This is the third post about my recent book, one that I am very excited about—Tracking the Storm. An excerpt from Chapter 3 follows below. You can download a pdf if you enjoy reading on your computer or also purchase a printed copy of the book.
Could we possibly be in the last phase, the phase of a Great Crisis? Or, to use the season metaphor of Strauss and Howe, are we in the Winter of this current saeculum? I believe we clearly are. Not only have the predictions of Strauss and Howe come into focus, somewhat sharply in some of their thoughts, but a host of other events have begun to emerge that speak clearly of both unraveling (Third Phase) and coming crisis (Fourth Turning). To anyone watching in 2010-2011, things in the USA certainly seem to be unraveling. In fact, the 15 years from 1990-2005 very clearly present a period of the country coming unhinged.
For the past decade then I have been watching closely for signs, look for any similarities to events like the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue or the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. At the same time, I have been listening to experts from multiple fields. Have you? If so, then you have probably noticed what I have—that many of these experts in disparate fields of focus (technology, biology, environment, space, finance, geo-politics, agriculture) are all talking about looming massive crisis that they believe will hit in the 2010-2020 decade.
The currently most famous example of this is the experts in the Ancient Mayan religion and culture. If you haven’t heard, the Mayans understood time through a circular calendar or clock-type device. It was a very complex system that ultimately allowed them to incorporate various smaller cycles into what is known as “The Long Count.” For some reason unknown to scholars, the Long Count stopped being counted in a way that concludes on December 21-23, 2012 (depending on which starting date a scholar uses, a choice of August 11-13, 3114 BC). Thus, to those who wish to see it as such, one can propose that the Mayan’s predicted the end of the world (though there is no evidence that any such thing can be really concluded). Adding to the hysteria is that December 21, 2012 is the Winter Solstice. That, of course, happens every year, but being the shortest day of the year seems to lead credence to the Mayan concern.
Staying in the stars, scientists who are experts on the sun have predicted a horrific decade of solar flares and issues with the sun. Geo-political analysts have suggested the China will invade Taiwan, North Korea will launch a nuclear attack at either South Korea or Japan, and that Russia will return to communism, perhaps attempting to reclaim her lost “States” like the Ukraine or Uzbekistan. Turkey at war with a new Kurdistan, Greece fighting to conquer a new Macedonia, Serbia battling Kosovo over independence—these are just a few of the regional explosions that are predicted.
Financially, as I write this in 2011, we already know of the economic disaster; yet many financial experts predict that this is the start of disaster, not the end. The same happened in 1932 when things got worse economically compared to 1930, even though the government had taken various steps to “fix things” since the start of the Great Depression. Some reports are that real wages are going to stay flat for at least another decade. Other experts are now saying that the average American family’s economic buying power has actually been in decline since the early 1990s.
At the same time, other financial gurus have predicted the end of cash, the end of the penny and the beginning of people only needing to use their cell phones to make purchases. This move towards digital money is coming, of course, at the same time as more Americans slide deeper and deeper into debt. Almost 40% of the country owes over $10,000 in unsecured debt (that means not including their house or car loans). Over two million people owe more than $40,000.
Meanwhile, the national government is so far in debt that some geopolitical experts have predicted that China may call in our loans, though other scholars doubt that. Still, what if China asks for payment in the form of, say, Hawaii or Alaska? Even if there is no “arm twisting” to hype up the international crisis level, owing China over $800 billion (we also own Japan over $700 billion) is not a great place to be heading into the next decade. There is a real possibility of the USA simply not being able to pay its normal expenses to run the country (services, welfare, new health care, etc…), let alone any costs to foreign countries.
Obviously anyone with two ears knows all about the supposedly critical state of nature. Al Gore has made a new career for himself with his popular slideshow about global warming, and though other scientists disagree with what exactly is going on, experts predict massive “gloom and doom” situations that could begin in this next decade. Even average people living on the shores of the US report on the rising ocean levels. Other experts point to a growing critical shortage of water, often due to a US determination to create green spaces out of arid surroundings.
Other science “issues” are looming including studies that show the sun’s solar radiation is actually decreasing, while other studies indicate that the earth’s spin has been slowly speeding up since 1999. Few have missed the seeming increase in killer hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunami’s and natural storms in general.
In the area of medical science and agrarian science, we are starting to figure out that all of the efforts in the 1950s-70s to eradicate diseases have only served to make the diseases mad. Back in full force are old favorites like polio, measles, rubella and mumps with adaptations made by the disease to make their punch more powerful. Many medical experts are predicting a nightmare pandemic to hit sometime in the next 10 years, with prediction of swine flu, avian flu, influenza and for some conspiracy experts, smallpox (considered to be the one disease that actually has been eradicated by science).
It’s not just human diseases either; recently, agrarian experts discovered an outbreak of a return of stem rust, a deadly disease for wheat. Considered banished by science in 1970, it is now back, emerging from Africa. And it has returned angry! The disease is able to leap unpredictably long-range due to global travel and trade; worse, it is showing the ability to mutate meeting all new attempts by science to destroy it. Not a comic-book writer’s new attempt at a super-villain, this disease could bring worldwide famine, or at least famine to China and India and the rest of Asia.
Nutritionists take their concern in another direction, especially for the USA. Not only are children absorbing 11 hours or more of media, in our ever-loving quest for “things to watch,” obesity has exploded. In the past 15 years, Americans have grown in weight to the point that every state but Colorado has 20%+ of their population obese. According to some surveys, the full population is close to a 30% rate of obesity. Over 20% of US children are overweight or at high risk of adult obesity with the rate climbing. One recent study determined that by 2015, 75% of Americans would be overweight or obese.
Including TV, Americans are getting over 60 hours of unduplicated media content, which largely means sitting and doing nothing. Again, while this may pale compared to the world flooding due to melting ice caps, if this alone was the only crisis to hit in the 2010-2020 decade, it would easily exceed the financial cost of the civil war. In today’s dollars, the Civil War of 1861-1865 would have cost between $4 and 7 billion dollars (by comparison, World War 2 cost over $3 trillion and the Iraq war has cost over $900 billion). Our obesity cost is over $140 billion a year, so for a 4-year effort the cost exceeds $560 billion, not a small issue for the society.
Whew—this is exhausting and scary reading, huh? See what I meant when I told you a great crisis was coming? If any of these scholars and experts is correct, the decade of 2010-2020 will be the most explosive known in about a century. I know for many of you intelligent readers, you may be leaping to defend our coming decade by proclaiming the equivalent of “so’s your mother.” Or, more politely, the concept that every decade, every period of time has its own crisis, own issues, is presented as reason why we should not necessarily worry. In general terms, I agree with that concept; each period of time does indeed have its own wars, economic crisis and scientific concerns.
My point, however, isn’t some alarmists hysteria about any one of these things, but to reiterate that the experts in these disparate fields ALL point to this decade of 2010-2020 as the period of reckoning. This evidence of looming crisis for the USA (and the Western society in general) corresponds with the historical pattern. Winter is indeed upon us.
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Tracking the Storm provides powerful clues about what is coming, rapidly, to the United States. There is little doubt that a storm is approaching the country, the outer edges of the winds already swirling around us. What does that portend for the nation? Through the clues of history, we can find direction and steps to undertake to prepare. Many believe there won’t be a storm, or maybe that the worst is over. With history as a guide, I demonstrate that we haven’t yet even reached the Great Crisis.
Gripping and “a scary yet necessary read,” Tracking the Storm moves through the past 400 years of Anglo-American history to illustrate the various clues provided that show the steps to the coming crisis. I will tell the story of political instability, economic distress, rapid technological changes and a growing philosophical divide that challenged previous generations. At the end of each Great Crisis, the nation had been radically changed. Pick up your copy of Tracking the Storm today!