We casually throw around terms like Boomers and Generation X without truly understanding the deeper meaning of what a generation is and represents. In the mid 80s I read a book called Generations, in which the authors showed the United States had four different generations, which followed each other like the hands on a clock, from 12 to 3 to 6 to 9 and back again to 12. These generations the authors labeled (I paraphrase) Aggressive, Aggressive Passive, Passive, and Passive Aggressive. Their contention was that it took two to tango, and as long as one of the three Passive generations was in control of the levers of power, all out war would be avoided at all costs But let an Aggressive generation be in political and cultural control of the country, a blow, or even a spit in the face, would be responded to with a blow. When I read the book some 25 years ago, I saw by their charts that an Aggressive generation would be in power sometime after the 2012 election, and following their logic, and given the nature of the world and the nature of the threats posed to us by a variety of actors, it followed we would in a major war sometime between2014 and 2020. Or so was my reading of a very persuasive presentation. If the authors were correct in 1986, and are correct now, it is coming, possibly much sooner than we think, and it might very well be a nuclear war with China and North Korea, with sideshows against a few of the more noxious muslim countries. If and when it happens it will be a World War.

 

 

Again the lights go out

Again the young men march

Again the women weep

Their babies in their arms

Again the skies rain down

Again the seas run red

Again the children cry

When heard the shrill alarms

For it was ever thus

From Athens, Rome to now

For people must defend

Their temples, gods and farms