I’d like to tell you all a bit more about the statistics behind this article.  But, I’m feeling a bit hazy now, like a bad trip.  Maybe later when my head clears, man.

Very nice piece in the NYTimes by an officer who is almost certainly a Generation X (born 1961-1981) (he started serving too early to be a Millennial (born 1982-200?), and he is not high enough ranking to be a Boomer (born 1943-1960)). Any survey of generational divisions in today’s the armed forces uncovers Xer officers who feel bollixed by their Boomer superiors. The Xers want to decentralize decision making, reduce the bureaucracy, give more initiative to leaders on the ground, make decisive choices, and embrace risk rather than shun it.

Why all the smothering oversight? To reduce American casualties, of course, say Boomer and Silent (born 1925-1942)elders. To create an idiot-proof (Boomer-speak for Xer-proof) safeguard against bad headlines for political leaders back at home. But, counter the Xers, what if this approach simply ensures that America’s effort is ineffectual and that we are still there ten years from now, still slogging around and suffering casualties?

Speaking of the Nomadarchetype at war, I am reminded of the memorable scene in the movie “Patton.”  Omar Bradley (who was given all the best lines because he advised the director) got owned in one exchange after castigating George for being too aggressive in a particular attack in the Sicilian campaign and suffering needless casualties. Patton’s response—and I loosely paraphrase from memory: “Sure, Brad, some died. But we broke through, didn’t we? We brought this war closer to an end, didn’t we? If we did it your way, we might still be pinned down there, dying as we speak.” It is an interesting question whether the war would have been over in Europe in 1944, instead of 1945, if Patton had remained Bradley’s superior during and after D-Day. Germany might never have been divided, and the Soviet postwar domination of Central Europe would have been much weaker.

Ulysses Grant was another famous Nomad warrior who understood better than his elders (except for a few, like Lincoln and his friend Sherman) that sometimes you have to take risks, including the risk of losing lives, to get the job done. This is how the midlife Xer-in-charge pushes the mood toward the Fourth Turning (Crisis).

The final remarks in this article explicitly and eloquently point to the tethering of Generation X leaders:

“The culture of risk mitigation could be countered with a culture of initiative. Mid-level leaders win or lose conflicts. Our forces are better than the Taliban’s, but we have leashed them so tightly that they are unable to compete.”

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This article in the NYT can be read on many levels.  As an indicator of the tremendous pressure facing young Millennial (born 1982-200?) who want to excel.  Or as a sign of how far Millennial girls are willing to go to slavishly jump over every bar that teachers put before them.

Or it can be read as pointing to the changing role of entertainment in a nation now governed by the “cultural elite,” no longer by the “power elite.”

Young Boomer (born 1943-1960) recall their parents and teachers taking such a casual attitude toward culture and entertainment.  It wasn’t part of the civic and institution building that (G.I. (born 1901-1924) believed) really mattered.  Cultural performers were not very well paid, and no one really cared if the production was original or innovative.

Now look at Millennials.  If they want to excel in entertainment, they had better be ready to enter some astronaut program of all-consuming perfection.

Bill and I once wrote—I think it  was in Millennials in the Pop Culture—that if “The Graduate” were re-written today, the key word “plastics” would be replaced by the word “media.”

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This is really a nice video featuring Jeff Gordinier who wrote “X Saves the World”. Very Generation X (born 1961-1981), both substance and style. Love the black shirt against the black screen. Nice of him to use dates that are closer to ours (starting in 1961) and to give the generation close to twenty years.

The cover of Time Magazine this week features on article on overparenting:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1940395-1,00.html

(thanks to JenX67 for the link)

The claim is that a backlash is forming, but I wonder whether that will really be the case. The author of the Time article doesn’t seem to discriminate between over-achieving parenting (typical of Boomer (born 1943-1960)) and over-protective parenting (typical of  Generation X (born 1961-1981)). Things like “slow parenting” are a good example of where Gen X is rejecting the Boomer over-achiever style:

This is a Slow Family Living class, taught by perinatal psychologist Carrie Contey and Bernadette Noll. “Our whole culture,” says Contey, 38, “is geared around ‘Is your kid making the benchmarks?’ There’s this fear of ‘Is my kid’s head the right size?’ People think there’s some mythical Good Mother out there that they aren’t living up to and that it’s hurting their child. I just want to pull the plug on that.”

There is definitely a Gen X driven backlash against the whole perfectionist Boomer “hyper-parenting” style. But the whole move back to simple, slow, home-based child rearing often leads to parenting styles that are even more hands-on and protective than they were before. Workshops on how to help kids by “letting go” and the mathematical reassessment of which risks are worth guarding against has a comical aspect. You will know when the next generation of young children are arriving (their parents will be late-wave Millennial (born 1982-200?)) when no one is any longer interested in this subject. We’ve built a whole new world that is basically safe, so now let’s just ignore them and not worry any longer. When we reach that point, young Prophets (the next incarnation of the Boomers) will be among us.

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Proviso: I don’t of course agree with everything–or maybe even most of the things–Jim Quinn says.  But I do love the passion and intensity and texture of his analysis.  He is definitely a worthy contributor.  I don’t know his age, but I guess like the rest of you he’s Boomer-Xer cusp.

On the starting date for the Fourth Turning (Crisis) (4T), I believe Bill and I did a column on the 4T site several years ago detailing all the reasons why we thought it did not begin with 9/11.  We got some flak at the time, because there were lots of people who *wanted* it to begin then.  But to our eye, it was clearly too early.  Typically, a new turning begins after all of the living generations begin to move into their new phases of life.  In 2001, clearly that hadn’t happened yet: Boomers were not yet retiring, Generation X (born 1961-1981) were not yet taking over any institutions as midlife leaders, Millennial (born 1982-200?) were barely graduating high school, and so on.  We predicted that the Third Turning (Unraveling) (3T) mood would yet have an Indian Summer… and so it did.  Keep in mind that on the “Hero clock” of the last 4T, we are still not quite due for the 4T to begin.  The ‘29 Crash happened 28 years after the first G.I. (born 1901-1924) birth year.  We will hit that same year  for Millennials in… 2010.

All that being said, many are asking me if I think the 4T has yet started.  I’m with Mr. Cooper.  For nearly a year now, I’ve been saying that a strong case can be made that it started in 2008–with the beginning of an epic financial crash (a 60% decline in the global Dow from peak to trough) and an extraordinary national election that may signal an enduring political realignment and that has, for the time being, put government on a sort of permanent emergency fiscal footing (with 10% of GDP deficits that may only come down slowly if at all).  And yes thanks to 911 everyone knows that we are engaged in seemingly endless Asian wars–but now, thanks to the election, they are *bipartisan* wars… and *bipartisan* showdowns over nuts with nukes.  We’ve got plenty of moving parts.  I think one could say we’ve got sufficient or “critical” mass to call this the beginning of a 4T.  The next two or three years must be watched closely.  The crucial question, if indeed the 4T is underway, is determining when the “regeneracy” phase of the 4T will begin.

On the question of dating the Homelanders.  Let’s assume the Millennials are a 23-year-long generation (perfectly plausible: one year shorter than the GIs, one year longer than the Xers).  That would put their last birth year at 2004.  Which means the first Homelander birth year is 2005.  Let’s now assume that 2008 marks an extended period (ten “lost years” or more) of very poor economic performance–with high unemployment, low capacity and consumer confidence, stagnant global trade, etc..  That would precisely mark the Homeland Generation as the generation having no memory of the Great Boom.  All Millennials will recall at least some childhood during the zany ’90s and early oughts; Homelanders not.  Exactly in the same manner that all G.I.s could later recall at least some childhood during the Roaring Twenties–but the Silent (born 1925-1942) (born starting in 1925–the oldest were turning four at the Great Crash) could not.

In presentations I do for K-12 teachers and administrators, I am starting to spend more time talking about the Homelanders (they may now be in preschool–and will soon be entering grammar school).  And yes they have all the early markings of the Artist archetype.  They are heavily protected by their Gen-X moms and dads, who overwhelmingly believe they are raising their kids in a more hands-on, interventionist, kid-safety-comes-first style than they themselves were raised.  Just like the Lost Generation, who discovered the behavioralist child-rearing guru John Watson, so too are Xers parents deep into the behavioralism of child-care guides filled with “do’s and dont’s” rules.  In our recent book “Millennials and K-12 Schools” (2008), we have a small chapter on the Homelanders.  Every day we are expanding our insights.  I hope sometime soon to write a longer column on them for all of you.

It’s getting late.  Anyway, thanks again for being here.  Last weekend I did a three-hour radio show on Coast-to-Coast AM (11 PM to 2 AM Pacific Time), and I was extremely grateful, in the last hour, to get a great number of phonecalls from Boomer (born 1943-1960) and Gen-Xers around the country who first read our books in the early ’90s and have been following us ever since.  This was my fourth or fifth show for them–and they will probably soon have me on as a regular (rough hours I know!).  I hope to meet you on one of these show.  In any case, I can truthfully say that it’s your curiosity, your enthusiasm, and the sharing of your own experiences that has always made this worthwhile for both of us–Bill, while he was still with us, and myself for as long as I am around.

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This is an interesting and creative essay by Jim Quinn, who writes for a financial newsletter:

http://theburningplatform.com/economy/american-pie-1

Quinn says the Fourth Turning (Crisis) started in 2005 and that we have several more years of worsening wars, higher energy prices, and towering deficits before we reach regeneracy. He still sees a Boomer (born 1943-1960) Gray Champion in our future (which generation is he, I wonder?):

We are years from a final resolution. The cast of characters who will decide our fate is unknown today. Barack Obama will not be a major player in the climax of this Crisis. He will go down in history as the James Buchanan or Herbert Hoover figure that only insured that the Crisis would grow bigger and more painful through his actions. The country is likely to turn to an aging Boomer to lead the country through the violent phase of this Crisis. The initial phase of this Crisis has passed, much like the stock market crash in 1929 and the appearance of a recovery in 1930. The “solutions” that have been implemented thus far will drive our deficits skyward, drive the dollar downward, and ultimately push the economy into a depression. The confluence of a deepening depression with the onset of peak oil shortages in supplies and soaring prices between 2010 and 2014 will plunge the country into chaos. As the world loses confidence in the leadership of our country, they will exit our debt and our dollar. The collapse of the U.S. currency could result in a number of calamitous scenarios.

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This article on the “Death of the Soul of Capitalism” is another illustration of how so many Boomer (born 1943-1960) will be totally bummed out if they don’t live to see the opening of the Seventh Seal… or the Age of Kali.

The mood of the Fourth Turning (Crisis) is really starting to get interesting.

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The Wall Street Journal had an interesting retrospective on the life story of the one the G.I. elite. Norman Borlaug—a Promethean provider of basic staples to the world.  And, along the way, a savior of the world… of course in a very material, not spiritual, way.  Not to be Jimmy Stewartish about it—but how much more miserable we would all be today if this generation had never been!

Read it here.

This post from David Brooks and Gail Collins in the NYTimes blogs paints a banal picture of Ted Kennedy.

I have already heard comparisons in the media to Daniel Webster and Henry Clay.  The parallel with John Q. works also.  If (say Chappaquiddick never happened) Ted Kennedy had won the presidency, I suspect his White House tenure would have been as brief and unpopular as John Q’s. And, like John Q., he was always a lot more popular in his native Massachusetts than he ever was elsewhere.

The only comparable figure in the Progressive Generation who springs to mind—a famous reformer and flowery-tongued Senator who won many terms and often competed for the presidency—is Robert LaFollete.  But frankly Ted never had LaFollette’s passion and courage.  And, to tell the truth, he was not close to being the intellectual equal of any of the above.  More than any other political leader I can think of, Ted Kennedy’s early electoral success rested almost entirely on his family’s money and reputation.  Only as an elder statesman did he begin to gain, through his own affability and attention to process and detail, a reputation as a constructive and bipartisan dealmaker.  Not sharing the charisma or vision of his elder brothers, most young Boomer (born 1943-1960) hardly gave him much notice back in the ‘60s or ‘70s.  He was a quintessential Mr. Insider, far more beloved by his friends and staff and close associates than by the anonymous public at large.  Ultimately his insider strengths enabled him to become a coalition-builder and doer in an era when so many other legislators (esp Boomers) were distracted by ideological posturing.

Woody Allen once said that 80 percent of life is just showing up.  This is an  apt summary of Woody’s entire  Silent (born 1925-1942) generation: They came along at an opportune moment, they showed up, they played by the rules, and they got rewarded.  Ted Kennedy’s a good example of this.  Despite his obvious character flaws, he simply stayed around, persevered, went through the motions, did his duty, attended to his family’s crusades, and ultimately got plenty done.  Had he been born twenty years later, in 1952 rather than 1932, he would have run off to Katmandu or Bora Bora—possibly to return with some entirely transformed persona.  Not Teddy.  And that serves as an exemplary life lesson to all of us born in younger generations.

Hat Tip to Reena Nadler for finding the article.