The 96 year cycle

[Bucky]

For devotees of American history, looking for a pattern of past events to judge and anticipate the incoming Trump Administration by, I'm going to suggest we look at the Harding Administration (1921-1923)

Tidbits from U-S-History.com. The parallels should just jump out at you

Domestic Affairs:
The undisputed goal of the Harding administration was to use governmental powers to assist American business and industry to prosper — a trend that had begun during World War I and accelerated during the New Era of the 1920s.

Election of 1920:
The American electorate turned against Wilsonian idealism and interventionism and embraced a "return to normalcy" promised by Warren G. Harding.

Recession:
A postwar economic downturn begun under Wilson continued into the early months of the Harding administration.

Emergency Tariff Act (May 1921).
Stop-gap aid was extended to U.S. farmers until a more comprehensive tariff measure could be written.

Immigration Restriction Act (May 1921).
Congressional immigration reform introduced the first use of a quota system.

Budget and Accounting Act (June 1921).
Congress granted broad powers over the preparation of annual federal budgets.

Revenue Act of 1921 (November 1921).
Treasury Secretary Mellon won only a partial victory in his quest for tax reduction.

Fordney-McCumber Tariff (September 1922).
A blatantly protective tariff answered the pleas of many American producers, but sharply reduced overall foreign trade.

Resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan:
The reappearance of the Klan was evidence of some Americans' resistance to a fast-changing postwar world. The new organization targeted more groups and movements than had the original during Reconstruction.

Harding, of course, ended up running one of the three most corrupt administrations in US history (rivaling and possibly surpassing those of US Grant and George W. Bush). An essentially lazy and shallow man (with a weakness for the ladies) he may have gotten elected by promising to take things back to the way things used to be, but his real weakness was in relying on too small a pool of advisors who misdirected him and held too much sway over his final decisions. Or indecisions, more often than not. Warren Harding was in over his head.

His lack of hands on management and the time period's emphasis on wealth-as-success led to his appointment of a bunch of crooked and venial underlings who sought every opportunity to use high office to loot the country. They were far from being the Republican Party's best and brightest. Harding valued personal loyalty over actual competence (or maybe just lacked the mental acumen to tell who was competent and who wasn't). A lackadaisical press corps more or less played along, with a few exceptions, because a war-weary society, still jumpy after a series terrorism attacks by foreigners, was disinterested in following the details of the little scandals. The scandals just slowly piled up in the young administration's first two years.

In some places, the coincidences are uncanny. In other cases they don't quite play out in such parallel details. The bigger trend to look toward the future is the extent to which Trump's 3rd stringers and lobby jockeys go all Teapot Dome on us. His big projects like wall building, infrastructure rebuilding, immigrant monitoring and controlling, and deregulation of industry safety standards will be full of opportunities and temptations for official corruption. It will be a circus of corruption. It will take loads of poking from activists to get the mainstream media to pay attention to it.

This is where we at Du will be able to play a role. We must become an echo chamber to raise some noise--from here and then spreading out to all other parts of the internet and broadcast media--about the corruption in Washington.

[Cooley Hurd]

1. This is a fascinating juxtaposition

[bench scientist]

2. this is a very perceptive.

Trump's advisors in my opinon will be far worse, both with the scale of their greed and the scale of their impact.
They can now cause far more global havoc than in 1921 in both regards.

[Blanks]

3. The similarities between Trump and Hoover...

Are difficult to overlook too.

Hoover had never been elected to public office, he was wealthy, had never served in the military. He promised a chicken in every pot.

Once things went south, he basically said "let them eat cake" that's the kind of leadership I expect from Trump.

[Bucky]

7. I fear forces around Trump will be a bit more malevolent than Hoover.

[ms liberty]

4. K&R...n/t

[tinrobot]

5. Strauss-Howe theory predicts a 4 generation cycle

So, that's roughly 80-90 years. In that scenario, Trump is more of a Hoover and we are fast approaching a crisis on the order of the Depression/WWII.

These two articles are a good primer:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnmauldin/2016/06/24/millennials-are-doomed-to-face-an-existential-crisis-that-will-define-the-rest-of-their-lives/#649b686649fc

The more I dig into Strauss-Howe, the more I agree with it. We're in for a rough decade.

[Bucky]

6. Sure, the Hoover analogy works somewhat, but in character & corruption, it's Hardinger

New start/new promise offered by a shady character. Hoover, for all his faults, was a classic liberal who ran a pretty clean government. He was just too laissez faire for his own good. Think of a Gary Johnson who could pass a roadside sobriety test.

[tinrobot]

8. I don't think the analogies need to be as exact, but point taken.

Hoover presided over the collapse, and I think the collapse will come sooner rather than later, so that's why I chose Hoover. The next collapse will not be identical to the 1930's, so the parallels don't need to be identical.

What I keep seeing from Strauss-Howe is that the next 10-15 years will be a time of crisis. How that crisis plays out is not as specific from the theory, just that there will be one and that the Millennial generation will pull us out of it.

I do think your analysis lines up with the idea that we're approaching a crisis point. We certainly agree about that.