An American Prophecy

The Fourth Turning: an American Prophecy. In 1997 William Strauss and Neil Howe published this book that said America was in a period of culture wars that would end in a Millenium Crisis shortly after 2001. The precipitating event they said might be a terrorist war.

This was only their latest in a series of books on generational history, earlier one's being Generations and 13th Gen. The last was written about the X-generation. They had also expressed surprised that on one had written a biography about the G.I. generation shortly before "The Greatest Generation" became the media rave. The latest one is Millenials Rising which predicts a "Millennial makeover" of American popular culture.

For the next twenty years the country will be wrestling with choices on how to respond in the crisis time it finds itself. This will involve not only terrorism and taxes, but energy and the environment, and above all else defining the new American values. The last period of crisis was the Great Depression and World War 2. Note that this was the time of the great rise of the Democratic Party. In 2005 America will have a stark choice for the future, corporate safety first under the religious GOP or empowering people under the seperation of church and state Democrats. Right now this is a fifty-fifty nation, by November I pray it breaks the right democratic way.