, via the microcosm of the US 2017 Virginia election and the outing of Senators Franken and Conyers, we see women liberating themselves and institutionalizing a new balance of gender power in which their concerns and interests will predominate.
Woe to Silent and Boomer generation men who failed to learn the meaning of “male chauvinist pig” back in the Sixties. Your public life is done. Not due to anger or righteousness (though both are justified), you’ve simply become, just now, historically passé. Henceforth, sex and gender transgressions doom political careers. An epoch is over.
From the point of view of social and political change, this cultural shift is going to be thoroughly revolutionary. Most fundamentally, this is because the practical interests of women in their children’s and their families’ future require (in today’s realities) a struggle to bring corporate power back under human command. To stop gun violence and war, to ensure health and education, to ensure full employment and security in old age, to restore the environment...all these things necessitate a reckoning with corporate authority, with the ceaseless drive of corporations to pursue profit no matter what the harm to people, our civilization and our planet.
Unlike women, men have a propensity to settle problems directly by force so they pay only secondary attention to collaborative problem-solving. Relying on force options (since the rise of patriarchy some 10,000 years ago), men – mostly, the wealthiest men and their male subordinates – created credit systems and states, waged wars, conquered nations and enslaved people in a constant drive to exploit nature and human labor. Women suffered horribly, losing their natural right to chose their own mates and, henceforth, enduring the domestic slavery of marriage and debt servitude. One enduring vestige of this setback is the sexual aggression routinely deployed by men who have economic and social power over certain women.
But, now, after millennia of economic and social development, civilization has matured into a single, global complex of social interactions upon which everyone is mutually dependent. In this context, that is, in today’s global market, the inherent drive of corporations to command labor and deplete nature for the private accumulations of a relative few creditors (lenders and investors) is socially and ecologically counter-productive. Today, the owners of the civilization’s massive debts are a handful of financial corporations that manage credit and money supply in American (dollar), British (pound), European/German (euro), Japanese (yen) and Chinese (renminbi) markets. These few global financial corporations exercise a near monopoly in the creation of money and debt, relentlessly “earning” superprofits from interest, fees and collateral confiscations. Meanwhile, they invest heavily in politics to exercise effective control of the policies and arsenals of the world’s biggest states (the US first among them). This means that women, to achieve their objectives, find themselves face-to-face with corporate power in politics.
Meanwhile, as a world system, corporate capitalism (aka, the global market) is in crisis, unable to support civilization’s population while, nevertheless, destroying our climate, polluting our seas and decimating the planet’s biological diversity. Worldwide, the corporate system fails to adequately support or employ almost half of all people, and most are Millennials and GenXers. While the labor and creativity of these people are just what the world needs to repair civilization’s social and ecological catastrophe, corporate finance – because there is no money to be made in lending to non-profit projects – has no incentive to get involved.
Women know these stark realities, deep in their souls. When women finish their work of taking power and begin directing social rectification, they will ignore calls to violence and seek other ways to address concerns. First among them, the most obvious other option, is holding the corporate system to account. It created this mess, and it can clean its mess up – under popular (women’s!) direction. Indeed, if not the corporations, who is going to pay to put everyone to work tackling this world’s cascading crisis?
Men aren’t women so, inevitably, we see reality with a different lens and different blinders, too. I’m excited to see how fast women will go.
We can't be sure that Alabamans will take Roy Moore down, but if they do, it will be because suburban Millennial and GenX women, who voted for Trump (and other conservatives) in 2016, desert the rightwing ship of their elders. Necessity is firm guidance, and, always, it is young women (as opposed to older women and all men) who change first. But, even if Moore survives this round in Alabama, his further exposure and the erosion of his support is inevitable. Franken did his best to apologize; perhaps, he had an epiphany and is sincerely horrified by himself (one can only hope). But now, he has to resign.
This unfolding tidal wave was made evident in the Virginia elections. The state’s elections are a year ahead of the national cycle, and Republicans already controlled the Virginia legislature when Trump ran and won election in 2016. Thus, many of the state’s male legislators had the opportunity to react to Trump’s Access Hollywood revelations and, later, to the outpouring of women’s power demonstrations right after he took office. Unfortunately for several of them, they not only defended Trump, they also took the opportunity to make sexist remarks about his feminine critics. This behavior directly provoked a number of GenX and Millennial women – including a transgender woman – to run against and defeat these jokesters. Indeed, with three seats still to be recounted, Democrats have the potential to swing 16 seats their way and take majority control of the Virginia House of Delegates! Totally unexpected thrashing. And of the 16 winners, 12 were women (several, women of color).
Similar outcomes were evident in New Jersey and the wide range of local races in this off-year expression of electorate trends.
Just imagine that the Virginia trend ripples through the 2018 Congressional and statehouse elections nationwide. Suddenly, we could find strong grassroots women holding office and pursuing change all across the country. (Indeed, a startlingly similar trend is unfolding in Britain, too.) Imagine breaking the Republican monopoly of Congressional power with a host of new, nominally Democratic but independent-minded Congresswomen. The march into the 2020 Presidential campaign is clearly delineated.
I am heartened by remarks that Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) made in the aftermath of the Virginia results. Clearly buoyed, he expressed confidence for the movement seeking to hold billionaires and corporations to account, and he urged the Democratic Party to open all state primaries for participation by independents (as candidates and as voters). Sound talking points. At this time, Sanders seems the best positioned of Americans who might rise to the status of Gray Champion in this Fourth Turning.
In any case, IMO, we are now at the revolutionary juncture we Boomers have awaited our entire political lives. The issues that animated our youthful, Sixties rebellion – war, racism, sexism and the Earth – are coming full circle. Our generation’s “rendezvous with destiny” is now. Clearly, the window is open in the US for progressive forces to take the Congress and Presidency through the 2018-20 election cycle. Other nations are on similar trajectories. These successes will reset the global stage for the final showdown in civilization’s epic struggle to subordinate corporate finance to human needs.
Boomers know our children. The GenXers among them are just about at their wits end, and the Millennials seem not to have a real chance at even proving themselves. All are enlightened; they see the world as it is. They’ve got no choice but to stand up, at least to listen to the candidates and vote…and as the turnout in Virginia and New Jersey showed, turnout they will. They’ll also volunteer, donate money and run for office. In history, at all fourth turnings, the rising generations always tighten morality and make fundamental change.
This time will be no exception, and it is women who are turning the tide.
[Steve Clark]
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